Some Of The Usual Suspects: Judge Dredd #14 Review

A couple of months ago, recognizing a gap in my comics history education and having a 20 percent off coupon from Barnes & Noble burning a hole in my pocket, I started reading 2000AD’s Judge Dredd from the beginning. I picked up the first five volumes of Judge Dredd: The Complete Case Files, and have been picking up volumes one at a time since, getting up to volume eight so far.

So while I am by no means an expert on Judge Dredd, I have soaked up enough to have formed the opinions that Ron Smith is my favorite artist on the title other than Brian Bolland so far, that Walter The Wobot is a fucking stupid character, that Dredd should have ventilated The Judge Child as soon as he found him, and that based on the apparently constant appearances of The Fatties, those British comics creators have a fairly solid handle on American culture.

So while we have had IDW’s adaptation of Judge Dredd by writer Duane Swierczynski in the house, it’s been Amanda who’s been picking it up. I haven’t been reading it, because I figured they would hew closer to the recent Dredd movie than the original comics, and that they would go along the lines of DC’s 1990s version of Judge Dredd, that took place in an entirely different continuity from the original 2000AD comics.

But I finally knucked and checked out Judge Dredd #14, and, well, I was half right. The IDW version of the book seems to take place in the 2000AD continuity, with at least a couple of familiar characters who won’t necessarily mean anything to anyone who hasn’t read some of the original books. And it gives us two stories that are pretty solid crime stories with sci-fi elements like body switching and psychic predictions that fit well into the overall Dredd universe.

It’s a good comic, but it’s only an okay Judge Dredd comic. Because it is missing something.

The primary story of the book, Badges, is about a serial killer picking off judges. One was killed by being called into an ambush at a fake crime scene via a hijacked radio call from the Hall of Justice, one was killed outside his home, and one was killed by a sniper at the Hall of Justice, of all places. Most of this happened while Dredd was hibernating in a sleep chamber following his last adventure, which doesn’t make Chief Judge Cal, who is gunning for Dredd, very happy. The secondary story concerns a criminal caught by a crooked judge who is willing to offer a deal: switch bodies for two weeks so she can do the dirty work of whipping the judge in enough shape to pass his annual physical. What he didn’t mention to her was that he was also under suspicion for corruption, and, well, the Special Judicial Squad has a special punishment for crooked judges…

So the opening story is a pretty well put together Judge Dredd crime story. It has all the elements: a mysterious killer who uses technology like dimensional jumping and overriding control radio broadcasts to operate, psychics to cut some storytelling overhead, and copious use of the Lawgiver. It also gets Dredd’s character right, in that the dude is singleminded in the pursuit of the killer in spite of obstacles, and quick on the Lawgiver – I think my favorite panel in the book was Dredd screaming at the killer to surrender, while at the same time snapping off three killshots, which is like giving a courtesy tap to a girl about three seconds too late.

Further, it was good to see Judge Cal, who was a big player in one of the early Judge Dredd volumes. It put the story right into the classic 2000AD stories, which gave me a feeling that the story fit into the classic ones I’ve been reading… but at the same time, it made me wonder exactly where it fit into those stories. Given that I know where Cal winds up, it seems like a head-to-head battle with Dredd while Cal is still Chief Judge could skew some of the stuff I’ve already read. … but then again, I don’t know for a fact that IDW’s version of Judge Dredd actually takes place in 2000AD’s universe. Either way, it was good to see the ancillary character for someone who’s read some of the original stories.

And even the backup story, which is missing Dredd entirely, gets the broad strokes right: Judges being sentenced to Titan, body switching, and a citizen of Mega City One who’d rather do damn near anything than voluntarily lose weight all feel organically like a Dredd story. But it was reading that story that tripped me to exactly what it was that I felt was missing while reading the book: the humor. The original Judge Dredd comics from England are packed full of wit and even slapstick humor – The Fatties in the original books are so huge they are ridiculous, while the judge here is just the kind of garden variety of fat fuck you’d see at any McDonalds – but there wasn’t anything like that in this comic. Sure, there’s a certain amount of irony in the body switching story, but its so dry that it makes James Bond’s martini look like a Bourbon Street fluorescent chick drink.

The cool thing about Judge Dredd is that it has supported a variety of different art styles, from Brian Bolland’s realism to Simon Bisley’s abstractions, and this book follows in that tradition. Nelson Daniel’s art in Badges is a little bit on the abstract side, with big lantern-jawed judges, backgrounds that are filled with sound effects, and somewhat simple, medium lines. Plus, since he’s the guy who drew that panel of Dredd shooting while asking for surrender, he’s got my vote. Staz Johnson’s art on backup story Harsh Condition is more realistic than Daniel’s, with a finer line and more consistent proportions. It looks good… but again: fat Judge Harvies is just a garden variety fat guy. After years of stories about Fatties that wash through the streets like a tide, I expected less someone who looks like Tony Soprano than someone who looks like Tony Soprano immediately after being sawn from a double-wide trailer.

Judge Dredd #14 is a solid sci-fi crime comic with a lot of great elements of the original Judge Dredd to keep fans of that book interested and (hopefully) get people interested in those old stories, which are really a lot of fun. But it is missing that one essential element from the original books: humor. And granted, not every Prog of the original Judge Dredd had lines like, “Gaze into the fist of Dredd!” in it, so maybe this is just a particularly serious issue for the IDW version. But I’m hoping to see some satire and a few laughs in future issues… and I say “future issues,” because this one was good enough, and reminiscent enough of the original, to make me come back for more.