AUTHORS: JOHN WAGNER, ALAN GRANT, ROB WILLIAMS | ARTISTS: R.M. GUERRA, SIMON COLEBY, DAVE TAYLOR, MICHAEL DOWLING | PUBLISHER: REBELLION | FORMAT: PAPERBACK | RELEASE DATE: JULY 25TH
The world of Judge Dredd is always ending. The core idea behind this post-apocalyptic canon is that humankind is hanging on by a thread. Which requires Dredd to be judge, jury, and executioner in order to keep Mega-City One from the edge of collapse. Given the series has been going for over 40 years, you’d have thought things would have improved at some point, but the writers keep throwing in disasters to make humanity’s existence all the more precarious and to justify the fascist police state that is Mega-City One.
Ghost Town is a collection of stories set after ‘Chaos Day’, a viral attack that has wiped out a huge chunk of the population. With the Big Meg strewn with corpses and the Justice Department desperately short of staff, the set-up for all of these tales is grimmer and darker than the usual Dredd fare. The first story, Wasteland, is a straight forward Dredd police-procedural drama. Really it serves as an introduction to the new state of the city, showcasing the additional horror and the loss of hope. It centres around the shenanigans caused by wealthy citizens trying to take advantage of the desolate tenement blocks for profit and power and is fun if predictable.
Dead End features Psi-Judge Cassandra Anderson. It opens with an appropriately downbeat vibe and gets darker as it goes on. Some of the scenes were headline grabbers when this story first appeared in the regular magazine as the storyline is very, very grim. However about half-way through a reset button gets mashed and the tone shifts to the Psi-Judges versus a big bad monster story, which is pretty normal.
The titular Ghost Town is a tale of despair and betrayal. The short-staffed Judges ask Dredd to assess a new scheme – Rangers comprised of people not quite good enough to be Judges. These substitutes are a mixed bag of characters, and mostly it’s an excuse to give a ‘citizens view’ of the situation. It’s a relatively fun tale of robot piracy and brutal solutions. Dredd is especially unsympathetic in this adventure, but that’s the point.
The Man Who Comes Around revisits the issue of Dredd’s mortality. It’s been done before, many years ago and though it’s nice that Dredd ages and gets grumpier as he does so, the story doesn’t really do anything but pass the time. The final story, 300 Seconds, is similar filler and should take you much less than five minutes to read.
Overall, this is a fun and entertaining collection of Mega-City One stories with a darker tone than most. Character development isn’t really a thing for Judge Dredd, but it comes pretty close.
