Preview: ‘Al Ewing – Judge Dredd: Blaze Of Glory’

Al Ewing didn’t write all that many Dredds but as Blaze Of Glory, this short 140-ish page collection will show you – they were a set of damn fine Dredds.

Spending pretty much all of his writing time over at Marvel these days, Al Ewing was never the most prolific of 2000 AD writers, but sometimes you don’t need to have had years and years of Progs and Megazines under your belt to get a collection – it’s the quality not the quantity that counts.

So, that’s why we have Blaze Of Glory, a collection of Ewing’s great, great Judge Dredd stories from his time at 2000 AD, many of them previously uncollected, and all of them damn fine examples of his style and how well he wrote Dredd.

Inside, there’s mutants, laidback religious cults, the Sex Olympics, and a fiendish plot to off Santa Claus. Add in a bit of the poignant, a bit of darkness, and a hilarious James Bond pastiche done with ultra-realistic stand-ins for Connery, Moore, Craig, and all the rest – and the result is a cracking collection of one author’s take on an iconic character.

Oh, and there’s also, for my money, one of the funniest and silliest of Dredds from recent years when Al Ewing and Jake Lynch brought together Dredd and Ewing’s finest creation, Zombo, for a few pages of absolute fall off your chair funny. That was from as recent as 2020, for the Summer Special – so fingers crossed that this isn’t in any way the last we’ll see of Ewing’s name in the credit boxes here.

So, here’s a few highlights from the book for you. Yes, preview time!

AL EWING – JUDGE DREDD: BLAZE OF GLORY

Written by Al Ewing, art by Simon Fraser, Paul Marshall, PJ Holden, Leigh Gallagher, Andrew Currie, Patrick Goddard, John Higgins, Liam Sharp, Ben Willsher, Jake Lynch.

Published by 2000 AD & Rebellion on 1 March 2022.