The Weekly 2000 AD Prog #2431: No One Beats The System, Especially Not In Mega-City One

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, we get a shift-around, with a rare Dan Abnett-written one-off Judge Dredd, a one-off Future Shock, and then the continuations of three very different bits of sci-fi – the classic Nu Earth tale running in Rogue Trooper, the alien invasion with a vampiric difference in Silver, and the body horrors unfolding in Ghosted. All in all, another fine line up for the anthology that’s been delivering the goods for nearly five decades. Seriously, are you not getting it yet?

It all happens under yet another iconic cover from Cliff Robinson and Dylan Teague…

2000 AD Prog 2431 is out in the UK now. It will be available in the Americas at some point, but who knows when that may be, especially when the distribution system is rather fluid right now. My advice, as always, head into your local comics shop and ask them nicely to order it in for you. After all, it’s coming up for its 50th anniversary in a few years time, and it’s been a consistent source of fine, fine sci-fi comics every since Prog 1. And yes, late with the preview this week – we’ve been moving house. I’m way too old for this moving rubbish, and ache in all those places old bones and muscles shouldn’t be aching. But enough moaning, time to get into the latest 2000 AD…

JUDGE DREDD: NO PLACE LIKE HOME – BY DAN ABNETT AND ROB RICHARDSON, LETTERS BY ANNIE PARKHOUSE

Well,  Abnett may be a writing machine, producing the likes of The Out, still my favourite thing of the last many years in 2000 AD, Sinister Dexter, Feral & Foe, Azimuth, and loads more besides, it’s a surprise he doesn’t get to do more Dredds. Especially after you read this perfectly done-in-one tale here.

For a start, it’s got Rob Richardson’s art and colours, an artist who’s been appearing fairly regularly in the pages of the Prog and the Megazine these past couple of years, getting better and better, with this as his finest moment thus far. The way he evokes a mood of Mega City One, his colours perfectly chosen, the dark streets of the Meg full of subtle colours and fabulous images. It’s as much a delight to look at as it is to read.

It’s a done-in-one Dredd, focusing, as do so many of the best Dredds, on some poor unfortunate citizen. In this case, it’s Ned Wikney, walking into a gang turf war and getting himself mistakenly declared dead at the scene. Med Techs not doing their jobs properly, and setting poor old Ned on course for a bureaucratic nightmare that only the Meg can dish out. Because once you’re dead in MC-1, it’s bloody hard to live. Once he’s done his eight weeks of rehab in the hospital, it’s out on the streets, where the dead man finds out that MC-1 doesn’t deal with the mistakenly dead too well.

It’s a classic little tale of bureaucracy and red tape, a system set up to deal with its citizens by the book. And when you slip through the cracks, there’s no way back. Forms need to be filled in, one office after another, and you can see the life draining from Ned’s eyes as this nightmare world grinds him down. Cue another gorgeous bit of art from Richardson that shows so much…

Not even Dredd can help, sending him on to Housing. But he’s been there already, too many times. And it’s then that he snaps, the grind of it all just too much. And now he’s just another Cit turned perp, the cruel world done with him for good.

Damn, that’s a great six-pager from Abnett and Richardson, a mini classic Dredd, classic and immediate, all the problems of Dredd’s world writ large for the reader to see.

ROGUE TROOPER: TIDES OF WAR – PART 3 -ANDI EWINGTON AND PAUL MARSHALL, COLOURS BY PIPPA BOWLAND, LETTERS BY JIM CAMPBELL

This is shaping up to be a fine little Rogue Trooper tale indeed. Set in the best bit of Rogue history, somewhere in the whole Traitor General saga, Rogue just wandering, searching for the man who killed his comrades, allowing Ewington to just tell the war tale he wants to tell. And it’s a fine little tale indeed.

We’re travelling up the Corrosive Straits in the company of the crew of the Souther Torpedo Class Patrol Boat Dauntless, a knackered little boat full of a small crew generally pissed off with this war they’ve found themselves in. They’ve already fought off an assault from the air, and now there’s a Nort ship bearing down on them. Nothing more on the ‘Iron Leviathan’ mentioned last episode here, but that’s because we’re way too busy dealing with the Dauntless standing up to the bigger Nort ship and getting involved in one nasty firefight.

Marshall’s solid, simple art does everything it needs to, clear storytelling done really well, the decision to go with a muted black, white, and grey tone style with Rogue picked out in blue still a masterstroke here.

Lots of action, all done really well. This is the sort of Rogue that works really well, a lone soldier on his own little Apocalypse Now adventure upriver.

GHOSTED: BOOK ONE: PART 5 – BY GUY ADAMS AND MEGAN HUANG. LETTERS BY SIMON BOWLAND

This one’s been nothing but a slow reveal war story, taking place in the seeming utopia of Kinshasa.  But, as party girl Benu is finding out, there’s a dark secret to Kinshasa’s façade of shining towers and looked-after people, and it’s one of a secret war being fought, a war that takes the most vulnerable in this ideal society and turns them them into warriors, implants turning them into soldiers, fighting in a war that they, and we, know little of.

Again, there’s a skill in playing a story out this way, not giving too much away, slowly drip feeding elements of the bigger picture to the reader. It’s one that Adams has done so well here in Ghosted, creating one world and then slowly showing us that that world is far from the truth. It’s not one of instant gratification, not one of immediate revelation. No, this goes the other way, making you think, making you wait for the tale to play out. And it’s playing out so well.

Last episode we saw how the ghost in Benu’s head came to be, the horrors of the Kinshahsa implant revealed. Now Benu and the soldier in her head get to chat some, not that either of them are happy about that. Benu’s having a hard time believing that this party world she’s known all her pointless life is a front for some war with aliens on another world.

But she’s got bigger problems right now, as the Kinshasa cops are coming for her, and it’s time to escape.

Plenty of mystery, plenty of action, plenty of Huang’s vibrant and kinetic art that never lets up. Ghosted really is playing out slowly, but doing it with a pace that’s impressive.

FUTURE SHOCKS: THE TAKEOVER – BY JAMES PEATY AND CAM SMITH, LETTERS BY ANNIE PARKHOUSE

Future Shocks, if you didn’t already know, have been a staple of 2000 AD for much of its history, five pages of story with a classic twist in the tale.

Here, it’s all about big business and family betrayals, as an old man learns that he can’t trust anyone in this world anymore, especially not when money’s involved.

Attar’s family are moving against him, his business targeted by another, his family against him. But his old bones don’t seem up for the fight anymore. The solution? Well, that’s all about a de-ageing process, one that gives him the edge in life and in the boardroom, and he ruthlessly moves against all those who’ve wronged him, whether that’s business rivals or family.

But the one rule in business is to always watch your back and never trust anyone, not even those you think are closest to you. And so it is that Attar discovers that he really couldn’t trust anyone, and that mistake will cost him dear.

A simple little Future Shock perhaps, but still a good little five pager by it’s inevitable end.

SILVER: BOOK TWO: PERFIDIOUS (PART 1) – PART 5 – BY MIKE CARROLL AND JOE CURRIE. LETTERS BY SIMON BOWLAND

Silver is all about pace, an incredibly fast pace. The entirety of Book One was done in a day. And whilst Book Two has taken a little more time than that, we’re really into things now, each episode taking place in mere moments of time, Carroll imbuing this tale with so much speed, every episode passing by in mere moments, but still giving us plenty of the backstory of the Sepsis invasion of Earth and the small resistance movement fighting against them.

This resistance has brought in the ancient vampire Baroness de Silva to their fight. She’s not exactly pleased about it, but needs must, the enemy of my enemy an all that. The first mission went well, but this second mission, an attack on a Sepsis nursery, has hit a snag. A rather large snag in the quiet threat of Louise, a human collaborator who knows a little about fighting the sort of ancient monsters like the Baroness.

And that’s where we’re at. Louise leading the Sepsis troops and the collaborating humans against the Baroness, hitting her again and again, destroying her body bit by little bit.

But could it be that that’s all part of the resistance plan? Could the Baroness just be a sacrificial lamb for the greater good? And just how will the Baroness feel about that when this is all done? Well, that’s always assuming that she gets out of this intact – which is looking increasingly unlikely at this point.

Carroll’s storytelling in this one is just all about the action, each page full of moments, the fight never stopping, and in this he’s perfectly assisted by Joe Currie’s art. Currie was the artist Silver was designed for, those Euro-influenced lines perfectly suited to the pace of this one. He delivers on every panel, every page, creating something that’s unrelenting in its forward motion, a great read indeed.