4 out of 5

General awesome quality.  Nothing really mind-blowing at this point, but great starts to Absalom and new thrill Helium.

In 1933, Wagner concludes Judge Dredd’s ‘Breaking Bud’ – illustrated by Richard Elson, and Strontium Dog’s ‘The Stix Fix’ – with Ezquerra.  In typical Wagner fashion, the last chapter is always a sort of slate cleaner, quickly shooting up the baddies and dangling any necessary potential future details before us in the last panel.  ‘Bud’ was a fun little followup to the time wristbands that I believe appeared in the Megazine, though the story reroutes from focusing on Bud to let JD deal with some Time Cops.  Excellent art from Elson, and an effective tying up of loose ends.  ‘Stix’ has Johnny Alpha tying up his own loose ends with bullets and explosions; it’s a little underwhelming given the journey it took to get here, but such is the Wagner way, and it leaves room – of course – for future Stront stuff.  In the same prog we also get the conclusion to Eddie Robson’s Tharg 3riller, ‘Commercial Break’ and a Future Shock from ING Culbard.  The Shock is interesting but almost way too compressed; similarly, Robson had some huge awesome ideas that he packed into the first two parts of his tale, leaving the third part with the unfortunate task of concluding things way too hastily.  Three parters are tuff.

Starting in 1934, we get a new Dredd bit by Michael Carroll and Colin MacNeil.  MacNeil’s art is simply amazing: its visual simplicity, almost cartoonish, disguises how skilled Colin is at layout and motion.  He also has the gift of maintaining the line wherepast things become too cartoonish; although it’s got a Saturday Morning feel, it still absolutely functions as the Judge Dredd world.  Carroll’s story, ‘Blood of Emeralds,’ sets up the first few chapters of an interesting mystery that’s got some Irish stuff goin’ on with a character named ‘Fintan Joyce.’  Hm.

A new Absalom tale starts, with curmudgeonly Harry investigating some demon stabbings.  I’ve only experienced bits and pieces of Absalom before, and I didn’t get the tone.  But Rennie really grabbed me right away with ‘Under A False Flag.’  Paired with the expressive B&W art of Tiernen Trevallion, I found myself absolutely loving this completely unlikeable old man, the bumbling detective type who actually always knows what he’s doing, and I look forward to future installments.

Pat Mills concludes his recent Slaine book with Slaine finally facing off against the Primordial, a constructed being who’s supposedly Slaine’s equal-if-not-better.  Slaine’s always a bit too fanciful and dumb for me, but the last few chapters are pretty action based, with plenty of wildly weird painted art from Simon Davis, so the thrills past the time easily enough.

T.C. Eglington and Karl Richardson start another ‘Outlier’ story.  Having not read this before, I’m not too clear on the setting, and it’s sincerely hard to make a judgment at this point.  The installments were certainly readable and not boring, but they don’t offer much context to say yea or nay yet.

Lastly, Ian Edginton and D’Israeli team up again for Helium, a new creation about a future Earth where we exist at mountain peak level, above a poisonous gas cloud – a remnant of a war – that coats the surface.  But lately, things have been disappearing beneath that cloud, and now we’re getting visitors…  I’m up and down on Edginton but this was a really great setup, graspable immediately and yet presented in a fresh fashion.  Our lead character is likeable, and the world-building is well balanced.  And D’Israeli’s control of his art and the brilliant colors used just blew me away; I was admittedly supposing he’d be stuck on a stylized kick because of Stickleback, but that’s my ignoring the variation in his body of work.  Like ‘The Order’ from some progs back, this is an exciting entry into the 2000 AD world, and it’s always super cool to see this stuff starting out.