Judge Dredd #16
13 Badges, Part 3
Created by John Wagner and Carlos Ezquerra
Written by Duane Swierczynski
Art by Nelson Daniel
Letters by Shawn Lee
Covers by Brendan McCarthy, Inaki Miranda & Eva De La Cruz
IDW Publishing
Release Date: February 26, 2014
Cover Price: $3.99

So earlier this week I was given a copy of Judge Dredd #16 to review. Being a fairly big fan of Dredd I was extremely excited to make this my first review and not fuck it up. The only problem is that I had already made arrangements to hang out with a friend of mine, Richard. Now, Richard is a fairly swell guy right up until you start talking about politics. Then he loses his proverbial shit”¦ And with Richard”¦ everything comes down to politics. Even comic books. Richard knocks on my door and walks right in as he always does, sits down on my couch, and starts blathering on about something he read on some forum only he and a few dozen of his Libertarian buddies apparently know about. While this is happening, I’m sitting in my cozy chair reading the issue and being fairly well happy about it.

Dredd #15 left us in a rather precarious place. Ol’ Joseph was being held in the Hall of Justice and was being interrogated by Cal’s men. And by interrogated, I mean he was having the living shit beat out of him like he was a uniformed piñata. So, I’m about 3 pages into the story and really enjoying Nelson Daniel‘s art (he has a superb usage of shadow vs. color to create depth in the panels that’s kind of rare these days) when Richard looks over, sees Dredd, and launches into a tirade about how this comic is a tool by the media conglomerates to desensitize us into accepting the police brutality and surveillance as it is today. If we all accept Dredd‘s future as inevitable then we won’t complain blah blah blah. I think he actually said “Sheeple” at one point. Richard could have gone on for an hour about this, and how it’s unfair that bitcoin isn’t more accepted, and I wouldn’t have given two shits because I was completely enthralled with this story and the fantastic panels on every page.