Cover is dynamic, but somehow also a bit nondescript.
The Out is just spectacular. Not for nothing is Dabnett the proud holder of the Golden Goatse. In some ways I wish Cyd had
never met another human, but equally it's an indication that series isn't going to coast along on any kind of status-quo. The reality of being a refugee is succinctly punched home, and the SF Book Cover concept really hits its stride, with Harrison making me feel like I've actually been to Outer Outer Space. Best thing since, well,
Brink.
Full Tilt Boogie is really very enjoyable indeed. It fairly jogs along, gently building characters and situations in often unexpected ways, and always looking sharp. I'm not sure there's ever been a 2000AD strip quite like it - maybe what Zippy Couriers could have been. Keep 'em coming.
Diaboliks. Not much happens this week, and most of the expanding cast just stand around, but it's somehow still a decent read. Fuso is good, no question, but at the same time I feel a bit like I've been the victim of a bait'n'switch. And that logo remains just wildly intrusive.
By contrast
The Order has lots going on and everyone gets something to do, but it all feels a bit unsatisfying this week. There's something about the use of Armoured Gideon that doesn't feel right. Rather like Vissini says about Vissek, he was supposed to be this great legendary
thing; instead he's just another quite large robot with a human consciousness. Maybe he should have been left where Kek-W presumably found him: unemployed, in Greenland.
Dredd: This week
End of Days is the most interesting it's been for me, with Flint's emaciated crew a genuine shock. I don't know if the Great MacNeil kept this debility under literal wraps to heighten the impact in this quieter part of the story, or whether Flint has just gone to town on the idea, but either way it's something new to the strip and it's truly horrible and I like it. Especially good juxtaposed with the musings on the ravaged post-apocalyptic world on the opening page - this kind of thing is what the Williams & Flint team are best at.
But look away now, gentle reader. I feel an unjustifiably pedantic rant coming on.
Unfortunately the word salad in the second half of the episode almost severs my new engagement entirely: Ice breaker? Ice shelf? Permafrost? Gas pockets? Ancient disease layers?
Ice-breakers, (even giant future versions of the current Xue Long series), break through Arctic sea ice, several metres thick, as Flint's lovely drawings show. Ice
shelves OTOH are glaciers extending out onto the sea from the land at continental margins, usually over 100m thick (those big ice cliffs you see in documentaries) - it seems pretty unlikely that the Xuelong 3000 is bobbing along on top of/through one of those. Submarine permafrost, essentially flooded ice-age land-surface, does indeed lie along some Arctic coasts - but where are these 'ancient diseases' coming from, germs/viruses sublimated into gas pockets which escape (from where?) when the overlying ice-shelf, floating on water, get broken up?
In short it's tosh, a mish-mash of all-too-real current environmental concerns pressed into service in a story where most of the world has been a toxic and radioactive desert for decades, following at least three successive large-scale nuclear exchanges and frequent pandemics.
Meanwhile, Thug Dredd has a nostalgic muse on how all his past crises have been solvable by hitting things really hard- except the cited Chaos Day most demonstrably was not solved that way, or indeed
any way. The dying only really started after he'd run out of 'some creep' to punch. I'd much prefer it if passive introspective Dredd had a better memory.
Plus points: really shocking imagery. Minus points: apparently not set in Dredd's world.
