We have some familiar faces behind the art of this late annual - Mark Farmer does another slick Judge Anderson story, and the main tale is drawn by John Higgins in his absolute prime.
As noted earlier, Higgins is still an A+ artist today. His line has got a little softer in the past few decades, but in the mid-eighties is was sharp enough to cut your throat. His painted work is remarkable - check out World Without End, one of his few American efforts. I still don't understand it, but know it looks gorgeous. His Razorjack comic is fucking fantastic - there was even a crossover with the main Dredd strip a few years back - and I just read his latest Dredger comic last night in the latest Actin special and it was absolute aces.
In this annual he's in the Cursed Earth, and it's another fairly rote story for that setting. It's surprisingly brutal, with a lone female judge's horrific death setting off the plot, with some doses of dark humour - the villains are literally named the Bad Guys, with an army of creeps with names like Rough Guy, Tough Guy, Little Guy, Little Little Guy, Titchy Little guy and Girl Guy. Higgins' painted pages sell that absurdity, and the blasted wasteland of the Cursed Earth never looked shinier or sharper.
It's a solid annual of its time, but does lose points for trying to use Bolland's single page that he did for prog 500, but was rejected because the artist dared to spend his page asking here the money from all the merchandise featuring his art was going, and it's been re-lettered here to say Bolland was 'bored stiff' of drawing Dredd so many times. It's a blatant grasp for some Bolland material, but definitely leaves a sour taste in the mouth.
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