Cadet Dredd: Tooth And Claw

by Matthew Smith, Neil Googe (artist), Ilias Kyriazis (artist)

YOUNG JUSTICE!


Before Judge Dredd, there was Cadet Dredd – a keen, fresh-faced apprentice, and stickler for the rules, with no idea of the legend he will one day become.


Young Joe hits the streets of Mega-City One for the first time, facing off against perps, monsters and genetically modified movie stars as he learns how to become the greatest Judge the Meg has ever seen.


Zarjaz adventures await inside this thrilling new collection!

208 pages, Paperback

Published November 19, 2024

Reviews

[Mark Barrett · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was very pleasantly surprised by this collection. I went into it expecting a childish, sanitized rewrite of Dredd tales.

It isn't.

These are a series of twelve-pagers that slot nicely into the world of Megacity One. They have that gritty feel of the grown up Dredd tales and don't hold back on the violence and story complexity. Plus: some interesting insights into Dredd's relationship with his brother Rico.

[Alex Sarll]

Harmless but inessential prequel fare from the now-sidelined Regened initiative aimed at bringing in younger readers. Waiting to see what Rico will do wrong this time is mildly amusing, though you do start to wonder why they didn't just flunk him.

[Steven desJardins · Rating 4 out of 5]

The shift in perspective from the hardened, experienced adult Judge Dredd to a younger, brilliant but unformed Cadet Dredd, adds enough freshness to these self-contained twelve-pagers to make them worth reading for Judge Dredd fans. But ... well, the best Dredd stories are social commentary on the nature of justice, and the worst ones are action shoot-'em-ups with no subtext beyond "the bad guys are tough but the good guy who's not afraid to use violence is even tougher". These stories are somewhere in between. Many of the stories refer obliquely to future storylines, e.g., Dredd's clone brother being reckless and scornful of the rules, or a senior judge asking Cadet Dredd whether he thinks the law excluding mutants from Mega-City One is just, in a way that feels like the writer wants you to feel like you're clever for knowing the reference. (Knowing a reference doesn't make somebody clever.) But I didn't feel like these stories were doing anything really new with the character (which is, admittedly, a high bar for a characters who's had installments published weekly or even more than weekly for almost fifty years).