Judge Dredd #1

I've always found Judge Dredd to be sort of a guilty pleasure, so when I heard IDW was coming out with an new series I was more than eager to pick this up. In the first issue we have a pretty simple reintroduction to Judge Dredd, and it's split into two different parts. The first part of the issue is the first part of a story arc where Judge Dredd is called in to take care of a string of robberies resulting from a malfunctioning tree that rapidly reproduces fruit. One of the robberies is a bit more organized, and Dredd discovers there is more to this robbery than what it first appears. It seems from the premise like this will be a pretty simple story that will entertain, but maybe not necessarily be memorable. Still it gives us a little something more to look forward to.

The second story falls a little flat. It is a story that can't quite make up its mind about what it wants to be. It attempts for the most part to be funny, but at the same time horrific in a way. In this story we see the dysfunctional relationship between a store owner and his robot assistant that just so happens to be feminine in design. The story is an attempt to cover over the familiar ground of "hell hath no fury as a woman scorned", though it sort of misinterprets the message since the woman just so happens to be a robot, and she is sort of egging the store own on in an act that has serious consequences for him. It is a story that is just poorly executed, distracting, and completely forgettable. It would have been better to leave this story out.

Overall it's not a bad comic, but it's not a great one either. I recommend it for fans of Dredd, but if you're a newcomer you can give the issue a shot and decide for yourself what you want to do from there whether it be to give it a couple more issues to decide if you want to keep reading or if you would rather move on to other books.