The Weekly 2000 AD Prog #2482: Helium’s Exploding Into Pulp Action

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.

This week, the continuations of Judge Dredd, Brink, Silver and Helium, and the finale to the latest three-part Tharg’s 3Riller, Poster Girl. Five strips that couldn’t be more different if they tried. You’ve got Dredd on a case, the brilliant slow-burn sci-fi procedural of Brink, the alien invasion with a difference of Silver, the pulp thriller wonders of Helium, and a very good Tharg’s 3Riller that surely must lead into another series. Five strips, all wonderfully different — which is, of course, the greatest attraction of 2000 AD. There’s going to be something you’re going to love in here, maybe more — but you know, with the weekly format, there’s always the next great thing coming up. And speaking of great things, we have, in the next Prog, the start of The Oubliette, the big Judge Dredd mega-epic written by Ken Niemand, running alongside The Black Tower in the Judge Dredd Megazine — it’s surely one of those must-read Dredds.

But before then, we’ve got the five strips in this week’s Prog to enjoy, all kicking off under a D’Israeli Helium cover…

2000 AD Prog 2482 is out now in the UK. It’s also finally available in the Americas through Lunar Distibutors on 27th May. Rejoice, my American cousins, you finally get to experience 2000 AD the right way, as a weekly. But be sure to head down to your local comic shop and ask them (very nicely, of course) to add it to your pull list. Trust me, you won’t regret taking the plunge into the best sci-fi anthology there is.

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

Judge Dredd: Crossed Lines — Part 2 — Final Part — By Ken Niemand and Andrea Mutti, Colours by Pippa Bowland, Letters by Annie Parkhouse

Well, with the first part to this, we had a rather unexpected Dredd moment — with central comms down, it was Dredd trying to talk down what he (and we) thought was a jumper. Except, as we found out right at the end of that first episode, he was none of the sort … just another cit who wants to kill…

So, with the revelation that Dredd’s not dealing with a jumper but a potential killer, we’re off and running into this second part. Still no idea just how and why Control is offline, but nonetheless, Dredd’s still got this case to run, and run it he does.

Niemand’s proving himself rather good at these little Dredds, the seemingly unimportant ones, the simple precedurals, the nothing epic about them at all Dredds. And, after all, the entire history of Dredd is full of these moments between the big events, and history shows us that they’re the all-important stories, the ones that build on both the legends of Dredd and his city. Sure, next Prog and next Megazine, we get to see another Dredd epic take flight, again courtesy of Niemand, but here, it’s all about the small moments.

Case in point, the little moment where we get Dredd on a bike, the captions giving us his thoughts — ‘Still, over sixty years interacting with them — well, shooting or arresting them mostly.’ Oh yes, that’s just perfect, dialogue worthy of Wagner & Grant, capturing all that’s so ridiculous and wonderfully silly about Dredd.

Okay, back to where we’re at in Crossed Lines — 60 plus years on the streets and a memory for all the perps he’s put away over the years is the solution to this one, as Dredd races towards the potential killer.

A simple Dredd, just the set-up and the denouement, this one a done in two episodes thing, Dredd racing in to solve it all and get the bad guy, just as he always does. But it’s been two episodes where Niemand adds to the long list of small tales that build upon the legends of the man and his city, and where Mutti shows just how good he can be on Dredd.

Brink Book 7: The Call Of The Void — Part 11 — By Dan Abnett and INJ Culbard, letters by Simon Bowland

So, we’re 11 parts into this, and what’s happened so far could be condensed down into this — Bridge and her allies arrive at LunaHab. Bridge takes on her new roles. Bridge gets up in the new Security Chief’s face. One of Bridge’s allies is targeted by the InterHab Intelligence Agency (IIA) boss, who’s here on LunaHab up to no good. Meanwhile, the BRV-1 ship is headed to the Mercury Event with a stowaway (perhaps).

Yes, 11 parts and that’s all that’s happened. Well, that’s what Brink’s critics would say. They’d also say that Brink’s slow, Brink’s boring, nothing happens. And in response, I’d say that they’re just not getting it, and I’m so sorry for them. Because, in those 11 parts of Brink, which has been, it’s true, a series of talking heads or walk and talk moments, we have just the finest sci-fi drama there is.

Anyway, right now, in episode 11, we’re with Bridge and Lauren Steers Maslow. The former is the HabSec officer whose encounters with Sect activity have made her an essential part of the whole HabSec Mercury Event investigation. The latter being one of those whom Bridge has brought with her to LunaHab, the widow of an investigative journo who got as close as anyone to the Corp/Cult intersection. Although, as we find out on page 1 here, Lauren has her own in on the whole Corp involvement with things here.

They’re hanging with another of Bridge’s allies she’s brought along to LunaHab, Reggie Catenada, as she gets a replacement arm fitted.

And it’s here we get another one of those Brink moments, as Abnett and Culbard manoeuvre things in such a way as to leave the reader right on the edge of their seat. Here, it happens as Bridge and Maslow talk about IAA and about the man they know as Leedon (and we know as Danny Reardon, high up in IAA but also right here on LunaHab, last seen tapping up Reggie as a possible in to the Task Force.) As they talk of him possibly running a dirty op to demonise the unions on Ludmilla, thus transferring more power to the Bigcorp and Habgov authority, we see Leedon/Reardon moving through LunaHab, grabbing scrubs, and following a HabSec officer on a coffee run …

… a coffee run for … yes, Bridge and Maslow. Suddenly, they’re all in the same room, Bridge et al totally oblivious, but Leedon/Reardon joyous in his luck, and already plotting just how he’s going to get rid of these particular problems for the IAA.

It’s all in the way Abnett and Culbard play it out, how everything comes together so perfectly, as we watch two masters move the chess pieces around so wonderfully well, the slow burn just so thrilling, as every conversation, every little moment could potentially play out as something vitally important. Essentially, those who say Brink is a slow, boring strip simply don’t get it — and that’s fine, there’s always going to be those who aren’t on board. Every great work of art had its critics, of course. All I can really say is that those who don’t get Brink are missing out on one of the greatest of all 2000 AD strips, right up there amongst the very best of strips across nigh-on 50 years of the comic. Yes, it’s honestly that good, and I just have to feel sorry for those of you who don’t get it.

Silver: Malignant — Part 8 — By Mike Carroll and Joe Currie, letters by Simon Bowland

Back to Earth, an Earth conquered by the Sepsis, and a motley resistance attempting to fight back. One of the key players in inflicting damage for the resistance was the Baroness DeSilva, who crashlanded back to Earth after causing significant damage to Sepsis ops. Right now, she’s headed into Switzerland and looking for her brother.

And that’s where we pick things up here, in a glorious four pages where Joe Currie once again steps up and his art delivers some fabulous violence after the Baroness and her human companion/saviour/ assistant Alain get to the Swiss compound. It’s a consistent highlight of Silver that Carroll’s writing gives us bursts of regular action that let Currie just really pull out all the stops, and it looks quite wonderful.

So, we’ve now got the Baroness reunited with her brother, who’s obviously been working with the Sepsis in some way since they took over. That’s no doubt going to cause problems down the line somewhere. As for the final page, we’re back with humanity, as we see another little tale of just how the survivors dealt with the Sepsis conquest.

As I’ve said, this third book of Sepsis has taken the initial fast-paced thing of Books 1 and 2 and slowed it down a little, expanding things. Where Books 1 and 2 were all about a couple of days of the resistance versus the Sepsis, this third Book takes us far deeper into things, letting Carroll build up this new world he’s created, the slowing down of things allowing him to expand upon it all, exploring what it means to be conquered, look at just what your average Joe would do in the circumstances, and take a longer look at the resistance and put paid to any thoughts of them being some whiter than white force valiantly fighting back against the invaders. No, here in this Book, we’ve seen that the resistance is willing to do everything it can to win, no matter what the human cost along the way.

It’s been a shift in storytelling, but it’s really one that works. Suddenly, the whole world of Silver has opened up. We’re learning more and more about the way an alien conquest has affected this world. No longer simply constrained by the day-to-day conflict between resistance and Sepsis, we’re being given so much more here, and it’s opening up Silver to become something epic in scale.

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

Here we go then, the final part of this latest Tharg’s 3Riller, where Starkey and Marshall are giving us a thing of old supersoldiers, lost to an old war, only to have a trio of journalist turn up facts that shows them that one of those supersoldiers is still alive. So, on to the final part of this one.

Yes, we’ve seen this sort of tale before, of course we have — there’s only so many ways you can do the old supersoldier tale, and you know that it’s going to end up grim, with this last supersoldier shown to have gone off the charts bad — we saw that last episode after all.

Now, we’ve got two of the three journos knocking on the door of the last known address of ‘Peggy,’ that somehow still alive supersoldier who we saw doing terrible things on the battlefield last episode.

The first two parts of this Tharg’s 3Riller were packed with plot, Starkey cleverly seeding the details of what happened to this world to bring us to the time we’re at right now. But this third episode has just the five pages to bring it all to a conclusion, and it’s almost inevitable that it feels just that little rushed in its conclusion, as the journos discover what happened to ‘Peggy,’ much to their personal peril, as they explore the house she’s meant to be in …

It ends pretty much as you would expect, fast and nasty. Everything we’d imagined, really. That’s not to say it hasn’t been a damn fine little three-parter, and there’s still the possibility that there’s a second series to come out of this — after all, we still have the one journo of the trio left behind, ready to swing into action to investigate just what happened to her two journo comrades when they investigated the last supersoldier.

And you know, I’d like to read that, as there’s more than enough that’s been seeded here to create something way bigger than just this three-parter. So, hopefully, we’ll be seeing more of this world in Progs to come.

Helium: Red October – Part 7 – By Ian Edginton and D’Israeli, letters by Annie Parkhouse

Okay then, we’re back in the pulpy world of Helium, which finds Constable Hodge making a break for it from her captors in Londinium, part of the world below the Poison Belt in this world where humanity’s self-destructive drive came good, and the world is split between those above and below the toxic Poison Belt. Hodge is a child of the world below, a princess even, but her allegiances are with the world above, the world that found her, the world she’s served, along with her longtime companion Sol, her protector, the one who rescued her from assassination back in the world below.

And right now, she’s attempting to return that particular debt. They’ve been sent back to the world below by the surely soon-to-be-unveiled as the real bad guy behind all this, the Prime Minister of the world above the Belt. They all landed on the world below, captured by the kingdom of Londimium, a creepy retro-place where the King has breeding plans for Hodge. Except, as is her way, she’s broken free, and she’s off to rescue Sol, only to find that he’s been broken down, his mech parts stripped away. Can she find a way to make him whole again? And what about the cover image, of Newman, Equerry to the King, showing just what he’s made of — well, that’s something you’re going to find out right here in Helium.

As always, it’s a strip that impresses, one where Edginton embraces the pulp and where D’Israeli just goes for it with the artwork. This week, it’s all pretty much red for the colour palette, as we head to the workshops where Sol’s being broken down, a gloriously rich red palette that D’Israeli utilises so well.