The Alienist premiers as Outlier and Jaegir come to a close. I finally took this week to rant about Henry Flint at length elsewhere, so let's talk a bit about some of the other series in the Progs before I change my mind.
Helium gives me a mix of feelings at this point: the comic isn't leaving many stones unturned in its storytelling. If a character so much as opens a door, you bet your ass it’s in the comic. Edginton is feeding D'Israeli a very carefully curated selection of shots and the result is a very sound sequential narrative. The upshot of that is that Helium can feel like it's dragging, even when the story is going through necessary steps. Part of the problem seems to be that taking the time to present places and events in the story this carefully doesn't benefit from only a handful of pages every week. Hence the mix of feelings: Helium has been suffering the last few weeks because I want more of it!
I've talked at some length about the writing team of Rennie and Beeby before: they worked on a series called Survival Geeks which premiered its first full arc in Prog 1918. I loved the first run on the series mostly because of Rennie and Beeby's pairing with artist Neil Googe. The entire team demonstrated a great sense of comedic timing. The Alienist, from the same writing team but with artist Eoin Coveney, began this week and opts for old-people horror instead of teenage comedy.
The jury's out until we see our hero Sebastian Wetheral in action in a chapter that isn't just setting things up, but as far as a first chapter goes in terms of setting the tone, I thought this was a success. Coveney's black-and-white horror styling is a welcome replacement for the recent departure of Absalom, yet again showing the great sense that these editors have for putting together an anthology and maintaining its balance. I'm excited to see more of this series, and hope to see Coveney really strut his stuff once the shit really hits the fan.
Score: 4/5
2000 AD – Prog 1944 Writers: Various Artists: Various Publisher: 2000 AD Price: £1.99 (Digital) £2.49 Release Date: 8/19/2015 Format: Weekly; Print/Digital