Review by Frank Plowright
‘Judgement Day’ was the first time a crossover was attempted between the weekly 2000AD, and monthly spin-off Judge Dredd Megazine, and a suitably epic premise was supplied for the occasion by having Mega-City One invaded by zombies. John Wagner and Garth Ennis co-plotted, with Ennis providing the script.
Judge Dredd and a few cadets are looking into the disappearance of those working at a mining colony in the Cursed Earth when the situation escalates rapidly from investigation to crisis as an army of zombies manifests. They can’t be allowed to breach the city walls. Rather cleverly, the cause is an enemy from the Strontium Dog series who’s slipped away through time to raise the dead, the Necromagus Sabbat, and Johnny Alpha is sent to bring him to justice.
With Carlos Ezquerra unavailable to draw everything as he did in The Apocalypse War, other artists are needed and the assignment was handed to then relative newcomers Peter Doherty and Dean Ormston. Doherty’s airbrushed precision differs greatly from Ormston’s more expressionistic art, and neither resembles the traditional lumpy people drawn by Ezquerra. Ormston’s character designs hit the spot, but his storytelling is vague this early in his career, not a problem affecting Doherty or Ezquerra. Doherty produces some great looking pages at the start, but by his final chapters the art is far more basic, an indication of the time that went into the early pages. Because he’s drawn so much Dredd, Ezquerra can be under-valued, but a late sequence here of Judges in battlesuits battling zombies is amazing. As Chris Halls, later film and video director Chris Cunningham draws one chapter, his art fusing Glenn Fabry and Sean Phillips.
Ennis arranges matters so that Mega-City One gradually being over-run is detailed in the weekly instalments, while Strontium Dog’s attempts to convince the Hondo Judges are a separate thread. This leads to some placeholding, such as a chapter featuring a couple of contrived fights for Dredd, but overall this is a winner. Ennis writes Sabbat as a sardonic taunter, absolutely sure of his own invincibility and his creepy cloak is a great idea. Because Ezquerra draws so many pages Judgement Day really has the feel of the classic Judge Dredd disaster serials with last ditch relief coming at a terrible cost. Ezquerra uncharacteristically fudges the storytelling at the end, but this hits the action and excitement buttons all the way through, and it’s no surprise that it’s seen several editions over the years.
Both the Essential Judge Dredd hardcover version and the Mega-Collection hardcover include an extra story, ‘The Kinda Dead Man’ by Ennis and Anthony Williams, casually connected to the main plot, but it’s a throwaway. Years later the events of Judgement Day were revisited in alternate world scenario The Darkest Judge.
