3 out of 5

Some really solid Dredds, a this-totally-works-as-a-one-shot-not-sure-why-it’s-continuing new strip from Kek-W, a long-running Brink gives way to the return of Azimuth for Dan Abnett, Dan also returns on a middling The Out, and Garth Ennis tries to followup on his well-received Rogue Trooper work with a very lore-heavy entry that didn’t read well to me.

Truly a mixed bag.

Starting out with Dredd, I think my issue with Williams’ Dreddverse is that… it’s too dark. It’s like he takes the legacy of the character and sucks out all the satire. It’s not the one-liner style of IDW, not by far – it is absolutely indebted to the underlying ethos of the character, and Williams knows his Dredd lore in a deeper way than the US books; but still, it’s like a grimdark version of Joe.

…That said, I think this can work given the right material (even Wagner would go grim at points), and while I have mixed feelings on his handling of Maitland overall, this zoomed in followup epilogue of sorts works because grim is the “right” reaction, and Joe’s interrogation of a perp should fit that mold. Co-written by Arthur Wyatt with Jake Lynch the perfect complement on art, this two-fer gave more needed weight to that story.

Following this: Niemand does a three part Sov riff with Hater, where he and artist Silvia Califano (new to me; some very nice, Phil Winslade weight to characters with a bit of Boo Cook roundness to figures in general and openness in the paneling – looking forward to more!) suggest how legacy hate can continue to be seeded to a generation essentially separated from it. What, I think, has made Niemand a viable contender for a suitable Wagner-esque Dredd writer is his ability to blend modern politics effectively without the overreach / obviousness of some other writers, while also full-on delivering MC-1 silliness. Hater leans more serious, and its modern (or, sigh, ongoing) parallels are there, but also completely relevant to the Dreddverse.

Finally, Michael Carroll and Ben Willsher do an unnecessarily confusing but fun Radlands romp with – yay! – Joyce returning, but – boo! – he doesn’t really get to do all that much. This essentially ends up being several one-shots linked by bookends, with Joe and Joyce traveling around and taking care of random business. It’s a very fun idea, and I dig the way Carroll just went for starting every entry cold, in the middle of the conversation (you do catch up), but if you’re not queued in to what he’s doing, it’s also confusing as heck. Having one extra panel to begin and end to sort of reestablish the frame would’ve done the trick, but wouldn’t have collected well. So this will be a good trade read.

Onward!

Nightmare in New York was intended to be the swan song for Kek and John Burns working together, and then he unfortunately passed partway through its production. David Roach steps in, giving the work his own flavor but staying rooted to Burns moodiness; the switch can be worked into the concept in a way, as this is a bloody riff on the Harry Potter child magician thing, and as our lead “discovers” her powers more, that somewhat aligns with the switch to Roach.

I do love Kek’s take on this concept, though, setting it in the slums of old NY, and making our leads all street dwellers, and the “magic” of the dark and demonic variety. At its outset, this easily could’ve been extended to another series, but then Kek gives it a full-on conclusion that makes me question where it goes from here – as its been approved for round 2. Since I tend to dig Kek’s concepts but get frustrated by (to me) unnecessarily complicated followups, I hope for the best but… y’know, I’m also skeptical.

Brink winds down its massive 20+ thrill run and, yeah, on the whole it was worth it, and it’s awesome that Dan has earned this clout, though also: was it worth it? Thinking back through this murder mystery, we have several runarounds that likely could’ve been cut, and I’m not sure it would’ve been to the story’s detriment. I will absolutely look forward to reading this collected, and 9 weeks out of 10 I was totally down with the pages of talking heads, and the bits and pieces all fit, I’m just brought to wonder: if Dan had been asked to reign this in to half the thrills, might it have been just as good?

This flips over to Azimuth, of which my opinion mostly remains the same: I love it, but I don’t feel like it matters yet. Ever since this flipped to SinDex, I feel like I’ve been waiting for some shoe to drop us back into “reality,” which has to happen eventually, and the appearance of Cass is just another delaying tactic along those same lines. But because of that sense, it’s really hard to give the story much stakes. But damn, Tazio Bettin is now one of my favorite artists / designers of all time, and Dan writes this story like it’s the coolest thing ever. It has the same kind of punchy fun as The Kingdom, just without any real forward story momentum.

…That last comment 100% shared by this latest The Out run. Here’s the thing: I don’t really like Cyd that much. But Dan started us out there, with the book functioning as an alien travelogue, and then slowly seeded in her background and larger story elements, and while I still didn’t like her, I appreciated her part within a story / world I was enjoying. But now it’s like Dan wants to go back to the travelogue stuff, and while part of the narrative is Cyd purposefully ignoring her past experiences – a very human trait – it essentially puts us back at square one with her character. Mixed with my very mixed feelings on Harrison’s art (character inconsistencies; my old eyes seeing completely illegible pages of computer and line art mushed together), I just don’t know what to do with this strip. Week by week I’m in it, or not. Some weeks, I found Cyd’s bluster as a kind of taxi service amusing, then the next week we’d wax prosaic about some teenage b.s. in a way that would’ve felt more organic if not paired with Cyd’s otherwise ignorance. And her bag has become a non-character – just kind of like a chorus – which is a bummer. I dunno. I want to feel some magic on this one again, and perhaps will revisit the trades in sequence to reinspire that.

And: Garth Ennis – ‘When a G.I. Dies.’

Folks: I have zero clue what was happening in this one. Part of that is because Garth is digging into Rogue history, but part of that is, frankly, what I would consider poor writing. I appreciate Ennis’ ability to shoehorn war into any strip he’s working on, and obviously Rogue is a very good match for that, but there’s something here about the side-blind atrocities of war that feels just plucked from a history book, then dropped into sci-fi, with lore nods patched on as cover. There are story jumps from thrill to thrill that aren’t necessary (as in: there were smoother ways to do that; there wasn’t something wholly important that required page space before or after that necessitated a jump inbetween), and while I think it’s fine to write for those-in-the-know, I also think literally any comic should be readable without context, and if it’s well written and you’re not one of those “those,” you’ll be interested enough to dig up that context. People in the forums seemed to come around on this one, but it wasn’t for me. Patrick Goddard’s art is perfect; conceptually, Garth is a great fit for Rogue. It’s just like he’s writing two separate stories – a war story and a RT story – then overlapping the dialogue and cut-and-pasting until it somewhat makes sense.