4 out of 5

Well fart me for a kipper, I liked the ending of Outlier quite a bit.  T.C. Eglington and Karl Richardson, perhaps having totally exhausted my expectations by wasting a sci-fi detective setup in Part 1 and giving in to yelly, sweary Image comics influences in Part 2 seem to finally have the pieces of their half-dumb / half-smart alien invasion tale in a fascinating place.  Namely: our mostly bad guy (Caul) has tried to become a good guy by rescuing some folks kidnapped by the faceless Hurde enemy; our mostly good guy PI Carcer has fully been taken over by the Hurde to become a bad guy.

And then these “mostly” roles get muddied up even further by a really impressively dark turn of events.  2000 AD is rarely happy, exactly, but this was still a surprisingly bleak way to go with things, and Eglington doesn’t dress it up at all, nor does Richardson go for any unnecessary glory shots: shit just goes down; it goes down without a blink, and then the post-script is an acceptably poetic capper, if a little confusing in its final sentiments.  I’d forgive what came before if I felt like this ending was always in the works, but… I dunno if I buy that.  Regardless of the origin (i.e. always planned or determined by deadlines / popularity), this was a quality ending, true to science fiction form.

This collection also includes a Michael Carroll Dredd one-shot, which is sorta out of place without the larger narrative context in which it originally appeared, but you get the gist (a mob enforcer turns on his boss) and it’s definitely the usual Carroll high quality tale.