The Weekly 2000 AD Prog #2485: Who Are The Finders? The Judge Dredd Mega-Epic Gets Even Better

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 2485, same four ongoing tales as last week, and the return of the Ben Wheatley-written and Simon Coleby-drawn Judge Dee, which took a mid-series break back in February.

Well, I say the same four ongoing, but that’s not quite true. Because, for the first time in I don’t know how long it’s been, there’s no Judge Dredd strip this week. Instead, The Oubliette Part 4 is actually a Judge Rico tale, sub-titled The Finders Part 1. After all, with Dredd missing and no-one (or nearly no one) in Mega-City remembering him, it’s Rico who’s the City’s greatest lawman.

After that, we have continuations of three excellent strips: Brink, Helium and Silver. Three very, very different things. The very best sci-fi cop procedural and slow-burn bit of greatness you’ll ever see in Brink. A wonderful bit of fast-paced adventuring on a beautifully different Earth in Helium. And then, in Silver, a conquered Earth tale with a vampire twist. All of them are so good, all of them examples of all the variety and depth of storytelling you’ll find in 2000 AD.

All of it starts with a cover from Jake Lynch, artist on The Finders …

2000 AD Prog 2485 is out in the UK on 3rd June. It’s also out in the US and the Americas on 17th June. This is the first time the Prog has been available in the US, as it’s meant to be read, as the very best weekly anthology you’ll ever read. Make sure you head to your local comic shop and ask, beg if you have to, for them to get it in for you. Seriously, you won’t regret it.

Right then, with all that done, time to take a little look-see through this week’s Prog …

Judge Rico: The Oubliette — Part 3 — The Finders — Part 1 — By Ken Niemand and Jake Lynch, Colours by Emily Roach, Letters by Annie Parkhouse

Well, let’s explain the long title there first. We’re now getting into this Dredd Mega-Epic, The Oubliette, where Dredd’s disappeared, trapped in the Oubliette. There’s also ‘The Black Tower’ running in the Judge Dredd Megazine, where we see the fallout from the incursion of the tower on Mega-City One and Judge Rico dealing with it. But here, we take a sideways step, as Niemand expertly shuffles the many characters involved to take us back to Mega-City One, where Dredd’s not only gone, but his very existence has been wiped from everyone’s memory, and where it’s Judge Rico who’s the top cop in MC-1, and always has been.

So, with all that going on, Niemand’s bringing in another bit of the story he’s going to be telling over a fair few months it seems, with the introduction of The Finders. And that switch means a new artist, the wonderful Jake Lynch, another one of those modern-day Dredd artists who are taking the character to new heights.

Doing this, multiple storylines within an epic Dredd, switching artists, it’s not a new thing. Indeed, it was something you got from many of John Wagner‘s big Dredd tales. And having it here is just an example of how much Niemand’s throwing at this one — although ‘throwing’ implies something haphazard, where this is anything but. Here, he’s working a storyline he’s been seeding the plot threads and the characters for a few years, all finally coming good here.

Case in point, in The Finders, where Niemand brings in both washed-out psi-Judge and now PI Lana Locke (introduced in Prog 2470 as The Finder of Lost Things) and PI Joe Fargo (the old man Dredd from another MC-1, introduced through Niemand’s playing around first with the movie Dredds, and then adding in this far more important version of Dredd). You see what I mean by Niemand finally pulling everything together that he’s been seeding for the last few years?

Anyway, Locke is suffering the same psychic attack that all of the City’s Psis have been incapacitated by. Whilst Joe Fargo is one of the few who actually remembers Dredd — makes sense, after all, on another MC-1, another world in the multiverse, he WAS Dredd.

So, Joe fills Lana in on what’s going on, although she’s struggling to believe it… Well, you would too.

So, this Dredd epic really is taking off. We’ve got a triple-stranded tale. First, you’ve got the forgotten Dredd down in the Oubliette, making it his mission to get out, something that’s never been done before. Then, over in the Megazine and ‘The Black Tower’, we have Judge Rico tackling the tower’s incursion. And finally, in a strip that will dip in and out between Dredd’s attempt to escape the Oubliette, we’ve got The Finders, as Joe and Lana attempt to solve the mystery of why Dredd’s now the forgotten man.

Quite a story. A triple-thread, Niemand brings in themes and characters we’ve had introduced over the last few years. And dammit, he’s doing it so well. Everything feels natural; the break in the Dredd tale here isn’t a jarring thing, merely introducing the third strand of what promises to be something very long, and very, very good.

And having Lynch onboard as the artist for The Finders is a real plus. Like I say, he’s long been one of those new Dredd artists who’ve come to the fore over the last few years. Having him and Dan Cornwell draw Dredd’s latest epic here in the Prog just works a treat. Lynch’s art is all angular wonder, evoking the best of McMahon, but still all his own. Great shapes, pushing the panel layouts to extremes, his figure work is superb.

Yeah, it’s a great, great Dredd epic. One I reckon will run not in weeks but in months, and I’m up for that.

Brink Book 7: The Call Of The Void — Part 14 — By Dan Abnett and INJ Culbard, letters by Simon Bowland

More Brink brilliance. Of course. I mean, what else did you expect? As I will keep telling you, this is one of the greatest of all 2000 AD strips, not of the last decade, but of all time. Right up there with the very best. It’s long, it’s involved, it’s a real slow burn of a thing. And yes, you really, really need to get all six of the previous books in the saga. Trust me, you won’t regret it one bit. By the end of that read-through, you’ll be as much of a fan as I am.

In Call of the Wild, we’re on LunaHab, where all that’s gone before seems to be coming together. The claustrophobic conditions humanity suffers on the Habs, leading to the rise of the Sects and the bizarre sect-crimes, with the Mercury Event, where Mercury and all the Habs surrounding it suddenly went dark. All of it’s been documented in Brink, and now Bridge, a Hab Security Officer who’s found herself deep in Sect crime, is on LunaHab as part of the HabSec Taskforce investigating the Mercury Event.

Except HabSec is far from the only player here. The Interhab Intelligence Agency (IAA) is deep into this as well, possibly fuelling Sect activity, definitely against HabSec’s mission to investigate Mercury. There’s strong evidence they sabotaged the second of the ships meant to be headed to Mercury. And, on the first ship, launched early, weeks away from Mercury, there’s the possibility of a stowaway, and now there’s been a death of one of the crew. Meanwhile, on LunaHab, one of IAA’s chiefs, Leedon/Reardon, is up to no good.

Yes, even summing up what’s been going on takes a little while. But that’s because the world of Brink is so incredibly deep, so filled with all the moments, a story that’s unfolding slowly, yet oh so perfectly. Did I tell you this was one of my all-time favourite 2000 AD strips?

Anyway, right now, here in episode 14, we’ve got Bridge tasking Castenada with investigating Leedon/Reardon, and we’ve got Leedon/Reardon tracking Bridge and Maslow, both of them important targets for IIA, in its drive to eliminate those who know too much about the Sects, and, by association, IIA’s involvement in the Sects.

So, we have an episode of Leedon and Castenada circling each other, beautifully done, as always, by Culbard, whose art here is never less than incredible.

And then we have Bridge ThereSharing (think FaceTime but 3D, VR, whatever) onto the ship currently headed to Mercury, the one where they’ve got a stowaway and a death, and where Bridge’s friend, Gita, is running the show.

And whilst the ThereShare is running, things take a weird turn, maybe transmission distortion, perhaps something else, something nastier.

Oh, and then there’s Bridge and Cutwell, HabSec Task Force Security Chief, who really didn’t get off to a good start, butting heads once more. And this time, it’s Cutwell pointing a gun at Bridge.

So much going on. As always in Brink. And all of it, absolutely all of it, is important. Because that’s the way Abnett writes Brink, as a completely immersive experience, where we walk alongside the characters, uncovering the next bit of the mystery as Bridge does. It’s just so bloody good, as Abnett and Culbard control everything so incredibly well. Yeah, I think I might have mentioned this before, but it’s absolutely up there in the best of 2000 AD.

Silver: Malignant — Part 9 — By Mike Carroll and Joe Currie, letters by Simon Bowland

Back with Silver, Carroll and Currie’s tale of a conquered Earth with a difference. The Sepsis are here on Earth, farming the planet, most of the population acquiescing, some outright collaborating. Against them, there’s the Resistance. And the Resistance is a multi-layered thing. We’ve seen one part of it who’ve literallly dig up the Baroness, a centuries-old vampire, and who’s proved very effective in attacking Sepsis operations. But we’ve also seen just how far the Resistance is willing to go to inflict any form of damage on the Sepsis, to the point where we’re seeing what they’re willing to do as just as inhuman as the conquerors themselves. And that’s where Carroll’s writing on this third series has taken that step up. Where it was all about the action-packed moments over the course of a few days in the first two series, now it’s all going deeper and deeper into what occupation and resistance truly means, and it’s given the strip a real depth and so much more meaning.

Here though, we’re on the ground with the Baroness, who has rather fallen out with her brother, fellow vamp, Alderman Estaban Nicoli Calandro, who’s accepted the Sepsis’s rule and become just another slave master… after the vicious fight last episode, things come to a [ahem] head this episode….

Yeah, brutal moment. So damnwell captured by Currie there.

So, the Alderman wasn’t perhaps the big threat I thought he would be. Although, as the Baroness makes off with his personal, Sepsis-donated, ship, we do get the possibility that decapitation might not be an end to the Alderman after all …

Having said that, the Baroness has a plan to stop that happening as well.

And after all that, we have just a little check-in with the Resistance and a plot point that Carroll’s been working on over the last few weeks, something that may well prove important in the weeks to come. But more on that when/if it does happen.

Suffice it to say that Silver is just a damn fine strip, packed with action of course, something Currie’s art is wonderfully suited to — Carroll knows to play to the strengths of his artistic partners after all — but here in Malignant we’re getting far, far more than just the action that filled Books One and Two of SIlver, and that’s really fleshing out the bones of the whole story, giving us so much more, and making this a genuinely fascinating thing.

Psi Judge Dee — Part 6 — By Ben Wheatley and Simon Coleby, colours by Jack Davies, letters by Simon Bowland

Well, this one ended rather suddenly after just five parts. Possibly a planned mid-season break? Possibly just a problem getting the episodes completed. Hey, it happens, especially with a weekly anthology where the deadlines are always tight. We never know what’s happening behind the scenes with writers and artists. Hopefully, it wasn’t something too bad. And it’s certainly good to have Psi-Judge Dee back.

A quick recap for you … Judge Dee is a Psi-Judge, the Justice Department Division where psychic powers are brought to bear against the many threats that attack Mega-City One on a daily basis.

Judge Dee is a rising star, with an unmatched arrest record, something that’s brought her to the attention of both her superiors in Psi-Div and the SJS, those sinister Judges who oversee the street Judges, the Internal Affairs of the Justice Department — a Judge with that good a record must be hiding something, goes the thinking.

And the SJS are right, although they’d never even begin to guess Judge Dee’s secret, as not even they’d figure it was a demon bonded to her that was the key to her success.

It’s all thanks to an exorcism gone wrong, and now Dee’s host to a large purple demon called Klato, who helps her with her cases. In return, she feeds the demon the souls of those collars.

Wheatley tied it all into the classic ‘Haunting of Sector House 9,’ bringing the demon Tamerlain back to MC-1 — he might be a great director and writer of some great movies, but he’s also a big 2000 AD fan.

Add in the Sovs embedded in MC-1, who now know Dee’s secret and who have their own demon, nastier than Klato, and Dee’s in deep. Her corruption in keeping her hosting Klato was bad enough; the dark turn of her feeding her perps to her demon made her far from the ideal Psi-Judge. And now, with her desperation to keep her secret just that, the Sovs have her in their pockets, and she’s descending even deeper into the sorts of corruption that the SJS always suspected.

That’s the great thing about Judge Dee, it’s a strip where there’s none of the simple black and white of your usual Judges. Instead, Dee’s reacting all along, doing everything she can to keep ahead of a certain disaster, her morality fatally flawed. All of this, plus Coleby’s usual excellent storytelling skills, make Judge Dee just a great strip.

Okay, that catches us up.

Right now, in episode 6, we’re seeing the demon Tamerlain menacing the City, the Sovs thinking they have control of it, thinking they’ll be able to subjugate MC-1 through its help. And then there’s Klato making his own move here. After all, whilst Dee might have wanted to rid herself of her possession, she didn’t reckon that Klato wasn’t all that happy with the situation he found himself in.

All of which doesn’t bode too well for either Dee or the City, as demons are running rampant, and Dee’s just constantly playing catch-up, too wrapped up in protecting her secret that really isn’t too much of a secret at this point. A fatally flawed Psi-Judge, a morality tale, an example of just how anyone will do whatever they can, no matter what, to try to get themselves out of the shit they find themselves in. That’s all that Judge Dee is, and it’s a fine piece of Dreddworld indeed.

Helium: Red October – Part 10 – By Ian Edginton and D’Israeli, letters by Annie Parkhouse

Okay then, completing the five strips this week, more from Helium: Red October, where Hodge, Sol and Bloom find themselves in deep trouble.

Their mission down below the Poison Belt that splits this future Earth has taken them into Londinium, one of the giant terrariums that allow the humans below the toxic Poison Belt to survive. It’s a culture based on the old English Royal Court, where the corpulent King has vile intent for Hodge, herself a princess of the down below, rescued by Sol and taken above, living her life, prior to this, in blissful ignorance of her history.

Now, as Hodge, Sol and Bloom look for a way out of Londinium, the King wants his prize back… and the hunt is on …

As always, Helium delivers fast-paced pulp serial action, a real old-fashioned thing, where it’s all about the goodies and the baddies, where things happen fast, and the world is full of wonderful cliches of sci-fi and fantasy things.

Of course, Edginton and D’Israeli are clever enough to take Helium above these pulp fiction origins, giving us instead something that’s smart and knowing and, above all, just fun. They’re building up this world so well, giving us plenty of background and detail in the seemingly simple tale they’re telling. And of course, with D’Israeli on the art, everything looks just so good, as he’s one of those artists with a unique style, filling every panel and page with so much great imagery.