Preview: Hershey: Disease – The Ex-Chief Judge Of Mega-City One – Ella Es La Ley!

by Richard Bruton

The return of former Chief Judge Hershey, on a mission to make amends for past failings, one that’s going to take her around the world. First stop, the brutal and dangerous streets of South America’s Comuna…

“As Chief Judge of the chaotic and crime-ridden Mega-City One, Barbara Hershey is used to losing allies and making enemies. But when she is poisoned with a terminal alien pathogen, she realises that the time to rectify her mistakes and take revenge is beginning to run out.”

When John Wagner said farewell to Barbara Hershey in his Dredd: Guatemala storyline, we thought it was the end. Poisoned by an alien parasite, she made her peace, said her goodbyes, and died…

And that was that.

Except it wasn’t.

Hershey has unfinished business.

Unfinished business that she doesn’t want Dredd to know about.

After all, it was on her watch that Judge Smiley ran rampant, on her watch that Dredd and shut her out of the secret war against Smiley, and on her watch that the Enceladus was trafficked around the world to create more enemies of Justice.

Smiley might be dead, but the network he set up across the globe lives on. Unless Hershey takes it down.

But how’s she going to do that if she’s terminally ill?

How’s she going to do that when she’s dead?

Well, in Hershey: Disease you’re going to find out.

Hugely enjoyable, wonderfully readable, with Hershey’s quest feeling every bit as brutal and desperate as it needed to be, Rob Williams’ writing is sharp and punchy, whilst Simon Fraser’s artwork, with less of the lush stylings of Nikolai Dante, is full of threat and nastiness, capturing the essence of Hershey’s new life, complete with that stunning use of tonal colour throughout the series.

It’s a major addition to the world of Dredd and, given the amount of the world that Hershey needs to cover to rectify her failings over Smiley’s network, one that should run and run.