Where to start

Hello everyone,

A common problem with getting into any comic series is where to start. Whether it be batman, Superman, Spiderman or any other series the answer is quite often tricky. With many comics, especially older ones the early issues will have a very different tone, pace, and direction than any modern comic. For fellow huge comic fans, people who have come to accept this I usually recommend starting from the beginning, this is what I prefer to do because its often times very hard to move back to the beginning of a story once the story is well established in your perception in the middle, this often causes people to unfairly judge early stories in the same series they love because they feel more like proto-comics more than the stories they’ve come to love.

Alternatively, when recommending somebody to start a long running series from the beginning it can be very discouraging for a potential fan to enjoy the older, child-focused stories of yesteryear. Many will write-off the whole series and sometimes the entire comic book genre, as kids’ stuff based on that singular experience.

Thus, I cannot offer my recommendation as to where to start, only, my advice on how you should start. I personally love old cheesy science fiction I loved it as a kid and when I read it now it brings me back in a lot of ways. If old cheesy sci-fi is your thing, I recommend starting from the beginning with the complete case files volume one. It’s what I did, when the case files first came out and I loved it.

          If volume 1 is to childish for you then fast forward to volume 5, It is my personal recommendation as a starting point and it features many events which affect the series for years after, it also is where the series begins to grow up a bit, focusing on longer arcs, before volume 5 most the stories are very short and very self-contained (with a few exceptions). The complete case files volume 4 contains some good prog's if short chunks of Dredd are what you're looking for with only a few long-ish arcs.

Now if the hard to define, lightheartedly violent tone of the early comics isn’t your cup of tea at all then the next best place to start is in Judge Dredd: America. Without giving anything away it is the second major turning point for Dredd in storytelling and largely establishes the tone of future stories.

          Some people though Prefer to start with the chronological beginning, nothing wrong with that it honestly is a matter of taste, I honestly don't recommend it because in the same way you wouldn't show a new star wars fan the prequels before the originals you shouldn't show a new Dredd fan the trade origins first (Usually). Some people prefer it this way.

In the end, I always recommend starting with case files 01 first, if you hate it you can always jump forward to 05, hate that jump to Dredd america, hate that, jump back to origins, hate that and Dredd probably isn't your thing. the main reason why I prefer people starting with 01 is because it is easy to read the natural progression of a series and it will only get better from there, now starting with later volumes make the jump back to the ruff, black and white, early progs a tough one, I started with 01 and really enjoyed it but when I went back to read it for my review I saw far more flaws than I used to, perhaps it is because my standards were adjusted because I saw how great Dredd could be and how much it fell short, either way starting at the beginning allows the reader to develop with the series organically while starting later and heading back creates jarring jumps, and the difference between early progs and later ones is literally black and white.

At the end of the day the best place to start is immediately, I have a few links below to the comics mentioned above.

What about you guys? long time Dredd readers, where did you start reading Dredd? when was that? what do you recommend as a starting point? Let me know in the comments!