Judge Dredd E-Book Review

After hitting up the cinema to watch Dredd last Summer, I jumped online as soon as I got home to check out the comic book situation and what I could get my mitts on. It had been years since I last indulged in the Judge Dredd comic books alongside their 2000 AD counterparts.

However, a cursory browse on Amazon showed that there didn’t seem to be any books available on my preferred format, the Kindle. With my bookshelf space at an absolute premium, and plenty of upcoming travel that would mean lugging heavy books around, I decided against an immediate purchase.

But as you may know, there is a button on the Amazon website to tell publishers that you’d like to read their book on the Kindle if there isn’t the e-book format available. Which I duly hit… and then thought nothing of it.

So imagine my surprise the other week when our Chief Judge, Zeth, informed his motley crew that he had some Judge Dredd comic book compilations available in the e-book format (mobi) for review.

I was given three classic titles to review: The Cursed Earth, The Day The Law Died and The Dark Judges. All three between them were a perfect re-introduction into the Judge Dredd comic book universe, or an excellent starting point for those who are inspired from the recent film to check out more Judge Dredd lore.

The stories themselves are classics. The Day The Law Died follows on directly from The Cursed Earth, and the two of them provide a suitably epic and enjoyable trawl through both Mega City One and the cursed earth beyond the city walls. The Dark Judges features some of the more prominent stories regarding the Dredd universe’s most iconic villain, Judge Death, as well as Cassandra Anderson.

If anything, the outlandish humour in the books did strike home that the Dredd universe isn’t quite as gritty as the recent, both otherwise still excellent, film depicted. It was good to go over some of the classic Dredd tales, but it would be good to see some of the more contemporary stories also updated to the e-book format.

So what of the e-book format itself? At Games Fiends we decided to put the ultimate Judge on the ultimate trial by checking out these e-books on the standard Kindle 6″ e-ink display. No colour, no touch screen, no zooming. So what was the verdict?

All in all, publishers Rebellion/2000 AD have done a solid job and avoided a sentence in the iso-cubes. With Kindle Panel View switched on, the page appears in full before each panel/segment of the page is zoomed in as much as possible. At no point did I feel I was losing out on the detail that you’d normally have with a physical copy. It was only during the “busier” pages with a more sprawling layout whereby the cut from one panel to the next wasn’t quite so clean. But otherwise I was able to follow along each story and admire the artwork without any fuss.

That said, at some points I did find the text in some of the panels to be a little small, and I’ve got decent vision so there might be some people who struggle and will need to zoom in on each panel (which is obviously a pain on the 6″ e-ink display, and not so much for other models such as the Kindle Fire).

What’s interesting though is that going by the reviews on the Amazon links above, it would appear that the physical publication gets a hammering for being printed out on paper 50% smaller than the original 2000 AD comic book publications. So it would seem that the e-book format with its panel view and additional page zoom may be the better format to opt for if you have the choice.

Otherwise, a fantastic collection of stories and hopefully the start of more Dredd and other 2000 AD comic books to hit the e-book market.

The judgement is great, the sentence is, more!