The Weekly 2000 AD Prog #2441: You Really Don’t Want To Mess With Dredd

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 get continuations for four strips and the debut of a new Tharg’s 3Riller. The four continuing are the excellent Dredd: Tunnels by Rob Wiliams and RM Guera; the brand-new Ravilious Pact, where mob action meets magical naughtiness; the continuing intrigue and mystery of Azimuth in ‘Abandoned by God’; and the steampunk brilliance of Scarlet Traces: Empire of Blood. As for the Tharg’s 3Riller, it’s a follow-up to the 2022 Future Shock, ‘Relict’, by Honor Vincent and Lee Milmore, who got that Future Shock after winning the script and art talent search contests at Thought Bubble 2021. It was a great Future Shock and both Milmore and Vincent have gone on to show us plenty more of what they can do in the pages of 2000 AD. High hopes for this three-part follow up tale of time-travelling super-intelligent mice.

And it all takes place under something typically wow by Colin MacNeil.

2000 AD Prog 2441 is out in the UK on  Wednesday 16th July. 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? Well, the world’s still turning, despite efforts to the contrary by many of our political leaders. Let’s try and keep it that way, eh? After all, you don’t want things to go the way of Dredd, do you? Or at least, no more than they already have in the new USA.

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

JUDGE DREDD: TUNNELS – PART 3 – BY ROB WILLIAMS AND RM GUERA ,COLOURS BY GIULIA BRUSCO, LETTERS BY ANNIE PARKHOUSE

A massive attack on a Sector House, carried out, Terminator-style, by one ex-Wally Squad Judge, cutting down perps and Judges alike. And it’s the first sign of Total War changing the world…

In just six pages, Williams, Guera, Brusco, and Parkhouse have just given us one absolutely fabulous bit of Dredd action. And every single one of the creative team has outdone themselves here.

I mean, the art’s fabulous, the colours just perfect, Williams’ punchy, frenetic pace in the writing matched every step of the way by the art team, and then there’s the lettering here, a lot more colourful and higher in the mix than usual with the sound effects, and it’s all come together to make something that’s genuinely fabulous.

And we’ve still not gone back to the mission that follows from this that we saw in episode 1, with Dredd on a mission down in Ciudad Barranquilla, on the hunt for ‘Silva’, who we can easily surmise is the man behind all this chaos and devastation in Mega-City One right now.

Seriously, this one’s been dialled up to 11 from the off and it’s not letting up anytime soon I think. WIth Total War ramping up things, this is shaping up to be truly great.

THE RAVILIOUS PACT – PART 2 – BY TC EGLINGTON AND STEVEN AUSTIN, COLOURS BY JOHN CHARLES, LETTERS BY SIMON BOWLAND

Now, last episode of this new one, we met j

Jason Ravilious, enforcer for the Boucher Mob, maybe one man that old man Archie Boucher, now the late old man Boucher, trusted.

Thing is, this is a very different sort of gangster story. Sure, it’s got all the trappings of your normal mob tale, a family rising to rule London through power and force, preside over by their patriarch. It’s got all the rivalries, the continual threats, including those from within in the shape of young Todd, last seen putting a pillow over dad’s face. And although Archie might have been dying from the cancer, that was no mercy killing, just the final powerplay of a son too impatient to wait for nature to take its course.

And now it’s time for the wake. Although first, we get a little more of Jason’s quiet, loving home life. Although, as that shocker of a first panel shows us, things have a way of getting to him even there…

Because that’s the other strand of The Ravilious Pact, where the power of the gangsters comes from the many ways they’ve used demonic forces to rise to the top. And those demonic forces… well, you get the idea that the time to pay the piper is coming sooner rather than later here.

Anyway, off to the wake, where Todd’s busy causing trouble, and Jason’s torn between keeping his ife happy and keeping things from boiling over – it’s a tightrope he’s not managing to walk too well. There’s rivals coming out the woodwork, Todd’s way too drunk for this, and poor Jason’s always going to end up in the middle of things.

A second episode that just builds on all the good stuff of the first, establishing things, giving us a fair few interesting characters to boot, and then throwing in a couple of curveballs. You know, like this…

I think Eglington and Austin are onto something here. It’s a strip that’s carefully, right now at least, grounded in the very human darkness of a man struggling to keep two sides of his life from coming together.

It’s got all the grit of something like Get Carter, that classic of the gangster drama genre. But the nastiness is building, just little things so far that we’ve seen. No doubt there’s going to be an escalation coming, as all the pieces are moving into position. And I have faith that Eglington and Austin are going to handle that escalation really well.

THARG’S 3RILLERS: RELICT: INVASIVE SPECIES – PART 1 – BY HONOR VINCENT AND LEE MILMORE, LETTERS BY SIMON BOWLAND

Well, this is a welcome surprise. ‘Relict’ was the Future Shock from Vincent and Milmore that came about when they won the script and art contests at the 2021 Thought Bubble comics festival. Yes, that was a great Future Shock, and not one I’d imagine we’d see more of. But it’s so good that we do.

But first, a catch-up about ‘Relic’t. It’s all about one little mouse living in a post-apocalyptic world where humanity’s long been wiped from the face of the Earth. Said mouse is resourceful, long-lived, and very, very smart. And all he wants to do is that simple thing of making a time machine to head back to ‘save the makers.’ Except, once that poor little mouse does get back in time, the twist is a nasty one, just as the best Future Shocks always have, leaving that mouse betrayed by his ‘makers’, freeing his fellow laboratory specimens to watch as mankind destroys itself.

This hyper-intelligent mouse might have rescued his fellow experimental test subjects, and they might have the same longevity that he does. But they don’t have his intelligence. Whilst they don’t age, they can die. It might be from starvation, but it’s more likely from the bugs that are picking them off, meaning there’s just 14 of the originals left. And he’s increasingly frustrated at the lack of progress. That is, until one of them speaks back to him – finally, he can maybe see a way forward.

But first, he needs to solve the bug problem and the food problem. Thankfully, as you’d expect from a mouse that developed time travel, he’s got a plan. The bad thing is that it’s going to involve the ‘Biters’, the strain of the originals bred for violence, a group he’s had to imprison all these years.

Just as with the first Future Shock, ‘Invasive Species’ covers so much in its tiny page count here in this first episode. Vincent and Milmore so simply pull together centuries of experiences in just these few pages to create a rich world where we’re instantly involved. It’s every bit as good as that first Future Shock – and that was very, very good indeed – but this time, with a whole 15 pages, I just can’t imagine the heights both Vincent and Milmore will take this one to.

AZIMUTH: ABANDONED BY GOD – PART 2 – BY DAN ABNETT AND TAZIO BETTIN, COLOURS BY MATT SOFFE, LETTERS BY JIM CAMPBELL

Azimuth continues its mystery with this newest series, one in which we’ve seen Suzi Nine Millimetre meet Lord Killfile and an assemblage of Lords of the New Flesh, who’ve got a plan to deal with the threats to this wonderfully strange world. Here’s the ending of the first episode…

Yes, lots of the strangeness we’ve come to expect, and a plan for Suzi, perhaps the key to ‘win the war with the impossible outside’ – whatever that may mean.

Again, if you’re wondering what’s going on, don’t be concerned, that’s the default state when you’re reading this one. The quick summary is that Azimuth is a data-driven world, controlled by the Lords of the New Flesh, each controlling their kingdoms within Azimuth. But then we had the arrival of the Stranger, one very familiar to readers of 2000 AD, none other than Ramone Dexter, one half of Sinister Dexter, gun sharks of Downlode. And now it seems that Azimuth is part of Downlode, currently controlled by a rogue AI, and Azimuth might be just part of that AI-controlled takeover. Or it might not, such is the deviousness and invention of Abnett’s writing here. Anyway, Dexter’s joined by Psi-Judge Cassandra Anderson – again, another big surprise, who isn’t quite the Anderson of Dreddworld, but seems very, very like her, perhaps some image of an idea created by an AI that has, perhaps, seen things beyond its own universe?

Okay then, that’s a very, very brief catch-up. Now, we have Suzi in front of Lord Killfire and the other Lords of the New Flesh, part of an army of her kind, talking of Azimuth in crisis, at war with an outside that even some of those assembled simply don’t believe exists. They want to stop the destruction of their kingdoms, questioning whether their God, Annica, has forsaken them. But, as one of the Lords says…

Yes, could it be that Annica is Downlode’s AI, busy with its takeover of Downlode and has little time for the world it first created? Well, Abnett will know, and Abnett’s not the sort to tell so quickly.

What we have here is a coup against God, with Suzi its herald, meant to bring Dexter onboard to fight with them. Or something like that. Of course, as we finally catch up with Dexter and ‘Andi’ in the final two pages of this one, they’ve got their own problems – problems which, as most things seem to try to do, are out to kill them.

So many questions, so many theories. Mine will all, no doubt, be wrong. But dammit, this is one big wonderful enigma of a strip, where the mystery of what we’re dealing with is just part of the fun. And, although I haven’t mentioned Bettin’s art so far – my bad – it’s all quite wonderful on the eyes, the perfect artist to bring this incredibly strange world to life, something he does so very well.

SCARLET TRACES: EMPIRE OF BLOOD – PART 10 – BY IAN EDGINTON AND D’ISRAELI, LETTERS BY ANNIE PARKHOUSE

Just as Azimuth is full of mysteries, so is Scarlet Traces. You couldn’t have two strips more different of course. One an incredible future world of strangeness, the other very much grounded in an alternative Victorian England. But they share that excellent storytelling, taking so many ideas and developing them so well, two strips where writer and artist are working in perfect synergy to give us a slow reveal of all that’s going on.

With Scarlet Traces, it’s a story that we know the ending to – or at least we all should. After all, you have all read the excellent Scarlet Traces volumes already, right? They take HG Wells‘ Martian invasion of England as a start point and build an epic tale of a new British Empire that ascends to the stars on the back of the Martian tech they commandeer following the failed Martian invasion.

But here in ‘Empire of Blood’, we’re right back at the very start of it all, set in London just after the Martians have succumbed to the simple Earth viruses, right at the start of England’s plans to cannibalise the Martian tech.

Alongside this big picture, we have an old-fashioned crime procedural, following Detective Sergeant Bey investigating a series of strange robberies, al of which involve something subterranean. We’ve also seen one Martian deep under London, planning who knows what. And we’ve also been party to the plans of Germany, who’ve seen the potential for advancement that the British now have and who want to claim part of it for themselves.

Several strands of plotline all going on at once, but all playing out together, inevitably to join up in some fashion at some point, it’s just that we don’t quite yet know just how. The brilliance of Empire of Blood is just how Edginton and D’Israeli are controlling things, each plot strand developing incrementally, keeping us guessing whilst keeping us enthralled.

Episode 10 takes us back to the German spies on a mission to capture Martian tech. They’ve hijacked one of the British convoys transporting a Martian corpse to a secret location, and are now seeing just what they have. Captain Karnstein has already come to the conclusion that the Martians are a force demanding that petty country disputes be put aside and that the real enemy lies without. But his superiors may not see it that way. And anyway, they’ve got their orders to move out and return.

In the meantime, Bey has taken in a house guest, one Sergeant Penny, once of the Thunderchild, and gravely injured by its skirmish with the Martian invaders. Bey’s smarting from the warnings from mysterious men of the government’s shadowy agencies…

Like all good coppers of this sort, Bey’s not one to be warned off, even by those with a hell of a lot more power and reach than he can imagine. Which is why he’s convinced Penny can assist him with his investigations. So, seeing as he, Constable Stranks, and Penny have no family or loved ones who can be used by those in power as leverage, they all decide that they’re to continue with the trail they find themselves on. You can’t imagine it’s going to end too well for any of them.

So, we’re left, at the end of part 10 (and I’m now sure that this series will end only to lead into a second series – there’s far too much to deal with not to) with everything building up, the three strands coming together slowly but surely. It’s a controlled thing, one where everything that might have seemed perhaps inconsequential at first glance plays its part in building up the story.

Like I say, Edginton and D’Israeli are perfect for this. They’ve already created an epic tale of huge consequences in Scarlet Traces. Now, in Empire of Blood, they’re going back to the beginning to give us more detail of things, all wrapped up in a copper’s obsessive investigation that will bring in nefarious government agencies, German spies infiltrating the Martian secrets, and the sole Martian left under the Earth. And it’s going to be a damn fine read to get to that. But we’ll get to it only when Edginton and D’Israeli want us to get there – and I wouldn’t have it any other way.