Preview: ‘Dreadnoughts Vol 2: The March Of Progress’ And A Return To The Nightmarish Earliest Days Of The Justice Department

One of the finest series debuting in the Megazine over the last few years, Dreadnoughts takes a look at how a world goes wrong and the Judges take over…

I’ve been all over Dreadnoughts since it debuted in the 30th-anniversary issue of the Judge Dredd Megazine, with Michael Carroll, John Higgins, Sally Jane Hurst, and Simon Bowland’s tale of the world of Dredd before Dredd proving to be a nightmarish vision of both MC-1’s past and our future – a future America that’s perhaps horribly close right now.

It’s such a powerful and prescient storyline, one of an America on the cusp of it’s descent to the fascism of the Justice Department and the Judges taking over the rule of law.

The idea might well be superb, but it’s the execution by all involved that made it such a hard-hitting series, showing us the terrifying vision of how democracy can be so easily lost. Instead of taking us to the big events, the sort of thing we’d already seen in John Wagner and Carlos Ezquerra’s Origins, we go the boots-on-the-ground approach, focusing on just one small part of the issue, focusing not on the huge political changes at the level of the Justice Department but by cleverly looking at the experiences of the newly graduated Judge Veranda Glover, 40, as she heads to Boulder, Colorado to add to a team of four Judges struggling to deal with the problems of mass unemployment and growing civil unrest.

The first volume, Breaking Ground, introduced us to Glover as she made her way into Boulder and her new position, dealing with fear and suspicion from both the public and the existing law enforcement soon to be replaced in this brave new world – as Carroll says, this might look like a straight bit of sci-fi, but it’s not – it’s a horror story. And it’s still a quite brilliantly done horror story at that.

And all of that continues into this second volume, The March Of Progress, where a crime blitz in Boulder leads to riots against the Judges’ excessive use of force and violation of human rights. Meanwhile, the Hemlock Cartel takes advantage of the chaos to declare all-out war against the Justice Department. And against all of that, there’s the matter of long-buried secrets of Glover’s past that come to light.

Dreadnoughts Vol 2: The March of Progress will be released in December 2024.