Despite the lack of my darling Ritterstahl and the rest of The Order, Prog 1923 was a great all-around issue. "1%", the latest 3riller, came to its conclusion this week.  As a philosopher and a fan of sci-fi, I thought the concept for this story really paid off.  There are questions of personal identity that arise without any sorts of weird sci-fi stuff like in this story: how are you the same person as when you were a child?  And how the hell do you even begin to try and answer that question when you consider that all of your parts, all of the cells that make you up, weren't around back then?  Toss in some morally ambiguous experiments in the future and you've got yourself a great little story.  Robson won me back over from what I thought was an awkwardly paced outing in the last 3riller, and Culbard delivered a world that alternated between the stoicism of its main villain and the out-of-this-world (literally) whimsy of his younger counterpart.

Byrne is back with another of his Twisted Tales, and I loved this one.  I imagine it will be the only time that I see a story which is centered on the stretched tongue of a giant bio-mechanical swine.  It took a couple of read-throughs for me to follow the very beginning of the story, but with wordless comics you usually have to seek a little more context before the pieces start to fit together.  What I really loved about the artwork here, other than the obvious fact that it's a delight, is how irreverent the main apple-toting rebel is here.  Byrne has barely any space to take us into this world: he will either succeed as the story goes on, or fail.  The smugness of the main character really livens up our engagement with an enslaved populace who we have known for exactly zero pages.

Dredd put in a solid one-shot, and both Savage and Survival Geeks closed really strong.  I was sour on Savage when it first came back into the Progs mainly because of some pacing issues. But the introduction of Bill's brother to the mix as a Volg as well as the return of Howard to the mix led to a really compelling finish that has me excited for its next round of serialization.   Similarly, I cannot wait to have more Survival Geeks: the thing that is so great about the Progs is that when a series performs really well and then finishes, even if it's a bummer to lose it for awhile, you always get to look forward to the return of that title.  2000 AD has such a wide variety of quality material on deck right now that it's often upsetting that they're limited to five titles a week.  But that's part of the charm, of course, and it helps keep things fresh.

Next week is another one of those weeks that is great for jumping on to this anthology.  Give it a shot while my reviews are still about something other than The Order.

Score: 4/5

2000 AD - Prog 1923 Writers: Various Artists: Various Publisher: 2000 AD Price: £1.99 (Digital) £2.49 (UK) Release Date: 3/25/2015 Format: Weekly; Print/Digital