The Weekly 2000 AD Prog 2474: AI Take Over In The Discarded

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.

This week is a week of penultimates, as we’re building towards Prog 2476, one of those bumper jumping on Progs. That means that the current Dredd and The Discarded are on their penultimate episodes, as is the 3-part Tharg’s 3Riller, Who Is Adrian Apollo? This Prog also sees a one-off Future Shock crammed in there. And, of course, there’s Brink, only on part 3 of The Call of the Void, not finishing any time soon — and that’s just fine by me.

As always, five strips for your enjoyment, from the best damn sci-fi anthology there is.

And everything opens up under a Discarded cover by Steve Yeowell…

2000 AD Prog 2474 is out in the UK on 18th March. We’re still waiting a few weeks before the distribution deal with Lunar kicks in, where the Americas get to experience the joys of the Prog weekly for the first time, albeit four weeks after the UK. That’s all starting in a few weeks from now. Rejoice Americas, rejoice! Of course, there’s nothing stopping you from grabbing digital copies of the best sci-fi anthology there is from the 2000 AD webshop. You may have noticed that, finally, I’m back on track with these Weekly 2000 ADs as proper previews again, in advance of the publication date. Don’t expect it to last, but let’s enjoy it whilst we can. Here in Bruton Mansion, NV, things are all about late-night phone calls back to the UK trying to sort dead old dad’s stuff out. Seriously, if you have elderly parents, talk to them about what they want to do early. It will save you a load of stress and heartache in the long run.

JUDGE DREDD: CLIMATE CRISIS — PART 4 — BY ROB WILLIAMS, NED HARTLEY AND PJ HOLDEN, COLOURS BY JACK DAVIES, LETTERS BY ANNIE PARKHOUSE

I keep saying it every week, but let’s have a round of applause for PJ Holden on art here. He’s not really a Dredd regular, but when he does head into Mega-City One on artistic duty, it’s always a fabulous thing.

I mean, just have a look at that first panel here. Dredd lashed by wind and rain on the weather satellite — bloody excellent…

Again, a hell of a lot more gore in this one than usual. But deliberately so, with all involved obviously deciding this was going to be short and nasty – and surprisingly funny in the way they deal with the gore. Seriously, there’s been a lot, but it’s been done in the way that has you smiling at the excess rather than grimacing. It’s all in the tone of how it’s been done. And that tone is just damn, damn good.

Williams and Hartley work real well together, delivering an old-school Dredd that’s just one massive, all-out action-packed thing. Complete with the arm ripping off, face ripping off, spine kicking out action…

So, we’re up on the Weather Control satellite that’s been taken over by Facechange, a mutie? Maybe. Frankly, it’s unimportant, just take it on face value, he’s the villain of the piece up there. So, plenty of action up on the satellite, Dredd losing his team of Judges one by one until it’s just him against those holding MC-1 to ransom.

Except Facechange isn’t the big villain of the piece. No, that would be far too simple. Instead, the real villain is down on MC-1, in amongst the billionaires of the CARTEL, busy poisoning them all to get hold of all those lovely hard creds. The reveal happened last episode…

Oh yes, Oola Blint, the Angel of Death. Did you see it coming? If you did, yay, there’s added history to this one. If you didn’t, if you’ve no idea who she is, it matters not, it’s all part of what makes Dredd so good. All the writers have it in mind that there’s decades of history to play with, but they’re also well aware that not everyone knows that history, meaning that Dredd is always accessible, always there for new readers. All you need to know of Oola Blint is she’s been a villain before, she’s escaped from Brit-Cit, and she’s here with nefarious plans. Of course, if you did delve into the continuity, you’d find she’s been around since 1997, serial killing her way through various strips.

So, yes, here we go, the finale happens next week, meaning this one’s a short five-parter that knows not to outstay its welcome. Just get in, do all the action, give us a thrilling bit of Dredd on a mission, and get out. Cracking little Dredd indeed.

BRINK: BOOK 7: THE CALL OF THE VOID — PART 3 — BY DAN ABNETT AND INJ CULBARD, LETTERS BY SIMON BOWLAND

Brink Book 7, part 3 — one onboarding interview for Bridge with the Chief of Mission Security on Luna Hab for the Special Detail Taskforce and one drink at the bar for Regina Castanada. Five pages of nothing but talking heads in two locations. And boy, is it just amazing.

Simply put, this is what makes Brink so good for me — the way Abnett writes it so well, pushing the story along slowly and in detail, yet never missing a moment to bring in tension. And as for Culbard, well, he just makes all that chatter seem vibrant and real, shifting angles around, perfect control of facial expressions, never letting our attention wander in the conversations.

The talk is all-important in this crime drama — and that’s what this is, just a spectacularly done crime drama. One of the best I’ve read. Sure, it’s got sci-fi as a backdrop, but it’s a fabulously written crime procedural, with an SFX budget held back only by what Abnett and Culbard can imagine — and, as you’ll see, they can imagine so much, so well.

If you’re after a recap, see last week and the week before that. Long, involved, brilliant story short — Bridge is part of HabSec, the security for the series of habitats holding the last of humanity, evacuated years ago from a dying Earth. Over the six books so far, she’s been investigating the Sect crimes that beset the claustrophobic confines of the Habs, where madness and strangeness flourishes. Add to that the fact that, for reasons yet unknown, Mercury has completely vanished.

Anyway, back to the tale at hand. First, there’s Bridge’s onboarding interview with the new Chief of Mission Security here on Luna Hab, Holly Cutwell. She smiles a lot. Way too much if you ask me. Although I could be reading far too much into that. Like most everyone else on Luna Hab, she’s with the Special Detail Taskforce now in charge of investigating the Mercury Event. Although, as Brisge points out, with customary bluntness, they’re having their legs cut out from under them by InterHab Intelligence Agency (IIA)…

For a start, there’s suspicions around the sabotage of the second BSV ship, meant to be joining BSV1 on its mission to the Mercury Zone. Could that have been IIA? Or something else? Whatever it is, Bridge is stuck here on Luna Hab for the foreseeable, whilst here friend and colleague Gita commands BSV1 on its way to where Mercury once was.

Then, to the bar, where one of two assets Bridge brought to Luna Hab, Regina Castenada, ex-HabSec, ex-PI, heavily involved in the last bit of Sect nightmare on Belleholme Hab, is kicking her heels, waiting for Bridge to dial her in.

And then there’s IIA higher up, Danny Reardon/Evan Leeden/Bowen Coulter, moving in to make Regina his asset, his disposable asset. Reardon’s nasty. We’ve seen that already. And he, and IIA, have plans for royally screwing up the HabSec/Taskforce mission, with whatever that ‘primary objective’ is.

So, yes, five pages of chat. It’s quite the most wonderful bit of comics. The tension is already palpable, thanks to all that Abnett and Culbard do here. Damn, Brink is just sublime.

THARG’S 3RILLERS: WHO IS ADRIAN APOLLO? — PART 2 — BY LIAM JOHNSON AND STEVEN AUSTIN, COLOURS BY JOHN CHARLES, LETTERS BY ROB STEEN

Now, the middle section of the latest Tharg’s 3Riller, the 15-page, three-part shorts that sometimes exist just as one thing, sometimes go on to more tales.

What we have in ‘Who Is Adrian Apollo’ is James Bond as sci-fi, as the ultra-cool Adrian Apollo gives his briefing on the latest mission. Lots of infiltrating space stations in impossible ways, that sort of thing.

He’s looking for a weapon, something that’s meant to be here, opened by the necklace key we saw him steal last episode. Except there’s no weapon here, just a secret store of Trivbranium, some huge energy source, held there just so the big bad can get rich. Of course, that’s not the end of it. Oh no, in fact, in short order, we get word that Apollo’s foe got killed and the fuel got released, flooding the market and accidentally sorting out at least one major war in the process. It wasn’t Apollo’s plan, but, hey, if it works, it works.

So, two episodes in and what we’ve had thus far is all very straightlaced. Bond as a spaceman, secret agents with laser blasters. A simple mission, completed by accident practically. And it’s been all very enjoyable, Johnson and Austin working together well to give us all the over-the-top enjoyment you’d expect from this sort of tale.

But where’s the twist, where’s the weirdness, where’s the thing that isn’t just an enjoyable as it is space spy adventure? Well, the answer to that comes on the final page of this one, with just one little sentence: Apollo’s boss/handler throws it all up into the air.

Oh, I’m hoping this one ends well — after all, when you’ve only got 15 pages of comics real estate to tell the tale, spending two-thirds of it in the set-up before the twist is a ballsy move. But so far, so good; it’s all whether the ending twist works. We’ll see that next week.

FUTURE SHOCKS: STRICTLY BUSINESS — BY JAMES PEATY AND MIKE WALTERS, LETTERS BY ANNIE PARKHOUSE

From the three-part 3Riller to the single Prog, five-page Future Shock. Probably the hardest gig in comics. Seriously, anyone can write a decent multi-parter in US comics, with the luxury of 20+ pages an issue. But get that same writer to do something clever that works — start, middle, twist in the end — all in just that five pages, well, that’s a real job and a half.

Here, it’s Peaty and Walters taking their punt at a Future Shock. It’s the 25th Century, where Bernstein (looking strangely like Devlin Waugh) is jetting away from Phoenician Heights Casino and Resort. He’s working for ‘The Agency,’ a hitman, lining up his next gig, a triple target hit with assistance from his Agency contact Max.

Job 1 goes off without a hitch, albeit there’s a link to Bernstein’s home planet, Delta Prime. Job 2, well, that’s a little more tricky, and again, that link to Delta Prime.

And here’s where Bernstein gets his first whiff of something fishy going on. One link to Delta Prime was coincidence, but two — well, two smacks of something more.

Saying any more would blow the ending, and that’s always the point of any Future Shock, good or bad. And this one, well, this one’s a decent one, Johnson and Walters working well to give the twist in the tale/tail a good setup and finale.

THE DISCARDED — PART 12 — BY PETER MILLIGAN AND KIERAN MCKEOWN, COLOURS BY JIM BOSWELL, LETTERS BY SIMON BOWLAND

The penultimate part of this one now. And I do hope it’s getting a second series. If only because Milligan’s planted so much into the background to this one that’s damn fascinating and that could really kick off into something big and good.

What we’ve had in the Discarded thus far started out with a real good set-up, as I say, the notion of a fascist Britain sending off all its unwanted dissidents and criminals and undesirables to Junkfall, the island it also sends its plentiful trash to — that’s loaded with potential. Especially when Milligan plants the seeds for revolution with the insertion of a rogue AI chip that’s taken over one of the dissidents, and when there’s talk of transforming first Junkfall and then who knows where.

Into this, cop Veera Banksy gets dropped off. Her mission, kill the host of the AI. Problem being said host is her dad, Aaron Banksy. And over the 12 episodes, we’ve had a pretty straightforward thing of Veera travelling Junkfall to get to her target, her dad, and finding out, along the way, that, wouldn’t you know it, the government’s not all she thought, and the folks up here on Junkfall are a lot more than she thought.

Now, she’s face-to-face with daddy, and she’s torn between detonating the bomb she’s been carrying all along that will destroy the chip, and saving her dear old estranged dad. Dad, obviously, because that’s the way of these things, is fighting the chip takeover, meaning he gets to do one last selfless thing, an all too easy vindication of a life of neglecting his daughter.

Of course, it’s never that easy, and the chip takes action…

So, we’re coming to the end of it all. First off, McKeown’s done great things all the way through this one, giving us all the right beats in all the right places, a great bit of artwork all the way through The Discarded.

Like I say, it’s gone from a set-up packed with potential, all those possibilities of this new Britain and the ideas of revoltion, to a really straightforward quest for Veera, taking her through Junkfall, with, it has to be said, interesting moral and ethical questions cropping up throughout, to an ending where it’s Veera and her dad versus the chip. It’s most likely my fault that this feels less than it should have been; I’ve most likely imbued it with more potential than Milligan ever intended it to have. Reading the whle thing once more, as I did this week, playing down the background stuff, it’s a decent little adventure.

As for where it goes, well, that all depends on how next week plays out. Good little standalone thing full of adventure and action or something bigger setting up for series 2? No idea.