JUDGE DREDD: Day of Chaos (Comic Review)

2000AD #1743 - The start of Days of Chaos.

JUDGE DREDD: Day of Chaos (from 2000AD.)




When I was a kid, around 9-10yrs old, my friend who lived directly across the street from us was a huge fan of the British weekly comic series. The two of us at such an early age began a love of a genre in entertainment that I wasn't even aware that I was in love with: Science Fiction. Sure we had our favourite TV shows like Knight Rider, Star Trek and Automan, but they were to us just the normal thing to watch.

My friend Regan was in love with the ABC Warriors which was a series that ran in 2000AD. He made sure he got every single issue of the weekly and so in turn I got to read it and for free. We had our own gang of two called the 'ABC Warriors', with out own clubhouse which his father and the two of us built. That was some 30 years ago.


But I haven't read a single issue of 2000AD since the 1990s. I somehow grew away from it and turned to mutants and to Marvel Comics. 

Karl Urban as Dredd 2012.

2000AD has a few stories each issue which are usually around 8pgs long and each story is a different title and about a different character i.e, Rogue Trooper, Chopper and the central and greatest of all the characters is Judge Dredd. Dredd 3D, is soon to be released in the theaters starring, I am pleased to say a Kiwi (New Zealander), Karl Urban. Being a Kiwi myself I was ecstatic when I first heard this news over a year ago. There has been an earlier adaption of the comic books, starring Sylvester Stallone as Judge Dredd in 1995.

Judge (Joseph) Dredd is not a superhero or a hero at all. He is an infamous future police officer who rides a motorbike which talks. Imagine Dirty Harry combined with John McClane (Die Hard) and you get Joe Dredd, who is the law in the future of a dystopian city called Mega City One.  


The city is based in the Eastern United States and is governed over by a council of Judges, who rule the city with an iron fist. Every crime no matter what it is, is punished by placing the perpetrator in an Iso-Cube. There are other cities as well and other landmasses as well as other planets. There are cults given to TV shows as well as death cults. There are even mutants and aliens, all in the cities. 

Stallone as Dredd, 1995.

Some of the greatest comic book writers and artists in the past 30-40yrs in British and American comics began their trade working on 2000AD. Creators of characters and series titles like Judge Dredd by writer John Wagner and artist Carlos Ezquerra, as well as Pat Mills. Mills also created, with his then wife, Angela Kicaid, Slaine, whose most famous artist is non-other then Hellblazer current cover and sometimes interior artist, Simon Bisley, as well as current longtime Hellblazer writer Peter Milligan. Others have been Glen Fabry, Neil Gaiman, Alan Moore, Grant Morrison and Mark Millar (of Kick Ass fame). Last but not least, Garth Ennis. These and many more famous names have worked and created characters for 2000AD. 

When the movie is released like with all things comic book, there will be a rush by the masses to find out more and also to find out where to start reading Judge Dredd comics. I am here to tell you that the best place to start is Day of Chaos.

Dredd starts to believe Cadet Hennesey's predictions.

John Wagner who, as mentioned, co-created Judge Dredd is currently working on a series called Day of Chaos. The storyline is by far one of the best series I have read in comics currently and is an epitome of the character driven story. The story has as its beginnings 30 years in the past as the cause of what will become the "Day of Chaos". There are so many players and part-players in the story. 

As the story unfolds, John takes us through some of the major players, namely the the remaining Soviet landmass, known as East-Meg One, that was destroyed by Dredd 30 years prior as he tried to save Megacity in a catastrophic battle. One survivor of the war is Colonel Yevgeny Borisenko, an East-Meg One intelligence officer, blinded by the flash of the nuclear explosion. Yevgeny has revived what was the early stages of a genetically-engineered soldier programme and has been training them for the past 30 years to carry out his revenge on Dredd and his beloved city. 

Col. Yevgeny threatens the scientist and his family.

One key character is a biotech scientist and his family who have been under house arrest for years, since it was found that he had nearly created a virus which could wipe out the entire human race - Yevgeny has his people kidnap the scientist from under the Megacity One's Judge's noses and takes them back to the Sov Bloc.  

With the election of a new major for Mega-City One approaching there is much activity, both with the running candidates and the sure for the previous major, PJ Maybe, who just happens to have returned back to the city after having gone into hiding after being found to be a mass murderer. 

Dredd shooting a rioter after the 'kill on
site' on rioters and those breaking curfew.

As Yevgeny's 'children' begin to go about their plans of their biological war on Mega City One and it's people, a young and as yet untested twin with precognition ability begins to 'see' people and places and items that have to do with what is being planned for the Day of Chaos. With the active embedded enemy personal in all areas of Mega City One life and affairs, soon the twins are in danger and it is too late by that time to stop what can only be described as the biggest biological attack on a city in the history of 2000AD's Mega City One. 
As people become affected by the virus, the ports to the city are closed off and people are advised to stay home and not go out unless absolutely necessary. But with the election day approaching citizens see it as another way for the Judges, who they believe are evil anyway having lived under their iron fist for decades, to control the population and they begin rioting. And so, the numbers of those getting sick begins to rise. 

As the disease takes on greater hold of a person, it begins to change their behavior as well. From being calm one moment to ultra-violent the next instant with very fast relaxes, they begin to regress and behave like animals, attacking anyone by biting and ravaging and feeding on dead bodies.

Soon it's anarchy in the streets as Yevgeny's plan of slowly destroy Mega City One takes life. War cults such as The Rage and Total War begin attacks on the symbols of the Judge's rule, by attacking and killing Judges in the streets and at their training academy. Judges become the main targets, but later with the riots and violence in the streets and attacks by the virus carriers, no citizen is safe. 


What happens in Day of Chaos will forever change the world of Judge Dredd and the role that the Judges play in Mega City One. And the best place to start reading the megazine if you haven't already is : 2000AD #1743.

Anthrax, a thrash metal band recorded a song early in the late 80s called 'I am the Law' about Judge Dredd, which for them was a iconic hit. 

(ARU), Aruneshwar has a Bachelors Degree in Digital Media -Digital Film-making. He took a semester of Multimedia earlier last year which kind of set him up for comictrade.co.nz, a New Zealand  online comic store. On the creative side, Aru is writing and illustrating a graphic novel about the 30yrs of Institutionalised Slavery of Indians in Fiji from 1885 -1915. He is a prolific script writer and writes in all comicbook genres which include several graphic novels for his own company,Rising Sun Comics. Aru also uploads a digital comic series on Facebook called, Zero as well as completing his first crime-noir graphic novel, The Circle. He is also trying to finishing off coloring and lettering a superhero comic book mini-series he co-created with Mike Burbeck called, Incredi-Girl.