Review by Frank Plowright

For years the Judge system has ruled Mega-City One harshly, enforcing justice as they see it, but with an iron hand ensuring even well-intentioned citizens are guilty of something. However, it’s a never ending cycle, and what with the city-wide disasters constantly requiring massive rebuilding allocations, how can the budgets be balanced in the long term? Financial officer Judge Maitland has been running the numbers and she has the solution, except no-one’s going to like it. If money is diverted to education and social betterment, in the long term crime will greatly decrease. Should this experiment proceed across the city? It’s the thread running throughout this collection.

Boo Cook’s neat, but eccentrically pale coloured art introduces the topic, a fair contrast with the following wilder style of Jake Lynch (sample art left), whose exaggerations are suited to the collection of weirdos introduced. His Dredd is fine, but Maitland under Lynch is alternately wild-eyed and plain wild. Henry Flint’s art is constantly evolving (sample art right) and he moves away from standard Dredd storytelling by using many small panels on a page, telling the story via facial expressions accompanying text. He’s on a sticky wicket with Dredd on that basis, but the system works even with the action moments, where Flint will occasionally expand a panel to half a page. While the style is very different, the technique brings to mind Howard Chaykin’s work on American Flagg!, and look out for a fine page of visual metaphor.

A further complication is that Maitland’s actions in Regicide impacted massively on a crime syndicate, and they’re out for revenge, which occupies the second collaboration between Rob Williams and Arthur Wyatt. They follow a tried and true narrative procedure of first introducing a selection of eccentric, yet seemingly invincible assassins, then set them loose in a fragile location, in this case the tunnel beneath the Atlantic ocean.

The two plot threads then merge in the epic nine chapters of the title story. With Flint propelling the action and selling the subtlety, Williams and Wyatt explore both the political and street level ramifications of Maitland’s idea. Many within the system are opposed, and there’s the opportunity to take a dig at slanted rabble rousing masquerading as news commentary personified by TV host Robert Glenn, who readers know is being fed information by a Judge.

Readers used to what happens in Mega-City One over the years can root for Maitland and hope this is an exception leading to better times, while those less versed in Dredd and his world will have greater optimism. Either way, it’s a thriller with the epilogue pages setting up the consequences, which means Williams and Wyatt aren’t finished and there’s going to be more to come. Good.