Judge Dredd 1

Once upon a time, there was a strip called Judge Dredd, in a British comic called 2000AD. Judge Dredd was a nihilist CyberPunk dystopia, and was best delivered in strips of about eight to ten pages, which would usually feature some luckless offender doing something trivially wrong, and getting sentenced to lots of time in prison. But it was funny.

Now, those nice people at DC have bought the rights to publish Judge Dredd in the USA, and have called in a crack team of writers/artists to duplicate the experience for the people on the other side of the Atlantic. The trouble was, part of the sale of Judge Dredd included the condition that all scripts had to be checked by two of the people who'd worked on Dredd over the years, and if they didn't like it, it got sent back to the Drawing Board.

That was last October

Now, merely ten months afterwards, the first story arrives. And guess what?
That's right, they've screwed it up. Or round, or something. The new look Judge Dredd isn't the Law anymore. He's a maverick cop, a man on the edge, running just inside the system. And he gets captured at the end of the first issue.

AAAIIIGH!

This is not Dredd. This is a story by the same name as Dredd, with none of the atmosphere, none of the Big-Brother is watching you feeling, none of the humor. Blech. As it stands, it's another cop-against-the-corrupt system story. Passable, but still not dredd. Hmph.

The Art is by Mike Avon Oeming, who at the very least wins the 'strangest name for a professional artist' award. He at least knows what Judge Dredd looks at, and displays a reasonable attempt at Mega City One, although some of the heads do seem a little stretched.

Art: 3.5
Writing: 3