The Weekly 2000 AD Prog 2494: Judge Fire Heats Up Deadworld
by Richard Bruton
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.
Four the same as last week, all kicking off with more of Dredd’s attempts to get out of ‘The Oubliette’ in this latest mega epic. Following that, things get up close and personal for Reggie in Brink, more fantasy adventuring in Nightmare New York, and Judge Fire makes an appearance in The Fall of Deadworld. As the fifth strip, there’s a return of James Lovegrove‘s Alphabet Future Shocks, this time A Zombie Apocalypse Alphabet drawn by Russell M. Olsen.
Again, as always, don’t wait around for a jumping-on Prog — it’s always the perfect time to dive into 2000 AD. It’s been the greatest sci-fi anthology for nearly 50 years now for good reason. This week it all kicks off with a great Colin MacNeil cover for The Fall of Deadworld …
2000 AD Prog 2494 is out now in the UK, and for you lucky folk in the Americas, you can finally get hold of the Weekly Prog, with this one out on 19th August through Lunar Distributors. Go ask your local comic shop to order it in for you.
Right then, let’s get ready to rumble, as those pop titans PJ & Duncan used to sing … time for the new 2000 AD …
Judge Dredd: The Oubliette — Part 12 — By Ken Niemand and Dan Cornwell, Colours by Emily Roach, letters by Annie Parkhouse
Another episode of ‘The Oubliette’, another six pages of Dredd relentlessly moving up the levels of this nightmare prison world. And… well, that’s it really. Just onwards and upwards, him and his Sov buddies killing anything that gets in their way — not that many do.
As that opening page tells you, “Word passes up through the layers of The Oubliette — Something is coming. Something terrible — wrathful and relentless — merciless and single-minded — unstoppable — the Lawman is coming.”
And that’s the whole tone of this one covered in a few ominous lines.
Gathering up his uniform slowly, this time the badge and the helmet are back, meaning the old man’s looking far more like the Dredd we know.
But there’s at least one here in the Oubliette not happy with what Dredd’s doing, Sarah Kopp, his spectral companion from back in ‘The Shift’ …
She promised to look after Dredd here in the Oubliette as he’d tried to look after her in ‘The Shift’. But she’s increasingly looking disappointed in how he’s doing things. Why? Well, no doubt we’ll find that out in time.
So yes, five and a half pages of Dredd going ever higher, Ken Niemand doing the ominous voiceover thing with delight, and Dan Cornwell really excelling through all of this. The details of the Oubliette itself, the weird and wonderful inhabitants, and then the explosive action sequences … all of it done with some fine style. As for that final half page… well, that’s a doozy, harking back to the very first episode, complete with a shocking revelation.
So yes, the mega epic keeps on going, a relentless old school thing, reminiscent of so many of the Dredd epics of yesteryear. A hell of a lot of fun indeed.
Brink Book 7: The Call Of The Void — Part 23 — By Dan Abnett and INJ Culbard, letters by Simon Bowland
Okay, let’s skip the usual opening words of praise for Brink — surely you know my opinion on it by now. It’s very, very good indeed.
On LunaHab, things are getting climactic, with the issues on the mission to investigate the Mercury Event taking a backseat these past few episodes to deal with the increasingly plausible idea that Mercury and Sect have more to do with the Intehab Intelligence Agency and less to do with mystical hoo-doo. Or at least that’s what Bridge thought. Things switched around (again) last episode with IIA mole Cutwell spilling the beans — most importantly giving the HabSec Taskforce on LunaHab a face to the name of Danny Reardon/Evan Leedon, the IIA black ops leader who’s right here on LunaHab. Right here and, as we saw in the final panels of last episode, just that little too close to Bridge’s ally Regina Castenada …
Everything that’s so damn good about Brink is there in those few panels. All the tension that’s been building up over the weeks and months contained in a tableau at the bar; you can see Reggie tense up, can tell things have changed. Here, after cosying up to Reggie for so long, convinced she could be worked as an asset, Reardon/Leedon picks up on Reggie’s subtle change in mood in a moment — as you’d expect from someone so high up in IIA. And it gets nasty real fast.
It’s one of those rare episodes of Brink where things explode into action, where the standard pattern of the drama’s people talking in a room is jettisoned and everything goes super fast, with Abnett stepping back and Culbard doing his thing, opening up the art, bigger panels, kinetic action, everything choreographed so beautifully. Battle as ballet.
I’ll shut up and let the art do the talking here …
Glorious stuff, explosive yet controlled. By the end of this one, Reggie’s got him at the wrong end of a gun barrel, and is calling in Bridge. But, as the final page promises, Reardon/Leedon may well have more surprises yet to come — I mean, at this point, you’d expect nothing else from Dan Abnett’s twisting and turning writing on Brink.
Nightmare New York — Book Two — Part 7 — By Kek-W and David Roach, colours by Peter Doherty, letters by Annie Parkhouse
Young Lil and her newfound friend, Mose, the Firedrake, find themselves trapped, powerless, down in the depths of Professor Praetorian’s Dime Museum, and things are not well between the pair …
But there are more pressing things to worry about than a spat, especially one caused by one of the Professor’s captive mystical beasts, as Praetorian’s own demonic origins are revealed, plans that put him in the same ranks as Lil’s own dad. Another man with dreams of power, willing to sell his soul in the bargain — this time to the demon Asteroth — granting him arcane abilities of para-anatomy, altering the human body by demonic means. Which explains the gruesome specimens littering the Professor’s Museum.
Family does play such a part in Nightmare New York, whether it’s Lil’s own biological family, evil dead dad and crazy mother, or the newfound family of Lil’s, her found family. But the demonic rears over everything, as we find out in the final page, as the Professor’s diabolic plans for Lil leave everything looking dire.
Again, plenty of lovely (albeit demonic) things to look at in Roach’s pages here, a worthy successor to co-creator John M Burns on art. There’s this real classicist’s beauty in how he renders his figures on the page, demonic or human, and it’s something that suits Nightmare New York so well.
Future Shocks: A Zombie Apocalypse Alphabet — By James Lovegrove and Russell M. Olsen, letters by Rob Steen
This is the second of novelist James Lovegrove’s Alphabet Future Shocks — the first being ‘An Alien Invasion Alphabet’ in May’s Prog 2484.
That first one was a lot of silly fun, something 2000 AD has always had as part of its DNA across the years, and doesn’t really get enough credit for. ‘A Zombie Apocalypse Alphabet’ carries all that silly fun on, giving us an A to Z from first accidental lab contamination to full-on zombies running riot.
Just five pages, six panels a page after the opener, all very well done, and full of little details from Lovegrave and Olsen as we end up following the gravedigger through his own personal nightmare, ending up just as you might expect.
Sure, it’s nothing new. But that’s not the point here. Just as comedy has featured in 2000 AD throughout its many years, so have these ‘list’ Future Shocks, perhaps never better done by a certain Alan Moore back in the day. But there’s always room for more, as they’re a hell of a lot of fun, particularly when they’re as well done, as fun, and as funny as this.
The Fall Of Deadworld: Justice — Part 8 — By Kek-W and Dave Kendall, letters by Simon Bowland
Fairfax and Eastwood, both broken and infected Judges, albeit in different ways, have Sidney De’ath in their sights here on the planet that will, slowly, surely, inevitably, become Deadworld, as the Dark Judges come into their life-extinguishing own.
Although, right now, all is hardly sweetness and light amongst the Dark Judges and their fiendish followers …
As Fairfax and Eastwood make their move, Death sends Judge Fire and his troops to bring them in. Eastwood’s expendable; Death just wants her dead. But Fairfax, Death has plans for Fairfax, still intending to turn him … after all, he’s part of the way there already.
But as Fire tracks down Fairfax, things go from bad to worse — and there’s a rotting stench of revolt in the ranks. More of that to come next week.
As I’ve said in the past, what makes The Fall of Deadworld such an intriguing prospect is the inevitability to it all. A story where we’ve known the end right from the start, where we know that Deadworld falls and we know the Dark Judges prevail. We just didn’t know the mechanics of it. Well, that’s where we’re at now. And it’s that voyeuristic thrill of looking in, knowing more, you think, than all those involved that keeps me involved.
But what really makes this particular Fall so great has to be the beauty of Dave Kendall‘s art. Strange to think of it that way, given the subject matter and the gruesome menagerie of characters here, but there is a dark beauty to what he does. It’s especially noticeable in the tonal colours here, where Kendall’s general muted tones of browns and greens are broken up with extremes of reds, pinks, purples, vivid green, something truly beautiful, garish delights all through this Deadworld series that just hold your eye on the page.
