The founder of the society even has his doubts about it and Judge Dredd talks about doing things differently. A society based on law and order sounds good until you actually have to live under its oppression. I enjoyed the story as there was a lot to it even if you think it would just be a simple story considering the main character. It is very violent and I would not recommend it for younger readers as it seemed like it would have been something the older teenagers would have read back in the day and had confiscated when they took it to school. Comparisons with the Trump presidency are no doubt tiresome by this stage but there is a mob storming the Whitehouse at one point and a president who rigs the election.

Most of the story is told in flashbacks concerning the breakdown of law and order in the USA, Judge Dredd’s early years, World War III and the last president of the USA.

The original story of Judge Dredd’s origins was told over several issues of 2000AD back in 2006 (progs 1505–15–1535 prologue in 1500–1504), but these are now out of print except for digitally so they would be hard to find. The Marvel vs DC duopoly wasn’t really as big a thing in that market which makes the stories seem different as they were not trying to outdo each other doing the same things.

One thing that makes this character different is that even though the story is set in the USA it was written in the UK which had a different culture with its comics with the old ones like Beano being for the younger readers and the older ones being into Viz. The character and story has had a lot of influence on other popular culture so it was good to go back to the origins of the character. Originally published in 2000AD magazine back in 1977 Judge Dredd is the most famous character from that you most likely know about even if you have never actually read the comics as he is in movies, video games and even had an Anthrax song about him at one point.įor a character with 44 years of history it is difficult to know where to start so I appreciated that I had a chance to read this to read about the origin of the character directly from the creators.

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