The Weekly 2000 AD Prog #2442: Demon Days In ‘The Ravilious Pact’

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, more of the same – meaning five rather great strips all continuing. So, more of Dredd in ‘Tunnels’, the latest action-packed thriller from Rob Williams and RM Guera. More of the mysteries of Azimuth unfold in ‘Abandoned by God‘. More steampunk strangeness in a post-Martian world with Scarlet Traces: Empire of Blood. And more of the dystopian nightmare in a post-apocalyptic world where Stephen the mouse is the world’s only protector in the second part of the latest Tharg’s 3Riller, Relict: Invasive Species. And finally, as featured on another great cover from Cliff Robinson and Dylan Teague, more mixing of demons and gangsters in The Ravilious Pact.

2000 AD Prog 2442 is out in the UK on Wednesday, 23rd 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?

But anyway, time for a quick spin through this weeks Prog… first, with another of RM Guera getting a good bit of chin in Dredd: Tunnels…

JUDGE DREDD: TUNNELS – PART 4 – BY ROB WILLIAMS AND RM GUERA ,COLOURS BY GIULIA BRUSCO, LETTERS BY ANNIE PARKHOUSE

It’s the aftermath of the deadly raid on Sector House 42, when one rogue Wally Squad Judge blazed a destructive trail, leaving us and Dredd, at the end of last episode, wondering just what the hell happened. And let’s all just pause for a moment to enjoy that chaos, brought to brilliant life by RM Guera and Giulia Brusco. A spectacular example of the sort of wonders they’ve been doing on art for this one…

Right now, it’s all about the Justice Department desperately trying to get ahead on this one. But there’s no getting ahead on this, as Total War nail things with a mass broadcast – ‘Once you would have been too strong to allow us to hurt you in this way. You are not strong anymore. Now… we can hurt you.’ Ouch.

That one hurts. And Chief Judge Logan’s boiling over with righteous anger.

Dredd’s hunt for Wally Squad Judge Skowronski, now a Total War poster boy leads him to Ciudad Barranquilla, Banana City, where he’s been spirited away to. And that means we’re finally getting back to that moment in episode 1 of this one, with Dredd just getting out of the ambush and on the hunt for ‘Silva’, just another step to hunting down those who’ve managed to do the unthinkable, make the Justice Department look vulnerable.

There’s so much to really enjoy in Tunnels. You’ve got all that fast-paced action, with Williams, Guera, and Brusco all doing incredible things, giving us a masterclass in just how to do things right whilst still giving us plenty plot points for the future of not just this strip but plenty of Dredd tales to come.

Yep, like I say, masterclass.

THE RAVILIOUS PACT – PART 3 – BY TC EGLINGTON AND STEVEN AUSTIN, COLOURS BY JOHN CHARLES, LETTERS BY SIMON BOWLAND

Demons meet London gangsters, such a simple setup, but one that’s working just great so far. Eglington and Austin have spent two episodes giving us background, drawing us into this strange world of a very different sort of mob.

We’ve seen crime boss Archie Boucher pass away, although it wasn’t the cancer that got him in the end, it was his unhinged offspring Todd putting a pillow over his face that did him in. Criminals, eh? We’ve met Jason Ravilious, Archie’s chief enforcer, who’s got plenty of justified reservations about the new regime, and who’s really wanting to get home to smooth the waters with his wife. And that’s possibly going to be one of the main threads of this one, watching Ravilious walk that difficult path between his two lives.

Here, we have a couple of things developing. First, there’s that last mission Archie had for Jason, getting hold of an occult mirror to firm up the Boucher family’s power. And then we’ve got Todd’s new way of doing things, including, in a tried and tested way of showing us the difference between old and new criminals, getting into drugs, something his old man always avoided. Yep, Eglington’s certainly not above using the cliched shorthand here to move things along and show us, if we needed showing, that Todd’s just not the nice sort of London gangster.

And of course, there’s the other side of this one, the dark arts side, where making deals with demons has been a huge part of what made the Boucher family so strong. Todd’s already playing hard into this side of things, even down to bringing in Jason’s non-too-good brother-in-law into things, something that’s way too close to home for Jason. So, we’re set up for things to get very nasty in future episodes. And there’s still Jason’s rather obvious foreshadowing about Todd’s dealings with demon Ba-Laal not being a good thing.

Yep, The Ravilious Pact is shaping up to be a great new strip, Eglington and Austin both understanding the brief on this one, giving us something playing with the genre(s), building up the intrigue and the threat, all with Jason right in the middle of it, trying to make his twin lives work.

RELICT: INVASIVE SPECIES – PART 2 – BY HONOR VINCENT AND LEE MILMORE, LETTERS BY SIMON BOWLAND

Again, this one’s a wonderful surprise. Relict was a one-off Future Shock, Vincent and Milmore’s first pro work after winning the Thought Bubble/2000 AD script/art prizes back in 2021. As with any Future Shock, it was a one-off. And a wonderful one-off it was. Hyper-intelligent, incredibly long-lived mouse Stephen working in a dystopian future Earth, made post-apocalyptic by Humanity’s folly, to create a time machine to get back and save his ‘makers’. The twist, and it was a twist packed with emotion and heartbreak, being that Stephen’s ‘masters’ weren’t the kind, loving beings he remembered them as, but scientists treating him and his kind as experiments to be used up and discarded.

Well, now it’s centuries into the future. Humanity’s long gone, but Stephen and his fellow long-lived mouse survivors of those experiments are still alive. But the world they’re in is a harsh one, and they’re losing more of the original experimental mice every day due to the bugs picking them off. He thought he was alone in this, the only one of his group with the intelligence, until he met Clara, the first mouse to show any signs of intelligence amongst his experimental peers. (And yes, they’ve all had plenty of little mice, it’s just those new breed don’t have either the intelligence or the long life of the originals.)

So, that’s us all caught up. Which brings us to part 2 of the 3-parter here. Vincent’s already crammed so much into part 1 – although maybe ‘crammed in’ creates the wrong idea. Perhaps skilfully managed to get so much plot into episode 1 whilst making it all flow beautifully is a better way of putting it. Similarly, Austin’s art is just a perfect fit, making Vincent’s ideas come to life, making us believe in this strange world from the viewpoint of the mice. It’s taken everything that was great about that one-off, so we thought, Relict, and given us a new adventure for Stephen.

Here in episode 2, it’s all about Stephen freeing one of the ‘biters’, the dangerously aggressive few of the originals bred for violence. It’s all part of his plan to beat the bugs and get enough food to keep his extended family alive. So, it’s Stephen, Clara, and Grizz against the bugs, a perfect plan? Well, not quite. But that’s something that will play out in the finale to this one.

As for this second episode, it’s another perfectly done thing. Again, Vincent and Austin pack so much into this. An episode that is, essentially, just Stephen assembling his troops for his plan, turns into a heartfelt thing in the middle, with Stephen’s inner thoughts of relief of not being alone anymore, finding new hope in his companions, hope for their future, only to have it, perhaps, ripped away by the end. Yep, two great episodes to follow up a great Future Shock. Two creators obviously loving what they’re doing here.

AZIMUTH: ABANDONED BY GOD – PART 3 – BY DAN ABNETT AND TAZIO BETTIN, COLOURS BY MATT SOFFE, LETTERS BY JIM CAMPBELL

The mysteries of Azimuth continue. Abnett and Bettin have created a whole weird world where everything is up for debate. Nothing here is fixed. It’s more than likely a sub-division of the rogue AI that’s taken over Downlode, created as a fever dream of that same rogue AI, playing with creation. Well, that’s what I currently think. I’m most likely very wrong, and I imagine Dan Abnett’s got plenty more twists and turns to throw in our way before we get to anything approximating the truth.

As it is, here in ‘Abandoned by God’, we have a couple of strands of storytelling playing out. First, there’s Suzi Nine Millimetre’s strand. She’s part of the Lords of the New Flesh’s mission to figure out why their god, Anicca, has seemingly forsaken them, part of an army tasked with finding the truth.

And then we have Dexter and ‘Andi’. The former part of Sinister Dexter, dropped into this new world after running from the rogue AI that took over his Downlode, fitting into the role of ‘The Stranger’, the long prophesied figure who’d come to Azimuth for who knows what reasons and who knows what ends. The latter looking suspiciously like Psi-Judge Cassandra Anderson, albeit looking very different. But there’s still plenty of references to the Anderson we know, the Anderson of Mega-City One. It’s all just part of the bigger picture Abnett and Bettin are spinning out here, I’ve just learned to go with it, saving up the questions, and just really, really enjoying the ride.

This time round, we’re starting with Dexter and Andi, finding strange comradeship with the Recyclopaths, the scavenger gangs roaming the wastes of deleted kingdoms of Azimuth. But that comradeship doesn’t last, and Dexter and Andi fall to their weapons, to wake up in a cage fight where it looks like Dexter doesn’t stand a chance.

Meanwhile, Suzi is making her way, in the company of a team of Cadavaters, out of Lord Killfile’s hidden encryption, their mission to capture ‘The Stranger.’ And those twin threads are about to come together.

Yes, Azimuth is a mystery wrapped in an enigma and all that. But that’s not a drawback, it’s just part of the fun of this one. The way that Abnett and Bettin tell this story is such that you find yourselves leaning into the mystery, enjoying the not knowing.

SCARLET TRACES: EMPIRE OF BLOOD – PART 11 – BY IAN EDGINTON AND D’ISRAELI, LETTERS BY ANNIE PARKHOUSE

Well, we’re many parts into this and it just keeps rolling on a languid sort of read, but languid in all the best ways, Edginton bringing all his pieces into play, with D’Israeli expertly showing us so much in his art.

So, we’ve for the the slow investigation into bank robberies and things coming up from under London, or the German spies intent on stealing the Martian tech to get ahead of the Brits and their own plans for advancement. And of course, there’s still the none too small matter of the Martian living somewhere below, we really haven’t got too far into that one yet – well, more of that in a moment.

Detective Sergeant Bey, Constable Stranks, and their newfound companion Sergeant Penny, once of the Thunderchild, are determined to get to the bottom of things, despite being warned off by shadowy agencies lurking in the corridors of power.

Meanwhile, the Germans are busy plundering, but accidents will happen, and this accident appears to have set off an alarm of sorts, one recognised by Bey, the shadowy government agents following him, and that Martian underground.

Anyway, this continuing saga that’s taken us right back to the beginnings of Scarlet Traces, back before the British Empire ascended to the stars, back to the days immediately after the Martians had fallen, just keeps going, brilliantly so.

Everything’s coming together, although you can’t help but hope that this one continues past the 12-part cut off many strips adhere to. After all, there’s a real joy in things playing out in such a fabulously languid fashion.