4 out of 5

Interceptor, as summarized on the back cover, is “fast-moving SF action.”  This is incredibly accurate.  The story is also a ton of fun, with the fast-moving component nudging it into cheek (something 2000 AD stuff excels at), rushing forward so quickly it actually becomes dumb.  But that’s fine: dumb fun is still fun.

The setting doesn’t really matter except that making it the future allows for laser blasters.  So in the future, hot doc Lyra (her being hot shouldn’t matter either except the cheekiness results in her running around in underwear for a good bit of the strip) is finishing up a long shift at the ol’ doctor factory when a patient arrives bleeding unknown goop and mumbling about crazy things.  Then some crazy things happen in the form of an old woman, a kid, and a singer celebrity showing up and immediately shooting lasers at the patient, who unfortunately tanks it but not before gifting Lyra ‘the orrery’ – a lil’ pink orb – that when she touches suddenly allows her to see the monsters that are hiding under the guise of the attackers, as well as the patient.  It’s the Green Lantern setup: now you’re responsible for this thing, human, so figure it out along the way.  It’s also like page 5 or 6 of the comic, and things aren’t about to slowdown, as some Men in Black types show up looking for the orrery (and thus Lyra) along with a new batch of monsters, and thus is she attacked at home whilst in underwear and thank goodness she was a combat medic in the war which makes her a badass fighter, navigating through this mess for several pages as we learn more about what’s going on.  Which turns out to be a pretty great concept: a spin on some variations we may have read / seen before but still fresh feeling (even from something written a decade ago) and relayed to us in the most hilariously compressed format possible so that Interceptor doesn’t have to pause for a beat.

…This works up until the last section of the tale, where the compression has packed everything in way too tightly and it suddenly seems like we’re missing a whole chapter or two as the story’s pressures cause it to burst and splatter all over the conclusion.  It’s not exactly anti-climactic, it just feels like we skip the climax and only witness the coda, when everyone winks at each other and it’s okay.  The sense of cheek that kept the silly stupid feeling like a humorous affect of the story tipples over into just seeming dumb, so it’s an unfortunate ending.  Thankfully it’s such a small slice of the book it’s not too much of a deal breaker.  Plus: Steve Pugh on art.  I had to look this dude up because, though the name’s familiar, I couldn’t recall if I’d seen his work before.  His work on Interceptor is a unique blend of Chris Weston’s over-realism and Phil Winslade’s sketchy mobility (no, I don’t know what either of these descriptors mean either), blending for this flexible middle-ground where crazy-ass creepy page-filling demon monsters can stand side-by-side with convincingly detailed humans.  His page layouts also have this cool scattered feeling that matches the script’s stumbling-forward nature.

We also, oddly, get 3 more sections of Harlem’s Heroes, which is still a lot of fun, still drawn with amazingly gritty detail by Kev Walker, and still unfinished, with – I think – the last fucking section held off for “two months’ time,” which means 2 more megs, methinks?  It’s nuts to keep playing this story out, but at least our mighty editors are gonna make good on finishing the reprinting.