4 out of 5

New tale “The Damp Descent” – later reprinted in black and white in TPB vol. 2 – and the first two Dark Horse Presents shorts. Elizabeth Chadwick is on color duties here: “Descent” is beautiful and worth the full-size, multi-toned version if all you own is the 6″ x 9″ TPB one; DHP entry “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous” has the tang of 80s color Eclipse color, where we’re kind of forcing psychedelic poppy hues onto things just because we can, but “Under the Desert Stars” flip-flopping from desert to sea to day to night allows Elizabeth to use their additions to great effect. Overall a net positive if you own these stories elsewhere and need some more emotional nuance.

“Rich and Famous” would’ve been perfect in its original DHP context, but it’s somewhat slight in the greater Concrete world that’s been built out since. Its final page gag is a good one, though, and overall does show how Chadwick was interested in kind of tip-toeing from silly to serious and back tonally. “Desert Stars” is both a perfect short and a perfect complement to the frontispiece, as it’s a very similar setup on a much smaller scale – and that does demand some overall acknowledgment of editor Randy Stradley / publisher Mike Richardson (or, heck, maybe it was Chadwick) for putting these three stories together, as they all have a high level theme of self-deception.

Which circles back around to Damp Descent: in which Larry and Concrete follow up on rumors of an alien artefact out in New England, as reported by some fringe artists living in the forest. It’s a wonderfully varied cast, Paul masterfully telling giving us so much through their acting and choice of words (with letterer Bill Spicer forever the perfectly muted match-up for Concrete), and it’s truly a mic drop how many story gears the creator can turn in a single issue / story. Descent is excellent all the way through… though in searching for a final, profound beat Chadwick arguably forces the moment a bit. It’s smart; it makes sense; it just felt like an almost unneeded punchline that a silent drive towards the sunset could have bested.