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I like the idea of ending on a deliberate high note

Absolutely, and also that we didn't have lengthy waits between chapters. The light which burns twice as bright...

WHAT??!!

Yeah it's a thrill-powered five out of five this week, made even more impressive by each strip being so spectacularly different. Interesting quote from Dredd in the aftermath of 'A Better World':

"Forget personal independence. Compliant and obedient - that's what makes good cits."

It's almost like the Dredd scripting hydra's heads are really talking to each other.

Didn't he get a full body replenishment type thing in the Meg a few years ago?

['R&TWT&C']

I can see them maybe killing Dredd off for the 50th (it would certainly be a suitable epic selling point) and replacing him with a(nother) clone, who to all intents and purposes would continue to be Dredd (but would have to learn the ropes all over again).

The Dredd story reminded me a little of the Steven Spielberg movie Duel - a thrilling chase with, as I recall (it's a long time since I've seen it), a somewhat anticlimactic ending

Very much so, great spot. And do we actually know where the protagonist in Duel is going? It's enough for the movie that he's just 'on a journey' but I think 'R&TWT&C' needed a little more context, especially given the prologue. Did it benefit from not having a simple panel at the start saying something like 'En route to a routine check on MC1's northern border facilities, Dredd's flight hits trouble..'? I love a dislocated narrative as much as the next cit but if that's what Rend and Tear... (sorry, I'm done with the acronym) was aiming for then the prologue at the Academy was a bit incongruous. Perhaps the Williams droid was asked to add that because starting the story proper in a 'jumping on' prog would have presented new readers with a leap to far? It also struck me that perhaps Tharg managed to secure the services of R. M. Guéra at short notice, and Rob Williams had to cook up a story post-haste?

And how does Dredd now get back home? All will become clear, I'm sure.

Oh and everything else this week was brilliant.

^ Re. Proteus Vex, of course 

[P. Vex]

Oops, bit late on this. Though we're at one of those stages where the strips are comfortably into their runs, so it's pretty much 'as you were' - P. Vex and Brink narrowly ahead of 'R&TWT&C' and Aquila, with Indigo Prime continuing to confound. The McCrea droid smashes another cover.

Obviously it's not a bad thing to have Henry Flint on the first chapter of your new strip - quite the opposite, in fact - but now it's become indelibly associated with Jake Lynch, I wonder how the protagonists might have looked if he'd been on it from the start? 

[Aquila]

Aquila is thrillingly epic - that nude scene's certainly an eye-opener! It's a shame my CBR reader displays the double spread as separate pages

Sorry, should just clarify that by 'double spread' I mean the face-off before the battle, not the nudity : )

[Indigo Prime]

Yeah once again the prog is firing on all cylinders. Okay, most cylinders (sorry, Indigo Prime). R&TWT&T takes a breather but I'm sure the action will be back soon, so I'll bear with it. I get Dredd's motivation for attacking their guide but I'm not convinced he'd eliminate them while they were all still trapped in the wilderness. While Moon is obviosly being shown as a resourceful cadet, it's important that isn't demonstrated by Dredd becoming stupid.

Aquila is thrillingly epic - that nude scene's certainly an eye-opener! It's a shame my CBR reader displays the double spread as separate pages. I'm sure that if I adjust the settings when I'll be able to put them together. Brink is for now just building the layers of intrigue, of course. It's certainly the only strip which could possibly finish on the cliff-hanger "You know we got golf here, right?".

Running out of superlatives for Proteus Vex.

Across. Race Across the World.

['R&TWT&C']

Ooh! I get to start a prog thread.

So is 'R&TWT&C' just gonna be ten weeks of Dredd vs. bear - sorry, Dredd vs. giant mutant bear? Fantastic, I'm all for that. I mean, it would perhaps be slightly better if it wasn't just giant mutant bear but giant mutant misshapen rad-beast (a bit more scope for Guera to go to town) but I'll take this.

Shut down those end-of-year polls - Brink is back, again treading the tenuous tightrope between action and inertia. Does the first page, situated in what presumably passes for a meat-packing warehouse in this hab-verse, mean that the unions are again going to figure? I can see Lind would be a great asset in Race Around the World (BBC1 9pm tonight!). Events progress apace in Aquila, which this week features possibly the briefest 'foment slave rebellion to form army' scene ever. Love the cover too, by the way - the two visible eyes of the four-eyed horse beast make it look like something from Picasso's Guernica. And wait! Re-open those end-of-year polls! Despite the additional competition, Proteus Vex is once again the best thing in the prog! Great Skizz vibes from Illlla (that looks all wrong in lower case) Evuron.

[Full Tilt Boogie]

Great that in the rare absence of nothing specific to plug, there's an old-school Nerve Centre message from Tharg rambling about bizarre human behaviour. More of this sort of thing!

Nice to see that Moon's instinct to cut and run is already bearing fruit. Nice choice, Dredd. Hale would probably have tried to fly the HW302 into it. Agreed that much of Full Tilt Boogie hasn't had the same manic energy as the early chapters. Would be a shame if it regains its mojo only to conclude. Aquila was great, as ever - is it also surging towards its climax? If so, roll on The Alienist book three!

Proteus Vex is fast becoming an all-time classic thrill. You know something's really good when a fantastic episode like this doesn't even feature any of the protagonists. The spaceship is a barrel. Love it.

Or come to think of it, even the bottom two rows!

Assuming they can accommodate the monarch's head and denomination, they could do a lot worse then use the illustrations from the top two rows of Thrill Power Overload:

It would be great to have a collection devoted entirely to 2000 AD. Assuming we still have a Post Office by 2027.