The Weekly 2000 AD: Prog 2433 — The Wreckage Of War And Rogue Trooper Delivers

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, it’s another done in one Judge Dredd, complete with more of that ever so damn good Rob Richardson artwork, this time written by Geoffrey D Wessel. And after that, it’s more from four, couldn’t be more different slices of sci-fi if they tried strips. You’ve got classical action done right in Rogue Trooper, you’ve got something increasingly bizarre and increasingly fascinating in Ghosted, the resistance movement’s not so secret weapon continues to get stomped on in Silver, and it’s back to the steampunk world of Victorian Britain for Ian Edginton and D’Israeli‘s Scarlet Traces. Five strips in all, five examples of what’s made 2000 AD so essential all these years – and continues to do so.

All that kicks off under an absolute stunner of a cover from Colin MacNeil…

2000 AD Prog 2433 is out in the UK on Wednesday, 21st May. If you’re in the Americas, the best way to get it would be to pop into your local comic shop and ask the nice folks in there to order it in for you. Trust me, as a convert for the past decade and more, you won’t regret it. I’m still ahead of the game with the Weekly 2000 AD, no thanks to the delightful Cox Communications, who seem insistent on providing an internet service here at Bruton Mansions LV that’s off more than it’s on.

JUDGE DREDD: FAMILY TRADITION – BY GEOFFREY D WESSEL AND ROB RICHARDSON, LETTERS BY ANNIE PARKHOUSE

Another done-in-one Dredd now, the latest in a series of rather good ones. This time, another stint on the art from Rob Richardson, last seen in Prog 2431. Honestly, I really do love what Richardson manages to do to make the Mega-City all mean and moody, the use of bright colours against a muted background and a really strong sense of storytelling makes him one of an exciting batch of relatively new artists who’ve come through on Dredd and other strips in the past few years.

This done-in-one is by Geoffrey D Wessel, another tale of the poor cits on the ground in the Mega City, poor bastards that they are.

Here it’s one Kylian Charles, whose whole family, him included, have a bad rep in their neighbourhood as snitches. meaning every day’s just a grind. He’s got just one friend, and that friend’s in trouble. So, it’s either snitch again to the Jays to save his pal or step up, gun in hand, and deal with it himself. Oh, Kylian, Kylian, Kylian, this was never going to end well for you, was it?

And so it is, six pages neatly done by Wessel, beautifully drawn by Richardson, with a nasty little twist in the tale to finish with. Yep, another cracking little done-in-one Dredd to open up with.

ROGUE TROOPER: TIDES OF WAR – PART 5 -ANDI EWINGTON AND PAUL MARSHALL, COLOURS BY PIPPA BOWLAND, LETTERS BY JIM CAMPBELL

Well, after finding a moment of sanctuary in New Forge with the Nu Earth Resistance, Rogue and the crew of the Dauntless just go from one bad thing to another, this time with fire coming from the skies, courtesy of a Nort Sturmhammer squadron. Oh, it never rains but it pours – and this time it’s pouring bombs down on New Forge.

It hits the Dauntless’s crew hard, seeing the few who were willing to welcome them in wiped out like that… the cruelty of war, survivor’s guilt…

But now it’s onwards, upstream, looking for the Iron Leviathan, the Nort superweapon. Although there’s always that thought in the back of your mind here that what the hell are a few broken Souther soldiers onboard a crappy boat and one rogue GI going to be able to do against something that big? Well, with the way this one ends, we’re about to find out.

Marshall’s doing some lovely things with his art in this one. The figure work’s as solid as it always is from him of course, but there’s moments amongst them, the visions of the landscape like this one…

… where you just stop and go yes, now that’s the way to do it. The lone boat travelling upriver into the heart of darkness, surrounded by destruction and desperation. Now that’s an image to linger over right there.

Alongside Marshall, Ewington’s doing a damn fine job of giving us old school war story stuff, the sort of timeless Rogue Trooper tale that evokes the essence of the character without being bogged down in trying to explain just where this is happening in the grand scheme of things.

It’s a fine, fine tale of Rogue, with plenty to offer old and new fans of the character.

GHOSTED: BOOK ONE: PART 7 – BY GUY ADAMS AND MEGAN HUANG. LETTERS BY SIMON BOWLAND

Just when you thought you were, maybe, getting a handle on where Ghosted was going – the whole idea of rich kid Benu being haunted by ghosts of a warrior fighting for the kingdom of Kinshahsa in some secret war against aliens, part of an unwilling conscription of the poor and vulnerable plucked off the streets of this golden city, surgical implants forcing them to fight and die for something mysterious… then Adams throws us a curveball.

Last episode we got introduced to the strange man working for ‘The Trust’, a thing already mentioned a couple of times here, something not to be trusted, maybe the big bad behind all this. He’s absolutely not a nice man, and he’s seemingly got Benu in his sights – but again, we know not why.

This episode, we shift focus once more, Adams seemingly deliberately trying to keep us off-balance, as we walk in the footsteps of another strange character, before finding out she’s connected with the ghost soldier who’s somehow connected to Benu. Oh, and the nasty man keeps being nasty, and getting, so it seems, closer to both Benu and the ghost soldier.

You know, this is probably one of those strips that’s doing one of two things. They’ll be those of you who just hate it, hate the uncertainty and the curveballs, hate Adams not laying this out for you. Or then there’s those of us, and yes, I’m in this group, who are loving the things others might hate. There’s a magic about what Adams is doing here, strange things getting stranger and less clear as the series goes on, swimming against the tide of what’s meant to happen in these sorts of strips, refusing to play things out in simple linear fashion.

And against all this, Megan Huang’s artwork is really something. A very modern and fresh style, yet doing such a fine job in conveying the weirdness whilst still keeping things as clear in the artwork as something this strange needs to remain readable.

Ghosted, perhaps not for everyone, but again, that’s exactly what 2000 AD has done for many years, taking a chance, throwing something unusual and challenging into the mix. Damn, I’m enjoying this one.

SILVER: BOOK TWO: PERFIDIOUS (PART 1) – PART 7 – BY MIKE CARROLL AND JOE CURRIE. LETTERS BY SIMON BOWLAND

Silver runs at speed, breakneck speed. The whole of the first series was pretty much done in one 24-hour period, from the unearthing of the vampiric Baroness da Silva to her leading the resistance against the alien overlords, The Spesis, and striking a blow against them.

Now, in series two, things haven’t really let up from the off. There’s been a new mission for the Baroness, intended to strike against one of the Sepsis’s nurseries, but it’s all gone very wrong. And that’s all thanks to one Louise Chamberlain, who’s had dealings with the Baroness’s kind before, not to mention having a very personal link to the Baroness herself.

All this is going on against the backdrop of the bigger scheme of things, with Carroll lacing Silver with tantalising looks at the way the Sepsis’s conquering invasion works. It’s all cleverly inserted into the moments in-between the action – and oh, there’s so much action – but there’s definitely the sense that Carroll’s got a long-term plan for where this is all going. Take this, from page two of this week’s episode…

You can’t put something like that into something so wonderfully done as Silver and not expect us to think it’s got some extra meaning that’s all going to play out in the storyline at some point, surely?

Anyway, we’re back with Chamberlain on the verge of destroying the Baroness, relishing her power, delighting in being able to cause the Baroness such pain. There’s a long history of hatred here, one that’s surely going to come out in the long run as well.

But such is the speed of Silver that all of these little intrigues are slotted in amongst the unrelenting pace of things, the pace that suits Currie’s art so well. He’s doing great things on art in Silver, that gloriously thin line and Euro-styling at play to great effect in every episode.

SCARLET TRACES: EMPIRE OF BLOOD – PART 2 – BY IAN EDGINTON AND D’ISRAELI, LETTERS BY ANNIE PARKHOUSE

Detective Sergeant Bey is hauled in front of his superiors and given a new case, tracking down one of his own, who’s involved in the bank job we saw in the first episode of this new Scarlet Traces. It appears that Sergeant Jones has had away with quite a bit of the loot in that one, and Bey has been given the task of investigating the theft. He’s pretty much got no choice but to agree to the case…

Meanwhile, over in Berlin, plans are being hatched, the Germans have been looking at the technologies that the British now have thanks to the failed Martian invasion with envious eyes. And there’s a plot afoot to get in on the technological action.

Again, a completely different kind of sci-fi going on here, a steampunk fantasy building on everything Wells gave us in The War of the Worlds. Edginton and D’Israeli have documented so much of the aftermath of Wells’s failed invasion already in Scarlet Traces, building an epic tale from the ground up. Now, we’re headed back to the very early days and a new tale set in the immediate aftermath of that failed invasion, seeing the earliest days of the new British Empire that will rise from the devastation of the invasion, using the tech they claim as spoils of war to establish a new British Empire that will dominate the world and launch itself into the stars.

But right now, we’re in the earliest part of this new tale, a fresh tableau of possibilities, one based, right now, in a simple copper’s mission, but one that, I have no doubt, will go on to get bigger and bigger in the telling.