Michael Carroll (1) (1966–)

That was surprisingly better than I expected it to be 😊

The first story by Michael Carroll is basically a Western with Dredd as sheriff in a border town run by a corrupt business family, with high explosive weapons, mutants and radioactive twisters.

The second story by Matt Smith sees Dredd battered and bloodied, running a gauntlet of violent perps in a locked-down Mega-Block, not dissimilar to the excellent Karl Urban Dredd movie.

The last story by Cavan Scott is a detective mystery, featuring a female Trump-alike trillionaire politician and Deadliner, a serial killer targeting journalists. Dredd is assisted by a Psi-Judge, who wasn't Anderson but could just as well have been. Sadly, this story was marred by a section of egregious fatphobia 😕 I know the Fattie subculture is canon from the comics, but it can be used sensitivity or abusively, and unfortunately Scott went with the latter, which is a shame.

All the Dredd characteristics are here, but as an inexperienced newbie on the Mega-City One skeds, Joe is not infallible and he has some learning to do. Overall, a fun romp with a bit more going on than steel-chinned police brutality.… (more)

Here we are given several stories linking Dredd with Russia (or Sov) territory. We follow Dredd from punitive expedition to the ultra secret Sov prison (in my opinion best story in collection, both artistically and story-wise), effects on the soul of people that took part in wiping out entire Sov mega city to assisting Sov Judges in the remote parts of SIberia only to get haunted by the ghosts of the past.

Art is mixed here. First story was a best one to me, story of the Apocalypse team was more toony in a bloody and gory way (AD2000 trademark), while story of Mega City One's assistance to Sov's remote outpost is more of a sketchy approach, long, pointy characters, dark and shady, rather monochrome panels. In overall pretty solid art.

Recommended to all fans of Judge Dredd and his universe.… (more)

Definitely not an edge on your seat thriller. More of a devastating story for a family shielded in secrets. After surviving the war and thought dead, Pete Banning returns to his Mississippi Cotton estate to his wife and family and ends up killing the local preacher who gave comfort to his family during his absence. He gave no defense for his actions and would give no motive. As a reader, it was obvious the reason for his actions, but was it? The secret would go to his grave with him. For his children left behind, losing their family farm inheritance along with their parents finding the answers to the family's demise was not what they ever could have imagined. The story of Pete and his fellow soldiers suffering during the war and the depiction of the horrific scenes of the Bataan Death March were truly hard to read and made the tragedy after Pete's return from the war even more heartbreaking. ** All other reviews included here appear to be about another book?… (more)