Jan 2013
Writer: Duane Swierczynski
Artist ("We've Got You Now"): Nelson Daniel
Artist ("Naked City"): Langdon Foss
Colourist ("Naked City"): Ronda Pattison
Cover (A): Zach Howard
Cover (B): Nelson Daniel
Variant cover: Nick Percival
IDW Publishing, colour, $3.99 print, $1.99 digital
Okay, I get it. Multiple covers are a thing. IDW's Dredds are going to have 'em more often than I like, and I shouldn't whinge as they're pretty. Fair enough. Still, let's have a look. Cover A (top right) has Dredd dispatching a tracked war robot with a boot to the face and by ripping cables out of its neck. The robot's a typical mix of the plausible and the silly that we'd expect in this kind of strip: a humanoid torso on tracks with a minigun attached. It has nothing to do with the story inside; it just shows Dredd being hard and robots being fun to draw. Cover B is a head-and-shoulders side view of Dredd standing in a city street in front of a Lawmaster bike, with dust and pollution. Dredd looks his usual mean and moody self. This also has nothing to do with the plot in progress. Yes, this is notion bugs me. No, I don't care how old this rant is getting.
As far as first pages go, this is a corker. Nice shot of judges on Lawmaster bikes hogging the road, kicking up dust and in one case doing a gratuitous wheelie. Cityscape with dozens of glaring illuminated signs warning viewers of the abduction of one of Mega-City One's hyper-rich citizens. Mobilising what seems like all Justice Department on the behalf of one rich boy is a bit excessive, but if Dredd's to be an effective satire it has to show the gap between the haves and the have-nots. There's even a name for this kind of all-points bulletin: TRUMP ALERT. Since one can read this term as either a reference to egomaniacal plutocrat Donald Trump or to a 'trump', a particular kind of wet, noisy fart, I'm particularly impressed by this addition to the Big Meg's lexicon. I'm all for its use in any Dredd comic, British or Stateside.
This being Mega-City One, there's more to this affair than mere kidnap. The victim soon turns up safe at home – or does he? Because MC-1's criminals are twisted and inventive, the affair is kidnap, cloning, threat of torture, made even more cruel since there's no way the victim's wife can know for sure if the victim is her husband or a mere clone!
It's at this juncture that I have to highlight a similarity between this story and an early Dredd adventure from 2000AD Prog 38 (left), in which people were kidnapped and replaced with lifelike androids and used for espionage. Obviously these cases differ in terms of motive, but it's nice to see the 'kidnap plus doppelganger' idea brought out and given another airing.
A bit more world-building goes on while the plot unfolds. Chief Justice Morgan is in charge. We learn that clones can retain the memories of their 'parent', right up to the moment the sample was taken. Judge Tarjay returns to partner Dredd, having recovered from his injuries in issue #1. Anderson reappears to give psionic backup. All good stuff and it doesn't seem forced or gratuitous: no infodump, no 'As You Know, Bob'. Characters recur and, bit by bit, we get a feel for their personalities. It's so easy to do this sort of thing badly, to force characters to serve the plot, but thankfully that's not what happens here.
No sign of Myers this issue; ditto any sign of the rogue robots: that plot hook's been left to dangle while another plot's been advanced. That's probably for the best; sometimes events simply aren't straightforward, and given that Myers is going undercover, he needs time to establish himself in his new identity. The city will just have to keep Dredd and the other judges busy for the time being.
Nelson Daniel again does a pretty good job with his art duties. He's got Dredd down pat; the perma-scowl, only the slightest change in facial expression betraying an alteration in mood. Dredd is not the most expressive or demonstrative of characters – they don't call him 'Old Stony Face' for nothing – and Daniel gets that. Fortunately he doesn't make the mistake of making every other judge the same: Tarjay, Chief Justice Morgan, Anderson (naturally) all have a far wider variety of expression: Morgan's troubled brow and careworn face show his age without crowding his face out with a load of unnecessary lines. The use of Letratone-style shading is tasteful too, and adds a nice retro flavour to his work. Not sure if that's actual Letratone or just something Nelson Daniel does with his computer, but either way it works. I should have remarked on this before, but it's the first time it's actually jumped out at me.
His action scenes continue to impress, laying to rest many of the apprehensions I had during my review of issue 1. There are some terrific camera angles when Dredd's hover vehicle runs a gauntlet of opportunistic perps; he conveys a good sense of tension and breakneck speed throughout, making the sudden cliffhanger work all the better. After all that movement, the brakes are slammed on abruptly and we're left wanting to find out what happens next issue, or rather how it happens. Obviously Dredd survives. You could disintegrate the intransigent old bastard and the dust would still be capable of kicking arses and dispensing justice.
Without giving too much of the game away, Tarjay is also the subject of 'Naked City', a six-pager that expands on the cliff-hanger of 'We've Got You Now'. Foss and Pattison's visuals are clean and elegant, and don't overcrowd a simple story and bit of plot-building by Swierczynski. They capture Tarjay's desperation and quick thinking nicely, especially the look of repressed panic when he sees one of the perp sheets. Swierczynski's writing as before is excellent, the plotting tight, the character development plausible; all in all a believable portrait of a man up against terrible odds. It's hard not to root for him which makes what fate has in store for him all the more tragic. But, I have to pick one nit. The bit with the organ-leggers. Two hilariously clunky word balloons. Given that the story has no dialogue except for three panels, any bit of ropy dialogue is going to stand out like a sore thumb. Alas, these made it through: Those two balloons could have been removed, at no cost to the page's impact. Less would have been more.
A pretty good issue, easily the equal of its predecessors. 8/10.
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