You shouldn’t need a prologue comic or a prequel story to help you understand the story in Dredd 3D. Well, to be fair, you probably won’t need much to understand that whole thing. It’s rather simple. The dude in the helmet is the Judge. He gets to kill bad guys real good. There’s a rookie and a bad guy played by the wife from 300 with a big scar on her face that does not in any way detract from her aesthetic prowess. Bullets. Slow-motion. Drugs. Justice. Boom.

Despite all this, the folks behind the film have put together a pretty rad prequel comic called “Top of the World, Ma-Ma” that tells the story of the film’s baddest babe and her lurid past.

Created with 2000 AD and written by Matt Smith with art by Henry Flint, Chris Blythe, and Simon Bowland, the “The Secret History of Ma-Ma” is a new 16 page collectible comic that explains the rise of the film’s villain Ma-Ma (played by Lena Headey). It also features a bit of cross-over with Judge Dredd (played by Karl Urban) and a preview of some of the characters from the film.

You can read the comic here or watch the motion comic edition below. Dredd 3D is due in theaters September 21, 2012.