The Weekly 2000 AD Prog 2463: Merry Christmas From Dredd

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.

Yes, it’s that time of year, where the Prog takes a week off next week, but gives us all 100 pages to end the year with. Inside, there’s eight strips, the conclusion of the Rogue Trooper; Ghost Patrol epic, the starts of two new continuing strips, Herne & Shuck by David Barnett and Lee Milmore and The Discarded by Peter Milligan and Kieran McKeown, plus a load of one-off tales, including a very different Dredd tale, featuring the return of MikMak, one of Europe’s lost classics… perhaps.

And everything starts under a rather brilliant cover from Greg Staples:

2000 AD Prog 2463 comes out last week, so, yes…  this is another late. Let’s blame the inevitable acceleration of all the things you need to do at this time of year. It’s the tyranny of Christmas, where the season that’s meant to be the most relaxing thing turns into a nightmare of trying to do the perfect Christmas. But hey, take a moment, enjoy what you’ve got, be thankful for the small things, and if the Weekly 2000 AD is a few days late… hey, it’s Christmas, cut a guy some slack, eh?

So, it’s out on UK shelves right now, but if you’re in the Americas, things might be a little more difficult than usual to get the four-weekly Prog bundles. Pop into your local comic shop and ask them if they can order it. If they can’t, there’s always the option of going digital with the Prog from the 2000 AD web shop. However you get it, it’s still the finest sci-fi anthology out there. As for Bruton Mansions for this festive season, we’re rather Christmased up, 12 Christmas trees are up, including, of course, the traditional Peanuts tree. So, Merry Christmas one and all, may 2026 bring you all you wish for, plus, obviously, peace on Earth and goodwill to all men. Fingers crossed, eh?

Okay then, time to head inside the latest Prog…

JUDGE DREDD: MIKMAK’S BIG MEGA-CITY ADVENTURE – BY KEN NIEMAND AND STREF, COLOURS BY FIN CRAMB, LETTERS BY ANNIE PARKHOUSE

Sometimes you get super serious Dredds, sometimes you get silly Dredds, that’s all part of the greatness of the strip. This one, definitely silly.

It’s all about MikMak, a rather familiar bequiffed youngster, brown pants, blue tanktop – or, as Dredd describes him, ‘that little Euro-creep.’

Oh yes, it’s Tintin in MC-1, all done in suitably ligne claire style by Stref, whose Tara Togs book was a rather fun thing indeed. Here, we have Stref doing MC-1, with a character that looks a lot like Hergé’s boy reporter, accompanied by the mysterious Mister Blanco, with Dredd on his case.

Honestly, this is just silliness personified, Niemand and Stref giving us all the Tintin moments, including a rather great couple of pages of MikMak covers that could have been…

So wonderfully tongue-in-cheek all the way through, this is such a daft idea, done perfectly by Niemand and Stref. But perhaps the finest thing about it all has been following social media, as the ‘fans’ have been pointing out that it’s just a Tintin rip-off, bemoaning that Dredd looks silly, and then taking umbridge when everyone with a brain has been playing along with it all, really pissing off those with no sense of humour by talking about their memories of all of MikMak’s adventures they remember reading in the past. It’s been a wonderful week seeing the humourless comic ‘fans’ losing it big time.

HERNE & SHUCK: POWER TRIP – PART 1 – BY DAVID BARNETT AND LEE MILMORE, COLOURS BY GARY CALDWELL, LETTERS BY ANNIE PARKHOUSE

A new adventure for the folk horror pairing of the magical troubleshooter and his demonic dog, with Barnett and Milmore setting things up for this next adventure. Their merry little band has grown now, not just young Caris, who they rescued from a death cult, and who they’re just beginning to understand the extent of her powers, but Jordy as well, Herne’s ex, an occult hitwoman. And of course, after the events of the last series, Herne’s now evolving into his role as Herne the Hunter, a ghost from English folklore, a pagan deity of sorts, a shaman, a forest spirit, an spect of the God of the Hunt – and what that means for Herne, we can only imagine, something that will, no doubt, be explored in future series.

Anyway, here in the first episode of ‘Power Trip’, we’re all about the quiet before the storm, the set-up to things, Caris summoning a demon, Herne chatting with her in the aftermath. And then, once she’s asleep, a talk about where they’re going next.

Herne discovers that he really does have some very new powers, bringing back the dead being just one of them – his words have power it seems. Not to mention importance in the realms of the Gods, which explains why the Lady of the Woods turns up, telling him just why he’s been stripped of his new powers, all until he proves himself worthy. And, despite him making typical light of things, is rather serious indeed…

So, plenty going on, and that’s not even mentioning the Cudd devotees getting involved, the Crawly Man resurfacing, a demonic possession with bad things in the future for Herne.

So, a set-up episode, but a damn fine one. Herne & Shuck is a great series, full of all that folk horror and English folklore, all wrapped up in a wisecracking loner and his demonic dog (who does get all the best lines), giving us a supernatural tale that gets deeper and darker with every series.

AZIMUTH: BETTER THE DEVIL YOU KNOW – BY DAN ABNETT AND TAZIO BETTIN, COLOURS BY MATT SOFFE, LETTERS BY JIM CAMPBELL

A return to the strange city of Azimuth, where the Lord of the new Flesh rules all, blind to the fact that this is all a facet of Downlode, where an evil AI has taken control, and Azimuth may, or may not, be the last place of freedom.

We’ve had Ramone Dexter crash into Azimuth already, possibly the much prophesied ‘Stranger’, perhaps not. But there’s also Andi, very much looking like Psi-Judge Cassandra Anderson, not quite the same Anderson of Mega-City One, but close, very close.

Azimuth is a world of mystery and strangeness indeed. Abnett absolutely loving confounding and confusing us, Bettin’s art just a perfect match to this techno city of the imagination.

Here though, we’re all about Andi, all about the three seconds before Cassandra Anderson dies here. She’s fighting off the Great Anicca, the realisation of Downlode’s rogue AI here in Azimuth. It’s a one-off tale leading into the next Azimuth series, and one where we find out more of just who Andi is. Of course, given this is Abnett, there’s many more questions than answers here.

The mystery is all there in the first few pages, the captions talking of how the Fabled Basilisk ‘destroyed her world,’ and how ‘she barely survived.’ But, if this is Anderson, doesn’t that mean that ‘her world’ is actually MC-1, how the hell does that work?

And in those last few seconds, Anderson casts her mind back to a moment, a vital moment in her history, one that anyone who’s read her stories over the years will recognise, as Satan makes his appearance, or at least Anderson’s version of Satan. Seriously, I could explain, but it’s all tied into Anderson’s history. The best I can do is point you towards this  – the Essential Anderson: Satan.

But their conversation leads us to more questions (of course), the sort where we’re now wondering some more about Anderson saying, ‘I watched you die! I watched the Basilisk destroy you along with my world!’

There’s talk of ‘Anicca entered out reality,’ more confusion and way more questions coming from that. Then there’s this, ‘My world, and all the others in your damned Empire, annihilated by a malign AI Singularity.’ Damn, Abnett just keeps throwing the questions into Azimuth, just as he has right from the start.

By the end of this, we’re no more enlightened, but the journey, oh, the journey really is the thing. Azimuth just keeps asking so many questions. All I can say is that it’s one to strap in and really just go with it, a strange, strange world that’s just getting stranger.

THE DISCARDED – PART 1 – BY PETER MILLIGAN AND KIERAN MCKEOWN, COLOURS BY JIM BOSWELL, LETTERS BY SIMON BOWLAND

A brand new strip for the Christmas Prog, continuing into 2026, as Peter Milligan and Kieran McKeown tell a tale of an orbiting garbage island known as Junkfall, set up so that Britain has a way to rid itself of a mounting problem of its waste.

Junkfall’s manned by robotic Trashmasters, ruling the toxic wastes with brutality, keeping down the residents. Because Junkfall’s not just a trash island giving Britain a way to get rid of its discarded trash, it’s also a way for it to get rid of its undesirables, the criminals, the unsavoury types, the dissidents, all discarded, shipped out to make what miserable life they can on Junkfall, scavenging to stay alive amongst the trash mountains.

It’s a fascinating set-up, Milligan obviously using the allegory of the trash island to say more about modern society and the way it discards those who are unwanted, outcast. Well, perhaps he will, the potential’s there, as is the potential to look at this particular Britain, ruled, as we’re told, by ‘an illegal, dictatorial government.’

But right now, the stories all set on Junkfall, with this opening chapter doing the tried and tested thing of following a new set of Junkfall arrivals – a revolutionary dissident doing a fifty-year stretch, arrested for crimes against the government by his own cop daughter, a religious zealot who prays to his two-headed God for salvation, sent here for espousing a prohibited religion, a convicted conwoman, a white collar criminal imprisoned for property fraud. These are the ones we’ll be following in The Discarded.

And against all this, we have ‘the chip,’ the thing we see on the first couple of pages, something from a government research centre, meant to be locked safely away until the scientists could fix the glitches on the chip, but a chip that’s found its way to Junkfall, an accidently discarded thing that finds a home, finds a purpose, finds an unwilling host out on Junkfall.

It’s just 12 pages long, a double-length opener, but Milligan sure does cover a hell of a lot of ground here, setting up things really well, introducing the cast, setting out the societal background, giving us a look at just how nightmarish their new home is, and then introducing the threat of ‘the Chip.’ All of it done in just these 12 pages, all done bloody well. And McKeown’s art is damn good here, visually impressive, yet carrying the story perfectly, giving us all the visuals necessary to get across all the information Milligan’s packing into this one. A new tale, packed with promise, set up real well.

YOUNG DREDD: DOG EAT DOG – BY KEK-W AND CLINT LANGLEY, LETTERS BY ANNIE PARKHOUSE

It’s back to Deadworld here, the planet from a parallel dimension, home to the beings that will become the Dark Judges, the superfiends who would devastate their world and would then go looking for more lives to extinguish.

Kek-W, along with Dave Kendall, have been telling their ‘Fall of Deadworld’ story for years now, slowly and deliciously darkly building up to the fall, but now we’ve got a little prequel tale, taking a look back at Young Death, Judge Death before he became one of the Dark Judges, as Judge Sidney De’ath is out on a call, a young Judge under Judge Steelgrave, who’s about to find out just how dangerous De’ath can be.

They ride into a drug den, De’ath putting together the backstory way too quickly for Steelgrave’s liking, uncovering corruption, and dealing with it quickly, deadly with the cold, psychotic touch that has marked him out as a potential candidate for the dead fluids by The Sisters of Death.

It’s a test, De’ath’s intro to the Sisters, and the moment he’s set on a path that will see him transformed, eventually leading to the complete and total decimation of all life on the world that becomes Deadworld.

It’s a perfect little six-pager, Kek-W taking ownership of Young Death here, working his history into a neat little tale of a psychopath finding his way, with Clint Langley’s art just screaming off the page, loose and fresh, colours popping, everything feeling suitably messy and nasty in the art. In the past, Langley’s digital art has sometimes seemed a little too clean, but this is so different, just dirty art, perfect for the diseased mind we’re dealing with in the story.

HAWK THE SLAYER: THE CALL – BY ALEC WORLEY AND STAZ JOHNSON, COLOURS BY JOHN CHARLES, LETTERS BY ROB STEEN

Another trip back in time to the legendary adventures of Hawk the Slayer, in a world of medieval struggle and dark magics, where Hawk has defeated his evil brother Voltan some years past, and now finds himself, along with his comrades in arms, protecting this world from the Black Wizards’ influence. Armed with his Mindsword, Hawk has pledged to keep the peace.

Except this isn’t a tale of Hawk, it’s a tale of one of his men, and you’ll forgive me if I can’t dredge up the name right now, sometimes these things escape me. Regardless, it’s the archer, on a spiritual quest of wintertime, deep into the woods to remember the names of those gone, but this year it’s different, as he meets a vision in the forest…

But the vision is a trap, a magical creature out in the forest, a grave-crawler, where the archer fights for his life, and finds new hope in the woods.

‘The Call’ is Worley doing an interlude, all taking place in a drifting, liminal place, the archer being tested, his visions and his belief seeing him through. How it feeds into the continuing tale of Hawk the Slayer, I have no idea, but it’s really well done, a little tale of the strangeness that Worley’s bringing into something that started out as just a comic spin-off from a vaguely remembered ’80s sword and sorcery movie.

ROGUE TROOPER: GHOST PATROL – PART 14 – FINAL PART – BY ALEX DE CAMPI AND NEIL EDWARDS, COLOURS BY MATT SOFFE, LETTERS BY JIM CAMPBELL

So, the end to the big Rogue Trooper tale of 2025, De Campi and Edwards giving us a real nostalgic look back at the origins of the Genetic Infantrymen, one they’ve played out using the story mechanics that hark back to the earliest tales of Rogue. Over the past 13 episodes, we’ve had Rogue being dropped into this one, a spectator to things at first, but every episode drawing him closer and closer to the prize, where the prize is the lost Souther base where the GI program was first developed. But whilst that bigger story happened in the background, each couple of episodes saw Rogue on a little mini-adventure, a new threat every couple of weeks for him to beat the crap out of, just as those earliest Finley-Day and Gibbons Rogues played out.

So, we’ve had the nostalgia in the story structure and the setting, but the big story has always been there, coming to a head right here in this final episode, all set up by the final page of the penultimate episode…

Oh yes, turns out that the whole mission that brought Rogue and Officer Macinrow together, the mission masterminded by Nygaard, the whole find Fob Azure thing, was all a ploy, a revenge thing for Nygard, son of the Traitor General.

Oh yes, betrayal at the highest levels, that’s always been something that’s part of the DNA of Rogue Trooper, and De Campi and Edwards really have tapped into the nostalgic feel of this character, giving us something in Ghost Patrol that pays homage to the past yet gives you a damn fine story that sets things off in a new direction for Rogue’s tales to come.

At the end, because of course Rogue and the rest manage to get out of this one, beat the Norts, and find a new landscape for this never-ending war.

Yes, it’s been a great Rogue, maybe starting out a little wobbly, but overcoming that with some style. Where things go from here, with Rogue not the only GI any more, well, I really don’t know. But I do know that De Campi and Edwards have given us a tale that played into the past and still moved Rogue forwards. And that’s a pretty damn fine thing.

STRONTIUM DOG: THE NECKS CASE – BY KARL STOCK AND COLIN MACNEIL, COLOURS BY DYLAN TEAGUE, LETTERS BY ROB STEEN

And finally, a tale of Johnny Alpha, beautifully drawn by Colin MacNeil, where we join things in the aftermath of the murder by Max Bubba of Johnny Alpha’s long-time partner.

It’s Christmas in the Doghouse, home to the Strontium Dogs, December, 2185… ‘The year of the Max Bubba case,’ and Johnny’s back on the Doghouse after months away, driven, grieving, after tracking down the Bubba gang. With nothing else to do, he’s after more jobs, a man on the edge, losing himself in the only thing he knows how to do.

So, he’s off on a job to Limmy’s World, where three rogue Stronts have set up base, creating a dictatorship, where the native Bundaranians have been conquered. So, as Johnny wonders just what he’s doing being a Stront anymore, he gets a case where he has Wulf over his shoulder and in his head, and innocents to protect.

It’s a nothing tale in the world of Strontium Dog in one way, but it’s a damn fine nothing sort of tale, Stock getting into the raw emotions of Johnny losing himself, the darkness of grief, the bond of friendship. Plus, all that chance to see MacNeil doing Johnny Alpha…. so good to see.