Advance Review: ‘The Darkest Judge’ Gives Us The Magnificent Wish Fulfilment Alt-Take On Judgement Day We Never Knew We Needed

Sure, we’ve seen zombies in superhero universes done before, but here’s 2000 AD‘s take on it all – and it’s a damn good alt-take on a classic.

Sure, we’ve seen zombies in superhero universes done before, but here’s 2000 AD‘s take on it all – and it’s a damn good alt-take on a classic.

Collecting the tales published in 2022’s 2000 AD Prog 2300 and Judge Dredd Megazine #448, The Darkest Judge is a massive, multi-part, multiversal what-if tale that celebrates 30 years of the iconic Judge Dredd: Judgement Day.

In that classic Dredd tale, Garth Ennis, Dean Ormston, Peter Doherty, Chris Halls, and the legend that was Carlos Ezquerra, told the tale of the necromancer Sabbat raising up an army of the dead, defeated by Dredd and Johnny Alpha, averting a zombie apocalypse. But what if it didn’t happen that way? That’s the key question posed in The Darkest Judge, what would have happened if just one different path was taken?

Like I said here in the preview – it would be bad. VERY bad.

And that’s where we are here in The Darkest Judge. Within the first few pages, we’re taking that alternative path and seeing what might have happened had Dredd and Johnny not taken on that mission, and dealing with the fallout of the proposition that the best way to get rid of Sabbat’s threat was to drop a shit-load of dimension bombs to shift the whole zombie horde into a different reality.

All of which takes us into what if? territory here, with Kenneth Niemand’s guiding hand getting to show us the great and the good of the 2000 AD universe get zombied in the worst possible way.

Because, whilst the dimension bombs see the immediate threat to Dredd’s world averted, the zombie plague spreads out across countless realities from the worlds of 2000 AD, with zombies infecting everyone from Rogue Trooper to Sinister Dexter, from Ace Trucking to The V.C.s. And we get to see it all played out from a veritable who’s who of 2000 AD writers and artists, all doing the dirty on the characters us 2000 AD readers have loved all these years.

And yes, like I said in the title to this, this is wish fulfilment to the max, 2000 AD style. The first half of the book sees the zombie plague spread across the 2000 AD universe, through the worlds of Rogue Trooper, Survival Geeks, Mean Arena, Sinister Dexter, Ampney Crucis, and Robo Hunter, all culminating in Johnny Alpha realising what devastation has been wrought and heading back to MC-1 to confront Dredd…

And meanwhile, back in MC-1, Dredd is having to come to terms with the fact that this version of the plan is about to come back and bite him – literally.

All of which leads into part two of the book where we see a rag-tag team assembled by Johnny Alpha – after stops in the worlds of Shimura, Anderson, Missionary Man, Cadet Giant, Devlin Waugh, and Amitage – take on the ultimate bad guy, a zombified Dredd.

Like I say, this is pure wish fulfilment running rampant. But that doesn’t mean, not in any way, that I didn’t thoroughly enjoy the hell out of this. Seeing the zombification of the 2000 AD universe in part one is just great, with plenty of star turns from all involved, but with special mention going, of course, to seeing Henry Flint back on Dredd in the opening and closing chapters of part one – one of the greatest Dredd artists working right now surely.

But it’s in Kenneth Niemand‘s careful masterminding of it all that the real meat of the tale is to be found. Well, Niemand and 2000 AD editorial. It’s incredibly rare that 2000 AD do something like this, and the rarity of it is what makes this so much sheer utter fun.

As the second part kicks off, the brilliance of Flint is replaced by the equally magnificent artwork of Leigh Gallagher, again taking the opening and closing chapters of it all. And in this second part, it’s all about pulling it all together, the sheer delight of seeing 100-ish pages of what-if come good in a conclusion where Missionary Man, Judge Anderson, Judge Giant, and Johnny Alpha take down the zombiefied Dredd, that’s just the ultimate fan service going on right there.

Sure, it’s cliched and it’s full of the whole what if thing of everything happening way too fast. But it’s also a quite wonderful bit of Dredd alt-history, something done so rarely that it’s always rather special when it happens.

So just strap in and prepare yourself for a thrill ride that only 2000 AD can give you. This isn’t cerebral, it’s not got anything clever to say about the state of the world, it’s just a fun zombie tale executed so well by so many great writers and artists who probably had as much fun creating this as you will reading it.

Judge Dredd: The Darkest Judge – Published by 2000 AD on 19th July 2023

By Ken Niemand, Henry Flint, Mike Carroll, Gary Erskine, Emma Beeby, Neil Googe, Karl Stock, Kieran McKeown, Dan Abnett, Russell M. Olson, Ian Edginton, D’Israeli, Arthur Wyatt, Toby Willsmer, Rob Williams, Staz Johnson, Leigh Gallagher, Kei Zama, Honor Vincent, Boo Cook, Gordon Rennie, Dan Cornwell, James Peaty, Nicolo Assirelli, Liam Johnson, Conor Boyle, Steve Yeowell.