The Weekly 2000 AD Prog 2491: There’s Nightmares In New York

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.

Another week, another five rather great strips to enjoy in the damn finest weekly sci-fi anthology you could ever wish to read.

The Dredd mega-epic, ‘The Oubliette’ (alongside The Black Tower in the monthly Megazine) keeps on keeping on here, with Niemand joined by Jake Lynch on another look at The Finders — stories within stories, just the way all the best Dredd epics do. Connected to  ‘The Oubliette’/Black Tower epic, this Prog ends with Anderson, Psi-Division, where Anderson’s doing her best to cope with the nightmare situation MC-1 finds itself in.

In between those two, we get three more continuing series. There’s another trip to 19th-century New York in Nightmare New York, as Lil uncovers more magical nastiness on (and under) the streets of the Big Apple. We get to experience the destruction of a world as the reign of the Dark Judges slowly comes to pass in The Fall Of Deadworld. And, of course, best of all, in fact the best 2000 AD strip for many years, one of my favourites of all time, Brink, keeps doing its sci-fi procedural thing, and doing it so brilliantly.

There you go, another five strips for the week. Again, don’t fret that things are in the middle of storylines here, just dive right in. You’ll pick it up in no time. If you love some of them, cherish them, as the weeks roll round fast, and they’ll come to an end soon. If you hate some of them, don’t worry, the weeks roll round fast, and they’ll come to an end soon. Oh, except Brink. Brink‘s always around for the long haul, where a series of 20+ episodes is the norm. But if you don’t like Brink, what can I say? You’re wrong.

Right then, all of it starts under a Nightmare New York cover drawn and coloured by father/daughter artistic team, David and Emily Roach …

2000 AD Prog 2491 was out in the UK on 15th July. It’s also out in the US and the Americas on 29th July. So, you US folks, head down to your local comic shop and ask them really nicely to order 2000 AD in for you. It’s so worth it!

Okay then, enough of the meandering intro, into the Prog itself …

Judge Dredd: The Oubliette — Part 9 — The Finders — Part 3 — By Ken Niemand and Jake Lynch, Colours by Emily Roach, letters by Annie Parkhouse

So, back to the Oubliette. Or, actually, not back to the Oubliette. See, the Oubliette is where Dredd’s found himself, a place outside of time, a dangerous and deadly (temporarily) place. Meanwhile, back in Mega-City One, the Black Tower has made its incursion into the City, with chaos ensuing (and you can see said chaos here in the Prog with the Anderson tale and over in the Megazine with the Black Tower). One effect of said incursion is that no one, or nearly no one, in the City remembers Dredd at all.

I said nearly no one. Well, one of those who remembers him is Joe Fargo, a multiverse alternative Dredd, now working as a PI. He’s got together with washed-out psi-Judge and now PI Lana Locke, who doesn’t remember Dredd, who’ve been given crucial information by Professor Hobbes, another who remembers Dredd.

Joe Fargo, Lana Locke, and Prof Hobbes are all characters Niemand’s introduced over the last few years of his Dredd storylines, giving you some indication of how meticulously planned this has all been. It’s Niemand pulling all the strands together in one massive storyline now across the Prog and the Meg. And it’s really rather impressive.

Here, we’re with Fargo and Locke, in their role as ‘The Finders’, the story within the bigger story, something John Wagner was oh so good at doing when he was doing the BIG Dredd storylines.

They’re on the hunt for Dredd, the forgotten man, accompanied by ‘Mister Jeremiah,’ one of the ‘Favoured Sons’ of Mega-City One, someone sent on this mission by Prof Hobbes.

Between them, after a bit of nastiness with a few MC-1 residents, Fargo, Locke and Jeremiah have the in on just where Dredd is …

Then things cut to Judge Giant, in the aftermath of the disastrous assault on the Black Tower, overwhelmed by all that’s happened, who suddenly gets a call from Fargo, who dangles Dredd’s name in front of Giant, as Giant’s mind goes into overdrive trying to remember an impossible name …

As usual, Lynch’s art is just a great thing here, all angles and expressiveness, really great in the action sequences of Fargo, Locke and Jeremiah dealing with the City perps, but really coming into his own on the claustrophobic sequences of Giant having his memories unpicked bit by bit. Moody, atmospheric stuff, just done so very well.

So, yes, ‘The Oubliette’/’The Finders’/The Black Tower, it’s all coming together as this really great Dredd Mega-Epic, the sort that 2000 AD just doesn’t do very often — all of which makes it all the better when we do get this sort of BIG, BIG, BIG Dredd storyline.

Brink Book 7: The Call Of The Void — Part 20 — By Dan Abnett and INJ Culbard, letters by Simon Bowland

Like I said above, Brink’s always been the exception to the rule that 2000 AD strips tend to be 12 episodes or less. Brink has its own rules, Brink runs in excess of 20 episodes each volume. And it’s, as I’m pretty sure I’ve said before, one of the finest bits of 2000 AD there’s ever been. Seriously, it’s up there in my favourite series of all time.

Anyway, here we are, 20 episodes in, the best part of five months’ worth of storytelling, and we’ve had 20 episodes where there’s been no big action sequence, no massive thing actually happening, just 20 episodes of incredibly good drama, perfectly laid out by Abnett and Culbard.

In this world of humanity’s last hope, where the remainder of mankind are squeezed into spacebound habitats, evacuees of a ruined Earth, everything Bridget Kurtis, Bridge, has investigated thus far points to bizarre Sect activity, humanity turning to dark things to escape where it’s ended up.

Across all the Brink volumes thus far — and yes, of course you should be getting all of those volumes and reading them, they’ll become one of your favourites too — we’ve seen this Sect backdrop to all the weirdness play out — the idea that something very big, very alien to humanity, very bizarre and almost magical, the thing that caused the Mercury Event where the planet and all the Habitats surrounding it went completely dark — with the Sect explanation to it all providing the backdrop, the spine, to all that Bridge has uncovered.

And then, in a masterstroke of the dramatic reveal, and in a very Brink fashion, Bridge attends a meeting here on LunaHab, as part of the Taskforce investigating the Mercury Event, where she puts forward the idea that, no, perhaps it’s not all Sect after all. Perhaps it’s merely that the Interhab Intelligence Agency (IAA) is manipulating things. And perhaps the whole Mercury Event is all just part of an IAA cover-up for something terrible that they engineered in their continued cosying up to Big Corp.

Oh yes, it may have been ‘just’ 20 episodes of talking heads, of meetings and chats, but these 20 episodes of Brink have been, once more, Abnett and Culbard delivering a tour de force of comics storytelling. It’s quite magnificent, it really is.

Here, in episode 20, Bridge and Vittori, director of the HabSec Taskforce, have a chat, where Vittori lets Bridge know that she’s onboard with the ideas Bridge is working out here as regards IAA, where ‘Sect’ is something they’ve engineered as a bogeyman to keep humanity as a ‘manifestation of fear in everyone.’ There’s mention of ‘Weird Life’ (again, read the whole of Brink, please!), and a debate, over terrible coffee, of what it all means.

So much going on, so much revealed in the conversation between Bridge and Vittori that takes up the entirety of the episode, Abnett and Culbard, again, just giving us all the drama to be had in a pair of talking heads. And by the end of it, is it just me, or do you get a sense of trepidation about all this? Just me, perhaps? Well, we’ll see — Abnett really is the master of the misdirection after all.

Again, as always, Brink is just the very, very best.

The Fall Of Deadworld: Justice — Part 5 — By Kek-W and Dave Kendall, letters by Simon Bowland

Last episode, we had Ava Eastwood on her long walk outside the City, coming into contact with Judge Fear, one of the quartet of Dark Judges who we know will work together to bring about the fall of this planet.

After all, that’s the entire summation of the Fall of Deadworld, that we’re the voyeurs, looking in on a planet where we know what the end result will be, where we know the Dark Judges rise and wipe out all life, transforming this planet into what becomes Deadworld, before turning their attention across the multiverse to the MC-1 of Dredd and Anderson, where they’ve spent the last nigh on 50 years attempting to bring Deadworld to MC-1.

But that’s not just the secret we all know about the Fall of Deadworld, the whole watching as the world falls thing, that’s also the story driver here, as we join with the brave resistance to all the darkness in their (utterly futile, we know) attempts to fight back against Sidney De’ath and his minions.

We’re getting closer and closer to the end of days here, as the Dark Judges form up, as the world succumbs to the nightmare. We have Judges Death, Fire, Mortis and Fear all in place, who, despite dealing with a few internal issues, are determined to push this world to destruction.

Against all this, there’s the resistance, who we know are completely outgunned here — you know, the whole it’s all going to end up in devastation thing. Yet still they fight on. Megagrad is destroyed, the Sovs in this Mega-City are on the run, and the Dark Judges have set their sights on the resistance in general and Judge Eastwood in particular.

Yes, it’s a complex thing, and it’s definitely one that demands repeated reading of the whole thing — luckily, there’s a huge omnibus edition of all things Fall of Deadworld coming out. But it’s this big story that Kek-W and Dave Kendall are marshalling to its conclusion so satisfyingly well.

Nightmare New York — Book Two — Part 4 — By Kek-W and David Roach, colours by Peter Doherty, letters by Annie Parkhouse

Now, complete switch-up, taking us back to 1845, and the magical fantasy of Nightmare New York, where Kek-W and David Roach, following on from series co-creator John Burns, still much missed, are going about creating a massive tale, connecting various bits of the Kek-W-verse (for want of a better description). I mean, we already know that, in the future, young Lil here in Nightmare New York becomes older Lil in 1899, where she’s having afternoon tea with a certain Inspector Mucha of the Kek-W and David Roach series Saphir. And now, here in Nightmare New York, we get a little passing reference to Wyrms, as featured in Kek-W and John Burns’s The Order …

Oh yes, Kek-W’s definitely crafting something big and all-encompassing here. Bringing in past and future tales, all coalescing here in Nightmare New York, where, right now, young Lil and her newfound firedrake buddy, Mose, are trying to figure out what the hell is happening, where all these magicks are taking them.

Cue some beautiful art from Roach, as Lil and Mose take a trip below the London streets, as they head into trouble once more.

Anderson Psi Division: The Void — Part 4 — By Liam Johnson and Rob Richardson, letters by Rob Steen

Back to the Oubliette/Black Tower now, as Johnson and Richardson give us a mega-Dredd adjacent thing, as we follow Anderson as she attempts to work out what the hell is going on post the Black Tower incursion. Of course, seeing as this is something merely in addition to the main tale happening in the Judge Dredd/Judge Rico tales happening right now in the Prog and the Megazine, we can’t expect anything major to happen in this one. But, given that, what Johnson and Richardson do here is a really great little Anderson tale, reacting to events, of course, but still great, particularly as it’s full of all those Richardson touches that I do so enjoy.

So, anyway, here we have Anderson working the case, accompanied by the mysterious Judge Nash — and is it just me, or does Nash seem to be getting just that little bit more questionable as we get further into this? Or is it that the events of the Oubliette/Black Tower have me questioning everything right now?

So, Anderson and Nash have found Lucas, a kid with obvious, once Anderson gets in his head, Shift infection, something Cass has been experiencing as well.

Like I say, this one’s not ever going to be key to what’s happening in the bigger tale, but, as a stand-alone Anderson, it’s doing a good thing.