Preview: ‘Cadet Dredd: Tooth And Claw’ – Before The Judge, There Was The Cadet

by Richard Bruton

Back before Dredd became the legend, before the Judge, there was Cadet Dredd… these are the first of his adventures…

This is a collection of the first set of Cadet Dredd from the 2000 AD Regened Progs, doing exactly what you think, giving us Judge Dredd as a young Cadet, earning his eagle out on the streets of Mega-City One.

The Regened Progs got a lot of flak from ‘fans’ – by which I mean those long-time readers of 2000 AD who love to point out that it’s not as good as it was when they remember it best and simply won’t abide any change or invention. You know the sort.

Personally, I thought there was a lot to enjoy with Regened, getting a whole host of new and old creators in to try something different, pushing the comic onto, hopefully, younger readers and providing an audience for the future.

Each Regened Prog opened, as does each Prog, with a Dredd, except this was Cadet Dredd, way before he became the hard as nails street Judge.

To give you an idea of things, let’s just go with a couple of the 19 Cadet Dredd strips in here… there’s plenty and they’re all really rather fun…

It all started with a fun one, Crowd Control, back in 2018’s Free Comic Book Day comic from 2000 AD, where the whole Regened thing started. It was Cadet Dredd doing a bit of public relations, making friends with the citizens, that sort of thing…

And yes, there were dinosaurs involved, because why the hell not. After all, who doesn’t want to see Dredd do this…

After this, we get things going very wonderfully silly as Chris Weston takes over for an episode as Cadet Dredd and Cadet Rico take on Grudzilla. It’s more PR, this time Dredd and Rico on mission to do the friendly stuff when Hondo-Cit’s most successful franchise starts filming their latest in MC-1. Anyway, Grudzilla’s a typical movie diva, meaning rampage ensues, Rico ends up in Grudzilla’s guts, and Dredd gets him out – the messy way.

Seriously, huge Kaiju meeting Krong, plus poop gags – everything younger readers (and this older reader) want. Chris Weston on script and art doing his very best to give us something classically Dredd silly, something that’s been part of Dredd since the beginning.

So, that’s just the first couple of Cadet Dredds in here, enough to give you a good idea of the fun to be found in here. As this collection goes on, we get more of Dredd and Rico doing their cadet things, with it all gradually getting darker and more serious as things go on, as if each subsequent writer and artist realised they could get away with more and more as Cadet Dredd went on. Never actually straying from the all-ages brief, but beginning to push at the limits of what counts as all-ages, and doing it very well indeed.

Just a look at the creator credits on this should give you an idea of what sort of things to expect. Where it started with Neil Googe doing a very good looking but more cartoonish Dredd, as things go on we have Dredd artists such as Jake Lynch, Ben Willsher, Toby Willsmer and more bringing the artistic sensibilities they usually use on big, grown-up Dredd to these Cadet Dredd adventures. It also features the debut of the great Joe Currie showing us all that Euro-influenced glorious thin line that we’ve recently seen on the much more adult Silver.

CADET DREDD: TOOTH AND CLAW

Written by Matt Smith, Chris Weston, Rory McConville, Mike Carroll, Arthur Wyatt, Liam Johnson, James Peaty, Paul Starkey, Ned Hartley

Art by Neil Googe, Ilias Kyriazis, Nicolo Assirelli, Luke Horsman, Davide Tinto, Jake Lynch, Duane Redhead, Ben Willsher, Joel Carpenter, Silvia Califano, Gary Welsh, Toby Willsmer, Neill Cameron, Joe Currie

Colours by Len O’Grady, Chris Blythe, Gary Caldwell, Matt Soffe, Jim Boswell, John Charles

Letters by Sam Gretton, Annie Parkhouse, Simon Bowland

Originally serialised in 2000 AD progs 2130, 2170, 2183, 2196, 2206, 2220, 2233, 2246, 2256, 2280, 2288, 2296, 2306, 2325, 2336, 2346, 2356, 2000
AD Regened Volume 1 & 2000 AD Free Comic Book Day 2018.