3 out of 5

Mostly a clearing of the deck for the next bumper.

In the Dredd spot, we get a perfect oner from Ken Niemand, well-matched to Rob Richardson on art – Niemand is quite skilled at maintaining the Dreddverse vibe while able to dive into more street-level tales, and ‘The Finder of Lost Things,’ feature a low-level psi, is another great example of that. Following, we have the five part Rob Williams ‘Climate Crisis,’ which is kind of typical of Rob’s teeth-gritted storytelling, but I appreciate that he keeps the focus narrow here to a heist on weather control, and gives P.J. Holden reasons to go mean on art. Standard but exciting fare.

Herne & Shuck concludes; David Barnett had good structure for this outing, putting Herne through a thrill-by-thrill test of skills, and Lee Milmore’s art has gotten continually more dynamic along the way. Some worthwhile narrative pieces chug in the background, but also serve as a reminder of how much of a stall this arc actually is, wholly solidified by a kind of underwhelming backpedaled conclusion.

Judge Dee “concludes,” or rather, gets interrupted and is-to-return. This strip… is an over-plotted mess. A psi with a demon running mental side-saddle is a good pitch, but the character could use more foundation before basing some of the strip around her demon being discovered by others. Ben Wheatley otherwise gives in to cinematic stylization in the storytelling, jumping around too much to make any of the stakes land. Simon Coleby is a good choice for the tone, and I think there’s stuff to explore here, but this is a rough first outing, especially to have the story put on pause for whatever reason.

Milligan’s The Discarded concludes, but this one also never got off the ground. No new complaints here; it’s like Pete had one central idea – a “smart” computer, maybe playing on AI fears, helping the underclass to rise up on a prison planet – and then totally forgot what he was writing about, and wanted to let artist Kieran McKeown show off his sexy leading lady doing sexy leading lady stuff in a really clunky sci-fi pulp riff. Clumsily written (as per my bias – that’s how I find most of Milligan; he just used to pair it with more surreal concepts as a balance), and wholly unfocused.

Liam Johnson and Steve Austin offer a confusingly toned 3riller featuring secret agent Adrian Apollo; this one strikes a weird middleground of reading like a pitch for an ongoing, but also not committed to establishing anything outside of the 3riller, making it feel partially like an intro and partially a standalone. It’s not bad, but slots alongside some of these other entries as feeling rather wayward.

Brink to the rescue. After an interesting but indulgently talky previous arc, Abnett and Culbard kick off The Call of the Void, which feels kind of like a back-to-basics, but with the comfort of having established the Sect, and Bridget with the experience of having going through some shit. We have a small crew of recurring cast members, and great use of overlapping narrators to keep us guessing as to where this arc is gonna go.

Sprinkled with some acceptable Future Shocks and other oners, giving occasional extra space to Brink and kicking off with very readable Dredds helps buoy this run immensely.