Judge Dredd: The Complete Case Files - Volume 03

Mega-City One, 2101. The city is recovering from the rule of the insane tyrant Cal and, as usual, it's up to the firm and unyielding vigilance of Judge Dredd to make sure stability is maintained. But with his niece Vienna being targeted by criminals, crime rising in the city hab blocks, and a vast invading army of flesh-eating spiders headed towards the city, Dredd has his hands full. And that's before the sinister Judge Death arrives from another dimension...

The previous two volumes in the Complete Case Files series presented two different sides to the Judge Dredd mythos. Volume 01 was mostly stand-alone stories with little linking material. Volume 02 is divided into two huge arcs, The Cursed Earth and The Day the Law Died, with only a few standalone stories. Volume 03 is, once again, mostly stand-alone stories, although these are now usually mini-arcs of 2-4 issues apiece, with the occasional one-off strip.

This approach, coupled with a greater interest in worldbuilding and continuity (things that were more optional in the first volume) means that the omnibus covers a lot of ground. Several Judge Dredd core concepts are explored here, such as city fads that the population of Mega-City One latches onto to avoid going totally insane, with "boinging" (jumping around the city in indestructible plastic bubbles) the first to be investigated. We also learn more about Mega-City One's TV stations and what kind of shows are popular, and we get several arcs in which the city is under threat from a vast horde out of the Cursed Earth, being, er, druid-led hippies and killer insane spiders respectively. In another story, Dredd joins forces with a talking cat (genetic engineering, natch), fights horror-themed robots running amuck (Dredd vs. the Hunchback of Notre Dame is an underrated face-off) and has to take part in an international incident as Mega-City One has to evict Sov-Block warships from the Black Atlantic off the coast. Smaller-scale stories see Dredd having to deal with the introduction of the most amazing-tasting chocolate in the history of the city, and dealing with a super-genius child whose parents did not set appropriate boundaries (this story gets a sequel a mind-boggling thirty years later).

But the volume saves the most memorable story for almost last. Dredd's most iconic, famous foe is Judge Death, a semi-incorporeal being from another dimension who killed his homeworld's population, ensuring justice by making life itself a crime. Dredd has to join forces with Psi-Judge Anderson, arguably the second-most-iconic judge in the whole franchise apart from Dredd, to take down the enemy. This is a foe so formidable that it's hard to see how Dredd can plausibly win, and to their credit the writers realise that as well, and come up with a novel solution that doesn't resolve the situation permanently, but puts it on hold for another time (in this case, Volume 05).

Those looking for another long-running, epic arc may be disappointed not to find one here, but this collection of shorter arcs is head-and-shoulders better than Volume 01. The stories are funnier, the satire is sharper and the world is feeling more consistent. This is still far from Dredd at its best, but we're certainly well on our way to getting there, and it's satisfying to finally meet Dredd's most formidable adversary, and one who will continue to plague him for decades to come.

The Complete Case Files Volume 03 (***½) contains every Judge Dredd story printed from Prog (issue) 116 to Prog 154 of the comic 2000AD, published from June 1979 to March 1980. The stories are set in the years 2101 and 2102. The writers in this collection are John Wagner and Pat Mills. The artists in this collection are Brian Bolland, Dave Gibbons, Mick McMahon, Brendan McCarthy, Ian Gibson, Garry Leach, Ron Smith, John Cooper and Barry Mitchell.

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Person of Interest: Season 2

Harold Finch and John Reese continue to use the predictive powers of the Machine to help people in trouble, but a new factor has entered the equation: Root, a skilled hacker with an evangelical belief in the Machine. Whilst Root goes deep undercover to track down the physical location of the Machine, New York becomes a battleground between the feuding criminal gangs, the police and HR, a shadowy cabal of corrupt police officers and public officials.

Person of Interest's first season was a solid, if slow-burning, introduction to the series. It set up the central characters and premise, and gradually complicated the premise as the series drove on. Serialisation was embraced only slowly, as some apparently one-off characters became recurring allies, enemies or potential frenemies, with the main focus remaining on the mystery-of-the-week.

Season 2 basically continues this format, although serialisation is embraced a little bit more. It takes two episodes for the cliffhanger ending of the first season, where Finch is kidnapped by Root, to be fully resolved and this makes for a great storyline pitting talented actors Michael Emerson and Amy Acker against one another, whilst Reese (Jim Caviezel) tries to keep up on the still-incoming numbers with the help of Detectives Fusco (Kevin Chapman) and Carter (Taraji P. Henson). Along the way they acquire a dog, Bear, who quickly becomes an integral part of the team, and help a conman named Leon, played by Emerson's Lost colleague Ken Leung, who becomes a reluctant ally.

The throughline of Season 2 seems to be "let's make the team bigger," with some episodes seeing Finch, Reese, Fusco, Carter, Leon and returning ally Zoe (Paige Turco) joining forces to deal with cases, which can be a bit jarring after the more claustrophobic first season which was basically the Finch 'n' Reese Show. Most episodes don't require this level of all-hands-on-deck though, so the show develops multiple subplots such as a new love interest for Carter, Beecher (Sterling K. Brown) and a new criminal conspiracy storyline involving Carter, Fusco, returning occasional frenemy Elias (Enrico Colantoni) and the shady Alonzo Quinn (The Wire's Clarke Peters). In fact, the acting firepower of the season is impressive, with Peters and Brown particularly impressing.

The show does a good job of developing these subplots whilst keeping the main storyline ticking over, with a surprisingly light touch. I was expecting Root to play a much bigger role this season but her appearances are sporadic, and more impactful when they do take place. The stories-of-the-week are quite entertaining, though at times they do feel they're feeding off a big book of TV stock premises, such as the main character and a female lead having to go undercover in suburbia to uncover a hotbed of murder and mayhem, or the mob hitman who falls for his target. Still, these stories are usually well-executed.

The season takes a huge upward swing with its sixteenth episode, Relevance, which introduces Sarah Shahi as government assassin Sameen Shaw (with as sterling guest turn by Ebon Moss-Bachrach as her partner), whose number is picked up by the Machine. Uniquely, the story is told from Shaw's point-of-view exclusively, with Reese and Finch showing up without much warning. The clever script plays with and breaks the conventions of the show, and Person of Interest's tendency to pull its punches to keep the mass audience happy goes out the window. Shaw is a sympathetic and wronged character, but she is also resourceful and ruthless in a way that makes even Reese look amateurish. Shahi's performance is absolutely outstanding, and the twists and turns in the plot make this easily the best episode of the first two seasons. Making Shaw a regular after this (though it takes a few episodes for her to come back) is a no-brainer.

The season ends with an impressive two-parter which blows open a lot of the show's premise. We learn what's been going on with the Machine in the presence, and what happened to Reese and Ingram after turning it over to the US government. Root makes her long-awaited move and the value of having Shaw on the team becomes clear, with the show building to a big cliffhanger, even if maybe it hedges its bets a little so as not to make a return to the status quo impossible.

Still, Person of Interest's second season (****) is a sharp improvement on the first season's promise. Expanding the cast is a good idea which brings more storylines and ideas into play, and the show admirably mixes some good serialised plots with some inventive episodes-of-the-week (though there's a few rote ones as well). The show's improvement in quality impresses. The show is available on physical media and streaming worldwide.

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Citizen Sleeper

In the distant future humans can digitise their consciousness and place it in android replicants, "Sleepers." A Sleeper escapes indentured servitude on a freighter and finds themselves on the Eye, a large space station formerly controlled by the Solheim Corporation but is now contested between several factions. A former trade union turned civil authority, Havenage, uneasily shares the station with a criminal operation named Yatagan. The Sleeper must navigate between these factions and find some way of escaping the station and living a good life.

Citizen Sleeper was originally released in 2022 and attracted significant acclaim on release. The game can be summarised as part roleplaying game, part survival resource-juggler and part adventure game. The game is smoothly minimalist, playing entirely from a map of the Eye space station, occasionally with character art displayed whilst conversations are held.

The story unfolds over multiple days. At the start of each day, you roll a series of dice. The results of the dice can be applied to different activities, such as doing a day job for money, investigating the station to further the storyline or hacking into the station network and uncovering the secrets of its long-dormant mainframe (evading ancient security programmes in the process).

Citizen Sleeper's storyline feels quite tight at the start but then starts sprawling in numerous different directions. There are multiple ways to escape the station, different factions to align with, and a dozen or so significant characters you can develop relationships with, some of whom can help you, others hinder. Some characters are antagonistic but can be won over to help you; some are initially friendly but have hidden, darker agendas you might deal with.

Your Sleeper requires food and energy, meaning you sometimes have to make tough choices on whether to do more activities or spend dice on sustenance. But if you take too long, you can start losing dice (representing your growing weakness). The numbers you roll on your dice also have different application. In general, the higher the number the better, but some tasks require you to precisely match a number and you can't do anything without anything else, meaning you may have to wait a few days and several rerolls before accomplishing that task.

Your character does level up periodically and you get new abilities such as being able to reroll dice once a week or being able to tackle specialist tasks.

It's a compelling mix of interesting systems, complicated further by various ticking clocks, such as a character completing their own mission before they are ready to help you or until pursuers catch up with you on the station. Things stay just on the right side of being overwhelming, and the game is generally fair with you about keeping your character informed about what's going on and what possibilities there are for things to do next. However, the game can also be relatively ruthless in shutting down the possibility for hedging your bets: once you commit to a course of action, some other possibilities are invalidated.

With a single run of the game taking less than eight hours (depending on your choices, you might wrap up one in maybe four), it's short enough to encourage multiple replays and it can be surprising to see how your choices can impact the game. One playthrough might see you developing a major quest to discover your original human identity; in another, this might barely be mentioned as a factor in the story. One run might see you explore the entire station and visit every location, the next might see you leaving the station with half the map still in darkness. Your impact on the story is considerable, and fascinating.

Obviously this is a low-budget game, but the production values are quite impressive. The graphics are minimalist but atmospherically effective, the soundtrack is superb and the writing is quite compelling. Most of the NPC characters are well-written and engaging, and the game does a good job of holding your attention and making you make tough choices, with the consequences for failure being usually as interesting as those for success. Citizen Sleeper does a lot with not a lot of resources.

That said, the game can feel a bit punishing, especially near the start, and occasionally too reliant on the RNG number gods to progress to the next part of the story, resulting in bursts of wheel-spinning. The game is still short enough that this is not a major problem, but it can be a source of occasional frustration.

Citizen Sleeper (****) is a fascinating and well-written game, with a lot of substantive choices to make and encouraging of replays. The game is available on PC, Nintendo Switch, Microsoft Xbox One and Series X/S, and PlayStation 4 and 5. A sequel, Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector, was released last year.

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New China Miéville novel gets cover art and blurb

China Miéville's enormous new novel now has cover art and an expanded blurb.

"From the bestselling, award-winning master of uncanny fiction comes a defining work, twenty years in the making – a deeply moving, decade- and continent-spanning epic of grief, global tumult, and grim conspiracy.

"Maur’s life has been shaped by an unbearable loss. But in the aftermath of what is an apparently ordinary tragedy, deeper, stranger questions arise . . . Their answers may lie within the dark heart and darker history of an old soldier who shares Maur’s obsessions – and is violently pursued by the same unknown, unquiet forces.

"So begins The Rouse, a book unlike any other: at once a sprawling saga of a bloody century, and the intimate story of two lives, their loves, regrets and secrets – and a terrifying journey into infinite mystery."

The Rouse, all 1,264 pages of it, is currently due for publication on 17 September 2026.