Welcome back to 2026AD, where I write about every issue 2000AD released in 2026. This week, Prog 2466!
Judge Dredd: Death of a Judge
- Annie Parkhouse (Letterer)
- Chris Blythe (Colourer)
- John Wagner (Writer)
- Mike Perkins (Artist)
Mike Perkins and Chris Blythe drop painful, bruised daylight across this issue as Dredd is taken off the board in more ways than one. I really liked the play with the decoy to draw an assassin out. Obvious but sensible, which defines a lot of good detective fiction, and this is good detective fiction. Someone wants Dredd dead, possibly over the Mechanismo units and he’s back on the job, barely healed after an explosion that should have killed him. God, you can almost hear Karl Urban growl can’t you? Fun, confident storytelling and this is my first introduction to Ronald, one of the still active Mechanismo units and Dredd’s new Watson. He’s fun! Looking forward to where this one goes.
Herne & Shuck: Power Trip
- Annie Parkhouse (Letterer)
- Gary Caldwell (Colourer)
- David Barnett (Writer)
- Lee Milmore (Artist)
A fun ‘meanwhile, back at the ranch’ gives us some enjoyable time with Shuck, the revelation he calls Beth ‘Zombeth’ and a nicely handled moment of horror. Herne meanwhile gets a lift from Brigantia to the next god, Cernunnos, who demands he hunt a deer to prove his worth. What he does, and what that says about him, is one of the things Barnett excels at; humanity in the face of the uncanny, and compassion in the face of terror. This is rapidly becoming a favourite, and Lee Milmore’s art is especially fantastic.
Tharg’s Future Shocks: The State of Nostalgia
- Simon Bowland (Letterer)
- Steve Roberts (Artist)
- Ned Hartley (Writer)
Sana has moved to a new town, needs a new job but keeps running into Nostalgia, as a commodity, a retail force and something far more sinister…Ned Hartley takes the Future Shock and turns it upside down in a story that gets meta twice, and takes the tired old ‘everything is nostalgia’ now non-argument to a logical and terrifying extreme. I love the reveals here, and I especially love that it has the courage to end uncertainly. Roberts’ art is fantastic too, nervy and friendly all at once and Bowland has enormous fun with all the way what’s going is communicated. A real standout of the issue.
Azimuth: Cornered
- Dan Abnett (Writer)
- Matt Soffe (Colourer)
- Rob Steen (Letterer)
- Tazio Bettin (Artist)
The Minotaur finds its fugitives. This is a weird one, because it initially reads like the plan that was hinted at last issue isn’t where they went. But read it again, and you’ve got a surprisingly dark strategic move as Anderson’s burned out powers become a means of survival. There’s a great visual gag here where the minotaur perceives multiple versions of her from various times in her life (And Anderson has been THROUGH IT. One of them is even the possible future where she was the herald of Satan. Seriously.). It’s a fun, if slightly anti-climactic ending that sets up a future plot for her and finishes with our characters walking to the next volume. Fun though and I’m looking forward to that next volume.
The Discarded
- Peter Milligan (Writer)
- Simon Bowland (Letterer)
- Jim Boswell (Colourer)
- Kieran McKeown (Artist)
Veera has been captured by the Cyber Prophet, a cult leader on the prison island of Junkfall. This one’s starting to go off the boil for me. The fairly grounded and fun first couple of episodes have given way to a sentient android priest, a cyborg priest yelling ‘THE DIVINE FART WILL CLEANSE YOU!’ and an incredibly clunky set up for Veera to fight Rusta, a dissident convict who hates cops. There’s a beat that suggests Veera’s effectively indoctrinated by her job that’s really interesting, but it plays in a way that also strongly suggests she’s an idiot. The art’s great, but the story seems to be shifting tone in a manner I’m not enjoying. Still, we’ll see where it goes.
And that’s it for Prog 2466! See you next time.