Preview: ‘Judge Dredd: The Complete Case Files 48’ — Onwards To ‘Tour Of Duty’

Another in the complete, in order, reprinting of Judge Dredd, from both 2000 AD and the Judge Dredd Megazine, the absolutely essential way to read it.

This is one of those moments where the various little stories of Dredd give way to the mega-epic, in this case, Tour of Duty, the second biggest Dredd epic of all time, some 46 episodes long. It’s also where recent publishing history overlaps with these Complete Case Files, with three recent volumes of the Essential Judge Dredd in 2023-2024 giving us a cherry-picked Tour of Duty trilogy.

Here, though, we get the work as published, in order, well, sort of. As happens sometimes, especially with such a big story, certain tales in the Megazine were published after events in the epic story changed things, and so it is here. Hence why the whole thing opens, unusually, with three Megazine stories that took place before the Tour of Duty prequel, Under New Management, rather than diving straight into things. Hey, sometimes you’ve got to twist things a little to make them work.

Anyway, if you didn’t know, the background to all this comes out of Wagner’s recent epic, Origins, where Dredd’s dsicovery of a mutant branch of his clone family, all tied back into Chief Judge Fargo, had led him to rethink his approach to mutant rights. We’ve had all the build-up to things here, the sort of great socio-political commentary that John Wagner is so damn good at, making Dredd so much more than just the authoritarian cop carrying out the orders of this fascist regime.

This entire volume, and the next, will deal with the fallout of Dredd’s support of Mutie rights, the majority of it written by Wagner, but with the likes of Al Ewing, Gordon Rennie, and Robbie Morrison pitching in shorter tales along the way.

It all properly kicks off in the excellent single episode of Under New Management, on new Chief Judge Dan Francisco’s first day in office. Both Dredd and Hershey are removed from the city, their crusade for Mutie rights now failed, they’re both seen as liabilities that the new Chief Judge, his Deputy, Judge Sinfield, and the rest of a new Council of Five can’t be associated with. For Hershey, that means a posting off-world, something we know will be the death of her in time. Dredd, meanwhile, is to be sent into the Cursed Earth to oversee the setting up of four mutant townships to take all the muties expelled from Mega-City One, with Beeny punished for being his protege as his second in command out there.

As you’d expect, it’s a superb little intro from Wagner, setting up the next storyline, the epic storyline, so perfectly, an exercise in how to do things like this so tightly, so well. As we see Hershey and Dredd expelled, there’s also a counter storyline of one of those muties and his ridiculous robo-lawyer’s attempts to get clemency for his death penalty providing comic relief alongside the seriousness of the political manouverings. Masterful, simply masterful.

From then, we’re plunged, for over 200 pages into Tour of Duty. First, the Wagner-written brilliance of the Tour of Duty storyline itself, a mere six episodes, yet so important, followed by a series of episodes, some single Prog long, others short multi-episodes, most by Wagner, others by Ewing, Rennie, Spurrier, all exploring the new life Dredd has now in the Cursed Earth.

Tour of Duty has Dredd and Beeny with their meagre and sub-standard team of one Judge per township, facing the harsh realities of life in the Cursed Earth. It’s artistically superb, Colin MacNeil‘s collaborations with Wagner always are, writer and artist in synchrony, giving us so much in wha’s not said, the storyline always moving forwards so strongly, following Dredd as he realises he may never see the City again, yet stoic and determined in his new role.

As we go deeper into Tour of Duty, we get more action, as Dredd and his woefully inadequate team attempt to deal with the threats out there, leading to many episodes of Dredd versus the trouble of the week, plenty of action, but also laced with growing tensions of what it was put him here. That’s all explored along the way, as Sinfield pushes his powerplay, a harder line than Chief Judge Francisco wants to push, the difficult politics of power never far from the surface here. All of that perfectly explored in the Wagner-written tales following Tour of Duty, where both Dredd and Rico starting to question the Deputy Chief Judge’s motives in all this…

All this just boulders along, Wagner expertly threading the action of Dredd and his merry little band face that week with the political goings-on back in the City, all leading to Dredd’s reappearance in MC-1 to see Francisco, only to find himself face to face with Sinfield, whose plans are only just beginning.  But that, well, that we’ll see in the next volume of the Complete Case Files.

Needless to say, this volume is all about Wagner and how damn good he is at doing everything so right with Dredd. Sure, the ancillary tales work well, all the writers involved doing good things, packed with plenty of great art from a stellar cast of artists. But it’s Wagner’s world at this point, and watching him execute this epic is just the greatest reading experience there is.

JUDGE DREDD: THE COMPLETE CASE FILES 48

WRITTEN BY JOHN WAGNER, AL EWING, GORDON RENNIE, ROBBIE MORRISON, JOHN SMITH. ART BY KARL RICHARDSON, CARL CRITCHLOW, COLIN MACNEIL, PJ HOLDEN, MIKE COLLINS, PAUL MARSHALL, JON HAWARD, COLIN WILSON, PETER DOHERTY, KEV WALKER, PATRICK GODDARD, JOHN HIGGINS. COLOURS BY CHRIS BLYTHE, GARY CALDWELL, FIONA STEPHENSON, JOHN HIGGINS & SALLY JANE HURST. LETTERS BY ANNIE PARKHOUSE & SIMON BOWLAND. COVER BY CLIFF ROBINSON

ORIGINALLY SERIALISED IN 2000 AD PROGS 1644-1673, JUDGE DREDD MEGAZINE 284-292, 2000 AD PROG 2010. (2009-2010)

PUBLISHED BY 2000 AD ON 5 NOVEMBER 2025