Judge Dredd, Rogue Trooper, Strontium Dog, Sláine, Nemesis…so many characters call the “Galaxy’s Greatest Comic” 2000 AD their home. As the weekly anthology looks ahead to a new year of stories (many kicking off in 100-page Xmas prog 2413), there is no better time to take stock.
2000 AD and publisher Rebellion had a bumper year on the comics front – a successful Kickstarter for romance anthology Roxy; a Gail Simone-led supernatural Misty special; a third series for Garth Ennis‘ war comic revival Battle Action; and celebrating 40 years of cult kids horror anthology Scream! with a hot-selling Archival Collection compiling every single issue of the beloved but short-lived British weekly plus an anniversary special of new material. 2000 AD also got some ‘special’ treatment – with a mashup themed Scifi Special – and the return of the 2000 AD Annual after 35 years. Plus the surprise news that a certain long-gestating movie adaptation had wrapped filming.
2024 was also a special one on another front — as The Beat’s own reviews editor Zack Quaintance took the plunge and became a regular reader, with weekly Prog Report instalments joining Wednesday Comics Reviews column. To also mark a year of Prog Report, Beat contributor and veteran reader (or “Squaxx dek Thargo”) Dean Simons discusses with Zack the Report’s genesis and the new reader experience, before they each select their highlights from the year.
Read on!
Note: to simplify proceedings, Dean and Zack’s chat will focus exclusively on the weekly prog (issues) of the main weekly 2000 AD, and not the monthly Judge Dredd Megazine or specials
[ A YEAR OF PROG REPORT ]
Dean Simons: I believe this is your first full year with 2000 AD.
Zack Quaintance: Yeah, definitely. First full year reading weekly, week-to-week. I’d always read Judge Dredd and a couple other highlights.
DS: When did you start looking through the issues properly?
ZQ: I used to read a lot of digital comics through comiXology, weekly as they’d come out every Wednesday morning. It was part of my routine. As that platform got worse, and their app became so unfriendly, some of the publishers I used to follow stopped putting new comics up on it. So, I was looking for something to scratch the weekly digital comic-in-the-morning itch.
As a reviewer and editor, I was getting all the 2000 AD stuff, and I’d wanted to get into it. With comiXology going away, it suddenly became the friendliest weekly digital comic experience. And so that was what really kind of pulled me into it.
DS: When was that? Last year?
ZQ: Yeah, I think it was right around this time last year. It was kind of a gradual thing. I started to read it a little bit, and then it just slowly became part of my routine, every Wednesday morning.
DS: So you started with the 2023 Christmas issue, probably.
ZQ: I think I’d started a little bit before that, dabbling, but yeah, I definitely had read last year’s Christmas issue.
DS: I remember last year’s Christmas issue was not exactly new reader friendly – with the majority of the issue deep into multiple storylines, instead of starting with a fresh slate.
ZQ: I think for me as a new reader, I skip stuff. There’s stuff that feels more like you need to know the backstory a little bit more than other series. I haven’t been putting pressure on myself to understand all of this. If there’s two to three stories that I’m following at once (out of five) I’m fine with it.
DS: When I started reading 2000 AD here in the UK, I was about 17, and because I was spending at the time around £2 (~$3.60) of my own pocket money, I insisted I had to read everything in it. Get my money’s worth. It was 2006, I was at sixth form college, which is like preparation before university. I was kind of bored during my lunch break and I saw 2000 AD in the local cornershop (newsagent/newsstand) while buying snacks.
I was aware of it before but during the 90s it was definitely not for kids. In the 90s it was going for the FHM and “lads mags” crowd. I wasn’t interested in it at all. A year or two before I eventually picked it up properly, I recall my English Literature teacher mentioning that she really enjoyed Strontium Dog, which subconsciously made me think about giving it an actual shot. The one I picked up featured an ABC Warriors cover by Henry Flint, not sure if you are familiar…
ZQ: I know what they are, though, because I’ve poked around – I also have all the Best of 2000 AD books as well – I did poke around to see what the most highly regarded 2000 AD stories seemed to be, and that was one that I kind of dabbled in.
DS: Anyway, yeah – I picked it up. It was a random issue so I was reading things deep into their respective runs. For instance I had no clue what was going on in Nikolai Dante (created by Robbie Morrison & Simon Fraser). The epic Tsar Wars arc had already happened and it was the fallout – I had no idea what was going on, but it looked cool. Possibly my first experience with John Burns‘ art. The Ten Seconders (by Rob Williams and Mark Harrison) was several instalments into its first series, and I also had no idea what was going on, but I really loved the art and concept. The whole package sucked me in and I read every week since. When I went to university, I became a subscriber – which I still am today. 18 years later.
ZQ: That’s amazing.
DS: When did you start Prog Report?
ZQ: I don’t remember when the first one was. It might not have been the first week in January. I was definitely doing it by February. I’ve done it almost every week. I don’t think I missed many weeks.
DS: Wow, nowadays I tend to let my issues build up and batch read a couple months worth.
ZQ: Part of the reason I wanted to do Prog Report was so that it would require me to read the comic weekly. It was almost like accountability, to make sure I’m keeping up with it. That’s why I do a lot of the columns for The Beat, they force me to stay current on what’s coming out.
DS: Now that you’ve done it for pretty much a whole year, reading it weekly, what did you think?
ZQ: Obviously, I like it. I almost wish I’d done this sooner, you know. I don’t know if it’s always like this – you probably could speak to this better than I can – if it’s particularly strong of late but it feels to me, really, there’s always at minimum two stories I’m really into. I think that is a pretty good batting average for a weekly anthology comic experience. Especially if you’re buying it online, it’s two bucks. That’s nothing, you know.
DS: I don’t know if I would say this year was standout but it was a decent one. There’s series that I like more than others. What I really like is anything that’s not a legacy character. Those always draw me in because often I’m a bit sceptical about surmounting their original runs with different creators. This year was an interesting one because we had a lot more Rogue Trooper than previous years.
ZQ: Yeah. Even as a newbie I’m sort of with you. I really like the one-offs, or the very strange ones. Like, there was the three part Blue Skies Over Deadwick (by David Baillie & Nick Brokenshire) that had a kaiju and the brain would age people as they approach it. I thought it was fantastic. That one was really surprising to me, and I really enjoyed it quite a bit.
DS: One of my favourite stories this year was also a one-shot, a Terror Tale, called Antumnos (by Jon Lock & Richard Elson) where two investigators are looking into strange happenings in the countryside. Unusually, it was a much longer Terror Tale. Normally they’re quite short, no more than about four pages. This one went to six. The writing was really solid and artist Richard Elson did an effective full page spread that blew me away.
ZQ: Yeah, I remember that story. That was a good one,
DS: That was tight. I loved that. So one fave was the short Blue Skies Over Deadwick…
ZQ: I thought Nick Brokenshire’s artwork was really good.
DS: Yeah, there’s always a lot of strong artists in 2000 AD.
ZQ: There really are. Another thing I like about 2000 AD is the art styles are varied too. It’s an anthology that covers different genres, so of course there will be different art styles, but I feel like 2000 AD is a good way to expose yourself to really good, varied comic book art on a regular basis.
DS: How have you managed with The Out (Book 4), which has been running in the most recent weeks and months?
ZQ: I’m skipping that one, to be honest with you. It was kind of like with Brink where I know there’s a lot going on here that’s really interesting but I’d like to go back and start this from wherever the beginning was.
DS: The thing with The Out is it has a way of meandering and the overall story presents itself during the arc, so you don’t necessarily need to know what it was before.
ZQ: Yeah, that’s a challenge for me too. That’s the one thing that’s a little difficult for me – like, when you get The Out: Book Four, it’s tough for me to tell: should I try to jump in here or do I need to go back and start at part one?
DS: I think you can do both. One of the interesting things about 2000 AD for me is that I’ve had the experience of just diving into series well into their runs and still got into them. I found The Out quite interesting because Dan Abnett is very good at tight plotting. Week to week, he can fit an entire five page story that subtly contributes to the series plot. Each episode feels almost standalone but they’re connected.
ZQ: I think part of it too is that I’m feeling time becomes more valuable as I get older. If I was reading this in my 20s, I’d put much more pressure on myself to read every page, rather than skip some series that seem to require more familiarity. So yeah, there are some stories I want to go back and read start to finish, and I’m okay with putting a pause on them for now, until I can carve out time.
DS: The Out is quite good. I believe a lot of the 2000 AD fandom are into it. It’s got a slight Halo Jones (seminal Alan Moore–Ian Gibson series) vibe to it, I reckon.
ZQ: I really like the art from what I’ve seen. But yeah, I didn’t get into it this year.
DS: Besides The Out and Brink, did you find it was much of a learning curve reading 2000 AD this year?
ZQ: Not really. I think if you read comics, you’re used to picking up context clues and not needing to know full continuity. I think they do a good job making it new-reader friendly. Judge Dredd is always very accessible. I think any new reader can probably pick up that story no matter where it is. The character presents itself, and you usually know what the story is trying to do. And so I think having that one story that’s always there and easy to glom onto and be like, ‘alright, I get what’s happening in this one’ means it’s not too steep of a learning curve.
There’s also, like we were saying earlier, a good mix of standalone stories, as well as Future Shocks, which I think are always a lot of fun, and stuff like that to draw you in. I think it’s like one of those things where it’s an easy learning curve to become halfway familiar with reading the Prog, but then the second half of really deeply familiarizing yourself with some of the more subtle things starts to become harder as you get more into it. That’s kind of been my experience with it.
DS: Interestingly when I started reading, I couldn’t get into Dredd. I didn’t particularly like the series until a little later. I had to warm to it. It was everything else that interested me.
ZQ: Another thing too is a lot of the creators they’ve had working on Dredd this year I’m a fan of. Like Rob Williams, I know his comics, I’ve read his comics. So the people working on Dredd when I was jumping in were creators I was already familiar with – which I think helped.
DS: The big Dredd writer around when I started was – at the time – a lesser known writer called Al Ewing.
ZQ: Oh really, was that 2006?
DS: I think he started writing regularly for 2000 AD around 2004. He started writing quite a lot of Dredd by 2008 and then a few years later he made the leap to the US. He’s barely been seen in the Prog since.
ZQ: Yeah, I just got the Essential Judge Dredd: Tour of Duty (Book Two) which has Al Ewing Dredd stuff in it. That may be from the time you started reading.
DS: Yeah. It’s a very weird feeling. The summer after I started reading was when the very first Judge Dredd Complete Case Files was released. That’s when 2000 AD owner Rebellion’s republishing initiative really started to get going. Now the Complete Case Files are up to where I started.
ZQ: Oh yeah, that will definitely remind you of your age (laughs).
DS: It is weird, for sure. There has been lots of interesting Dredd stories. I tend to like the shorter ones that are in between the major arcs. One I quite liked this year was Hater from October (by Kenneth Niemand, Silvia Califano and Giulia Brusco; Progs 2403-2405).
ZQ: Was that the one that was tied to the Apocalypse War?
DS: Yeah, about this guy who was born after the Apocalypse War to a low level alleged collaborator of the enemy. They were persecuted their whole lives and his mom told him that he was the son of some big shot soldier. Because of all the bullying and ostracisation, he gets easily tricked into becoming an extremist – and it turns out that his mom lied, he was the son of a nobody. Just an easy mark. That was really good.
ZQ: Yeah, I liked that one too. It was a very dark sort of funny, the way they played it.
DS: You can see there’s an element of satire to it as well, and perhaps how it could apply to current events, especially in the past decade or two.
ZQ: Oh, yeah, delusions of grandeur for a lot of people…
DS: …and someone taking advantage of it, getting them to do what you want.
ZQ: Yeah. It’s too real, right now.
DS: That’s true. So do you think the comic 2000 AD has much appeal to the US?
ZQ: It’s tough because it’s not physically available here easily — or really at all. I think to digital comic readers, yeah, it absolutely does have appeal to U.S. readers. It’s there every week. It’s $1.99, and you get – aside from the PDF – a CBZ, a file type that a lot of digital comics platforms don’t give you. So yeah, if you’re like me and you’ve carved out a digital comics weekly routine like that, I think it has a ton of appeal; and it doesn’t matter that it’s not from the US. I think what holds it back in the US is the lack of steady physical availability. Not sure there’s an answer to that. I don’t know how well you could sell magazines through a subscription model to anyone here at this point. That ecosystem has really been destroyed here, aside from something like The New Yorker.
DS: In the UK, the newsstand/newsagent accessibility of comics is barely holding on but not many can still do it.
ZQ: I think comics here stopped doing it. I used to subscribe to Uncanny X-Men and Amazing Spider-Man up through high school, which would have been like early 2000s. By the time I really got back in to comics heavily in the early 2010s the subscription thing wasn’t an option anymore, as far as I know.
DS: I was likewise a child subscriber to some comics. I recently found my very old Panini Marvels. Panini have had the license to reprint Marvel material in the UK since I was a kid in the 1990s, after the shut down of Marvel’s UK branch. Panini picked up the licensing rights for the UK and a lot of Europe. When I was a kid they started reprinting Spider-Man and X-Men, and I was a subscriber. I was looking at some of my old issues and was surprised how cheap those subscriptions were.
ZQ: The comics would come to you pretty banged up though, they weren’t investing a lot in the mailing infrastructure. If you were collecting it wasn’t a good route to go, but if you’re just reading it as a kid, it was really cheap.
DS: Yeah, I like getting 2000 AD in the mail as a UK print subscriber
ZQ: But with the US, I do think that some of the initiatives 2000 AD/Rebellion have done, like these Essential books – which I’m buying like crazy, because I really enjoy them. And the Best of 2000 AD, the ‘sampler pack’ initiative they did with Tom Mueller designing the books and everything. For people like me who buy a lot of comics to put on shelves, that’s been great. It’s made 2000 AD appealing to me at least. I don’t think I’m alone.
DS: In the UK, Hachette has been doing a partwork with 2000 AD – you may have seen the ads for it on the back page of the digital issues. Basically, it’s a graphic novel collection. You pay £20 a month for two instalments. It started in 2017 and they keep extending it. I’ve forgotten how many times they’ve extended it but now it’s going to hit 200 volumes. There’s just so much 2000 AD.
ZQ: That’s funny. Do you think they’ll continue to extend it past that?
DS: I’m kind of hoping they don’t because my shelves wouldn’t take it
ZQ: You only have so much space.
DS: I mean, they could probably figure out one or two things, but it’s going to be tricky. The 2000 AD Ultimate Collection (as it is called) is good because there’s a lot of stuff that’s not been physically reprinted in an age. I don’t think Hewligans Haircut (by Peter Milligan & Jamie Hewlett) was reprinted before, The Red Seas (by Ian Edginton & Steve Yeowell) is out of print, and they didn’t publish the whole thing – but you can get the entire series digitally (although the digital files are in not very good shape). Lobster Random (by Simon Spurrier & Carl Critchlow) was another that never got a proper reprint treatment. Just a lot of series.
ZQ: Rarities and things.
DS: Yeah, there’s also some weird stuff that isn’t long enough to fill a whole book. I think they’re squeezing them in the back of other books.
So you think these recent US initiatives have been succeeding?
ZQ: As well as any comics that are selling here these days. Like I said, they’ve certainly worked on me. But I do think it’s really helpful to have these serialized, uniform versions (e.g. Essentials, Best of 2000 AD) be accessible. Especially with people being so familiar with manga – kind of looking the same way on the shelf. It’s nice to have if you’re interested in it, as a jumping on point and to fill your shelves. I think the Best Of in particular made a bit of a splash when they did that series, especially the first volume, and that’s kind of how it always goes.
DS: It was quite interesting seeing the choices for what they put in.
ZQ: Yeah, I remember you had some notes (laughs). What did you think?
DS: I thought it was pretty good. I was just really interested in the mix and quite surprised by certain choices. My quibbles were only on the level of ‘they picked one series over another series for new readers unfamiliar with the comic’, though. At the end of the day – if it gets people reading 2000 AD, have at it – because there’s loads of other good series you can find that didn’t make the cut.
ZQ: They maybe wanted known names. I recognized Dan Abnett, Alan Moore….Having those sort of names in these books probably made them helpful to sell.
DS: Yeah, it’s been a long time since Alan Moore’s appeared in 2000 AD though. During the big “British Invasion” of US comics, a huge swath of writers and artists jumped from 2000 AD. It was because of that exodus of talent that probably opened the door for the likes of Mark Miller, Grant Morrison, and Garth Ennis.
[ PICKING FAVOURITES ]
DS: So looking back on this year, what were your favorite stories?
ZQ: I put Judge Dredd: A Better World on The Beat’s Best Comics of 2024 list. We already mentioned the kaiju story (Blue Skies Over Deadwick), which I liked a lot. There was a story Peter Milligan did with Rufus Dayglo about interstellar migration and corrupt forces, The Devil’s Railroad (begun in 2023, concluded in 2024; progs 2352-55, 2357-66). I thought that story was excellent. That was right around when I started reading. And then another one that we haven’t mentioned yet, that I really liked was the one drawn by Joe Currie, Silver (co-created and written by Mike Carroll; prog 2390-2399)
DS: Yeah! That series was a great surprise.
ZQ: And then Nightmare New York, which just wrapped up (by Kek-W, John Burns & David Roach; prog 2401-2412). I was really into that one as well. So if I had to do a top ‘not-legacy character’ stories of 2024, those stood out to me,
DS: For me – this is also in no particular order. Definitely Silver….Herne & Shuck (by David Barnett & Lee Milmore; prog 2392-2399) – I was just happy to see those two characters back. They started as a couple of those short three-part “3riller” miniseries (2022’s The Crawly Man, prog 2297-2299; 2023’s Maxwell’s Demon, prog 2343-2345) and I really liked them. A wandering geezer and his talking demon-possessed dog, brilliant.
Nightmare New York, especially because it was veteran British artist John Burns’ very last work before he abruptly retired – and sadly died a few months later. David Roach then took over on art. Different but very welcome.
I’ve been really enjoying the latest series of The Out (Dan Abnett & Mark Harrison; prog 2401-present). I don’t necessarily know where things are going or what’s going on, but I just love reading – and looking at – it. So The Out, Silver, Herne & Shuck, Nightmare New York… and probably Intestinauts: Busted Flush (Arthur Wyatt & Pye Parr; prog 2382-2387).
ZQ: Oh that one was a lot of fun.
DS: I really like Full Tilt Boogie (Book 2, prog 2367-2377; by Alex de Campi & Eduardo Ocana) for its art but the story – I didn’t feel like there’s enough happening, but I’m really intrigued at the same time. I’m not sure if I’d put it on my top list, but still, I quite like it, especially the artist. An honorable mention, I guess.
ZQ: I like Full Tilt Boogie, but I agree with that.
DS: I was quite disappointed this year with Fall of Deadworld: Retribution (by Kek-W & Dave Kendall; Prog 2352-2355, 2357-59, 2370-2374), which is one of my favorite series in recent years. The concept, mood and the gore appealed. It’s set in the world of the Dark Judges (e.g. Judge Death) before the Dark Judges themselves are fully present. It’s the beginnings – except you don’t know if it’s the same world we assume it to become or if it’s a parallel Earth where it could go either way.
ZQ: Oh, that’s interesting. I didn’t realize that.
DS: It’s kind of got a Walking Dead vibe to it – just a bunch of people, including former judges, trying to survive with hints to Judge Dredd lore and classic epics – like the Judge Child saga – implied. I mean, these are all kind of easter egg things, so you don’t necessarily need to know to enjoy it.
ZQ: I read that one and I liked it.
DS: Yeah. The current one is doing it’s own version of the Apocalypse War – if the apocalypse war happened whilst the dark judges were emerging in Mega City One. It had a lot going on but the characterisation and plot felt haphazard.
[ WHAT’S THE BIG DEAL ABOUT THE APOCALYPSE WAR? ]
ZQ: Actually, here’s a good question for you: I feel like there’s been three or four different nods to the Apocalypse War this past year. It seems like every month there’s a new one.
DS: Yeah, it feels like it’s kind of never left, it’s a big scar on the world of Judge Dredd so I can kind of understand its continued presence.
ZQ: I was just curious about that as a new reader. If it was in the zeitgeist this year, or if it was kind of always that important.
DS: I think it’s because the fallout of that story (first published in 1982) just keeps echoing through the years. I actually never noticed the repetition before. But yeah – you’re right – it’s always seemingly cropping up.
ZQ: To be fair – because I haven’t read all the Essential Judge Dredd books yet (I’m making my way through them) – there could be just as many nods to other stories that I haven’t read yet, and I’m missing them.
DS: Yeah, The Apocalypse War connection is interesting, I’ve never thought too much about it. But it definitely feeds into a lot of things. I’m not sure why it keeps resurfacing.
ZQ: Maybe it’s just particularly relevant as of late, people thinking about this sort of thing (nuclear war, invasions).
DS: It’s possible.
[ AZIMUTH ]
DS: What did you think of Dan Abnett & Tazio Bettin‘s Azimuth? The latest story (The Fabled Basilisk, Prog 2406-2411) just wrapped.
ZQ: I thought it was fantastic. It gave me a taste of really dense, very highly visual sci-fi. It kind of reminded me a little bit of The Fifth Element, in the aesthetic choices. That one drew me in right away. I really liked it.
DS: It’s kind of funny because it’s feeding into another series – a Sinister Dexter story arc that was running for several years. Same world, continuing the story but suddenly the world is completely changed and it is something else. It’s kind of like with Age of Apocalypse replacing all the X-Men series in the ’90s. Everything was cancelled, and then a whole new world sprang up. And this is kind of the fallout from that specific Sinister Dexter arc (Bulletopia, which ran in 2000 AD intermittently between 2020 and 2022).
ZQ: Okay, it was definitely like one of those series we were talking about earlier. I could tell there was a lot going on, but I felt like I could just jump into this one. I think Tazio Bettin’s art was a big part of that, because I really enjoyed it and how it was almost whimsical throughout. I thought it worked really well.
DS: Yeah, I’m really curious where the overall story is gonna go. Part of me wants to see the world of Azimuth continue, but also I wonder how it could continue. It’s all leading to something, especially if you were reading the Sinister Dexter stuff before.
What happened was a fully sentient, powerful rogue AI became so powerful that it has fabricated an entire world. In the prior Sinister Dexter arc it took over their city (and slowly the world). One character – Ramone Dexter aka ‘The Stranger’ – has come back to try and stop it. But he has now walked into a new radically transformed world, kind of like a fully immersive MMO.
ZQ: I could see that. It was also a really funny story. Wasn’t there a character called Papa Legday? That’s amazing, that’s deeply funny.
DS: And the name of those French-themed automatons?
ZQ: Yeah, they had a funny name as well.
DS: They came from Reversailles, Basteel and Louis Cans. Amazing.
ZQ: I had a good time with that one.
DS: Name puns are actually a recurring feature of 2000 AD
ZQ: Papa Legday is inspired!
DS: There’s some other series that you’ll see it occur. Have you looked at Kingdom (by Dan Abnett & Richard Elson)?
ZQ: I haven’t. No.
DS: The main character is a genetically modified dog that stands on two legs and can fight. His species is supposed to protect the territory hiding humans in cryostasis from giant bugs. His name is ‘Gene the Hackman’.
[Gene the Hackman pic]
ZQ: [laughs] That’s good.
DS: And all the dogs in Kingdom have names that relate to real people.
ZQ: Yeah. They do that with the names of a lot of the things in Judge Dredd. Pop culture references and that kind of thing.
DS: Yeah, the city blocks. It’s a recurring feature. It’s an element of satire that they just throw in. It’s great.
ZQ: I know I really like all that.
[ JUDGE DREDD ]
DS: We’ve been circling around it, but let’s go to Judge Dredd. What did you think of this year?
ZQ: I liked it. It’s my first full year reading Judge Dredd, week to week. I thought the Better World (by Rob Williams, Arthur Wyatt & Henry Flint; Prog 2364-2372) arc was fantastic. And then there’s a lot of variety between stories. Machine Rule (by John Wagner & Colin MacNeil; Prog 2392-2398) I thought was really good as well. I mean, I don’t know, you probably have a much more thoughtful take as a long time reader.
DS: I sort of take it or leave it. I just read the stuff – it’s not the central feature of the 2000 AD experience (which makes me a bit of an outlier). I was wondering which arc was better before this chat. A Better World or Machine Rule. Whenever series co-creator John Wagner is writing something in Dredd, it often changes the world, the status quo. He has this tendency to just do a complete rug pull on all the other writers which I enjoy. For instance, when the Chaos Day epic happened, I think a lot of the writers weren’t entirely in the know, and the editor wasn’t in the know either until really late in the scripting process – when it turns out that John had essentially killed off most of Mega City One’s population, Justice Department is radically short of manpower and pretty crippled. The city is now heavily in debt, and they don’t have enough people on the streets. In 2019 the robot judges were reintroduced (beyond a prototype) and rolled out on the streets. They’ve been a regular feature in Dredd stories since covid. When Machine Rule was running, I was wondering if John was going to do a major rug pull again. And this one was actually a fairly light one, as his rug pulls go.
ZQ: I didn’t register it that way at all, really.
DS: I love that about John – that he’ll just be, ‘Yeah, let’s do this’.
ZQ: It’s really funny. I didn’t realize that that was a thing,
DS: So as I was saying – I was wondering which was the best this year, A Better World or Machine Rule. I reread A Better World just before our chat – and yeah, I think you’re right. It’s a stand out arc.
ZQ: I’ve read so many comics, it’s very rare for me to react to something on a page turn but it made me gasp. The big moment in that, when I was like, ‘Oh my God’. Aloud almost. They just built up to it really well. Like, you kind of thought something like that was coming but…
DS: A weird thing for me about reading Dredd is – because it’s been running for 47 years, and the characters age in real time, so time is also passing – those various bits, incidents and characters – that are mentioned in A Better World, like Major Domo and all that – I’ve been seeing them show up here and there in smaller stories since around 2017 or 2018. I read the stories and move on most of the time as they are often pretty spread out. It’s quite something to have everything tie together after such a long time, paying off for longtime readers and exciting new readers. It is also occasionally tricky to see, for me, a casual reader (not a Dredd megafan) – things just kind of happen. I see the smaller incidents and they pass me by in the weekly, as I’m idly reading over the years, I don’t necessarily realise how major or impactful a story might be – more than usual, anyway. Especially at the time. But when you come in fresh, as a newer reader, maybe you sort of notice the difference and how standout the arc really is.
ZQ: Yeah, yeah. Well, for me it just read as an excellent satire around police reform, the public reaction to it, and the status quo pushback – independent of any other Judge Dredd stuff that was going on. With Judge Dredd I think this is a topic you have to address at a certain point, and they did a fantastic job of it.
DS: And the fallout is still kind of going,
ZQ: I feel like there will be more coming. We haven’t seen the bulk of it yet, the fallout.
DS: Yeah, yeah, that’s the thing about Judge Dredd. There’ll be these arcs, and they may not pay off for several years, but they will pay off at some stage.
ZQ: It’s a very patient comic, it feels like.
DS: It kind of rewards regular reading but at the same time you can just sit back and read the collections, if you want to.
ZQ: That’s how I used to. I first started doing that with, I remember in 2018 or so, there was a lot of buzz around the Small House arc, and that was sort of where I came in and started doing that. Just picking up the collections and reading that way. But I think this one’s more accessible. If you’re just coming in completely absent of any knowledge of Judge Dredd, I think you can come into this arc and if you have knowledge of police reform movements and what’s been happening with that, you can pick it up blind, read it and get a lot from it.
[ ROGUE TROOPER ]
DS: Let’s roll over to Rogue Trooper. Did you have much knowledge of the character before this year?
ZQ: Absolutely none. I’d never heard of Rogue Trooper. To be honest, I did not know the character.
DS: Did you know there was going to be a movie?
ZQ: I mean, I think that’s where I heard of it first. Yeah, that might have been the first time I heard of Rogue Trooper. I’ve probably seen the character or something, and not paid much attention to it until the movie announcement. That seemed like a big deal.
DS: Did you check out the Rogue Trooper arc that Garth Ennis and Patrick Goddard did a year ago?
ZQ: Blighty Valley? Yeah, I actually grabbed the Francesco Francavilla cover at San Diego Comic Con. I really liked it.
DS: When I started reading 2000 AD, there were actually one or two Rogue Trooper stories to sort of bring the character back, but they didn’t quite work out. Maybe the time wasn’t right. There have been really good spin off series set in that world. Jaegir‘s a very good one. That’s by Simon Coleby and Gordon Rennie. Highly recommend that one.
I knew the film was coming, although it had been in kind of limbo for so many years that I didn’t think it was going to happen – much like that Judge Dredd: Mega City One TV series that’s supposed to be in in the works, and we haven’t heard about that in years. So when they said the moive was definitely happening, that was huge news.
ZQ: They had a director and everything.
DS: The director – Duncan Jones – has been attached the whole time. He’s just been working on it for ages. The original Rogue Trooper stories are really good but I find the character himself is very two dimensional. It’s really an ensemble cast because of his equipment (which house the biochips of his former unit). What makes Rogue Trooper interesting is the stuff that he gets involved in or the stuff that happens around him, but not the character himself.
ZQ: I can see that. That makes sense.
DS: So I find many Rogue Trooper stories don’t quite work for me
ZQ: Did you like Blighty Valley or you didn’t really care for that one either?
DS: I really liked that because it was Garth Ennis doing what he does best, which is tell really interesting war stories
ZQ: Exactly.
DS: The most recent one – When A G.I. Dies (Prog 2401-2412) was curious because it connected to a story that took place all the way back in progs 358-368, in 1983.
ZQ: I didn’t connect with that one nearly as well as I did with Blighty Valley.
DS: Agreed. I did find it interesting though, because it was one of the few Rogue Trooper stories that went into the life and reality of the ‘Dolls’, the female Genetic Infantry (G.I.s) that are never sent onto the battlefield.
ZQ: I also thought that was the most interesting part of it but then it had the other angle with that villain which was kind of taking a little bit of space away from the angle with the Dolls. It seemed like two stories almost kind of wrapping around each other.
DS: I sort of saw what what Ennis and Goddard wanted to do but it didn’t quite resonate the way Blighty Valley did, and that was slightly disappointing. Souther Belle (by Geoffrey D. Wessel & Dan Cornwell; Prog 2386-2391) was better as it was a clearer story. That involved a Doll that had been co-opted by the enemy. I find that the Doll angle itself is interesting, because the Dolls are so little explored. I would love to see more stories looking at them than Rogue.
ZQ: I’m with that. I thought the stuff with them in When A G.I. Dies was really strong. It seems like there’s a lot more there that they could do.
DS: Do you want more Rogue Trooper stories in 2025?
ZQ: I mean, if Garth Ennis is writing more war comics I’m never gonna say no to that. You feel like he’s gonna run out of them at a certain point, right? But then once a year, there’s the most devastating story you’ve read, and it’s a Garth Ennis war comic. Seemingly an infinite supply of ideas for war comics.
Prog Report and 2000 AD will return on January 8, 2025. Back issues – and subscriptions – can be ordered in print and digital from the 2000 AD webshop. It can also be ordered from Previews with Prog 2413 shipping January 22.
