Review by Frank Plowright

Tour of Duty is a loose title applied to three volumes collecting the Judge Dredd stories published between 2007 and 2010, primarily written by John Wagner, in the case of this selection exclusively.

The connecting thread is Wagner advancing a plot about mutant rights in Mega-City One, connected to earlier stories where Dredd discovered he had mutant family living in the Cursed Earth. Having largely taken as accepted the idea of those born with birth defects as second class people to be shipped out of the city to containment camps, Dredd’s now beginning to question that policy.

Because he’s so good with wacky stories about Dredd and his world, there’s possibly a tendency to underestimate the quality of Wagner’s Judge Dredd when he’s playing things straight, and that’s more or less the case throughout Tour of Duty Book One. There is an exception for the dark humour of a concentration camp presented as if a holiday camp, but while it explodes into action in places, it’s an introspective collection as Dredd considers his age and the policies of the system he serves.

Also included is Wagner picking up on another thread from the relatively recent past as we look in on Byron Ambrose, Mayor of Mega-City One. Readers who’ve been following the continuity know he has a secret, but for the shock value that’s best left undisclosed here. He’s involved in a clever five chapter story in which Dredd is kept busy with the suspected return of an old enemy while a vote crucial to the future of Mega-City One goes ahead. It’s wonderfully understated.

So is much of the art. This is a superior selection of illustration, with only Nick Dyer’s heavily distorted people not up to scratch, showing a talented artist still striving for a style. A rare Dredd outing from Rufus Dayglo opens the book, and the neatness of Patrick Goddard defines the volume’s best story, a complicated tale of poisoned revenge. The sample art combines the excellence of Colin MacNeil, responsible for more art than anyone else, and Kev Walker slightly channelling the chunkiness of Dredd great Mike McMahon in drawing a block riot.

The deeper into the collection one goes, the more obvious the parallels with the toxic arguments about immigration in the 2020s become. Wagner may have been prescient, but the greater likelihood is of him extrapolating a scenario that’s become all too real.

There are fewer laughs to be found than in a standard Dredd collection, but this is a quality selection worth investigating in any form. These stories are spread across Judge Dredd: The Complete Case Files 45 and 46, which also feature the material written by others separating Wagner’s stories when originally published. This also one of relatively few Judge Dredd collections reprinted as part of the Judge Dredd Essentials selection. The previous edition was as Tour of Duty: Backlash, which is slightly longer, featuring an extra multi-part story now starting Tour of Duty Book Two.