If Judge Child is Dredd’s answer to the precocious Anakin Skywalker, then Joe does what we all wished we could have done with the mystical runt…Īrtist: Will Simpson, Colin MacNeil, John Burns This is where it all began though, taking Dredd outside his comfort zone into world of brilliantly surreal speculative escapism. The first long-form John Wagner and Alan Grant team-up, the pair would not only go on to craft more Judge Dredd mega-epics, but re-energised a cluttered and predictable era for Batman with a stripped-down and altogether darker run on Detective Comics, focusing on pulpy short-stories with fresh villains. Dredd leads a crack team (including Judge Hershey in her debut appearance) in search of the mythical Judge Child, who will bring balance to the (police) force – the perfect setup to bob from outlandish situation to outlandish situation across the Cursed Earth and into space, taking in a first encounter with the fearsome Mean Machine Angel, a first look at the cowboy chic of Texas City, Dune-inspired Oracle Spice hallucinations and the brilliant, absurdly terrifying Jigsaw Disease that erases its sufferer Tetris-block by Tetris-block from existence.

Judge Dredd’s own Star Wars, with a splash of Homer’s Odyssey. The psychopathic PJ Maybe is on the loose, the Academy of Law is destroyed in a terrorist attack and the Dark Judges are unleashed.ĭay Of Chaos certainly lives up to its name.Īrtist: Mike McMahon, Brian Bolland, Ron Smith Plot and counterplot gather momentum – news that the contagion is incurable leak out, and citizens riot rather than be executed by Judges who’d been rounding up the affected, promising quarantine and cure. Running for nearly a year between July 2011 and June 2012, Day Of Chaos was an apocalyptic levelling of Mega-City One, comparable to earlier storylines of mass destruction like Judgement Day and The Apocalypse War, this time with a hint of 28 Days Later, Garth Ennis‘ Crossed and even status quo-rupturing anarchy of The Dark Knight Rises.Ī biological agent is unleashed by vengeful agents of the previously decimated Soviet Bloc city, East Meg One, turning all it affects into murderous psychopaths for the four days it takes to kill them. Proves that new Judge Dredd stories can have as much impact as the cast iron classics, thanks in part to the continued presence of co-creator John Wagner. Artist: Ben Willsher, Henry Flint, Leigh Gallagher, Colin MacNeil, Edmund Bagwell

Tour of duty john wagner