The Weekly 2000 AD – Prog 2430 – Ghosted Goes Deep Into Your Head, But Not In The Ways You Thought

Taking a look inside the UK’s greatest sci-fi comic, the Galaxy’s Greatest, now 48 years young —it’s the Weekly 2000 AD.

48 years young, consistently the finest sci-fi anthology you could wish to read. There’s so much in store for you inside the pages of the weekly Prog, it’s about time you dived in!

This week, more of the five great strips we’ve had for a little while. There are finales for Judge Dredd: Blitzers and Chimpsky’s Law, a second part of a new Rogue Trooper, and more from the very different sci-fi worlds of Silver and Ghosted.

All of that comes under a very stylish and iconic Simon Davis’ Ghosted cover that looks very much like this…

2000 AD Prog 2430 is out now in the UK. It will be available in the Americas at some point, but it’s never certain when, thanks to the weirdness of the distribution network, only made worse by all the recent changes at Diamond, no doubt. My advice is to go to your local comic shop and demand they order it in for you. Seriously, you need 2000 AD in your life. It’s been consistently the finest sci-fi anthology for nigh on 50 years now.

So, away we go – let’s show you what’s happening inside…

JUDGE DREDD: BLITZERS – PART 4 – FINAL PART – BY KEN NIEMAND AND DAN CORNWELL. COLOURS BY DYLAN TEAGUE, LETTERS BY ANNIE PARKHOUSE

Like I said last week, this is so much the Niemand Dredd, meaning it’s been literally on Dredd and concentrating instead on the folks of Mega-City One. After all, there are so many stories possible in the strange world of MC-1, so many weird and wonderful people, that the relatively one-dimensional character of Dredd really works best when playing off others.

Here, it’s all been about the mob Blitzers, a group of poor bastards forced by the mob to have explosive devices implanted in their bodies. But then Chaos Day came along, and everything went south. Their mob bosses were gone, and they had a way out. Once they figured out a source for the drugs suppressing the explosives, they just did what they’d dreamt of, lived normal lives.

Right up until now. Now, the drugs aren’t working anymore, and they’ve had to leave their lives behind and run, knowing they’re not getting out of this one alive – it’s just a case of whether they blow up or Dredd gets to them first.

And that’s where we are now – two left alive on page 1, down to just one by page 3…

She’s the woman with the most to lose, kids she’s had to leave them all behind, and she knows what MC-1’s City Care meant to her, which only makes the final couple of inevitable pages all the more tragic, seeing Dredd deal with what’s just another case to him but is the end of the world to her and her kids.

Another really well put together four-parter from Niemand, who really does write these so well. Plus some absolutely cracking Cornwall Dredd art along the way.

CHIMPSKY’S LAW: THE TRUTH CONUNDRUM – PART 5 – FINAL PART – BY KEN NIEMAND AND PJ HOLDEN. BY JACK DAVIES, LETTERS BY ANNIE PARKHOUSE

Another finale to another Niemand-written tale of Mega-City One. This one’s Niemand and co-creator of the wonderful Noah Chimpsky, having a blast, giving us a true MC-1 hero in the shape of a gene-modified simian who’s every bit as dedicated to the law as Dredd is, just without all those fascist overtones. Chimpsky, from the off, has been all about making the city a better place, but doing it his way, the right way, showing more humanity about it than the humans in charge, and, along the way, giving us a hell of a lot of fun.

This latest Chimpsky’s Law has been all about doing what others think is best for the City, in this case, the Truth Bomber, a droid whose vision for a better world is the same as Chimpsky’s, up to a point. But that point’s the thing – it’s the line Chimpsky won’t cross, which is why Chimpsky’s spent most of this one brainwashed by the robo-Truth Bomber. Now he’s free of that mind control, it’s all about making it out before the Judges discover Chimpsky’s mission.

Anyway, enough of the plot. Suffice it to say Chimpsky gets out and the Truth Bomber gets some Mega-City Justice courtesy of Dredd.

It’s been another really fun Chimpsky story, comedy high in the mix for sure, but a solid story behind it as well. It’s another building block in the whole Chimpsky as the hero MC-1 doesn’t know exists, doesn’t realise it needs story Niemand and Holden are building up here. It’s fun and it’s great and it’s something I can’t wait to read the next installment of.

So yes, Niemand writes it real well, but Holden makes it work, his art looking so good here, his creation meaning that he’s absolutely giving his best here, and his best is oh so good. So, we’re done with another Chimpsky adventure, and I’m looking forward to the next.

SILVER: BOOK TWO: PERFIDIOUS (PART 1) – PART 4 – BY MIKE CARROLL AND JOE CURRIE. LETTERS BY SIMON BOWLAND

Well, the action just keeps on coming in Silver, as the Baroness, the centuries old vampire literally dug up by the resistance to the alien Sepsis, goes for the latest resistance target, the Sepsis nursery, with Carroll absolutely playing to all the strengths, and there are many, to Joe Currie’s artwork. Silver has been fast, violent, and brilliant from the off, and this second series keeps all that going.

The added factor here is Louise, the Sepsis’s collaborating monster hunter, who’s dealt with the Baroness’s kind before. It’s a levelling of the playing field moment. The resistance had the upper hand for a moment, where the Baroness could cut through the Sepsis forces at will, but now Louise comes in and has a plan to take her down.

It’s fast and it’s oh so good. Currie’s control of action sequences, taking page after page of moment on moment, panel after panel, page after page of action just so well done. This is a writer writing for his artist, and the artist stepping up so well.

Whilst it’s all about the action, there’s plenty of bigger picture things being handed to you in the midst of all this action, writer and artist building the story behind the story, yet never losing sight of the way this story is all about speed. You can see it there in the first couple of pages previewed below, the way Currie controls the few seconds of action in the space of two pages. It’s so well done, such a perfect way of showing things, and Currie’s on top of it all.

GHOSTED: BOOK ONE: PART 4 – BY GUY ADAMS AND MEGAN HUANG. LETTERS BY SIMON BOWLAND

Everything that’s gone before has been building to this, the moment the truth of things is revealed.

There’s a skill to the slow reveal that’s been lost over the last few years. We demand to know all there is about something we’re reading or watching, we’ve lost the art of intrigue, of something that doesn’t lay everything out in the first act. Well, Ghosted is a welcome return to the way things used to be, of slowly developing things, of keeping the reader in the dark. The three episodes before this have set things up one way, this is the episode where the truth comes out. This way…

Yes, there’s a war being fought by Kinshasa using the poor as cannon fodder, just as wars have always been fought. Except for this war, the conscripts are snatched from the streets and get shaved, sliced, and implanted before shipping out to wherever they’re fighting.

As horrific as that page of the homeless girl getting her implant is, the next one’s worse. The orderlies talking over her as she’s listening, talk of hollow freaks and drowning the enemy in dreck, dehumanising, degrading, Adams setting the tone right and Huang’s art excelling in showing us all the horror.

It’s shaping up really well is Ghosted, those first three episodes teasing and tantalizing the bigger themes, and now we’re really getting into the story itself and the horrors of both war and this divided society that throws its most vulnerable into battle.

ROGUE TROOPER: TIDES OF WAR – PART 2 -ANDI EWINGTON AND PAUL MARSHALL, COLOURS BY PIPPA BOWLAND, LETTERS BY JIM CAMPBELL

Rogue’s journey upriver, Hearts of Darkness/Apocalypse Now style, continues. He’s on Souther Torpedo Class Patrol Boat Dauntless, trying to head down the Corrosive Straits – yes, even the water on Nu Earth will kill you.

The patrol boat’s seen better times, there’s a crew none too keen on whatever it is they’re meant to be doing, and they’re under attack from Nort Sky Wraiths – there really never is a moment to just relax on Nu Earth.

Anyway, once that threat’s over and done with by heading into the chem-fog, Rogue’s got a chem-fog-addled Captain seeing ghosts of past crew to talk down, only to end up with something bigger and nastier than they are headed towards them.

But there’s also something more going on, maybe, that mention of ‘the Iron Leviathan’, a mission that only the captain seems to know about…

So, two episodes in, and it’s all looking and reading real well. As it’s set out of time, as it’s all isolated to the river, there’s none of that trouble with dealing with the whole Traitor General storyline thing, both the brilliance that succeeded in driving early Rogue in such a singular fashion that made it so good. Doing it like this means Ewington gets to do the war story he wants, it just happens to feature a big blue GI.

And speaking of blue, whoever chose the palette here, black and white with greytones plus a distinctive blue to pick out Rogue, really deserves a pat on the back. Paul Marshall’s art was already going to be a good look, solid, simple in all the best ways, but adding in the tones and the blues just elevates it so much.