The Weekly 2000 AD Prog #2456: Tharg The Mighty Brings You The Latest 48-Page Bumper Prog

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.

The last of the bumper Progs for 2025 this week, with the comic expanding to 48 pages, meaning that you get not just the five ongoing strips but two extra special one-offs.

The five ongoing strips are just the same as last week. But all five range from pretty good to bloody excellent, so I’m not complaining about that at all. As for the special one-offs, well, there’s eight pages of Nightmare New York by Kek-W and David Roach, bringing us up to date with Lil’s adventures in her newfound magical world following last year’s debut series, and leading into the second series coming in 2026. The other one-off is Andrea Butzbach‘s Big Ass Sword, a tie-in to the original graphic novel released by 2000 AD next week, promising technopunk fantasy, big swords, warring robots, and talking skulls.

Yep, seven strips, all of them illustrating my point, yet again, that 2000 AD is, and always has been, the finest sci-fi anthology around. It all starts under a Mike Dowling cover….

2000 AD Prog 2456 is out now in the UK. As for the Americas, well, things have always been patchy. 2000 AD ships in a four-week bagged-up pack and few comic shops get it in. So, if you want to share in the best sci-fi anthology, head down to your local comic shop and ask them so nicely if they’ll order it in for you. I keep saying it, I know, but you really won’t regret it.

Now, time to head inside the latest Prog…

JUDGE DREDD: AND TO THE SEA RETURN – PART 7 – BY ROB WILLIAMS AND HENRY FLINT, LETTERS BY ANNIE PARKHOUSE

The folk horror Dredd tale, full of Cthulhu-esque things from out there in the sea moments continues. But into this, Williams takes the time to inject some post-Chaos Day paranoia into things. It’s been a motif in his writing of Dredd for a while, the sense that Mega-City One is a weak superpower, getting by on reputation alone, and that’s front and centre here in the thoughts of Chief Judge Logan right there on page 1. It’s something that’s been in his writing of Dredd for a while, there in the Maitland saga, there in the most recent Williams-written ‘Tunnels‘, and now given form in this latest damn good Dredd. It’s something he does so very well, bringing in the political aspect of things in an unassuming fashion, yet it’s so important to things.

Meanwhile, Dredd and his fellow Judges, high as kites to keep the Black Atlantic Worms at bay, are on their way to the Barge to mount a rescue mission for Anderson, who’s in the clutches of Carver right now. But, if you’re a MC-1 Judge being faced with Dredd in a pssed off mood, there’s no better way of getting sober damn quickly…

As they head into the Barge, we find out just what’s happened to Judge Guthrie – it’s not pleasant – and they all come to realise that there’s an army of the infected ready to invade MC-1. Yet, they’re not invading… why?

Well, a rapidly sobered-up Tan makes the connections…

Yep, Anderson’s the key, she’s the one Carver needs to call Skolex, whatever Skolex may be.

And let’s take a moment here to glory in the art of Henry Flint. I’ve said it many times, but he’s absolutely the finest Dredd artist of the now. That little moment there, the subtle linework, the close-ups, they just work so incredibly well. It’s the sort of thing he’s been doing all the way through this, his control just superb, the way he’s built and built the tension of this creeper of a tale just sublime.

So, just who, just what is Skolex? And exactly how much shit are Dredd/Anderon/MC-1 in this time? Well, that’s something we’ll be finding out in time. Perhaps. However long this one takes is fine by me. Williams and Flint are crafting another very special Dredd tale here.

RED DRAGON – PART 6 – BY ROB WILLIAMS, STEVE YEOWELL, PATRICK GODDARD, COLOURS BY DYLAN TEAGUE, LETTERS BY SIMON BOWLAND

This really is the sad little saga of Siadwell Rhys, the Red Dragon, one of the most powerful superbeings on Earth in the ’60s, who’d end his days as a somewhat recovering alcoholic in the pages of Grant Morrison and Steve Yeowell‘s Zenith as one of many to fall before the Lloigor.

All through this, Williams has been portraying Rhys as the outsider, the poor little Welsh kid, abandoned, desperate for friends, comrades, falling in with the Cloud 9 superheroes intent on changing this world, mastering this world, dominating this world, ignoring the fact that they’re all just pricks of the highest order because, poor Siadwell, he just really wants someone, anyone, he can call his friends.

And that’s all in evidence here, as Siadwell gets sidetracked into another little pocket dimension by Mandala, Peter St. John, who, just maybe, in this telling of things, isn’t quite the self-serving manipulative prick he was painted as throughout Zenith. In the Steve Yeowell illustrated, bold, bright and coloutful return to the 60s bits of Red Dragon, we see St John pull Siadwell aside, away from the rest of Cloud 9 with their dodgy plans for a new race of superhumans, to tell Rhys that Cloud 9 and Dr Peyne’s plans will involve the culling of 90% of humanity, something they see as an acceptable sacrifice for the coming of Homo Novus, the New Man. And yes, it does seem that Peyne is a little bit of a pervert – the clues were always there, after all.

Meanwhile, back in the dreary, miserable, black and white present day, so beautifully done by Patrick Goddard, we have the fascinating darkness that’s managed to work its way into what was meant to be the ‘normal’ half of this one. But as he’s getting more and more enmeshed in the reality of the place Siadwell grew up in, the place he returned to, the more he finds that’s full of its own dark surprises.

BIG-ASS SWORD: DEFRAG PROCESS – BY ANDREAS BUTZBACH

The full-length original graphic novel is out on 4 November, with this strip – I think this is a stand-alone strip tying into the release of the GN.

It’s something different for 2000 AD, a completely new original graphic novel. They’ve done it a few times in the past, but this is the first for a long, long time. And it looks rather excellent to be honest.

Described as ‘a technopunk fantasy saga filled with warring robots and talking skulls,’ it’s all about one robot warrior wandering a strange techno landscape, populated with the remains, both organic and mech, of a long past war. All the robot’s got for company along the way is a talking skull and, of course, a Big-Ass Sword.

Here, though, it’s time for a big-ass battle. Two opposing forces of robotic warriors line up, called to fight by the electrical impulses telling them that’s what they should be doing. Fight, kill, maim, hate, destroy, old programming is hard to cast off, it seems.

Big-Ass Sword looks great – angular, Mignola-esque stuff the most obvious of the influences, but there’s plenty of Otomo here as well in the design and mech going on. He’s also bringing a European sensibility and style to it all, with a look that would fit quite naturally into Metal Hurlant. We’ve seen a little of his work across various Treasury of British Comics, including The Thirteenth Floor, Smash!, and Monster Fun, but this is something way bigger and better, tapping into the plentiful work he’s done in Germany. Definitely one I’m looking forward to reading more of, just one week to wait, and this little primer whets the whistle nicely.

VOID RUNNERS: BOOK TWO – PART 7 – BY DAVID HINE AND BOOK COOK, LETTERS BY ANNIE PARKHOUSE

Hine and Cook’s psychedelic space ride, of evil galactic empires and plucky rebels, just keeps on trucking, and does it all with a style and a wit that makes it a hell of a lot of fun.

Last time round, we had Captain Shikari getting a little cosmic advice from the Great Pleroma, with their trip bringing forth mommy dearest with the news that Shikari was a dust baby, Shikari’s mom introduced to the drug by Moondog when she was pregnant with Shikari… leading to a wonderful little panel of awkward silence, Moondog not knowing where to look, leaving us to imagine just how close Moondog and mommy were…

Anyway, mom’s parting words of advice are that Shikari needs to deprogram the enslaved Manjukaks so they can be freed. All of which means Shikari’s going to have to perform the ceremony of the purple-violet squish.

All of which leads us to the ceremony that opens things here, Hine playing with things delightfully – the squish being a ‘tradition that began in a holy place known as the Hate Ash Berry on the original human homeworld.’ Plenty of dust is consumed, and something that looks rather like the meta guru himself, Marc Bolan, manifests to give the truth to the Manjukaks about their masters.

So, all sorted? Yes? Well, no, it’s that classic moment where Shikari discovers that you can get what you want and still not be happy. Oh dear, poor old Shikari, solve one problem, only to have the next rear its ugly, violent head. Whoops.

Great stuff, Cook’s organic artwork just perfect for the mix of bizarre alien life and total tripiness going on all the way through Void Runners, and Hine’s storytelling rooted in classic good versus evil stuff, yet laced with a heroic dose of counterculture, drug culture, yet always keeping tongue firmly planted in cheek.

NIGHTMARE NEW YORK: HARD TIMES – BY KEK-W AND DAVID ROACH, COLOURS BY PETER DOHERTY, LETTERS BY JIM CAMPBELL

With the first series of Nightmare New York, we got to see and love the final art of John Burns before his passing, with the series finished by Roach and Doherty. In that, Kek-W told the tale of young Lil, living rough on the streets of Manhattan in an alternative 1845 where magic is all too real, where Lil discovered she had magical powers, all before nearly being sacrificed by her devil-worshipping dad.

Now, we have this one-off piece, a catch-up with Lil in advance of the second series that comes our way in 2026.

She’s on the run, a rat named Selene her only friend, as she stumbles into a literary disagreement, with the writer of some play taking issue, with bullets, with the none-too-attractive review from none other than Edgar Allan Poe. That’s mere window dressing, though, a cute opener giving Poe the knowledge that ghosts are real and perhaps setting him on course to bring the macabre to his poetry. After all, literary criticism can be a dangerous game.

Anyway, after the little diversion of Lil meeting, sort of, Poe, she’s away to somewhere else, losing control of her powers until she winds up, through a twist of fate and happenstance, finding a little temporary happiness in a bakery. Trouble is, when you’re Lil, happiness is temporary, and it’s not long before another little twist of fate has her delivering to her father and mother’s residence. Her father, of course, died in his dealings with Lil’s soul and the demon Moloch. But her dear mother still lives there. The reunion, it has to be said, isn’t a happy one.

Cut to Paris and 1899, with a still unnaturally youthful Lil, dressed in finery and calling herself Lillian, has a rather unexpected rendezvous with another of Kek-W and Roach’s creations. I won’t spoil the reveal, that’s no fun after all. But I will say that it was most unexpected and most welcome, two strips coming together in a way that makes me rather keen to see the next Nightmare New York series.

BRASS SUN: PAVANE – PART 7 – BY IAN EDGINTON AND INJ CULBARD, LETTERS BY SIMON BOWLAND

Next up, the brilliance of the epic sci-fi meets steampunk in the most imaginative of worlds you’ll ever see. Everything is set on a life-size solar system orrery, a mechanical marvel where each planet is connected by practically impossible to imagine spars. The sheer scale of it is as incomprehensible as it is magnificent.

Of course, if that were all that Brass Sun was, a concept without a heart and soul, it wouldn’t be a wonderful as it is. But no, the combination of Edginton and Culbard has created something where the amazing concept is merely the backdrop to things.

And right now, those things involve Wren, once more on her quest to save the system, joined by Ariel O’Connor, marooned on a planet and hunting down the parts for their broken ship. It’s a planet where the Inquisitors are busy harvesting, to Wren and Ariel’s horror, the minds of the people in their hunt to track down the key to saving the system and reigniting the Brass Sun.

Faced with families and children being harvested, Wren’s all for rushing in, whilst Ariel’s seen all this before, knows they have to play a longer game, staying free and alive long enough to mount their resistance.

But Wren’s no longer the quiet little thing she was so many years and so many series ago…

So, there’s a hastily put together plan, one of those that might work, might cause a hell of a lot more trouble – have a wild guess which way this one’s going to go?

As always, Brass Sun is just a wonderful experience. Like I say, whilst the initial concept is brilliant in its scale and sheer incomprehensibility, it’s the characters that make this one just fly. That and the skills of all involved in making those characters come to life, flawed, difficult, complex things, all involved in this epic quest.

ROGUE TROOPER: GHOST PATROL – PART 7 – BY ALEX DE CAMPI AND NEIL EDWARDS, COLOURS BY MATT SOFFE, LETTERS BY JIM CAMPBELL

Finally, for this Prog, the next slice of action down on Nu Earth, where De Campi and Edwards are doing a hell of a lot of good things.

For now, the mystery that’s brought Souther veteran Gordon Macinrow back to Nu Earth where he’s part of a team to find his fellow vet, both of whom were there 10 years prior to see the Traitor General’s plot to destroy all the new Genetic Infantrymen almost work.

Instead, we’re dealing with the more pressing matters, as the very last of those Souther GIs, Rogue Trooper is racing in to stop a plot by Nort fifth columnists who’ve managed to hack into the new Souther weaponry, and whose bigger plans involve getting into the Milli-Com mainframes to spread the virus through every weapon in the Souther army.

There’s plenty of good old-fashioned Rogue Trooper action, the sort of thing that’s a real joy to see, especially the way Edwards is handling it…

Like I’ve said before, it’s settled into a linear storytelling thread now, dispensing with what was, at least in those first couple of episodes, a rather confusing back and forth between now and 10 years prior. And now we’re with Rogue and his team, including Macinrow, and no doubt the mission Macinrow was brought back to Nu Earth for will be connecting into Rogue’s tracking down of the new breed of Nort soldiers.

It’s simple, but it’s also very good simple – there is, after all, a real thrill of seeing Rogue in action, especially when it’s handled as well as this.