Most Under-rated

James Mackay: I don’t love Blood of Satanus III. It’s not very good. But in the way of all Pat Mills scripts it gets under the skin of the readership and so, when the online community turned on this, they turned on it really quite viciously. It’s not much of a compliment to say that this should have been filed under “could do better” – but when fan opinion is “should never have seen the light of day burn the heretics etc” then “under-rated” seems le mot juste.

Adam Crabtree: Inexplicably, Bob Byrne’s reception has been rather mildly received, inexplicable because the man’s a master of form and style, a gifted storyteller who’s been putting out prime graphic material solo for time. He deserves to become a fixture in Tharg’s stable, and a damn respected one at that. Button Man IV too, didn’t get the props it deserved for a whip-smart script from John Wagner, and glorious colours from Frazer Irving.  

Charles Ellis: Straight draw between Savage Book III and Sinister Dexter in general.

Savage didn’t seem to get the same attention and raving that it got when it first came back. To be honest, there are some plot flaws – Book II ends with Savage saying it can’t have been the Volgans who killed his bruvver, Book III reveals it was… the Volgans; and also there being a resistance when a major figure it can be a collaborator – but there’s a passion coming through in it, both from Pat getting his teeth into it and in Savage’s rather personal quest. It also has some great action, which is always nice.

Sinister Dexter, on the other hand, gets no love at all it seems! Having Dexter not paralysed at all was an annoying cheat (though I’m glad that Abnett’s shown he’s still recovering and is trying to pretend he isn’t), true. That said, The Last Thing I Do was a great little twisty tale with a smart scheme and well-executed action, and in their recent appearance there’s a whole lot of sub-plots simmering away nicely and a whole range of characters with differing agendas. Abnett’s keeping everything tightly-knit and has managed to misdirect me (I didn’t expect Tracy to be feeding info to the DCPD), and I’m expecting for the eventual War Of The Moses to be as spectacularly as No Dumb Minions was in 2005. (But without the “he’s not dead!” thing this time, please Dan!)

Robert Cornell: Greysuit was a deeply flawed story that picked up mostly bad reviews after starting quite well. It seemed to suffer from being scheduled next to Mills’ more flamboyant and better-received Defoe. This was a nifty secret agent storyline with some of the best violence seen in 2000 AD for a while. (By “best,” I mean it made me think, “ouch! Having your jaw punched off must really hurt!”) The strip’s main sin was padding – it needed to be a couple of chapters shorter – and a bit of an anticlimactic final part. Otherwise, it did exactly what it promised, by updating MACH 1 to the post-9/11 era.

Alex Frith: The Angel Gang: before they wuz dead. Simon Spurrier and Steve Roberts really knocked this series for six, to my mind absolutely nailing the characters of the four Angels. Dark humour a-plenty, an engaging story, and Roberts's best art yet - which is saying something. I think it was rather overlooked in the general tirade of abuse hurled at Satanus, and the Meg in general.

Daniel Payne: Greysuit wasn't brilliant, but it was entertaining and well illustrated, and it seemed to take a hell of a bashing from some readers. Consequently it is the most under-rated thing this year, even though it wasn't one of the best strips.

Pete McCosh: The 86ers. Maybe it’s just that it appears so infrequently that everyone’s forgotten what’s going on between storylines, but the two outings this strip has had this year have led me to the conclusion that it’s shaping up to be every bit the multi-stranded narrative that Caballistics is. What it really needs (and it’s not alone) is a more extended run in the weekly.

WR Logan: P. J. Holden, it’s about time this square headed, Irish, short droid was given something truly great to work on. So in an attempt to make him more credible lets here it for his new more serious droid name, Paul Jason Holden.

Steven Denton: In the self professed galaxies greatest comic it’s hard to find anything that’s underrated. I’m going to have to go for Button Man 4: The Hitman's Daughter. The absence of Arthur Ranson and the slow burning pace as well as the inconvenience of episodes when it’s best read as a whole probably made it harder to heap the praise it deserves upon it at the time.  

Martin Charlton: Jonathan Oliver. Jon-0101 continues to pump out the trades and to organise the never less than stellar Abaddon books line at a disarming rate. While the trades occasionally slip their scheduled release dates, they’re always worth it.