The Weekly 2000 AD Prog #2492: Anderson Ventures Into The Madness Of The Black Tower

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.

It’s once more the same five strips this week, all of them bedding down in the middle of their tales. But don’t ever let that stop you from joining in the 2000 AD party. Pick it up wherever you can; it’s always going to be worth it. Jump on in, you’ll soon pick things up. All you need is an open mind and the willingness to just go with things. Trust me, 2000 AD is, as it’s always been, the finest weekly sci-fi anthology you’ll ever have the pleasure of reading.

So, this week, there’s much more of the same. That means more of Judge Dredd down in ‘The Oubliette’, that latest bit of the Dredd mega-epic masterminded by Ken Niemand, running across the Prog and the Judge Dredd Megazine, all of it building to one of those rare huge Dredd things, the sort of epic that’s been there from the early days of Dredd.

Alongside that, there’s more from The Fall of Deadworld, where we get to see a world fall to the Dark Judges. Then there’s Nightmare New York, a 19th-Century magical thriller. And, tying into all the nightmares happening in Judge Dredd right now with ‘The Oubliette’ and The Black Tower, we have Judge Anderson dealing with the traumatic incursion into Mega-City One here in ‘The Void’.

Finally, best of all, there’s another episode of Dan Abnett and INJ Culbard‘s Brink, the finest thing you’ll read in 2000 AD, not just one of the best things published in the Prog, across its near 50 years, but one of the best things you’re going to read in comics, full stop. Seriously, it’s that damn good.

And it all kicks off this week with a Clint Langley Anderson cover …

2000 AD Prog 2492 is out right now in the UK, published on 22nd July. It’s also out in the US and the Americas on 5th August. This is a big, big deal, the first time you American folks have been able to get the weekly Prog as the weekly Prog — so head into your local comic shop and ask them, beg them, plead with them to order the weekly Prog in for you.

Right then, intro done, time to head into the weekly wonders of 2000 AD …

Judge Dredd: The Oubliette — Part 10 — By Ken Niemand and Dan Cornwell, Colours by Emily Roach, letters by Annie Parkhouse

Right then, so, after the brief interlude of The Finders last episode, we’re back to ‘The Oubliette’ proper this Prog.

A reminder, should you need it, Judge Dredd isn’t like your normal long-running comics series, it doesn’t do massive crossovers regularly. But, through the near 50-year history of the character, there have been plenty of Dredd mega-epics, and their relative scarcity means they’re always something special. And so it is with the Ken Niemand-helmed Dredd mega-epic currently running with ‘The Oubliette’ here in the Prog and The Black Tower running over in the monthly Judge Dredd Megazine. It’s a major event and then some, giving us a hell of a lot of Dredd action, promising major upheaval to Dreddworld. And, unlike the sorts of ‘events’ you see in your Marvel and DC Comics where very little changes, these Dredd mega-tales really do deliver on their promises.

Okay, back to ‘The Oubliette’ the strange place Judge Dredd finds himself in, where he’s uncovering all manner of strangeness in this prison, chock full of whatever characters Niemand wants to throw into the mix. This episode, we get to follow up on Dredd’s Sov buddies (the enemy of my enemy, etc. etc.) revealing that there’s one level where there’s actual weapons, something Dredd definitely wants, except they’re all controlled by two factions, who’d ‘rather kill each other in some insane forever war than try to escape or rule.’ Oh yes, time to bring in some Norts and Southers from Rogue Trooper …

Yep, Niemand’s got carte blanche here to pull in anyone from anywhere, whether they’re connected to Dreddworld or not.

Time for Dredd to get nasty — after all, given that killing her is only temporary, Niemand can show as much of it, in as brutal a fashion as he wants. With the dead Southers’ dog tags, he arranges a parley with the Norts, and from there, a challenge …

The whole of ‘The Oubliette’ is a march upwards for Dredd, each level taking him into more danger, more killing, more strangeness. Obviously, at some point we’ll have to actually address what the hell the Oubliette is, but that’s some way off, I think. In the meantime, we get to see Niemand and Cornwell doing a cinematic bit of action sequence-filled stuff every week, every episode a new threat to be overcome, every episode taking Dredd one step closer to getting out.

It’s feeling very old school in that it’s just Dredd scrapping his way out of stuff, no politics involved, no complex storyline, just Dredd being Dredd.

Brink Book 7: The Call Of The Void — Part 21 — By Dan Abnett and INJ Culbard, letters by Simon Bowland

Well, we’re all still rather reeling from Bridge coming up with the alternative idea that, instead of all the Sects being part of a huge mystery where dark forces are massing, it’s just possible that it’s all just the Interhab Intelligence Agency (IAA) manipulating things, using the chaos as a cover-up for whatever they’re trying to cover up on Mercury.

This episode, Bridge, Bonner, and Lind get to look at IAA infiltrator Evan Leedon, already here on LunaHab, causing trouble, to who know quite what end. Thanks to Lind, they’ve got a face from events on Ludmilla, and are running that face against all those on LunaHab.

And while that’s running, we have Bridge heading off for a chat with Cutwell, LunaHab and Special Taskforce Chief of Mission Security…

No, they don’t really like each other. Bridge has got questions — like why she knows the name Leedon and why she reacted when she heard his name.

Cue pages of Culbard bringing his A-game to Abnett’s script here, each page full of shifting camera angles, focusing in on Cutwell under conversation as interrogation from Bridge, watching Cutwell shift around in her seat, perfect body language, perfect facial expressions, all leading to yet another of those Abnett moments in the final panels. Yet another what the hell moment in a series that’s been so full of them.

Seriously, go buy all the previous Brink volumes right now. You’ll be reading the best damn series from 2000 AD in so many years, right up there with all the finest of strips it’s ever published. And, in my humble opinion, one of the best damn comic series I’ve ever read.

The Fall Of Deadworld: Justice — Part 6 — By Kek-W and Dave Kendall, letters by Simon Bowland

Things seem to be accelerating somewhat in the Fall of Deadworld. We have the Dark Judges doing their thing, bringing death and devastation to this world that, possibly quite soon, will become Deadworld.

Against the Dark Judges, we have a ragtag team of resistance, comprised of Judges, cits, and some of the Sov Judges who’ve realised their invasion of MC-1 couldn’t have come at a worse time.

We know what they’re doing is absolutely futile, of course, but they don’t, and that’s the point. The Fall of Deadworld is all about watching these people desperately trying to save their world, being on the ground with them as things fall apart, as we know they inevitably will.

So, as the forces of the Dark Judges assemble, and there’s a small victory to be had for the resistance, and then the dangling of a tempting offer of a little tactical nuke assistance from the Sovs.

As always, Dave Kendall’s art is just a superb thing, grimy, nasty work that’s just perfect for this series. No one else could really get the sense of darkness and futility quite so right as Kendall. And whilst the story does have a tendency to meander a little, Kek-W seems to have an end in sight, meaning there’s plenty going on to keep you reading, keep your attention, all the while enjoying the imagery Kendall evokes of a world we’re voyeuristically watching fall.

Nightmare New York — Book Two — Part 5 — By Kek-W and David Roach, colours by Peter Doherty, letters by Annie Parkhouse

A complete shift from the usual sci-fi now, with the 19th-century fantasy of Nightmare New York, where young Lil is currently up to her neck in trouble, with her and the young firedrake Mose find themselves in deep, trapped in Professor Praetorian’s Dime Museum, where, rather intriguingly, there’s talk of Wyrms, meaning that Kek-W’s Nightmare New York, already connected with his and Roach’s Saphir, now has a connected with his and John Burns’s The Order.

When we left Lil and Mose, they were in a little difficulty …

Now, we see the fallout from that, opening with the witchy baker Lil’s been finding refuge with first getting told off by a homunculus, followed by his sister taking up arms to go looking for Lil, and then, finally, getting a message from John Domingo, the Black Constable, who, a quick Google search tells me was ‘an infamous Hoodooman and necromancer in Charleston, SC, in the 1880s.’ Domingo’s got more info on Lil, already marked out as the baker witch as ‘Lilith… destined to destroy heaven’, telling him/us that she’s not yet in full control of her powers and that the men who hold her want to unlock said power and use it for their own, nefarious, ends.

Then it’s a quick check-in with Lil and Mose, where there’s help from unexpected sources. No doubt we’ll find out more on that next episode.

Roach’s art is just the loveliest thing, a perfect artist to carry on the legacy of co-creator and original series artist John Burns. It’s all just this classical style, warm lines, great characters, beautiful surroundings, all just giving us this rather intriguing magical adventure.

Anderson Psi Division: The Void — Part 5 — By Liam Johnson and Rob Richardson, letters by Rob Steen

Now, seeing as Niemand is controlling all the important stuff happening in the Dredd mega-epic in ‘The Oubliette’ here in the Prof and The Black Tower over in the Megazine, we know there’s going to be very little of actual import coming out of this Anderson tale, a ‘what I did while MC-1 was under attack from the Black Tower’ sort of thing. But that doesn’t mean that Liam Johnson and Rob Richardson‘s Anderson here can’t be a damn fine little tale. No, far from it, even though it might not be a key element of the big tale being told, both have constructed something that’s a great little tale, with Richardson’s art being a particular high point for me.

Anderson, one of the few Psi-Judges still on their feet, is determined to figure out what the Black Tower incursion is all about. She and her minder, Judge Nash, have happened on Lucas, a kid with perhaps his own Psi powers, or perhaps just a kid infected with the remnants of the Shift, carrying darkness in his head.

Anderson’s in Lucas’s head, being Anderson, a human face of the fascist regime …

Deep in Lucas’s head, Anderson uncovers Kra’vum, something that knows all about Anderson, a monstrous thing taking over minds, infectingLucas, infecting Anderson …

Like I say, it’s never going to be an important bit of the big Dredd mega epic going on, but what Johnson and Richardson are doing in this ‘Oubliette’/’Black Tower’ adjacent tale is well worth reading for its own merits.