Tweet
2000 A.D. Prog 1977
Released by: 2000 A.D./Rebellion
Released on: April 27th, 2016.
Written by: Various
Illustrated by: Various
Purchase From Amazon
2000 A.D. Prog 1977 lives! Carlos Esquerra delivers the Tharg! Cover that graces the front of this latest issue. Now on with the stories…
Judge Dredd - The Grindstone Cowboys by Michael Carroll and Colin MacNeil: Thorn and his gang of mutants have wounded Dredd, but the rest of his team manages to get him to cover in time. Dredd's bleeding - a lot - and Thorn is still on the attack. A Med-Wagon is called in but it doesn't look like it will make it in time, leaving Judge Lorenzo with no choice but to improvise and save Dredd's life. The Med-Wagon arrives and they take Dredd off to what all assume will be safety. But you know what they say about assumptions…
What a cliffhanger! Lots of action here and things look bad for the Judges stuck out there in the Cursed Earth. At the HQ, there are allusions to a conspiracy of some sort but we don't those details yet. Carroll's tense and exciting story sees the other Judges step up when Dredd goes down, while MacNeil's artwork continues to be great.
Survival Geeks - Geek Fatales by Gordon Rennie, Emma Beeby and Neil Googe: The two gender reversed teams work together, freed from their rodent captors. When the rodents send in a giant mech, one of the geeks rises to the challenge but it's not any of the characters you'd expect it to be, but they basically remain surrounded.
This new chapter won't win you over but if you've enjoyed the story so far, you'll dig this one too. The Lovecraftian surprise is a nice touch and the art is clean, colorful and detailed but this one isn't catching fire the way a good serial should.
Tainted: The Fall Of Deadworld by Kek-W and Dave Kendal: The locusts are attacking the bus, the survivors left inside understandably starting to panic. When they break through the windows the humans do what they can to fight them off - does this plague of locusts really signal the end times? They smoke them out of the bus but soon realize that Luke, after being bitten by the serpent, is not doing well at all. And then they run into some heavily armed, trigger happy cops…
Kek-W's post-apocalyptic tale of action and horror continues its race into darkness. Things are definitely not getting better for the crew in the bus, and yet somehow it looks like there are worse things to come just over the horizon. The 'end times' angle is well played here, some sly Biblical references worked into the story in interesting ways, while Kendal's artwork continues to blow minds, a real treat for the eyes.
Tharg The Mighty: The Secret Of Prog 1977 by T.M.O. and Mike Collins: Script Droid Gut-76 and Refuse Editor Max-19 take us back to 1977 where Tharg The Mighty has set up shop in London where he's decided to put out a weekly comic book. Why? Because it will help him exorcise the alien presence that possesses him! The two droids rummage through the records to find out if this is all true or not - only to run into Tharg himself!
This is an amusingly meta story that's a good mix of sci-fi high-jinks and self-referential humor. It's a fun, quickly paced read nicely illustrated in black and white by Collins, who does a fine job detailing both of the droids and Tharg himself.
Aquila: Charon's Mercy by Gordon Rennie and Paul Davidson: Last but most certainly not least, we catch up with Aquila as Tortrix The Necromancer begins to torture him. When Acquila breaks free and grabs the necromancer by the neck, he convinces him to reach out to the underworld and get him to Nero The Emperor in hopes of finding where Ammit The Devourer his hiding. While they do that, Felix makes his way out of the dungeon with only one thought on his mind - kill Tortrix. But Acquila needs the necromancer for his own reasons… this won't end well.
Rennie's plot is taking some interesting twists in this installment, without pulling back on the gore or the nastiness that has been a part of it since the first chapter. It sets up the next installment in a big way, there's some serious conflict on the horizon, while Davidson's nicely detailed art wisely leaves nothing to the imagination. Nasty, bloody stuff - a great read!
