Welcome To The Genesis Of The Law: Previewing ‘Dreadnoughts Book 1 – Breaking Ground’

Going right back to the start of the Justice Department in Mega-City One, Dreadnoughts tells “The horror story of a descent into facism and the beginnings of the world of Judge Dredd.”

I’ll talk about this more in a review to come, but I figured you’d like to see a preview of the first Dreadnoughts book, out on 1st November.

If you don’t know, and you should, after all, we covered Dreadnoughts every month in the Monthly Megazine feature here at comic, but, just in case…

It’s 2035 AD. The Justice Department and the Judges have just come into being, a unique service sitting alongside the police, the judiciary, and the government. Only a few of them right now, but their ranks are growing. Given unimaginable powers, it’s not surprising that the existing authorities are uneasy, to say the least.

And into all that comes Judge Glover, fresh out of the academy, 40 years old, and headed to Boulder to supplement a four-man team.

This is her story. And the story of how democracy fell in Mega-City One, and the story of how the world changes, not in a sudden event, but with the slow erosion of the liberties we all take for granted.

I won’t say much more, after all, this is just a preview and there’s plenty at Comicon of Dreadnoughts in the Menazine Monthly posts. Suffice it to say that Michael Carroll is absolutely writing something that feels like a classic right from the first few pages. And he keeps it going right through to the very last page.

And as for John Higgins, brilliantly assisted by Sally Hurst on colours, it’s something of a career-high, just so good all the way through, just as it’s been right from the moment we saw that first image for the series, that killer image that makes the cover, the first page of Dreadnoughts – perfection.

Dreadnoughts: Book One – Breaking Ground – written by Michael Carroll, art by John Higgins, colours by Sally Hurst, letters by Simon Bowland

Published by 2000 AD / Rebellion on 1st November