The Weekly 2000 AD Prog #2462: Ready For A Nightmare New Year?

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.

It’s the last regular Prog of the year, with next week seeing the 100-page Xmas Prog, rather stuffed with a load of good, good things. Again, just the four strips in the greatest sci-fi anthology out there this week, as we bid farewell to Judge Dredd: Messengers, whilst Rogue Trooper: Ghost Patrol gets to its penultimate part with a double-length episode. Alongside that, we have a new Future Shock by James Lovegrove and Toby Willsmer, and the second, and sadly, final part of the zombies walk and work amongst us tale that is Deadtown by David Barnett and Luke Horsman.

So, for one last time this year before the end-of-year blowout of the BIG Christmas Prog, shall we wander through the delights of the latest 2000 AD Prog…

It all begins under a typically beautifully dark cover by Nick Percival…

2000 AD Prog 2462 came out in the UK on 10th December. If you’re in the USA, there might be a few issues getting hold of the four-weekly Progs. But head into your local comic shop and see what they can do for you. And if you can’t get hold of a physical copy, you can always get hold of digital Progs at the 2000 AD web shop. Here in Bruton Mansions, we’re getting a little bit Christmassy. Still no Grinch tree as yet, but Mrs B does keep threatening to come back from a shopping expedition with one, so watch this space.

Okay then, time to head inside the latest Prog…

JUDGE DREDD: MESSENGERS – PART 3 – FINAL PART – BY KEN NIEMAND AND NICK PERCIVAL, LETTERS BY ANNIE PARKHOUSE

A quick three-and-out for this one, but that’s okay, as it’s really just a brief intro to the gruesome delights that Niemand and Percival and others will be bringing your way in 2026, promising to really fill Dreddworld with absolute horrors. The Oubliette, the Dark Forest, The Black Tower, the Undercity; all of them featuring in something big for next year.

Anyway, ‘Messengers’ is all about setting up what is promised to be something that will be a big, big thing in 2026 for Dredd across both the Prog and the Megazine. And it’s set it all up so very, very well.

There’s much talk of the city father, ancient powers that have been here long before the Mega-City, how Dredd and the Judges have “served them all your life. Even if you don’t know it.” As Dredd is told, when he gives his usual terse reply, “I serve the City and the Law,” it’s “Their City. Their Law.” The Black Tower is coming, whatever that is, hinted at in ‘The Shift’, as well as the Oubliette, “A prison, the worst place in the universe,” where Dredd’s told that he’ll “be in there while your city is in danger.”

And that’s just from pages 1 and 2 of this finale. After that, we rejoin Rico and Giant, as they get the skinny on the Black Tower from something suitably nightmarish as only Percival can bring to the page. Something about The Black Tower, and how they “Forgot about it. You were made to forget about it. Lost for so long, but now it’s coming back…”

And then there’s the line, “He won’t be there, so which of you will be the sacrifice instead? Which of you will offer yourself to the Black Tower?”

Who’s ‘He’ in all this? What sacrifice? Just add it to the list of questions that Messengers poses – questions that we’ll get the answer to in 2026.

As this one ends:

“The Oubliette is coming… in 2026.”

Based on all that Niemand and Percival have done thus far in bringing back the horror to Dreddworld, and doing it with some fine style indeed, it’s going to be something big, a rather epic descent into madness and terrors that you’ll want to be here for.

FUTURE SHOCKS: THE HAPPINESS MEME – BY JAMES LOVEGROVE AND TOBY WILLSMER, LETTERS BY SIMON BOWLAND

The Future Shock, staple of 2000 AD, right from the early days. A limited page count (in this one, just four pages) to tell a complete thing, beginning, middle, end – and that end needs a twist. Probably the hardest thing in comics to do well, especially as, after nearly five decades, there’s been a lot of Future Shocks, and many of the great ideas have been done already. Right?

Well, here goes another – great to see Toby Willsmer’s art inside the Prog for a change instead of on the cover – great art.

It all starts with the happiness meme escaping from a military research centre… Kevin Jorkins is to blame, smuggling in a banned phone, taking a photo of the meme for his girlfriend, and taking said meme out into the world as he leaves.

And thus the happiness meme spreads across the world… everyone who views it falling into lethargic apathy, just as those who created it meant to happen. Chaos, predictably, ensues.

Enter Colonel Grimshaw, who wants this thing fixed. And now. So, they do. And what’s the best thing to replace happiness? What’s the thing that spreads even faster? Well, yes.

Four pages of Future Shock that does the thing it’s meant to do. Interesting idea, well done.

DEADTOWN: PART ONE – EPISODE 2 – FINAL PART – BY DAVID BARNETT AND LUKE HORSMAN, LETTERS BY SIMON BOWLAND

After the double-length opener last Prog, Barnett and Horsman’s latest, a zombie tale with a modern twist, continues – and finishes. A really unexpected end. I can only hope we’ll be seeing another series in 2026.

The set-up was so simple, a Russian satellite crashed down into a cemetery and caused the resurrection of 3,000 dead folks. That’s it. But it’s how it’s played out that’s interesting, and one that plays into themes of outsiders, asylum seekers, prejudice – and don’t anyone say that politics doesn’t belong in 2000 AD. If you do, you’ve been missing the point for nigh on 50 years.

So, against all this zombie return stuff, we’ve got the more immediate tale of one particular dead man returning to work thanks to the Revenant Act, Detective Constable Bill Rook, previously dead in 1958. Now partnered with DI Ewing, whose own mom is one of the returned, they’re off on a case, one taking place right here in Deadtown, the ghetto created for the returned dead to live amongst us all.

Oh, and just to add to the social aspect of this, it turns out that Rook was one of just a few black coppers back in the fifties. But, as Rook tells Ewing, it wasn’t ‘as tough as being black and dead.’

Anyway, it’s onwards into the investigation of the second death of Jimmy Pills, aka James Heygate. It seems Jimmy wanted brains and was prepared to pay various lowlifes to dig up the dead to get them. But that’s by the by at the moment, as they’re off on a lead that takes them to the church of Rev Peter Heygate. And no, it’s not a coincidence.

Well, it seems like an open and shut case, only to get screwed over by timing. Seems the Reverand did his unholy brother in (again) just an hour before the Revenant Act, meaning the Rev walks free.

But more interesting than the case is what it leads to, as Ewing gets a little inside knowledge on why Jimmy Pills was after brains, something the recently un-deceased appear to crave, DC Rook included, all of which leads to Ewing figuring she can help her poor old (dead) ma.

So far, after just the two episodes, Deadtown is playing out just fine, plenty of interesting roads it can go down, plenty of political allegory in the mix, all of which is brought to life so very well by Horsman’s, as ever, fabulously done artwork. It’s a good tale that has the real potential to go into a great one.

Like I say, this one ends before it’s had a real chance to get to that great status. Seriously, two episodes is way too short to tell this tale. I can only imagine there’s more to come in 2026. I won’t complain if there is.

ROGUE TROOPER: GHOST PATROL – PART 13 – BY ALEX DE CAMPI AND NEIL EDWARDS, COLOURS BY MATT SOFFE, LETTERS BY JIM CAMPBELL

A double-length penultimate part to this Rogue tale, one where De Campi and Edwards have played into the origins of Rogue Trooper, and have, all told, done rather a good job.

They’ve gone back to the origins of the character, to the Gerry Finley-Day-written tales when Rogue was left as the last of the Genetic Infantrymen, the super soldiers created by the Southers in their seemingly never-ending war with the Norts on Nu Earth. Those earliest tales were stories where Finley-Day and Dave Gibbons, along with plenty of other great artists, including Brett Ewins, Cam Kennedy, and Colin Wilson, set about giving us a storyline where it was all about Rogue’s quest to track down the man who betrayed them all, the Traitor General. But, within that ongoing quest, they set up a load of little tales, a fight of the week sort of thing, throwing Rogue into battle with something strange every week.

And that’s just what De Campi and Edwards have done with this one, as Ghost Patrol adopts, deliberately, the structure of those earliest Rogue tales. Here, it’s the return to Nu Earth for Officer Macinrow, who saw the Quarz Massacre a decade ago, all masterminded by Nygaard, who’s put together this mission to find Fob Azure, the lost Souther base where the GI program was made flesh. But whilst they’ve been on the hunt for Fob Azure, De Campi and Edwards have thrown in a mini Rogue adventure every couple of Progs, basically giving Rogue something to fight whilst the bigger picture unfolds.

Right now, we’re at the almost end, this double-length episode leading into the finale, as Rogue, Macinrow, Nygaard, and the rest of their small team head into Fob Azure, looking for answers, and finding yet another bit of enemy action for Rogue to have a bit of a fight with.

So, cue the Nort super soldiers we’ve seen before, the Steel Sisters, and let Rogue have at it. Rogue finds his long-lost comrades in Fob Azure, there are fundamental questions to be answered, as the original GIs come out, but not before Rogue has a little bit of action… all soundtracked, wonderfully, by The Spice Girls…

By the end of this one, we’re given the real bad guy in all of this – and no, you don’t get any Brownie points for guessing who it is, it was, after all, right there from the off.

So, leading into the finale, it’s been a series of ups and downs, one that I haven’t always been on board with. But, when I did a re-read of all the episodes thus far, it’s also been something that really does get the whole idea of Rogue Trooper, De Campi and Edwards truly going back to the original stroyline, going back to the structure of those earliest tales, giving us an honest to goodness Rogue Trooper for now that really does hark back to those originals whilst bringing it all up to date.

It’s been a rather good Rogue tale; let’s see how they finish it next week.