3 out of 5

A long run of progs that offers a lot of promising newness and returns – Helium! A new Milligan / Dayglo joint! Feral & Foe! – but hits a downward trend of churn in the back half of the run. That said, while I’ll remark below where I felt like some things were of questionable quality in whatever ways, the energy of the progs was consistent; the churn is more regarding the content of the stories, while the presentation remained positive. Would I read collected versions of some of these thrills? Heck no. And I’m glad some have concluded. But week to week it was always an enjoyable read.

Some churn up front in the Dredd slot: Poison is the ending ending to Williams’ Hershey saga, closing up the thread of the Who, How, and Why of the judge’s poisoning. Now, on the one hand: PJ Holden on art and Pete Doherty on colors – yes please. But, I dunno, Williams tends to wax on and on with his stories, only to rush an ending, and this felt in line with that both on the macro – Hershey’s tale has had quite a code – and micro, as this should be a hopefully satisfying (or purposefully unsatisfying) followup, but it never quite succeeded in feeling especially necessary. Thankfully, this thrill gives way to another Niemand entry in the electro sentience tales – where the judge hating mind keeps jumping from problematic host to host – and while this is beating the same dead horse over and over, Kenneth and Nick Dyer know to keep it short, at a couple entries. It’s funny, and keeps the door open a lil’, just in case we want to revisit. Thus follows the Xmas prog – another great Niemand tale – a solid Collins oner, and then we step into Arthur Wyatt (joined by Williams) and Henry Flint continuing Maitland’s democratic reform experiments. You know this is going to fail; I’m hopeful that Wyatt can effect that in a particularly Dreddy way, and not just make it a right wing / left wing riff.

Okay! Feral and Foe – I’m half in, half out on this. I firstly love how much fun Abnett is having with this, and how Elson is getting to just go wild with comedy and action, but the D&D riffing starts to get a bit too on the nose, and this is one of those churn tales: it’s super fun to read in a way, but it’s an extended dungeon quest that kind of just keeps putting the team in different rooms with a different monster to slay. The story oddly doesn’t have much drive, while still being entertaining. I think F&F has had this problem from the start, honestly, but the tone was a bit more vague in the first couple arcs – there was room for it to feel both serious and silly – and while it’s nice to have the voice sharpened, that also makes it more of a straight comedy, and one that’s probably more rewarding if you’re big into D&D, which I am not.

Helium: Wow, glad to see this back. I’m iffy on Edginton overall, but I like the world of Helium, and perhaps the infrequent appearances help with its novelty. ‘Scorched Earth’ is a well-paced chase that, unlike the somewhat pointless scuffles of Feral, gives meaning to each cat and mouse feint, building towards some solid politicking and world-building in the story’s later entries.

The Fall of Deadworld – Dave Kendall’s growth on this title has been the best part, turning sludgy painted work into something that really has some life and movement to it, while also certainly perfectly matched to the book’s tone. As far as the story itself, eh… okay? There’s a lot of goopy gooky monsters in this one, and that’s kind of cool, but I’m not alone, according to the forums, in being pretty lost as far as what’s happening. In my mind, this is a title that should only have worked in a limited format, but it’s too “cool” to let go, so Kek keeps going. It’s never really worked for me either way (I’m admittedly not a fan of Kek’s, as their writing, to me, tends to start with some strong ideas and then… go quite astray), but at this point, it reads like something thriving on visuals the writer dreams up for the artist to make look badass, and that formula has apparently been working. Thus, more churn, but with neat art.

Enemy Earth: Cavan Scott and Luke Horsman. I’m… really surprised this has made it this far. I like Horsman, but not on this title; I think Scott is a solid writer, but not an especially complex one. So in trying to weave a tale of an invasive plant species taking over the world, combined with an artist who’s not really suited for large scale action – Horsman’s loose, expressive style is just not detailed and focused enough to either clarify what’s happening or compress enough into each panel – Scott’s reliance on a lot of tropes and the often confusing visuals just don’t click. I keep being surprised by how brutal the story is (or wants to be), and I doubt that’s a desired effect. Unfortunately, these trends keep getting worse with each arc – more tropes, more visual confusion – and I look forward to seeing these solid creators repurposed on thrills better suited to their skills.

A new Thistlebone starts up towards the end of this set – not much to say yet, but I’m digging how we can just kind of start in the middle of things, with the understanding that shit’s fucked up, and Simon Davis can now just illustrate fucked up shit. Previously, there was a lot of lore to sift through; now we’re ready to run from part 1.

I’ve saved Milligan’s / Dayglo’s Devil’s Railroad for last. I don’t want to rag on this too much. Dayglo’s art is a wild blend of Hewlett and McCarthy, and while I kind of feel like that blend is almost too much – like there’s some more degrees of development until it feels more exclusively like Rufus’ own thing – I also can’t deny the pages are pretty glorious to look at. Pete… Pete purposefully writes cheese. I do get that. His preference for puffy poetry makes him write flowery dialogue, and he has fun countering that with occasional crassness. But this felt so work for hire, with Milligan trying to maybe channel some thoughts about parenthood (and immigration politics; perhaps abortion politics…?) into a tale of two poor aliens trying to hustle their unborn child from a bad planet to a good planet, and getting viciously separated along the way – totally valid – only for the no characters to wind up interesting or sympathetic, no villain more no a cutout of overkill diehard nonsense, and no piece of dialogue something more heartfelt than a soap opera line reading. There’s an “it was all a dream” fakeout early on that kind of ruined this for me, and it was the trophy holder of churn thereafter. As with some other writers I’ve mentioned, I know Milligan isn’t a fave of mine, but this still felt like a particularly poor showing.