Nice cover. Also, interesting editor's letter, which says one of the reprint slots next week is being replaced "with a pair of brand-new stories". Woot! Lovely to hear, not least because I've cooled on the reprint since the Matt Smith IDW Dredd and Ruckley Rogue Trooper ran out. (I need to re-read Johnny Red, though; not sure I gave that a proper airing.)
Dredd: I loved D'Israeli. I'm rarely convinced he's a good match for Dredd. But it works here, with an increasingly absurd tale that's a lot of fun and doesn't overstay its welcome.
After a whopping ten pages of interviews (all good), we get a Steve Roberts kluge pin-up, before the final part of DeMarco. I need to re-read this tale as well, because it's kind of washed over me. It didn't really stand out. By contrast, I'm enjoying Armitage more than I have in a long while. It's blazing along nicely.
Another interview (newcomer Helsby) leads into a slightly odd piece on Ted Cowan (given that there's naff-all info about him in the wild), and some Robot Archie. As is often the case with this stuff, it's an extended trailer for the book, although it just about works well enough in giving us some bite-sized mini stories of sorts.
Reprint-wise, Hook Jaw wraps. I couldn't stand this. I get that a lot of it was pushing extremes on stereotypes (choice dialogue: "I'm gonna slaughter every last one of these pirate sonsabitches then coil out asteamin' American deuce on their corpses."), but, I dunno. I just didn't care about any of it. I guess at least it ended well.
I'm fairly certain I've read Toxic before, but I don't remember much about it. Other IDW Dredd that feels a bit off, but I'm sure that will be perfectly serviceable. And then we wrap up with two originals: a new Harrower Squad has Yeowell having fun with stompy blocky robots, but the star is Dreadnoughts, which is its typical mix of grim and compelling. Alas, the editor's letter refers to it as a "short series". Hopefully not too short.
In all, a bit of a mixed bag, although I the majority of the original material was very good. That bodes well if there's going to be more of it as of next month.