4 out of 5

Okay, yeah, I’m just going to be making up groupings of issues for reviewing here on out.  This takes us right up to a three-parter starting in issue #30, so it seemed like a logical split.

Baron has settled into a nice rhythm with Badger by this point, keeping our lead mostly in his Norbert persona – with just the right blend of lucidity and nonsense – while strange justice is meted out an issue at a time.  Occasionally, Daisy or Ham (or the Yeti) show up, just to remind us that there was a plot at one point.  Previously, this randomness was annoying, but more because it seemed like we were always just about to get back on a track.  But all pretense is gone, and reading Badger as a one-and-done dose of silly is definitely satisfying.

In these issues, Badge takes on a heavy-handed martial arts school instructor; duck murderers; a cockroach tamer; an IBOB demon (hey, continuity!); and a lawyer-hatin’ musclehead.  That last foe shows up in issue #29, which also features Clonezone in a very amusing self-referential one-shot.  All of these books are entertaining, if, as forewarned, inconsequential.  The cockroach tamer is given a two-parter, which builds to an hilariously over-the-top showdown that earns its extra page run.  The IBOB / Yeti book is a bit of a lark; there are a lot of fun concepts mashed together, but that it ends on a truly Baron punchline makes it feel like he just sort of shrugged the story together.  Art-wise, Reinhold remains solid, though I’m split on how I feel when he starts inking his own work in book 26, giving Jim Sanders III a break.  We definitely get more detail – his loose shading reminds me of Phil Winslade (although adjusted for time, I should say Winslade reminds me of Reinhold…), but Sanders admittedly simplified style gave the book a lightness that really worked for some of the comedy.

Clonezone remains the backup feature.  I’m mostly entertained by it.