This volume overlaps with so many other apparently concurrent adjacent and tangential books and storylines that it's best to just relax and go with the flow. I'm sure close and careful reading of these would be rewarding and enjoyable but I'm in more of a read-and-run state at the moment. The return of Brice Wayne, Sexton Blake's identity revealed, the return of Dr Hurt, the end of Dick Grayson and Damian Wayne as the dynamic duo, the rise of Leviathan and the establishment of Batman Inc. I love the idea of Batman Inc - in the real world it would be horrific, but in a world of supervillains and more secret organisations with armies of assassins and spies and henchmen, it makes absolute logical sense. I don't know if this is a bewildering chaotic mess or a glorious chaotic rush, but the latter seems more in the spirit of comic books, so why not.

After last-volume's rather one-sided battle, the Freakangels reach a turning point in their protection of Whitechapel, where their biggest danger is their own success. They have to stop noodling around and surviving and actually start working to build something. After all, though we don't know how or why, this post-apocalypse is all their fault. Fun with engineering and psychic powers and guilt and the inter-relationships of a disparate group of twenty-somethings with terrifying abilities struggling to find maturity.

Seventies spy shenanigans - Velvet, secretary to the Chief who turns out to be a superspy, searches for the mole who made her kill her husband while still on the run for the murder of another spy. Crisp writing by Brubaker, lush noirish art by Epting, this is a perfect cocktail of sexy violent espionage.

A mysterious metal that can be cooked to produce a peculiar drug, an art collector looking for the perfect artist, a bunch of violent thugs on the hunt, and S, who stole the metal, takes the drugs, is hired by the collector to look for the artist while the thugs are on his tail. Near future sci-fi hard-boiled crime art chase detective thing, painfully hip and cool and street-smart, thoroughly rock'n'roll and a little bit out of this world.

Back when I hung out at the Warren Ellis Forum and The Authority was coming out, there was a lot of talk about decompressed storytelling, and widescreen comics. This is the opposite. Sp far the opposite. Crowded, dense, detailed, the characters, the stories, the dialogue, the sound effects, the colours, all so crowded together they're literally tripping over each other all across the pages, with tight focus, like a television screen rather than a cinema. It's also garish and nasty, knowingly full of the sex and violence it sends up in its satirical take on the media, so sordid and twisted, a cynical corrupt world full of venality and hatred. It's glorious. A sly bit of fast and furious pop-comics, politically aware, culturally accelerated, socially diseased. Chaykin's a craftsman, and never loses control of the chaotic material he's splurging with exceptional skill and energy all over the page.

In the purple-tinted post-apocalypse the psychic twenty-somethings who somehow or other caused all this make amends as best they can, taking more refugees into their protectorate of Whitechapel and putting in the work and innovation to build up the infrastructure. It helps that they all seem to be more-or-less geniuses in their chosen fields. However a grisly murder and some ethically dubious behaviour by a particularly rapey Feakangel threatens to disrupt the jolly barn-building and marching towards a more secure and stable future.

The Jackaroo pop in to help humanity after an unfortunate incident with a nuclear bomb in the middle of London, providing shuttle flights through wormholes to a number of gift-worlds where Earth can establish colonies amongst the stars and make the same mistakes and maybe find a few new ones. Littered with the remains of previous alien races who have been beneficiaries of the Jackaroo's slightly mysterious benevolence, ancient artifacts make their way back to earth and cause strange ideas to spread, memes and eidolons inspiring cults and and various types of odd behaviour.

Chloe Miller checks up on what promises to be a harmless breakout and finds two children possessed by an alien ghost. On Mangala, one of the Jackaroo gift-worlds, Vic Gayle investigates a murder that leads him to a web of crime and corruption centering on a distant archaeological site. It looks like humanity's about to find something rather interesting, or that something interesting has found them, but will they be the better or the worse for it?

All is revealed! Who is the shadowy mastermind behind the murder of the secret agent that sent Velvet careering across the world hunted by her own agency, dredging up ghosts from the past leaving dead bodies and broken hearts scattered everywhere like spent bullet casings after a firefight in a skyscraper where someone jumped out the window backwards and fell down firing up at the KGB hit squad and killed them all dead and landed on a car and walked away feeling slightly hungover? Yes, that.

So how did a bunch of silly disaffected teenagers end the world? And now that it's ended, is there anything they can do about it? Luke's on the rampage, Mark is back and the Freakangles are discovering just how few limits there may be to their powers, which could be awesome or could be terrifying but probably both, and it certainly puts a strain on their relationships with each other.

Big days for the Freakangels as Warren Ellis's take on the Midwich Cuckoos start to unlock the full potential of their powers. Mark's back and Luke's been shot in the head - he gets better but he doesn't improve as such - and there's something out there circling and trying to get in so the question is can they get their act together in time to avoid being turned into drones by Mark or overwhelmed by the outside force?