The Weekly 2000 AD Prog #2490 – Fear Deals In Death In ‘The Fall Of Deadworld’

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.

Again, it’s more of the same this week for all five strips. By which I mean they’re all continuing, not that there’s anything remotely samey about them.

So, more Judge Dredd down in ‘The Oubliette‘, this mysterious, time-spanning prison where the usual rules don’t apply at all. It’s a nightmare for this Lawman, now forgotten in Mega-City One, with Ken Niemand and Dan Cornwell charting this latest Dredd mega-epic tale. After that, there’s more from the ever-wonderful Brink, where we’re dealing with the fallout from the idea that turned the series’ entire premise on its head. Then there’s The Fall of Deadworld, charting just what it was like to be living on the planet that was home to the Dark Judges, just prior to them decimating the place — answer, not nice, not nice at all. Next, Nightmare New York, completely different again, with a 19th-Century tale of magic in the Big Apple. And finally, tying into ‘The Oubliette’ and The Black Tower over in the Judge Dredd Megazine, we have Anderson, Psi-Division, where Cass Anderson attempts to deal with the fallout from the Black Tower’s incursion into MC-1.

There you go, five rather damn good bits of sci-fi and fantasy for you to enjoy this week. All part of what makes 2000 AD so great — every strip something different. As I always say, the time to jump on board is right now. Don’t worry that you’re in the middle of strips; you’ll soon pick it up. And if there’s one strip you maybe don’t like, fear not, in a few weeks, there’s bound to be something new, and that something new might be something you love. So, what are you waiting for?

Okay then, let’s head on in … all of it starting with a Fall Of Deadworld cover where series co-creator and artist Dave Kendall pays homage to Frank Frazetta‘s classic Death Dealer, of course).

2000 AD Prog 2490 is out in the UK on 8th July. It’s also out in the US and the Americas on 22nd July. And this is still a big thing, you lucky American folks getting the chance to experience the Prog as it’s meant to be read, as a weekly. Thing is, you have to get down to your local comic shop and ask them real nicely to order it in for you.

Right then, enough preamble, time to take a look inside…

Judge Dredd: The Oubliette — Part 8 — By Ken Niemand and Dan CornwellJake Lynch, Colours by Chris Blythe, letters by Annie Parkhouse

Oh yes, ‘The Oubliette’ just keeps on going, really doing everything required of that whole Dredd mega epic thing. And, with The Black Tower running in the Megazine, there’s a heck of a lot going on to keep us all busy with this.

Down in the Oubliette, Dredd’s fighting his way up — and maybe out. Although we really have no idea whether that’s where the exit is, and neither does he. Thing is, The Oubliette is one of those tales where it really only needs a story driver, and that story driver here is Dredd going up, up, up, fighting all the way. That’s pretty much all there is to this one. Dead simple. But the simplicity is a good thing, as it gives Niemand a chance to just play with the violence and Cornwell a chance to show it all. Both have done so real well thus far.

Here, Dredd’s fallen in with the Sovs — you know, the old enemy of my enemy thing, where the enemy here is the Oubliette itself, and the Sovs are just a means to an end for Dredd. Cue the violence …

One interesting thing about The Oubliette, it may be the answer to the long-standing issue of what to do about Dredd’s ageing out. See, if you didn’t know, from the start, one year of Judge Dredd strips is one year in real life. That means that he’s aged one year ever since the strip debuted in 1977. So, Dredd’s technically in his late ’70s, early ’80s right now. Of course, the various medical treatments/enhancements over the years have meant that he’s a hell of a lot younger than that in reality. But the problem still exists; he’s an old Judge, and that needs to be dealt with at some point.

Well, The Oubliette may well be the answer to all that. After all, things in The Oubliette are different …

Yes, he’s grown back his eye. One of the bionic eyes he got a while back. Brand-new. So, if that’s happened, there’s no reason to think that a complete body rejuvenation couldn’t happen here as well. Thus solving the problem of Dredd being an old man. Maybe, at the end of ‘The Oubliette’, we’ll have a new, young Dredd, ready to face the next 50 years? But that’s just me speculating.

What ‘The Oubliette’ is, is an all-out bit of action, with Niemand throwing in references to old Dredd tales, plus bringing in plenty of other bits of 2000 AD while he’s at it. We’ve already had the Gronks here, so the reveal of the level where there’s two armed factions — the only place in the Oubliette with guns — who don’t care about taking over the Oubliette because they’re too busy obsessively fighting each other to do so shouldn’t be any surprise. Yes, it’s them, of course it’s them. More on that next week.

It’s a hell of a lot of fun is ‘The Oubliette’, classic Dredd doing Dredd things, one mission, just get to the top of the Oubliette and hope that solves the problem. Great writing, great art.

Brink Book 7: The Call Of The Void — Part 19 — By Dan Abnett and INJ Culbard, letters by Simon Bowland

Brink‘s the one exception to the rule when I say that, if you don’t like a strip, don’t worry, it will be gone in a few weeks. Nope, not with Brink. If you don’t like Brink, tough luck; the volumes run to 20+ weekly episodes.

Then again, if you don’t like Brink, then, frankly, I don’t want to know you. Because, as I tell you every single week, Brink is the best thing you’ve ever read. It’s not just up there in my favourite 2000 AD strips of all time, it’s right up there in my favourite comics of all time. Seriously, it’s that good.

Anyway, you should know the deal now. Humanity exiled to various Habitat ships after they’ve made Earth uninhabitable. Habitat Security Division tasked with keeping a lid on the powder keg of this claustrophobic life, where strange Sects spring up promising something better. Into this, we have Bridget Kurtis, Bridge, who’s seen her far share of strangeness and Cult activity over the previous six books of the series. Add into this the Mercury Event, where Mercury and the Habs around it went completely dark.

Well, right now, Bridge and her colleagues are on Luna-Hab, working as part of the HabSec taskforce to investigate the Mercury event. One of their ships is already on the way to Mercury, a second was sabotaged before launch. And various strange things have been happening, both on Luna-Hab and on the ship headed for Mercury. All of which is playing out against the increasingly nefarious work of HabSec’s sister agency, the Interhab Intelligence Agency (IAA).

So, as happens in Brink a fair bit, last episode was a bit of a moment.

We had this …

Oh yes. Bridge, proponent of all things strange and Sect-related, seemingly an adherant to Weird Life and all that meant, has been musing on things whilst she’s been here and has come up with another very plausible idea that it’s actually IAA that’s behind everything — not just all the Sect activity to keep humanity down, but also the Mercury event, something they’re desperate to hide from all concerned.

Now, that, of course, is absolutely a game changer, shifting the ficus in all the things that we thought we knew about Brink — all the weirdness, all the Sect stuff, all the complex theories of Weird Life — and turning it on its head. Suddenly, this may well all be just about simple human corruption, the corporations and the agencies covering up. It’s a huge shift in things. Although, given that Abnett’s a tricky bugger with his plots, it could all just be smoke and mirrors leading to something else. Oh, he does like to throw in the red herrings.

But anyway, it was a wow moment last episode. And this time, we get the fallout from that, a first page of Culbard doing what he does so well on Brink, the character study of Bridge, up close, talking about her life since we met here, all the madness and strangeness she’s experienced that may have sent her down the wrong path. That all the weird might have stopped her seeing the ‘really dull, ordinary, simple reason why shit happens.’

It’s a perfect first page, one that gets inside Bridge’s thinking so well, and one that, yet again, shows us just what a great artist Culbard is.

What we get after this is another four pages of talking heads — but damn, the way Abnett and Culbard do talking heads is some of the best drama you’ll read this year. Bridge is explaining her ideas to the group, putting forward the idea that IAA and BigCorp are behind all this, working through her thinking.

It is, as you’d expect me to say, just a sublime moment in a series that’s been full of sublime moments. Seriously, go buy the entire series in book form. Read it, come back, and tell me this isn’t just the best thing you’ll read all year.

The Fall Of Deadworld: Justice — Part 4 — By Kek-W and Dave Kendall, letters by Simon Bowland

Well, as shown by Kendall on the cover this week, we get to meet Judge Fear here in this latest Fall of Deadworld, the series where we’re on the ground, watching the Dark Judges come into being, waiting for the moment where they turn this world into Deadworld. We’re watching the slow yet inevitable death of a world here, with Kendall giving us all the perfect imagery for it.

This time, we’re off in the Cursed Earth with Judge Eastwood on her Long Walk, coming face-to-face with Casey’s head spider. Yes, that’s after Casey was killed in the last series. [Yes, The Fall of Deadworld is complex, and there’s definitely an advantage to having read all that’s gone before. But it’s also a series that stays true to the original idea of, shit, what would it be like to live on a planet where the worst possible thing happened and we know there’s nothing anyone can do to stop it.]

So, yes, Eastwood comes across Casey’s head spider, a hideously mutated thing, but killing that is the least of her problems, as, yes, she then comes face-to-face with Judge Fear, and all that entails.

Again, Kek-W and Kendall are creating a mythology, a treatise on all that end-of-the-world stuff going on here, with us watching, fascinated, as the Fall happens before our eyes.

Nightmare New York — Book Two — Part 3 — By Kek-W and David Roach, colours by Peter Doherty, letters by Annie Parkhouse

Nightmare New York is pure magical fantasy stuff, very much something that’s been part of 2000 AD‘s sci-fi remit from early days, and something that shows you just how diverse the strips regularly are.

After all, your regular sci-fi mag doesn’t have a magical series set in 19th-century New York, does it? Here, we’re with young Lil, discovering much more about her world and her newfound powers. She’s just found out that her guardians, the ones who took her in when she had nowhere else to go, just happen to be magically inclined themselves. A little debate over witches and wizards, followed by Gyorg, the witch, giving us a little foreshadowing …

“She is Lilith, Az Ordog Lanya, the destroyer of heaven and hell, and all that lies between.” Oh yes, plenty of foreshadowing there. “Az Ordog Lanya,” that’s Hungarian for “the Devil’s Daughter.” So, yes, plenty to mull over with this one. And still Lil and Mose have more to uncover.

Plenty of intriguing things happening in this one, all the time with Roach doing his usual grand job on the art, classical looks, stylish and simple, in all the very best ways.

Anderson Psi Division: The Void — Part 3 — By Liam Johnson and Rob Richardson, letters by Rob Steen

More now from The Oubliette/Black Tower-adjacent tie-in now, as Anderson, one of the few Psi-Judges left either alive or mentally intact after the Black Tower’s incursion into MC-1, attempts to work out what the hell’s going on, and, more to the point, just who the hell is the disembodied voice she keeps hearing asking for her help.

It’s Johnson and Richardson doing their very best work here, giving us an Anderson that’s dealing with things as best she can, fighting the good fight …

I’ve long said that Richardson’s an artist to watch, and here, his art is just damn good, his line and colours working so well, giving us an Anderson under pressure, every panel and page a delight to see.

Sure, we know that anything that happens in this Anderson series won’t really have any major impact on the bigger tale — that’s Niemand’s after all — but it’s still this great self-contained thing to enjoy for itself.