The Weekly 2000 AD Prog 2480: The Baroness Faces The Latest Sepsis Nightmare In Silver

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.

Here we go then, another week, another set of five great 2000 AD strips – it’s still the finest sci-fi anthology you could ever read.

There’s a done-in-one Dredd this week from Ken Niemand and Nick Dyer, alongside an incredible strong tiplet of continuing tales in Silver, Helium and, as you should all know, my absolute favourite, Brink. And, starting this Prog, a brand-new Tharg’s 3Riller, Poster Girl, by Paul Starkey and Paul Marshall.

As always, five strips to delight and amaze, all different, all giving you something to love. And if you don’t happen to love one particular strip of two, well, the joy of the Prog is there’s always something new and exciting in the works!

Right then, all this starts off under a Silver cover from Joe Currie…

2000 AD Prog 2480 is out in the UK on 29th April. Still not available in the Americas quite yet. But the first official Prog you’ll be able to get, albeit a few weeks after UK publication date, will be next week’s Prog 2481, out on 20 May. Run, don’t walk, to your local comic shop and ask them to be sure to order you a copy.

Okay then, all that done, shall we take a look inside this latest Prog?

Judge Dredd: Silent Witness — By Ken Niemand and Nick Dyer, Colours by John Charles, Letters by Annie Parkhouse

Niemand’s in charge of the big Prog and Meg crossover, coming very soon, all dark and foreboding and nasty. So, perhaps as an antidote to that, we get this, Silent Witness, one of those absolutely ridiculous Dredds that are so essential to the legend of the strip.

Seriously, it’s all about a mannequin. Somehow sentient, perhaps, or maybe we’re all just having a weird fever dream.

Anyway, said mannequin’s chuffed as all hell at the start of this, with the voiceover proclaiming that this is the story of how he and Dredd solved a crime together.

Well, sort of. Sure, he’s there when there’s a robbery of the weird mannequin store. He sees his mannequin pals get ripped to pieces, and it’s he who holds the key to it all, after one of the perps stashes his weapon somewhere rather intimate…

So, how’s a mannequin meant to solve the case with Dredd when old Joe turns up?

Well, it’s as silly as you could hope for, really, right from the start. Just one of those daft things that play up the weirdness fo the stories and the city, the sort of thing that Wagner and Grant always used to do so incredibly well. And Niemand’s taken on that mantle, giving us something suitably off-the-wall ridiculous. Dyer’s art is suitably expressive to boot. Well, at least as expressive as you get with a story about mannequins.

I mean, the nasty stuff’s coming, why not have a little laugh at the strangeness of Dredd’s world before then?

Brink Book 7: The Call Of The Void – Part 9 – By Dan Abnett and INJ Culbard, letters by Simon Bowland

Okay then, the usual intro here – Brink is good. Brink is bloody great. Brink is one of my all-time favourite things I’ve ever read in 2000 AD. It’s so good that I’d beg you to not read this series and go and treat yourselves to the collections of Books One to Six, then dive into Call Of The Void. You’ll thank me for it.

So, where we’re at… Brink, Bonner and the gang are all on Luna Hab, now part of the HSD Special Detail Taskforce charged with investigating the Mercury Event. They’re stuck there, as the second BSV ship has been sabotaged by who knows who. But there’s a good chance InterHab Intelligence Agency (IIA) is involved, the agency wrapped up way too tight with everything that’s gone before, implicated in Sect activity, and one of their higher-ups is here on Luna Hab, running his own counter op.

Dangerous, dangerous times indeed.

Meanwhile, onboard the first BSV, now about four weeks out from Mercury, launched early in response to the intel over potential sabotage, Bridge’s friend Gita has a problem…

Yes. Saboteurs on Luna Hab is one thing, but, as Bonner points out when Bridge takes the news to him, would it really be possible for a saboteur stowaway on a 10-man BRV? Bonner and Bridge don’t think so. Which means that they’re both leaning towards something potentially worse, something psychological… and we’ve seen how that goes in Brink.

Now, you should know just how damn good Brink is by now, of course, you should. But by concentrating on the drama in the plot, I’d hate for you to think that what Culbard is doing here isn’t so much of what makes Brink work so well. I mean, seriously, the last two pages here, as Bridge ThereShares herself onboard the BSV1, taking a virtual look around the ship, is a masterpiece of near-silent storytelling, where Culbard just amazes me yet again with what he does every single episode.

Brilliant. As always.

Silver: Malignant – Part 4 – By Mike Carroll and Joe Currie, letters by Simon Bowland 

Earth, 2001. In Silver, it’s not a nice place, not a nice place at all. Humanity’s been overwhelmed and conquered by the alien Sepsis, where you’re either working with them, cowering in fear of them, or part of the resistance.

That’s the backstory to Silver, where Mike Carroll and Joe Currie are creating this fast-paced thing, full of action, yet also full of world-building, a perfect tale of alien occupation.

The Earth resistance has unearthed centuries-old vampire the Baroness DeSilva, and her attacks on the Sepsis infrastructure have been, if anything, way too successful, so much so that the resistance is reeling from the Sepsis retaliation.

However, this episode takes us away from the resistance to focus just on the Baroness. She’s recovering from her last mission, planning on travelling to Switzerland to connect with her brother for assistance, another vamp, albeit one who’s just a little more flamboyant in the Baroness’s memory…

That’s from the last episode, where we’re told that the Baroness’s brother may well be in cahoots with the Sepsis.

But before then, we’re travelling along with the Baroness and her companion, as they come across something Sepsis, something nasty, genetically wrong, rejects from the Sepsis’s experiments to create warriors.

It’s an episode where the action dominates, where we get to enjoy just what Joe Currie can do, and he does it with some fine style indeed, a gorgeously loose, Euro-line sort of thing, It looks like nothing like anything else you’ll see in 2000 AD. And that’s rather the glorious thing, don’t you think? In any issue of 2000 AD, you’ll find a wealth of artistic styles, and that’s all to the good, I mean, how many places do you get such variety and diversity of art as Nick Dyer, INJ Culbard, Joe Currie, Paul Marshall, and D’Israeli? Sure, you might not like them all, but that’s sort of the whole point with any really great anthology – where would be the fun if an anthology wasn’t pushing things? And that’s what 2000 AD keeps on doing.

Tharg’s 3Rillers: Poster Girl — Part 1 — By Paul Starkey and Paul Marshall, colours by Dylan Teague, letters by Rob Steen

And now we kick off another Tharg’s 3Riller, three parts and done, sometimes just one tale, sometimes a lead-in to something more, with several series, like the recent Herne & Shuck, being one where a couple of Tharg’s 3Rillers led into longer storylines.

Here, we’re in some unspecified time in Blighty, where we open with Peggy, bestriding the UK countryside, talking about how, in a switch-around of the usual propaganda talk, the country needs her. Then we cut to a press room, and a group of journalists whose chat gives us a glimpse of where we’re at — a Mountbatten story, the Almost War, the Anglo-Zanzibar war, and then there’s Peggy and the Avalon Project, something long forgotten — perhaps.

Because one of the lowly interns has been digging deep here, uncovering a paper trail of veterans’ payments, an ID code, a one-off photo… all that leads to Peggy, or EX17A as she’s referred to in the files. And they’re led to the fact that Peggy, whoever she is, whatever she is, is alive.

All of which is five very valuable pages in a 15-page story, all of which teases the possibilities of what this 3Riller is all about, and does it damn well.

This is a great opener, one where you’re not spoon-fed the plot in the slightest, but where you pick things up from the clues dropped here and there, keying in perhaps to a pre-existing knowledge of all things esoteric and strange, along with a healthy dose of post-war nostalgia. But it’s all cleverly hinted at, something you’ll add your own reading to, teasing out the story. Excellent work by Strakey in this first third of the 3Riller, ably abetted by Marshall, whose art always looks great, always serves the story so well. But, right now, we’re left with a hell of a lot more questions than answers with Poster Girl — and isn’t that just that way it should be?

Helium: Red October – Part 5 – By Ian Edginton and D’Israeli, letters by Annie Parkhouse

So, we’ve got Constable Hodge, her right-hand man, Sol, and their comrade Professor Bloom all in various degrees of distress down here in the under Belt, prisoners of a Royalist offshoot of those that rule the kingdoms below.

Quick recap for this most delightfully pulpy of tales — we’re in a world where Earth’s a toxic wasteground, where the only remnants of humanity exist on the highest peaks or in massive flying machines, all to keep themselves safe above the Poison Belt that shits off the rest of Earth. Except we’ve all learned that there are civilisations below the Poison Belt, a civilisation of conflict, where Hidge was once a princess of the realm, Sol her protector, and Bloom the man who is convinced he can return Earth to its pre-Poison Belt times.

Of course, this being Edginton and D’Israeli doing this perfectly executed pulp adventure, it’s all done at pace, all with a glorious cliffhanger ending. Right now, though, Hodge, Sol and Bloom have been sent back down below the Poison Belt by the Prime Minister of the kingdom above the belt (again, not a nice man, definitely not to be trusted, and all part of the broad and enjoyable brush the goodies and the baddies here in Helium).

They’re now in Londonium, one of the terraium kingdoms beneath the Poison Belt, where Hodge’s Princess status is planned on being used to create heirs to the ancient Royal bloodline. Hodge is not all that keen on that…

Except the corpulent mass that is his most Royal Highness August Angevin Plantengent, rightful king of England, has plan for her, and she’s in no position to fight against it.

The whole disgusting mass of the Royal court here is captured by Di’Israeli in sweaty oranges and browns and reds, perfectly done, with Edginton and D’Israel giving us this olde England look of primped wigs and white makeup, so well done, so well captured, so full of excess and venal desires.

Helium is just this perfect thing, a rip-roaring adventure that takes a darker turn here. Of course, as with all the best of pulp tales, we know Hodge will make it out the other side relatively unscathed, but it’s how it moves from point A to point B to point C that’s the thing here, and Edginton and D’Israeli execute that so damn well.