Ranks 6-5: seriously scrotnig Progs

Rank 6: Prog 2212, (which would be ‘Prog 2021’ under the old numbering system)
dated December 2020,
(falling in between Progs 2211 and 2213, obviously…)

Recency bias, or just a really excellent Prog? You decide.
Art by Cliff Robinson and Dylan Teague

What’s in it?

Judge Dredd, a seasonal one-off
Strontium Dog, a one-off / blast from the past
Survival Geeks, an epilogue
Visions of Deadworld, a one-off
Proteus Vex, first episode of the latest series
Slaine, first episode of the final series
Hershey, first episode of the latest series
Time Twisters, a 2000AD-centric one-off
Durham Red, first episode of the latest series

PLUS:
An interview with an art droid from yesteryear
A double-page poster
A couple of trailers for thrills / Live Experiences to come
A letters page

Analysis

So yes, this is the most recent Xmas Prog, produced during the Year of Lockdowns (and released just as Lockdown 3 was underway, I think??), and somehow it's all spiffing stuff - not a dud story in the batch. But also no time or resources, perhaps, to stir anything into the mix to give it that feeling of being more-than-usual Xmas Prog special...

Right, let’s get into the blow-by-blow.

Front cover by Cliff Robinson and Dylan Teague

If you’re doing a Tharg / thrill-power based cover, you gotta go BIG, and this cover indeed goes BIG! The eyes, the glowing rosette, the way Tharg’s hair is crackling with energy, it’s mad mental fun – easily my favourite ‘just Tharg’ cover of the Xmas Prog run.

9/10

Judge Dredd: Three Kings by Ken Niemand & PJ Holden

See, it’s called Judge Dredd, and hen is in it, but it’s a Chimpsky adventure really – a character who’d get his own spin-off series just a few weeks later. And it’s good, having fun with Christmas side jokes, especially involving Hitler-based children’s entertainer. 

Comic delights
Art by PJ Holden

 There’s potential here for a character to return in maybe 12 or 18 years time, should the Prog itself and Mr. Niemand still be working, to pick up one slightly unexplained bit where Dredd appears to let a person go free.
It’s also, for me the point where Chimpsky skirts with being just a bit too competent and full of resources. For the sake of a Christmas tale, all can be forgiven, but I confess for ape-based Dreddworld stories, I’m Harry Heston all the way.

9 out of 10

Strontium Dog: Once Upon a Time in Der Vest by Rob Williams & Laurence Campbell

Arguably the best non-Ezquerra Strontium Dog art...
by Laurence Campbell

This is such a throwback of a story, the opening spread is in colour and the rest is black and white, like this was right out of StarLord comic. And I’m pretty sure this is meant to be the setting, too, as it’s a very early adventure for Johnny and Wulf. Williams and Campbell both do extraordinary careful work to evoke all of this without just lazily relying on copying specific panels or ideas, beyond the basic concept of the time bombs. I’m not sure if this would sustain a whole new big story, but as a one off it’s a straight-up success, and a worthy tribute, I reckon, to both Carlos Ezquerra and Strontium Dog fans.

9 out of 10

Survival Geeks: A Quiet Night in by Gordon Rennie, Emma Beeby & Neil Googe

I am also a two-finger typist.
Art by Neil Googe

You know, it’s not a 2000AD bumper Xmas Prog without Gordon Rennie either delivering an all-new thrill, or saying goodbye to a much-loved series. The Rennie/Beeby pairing has ever delivered the goods, and this fond farewell to Survival Geeks is super happy to lean into what it is – a charming  look at one version of what could have happened to the four ‘friends’ after they stopped mucking about across dimensions and tried to get jobs. It manages to be both happy and cynical together, and I can’t help but wonder if that’s the inherent nature of the writing partnership. Googe, of course, guarantees that it’s also fun and full of cute details, my fave being the planet of robot killer Tories.

10 out of 10

Visions of Deadworld: A Girl's Gotta Eat by Kek-W & Dave Kendall

Deadworld has become a permanent fixture in these Xmas Progs over the last 4 years, I guess filling the classic UK idea of ‘ghost stories for the season’. I mean, it’s not a ghost story, but it sure is a story to serve as a reminder that we are dust, and to dust will all return. This one sees Kek-W in ideas mode, examining something to do with robot/zombie hybrids, and the idea of how sometimes one concept can override another – perhaps the drive to life can overcome the death urge? It’s kind of heady stuff to be honest, perhaps too much so?

8 out of 10

Proteus Vex: The Shadow Chancellor (part 1) by Mike Carroll & Jake Lynch

The combination of wildly alien people’s mixed with politics and history-heavy exposition makes this story require a bit of work on the part of the reader. I can’t always be bothered with that, but having put the effort in I can say it’s clever stuff, not necessarily super-satisfying, even when you get scenes of head-mouth alien ‘Midnight Indicating Shame’ going on a bloody kill-spree.

8 out of 10

Sláine: The Web of Weird Dragontamer (part 1) by Pat Mills & Leonardo Manco

Undeniably beautiful, this latest and seemingly final Slaine story very much begins where the last series ended up, with Slaine fighting evil Trojans who have come to Britain, founded London, and generally committed the sin of bringing Christianity-based order to Celtic chaos. There’s fighting, wordplay, a villain, and the hint of dragons to come. For the life of me I can’t remember how Slaine got here, or what time period we’re supposed to be in, but honestly thinking about those things tends to make Slaine a worse story to read, and just hanging on for the ride is often the way to go.

9 out of 10

Hershey: The Brutal (part 1) by Rob Williams & Simon Fraser

It’s called ‘Hershey’, but this episode in particular may as well be titled ‘Dirty Frank’, with Williams making it as clear as he possibly, possible can, in case any readers had any doubt (and to be fair, some might), that Hershey’s big, beardy, sadsack sidekick is indeed the somehow not-dead Dirty Frank. Also turns out he good at taking hits and dishing out brutal punches. Fraser’s art is impeccable, Williams’ atmosphere and dialogue delightful as ever, all in service of a story that maybe doesn’t make so much sense, but it’s a small price to pay.

8 out of 10

Time Twisters: Time Hygiene by T.C. Eglington & Warren Pleece

One of those meta one-offs that technically follows the format of being a story with a twist ending, but is actually a 2000AD/Tharg story in disguise. And it works brilliantly. Someone who doesn’t have a long history of reading the comic might not appreciate it in this way, but little nods to Twisters past (the Alan Moore ones, naturally) feel earned, and there’s some cleverness going on around the ending that allows Pleece to show off as much as Eglington. Hard to ask more from not just a one-off twisty tale, but specifically one that’s in a ‘Special ‘ Prog.

Meta-time travel jokes are my bag.
Art by Warren Pleece

10 out of 10

Durham Red: Served Cold (part 1) by Alec Worley & Ben Willsher

I mean, this story is so in debt to John Carpenter, who in turn was deeply in debt to Howard Hawks, that it’s actually set in the Hawks-Carpenter Station. But with that out of the way, there’s a neat combination of action and mystery that feels just a tiny bit empty, which I think is because it needs a soundtrack. I remember this story never quite going anywhere special, but as an opener it’s solid action stuff. The scene is set, mysteries are set up for us to ponder, and Durham Red is positioned squarely as the ‘is she good or evil’ conundrum that inevitably never really pays off, because we know, at this point, that she is definitely more good than evil.

8 out of 10

 

Onto the non-thrills!

No getting around it, but this Prog falls down squarely on its extras. No offence to Carlos Pino, but an extended interview with the man behind Disaster 1990 and Angel is surely something that should have run in the Megazine when either of those were reprinted in a floppy, and not as a special end-of-year 2000AD treat. The 2-page poster from S K Moore almost makes up for it, as it’s one of the very best of its kind, showcasing a classic mix of 2000AD stars but in Moore’s style it takes a while to figure out who’s who – in a fun way. On the other hand, it’s a 9-story Prog, rather than the usual 8, and with a high standard of thrillage maybe that was the right call?

I don’t tend to single out the letters pages or the trailers, but the Lego entry from this Prog is STUNNING and mental in conception. The fact that its unfinished is fitting, frankly. 

The level of detail on this thing!
Lego stylings by the Rees family.

And the idea that, in the middle of Covid times, Rebellion might actually manage to set up and open a ‘Live experience’ (whatever that is) based on Judge Dredd was very bold. It did not, in 2021, come to pass. (But, you know The 10 Seconders book II and Saline: Dragontamer took two years longer than advertised as well…)

What’s NOT in the Prog?

No Wagner, no Abnett, and nothing totally new. But there are some experiments in here, mostly having a go at a different creative team on Strontium Dog, and doing it in a way that celebrates the past rather than, quite yet, writing new adventures for Johnny Alpha and co. The long, LONG trailed Slaine story finally appears, which is certainly celebratory, especially as, in the two year wait, it seems increasingly likely that this really IS finally it for Slaine (but we’ve heard, or at least suspected, that before…).

Let’s also not forget that this is the Xmas Prog from deep in the time of Covid. Somehow, all through 2020, the Prog and Meg and indeed various specials, reprint editions and all of that had carried on with little more than minor delays, so it’s an achievement to get the Bumper Prog out there in as good as shape as it has ever been.

Final scores…

Average thrill-score: 8.8 out of 10
Non-thrill score: 1 out of 5
Balance of thrills old and new: 4 out of 5
Standalone specialness score: 7 out of 10
Cover score: 9 out of 10

Overall overall score: 31.8 out of 40

Rank 5: Prog 2007,
dated December 2006,
falling in between Progs 1517 and 1518

What’s in it?

An episode of Judge Dredd: Origins, roughly half-way through
Stickleback, the first episode of an all-new series
The 86ers, a one-off episode
Sinister Dexter, a one-off Xmas-themed story
Nikolai Dante, a one-off New Year’s Eve-themed story
ABC Warriors, the first episode of an all-new story arc
Harry Kipling, a seasonal one-off episode
Kingdom, first episode of an all-new series
Droid Life

PLUS:
An interview with David Bishop about Thrill-Power Overload, and an extract from that book
New star scan and fact-file page for MACH One
A handful of trailers for thrills to come
A letters page

Analysis

It’s worth noting that 2006/7 was a big (school) year for Tharg. This end-of-year Prog followed on pretty quickly from the landmark Prog 1500, the start of the much-anticipated Judge Dredd: Origins, in Prog 1505, and was published just a few short weeks before the 30^th birthday Progstravaganza of 1526. In other words, Tharg had a lot of juggling to do to make three different Progs all feel special, and all within a few months of each other!

This was the first time we got the middle episode of a story – perhaps to make up for that, all the other stories have a pretty solid jumping-on point feel, more than usual in my estimation.

Right, let’s get into the blow-by-blow.

Front cover by Simon Davis
This is near-perfect if you ask me. It’s fun, it’s Christmassy, it’s beautifully painted. Arguably there’s a slightly weird mix of characters, with a few who don’t appear in the special, and even those who do – e.g. Harry Kipling - feel a little tacked on. But the brilliance of Torquemada’s pointy head turning into an elf hat is just too good.

9.5/10

The Droid Life’s a good ‘un, just the right amount of Xmas gloom.

Judge Dredd: Origins part 14 by John Wagner and Carlos Ezquerra.

So yeah, this is part 14. In theory that’s a terrible place to pick up a story. But you know what? I actually think this is almost a better way to hook in lapsed readers, if not new ones, than if it had been episode 1. I mean, it’ll make you want to pick up some back progs, as well as pressing ahead with new ones, right? And that way, you’ll be exposed to two different line-ups of thrills, more chance for Tharg to tickle your fancy.

And let’s not discount the specifics of the episode on display here – it’s right at the heart of everything! Basically, this is full-on flashback mode, as we see young Dredd (and Rico) discover that President Booth was not only genuinely bad, as in, rigging an election bad*, but also that he is determined to start a nuclear war out of some weird sense of US manifest destiny. It’s one of perhaps two key moments in the ‘Origins’ part of Judge Dredd, as a series (the other being the moment where the Judges seize power). Riveting stuff, in other words, even if you’ve no idea what happened in parts 1-13 of the story.

Nothing says Christmas like shooting a dog in the head.
Art by Carlos Ezquerra

10 out of 10

Stickleback: Mother London part 1 by Ian Edginton and D’Israeli

The first of TWO all-new series, and indeed the first of two that are still running in the Prog today. That’s pretty special! But I have to say, this first episode is WEIRD. There’s the glorious and delirious D’Israeli artwork to revel in, a real kick in the pants on seeing it the first time. But this episode presents two prologues that appear to contradict each other: first, supernatural entities are very real, then, we see supernaturalism being roundly debunked. And there’s no hint of the title character beyond the last balloon in the final panel. We don’t even really know which character, if any, we are going to be siding with as the story unfolds, or what this story is going to be about. We know a lot about where it is set, and the kind of tone we’ll be experiencing, which is enough for some, I guess. Look, Edginton makes this sort of thing work, but he has to try very hard. 

Who is the protagonist of Stickleback Book I?
Art by D'Israeli

8 out of 10 (but I’m scoring heavily for the art here)

The 86ers: Walking to Eternity by Gordon Rennie and PJ Holden
It took me a while to work out that the 86ers WASN’T the story of GI flying ace Rafaella Blue fighting Norts in space, but was in fact about a ragtag bunch of Norts and Southers (and others) trapped, unwittingly, in a Lovecraftian nightmare. This episode, in particular, while it does play into the wider 86ers story eventually, is basically a Sci-Fi Terror Tale that happens to be set in the Rogue Trooper universe. When I read it like that, I rather enjoyed it. Trying to work out how it fits with the wider '86ers' series was less fun.

Chilling horror
Art by PJ Holden

7 out of 10

Sinister Dexter: Christmas Time by Dan Abnett and Simon Davis
This one reads very differently in hindsight. Frankly, at this point in SinDex history, a lot of questions were being asked why the series was still going. I mean, they both died, right? Well, we’re in the immediate ‘post-Malone’ phase,** so Sinister has been brilliantly revived, and this episode focusses on him imagining what to do about Dexter, who is less convincingly alive and very much paralyzed. It’s both silly and poignant in the usual Abnett and Davis style, but reading it now, when I know what’s going to happen next, I can’t help but think of it as Abnett’s way of saying “Look, the story could end here but it’d be too sad and we’d miss out on all sorts of fun, so just let me run with it, OK?” And the next decade did indeed prove him right.

9 out of 10

ABC Warriors: the Volgan War Book 1 part 1 by Pat Mills and Clint Langley

The Mills and Langley team have become something of a staple in this era of the Xmas Prog. Langley’s art had been getting better and better but here he really hits his stride – there’s something about his style that just WORKS for robot characters. Like a lot of photo-reference bods, his humans at times felt stiff, or at least their expressions only ever matched part of the speech balloon. But with robots that’s rarely a problem. Even more, the idea that he is manipulating photos rather than creating art (a false dichotomy anyway) is plainly impossible because actual ABC Warriors have yet to be built! Anyway, the art is tremendous, especially that double-pager of the army of Hammersteins marching into battle.

Langley makes his robots look as if they are real things he has taken photos of. Uncanny.

 

As for the story, this is typically taken as the point where Mills began doing nothing more than retreading old ground. In fact, there’s a lot less of that than you might think, especially in the early episodes. If anything, he doesn’t do enough to remind us of what the set-up is – there’s a whole bit about humans having direct control over the Warriors from way back in the early episodes of the original series that would leave new readers scratching their heads.

Still no shortage of ideas on the Mills front, is what I’m saying, although the brick-thin subtlety is somehow less charming in 2006 than it was in 1981.

9 out of 10

Harry Kipling (Deceased): Winter Wonderbrand, by Si Spurrier and Boo Cook

A marmite character and series if ever there was one, and this may be the most marmite of all episodes. As soon as it kicked in with the ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas’ riff, I was all set to score it low. But, thankfully, the poetry pastiche is kept only for the first and last pages, and the pastiche IS rather well done. The thing is, with Spurrier’s ‘use ALL the words’ writing and Cook’s anarchic art, us readers had to do a lot to follow pretty much anything in the series – I can barely tell you what the set-up is, beyond ‘there’s a zombie version of a colonial-era Brit who kills Gods and talks funny’. In this episode, naturally, he’s killing Gods (and associated mystical beings) that have links to Christmas. In the abstract, it’s clever and funny. On the page, it’s CLEVER and FUNNY and that gets a bit wearing, even with Cook’s otherworldly colours to augment the excesses. Still, you won’t get anything even remotely like this in any other comic EVER, and if that’s not the 2000AD punk spirit I don’t know what is.

8 out of 10

Kingdom: the Promised Land part 1 by Dan Abnett and Richard Elson

Instant icon Gene the Hackman
Art by Richard Elson

Here’s the other all-new series, and another that has stood the test of time, arguably even more than Stickleback. In direct contrast to that series, Abnett and Elson are front and centre with their main character, and basically the whole schtick of the series is laid out in episode one. I mean it’s a bit cryptic but hardly difficult to work out what’s what.

9 out of 10

Nikolai Dante: the Road of Bones by Robbie Morrison and John Burns

A New Year’s Party at a Siberian gulag – what larks! Basically this story is telling how Dante reunites with Elena Kurakin, 2000 AD’s second Mongolian sidekick character**. It also functions well as a single story to alert lapsed readers to the current status quo. I’m so used to thinking of ‘The Adventures of Nikolai Dante’ as one continuous story that I don’t give the team enough credit for making it very readable as individual stories, a lot of the time.

9 out of 10

Onto the non-thrills!
The main event is a text piece – but I’m in favour this time as it’s not a story, it’s an interview with David Bishop about the creation of Thrill Power Overload (meaning it’s a behind-the-scenes peek at the creation of the ultimate ‘behind-the-scenes’ book), and an extended extract from the book itself. Tharg is still flogging the ‘Data Byte’ dead horse, which this time around yields MACH One, of all past characters. To be fair, we get new art from John Cooper, nicely ticking the ‘new work from much-loved UK comics artist’, and the promise of Greysuits (sic), a reworking of MACH One from Pat Mills. Nice to be reminded that there was a time when the prospect of a new series of Greysuit did not raise a shudder.
The letters page is especially notable because it has a letter in it by me.
More notable is that Tharg manages to commit the sin of trailing not one, but two new series to begin in 2007 that ended up not actually running ‘til a year later! Artist troubles, what are you gonna do?

What’s NOT in the Prog?
Clearly less and less of an issue for Tharg, but I’m still missing the nostalgia angle from the first 2 or 3 specials. Basically it’s all very new. Origins being the main exception – everything else is pretty much just the latest episode of ongoing series, plus the two all-new things. Excuses could be made because that sort of thing was perhaps better left for both Prog 1500 (with its extraordinary cover image playing host to a vast number of characters old and new), and the upcoming 1526, 30^th anniversary and all. Even more, one could say that 2000AD only survives by pushing new ideas and new talent all the time – although there’s little in the way of new talent here, Si Spurrier maybe qualifies?

One last minor noteworthy thing – this is the first Xmas Prog with no boobs in it. Unless you count the metallic orbs on Nurse Ratchet in ABC Warriors. The Prog in its long history has not been afraid of the odd bit of nudity, but on this read-through I have noticed that it’s a prominent feature of the Specials, all the way back to Prog 2000…

Never mind all that. If the aim of any given Prog, even these Xmas specials, is to deliver a mix of different stories, told by creators at the top of their game, this is a VERY strong Prog.

Final scores…

Average thrill-score: 8.6 out of 10
Non-thrill score: 4 out of 5
Balance of thrills old and new: 2 out of 5
Standalone specialness score: 8 out of 10
Cover score: 9.5 out of 10

Overall overall score: 32.1 out of 60

 *The Trumpian overtones of Booth are impossible to ignore in 2021, but frankly the implied links between Booth and his lackeys to the Bush/Cheney combine was intended by 2006 John Wagner, I have no doubt.

**one day someone else besides me is going to find this funny – guess the singer needs an even bigger hit than ‘Sunflower’.

***The previous being Genghis 18

 

So, what's left? Has your favourite come up yet? Maybe it will very soon.