Review: 2000AD PROG 1925: It’s a lovely spring day in England, and all is right in the world

Writers and authors: Numerous
Publisher: Rebellion
Awesome Cover Art by: Simon Davis
Released: 8th April 2015



Last week’s 2000AD was great, it gave new readers a perfect jumping on point, and gave long-term readers a tremendous feelings of optimism for what is to come next, so let’s get straight down to it and see if this week’s 2000AD can build on that promising opening.

Judge Dread- Enceladus/New Life has some nice red colouring and a tension packed story-line involving whether or not the Judges will shoot down an out of control spaceship as it hurtles towards the city centre. There are echoes of a certain (suspiciously disintegrated) United Airlines Flight 93 here, and the end result also plays into what happened on 11th September 2001. Do you really think that they would allow what is essentially a flying bomb to hit buildings and kill innocent lives? That’s the question, and the answer is in a document called Operation Northwoods (See link at the end of this review).

Here’s the sad truth. Yes, they would allow it to happen, but NO, they wouldn’t tell you about it when they do. This 2000AD fictional story ignores all of that pesky real-world reality stuff of course and the good guy judges do what you would expect them to do if you spend all of your time watching mainstream television. They save the day, just like they don’t do in the real world where life is essentially meaningless to government order followers in silly uniforms. Anyway, it’s an okay strip, the plot has intrigue and I enjoyed it. No ‘truther’ stuff, but I don’t expect to see any in a comic book that I can buy in WH Smith’s, which is bloody depressing, but there you go. The corporate whore state is nothing if not predictable. No truth is allowed in the mainstream, but you already knew that, right?

The second story in 2000AD this week is Orlok, the psychic painter bloke. It begins with your usual comic book portrayal of a violent anarchist. Poor old anarchists are always portrayed as violent criminals in comics, because anarchy means freedom from centralised control, and comic book writers (99% of the time) are slavery loving statists. Oh well, no surprise here then, so let’s see how this violent anarchist is dealt with, yawn. Ummm, the anarchists kidnap the psychic artist bloke, and actually get away from the cops. Keep your eye on this one. Perhaps it’s not going to be as formulaically statist worshipping as I thought? Yeah, I know, I’m hoping for the impossible, but that’s what I do.

Third story is the awesome Slaine- The Brutania Chronicles where our hero is fighting against a crazy religious cult leader who likes chopping people’s heads off for the demonic sacrifice demanding god of his nutty religion. Sounds familiar, don’t you think? Now, what other crazy cult followers can you think about who are slaughtering people for their demonic false little god?  If you don’t know what I’m talking about then off to the Google machine, or just pick up a newspaper. That real world bloody death cult is quite busy right now, and they are getting plenty of good PR support in the corporate whore mainstream newspapers. Back to Slaine. Everything about it is fantastic, from the art, the story, to the hidden meanings behind the narrative themes. It’s excellent, and you need to buy 2000AD for this story alone.

Grey Area is the next story and it also interested me in that it appears to be about a planet of new ager aliens who don’t appear to recognise that there are nasty things out there who will do them harm, and that if they don’t defend themselves then they are going to get their friendly, tolerant, peaceful, spiritually awakened heads kicked in. It’s a book about ignoring the self-defence principle, at last that’s how I’m reading it so far, and for that valuable lesson alone I’m both enjoying the story and having a bit of a laugh with it as well as I get to know more about this ridiculous left liberally tolerant mad universe that’s about to get it’s arse kicked.

I don’t really like the art in the final story (Strontium Dog) but the main protagonist is an old childhood favourite of mine, and I’m enjoying the story which is essentially a p*** take of what a future world with China and North Korean crazy dictators in charge would look like. Much like what we have now I would suggest just without the pointless fake elections that they insist upon every few years or so. But I digress. I enjoyed this one as well, it was funny, silly and the plot has elements of real world stuff in it that I (obviously) found very interesting as well.

I began this review by asking whether or not 2000AD could build on last week’s excellent jumping-on PROG of new story arcs. The answer to that question is a stomping and trumping Elephentine YES. They’ve kept the momentum going brilliantly. PROG 1925 is an excellent comic book that has lots of things going on, a fantastic feature story (Slaine) and very little weak points in between. Spring 2015 is looking very bright indeed, the day has been lovely, I’ve just read a fantastic comic and I couldn’t be feeling better. Oh dear, things are looking far too good. I’m starting to get a bit worried now.


Overall rating: 9/10 (Just as great as last week’s awesome Spring 2015 opening)

Best story: Slaine: 10/10 (Weird and wonderful)

Worst story: None. They are all pretty decent. 


Info about Operation Northwoods:
http://io9.com/5838778/operation-northwoods-the-1960s-government-plan-to-fake-terrorist-attacks-on-the-us