Welcome, Earthlets, to Multiver-City One, our monthly look at the “Judge Dredd Megazine!” Let’s get right to it.
Judge Dredd: Don’t Drokk with Bob Part 1
Credits: Ken Niemand (Script), Ian Richardson (Art), Jim Boswell (Colors), Annie Parkhouse (Letters)
Christopher Egan: The new “Judge Dredd” strip is one that is fully entrenched in Dredd lore and canon, but Ken Niemand still crafts an opening chapter that is accessible to fans of all sorts, whether or not they are Judge Dredd experts or not. We follow two Judges patrolling The Dundee Projects, a failed and abandoned housing project that was left to rot after the Chaos Disaster. Coming across a community of homeless people, they begin to cite laws and regulations, attempting to rack up as many charges against these people as they can. They don’t stop there and their cruelty goes beyond simply doling out arrests and judgements in accordance with Mega City One’s fascist government.
As they continue to be more and more demeaning and terrible to those who could never fight back, a mysterious person comes out of the dark to bring about his own form of judgement. Attacking the Judges with super-human strength absolute ferocity, they stand no chance against him and are grievously injured. Afterwards, Dredd and a handful of other Judges show up to assess the situation and deal with what exactly happened. Unfortunately, outward cruelty aside, their cases don’t fare much better with Dredd sentencing them all to a year in the ISO-Cubes before setting his attention on the monstrous figure known only as Bob.
Niemand doesn’t pull any punches showing how different Judges handle situations, just how violent and brutal things get in the Mega City underworld, and uses this story to expand on and spin off from past events in the “Judge Dredd” canon. He does a great job explaining Bob’s origins and how they relate to Judges and the Justice Department. We also get a connection to a crime boss by the name of Mr. Linnster. Linnster had a run in with this Bob in the past, and was left badly injured and permanently scarred. This chapter sets up how Linnster and the Judges will be heading after the same goal, and it’s clear this will come to a violent head. It looks to be an exciting and harrowing story on the horizon.
Richardson’s artwork is stunning. His work feels like classic “Judge Dredd” leaving no detail behind. Character designs and the few set pieces are given full attention. It’s really beautiful, even in its most destruction and horrifying moments. Jim Boswell’s stunning colors over this work really lends itself to that classic, yet modern vibe of the entire look. The colors are right at home within Sly Stallone’s version of Dredd, but the shadows, violence, and settings are right out of Karl Urban’s. While it may be sacrilege to compare the comics to the film adaptations, those color palettes were some of the first I saw for the character, as I read the black and white versions for years before really getting into more current stories. Boswell’s work brings up some good old nostalgia while also being simply stunning to look at.
‘Don’t Drokk with Bob’ is a killer start to this new strip and opens us so many possibilities it will be a difficult wait for next month’s Megazine.
Megatropolis, Part Eight
Credits Kenneth Niemand (script) Dave Taylor(art) Jim Campbell(letters)
Michael Mazzacane: The first book of “Megatropolis” comes to a violently satisfying conclusion that makes the final push into a reflection of a Mega City One yet to come as the vigilante known as Judge Dredd attacks the mayoral party. While there has been violence throughout, Niemand and Taylor have largely elided the more brutal moments. An elision that pays off on the second page as Dredd takes out a series of citizens they deem “corrupt” in a brutal series of headshots. The page construction by Taylor for this scene is probably among the single best pages in this eight-part strip. The panel content is at once chaotic and geographically nebulous but incredibly easy to read as he creates a line of exploding heads to pull the reader along. Jim Campbell’s lettering also helps to funnel the readers gaze by placing the word balloons always to the side of a given panels exploding head. The spatial relations of the 7 killings depicted are nebulous at best, but make sense as a page of sequential art. They form a simple and effective montage of crime and punishment. The nebulous relations to everything also allows Taylor to just draw a variety of crowd figures that help to give the page a sense of energy besides the blood splatter, often time the movement of the crowd and the splatter are in opposite directions.
Continued belowThat sort of chaotic clarity comes through to the following page wherein Taylor juxtaposes two columns of three panels against one another to highlight subgroups within the overall crowd and slowly draw them together for the concluding panel.
Dredd’s murder spree is also the first time we’ve seen him pass extra judicial judgement on figures that aren’t just for lack of a better term common criminals. Previously they had focused on organized crime outfits. The partygoers getting a bullet to a head are more of the white-collar variety, this choice of targets also gives Dredd and his maker Fargo an appearance of something more to the left of the political spectrum. This is a mirror of fascism Dredd traditionally embodies. As Dredd holds the Mayor over the ledge Rico tries to talk them off it, ironically by expressing a purity in the Law. Imploring a trust that the system will eventually catch up, a sense of purity to the law itself that the main universe Dredd used to consider but has changed in the last 20 years – if not later during events like ‘Democracy’ etc. Meanwhile Dredd, and by extension their maker Fargo, the criminal justice system is inherently corrupt therefore justifying their vigilante behavior. This inversion is perhaps the most interesting and thread I hope is explored in further strips because what is Judge Dredd without a system of laws to form the foundation of their identity?
Part eight of ‘Megatropolis’ is the end of the beginning with the last few pages hinting at what could come next, there is that premonition Madam Cassandra had that is sitting away in the back of Rico’s mind. Prophecy has a funny way of coming true though now that symbols like Dredd’s helmet have been made. Hopefully this strip continues in relatively quick fashion with Dave Taylor’s art.
Devlin Waugh: A Question of Trust, Part 2
Credits: Aleš Kot (script), Mike Dowling (art), Simon Bowland (letters)
Brian Salvatore: After a chapter that firmly set up the players, the second chapter of ‘A Question of Trust’ shows Devlin taking action. And while it may seem like stuffing a small child into a laundry basket would be bad form for Waugh, we get a glimpse of how what he sees and what we see may not always be the same thing. Mike Dowling’s art allows both of these worlds to blend together, with things seemingly normal one moment and then demons are getting punched in half the next.
Aleš Kot’s script has impressive duality as well, as it needs to read somewhat naturally in both settings as well. Waugh has to be making sense to the characters he’s talking with, but without a link to the unseen, supernatural world, the story can feel a bit disjointed. But Kot blends the two well, especially as the supernatural world tends to encroach on ‘normalcy’ instantly.
One of the difficulties of the Megazine, versus the weekly progs, is that while there may be more pages than a strip in a prog, the space between stories means that each chapter needs to somewhat act as its own story. Kot and Dowling recognize that, making this a complete story of sorts in a still limited page count.
Diamond Dogs II: Part 1
Credits: James Peaty(script), Warren Pleese (art), Simon Bowland (letters)
Matthew Blair: Within the Judge Dread universe there are several different Mega Cities, each with their own cultures, ideologies, and law enforcement techniques. “Diamond Dogs II: Part 1” takes us to the world of Brit-Cit, where the law is less of a problem and the criminal elements are far more dangerous. We’re re-introduced to Nia Jones, a former criminal informant who finds herself being pulled back into the game when she has an opportunity to bring the man who killed her father to justice.
James Peaty shows Brit Cit as a city with the usual satire of the Judge Dredd universe, but Brit Cit judges aren’t as powerful and have to rely more on criminal informants and a slightly lighter touch. Peaty writes Nia Jones as an exhausted and down on her luck low level criminal who finds herself being thrust into the deep end of the European criminal underworld against her will with very little chance of survival. It’s a fairly traditional set up that could have some interesting settings to explore and people to meet.
Continued belowWarren Pleese provides the artwork for “Diamond Dogs II: Part 1” and while his style is effective and efficient, there are some moments that just don’t look right. Pleese is very good at showing emotional ranges and quiet dialogue scenes, but there’s a big action set piece at the beginning where the anatomy of the characters feels stiff, unnatural, and kind of borning. It’s an art style that is more suited for people sitting around and talking to each other, and if the story maintains a talkative nature, then the artwork will be able to find its place. I
“Diamond Dogs II: Part 1” brings the reader into a quieter section of the Judge Dredd Universe that relies more on talking and diplomacy than guns and outright violence. However, just because it’s quieter doesn’t make it any less dangerous or intriguing and it will be interesting to see where things go.
The Dark Judges: Deliverance, Part Eight
Credits: David Hine (script), Nick Percival (art), Annie Parkhouse (letters)
Rowan Grover: The day of Deliverance is on the residents of this comic and it’s about as grim, visceral, and violent as predicted. Hine does a good job here of building us up slightly with the twist that Judge Whisper is the only one who can understand the being Um, and that they have the solution to the incoming apocalypse. It’s one of the most bizarrely sensible plot developments in this comic. Of course, the strangest of the Dark Judges is able to commune with a peaceful yet eldritch being more than a child! It feels like the kids have finally found the MacGuffin that they need, yet Deliverance marches on. Once the Wild Kids and the Dark Judges reconvene, we hilariously see Judge Death acting as the straight man of this grand, dark comedy, making dry remarks about everything said but with his classic elongated speech. Hopes are appropriately dashed and the stage is set by the end for an undoubtedly huge finale.
Percival goes pretty hard in this issue with some very psychedelic and fluid artwork. We get the most concentrated version of this with the Whisper and Um scenes, which radiate with sparkling and bubbly purple and blue energy. The way both figures are shaped also has them looking larger than life and elongated to their extremes, adding an extra surreal layer. This is cleverly juxtaposed almost the very next page by the beautiful terror of the Deliverance taking place. Percival certainly wastes no time here, rendering a giant scene upon a stairwell of Judge Death and his companions laying waste to an eerily compliant group of people surrounding them. Each figure burns with flames or drips with blood and grit, embodying the demonic forms they represent so well.
This latest chapter sets us up for the finale in a particularly bombastic yet comedically dry manner, and it works because it pushes so far into what it does. I’m intrigued to see how things wrap up or continue into the next month.
