Silver, 2000 AD’s Fierce Post-Apocalyptic Vampire Vs. Aliens Saga, Returns

Silver, one of 2000 AD’s most exciting new series of 2024, is returning to the weekly comics megazine for its second chapter. Silver is back in next week’s 2000 AD Prog 2427, releasing April 9th, and will continue following the story of Baroness DeSilva, a powerful vampire awoken from decades of slumber to discover that Earth has fallen and is under occupation by invading aliens with advanced technology called the Sepsis. The story comes from writer Mike Carroll (Proteus Vex, Dreadnoughts), while artist Joe Currie (Cadet Dredd) draws the series with a vicious flair. For those who missed Silver’s excellent debut chapter, here’s Carroll explaining the premise in his words:

“In 1969, the invaders came. Powerful, inscrutable, utterly ruthless, the alien Sepsis devastated the Earth’s armies, wiping out entire nations, killing billions of people. Aided by a handful of collaborators, they enslaved the survivors. But there were also those who resisted the invaders, who fought back whenever they could, and over the course of three decades of sabotage and guerrilla warfare, they accomplished… almost nothing. And then the leader of a British resistance cell, desperate for a victory, dispatched a team to recruit Baroness Yelena Honorée DeSilva. She is five hundred years old, immensely strong and fast, and she’s even more cunning, ruthless, and blood-thirsty than the Sepsis, and she has only one known weakness: she has an extreme allergy to sunlight.”

Baroness DeSilva is a captivating character, and Silver is a potent blend of the sci-fi, horror, and post-apocalyptic genres. However, as Caroll explains, the impetus for the story is rooted in Currie’s distinctive visual style.

“Silver is one of those strips that couldn’t have come about if not for the artist,” he says. “When The Mighty One asked me to come up with a story for Joe Currie to draw, my instincts told me that it should be strange, dark, action-packed, gritty… Joe’s an amazing artist who has a powerful, visceral, intense style we’ve rarely seen before in the pages of 2000 AD. Maybe if you mashed Carl Critchlow’s art into John Hicklenton’s and then turned it upside-out and inside-down and went off at ninety degrees… He can draw the most ugly characters in horrible situations in such a way that it becomes mesmerizingly beautiful.”

Silver returns to 2000 AD in Prog 2427, releasing on Wednesday, April 9th, one of four new first chapters in the issue. Judge Dredd is also beginning a new tale, “The Truth Bomber,” and Chimpsky (seen on the cover, above) returns to the megazine in “The Truth Conundrum.” There’s a new tale of The Fall of Deadworld, “Blow by Blow,” and tales from the universe of Rogue Trooper in the Nu Earth Tales story “Dome.” Plus, another chapter of the Portals & Black Goo story, “A Quorom of Fiends.”