Comic Review: Judge Dredd Year One by IDW
After yesterday’s rough review, I felt it only fitting to showcase a better offering from IDW. IDW is the American Comic company with the rights to the Judge Dredd franchise; for the most part, they republish older Judge Dredd stories for the American market, but they also deal with Judge Dredd's early years and his time spent in Mega-City 2, though these can be hit-and-miss. It is one of these early-year stories we are going to review today, all the way back, in fact, to his first year as a full Eagle judge.
Judge Dredd: Year One.
Author: Matt Smith
Illustrator: Simon Coleby
Release Date: November 5, 2013
Publisher: IDW
Fluff: In an all-new adventure from Joe Dredd’s early days as a Mega City-One Judge, writer (and Eagle-award-winning 2000AD Editor), Matt Smith presents a tale where “all the young juves carry the news,” only in this case, the news is delivered with a lethal blow!
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Review
First, unlike many Year One stories (Batman, etc.), this isn't set up as Judge Dredd's first experience in law or arresting people. But it is instead set during his first year as a full-eagle Judge, a term for freshly graduated Cadets. The nice twist to this type of series is that the Judge Dredd we see here is barely older than the Juves he's chasing. Dredd is in his late teenage years, possibly early twenties. In a rare turn of events, we have a rookie Judge Dredd, fresh-faced and wanting to make a difference. Due to this, we see Dredd getting called Rookie a lot, which he hates (but I love). But with Dredd being Dredd, he behaves like a straight-ass Judge who follows the rule of the law by the letter. Even as a rookie, he has the guts to recite the law to more senior judges.
The story itself is rather interesting. All over Mega City 1, Juves, aged one to eighteen, are randomly developing destructive psychic powers. With the newly designed and understaffed Psi-Division (so no PSI Judge Anderson yet) being stretched to the limits trying to locate and contain the source. They have no choice but to team up with the street judges. As it becomes a tradition, Dredd is not a fan of the PSI department or the members of its unusual division. But at the same time, Dredd and the Mega City 1 judges are unprepared for this outbreak and must work together to solve the crisis. Soon, things are escalating way out of control, and Dredd watches as an eight-year-old tears apart a perp for threatening to shoot his dad! He uses only his anger and the newly found psi abilities (scary for everyone) to reap bloody vengeance.
From here on, the story takes a dark twist as Dredd faces down the source of all these Psi issues. We also get to see a young Rico alongside Dredd. Still as cadets, rookies, brothers and friends. I need more of this, please.
This was a great read and well worth a purchase. The art by Simon Coleby is beautiful, and this comic has initiated my interest in more of the IDW series (beyond the cheesy-looking ones).
