2 out of 5

An extra helping of Dan Abnett goodness isn’t enough to counter my least favorite Pat Mills strips – Slaine – and an interminable Kek-W take on an interminable John Smith strip – Indigo Prime.  Obviously those thrills have their fans, but unfortunately, I’m not one of them, and the pairing here was too much.  In addition, though we have Rennie and Absalom, his approach in this particular thrill is so wayward I just couldn’t get into it.  Thus: the 2000 AD rarity in which I was only really enjoying the Dredds in the latter half, and even those, despite Carroll and PJ-frikkin-Holden on art, suffered from some weird pacing jumps, maybe to make way for the XMas bumper brog.  (Indigo Prime also disappears without a conclusion for maybe the same reason…)

Dredd’s ‘Icon’ – about a contested statue of our main man – bumbles through its politics and then gives way to a couple of interesting one shots (Rory McConville and Mick McMahon!) before Black Snow kicks off in 2050.  This is pretty intriguing, with our judges stepping in the middle of an East Meg 2 dispute, but as mentioned, the last couple of entries feel really jumpy, like information is missing.  Still, Carroll is the reigning Dredd champ of late (never unseating Wagner, of course), and it’s always interesting to see how and where he’s expanding the mythology.

Slaine… I don’t even know.  Finds out about his father.

In Indigo Prime, our interdimensional police say a lot of sci-fi made-up mumbo jumbo and don’t accomplish anything.

Absalom jumps all around the character’s cast to assemble a crew to go rescue Abs’ grandchildren, but, as with Black Snow, it kept feeling like giant chunks of the story were dropped for space concerns; I think we were seeing different points in a timeline, and I’m likely missing the context of not having read the first Absalom entries, but this was hard to follow.

The first half of this run of progs gives us some great SinDex and Grey Area tales, which keeps things afloat, and Eddie Robson drops a rich – if ultimately a bit disappointing – 3Riller to round things out.