Preview: ‘I Am The Law – How Judge Dredd Predicted Our Future’

I Am The Law looks at how the future cop in sci-fi Mega-City One predicted the rise of authoritarian policing is explored in a fascinating and necessarily frightening work…

Something very different coming from 2000 AD on 23rd February – I Am The Law, written by 2000 AD’s  Brand Manager Michael Molcher, is a non-fiction paperback that takes a long, detailed look at the ways that 2000 AD‘s Judge Dredd strip has predicted the future of policing and law and order politics.

[Obviously, as a non-fiction work, this preview is more to give you an idea of what to expect, a taste of what you’ll be reading. So, I’ve picked just a few select passages from Molcher’s introduction to his work to give you that glimpse into the book.]

It’s an important and interesting book that addresses the world of today through the lens of Judge Dredd, a comic strip that, since it began in 1977, has portrayed a future world where law and order has been taken out of the hands of the police and the judicial system and placed squarely on the shoulders of the Judges – they literally ARE the law, dispensing justice as police, judge, jury and, when required, executioner.

When John Wagner and Carlos Ezquerra created the future cop it swiftly moved from sci-fi action to something far more nuanced, evolving into a hard-hitting satire on the world and particularly the increasing militarisation of the police and the rise of politics that take a hard-line stance on ideas of law and order – something that, over the years, has held up a mirror to societal changes and made readers consider just what sort of law and order they see around them in their everyday lives.

Over the last four-plus decades, Dredd’s continuing adventures have done what every great sci-fi series does, shining a light on events in the world its readers live in. More than that, it’s served as a warning about the way that policing and the judiciary has been shifting over the years with the introduction of zero-tolerance policing, politically motivated law enforcement, suppression of political protests and dissent, and the proliferation of state surveillance.

Molcher’s writing here brings together the comic book history of Dredd and various theories of policing to paint a dire warning of the ways modern-day policing and law-making increasingly reflect the events seen in Dredd’s history.

Through the chapters Molcher explores the world of Dredd, looking back to key elements of the decades of storylines, whether that’s major arcs such as ‘The Day The Law Died’ or ‘Block War’, or the overarching themes of the world of Dredd, and makes a powerful and convincing argument for the worrying rise in police powers, politicians spouting law and order as a simple solution to all ills of society that have slowly (and in many cases, not so slowly) stripped away individual and societal liberties in favour of authoritarianism. Our police forces and judicial system may not be at the level of the Mega-City One Justice Department, but they’re definitely moving in that direction far too swiftly.

In I Am The Law: How Judge Dredd Predicted Our Future, Molcher takes on a huge subject and produces a work that will inform and educate and, in many cases, frighten you at just how prescient Judge Dredd has been over the years. For anyone interested in comics and understands how important they are as a medium and how they can still be vital in commenting on our world, I Am The Law is essential reading.

I Am The Law: How Judge Dredd Predicted Our Future is written by Michael Molcher with a cover by Pye Parr. It’s relased on 23 February 2023 and is available to pre-order now from the 2000 AD web shop.