Review by Ian Keogh

With a Judge Dredd film on the horizon DC took a punt on introducing 2000AD’s brightest star to the American market. The series ran for just over a year from 1994, and Legends of the Law presents the first two stories.

DC made the right decision in reuniting the John Wagner and Alan Grant writing partnership, and they’re exemplary in setting the scene with Dredd’s blend of satire and fascism as a coach of tourists arrives in Mega-City One. As Dredd attempts to discover where tobacco is being smuggled to, the tourists become lost, and we also look in on an organ snatching organisation.

If anyone knows the lunacy of Mega-City it’s Wagner and Grant, and they duly introduce a range of eccentrics from the frankly too far over the top singing surgeon to the peeping tom. It’s interesting for being set prior to Dredd’s UK continuity as seen by Cassandra Anderson being a young girl, but it’s also stretched too long over four chapters. The biggest drawback, though, is Brent Anderson’s art. Panel by panel he tells the story, he draws a decent Dredd, and designs a convincing monstrosity at the end, but the layouts don’t maximise the possibilities of the city, which is presented as a bland backdrop.

Anthony Williams has a better handle on both Dredd and his environment, and is influenced by Brendan McCarthy’s looseness, but isn’t as imaginative or talented, although to be fair to Williams, few artists are. D. G. Chichester’s plot concerns meat-eating robot bugs and Dredd training a hardline and overly ambitious cadet during a mission in the Cursed Earth. It’s a viable Dredd story if you overlook it being too derivative.

Overall this is one for the hardcore completists, while anyone else would be better advised to head for some classic Dredd instead as per the recommendations.