The Weekly 2000 AD: Prog 2437 — What Happened After Judgment Day?

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, it’s time for one of those bumper Progs, with seven strips to delight. Starting off with the cover feature, it’s another of those Garth Ennis/Henry Flint ‘VS’tales. They’ve done Robo-Hunter /Dredd, they’ve done Strontium Dog/Robo-Hunter, and now they’re back in the aftermath of Judgement Day, where Johnny and Joe walk out into the Radlands of Ji, having just defeated Sabbat the Necromagus. An untold tale from the past to end this one. Other one-offs here are a Fiends of the Western Front taking us back to Constanta on his way to the USA for the events of the recently published Wilde West, and a new Future Shock by Rob Williams and Simon Coleby. Alongside these, we get continuing tales from Ghosted and Scarlet Traces and the start of new stories in Judge Dredd and Nu Earth War Tales. All in all, a packed bumper 52 pages of Prog this week.

All of it takes place under the latest brilliant cover from John McCrea and Mike Spicer… looking rather like this…

2000 AD Prog 2437 is out in the UK on Wednesday, 18th 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 write this, LA, NYC, and other cities are seeing mostly peaceful protests while the President seems to be trying to inflame things by sending a federalised National Guard and the Marines in, whilst looking forward to a military parade for his birthday. Seriously, the events in Judge Dredd just seem more and more prescient, don’t they?

But anyway, time for a quick spin through this weeks big Prog…

JUDGE DREDD: CONFESSIONS OF A WINDOW CLEANING DROID – PART 1 – BY KEN NIEMAND AND NICOLO ASSIRELLI, COLOURS BY QUINTON WINTER, LETTERS BY ANNIE PARKHOUSE

Niemand does like his recurring characters – here it’s Roz’s Universal Robots, last seen in Prog 2373, also with Assirelli on art. Roz is Dredd’s go-to droid fixer. And this time he’s looking to get the last images from a window cleaning droid that witnessed a mob hit.

It’s an interesting little set-up, Dredd outsourcing droid tech work to someone he recognised as better at the job than some of Tek Div. And Roz, with her ‘Robots are people too’ ideas, is another one of Niemand’s fascinating Mega-City One characters. He does do a grand job of bringing the citizens to life.

Anyway, Roz gets to work on the droid, Dredd hits the streets (and hits the people on the streets). But there’s a bigger story developing, a ring of crime syndicate informants among Justice Department auxiliaries, something that’s got SJS involved, the shadowy Special Judicial Squad, the Judges investigating Judges. All of which means a simple fix: the droid problem for Roz is about to get a lot bigger and a lot nastier.

Again, it’s Niemand doing a great job on Dredd. Like I say, he delights in bringing in so much more of the Mega-City’s citizens into things, fleshing out the world of Dredd beyond the Judges. And it’s always good reading. As for Assirelli, his art on Dredd really does bring out his best. The looseness is still there but it’s controlled and filtered into tight and dense pages of great artwork.

SCARLET TRACES: EMPIRE OF BLOOD – PART 6 – BY IAN EDGINTON AND D’ISRAELI, LETTERS BY ANNIE PARKHOUSE

There’s a delicious slow burn feel to Scarlet Traces, with Edginton and D’Israeli revisiting the world they inherited from HG Wells and his Martian invasion of Victorian Britain and then expanded, fleshed out, and gave life to an epic. Here, we’re back in the immediate aftermath of the invasion, the last vestiges of the failed invasion hiding out, whilst the world above attempts to get back on its feet.

The British are busy gathering up all the Martian corpses and the Martian tech and transporting it to a secret facility, one we know will provide the building blocks of a grand new British Empire that ascends to the stars. But right now, there’s a German infiltration team out to steal whatever secrets they can, and plenty of more down-to-earth criminality to be investigated. That’s Detective Sergeant Bey’s storyline, and no doubt we’ll get back to that. But here, it’s all about the Germans and their raid on one of those transports of Martian corpses.

Oh, and there’s a little revisiting of that one Martian we keep coming back to. Mysterious and more mysterious.

Like I say, a slow burn of a tale, one that’s damned enjoyable, watching all the pieces moving into place, expertly done by both writer and artist.

FUTURE SHOCKS: THE PROPHECY OF LEKBITH THE GREAT & TERRIBLE – BY ROB WILLIAMS AND SIMON COLEBY, COLOURS BY JACK DAVIES, LETTERS BY ANNIE PARKHOUSE

A classic Future Shock now, a little bit of fantasy for you, as we join the world of Lekbith the Great and Terrible, part of the terrible prophecy of the peaceful kingdom of Barak-Dur, where tales are told of the day he would retrieve the fire stone of creation from Gul-Thar the Impervious.

The legend grows and grows, the prophecy unfulfilled. Until one day, a child with an extra finger is born, just the same extra finger, so the story goes, as had Lekbith. His mother, not the most stable, leans into things and calls the boy Lekbith. And thus starts a life of misery for poor Lekbith, a decent lad who just can’t escape the prophecy, or the plentiful raiders and assassins who make his young life a misery.

The boy grows into a man and dedicates himself to being everything his namesake wasn’t. Good, honest, true, a veritable hero. Except the hero never gets the thanks he craves. All he gets is this…

And a man, even a good man, has his breaking point. And so it is with Lekbith. But will the good man really stick to his newfound ideas of being evil? Or will the good win out after all? And, in the end, will it matter when the prophecy is already written.

A great, tongue firmly in the cheek Future Shock by Williams and Coleby, great art as you’d expect, of course, and a suitably nasty little twist in the tale by the end.

NU EARTH WAR TALES: THE MAJOR – PART 1 – BY GORDON RENNIE AND JAKE LYNCH, COLOURS BY DYLAN TEAGUE, LETTERS BY JIM CAMPBELL

Another visit to Nu Earth and the world of Rogue Trooper. Why, you’d almost think there was a major film coming out with all this new Rogue Trooper work we’re getting. Well, yes, there is, and 2000 AD are milking it for all they can – and who can blame them? The Duncan Jones-helmed animated movie comes out later in the year. It should be rather good.

Anyway, these Nu Earth War Tales are a series of tales set on the poisonous wastes of Nu Earth, some of them featuring the last of the Souther-created Genetic Infantrymen, Rogue Trooper, others focusing on the world of Nu Earth and the Nort-Souther war.

This one’s a Rogue tale – sort of, brilliantly illustrated by Jake Lynch, whose languid, angular style brings a great look to Rogue here. The point of these Nu Earth tales is to drop us into the action, unbound by the continuity, and just enjoy the tale for what it is.

And here, it’s not Rogue per se, but a time before the Quartz massacre, where we join a troop of GIs on a mission, including ‘Switch’, a GI with a split personality, one a simple trooper, a grunt, the other ‘The Major’, aggressive, dominant, allowed to live despite the abnormality because of the Major’s briliant tactical awareness and success in the field.

This current mission’s being manipulated by the Souther’s running this GI experiment, meaning the Troopers have been landed in the middle of a hot zone, surrounded by Norts, meaning there’s plenty of action from the off, the GIs doing their thing, not knowing they’re nothing more than experiments right now, their masters not really caring if they live or die, everything going into the data to make the next gen of Troopers better. Things are about to get really bad.

Another great start for this latest Nu Earth War Tales, Rennie seems on a roll with these. Then again, he’s got form for playing in the world of Rogue Trooper with the excellent Jaegir. That was one that explored the world of the Nort-Souther war from a new perspective and freed things from the tight confines of Rogue Trooper’s continuity. Now, with Nu Earth War, there’s so much more of Nu Earth and the endless possibilities of war tales to play with.

And it all comes with Jake Lynch on art. That’s always a special thing. Like I say, he’s got a beautifully stylised style, all his characters have that long, angular look, limbs stretched just that little unusually, action scenes where the lines are pushed just that bit far. Yet it all works, in a Mick McMahon fashion. There’s always room in 2000 AD for artists who want to push things in interesting ways, and Jake Lynch is a damn fine example of this.

GHOSTED: BOOK ONE: PART 11 – BY GUY ADAMS AND MEGAN HUANG. LETTERS BY SIMON BOWLAND

Back to the strange, strange world of Ghosted. As I keep saying, week in, week out, for 11 weeks now, this one’s been a gloriously frustrating thing. Never frustrating – at least to me – it’s deliberately obtuse, complicated, playing with multiple storylines and characters, never really showing us the whole story, just building and building to its finale – which, more than likely, will be one that leaves me scratching my head and wondering what just happened.

None of this is a bad thing. There’s nothing wrong with a story that doesn’t give up its secrets by part 2, or 3, or 4, or 5. Nothing wrong with a writer deliberately keeping the plot secrets to himself and letting the readers puzzle things out, being complex and creative with storyline and dialogue. Which is just what Adams is doing here, the cut-up speech intransigently clipped and designed to throw you a curveball. Equally good is the art by Huang, sensibly done simply, easy on the eye, not trying to make things as visually complicated as the storyline is, that would perhaps be a move too far. Instead, it’s light and colourful, serving the story perfectly, giving you an in where the story pushes you away that little bit.

Anyway. Here’s where we are. We’re in the utopia of the future that is the African kingdom of Kinshahsa. A place where the rich and beautiful are happy and looked after, blithely so, unaware of the turmoil that their rulers, their secret rulers, The Trust, are dealing in. This is a world where the underclass are taken, experimented on, and thrown into a suicide mission in a war against something alien.

One of those rich kids is Benu, who’s been haunted by visions of a warrior ghost, one of those sent by The Trust to war. But there’s something different here, the ghost has pushed through and brought Benu into the secret world. Of course, The Trust can’t allow that to happen, and they’ve sent their own psychopathic attack dog to sort it out. But maybe, just maybe, Benu and her pals can hack into the system and get the message out. Although, of course, in a thing like Ghosted, this simple out surely isn’t going to be allowed to work, The Trust just won’t let it.

Confusing, difficult, but so intriguing, Ghosted is really turning into that thing that’s so good, the strip you turn to first, just to see if you can figure it out this week. Can’t say fairer than that.

FIENDS OF THE WESTERN FRONT: RED TIDE – BY IAN EDGINTON AND NICK PERCIVAL, LETTERS BY JIM CAMPBELL

Now, here’s another one-off, coming back to the world of the vampire Constanta that Edginton and Tiernen Trevallion have constructed from the mere skeleton that was that first Fiends tale by Gerry Finley-Day and Carlos Ezquerra. That first was sublime, a wartime vampire tale, but what Edginton and Trevallion have done with it is fleshed it all out, given us the long and tortuous history of the vampire, and they’ve done it so very well.

Their latest was ‘Wilde West’, where the vampire Constanta and his very unlikely comrade, Oscar Wilde, both found themselves in the USA with a reason to come together. But now, in ‘Red Tide’, we’re jumping back, just a little, to follow Constanta to the USA, onboard the steamer Elysium (a perfectly named ship for many reasons), on his way to meet up with Wilde.

But, no Trevallian this time on art. Instead, we have Nick Percival, who, as I’ve said many times, is the finest exponent of doing all things horrific working in 2000 AD right now. Yes, it’s a shame Trevallion wasn’t onboard for this one, but in Percival we have a really perfect stand-in. Completely different in style and tone, but perfect for this little self-contained tale of death, blood, and horrors, all trapped on a boat where no one can escape.

Captain Constanta has attracted the attention of young Ms Olive Featherstone, on her way to America to be married – after all, there’s a dark mystery about the man (she thinks) who only walks the ship’s decks each night. Meanwhile, there’s a fishing boat trailing them, running dark, waiting for its moment, sent by those who would do Constanta harm, those we’ve already met in ‘Wilde West’.

But Constanta knows, and Constanta is ready…

Like I say, it’s a little tale, one that quickly explodes into bloodshed and nightmares, and Percival’s art really is perfect for getting all that horror down on the page.

And whilst it may be a little tale in Edginton’s grand scheme of things to do with Constanta, it’s one that plays so well into the mythos of the character. A vicious, violent killer on the one hand, something that feeds and murders, but one that can show a simple mercy when needed, although that mercy doesn’t involve anyone surviving, just given the quick death others don’t get.

JUDGE DREDD VS STRONTIUM DOG – BY GARTH ENNIS & HENRY FLINT, LETTERS BY ROB STEEN

The third of Ennis’s occasional VS stories, where he gets to play with 2000 AD characters and have just the best time. All this with Henry Flint on art, surely the finest Dredd artist we have right now, capable of such stunning work – the sort of work you’ll find on every page of this one.

Anyway, this latest deviates from the VS format thus far. No random meeting thing going on here, this is very deep into Dredd continuity, taking place immediately after the conclusion of the classic ‘Judgement Day’, where Dredd and Johnny Alpha, THE Strontium Dog, find themselves in the Radlands of Ji, 33 years ago (bloody hell, is it really that long since Judgement Day?). They’ve just seen off Sabbat the Necromagus and have a damn long walk back to their worlds. In Judgement Day, it was left like this… with art from the much-missed genius of Carlos Ezquerra…

And that’s exactly where we pick up here. Johnny and Dredd having a long walk through the Radlands and have a little chat…

Of course, there’s things coming to get them, nasty things in these Radlands, but that’s all happening as almost an aside, the action, the strange beasts, all there almost as background to the conversation of mutants and the law, of the different ways Dredd’s world and Johnny’s world deal with them. Yep, it’s a long, long walk and an interesting conversation to be sure.