The Weekly 2000 AD: Prog 2450 — Everything’s New Inside, Everything’s Great Inside

Taking a look inside the UK’s greatest sci-fi comic, the Galaxy’s Greatest, fast approaching 50 years of brilliance —it’s the Weekly 2000 AD.

After the clearing of the decks last week, time for one of the jumping on Progs – a perfect time for you to take the plunge and get into the finest British sci-fi anthology you could wish for.

So, six strips in here, including what looks like a damn fine new Judge Dredd series by Rob Williams and Henry Flint, the start of a second series of the excellent and wonderfully strange Void Runners by David Hine and Boo Cook, and a new Rogue Trooper series taking us right back to the start of the GI program by Alex De Campi and Neil Edwards. Then there’s a one-off Thistlebone prose tale by TC Eglington and Simon Davis, plus the first part of a two-part Psi Judge Anderson by Alex De Campi and Rob Richardson, the second part of which is in the new Judge Dredd Megazine, issue 484. And finally, something I genuinely never thought I’d be typing – the start of the new series of Ian Edginton and INJ Culbard‘s epic sci-fi adventure Brass Sun, some seven years after the last series – but some things are definitely worth the wait!

All this under a rather Steve Dillon-looking cover with a great Dredd and Rogue by Mark Sexton…

2000 AD Prog 2450 is out in the UK on 17th September. It’s the perfect time for you to take the plunge – all new series, all of them showcasing just how diverse, just how rich the storytelling is in 2000 AD. Seriously, you really need to give it a try – you won’t regret it one bit. 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 yuor hands on them. But trust me, it will be more than worth it. A whole world of incredible sci-fi awaits. As seems to be the norm right now, life keeps getting in the way of getting these things to you in a timely fashion. I mean, shouldn’t a preview come out before the comic gets released? Well, that would be the ideal, for sure, but this week started at the weekend with a rather large HOA bill and a fridge freezer that didn’t want to fridge or freeze any more. Both of which meant far, far, far too much time spent on the phone and online. Yes, I know security is a good thing, but does Bank of America really need to ask for six verification codes for me just to add one new payee to my account? Bloody modern life, as Blur said, is rubbish.

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

JUDGE DREDD: AND TO THE SEA RETURN – PART 1 – BY ROB WILLIAMS AND HENRY FLINT, LETTERS BY ANNIE PARKHOUSE

Oh my, how lucky we are, just as one Rob Williams Dredd finishes last Prog, we get another multi-parter starting right here. It’s described as a bit of a chiller, and that’s just how it starts off, as a mist rolls in across the Black Atlantic and a sea of bodies, all iso-cube inmates, are discovered.

If that sounds like the start of a nicely chilling Dredd multi-parter, you’d be spot on. I mean, just the two pages below should give you all you need to know – this one’s going to be something special. From the ominous reveal of the bodies to the final couple of panels on page 2 with a classic bit of Williams Dredd between Joe and Chief Judge Logan, this one’s setting itself up for a great read.

So, dead bodies of iso-cube inmates washing ashore, Dredd figuring they’re from ‘The Barge’, the floating iso-cube under Judge Guthrie’s command, and somewhere that’s gone off the radar now. 11,000 plus onboard, some of the worst of the worst, and it’s Dredd putting a team together. Yep, the perfect start to this one, given an extra little kick putting Anderson into the mix and ominous foretellings of things to come.

All this, of course, to the sweet sight of more Henry Flint art on Dredd, an artist who surely is the best of a great bunch of modern Dredd artists. What’s not to love?

BRASS SUN: PAVANE – PART 1 – BY IAN EDGINTON AND INJ CULBARD, LETTERS BY SIMON BOWLAND

Seven long years have passed since we last saw Brass Sun. It’s one of those series that few believed would ever come back, but it’s damn good that it has.

It all takes place on the Orrery, a complete, life-sized mechanical solar system, one that’s slowly failing as the Brass Sun is dying, condemning all those beings of the Orrery to a slow death. Into this, we met young Wren, charged with travelling the rails between the worlds here and putting together the key with the power to restart the sun.

Although, why don’t I just give you the intro page, itself a perfect recap of all that’s gone before and some of what is to come….

Yes, sometimes we need a reminder, especially as its been so long since we were last treated to the worldbuilding quest done so very well by Edginton and Culbard.

Set many years after the last series, we join things back on Hind Leg, where all this started, joining an odd group on something akin to a pilgrimage, and, through the neat little narrative conceit of fireside tales, we get another look at what Wren’s legacy means to the peoples of these worlds.

So, we’re well into the future, getting a glimpse of a world post-Wren, one where the threat of the dying sun seems averted. No doubt the next episode is where it all begins properly, taking us back to Wren, the older Wren we now know suffered the loss of her and Septimus’ 16-year-old daughter, watched Septimus return to his order, and is now reunited with the pirate Ariel O’Conner. That’s for the next episode. But here, well, here, we have a perfect reintroduction to the world, a magnificent world of wonders given life by both creators. Oh, it’s so good to have it back.

ANDERSON, PSI-DIVISION: FLOWERS OF EVIL – PART 1 – BY ALEX DE CAMPI AND ROB RICHARDSON, LETTERS BY SIMON BOWLAND

A special two-parter which concludes in the pages of the Judge Dredd Megazine, out right now.

De Campi joins with one of my favourite new artists, Rob Richardson, for a simple tale of love and betrayal, following PJ Maybe’s once love, the custom-built sex droid Inga 3. She’s out on the streets of MC-1, cast out in favour of Inga 4, and she’s really not going to take that lying down.

And that’s how it is that Dredd and Anderson find Inga 3 robbing the Black Museum, looking for a gift to win back her former lover. And that’s when the flowers of evil come into play.

As a quick two-parter, it’s obviously going to play out pretty fast, but De Campi, aided so well by Richardson’s always evolving artwork, gets a hell of a lot into these first five pages, establishing motive and means, bringing Dredd and Anderson into things, and leaving us with a cliffhanger that means you really will want to be picking up the Megazine for the tale’s conclusion. It also means that I’d love, just after one episode here, to see what both of them could do with something longer and more involved with Anderson, as both seem to have the character down right.

THISTLEBONE: THE VOICE IN THE HOLLOW – BY TC EGLINGTON AND SIMON DAVIS

The cult of Thistlebone, a genuinely chilling series of three volumes of dark folk horror, something you should absolutely have a look at. Here, we have another short revisit to the village of Harrowvale, surrounded by the woods where the horrors of your imagination come to life. The cult of Thistlebone is worshipped by occult groups, putting on their animal masks and sacrificing their victims to the woodland God.

Those three Thistlebone volumes should be considered essential reading. This is the second of these short prose pieces, illustrated, as you’d expect, so beautifully by Davis. Treat them as continuations of the Thistlebone myth, take them as standalone things, it doesn’t matter particularly. This, as with the previous prose tale, is just a short and nasty thing that evokes the madness of Thistlebone perfectly.

A children’s game that takes the young into the woods, a children’s game that began as something nasty and turns, so swiftly, into something chilling, as the evil of the woods takes hold of us once more.

VOID RUNNERS: BOOK TWO – PART 1 – BY DAVID HINE AND BOOK COOK, LETTERS BY ANNIE PARKHOUSE

Sci-fi and psychedelia happening here, Hine describing the first series of Void Runners as ‘a sci-fi version of Ken Kesey’s Magic Bus trip across the USA in the 1960s.’ Which should give you an idea of just what you’re in for here.

In that first series, we met notorious Void Runner Captain Alice Shakari, called upon by those in power to track down the source of the mythical Kali’s Dust that gave those in power, the tyrannical Ankorites, the power to rule over the network of planets and systems known as The Federation. But things took a turn, and now Shikari is on a new mission, one to free the people from the Federation.

Shakari and the crew of the Nautilus make planetfall on Rigel-16, where the ruling Prima keep the Manjukak as their servants.

Their mission, and this is a long way from Star Trek, is ‘to expand the consciousness of all those who suffer under the oppression of the Federation by any means necessary.’ Cue epic blowing of minds with Kali’s Dust, as Shakari’s mission to enlighten brings something new to this planet of masters and servants.

That first series was another great new thing from 2000 AD, full of energy in a tale of rising up against those keeping you down, all given rich life on the page by the quite incredible organic art of Boo Cook, always a perfect choice for an artist if you’re after something effortlessly strange and different, worlds populated by all manner of things alien.

Well, now we’re here with the second series, and the weirdness just keeps on coming, the art keeps delivering the strangeness of it all. Sure, the basic DNA of the tale is a simple one, that of lone rebels attempting to overthrow a great evil empire, but that’s not the point here. No, the point of Void Runners is that it’s a much trodden road of story given freshness and new life through the manner in which it’s told and the way it’s shown to us on the pages.

ROGUE TROOPER: GHOST PATROL – PART 1 – BY ALEX DE CAMPI AND NEIL EDWARDS, COLOURS BY MATT SOFFE, LETTERS BY JIM CAMPBELL

Promised as a major Rogue series, one where De Campi and Edwards examine the very legacy of the Genetic Infantryman, it would certainly seem that way from the first few pages here.

We’re starting off at the dawn of the Genetic Infantryman project, the thing that the Southers are convinced will win them the war with the Norts. Of course, the end to that is well-known: the Traitor General, the Quartz massacre, all but one GI dead, the project finished before it even really got started, leading to the legacy of the one known as the Rogue Trooper.

Fast forward 10 years, to Old Earth, and a veterans’ welfare meeting, where Gordon Macinrow is about to meet a Lieutenant Mygaard from the Army Intelligence Corps, looking into the disappearance of a Sergeant Huxley, one of Macinrow’s comrades in arms a long time gone. The Lieutenant wants Macinrow for a new mission, one that’s going to take him back to Nu Earth.

And that’s it for this opening episode. Yet there’s plenty here to unpack. It’s got that sense of going for the big story, anchoring itself in the legend of the GIs and the betrayal of the Traitor General, but also that idea of using Macinrow as your everyman entry point to things.

And what do you know, so far, so good. De Campi’s second strip this week and, just as she seemed to have a handle on Anderson, she also seems to get what it is that makes Rogue Trooper work, the essential idea that its a war story of loss and betrayal, not one of glory but one where the horrors are writ large.