3 out of 5

Okay, Niemand takeover, which should be amazing, but if the slow lead-in to The Oubliette Meg / Prog crossover has made some of Kenneth’s Dredd tales occasionally feel… not underwhelming, but just, like, constantly in a state of buildup, such that once you spotted the pieces, you could tell when an interesting story was inevitably just going to end on a “coming soon…” kind of beat – if the lead-in has had that vibe, the final appearance of the story can maybe not help but feel distracted, as Kenneth is spreading it over several tied-in ongoings. I’m not sure exactly what the solve is, as the world-spanning stuff is theoretically super fun – and will be amazing, once collected – but in practice it ends up just making all the side stories have a kind of filler effect.

But here we are, and that does partially hang over the rating, though not everything is Oubliette, with the final Department K story maybe the worst mark on this run (sorry!), and Megtropolis in its own world but also I think “suffering” from Niemand being in world-building mode overall, and its narrative feels wayward. It also will read awesome in collected form, I’m sure.

In the Dredd spot: Niemand firstly closes out an Old Joe 2-parter… which is perfect. This is non Oubliette stuff, but it’s maybe what I wished was being done with all the lead-ins, as Old Joe does take part in the crossover, and this actually is setup, but just in the sense that it keeps Joe in circulation so it’s not a surprise when he’s available for the series. Lovely Lynch art. Geoffrey D. Wessel and Boo Cook pop-in for an overly complicated oner (love Boo on Dredd, but I find this has been true of a lot of Geoffrey’s writing so far – simple stories that are a bit overwrought in the telling, and Boo maybe doesn’t do much to clean up the storytelling, unfortunately); followed by Karl Stock and DanMcDaid on a less-complicated oner that has a nice fakeout and again underlines that Stock is kind of the king of these get-in get-out tales. Finally, we’re on to legit Oubliette material, focused on Rico, and arted by Nick Percival. Now, conceptually, I think this is smart – Dredd is in another (dimension), which has caused the Meg to forget about his existence, so Rico now is the de facto Dredd, and he’s called in to investigate the sudden appearance of a giant tower in the Meg. With Percival on art, the tower brings with it a lot of zombie creepy crawlies, and yeah, he does that well, but the painted style still isn’t great for the big scale action the story necessitates. Jumping between a weekly and a monthly for one story is tough, so again, I think if the Prog is doing Dredd inside the tower and the Meg is Rico outside the tower – I get it! It still can’t help but feel a little stalled storytelling-wise, which isn’t helped by Percival’s art lending itself to “stalling”, in the sense that it’s pinups over art-in-motion.

Department K: Ned Hartley tries to close this out with some evil-entity dimensional shenanigans that add some good stakes to things (and kind of juggles leaving the door partially open just in case someone wants to pick up the interdimensional Tek-Div division again), but this still reads like a Regened story minused the kid-geared fantasy – i.e. simplified character archetypes; a very basic good versus evil story that can’t quite grapple with the moral grayness it incorporates – and Mike Walters’ art feels rushed, limiting backgrounds and Walters either not having time to figure out how to scale for kaiju-like battles or maybe just not being the right match for it. This was sort of a drag to read.

Atomfall continues to be a really surprising addition to the Meg, given its video game origins. Which doesn’t mean the game’s plot is bad, but I’ve rarely – rarely – read good game-to-comic adaptations, regardless of the source material’s quality. Here, the weirdness is palpable and consistent – no shark jumping, even when some Lovecraftian elements reveal themselves – and the sense of danger as Jenny and some locals relocate to an island that proves to have some violent occupants truly makes every entry have a “what will happen next?” excitement.

Wagner’s / Dan Cornwell’s (final?) Rok series – Rok the World – is the best one yet, as John is unafraid to keep pushing what felt like such a basic concept on to some inevitable complications, as Rok is tasked with weighing in on ultimate judgment of Earth, now that he’s drawn his race’s attention to it. Most writers would have taken the undercover-alien premise of the series’ start and, given audience interest, iterated on that with continual, but repeated, threats to “expose” the alien. Instead, John keeps knocking down those simple outs, and has upped the stakes with each and every book. And then the bastards paused the series in the middle, just to keep us hooked! We are.

Fargo & McBane fight a vampire. PJ Holden’s art is a fantastic match; you might be asking why the tone of this feels a little off and doesn’t quite sync with the street-level vibes of previous F&M. …Because it’s an Oubliette tie-in, sorry. This is where I was feeling especially burned by this approach, if it’s not clear.

Lastly, Megatropolis, which I’ve essentially already commented on: bringing in PJ Maybe’s Megat proxy is super interesting, and Niemand continues to jump through and twist Meg lore, but this starts to feel so in the weeds – and kind of far away from the initial pitch of the Dredd robot – that it’s hard to piece together if this is just nostalgia tickling coolness, wholly it’s own thing, or is gonna somehow end up being tied into Oubliette, har de har. I’m enjoying this, but I can’t tell you I understand exactly what the focus of this arc is.

(Lastly lastly, a new Rogue starts up in Meg #493, but there’s not enough to weigh in on that yet.)