The perfect comic that we need in 2025.
Judge Dredd: A Better World by Rob Williams, Arthur Wyatt, Henry Flint, Jake Lynch, and Boo Cook (2000 AD, 2025; above image art by Henry Flint)
Ultimately, it all comes down to money and power, particularly who has both. Comic books are often about power but most don’t want to deal with the money part of it other than in laughable ways of millionaire heroes or billionaire villains. Then again, most comics aren’t Judge Dredd: A Better World. Writers Rob Williams and Arthur Wyatt along with artists Henry Flint, Jake Lynch, and Boo Cook deliver what may be one of the most realistic comics for our times as Judge Maitland poses the question of what if we diverted some of the money we use to police people toward social programs and education? What if instead of keeping people down, we tried to lift them up? Seems simple but Mega City, much like the real world, is not a simple place.
A Better World follows Maitland’s quixotic quest to try to improve society by investing in it. Her role as one of Mega City One’s judges is basically to be an accountant so as she studies the numbers. She looks at the numbers and realizes that there’s a way that Mega City One could wipe out crime. The way that the powers-that-be operate today just perpetuates a system of poverty and violence. With Maitland, Williams and Wyatt explore what it would take to change a society, the work and the sacrifice. This story hits hard, particularly right now, because it asks us to trust in our fellow citizens rather than fearing them. And that’s a great thing.
But getting in the way of that trust is power. In this story, Judge Dredd walks a line between Maitland and their superiors. It’s fascinating to watch this character who knows who he is and what his role is being able to recognize that maybe there’s a different way. Now, he probably doesn’t have a place in the world which that different way could lead to and he seems fine with that. Then there are the ruling Judges who like the current status quo because it gives them their power and position.
Through the three artists, we get different views of Mega City One but what remains constant is the struggle of its ordinary citizens. They face many trials in their daily existence but those struggles are often tied to the Judges. Like Dredd may be a peace keeper but he’s the bull in the China shop as he tries to uphold the law. Jake Lynch gets to draw the middle portion of the book where Dredd is protecting people. He’s big and powerful but his is also just there. He’s not changing lives but is just trying to maintain some semblance of order. As he’s the titular character, Judge Dredd is the engine of this story but he isn’t the story itself.
Henry Flint gets to draw the final part where everything comes together and then falls apart. Maitland becomes the focus of the story as she’s driving the plot. Flint focuses on how the city pushes back on Maitland’s goals even as those goals show progress when executed. The complications of the world, shown through Flint’s tight line works, are resistant to change, even when it’s change for the better.
Rob Williams and Arthur Wyatt feel like they’re doing something really daring here by challenging the status quo. Judge Dredd seems to work best sometimes when it’s embracing elements of satire and those elements are present, just without much humor to poke at the ways that we accept police states today as just the norm. We live in societies of laws and rules and we need to be policed to make sure that we hold to those laws and rules. We’ve been conditioned to think that this is just part of the social contract that holds us all together.
But there has to be other answers to how we move forward as a society than just having to be policed to the point where we basically develop Stockholm Syndrome to our authorities. Judge Dredd: A Better World is almost too perfect of a comic for the mid-2020s, when we’re leaning so far toward authoritarianism and fascism, two words that clearly describe the world of Dredd. Williams, Wyatt and their artists just cut to the point that we don’t see change because the people in power don’t want change. It’s as simple as that. And of all the comics out there right now, it’s Judge Dredd that has to remind us of that.
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