Broken Frontier

Heavy Metal Dredd collects stories of überviolence, set in the Dredd world but shifting the stick to a higher gear. This is über-Dredddishness, agressive tales that don’t hold a punch unless teeth, chinbone and blood splatter all across the panel. Before relocating to Judge Dredd Megazine, these tales were orginally told in international music magazine Rock Power. It gave Dredd a rise in prominence across the globe. This is heavy metal fetishism to its logical fascistic extreme. Putting on a satirical jacket over the leather one. Every few panels, the premisses in these colleted tales go so far over the top that limbs fly across the page and teeth get to meet a new regular acquintance: mister Billy Club Lawgiver, leaving nothing of the lower face presentable - except for in a jar for future scientific study.

Most of these tales are penned by Dredd mainstays John Wagner and Alan Grant with an unhealthy dose of John Smith and David Bishop. In comparison with the regular Dredd tales, they have shifted their focus a bit, going for the even more exuberant and twist concentrated with hardboiled 2000 AD action. Has Dredd ever ripped apart more juves than in Heavy Metal Dredd? In conjunction with the agressive stance, the writers also go search out the music in their black souls. We have a future Monkees mutant rip off, the most dangerous guitar in the world, the legend of Johny Biker, a funny take on the Ozzy Osbourne groupie phenomenon, etc. Mostly leading to funny tales that spin violently out of control.

Simon Bisley and John Hicklenton handle almost all the art while Brendan McCarthy shows up for a suitably chosen trippy tale about two Megacity One’s hippies. Bisley, renowned for Slaine: the Horned God and Hicklenton having paid his dues on Nemesis the Warlock, both are not exactly known for their cute renderings of kitty litters. Heavy Metal Dredd sets violent tales in violent times but told with a dripping layer of satire that comes leaps rigth off the pages and so does the talent of the artists. They cut loose and paint, ink and blood are splattered in equal amount amongst the denizens of Megacity One.

While Bisley goes for a hyperrealistic cartoony style with a violent  twist and clear layouts, Hicklenton pulls out all the stops, often dropping panel borders and contorting bodies and action into a melting pot of flesh and sweat and steel in order to tell the story in as visually agressive style as possible. His overbulging exploding overly fleshy people take up all the room in his panels, delegating backgrounds in a minor position with his overly rendered muscles and fat. While both styles are uniquely their own, for Heavy Metal Dredd they complement eachother perfectly. It is easy to see why these tales in conjunction with the art stirred up such a debate about violence in comics.

This is not the Dredd you grew up on, kiddo. This is Heavy Metal Dredd. Put on your jock strap, tighten up those steel chinned Doc Martin and oil your Lawgiver. Wagner and Grant turn up the volume while Bisley and Hicklenton play the page with a mean riff! Heavy Metal Dredd has arrived, get your teeth kicked in!

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Heavy Metal Dredd, published by Rebellion 2000 AD, is a full color 128 pages TPB, retailing for £11.99. It is available in April from finer bookstores and comic shops everywhere.