3 out of 5

The highs are weighed down by some mehs.

The Dredds – normally a reliable source of entertainment – surely continue that trend, but by the same token, it’s a lot of casual, short episodes that stop short of being smart enough or silly enough to make them re-read worthy, but we do start off with some great Judge Pin stuff drawn by Chris Weston, which leads into the unbeatable Rory McConville one-shot, doing a fantastic riff on tech-obsession.  We’re only three progs in, though…  T.C. Eglington picks up the baton in 2076 with some Sons of Booth followup.  This has potential with its political commentary, but T.C. gets mixed up in his focus, divvying up extremist points of view with media manipulation commentary for a muddled tale.  Alec Worley shakes some life back into things with the chuckle-worthy ‘Nans of Anarchy,’ which focuses on a granny biker gang with lively art from Karl Richardson, showing more range than I’d previously attributed to him from Outlier.

Rennie and Simon Coleby return for more snarling wartime complexities with Jaegir.  ‘In the Realm of Pyrrhus’ is a thrilling – but too damn short! – undercover thriller.

Abnett and Yeowell give us a mixed bag of SinDex’s.  Yeowell’s quick, dashed style is great at easy characterization, so strips where it leans on Dan’s buddy-cop dialogue and wiseguy philosophizin’ are great; action strips are really lacking from an art perspective, though, making some interesting tales – Sin and Dex battling friend or foe Demon – seem sloppier than they are.

Wagner and Ezquerra return with Strontium Dog, but this run really feels like it’s treading water, unfortunately, as Johnny Alpha goes through patronly pains when teamed up with the inexperienced son of an old mate.  The story sticks to a really generic path of the kid trying and failing to prove himself; Alpha eventually coming ’round to acceptance; and is short on the action-comedy vibe that’s normally woven into SD.

I’m not a big Emma Beeby fan, and her Anderson PSI tale, Undertow, is a primary reason why: her scripts are jumpy, not giving me enough time to properly ground plot points or characters.  The main reason for Undertow seems to be to reincorporate Judge Karyn, but it’s a confusing mish-mash of a mini PSI judge rebellion, undercover samurai operatives, vampires…  I dunno.  Art duties switched mid-way through, but both artists seemed to have equal difficulty making the script followable.

Definitely readable stuff (recovering from the recent Mills’ double dose…) but we’ve still not seen a stellar batch of progs in a bit.

Note: SinDex and SD end in prog 2081, which I’ve read, but the endings don’t change much of what’s written above, and 2081 leans more into new material, so it’ll be reviewed with the next crop o’ stories.