4 out of 5

A special focusing on Carlos Ezquerra’s co-creations, in memory of the maestro’s passing.

The highlight here – and something to legitimately get excited about – is the last project Wagner and Ezquerra worked on: Spector, robot detective, which Carlos illustrated the first two parts of, and the scripts for parts 3 and 4 were completed.  All of that is presented here, and it’s fantastically fun: the robo PI is not a new thing by any means, but Wags puts a great voice to the character, blending the ‘robot doesn’t understand humans’ humor with interesting human / machine dynamics that the writer had started to work on in some Dredd thrills.  Artistically, Carlos sets Spector up as one of his Just A Pilgrim-type stolid cowboys, but you can tell why the character was so intriguing to Wagner: the character looks like a hero but has the remove of a Dredd-type; you want to know the story backing this guy up, and Wagner came up with a great one.  He mentions a desire to continue it with another artist, and I do hope he does, now that the DNA has been set down by these two classics…

Elsewhere: Alan Grant and Robin Smith take Dredd on a museum tour of the ‘2000 AD wing’ for a winky spotlight of Carlos’ creations, which is good fun and Smith nails the look, but it felt like it missed an easy humorous beat toward the end with Dredd himself appearing in the wing.

Michael Carroll and Patrick Goddard offer up a black and white Wulf Sternhammer bar brawl.  These are definitely Goddard’s pencils, but it felt like the paneling and layout style was mindful of Carlos.

The take that felt a little out of place was Guy Adams’ and Dave Kendall’s Fiends of the Eastern Front, which gives us an interesting, roundabout first meeting of the Fiends, but Dave’s painted art just… isn’t Esquerra-y, and Guy Adams seems to intent on writing his own story versus the tributes found in the rest of the book.  This is all backhanded, because the thrill is good, it just sticks out.

Definitely worth it just for the Spector stuff alone, which also gives us a view on how tightly Wagner scripts things (and how much he trusted Carlos to get his point across).