Last week I went a little in-depth regarding the quality and charm of Flint's art on the current Dredd story, and this week the story pacing overall deserves some praise. I complained about the very first chapter of "Enceladus" because it took a lot of pages to do nothing but establish some simple facts. But as the story has carried on, the story's initial chapter looks more and more like a very poignant entrance to a tale with a lot of spaceships and a lot of details in different times and places. Williams is mixing up the event structure of the story and really building a narrative that makes the reader work to piece together the different elements of the world that Flint won't let us take our eyes away from. Otherwise it was a slow week in the Prog, but these happen sometimes. Last week, Orlok was preparing to storm a compound to recover Rasputin, and we saw Rasputin use his unique artistic precog powers to predict the ensuing carnage. A narrative move that I did not expect, but that I really enjoyed, was that this week picked up after the carnage, with Rasputin being successfully rescued and only the aftermath of the carnage appearing on the page. I liked this especially because it gives a lot of weight to Rasputin's abilities: he's such a good precog that, even beyond the fourth wall, the reader can take his predictions for granted. That's a fun and effective storytelling decision. The collateral damage of the decision, unfortunately, is that this chapter didn't have enough going on to make up for the loss of the action that would have been present otherwise.

Additionally, as I was worried might happen last week, Grey Area is grinding to a halt. Putting your characters in a jail is fine, and showing that they're stuck there for a chapter is also fine: but the reader just doesn't need two chapters to display these characters being stuck in a jail. The point of this week's installment was to stress the length of their stay, and possibly to add some suspense as a world-devouring force bears down on the alien planet on which they are stranded. I don't need more length to this situation in order to stoke suspense: these characters are obviously fucked. Let's get on with it. The art is still stellar, but the last two chapters easily could have been condensed into one.

I expect things to pick up next week for Strontium Dog and (hopefully) the other stories. As long as Flint is drawing Dredd, though, you have no reason to avoid this anthology.

Score: 3/5

2000 AD – Prog 1927 Writers: Various Artists: Various Publisher: 2000 AD Price: £1.99 (Digital) £2.49 (UK) Release Date: 4/22/15 Format: Weekly; Print/Digital