‘Dreadnoughts Book One: Breaking Ground’ – Michael Carroll, John Higgins (Rebellion)

I love reading comic books but the one thing that stops me really going for it is the nagging, inevitable feeling that with some titles, there is just far too much backstory for me to ever get my head around. ‘X-Men’ is one (lets be honest, all of the Marvel comics now), ‘Judge Dredd’ is the other. I mean, I’ve read a number of the stories but the fact that the ‘2000AD’ comic is pushing what, fifty years old now? I’m never going to catch up with it all.

So when I realise there’s a chance to get in on the ground floor, just a little bit, and maybe get a little bit of that backstory after all… I’m in :o)

The year is 2035 and American society is crumbling. State brutality in response to public protests sparks even greater restrictions on what American citizens are free to do. The police force are being replaced by Judges, paramilitary cops who can dispense summary justice on the streets, and the public are about to learn just what it means to have a Judge in your neighbourhood.

Judge Veranda Glover is fresh out of the Academy and assigned to Boulder, a city that’s about to erupt in violence; can she be a Judge in an America that still thinks it ‘knows its rights’? And can she keep her own dark secret from being revealed…?

Judge Dredd’s America has long been a nightmarish vision of a future where authoritarianism and outright Fascism have replaced democracy so the prospect of taking a little step ‘back in time’, to see the tipping point in greater detail, was definitely appealing. I’ll be honest, I feel like I just missed the pivotal moment but what we’re left with is a lot more interesting. The Judges are just starting to make their presence felt and it’s already too late for the populace to do anything about it, and that includes regular law enforcement and the military… The only thing is, people haven’t quite figured that out yet so what we get, as readers, is what feels like conflict erupting on almost every page. And that was brilliant for me, getting to see that slide into Fascism play out at a personal level (with Glover working her case in typical Judge fashion) against that wider backdrop. And I’ll say it, it’s even sobering to read when you see how our world is turning at the moment. You’d like to think it would never happen though, would it? Especially when ‘Breaking Ground’ really hammers it home that Dredd’s world was built on some pretty corrupt foundations...

I thoroughly enjoyed ‘Breaking Ground’, so much so that I was actually a little disappointed to see it come to an end and the following story, ‘The Paradigm Shift’, take us back to the future (sorry, couldn’t resist) world of Mega City. I shouldn’t have worried though, Carroll ties past and future together and they dovetail perfectly in a tale where the mistakes of the past can finally be put right, just not the mistakes you were maybe thinking of. ‘Paradigm Shift’ rounds the book off in just the right way, expanding on some of the themes raised in ‘Breaking Ground’ and showing us how these may impact on Mega City One.

As usual, I’m not the best at talking about artwork but I’ll give it a go :o) Higgins’ art really caught the feel of that moment (and Hurst’s colours brought it out superbly); grim and a bit brutal but always compelling. Lynch’s art, in ‘The Paradigm Shift’ didn’t quite hit those heights but that’s just me I think. To be fair, Lynch and Charles do for Mega City One what Higgins and Hurst do for Boulder, Colorado.

‘Breaking Ground’ was a great read then and it won’t surprise you to learn that after I finished it (and said things like ‘damn…’ and ‘wow…’) I went straight out and ordered Volume 2. I really need to stop doing that… Oh well, I’ll let you know how it goes.