2 out of 5

The Megazine Dredd slots, being monthly and allowed more page space than in 2000 AD, tend to be tonally pitched rather oddly. The pacing – even though that’s standard for US books – doesn’t necessarily work with the way Joe’s tales are told when trying to serialize, and especially with weekly lore happening in the prog, while the increased pages tends to give unintended emphasis to stories that are written as one-shots. So it’s a tough sell either way. Best bet is what Ian Edginton and Paul McCaffrey do in Messiah Complex, by doing a two-parter; the rougher approach is what Niemand has been trying to do – slow roll world-building – but that can come across very forced, as in his (and Dan Cornwell’s) Lawmen of the future, which unevenly applies a funny multiverse shtick that rags on Stallone-verse Dredd and tries to backdoor it into Niemand-constructed lore. Thankfully, Niemand also has the XMas Krampus riff Coming to Town, with Paul Marshall, which nails the writer’s John Wagner-y penchant for satire plus solid storytelling. Michael Carroll + Nick Percival and Edginton + Nicolo Assirelli give us some oners which fall into more average territory, but are definitely satisfying at doing the job.

For the rest of our spots: Niemand returns to both his 70s Judge Fargo copper and One-Eyed Jack for Fargo & McBane, which plays at being just a straightforward pulpy B-movie thing, but as paired with artist Anna Readman, the visual tone makes this just really unpleasant to read. I dig Readman’s style, and I can see how the pairing made sense on paper – Anna does a kind of crunchy, zine-y, sleazy look, pushing cartoonish silhouettes towards belching and farting pseudo-realism; Fargo & McBane is leaning into late-nite movie vibes for which “sleazy” could be the overriding m.o., but visually the story is just too garish to serve the overly complex case on which our two renegade cops team up. As such, the narrative never gets going, the characters end up feeling – because they’re made to look – incompetent, and Niemand writes for Readman by giving them plenty of gross things to draw. I’m sure there were fans of this, but I wasn’t one of them.

Same can very, very much be said for what I consider one of the most obnoxious Megaverse entries I’ve read, as Ales Kot continues to build his navel-gazing soapboxes higher and higher on Devlin Waugh, working with an under utilized PJ Holden. I appreciate that comics can be a place to work things out that are happening in your personal life, but that should probably be matched to an interesting story. Devlin going on a drug trip while talking heads fill pages with text that schmaltz on about interpersonal relationships, and jesus am I too self-centered, and should I be more giving, but I can’t give if I don’t know myself, and why do we have to commit, and can’t we always live free, and on and on and on, and I didn’t enjoy reading this stuff when I was maybe going through it, and I… still don’t. Again: likely this worked for people. Kot’s Waugh started out as refreshingly oddball and crass, and I love that they’ve gotten to stick with it, but it’s turned into a rabbit hole of (at least as far as I see it) Kot vomiting his personal stresses onto the page, then backing them up into a loose story, and that’s simply not compelling to me, with this entry truly unpleasant to read. I am sorry to rag on this so hard.

Lastly, I did get a more pleasant surprise with the return of Death Cap, from T.C. Eglington and Boo Cook, as Anita Goya’s travels are really being pushed into unexpected directions. It can be pretty heavy handed at points, and it ends rather underwhelmingly, but Eglington is really putting the character through the ringer, and Cook’s style has turned out to be perfect to balance out Goya’s mutations with their bubbly pencils and fluorescent colors. I really can’t say where this is ultimately going – Anita is not being built into a hero, even a tragic one – and that is exciting.