BOOK REVIEW – GARTH ENNIS & GREG
STAPLES – JUDGE DREDD – INNOCENTS ABROAD. 2002 Titan Books.
Graphic comic stories collection featuring some excellent Judge Dredd adventures. The title story is a follow up to Ennis’s excellent Emerald Isle. An Irish hoodlum, Mickah O’Dilligan, finds out he has McSod’s Disease, which will bloat him into an extremely ugly freak within hours if he doesn’t get himself wrapped in gold. Killing his doctor for giving him the bad news, O’Dilligan is delighted when his Irish brothers turn out to have a stash of stolen bank gold, but the brothers are being pursued by Judge Dredd and an Irish Cop who Dredd worked with in Ireland – their pursuit prevents O’Dilligan from exploding into a freak, and he eventually burns to death in an oxygenated swimming pool. A fun story with an inevitable resolution. There are great asides, such as Dredd arresting people in a bar for drinking illegal canned beer instead of fresh measured pints by the glass – a case of real ale fanaticism becoming law.
Babes
In arms is a fairly straight-forward revenge tale, in which a group of
mistreated women track down their husbands one by one and kill them, with no
regard for innocent bystanders who get in the way.
Rough
Guide to Suicide is a spoof of Internet help manuals, where someone has published a
guide to the best ways to kill you, resulting in thousands of suicides
throughout Mega City One. Dredd goes to arrest the writer, hoping it will end
the craze, only to find that the author has practiced what he preaches and
become a martyr to his own creed – the suicides continue unabated.
Blind
Mate is a viscously funny satire on the Blind Date TV dating show, and even
features a Cilla Black like presenter called Chiller Black. One contestant is a
killer who Dredd is trying to bring to justice. When Chiller asks Dredd to be a
contestant, he arrests her for improper behaviour.
The
final story, Twin Blocks, is another thinly disguised TV parody, this time of
Twin Peaks, in which the various freaks that populated the show, such as the
log lady, here depicted as the Mop lady, are quickly arrested or sent for
psychiatric evaluation, and the main villain’s resemblance to Kyle Machlachlan,
(Agent Dale Cooper) in the Twin Peaks show is uncanny.
A fun collection, though lacking any contrasting serious Dredd tales.
© Copyright. Arthur Chappell
LINK TO THIS PAGE http://arthurchappell.me.uk/book.review-judge.dredd-innocents.abroad.htm
LINKS TO OTHER PEOPLES PAGES E-mail arthur@chappell7300.freeserve.co.uk
UPDATES MYSPACE - http://www.myspace.com/arthurchappell
FACEBOOK - http://profile.to/arthurchappell/
FACEBOOK BLOG http://apps.facebook.com/blognetworks/blogpage.php?blogid=85623
MY BOOKS - http://stores.lulu.com/store.php?fAcctID=952521