The Weekly 2000 AD Prog #2436: The Baroness Unleashes Hell In ‘Silver’

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.

Yes, 48 years young and 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 have three finales – the excellent Dan Abnett and Colin MacNeil Judge Dredd, The First 100 comes to its brilliant conclusion, we have the end of Rogue Trooper‘s own little Heart of Darkness in ‘Tides of War‘, and the first half of Silver: Perfidious leaves us all desperate for more. Alongside those, we have the first series of Ghosted building to its own fascinating finale in a couple of weeks and the Victorian steampunk drama of Scarlet Traces keeps on doing the thing it does so well.

It all takes place under a Joe Currie cover to mark the end of this first half of Silver: Perfidious

2000 AD Prog 2436 is out in the UK on 11th June. As always, you’ll have a harder time finding it if you’re in the Americas – might I suggest popping into your local comic shop and asking them very nicely if they can order it for you? As I’m writing this, we’re into another week of plus 100 degree heat, so it’s a good job the air conditioning is working. Sure, I could have bought a small car for what it cost, but you try existing in this hellscape desert they call Las Vegas without air con. Oh, the joys of living in sin city.

But enough of those problems, time to head into the Prog for this week…

JUDGE DREDD: THE FIRST 100 – PART 3 – FINAL PART – BY DAN ABNETT AND COLIN MACNEIL, COLOURS BY CHRIS BLYTHE, LETTERS BY ANNIE PARKHOUSE

This three-parter may well be my Dredd of the year so far. It’s not been big or important, not one of those huge, world-changing things. But damn, it’s everything that talks to what Dredd is about. A modern classic done over 18 pages, telling the sort of story that so many writers would need 50+ pages to tell, and still not get it this good.

On top of Abnett’s writing, we have the simply perfect artwork of MacNeil here, glorious in its execution, as always. There’s just something in the way he can do a figure, the beautiful way he controls the shadows. I mean, just look at this headshot on page 1 of this one… the angle of the head, the shadows playing across the helmet, the lights catching just right. It’s quite beautiful…

Or this section, Abnett leaving MacNeil’s art to carry things. The second page opens with crime lord Drumm’s hired muscle going up against Dredd and his then rookie undergoing her 100 hours, Judge Gable, now narrating the tale to her own rookie doing her 100 hours, Judge Macie. Panel 1, the goons, panel 2, Gable telling us, things got busy as Dredd and Gable spring into action. This is followed by seven panels, first three horizontal and then four vertical, all showing the firefight, words unnecessary when the action is displayed this well..

And then, the masterstroke, bottom of page 3, a single half-page panel, with the caption ‘But that kind of busy is where Dredd lives,’ and this image:

There’s just something sublime, I think, about the way MacNeil’s posed Dredd here, the almost casual confidence of the shot to the right whilst he’s scanning the battleground. It’s perfect, just MacNeil adding so much to Abnett’s already great plot and script.

Anyway, as a third and final part, things come to a head, and we hear Gable’s tale end, just as Dredd turns up in the here and now. From then, we get the twist in the tale that you’ve maybe, maybe not, seen coming. But nonetheless, it’s a really strong ending, all playing into everything Gable’s been telling her rookie about the legend that is Dredd.

Like I say, it’s only a minor Dredd in the grand scheme of things, but that doesn’t make it any less of a brilliant Dredd. I do so hope Abnett keeps going with his Dredd tales, I’d love to see more of them.

ROGUE TROOPER: TIDES OF WAR – PART 8 -FINAL PART – ANDI EWINGTON AND PAUL MARSHALL, COLOURS BY PIPPA BOWLAND, LETTERS BY JIM CAMPBELL

Rogue’s Heart of Darkness/Apocalypse Now tale concludes in just the manner you’d expect it to, as Rogue and the crew of the Dauntless attack the Nort superweapon, the Iron Leviathan.

The bombs are in place, the mission’s almost done, just the threat of a Nort submarine to overcome and that’s it.

And I don’t mean ‘that’s it’ in a derogatory sense, not at all. We knew how this would end, after all, it’s a simple Rogue Trooper war story and the hero does tend to get out of these things in one piece, doesn’t he? Well, yes, but the final couple of pages are a decidedly downbeat end to things, which helps elevate this above a gung-ho, by-the-numbers, the good guys get the job done thing.

It’s been a very straightforward but nonetheless enjoyable Rogue tale that’s worked a treat. Ewington and Marshall have worked together really well to make this a really good Rogue tale, harking back to the sort of adventures you can see in the ongoing Rogue Trooper Complete Collections – and there’s nothing wrong with that at all.

GHOSTED: BOOK ONE: PART 10 – BY GUY ADAMS AND MEGAN HUANG. LETTERS BY SIMON BOWLAND

We’re moving into the endgame of this one. I’m guessing right now that it’s a 12-parter, but that doesn’t mean that Adams is making things any easier on us as we approach the ending. No, it started off as a mystery and one that deliberately frustrated us at every turn, and it’s going to end that way, I think. And I’ve no problem with that at all.

Adams’s story has intrigued rather than annoyed with all the various storylines playing out, his dialogue obtuse, cut-up almost, all given flesh on the page with Huang’s artwork, deliberately simple, letting the words and the story give us the complex stuff, sensibly not complicating things further by making the art difficult. But simple doesn’t have to be boring, and Huang’s art is nothing of the sort, vibrant and bright, a perfect way of showing us the big things going on here.

The Trust is here, their control over the utopia of the African kingdom of Kinshahsa total, keeping the rich happy whilst shipping off the vulnerable and poor to an alien war. And their agent, the psychopath, is on the loose, ripping through the group that’s developed around Benu with ease, madness and bloodshed in equal measure.

Like I say, we’re coming to a finale at some point, but I have absolutely no idea how that’s going to play out, just as I have absolutely no idea which way Adams is going to take each new episode. Such is the joy of Ghosted, it’s one that you just can’t second-guess, you simply have to go along with the madness and the weirdness – but that’s a good thing. In 2000 AD, there’s room for all sorts of strips, whether they’re simple linear things or complex, intriguing, just can’t quite get a handle on them yet things. And Ghosted is so much in the latter.

SILVER: BOOK TWO: PERFIDIOUS (PART 1) – PART 10 – FINAL PART – BY MIKE CARROLL AND JOE CURRIE. LETTERS BY SIMON BOWLAND

Well, this one just raced by, didn’t it? Here we are at the end of the first part of Book Two, and it’s all been just an action-packed thrill ride and then some.

Silver’s all about that fast-paced, everything happening over 10 episodes that take place in a day or so, and it works so well. The clever thing is how Carroll has managed to use this all-out action pacing yet still worked in a whole world of backstory into it all. We know all about the Sepsis and their invasion and conquest of Earth, all about the small resistance movement railing against them, some of the Baroness da Silva’s backstory, and all of it’s been given to us in the midst of something that runs so fast. Very cleverly done, very different from Carroll’s usual storytelling. In this, he’s aided and abetted so well with Joe Currie’s artwork, which I’m sure you’re tired of me telling you is a really gorgeous thing of thin lines and Euro stylings. But hey, it is what it is, and it’s quite perfectly done here, Carroll obviously catering his story for his artist – and it shows with the synchrony of writing and art that Silver has.

Right now, at the end of this first part of Book Two, we have the resistance attacking the Sepsis breeding farm, using humans as breeders to make new Sepsis creatures, but they never imagined it would all end up in a mushroom cloud, a seven megaton nuclear blast orchestrated by the Baroness. It wasn’t meant to go this way, as we find out here, resistance leader Bishop intended the Baroness to get in there and cause chaos just so they could get the essential data they needed, the vampire a necessary sacrifice. But she outdid herself, the blast taking out so many of the Sepsis and their warships, something never imagined by Bishop. Because now, in the fallout from all this, the greatest victory for the resistance since the invasion began, the Sepsis will be targeting the resistance like never before, and Bishop knows this, knows he’s signed death warrants for so many of the resistance, their greatest victory could be the thing that destroys them all.

It ends so well, a cliffhanger for the second part of this tale, the Baroness alive, barely, the resistance hunted, the Sepsis angry, all leading to what will surely be another great series, just as this one has been.

SCARLET TRACES: EMPIRE OF BLOOD – PART 5 – BY IAN EDGINTON AND D’ISRAELI, LETTERS BY ANNIE PARKHOUSE

Scarlet Traces is another example of the variety of storytelling you’ll find in 2000 AD. It’s slow, deliberately so, playijng the investigation out in the shadow of the failed Martian invasion, plenty of stroylines going on – there’s Detective Sergeant Bey investigating the robbery, seemingly masterminded by a fellow copper, the Germans trying to get their hands on that inviting Martian tech, and, always there, the vestiges of the Martian invasion, the stragglers left behind, still deadly.

And it’s all playing out here, wonderfully slowly. we have Bey meeting a beat copper, his beat wiped out in the invasion, but he’s still got insights for Bey, he’s worked out that Bey’s being set up to fail, being turned into a scapegoat for who knows what. But Bey’s still going to see it through, even knowing he’s been set up.

And, as we reach the end of this particular episode, we get the Martians rearing their ugly heads once more.

Like I say, it’s a slow build, revealing little in these early episodes, yet Edginton and D’Israeli have such control over all that’s going on, so immersed as they are in their creation, that it’s never anything less than enthralling to see it paying out.