Matt Smith (10) (1972–)

That was surprisingly better than I expected it to be 😊

The first story by Michael Carroll is basically a Western with Dredd as sheriff in a border town run by a corrupt business family, with high explosive weapons, mutants and radioactive twisters.

The second story by Matt Smith sees Dredd battered and bloodied, running a gauntlet of violent perps in a locked-down Mega-Block, not dissimilar to the excellent Karl Urban Dredd movie.

The last story by Cavan Scott is a detective mystery, featuring a female Trump-alike trillionaire politician and Deadliner, a serial killer targeting journalists. Dredd is assisted by a Psi-Judge, who wasn't Anderson but could just as well have been. Sadly, this story was marred by a section of egregious fatphobia 😕 I know the Fattie subculture is canon from the comics, but it can be used sensitivity or abusively, and unfortunately Scott went with the latter, which is a shame.

All the Dredd characteristics are here, but as an inexperienced newbie on the Mega-City One skeds, Joe is not infallible and he has some learning to do. Overall, a fun romp with a bit more going on than steel-chinned police brutality.… (plus d'informations)

dreddone
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!

Received in ebook format from www.netgalley.com. DRMd, too big to be sent to a kindle, had to be read using ADE on a laptop. Unfortunately ADE on a laptop is not the easiest format to read these stories - in "actual size" the font is virtually unreadable (bad for something this text heavy), but if you magnify, the scrolling becomes so slow as to be unresponsive....both PG-DN and cursor scroll both mean that each page can take over 10 minutes to progress through. (I have read other graphic novel content on an ipad, and it has been a joy and a delight to read, so to be presented in this format is highly disappointing).

To the story itself: Dredd has been on the streets for approx a year after 15 years in the academy. Psi-Division is not long established. Seemingly random Psi events kick off around the city, where teens that would have previously rated "zero" for psychic ability are producing. Dredd is learning from more experienced Judges such as Goodman and Riorden - the latter being the Psi-Cop leading on the investigation. Between them Dredd and Riorden end up at a children's home where Dredd enters the psychic rift that has opened up recently in the building.

Dredd finds himself facing a version of Meg City one that has been decimated as his own, but empty of people - a situation he has never confronted before, and it makes him nervous. He meets up with some judges that have been forced underground by the psy-kids that took the city over the previous year, under the guidance and direction of something that calls itself "The Four Mothers". Meanwhile, the Judges in Dredd's reality are attempting to find him and pull him back with forewarning of potential issues to come through a time link to the future.

Graphics are good - the other MegCity One in particular - it's very word heavy (Dredd speaks!) and I will consider getting a paperversion of this… (plus d'informations)

This review first appeared on scifiandscary.com
‘Judge Dredd Year One: City Fathers’ is a book that tries to do four different things, so it’s maybe not surprising that it doesn’t succeed at all of them. It’s an origin story about the early years of a very well known character, Judge Joe Dredd. It’s a detective story and it’s a sci fi action thriller. On top of that, it takes a universe famous in one medium (comics), and translates it into another (prose). By my measure, it manages to do two of those four things well.
The book is set in the first year after Dredd’s graduation from the justice academy, when he’s still a fresh young Judge on the streets of Mega City One, rather than the grizzled old bastard readers of 2,000 A.D. know and love. The case he is investigating is one of a dangerous new drug on the streets of the city, one that causes users to become homicidally insane.
Dredd was a favourite character of mine as a teenager, and the book plays to the strengths that I remember from those days. It’s full of brutal violence and terse dialogue. Dredd powers around the city on his Lawmaster motorbike and dispenses justice with his Lawgiver pistol. The action scenes are thrilling and effective and the book fully captures the colourful, feverish atmosphere of Mega City One.
Where it works less well is as a detective novel. I love a good mystery, and sadly this isn’t one. The denouement comes out of nowhere at the end, giving readers little chance to deduce things for themselves along the way. The book is also not entirely successful as an origin story. The problem is partly the shift from comic book to prose, because it invites an examination of his inner thoughts that is easier to avoid in comics. Dredd has always been an iconic, silent monolith of a character and the examination of his feelings and motivations just didn’t work for me.
This is a bit of a mixed bag then, in some ways it’s as good as you’d hope it could be. In others it’s unsatisfying. Fans of Dredd will probably have fun with it, but anyone else should probably start elsewhere.
… (plus d'informations)