Written by Garth Ennis
Art by Peter Doherty, Dean Ormston, Carlos Ezquerra, Chris Halls and Anthony Williams
Cover by Greg Staples
DC Solicitation: Get ready for a thrilling action/horror story featuring the legendary Judge Dredd, written by Garth Ennis (PREACHER) with stellar art by Peter Doherty, Dean Ormston, Carlos Ezquerra, Chris Halls and Anthony Williams!
He is a nightmare that the Psi-Judges didn't predict, and that even Judge Dredd cannot prevent. If his vile plan succeeds, the world will never be the same again. His name is Sabbat, he has the power to raise the dead…and he's already here!
While Mega-City One fights for survival, Dredd must find and terminate Sabbat. But help is coming from an unexpected source - the future mutant bounty hunter and "Strontium Dog" Johnny Alpha, hot on the necromancer's trail!
On sale Nov 3 [2004] o 7.375" x 10.1875" o B&W, 160 pg. $14.95 US
delayed to Nov 10 2004
This volume reprints:
Judgement Day, 20 episodes, progs 786-799 (6/6/92 to 9/5/92) and Megazine vol.2 #4-9 (6/92 to 8/92). Story by Garth Ennis & John Wagner, art by Peter Doherty, Carlos Ezquerra, Dean Ormston & Chris Halls.
The Kinda Dead Man, prog 816 (1/2/93). Story by Garth Ennis, art by Anthony Williams.
Commentary: "Judgement Day" is a reasonably good introduction to Dredd, and a fair start to DC's series of Dredd collections. Garth Ennis piles on a lot of over-the-top mega-violence in this story, but it all seems a little much. There's some humor evident in the evil Sabbat, but too often he comes across as camp and silly, and not threatening in the way previous Dredd master-villains like Chief Judge Cal and War Marshal Kazan were. Ennis has a huge amount of respect for the character of Dredd, putting him, despite his voluble self-criticism of his work for 2000 AD, in the upper tier of Dredd's writers. Added to a huge cast of international judges, many of them guest-stars in earlier Dredd adventures, is Johnny Alpha, making his second crossover with Dredd. The lawman's casual dismissal of anything the mutant bountyhunter has to say or add to the adventure is pretty amusing stuff. The artists contribute some excellent work, although most of Peter Doherty's episodes are painted very dark and muddy and don't reproduce as well as you'd hope.
This volume fills up the page count by reprinting an Anthony Williams episode which appeared four months after "Judgement Day" and addresses, in part, one of the loose ends from the story. Unfortunately, they didn't take the opportunity to include "The Taking of Sector 123," an Ennis-Ezquerra story from the Megazine which immediately followed "Judgement Day" in its pages, and pitted Dredd against a block uprising which started during the zombie invasion.