Judge Dredd Year One: Omnibus

When you’re trying to uphold the law in a city of hundreds of millions, you better be pretty damn tough. For Judge Dredd, it’s what he’s spent his whole life training for. But while many know Dredd’s greatest triumphs and most epic battles, very few have glimpsed him in his early days, fresh out of the academy and looking to bring the worst of Mega-City One to justice, whether they like it or not.

Judge Dredd Year One is a collection dedicated to the rookie year of the sternest judge to ever patrol the streets of that futuristic crime-ridden urban sprawl. And these are hard-hitting, sharply told stories, each offering a different facet of Dredd’s early development.

While I do feel one of the big twists in the third story, “Wear Iron,” was marred a bit by its placement in the collection—the surprise would have been more impactful if it were placed first—the collection does a terrific job of exploring the city while offering some suitable challenges to young Dredd. These stories probably won’t redeem Dredd in the eyes of skeptics, but I hope they introduce new readers to an intriguing side of an iconic character.