Fiction Reviews
Judge Dredd: One-Eyed Jacks
(2025) Ken Niemand et al , 2000AD – Rebellion,
£16.99 / Can$33 / US$24, trdpbk, 112pp, ISBN 978-1-837-86606-9
Before we get into this we need a bit of British comics history.
The character of Judge Dredd was co-created by John Wagner (his image created by Carlos Ezquerra) all well and good. This was back in 1977. However, before then in 1975, Wagner worked as editor (along with future fellow 2000AD stalwart Steve MacManus) for another British comic, Valiant. Its strips were not all SF: some just hinted of genre or fantasy but the comic had what might be described as the comic equivalent of cult televison. A few strips were, though, firmly SF/F including: SF novelist Ken Bulmer's The Steel Claw, The House of Dolmann, novelist Barrington_J._Bayley's The House of Dolmann, Mytek the Mighty and also the more fantasy Kelly's Eye.
And so it came to be that John Wagner created the character 'One-Eyed Jack'. He was one-eyed because he was blind in one eye (having been shot by a robber) and wore an eye patch. He was a policeman who was not afraid to use a gun and so was very much a Dirty Harry rip-off but with his own distinctive backstory.
One-Eyed Jack was Detective Jack McBane, who had used to do everything by the book and following the rules, but losing his eye due to a criminal's attack changed his approach and now he does whatever it takes to get the bad guys.
Jump forward a couple of years and John Wagner was with Pat Mills pulling together what was to be 2000AD and knowing the success of the One-Eyed Jack strip, they decided that something similar was needed for their new comic and so a futuristic One-Eyed Jack was sort of re-born in the form of Judge Dredd… And the rest, as they say, is history.
This bring us to 2023 and this story written by Ken Niamand which appeared in Judge Dredd Megazine before being compiled into this 2025 graphic collection. But before we get into this we do need some recent Dredd background…. Dredd now has two clone brothers – one of who has left the Judges and the other still a Judge who calls himself 'Rico' after Dredd's original clone brother (who went renegade and Dredd killed decades ago). The new, younger Rico clone brother was created because the Council of Judges were aware that Dredd was ageing and that the city needed a Dredd-figurehead patrolling the streets.
The other bit of recent Dredd history is that Dredd has had a couple of re-juve (rejuvenation) treatments and recently bionic eye replacements.
It is 2145AD and Dredd is on patrol when one of his bionic eyes starts playing up so he is moved to 'light duties' while the problem is sorted out. Meanwhile, his (younger clone brother) Rico has a problem with a mass murder investigation and so calls Judge Joe Dredd in as a consultant (well, that counts as 'light dutues').
The way the murders were carried out is similar to a number of previous cases but there are some oddities. A number of the victims are carrying old – pre-atomic war – identity cards and also they are carrying some old pre-war items. However when forensic dates these, all these apparently 'old' items were dated as being only a few years old!.
Meanwhile, in 1975, two centuries earlier in a run-down part of New York, a druggy in a run-down mission for the homeless building receives a slip of paper through a 'portal' while talking to aliens! Suddenly the door burst open a Detective McBane bursts in gun blazing. McBane gets a call over the radio from a colleague at the scene of another murder. Apparently one of the victims is carrying the identity card of someone who will not – it seems – bee born for another 150 years in an unknown place called Mega-City One!
Back in 2145, Dredd and Rico call in a Psi Div (Psionic Division) Judge Gurran to mind-read the thoughts of one of those arrested at the scene of the mass murder. She successfully reads the mind but gets mentally trapped: Dredd and Rico shoot the arrested man so as to release Gurran from the trap but she dies anyway. It is clear that there are powerful forces at work.
Dredd and Rico decide to visit a powerful psi-terrorist whio is the only person they know with enough psi-power to do what was done to Gurran, but when they open the vaults, to interrogate Anton Molak, he is not there.
Flashback to two centuries earlier to 1975 and McBane's partner, Eartha Fargo – an African American – goes undercover…
And so begins two parallel investigations: one in 1975 with McBane and Eartha Fargo, and one in the far future 2145. As Eartha Fargo is Chief Judge's Eustace Fargo's grandmother (yes, Fargo was one-quarter African American) and as Dredd and Rico have Fargo's DNA, there is a direct ancestral personal connection between the two cases. Could this be pure coincidence…?<.P>
As you can see, there is a lot to unpack here and also a lot of British comics history as well as Dredd's ancestral history in the mix. This is an important Dredd story!
The full-colour artwork by Kieran Mckeon and Quinton Winter hits the spot.
Accompanying this modern Dredd classic we get another One-Eyed Jack story with Eartha Fargo set solely in the late 1970s. I have to say I found this story weaker and that it strayed from the original mythos in that Jack broke the rules in the Vietnam War. However, we do get the sense that Vietnam was where Jack got his drinking habit and it could be argued that his rule-breaking was in part due to the horrors of war as well as the fog of drink, though this could have been more explicit. Its saving grace is that the story reveals that Eartha Fargo's own father (Chief Judge's Eustace Fargo's great-grandfather) was a World War II veteran who absolutely hates fascists: the irony being that Dredd is part of a fascist regime.
One-Eyed Jack was to reappear a couple of times in Judge Dredd Megazine and looks like the strip will continue to see occasional reappearances. Ken Niemand seems to be making a fair fist of this and I am glad that John Wagner is still with us to see McBane's new adventures and the new connection established with his other creation, Judge Dredd.
This is both a 'must have' for Dredd aficionados and sufficiently self-contained for those who only occasionally dip into the Dreddverse. Get it while you can otherwise you will have to seek out the larger – hence more expensive – anthologies that will surely come along (in the Judge Dredd: Complete Case Files for example) in the future.
Splundig.
Jonathan Cowie
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