No pissing around this week: this Prog is straight into my all time Top Ten, probably somewhere around No. 5 or 6. Out of 1810. Beware, this gushing review is just one superlative after another, though none of them are intended to be hyperbolic: just the facts, man.
Any one of these episodes could not only be the best strip in any given 'standard' week, but the among the strongest of any standard year. The Dredd alone is possibly the best ever episode not written by John Wagner, and places highly in the best ever episodes, its two companion strips each soaring away on their own merits and all three still gelling beautifully. And this in what must be one of the strongest years ever for the character.
Incredibly even that is topped by a Ro-Busters ABC Warriors[/b] so improbably perfect that I wasn't sure if I was dreaming it even while I was reading it, and as if that wasn't enough it nestles under Langley's personal-best-ever cover.
The sorbet in this incredible banquet, the bloody sorbet mind, is Brass Sun, a strip which itself is the best new story of the year, and an episode which delivers both on a broad canvass and in exquisite details - the panel of Conductor 17 gripping the back of Wren's jacket is as gobsmackingly brilliant as the shot of him holding her sleeve, and not her hand, as they run through the grass three weeks back. Stunning work.
The whole damn thing is just too good for words. Other comics only exist to provide a bar that 2000AD can soar over with metres to spare*.
* Okay, maybe that one was hyperbole. But just that one.
