3 out of 5

Judge Dredd – The Shift. This corner of Niemand’s Dreddverse – with Nick Percival on art, and thus tending to lean into horror – isn’t one I’m recalling too much, but there was something about this story that was really familiar, like we’d covered something similar before. I know there’s some “out there” alt-universe force to which Niemand keeps alluding, and that’s toyed with again, as Dredd chases a psi girl to a Death Judge-y nightmare dimension via a riff on ‘the elevator game,’ i.e. hit elevator buttons in a certain order – exit into some hell-adjacent realm. The story mostly works, as it’s written with balance, Joe all steely-jawed and Giant, on the other side, trying to bring him back, with doses of levity. Percival’s work nails the goopy stuff, of course, but there are conversational / dramatic beats that inevitably felt stiff in the painted style.

Full Tilt Boogie concludes, in what felt like a way bloated stretch to a kind of leftfield showdown – in the sense that the story shifted into a different kind of sci-fi than we’d been dealing with, as if writer De Campi just did a speedrun of various classic space flicks and wanted to stuff in as many subgenres as possible. Eduardo Ocana’s spacious art and slick, Moebius design style continues to look fantastic, and the story read just fine week to week, this arc just kept feeling like it was spinning its wheels to dole out a double-length fight scene.

Fiends of the Eastern Front pairs Oscar Wilde with Constanta, and puts the odd couple through some paces of encounters with various hunters, fiends, and haunted towns – an amazing travelogue. Tiernen Trevallion has found a second home after Absalom, and I love how Ian Edginton has expanded on our lead vamp’s character and history without it coming across as just a greatest hits. Like, this story maybe doesn’t really “matter,” but it feels like it does when you read it, and a big part of that is due – visually as well – to some great characterization.

Portals and Black Goo continues to not be for me. The dialogue still reads as cringe attempts at oldies sounding hip; whether by their own design or following writer John Tomlinson’s instructions, Eoin Covenay’s page layouts frustrate me (despite digging the Yeowell-slung linework), as scenes break at odd parts of the page, and dialogue pacing is herky-jerky. Storylines started to somewhat formalize as we came around to a concluding ceremony that was to usher in some Big Bad, but at the same time, if that was the intended ending point, it doesn’t justify how much wandering we did to get there. Stuff is subjective, but this strip got off to a bad start with me, and there’s been nothing to shake that.

Towards the start of this run, Hawk the Slayer concludes, and it was pretty strong up until its final part – although, thematically, I think the underwhelming nature of the ending made sense. I like Alec Worley on this script, and artist Simon Coleby absolutely gives the fantasy art a needed darker edge. …And towards the end of this run, we start to get some Nu Earth oners by various creatives. So far… these are not much, but I do look forward to the opportunity to explore the Rogue-verse beyond the lead.