JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 20

Mega-City One 2115-2116

(1993-1994: progs 856-887 / Megazine 2.44-2.56)

 

We’re still in the darkest part of the Dark Age of Dredd (as written by Morrison and Millar) but there is one bright shining light in Case Files 20 – perhaps the brightest shining light in the entire Dark Age or Case Files 17-23.

I am of course talking about The Book of the Dead, the standout story arc in this volume or any other in the Dark Age.

It’s Judge Dredd vs the Mummy! What’s not to love?

It’s also our introduction to Egypt’s mega-city, Luxor – and what an introduction! The Luxor Judges may rank as yet another mega-city of villains but you have to love their uniforms – absolutely top tier, with their pharaonic chic.

It helps that it is illustrated throughout by artist Dermot Power, with some of his best art – or indeed, some of the best art featured in the Judge Dredd comic, up there with Brian Bolland. Hmm…note to self – compile my Top 10 Judge Dredd Artists.

Sadly, the same can’t be said of The Sugar Beat, the other exotic story arc introducing Dredd to another foreign mega-city – the Pan-Andes Conurb.

The Pan-Andes Conurb and its Judges had much potential – even if the latter were essentially just glorified security guards for the criminal sugar cartels – but instead that potential is squandered by what is arguably the laziest and most blatant stereotyping in the Judge Dredd comic. And we’re talking about that period of time in the comic’s history when stereotyping was most on the nose – after all, they had a Sov Judge named Traktorfaktori.

We’re talking literal flies buzzing about the Pan-Andes Conurb Judges – which is more the pity as they actually have one of the better uniform designs of foreign mega-city Judges, with condors instead of the eagles used in Mega-City One uniforms.

Now we get it – the Pan-Andes Conurb Judges are meant to be in the same casually brutal and corrupt category as the Judges of the only other surviving South American mega-city, Ciudad Baranquilla, the latter otherwise mimicking Mega-City One in their use of eagles in design. However, at least the Ciudad Baranquilla Judges have a genuine edge of menace and cunning to them, not to mention get some sly digs in at Mega-City One’s expense whenever there are dealings between the two mega-cities. The Pan-Andes Conurb Judges are just pathetic – literally fat and lazy in the case of their Chief Judge, seemingly in perpetual siesta but for when they are roused by corruption.

One wonders how these bozos survived Judgement Day when Ciudad Baranquilla just barely scraped by – and the two other South American mega-cities, Brazilia and South-Am City, went under and got nuked.

There are some other middling arcs and episodes, with points of interest but nothing to write home about – although enough to do brief recaps or reviews.

For arcs or stories of more than one episode, there’s the opening arc in Roadkill – but I’ll also briefly stop in on Frankenstein Division, The Manchu Candidate and Scales of Justice.

For episodes, we’ll have stopovers at Crime Prevention and Top Gun. However, as in Case Files 19, the Megazine stepped in with the standout episode – It’s a Dreddful Life.

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 20:

ROADKILL (prog 856-858)

 

Judge Dredd does a combination of Christine and, um, Robocar?

Yes – that’s a play on Robocop. I stand by my opinion – and I understand not only my opinion – that Robocop was inspired by Judge Dredd. However, in this particular story arc of three episodes, instead of putting a dead police officer’s brain (and what’s left of his body) into the titular cyborg, it’s putting a dead criminal’s brain into a car’s automated guidance system.

As you might guess, it does not work out too well.

The set-up for the plot involves elderly citizen Merv Whitstable due for his statutory eye test to retain his driving licence. Dredd pulls him over for a traffic violation (and gives him sixty days in an iso-cube). Dredd also advises him to use his nest egg savings to “invest in a new pair of eyes”.

Dredd would know of course – he’s had his own bionic eyes since losing his original organic eyes from gruesome injury all the way back in City of The Damned in Case Files 8 (nine years earlier in both episode publication time and in-universe time).

Although it is a little puzzling that 22nd century medicine has not extended people’s health more – as his licence indicates when Dredd pulls him over, Merv is 73, which you’d think would perhaps be comparable to someone a decade younger in our time. For comparison, Dredd is 54 at the time of this episode – and he’s in robust health. (It’s a little complicated – Dredd was “born” in 2066, but by virtue of acceleration during “gestation” in the cloning process was physically and mentally five years of age at “birth”).

There is a nice gag that Dredd could tell Merv’s eyesight was bad because Merv drove into a Justice Department vehicle park.

Unfortunately, his eyesight has deteriorated to the point he can’t pass the eyesight test for a driving licence. Instead of bionic eyes, his car dealer – who also strangely conducted the eyesight test and renews his licence – sells him and his wife the robo-car, or “living brain guidance system”.

And you guessed it – because they had limited money to spend, the dealer fobbed them off a “living brain guidance system” using a dead criminal’s brain. He’s nice enough to introduce himself to them – and for some reason is able to replicate his former face on their monitor – as Lenny-Lee Lucas, who we later learn was known as the Karaoke Killer, “part-time runner for the White Lotus Triad”.

“An’ boy-oh-boy…does ol’ Lenny have some scores to settle!”

For someone who finds himself posthumously as a car automatic guidance system, Lenny adapts quickly to his situation – with his first stop almost literally a pitstop at a local mechanical body shop to pimp out Merv’s modest vehicle (by holding one of their mechanics as hostage at, ah, bonnet-point against a wall, threatening to crush him). All this while holding Merv and his wife captive in their own car.

And by pimp out, I mean equip with wings and weapons, including missiles – which I’m not sure would have been part of the inventory of the average body shop, but then it is Mega-City One. As the Judge investigating the strange hold-up tells Dredd, the vehicle “demanded a full systems conversion and armaments fit-up” – which makes the latter sound relatively routine.

The investigating Judge also fills Dredd on the background as to how Lenny-Lee’s brain ended up in the car – “Vehicle is equipped with a Quantrak auto-pilot. Uses brains from repeat offenders. Med-Division supplies ’em straight from the slabs”.

As Dredd dryly asks, “whose bright idea was that?”

Apparently, it was Chief Judge McGruder’s as part of her business initiative for closer cooperation with private enterprise. In fairness, “the brains are wiped and reprogrammed from scratch. We got a 100% success rate. Well, we did have, up till today”.

It’s always that one glitch that ruins it. Anyway, Lenny-Lee is out for revenge on the Triad that left him out to dry – and die – on a botched organ bank job. You know how it goes – he essentially goes all Christine on them. Yes – that’s a reference to Stephen King’s demonic car of that name. Except Lenny-Lee likes to sing twentieth century songs as he kills people – hence his karaoke killer moniker.

Dredd apprehends Lenny the hard way – entangled by an anti-personnel net on the vehicle windscreen, he manages to extricate himself and cling long enough to the airborne vehicle in order to literally pull Lenny’s organic brain out the guidance system. Or as Dredd says, “time I got my hands dirty”.

So Dredd effectively kills Lenny for the second time but was injured by Lenny’s attempts to shake him – although not too badly by the standards of Dredd’s misadventures. It’s enough to wonder how he does maintain his robust health at his age.

Merv’s wife does less well – as in dead from cardiac arrest while held captive by Lenny. Merv himself does marginally better – paralysed from the neck down. My biggest problem with the story arc is that Dredd arrests him as “accessory to about thirty major variations” because the vehicle was registered in his name. I know Justice Department in general and Judge Dredd in particular are heavy-handed in their police state, but this just doesn’t seem to sit right – given that Dredd knows exactly what happened. Normally Dredd would target the dealer who sold Merv the automatic guidance system as the accessory or for criminal negligence – possibly even Subaro Autopods that holds the exclusive contract, or the Med-Division staff who supplied them.

To be blunt, Merv and his wife out of all the people involved were innocent victims – indeed, the only innocent victims as the people Lenny actually killed were Triad mobsters. Not to mention that Dredd used Lenny to lead him to the Triad gangsters who otherwise had eluded Justice Department.

Some names dropped not so much for blocks as for apartments – Arcudi for Merv’s residence, possibly a reference to comic writer John Arcudi, best known for his work on The Mask, which this story arc seems to invoke at times. Also – sigh – Sax Rohmer, author of the Fu Manchu books, for the Triad kingpin’s residence.

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 20: BOOK OF THE DEAD (prog 859-866) has its own page.

 

 

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 20:

FRANKENSTEIN DIVISION (progs 868-871)

I Hate Christmas (prog 867)

 

“An unholy amalgam of the Sov Judges who died in the Apocalypse War, Project X is the ultimate Judge with one mission in life…”

There – I’ve saved you actually reading the four episodes of Frankenstein Division.

I suppose I have to mention this story because once you see it you can’t unsee it but as you can tell, I’m not a fan.

You can guess the premise from the title and my feature quote – some weird Soviet project to create a Super-Judge from the best body parts of Sov Judges killed in the Apocalypse War. Which serves as something of a metaphor for writer Mark Millar picking over the pieces of the Apocalypse War to stitch together this monstrosity. At least when Garth Ennis warmed up his leftovers of the Apocalypse War, you very much had the impression he was a fan of the epic.

Not so much here. It makes no sense, not even as a weird play on Frankenstein. The Sov Judges who oversaw the project – Yeltsin and Andropov (sigh) – explain it to Chief Judge McGruder and Dredd.

But first – Yeltsin can’t even get the Apocalypse War right when fawning over Dredd. “It’s an honour to meet you, Judge Dredd. Though our mega-cities were once at war, you are a much respected figure in East Meg Two”.

Not so – at least with respect to East Meg Two and Mega-City One being at war. That was East Meg One – which was nuked by Dredd. There was a whole plot point in the Apocalypse War about East Meg One’s sister city not being involved in the war – it was how East Meg One kept Mega-City Two and Texas City out of the war.

I suppose it’s possible that Yeltsin could have been speaking as or on behalf of the East Meg One veterans who went to East Meg Two after the war – it was another plot point how Dredd just had the Sov Judges who surrendered and were taken prisoner dropped off at the site of their former city (with at least one Sov Judge announcing his intention to head to East Meg Two). But you’d think he’d say something more along those lines.

Anyway, it’s all downhill from here – and we didn’t even start high up. I’m talking the ridiculous plot of surgically combining the body parts of Sov Judges killed in the war into a literal superhuman Judge. How does that even work? How does it make him apparently invulnerable, since his body parts literally came from Judges who were killed?

When did the Sovs even ship back the bodies of their Judges killed in the war? And to East Meg Two, since any they shipped back to East Meg One would have been destroyed? And did they just put them on ice for all the years before Project X?

Drokk – even Dredd has a better explanation than the actual story. “So what’re we dealing with, Yeltsin? Some kind of robot?” That would have made for a better story – and perhaps help tied in with the dormant Mechanismo storyline, even reviving it to deal with the new threat. Or just cloning or genetic engineering.

Anyway, it’s “synthi-brain” malfunctioned and the Soviet Frankenstein escaped, with the single-minded pursuit of vengeance against Dredd for killing the Sov Judges making up its body. What – all of them? And yes, I know the story says so but come on. Did Dredd singlehandedly kill every Sov Judge in the Apocalypse War? Or just the “best” ones they just happened to use for Frankenstein Division.

Also – how do its body parts “remember” being killed by Dredd? The story kinda says they do – “Judge Dredd. The name on the badge. The last thing the Sov Judges saw when they died in the Apocalypse War – but again, come on. Surely that would at least have to involve the brain from those Judges. And if the Sovs created a “synthi-brain” for their Franken-Judge – then unless that too used the brains of fallen Sov Judges killed by Dredd – why is it consumed with the desire for vengeance against Dredd?

And yes – it’s Dredd vs Frankenstein for the showdown in the finale. Dredd wins when the creature stops to monologue, which serves it right for being a wordy monster – perhaps somewhat at odds with the inarticulate monster of the Frankenstein films, but on point for the monster in the book, which met its fate from going around quoting Paradise Lost.

Okay, okay – I’ll admit I’m a fan of the epilogue, where Dredd executes Yeltsin and Andropov after their Franken-Judge wreaked havoc on Mega-City One, with the endorsement of the Sov Chief Judge from East Meg Two disowning them and their Frankenstein Division. Dredd echoes the notorious scene from the Lethal Weapon film. Diplomatic immunity? It’s just been revoked.

British sitcom Oh No, It’s Selwyn Froggit is name-dropped for a Mega-City One block Dredd attends at the outset of the storyline.

And I skipped over the episode of I Hate Christmas in prog 867 – another Dredd Christmas episode with Dredd being grumpy about Christmas, notable only for another Judge going futsie (and Dredd having to take him out). Oh – there is a brief interlude at Gus Grissom Spaceport, named for an American pilot and astronaut, where Dredd cold-heartedly sends a stow-away from Simba City straight back, despite the man’s pleas about fleeing famine in the African Dustbowl.

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 20:

CRIME PREVENTION (prog 872)

 

“Standard psycho test revealed Stubbs to be a potential perp. 87% probability. Better we cube him now…” Judge Dredd does Minority Report by psych profiling.

That pretty much sums up this episode, although the Minority Report psych profiling thing MC-1 has got going in it doesn’t pop up again. That’s not surprising, since you’d imagine they’d have to pre-emptively cube almost all their citizens. I mean, who in MC-1 isn’t a potential perp?

There’s a interesting titbit in the opening of the episode – apples or at least apple trees would seem to be extinct, as Dredd recovers an apple stolen from the “Fresh Fruit Museum”, which suggests that enough fruit is functionally extinct to have a museum. Dredd’s reference to apples not growing on trees any more suggests that apples may originate from other synthetic sources, perhaps like the munce that is the main meat product in MC-1.

Anyway, one of the juvenile onlookers to Dredd arresting the apple-stealing perps is a fan. He tried out to enrol as a cadet Judge at the usual intake age of five but failed. Now he’s applying for the second round intake at age twelve – again a feature that seems to pop up in this episode but I don’t recall elsewhere. In fairness, that second round intake doesn’t qualify as street-Judge cadets, but does qualify for off-world Judges or Judges in the lunar colonies.

“All we had to do is pass a stringent psychological profile test”.

No prizes for guessing that test is just the cover story for the one to pre-emptively profile potential perps – or one for me for that alliteration. Needless to say, Dredd’s young fan – Ricky Stubbs by name – is sorely disillusioned about his hero. “Now I think he’s a monster”.

He has a point – the whole thing seems massively unfair, which may be why it never popped up again. Dredd doesn’t pass any sentence, which he does even for the worst actual perps, so it’s unclear what term of encubement Ricky has to serve. It may even be indefinite. Also, MC-1 does distinguish between juvenile and adult offenders, so 12 year-old Ricky should be in juvenile detention.

 

 

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 20:

THE SUGAR BEAT (prog 873-878)

 

I’d say Case Files 20 is giving us a treat with a second foreign mega-city after Luxor…but it’s the Pan Andes Conurb.

Sigh. It’s not that bad – spoiler: okay, it’s still pretty bad – but it can be goofy fun if you look at it just right and ignore some of the worst stereotyping of a mega-city. And since stereotyping is the point of mega-cities, that’s saying something.

The Pan-Andes Conurb and its Judges had much potential – even if the latter were essentially just glorified security guards for the criminal sugar cartels – but instead that potential is squandered by what is arguably the laziest and most blatant stereotyping in the Judge Dredd comic. And we’re talking about that period of time in the comic’s history when stereotyping was most on the nose – after all, they had a Sov Judge named Traktorfaktori.

We’re talking literal flies buzzing about the Pan-Andes Conurb Judges – which is more the pity as they actually have one of the better uniform designs of foreign mega-city Judges, with condors instead of the eagles used in Mega-City One uniforms.

Now we get it – the Pan-Andes Conurb Judges are meant to be in the same casually brutal and corrupt category as the Judges of the only other surviving South American mega-city, Ciudad Baranquilla, the latter otherwise mimicking Mega-City One in their use of eagles in design. However, at least the Ciudad Baranquilla Judges have a genuine edge of menace and cunning to them, not to mention get some sly digs in at Mega-City One’s expense whenever there are dealings between the two mega-cities. The Pan-Andes Conurb Judges are just pathetic – literally fat and lazy in the case of their Chief Judge, seemingly in perpetual siesta but for when they are roused by corruption.

Grud knows how these bozos made it through Judgement Day when two other Latin American mega-cities – Brasilia and Chile’s South-Am City – did not and Ciudad Baranquilla just barely scraped by. Even Ciudad Baranquilla has a certain brutal ruthlessness – these guys are just hopeless

Oh – and the premise of this arc involves growing sugar, classed as an illegal drug in Mega-City One, as an analogy for cocaine, although you wonder why they don’t just grow cocaine. Anyway, Judge Dredd is sent there to sort out the sugar trade from the Pan-Andes Conurb to MC-1 – and given that the PAC “Judges” are all in the pocket of the sugar cartel, that means sorting both the cartel and the PAC Judges as well.

 

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 20:

THE SUGAR BEAT 1 (prog 873)

 

Dredd’s stopping the sweet stuff hitting the streets of MC-1 at its source – the Pan Andes Conurb. “It’s high quality refined glucose, primo stuff”.

That’s the premise of the Sugar Beat, sugar as illegal drug in MC-1 being a stand-in for cocaine. Ah – can sugar grow at that climate? Why not just grow and traffic cocaine? Of course, this is a world in which the potato – the potato, originating in the very location of the Pan Andes Conurb – has gone extinct!

It amuses me that Dredd’s introduction to this new flood of sugar on to the streets of Mega-City One is the speed with which a mugger attempts to flee him. Attempts, as in Dredd shoots the mugger with a heat-seeker bullet, killing him. However, as Dredd observes during pursuit – “he’s fit, I’ll give him that” – and after shooting him – “kid was fast, too fast” – before solving the mystery with satchels of sugar. Um, I don’t think sugar works like that. It’s not a performance-enhancing drug or anything. Although maybe this twenty-first century sugar is, perhaps with genetic engineering?

Anyway, that’s where that primo stuff line comes in – from Chief Judge McGruder of all people, albeit quoting the “tech boys”, as she assigns Dredd his mission to stop the sugar trade at its source. Of course, as Dredd queries her, she has an ulterior motive for getting Dredd out of the city, reflecting the simmering tension not only between Dredd and her, but with other senior judges as her mental faculties continue to deteriorate.

Dredd touches down – presumably on one of the Justice line of official space shuttles. And that’s where we’re introduced to the Pan Andean Conurb judges in all of their stereotyped glory, lazy and corrupt, down to the flies buzzing around them. As I said, it’s a pity because despite the offensive portrayal of the Judges themselves, I actually like their uniform design.

The shoulder condors in substitution for the American eagles are a nice touch. They’re not top tier by any stretch – they seem to be from military fatigues rather than biker leathers and have non-standard footwear – but they beat the Ciudad Baranquilla uniforms, which wouldn’t look out of place in a Mardi Gras parade.

Dredd gets only bad jokes from the Pan Andes Conurb Judges – despite the promised “full diplomatic cooperation from the Pan Andes Conurb Justice Department”. When he asks them where his official transport is, they joke about Yankee’s pony (as well as calling him gringo) – presumably a reference to the pony in the lyrics of Yankee Doodle Dandy.

They’re not off to a good start with Dredd – and it only gets worse from here…

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 20:

THE SUGAR BEAT 2 (prog 874)

 

I guess Dredd just had a thing for pyramids at this time – he’s only recently back from Luxor but here he is checking into Sector House 12 in Pan Andes Conurb

However, the interior of the Sector House 12 pyramid is not as impressive – just Pan Andes Conurb Judges clubbing their hapless citizens

Also Judge Guacamole? Sigh. That’s pretty much as bad as Sov Judge Traktorfaktori. It’s like Judge Dredd doing Asterix.

The Sector House reception Judge tries to stall Dredd by having him wait for the Chief Judge but Dredd isn’t having any of it and just asks for the quickest route to the docks. Although I’m not sure why – does he know the cartels literally ship their sugar? It is the twenty-second century after all – although given how antiquated the Pan-Andean Conurb is, maybe they do.

And yes – Dredd does ask the name of “the freighter that’s been illegally transporting sugar to Mega-City One”, so I suppose he does know that. The criminals at the dock also knew he was coming, as the Sector House reception Judge tipped them off immediately that Dredd was out of earshot. So no surprise that Dredd is set upon by one of the heavies at the dock – although I am surprised that the heavy rebukes Dredd for his lack of jurisdiction. And impressed – they obviously have a high quality of mob muscle in the Pan-Andes Conurb docks, such as to dispute a legal point with Dredd. What’s more, as far as I can tell, the heavy is right – Dredd indeed does not have jurisdiction and just pulls his gun on the heavy. “This is all the jurisdiction I need”. The heavy swipes away Dredd’s Lawgiver and a melee ensues.

 

 

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 20:

THE SUGAR BEAT 3 (prog 875)

 

“The Cuba Libra, Condor Wharf, Pan Andes Conurb…a few of the locals are helping Dredd with his enquiries”

I love that opening panel – and I always love Dredd putting the smackdown on a gang of thugs trying to put the smackdown on him, as here in a classic bar brawl at a lowlife dive bar. I mean the low life gets pretty low in MC-1 – but it’s even lower here in the PAC

To give them credit, these street thugs are better antagonists against Dredd than are the PAC Judges, although everyone else in this storyline is as well. It’s why the PAC Judges just tip off everyone else to do their dirty work for them.

One of them even does the impressive feat of picking up a piano – yes, a literal piano – as a weapon to throw at Dredd. He might have done better picking up literally anything else as a weapon against Dredd or even just punching him with that strength.

As it is, Dredd questions him further as to the name of the freighter transporting sugar to Mega-City One, using the persuasive technique of dunking his head in the water off the docks – “hundreds of years of pollution have turned the Black Pacific into a deadly chemical cesspool”.

I know that’s the case for the Black Atlantic, which is almost as iconic a geographical feature as the Cursed Earth, but I seem to recall the Pacific faring better. In the Song of the Surfer prelude to the Oz epic, the Pacific was shown to be unpolluted – with Chopper even playing with unmutated dolphins. And in Babes in Arms, Mega-City Two was shown as having a beach life with its coastline on an unpolluted ocean.

Also, hundreds of years? Well, perhaps two hundred at most, from 1900 or so.

Anyway, the Pacific does the trick, polluted or otherwise – the thug fesses up with the name of the freighter, the Crazy Hoolio Ingracias, which I’m sure is a play on Spanish singer Julio Iglecias.

 

 

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 20:

THE SUGAR BEAT 4 (PROG 876)

 

“Count yourself lucky, Gonzalez. Think what I could’ve done if I HAD jurisdiction”

Judge Dredd – he is the Law! Even when he doesn’t have jurisdiction.

“Acting on intelligence from a concerned citizen, I had reason to believe that the freighter Crazy Hoolio Ingracias was involved in illegal sugar peddling”.

I love Dredd’s journal entries – it’s part of the humor of this story arc how his deadpan journal entries contrast with what we see in the comic, which in short is Dredd as one-Judge army descending on the Pan Andes Conurb and its sugar cartels.

The first casualties of Dredd’s one-Judge army, apart from the injured thugs at the docks (we later hear of fifteen civilian casualties of this episode), are the crew of the Crazy Hoolio – after they make the mistake of firing upon him in answer to his request to board them. Impressively, Dredd takes them out with one armor-piercing shot.

“The Crazy Hoolio ignored a clear warning to heave-to. I was forced to insist. Regrettably, I hit the ship’s magazine and my key evidence sank with all hands in the lethal waters of the Black Pacific”.

Dredd has no choice but to return to the Sector House of Pan-Andes Conurb Chief Judge, where Duty Judge Gonzalez remonstrates with him as to the casualties of his one-Judge war against the sugar cartels – ironically as it was Duty Judge Conzales who tipped off the dock thugs to Dredd in the first place.

Dredd has to call Chief Judge McGruder to get her to pull diplomatic strings with her counterpart in Pan-Andes Conurb – counterpart in title only that is, as Chief Judge Garcia is effectively a henchman of the sugar cartels. En route to the Chief Judge Garcia’s office, Dredd inflicts another casualty – slamming a door into an eavesdropping Pan-Andes Conurb Judge spying on his call with McGruder.

McGruder’s diplomatic string-pulling works quickly, albeit effectively sabotaged by the Pan Andes Conurb – as Chief Judge Garcia finds an antiquated twentieth-century helicopter as transport for Dredd, although that does come with its pilot Juan, the best character in the whole Pan Andes Conurb storyline. That’s not the only sabotage – as Chief Judge Garica personally calls the sugar cartel to tip them off “the eagle is on the wing”.

 

 

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 20:

THE SUGAR BEAT 5 (prog 877)

 

Okay – I’ll admit I’m a fan of this panel where Dredd finds himself massive outgunned in his derelict chopper by the Pan Andes Conurb sugar cartel air-gunship. As in, completely outgunned, because I’m pretty sure Dredd’s chopper doesn’t even have guns.

This episode introduces us to the other best character in this storyline (apart from Dredd’s pilot Juan) – Dredd’s antagonist and sugar cartel queenpin of the Pan Andes Conurb, Senora Testarossa. She takes her henchman, Chief Judge Garcia, to task because he remonstrates her that killing a Mega-City One Judge is insane. Testarossa points out to Garcia that if he’d covered his tracks, “we’d never be in this ludicrous mess”. She has a point but I’m not entirely sure how Garcia was meant to do that.

Not surprisingly, the Testarossa airship guns down Dredd’s chopper into one of the sugar fields, but Dredd manages to bail out with Juan at the last moment.

Dredd and Juan find one of the sugar refineries, which has a bomb set to blow up the intruders – somewhat inconsistently, as Senora Testarossa was complaining to her airship crew about the damage to the sugar crop from Dredd’s helicopter crash. I’m prepared to bet the sugar refinery is much more expensive to replace than a small area of sugar cane fields.

 

 

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 20:

THE SUGAR BEAT 6 (prog 878)

 

Dredd does a plea bargain with Senora Testarossa, sugar cartel queenpin of the Pan Andes Conurb.

Of course, she tried to kill him first. The explosion of the sugar refinery didn’t take – Dredd and Juan survive it, although implausibly Dredd leaves his Lawgiver behind for Juan to retrieve. Instead, it blows a hole in the cartel’s own defenses, such that Dredd is able to infiltrate their command bunker.

There he faces off with Senora Testarossa’s two bodyguards, dispatching them with a little help from Juan – although when I first read it, I thought Juan was helping one of them, tossing him Dredd’s gun. To be honest, I’m still not clear about that. Sure, a Justice Department Lawgiver is palm-printed to its Judge to avoid unauthorized use…but did Juan know that?! Anyway, it has the effect of incapacitating the bodyguard, as the Lawgiver blows up in his hand as it is designed to do from unauthorized use – maiming him with the loss of his hand.

Anyway, Dredd simply has to invoke what will happen to Testarossa at the hands of her own customers when she defaults on their sugar purchases – which makes me think he deliberately blew up the Crazy Hoolio – for her to agree to a plea deal. In this case, involving incarceration for her own protection.

 

 

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 20:

THE SUGAR BEAT 6 (prog 878)

 

“That GIVES me jurisdiction”.

The Sugar Beat wraps up as we all knew it would – with Dredd arresting most of the Pan-Andes Conurb Judges for corruption, based on the testimony of Senor Testarossa.

Dare I say it, it all works out pretty sweet for Dredd. He gets to return to the Pan-Andes Conurb in style, flying back in the Testarossa air-gunship. He even gets back at the two PAC Judges who joked to him about a pony when he arrived, arresting them for corruption and commandeering their vehicle – “there’s always the pony, pal!”.

And returning to Sector House 12, he arrests Chief Judge Garcia and most of the other Judges there, which he quips will keep the Mega-City One penal colony on Titan busy for a year. Sadly, he also arrests Juan – “piloting an unlicensed obsolete aircraft for personal gain”, “failure to file preservation order for said aircraft” and “unauthorized handling of official Justice Department weapon”.

Really, Dredd? The only person to actually help you – well, not under your duress – in Pan Andes Conurb?

Anyway, the story concludes with Dredd implying that he will stick around as the interim system of justice for the Pan Andes Conurb as “most of your Judges are now in the cubes”, in the fine tradition of Mega-City One imperialism. Actually, we see MC-1 do a fair bit of what we might describe as imperialism in the Judge Dredd comic. However, Dredd seems to get back to Mega-City One quickly as we see him there in the very next episode. In fairness, while a year of the Judge Dredd comic corresponds to a year in real time (only, you know, 122 years ahead of us), the passage of time between individual episodes can be somewhat amorphous – not necessarily the week implied by their weekly publication.

 

 

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 20:

TOP GUN (prog 879)

 

“Drokk! Check the size of that gun!”

“Neat wheels, Judge Dredd!”

Tek Division designs a prototype Lawgiver and Lawmaster like that car by Homer Simpson. The Lawgiver – the standard Justice Department gun – was not as bad, but the Lawmaster – the standard Justice Department motorcycle – was clearly overblown.

Needless to say, it does not too work out too well with Dredd – and in similar terms to Homer’s costly over-designed car. It gets the Tek Judge responsible for it “doing twenty for criminal negligence” on Titan.

In contrast to Homer Simpson’s car, the new Lawmaster looked okay in the shop so to speak – even Dredd said so at first glance:

“Tek Division are just applying the finishing touches, Dredd. This model comes with ground-to-air missiles and jet-ski option. Boys reckon it’s capable of anything up to six hundred kilometres an hour.”

On second thoughts, I don’t know how any of those options are going to be useful in hyper-urban Mega-City One. Where are they going to use the jet-ski option? The Black Atlantic?! Also, note the influence of the British writers over the American setting – kilometres rather than miles and spelt the British way as well!

It’s soon put to the test – a full on iso-cube breakout, hijacking three Justice Department vehicles no less – and fails almost straight away, with the engine catching fire. Strangely, the Lawgiver gun also catches fire. Dredd calls in for a burns unit to be on standby – “I may need medical attention”.

As it turns out, Dredd takes out each of the hijacked vehicles – and their escaped perp hijackers – with the Lawmaster’s missiles or the Lawmaster itself, on kamikaze autopilot, without needing medical attention. “Forget it – wasn’t as bad as it looked.”

Although perhaps Dredd should not have dismissed that burns unit, as he lays down some major burns on Tek-Judge Stone – “Lousy. Their malfunction cost an estimated three hundred dead – extensive public and private damage.”

I’m assuming those casualties and that damage is from the over-destructive effect of the explosions from the missiles or the Lawmaster. I don’t know, Dredd, I’m not sure all of that can be blamed on Tek Division, given you fired those missiles and commanded the Lawmaster as effectively another kamikaze missile…

 

 

 

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 20:

THE MANCHU CANDIDATE (progs 881-883)

Under Siege (prog 880)

 

Justice Department turns on itself as the Wally Squad or undercover Judges send one of their own as an assassin to take a shot at Chief Judge McGruder, in what seems like a potential Wally Squad coup.

I’m shocked! No, seriously. I normally would have expected it to be the SJS or Special Judicial Squad – the Slytherins of Justice Department. But they’re loyal to McGruder as she used to be SJS, rising to its head position and seat on the Council of Five.

Not that there is a Council of Five anymore, since McGruder did not reinstate it when returning to office after Necropolis. That’s the actual subject of argument between McGruder and Dredd when both are officiating at an Academy of Law graduation of cadets as rookies. Dredd proves loyal enough though when foiling the assassination attempt at the graduation, although the assassin manages to escape through disguising himself as a cadet Judge. That tips Dredd off to the identity of the assassin as a Judge, while he and McGruder deduce it to be a Wally Squad Judge.

Dredd gets a lucky break as he is further tipped off by a violent incident at Laurence Harvey Block – named for the actor who played the brainwashed US soldier in The Manchurian Candidate film – and soon traces it to the one Wally Squad operative in that block, who is indeed the assassin, Landslide Otis.

The story takes a bizarre twist. When the assassin dies in a shootout with Dredd as Dredd apprehends him, he’s revealed to be a Sino-Cit plant or sleeper agent – hence the title Manchu Candidate. What’s more – he tells Dredd in Chinese “I was only a patsy”

But how? How did he infiltrate Mega-City One, let alone the Judges? And presumably as a child cadet – apparently with “massive facial reconstruction” to disguise his Chinese appearance

Also but how was a patsy? Is Sino-Cit trying to assassinate McGruder? But…it seems to be a genuine conspiracy by the Wally Squad gone rogue? We actually see the would-be assassin’s Wally Squad superior (and handler) giving him the orders

So did the Wally Squad know he was Sino-Cit or was it just coincidence? Was the Wally Squad using Sino-Cit or vice versa? What’s more, it’s a Chekhov’s Gun – or the Sino-Cit equivalent, obviously set up to foreshadow conflict between Sino-Cit MC-1…but it never went off

I think the writers were planning or working towards just that, some conflict between Sino-Cit and MC-1 as the next crisis or epic storyline – remember War Games in prog 854? – but it just fizzled out and they abandoned it.

I skipped over the episode Under Siege in prog 880, which involved a storyline we’ve previously seen in Judge Dredd – the computer running Michael Portillo Block for the super-rich (with the block apparently named for a British journalist and member of Parliament) goes berserk and starts killing its residents with its own security systems.

 

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 20:

SCALES OF JUSTICE (progs 884-885)

 

Judge Dredd does Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome. No, not the cool part with the Thunderdome. The part with the lost tribe of children – or cadets in this case.

That’s pretty much it. Dredd is sent to investigate a distress signal from the Cursed Earth. It’s from a Justice Department H-wagon that went down with cadets on board, although weirdly Dredd refers to that occurring in the Apocalypse War and elsewhere the story refers to it as 18 months earlier (which makes more sense). So unless it’s a flashback story or the reference to the Apocalypse War was meant to be a reference to something else, perhaps Inferno or Judgement Day…?

Anyway, there’s two rival factions within the lost cadets – one hardline faction effectively seeking to set itself up as Judges in the Cursed Earth, blaming Justice Department for abandoning them, and the other that seems to be holding to the standards of Justice Department until rescue. They both lose, although a girl from the latter saves Dredd’s life from the former – and the mutie raiders who gatecrash the party.

 

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 20:

THE ENEMY BELOW (progs 886-887)

 

Few 2000 AD artists depicted abominations quite so eldritch as Clint Langley.

This particular eldritch abomination is a mutant creature that seems to have infiltrated the iso-cubes under the Grand Hall of Justice that Dredd had ordered to be flooded during Inferno. So Dredd takes it out when he goes diving in the flooded iso-cubes to manually activate or work the pumps to clear out the flooding.

 

 

 

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 20:

IT’S A DREDDFUL LIFE (Meg 2.44-2.45)

Bury My Knee at Wounded Heart (Meg 2.46)

You are the Mean Machine! (Meg 2.47)

Freefall! (Meg 2.48)

Do the Wrong Thing (Meg 2.49)

Giant (Meg 2.50-2.52)

Howler (Meg 2.53-2.56)

 

And we wrap up Case Files 20 with my favorite Megazine episodes in it – as the title indicates, it’s Dredd doing It’s a Wonderful Life in a two-episode storyline.

Dredd appears to be transported by the ghosts of his past to an alternative world in which he never lived, narrated by Judge Death as host. “Judge Dredd. This is not your life. Come hither, enter the lawless zone – a world where you never existed!”

(That’s not an exact quote – I edited Death’s sibilant hissing).

It’s a fun tour through the history of the Judge Dredd comic, a dark alternative timeline without Dredd but which remains eerily familiar to the one we know. Technically speaking, there is a Judge Dredd in this timeline – but it’s Rico, not the Joe we know.

In this timeline, Rico does the Cursed Earth mission to Mega-City Two – but uses the serum to extort to become Chief Judge of Mega-City Two, with a little help from his friends, which strangely includes tyrannosaur Satanus as his loyal pet. There’s a nice gag in which Spikes, seemingly Rico’s companion for the Cursed Earth mission as he was for our Dredd, is riding Satanus while dangling a bound Tweek as carrot for his “horse”.

Chief Judge Cal comes to power back in Mega-City One, as he did after our Dredd’s return from the Cursed Earth mission, but harmlessly chokes on a bone from Deputy Chief Judge Fish after ordering Fish on the menu in a tantrum towards his beloved pet.

Psi-Judge Anderson died, presumably in her encounter with Judge Death in their mutual introduction in the comic – and we also see a “victorious” Death grappling with the futility of exterminating all life as a solitary Dark Judge. Even at the rate of one cull per minute, it will take 800 years to eradicate the existing human population – setting aside the birth rate and other living creatures.

We see Judge Hershey as an honorary angel in the Angel Gang – angel in the sense of Victoria’s Secrets angel, serving them up drinks in cowgirl lingerie – with the Judge Child held captive in a jar. Back in Mega-City One, Otto Sump has some bizarre business partnership with P.J. Maybe, while Radlands of Ji ninja assassin Stan Lee is a film star (aptly enough, given the influence of Bruce Lee and Stan Lee for his name).

Judgement Day still happens, ending Chief Judge Rico’s racket in Mega-City Two – and sending him riding Satanus away from the nuclear sunset. And Judge Death’s quest to judge life as a crime become even harder when the dead come back to life.

So not surprisingly the other Judge Dredd villains aren’t too happy with Sabbat and gang up on him – in the art we see Rico, Judge Death and the Angel Gang, as well as a Klegg (presumably Cal’s Deputy Chief Judge Grampus), an East Meg One Judge, renegade Judge Grice, Black Atlantic pirate Captain Skank, and Call-Me-Kenneth. It’s something of a premonition of the Helter Skelter storyline to come.

It also turns out to be a hallucination – from an illegal hallucinogenic substance in a vendor’s pie, although I’m not sure why Dredd took a bite from it in the first place, other than plot contrivance. The vendor is outside Frank Capra Block – a nod of course to It’s a Wonderful Life.

As for the other Megazine episodes:

• Bury my Knee at Wounded Heart (Meg 2.46). The title is of course a play on Bury my Heart at Wounded Knee. It involves a citizen with the surname Knee trying to bury his wife – died from old age – at Wounded Heart private cemetery, burials of course being a rarity with Mega-City’s Resyk
• You are the Mean Machine (Meg 2.47) is a Choose Your Own Adventure style as Mean Machine Angel. Of course, the only correct answer involves your signature headbutt
• Freefall! (Meg 2.48) involves the tragic thoughts of a leaper as she plummets to her doom
• Do the Wrong Thing (Meg 2.49) is an obvious play on the Spike Lee film Do The Right Thing, featuring a heatwave at Danny Aiello Block, a nod to the actor in that film
• Giant (Meg 2.50-2.52) sees Giant – that’s young Giant or Giant Jr – graduate from rookie to Judge, in a case involving the return of Walter the Wobot gone wogue, I mean rogue, advocating Call-Me-Kenneth’s robot revolution.
• Howler (Meg 2.53-2.56) involves an overpowered alien trying to take over Mega-City One or at least the Sump Tower Hotel. Funny – I was today years old when I realized that Otto Sump was (or adapted to) a parody of Trump. Also, overpowered alien tries to take over Mega-City One – or at least take on Judge Dredd – is a storyline that recurs surprisingly often.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Finally, I note that I was unable to play my usual drinking game of matching the Case Files volume cover art to the interior panel art – and that’s because, after using Google Image search, I was able to match it to the cover of prog 853 as featured. That prog was actually an episode collected in Case Files Volume 19 – indeed, three episodes before the ones collected in this volume – as the final episode of the Inferno storyline (so the cover art did not relate to that episode either). Still, since I did end up matching the Case Files Volume cover art to its origin, I suppose that counts for a shot in my drinking game…?