3 out of 5

A brief post-Maitland sojourn, some solid continuations, The Out ends its current run… and Portals and Black Goo.

Let me get Portals out of the way first: this pitch of a food delivery driver for vampires and werewolves and etc – and thus the “food” might be blood or whatnot – is a quirky one, but it is absolutely suffering from dated slang from writer John Tomlinson, as well as a completely mind-numbing sense of storytelling. Tomlinson is hopping across several tales – delivery driver Kroy’s discovery of abuses of the Devouroo system; a vampire trying to go straight; some kind of forthcoming psychic / cosmic war; a zombie who keeps getting urged to do bad things by a ghost – and individually some of these get purchase, but they’re presented with zero sense of flow from one to the next. It makes it really hard to get a bead on what we’re doing. Artwise, whereas Eoin Coveney’s first outing felt a little undefined – energetic but wandering, trying to perhaps make sense of Tomlinson’s scripting – there’s a much stronger sense of character / visual identity this go-round. Maybe once I see where this ends, I’ll reread it and get a better feel for it.

Next, getting the underwhelming stuff out of the way: The Out. I pretty much groused all I can about this in the last batch of reviews, and all of that applies here. The last couple arcs have felt like Abnett struggling to find direction – the book started as a travelouge, then got serious, and figuring out how to scoot it back to casual travelouge is the chore – and we kind of had that at the start here, with Cyd faking herself as part of a gang of rogues, and taking on related “missions,” but that was all a distraction for emotional stuff, yadda yadda, and then some last minute twists wholly reset the clock in wholly unsatisfying ways. A character I swear we don’t care about returns, and I think we’re supposed to care. This is a rare misfire from the prodigious Abnett; again, it reads like the book got away from him a bit. Again with positives coming from the art side, though, the last few entries found a really solid middleground between Mark Harrison’s pencils and the digital stuff; the balance is there so the pages finally – to my eyes – read well, and capture the proper sense of oddness or awe that the digital stuff is intended to better allow for.

In the Dredd spot, Arthur Wyatt and Rob Williams and artist Jake Lynch add another Maitland postscript, furthering details on discontent amongst the judges and Dredd’s role amongst them, and how Maitland’s legacy is being used on the streets. A recent 2000 AD podcast suggested Williams as the proper Wagner throne inheritor; frankly: no. Or rather, only if Wagner had only written America. While I think this story fares well, it’s mainly because it’s interstitial. The social commentary on media manipulation is lowkey; Arthur and Rob aren’t trying to change the world. But when the stakes get bigger, these stories feel forced to make points, and irrevocably change the MC1 with Marvel / DCish “nothing will ever be the same!” vibes, whereas Wags’ skill was / is in writing stories that prove to be major, but you’ve no idea while you’re in the midst of them – it’s all very organic.

Anyway, a side complaint. After this, we get a solid oner from, to me, a preferred Dredd writer – Michael Carroll – with amusing bit with a dog assisting Joe, illustrated by Nicolo Assirelli.

Okay! Elsewhere: Fiends of the Eastern Front is off on a solid run, with Tiernen Trevallion’s color work proving to be quite a perfect match for Ian Edginton’s story of Oscar Wilde assisting Constanta. It’s an amusing odd couple-ish setup with the added tension of one member of the couple being, y’know, a murderer.

Lastly,Hawk the Slayer is thus far quite great when penned by Alec Worley, with Simon Coleby’s art another great pairing – his “mushiness” is a good choice for dark fantasy. Thus far, Hawk is visiting a city being disruptively led by its spirit-tainted priestess, and Hawk is ready to jump in and do some sword swinging.