Andy Naylor reviews IDWs Judge Dredd: Year One #4…
“Psychically powerful juves rule the streets and insurrection is spreading in Mega-City One – Justice Department’s only hope lies with Judge Dredd, attempting to cut off at source the psi-energy passing across the dimensional divide. But for a young lawman barely out of the Academy, has he underestimated just what it will take to save the metropolis he has pledged to protect? “
Judge Dredd is in an alternate reality, a lawless Mega-City One, where the remaining Judges are relegated to scavenging a pitiful existence as they struggle to survive against the dominating and Psi-powered Juves. He must find the cause of their power or his own Mega-City One could be next.
First off, and I’ll make this quick as I don’t like repeating myself too much, but Judge Dredd still comes across as a hardened veteran with twenty plus years of service and experience to draw upon. I’d still like to see something raw and incomplete in the way the great Lawman behaves. Some fallibility about him, nothing about him is different about him at all.
I honestly don’t get the first few pages of the comic, featuring a flashback of Dredd and Rico. It feels shoehorned in. I had to double check I was reading the right comic, and if you are lucky enough to read all the issues in continuation, then this will just drag you out of the story in confused bewilderment. It serves no purpose other than to link Year One Dredd to his regular counterpart and give the reader a little chuckle of “Oh we know what happens to him! Haha.” If there’s something for the die hards in the story then I’d like it to be more subtle and cleverly used.
I enjoyed this conclusion for the most part, it was intriguing and held my interest and paved the way for some future stories which can be linked back to this. However, I felt it did just suddenly end rather quickly. After such a good build up and plot setting, to have everything dealt with so swiftly seemed somewhat anticlimactic.
I do enjoy this series, the art and the colouring are superb and the story, despite my minor issues and grumblings, is solid. With twenty years of unseen Dredd to create I am excited to see what happens in the next story arc. I do sincerely hope that, and I almost hate myself for saying this, alter Dredd’s character a little bit. I want to see him grow, learn and make mistakes. He shouldn’t be amazing from the word go.
Andy Naylor – Follow me on Twitter.
Originally published July 25, 2013. Updated April 11, 2018.
