Really great week for this anthology, I would recommend this issue to people who were not even caught up on all of the titles. I loved this week's episode of Savage. Last week set us up for a reunion between the Savage brothers, and this week explained the disappearance of one while putting the finishing touches on their reunion. I thought the writing was still a little shallow, but it's not like we were dealing with the back-story of a deep, intellectual character. Seeing Savage interact with just a few Volg grunts last week was entertaining, I will definitely keep tuning in for more now that his wacky brother is in the mix.
I don't even care about repeating myself anymore: I am going to gush about Staples and Burns in concert this week. The art on the Dark Judge saga and on The Order is consistently worth of stopping and staring at in awe. Because of how pretty Staples’ artwork is, I think it's easy to overlook how good he is at this whole sequential storytelling thing. Make no mistake: the dude knows how to cover a story beat and keep things moving. We didn't need ten-million pages about Dredd and his squad experiencing the devastation of the Dark Judges: we just needed one boot next to one rotting skull, meticulously rendered, and we get the picture. The main reason Staples is able to be so indulgent on every page with so few panels is because he's a gifted artist and a clever storyteller.
I though Burns was pretty indulgent this week too, and reading The Order has been one of the most complete experiences of a comic I have had in my time as a fan of the medium. Kek-W has surely helped things by building such an eclectic, action-packed, and, frankly, confusingly awesome world, but Burns is bringing it to life in a way that I'm not sure any other artist could have done justice. Seeing Ritterstahl in action this week was kick-ass, and it's hard to give Burns too much credit for rendering such an idiosyncratic character in such an elegant yet fully kinetic style.
What else can I say? Even Ulysses Sweet, whose gag has been wearing thin with me, managed to elicit a chortle this week, and I thought this chapter of Orlok in conjunction with last week's was the best one-two punch of the young series so far. This week's Prog was one I would unflinchingly recommend to anybody looking to try out something new in the world of comics.
Score: 4/5
Writers: Various Artist: Various Publisher: 2000 AD Price: £1.99 (Digital) £2.49 (UK) Release Date: 2/4/15 Format: Print/Digital Anthology