Finally: Ian Edginton And INJ Culbard’s ‘Brass Sun’ Returns To ‘2000 AD’

It’s been gone from the pages of 2000 AD for seven long years, but Ian Edginton and INJ Culbard‘s steampunk sci-fi series, Brass Sun, returns in September 2025!

The tale, set in a giant mechanical solar system, began in 2012 and ran across five series, finishing with ‘Engine Summer‘ in 2018. It ended on a big cliffhanger – and then… well, nothing. Absolutely nothing.

But while we had it, it was wonderful, something really epic, a fabulous quest taking place across fabulously imagined worlds. At the heart of the solar system is the brass sun, the life-bringer to all those worlds, all those people. But the brass sun is dying, with the outlying worlds already going cold, the life-giving rays of the sun no longer reaching them.

Young Wren has uncovered part of the secret of the brass sun, and sets off on an epic quest to pick up the pieces of the lost key needed to restart the sun and prevent more deaths in the system. Her travels across the worlds have taken her to many strange and wonderful places so far, and now, finally, we’re going to pick up the tale.

But why the delay? Well, here’s co-creator Ian Edginton with the explanation…

‘The first run of Brass Sun was a great success, people really took to it, so much so that I started to doubt that I could repeat it with the next run. It was genuinely a case of performance anxiety! I was worried that it wouldn’t measure up so I kept putting it off and putting it off..

‘Eventually Ian (the other one) and I went on to do other things and Brass Sun lay fallow for years. But about eighteen months ago, my teenage daughter read the whole thing and was annoyed that there wasn’t any more, that I’d just left poor Wren hanging in limbo. I reread it myself and realised she was right, and what’s more, I wanted to finish telling Wren’s story, I owed it to her. I also realised that I needed to get over myself and just get on with it and so here we are!’

So, as a fan of Brass Sun, my thanks, and the thanks of many, many Brass Sun fans, go out to Ian’s daughter for giving him the kick up the arse required.

The new Brass Sun won’t deal with the cliffhanger right away, though, as it’s picking up the tale, fittingly, given the long delay, with an older Wren, now in her mid-twenties. After all she’s gone through, she’s withdrawn from the rest of the world, given up on her quest. But then an old friend arrives with a message… and Wren discovers that, no matter what she wants, she can’t escape her destiny.

And it sounds like the two Ian’s, Edginton and Culbard, couldn’t be happier to be returning to the grand tale, with Edginton saying this:

‘It’s great to be working with Ian again. I’d forgotten how much of a laugh it was. We’d start off talking over the story and script and then end up debating whether you could build a submarine out of Tofu and could a spider ride a Moped? We’re a pair of unsupervised middle-aged men with far too much time on our hands!’

Now, Brass Sun returns to 2000 AD this September, and we’ve shown you some preview pages through this piece. But if you really want to find out just what it’s all about, we’ve put together a list of all the Brass Sun episodes thus far below. There’s also a gorgeous hardcover collection you could pick up, containing the first three storylines.

Brass Sun – the story so far:
‘The Wheel of Worlds’ – 2000 AD Progs 1800-1811, 2012
‘The Diamond Age’ – 2000 AD Progs 1850-1861, 2013
‘Floating Worlds’ – 2000 AD Progs 1888-1899, 2014
‘Motor Head’ – 2000 AD Progs 1950-1959, 2015
‘Engine Summer’ – 2000 AD Progs 2061-2072, 2017–2018

However, if you really want to get a glimpse of what this gorgeously built world is like, 2000 AD are still offering the first issue of the US version of Brass Sun, a six-issue series published in 2014, as a free download. You can download that here. Seriously, what are you waiting for?

Brass Sun returns (no doubt triumphantly) to the pages of 2000 AD this September.

And from that free download, here’s a perfect intro to the series: