Interview: Talking Dreadnoughts with Michael Carroll

Rob speaks to Michael Carroll about Dreadnoughts Book 1: Breaking Ground...

Dreadnoughts: Breaking Ground is the opening tale to what's essentially the history to both the Justice System and the Justice Department. Set in 2035AD, the Justice Department and the Judges have just come into being. While these "Judges" are low in number, they are already taking over from the outdated judicial service which is causing quite a stir.

Written by Michael Carroll (Judges, Proteus Vex) with art by John Higgins (Before Watchmen, Batman: The Killing Joke) and colour by Sally Jane Hurst (Before Watchmen), Dreadnoughts explores the origins of Judge Dredd's dystopian police state and, in doing so, provides chilling insight into our own historical moment.

Breaking Ground follows "rookie" Judge Glover as she's sent to Boulder, Colarado to reinforce a four-man Judge team stationed there. As the story unfolds we see the slow decline in democracy, which will eventually lead to the creation of MegaCity-1 and the war between the Judges and President Booth. 

I recently virtually sat down with writer Michael Carroll and asked him a few questions about Dreadnoughts, and the wider Judge Dredd world...

Hi Mike, thanks for taking the time to answer my questions about Dreadnoughts.

Michael Carroll: Thank you for taking the time to ask them, Rob! I hope my answers make some sort of sense. I have a tendency to wander off-topic like an excitable little kid in a huge shopping centre who’s seen an escaped balloon and has spent ages chasing it before he finally looks around and realises that he doesn’t know where he is or what happened to his parents. Eventually he gets adopted by the lonely but kind-hearted woman who owns one of those stalls that sells phone-covers or polished stones masquerading as healing crystals and it’s not until his twenty-first year, in accordance with ancient prophecy, that the shopping centre has to close because it’s about to be demolished to make way for a new shopping centre that’s smaller and crapper than the old one and everyone is fired and the kid emerges back into the real world and sees the sun and clouds for the first time in fifteen years and then a wise-looking crow gives him an old brass WWI medal with a strange-glowing inscription on the back and so he embarks on a quest to find a dragon or ancient aliens or something. 

I’ve forgotten the original point of that paragraph but now I desperately want to go on a quest.

When it comes to writing about the early years of the Justice Department it’s fair to say that you’ve written your fair share of this history. What’s it like delving into the untapped history of both the Judges and the Law they unequivocally serve?

MC: It’s a challenge, that’s for sure! It’s definitely been a “how do we get there from here?” situation. Dredd’s first stories were published in 1977 but set in 2099, so that was a nice 122-year gap: plenty of time for a shining, towering, futuristic Mega-City complete with flying cars and robots to evolve from the platform-soled, transistor-based, woodchip-wallpapered orange-and-brown world of the 1970s.

But thanks to the passage of time we’ve lopped forty-four years off the front end of that gap, plus there have been occasional stories that flashes back to Dredd’s early years: we know that Mega-City One and the Judge system are pretty well established by the time of Dredd’s birth (or the clone’s grown-in-a-vat equivalent of a birth: his decanting, maybe?) in the 2060s. 

That 122-year gap has been reduced to a little over forty years. Luckily, John Wagner and Carlos Ezquerra’s seminal Judge Dredd epic Origins went a long way towards showing how we get to Dredd’s world from our own, but by necessity it rushes through a lot of the history. For example, it devotes only two panels to showing the first Judges on the streets.

In Dredd’s era the Judges are trained from the age of five, but the system can’t have started out that way, so who were those first Judges? They’d have had to be specially-trained cops and lawyers and soldiers, hand-picked by the Chief Judge. How did they cope with that? How did the public react to these new hardline law-enforcement officers who had the power to dispense instant justice? How did the cops react? One of the most important rights an American civilian has is that in any criminal case the burden of proof lies with the prosecutor. The accused doesn’t have to prove that they’re innocent: it’s up to the cops to prove that they’re guilty. But once the system gives the cops the power to sentence suspects on the spot that right effectively disappears.

That’s the heart of Dreadnoughts (and Judges, the related series of prose books) in many ways: the Judge system is a horrible solution to the problem of rampant crime and ineffectual policing, but all the important and influential people believe that it’s not only necessary, it’ll be to their advantage. With the new Department of Justice they’ve created a monster... But those of us who were wise enough to get the bulk of our education from science fiction and horror stories know that monsters invariably turn on their creators!

So, yeah, it’s been a huge amount of fun writing these stories! However, I’ve been careful not to interfere with established history. For a series that’s been running for forty-four years Judge Dredd has had a remarkably solid continuity with very little retconning. No “imaginary tales” or alternate time-lines or reset-buttons or “Get Out of Jail Free” cards or deals with the devil here, folks! If something happens in a Judge Dredd story, then it happened.

I knew from the start that I wanted it to be the same with Dreadnoughts and Judges. We stick with the established continuity. We’re not going to introduce Mega-City Four and then have it nuked out of existence shortly before everyone in the world is infected with a special virus that erases all traces MC4 from their memories for some contrived reason. And it’s very unlikely that we’ll spring on the readers the fun idea that Dredd’s old serving robot Walter was actually built by Judge Fargo.

For that reason, while it’s always tempting to have the heroes face big, bombastic world-ending threats, we’ll generally be avoiding anything along those lines and instead keeping the stories a lot more grounded. Think of them as closer in tone to the 2012 Dredd movie with Karl Urban than the 1995 Sylvester Stallone version. 

Likewise, Origins covered all the big political stories, the behind-the-scenes machinations in the Department of Justice, so we don’t need to go over that ground again. What the Dreadnoughts and Judges stories do cover is how the ordinary Judges on the streets deal with the fallout of those political decisions.

Throughout Judge Dredd's rich history, we’ve seen the Justice Department do some pretty questionable acts.  How does the department we see here compare to the one portrayed within the current timeline? 

MC: The Department of Justice in Dreadnoughts is really only finding its feet. Everyone knows that the Judges are completely autonomous, but they’re only just beginning to realise what that really means. As we’ll see towards the end of “Breaking Ground,” even some of the Judges don’t fully grasp this new way of policing. 

On top of that, the Judges are pretty low in number so they have to work alongside the establishment that they’ve been created to replace, so in effect America has two competing forms of authority: if you’ve committed a crime, better pray that the cops find you before the Judges do, because then you’ve got a chance. With the Judges... Well, no matter how good you think you are, the Judges are faster, smarter, better trained, better equipped, and absolutely merciless. Plus, of course, they don’t answer to anyone.

In time, the Department of Justice will grow in strength and influence and eventually supplant the government, but for now, in these early tales, everyone thinks that the Judges are a temporary solution. And they are, of course, because everything is temporary on a cosmic scale and every empire falls, but sometimes “temporary” ends up being a lot longer than people expect.

Dreadnoughts was originally serialised within the Judge Dredd Megazine (issues 424-429). How was it in writing a strip that essentially had to get the reader to come back for more? 

MC: With any serialised story you need to have some unanswered questions at the end of each episode to hook the readers’ imaginations. Some writers begin with a vague idea of how the story might end and just meander their way towards that ending, inventing challenges for the protagonist along the way. I’ve always found that to be too much work because I keep painting myself into corners. I prefer to fully plan the story before I begin so I can figure out how best to slice it up into episodic chunks.

That process is easier with a novel because the writer can make the chapters as long or as short as they need to be, but with comics each episode has a predetermined number of pages – ten, in this case – so we can’t change that! What we can do, however, is change the number panels per page, so that gives us some measure of control regarding the pace of the tale.

When it comes to resolving those cliff-hanger endings, or other plot twists, I’ve always believed that the reader needs to come away from it thinking, “Oooh, I didn’t see that coming!” and not “Where the heck did that come from?” Those two responses might seem almost identical at first glance, but they’re very different. I think it’s important that the story gives the reader all the information required, albeit in a disguised or disassembled form, so that when the solution or twist has been presented they can look back and see that all the clues were there and that the solution has a logical basis. If, on the other appendage, the solution is something out of the blue – an element that the writer deliberately chose to omit, or more likely one they just made up on the spot – then that’s just cheating! Every story has to have its own internal logic. You don’t want the readers thinking, “So the hero escapes from the Death Chasm of Doom because a scientist you’ve never mentioned before had secretly injected them with mutant alien grasshopper DNA and they can jump three times as high as a normal person... How was I supposed to have guessed that?”

In Dreadnoughts, we follow rookie Judge, Judge Glover. We soon learn that Glover has a penchant for the law much in the same way as the future Judge Dredd. How do you think Dredd would react to Glover if their paths crossed? 

MC: Hmm... Well, Glover would be in her mid-eighties when Dredd graduates from the Academy of Law, so that’d be a weird team-up. I think that the best way would be through time-travel, which is possible by Dredd’s era (which of course means that it’s possible in every other era, too). Maybe Dredd would go back in time to apprehend a temporally-displaced perp or something like that. 

I think they’d work well together... once they settle their differences. Glover is definitely one of the Judges who think that the new hardline Department of Justice is a necessary evil, and that once all the big problems have been sorted out everything will go back to normal. But Dredd grew up with the system: it’s all he’s ever known so that’s his normal. 

So, yeah, I reckon Glover and Dredd would each be impressed with how the other operates, but Glover would be pretty upset to learn that by Dredd’s time the Judge system hasn’t solved all of the problems it was created to tackle. Or indeed any of them.

This might make things pretty awkward at first, but then they’d realise that they had more bridges between them than walls, and after that they’d be an unstoppable team! And then, naturally, they’d both realise at the same moment that they’d fallen in love, but just before their very first kiss the time-vortex thingy would activate and whip Dredd back to his own time, and they’d never see each other again: the Judges learn that the only laws they can’t rewrite at the Laws of Time. It’s a heartbreaking tragedy of law-enforcement and time-travel, coming never to a comic near you!

In terms of story, Dreadnoughts doesn’t necessarily feature a central "bad guy", much in the way that nearly every character featured is “the bad guy" in someone else’s eyes. Was this always the intention?

MC: Well, “Bad guy” is like a label that someone’s secretly stuck to your forehead. Other people can see it, but you can’t so you don’t know why they’re treating you as though you’re wrong. (Unless you look in the mirror... but then it’s reversed anway, which is probably poignant or something.)

I deliberately didn’t want to give Glover that kind of arch-enemy because while the story is structured around a central crime – the kidnapping – it isn’t really about that: it’s about the rise of the Judges and the fall of American democracy, and the links between the two. Which is the instigator? Do the Judges rise to power because democracy is failing, or does democracy fail because the Judge system is permitted to come to power?

Judge Veranda Glover herself is the bad guy in many respects: the Judges are a horrible, monstrous solution to the country’s problems and Glover embodies the Department of Justice more than most. She  is hugely efficient and a firm believer that the system is the best solution. Much of that belief is informed by her background – we’ll learn a lot more about her in the next book, “The March of Progress” – but it’s also something she has consciously embraced. She knows that the Judges will have to commit to certain questionable acts in order to straighten things out, and she’s willing to be the bad guy in those cases.

As the Dreadnoughts story unfolds, we’ll see the emergence of a character who’s closer to the standard notion of a bad guy as far as the Judges are concerned, but to others they might well be the voice of reason. Again, that goes back to the idea of labels. Every character sees themselves as the hero of their own story.

Dreadnoughts also see your team up with artist John Higgins (with Sally Jane Hurst on colours). What was it like seeing this talented duo bring your script to life? 

MC: I’ve worked with both Sally and John before, and they’re two of my favourite people in the world and not just because they’re hugely talented! It came about because John and I were chatting about a possible follow-up to the Judge Dredd/Razorjack crossover we did a few years ago. Negotiations on that follow-up kind of ground to a halt – I think because we disagreed on the idea that I was right about everything – but during the process I mentioned Dreadnoughts. I’d just delivered the script to the editor a few days earlier, so it was fresh in my mind. 

I hadn’t written it with John and Sally in mind, but John was very keen on the idea and once he started to enthuse about it, I couldn’t picture anyone else but John and Sally drawing it! I knew instantly that they’d bring their best work to the strip – they always do anyway – so I contacted The Mighty One and let him know that I’d like them to be assigned to it, if possible. He was on board with that, thankfully! 

When the first pages came in I was blown away. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that I know John Higgins’ work better than just about anyone else in the world – I ran his website for many, many years until I was mysteriously fired for mysterious reasons that remain a mystery to this very day – so I knew how talented he is, and yet he still surprised me. He’s one of the greatest comic-book artists in the world, no question.

Likewise, Sally Jane Hurst is an incredible artist, and without a doubt one of the most creative, flexible and inventive people I’ve ever met. She’s a phenomenal singer, too! I don’t think there’s anything she can’t do.

We also see some pretty dark scenes and plenty of grey areas throughout the story. This is both portrayed through the story and its art. What’s been your stand out scene? 

MC: I don’t want to spoil too much... but I feel that the flashback to Phoenix, Arizona works particularly well. Sally and John knocked it out of the park with those pages! 

For me, these were the events within the High School. Without going into spoilers – it hit home as to how much this world had gone to hell. Even before the first character speaks, Higgins has already brought the hellish scene to life just with his facial drawings. 

MC: True! John has an innate understanding of horror – his exemplary artwork on Before Watchmen: The Curse of the Crimson Corsair is testament to that – and he knows instinctively how to get to the core of any scene. Those two attributes combined enable him to imbue a horrible sense of depth and credibility to the High School scenes. As I mentioned earlier, I didn’t write “Breaking Ground” with John in mind as the artist, but I am so glad he came on board, and brought Sally along, too. They’re an amazing team and having their fantastic work on my scripts triggers my imposter syndrome. 

And finally, what can we expect to see from ourselves in the future? 

MC: Dreadnoughts: The March of Progress is already in the pipeline, as is book three of Proteus Vex: I’ve seen some of the artwork for that already – by Jake Lynch and Jim Boswell – and it’s looking amazing, even better than book two! I’ve also got another Judge Dredd two-parter on the way, and the second episode of Mayflies. Hmm... That’s actually all I have lined up at the moment, I think. I’ve got a bit of a bad feeling that it’s gonna be another winter spent sitting in the dark and wrapped in blankets as I eat cold beans straight out of the tin. Assuming that someone donates some blankets, that is. And some beans.

Dreadnoughts: Breaking Ground is heading to stores on 9th November 2021. Be sure to check out the 2000 AD webshop for pre-order info on the exclusive hardback edition. 

Special thanks goes out to Michael Carroll for taking the time to answer my questions. 

Rob Lake - For more comic book and video game chat why not follow Geek Culture Reviews on Twitter and Facebook @GeekCultureRev