7: Snowstorm

So we reach the end of the first Volume with another Garth Ennis one-shot. There's a good central idea here, with sugar being banned and then becoming a narcotic-like substance. I can't remember if that idea was introduced in this story or had already been established, but it fits in well with the mad world of Mega-City One.

Similarly to Firepower, there's nothing overtly "wrong" with Snowstorm, but there's just not a lot to it. One-shots are tricky to pull off, and my feeling here is that Ennis tries to cram too much into a handful of pages. The idea was probably good enough to explore over a few episodes, exploring the illegal operations that had sprung up around the "snow" trade.

Instead, it reads like a synopsis of a story rather than a story itself. The crime is established, Dredd and the Judges find out, then come in and shoot people, and the problem seems to be over. There are no surprises, no standout characters and no inspiration - and while Colin MacNeil has some fun with the graphic deaths he gets to portray here, even those are nothing we haven't seen before.

A lacklustre end to the first Volume.