2000 AD #457

Feb 1986 · IPC · 0.24 GBP

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“6: A Soldier's Things”

About this Issue

Prog 457 falls in the middle of The Ballad of Halo Jones Book Three, the concluding and most emotionally harrowing chapter of Alan Moore and Ian Gibson's groundbreaking serial — a strip deliberately conceived as the antithesis of the typical 2000 AD formula, built around an ordinary woman navigating a far-future galaxy rather than a gun-toting male action hero. Book Three transplants Halo into the brutal machinery of interplanetary warfare, pushing the series into territory that was genuinely unusual for a weekly British anthology comic aimed primarily at teenage boys. The issue also carries concurrent instalments of Judge Dredd, Strontium Dog, Rogue Trooper, and Sláine, making it a characteristic cross-section of what 2000 AD looked like at its mid-1980s commercial and creative peak — a period when the comic was reaching roughly 150,000 readers per week and setting the template for a generation of British writers who would go on to reshape mainstream American comics.

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writer Alan Moore · artist, inker Ian Gibson · letterer Starkings · cover Robin Smith

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History

Prog 457 was published in 1986 under IPC Magazines, which had owned 2000 AD since its 1977 launch; the following year IPC's comics division was sold to Robert Maxwell and rebranded Fleetway, making this issue part of the final full year of IPC's stewardship. The Ballad of Halo Jones Book Three came about after artist Ian Gibson — disappointed by the marginalisation of women in 2000 AD — sought out Alan Moore as a collaborator; Gibson had asked to work with Moore at an after-signing party, and Moore eventually returned with a concept built around what he described as avoiding 'guns, guys and gore.' Book Three, lettered by Richard Starkings (replacing Steve Potter from Books 1 and 2), represents the creative apex of that collaboration, though the series was already living on borrowed time: the rights dispute that would permanently halt it after this third book was looming even as these episodes were being produced.

Trivia · 8 facts

Prog 457 contains an instalment of The Ballad of Halo Jones Book Three, which ran across Progs 451–466 — the third and final completed book of the planned nine-book saga.
Book Three is written by Alan Moore and drawn by Ian Gibson, with lettering by Richard Starkings; it depicts Halo Jones as a soldier in a brutal interplanetary war, the darkest tonal register of the entire series.
The series was designed from its inception to foreground a female everywoman protagonist and to avoid the action-heavy 'guns, guys and gore' approach that defined most 2000 AD strips of the era.
Halo Jones Book Three was ultimately the last completed book; the series was permanently discontinued after a dispute between Alan Moore and Fleetway/IPC over intellectual property rights to characters Moore and Gibson had co-created.
The issue also carries ongoing instalments of Judge Dredd, Strontium Dog (featuring Johnny Alpha and Wulf Sternhammer), Rogue Trooper, and Sláine (with his dwarf companion Ukko) — representing the core of 2000 AD's mid-1980s anthology line-up.
The Judge Dredd segment involves figures from Mega-City One's judiciary including Chief Judge McGruder, Chief Judge Silver, Judge Hershey, and Psi-Judge Anderson, indicating a story with significant institutional/political weight within Dredd's world.
Prog 457 was published during 2000 AD's peak IPC-era circulation of approximately 150,000 copies per week, less than a year before IPC's comics division was sold to Robert Maxwell and rebranded as Fleetway in 1987.
The Ballad of Halo Jones has been reprinted extensively, including in The Best of 2000 AD Monthly, a Titan Complete edition (1991), Rebellion collected editions (2010, 2013, 2017 Ultimate Collection vol. 46), and a full-colour omnibus edition coloured by Barbara Nosenzo (2023).