Review by Karl Verhoven

In Mega-City One crimes committed by Judges are punished by working exile to the mining colony on Titan, so inhospitable that survival requires surgical replacement of facial features with metal modifications. It renders any convicts who survive their term instantly recognisable when they return. One who has is Kyle Asher, whose crime was killing a citizen. When confronted by Judge Dredd he claims he once signed up to serve his city, and that’s why he’s employed in the sludge pits, a job otherwise considered only fit for robots. He also claims there’s an organised program to ensure all former Judges returning from Titan are unwelcome. “You think all those Titan returnees that jump under zoom trains are genuine suicide cases?” he asks Dredd.

Dredd has to decide whether to believe a disgraced former colleague or the Justice Department’s secretive unit for investigating Judges, the SJS. Readers, however, are shown the SJS warning Dredd off, and monitoring Asher. That’s just the beginning of Kenneth Niemand’s twisting trilogy. It seems at first that he’s too easily sacrificed the suspense of whether or not there’s a harassment policy against former Judges returning from Titan, but the anticipation becomes evaluating just how sincere Asher is. He knows all the regulations, and ensures he stays within the law, but does he have ulterior motives?

The tension and action are intensified by Tom Foster’s art. He explains in the process notes how he felt he’d become too dependent on digital tools, and this marks his return to actual drawing. It’s a phenomenal result, if in places too reminiscent of Brian Bolland’s approach, but Bolland’s a great example of solid and dynamic storytelling, and Foster certainly delivers that amid fully rendered scenery.

Niemand makes good use of Mega-City One and its locations, has a nice line in distracting via bizarre crimes as Dredd investigates, and ensures matters are a little more complex than it appears at the start. Asher is contrasted with the relatively inexperienced Judge Purcell, prone to cutting corners, bending rules and quick to judge, but not in the official sense, and it’s discovered he does have a mission. Sometimes where Niemand leads is predictable, but more often he’ll surprise by swerving clear of what readers will assume. This is partly by focussing on both Asher and his constant mantra of anything he endures now isn’t as bad as twenty years on Titan, while other contrasting viewpoints are supplied, muddying motivations. The eventual mystery becomes how many principles Asher will sacrifice in achieving his aims and what the personal cost will be.

Neither Neimand or Foster are regulars on Judge Dredd, but on the basis of A Penitent Man there’s no doubt they ought to be.