It’s the end of the year and so as is customary, 2000AD have just published their bumper end of year edition, Prog 2013. Clocking in at 112 pages, it’s a package of variable quality but with enough decent material to attract the discerning reader. It kicks off with Violent Night, the obligatory Judge Dredd Christmas story, written by Michael Carroll and drawn by Ben Wilsher, where old stoneface comes up against gangster Lex Vex. It’s fun in a throwaway fashion and Wilsher has a nice loose line to his work. Next up is a self-contained Absalom story, written by Gordon Rennie and drawn by Tiernen Trevallion, who is bound to be snapped up by the Americans before too long. Absalom and his team encounter a particularly nasty creature by the English seaside and Rennie displays a nice line in casual menace. Trevallion is a very talented artist indeed, echoing Kev Walker and Frazer Irving in his elegant art. Absalom is one of the highlights here. Savage by Pat Mills and Patrick Goddard, set in an alternate England of 2010, feels a little bit dated in 2012 but the character was in 2000AD way back at its start, so there’s a nice feeling of tipping its hat to its early readers by including it and Mills is nearly always good value.
After Savage is Ampney Crucis, a strip which first saw light in 2000AD back in 2008 and deals with an Edwardian detective stuck in an England that is not his own. Simon Davis is a great artist and it’s nice to see him matched with a writer of the calibre of Ian Edgington, who never seems to quite get the accolades he deserves. Kicking off a new story, The Entropy Tango, Ampney Crucis is a welcome addition here. Ack-Ack Macaque is a strip that previews a forthcoming Abaddon book by Gareth L Powell and feels a little bit flimsy. Back to Ian Edgington again and the start of a new Red Seas adventure, Fire Across The Deep, drawn by his regular artist on the series, Steve Yeowell. A fun, bawdy romp, Edgington manages to distill everything you need for an entertaining pirate tale and Yeowell provides classic comic art to proceedings.
Aquila, by Gordon Rennie and Leigh Gallagher, is a strip that is a remade version of Blackhawk, which ran in short-lived anthology Tornado back in the late seventies. It’s a story featuring a black slave in Roman times but Rennie includes some fantastical elements. It does have that British boy’s own adventure feel to it, which is not a bad thing and variety is what has always made 2000AD such a unique beast. Gallagher is a very accomplished artist and works well with Rennie here and the colouring is particularly noteworthy here. Pat Mills is back for The Visible Man, a crazy slice of modern sci fi drawn by the severely underrated Henry Flint, who is doing some of the best work of his career here. The issue wraps up with Strontium Dog, by John Wagner and Carlos Ezquerra, old school thrills which is marred by some particularly horrible colouring. The issue is peppered with a series of behind the scenes pages, so we can see how the strips develop from pencils and inks to colour, which is a very interesting bonus.
So Prog 2013 is a mixed bag but with some exceptional contemporary comic strips. It is staggering to think that, 35 years after it first appeared, 2000AD still has something different to offer discerning comic readers…
Prog 2013 cover
Tags: 100 pager, 2000AD, Christmas issue