The Weekly 2000 AD Prog #2483: The Oubliette’s Here & The Next Dredd Mega-Epic Begins Now

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.

So, Prog 2483, with just the four strips as opposed to the usual five, but that’s because we’ve got the double-length opener to the much-trailled new Judge Dredd mega epic, The Oubliette. It’s Ken Niemand running one huge story across Dredd in the Prog and the Judge Dredd Megazine — The Oubliette in the Prog, with art from Dan Cornwell and, coming soon, Jake Lynch, and The Black Tower in the Megazine, with art from Nick Percival. It all starts right here, and promises to be the culmination of the whole bringing back the horrors to Dredd that Niemand and Percival have been giving us over the past few years.

Alongside that one, there’s more of three really great strips — Brink, Silver and Helium. All of them absolute bangers, as I believe the kids once used to say.

And it all begins underneath an Oubliette cover from Cliff Robinson and Dylan Teague …

2000 AD Prog 2483 is out now in the UK. It’s also out in the Americas, through Lunar Distributors, just a couple of weeks later, on 3rd June. Finally, you folks in the Americas get to experience 2000 AD the way it’s meant to be experienced, as the best damn weekly sci-fi anthology there is. But be sure to head into your local comic shop and put a special order in to get the Prog — you really won’t regret it.

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

Judge Dredd: The Oubliette — Part 1 — By Ken Niemand and Dan Cornwell, Colours by Chris Blythe, Letters by Annie Parkhouse

Oubliette: defined as ‘A vertical dungeon in the Middle Ages.’

And that’s where Dredd suddenly finds himself by the end of this first episode of what’s been touted as the next Dredd mega-epic. It’s running alongside The Black Tower in the Megazine, both written by Niemand, who’s been building up to this over the last couple of years. His work with Nick Percival, starting with The House on Bleaker Street and running through Iron Teeth, The Shift, and Messengers, has really brought a chill to Mega-City One, the pair of them bringing back true horrors returning to the Big Meg and to Dredd — they’ve always been there, it’s just that sometimes they need a big epic like this to really bring them to the fore.

It all opens up here with ‘Somewhere else, not so long ago,’ as a caped and hooded figure wonders, Who has done this? Where is my beloved? Well, we’re not quite sure just who this is — there are clues, obviously, laced through all that’s gone before, and that’s all part of the fun of this one.

Next page, we’re back to the now, and that now is Dredd in The Oubliette, where he woke up 12 hours ago with no idea how he’d got there. As he tells us, ’17 creeps have tried to kill him. No Lawgiver, no ammo. No comms or back-up.’ The 17 creeps — now 18 creeps — who’ve tried to kill him are weird Orc-ish things, alien things — but that doesn’t stop Dredd just being Dredd, boot knife in hand, ready for the next wave of attackers. And they come, they all come, relentless, never-ending, and he’s just one Judge.

Okay, let’s break from the story outline there to heap lavish praise on Dan Cornwell, who’s on art duties for the first part of The Oubliette, with Jake Lynch taking over later on — a sure sign this one’s going to run far longer than your usual limit of 10/12 parts for a big Dredd storyline.

The first few pages of The Oubliette see Cornwell on fine, fine form, living up to his place in the ranks of those top-notch Dredd artists of today. It’s all very brilliantly done, all very fast and kinetic, Dredd in the pit, enemies unknown on all sides, leading into a page that Cornwell just absolutely nails, going from the usual 5/6 panels a page to this …

28 panels on that page, all perfectly chosen, all brilliantly drawn, very quickly and simply shortcutting the fight Dredd finds himself in against whatever it is he’s fighting down here. Whether it was Niemand’s script that called for the super-dense page or whether Cornwell decided that was the way to go, it’s a sublime moment, each micro panel a frozen moment in time, a snapshot of the ultra-violence going on, something that condenses it all to one page, yet gives us so much storytelling. Yep, here and throughout this first episode of The Oubliette, Cornwell continues to stake that claim as one of a chosen few of the best Dredd artists of the now.

Of course (back to what’s going on), even Dredd can’t win against a seemingly unending number of alien-looking perps. But it’s still suitably shocking when he’s finally done, helmet lost, one eye gone, struggling to stand, and then thrown down into the cauldron…

Again, Cornwell’s art just gives us so much here, the sheer scale of it all, showing us the levels of the Oubliette. And then there’s that moment, most of the way down, when Niemand throws us this — ‘For a moment, he sees something else, something hungry, something familiar.’ Familiar? Oh, here we go, let’s start analysing and guessing where Niemand’s taking this one.

But whilst we do that, Dredd’s down in the Oubliette, defenceless, taken in by something/someone stronger and bigger than the scavengers, something/someone telling a barely breathing Dredd they can take him to ‘the Healer.’ Again, mysteries abound, right from the start of this one, the sheer lack of set-up, the literally dropping us and Dredd into The Oubliette gives us way too many questions, way too many uncertainties, but that’s just all part of the set-up here, all of it designed togive us Dredd alone, vulnerable, broken, and as unclear as we are as to what the hell’s going on. As an opener, it does absolutely everything right — grabs you, draws you in, poses so many questions. Perfectly done.

And then we get the last two pages, both teasers of sorts. The first is a direct lift from Percival’s art in the first episode of The Black Tower, showing us what’s happening in Mega-City One whilst all this Dredd stuff’s carrying on. Well, it’s not good, let’s leave it at that.

And as for the final page … well, who’d have thought that Niemand doing a silly comics Dredd meets Stallone Dredd meets Urban Dredd tale would have led to all this? Well, Niemand perhaps? Anyway, it’s time for Old Man Dredd to get involved, the multiversal immigrant Dredd clone from somewhere different, finding out just how strange this world of the Black Tower and the Oubliette is…

‘There’s no Judge Dredd serving with the Department’????? Oh, boy. This one really is going to be one of those epic things, isn’t it?

A great start to things here, the double-length episode really allowing both Cornwell and Niemand to lean into it, giving us all the set-up we need and more to really get that chill down the spine realisation that this one’s going to be big.

Brink Book 7: The Call Of The Void — Part 12 — By Dan Abnett and INJ Culbard, letters by Simon Bowland

Well, you surely know my love for Brink by now? Needless to say, I’m loving everything about the latest series, have swooned over the past 11 parts of it, where all we’ve really had has been episode after episode of talking heads to move the drama onwards. Okay, let’s try that again … the last 11 episodes have brought us drama that just works on every level, as we see Abnett and Culbard build things up, creating razor-sharp tension through perfect moments, all playing into the long history of one of 2000 AD‘s finest ever strips.

Again (and again and again and again), I implore you, go buy the previous six collections of Brink. I’m not alone in reckoning it’s up there in the top 10 of all-time great 2000 AD strips. And you really, really will thank me for it.

Okay, this episode … when we left it last week, we had IAA (InterHab Intelligence Agency) higher-up and all-around bad, bad guy Leedon/Reardon has put himself into a position where he really can’t believe his luck. His ‘disposable asset,’ as he describes Reggie, has brought out both Kurtis and Maslow — this is too damn good to miss.

So, here we get Leedon/Reardon plotting a hit on them both, taking them both out of the picture, furthering whatever plans he’s got for seriously screwing with the HabSec Security Division’s plans for getting to the bottom of the Mercury Event.

A ‘Tactical Solutions’ team is here on LunaHab, and Leedon/Reardon’s putting them on a kill mission, willing to sacrifice them — seriously, just what the hell is going on between IIA (InterHab Intelligence Agency) and HabSec? How deep does it all go? All these questions and so many more will remain unanswered as Dan Abnett works his wonderful magic here.

The whole episode could be summed up as this – Leedon/Reardon watches Bridge and her crew have a meal, whilst calling in the hit team. That’s it. That’s all we have here. Of course, you know exactly where I’m going to go here, don’t you? Well, yeah, predictable me. So, although you can simply summarise this episode in a few words, that really does leave out the glorious sense of tension that Abnett and Culbard build into this one, every page ratcheting up that tension perfectly.

Brilliant, simply brilliant.

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

We return to follow the Baroness DeSilva, over in Switzerland, in the house of her brother. Both are centuries-old vampires, just with very different roles here. The Baroness is, unbeknownst to the Resistance, recovering after her last mission, crashing down to Earth after destroying a very important piece of Sepsis kit. Whilst her brother, Alderman Estaban Nicoli Calandro, is in the pay of the Sepsis, the alien masters of Earth. In return for a supply of fresh blood, he’s become a slavemaster, herding the humans under his control, putting them to Sepsis work.

He believes he’s in control, still his own master, his sister points out just what a fallacy that thinking is …

This is not your normal sibling relationship, and the friction between them simmers under the surface, there in every word of great dialogue Carroll’s writing here. You can’t help thinking things aren’t going to remain so calm, albeit so tense, for too long.

And meanwhile, as we spend the last couple of pages with the Resistance, we get yet another reminder that this is war and war is nasty and vicious and in no way noble or honourable, something Carroll’s really hammering home so well this series.

Silver’s just a great strip, really expanding into itself in this third series. Gone is the super-fast, whole series in a day or two setting of series one and two. Instead, we’re seeing the whole world of the Sepsis-occupied Earth here, not just tightly focused on one mission with the Baroness but looking at so much more. It’s really brought an added dimension to what was already a damn fine strip.

And of course, kudos to Joe Currie for delivering some very wonderful artwork each week, really nailing it all. 2000 AD’s always found artists with a different look. Seriously … John Hicklenton, Brendan McCarthy, Brett Ewins, Mick McMahon, Kevin O’Neill, Simon Bisley, and so many more. Now you can add Joe Currie to that list, giving us this fine line, Euro-style artwork, distinctive and unique, just the sort of thing that the Prog’s always done. We’ve seen plenty of his action-packed layouts and art thus far in Silver, but here he shows he’s just as comfortable doing something more sedate, and the conversation between the Baroness and her brother really crackles with so much energy, all thanks to what Currie brings to Carroll’s story.

Helium: Red October – Part 8 – By Ian Edginton and D’Israeli, letters by Annie Parkhouse

Oh, and while I’m thinking about it, add D’Israeli to that list of outsider artists who do things like no other that I was just speaking of in that review of Silver. Bloody hell, he does things here that are just wonderful, every panel here in part eight drenched in deep reds and oranges, his figurework just so good, his stylised look unmistakable, his colouring always so effective, integral to everything his art is.

Here in part eight, as I say, it’s all deep reds and oranges, as we’re down, down, down in the depths of Londinium as Hodge reunites with Sol, tortured and broken down as part of Londinium’s disregard for anyone not of Royal blood (that would be their plans for Hodge to act as brood mare for their corpulent King).

Except Hodge is way more than just a former princess of the down below, and she’s escaped the clutches of Londinium’s Royal Court, using Newman, Equerry to the King, to take her to rescue her companions on this mission — first Sol, then Professor Bloom. In doing so, Newman’s revealed his robotic/cyborg/whatever-it-is nature, showing just what he’s made of — the facade of Londinium revealed. Sol, being Sol, doesn’t really have all that much time for all this, and his interrogation of Newman soon takes a violent turn …

Hidge and Sol’s relationship has always been one of the key elements of Helium, a father/daughter thing, with Sol always the protector. And that doesn’t change as Hodge discovers, as they interrogate the robo-Newman’s brain, just how Sol’s made up. There’s this lovely, sweet moment where we get all that beautifully done relationship, masterfully put to the page by D’Israeli, whose art can do so much so well, that panel of Hodge kissing Sol is just a perfect moment that tells us all we need to know of their feelings for each other. It’s a gorgeous moment, and D’Israeli absolutely gets it so right.

So, with Sol rescued and Newman overcome, all they need to do now is locate Professor Bloom. Except he’s down in the kitchens. And, as Sol finds out when he interfaces with Newman’s robo-brain, he’s not there working … he’s actually a part of the menu, as we find out yet another layer of Londinium’s decadence.

Helium just keeps on giving us the whole pulp adventure feel, every episode fairly rattling along with action and intrigue, and with both Edginton and D’Israeli understanding exactly what the series is all about. It’s yet another example of the wonderful breadth of strips that make up 2000 AD.