Judge Dredd: Dark Justice

It's a replacement

Having only started reading Judge Dredd a year ago with the Mega Collection, my knowledge of the world is still growing, and I've only read few of the earlier tales involving the Dark Judges, including the mega-epic Necropolis which saw the Dark Judges bring ruin upon Mega City One. In the 26 years since Necropolis, they have only appeared sporadically, with Fear, Fire and Mortis appearing in the Day of Chaos and being captured in that epic by PJ Maybe. Death meanwhile went through a number of changes becoming somewhat of a comic relief in a number of tales before returning to the sinister foe which originally made him so popular, and becoming almost a half-life inhabiting the body of others in order to escape Dredd. That's the situation when Dark Justice picks up, with Death planning to free his brothers and take out Dredd and Anderson once and for all, before turning his attention to the rest of the world.Despite being written by John Wagner, probably the most qualified person to write a Dark Judge book, the story appears kind of flat. It starts strongly enough, with Death rescuing his brothers and sneaking aboard a starship filled with some of the richest citizens of the Mega City, while the Sisters of Death manipulate matters to get Dredd and Anderson on the ship to stop their foes. From there though it becomes a purely mediocre tale of running around a space ship trying to rescue those who have survived the original onslaught while re-capturing the antagonistic Judges. The "trapped on a spaceship, fighting for survival" story has been done many times before and has been done better.The book itself features a conversation between John Wagner and Greg Staples which ultimately lead to the story, with Wagner himself saying he felt he'd done all he could with the Dark Judges before being convinced to write one more story, especially after seeing the artwork Staples provided as a demonstration of his talents. It's this artwork that bumps the book up in terms of quality. Every panel is so rich in detail and quality,both in terms of the characters and the backgrounds. The back of the book is a collection of other artwork - posters teasing the event, covers of the original progs, storyboards, original pencils, reference photos.While the story is flawed at times, the artwork alone makes this one collection to pick up, and made it worth the read.

Rating is an average of two different strands (Story: *** Art: *****)Let's start by accentuating the positive - Greg Staples' lush, painted artwork. This is a stunning and beautiful book, which does a fantastic job of invoking place and mood with just the right pallete of colours for each situation. The book is well worth the cover price for the art alone (so go ahead and buy).And yet ...[MINOR PLOT SPOILERS]The story itself is something of a let-down. An interesting start - a spooky house and psi-shennanigans in the Big Meg, a stellar Ark with it's own society & hierarchy etc. - doesn't take long to morph into a fairly basic chase through a space ship. The Dark Judges' plan to 'get Dredd once and for all' is pretty dumb and riddled with holes and there isn't really a ton of characterisation and development. That's not always a bad thing for a JD story, but the overall feeling here is that all you're left with is, oh - hang on - some FREAKIN' AWESOME ART!Do buy it - but don't expect Origins or Day of Chaos or the Judge Child Saga or anything like that. Even the original, brisk tales of the Dark Judges feel like there's more meat on the bones than this. All in all a fairly slight tale in the mythos of the Lawman of the Future.

To frame my review, I'm proceeding on the assumption that this is The Dark Judges last appearance. And if that is true, then it's an average send-off and truth be told, an average story that has more in common that a Batman/Dredd one-shot that a true Dredd mega-epic.However the artwork by Greg Staples elevates it to something that at the very least, you simply sit back and marvel at. No wonder it took so long - the guy is a modern day Brian Bolland, both in his depiction of Death and his goons and the sheer detail he crams into every single panel. No Bisley-clone artwork here.As the previous review alludes to, the story doesn't round off or add to any previous Dredd plots which whilst great for the casual reader is unsatisfactory for the long-time fan - which is surprising given this is written by the only guy that can write Dredd, John Wagner. And maybe he had written everything he wanted to in Necropolis.I'm hoping that there will be one more Judge Death story, maybe concluding Dredd's adventures (he's not getting any younger) and given how unlikely it would be to get Bolland to draw that story, Staples would arguably be a better choice...If you want to read an OK Dredd story and enjoy beautiful artwork in a gorgeous volume, this is it.

The quality of the book is there and the artwork is fantastic. It's also nice to read the dark judges in a none slap stick story line (ie batman judge Dredd files).The thing I think this story it's lacking though it's depth. It'll take 20 minutes to burn through the story, I couldn't believe that the end was actually the end as there was still about half the book to go but they turned out to be cover art.Some of the dialog is a bit sloppy too, especially for Wagner with Dredds one liners not up to the usual standard of awesomeness.The book felt like a bit of an after thought. I was really looking forward to seeing what PJ Maybe was going to do with the dark judges and was interested to know how judge death would return. If you are too then prepare for a disappointment.It feels like such a wasted opportunity that Wagner was reluctant to write (he even admits this in the forward)I've given it 4 stars because to give a Dredd book anything less would be a travesty and it's still miles better than the batman story lines of the last 2 years.