The Weekly 2000 AD Prog 2488: Just What Did Anderson Do When The Black Tower Landed?

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.

After the bumper page Prog last week, we return to the usual five strips for Prog 2488. That means another trip into Mega-City One where the Black Tower has caused devastation and chaos in the big Dredd mega epic running across both the Prog and the Judge Dredd Megazine. Here, we’re in MC-1 but it’s a City where Dredd’s vanished, forgotten by nearly everyone. Alongside that, we have a new Anderson, Psi-Division strip starting, catching up with MC-1’s top Psi-Judge, reeling in the psychic wake of the Black Tower’s incursion. As for the other three strips this week, we have more of the always wonderful Brink, the finest sci-fi procedural you’ll ever read. Then there’s another visit to The Fall of Deadworld, where we’re on the ground with the Dark Judges as they turn their planet to a lifeless wasteland. Finally, the second new strip this week is Nightmare New York, where we’re back in 1845 New York, a place of magic and terrible danger.

So, there you go, five strips, all completely different, all completely indicative of what 2000 AD‘s been doing for nearly 50 years now, giving us excitement and the best, most diverse sci-fi anthology out there.

All that kicks off under a Neil Roberts Judge Anderson cover this week …

2000 AD Prog #2488 was out in the UK on 24th June. It’s also out in the US and the Americas on 8th July. It’s been a hell of a long time coming, but now you US folks can get hold of 2000 AD weekly.

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

Judge Rico: The Oubliette — Part 6 — The Finders — Part 2 — By Ken Niemand and Jake Lynch, Colours by Emily Roach, Letters by Annie Parkhouse

So, this one’s a big, big Dredd, with Niemand giving us epic Dredd, where ‘The Oubliette’ shows us Dredd taken from Mega-City One, and The Black Tower in the Megazine showing us Judge Rico dealing with the Black Tower’s incursion into the City. Meanwhile, in between The Oubliette episodes in the Prog we have this, The Finders.

Now that Dredd’s vanished, nearly everyone’s memory has wiped him from existence, with Rico as top lawman in MC-1. There’s only a choice few individuals left who remember how things were, how they should be, and one of those is Joe Fargo. This is really the culmination of Niemand’s stories in Dredd over the past few years, and it sees him tying things together, bringing in all the characters he’s introduced to the strip. One of those is Joe Fargo, an alt-multiverse version of Dredd, marooned in this Mega-City, and aware of Dredd’s disappearance. Another is washed-out psi-Judge and now PI Lana Locke (introduced in Prog 2470 as ‘The Finder of Lost Things’), who’s now working with Joe Fargo, but unaware of Dredd and his vanishing.

So, yes, this really is Niemand pulling everything together, quite brilliantly so, all those little seeds planted coming to fruition here in a very big Dredd tale.

Okay, so, The Finders. Joe Fargo and Lana Locke, thrown together, so it seems, although the trail that leads them to the mysterious Professor Hobbes may prove that it was a lot more calculated than that.

We get a few pages here of Niemand doing the odd couple buddy cop thing, and doing it well, Locke still not quite figuring out just who Joe Fargo is, and, amongst a little carnage, them getting more of that grudging mutual respect thing that these buddy cop tales rely on.

But that’s all to bring them and Hobbes together, where Locke gets read into the situation with Dredd.

And all that leads us to Fargo and Locke’s real purpose here, the mission to find Dredd. More on that next time, a few Progs down the line obviously, seeing as The Finders is an irregular thing, slotting in between our regular look at Dredd down in The Oubliette.

Well, it’s a damn fine tale indeed. Niemand’s really put his all into this, pulling together all those characters and story threads he’s been seeding in Dredd for many years now. Plus, on Finders, we have Jake Lynch on art, which is always a treat. His angular styles, the unusual panel layouts, they’re all just bloody great, pushing the limits yet never sacrificing readability. That’s some achievement. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, he’s one of the top Dredd artists of the time, and we have quite a crop of them right now.

Brink Book 7: The Call Of The Void — Part 17 — By Dan Abnett and INJ Culbard, letters by Simon Bowland

Well, we get the aftermath of IAA agent Leedon/Reardon/Levinson’s actions down in the depths of LunaHab, with Reggie Castenada and the surviving officer unaware of his involvement – or they are until the investigation reveals new evidence.

After that, it’s back to HabSec officer Bridge and her superior, Bonner, having a chat sitting onboard the sabotaged Bulk Range Vehicle Two. Wherein we get a little deeper into things, with Bridge and Bonner throwing ideas back and forth, diving deeper into the strangeness of Brink.

As always, I beg you to go and pick up all the six previous volumes of Brink. Something this good, something this involved, something this complex really benefits from you having the whole story before you plunge into this latest Book. Go do it now. You really won’t regret it.

Because, if you’re not caught up, there’s way too much happening here. A series all about the last vestiges of humanity fleeing a poisoned Earth, packed into cramped Habitat ships, where the Habitat Security Division attempts to keep this powder keg from exploding. The big story driver here is ‘The Mercury Event,’ something that happened back in Book One, where Mercury and all its associated Habs went dark. Since then, we, following HabSec Officer Bridget Kurtis, have been plunged into a world of people seemingly driven mad by their conditions, the rise of Sect activity, impossible ideas of science and belief, all whilst getting to thoroughly enjoy the best damn sci-fi cop procedural you will ever read.

Abnett’s writing this as a long-term mystery, playing with the reader, each volume a thrilling bit of slow build, perfect drama, dazzling dialogue, an ever-expanding cast of characters, turning it into something that, were the FX budgets capable of going as big as they’d need to be, would surely be the greatest bit of on-screen drama you’d ever seen. Except the budgets could never be big enough to capture the ideas, could never be good enough to match what artistic vision INJ Culbard brings to Brink, in lock step with Abnett all the way, giving us visuals that make every episode, where, let’s be honest, there’s not, as far as the script goes, that much visual flair to go on. Every episode of Brink is five pages of people talking. Yet Abnett makes that sparkle, and Culbard makes every page just a masterclass in showing us all the drama through artwork that brings every moment to life, beautifully, dramatically so.

Yes, Brink is up there in my all-time favourite 2000 AD strips. Please, get on board, go buy the books — you’ll fall in love with this series as much as I have.

The Fall Of Deadworld: Justice — Part 2 — By Kek-W and Dave Kendall, letters by Simon Bowland

Surely you know the drill by now? Deadworld was once a planet just like any other. And then came the Dark Judges. Plunging the planet into conflict, terror, and death, eventually leading to said planet becoming Deadworld, the Dark Judges, led by Judge Death, succeeding in their quest to extinguish all life… ‘The crime is life. The sentence is death.’

We know where this one’s going, we’ve always known. Judge Death and the Dark Judges decimate their planet and then look elsewhere to continue their mission, eventually locking on to the world of Dredd, where they’ve been trying for many years now to extinguish all life in Mega-City One and beyond for decades now.

But what Kek-W and Dave Kendall are doing here in The Fall of Deadworld takes us back to their genesis, back to their original planet, back to Deadworld as it became Deadworld. And that’s the hook to this one. We’re taken into the nightmares, watching things unfold before us, seeing the plucky, ragtag resistance mount their fightback, yet knowing that it’s all absolutely futile. We know where this ends. The Fall of Deadworld is exactly that, the fall of this world. It’s inevitable, and that is what drives this, watching the events, knowing that all that transpires is just marking time before this world falls.

It’s another strip that may seem difficult to get into here, coming in with plenty of stories already told. There’s a big Fall of Deadworld omnibus coming out, and yes, you should be picking that up to get caught up on the whole story from the start. But really, all you need to know is that all that happens here is that it’s a classic of the small resistance fighting back against the overwhelming forces of evil. Sure, there’s strangeness going on over and above that, but that’s just the icing on the cake here.

The Sovs have taken advantage of the chaos, and young Jess Childs and her fellow rebels are fighting on, in the vain hope they can save their planet. There’s a moment with Childs and Judge Fairfax, a showdown between Childs and Judge Eastwood, and a Chief Judge taking a long walk. Plenty going on, as there always is with Fall of Deadworld, but there’s always that sense that there’s a bigger picture that’s at play here; we just have to sit back and enjoy it happening.

Nightmare New York — Book Two — Part 1 — By Kek-W and David Roach, colours by Peter Doherty, letters by Annie Parkhouse

The second series begins for this one, a series created by Kek-W and the much-missed John Burns, with David Roach ably lending his skills to the art after Burns’s passing.

It’s something strange and mysterious set in a different New York of 1845, where the early days of the city are filled with paranormal events. Into this has come young Lil, whose life living rough on the streets has been transformed with her new knowledge of her supernatural powers and her family lineage of dark magic.

When we left it, with a standalone episode in Prog 2456, following the debut series in 2024, Lil had nearly been sacrificed by her devil-worshipping father to the demon Moloch, found herself adrift in New York, been taken in and given work at a bakery, and found her mother, driven mad by what her father had done to her.

Most interesting of all, that one-off story ended with a scene in 1899, where a woman, Lillian, was taking tea in Paris, meeting a certain Inspector Mucha, talking of Lil’s sighting of the Tetra-Pentagrammaton back in 1845…

That’s Inspector Mucha, of Kek-W and Roach’s Saphir, another tale of the past with supernatural overtones. It was one of those moments when you realise that Kek-W has bigger plans for Nightmare New York than we’d have first thought. After all, Lillian looks very much like an older Lil, although certainly not a Lil that looks like she’s aged the 54 years between the events of ‘Nightmare New York’ and that flash forward in 1899 – mysterious magical stuff perhaps?

Anyway, Saphir was a great little series, and the idea that Kek-W and Roach are feeding Nightmare New York into this is both rather exciting and just that little bit puzzling – after all, it’s a tough call to pull together Saphir, running to a couple of series that last appeared in 2022, and’ Nightmare New York’. Too much time may have passed to make the connections pop. But then again, I recognised Mucha when I saw him there, maybe plenty of others got the same ‘What, How?’ moment as well. And it should be fun watching Kek-W pull it all together.

However, that’s for the future. Here, we’re in 1845 once more, with young Lil, and her rat Selene, perhaps inhabited by the spirit of Mary Crich, whose powers Lil’s inherited. She’s still working in the bakery, and she gets news that her mother has lost the big house, gone who knows where. It’s all tied up with the New York gangs, magical things happening, disappearances, and plenty more weird stuff happening here.

Where it’s all going, we just don’t know, but it’s sure rather fun being along for the ride.

Anderson Psi Division: The Void — Part 1 — By Liam Johnson and Rob Richardson, letters by Rob Steen

Ending this Prog, we have a new Anderson tale, one that ties in directly to the events happening in the Judge Dredd (and Judge Rico) stories playing out through Ken Niemand in both the Prog and the Megazine right now in ‘The Oubliette’, The Finders, and The Black Tower.

Because ‘The Void’ has Anderson as one of the few active Psi Judges left, after the psychic backlash of the Black Tower’s insurgence into Mega-City One seemed to drive most of the Psis mad or just outright kill them. ‘The Void’, it seems, is one of those stories where other writers get to play with the ideas of the current massive Dredd mega-epic tale going on, creating something that adds to the big tale.

So, Anderson’s one of the few Psi Judges left, with the Justice Department desperate to protect her, yet she’s doing her usual obstinate thing – she knows there’s a big bad out there, so she’s straight out, onto the streets, doing what needs to be done to fight back against these latest threats to her city.

What we have here is Johnson setting things up, all of it leading to the question of just who the voice is that she’s picking up, the voice asking for help.

And alongside Johnson, we have Rob Richardson on art and colour duties, one of a new batch of 2000 AD artists, and one whose work I do really like. He does things with his art here that makes the whole story pop, making what is essentially an opening chapter where Anderson has a quick nap, heads out to attempt to deal with the Black Tower incursion, and gets a message from who knows where, really ramp up the tension. Great art indeed.