Graphic Novel Reviews
Judge Dredd
Rend & Tear With Tooth & Claw(2026) Rob Williams, A. M. Guéra & Guilia Brusco, Rebellion, £19.99 / Can$33.99 / US$24.99,
trdpbk, 128pp, ISBN 978-1-837-86545-1
This features two firmly and one loosely connected stories together with a fourth Judge Dredd tale that were published either in the weekly 2000AD or monthly Judge Dredd Megazine in 2024/5.
The first story, 'Next Man Up', sees the Chief Judge Logan task Dredd with a mission to the Scandinavian Confederation. Logan has already selected the team but Dredd wants t bring along a cadet too, except he does not yet know which. The Chief Judge asks him why, but Dredd says it his personal discretion. Though too himself he wonders if it is because Maitland died (in a previous adventure) and Dredd is running low on the all too few people he can really trust. (Dredd has his own sense of right and wrong and justice that sometimes conflicts with the Justice Department's wisdom of the moment.)
Dredd goes on the streets to find a final cadet judge exercise. Against the tutor judge's own assessment, he selects a less gung-ho cadet called Moon.
The next story is the titular one of the collection, 'Rend & Tear With Tooth & Claw'. It sees Dredd's team shot down on their return from their (not referred to) mission. Their craft was taken out by a stinger somewhere in the Northern Radlands (a belt of the former southern Canada). With an unseen sniper taking out one of the judge survivors, Dredd and three others, including one badly wounded and Cadet Moon survive.
But in addition to a mountain gang after them, there is something worse: an over-sized bear has got their scent…
'Tunnels' ees a complete change with, initially Dredd in the Brazilia rainforest but we quickly jump to a flashback to six days earlier and Cuidad Barraquilla (Buenos Aries), Dredd and the local judges (which we know from a number of previous stories are corrupt) are escorting Dredd to a crime lord who is in protective custody house arrest but local gangs are impeding the judges getting there.
At this point we get another flashback to Mega-City One two weeks earlier still and Dredd is called to see a citizen who asked for him. The citizen turns out to be a wally squad (plain clothes under-cover) judge who was meant to have died five years earlier while undercover infiltrating Total War (a pro-democracy extremist group out to remove the judges – there have been a number of Total War stories over the years).
But it transpires that the wally squad judge has turned, or gone native, and strikes a blow against the judges. The rest of the story sees Dredd track this rogue judge down, first having got information from the mafia boss in protective custody, and then to the Brazilia rainforest replete with radiological mutations (following the nuclear war that created the Cursed Earth in the 21st century).
We get one last, unconnected Dredd tale, 'The Man Comes Around', to round off the collection.
There is a certain symmetry between the stories 'Rend & Tear With Tooth & Claw' and 'Tunnels'. The former sees Dredd being hunted and the latter him being the hunter. Both though are largely isolated from the main, great overarching Dredd plot arcs and are standalone tales. The one connection with the over-arching Dredd arc is with the initial story and Dredd seeking a cadet to take under his wing and whom hopefully he can grow to trust. This signals how alone Dredd has become. Bear in mind that the character has been going for almost half a century and has gone from being a young judge in his twenties to a grizzled veteran who has had at least to major re-juve treatments and the best 22nd century medical care Mega-City One has. Along the way he has lost trusted allies in various ways (including dementia, cancer as well as the line of duty). He has also had doubts about the judicial system and has been privy to 'the Big Lie'. Internationally in Dredd's early days, written during the 1980s and '90s communist and totalitarian Russia seemed on the wane unlike in the Dredd-verse where they remained steadfastedly against the West. Today, with Putin's fascist Russia, the Dreddverse seems decidedly prescient. And this brings us to the question of where is Dredd going?
Standalone collections such as Rend & Tear With Tooth & Claw are all very well, but where is the overall Dredd arc going? A couple of years ago we lost the long-standing Dredd lead writer Alan Grant and his writing partner and Dredd co-creator John Wagner is himself getting on in years which brings us to the question as to who will lead on taking the great Dredd plot arc forward? This collection's writer, Rob Williams, has already shown he can handle arc stories with The Small House. Let's hope that he and John Wagner are chatting regularly.
Jonathan Cowie
[Up: Fiction Reviews Index | SF Author: Website Links | Home Page: Concatenation]
[One Page Futures Short Stories | Recent Site Additions | Most Recent Seasonal Science Fiction News]