3 out of 5

Took a while to find its footing.

There are some important things that happen in this batch of Megs – the big ol’ Michael Carroll Joyce-ian JD crossover with the progs; Lawless just getting better and better; another tentatively linked Dreddworld tale but with a wonderfully fresh feel to it thanks to artist Boo Cook; and the “this Meg ain’t for kids” overkill of Realm of the Damned.

But some of these are just sort of conceptually big deals, taking a while to get going, while some filler like the Dredd movie-verse tale ‘Dust’ and Demarco, P.I. in the black and white slot feeling like a hell of a lot of padding.

To start, Carroll and Nick Percival close out the painted mutant-hunt ‘The Gyre,’ and it’s sort of similar to Carroll’s Demarco tale in the sense that it doesn’t accomplish much – it’s a get-in get-out story – and both live or die based on their art.  With Percival, the mutants look all goopy good in the painted style, and the environment of the strip – taking place upon ships during an ongoing storm – is spot-on, but like most painted art, the action is stiff as hell, and the humans drift into that uncanny valley territory.  So the strip, to me, never really settles in.  But it’s over soon, for Dust to Dust, the Dredd-is-dead Tex-Cit takeover tie-in to 2000 AD, with Dust filling in some background on TC’s plans.  Henry Flint’s harsh art is well-suited to the Cursed Earth setting, but this part of the story just isn’t near as gripping as the going ons in MC1, and only feel consequential after they’ve occurred and you understand their place in the overall story.  Still, the crossover was super cool, and did offer some “event” excitement.

Realm of the Damned comes bursting out of the gate with eye-rolling excessive gore, provided by artist Pye Parr, and high-school level swearing, provided by Alec Worley.  The vampire-hunting mash-up feels overwrought with gothness and whatnot, but once Parr and Worley kick down the standards, the story – flip-flopping the Van Helsing concept a bit – starts to take off, and it admittedly becomes a lot of fun.  There is that initial shlock shock, though, which can make it hard to see when the tale turns out to be pretty smart and fun.

Blunt: A remote MC1 outpost; pastel-hued Boo Cook art; something something rag-tag team must investigate.  T.C. Eglington gives his story a very laid back vibe, and Cook blows us away with the world and characters he creates.  It obviously lacks the jaw-dropping approach of Realm, but the roundabout storytelling is similar; you get the general gist, but it takes several issues before you get a feel for the pacing and nature of the characters.

B&W slot is initially held by Demarco, P.I., with lazy-seeming Yeowell art in line with what he did on Black Shuck and thus completely unremarkable to read, not helped by a vague plot by Carroll about killer cyborgs.  Thankfully this is only a few parts so we can get back to the evolving genius of Lawless.  Gushing about this Dreddworld Western is old hat by this point, but Abnett and Winslade have built their world and principles more fully in a fairly short amount of time than a lot of creators can manage over years, making the build-up to a showdown between Lawless and the big-bads in her town wonderfully tense.

So lots of things to talk about, but the stories themselves are either filler or take some time to hit their stride.