Insurrection

Judge Dredd

by Dan Abnett, Colin MacNeil (Artist)

Mega-City One controls a number of off-world colonies, where humanity has headed out into the stars to seek new and more peaceful lives on other planets, with many of these remote outposts providing Earth with much needed raw materials. But K Alpha 61 is rebelling against Justice Department's restrictions, declaring its independence and renaming itself Liberty. The Judges will not let that stand - this kind of insurgency needs to be stamped on without mercy...

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels, Science Fiction

198 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2017

Reviews

[Leila Anani · Rating 5 out of 5]

Insurrection remains one of my favourite 2000AD stories not to feature Judge Dredd - so we have Luther an off world mining colony commander who declares war on the Judicial system over a matter of justice: The Meg refused to send troops to help defeat an alien threat, forcing him to enfranchise his staff of robots, mutants and uplifts (genetically modified apes) - when the war is won, the Justice system refuses to acknowledge the miners as citizens. Luther is forced to declare a war he knows he cannot win as a point of honour.

With Wahammer's Dan Abnett at the helm of the story, aided by Colin Macneil's gorgeously detailed artwork you know this is going to be Military SF at hits best and indeed it is - We have lots of robots, giant apes and explosions to satisfy married with a tight plot and a moving human element.

I love how this portrays the Justice system as complete bastards. With the Dredd stories you see the Judges as anti-heroes often, a necessary evil - or they are used in a satirical, overblown manner. Here we get to see a different side - how implacable they can be.

The other thing I love about this are all the movie homages - Ever 70's and 80's SF film is pillaged in here somewhere from Outland to Planet of the Apes - It's just fun.

Love this one from start to finish - the art style does change half way through - we lose some of the amazing detailed greywash I presume because it was too time consuming. 2nd half is different, but fitted the story and the only complaint is if you compare it against the earlier half which just blew me away. Tragic military SF with sympathetic characters and a great story. What's not to love?

[Matthew Marcus · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mixed feelings about this one: on the one hand, Abnett is a highly accomplished scribe, and the story moves along very thrillingly with dramatic crescendos in all the right place. On the other, well, this just isn't Judge Dredd in any meaningful sense at all, it's Warhammer 40K. Yes, a coalition of rogue Judges, apes and robots sticking it to the man is a *little* bit Dreddy, but you can't just say that a bunch of throughly amoral skull-adorned spacefaring Nazis in power armour are "the SJS" and expect it to pass without comment. Yes, the Justice Department of Mega-City one has its dark side, but they are not the evil Empire from Star Wars, and one can't help but feel that if JD himself had happened to turn up in this strip he'd have quickly found himself siding with the plucky rebels, so vile is the allegedly more lawful alternative. Which is a shame as a less black-and-white investigation into the dilemmas of colonial justice could have been a real classic.

[Chris Browning · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sometimes Dan Abnett feels like the ideal comics writer - a journeyman who slowly but surely grabbed his own stories, becoming more and more distinctive as he goes on until you don’t really notice the moment his comics go from basically fine to unforgettable. But these days he’s knocking out three of the 2000AD/ Dredd universe’s finest stories - Brink, the astonishing The Out and Lawless. Even Sinister Dexter has gone from filler to quite wonderful in its most recent years

Lawless is the interesting one here because in essence it’s the sequel to Insurrection. Having not read that series until now, Lawless now feels an even more rich story of colonists dealing with guilt and shame and more, because most of these themes are ripples of aftershock from Insurrection (even if Freely is VERY different when she resurfaces as Metta Lawson) and now feels like a lot of it is dealing with the trauma of the events here. Because one thing’s for certain, this is definitely one of the Dreddverse’s bleakest and darkest series ever. The SJS squad have always been bastards but here are way, way beyond mere bastardry and seem like the extremes of the Justice Department that everything will head to unless some of those worse excesses are curbed

It’s basically a case of intractability meeting even more intractability, starting pretty much after the big events of the first Zhind war with the SJS squad already showing no tolerance for even the mildest rebellion, but ending up with such an extreme vision of “the law” that the bleak nihilism just seems horribly inevitable. Abnett’s genius, like in Lawless, is to give the space opera a real weight through the way it writes the characters. And Colin McNeil’s art is phenomenal (goes a bit off piste towards the end when he’s not doing the grey scale art but it does reinforce how bleak everything is getting): his chunky art at its very best, with everything have genuine weight and burden to it (compared to Phil Winslade’s spidery and nebulous art for Lawless). It’s the grime of classic prog space opera like the VCs (which Abnett also wrote for) taken to the nth degree

It’s a substantial work of art, a really sad and quietly distressed and traumatised story which explores stuff unsaid in Dredd’s world but always hinted at. It deserves to be seen as far more as simply the precursor to Lawless

[Johnny Andrews · Rating 3 out of 5]

An epic sci-fi saga. Outside of the big Meg, colonies are set up on different planets where a form of justice still prevails. When an alien race invades Karel Luthor, a Judge is given the right to give mutants, mechs and uplifts equal citizenship to fight in the war.
However, once the war is over orders from the Mega City is to take back those equal rights...Luthor doesn't sit well with that at all and goes against orders, spiralling into another war.

[Luis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Decent story with intriguing ideas (the robots' take on religion opens so many possibilities), but the change in art style in the latter third really brings down the overall product; it is nowhere near as interesting.

Would have been 4 stars otherwise.

Helpful to read as a set up for the Lawless comics, from the same writer, though that series far surpasses this volume.

[Al No · Rating 2 out of 5]

According to the intro (and back-up feature) this is a take on Warhammer 40K. Now, I’m not averse to the old space war but, as with a lot of Megazine strips, the art’s a lot better than the humourless script.

[Dean Simons · Rating 4 out of 5]

Holds together nicely. Found the themes and setting rather intriguing.

[Mike · Rating 5 out of 5]

Awesome!