Review by Frank Plowright

Continuing from Simon Oliver’s run (see 15 Minutes) World’s End lives up to the title as a teleportation malfunction transports Gen 13 to New York in the future. It’s a post-apocalyptic society and while Gen 13 are resourceful and adaptable, how will the team cope with a place devoid of hope when there’s no way home? And with Bobby blind besides?

Running alongside the more straightforward threats Gen 13 encounter, Scott Beatty has a young child with a massive vocabulary wheeling around a cloned infant referred to as Doctor Cross, and each of the team imagining their ideal future. Beatty has a good grasp of the individual personalities, and that’s a way of showing it.

Artist Mike Huddleston is early in his career, and anyone familiar with his later work would be hard pressed to know this is his art without the credit. There’s solid storytelling and well defined people, always a strength, but in a shadow led, angular style with the occasional element of cartooning. It’s solid and competent, if not familiar, and infinitely preferable to Dan Hipp’s stylised and wide-eyed set of people in the final chapter.

Because it’s given that Gen 13 are going to find their way home at some stage, Beatty’s post-apocalyptic plot needs a strong thread, and he doesn’t provide one. The team wander from place to place and they’re still wandering when the volume ends. It means the final chapter is actually the best for being relatively self-contained and with a focus.

That continues in the serialised issues concluding this story, which were never collected. Sure, you’ll find listings for a trade titled Teenage Wasteland, but try actually getting a copy. This is largely filler, but it made more sense in the end.