The Weekly 2000 AD Prog #2444: Look Into The Eyes Of The Traitor

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, coming up to five decades of publishing, 2000 AD continues to deliver the best sci-fi anthology around – it’s long past time you decided to take the plunge!

This week, four series continue, and there’s a one-off Nu Earth War Tales – Traitor, taking us back to the world of Rogue Trooper and the Traitor General that wiped out all of Rogue’s comrades. As for the four that are continuing, it’s a rather excellent quartet. Best of a good bunch is Judge Dredd; Tunnels, where Rob Williams and RM Guera continue to give us all the action as Dredd’s South American sojourn keeps getting more and more dangerous. Then there’s that mix of London mobsters and demonic forces in The Ravilious Pact, there’s more of the strangeness happening with Dexter, Suzi Nine and the rest down in the mysterious world of Azimuth, and more Victorian steampunk as things hot up in Scarlet Traces. Yep, five great-looking, great-reading strips for your enjoyment this week. And it’s all happening under another rather striking Lee Carter cover….

2000 AD Prog #2444 is out in the UK on 6th August. Which would be right about now. If you’re in the Americas, well, the best bet would to head into your friendly local comic shop and ask them to order it as the four-weekly bundles. And over here in Bruton Mansions, NV, the Ant wars continue. Seriously, the little buggers don’t know when they’re beat. Anyone got a spare anteater we could borrow?

But anyway, time for a quick spin through this weeks Prog… and, as has become a thing over the past few weeks, more of the Dredd chin panel that RM Guera is managing to put into each and every episode of Dredd: Tunnels:

JUDGE DREDD: TUNNELS – PART 6 – BY ROB WILLIAMS AND RM GUERA ,COLOURS BY GIULIA BRUSCO, LETTERS BY ANNIE PARKHOUSE

This really is one of those great Dredds, Williams doing action rather than his usual more politically driven Dredds, and RM Guera and Brusco and Parkhouse just giving their finest work to create something that started fast and just hasn’t really let up yet. It’s my favourite Dredd of the year so far.

Of course, that’s not to say that Williams isn’t lacing this one with threads that might be played out in the future. The idea of Mega-City One and the Justice Department being weakened and vulnerable to attack by a reinvigorated Total War is no doubt one we’ll see reverberating through future Dredd tales.

But here, it’s all about the action, and damn, it’s so well done. We’ve had Dredd headed down to Ciudad Barranquilla, the South American Mega-City rife with corruption, looking for, and finding, Silva, a crime boss who’s got info for Dredd on where to find ex-Wally Squad Judge Skowronski, Total War’s poster boy after his decimation of a MC-1 Sector House.

As his boat captain’s words say here, it’s just Dredd and a gun down here, no one to trust, just himself against the international democracy groups working together now, where the people are beginning to see him and his kind as the enemy, not the protection.

So, it’s a journey further upriver, on the trail of one of his own, now fighting, and winning, so it seems, for the other side. And, let’s not forget, the other side is fighting the fight for democracy against the jackboot of fascism of Dredd and the Justice Department. It’s just him and his gun now, walking into his own Heart of Darkness.

Absolutely brilliant stuff. Another quiet episode in its way, but still full of such incredible imagery from Guera and Brusco, beautiful, lush greens of the forest drifting into the muted horrors that Dredd’s headed into. A perfect Dredd action tale.

THE RAVILIOUS PACT – PART 5 – BY TC EGLINGTON AND STEVEN AUSTIN, COLOURS BY JOHN CHARLES, LETTERS BY SIMON BOWLAND

We’re well into this new strip now, and the magical, demonic parts of this one are coming to the fore, alongside all that well-done gangster grit we’ve seen thus far.

Jason Ravilious, enforcer for the Boucher family, has already seen his brother-in-law, Lee, sucked into things as the new head of the Boucher family, the frankly unstable Todd, starts running things his way. Lee’s the vessel for the demon Ba’laal, a demon who, we get the impression, is just playing with the cast here, waiting to play his demonic hand, one that Jason’s not going to like in the slightest.

Meanwhile, there’s the small matter of Jason’s dying mate, and the first inkling of just what the whole ‘Pact’ thing is all about. Because this whole using demonic intervention to further your criminal empire is a pact that’s just waiting for the demons involved to call in their markers….

Yes. There’s the price to be paid for this particular pact. A price Jason’s only just beginning to get an idea of.

It’s dark and it’s nasty, Austin’s art just perfect for things here, all the grime and nastiness of gangster life in London writ large in his panels and pages, as we follow Jason Ravilious down a path that we know is only going to get worse from here on in.

AZIMUTH: ABANDONED BY GOD – PART 5 – BY DAN ABNETT AND TAZIO BETTIN, COLOURS BY MATT SOFFE, LETTERS BY JIM CAMPBELL

We’ve got Dexter in the Faraday Boxing Ring, all powers neutralised, fighting the bloody big and nasty Megahurts. We’ve got Andi (possibly Judge Cassandra Anderson, who knows where Abnett’s taking this one?) dying in the ring.

Next comes the chaos, as Dexter fights his way out, making enemies old and new, as the massed ranks of the Cadavatars, including Suzi Nine, make an appearance. And in their ranks, there’s a certain Tracy, her hate reaching across the worlds of before Azimuth to feed her hate here in the bizarre world.

This one’s really running with the idea of keeping you guessing. Who is Andi? Is she really Cass Anderson, famed Psi-Judge of MC-1 in Dreddworld? What is Azimuth? Is it perhaps the imagination of Downlode’s rogue conquering AI program? Or could it be something more? And just what is Dexter’s part to play amongst all this mystery? The answers to those questions you won’t find here in this episode. No, that’s not the way Abnett’s playing this one at all. Instead, you get more and more teases, expertly done, as we dive deeper and deeper into the mystery here.

And all this is accompanied by Bettin’s glorious artwork, where his imagination is allowed free rein to fill the pages with wonderful, outlandish characters, perfectly done.

SCARLET TRACES: EMPIRE OF BLOOD – PART 13 – BY IAN EDGINTON AND D’ISRAELI, LETTERS BY ANNIE PARKHOUSE

Over the past 12 episodes, Edginton and D’Israeli have been slowly drawing their threads of this latest Scarlet Traces serial together, playing out this prequel to everything they’ve played out thus far in their epic story.

You absolutely have to read all the Scarlet Traces published thus far of course, as they’re just a fine, fine tale of expanding upon HG Wells‘ War of the Worlds, taking a fledgling British Empire up to the stars, utilising the Martian tech left behind after the failed invasion of England. But ‘Empire of Blood’ hasn’t needed you to know those tales – they add to the tale you’re reading for sure, but this one stands alone. We’re here in the wreckage of London immediately post that failed Martian invasion, before the new British Empire rose.

And in ‘Empire of Blood’, we’re taken back to a procedural with multiple strands. We have Inspector Bey investigating crimes all seemingly coming from below. We have the German spy mission to steal the British-Martian tech. And we have the lone surviving Martian, deep underground. All of those strands have come together now, and things are accelerating apace.

The Germans’ mistake has activated the Martian war machine, Bey and his crew are trapped in a firefight with the Germans, and there’s more trouble than either of those groups can imagine coming up from below.

‘Empire of Blood’ has slowly developed, Edginton and D’Israeli controlling things so perfectly, bringing it all to a climax over the next few episodes.

NU EARTH WAR TALES: TRAITOR – BY GORDON RENNIE AND SILVIA CALIFANO, COLOURS BY BARBARA NOSENZO, LETTERS BY SIMON BOWLAND

A one-off return to Nu Earth now, as the latest of these Nu Earth War Tales plays out. It’s just what we need for the world of Rogue Trooper, sidestepping the limitations of Rogue’s tale, too constrained by the singular driving force of Rogue’s quest to find and kill the Traitor General, that, once it’s done, means the story was done.

No, instead, Nu Earth War Tales allows writers and artists to play in the rich storytelling world of Nu Earth and the war between the Norts and the Southers. There’s many a tale to be told of the war, and Rogue’s tale was just one of them – that’s the key to these Nu Earth War tales.

Here, we’re deep into Rogue’s history, but Rennie and Califano spin things another way, taking a different look at the tale of the Traitor General, looking at the world through the villain’s eyes. getting a new perspective on a tale that’s been played out, again and again, over the last four decades.

And they do a fine, fine job of things, giving a new spin on a classic, getting under the skin of the villain of the piece. Again, it’s expanding on Rogue’s legacy, but doing it without taking anything away from the brilliance of that core story.