4 out of 5

I’m kind of breaking into the middle of several stories by grouping the progs this way for review, but a lot of things are swapping in and out, and I want to be able to digest Brink and Proteus Vex – to strips I love – in a few parts, so you’ll pardon the odd reviewing cadence.

The bumper issue that starts out this set has some solid Dredd / Rogue oners, but otherwise concludes Thistlebone (definitely my most enjoyed entry in this series yet), continues Full Tilt Boogie (same) and Indigo Prime (no comment). So this being a jumping on issue as advertised is kind of not true, but it does start Proteus Vex.

Once we’re in 2376, Rob Williams and Vertigo-er R.M. Guéra (e.g. Scalped) take the Dredd spot with the 6-part “Rend & Tear with Tooth & Claw,” and this helped solidify for me why I don’t like Rob’s Dredd: despite some great plot ideas – and this is a fun one – Rob just saps most of the fun out of the strip. Not that it needs to be old-school campy Dredd, but I find the best writers (Wagner, of course, and currently Niemand – but also Collins in my book) remember the underlying commentary, and are able to blend that with varying emotional tones. But Williams’ jokes tend to be on top, with his underlying tone some rather bleak world-building. Again, this has led to some great stuff, like the recent Maitland arc, but the ultimate disconnect I feel is because of this approach. And “Rend” has that too, as it should be a really great, gritty romp of Dredd in the mountains versus a bear, and it is… but there’s no really Megacity Dredd-ness to it, except as Rob’s version of it. So this is solid, with some learning curve art from Guéra – who takes his notes from Williams, and so is maybe a little heavy – but it’s not my Joe. Grading on a curve, though, because I definitely enjoyed reading it, and I think having a standalone story from recent Williams’ lore helped me to better identify (and then isolate) what hasn’t worked for me.

As to the conclusions of Full Tilt Boogie and Indigo Prime: for the former, I think this strip has really matured from its Regened days. The initial teen royalty escort mission felt very geared for that mag; Alex de Campi an Eduardo Ocana have successfully matured it into its own sci-fi universe. The characters feel rich; the internal logic of the world feels distinct. I’m a bit mixed on de Campi as a writer, but 2000 AD has proven to be kind of a good place to maybe give her some borders that pace / structure things in a way that’s working for me. I found this run to be fun, but with a rewarding emotional component; I’d like to read this stuff collected, and look forward to more. Indigo Prime, on the other hand… While I’ve normally felt the Kek iteration of this strip has been as purposefully confused as I find most of Kek’s writing to be, a comment on a forum about Deadworld actually being pretty linear has me reassessing from that perspective: strip out the lingo and conceptual excess, and maybe the writers stories are fairly straightforward. That helped for reading Indigo Prime; unfortunately, the riffing on kind of dated celebrity stuff and the (in my opinion) wasted appearance of Tyranny Rex kind of zoned me out of this “corporate takeover of IP” tale, also leading to being rather underwhelmed by Kek’s application of multiple dimension hijinks. It felt too simple, and then the celeb stuff added a layer of tiredness. But: since I’ve never much liked IP (and appear to have bias against Kek’s writing), I think it’s only fair to say that the art was good, something happened every prog, but besides the general conceit, it didn’t seem like this moved the narrative much along, which also tends to happen with a lot of Deadworld, come to think of it.

Proteus Vex’s complex sci-fi saga remains so, so good, but I don’t think there’s much room for “if you didn’t like it, try it again!” Carroll and Lynch are just going whole hog on their world-building and the back-and-forth narrative of tracking down Vex in the present, as explained to us via a questionable narrator in the future, recounting history, while we continue to understand flesh pilots, and alliances shift back and forth, and so on. I can’t get enough of this. It’s so dense and violent and smart and lovely. But again: this is either your bag or isn’t. I don’t find this to be a casual read, although you could probably just coast on the crazy visuals. And if you bounced off of it, I wouldn’t expect this run to bring you back in.

Brink, meanwhile, is always inviting of new readers, and this outing – with Bridget and a team of investigators on their way to elsewhere, stopping off at a midway point for downtime during which, inevitably, Kurtis starts to find Sect clues – is a nice little encapsulated story with enough lore notes to be perfect for all of us. Culbard is especially well-suited to the close quarters stuff, and Abnett, having earned his audience, does not fear giving us talking heads for pages – and the text is just that good that it’s as exciting as a battle sequence or whatnot might be. Even though this run is especially dialogue heavy, I think the world-building and Sect intrigue is totally enough to invite the uninitiated along for the ride.

And: contained wholly within these progs – nearing the conclusion of Aquila, with Rennie and Patrick Goddard bringing the titular slayer to the end of his quest in Hell with Nero. There are some absolutely brilliant subversions in here, while giving us plenty of the requisite gore. Those subversions are evidence of Rennie’s writing strengths, where characters are not just roped along plotlines, but start to behave and react accordingly, and our vengeance seeking warrior has truly begun to tire of his task. Instead of making this the plot du jour, though, it’s more that it informs the story that’s in motion – so we have momentum, and also rewarding character growth. I’ll be sad when this finally concludes (I think with the next part), but it should deservedly be considered one of 2000 AD’s better and most complete tales once it’s all wrapped up.