Review: 2000AD PROG 1924: SPRING 2015 STARTS HERE

Writers and authors: Numerous
Publisher: Rebellion
Released: 1st April 2015


It’s worth getting this issue of 2000AD for the simple reason that it’s the perfect entry point for new readers. New arcs are beginning here, and there are helpful ‘catch-up’ pages before each story. So get the book, try it out, see if you like it, because this is the perfect opportunity to see if 2000AD in 2015 is the comic book for you.

Here’s what I made of it, and I’m not going to talk about it in massive amounts of detail, I’ll just briefly scan the stories, and let you know what has potential, and what I personally think is going to be the highpoint of 2000AD in these coming Spring months.

First story is good old statist control freak, Judge Dredd. The beginning of this story introduces a prison planet and a bog standard (in Judge Dredd stories) mad crazy serial killer, dog on his head type person. The crazy bloke is easily sorted out, so don’t worry about him. He was just there to be beaten up whilst introducing readers to the setting for this new Dredd story. The art looked a bit rough, but the story is just beginning, so I’ll give it a few weeks before I pass any sort of judgement on it. It was a brief intro with a fight scene, and it worked well.

Second story this week was Slaine. Everything about it screams awesome, from the art, the ancient British mythology, to the talk of how death isn’t really death at all, just the end of the body meat suit, as the soul is immortal. I loved it, and can’t wait for next week to see how the story is going to progress.

Third story ‘Grey Area’ has an interesting premise, with the narrative focussing on an alien holding pen, reminiscent of quarantine for animals, designed to protect earth from horrible intergalactic diseases. The art was a bit dull and messy, but the idea is good, and it intrigues me.

Fourth story ‘Orlok’ has a great idea with a Pre-Cog artist who can predict the future through his paintings. This artist is interested in freedom and democracy (I hope it’s real democracy, and not the fake two party democracy currently enslaving the west) so he’s an obvious threat to the state. That’s a great idea and the art is very good as well. This story could be a good one.

Last story of the week ‘Strontium Dog’ has flat art, but the story interests me. It has elements of real world 2015 concerns in it, with the protagonist working against his will as an agent of a totalitarian future state, so pretty much like any blackmailed person working for our own totalitarian (new world order) state in 2015 really. He even has the orange jump suit, so beloved of the US and their proxy army buddies in ISIS. What did I just say? That those loonies in ISIS are working for the west? Yep, they sure are.

The west (plus Saudi Arabia and all of the other Sunni totalitarian states) are using ISIS as a proxy army to fight against the Shia states supported by Russia. Syria has been going on for a while, and now it’s happening in Yemen. ISIS are not a threat to the west, they are allies to the west. Western governments need ISIS to carry out their unpopular foreign policy objectives and to give them a reason for establishing a Police state back home. That is why they allow them to behead people on the Internet without doing a damn thing to stop them. That’s a tough truth, but it’s truth nonetheless.

Real life is just as interesting (or mad) as any comic book, so when real world elements come up in the books I’m not going to shy away from talking about them. If I don’t do it then who else is going to? Don’t expect any other comic book reviewers on the Internet to stick their heads up and talk about these issues. It’s a sad fact, but they don’t care about these issues at all. All they want to do is to bury their heads in the sand, raise their asses in the air and be willingly raped by the real world authoritarian maniacs of our times.

The vast majority of comic book reviewers on the Internet care only about re-tweets from writers/artists and future career opportunities where they can write boring reviews for boring websites. Truth be damned. They would rather talk about panel layouts, narrative flow and how 'cool' everything is than bring up anything that has real world relevance, the bloody cowards. If they were reviewing comic books in Nazi Germany they wouldn’t care less about what was going on around them there either. That’s their mentality, and that’s why they completely and utterly suck. Rant over, sorry about that, back to 2000AD.

Looking back at what I have just written (not the angry rant, just the 2000AD bits) I have to conclude that this jumping-on point issue of 2000AD has been a great success. Five new stories and none of them are bad. One of them has amazing art (Slaine) but all of them have a lot of potential to be very interesting indeed. I’m so happy. My comic book reading week has began on an up, and my 2000AD reading in Spring 2015 is looking very promising indeed.



Overall rating: 9/10 (If you want to check out 2000AD you won’t get a better opportunity than this)

Best story: Slaine- 10/10 (Awesome sauce)

Worst story: None of them. At this early stage all five stories intrigue me.