3 out of 5

These are all pretty good stories, for the most part, we’re just taking a slow-burn approach for these progs.

Blood of Emeralds concludes.  Colin MacNeil’s simple cartoonish style and Chris Blythe’s moody colors end up making for an awesome Dredd team, Colin’s take on the world big and blocky and heavy and expertly paneled to keep the pages in motion.  Michael Carroll’s script moves a little fast for five parts, swimming through a government conspiracy and a trip to the Irish Emerald Isle and trying to work us through Judge Fintan’s family history.  The change of atmosphere is great, and Fintan is a fun character, but it’s a bit too much of a combination of story and origin to flow, and so both sides come up a bit short.

Replacing this JD strip is Rob Williams and Henry Flint returning to Enceladus business with Old Life.  It’s a spooky “ghosts from the past” setup, Flint’s art dirty gorgeous as usual, and Williams really ratchets up the intrigue for these two initial entries, leaving us on a killer cliffhanger for part two.

Absalom chugs along, but slows down after some exciting demon-slayin’ business to sort of explain more about what’s going on.  Which is plenty interesting, just a complete tonal shift.  However, prog 1941 puts us in a primo spot for things to conclude (and features a great partially colored cover from Absalom artist Tiernan Trevallion), so I’m confident Rennie will wrap things up with gusto.

Helium starts to bring me back around on my shoulder-shrug feelings regarding Edginton.  What felt like wonderful world-building at first has quickly turned into an extended chase for several progs in a row, good guys and bad guys rather cleanly aligning.  D’Israeli’s art and the wonderfully bright colors definitely make the strip visually intriguing, and it’s still the basis for a pretty cool world, but it would’ve been nice if Edginton had taken a slower route to get us to all-out war between his characters.

Outlier remains the bumpiest of the recent thrills, with Carcer coming face-to-face with the frightening Caul, but nothing much besides talking heads – sorry, talking, 90s-Image beefcakes, as drawn by Karl Richardson – goes on.  The developments between Carcer and Caul are interesting, the strip just doesn’t come bundled with the “I’d like to know more” vibe that a lot of 2000 AD strips are fortunate enough to offer.  Still, like Absalom, T.C. Eglington is just putting pieces into place, and it’s possible will get a worthwhile ending.

And then one of Rennie’s best – Jaegir, a mixture of his joy for artistic thrash, with Simon Coleby’s and colorist Len O’Grady’s dark, wizened characters – and his brooding narratives, Attalia’s inner monologue’s swaying between bad memories and reflections on this dreadful world’s war crimes she’s tasked with investigating.  In Tartarus, her crew visits the titular world to conduct some undercover snooping.  Rennie effectively chops up the timeline to milk the most out of little moments and, again, though things are moving somewhat slow, part five drops us at an exciting turning point.