Comic review: 2000AD PROG 1945- A Pleasurable Diversion

Artists and writers: Various
Publisher: Rebellion
Released: 26th August 2015


It’s Tuesday afternoon, it’s raining, and I’m listening to black metal music whilst writing up my review of 2000AD PROG 1945.

Life is good.

As usual with my 2000AD reviews, I’m reading and writing as I go. So first off, the front cover. It’s pretty bloody good this week, featuring a feral looking Dredd, crouched, battle scarred and ready to explode into a violent assault on whatever unlucky bloodbank (aka every enslaved human being currently living under neo-liberal corporate statism) that is threatening his uniformed authority.

Nice one Mr. Jake Lynch.

Let’s see what Tharg has to say- Oh dear, he’s still describing reality as ‘mundane,’ and applauding himself for diverting our attention from the world around us. Not good Tharg. Reality is never mundane. Reality is fascinating. Reality is awesome. Reality is the one thing that the good sheeple (yeah, I use that word) need to get more attuned with, because if they don’t, it’s bread, circuses and slavery, FOREVER.

Oh Tharg, you are either very dim, or are just as caught within the neo-liberal matrix as 90% of the comic book readers themselves. A good story doesn’t have to deal with ‘mundane reality,’ but the best, the very best, always deals with it, that’s what makes them great, that’s what makes them a cut above the rest, and that’s what every writer working for 2000AD should be striving for.

Take precious, delicious reality, take something that you see in the every day life that you lead, stick it in your narrative, and say something that needs to be said.

Judge Dredd gets us off to a bad start. It’s all about the heroic cops (Judges) and how they are temporary down, not out, and about to fight back against the evil villains. The art (as always in this arc) looks great, but what is the story saying? To me it’s saying, support uniformed authority. That’s all that I’m getting here, and that’s not a message that I have any respect for.

The Alienist Part 2 utilises a story telling technique that makes it a very involving and enjoyable read. The technique is to show the inner thoughts of the main protagonist, giving readers the pleasure of being a spy within her mind as the narrative progresses. That’s extremely reader friendly, and I love it when writers think about the reader first. I already mentioned the art last week, it’s great, black and white, old-fashioned horror, very cool. This story might not be saying anything, so it will only ever rise to good, but it’s a very enjoyable good, so all credit to everybody involved.

‘Apocalypse Anonymous’ is very interesting. The story is about Special Forces operating in Syria, in 2015. Yes, you heard that correctly, 2000AD are actually featuring a story that references real world events that are happening right now. How are they going to get around that without upsetting anybody? How are they going to have westerners look like the good guys when we all know that our callously evil western governments deliberately created ISIS in the first place?

This story solves that problem in two ways. Firstly, it doesn’t mention ISIS, instead it just refers to ‘rebels,’ whoever they are, and then focuses on western Special Forces and what looks to be an upcoming fight with alien monsters. Will ISIS be mentioned late on in this three-part story? Will it bring up the fact that the US is working with ISIS to get rid of the leader (Assad) of a country that has done nothing to anybody other than wanting to be free from corporate western hegemony?

Will it mention that Syria is ran by a largely secular government, and that the so-called ‘rebels’ are Sunni Muslim extremists, otherwise known as Al Qaeda, or ISIS? Will it mention that western governments are on the same side as these Sunni extremists? Will it mention that the fight is Sunni Islam and the west versus Shiaa Islam and Russia? What do you reckon? My bet is that the next two episodes will have the western Special Forces fighting monsters and that nothing of any consequence will be discussed. That’s what I reckon will happen, but I’ll wait and see. I could be wrong. I hope that I am.

Grey Area/Contact is very amusing, very wry, and very entertaining. The story is concise, easy to follow, straight to the point, witty and fun.  It’s a nice piece of writing, very clever, very enjoyable and even a reality obsessed bore like myself couldn’t help but enjoy it. Nice writing Mr. Abnett, you are a talented, clever bloke and your dialogue is as sharp as an Oscar Wilde brand of razor blades.

I was a bit dismissive of Helium last week, but it’s usually enjoyable and the big bright colours and playful tone always makes me smile. This week’s episode begins with a gorgeous purple background and big happy faces. The narrative itself begins with a joke and ends with a very serious cliffhanger. Are our heroes doomed? Tune in same time, same 2000AD channel next week folks. I love it. That’s how you are supposed to finish a comic book.

Looking back at PROG 1945 of 2000AD it’s looking like a ‘good’ issue. Good means that it was fun, that it entertained me, that it diverted me. It didn’t say anything, but it didn’t try to. I look for excellent in my comic books, but good is certainly better than bad, and 2000AD was far from bad this week. The best story was Grey Area, and the worst was Dredd. Next week should be good. Helium has a delicious cliffhanger that will be resolved, that new arc (Apocalypse Anonymous) will show whether it’s going to touch reality, or not, and there’s something new called ‘Dreams of Deadworld’ that looks to be very intriguing indeed.



Rating: 7/10 (Not much reality, but 2000AD is a good, diversionary comic book this week)

Review: 2000AD PROG 1926- JUST BUY IT!!

Writers and authors: Numerous
Publisher: Rebellion
Released: 15th April 2015



2000AD is fast becoming my favourite comic book of the week, and in PROG 1926 this long-time Judge Dredd hater even enjoyed that strip as well.

PROG 1926 begins with ‘Judge Dredd- Enceladus New Life: Part Three, and even though I still despise the power tripping main-man himself, the story being told is a good old-fashioned mystery tale that has really captured my interest, attention, and whatever else I have that is hanging out there in the wind waiting to be captured. The structure of the story is clever, you want to know what happened to cause a space ship to turn into a suicide bomber minus the Allahu Akbar, and the art has a nice grain and grit about it as well.

Second strip this week is ‘Orlok- The Rasputin Caper: Part Three,’ and this is another case of me disliking the main protagonist but enjoying the story. This one features a nice dig at the corporate whore mainstream media of the future deliberately lying to the public. Looks like things in the future are much like things in the present then.

Third strip is the awesome in every conceivable way ‘Slaine- The Brutania Chronicles- Book Two, Part Three.’ The colouring, the art, the layout, and the overall look of this strip is excellent, lovely, beautiful, harsh, ephemeral, otherworldly, but real. This book has to be released in hardcover, and when it is released it will be a must buy for art lovers and comic book fans alike. The story this week is focussed on a cliché-spouting slave to a centralised control system. Hey, with that sort of corporate talent she would do very well today. A promising career on television or politics, or writing for a mainstream newspaper awaits a lady so unquestioning, so blind, so enslaved, so in love with learnt helplessness and a desire to do nothing but passively accept her lot in life. Like I said at the beginning of this paragraph, everything about ‘Slaine’ is awesome in every conceivable way, and just like I said last week, you need to get 2000AD just for this one strip alone.

How do you follow something as brilliant as Slaine? You can’t really, but ‘Grey Area- Just Routine Questions: Part Two,’ is a very good story that is posing a lot of interesting questions itself. The story here is about a planet of new-ager types who are happy to do nothing but be ‘spiritual’ and suck in their vegan guff fumes and think happy thoughts of niceness whilst congratulating each other on their passive inactivity. There’s a lesson to be learnt in this story, of how you cannot isolate yourself from the world, from reality, without it eventually busting down your door and forcing you take some kind of action. A life of ‘peace’ is nice, but is it really time right now in 2015 to hide yourself away in a cabin, to ignore what is going on all around you and hope that the world doesn’t eventually knock upon your door? That’s what is being explored in ‘Grey Area’ and that is why it interests me.

Last strip of this thoroughly entertaining and rewarding week in 2000AD is ‘Strontium Dog- The Stix Fix: Part Three.’ There is a vein of humour running through the strip that I’m enjoying and the story about a compromised prisoner being forced to help out some recognisably horrible centralised control freak types is along for the ride, assisting the humour and giving the narrative an element of seriousness that stops it from dissolving into a frivolous (‘Survival Geeks’) inconsequential joy ride.

The only thing that I didn’t like about 2000AD this week was the rather rough looking front cover. The rest of the book is superb, from the breathtaking Slaine to the clever and funny Strontium Dog to the questioning Grey Area and to the unlikeable protagonists but good stories in Dredd and Orlok. PROG 1926 of 2000AD is a fine comic book, and if you are not yet reading it then you really should be checking it out. 2000AD is a book that is on top form at the moment, and it really shouldn’t be missed. If you like comic books, then you need to get this book, it’s as simple as that.


Rating: 9/10 (Since the spring 2015 new start this book just keeps on getting better and better)

Best story: Slaine (10/10)

Worst story: All five stories in 2000AD at the moment are worthy of praise.