The Weekly 2000 AD: Prog 2449 — Don’t 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.

Well, it’s a bit of a different Prog this week, as there’s only three strips in here. That’s all to do with clearing the decks for next weeks big jumping on Prog, all new strips a plenty there. Here, we’re finally, finally, getting the conclusion of the fabulous Judge Dredd: Tunnels, missing in action these past few weeks, but well worth the wait.

After that, there’s double episodes to close out both The Ravilious Pact and Scarlet Traces: Empire of Blood. That’s three damn great series, all reaching their conclusions under one cover. Rather damn good if you ask me.

And speaking of the cover, it’s another fabulous study of Dredd by Toby Willsmer…

2000 AD Prog 2449 is out in the UK on 10 September. Don’t wait for the jumping on point, there’s still so much to enjoy right here. If you’re in the Americas, head to your local comic shop and say hello, and then ask them very nicely to order in the four-Prog packs for you. Although heaven knows when you’ll get your hands on them. But trust me, it will be more than worth it. A whole world of incredible sci-fi awaits.

So, let’s take a look see at this weeks Prog…

JUDGE DREDD: TUNNELS – FINAL PART – BY ROB WILLIAMS AND RM GUERA, COLOURS BY GIULIA BRUSCO, LETTERS BY JIM CAMPBELL

Well, it’s been a fair few weeks to get here, but damn, it’s so good to have the finale of, I reckon, the best Dredd so far this year. (Of course, there’s a new Williams/Henry Flint Dredd starting next week, And To The Sea Return, so perhaps it’s about to get pushed into second – but that’s for next week).

Anyhow, that’s for next week, right now, let’s talk about just how wonderfully good, how brutal, how action-packed, how quite utterly briliant this one’s been.

It’s been one of Williams’s action Dredds for sure. Right from the very first page, this one just exploded into life. Dredd down in Ciudad Barranquilla, where the Law is as corrupt as it gets. He’s down here looking for a Judge killer, one of Total War’s figureheads, who walked into a sector house and massacred every Judge there.

And it’s that Total War connection, and the idea that, after the failed Judge Maitland experiment, Mega-City One is more vulnerable than it’s ever been before, is where Williams has threaded just a hint of something political in here. It’s never a major plot point, never allowed to distract from the action, but it’s there, and I can’t help but think it’s something that we’ll see Williams come back to in the future.

Dredd’s unrelenting hunt for the Total War assassin, an ex-Wally Squad Judge himself, is just perfectly done here. It’s Dredd the unstoppable force, thrown into a world where there’s no rules. It’s just him and a gun. That’s it. No back-up, no tech, nothing but the man on a mission.

And, week in and week out, that mission has just been full of this driving action, everything so fast, yet everything completely controlled by Williams’s writing and the perfect choreography of Guera and Brusco. Seeing how the art team just take the constant forward motion, the drive to get to the end, for Dredd to get his man, has been just a visual masterclass in doing action perfectly.

Yes, it’s the Dredd of the year so far. Now, seeing as this is the final episode, seeing as how it’s been a few weeks since the penultimate episode, why not do what I did and give yourself the treat of going back and reading it from the start. It just gets better and better with every read.

THE RAVILIOUS PACT – PART 10 – FINAL PART – BY TC EGLINGTON AND STEVEN AUSTIN, COLOURS BY JOHN CHARLES, LETTERS BY SIMON BOWLAND

Another one where it all comes to a head, as the mob meets demonic forces tale of the Ravilious Pact wraps up its first series. And I’m hoping that we’ll see Eglington and Austin return for a second go round on this one, as it’s been a hell of a lot of genre-twisting fun across all 10 parts. There’s certainly enough threads of story left at the end of this to lead us confidently into that second series.

It’s all been about Jason Ravilious and his increasingly tenuous position in the Boucher Family, the top crime family in London, a family who’ve got to the top in partnership with many demonic forces – the whole Pact thing of The Ravilious Pact. But since old man Archie Boucher died and the family business was taken over by his psychotic son Todd, whose dealings with both rival gangs and the demons who’ve started to manipulate things to their own ends.

Separated from the Boucher gang, a price on his head, Jason’s entered into an alliance with the Duncan Family and Morvern… who’s obviously got her own reasons for playing things out this way. And those reasons may well not have Jason’s best interests at heart.

Everything reaches a crescendo, Jason takes on the demon Ba’laal, the shadow demon reappears, and a familiar face comes back into things – all of it setting up the (hopefully) inevitable second series. Because, despite playing hard into the genre tropes along the way, The Ravilious Pact has also given us a thriller with enough twists and turns to rise above the simple tag line of mobsters versus demons, turning into a tight, complex thrill where there’s so much more at play than the beginnings of it would ever have hinted. Alongside Eglinton writing really well, Austin’s rough-hewn art fits the whole thing just perfectly.

SCARLET TRACES: EMPIRE OF BLOOD – PART 18 – FINAL PART – BY IAN EDGINTON AND D’ISRAELI, LETTERS BY ANNIE PARKHOUSE

As I’ve said many times already in the course of one of 2000 AD’s far strips to go for longer than what’s now the standard 10 or 12 episodes, Scarlet Traces is truly a wonderful bit of epic sci-fi. Again, if you’ve never had the pleasure of seeing what comes after this prequel series, please, please go and read all of Edginton and D’Israeli’s epic, taking us from the aftermath of Wells’s War of the Worlds to a newfound British Empire ascending to the stars.

It’s the end of the long case that’s taken Inspector Bey from a simple robbery to hanging off a Martian war machine with unexpected allies trying to stop a message getting through to the Martians. It’s a thrilling end to things, perfectly done, as you’d expect of course. But it’s the pages that follow that give us cause to hope – certainly gives me cause to hope there’s still more to come from the world of Scarlet Traces, as we see the fallout from Bey’s mission, and a return of the shadowy Spry of Her Majesty’s Uncivil Service. Rather a perfect end to what’s been such a damn fine series.

Like I say, Empire of Blood takes us back to the beginning of things here, in the immediate fallout from the failed Martian invasion of England. And, over the course of the episodes, we’ve watched a slow build of a tale, drawing together all the threads to an enthralling conclusion, one that’s both worthy of all we know is to come in the world of Scarlet Traces and one that, hopefully, as with the Ravilious Pact, will lead to a second series of this one – becasue there’s plenty still to be told in this world.