JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 20:

BOOK OF THE DEAD (progs 859-866)

 

Judge Dredd vs the Mummy!

That’s right – we’re in the highlight of Case Files 20 and arguably the entire Dark Age of Dredd from Case Files 17-23, the eight episode story arc of Book of the Dead.

I mean – it’s just good pulp horror fun. 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.

Yes – it’s the usual stereotypical depiction of foreign mega-cities and doesn’t particularly make much sense as to why post-apocalyptic 22nd century Egypt and its Judges have reverted to imitating ancient pharaonic Egypt in implausible ways. Which just so happens to include an actual supernatural Mummy. But when it looks this good – who cares?

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.

Don’t worry too much about the paper-thin plot and its tenuous premise of Dredd’s diplomatic exchange with Luxor. Like any good horror film, it’s all just part of the ride to get to what we all came to see in the first place – the showdown between Judge Dredd and the Mummy. Indeed, as we learn in something of the twist – spoiler alert – Dredd’s whole diplomatic exchange was set up at its Luxor end for that very purpose. Of course, that just raises further questions but just go with it, okay?

So strap in for eight episodes of glorious art and your ride, courtesy of Morrison and Millar, to yet another showdown between Dredd and the undead. We’ve seen him take on zombies in Judgement Day, various forms of vampires (although technically none of them so far have been of the supernatural undead variety), and the Dark Judges who are arguably a form of lich. Now it’s time for Dredd to meet his Mummy.

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 20:

BOOK OF THE DEAD 1 (progs 859)

 

“I am Rameses, scourge of criminals and nemesis of the lawless.”

Here’s the introduction to Egypt’s mega-city Luxor – or more precisely its Judges. Luxor itself will have to wait until a little later in the episode.

As I said, you have to love those Luxor Judge uniforms – absolutely top tier with their pharaonic chic. In fact, I’m calling it now – I’m ranking them just below the Sovs in my mega-city Judge uniform rankings.

Dermot Powers’ art is on full display in this opening episode – so much so that I’m going to slow down and go almost panel by panel, firstly because of that gorgeous art and secondly because of the key story details in this episode. We’ll pick up the pace after this episode to the more usual panel per episode (or thereabouts) in the balance of the story arc.

As for that introduction, Dredd is literally dropped off in Luxor – “Judge Dredd, on board a Mega-City One Justice Department shuttle, has just landed at the north African city of Luxor, part of a cultural exchange program instigated by Chief Judge McGruder.”

Well, firstly, technically he hasn’t landed at Luxor but presumably their airport or spaceport facility some way from the city proper, as it is announced later. Secondly, McGruder seems to be coming up with all sorts of crazy plans lately – the Mechanismo project, that business initiative which gave us Roadkill in the preceding storyline, and now this cultural exchange. Of course, there’s method to her madness here – after their clash over the Mechanismo debacle, McGruder is keen to keep Dredd out of the city. Despite a reputation that seems to be worldwide, Dredd is not the best pick for cultural exchange or diplomacy.

And he gets quite the curt introduction to Rameses, apparently Luxor’s best Judge who is being exchanged with Dredd in Mega-City One for the week – and chose to take it personally. As we see at the conclusion of the story arc, he takes it quite a bit more than that. Judge Kamun is much friendlier – “I welcome you to Egypt with a joyful heart”.

Despite that friendly face, let’s just say that I don’t know how Kamun’s heart would fare against a feather on those divine scales of justice in Egyptian mythology…

 

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 20:

BOOK OF THE DEAD 1 (prog 859)

 

“Halt, sinner!

Be thankful I only took an arm, thief! Next time, I will not be so merciful!”

 

As I said, this first episode has one awesome art panel by Dermot Power after another – and they also set up so much of the later story or atmosphere of Luxor – that one almost has to go panel by panel. And yes – I know these are technically two panels!

And this sets up the Luxor Judges as another mega-city of villains comparable to Ciudad Baranquilla in corruption and casual brutality. Sigh – their uniforms might rank as top tier but their quality of life rankings is going down to fail-tier on a par with Ciudad Baranquilla.

I mean, Mega-City One Judges are trigger-happy but at least they don’t amputate arms. Although I suppose that puts the Luxor Judges up there with the limb-lopping lightsaber-happy Jedi.

And…is Judge Kamun just going to leave the criminal walk away to wander the streets without any sort of administration of justice or even patching him up? Does he at least get to pick up his arm? Is the penalty for petty theft – it was an apple from a street stall – really amputation? I’d prefer the cubes in Mega-City One.

As usual Dredd can’t resist a dry quip – “spare the rod?” – although I wouldn’t have picked him as one for Biblical or really any literary allusion, as in “spare the rod and spoil the child”.

 

 

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 20:

BOOK OF THE DEAD 1 (prog 859)

 

Well, I guess there goes that sarcastic pun about denial is not a river in Egypt, since the Nile is no longer a river in Egypt either.

Some nice Judge Dredd casual worldbuilding here in Book of the Dead, courtesy of a tight script and Dermott Powers’ art of the Luxor aircraft – nicely resembling ancient Egyptian art of a solar barque of the gods in design – as it overflies the canyon that “used to be the Nile”.

Used to be, that is, until the Atomic Wars “dried up its source”. Luxor “now pumps its water from hidden wells deep beneath the ground”.

Whoa – does that accord with the actual geology of Egypt? A cursory Google search suggests there might be something to it, but I suspect nothing close to the Nile itself.

And come on – who nuked the Nile? Can you nuke a river at source? I know the Atomic Wars were all out – but it still seems a frivolous use of nuclear warheads to little purpose. Who had it out for Egypt like that? Of course, it could be the sweeping environmental effects of global nuclear war – although that begs the question of whatever causing it was big enough to dry up the Nile…but leave the urban centers and population of Egypt unaffected enough to form a mega-city.

 

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 20:

BOOK OF THE DEAD 1 (prog 859)

 

 

“One of the four wonders of the modern world…the city of Luxor.”

 

Dredd is unimpressed by the sights of the canyon formerly known as the Nile, sneering from the corner of his mouth – “I’m not here to see the sights, Judge Kamun.”

You’d better get used to Dredd curling up the corner of this mouth to sneer in this storyline.

Judge Kamun tells Dredd he’s just warming up to the main attraction – “But up ahead is the greatest sight of all, my friend”.

Enter the glorious art panel of the city of Luxor, with Kamun’s line about it being one of the four wonders of the modern world.

But what are the other three?! Inquiring minds want to know! No, seriously – as far as I know, they have never elaborated on those other three wonders in the comic. I’d like to think Mega-City One has at least one of them.

And yes – the whole city appears to be under some sort of pyramid, whether of glass or the futuristic plastics they have in the twenty-second century (boing or plasteen among others), or perhaps some energy force shield. They never elaborate on it either.

The episode wraps up with another Luxor Judge on street patrol, Judge Khafre, being ambushed by a shadowy ghoulish figure – although we see enough of its bandaged arms to assume it’s that classic Egyptian undead stereotype, the Mummy. Conveniently, while the Mummy is chowing down on one of Khafre’s arms – which it appears to have torn off – it’s within eyesight of Dredd arriving into Luxor with Kamun. And strangely, it not only seems to know who Dredd is, but is also enthused to sibilance upon seeing him – “Yesss, Dredd…yessss”.

It’s nice to know that Dredd is so famous he’s known among the undead of Luxor.

 

 

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 20:

BOOK OF THE DEAD 2 (prog 860)

 

Whatever else you think of Luxor, you have to admit they have the most pimped out Chief Judge. The tiger really ties the room together.

Although to be honest, they might have gone a little too far with the whole pharaoh thing they’ve got going. I also would have thought that tigers were extinct in Dredd’s post-apocalyptic 22nd century.

Anyway, you’d also be forgiven for not thinking very much of Luxor, at least in terms of the quality of life for its citizens, placing it down there with Ciudad Baranquilla, the most dystopian of mega-cities in the twenty-second century.

They’re doing much better in terms of the preservation of Egypt’s ancient monuments, as we see the Great Pyramid and Sphinx at Giza – even if the latter is used as Luxor’s prison. Or more precisely, the maze beneath the Sphinx is used as the prison, although they execute the prisoners anyway after serving their terms.

Wait – there’s a maze under the Sphinx?! Looking it up, I found out that there was a legendary Hall of Records or library purported to exist somewhere underground near the Sphinx – and by legendary, I mean a modern legend apparently originating with American “clairvoyant”, Edgar Cayce. I guess Luxor decided to build it.

While looking that up, I also found out the Sphinx was built for Pharaoh Khafre – the namesake of the Luxor Judge killed by the Mummy at the end of the first episode. I’d note that Judge Kamun, Dredd’s Luxor escort, has a similar hame to Khamun – as the suffix of Tutenkhamun, which I understand to be derived from the god Amun.

Speaking of Kamun, he tells Dredd as they walk through the citizens of Luxor – seemingly left out of Luxor’s twenty-second century technology as they look much the same as contemporary Egyptians – “Look at the fear in the eyes of our citizens. The respect they show us. They know that even the wrong kind of look will mean a public flogging”.

So there you go – even looking at a Judge in Luxor wrong gets you a flogging.

Judge Kamun continues in the same vein as they enter what appears to be Luxor’s Grand Hall of Justice, resembling a palace or temple in ancient Egypt with the apt inscription He Who Weighs the Heart of Men – “There is no conflict in Luxor. There is only blind obedience.”

Kamun escorts Dredd to Luxor’s Chief Judge Giza (sigh) – although the lazy name is more than made up for by that art panel of the pimped out Chief Judge. Pimped out like a pharaoh, that is, down to a male and female servant whose only role appears to be sitting at the pharaoh’s feet to show how, ah, pharaohly the pharaoh is. The same goes for the tiger but it is a tiger after all – pretty cool.

Chief Judge Giza tells Dredd that something is rotten in the state of Luxor. We know this having seen the Mummy chowing down on a Luxor Judge, but the Chief Judge tells us that this is only one of many Judges killed by this undead thing. Indeed, thirteen as Chief Judge Giza tells Dredd.

Ah, better make that fifteen as the episode wraps up. Two Luxor Judges find what appears to be a pile of rags – but you guessed it, that pile of rags is the Mummy, although it’s not clear whether he was taking a nap or setting a trap.

And of course he chows down on them too. Or is that two? Or, for that matter, slurps them down – “Juicezzz! I need your juicezzz! Need to drink themm…and mmake me ssstronnng!”

Although that “juices” thing may be some unfortunate phrasing…

 

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 20:

BOOK OF THE DEAD 3 (prog 861)

 

Judge Dredd vs the Mummy: Round 1

I’m going to call this round a draw.

This episode opens with Judge Dredd and Luxor Judge finding the corpses – sucked dry – of the two Luxor Judges killed in the last episode. That description of sucked dry was used by Chief Judge Giza for the other thirteen Judges killed by the Mummy – which was somewhat surprising as when we saw it killing Luxor Judge Khafre, it appeared to actually eat one of his limbs.

Anyway, the Mummy has a bigger target in mind – indeed, the biggest. No, not Dredd – at least not yet, as foreshadowed by the Mummy apparently recognizing Dredd on seeing him – but Chief Judge Giza.

Either from a sense of opportunity, or dare I say it, toilet humor, the Mummy targets Chief Judge Giza in the most undignified position possible – on his throne. No, not his royal throne – that other throne of toilet slang. Nice gag though of Chief Judge Giza thinking the Mummy’s bandages were toilet paper being passed under the door at his request.

Needless to say, the Mummy makes quick work of Giza – and the two Anubis-like Judges standing guard outside the stall beforehand, although you only see their slain corpses in passing.

Fortunately, Dredd and Kamun are in the vicinity – although it’s not clear why, other than plot convenience – and overhear Giza’s screams coming from the Chief Judge’s quarters. They arrive at the scene in time for the first round between Dredd and the Mummy, as Dredd takes an incendiary shot at the Mummy as it runs away.

The Mummy turns back and gets a blow in as Dredd’s about to up the ante with a high-ex shot, throwing Dredd out the window for that cinematic cliché of Dredd’s fall being broken by successive canopies.

Dredd calls out (from the ground floor stall where he landed in a pallet of fruit or vegetables) for Kamun to pursue the Mummy – but Kamun replies “It’s too late, Judge Dredd. The beast has escaped!”

Hmm – something seems to be not quite right going on here…

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 20:

BOOK OF THE DEAD 4 (prog 862)

 

In Luxor, they even pimp out their resyk in pharaonic style.

I love how they threw a camel in there.

I can’t imagine there’d be many camels in Luxor but there’s one on the Luxor resyk conveyor for you.

And shame on you, Dredd, for that stereotypical crack – “Always figured the Egyptians would wrap their stiffs in bandages. As Kamun corrects him, “only the rich are allowed to be mummified…the rich and senior judges”.

In Luxor, resyk is for the plebs and proles – “the ordinary citizens” as Kamun calls them. Although you have to love the Luxor resyk motto, that they recycle “everything but the scream”.

 

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 20:

BOOK OF THE DEAD 4 (prog 862)

 

Luxor sending out its Chief Judge in sarcophagus style.

As Judge Kamun tells Dredd, “Our Chief Judge will be sent to the afterlife with all the ceremony his rank demands”.

Although I’ve nicknamed this story as essentially Dredd vs the Mummy, I suppose technically Dredd does see more than one mummy in it. Chief Judge Giza’s mummy is a lot less lively than the main Mummy though.

It is somewhat jarring that the 22nd century Egyptian megalopolis has reverted to much to its ancient predecessor – including mummification of its rich citizens and senior Judges, even more so that this is presided over by its “Tek”-Judges. (Tek being the more simplified phonetic spelling adopted in the 22nd century for tech, itself abbreviated from technology – not unlike resyk for recycling).

There have been some advances – as Kamun tells Dredd, “In ancient times, the mummification process took seventy days” but “now the whole ceremony is over in a matter of minutes”.

Why, though, since the story painstakingly shows the steps of the process that seems essentially the same as in ancient times? It seems a missed opportunity to have shown robots doing it.

Luxor even has revived the sacrificial interment of servants with the mummy of Chief Judge Giza – as an “honor guard” of “the Tek Judges of Anubis”. As Judge Kamun intones, “the Chief Judge will need servants when he awakens in the afterlife’ – which just strikes me even more that this whole mummy business should be done with robots.

Dredd is unimpressed as he accompanies Kamun for the funerary ceremony – “You don’t believe all this superstitious stuff, do you?”

What impresses me is that Chief Judge Giza is being interred in a pyramid – and indeed, one of the old pyramids, not a new one that Luxor has built for its Chief Judges. That seems to beg the question of how much room is there in those old pyramids for new mummies and their sacrificial guards? Do they just toss the old mummies out?

Dredd tells Kamun that he “feels kinda out of place here, Kamun” as they attend the funerary chamber. Kamun reassures him while standing behind him with a distinctly unnerving grin “Please, do not feel uncomfortable here, Judge Dredd. You are our guest of honor!”

Well, that’s unsettling. That choice of phrase – and Kamun’s slasher smile – bode nothing but trouble for Dredd. And sure enough – trouble is only two panels away…

 

 

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 20:

BOOK OF THE DEAD 4 (prog 862)

 

Things go pyramid-shaped as Dredd is betrayed and laid out as meat for the Mummy.

No, seriously.

“I wanted you here as meat! Sustenance for my master! A feast for he who will never die!”

That’s said by Judge Kamun after he’s zapped Dredd in the back with his Luxor lawgiver rod – phrasing! – but it may as well have been said by the writers Millar and Morrison themselves.

As I said in my introduction to this story at the outset, its paper-thin plot and tenuous premise is all contrived for the showdown between Judge Dredd and the Mummy. And here we learn the big twist – Dredd’s whole diplomatic exchange was set up by Judge Kamun at its Luxor end for that very purpose.

Yes – it has been foreshadowed through Kamun’s shady conduct throughout, most of all the Mummy’s convenient “escape” after its first round with Dredd, but also his constant smile that bordered on predatory grin. We got a good example of that smile at its most predatory as Kamun reassured Dredd about the latter being their guest of honor.

It was also foreshadowed in the very first episode as the Mummy spied on Kamun escorting Dredd into Luxor – when the Mummy not only seemed to know who Dredd was, but was also enthused to see him, as if the Mummy had been expecting him.

However, as I also said in my introduction, it all raises further questions. We’ll get to more of them in the next expository episode but for now Judge Kamun monologues to Dredd – while the latter is unconscious because Kamun just can’t help himself gloating – that he had “brought” Dredd here.

Here – as in the pyramid, for Chief Judge Giza’s funerary ceremony? Or to Luxor itself? Given what we learn next episode, Kamun is in league with the Mummy, essentially playing the role of Renfield to its Dracula, one would assume the latter – and that the Mummy killing Chief Judge Giza was setting it up.

Although that would imply that Kamun was in a position to pull strings to orchestrate a diplomatic exchange of Judges between Luxor and Mega-City One – that or a senior Luxor Judge or Judges in positions of power also in conspiracy with the Mummy – and also for himself to be the Judge assigned to Dredd in Luxor. However, the story itself doesn’t tell us that.

Also, lucky for Luxor that they happened to get Dredd himself from Mega-City One. Of course, Dredd is Justice Department’s most iconic figure, both in Mega-City One itself and in the 22nd century world, but that makes Dredd being picked for the exchange rather than any other Judge in Mega-City One rather remote. Of course, Chief Judge McGruder has issues with Dredd at this time and prefers to assign him on missions outside the city – but did Kamun or his co-conspirators know that? Or was it just more luck?

Anyway, as usual, the art is outstanding throughout, including the final panel of the Mummy lurching towards the pyramid to dine on Dredd. To quote the poet Keats, who are these coming to the sacrifice?

 

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 20:

BOOK OF THE DEAD 5 (prog 863)

 

“Drokk!”

Says it all really – like sands sealing the pyramid, so are the days of Dredd’s life…

Things aren’t looking too good for Dredd in this final panel, about to be buried alive by the sand sealing the pyramid to entomb the Chief Judge. It’s also the same fate as that for the Tek Judges as sacrificial attendants for Chief Judge Giza in the afterlife.

They at least have taken poison for a painless death before being swallowed up by sand, but it does lead to a nice exchange with Dredd as he looks for a way out of the pyramid chamber only to be told there is none – “What? Are you people crazy?”

In short, yes – for this insane level of verisimilitude in imitating ancient Egypt but that’s about to get worse.

But wait a minute, I hear you say – wasn’t Dredd zapped into unconsciousness as Kamun’s captive on the menu for the Mummy? How did he escape?

Well, this is the final panel of the episode, which indeed open with Dredd in chains as Kamun’s captive for the Mummy. As to how he escaped, Dredd did it like he always does – with an apparently superhuman feat of strength to break his chains, killing Kamun and an unnamed co-conspirator Luxor Judge.

But not before Kamun gives Dredd an exposition dump on the Mummy. Kamun tells Dredd that while most of the city follow the one god Yud – presumably like Grud for God, 2000 AD’s publication-friendly way of referring to Allah – he is part of a cabal following the “old gods…those ancient beast-faced gods”. Within this cabal, there were legends of “the return of a dreadful redeemer…Ankhhor, the dead-in-life, who found a method whereby his physical body could survive beyond death”.

You guessed it – that’s the Mummy. And luckily, Luxor dug him up. Yes, literally – when drilling for Luxor’s subterranean water. “I made sure I was part of the team of Judges sent down to investigate”.

And to fully restore himself, Ankhhor needs to suck Dredd’s ka. No, get your minds out of the gutter – his ka, “the genetic essence of men”, which sounds a lot different (and awfully advanced) for what I understood to be the ancient Egyptian concept of ka as the soul (or one of them anyway).

Which begs a lot of questions of why Dredd is contrived as the missing piece of the puzzle for an ancient undead entity to revive itself, even if he is one of Justice Department’s finest clones – but just go with it, okay?

Anyway, back to the final panel, time is running out – or rather the sand is running in – for Dredd…

 

 

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 20:

BOOK OF THE DEAD 6 (prog 864)

 

Dredd vs the Mummy – Round 2!

Nice of Ankhhor to save Dredd from being smothered by sand in the burial chamber first.

Of course, if you had just waited a little longer, Ankhhor, Dredd probably would have been smothered into unconsciousness and not put up a fight.

I suspect Ankhhor couldn’t risk Dredd dying as he has to suck Dredd’s ka au naturel as it were. No, not that – phrasing! – ka means soul or one of them anyway, as ancient Egyptian mythology had numerous soul components

It doesn’t matter since Book of the Dead adapts ka as genetic essence – which seems remarkably well informed for an ancient undead entity. It’s also why Ankkhor wants to suck Dredd’s sweet cloned genetic Judda juice. Hey – phrasing!

Anyway, Dredd literally headbutts Ankhhor and escapes through the passage from which Ankhhor burst into the burial chamber, before escaping the pyramid entirely with an Indiana Jones roll under the stone door sealing off the pyramid (until the next Chief Judge burial, I guess).

There’s a nice double take as Dredd thinks to himself that the stone door will stop Ankhhor for some time at least, but Ankkhor just bursts through it anyway – “I have waited three thousand years to be reborn as the lord of all the earth. Give me your fleshh!”

Eww.

Also – three thousand? It’s 2115 – so that would mean Ankhhor mummified himself in…885 BC or so. Well after the peak of ancient Egypt and well into its decline, shortly before being conquered by the Assyrians, Babylonians and Persians.

Dredd hits Ankhhor with a blast from Kamun’s rod – phrasing! At least, I’m presuming it’s Kamun’s rod but it would have to be a spare one as Kamun and his rod are back in the pyramid, after Dredd choked him out – hey, phrasing! It could be one that Luxor lent Dredd but the storyline made a point of Dredd using his own Lawgiver and its ammunition.

Dredd then flies away on one of those Luxor Lawmaster sky-chariot things that was outside the pyramid. I’m also presuming that it’s Kamun’s sky-chariot Dredd takes. Luxor definitely lent him one of those as we see him flying it side by side with Kamun to the pyramid for the burial, but the storyline seems to have forgotten that as we only see one sky-chariot outside the pyramid. If there were still two of them, Anhkhor could also have simply flown the other one after Dredd instead of leaping on the one flown by Dredd.

Fortunately for Ankhhor, he obviously was the long jump champion of ancient Egypt and makes the leap. Unfortunately for both of them, he and Dredd are thrown clear and fall from the chariot as they struggle over the Luxor skyline.

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 20:

BOOK OF THE DEAD 7 (prog 865)

 

“Grud! Guess I oughtta be grateful for the soft landing” Dredd’s got guts as he ends up in one of the worst parts of Luxor’s resyk.

Well, that was lucky – as was not being too high up that the intestinal soft-landing doesn’t injure or kill him.

That luck doesn’t last as Ankhhor plunges into the guts after him…

 

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 20:

BOOK OF THE DEAD 7 (prog 865)

 

“In defiance of death and all the ancient godsss of judgement, I will live again and rule! YOU ARE SSSIMPLY FOOD!”

Ankhhor explaining the rules in Round 3 of Dredd vs the Mummy – or the continuation of Round 2. It’s a little hard to tell – he’s worse than the Terminator and absolutely will not stop ever until he’s devoured Dredd’s ka.

Note to self – I really should do a list of antagonists Dredd has faced which see him as only food. There’s probably enough for a top ten – Ankhhor for one, but I can think of Satanus, the Black Plague spiders, and Nosferatu off the top of my head…

Anyway, back to Round 3 of Dredd vs the Mummy, it doesn’t start off too well for Dredd. The chain we see Ankhhor pulling here is connected to the gangway Dredd is on, breaking the gangway – and Dredd’s arm as he falls to the resyk conveyor belt.

Which prompts to mind the saying about costing an arm and a leg – as Ankhhor soon adds a broken leg to Dredd’s broken arm as Round 3 continues.

The episode closes out with things not looking too good for Dredd – with Ankhhor crouched over Dredd and poised to suck Dredd’s ka or life-force. Of course, being a comic, Ankkor can’t resist monologuing about sucking Dredd’s ka – and showing his surprising knowledge of genetics for a three thousand year old undead entity who has spent almost all of that time in a sarcophagus.

“I can almost tasste the honeydew of chromosomes, genes, the rich wine of your being”.

Which begs the question of why Ankhhor is almost tasting it as opposed to, you know, just tasting it rather than talking about it.

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 20:

BOOK OF THE DEAD 8 (prog 866)

 

“See, I figure there’s only one way to stop someone who can’t die. The Resyk way”

Would it work, though? An automated assembly line breaking down a body into its organic or even chemical components would seem hard to beat for killing an undead entity like the Mummy – or your average lich or vampire for that matter.

But what if the Mummy can regenerate from that? Luckily again for Dredd, it seems the Mummy can’t – but things might have been different if, say, it could regenerate from a single cell, like Junji Ito’s Tomie. Now there’s a match-up I’d like to see!

Wait, I see you say, what happened? We closed out the last episode with Ankkhor poised in victory over Dredd, the latter with a broken arm and leg.

Well, Dredd uses his good arm to pull out Ankkhor’s tongue in a scene I was sorely tempted to feature here – and then his good leg to kick Ankkhor into the automated resyk mechanism that dissects bodies into their components, hence my feature line and image.

And Dredd wins Round 3 – and the match – against the Mummy by resyk knockout.

Of course, it would have been more satisfying if Dredd’s victory had been less by chance than design – the happenstance that he and Ankhhor fell into Luxor’s resyk plant, rather than, say, Dredd deliberately luring Ankhhor to it. If they had fallen anywhere else, then Dredd would have been toast with his broken arm and leg. Having already quipped about Ankkhor as the Terminator, I suppose it’s not unlike the happenstance showdown of the automated assembly line at the end of the first film (or the smelting plant of the second film).

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 20:

BOOK OF THE DEAD 8 (prog 866)

 

“Shut it down! In the name of Grud, shut it down!”

These anonymous Luxor resyk workers don’t get enough credit as the true heroes of the story saving Dredd.

Dredd may have won his match against the Mummy – but it’s out of the frying pan and into the fire as Dredd is dragged into the same resyk automated mechanism that dissected the Mummy to its destruction.

Fortunately, the Luxor resyk workers overhear his cries for help and shut down the mechanism – which is particularly impressive as they don’t speak English and apparently ‘wake-up’ cases occur enough that the workers usually ignore them. Amusingly though, the note to the panel has “translated from the Egyptian” when it should be Arabic.

That wraps up Book of the Dead (except for a few panels effectively by way of epilogue). I also can’t help but think that Dredd’s quote reflected the reaction of fans to this story – as well as Morrison and Millar writing Dredd in general – at the time.

I can see where they’re coming from but I like Book of the Dead – as well as odd moments of Morrison and Millar writing Dredd – if only for Dredd vs the Mummy and Dermot Power’s sumptuous art of Luxor’s 22nd century retrofuturistic version of ancient Egypt.

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 20:

BOOK OF THE DEAD 8 (prog 866)

 

“What’s the matter, Rameses? Cut yourself shaving?”

And Dredd sees out the epilogue to Book of the Dead with his usual one-liners.

I suppose arguably that would make Rameses the third “mummy” Dredd encountered in this storyline, at least in appearance – the actual Mummy Ankhhor, the mummified corpse of Chief Judge Giza (killed by Ankhhor), and now the heavily bandaged Rameses.

Rameses was of course the Luxor Judge trading places with Dredd for this cultural exchange – I guess the streets of Mega-City One are tougher than Luxor. What puzzles me is how Dredd got speed-healing and Rameses didn’t – Dredd broke an arm and a leg during his fight with Ankhhor.

Also – I’m digging Hershey’s appearance here. Dredd of course has another characteristic one-liner to her asking him what happened with Luxor trying to feed him to one of their gods – “I didn’t agree with him. Now how about pointing me in the direction of some real action?”

And that’s a wrap on Dredd vs the Mummy in Book of the Dead.

 

 

 

 

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…?

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 19

Mega-City One 2115

(1993: progs 830-855 / Megazine 2.27-2.43)

 

Our next stop is Case Files 19 but just make sure to remain near the Mega-City Law bus – we won’t be staying here long.

 

That’s right – we’re perhaps at the darkest part of the Dark Age of Dredd, when Garth Ennis passed the torch as main writer to Grant Morrison and Mark Millar. As I said previously for the Dark Age of Dredd, this was often seen as a low point for Judge Dredd and the 2000 AD comic in general.

 

Don’t get me wrong – I like Morrison and Millar as writers, indeed as two of my favorite writers of comics…just not for Judge Dredd here. For whatever reason, they just weren’t the best fit for the character or 2000 AD comic at this time (although both had written some of their best work for 2000 AD), particularly as a writing team duo.

 

Although don’t get me wrong about that either – I do like some of their Judge Dredd episodes or storylines even at this time. There’s just slim pickings from those collected in this Case Files volume.

 

The standout for me was easily the episode War Games – not least for its introduction of the Sino-Cit Judges – although sadly subsequent episodes did nothing with its premise, either the pending crisis predicted by Psi-Division (in eighteen months, maybe less) or the “aggro-drug” they experiment on with Dredd to prepare for that crisis.

 

Ironically, the Megazine episodes collected in this volume offer up the runner-up for standout episode with Revenge of the Egghead – ironically, that is, because for me the (monthly) Judge Dredd Megazine is generally secondary to the (weekly) regular 2000 AD issues, but because we’re dealing with the Dark Age of Dredd here, the Megazine episodes often stepped up to take their place.

 

Anyway, there were some other episodes or arcs of interest collected in this volume – the Muzak Killer returns, as does another recurring antagonists penned by Garth Ennis, Johnni Kiss.

 

The episodes in Case Files 19 did feature an epic storyline – epic that is, in length as it consisted of 12 episodes, albeit towards the shorter end of Judge Dredd epics. Not so epic in terms of story quality – I am of course talking about Inferno, which I’ll mostly be passing over with a couple of panels or so. Among other things, it set in place something of a trend for the space penal colony of Titan, reserved for Judges who break the law, to become almost as bad a revolving-door prison for escapees as Arkham Asylum in Batman. Well, perhaps not quite that bad but still annoying – and at least a recurring problem in general for Mega-City One.

 

There was also the return of the Mechanismo robot judge storyline in the Megazine. Heh – more like Meh-chanismo, amirite?

 

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 19:

ENTER JONNI KISS (prog 830)

 

Judge Dredd vs John Wick. Well not really (and not quite yet) but similar in the whole legendary assassin thing.

Okay, okay – I have to admit Case Files 19 opens with a bang and badass assassin Jonni Kiss looks cool when introduced, although everyone looks cool when they’re in art by Greg Staples.

And okay – he proves to be more dangerous than other antagonists for Judge Dredd. That is, when we return to him after his introduction here – two years later or so in the Goodnight Kiss arc compiled in Case Files 23.

But we’ve been here before – the badass or cool hitman or assassin pitted against Judge Dredd, often doing surprisingly well or even seeming to take Dredd out but then doing the Bond villain thing of gloating over him rather than just shooting him already.

Drokk – we’ve even done the exact same foreshadowing in an introductory episode a few years before returning in a longer story arc to kick Dredd’s ass but drop the ball just before touchdown. Remember Wu Wang – or as I like to call her, Lady Deathfist, out to avenge martial artist Stan Lee? Yeah – they did the same thing for her.

Let’s face it – Dredd has faced and will continue to face a long line of badass or skilled assassins, agents, bounty hunters, hitmen or just someone with a grudge against him, all with a bullet (or something) with his name on it, arguably going all the way back to his own clone-brother Rico. Grud – there’s probably enough for their own top ten – Top 10 People Out to Get Dredd or even just Top 10 Judge Dredd Assassins & Hitmen. As Dredd himself says when he hears someone is out to get him or has a grudge, they’ll just have to get in line to take their shot.

Indeed, the Megazine episodes compiled in this same volume include a parody of that same character type of the badass cool assassin out to get Dredd – Slick Dickens, amusingly written as a character of that type written by a Mega-City One citizen, which of course sees him repeatedly jailed by Dredd (although you suspect Dredd’s secretly a fan),

In fairness, Jonni Kiss does better and is better at it than most, as evidenced by his trophy wall of Judge badges.

And he is introduced with a literal bang – assassinating no less than East Meg Two’s Supreme Judge Traktorfaktori. Sigh – I liked him and he seemed a decent sort when introduced into the Glasnost storyline. And yes – Judge Dredd continues its 90s trend of names for foreign Judges seemingly straight out of Asterix. It gets worse in this episode – as we hear of two rival contenders for succession, Riboflavin and Markimarkov, although at least it gives us the great line from Dredd “one Sov’s as bad as another.”

Of course, it helped that Trakforfaktori seemed to be well past it and that Kiss had a little help from some Gila-Munja mutant offshoots, although he double-crosses them, I wouldn’t put it past the Sovs that he had a little inside help as well, given the lax security we see here – possibly one of those rival contenders or even just anyone from the Diktatorat because that’s just how they roll.

But in fairness, Kiss does seem to be the best at what he does – taking out the Supreme Judge as well as the Gila-Munja out for revenge. And those were just test runs to prove his worth for his real target – who is of course Dredd. Although weirdly Kiss seems to go in for a good old-fashioned fax for receiving his instructions, even though those instructions are literally just the one word “DREDD”, setting up his subsequent appearance…

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 19:

THE GREAT BRAIN ROBBERY (progs 835-836)

The Judge Who Lives Downstairs (prog 831)

The Chieftain (prog 832-834)

 

Judge Dredd’s memories are so bad they literally make your head explode!

Why? “Because they’re all bad, meathead”

No, seriously – that’s the plot twist of the two-episode storyline, The Great Brain Robbery, and I am here for it, even if it does not make sense or seems impossible in biology or physics.

I mean, this story is a hoot, both in its premise and plot twist.

Yes, the premise involves yet another new crime driven by technology – memory theft (or thought theft as it is called in the episodes), courtesy of the neuron extractor. Although I don’t recall it featured anywhere else other than these two episodes, which might reflect how flawed its premise is as a crime when you look at it too closely.

We’re introduced to it through a Mega-City ‘tap’ gang, literally mugging one of MC-1’s many down-and-out citizens of his memories. In fairness, they seem a cut above the usual street gang.

For one thing, they carry it out in broad daylight on a crowded street. Sure, they seem to be relying on that common tendency to look the other way, even in our contemporary cities, let alone the dystopian giant mega-city city of the future – particularly where the victim is someone socially invisible like a homeless beggar. That’s further explained by the narration in the second episode – which notes that half of the Judge force has been wiped out by Necropolis and Judgement Day, so “the creeps are making the most of it”.

For another, this memory-mugging gang has more resources than your average street gang. Apparently that’s because memory theft has a high-end market, with rich citizens paying big to live vicariously through the stolen memories. That’s the part that doesn’t make sense to me. The lives of the overwhelming majority of Mega-City One’s citizens – at least 90% – are defined by their dystopian quality of grinding welfare dependency and drudgery.

Why would Mega-City One’s richest citizens – who can afford to actually live top-end experiences – want to buy memories of lower-end experiences? Sure there may be some thrill of ‘slumming’ it in someone’s crappy memories. More probably, there may be the thrill of experiencing some violent crime that is the other definitive feature of life in Mega-City One, although one anticipates that the market would be more for memories of perpetrators rather than victims, as the equivalent of playing some video game like Grand Theft Auto. However, the narrative makes it clear that the neuron extractor only extracts a few memories and that it’s a matter of potluck which ones you get.

More to the point, the subject of the stolen memories actually referred to in the storyline are mostly banal – “best memory my supplier ever sold me was one of picking up this measly account’s clerk med bills”. Sheesh! That guy can buy all my crappy memories. Although I do like the drug analogy.

Anyway, at least the main antagonist of the storyline – Vito Colletta – has the right idea for a target with memories that promise to be exciting. That’s right – it’s Judge Dredd. After all, we read the comic for excitement.

The memory thieves get their opportunity from Dredd doing his usual thing – going in solo into a city sector gone wild. Chief Judge McGruder initially tells him “you’re going to need serious backup” and the withering look he gives her is priceless. (She immediately retracts her statement – “Uh–no offence, Joe…!”).

 

 

Anyway, that gives the memory thieves the chance to do a drive-by shooting with the neuron extractor. They only get a “handful” of memories but that’s apparently worth “at least 5 mil”. Although I’m a little worried – does this mean that Dredd has lost those memories? Going by that homeless victim we see in the story, it does. On the bright side, Dredd does end up apprehending the rich receivers behind the memory thieves and they have some device to play the memories, so he could have used it to restore the stolen memories.

That of course brings me to that plot twist. Vito Colletta tries on Dredd’s memories for size – after not only reneging on paying anything for them, let alone 5 million, but also having his henchman literally throw them off the building. No honor among memory thieves, I guess.

Anyway, as I said, Vito tries on Dredd’s memories for size – “Judge Dredd’s memories! The action of Necropolis–crossing the Cursed Earth in a killdozer. Soon I’ll have the memories of a hero!” – and they blow his mind. Literally – as in his head explodes. And just before Dredd raids them too, hence his line to the rest of the memory receivers, to which he adds “Guess that creep wasn’t tough enough to handle ’em!”

And yes I skipped two stories

 

• The Judge Who Lives Downstairs (prog 831) – A fun little episode of Dredd doing the rounds in his home block, Randy Yates Block, which the episode notes is “the safest place to live in Mega-City One”. No surprise there.
• The Chieftain (progs 832-834) – an ex-Brit Cit ranger from Cal Hab (Caledonian Habitation Zone) on a roaring rampage of revenge in Mega-City One. He even has a weaponized bagpipe droid that kills with sonic waves – the Psycho-Piper, a “tight focus sonic disruptor on a robot chassis”. Dear Grud. Still – probably sounds better than regular bagpipes.

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 19:

MUZAK KILLER – LIVE! (progs 837-839)

 

Video killed the radio star – the Muzak Killer’s back and this time he’s live! And again in that glorious Dermot Power art!

Yes – it’s Marty Zpok, back from when we last saw him a couple of years back in Case Files 16. I mean, there’s only been a global zombie apocalypse in the meantime but not much seems to have changed for Zpok and the 22nd century ‘muzak’ he hates.

Well, except of course, he’s doing time in the cubes from his run as the Muzak Killer, when he targeted a thinly veiled version of the 1990s English music producers Stock Aitken Waterman and their expatriate Australian artists from the long-running (and highly popular) soap opera Neighbours, foremost among them Kylie Minogue.

Apart from time in the cubes, that has also seen him as the butt of the running gag in these episodes – being called “sad”, as in pathetic or a loser. It starts slowly and subtly with the abuse of his fellow inmates – as they beat him up in the shower, leaving him with a gap-toothed grin from a missing tooth like Mad Magazine’s Alfred E. Neuman for the rest of the story – but escalating to pretty much everyone, including Dredd, calling him out as sad or pathetic.

As “sad” as he is, his luck changes as we find out the Muzak Killer has his own fans. Not many of them to be sure, but quality counts over quantity for fans that are willing and able to break him out of prison in an aerial raid, led by his biggest fan called – what else? – Indiana Saddoe, presumably yet another play on the recurring gag of Zpok being sad. The raid doesn’t exactly go without a hitch. Unluckily, Judge Dredd happens to be in the vicinity and a well-aimed hi-ex shot takes out the “stratorover”, although Zpok and Saddoe survive the crash to escape to Saddoe’s apartment.

And from there they plot – well, mostly Zpok plots and Saddoe just goes along with it like the saddo he is – to hijack a ‘vid’ broadcasting station and broadcast Zpok’s war on muzak live. Needless to say, it does not go well for them, although it ends in a surprisingly lucky turn of events for Zpok. Lucky lucky lucky!

 

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 19:

MUZAK KILLER – LIVE 1 (prog 837)

 

I’ve already covered most of the first episode in my introduction to this arc but the first episode concludes with Saddoe and Zpok holed up at Saddoe’s apartment.

Interestingly, Saddoe is such a fan that he’s even purchased a copy of Zpok’s original Muzak Killer outfit from the first story for Zpok to wear in this one. (Of course, Zpok was wearing his original outfit when apprehended by Dredd). Nothing is said – we just see Zpok wearing it as opposed to his iso-cube regulation clothing so Saddoe must have bought it for him in advance.

 

Sadly, Zpok is less impressed with Saddoe’s music collection, even though it’s “the hippest alterni-music vibes in the Meg). For Zpok, all new music is muzak – “Exactly, Indy. Lesson one – music is only cool when it’s old.”

 

Although he contradicts himself with the very next words out of his mouth – “Down to business, Indy. How’s the music scene doing? Who’s big? Must be some pretty good bands about, since I wiped out the bad ones!”

 

O well – I suppose we shouldn’t look for consistency in the mind of a deranged killer. I suppose he could be talking about covers bands…

 

Anyway, that prompts Saddoe to reply that “lots of new muzak stars popped up and took over from the dead ones”.

 

Zpok is incredulous – “Eh? They didn’t even notice me?”

 

Well yes, they did – but not in any good way. Saddoe produces all of the “press clippings” from the so-called Ramsay bop or Zpok’s first murder spree (weird to think that there’s still paper press clippings or no digital scans in the twenty-second century). And upon reading them Zpok is barraged with descriptions of how pathetically sad he is…which makes him angry.

 

To appease him, Saddoe sees if there is any news of Zpok’s escape on the vid news and sure enough there is. Even better, Zpok rebounds with a newfound sense of purpose upon seeing the latest ‘vid’ entertainment show, Word Up, featuring live muzak. Now he’s a man with a plan – “Heh heh heh…Indy, my boy? You and I are going to be vid stars”.

 

I just love the look on Indy’s face, which says it all really…uh oh. 

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 19:

MUZAK KILLER – LIVE 2 (prog 838)

 

“Oh my drokking Grud!”

I mean, haven’t we all wanted to take a monster chainsaw to that one annoying ponce mouthing off about us? You know the one. And this was before social media – now you could cut through whole swathes of online critics.

Joking aside, I can’t help but feel that writer Garth Ennis or artist Dermot Power are using the Muzak Killer to work through some issues here. That journalist – David O’Steven – has an awfully distinctive appearance. I suspect there’s some inner joke in his name or appearance that I just can’t get through the dust of all these years later.

Anyway, David O’Steven was the journalist whose gutter press writing about the Muzak Killer’s last appearance enraged Zpok on reading it – “Marty Zpok’s slaughter of muzak stars proves just how sad some people are. The love of a good woman might help – but he’s so sad he’s probably never had a girlfriend, the sad jerk”. So there you have it – Judge Dredd did i-n-c-e-l-s first by decades.

And as luck would have it, prompted by Zpok’s escape, he’s writing – or dictating – more of the same when Zpok decides to pay him a visit with Saddoe in toe. Well, you can guess how that goes, particularly with that chainsaw. Mind you, you’ve got to love O’Steven’s last words – “I’ll print an apologaaaagh!”. Sorry Dave, I’m afraid you can’t do that.

Meanwhile, Dredd is hot on Zpok’s trail, although it’s hard to miss. As Dredd observes – “I’m in O’Steven’s hab, Control – he’s all over the place.” Let’s say the visual image of the panel matches that.

However, as we know, Zpok has bigger plans than petty personal revenge – or perhaps rather bigger plans that overlap his petty personal revenge against the world of muzak. And those plans involve hijacking the popular vid broadcast Word Up.

A quick tangent – we see the host of Word Up interviewing “aging star Conrad Conn”. Now there’s a blast from the past – Conrad Conn featured all the way back in The Day the Law Died (as collected in Case Files 2), as Mega-City One’s most popular vid star conscripted by Chief Judge Cal to star as Cal in the Chief Judge’s video ode to himself. That’s what I love about Ennis writing Dredd – you can tell he was a real fanboy for the classic early episodes.

Anyway, that’s what Zpok and Saddoe do – hijack the vid broadcast. Saddoe takes over the control room, with a randomizer to block the Judges from jamming the broadcast (and to keep the control room robots and staff broadcasting at gunpoint). And Zpok’s our host, after throttling the actual host Gerry Hindu and shooting female co-host Kati Mukkrake.

And you know – I think he may have missed his calling as a vid broadcast host, because he’s quite entertaining. Perhaps he and Mega-City One’s muzak industry might have been happier if he’d gone that route as a host of a music vid broadcast, a metaphorical Muzak Killer as it were with snide snarky criticism of muzak stars he doesn’t like. Sadly now he’s the literal Muzak Killer – and as he announces to his live audience, he’s just getting started with the show’s guests…

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 19:

MUZAK KILLER – LIVE 3 (prog 839)

 

“And now…the end is near…And so I face…the final curtain”

Well it’s time to wrap up this show – and by this show, I mean the vid broadcast Word Up hijacked by Marty Zpok a.k.a. the Muzak Killer. He must have known how this would end but he planned to go out with a bang – you might say he did it his way. Indeed, he does more than say it – he sings it, which I found quite surprising since I hadn’t picked him for a Sinatra fan. I mean, I know he liked old music – it’s his moniker after all – but I thought he preferred the different genre of classic or alternative ‘rock’.

And as I said, he goes out with a bang – indeed, several of them. He killed the two broadcast hosts last episode and now he gets started on the guests. Mairaid McSlaphead – I’m pretty sure she was a parody of Sinead O’Connor. Demanda – another of the broadcast’s hosts. Clarence from the Crazy Sked Moaners – not sure of the reference, but ironically he kills himself trying to carve the word ‘real’ into his forehead with a las cutter. Not sure we can chalk that one up to Zpok’s tally, although arguably Zpok egged him on – and you have to admit Zpok quipping “that’s not how you spell real” is funny. In fairness, it wouldn’t be easy getting the letters right on your own forehead.

Zpok gets another good gag in when he asks Anni O’Boge, sister of Syreen O’Boge whom he killed in the ‘Ramsay Bop Massacre’, about her sister “two years ago”. She starts to answer him but belatedly recognizes him – “Hang on a mo’…ain’t you the bloke who…?”. “Yep” says Zpok as he shoots her.

Quick side bar – Anni would presumably be a parody of Danni Minogue, sister of Kylie Minogue parodied by Styreen. And I hadn’t noticed before now that the ‘Ramsay Bop Massacre’ would also be a reference to Ramsay Street, setting of the Australian soap opera Neighbours, beloved in England and from which Kylie and her fellow ‘muzak’ pop stars originated.

Anyway, that’s the last shot Zpok gets in – as Judge Dredd has answered the call by Justice Control to attend the studio, shot Saddoe, and had the hostage studio staff shut down the broadcast (bypassing Saddoe’s jammer).

Which brings us to Zpok singing My Way with its apt lyrics – and Dredd brings down the curtain with a gunshot to the head. “Sad, creep.”

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 19:

MUZAK KILLER – LIVE 3 (prog 839)

 

But wait – there’s more. I can’t resist this epilogue (“six weeks later”) of how Marty Zpok learned to stop worrying and love the muzak.

 

Of course it helps that Dredd’s headshot effectively lobotomized him.

 

Lucky, lucky, lucky.

There’s two episodes after Muzak Killer, which represented Garth Ennis handing over the reins of primary writing duties to the duo of Grant Morrison and Mark Millar:

• Tough Justice (prog 840), penned by Mark Millar, in which juves exchange the equivalent of campfire horror stories about Judge Dredd embodying the titular tough justice to scare one of them straight (sadly too late as Dredd catches them trying to dispose of a blaster)
• Down Among the Dead Men (prog 841) also penned by Milar – in which grave-robbing seems to make a 22nd century revival, except snatching corpses from Resyk for medical students. Except…isn’t most medicine done by robots?

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 19:

INFERNO (progs 842 – 853)

 

I should be excited.

Firstly, Inferno is a Judge Dredd epic, albeit of twelve episodes rather than the usual ‘full’ epic length – the first epic after Judgement Day and yet another existential threat to Mega-City One (as well as potentially to other mega-cities), made more dire by how much Justice Department was weakened by Judgement Day.

Secondly, it’s Grant Morrison’s debut as primary writer for Judge Dredd, taking over (in tandem with Mark Millar) from Garth Ennis.

I should be excited but I’m not. That’s because Inferno is distinctly underwhelming. I’m not entirely sure why – it hits all the right beats for a Dredd epic, but yet feels strangely by the numbers, like Morrison was phoning it in. As indeed it felt for his and Millar’s run as the primary writers on Judge Dredd and 2000 AD – as much as I enjoy both writers for their work elsewhere (indeed Morrison’s earlier story Zenith for 2000 AD remains my second favorite comic of all time, second only to Judge Dredd), ranking them both in my Top 10 Comics, they just didn’t seem to be the right fit here. I’m not the only one that regards their run as where the Dark Age of Dredd was at its darkest, although it still has its highlights – but Inferno isn’t one of them.

It’s essentially a jailbreak – from the penal colony of Titan back to Mega-City One. How anyone pulls this off is beyond me, but Inferno started the trend for Titan as some sort of revolving door prison IN SPACE, rivalled only by Arkham Asylum in Batman for ease of escape or riot (or both). Even worse, the jailbreak effectively happened off-panel before the epic, in the prequel Purgatory by Mark Millar featured separately in the Megazine.

By his own admission, Morrison wrote Dredd simply as “just a big bastard with a gun”, but despite some tantalizing glimpses to the contrary, Morrison also wrote the antagonist – ex-Judge Grice returned from his exile and imprisonment for his conspiracy against the referendum and Judge Dredd back in The Devil You Know / Twilight’s Last Gleaming – equally as one dimensional “bastard with a gun”. Except, you know, not just a gun but also armed with an apocalyptic virus. I’ll give him ram-raiding the Hall of Justice with a spaceship for style though.

I tend to agree with the observations of the Dredd Reckoning blog about Inferno:

“Instead, there’s so much horribly clumsy writing here. Morrison asks us to believe that Grice’s small team of disgraced, hobbled ex-Judges could drive all the current Judges out of the city (off-panel); that the Grand Hall of Justice is built directly on top of iso-cubes; that Dredd would unblinkingly slaughter a building’s worth of prisoners rather than allow them to potentially be freed (although “it was only a parking offence!” strikes me as a very Morrisonian joke…that the Titan escapees would be packed on board a “pre-programmed robot ship” (cough) so Dredd could blow it up; that the Statue of Judgement is perched adjacent to the Cursed Earth, i.e. on the western border of Mega-City One (hint: it’s directly adjacent to the Statue of Liberty, which is on the eastern edge of North America); that the Judges would have an oh-well attitude to germ warfare decimating the population of MC1 (“fewer citizens means less crime”–er, that’s Judge Death’s position); that, after killing a bad guy in a career-record gruesome way, Dredd would go for a James Bond-style one-liner; that hand-to-hand combat between Dredd and Grice could settle the entire problem…”

I also tend to agree with the observation that Wagner’s Day of Chaos not only was an effective sequel to the Apocalypse War, but was “also in some ways, a vastly improved variation on a lot of the plot devices of Inferno…It involves psychic premonitions of doom, germ warfare, turncoat Judges, the Statue of Judgment and Hall of Justice attacked)”

Still, it did have some classic Ezquerra art, so I’ll essentially go from one art highlight to the next while being as economic with the epic’s storyline as possible.

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 19:

INFERNO 1-2 – Inferno / Titan Fall! (progs 842-843)

 

“Death from the skies!”

Sigh – Psi-Division being useless as usual without Anderson.

Okay – I have to admit that’s a badass introduction to Inferno in the final panel of the first episode.

And you have to give it to the epic that it hits the ground running – literally ram-raiding the Hall of Justice FROM SPACE!

And it’s badass introductions all round this episode – not least for Judge Dredd himself, as he takes out the Bazooka Brothers, a dubious duo using their titular weapon of choice to destroy shops or something.

But before Dredd, we’re introduced to Psi-Judge Janus – literally on her 19th birthday. Although that just shows how useless Psi-Division is that this raw Psi-Judge, presumably fresh out from graduating as a cadet, is their replacement for Psi-Judge Anderson (on mission off-world). I mean, she’s, like, likable enough – that’s a play on her Valley Girl verbal mannerisms by the way – but she’s no Judge Anderson.

Sadly, Psi-Division is even more useless than that as they also have to rely on a secondment from another mega-city – which sees the first introduction of an Indian mega-city, Delhi-Cit (sometimes written as Nu Delhi), and an Indian Judge, Psi-Judge Bhaji.

It’s his precognitive dream quoted in that panel – “death from the skies”. Bhaji is only marginally more useful than Psi-Division. I mean, at least he had some precognitive alert to the impending disaster about to strike Mega-City One – although apparently “every single Judge in Psi-Division had the same dream” but it’s not exactly helpful advice in terms of warning or preventative action, is it? It’s even less helpful timing as it’s literally just before it happens. That’s barely precognitive. It’s like Lisa Simpson tells a fortune teller in one episode – wow, you can see into the…present. That dream is barely better than looking out the window.

Or screen in this case, as Mega-City One detects fifteen incoming spaceships as the second episode opens – after the reader has been introduced to the epic’s antagonist, ex-Judge Grice and his fellow escapees from Titan, “carrying a deadly germ weapon, the meat virus”.

Which seems to have a nearly instantaneous effect in the dispersion area as they use their ships to ram raid the Hall of Justice and other buildings. We see a Judge Noonan succumb to it as she reports back from Mick Travis Block – named for a fictional film character. “Rapid…toxic…effects!”

We also see Grice swooping in with a jetpack – “This is your wake-up call, Mega-City One!”

I guess that space prison time on Titan left a little to be desired for rehabilitation.

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 19:

INFERNO 3-4 Descent into the Maelstrom! / Kill or Cure! (progs 844-845)

 

“No! It was only a parking offence! My Grud! It was only a parking offence…!”

Classic Morrison gag, although not up there with his best one-liners – for that, you have to go to Zenith.

Anyway, Grice and his renegade ex-Judges overwhelm Justice Department with their spaceship ram-raids – and above all the “meat virus”, apparently a weaponized virus they were developing on Titan. McGruder tells the other senior Judges in the Hall of Justice bunker that they have about an hour before showing symptoms – masks are useless as it spreads through the skin.

Still not sure how Grice’s few ex-Judges and spaceships are able to achieve the spread – of ex-Judges, ram raids or the meat virus – to overwhelm the entire Justice Department throughout Mega-City One but there you have it. There’s also Citi-Def but the writers forgot them for the other recent crises of Necropolis and Judgement Day as well.

There’s a grisly scene replaying that brutal torn apart by horses thing you see as a trope in pre-modern torture or execution. You know the one – where you have four horses pulling in opposite directions on a rope or chain to each of a person’s limbs. Except here of course they use Lawmasters – begging the question of how they bypassed the security protocols of the Lawmaster computers. You know, being ex-Judges convicted and sent to Titan.

Anyway, Grice and his renegade Judges ram-raid the Hall of Justice itself, as well as pumping the gas with the meat virus through the vents. McGruder orders a strategic evacuation – but says they can’t “afford to let Grice free the prisoners in the iso-cubes”. Um – why? As in why would he free them? And why can’t they afford to let him free the prisoners – would they really be reliable allies for Grice, or allies at all? Although it does give us that parking offence gag, as Dredd orders the cubes to be flooded. Since when did the Hall of Justice have iso-cubes? And follow-up question – why are they rigged to be flooded? Fortunately, the flooded cubes do serve a more useful – and less callous – purpose later in the epic.

We get to see Judge Hershey pull a big damn heroes moment similar to McGruder gunning down zombies in Judgement Day, but for the renegade judges threatening to gun down the evacuees, Dredd and McGruder among them. She also has a H-wagon, begging the question of where every other H-wagon in the city is and what they are doing.

As they fly away in the H-wagon – apparently part of a general and implausible retreat by all Justice Department outside the city, something which has never occurred in any crisis before or since – McGruder explains the meat virus. An alien virus (from actual dead aliens on Titan), Justice Department were developing it as a weapon. Secondary stage symptoms are sores appearing on the skin a couple of days after infection – more seriously, they all have two weeks to live as that’s when the terminal tertiary stage symptoms or complete tissue breakdown appears unless the antidote is administered before then. (And it has to be before the tertiary stage).

You’d think Justice Department might have had some antidote in Mega-City One in case something went wrong on Titan…but no. You’d be wrong. Of course, Grice and his renegade ex-Judges have the antidote. So that probably explains why McGruder heads off on a Lawmaster, presumably to make amends for her lapse of judgement – perhaps offering herself up to Grice in return for the antidote – and Dredd pursues her.

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 19:

INFERNO 5-6 – Long Live the Chief Judge! / Judges with Grudges (progs 846-847)

 

“Long live the new Chief Judge! Long live the Lord of Misrule!”

That’s ex-Judge Grice’s declaration of usurpation, as he usurps the position of Chief Judge in MC-1.

Of course, Dredd is having none of it – “When are you gonna get sick of the sound of your own voice, Grice? ‘Cause I’m already sick of it.”

Before we get there, episode 5 opens with the narration – “Forced out of Mega-City One by Grice and his renegades, the Judges have established a makeshift encampment in the Cursed Earth”.

By makeshift encampment, it means H-wagon parking lot – and by Cursed Earth, it means literally parking their H-wagons right outside the walls of Mega-City One.

The whole scenario is implausible, but perhaps above all that this entire epic makes it seem that the entirety of Mega-City One consists of not much more than a short stretch of the West Wall. Hence, Grice’s ridiculously small force of ex-Judges straight outta Titan in a ridiculously small flotilla of ridiculously small spaceships was able to eject all the Judges from Mega-City One – an Atlantic seaboard super-conurbation of 400 million from New Hampshire to North Carolina – and apparently to the one encampment as H-wagon parking lot outside the West Wall.

It gets worse. Dredd saves a citizen about to be randomly killed by two of Grice’s renegade Judges – and by randomly, it means because the citizen’s ‘eyes are too close together”. Really? Surely Grice’s renegade Judges have some motivation beyond terrorizing random citizens for no reason? Or at least something better to do? Like some sort of plan or orders from Grice?

After saving the citizen, Dredd directs the citizen to report to the cubes “when this is over” for doing nothing more than pleading with the renegade Judges “what do you want?” and offering them “everything I’ve got” – “I’m giving you six months for attempted bribery”. Really? They weren’t actual Judges but renegade ex-Judges and hence criminals – something Dredd is at pains to point out when the epic plays this scene again almost beat for beat a few episodes later, albeit more true to Dredd’s character dealing with the citizen he saves in that scene. Dredd wouldn’t charge a citizen being robbed by other citizens for trying to offer the robbers what they want because of their actual or threatened violence (although he might charge a citizen for flaunting wealth as enticement) – that’s essentially the nature of robbery. Of course, this is an example of how Morrison misfired with the character in this epic, essentially parodying Dredd as embodiment of the Law consistent with his catchphrase, except Dredd isn’t enforcing the Law so much as some deliberately obtuse distortion of it. And even if Dredd was obtuse enough to effectively charge victims of a crime as a party to it, it makes no sense or strategic timing for him to do so here.

Meanwhile, McGruder is being beaten up by Grice as he taunts her – “What did you think you were doing coming here, McGruder?”

Um, he has a point – what was her plan? Presumably it was offering herself up to Grice – but you’d think she planned to do so in exchange for something. You know, perhaps Grice handing over the antidote to the Judges? Or the citizens?

Anyway, Grice offers an exchange – her life for her loyalty to him, which we also saw him offer to that Judge he had dismembered by Lawmasters. Um, what was Grice’s plan here if she accepted? Which she should have – or more precisely feigned it to buy time to get the antidote or plot against Grice, hence my query what was Grice’s plan here if she accepted. Hence the query of what her plan actually was offering herself up to Grice – and what Grice’s plan was if she accepted his offer.

Fortunately for him, she neither has a plan nor accepts his offer, so instead he decides to use her for a much more dramatic and demoralizing display in the style of the Mongol conquests – which, come to think of it, his violent takeover of MC-1 resembles. Or perhaps more in the style of defenestration – except for throwing her out a high storey window, he just launches her on her Lawmaster off the Wall in full view of the aghast onlooking Judges.

Hence his declaration of usurpation. That might have been more interesting as some sort of declaration of anarchy – Lord of Misrule – or some sort of inversion in the style of a Department of Injustice, but Morrison doesn’t do much with it.

McGruder is a tough old bird – she survived injuries in the Apocalypse War, she survived her Long Walk in the Cursed Earth, and she survives this, albeit barely and with critical injuries.

And Dredd picks this moment to somehow materialize on top of the Wall for a dramatic showdown with Grice. Um – what was Dredd’s plan here, exactly? Yes, yes, it’s literally a baseball bat as we see a couple of episodes later. But what was his plan?! I’m so confused!

Anyway, it works out as well as you’d expect for him, given the showdown is only halfway through the epic. Which is to say, not too well, as Grice and his fellow renegade Judges easily best the sickened Dredd. Dredd is saved by a literal deus ex machina – well, literal ex machina anyway – in the form of Walter the Wobot, who also materializes out of nowhere, and out of a prolonged absence since his regular appearances as Dredd’s comic sidekick (which also seems misplaced here). Walter manages to get him out of the City (through some strange shafts or tunnels in or through the Wall) to the Cursed Earth – where it’s a case of out of the frying pan, into the fire as a horde of cannibal mutants attack them…

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 19:

INFERNO 7-8 – Death Dance! / Trial by Fire (progs 848-849)

 

“I got my plan right here!”

Okay, okay – I admit it. I can’t help but like this panel – the best of the epic – even if it doesn’t make sense.

I mean, his plan is a baseball bat?! Usually Dredd has better plans than that.

Also where did he get the bat? He literally just woke up in a makeshift hospital bed in the Justice Department encampment (where they didn’t take his helmet off).

I’m not done with the bat as his plan. Yes, yes – I know it’s Dredd announcing that he’s still in the fight (“who’s with me?”) but a literal fight? That is, a one on one, hand to hand – or rather bat to bat – smackdown with Grice? You know, the same plan as before, that saw him end up in the hospital bed, except with…a bat? You know you have a gun, don’t you, Dredd? Which if you had simply used last time you confronted him – shot first and spoke later – it would now be over. Instead, you did the whole  “I’m taking you in” routine which made no sense – as Grice even said and he had a point. And you only ended up in a hospital bed by grace of deus ex machina in the form of Walter – and Psi-Judge Janus tracking you before the mutants ate you.

Oh yeah – that’s how episode 7 opened. Dredd is about to be eaten by cannibal mutants after Walter helped him out of the city – but Psi-Judge Janus leads a team of Judges to find him and gun down the mutants. “Judge Janus picked up your psi-profile and led us to you”. Hence the hospital bed.

In the meantime, we do have some entertaining internal villain monologues from Grice, who in his usurped position of Chief Judge appears to have become completely deranged, combining the capricious psychopathy of Chief Judge Cal with the omnicidal mania of Judge Death. No, seriously – he muses happily to himself of the death of the entire population of Mega-City One – “Everyone has to die. No one is innocent” – before taking it on world tour. “And then Grice will stretch out his hand to touch and corrupt each of the great mega-cities in turn”.

I mean, replacing the eagle head with a skull on the Chief Judge uniform is something of a dead giveaway (heh).

Surprisingly, there’s only one sane man among his renegade ex-Judges trying to take him out before he kills everyone – “Grice has gone loco! He just wants to kill everythin’ now. Figger he reckons he’s Judge Death or sumthin'”. Unfortunately, he only has one flaky co-conspirator who betrays him to Grice, so Grice has him “executed” (along with the co-conspirator). By chainsaw.

I guess Dredd’s bat is looking better now…

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 19:

INFERNO 9-10 – Here Comes the Judge! / Girl Trouble! (progs 850-851)

 

You know I love a good panel of Dredd’s catchphrase – “I am the Law!”

Also roll credits as Grice replies – “Welcome to the Inferno, Dredd. Burn in hell!”

That’s at the end of these two episodes. Before we get there, we left episode 7 with Dredd heading off, a man with a plan with a bat in his hand, to beat up Grice.

In fairness, this time the epic does Dredd right as he saves a female elderly citizen from two renegade Judges. They were extorting fines from her under pain of execution, but as she pleads with them that she has not money, they switch to killing her as penalty “for flaunting poverty”. Although you’d think the renegade Judges, having the run of the city, could pick more lucrative targets. You know – banks, corporations, wealthier city blocks. But no – I guess street mugging it is.

At least this time there’s no nonsense from Dredd about charging the citizen. Instead he tells her – “On your way, citizen. Anyone you meet, tell ’em Judge Dredd is back!”.

Meanwhile, Grice has been busy setting his own charges – explosive charges on the Statue of Judgement. And yes – he detonates them, bringing the Statue down on top of a large section of the West Wall and tearing it down, conveniently right in front of the exiled Judges encamped outside the Wall. This becomes their cue, spurred on by exhortations from Psi-Judge Janus and Judge Hershey, to charge in and take back the city. Although – couldn’t they have just gone in with Dredd through the underground access he used? Or just flown in on the H-wagons which Hershey exhorts to get “rolling” into the city.

Somehow Bundy, the extremely butch chief henchperson of Grice, manages to find and get the jump on Dredd. Finally he uses his gun to just shoot her, as he should have done with Grice those few episodes back, albeit after the cavalry arrives in the form of Hershey and other Judges. RIP Bundy.

And that brings us to Dredd hunting out Grice for another showdown as the latter is getting started on burning down the Hall of Justice with a flamethrower, declaring there is no law – hence Dredd’s signature catchphrase. Although once again you could have just shot him, Dredd, rather than announce your presence. You’re even shown pointing your gun right at him (with Grice busy flamethrowing in another direction). It’s easy – you just did it with Bundy.

Anyway, there goes the element of surprise again as Grice turns his flamethrower on Dredd.

 

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 19:

INFERNO 11 – White Heat! (prog 852)

 

I’ve come to that time in my Mega-City Law recap when I play my Dredd drinking game – matching up the Case Files volume cover art with the comic panel art.

And what glorious art! By Brian Bolland of course – you can see his signature peeping out from under the 2000 AD title logo, meaning that it wasn’t the comic panel art but the comic issue cover art, Bolland’s specialty by that time.

Unfortunately – and unforgivably! – Case Files 19 does not include this cover, seemingly breaking the rule for Case Files volume covers including art from the episodes compiled in them, and usually compiling the Dredd cover art (where issues featured it as opposed to cover art for other storylines as 2000 AD is an anthology comic), typically at the end of the volume.

Worse, it was the cover for the wrong episode, symbolising what a mess this epic was. As you can see from the cover (if you zoom in), it was the cover of prog 848 – which was the seventh episode of the Inferno epic (titled Death Dance).

 

 

The cover art would actually appear to correspond to prog 852 or the epic’s 11th (and second last) episode – particularly this scene evoking the titular inferno as Dredd confronts Grice (again) while the latter is burning down the Hall of Justice with a flamethrower.

My assumption is that Bolland was given the description or draft art for this episode by inadvertence or mistake for the cover art of the earlier episode which featured nothing like this scene.

This scene also shows us how Dredd gets out of this one. He shoots the floor – for which Grice mocks him in this panel – into the flooded iso-cube cell hallway conveniently right below him, allow him to escape by swimming (and extinguishing the fire while he’s at it).

Dredd retrieves his Lawmaster and has another showdown with Grice outside the Hall of Justice. He finally just shoots at Grice, but then seems reluctant to get another shot in to finish Grice off, allowing Grice to go hand to hand with Dredd – seemingly poised to strike the final blow to Dredd…

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 19:

INFERNO 12 – Mortal Kombat! (prog 853)

 

Grice comes to a grisly end at the wheels of Dredd’s Lawmaster – and so too does Inferno with that Bond one-liner “What’s the matter, Grice? Feeling run down?”

If there’s a running theme (heh) to Inferno, it’s that protagonist Dredd and antagonist Grice spend too much time monologuing at each other rather than just finishing the other off or just shooting him. At least Dredd breaks the habit enough here to have his Lawmaster finish Grice off first before shooting off his one-liner.

And that pretty much wraps up Inferno, but for the usual epilogue bits. As the episode itself narrates, “Grice’s coup is collapsing” – and the coup finishes collapsing with the Judges led by Hershey regaining the city and either killing or capturing Grice’s renegade ex-Judges from Titan. And I suppose also whatever Judges defected to him in the city itself, presumably for the antidote – Grice mentions them but we never see any. What we do see is the last of them – Grice’s renegades – loaded onto a robot-crewed spaceship to be shipped right back to Titan.

Oh – and Hershey casually mentions that they won’t be able to produce enough of the antidote for all the citizens, so there’s going to be a death toll. How many? Who knows, other than Hershey quipping resyk will be working overtime and Dredd quipping back fewer citizens means less crime. It’s lazy writing. Just like we never see when or how the Judges captured the antidote from the renegade Judges – it would have been nice to feature a panel to show this, perhaps even some surrendering renegades offering it up for amnesty.

Speaking of amnesty, you didn’t think they were really shipping the renegade Judges back to Titan, did you? Where presumably they’d just escape all over again, maybe next week? Not on Dredd’s watch! Yeah…Dredd’s not doing that Batman putting the Joker back in Arkham Asylum and the whole revolving door prison thing. Instead he pushes the button and pulls a gotcha on the Titan escapees.

 

 

Nice if somewhat predictable twist but did he really have to waste the ship and robots for it, not to mention the elaborate ploy? And so Inferno ends with a bang – although really epic itself was a story not with a bang but a whimper.

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 19:

WAR GAMES (prog 854)

 

“Judge Dredd! For crimes against justice — you are sentenced to death!”

Finally – a bright shining light in the darkness that is Case Files 19 with my favorite episode, at least among the regular 2000 AD episodes and apart from the Megazine.

Unfortunately, it does have its problems and I’ll get to those, but they do not so much arise from the episode itself as the failure to do anything with it subsequently (and its timing as the very next episode after Inferno).

But what’s not to love about that very first panel, with our very first look at the Chinese or Sino-Cit Judges, rendered in superb art by Paul Marshall? Of course, that would be Sino-Cit 2 as Sino-Cit 1 was overrun by zombies in Judgement Day and nuked.

I mean, just look at them! Those uniforms come very close to knocking off those of the Sov Judges and Mega-City One Judges from their pedestal as my favorite. But for the fact that we don’t see them again for many episodes (as I have difficulty recalling their reappearance in the regular episodes) and then only after changing their uniforms, they might well be my favorite Judge uniforms.

I believe that they toned down the uniforms – which is frankly outrageous. If anything, they should have toned them up! But they’re perfect as they are. I note that there appears to be two regular Judge uniforms and one in a more senior or commanding position, although both uniform designs are in the red and yellow designs of the present Chinese flag.

As for the regular Judges, there’s the helmets styled in the traditional conical Asian design. The dragons as shoulder pad similar to the eagle for Mega-City One Judges. The Chinese characters which I presume to be their name, similar to the badges for Mega-City One Judges. The only issue I have is the shuriken belt buckles – which are a bit too much and also a potential source of injury.

The senior or commanding Judge has a similar coloring and design – but with some big boss shoulder pads going on and a dragon helmet. He also has skulls on his collar and badge, suggestive of perhaps a similar role to the SJS in Mega-City One, as well as a giant Chinese character on his chest.

And we’re still just in the very first panel – but I haven’t finished admiring it. You just have to love that grin on the Sino-Cit Judge on the right.

Of course, it’s the Sino-Cit Judges that are in trouble here. It’s that old adage – Dredd’s not locked in there with them, they’re locked in there with him…

 

 

“Not just Sino-Cit Judges, imperialist pig!”

Sino-Cit Judges and Sov Judges and stomm – oh my!

Yes, yes – just bask in that glory of Paul Marshall’s art in these panels from this episode, particularly as we have so few episodes like it in Case Files 19.

Despite being strapped into what appears to be an electric chair for his execution by the Sino-Cit Judges, with a leap Dredd is free! And suddenly armed with two Lawgivers to take them out instead, allowing us to get a look at the back of those Sino-Cit Judge uniforms and see they’re even cooler with the yin-yang symbols on the back.

But no sooner has Dredd escaped from the Sino-Cit Judges, calling for backup from Control (“We’ve got a nest of Sino-Cit Judges right here in Mega-City!”) then he is ambushed by a nest of Sov Judges, prompting an expletive of “stomm” from Dredd.

Or dare I say it, the stomm-bomb! So little used compared to the much more popular f-word substitute drokk. I believe stomm is the s-word equivalent. You often get a good drokk in Judge Dredd but you rarely get a good stomm. Mind you, we also get a good drokk coming up…

 

 

“You failed, Dredd! Welcome to hell!”

Sino-Cit Judges and Sov Judges and drokking hell – oh my!

Out of the frying pan, into the hellfire. The Grand Hall of Justice in flames and Dredd overwhelmed by SJS zombies.

 Just what the hell is going on?!

 

 

And it was all a dream!

Well, by dream I mean experimental psychotropic drug hallucination.

If anything, that’s even darker in some ways than the literal hellscape we saw in Dredd’s drug-fuelled nightmare vision – and as much as I love this episode, that’s where my problems with it start.

Not so much with the darkness of it – that Justice Department is prepared to resort to some extremely callous calculus from grim desperation. The callousness is obvious with the pile of poor chumps that Dredd has brutally killed in his literal drug psychosis and whom McGruder even calls “guinea pigs” – “Perps…we picked them up this afternoon — most of them minor offences but we needed some guinea pigs”.

Good Grud! Picked them up this afternoon? Minor offences?! You may have needed guinea pigs but you need them that badly and that quickly? You couldn’t have, say, used more serious offenders? You know, death row inmates – or the equivalent, as Mega-City One doesn’t have the death penalty…mostly.

Also…did they arm these chumps with, ah, spatulas or fly swatters? And I’m sure one of them just had a skateboard?  Against Dredd with a daystick and Lawgiver?!

Of course, they probably didn’t want anyone – or anything – more dangerous against Dredd, as they doped him to the eyeballs with their experimental “new aggro drug”. That’s the other part of their callous calculus here – the risk to their own Judge, let alone a Judge of the stature of Dredd, from an untested drug affecting their sensory awareness and perception, let alone doing so in some sort of extreme combat simulation to the death. What if it had incapacitated him, of itself or in combat? Not to mention they went all MK-Ultra with it – doing it without his consent or even knowledge.

It prompts to mind the official use of methylamphetamine in World War Two, originally for its perceived performance enhancement but ultimately banned for its negative effects – presumably including a deterioration of that performance (and one anticipates quite a bit of friendly fire).

But my problem is bigger than that. There’s the timing of it – literally the next episode after Inferno. What about Dredd recovering from his injuries, let alone McGruder?

However, the biggest problem is that they do exactly nothing with it – neither with its premise nor with the drug, both of which are never seen again. The premise is essentially one of grim desperation – “according to Psi-Division, there’s a crisis coming on. At our current depleted strength, we’re not strong enough to deal with it”. That crisis is further stated – or rather predicted – to be 18 months away or less, originating in the eastern blocks. “Somethin’ bad is headed this way”.

Spoiler alert – it isn’t and didn’t. While it is on brand for Psi Division to be useless as usual, that’s probably on the writers. No doubt the writing team – including Mark Millar who wrote the episode – intended and planned for something big and bad to hit Mega-City One, but they must have quietly dropped that story idea, whatever it was.

As for that drug tested on Dredd, no doubt it would have come in useful for Mega-City One’s Judges once they ironed out the kinks, not least in one of the crises that did come to Mega-City One, but again they must have quietly dropped it as story idea.

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 19:

JUDGE TYRANNOSAUR (prog 855)

 

“Stomping citizens is illegal, meat-mouth! You’re toast!”

You may be cool but will you ever be Judge Dredd taking out a T-rex with a flamethrower cool?

And that’s pretty much the point of this episode (which wraps up the regular 2000 AD episodes in this volume) but I’m always a fun of Jurassic Dredd – whenever dinosaurs pop up in the comic. Although by dinosaurs, let’s face it – it’s almost always tyrannosaurs. Or is that T-rexes?

There is another point of the episode – yet another episode showing Mega-City One’s citizens to be lovable idiots, although the lovable part may be an acquired taste. They’re certainly idiots – which is where the Judge Tyrannosaur of the episode title comes into play.

You guessed it – by contrived but fortuitous happenstance, a tyrannosaur that has wandered a long way from its Cursed Earth home to Mega-City One just happens to eat the right person, a perp holding Mega-City One’s “favorite granny” or oldest citizen hostage for ransom. This happens at the West Wall – the art suggests at one of the gaps still in the wall, so it may have been even more fortuitous that the tyrannosaur slipped through the gap at just the right time.

Although mind you, I’d have expected the oldest citizen to be older than 130 years in twenty-second century Mega-City One. I seem to recall body transplants in one episode.

Anyway, naturally Mega-City One’s lovable idiot citizens in the crowd hail the tyrannosaur as hero – with one oddball “Jurassic expert”, transparently named Dr Michael Crichton, lobbying for it to be made a Judge. How and why the tyrannosaur was taken inside (or further inside) the city, let alone restrained in chains, is not clear. Nor is why the Judges at the hostage situation either did it or let the citizens do it.

However, Judge Dredd is not having anything to do with this mother-drokking dinosaur in his mother-drokking city – “This nonsense has gone far enough!”

And just as well too, since that fortuitously coincides with the tyrannosaur escaping from its bounds just as the citizens were about to give it a giant Judge’s badge. It doesn’t seem to eat anyone but does stomp on the unfortunate Dr Crichton, despite him keeping still – as he tells the panicked citizens, the tyrannosaur responds to sudden movement (another nod to Jurassic Park). Hence the rebuke by Dredd to the dinosaur, before he fries it and finishes it off with a high explosive round.

As he tells the citizens, they don’t need heroes, dinosaurs or otherwise – “You citizens don’t need heroes – you already got us! Appreciate it!”

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 19:

THE HOTTIE HOUSE SIEGE (Meg 2.31)

The Jigsaw Murders (Meg 2.27 – 2.29)

Ladonna Fever (Meg 2.30)

 

“They practice progressive lobotomy…They have bits of their brains systematically burnt out to bring them closer to Grud. Ignorance is bliss, as they say.”

Normally I feature just one notable or standout story from the Megazine episodes in a Case Files volume, but there’s a four from this volume – one as my favorite episode in the volume, even above War Games in the regular 2000 AD episodes, and three for storylines that were to continue or recur in later regular episodes.

Of course, that might say something for the Dark Age of Dredd in the regular episodes at this time – allowing for the episodes in the Megazine, which I think were written by Judge Dredd’s best writer, John Wagner, to shine.

Although not so much in the first two storylines in the Meg – the Jigsaw Murders in the three Megazine episodes 2.27-2.29 and Ladonna Fever in Megazine 2.30.

The former is a ho-hum story about a deranged serial killer targeting a replacement arm for surgery to replaced his own amputated one but I’ll admit the latter is fun – an obvious parody of Madonna and her performances at the time. Naturally they breach Mega-City One’s public decency laws but Dredd hadn’t anticipated the city-wide riots in response to her arrest. They pull a fast one releasing her before serving her thirty year sentence – by releasing her after serving it, via some sort of “time stretcher”. Now she’d unappealingly old to the Mega-City crowds. Even better, her management contracts expired after three years – so her contracts no longer protects her records and assets are confiscated by the city. Hmm – I’m not sure it would work that way, as only Ladonna went through the time-stretcher. Interestingly, she apparently was a model citizen before her transformation into a pop star (essentially through total body plastic surgery). American actress and Madonna associate Sarah Bernhard is name-dropped for the block citi-def in which Ladonna served with exemplary record – during Necropolis or the Big Nec, which is somewhat surprising as Citi-Def resistance was omitted from the epic itself.

The Hottie House siege – an obvious satire of the Branch Davidian cult and its leader David Koresh, famously besieged by federal law enforcement at Waco in Texas – proved such a popular storyline that it was to recur in subsequent episodes. Mega-City One’s Branch Moronians – led here by David Wacovitz – were just the black comedy gift that kept on giving. A nice comic touch is the one or two members who lag behind other cult members in lobotomy and are therefore smarter. Not much smarter, of course, but enough to constantly trigger their leader David Wacovitz – although he implicitly relies on them for his plan of taking the hot dog outlet or Hottie House hostage to have any coherence or indeed purpose. Although even with those members lifting up the bell curve, the whole thing is doomed and Dredd takes out the cult single-handed.

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 19:

SLICK DICKENS: DRESSED TO KILL (Meg 2.34-2.35)

The Al Capone Story (Meg 2.32)

Bagging the Bagwan (Meg 2.33)

 

Judge Dredd does literary criticism!

“Thought you killed me in your last one, Kaput?…I’m giving you another five years for this pile of garbage!”

The most amusing thing about this all is that Dredd obviously read the book to pick plot points, pixie dust and all .

That book being the latest Slick Dickens book – Slick Dickens: Dressed to Kill – by Truman Kaput, an obvious play on Truman Capote. We last saw Kaput and his literary creation, sartorial hitman extraordinaire Slick Dickens, all the way back in episode 505 in Case Files Volume 10 – when Kaput found himself doing cube time for practising the crimes in his Slick Dickens book for realism. Dredd obviously read that book too (as he sentenced Kaput for practising other crimes in the book) – he’s a fan!

When he was introduced, Kaput had his literary creation kill Dredd – hence Dredd’s dry observation “Thought you killed me in your last one, Kaput?”

In these two Megazine episode, Kaput’s written a sequel – in his characteristic overblown style – in which Slick is back to finish the job, which has his fictional Dredd spooked. Well, his more fictional Dredd – as opposed to our fictional Dredd, who is less than impressed. Hence the five years Dredd adds to Kaput’s sentence – personally, I think Dredd just wants him to write another sequel and gave him the time to do it.

The preceding two Megazine episodes were also interesting but do not reflect a recurring character like Slick Dickens.

The first episode, The Al Capone Story (Megazine 2.32) features its titular protagonist growing up as a disappointment to his thuggish family – placid, good-natured and intelligence. That’s in marked contrast to Herman Schwartz, born on the same day to the next door neighbors of the Capones, and a constant terror in his delinquent behaviour, although the two boys become best friends. Capone’s father pre-empts the twist in the tale, bemoaning whether there was a mix-up at the block hospital – although Al Capone ultimately lives up to his name, imprisoned for tax fraud (albeit doing better than Schwartz, killed in a shootout with Judge Dredd on his way to arresting Capone).

People name-dropped for blocks include the mob bodyguard and successor to Capone, Frank Nitti (for the birthplace block of the two boys), gangster Joe Bananas (from Joseph Bonanno – for the block the families move to), and white collar criminal financier Michael Milken (for the block in which Capone settles down). I don’t know – it seems unlikely Justice Department would approve naming blocks for notorious twentieth century criminal figures.

The second episode, Bagging the Bagwan (Megazine 2.33) features Dredd having to protect a Dalai Lama-like figure – except less a figure of resistance and more a figure of annoying pacifist obsequiousness (his religion is named kowtowism) – from assassins hoping to claim the fifty million credit put on the Bagwan’s head by the Organization of Extremist City States. Sadly, as far as I know that organization is never featured again and we are not told anything about which cities are members of it – although they’re probably the usual suspects of villainous mega-cities in Judge Dredd.

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 19:

REVENGE OF THE EGGHEAD (Meg 2.36)

 

“Of course, why didn’t I think of it before! I’ll tranquillise the whole block!”

And believe me – this block needs tranquillising.

Ironically named after Kenneth Clark (albeit with misspelt surname Clarke), British art historian and TV presenter of Civilization, there’s not much civilization in this block, populated with the dregs of Mega-City One. As one of its own residents proudly proclaims, “this is a low IQ block”.

Which makes it all the more strange that Egward Shelduk, university nerd with a penchant for chemistry, lives there – but the answer is quickly revealed that it’s a Department of Housing mistake. Although to say he lives in the block is an overstatement – survives might be more accurate. And barely at that – even then it looks like he won’t last much longer.

By the way, this is it – my favorite single episode in Case Files 19. Yes – even more than War Games, because unlike War Games it actually goes somewhere, in self-contained fashion to boot. Also yes – I’m just as surprised as you are that it was not one of the regular 2000 AD episodes, usually the source of my favorite episodes, but one of the Megazine episodes. But perhaps not too surprised – this was the Dark Age of Dredd in the regular episodes after all.

My favorite Judge Dredd episodes often resemble the finest Greek tragedies. Yes – I stand by that comparison, with the common element being that the best Judge Dredd black comedy and the best Greek tragedy boil down to their tragic hero falling through no flaw or fault of their own but from being screwed over by fate. Indeed, often the tragic hero fights against their fate, only to bring it about or make it worse – the tougher they fight, the harder they fall.

Which is exactly what we see with Egward here – he tries to do everything right to peacefully avoid the relentless and violent bullying by his neighbors, only for none of it to work. We see the conga humiliation line pile-up in messages – his girlfriend leaves him a Dear John letter by video message as she can no longer see someone living in “that block” and his house loan application is turned down because his block is classified as “high risk”.

Worst of all, the Department of Housing pulls a good news bad news joke on him. The good news is that they have identified their mistake – he apparently was meant to be housed at Swingle Singers Swinging Singles – and are “rectifying their mistake immediately”. The bad news is that by immediately – or their “urgent priority” list – they mean the year after next.

The worse news is that Egward isn’t going to make it to the day after next the way he’s going, let alone the year after next. So again he does the right thing – he calls in Justice Department on his assailants. Of course, Justice Department shows up in the form of Dredd. Egward pleads with Dredd – “I don’t want any trouble – if you could just have a word with them.” Unfortunately for Egward, Dredd doesn’t do just having words with perps. Dredd arrests the family of bullies and now the whole block is out for Egward – “No judge to protect ya now, egghead!”

And that’s when Egward gets his bright idea – to tranquillise the whole block. “It’s so simple! I can make it up myself from common chemicals you’d find in any highly advanced laboratory!”. Sadly, nothing in Mega-City One is ever simple…

 

 

“Control! Med-wagons to Kenneth Clarke! We have a mass gassing!”

You sure do, Judge Dredd, you sure do. And how!

But also – and how? Well, we know the how. Block egghead Egward Selduk tranquillised the whole block. You know, to avoid being killed by the other occupants, which seems reasonable to me.

Not so much to Justice Department, who are alerted to the block being tranquillised when the crime in and around Kenneth Clarke drops to zero – “Normally we’d expect a crime every three minutes!”

Judge Dredd is called in to investigate and with the protection of his helmet respirator uncovers that everyone in Kenneth Clarke is out cold. Well, except Egward who protected himself with nose filters.

But that’s getting ahead of our story. Dredd disables the tranquilliser gas feed and the block residents awaken, in an even more violent mood than usual and ready to rumble. Or riot in this case – such that Dredd has to call in reinforcements who deploy my favorite Justice Department feature, riot foam.

And right then with the riot quelled Dredd’s off to deal with the perpetrator…

 

 

“You put the whole block to sleep, creep!”

“But that’s impossible! The – the tranquilliser wasn’t strong enough!”

“Not on its own, maybe — but combined with the tranquilliser WE pump into the block system –”

Ah yes – Mega-City One Justice Department tranquillizing its own citizens again. And yet again another citizen who discovers it – by mishap in this case – paying the price. Which for poor Egward Selduk is twenty years in the cubes.

And I for one will not stand for this – justice for Egward!

For one thing, it sounds like Justice Department should have been upping the dose. As Judge Dredd tells Egward, Justice Department’s tranquillizer was “just enough to keep them under control”. I’m not so sure about that, given that whole “crime every three minutes” thing.

For another, Egward had little choice to avoid being killed by other block residents – having tried everything else, including calling in Judge Dredd, none of which worked. He then chose a non-violent means of protecting himself – which would have worked but for Justice Department doing it first, outside his knowledge and obviously not as effectively.

And one last thing – Egward is exactly the sort of person Justice Department should be looking to enlist as a civilian auxiliary. Drokk – Justice Department in general and Judge Dredd in particularly cut deals to conscript peepers to use their spying for the city. Why not the same here? On his own and without any of the experience or resources of Justice Department, Egward tranquillised a whole block, peacefully putting it to sleep to protect himself and dropping its crime rate down to zero. Sure, the block rioted when they woke up, but you could argue that’s on Dredd for disabling the tranquillizer gas without calling in any Tek Division support or other Judges to deal with the citizens as they roused beforehand. So why not cut Egward a deal to conscript him as an auxiliary for Tek Division rather than encubement?

Although you do have to love Dredd’s wry observation at how he was able to identify Egward as the perpetrator – “No one else in the block is smart enough!”

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 19:

MECHANISMO – BODY COUNT (Meg 2.37 – Meg 2.43)

 

And we wrap up Case Files 19 with the ongoing Mechanismo storyline in the Megazine episodes. For me, it was more like Meh-chanismo (heh) but it had too big an impact for me to ignore in my Mega-City Law – and one that would continue for many more episodes yet. It makes quite the Megazine episode tally for Case Files 19. Normally I just feature the best Megazine episode, Revenge of the Egghead in this case (heh), but Case Files 19 had three recurring storylines which had to be featured – Slick Dickens: Dressed to Kill, Hottie House Siege, but the most important of all was Mechanismo: Body Count.

I’ll be quick about it, however, because none of the Mechanismo storyline really grabbed me – except for the climactic and fateful decision by Dredd here.

Judge Stitch – the Tek-Division Judge who masterminded the Mechanismo robot Judge project – is continuing with his insane pet project searching the sewers for his little lost robot which malfunctioned with lethal consequences, Mechanismo Number Five, having escaped psychiatric treatment to do so.

Meanwhile, Chief Judge McGruder is continuing with her pet project to fill the city’s depleted Judge ranks with robot Judges, rolling out the Mark Two models a year after the failure of the original Mark One models, not least Number Five – while Dredd continues to oppose robot Judges.

And Number Five is still out there continuing its pet project of law enforcement with ever more extreme prejudice. It’s pretty much executions all round for Number Five

McGruder conceives the perfect operational trial for the Mark Two models – search and destroy for the rogue Number Five. Dredd opposes this as well but realizes that he has only one option to prevent the Mark Two models becoming fully operational – find Number Five first.

And he does just that, tracking it through the illegal salvage crew that found and reactivated it, but unfortunately it manages to evade him into the sewers – where he, one of the Mark Two units, and Judge Stitch all converge on it. Dredd has already disabled it with a well-aimed shot and disables it further with another, but the Mark Two that destroys it despite Dredd’s order to “hold your fire!”

And that’s when Dredd does the darker side of his catchphrase by taking the law into his own hands – shooting and destroying the Mark Two unit. Dredd compounds this by exploiting the extremely impressionable state of the onlooking Judge Stitch (in his psychiatric breakdown) to effectively implant that the two robot Judges had destroyed each other.

As Dredd muses to himself – “A deception, but necessary under the circumstances. Enough to make McGruder pull back from commissioning the Mark 2s — for a while at least. Long enough to figure out how to deal with McGruder…”

And yes – you know that Dredd is just kicking the can down the road but it’s going to have some big consequences when it catches up to him, or he to it. I forget how that metaphor works. Sometimes you catch the can and sometimes the can catches you, but it’s going to have some big consequences in either case.

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 18:

Progs 804-829 / Megazine 2.12-2.26

(1992-1993 / Mega-City One 2114-2115)

 

 Case Files 18 continues the Dark Age of Dredd but without any epic stories like Judgement Day in Case Files 17.

 

On the bright side, that should make it quicker to get through, but there are some highlights despite the absence of an epic.

 

Mechanismo introduced a longer story arc which had its debut in the Megazine and continued in the episodes in subsequent volumes. It also provides the cover image for the Case Files 18 volume but doesn’t really grab me. More like Meh-chanismo, amirite?

 

It seemed too drawn out over too little, particularly from the perspective of current episodes where robot Judges are routine in MC-1, so it’s hard to see what all fuss was about for Justice Department attempting to introduce them here.

 

We see a return of Irish Judge-Sergeant Joyce as it’s his turn to visit MC-1 (as opposed to Dredd visiting Murphyville in the Emerald Isle storyline in Case Files 15). It’s an entertaining heist-type story – or rather post-heist shenanigans, as Joyce is there to retrieve some Irish perps seeking sanctuary with their gangster brother in the Big Meg. Sadly, after having boosted Joyce into a cooler character in Judgement Day, Garth Ennis brings his own creation back down to being the butt of the joke here.

 

We also see a return of the recurring epic storyline of PJ Maybe, as he resurfaces in PJ & The Mock Choc Factory. Yes – PJ does Willy Wonka, and as, ah, homicidally as you’d expect. Well, more so than the original Willy Wonka.

 

Otherwise there’s some entertaining or interesting episodes. Kinda Dead Men fleshes out – heh – the aftermath of Judgement Day. A, B or C Warrior is my favorite single episode in Case Files 18, with the usual absurdist black comedy I like and Dredd as deadpan snarker.

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 18:

INNOCENTS ABROAD (progs 804-807)

 

“Go to Mega-City One…bring back them O’Dilligan brother hallions”

 

That pretty much sums up the post-heist shenanigans of Innocents Abroad. That and “a couple of Emerald Isle scumbags are on the run in the Big Meg”.

 

Essentially the reverse of the Emerald Isle arc, except now it’s Judge Dredd escorting Irish Judge Joyce around Mega-City One to retrieve two Irish perps – the Sons of Erin they ain’t.

 

At least Case File 18 starts with a bang – my favorite longer arc (4 episodes) in this volume, although the competition is not particularly stiff for that accolade here. It’s a good romp – a bit of a Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels vibe to it before that film’s time – essentially involving three Emerald Isle elements on collision course.

 

The first of those elements is Judge Joyce, assigned the mission because of his previous involvement with Dredd back in the Emerald Isle arc in Case Files 15. Sadly, Joyce is not having the luck of the Irish – the running gag of this arc with Joyce as butt of the joke, and after all that work writer Garth Ennis put into boosting up Joyce, his own creation hailing from his homeland, into something more than a joke character in Judgement Day…only to return to Joyce as the punchline of his own Irish joke here.

 

Anyway, as one can see from the panels here, Joyce’s bike breaks down in the Black Atlantic tunnel, which sees him literally hitch a lift to Mega-City One, arriving three hours late for Dredd waiting for him at Customs.

 

 

Meanwhile, it doesn’t get much more Irish than O’Dilligan’s Nightclub – used by Mickah O’Dilligan as cover for his “shady little racket”. Also – add McSod’s Syndrome to the list of diseases you do NOT want to get in MC-1.

 

And McSod’s Syndrome is what Mickah O’Dilligan, second of the three Emerald Isle elements on collision course in this arc, is looking right down the barrel at in the test results from his doctor “Davy”.

 

“It’s non-contagious, but it accelerates and mutates your cell growth to a drastic degree and your body undergoes certain…er…changes”.

 

I love Mickah’s incredulous response at seeing those “changes” in some sort of medical text – where the subject’s torso is transformed into a monstrous lump partly swallowing up their awkwardly protruding limbs and head:

 

“Changes? You’re telling me!”

 

As, ah, Doctor Davy tells him though, there is a cure – and one that completely nullifies the virus. The only problem is it’s gold – not easy to come by in MC-1, and worse he only has a few hours to get it before his disease manifests itself.

 

On the bright side, Mickah does at least outlive his doctor – “Davey, this is terrible bad news…so I’m shootin’ the messenger” – but as for that gold, Mickah has the luck of the Irish. Enter the third of our three elements from Emerald Isle…

 

 

“Did…did you say gold?”

 

The luck of the Irish as Paddy and Francie O’Dilligan just happened to rob a bank of the gold their brother Mickah needs right now. And I mean right now – as in the next few hours.

 

Yes – it’s the third element from Emerald Isle on collision course in this arc, Mickah’s prodigal brothers on the lam from Emerald Isle in the Big Meg.

 

Mind you, Mickah is initially not pleased to see them, having just learnt that McSod’s Syndrome is about to turn him into “a lump of boke” – yes, I looked it up and apparently boke is a Scottish word for vomit – and now his prodigal brothers turn up out seeking sanctuary. It doesn’t help that they used to beat him up “when we were wee”.

 

What does help (after a brief segue to Judge Joyce getting the hang of a Mega-City One Lawmaster – or rather not getting it) is when they tell Mickah they didn’t just rob the bank, but they robbed of it of gold, just what the late doctor Davy ordered as cure for Mickah’s McSod Syndrome. And just in time too as Mickah only has a few hours before onset. Well that’s convenient – and conveniently timed. It really is the luck of the Irish for the O’Dilligans but it’s all downhill from here…

 

Yo Ennis! Why are you doing your boy Joyce dirty like this, turning him into the recurring butt of the joke here after boosting him in Judgement Day?

Ennis makes him a complete horn-dog here, including the obligatory cracking on to Hershey that every foreign Judge seems to do. Looking at you, Sov Judge Brylkreem.

Mind you, it only makes Joyce more legendary to me, particularly as he proves to be quite the ladies’ man. Not so much for Hershey of course – “are you for real?” – but certainly in the MC-1 club scene at O’Dilligans. It’s the accent, you see – “Where’d you get an accent like that, handsome?”

Dredd and Joyce are at O’Dilligans to hunt down the O’Dilligan brothers on the run from Emerald Isle, but that’s where the club owner Mickah steps in and hides them – not for any brotherly love, but for their promises of the gold they robbed from the bank and Mickah so desperately needs to cure his McSod’s Syndrome.

It doesn’t take a lie detector for both Dredd and Joyce to see that Mickah is lying to them about not seeing his brothers – not that Dredd uses one anyway but instead is waiting to catch all three brothers, Mickah included for the criminal racket he runs from the club.

That’s when Dredd spies a trivial infringement of the law – drinking from cans rather than plastene cups – and goes to town on a group of rowdy male patrons, while Joyce gets up to his shenanigans with the ladies. Sadly, Joyce is interrupted when Dredd shots one of the patrons for pulling a gun, blasting his headless body on to the table Joyce is sharing with the ladies.

Dredd’s almost as hard on Joyce as he is on the patrons when Joyce apologizes “Ah! Sorry, mate — just meetin’ folk, y’know?” – “Around here we call it dereliction of duty, Joyce. Lucky for you, you’re not on the force.”

Sheesh – lighten up, Dredd! Around here, we call that c*ckblocking!

Anyway, that sees Dredd and Joyce return to the Justice Department sector house, which is where Joyce cracks on to Hershey and Dredd plans his sting for the O’Dilligan brothers – just as they are going to pick up the gold…

 

 

One does not simply wade through Innocents Abroad without special mention for the Oxypool. I love these snippets of 22nd century life in MC-1 – a swimming center with water so oxygenated that human lungs still work in it.

Apart from yet another future fad in Judge Dredd, it’s also where the O’Dilligan brothers hid their gold from their bank robbery – although how they smuggled the gold through the notoriously draconian Justice Department Customs into Mega-City One, let alone into the Oxypool, is not answered. Although I can’t help but agree with their answer to Mickah’s question as to why – “Why not?”. The Oxypool is cool.

And here is where it all goes down for our boys from Emerald Isle – Dredd executes his sting to snare all the O’Dilligans, while Mickah O’Dilligan shoots open the locker where they stashed the gold but for which they had forgotten the combination. “Let’s try number forty-five , shall we?”

Mickah then pulls a fast one on his brothers to shaft them of their share of the gold, even though they’d already agreed to give him 80% for helping them escape. “What’s all this we business?”

Really, Mickah? Apart from shafting your brothers, you’ve already talked them down into giving almost all the gold anyway and you don’t have time for fight over the rest as your McSod’s is about to pop…

 

 

“It’s the Law, creep!”

I just can’t resist a good panel featuring Dredd using a variant of his catchphrase, featured here as he brings the sting on the O’Dilligans to its conclusion.

Paddy and Francie take the opportunity presented by the Judges descending on the Oxypool to get away from their brother Mickah with a good kick in the groin (from Paddy) – “pick the bones outta that one, Mickah!” – prompting Mickah’s McSod’s Syndrome to explode into full grotesque deforming bloom. What did I tell you Mickah about trying to screw over your brothers? You knew you only had a few hours and you wasted time with your shenanigans. Also…after shooting your doctor, did you actually know how to use the gold to cure your McSods? I mean, presumably you can’t just rub the ingots on you or ingest them in that form. Really, Mickah may mock his brothers for their stupidity but he didn’t seem to go about any of this the smart way. It’s like they’re all one big Irish joke…

 

 

“If they won’t leave quietly, they leave in a bag! Blow ’em away!” – Judges Dredd and Joyce finally corner the O’Dilligan brothers and their gang.

And it’s time for Innocents Abroad to wrap everything up in this fourth episode. Let’s just say it doesn’t end well, at least for everyone from the Emerald Isle, although Judge Joyce gets to go back home, if somewhat worse for wear.

Mickah O’Dilligan comes out the worst. Already transformed into a monstrosity by McSod’s Syndrome running rampant in full stage – “Holy dear blessed mother of Grud” as Judge Joyce exclaims, the good Catholic lad that he is, or “Oh…my…drokking…Grud!” as a female poolgoer recoils at the sight of him – Dredd takes him out with an incendiary round. Mickah throws himself into the oxypool – but the fire “positively thrives in the highly oxygenated water”.

Oh – and as the three O’Dilligan brothers are caught between two Judge units (the second headed by Hershey), not to mention each other, they fumble the gold into the Oxypool. It was probably a little late for that cure for McSod’s by then – although we never see what happens to the gold after that. One might hope the Judges retrieve it to return to the Irish bank Francie and Paddy O’Dilligan robbed it from but the odds are just as good for those Mega-City One citizen swimmers in the pool to have swiped it.

Speaking of Francie and Paddy O’Dilligan, Judge Joyce is hot on their tail as they flee the Oxypool, less one brother and all their gold – but they still have some fighting Irish spirit left as they jump him on his Lawmaster on loan from Mega-City One Justice Department. Joyce is very much a beginner on a Lawmaster and quickly loses control of it.

That sees the Tek Judges “still scraping bits of the O’Dilligans off the sked” – and while Joyce comes out of this whole Emerald Isle fiasco best, he’s still going home in plaster casts and a bad mood towards MC-1.

“As far as I’m concerned, you can stick your mega-city up your – ” and fortunately the last boarding call of the flight to Murphyville cuts him off.

“So much for friendly international relations” Dredd muses as they watch the flight depart from their Lawmasters – something of a recurring gag whenever Dredd is sent on a mission to or involved with another mega-city, which strangely enough often includes diplomatic missions given that Dredd is perhaps the last person Justice Department should choose for skill in diplomacy.

Hershey observes the obvious – “Yeah. Old Joyce didn’t exactly have the luck of the Irish”. To which Dredd characteristically replies – “Tough”. See what I mean about that diplomacy?

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 18:

THE KINDA DEAD MEN (prog 816)

The Magic Mellow Out (progs 808-809)

Raider (prog 810-814)

Christmas with Attitude (prog 815)

 

Surprisingly, the only episode to directly deal with the immediate aftermath of Judgement Day’s global zombie apocalypse.  Also Happy New Year 2115 -” and so, the Meg begins a year in which the dearly departed may not have actually departed…and the workers at resyk find themselves issued with pump-action shotguns”.

In this case, we see Sabbat’s head still on the lodestone where Dredd stuck it – fortuitously “not much left of his mind” at this point – but “energies will inevitably leak from the stone and cause…um…unusual phenomena on a planetary scale” – “though this should only occur infrequently”.

This begs a few questions. Well, a few more than the question posed by the obvious reference for the MC-1 Justice Department’s Chief Tek’s name, Oppenheimer.

Although that prompts one of the questions – given Oppenheimer’s role in the Manhattan Project, one wonders why there isn’t something similar here? That is, why isn’t Mega-City One trying to harness – or weaponize – this mystical energy “on a planetary scale”?  Of course, that might be what Oppenheimer’s preliminary report to Chief Judge McGruder is about here.

Also in fairness McGruder and Mega-City One are probably wary of screwing with something that caused the global zombie apocalypse that almost overwhelmed them and everyone else. Although it does beg another question of why the other mega-cities seem content to sit back and don’t want in on this, if not to monitor Mega-City One studying the stone then at least as some joint international (or rather inter-city) project to monitor the stone itself and its potentially dangerous energy, including the leaks that occur in this episode. Particularly as the lodestone is in the middle of the Radlands of Ji, essentially the Asian mystical badlands equivalent of the Cursed Earth beyond any mega-city – a neutral no-man’s land or no-city’s land.

One would have thought at least Hondo City – the nearest mega-city and the one most intimately involved in Judgement Day – would have been involved in a joint project with Mega-City One, if not also East-Meg-Two or Sino-City Two, the other major powers both wary of Mega-City One and also close to the Radlands of Ji. (There’s also teasing references to other minor cities in proximity – Kathmandu, Lhasa, Samarkand – and I think there may be some Mongolian polity).

Oppenheimer introduces his report by noting that “Sabbat is still secure”, which begs the question of why they just leave his head on the lodestone. Surely he’d be more secure elsewhere – or even better off dead without the mystical energy of the lodestone keeping his head alive – particularly as who’s to say his apparent mindlessness isn’t just some magical dormancy or trance on his part, waiting his opportunity to strike again? I mean his head shouldn’t be alive anyway but it is – I’d say you couldn’t be too careful with a galactic time-travelling necromancer turned demi-lich. It at least begs the question of how and why he is apparently mindless after what at most is a few months when he survived by magic without needing his body for years. Or at least why they don’t have some more security measures, such as a remote-activated bomb in his head like they do with the Suicide Squad.

For that matter, it begs the question of why Mega-City One hasn’t tried to flip the center of earth’s mystical power back from the lodestone to Mega-City One itself – which is where it was as few years back and where they could either study or secure it at more convenience to them. Remember that was the whole point of that Warlord storyline back in Case Files 9 (set about seven or so years previously), with the Warlord coming to Mega-City One for that reason – the center of earth’s mystical energy was in Mega-CIty One. Chief Judge McGruder at least should remember – it was why she resigned for the Long Walk in her first term of office.

Anyway, you guessed it – at least one of the effects of those energies leaking from the stone is to reanimate the dead, albeit on a more limited basis. You’d think that might have something to do with the necromancer’s head still on the stone so all the more reason to remove it. Perhaps they did, as I don’t recall it or these energy leaks in subsequent episodes.

So the storyline involves a citizen, who alternates between retaining something of his former consciousness and being a flesh-hungry mindless zombie, both as a result of those energy leaks as he should be neither, having had a fatal heart attack about two weeks back. He attends a New Year’s Eve party but fortunately Dredd is present to stop him chowing down on the guests – although Dredd is sadly too late to have stopped him chowing down on his wife and pet dog before going to the party.

Dredd solves the problem in his usual manner – with a bullet through the walking dead man’s brain, making him a fully inert dead man for resyk, hence the episode’s closing narration.

As for the episodes I skipped over:

• The Magic Mellow Out (progs 808-809) – apparently a parody of a famous 1960s British children’s TV show The Magic Roundabout, Dredd be tripping when he has to secure the titular amusement park after its guests became violently deranged from a leak of hallucinogenic gas in much higher quantities than authorized. Eric Thompson, the creator and narrator of the TV series, is name-dropped for the block near the amusement park
• Raider (progs 810-814) is a five-episode story arc featuring the titular ex-Judge (it’s his surname) and former Academy of Law classmate with Dredd (or more precisely the Dredds, Rico and Joe). Ex-Judge that is, as he left the force for a woman (and also as Dredd reminisces, he was “a bit of a dreamer”). Sadly, she died in his arms in the Apocalypse War. However, knowing his weakness, Dredd reintroduces undercover Judge Lola Palmtree to ensnare him. He proves a little too wary for that but by this time has become caught up in vigilante justice of his own against one of Mega-City One’s ganglords, a little like that Cadet turned rogue in The Executioner and ending in the same way, a lost gunfight with Dredd – although here Raider had previously equalled Dredd as a fellow cadet at the firing range but is outdrawn by Dredd in this gunfight. As Raider sadly says, probably expecting to be bested by Dredd with the latter’s forty years as a street Judge, “what else have I got?”
• Christmas with Attitude (prog 815) replays Charles Dicken’s A Christmas Carol, but here the attempts of Eb Skrooj at redemption after a supernatural vision sees his goose cooked instead – or more precisely him cooked as the Christmas goose by the McKratchit family.

 

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 18:

SNOWSTORM (prog 819)

The Craftsman (prog 817)

Ex-Men (prog 818)

 

“Sweetex! Those spugging drokkers cut this with sweetex!”

Yeah – that’s my reaction to artificial sweeteners as well.

It’s more of a big deal in the Meg as sugar is, well, a big deal – a big criminal deal as analogy for cocaine.

I have a soft spot for these sugar as cocaine stories in Judge Dredd, although it begs the question of what happened to actual cocaine (or any other contemporary illicit drug).  Sugar even shares one of the same nicknames as cocaine – snow, hence the titular snowstorm for a big shipment in “a city desperate for the sweet taste of a snowstorm”, with the suppliers known as snowman or snowmen. Consistent with the cocaine analogy, we get a reference to the Andean Conurb as the ultimate source of the snowstorm here. There’s been a reference to the Andean Conurb before – at least as the home city of Hector and Dave, the Flying Gonzo brothers in Supersurf 10 back in the Oz epic – but here we see it tied more closely into the illicit sugar trade. We’ll see a much closer and unfortunately stereotyped look at the Andean Conurb before the Dark Age of Dredd is over in The Sugar Beat – let’s just say Grud knows how it survived Judgement Day when other mega-cities did not.

Anyway, the story writes itself. Up and coming snowman Vinnie Touretto does a deal, tasting the product, interestingly in porridge, an “old trick” as the “only way to be sure” – “that’s primo drokkin’ cane, alright”. Unfortunately, his suppliers also did the old trick of giving him a good bag among the rest of their cut product – but Touretto took another old trick as precaution of putting a tracer in their cash payment. So he prepares to hunt them down but Judge Dredd gets him first and uses the tracer to get the Andeans too – but “there’s still a hell of a lot of snow to be shovelled off the streets”.

As for the stories I skipped over

• The Craftsman (prog 817) is a somewhat ho-hum episode about yet another serial killer in Mega-City One. Seriously, I think the Meg has a disproportionate number of these serial killers popping up among its citizens, possibly just as a hobby from the sheer boredom and brutality of their everyday life. Although in this case the killer – Nigel Bland – does have some sort of gainful career or hobby as a “vidder”, host of “Hey – Let’s Make Things” for plasteen carving, which I can’t help but feel was some sort of British TV reference at the time, same for the name reference of Steve Atkinson for the block where Bland resides.
• Ex-Men (prog 818) features not so much a pun on X-men but are essentially hitmen as suicide bombers, usually conscripted from citizens driven to desperation with nothing to lose (as here from terminal illness and a need to provide financially for their families). We saw exploding hitmen before in the Emerald Isle epic, but there it was to stop them being captured rather than the actual means of assassination as here.

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 18:

PJ & THE MOCK-CHOC FACTORY (progs 820-822)

 

PJ Maybe does Willy Wonka! Or rather – PJ Maybe kills Willy Wonka. And once again runs out of luck with Judge Dredd catching up with him – and punching him in the face now that he’s turned 18.

 

Yes – everyone’s favorite juvenile genius serial killer is back in this three-episode arc. One of Dredd’s most enduring and successful antagonists – particularly in terms of going undetected by Dredd or giving him the slip – PJ Maybe owes much of that success to his genius, even if that genius tends to be a three-trick pony of robotics, face-changing machines, and the hypnotic drugs SLD 88 or 89. But as engaging as he is as a character, you have to admit that he owes a lot of his success to being one lucky SOB. (Metaphorically that is, his parents were very nice people, totally oblivious to his evil nature – and it was sad to see them go in Necropolis, even the psychopathic Maybe felt their loss).

 

Even with his luck, PJ’s problem is like that of a gambling addict – he just doesn’t know when to walk away in a winning streak but instead keeps coming back to the table expecting to keep winning against the house. And in Mega-City One, the house is Justice Department – with Dredd as its chief enforcer.

 

PJ Maybe’s luck ran out with Dredd before when he killed one person too many – rival of his parent’s billion-dollar business (that they unknowingly inherited from him killing his mother’s family members), Alger Hoss, ironically by accident rather than design as he was attempting to frame Hoss for criminal business dealings using a robot double. Dredd caught up with him – having failed to detect him due to his youth and his playing dumb – and detained him in a psych-cube.

 

PJ bounced back with another lucky streak during Necropolis – managing to escape the psych detention facility as Justice Department collapsed into chaos and the Judges were controlled by the Sisters of Death. Just when that luck seemed to run out with his parents killing themselves from their despair of the Dark Judges, he had even more luck when their billionaire family friends, the Urchinsons, took him in. Naturally, PJ killed Junior Urchinson and Mrs Urchinson (the latter with some more luck given her suspicions of him) before assuming Junior’s identity courtesy of a face-change machine and Junior’s father being increasingly unhinged by grief. So PJ once again found himself the heir of a billion dollar company and fortune, having swapped out that of his parents for the Urchinsons – even managing to go undetected by Dredd.

 

However, that luck is again about to run out in this arc, with Dredd once again catching up to Maybe – Maybe having drawn the attention of Justice Department because he couldn’t stop killing people, ironically even as his opening narration states his first rule of killing as “don’t get careless”. In fairness, while he clarifies this rule to involve not “killing any more than I needed to”, he then goes on to say that he was “needing to quite a bit recently” – and for the most petty or trivial reasons, not that he expresses it with quite that insight.

 

For that matter, it’s not even clear why he bought the Wonker candy corp, involving as it did killing MC-1’s version of Willy Wonka, transparently named Willy Wonker. It’s not like he needed to, having inherited 60 billion after finally disposing of his new “adoptive” father to assume control of Urchinson Inc. Yes – he does seem to use the mock-choc factory to dispose of bodies (mixing them into the mock-choc – eww!) but surely he had other means at his disposal. It does make for the black comedy gold in the opening of the Wonker company exec Brad Gleem discovering a human nose in a candy bar, but it’s not like that plays a part in Maybe coming undone as Urchinson, except for now having to kill and dispose of Brad as well. Justice Department was already on his trail and sent Dredd after him for the preceding four suspicious deaths or disappearances surrounding him in a short timeframe.

 

Once again it’s all downhill for Maybe from there as Dredd joins the dots, despite the brief illusion of escape on a flight to, you guessed it, the conveniently corrupt Banana City where Maybe had squirrelled away 20 billion of his fortune in an account. Man – they’ll take in anyone if there’s enough money involved.

 

And having turned 18 on that very flight, Dredd is finally able to punch Maybe in the face – a curious line that Justice Department doesn’t cross despite its routine brutality against Mega-City One’s adult citizens that seems to be something of their only right (and rite of passage) dealing with Judges. And I have to admit that as much as I like PJ as a character – it was as satisfying to see as a reader as it was for Dredd.

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 18:

PJ & THE MOCK CHOC FACTORY (prog 820)

 

“It’s not like I was killing anymore than I needed to…it’s just that I was needing to quite a bit recently”.

 

That’s our PJ, with a rather elastic definition of need when it comes to killing people.

 

Indeed, it’s quite obvious that by needing or needed he means for the most petty and trivial reasons – something that would increasingly come into play as his ongoing storyline unfolds over the next quarter of a century or so. That’s obvious from his opening narration and the first person he refers to killing, his girlfriend Lili – I suppose that would be ex-girlfriend now – because she laughed at a pimple he had. Hmm – I was wondering why he never looked up Liana, his first girlfriend and still a heartthrob for me (as drawn by Liam Sharp), but now I’m glad he didn’t (assuming of course that she survived epic crises like Necropolis or Judgement Day, let alone the everyday brutality of life in MC-1).

 

I mean at least he started out targeting people who were unsympathetic, albeit of course not deserving their fate at his hands – people like his mother’s family who bullied his parents or himself, with the obvious exception of his two innocent neighbors he used as a test run or the innocent bystanders killed by his uncle’s crash that he engineered.

 

That sets up that black comedy of the opening reveal of the Wonker company exec Brad Gleem discovering a human nose in a candy bar while guiding a juvenile tour through the factory. Well, technically he doesn’t discover it – one of juveniles on the tour points it out to him but he’s quick on the draw to snatch it up to pass off as nothing in front of the juveniles. Compounding the black comedy, the juveniles become suspicious that he then doesn’t eat it, if Mock-Chox are indeed the “scrummiest mock-chox around” as he said in his tour guide spiel.

 

So you can guess where that goes – he has to eat the chocolate (including the nose) in front of them to keep up the masquerade that there was nothing wrong.

 

As he then tells PJ – who is of course still impersonating Urchinson Jr and running the Wonker company after Urchinson Inc bought it – “It was horrible, Master Urchinson. I was sick for an hour.”

 

Unfortunately for Brad, that’s the least of his health problems now that his discovery and cover-up of the nose in the candy bar has unknowingly placed himself at the top of PJ’s kill list – and PJ doesn’t waste any time about it either.

 

But first, Brad continues to explain the gravity of the situation – “I mean, Wonker’s is the top candy-corp in the Meg – that’s why you bought us! We’re launching the new Krunchblok tomorrow! But if this gets out, we’re sunk!”

 

Yes – I’d tend to agree that finding human body parts in your mock-chox would be a critical marketing and public relations problem.

 

However, PJ calmly offers Brad one of the Krunchbloks. Firstly, I’m surprised that Brad is not too traumatized to eat any mock chox, at least right now. Secondly, I’m surprised that he hasn’t tasted a sample before.

 

Anyway, PJ continues to calmly clarify Brad’s statement that the nose had a pin in it. “That’ll be Mr Grizz.”

 

Brad asks incredulously – “You know him?” – to which PJ replies “I killed him”.

 

PJ then launches into what seems an extraordinary spontaneous confession – confessing that he also killed Wonker because Wonker wouldn’t sell the factory to him, he killed Grizz because Grizz criticized his spelling (which in fairness is atrocious – despite his genius, PJ can’t spell), he killed his father to inherit the Urchinson billions, and that Urchinson wasn’t really his father as he had killed Junior Urchinson before changing his face to look like Junior.

 

He even confesses that he is PJ Maybe – and it says something of Maybe’s notoriety that Brad recognizes the name. “Drokking Jeez – you were on the news years back! P.J, Maybe – the psycho juve!”

 

But then, PJ does like to brag. And as you might have guessed, Brad is already a dead man walking, killed by the Krunchblok – “The hemorrhaging agent I put in it should kick in any second”. Which begs the question – did PJ have a Krunchblok already laced with a lethal hemorrhaging agent in case of just such an emergency? And what would have happened if Brad had declined?

 

Meanwhile, Dredd is assigned by Justice Department to clear up the Judgement Day backlog – “Go to Urchinson Inc. offices. Interview CEO J. Urchinson – four missing persons among associates / employees”.

 

And with that, the bell begins to toll for PJ Maybe’s lucky streak impersonating Junior Urchinson – or as PJ himself puts it, when you’re a psycho killer in Mega-City One, you can’t afford to be careless…

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 18:

PJ & THE MOCK CHOC FACTORY (prog 821)

 

“Me and old Dreddy had met before, when he arrested me for murder. I was getting to like him. He’s a pussycat…Okay, he’s not”.

Of course, that was when PJ Maybe had his original name and face – not that of Junior Urchinson. And of course, PJ is not being a reliable narrator here – he corrects himself that Dredd is in fact not a “pussycat” but I’m skeptical that he was “getting to like” Dredd. What PJ seems to like is playing cat-and-mouse games with Dredd.

Which is what he does here – after warmly reminding Judge Dredd that they’d “met” (“You pulled my Dad and I out of a nuke shelter after the big Nec”), he brazenly lies that he knows nothing about the four people he’s killed in the last six months. His “father”, his girlfriend Lili Solo, Wonker the former “chok boss” (not only transparently named for Willy Wonka but appears like him too in the flashback and statue we see in this episode), and his accountant Sam Grizz. Not to mention his fifth victim Brad Gleem just before Dredd arrived but that’s too soon to be reported missing.

You might be wondering about the standard issue lie detector or “birdie” that Judges use and that we see Dredd use here, but as PJ narrates – “if you’re going to lie into a judge’s lie detector, you can either get used to a broken jaw…or you can jam that sucker”.

What I was wondering about was whatever happened to that voiceprint identification which Dredd used to identify a perp way back when they introduced face-change machines way back in the second ever Judge Dredd episode – “The New You” in prog 3. That sure would’ve come in handy right about now.

Anyway, even without voiceprint identification, Maybe’s only slightly ahead of the curve as Dredd is suspicious from his instinct that something didn’t feel right against Maybe as Urchinson checking out completely on the birdie. So he requests Control scan all Urchinson’s associates and business contacts. Sure enough, that scan turns up “the only thing unusual” – the Maybe family as associates of the Urchinson family, which immediately triggers Dredd, with a “Drokk!” thrown in for good measure. Dredd requests Control call units to arrest Junior Urchinson. “You think he’s picked up some tricks from Maybe?” queries Control. “I think he IS Maybe!” Dredd replies.

Meanwhile, PJ has gone to the mock-choc factory to dispose of Brad’s body as the special ingredient in the latest batch of mock chocolate, treating us to some entertaining musings about having some standards as a serial killer. “All these people who won’t be satisfied with a poisoning here, a decap there – these people with body-counts in the millions…Call-Me-Kenneth…Ol’ Cal…Mad Dog Kazan…Judge Death…and that lunatic Sabbat! I mean the whole world! Just look what happens to people like that! One at a time, that’s my motto.” Well, I suppose that is the definition of a serial killer.

Unfortunately for PJ, Dredd arrives at the factory to apprehend him.

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 18:

PJ & THE MOCK CHOC FACTORY (prog 822)

 

 

Judge Dredd punches PJ Maybe in the face mid-flight to Banana City and has a confession of his own – “Gotta admit it…I’ve been wanting to do that for years”.

 

We’ve all been wanting you to do that, Judge Dredd, we all have – and I say that as a fan of PJ Maybe.

 

Although it’s a little concerning that the only line stopping Mega-City One Judges from gratuitously punching citizens in the face (or beating them with a daystick) when arresting them is that the citizen is of the age of eighteen years or over.

 

That is of course how the episode ends – with PJ Maybe under arrest again, albeit unconscious after Dredd punched him in the face.

 

 

 

How it started was with PJ absconding from the mock choc factory, setting a giant version of his robot bug he routinely used to kill people – including his very first victims, and Wonker himself as we saw in flashback in the second episode – on to Dredd. “I thought Dredd might appreciate using the bug on him, for old time’s sake. I’d been gone for a good five minutes by then, of course. I was off to Banana City, with twenty bil’ waiting in a numbered account”.

 

Dredd did not, in fact, appreciate it, but the giant robot bug gives him a good fight before he finally manages to defeat it. That’s enough time for Maybe to escape the city – “Little creep hopped a flight to Banana City – Customs boys got the APB a little too late!”

 

Not on Dredd’s watch, however, as he directs Control – “Then get me a fast h-wagon”.

 

And sure enough, as Maybe is musing happy thoughts mid-flight – “South of the border, down mekzone way – that’s where I was off to. There was bound to be a place for a smart kid with plenty of creds – and a talent for murder.” – Dredd’s h-wagon intercepts the flight, pulling it over so to speak. “Don’t worry sir, that’s just a Justice Depart h-wagon locking on to our hull”.

 

Dredd arrests Maybe, who smugly reminds Dredd that he’s a minor – only to be corrected by Dredd that it’s past midnight and he’s just turned eighteen. And you know how the rest goes.

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 18:

A,B,C WARRIOR (prog 824)

Last Night Out (prog 823)

 

“Well, citizen Colon. Can you guess what happens now? Is it a) we let you go? b) you get off with a five cred fine? or c) we lock you in the psycho cubes and throw away the key?”

A, B, C Warrior is easily my favorite single episode in Case Files 18 – involving yet another citizen gone mad in Mega-City One, or ‘futsie’ as Mega-City slang goes for people suffering from ‘future shock’, who have snapped from the pressure of just living in “a society where every single thing has become monstrously overwhelming” (quoting Chris Sims summing up the essence of Judge Dredd’s world).

In this episode, the futsie is a citizen with an unfortunate surname, Mori Colon – and the even more unfortunate madness from losing his job as a pollster. Although given the nearly universal automation of jobs in Mega-City One, I’m not sure how he ever had it in the first place since it would seem a job where a robot would be first in line.

Anyway, he’s adapted his former occupation as pollster to his new preoccupation as serial killer. As one Judge observes – “It’s incredible, Dredd. He’s killed over fifty people – all so he can ask them these insane questions!”.

That is of course after Colon is apprehended by Dredd. We’re introduced to him at the opening of the episode “polling” a resident of Frank Hovis block, as usual named for a character in a British television comedy series contemporary to the date of publication rather than someone you’d expect it to be used for a block in a twenty-second century American megalopolis. And by “polling”, I mean asking some of those inane questions – as multiple choice between options a, b, and c, hence the title – before shooting his victim. As in what will the victim do when confronted with a gun – a) try to jump me b) beg for mercy or c) run for it. (The answer in this case was b).

The sound of gunfire is reported by neighbors – which is how Dredd is called to the scene. Unfortunately, he doesn’t have much to go on for clues at the scene, particularly given the insane polling that is Colon’s modus operandi, but fortunately for Dredd’s detection skills, Colon decides further “research” is needed at a local club (where Colon laments that he should have thought of “polling” a crowd further). Research such as whether on learning of their impending deaths they will a) pray to Grud…b) pray to Satan…c)start to cry. (In fairness, Colon is researching whether religious belief is declining in Mega-City One because of the reactions of previous victims).

So as nearest Judge, Dredd is called to the club when Colon’s latest disturbance is reported and catches Colon in mid-massacre. Colon even polls Dredd which ammunition he will use. (Dredd choses an option that wasn’t on the poll, shooting through a table – and Colon’s arm – with an armor-piercing round). Although I do have to give Colon mad props for his justification to Dredd – “but I’m conducting an opinion poll!”

And that leads to us to the line I quote at the outset Dredd’s deadpan snark with his facetious “poll” to Colon after he recovers from med-bay treatment. And like the readers, Colon easily guesses the answer – “at a wild guess…c?”. Which if you recall was throwing him in the psycho-cube without a key – “You got it. Take him away.”

And yes – I skipped an episode, Last Night Out in prog 823, although perhaps I shouldn’t have because it’s a pretty decent example of an episode played (mostly) straight for tragic drama rather than the more usual absurdist or black comedy. Judge Cahill – “a forty year man” (ie with forty years on the streets) has six hours to live from a rad cancer he got in turn from a zombie bite during Judgement Day. So naturally he uses it to bust perps and kick heads with Dredd (at Dredd’s suggestion). Cahill gets in one last heroic shot and then – “I’m gone, Joe”.

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 18:

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, JUDGE DREDD! (prog 829)

Blind Mate (prog 825)

Unwelcome Guests (prog 826)

Barfur (prog 827)

A Man Called Greener (prog 828)

 

That’s right – it’s the big man’s birthday as the comic premise for this episode, although it’s not quite as fun or funny as you might think. Still, I can’t let it go past without celebrating – happy birthday, Joe!

That comic premise is Dredd being his usual hardcore self despite it being his birthday – probably even more so. Then again, when you’re getting on like Dredd is, birthdays aren’t much reason to celebrate – and that was thirty-odd years ago when I write this in 2024 with Dredd still going. Thank Grud for rejuvenation treatment!

Curiously, Dredd’s birthday seems to be a matter of widespread public knowledge, perhaps even city-wide. The episode opens with kids from the elementary school at Andy Crane block – named for a British television presenter, aptly enough best known for presenting Children’s BBC shortly before the episode’s publication date – singing happy birthday to Dredd. Needless to say, he’s not impressed as they sang eight points above the legal limit. Yes – Dredd pulled a sound meter on them.

He’s even less impressed with some tap-tax bandits – citizens who essentially pull a Robin Hood as resistance against paying for water. They too have heard of his birthday, and except for one foolhardy tap-tax bandit who gets an incendiary round for his trouble, they don’t want “to mess with the big man on his birthday”.

Then it’s off to the Grand Hall of Justice where Chief Judge McGruder has called him – for a surprise birthday party. It gets a “what the drokk” from Dredd – before the episode’s last gruff punchline with Dredd telling the Judges to give the gifts to charity. Although I am intrigued what anyone – let alone other Judges – would actually buy Dredd for a gift. Something suitably judicial, I hope.

I skipped some more middling episodes:

• Blind Mate (prog 825) features a game show, which from its imported dotty Brit-Cit host I am presuming is based on a similar contemporary game show Blind Date but could not be bothered to look it up. Anyway, a perp – a member of the Chipperdull Gang of contract killers modelled on the Chippendale male strippers, down to their shirtless appearance which would seem a little conspicuous for contract killers – on the run from Dredd ends up in the studio as a contestant. The host is so impressed with Dredd after his shootout with the killer that she invites him on as a guest – and is of course arrested for improper suggestion
• Unwelcome Guests (prog 826) features the SJS, the House Slytherin of Justice Department, up to their usual tricks – RPA or random physical abuse assessment – which does not go down to well with a jumpy street Judge with post-traumatic stress from a zombie tearing her shoulder off in Judgement Day. She shoots the two SJS judges – Dredd gets her a suspension for a year as opposed to a sentence on Titan and gives the SJS Judge a smackdown for his trouble.
• Barfur (prog 827) features the titular alien bear-kangaroo or grizzly broo, who gets to snack down on some animal rights activists. Dredd is called to the disturbance – one animal rights activist survives and gets twenty years in the cubes
• A Man Called Greener (prog 828). Yes – Mega-City One has underground spitting or gobbing contests. Yes – they’re as disgusting as they sound. Also dangerous, resulting in a traffic pile-up – which is where Dredd comes in and arrests them.

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 18:

MECHANISMO (Megazine 2.12 – 2.17 & 2.22 -2.26)

A Christmas Carol (Megazine 2.18)

Warhog (Megazine 2.19)

Resyk Man (Megazine 2.20)

Deathmask (Megazine 2.21)

 

“Trial by machine is here!”

It’s Judge Dredd vs Robo-cop! Or rather, since Dredd essentially is Robo-cop (as one of its influences), Judge Dredd vs the ED-209 from Robo-cop.

That’s essentially the plot in a nutshell of the Mechanismo storyline. With the number of Judges stretched thin after Judgement Day, McGruder is advocating robot Judges. Unfortunately, Dredd is adamantly opposed – not being too progressive when it comes to robots either as Judges or citizens in Mega-City One. He changed his mind when a much better model of Robot Judge was permanently introduced thirty or so years later – although it does make one wonder what this fuss is about here – but Dredd is right at this time, as the Mechanismo models were flawed in a similar way to the ED-209.

While Dredd was one of the influences for Robo-cop, this storyline of course comes after the latter – and acknowledges it with Peter Weller, Robo-cop’s actor, named-dropped for a block.

The story arc is also the source of the image used for the Case Files cover – a rare image not of Dredd himself – and my standing rule for Case File reviews is that I have to feature it as my drinking game equivalent of taking a shot on the title drop in a film.

There’s actually two parts to the storyline – Mechanismo in Megazine 2.12-2.17 in which the Mechanismo robot Judges are introduced but malfunction (and Dredd has to shoot it out with one of them) and Mechanismo Returns in Megazine 2.22-2.26, which sees one of the units reactivate to cause more trouble. It’s the number five unit – a play on the Short Circuit films – and it’s still out there in the sewers as the storyline ends…for now.

Of the other Megazine episodes:

• A Christmas Carol (Megazine 2.18) is the most interesting – a Christmas episode as an obvious play on the titular story by Charles Dickens, with Dredd getting a case of concussion and the Ghost of Christmas Past in the form of Rico
• Warhog (Megazine 2.19) features the titular war-bike – not exactly sure which war – that uses illegal biomechanics powered by a dead man’s brain and of course he wants revenge against his ex-gang
• Resyk Man (Megazine 2.20) features a man whose consciousness survives his apparent death and Resyk, as he too is used for biomechanics, fortuitously as he is able to save his widow and their child from a mutant gang
• Deathmask (Megazine 2.21) – Dredd does The Dead Zone (heh – the Dredd Zone) as a citizen becomes psychic and helps Dredd track down the titular serial killer

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 2
Mega-City One 2100-2101
(1978-1979: progs 61-115)

Judge Dredd gets epic!

Judge Dredd: Complete Case Files Volume 2 essentially consists of the back-to-back Dredd epics, The Cursed Earth (progs 61-85) and The Day the Law Died (progs 86-108).

I consider these two epics to be Dredd’s first true epics – and more fundamentally, where the Judge Dredd comic came of age. This is classic Dredd.

Of course, the two epics had their precursors in the two longer story arcs (or mini-epics) of Volume 1 – The Cursed Earth in Luna-1 and The Day the Law Died in Robot Wars. Each of the epics (and their precursors) respectively set up the essential Judge Dredd epic plotlines – Dredd confronting some threat, usually existential, to Mega-City One (Robot Wars, The Day the Law Died), and Dredd venturing to some other, usually exotic, location (Luna-1, The Cursed Earth), or a combination of the two, Dredd venturing to some other, usually exotic, location TO confront some threat, usually existential, to Mega-City One (arguably The Cursed Earth, although it involved an existential threat to Mega-City Two, at least in the immediate sense).

Yes – there’s a few episodes at the end of Case Files 2 which serve as something of an epilogue to the epics, particularly Punks Rule as an epilogue to The Day the Law Died. It also effectively replays the very first episode with Dredd taking on the punk street gang that has arisen as a law unto themselves – with Dredd’s characteristic schtick of taking them on alone, to restore the authority of Justice Department that had lapsed in The Day the Law Died.

Otherwise, Case Files 2 is almost entirely the two epics – each of which deserve its own consideration in depth.

 

THE CURSED EARTH

 

THE DAY THE LAW DIED

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 2

PUNKS RULE (prog 110)

The Exo-Men (progs 111-112) / The DNA Man (progs 113-115)

 

“I’m a cheap punk!”

And here we are with those episodes at the conclusion of Case Files Volume 2 that are not part of either epic, although the first and best of these, Punks Rule, is effectively an epilogue to The Day the Law Died.

As the new Chief Judge Griffin explains in this episode, the war against Cal allowed street gangs to come back in force, with the worst of them – the Cosmic Punks, led by Gestapo Bob Harris – setting themselves up as ‘judges’ in Sector 41 and declaring it a no-go zone to the real judges. One judge proposes that they stamp it out by sending in a fifty man squad, but Dredd disagrees – “The street gangs have lost their fear of us. It’s time we gave it back to them…Let’s show them one judge is worth a hundred punks”. As I’ve said before, Dredd’s always doing this – going in as the ‘one judge’ to demonstrate the strength of the law against any number of potential antagonists. He did it in his very first episode and he’ll do it again – it’s kind of his shtick.

And so, Dredd heads into Sector 41 alone, with an automated garbage truck for prisoners. A nice symbolic touch – and sure enough, he fills it with the punks who are smart enough to surrender, gunning down those who prefer to take a shot at him. Ultimately, Dredd takes even Gestapo Bob prisoner – after making Bob declare himself a cheap punk.

It’s an episode with Brian Bolland art, always a delight to behold – and Bolland did the best Judge Dredd punks!

 

And yes – I skipped two storylines:

• The Exo-Men (progs 111-112) featuring the titular gang that use demolition workers’ exo-skeleton powered suits for a bank robbery. However, the real fun in the story comes with two representatives of a citizen action group – the citizen’s committee for compassion to criminals (or CCCC) – who are monitoring Dredd as he pursues the exo-men. It was almost fun enough to feature in more detail, except that I think “Watchdogs” in Case Files 16 replays the same premise better.
• The DNA Man (progs 113-115) replays Frankenstein but with the mad scientist character – literally named Frankenstein, Milton Frankenstein (with his first name perhaps a nod to Milton’s Paradise Lost featuring in the original book by Shelley) trying to recreate himself from one DNA molecule taken from his blood. It’s a little weird since the world of Judge Dredd has cloning – indeed, Dredd himself is a clone. Here, however, Frankenstein succeeds only in creating monstrous versions of himself – which he unleashes on Dredd as Dredd is on his trail for killing his lab assistant.

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 2:
THE DAY THE LAW DIED (progs 86-109)

 

No rest for the wicked – or those who judge them. Once again, the Law gets EPIC!

The second Judge Dredd epic, The Day the Law Died ran straight on or back-to-back from The Cursed Earth, when Judge Dredd returned to Mega-City One from Mega-City Two. As I said before for the Cursed Earth epic, I still consider the back-to-back storylines of The Cursed Earth and The Day the Law Died to be Dredd’s first true epics – and more fundamentally, where the Judge Dredd comic came of age. This is the origin of the classic Dredd I know, although my introduction to Judge Dredd was The Apocalypse War epic (and its Block Mania prelude), still my favorite (and arguably the best) Judge Dredd epic. Each of the epics (and their precursors in Luna and the Robot Wars) respectively set up the quintessential Judge Dredd epic plotlines – Dredd venturing to some other, often exotic location, or confronting some threat, often existential, to Mega-City One.

We saw the former in the Cursed Earth, now we see the latter in The Day The Law Died. In this case, the existential threat to Mega-City One came from the Justice Department itself, in the form of the insane Judge Cal’s rise to the position of Chief Judge, essentially by way of coup. In this, The Day The Law Died effectively introduced a recurring theme in Judge Dredd – the dangers of corruption, and especially the corruption of power, within the Justice Department, albeit rarely at the level of existential threat to the city as it is in this epic. Ironically, the source of that corruption in this epic is Judge Cal’s position as head of the SJS or Special Judicial Squad, essentially the Justice Department’s equivalent of Internal Affairs or the body of Judges who judge other Judges. Nominally, the Special Judicial Squad is meant to guard against corruption within the Justice Department, but in practice in this and subsequent storylines they tend to have a somewhat antagonistic role to the rest of the Department (and Dredd in particular) at best and be a source of power unto themselves at worst.

In fairness to Judge Cal, most of the existential threats posed to Mega-City One come from Judges, just not usually Judges of Mega-City One. The extra-dimensional Dark Judges, led by Judge Death, are perhaps the most recurring danger to the city and became an existential threat to it in the Necropolis epic, with their warped philosophy that all crime is committed by the living so the elimination of crime involves the elimination of all life – “The crime is life. The sentence is death!” However, when it comes to the most effective existential threat to Mega-City One, the Dark Judges are amateurs compared to the Soviet or Sov Judges, mainly because the Dark Judges typically insist on meting out their dark justice by hand, whereas the Sov Judges typically employed weapons of mass destruction – in the Apocalypse War and subsequently in the Day of Chaos.

As for the storyline, like The Cursed Earth, it is simple and straightforward – all the better to let the SF future satire and absurdist black comedy play out. Indeed, just as The Cursed Earth essentially just, ahem, borrowed its storyline wholesale from Roger Zelazny’s Damnation Alley, The Day The Law Died also borrowed its storyline, but from a more classical source – the ill-fated reign of Roman Emperor Caligula, straight from the pages of Suetonius’ The Twelve Caesars, or more so as it was closer in time to this epic, the BBC TV adaptation of Robert Graves’ I Claudius. Indeed, Judge Cal was named for Caligula (with his appearance modelled on John Hurt’s portrayal in the BBC TV series), and he is even named AS Judge Caligula when the series was introduced (and subsequently collected under that title). Of course, if that was his actual name, it would seem to have been begging for trouble. I mean, what next? Judge Hitler?

Anyway, his insanity mirrors that of Caligula, albeit (somewhat disappointingly) without the depravity – not surprisingly in the more ascetic Justice Department of Mega-City One, or even more so, in the publishing restrictions for 2000 AD. And so as Caligula appointed his horse as a senator of Rome, Judge Cal appoints a goldfish as Deputy Chief Judge Fish, ironically remembered fondly by the Mega-City One citizenry for a death that saved the city.  Speaking of which, the insanity of Judge Cal was such that he sentenced the entire city to death – twice. Which again evokes the historical Caligula, who according to Suetonius wished that all the city of Rome had but one neck.

However, Judge Cal is made more dangerous in his insanity – and hence earns his place among the top tier of Judge Dredd’s villains – in that, unlike his historical predecessor, he at least has the cunning and presence of mind for a technique of mind control to ensure the loyalty of his equivalent of the imperial Praetorian Guard.  And as a failsafe, when Mega-City Judges proved too unreliable, to import a new Praetorian Guard – in the form of alien Klegg mercenaries. The Kleggs and their Klegg Empire – aliens resembling giant bipedal crocodiles with appetites to match – would prove to be an occasionally recurring element in Judge Dredd (and Dredd’s recurring hatred), although the reach of their Empire is obviously limited by their temperament and lack of intelligence.

The Day The Law Died also introduced an element that would prove to be something of a recurring cliché in subsequent Dredd epics (until it was dramatically subverted in the Day of Chaos storyline) – that Judge Dredd becomes the focus of resistance to the existential threat to Mega-City One, leading a small ragtag underground force to defeat it. In this case, literally underground – in the Under-City, which became more fleshed out in this epic from its previous introduction, and contributed a critical ally to Dredd’s resistance, in the form of the dim-witted but hulking brute Fergee. Of course, Dredd didn’t have much choice in this, as he was an important target of Cal’s plans to assume the position of Chief Justice and control of Mega-City One – as he had not been subject to Cal’s mind control technique due to his absence from the city on his mission in the Cursed Earth. Cal’s initial plan is to frame Dredd – and when that fails, to assassinate him along with the incumbent Chief Judge. Sadly, these elements have something of a bad aftertaste as they were adapted into the abominable Stallone Judge Dredd film – including where the character of Fergee was transformed beyond recognition in all but name to comic relief played by Rob Schneider. Sigh.

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 2:

THE DAY THE LAW DIED (PROLOGUE)

Crime and Punishment / Judge Dredd Outlaw / Bring Me the Head of Judge Dredd (progs 86-88)

 

The Day the Law Died, in which the insane Judge Cal becomes Chief Judge of Mega-City One, effectively begins with a prologue of three episodes in which Judge Dredd is framed and arrested for murder (although technically The Day the Law Died commences with prog 89).

The elimination of Judge Dredd is an important part of Judge Cal’s plot for control of Mega-City. Dredd is the most iconic Judge of Mega-City One and a potential focus of resistance – even more so as Dredd’s absence on his Cursed Earth mission has meant that he has not been exposed to Cal’s method for mind control, as revealed subsequently in the epic.

Unfortunately, the prologue leaves something of a bad taste in my mouth, since its plot was adapted almost in entirety for the storyline of the abominable 1995 Judge Dredd film – except even worse, adding insult to injury, by adapting it to involve Dredd’s clone Rico (played by Armand Assante, looking most unclone-like to Stallone’s Dredd), Judge Griffin and the original Chief Judge Fargo in ways completely distorted from their original roles in the comics.

It opens dramatically enough (albeit attributing a population to Mega-City One of 100 million, later increased to 800 million – at least prior to the Apocalypse War), with Judge Dredd on trial for murder before the Council of Five, the governing body of Judges within the Justice Department. It then flashes back to Dredd’s hero’s parade from his Cursed Earth mission, accompanied by the transparently named Chief Judge Goodman, and Deputy Chief Judge Cal, head of the SJS or Special Judicial Squad – the equivalent of Justice Department’s Internal Affairs, or perhaps, given all the trouble it subsequently causes, Justice Department’s house of Slytherin. Judge Cal, true to his slimy and Judas-like character, whines about Dredd’s expense claims for the Cursed Earth mission. Dude – Dredd just saved Mega-City Two! So rightly, Chief Judge Goodman slaps Cal down for the petty bean-counting. Although Dredd collapses from exhaustion in his apartment after the parade, that very night he apparently enters the office of the Mega-Times, Mega-City One’s leading ‘daily-vid journal’ and guns down the editor for not giving his hero’s parade top billing. He has a point – I mean, how does “Film Star Weds Alien” rate the headline?

Dredd is promptly arrested by Cal’s SJS and Cal enthusiastically leads the prosecution before the Council of Five to a unanimous verdict of guilty, including a reluctant verdict (badgered by Cal) from Chief Judge Goodman. Dredd is sentenced to twenty years on the penal colony on Titan (adapted in the film to Aspen in Colorado – must…suppress…gag reflex from film), seen off by a jeering crowd of citizens at Kennedy spaceport. Those Mega-City One citizens sure are fickle!

 

 

Of course, you can’t keep a good Judge down – Dredd knows he’s been framed and escapes. Cal has taken over duties from Chief Judge Goodman (who has suffered near nervous breakdown after the verdict) and unveils his secret weapon to capture Dredd – the same thing that framed Dredd in the first place, a robot replica of Dredd or Dredd-bot.

It’s Dredd vs Dredd-bot! Dredd ultimately tracks down his robot replica and defeats outwits it in a robotics factory, pre-empting the Terminator film.

 

 

But first Judge Dredd is on the lam! While on the lam from the Law, he needs the help of his informant Max Normal – and I’m contractually obliged to remind a fellow Dredd fan with amnesia of the character whenever Max Normal pops up to help out Dredd. And he really helps Dredd out here – while Dredd has correctly surmised that the only way he could have been framed was to use a robot double, Max is the one who tracks it down for Dredd. Hence that Dredd vs robo-Dredd showdown.

 

 

Of course, the Dredd-bot proves Dredd’s innocence and Chief Judge Goodman joyously overturns the verdict. Or rather the robo-Dredd’s head does – Dredd taking it with him to Justice Central, although you have to give it to him as the robot head really does rest his case. The robot head was also the subject of Brian Bolland’s cover art for the Eagle Comics reprints (issue 9) – which I am also obliged to feature as Bolland’s cover art for the Eagle Comics reprints was consistently among my favorite cover art for Judge Dredd. However, as Dredd ominously intones, the robot could only have been programmed by someone with complete access to Justice Department files, so there is a “traitor among us” – “the question is who and why?”. Technically, I suppose those are two questions. Unfortunately, Cal soon provides the obvious answers – well, more obvious than his shifty expression during this exchange – in the form of a much more direct approach to solving his problems, by killing them outright.

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 2:

THE DAY THE LAW DIED 1-2

The Day the Law Died / The Tyrant’s Grip (progs 89-90)

 

Foiled in framing Judge Dredd for murder, Deputy Judge Cal decides to take a more direct approach to gaining the position of Chief Judge and control of Mega-City One – assassination.

In this, Judge Cal is somewhat more proactive than his historical model, Caligula, who awaited his succession to the throne upon the death of his predecessor (and uncle), Tiberius – although my favorite Roman gossip historian Suetonius did advance the rumor that Caligula, ah, sped up his inheritance by smothering Tiberius (amidst the depravity and paranoia of the latter’s old age in personal exile on the island of Capri).

Chief Judge Goodman’s death is not as sordid – he’s assassinated by Cal’s SJS goons. However, he survives long enough to give Judge Dredd, who arrives just in time at the scene, a clue to Cal’s involvement – an SJS insignia he managed to tear off one of the assassins. Unfortunately, Cal has already anticipated Dredd’s opposition or at least simultaneously plotted against Dredd – as Dredd is shot in the head by an SJS judge waiting outside Dredd’s apartment with a sniper rifle.

So Cal becomes Chief Judge. Unlike his historical predecessor Caligula, who at least was credited with initial good rule for six months or so, Chief Judge Cal decides to get a head start on the crazy. When his loyal SJS subordinate Judge Quincy returns, affirming his assassination of Dredd on Cal’s orders, Cal notices Quincy is missing a button and orders him to strip – “Not good enough, Quincy! My judges will dress like judges – or not at all. Take off your clothes!”

Of course, with the historical Caligula, that probably would have been the prelude to something much more depraved, but Cal simply decrees that Judge Quincy is now to carry out his duties in helmet, briefs and boots. Ominously, Cal addresses Quincy while looking at himself in a mirror, like your standard megalomaniac – “There are going to be some changes round here, and the sooner that you and all the people learn that, the better”.

And sure enough – whereas Caligula was reputed to have planned appointing his horse as consul of Rome, Chief Judge Cal exceeds his historical model by appointing his goldfish as Deputy Chief Judge Fish. (In fairness, that fish died a hero, as we’ll see).

Fortunately, the city’s only hope, Judge Dredd, is recovering in hospital from his seemingly fatal head wound, primarily due to the advanced medical technology (by robot surgeons) of the twenty-second century. Meh – this is something you get used to with Judge Dredd, indeed this epic alone has a number of near-death escapes. The number of times he’s been near death in the line of duty… hell, he’s even actually been dead at least once. (He got better). Unfortunately, his recovery is interrupted by his arrest by SJS judges, who bring him before Chief Judge Cal (with head heavily bandaged in lieu of helmet), just as Cal is announcing his appointment of Deputy Chief Judge Fish. Cal takes the opportunity of his new Deputy Chief Judge’s appointment to take the latter’s first verdict (interpreted by Cal from bubbles) – a death sentence for Dredd.

However, Judge Giant, formerly Judge Dredd’s rookie, intervenes and volunteers to execute Dredd. Cal is flattered into granting Giant’s request, blundering into the standard  Bond villain mistake of not personally ensuring the death of his most dangerous opponent. And of course, it’s all a ruse by Giant, who then escapes with Dredd.

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 2:

THE DAY THE LAW DIED 3-6

The New Law / Mega-Riot / The City That Roared / The Kleggs are Coming! (progs 91-95)

 

So Judge Dredd escaped Chief Judge Cal with the help of his former rookie Judge Giant – and becomes the focus of the resistance to Cal, both within the Justice Department itself and in the perception of the Mega-City One citizenry. As usual in a Judge Dredd epic, he is joined by a small select team – in this case, the staff of the Academy of Law, chosen from judges wounded in action, and foremost among them is Judge Griffin, the principal of the Academy.

They are joined by the larger rebelliion of Mega-City citizens against Cal, prompted by insanity on par with his historical namesake Caligula. In fairness, Cal never loses his black sense of comedy (as does the epic itself). Citizens begging to shorten a sentence of 10 years imprisonment for littering prompt a characteristic joke – “I sentence you to death! Ha, ha! You can’t get much shorter than that, can you?”

With jokes like that, no wonder Mega-City One revolts. Just as the Dredd-led revolution is on ther verge of victory, the tide turns against it in the form of the ace up Cal’s sleeve – the alien Kleggs, akin to bipedal crocodiles with appetites to match, and a feature that would occasionally recur in the Judge Dredd storyline. Cal explains his new alien Praetorian Guard to his lieutenant SJS judge Slocum – “They’re called Kleggs, Slocum – a race of alien mercenaries. I’ve had their spaceship waiting in the stratosphere for just such an emergency. Neat, eh?”

To give Cal credit, he certainly shows more cunning and foresight than his historical predecessor Caligula. Although it is difficult to see how the Kleggs became a spacefaring alien species – and as is later revealed, empire – given their general brutish nature and lack of intelligence. Presumably, they were uplifted by other alien species to use as soldiers. They’re cheap to boot (heh, obscure historical Caligula pun) – “they fight for the joy of killing and take payment only in meat”. Of course, Cal thought to “let them eat the citizens”, but Slocum persuades him otherwise – “they might get a taste for human meat and then none of us would be safe”.

In any event, Cal has equally drastic plans for the citizens of Mega-City One, who after all have to be punished for their insubordination – he sentences the whole city to death. Twice – but this is the first time…

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 2:

THE DAY THE LAW DIED 7-8

Judgement Day / Exodus to Mutant Land (progs 96-97)

 

The insanity of Chief Judge Cal is such that he sentenced Mega-City One to death – twice.

The first occasion is prompted by Judge Dredd’s failed popular uprising against the Chief Judge. Of course, Cal is very orderly about it, starting in sector 1 of the city (with the intention of proceeding in numerical order through all the sectors) with its citizen population being queued in alphabetical order (from Aaron A. Aardvark through to Zachary Zzizz) to the execution stations. Although that would seem to have the obvious flaw of being slow, and moreover, allowing ample opportunity for the population of the next sector to flee in advance – or indeed the city in general to do so, as subsequently occurs.

 

Fortunately (albeit not for Aaron Aardvark), Judge Dredd and his resistance have their own perspective, as well as a plan to act on it – abducting Cal’s lieutenant SJS Judge Slocum as part of a greater plan to exploit Cal’s insanity to save the city with a fish. And within an hour, Slocum is at the place of execution – with the casualty of Dredd’s plan, Deputy Chief Judge Fish, in hand (as opposed of course to the unfortunate casualties of Cal in that first hour).

The plan works! Cal immediately cancels the executions for an equally historic event, the funeral of Judge Fish – complete with a grand procession from the Hall of Justice itself, led by Cal in pride of place behind the noble fish’s ashes in a golden bowl.

However Cal doesn’t take it too well when the streets are deserted – “You ungrateful scum! You dare! I spare all your lives and you dare to insult me this way!”

 

 

By the way, Brian Bolland did the best art of Cal ranting and I am here for it – including what might well be characterized as Cal’s catchphrase, “You dare!”(in sheer exclamation).

Meanwhile, the population is prepared to flee the city for the Cursed Earth. Judge Dredd barely survived the Cursed Earth in his last epic and now the people of Mega-City One find it preferable to Cal. And of course, Cal will be having none of it. His solution is the same as that of the Soviets in Berlin in 1961 (as well as more recent political platforms) – building a wall. “I want a wall around the city – a wall a mile high with searchlights and gun emplacements! I want it in three weeks!”.

The population of the city – human and robot – are conscripted into building the wall. Judge Dredd and his resistance launch guerilla attacks on sections of the wall under construction, but ultimately to no avail – the wall is constructed on schedule in three weeks. Ironically, this proved to be one of Chief Judge Cal’s only positive contributions to the city in the long-term, perhaps in parallel to his historical predecessor’s Roman construction projects. The city wall would prove to be invaluable in defending the city from subsequent threats.

In the short term, however, the wall was Cal’s final imprisonment of the city – “Now the whole city is one huge prison! There is no escape, citizens! I own you, body and soul!”

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 2:

THE DAY THE LAW DIED 9-13

The Hunt / Slicey, Slicey – Oncey Twicey / The Crash / Dredd Shock News / The Law & the Looney (progs 98-102)

 

The Day the Law Died settles into a pattern of Chief Judge Cal becoming progressively more insane, while Judge Dredd is on the run from one near-death escape to another as he and his resistance is hunted by Cal’s forces.

Cal’s alien Klegg mercenaries hunt down Dredd with their Klegg-hounds, essentially a cross between bloodhounds and the crocodilian Kleggs themselves. Dredd and his resistance escape the Kleggs in their ‘road-liner’, only for it to plummet 8000 feet to their apparent doom as Cal shoots the road out from under them. (They build their roads high in Mega-City One).

Dredd’s resistance goes underground – literally, as their escape vehicle plummets crashes to the so-called ‘City Bottom’ and then through it to the Under-City. As featured in earlier episodes, Mega-City One is a built-up (again, literally) conglomeration of residential blocks, buildings and roadways extending thousands of feet into the air – and in many cases, built or concreted OVER the former cities or features, now known as the Under-City, such as New York (at least in part), and in this case, the Ohio River, now nicknamed the Big Smelly from its pollution. Indeed “it got so polluted they had to concrete it over.

Cal declares “Judges, today is the third happiest day of my life”, which remains perhaps the biggest mystery of the epic for me as I have no idea as to the other two – presumably the first is his accession to Chief Judge, but the second? Anyway, Cal declares it is cause for city-wide celebration by way of the Purge.

Not a purge, but the Purge as in the films of that name – not by that name of course (although where’s the check, Purge films?), but still the same principle as a criminal Saturnalia. Cal decrees that for the next 24 hours, there will be no law – “Citizens are free to do as they wish, with no fear of arrest!” Hmmm, leave the city, perhaps? However, no one takes advantage of that obvious loophole, even though the threatened exodus of millions of citizens was the whole reason Cal built a wall only a few episodes back – or indeed, takes advantage of the Purge for any criminal activity, as the streets are deserted and the citizens hide in their blocks.

The stated reason is that “blinds are drawn and flags are at half-mast” for Dredd (come to think of it, what IS the Mega-City One flag?), although one might also speculate that other reasons may well be the citizens’ wary fear of Cal’s caprice (or each other for that matter). Cal is enraged and bans happiness, as in literally outlawing happiness – “Laughter is banned! Smiling is banned! Conversation is banned! Happiness is illegal!”. Now that’s totalitarian!

Meanwhile, once again Dredd’s death has been overstated – as Dredd’s plummeting road-liner was a new design, “fitted with a crash-proof command capsule”. And “at the moment of impact, airbags inflated inside the cabin, cushioning the occupants”. Airbags?! Yeah, I’m not buying it. I don’t think any airbags are going to save you after a fall of 8000 feet and crashing through the road into the Under-City. To paraphrase Jerry Seinfeld referring to parachute helmets, after a fall like that those airbags will be wearing Dredd and his fellow judges for protection, not the other way round. It’s like Iron Man’s suit – yes, it may protect you from blows actually penetrating it but not from impact or inertia, with your body bouncing around inside the suit, or your organs bouncing around inside your body.

Anyway, Judge Dredd now fortunately finds himself an unlikely ally in the Under-City in the form of Fergee. Sigh – once again, the bile rises from the 1995 Judge Dredd film’s mangled adaptation of plot elements of The Day the Law Died. It may not be quite so bad as Judge Griffin – one of the leading figures of Dredd’s resistance in the storyline from the comics – being effectively cast into the villainous role of Cal himself, but it’s close.

In the film, Fergee is played by Rob Schneider as everyday Mega-City One citizen and the wimpy comic sidekick to Stallone’s Dredd. True – the Fergee of the comic storyline is something of a comic relief character, as a somewhat child-like simpleton, but he’s anything but a wimp. Indeed, he’s a hulking musclebound brawler so tough he made himself King of the Big Smelly armed only with a baseball bat – and immediately proceeds to go toe-to-toe with Dredd himself in one-on-one combat. Besides, no one deserves to be played by Rob Schneider. Perhaps not even Rob Schneider.

Fergee will also prove to be a decisive ally to Dredd’s opposition to Cal – and savior of the city itself – after of course Dredd proves his worth by beating Fergee in that one-to-one combat, which Fergee takes in good humor, laughing it off and becoming best friends with Dredd. You have to give Fergee credit – no one can call him a bad loser!

In the meantime, once again channeling his historical model for insanity and vanity, Judge Cal is auditioning the cast for a televised drama to commemorate his victory over Dredd. You…don’t want to see the poor misshapen people he’s dredged up for the role of Dredd. For the role of himself, he of course has picked vid-star Conred Conn, “the handsomest man of the world”. Small problem – Conn has retired and doesn’t want the part but that’s nothing a casual threat of decapitation can’t change…

 

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 2

THE DAY THE LAW DIED 14-15

Fergee’s Place / Trapped! (progs 103-104)

 

The Day the Law Died continues to play out with the efforts of Judge Dredd’s resistance – with their new ally Fergee who accommodates them in his Under-City hideout, a former car mechanic “body shop” – to defeat Cal. Fergee gives them his unsurprising backstory – he’s the sort of hulking brute that normally would be in trouble with the Law, despite his apparent good humor, and indeed did so he hid out in the Under-City, where his size and strength make him the equivalent of some sort of feudal king.

More importantly, while at Fergee’s hideout Dredd and his resistance correctly surmise how they alone remain unaffected among Mega-City judges. Judge Cal prepared the subliminal daily crime briefings for the judge force and programmed them for hypnotic obedience to him. It all fits – the Academy of Law tutors didn’t attend the briefings, Dredd was in the Cursed Earth and Giant was on a “month’s leave”. Wait – Mega-City judges have leave?! What do they do with it? That…doesn’t really feature in other story-lines. Despite that story-line quibble, it certainly shows Cal to be a cut above his historical predecessor Caligula – and to demonstrate cunning or intelligence quite apart from his growing insanity.

Dredd hatches a plan for his resistance force – “Easy…we break into Justice H.Q. and use Cal’s own tapes against him. And we do it with the help of our new friend.”

Hmm – that plan doesn’t sound “easy”, Judge Dredd. And indeed it isn’t – as we shall see, it relies on Walter the Wobot once again saving Judge Dredd from one of Mega-City One’s crises (that makes two now with the previous one being the Robot Wars – a third will be added with the Apocalypse War).

Even more so, it ultimately succeeds through a series of incredibly lucky break, albeit one that arises that Cal’s own insanity, poetically enough.

Anyway, the first step in the plan is Fergee taking Judge Dredd back to the surface, where Mega-City One remains under nightly curfew – and which leads to my Mega-City Law equivalent of a title drop drinking game, taking a shot for Dredd’s image excerpted for the Case Files volume cover.

Here the image arises from Fergee being all too happy to throw down (“get heavy”) with the Judges that have sighted them – and Dredd wisely deciding discretion is the better part of valor, particularly when it comes to a Justice Department pat-wagon.

The duo flee but Dredd comes to a literal dead end (heh – Dredd’s dead end). Fortunately, Dredd improvises a plan to impersonate one of Cal’s Judges apprehending a curfew breaker, as a ruse to get the jump on the Judges in the pat wagon and take the wagon for themselves. Fergee of course takes the opportunity to “get heavy” – and Dredd deputizes him with one of the fallen Judges’ badges. Aww – they really do like each other.

That brings them to the second step of Dredd’s plan – using his robot servant Walter to do the actual role of infiltrating Justice Department to retrieve one of Cal’s briefing tapes. Finding Walter is easy enough – he’s in Dredd’s apartment. However, that apartment has unfortunately – and inexplicably given you’d think they have better things to do as Cal’s enforcers AND they think Dredd is dead – been taken over by Cal’s Klegg mercenaries…

 

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 2

THE DAY THE LAW DIED 16-17

Splat / Betwayal (progs 105-106)

 

There’s only one way to deal with Kleggs – “it’s clobbering time!”.

Or as Dredd’s ally Fergee puts it here, as he and Dredd start clobbering the Kleggs occupying Dredd’s apartment – “It gettin’ heavy time!”

Well, that and “easy the Ferg!” as he literally batters a Klegg with his trusty baseball bat.

After making quick work of the Kleggs, Dredd gets down to the second part of his plan – using Walter to infiltrate Justice Department to retrieve one of Cal’s hypnotic briefing tapes, with Walter using the pretext of betraying Dredd (or betwaying Dwedd as Walter’s defective speech unit puts it, hence the episode title).

One wonders why, given the almost limitless number of things that could go wrong with the plan – and indeed almost do, but for a series of incredibly lucky breaks. The obvious flaw in the plan is, as SJS Judge Slocum protests to Cal, “the whole city knows that robot is sickeningly loyal to Judge Dredd!”.

The first lucky break is that Dredd’s ploy plays right into Cal’s insanity vanity (yes I know that should be insane vanity but I couldn’t resist the rhyming play on words) – as Cal sees that as a feature not a bug, making Walter’s apparent betrayal of Dredd even more compelling as a propaganda tool. What’s worse – Cal is right as Mega-City One’s population once again shows itself to be incredibly fickle.

The second lucky break is that Slocum slips up in his protest by calling Cal crazy, which also plays into Cal’s insanity. Slocum tries to pass it off as worry on Cal’s behalf but his days are clearly numbered.

The third lucky break is that Walter is able to just stroll into the right room and retrieve one of Cal’s briefing tape, albeit a few days of propaganda pass before he can do so.

The fourth lucky break is that when Slocum catches Walter red-handed and brings Walter before Cal, that’s when Cal enacts his insane vengeance on Slocum for calling him crazy – paralyzing Slocum with some sort of anesthetic drug before Slocum can warn him about Walter, then literally pickling Slocum in one of his usual warped jokes about “curing” Slocum’s worry lines or wrinkles, playing off Slocum’s excuse for calling him crazy.

The fifth and final lucky break is that Slocum dropped the briefing tape that he had taken from Walter (to show Cal) – and Cal not only gives it (back) to Walter but also asks Walter to take it to the briefing room.

Whew – that’s quite the chain of lucky breaks for Dredd’s plan to work! One wonders if it might have been better for one of his own resistance force to simply infiltrate Justice Department headquarters instead, using the same secret passage they use later in this same epic. Yes – Walter apparently has to open it from the inside, but they drop that implausible detail in the Apocalypse War when Dredd uses it again without any such assistance.

Despite Cal’s monumental stupidity here, I can’t help but admire his “Cal is watching you” posters that are showcased in this episode.

 

 

However, despite all those lucky breaks for Dredd’s plan to work, there’s still a lot that can go wrong – and is about to…

 

 

 

 

 

“Let them hate me so long as they fear me”.

Chief Judge Cal channels his historical namesake and predecessor Caligula as he surveys his mastery of Mega-City One “on the hundredth day of his reign” – “The people are mine, Grampus, body and soul. And why…? Fear, Grampus. Fear wielded with the precision of the surgeon’s scalpel!”

Well, I wouldn’t say you wielded it like a scalpel, Cal – more like bludgeoned the city with it like a sledgehammer.

Also, holy crap! It’s only been a hundred days of Cal’s reign? !What with sentencing the city to death, building the city wall and so on – it’s seemed longer. Well, he certainly puts his namesake to shame – Caligula reigned for about six months of sanity and then somewhat over three years of insanity. I guess when you only have episodes of six pages, you have to condense things. Although, technically, shouldn’t it be The Hundred Days the Law Died…

Also note the city wall – to keep Mega-City in rather than anyone out – with that huge lettering “you are being watched” which seems somewhat superfluous with the wall itself and all those aircraft.

Of course, being Cal, he’s not happy with things being too good for him either, as the voices in his head taunt him that the only way to go from perfection is down.

 

 

 

Now that Walter has retrieved one of Cal’s hypnotic Judge briefing tapes and sent it to them (by post!), the efforts of Dredd’s resistance to undo the subliminal programming becomes a desperate race against time as Cal’s insanity comes to a head and he sentences the whole city to death. You know, for the second time. This time, it’s because he wants to preserve the “perfection” of his city for posterity – and what says perfection better than nerve gas?:

“We can go out, citizens! We can end our lives in a glorious moment of sacrifice – and preserve our perfect city forever in its finest hour! To this end, nerve gas containers have been placed in every district. At noon tomorrow, I will personally press the button to release it!”

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 2

THE DAY THE LAW DIED 19-20

Dredd’s Army / The Final Prog? (progs 108-109)

 

The fall of Chief Judge Cal – figuratively and literally.

As the epic draws to its conclusion, Judge Dredd and his “band of rebels” race against time to substitute their briefing tape for the subliminal hypnotic tape Chief Judge Cal uses to control the Judges in Mega-City One. Racing against time, that is, as it is the dawn of Death Day – when Cal aims to preserve the perfection of ‘his’ city with nerve gas.

Their briefing tape succeeds in dispelling Cal’s hypnotic control over the Judges – with surprising ease given Dredd’s resistance only had a few days to work on it – but we’ll circle back to that. Even Cal’s Praetorian Guard of SJS judges and Klegg mercenaries abandon him, the latter attempting to surrender but Dredd is not inclined to take Klegg prisoners.

However, Cal flees to the iconic Statue of Judgement, where he holes up with the control device for the nerve gas canisters throughout the city, poised to exterminate Mega-City One.

And the epic draws to a close like a James Bond film, with the timer ticking down the doom of the city as Dredd and his colleagues race to Cal in the head of the Statue – “in five minutes, the nerve gas control becomes active!”

Unfortunately, while Dredd’s resistance has neutralized Cal’s hypnotic control of the Judges, in the actual presence of Cal it remains too powerful to resist – and presumably also because Dredd’s rebellion substituted one night’s tape as against months of Cal’s subliminal hypnotism. There – I told you we’d circle back to that. All seems lost as the other judges immobilize Dredd and his rebel judges with Cal’s finger at the button – when Fergee, gravely wounded but still alive after Cal shot him while charging at Cal, saves the day by grappling Cal and leaping over the railing, taking Cal (and the other judges who tried to intervene at Cal’s hypnotic command) with him. In his insanity, Cal proclaims that he can defy gravity by commanding it to stop, which works out for him (and everyone else falling with him) as well as you’d expect. Which is to say, not at all, as the tyrant falls to his well-deserved death.

 

 

And the last page wraps it all up with the aftermath of the end of Cal’s reign of terror – the last Kleggs are hunted down, memorial statues are erected to Fergee as savior of the city and a new Chief Judge is appointed. With respect to the last, the judges clamor for Dredd as Chief Judge but he characteristically refuses. Instead, he proposes the most senior judge amongst his rebel judges, Judge Griffin from the Academy of Law. Of course, Chief Judge tends to be an ill-fated position within Mega-City One, but Chief Judge Griffin doesn’t do too badly in the position in subsequent episodes. As for Judge Dredd, he returns to where he is needed the most – to the streets! Ah, you’re not fooling anyone, Dredd – we all know you just hate the paperwork and politics. And with that, the Day (or technically the Hundred Days) the Law Died is (are) over.

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 2:
THE CURSED EARTH (progs 61-85)

 

And here we are in Judge Dredd’s first true epic, The Cursed Earth – for which some of my favorite images come not from the original print in 2000 AD, but the Eagle Comics reprints with their cover art by Brian Bolland.

You may recall the Cursed Earth all the way back from progs 3-4, although it had yet to be christened the Cursed Earth and was simply described as the “wilderness from the Atomic Wars” – if by wilderness, of course, you mean most of the former United States (outside the mega-cities on East and West Coasts and in Texas), now dangerous and mutated badlands (with a running theme of dark, mutated versions of the United States). The Cursed Earth is downright drokking dangerous – mutants, aliens, ratnadoes, the last President of the United States, Las Vegas, war droids…and freaking dinosaurs!

The Cursed Earth combines the essential Judge Dredd epic plotlines – Dredd confronting some threat, often existential, to Mega-City One, and Dredd venturing to some other, often exotic, location, or a combination of the two, Dredd venturing to some other, often exotic, location TO confront some threat, often existential, to Mega-City One. The Cursed Earth epic is just that – except the existential threat is not to Mega-City One, but its West Coast counterpart of Mega-City Two. In this case, it is a deadly virus that turns people into murderous, cannibalistic psychopaths (not unlike Rage virus in the 28 Days Later film(s), or for that matter, the Chaos Bug that almost wiped out Mega-City One in subsequent issues).

And it doesn’t get more exotic, or downright weird, than the Cursed Earth – except perhaps for alien space (both of which we’ll get to visit in The Judge Child Quest epic).

As for the storyline, it is simple and straightforward, much like that in Mad Max Fury Road (which come to think of it, would make for an excellent Cursed Earth storyline – Judge Dredd and Mad Max are even owned by the same studios, hint hint) – all the better to let the SF future satire and absurdist black comedy play it out. Dredd has to drive through the Cursed Earth to take a vaccine to Mega-City Two. Of course, they, ahem, borrowed the storyline from Roger Zelazny’s Damnation Alley. I know it, you know it and they know it. Who cares? It was an SF classic – a former Hell’s Angel has to drive a vaccine from the West Coast to the East Coast in a post-apocalyptic United States after a nuclear war. Judge Dredd just goes in the opposite direction. He even takes his own former Hell’s Angel-style biker with him (by the name of Spikes Rotten).

In Damnation Alley, flight was simply not possible due to the freakish atmospheric conditions as a result of the nuclear war. In the world of Dredd, with its regular aircraft (and space flights!), this excuse doesn’t really seem to wash, although there is a passing reference to the Death Belt of floating (and radioactive) atmospheric debris – which doesn’t seem to recur after this epic. Hell – Mega-City One supersurfer Chopper later crosses the Cursed Earth on a hoverboard! The Cursed Earth storyline offers the flimsy excuse that the plague infectees have taken over the Mega-City Two airport(s?). Surely Mega-City One aircraft could simply land as near the city as possible? Or Mega-City could use drones or similar craft to land anywhere else within the city other than the airports? But again, who cares? Who wants to see Judge Dredd fly over the Cursed Earth? Of course, we want to see Dredd ride across it (in his special Killdozer vehicle) and fight dinosaurs. So strap yourself in for the ride…

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 2:
THE CURSED EARTH 1-2 –
FORBIDDEN FRUIT / INTO THE DARKNESS
(progs 61-62)

You gotta love that title spread!

Forbidden Fruit in prog 61 opens The Cursed Earth epic, setting up its premise. Mega-City Two – Mega-City One’s Californian counterpart on the Pacific coastline – has been stricken with plague. What exactly is this plague (as Red’s co-pilot asks him)? No boring flu or anything like that for Judge Dredd’s first epic – it’s akin to the Rage virus in the 28 Days Later film franchise, although its victims are marginally more intelligent and articulate, not quite the de facto zombies of that franchise. Apparently, “it’s a disease left over from the Great Germ War… you know, the one that came after the Atomic War”. Judge Dredd’s world tends to be post-post-apocalyptic. It’s a wonder that ANYONE is alive in the twenty-second century, let alone the hundreds of millions of people in Mega-City One.

Anyway, plague-infected citizens have taken over the airports of Mega-City Two, conveniently isolating it by air for the plot, and have been transformed them into bestial, crazed cannibals. The plague is virus strain “2T(FRU)T” – adopted by the plague-infected into the strange battle cry – “tooty fruity”. Fortunately, Mega-City One has a vaccine. Unfortunately, the only way to get it to Mega-City Two is by land across the Cursed Earth.

Into the Darkness in prog 62 sees Judge Dredd equipped with his vehicle for the mission – the Landraider / Killdozer. (It’s a dual vehicle). Three other judges and some war droids are to accompany him – but Dredd handpicks Spikes Rotten for the mission, a criminal invoking the Hell’s Angel biker protagonist from Damnation Alley, because of Spikes’ previous experience as a gun-runner in the Cursed Earth.

 

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 2:
THE CURSED EARTH 3-4 –
THE DEVIL’S LAPDOGS / KING RAT
(progs 63-64)

Ratnado!

That’s right, Sharknado – Judge Dredd did it first in The Cursed Earth.

And in progs 63-64, we get to our ‘ratnado’, a tornado of rats known as The Devil’s Lapdogs. After the Atomic Wars, “great winds swept the land” hurling the postwar flotsam and jetsam high into the sky, where it became the Death Belt, a vast belt of flying garbage where nothing could survive, except of course the rats. The mutated rats learnt to glide on the air currents, swooping down with the winds like locusts, particularly upon the poor Cursed Earth town of Deliverance.

Dredd beats the ratnado (by playing Pied Piper with his bike siren).

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 2:
THE CURSED EARTH 5-6 –
THE MUTIE MOUNTAINS / DARK AUTUMN (progs 65-66)

One of my favorite images (colorized from the original black and white art by Brian Bolland) from The Cursed Earth epic – mutant Mount Rushmore! The mutant head I can understand, but Jimmy Carter?! Naturally, 2000 AD couldn’t resist the joke at the expense of the American president at the time.

Judge Dredd hasn’t made it all the way to South Dakota – apparently the Mount Rushmore sculpture was moved to just outside Mega-City One, although I’m not sure for what purpose, as it’s still in The Cursed Earth.

Dredd tries to avoid “mutie country” but the mutant leader, Brother Morgar of the Brotherhood of Darkness – it’s his head in the mutated Mount Rushmore – has other plans. He sets off after Dredd, in a procession of vehicles salvaged together – not unlike Immortan Joe and his war boys in Mad Max: Fury Road. Indeed, Immortan Joe and his mutated warlord state would fit right in the Cursed Earth (and a cinematic crossover between Mad Max and Judge Dredd is entirely possible, not to mention totally awesome – albeit unlikely – as they are owned by the same studio) – or for that matter, it would only take a few cosmetic changes to reimagine Brother Morgar and his followers as Immortan Joe and his war boys (or vice versa).

Needless to say, it does not turn out well for Brother Morgar and his followers. Dredd initially has a mutant standoff in prog 65, by threatening to destroy Morgar’s mutant statue. Obviously he has a big head in more way than one and lets Dredd’s team go. Of course, the Brotherhood pursues Dredd’s party in prog 66 – but the latter are helped by a mutant youth named Novar with powerful psi abilities. He seems to be an all-round psi, at least with telepathy or some similar ability to divine Dredd’s mission of mercy (hence why he aids them) but also telekinesis which he uses to destroy the Brotherhood of Darkness. The episode concludes with a hint that Novar may have more of a role to play with respect to Judge Dredd…but we never see him again, as subsequent writers obviously just shelved or forgot about him.

 

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 2:
THE CURSED EARTH 7 –
NIGHT OF THE VAMPIRE (prog 67)

Dredd vs Dracula!

Well, not quite, although that would be awesome! As we will see in subsequent episodes, there are vampires in the Dreddverse, but they tend to be of alien or mutant origin. Here it’s something much more murderous – the last President of the United States, Robert Booth.

Well, technically the actual ‘vampire’ are a trio of malfunctioning medic robots maintaining him in suspended animation and draining the local Cursed Earth villagers of blood to do it.

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 2:
THE CURSED EARTH 8 –
THE SLEEPER AWAKES (prog 68)

And so we are introduced to President Booth (or “Bad Bob” Booth), a small but important part of the Dreddverse mythology. Some of you may have wondered how Mega-City One came to be governed by the Judges, given that its predecessor United States is not governed by Judges – unless the Judges of the Supreme Court were to start riding around on motorcycles dispensing justice with guns, which admittedly also sounds AWESOME! The answer lies with President Booth. Sorry to say it, but the Atomic Wars started with an American first strike – when President Booth pushed the button:

“My Fellow Americans – we stand on the brink of eternity! Foreign elements are at work in every corner of the globe, conspiring to do us down an’ to undermine our position as the richest, greediest nation on Earth. I have issued an ultimatum to world leaders – get off our backs an’ start playin’ ball or face annihilation, that ultimatum has now expired”.

Booth had deluded himself into believing that the American missile shields would protect the nation. Instead, they DID protect the coastal mega-cities, but the rest of the United States became, well, the Cursed Earth. In response (and in accordance with the surviving outraged public), the Judges – which had been created as the elite police force in the growing mega-cities – assumed control with their Declaration of Judgement, which is what we see in this episode (the backstory of the Atomic Wars was in subsequent episodes).

“Here is the Declaration of Judgement…for crimes against the American people, your presidency is at an end!”

President Booth was tried by a Grand Council of Judges and found guilty of war crimes – but the Judges hesitated to execute the last President of the United States. Instead, they sentenced him to a hundred years of suspended animation in Fort Knox – with three medic robots programmed to routinely check and change his blood.

Which of course brings us to the vampire robots – which Dredd has re-programmed to help work for the local farmers. As for Booth himself, Dredd commutes the sentence to life imprisonment, working alongside the robots to help the farmers bring life back to the Cursed Earth – “Every day, you’ll see the mess you made of America!”

The Declaration of Judgement was also captured in this Brian Bolland cover art for the Eagle comics of the second part of the Cursed Earth epic – flashing back to the Judges sentencing the last President of the United States.

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 2:
THE CURSED EARTH 9 –
THE SLAY RIDERS (Prog 69)

It’s about time we had Judge Dredd’s “I am the Law” – and more classic Brian Bolland art.

This episode sees a return to Brian Bolland’s fantastic art, but also the writer Pat Mills’ misanthropy – a characteristic theme in his writing in which he seems to prefer aliens, dinosaurs, robots and basically anything else to people. Mind you, the people in his stories generally have it coming.

And so we are introduced to one of the most noble characters in any Judge Dredd storyline, who is of course an alien – Tweak. Ironically, for an episode positively dripping in Mills’ misanthropy, it also portrays Judge Dredd at his noblest and most heroic, although Dredd was always something of an exception for Mill’s usual depiction of humanity.

The episode starts as Dredd’s party cross the Mississippi – “the once mighty river is still ablaze with petrol, foul-smelling pollutants, and nuclear wastes from the Great Atomic War…a torrent of fiery death”. To cross it, they take a ferry – drawn by alien slave labor. Aliens? In the Cursed Earth? The ferry operator explains that they were “specimens brought back by the starships…used to be kept on an alien nature reserve around here” – until the war. Hmm, sounds a little…contrived. Among them is Tweak, who resembles a bipedal rock-eating aardvark – and he senses in Dredd an exception to the rule that humanity has proved to him so far.

With regret that he must postpone action against the alien slave trade for his mission to Mega-City Two (but vowing to return to deal with it), Dredd and company continue on their mission.

However, the next day, they see Tweak, having eaten his way out of his cage last night, fleeing as a fugitive from a pack of ‘slay-riders’ – who are admittedly riding some pretty cool mutant, ah, horse-things. The slay-riders run down and net Tweak, who obviously calls out for help, even in his alien language. And Dredd of course responds to the call – “When someone calls on the Law for help, be he mutie, alien, cyborg or human, the Law cannot turn a blind eye! AND I AM THE LAW!”

As I said, the Cursed Earth epic portrays Judge Dredd at his noblest and most heroic. It is a pity that his catchphrase is not often shown at its more expansive, as it is here. Typically, Judge Dredd is cast as an authoritarian figure, often satirically so, with his catchphrase as a reinforcement of that. He certainly is an authoritarian figure, but much more nuanced than the simple satire of a police state – and, as here, his catchphrase is more than a statement of his authority, it is the embodiment of duty.

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 2:
THE CURSED EARTH 10 –
REQUIEM FOR AN ALIEN (Prog 70)

Dredd first rides out to rescue Tweak and confront the slay-riders, led by their Alien Catcher General – a figure with distinctive echoes not only of Confederate hunters of fugitive slaves, but also the Witchfinder Generals of witch hunts. Although ironically the Alien Catcher-General has either a mutation or a mask of the head of a goat – ironically, that is, because he resembles nothing so much as the demonic (or devilish) Sabbat Goat of witches’ sabbaths, the opposite of what you might expect for witchfinder generals or witch hunts. Given the slay-riders’ attitudes to aliens and the general human prejudice against mutants, I’d suspect a mask rather than a mutation. Although they don’t seem to have an issue with mutant steeds, here gloriously depicted by Brian Bolland.

Unfortunately, although Dredd and company defeat the slay riders (losing their second Judge, having lost the first to the Brotherhood of Darkness), Tweak has lost his family – his mate and two young children already killed by the slavers. Dredd and company follow him to their grave in a neighboring plantation. It moves Dredd to one of his rare demonstrations of emotion – “Tweak, ain’t much I can do to make amends, buddy…but you’re welcome to come with us – and I’m sorry”.

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 2:
THE CURSED EARTH 11-12 –
BURGER WARS (progs 71-72)

Burger Wars – Ronald McDonald vs Burger King!

Now we reach the point in Judge Dredd’s Cursed Earth epic where my Mega-City Law has a treat for you – the first of the episodes that were originally censored as a result of lawsuit against 2000 AD. I thought Judge Dredd was the Law?

Anyway, that changed in 2014 with a European directive on copyright law allowing the use of copyright protected characters for parody and 2000 AD’s publisher Rebellion Developments republished the suppressed episodes in a new edition of The Cursed Earth in 2016.

Anyway, Judge Dredd and biker companion Spikes scout out the land and find the oddly named town of In-Between, but they soon find out that the town is in between the two warring hamburger chains (or burger barons) – McDonalds to the north and Burger King to the south. Of course, they find this out when Spikes makes the nearly fatal faux pas of ordering a hamburger, offending the town’s neutral sensibilities as the last “free town” left and raising the suspicion that the outsiders are spies. However, this standoff is diverted when the two warring sides, led by figures costumed as their trademarks, descend upon the town (in pick-up trucks and vans), each claiming the town as their “customers”. Hmmm, one can see how this might have been controversial, although arguably also something of a backhanded compliment to the burger chains’ powers of endurance in a post-apocalyptic world.

Dredd and Spikes are captured by the overwhelming numbers of McDonalds’ men, while Ronald McDonald himself personally dispatches the Burger King – prompting the Burger King forces to retreat.

Ronald McDonald announces his vision of the future to the cheering crowds of McDonalds City – a dream in which he sees “every square inch of this fair land covered by one big McDonalds burger bar…everything that’s decent and American HAS BEEN WIPED OUT and in its place will stand McDonalds – one huge onion-spangled McDonalds, from sea to shining sea”. That ends his “speechifying” – he then pronounces the “burgers and shakes are on me!”

However, there’s a momentary blot on this vision as the crowds (and prisoners) gather in the burger bar, Ronald queries a staff member why a table hasn’t been wiped. When the staff member stammers he’ll attend to it now, Ronald guns him down – “We’ve got standards of cleanliness to maintain”. Hmm – I must admit I’m with Ronald on this one. I bet that would improve service standards considerably – and there’s nothing worse than an unwiped table.

Dredd remonstrates with Ronald McDonald about the purposelessness of burning the town – “You’ve won this ridiculous war! You killed the Burger King!”. However, Ronald McDonald counters that “they’ll just choose another one”, revealing that he and the Burger King are just titled positions – he inherited his own as his father ran “McDonalds in these parts” before the Atomic Wars, and he’s just carrying on the “family tradition”. Although in this case, the family tradition has turned into violent empire-building. Unfortunately for Dredd and Spikes, Ronald McDonald pronounces they’ll just have to remain McDonalds’ “customers” until the war is won – and that might take a while. After all, “this is big country – burger country!”

Dredd and Spikes soon manage to escape (and free other prisoners) by overwhelming their somewhat perfunctory two guards – “both fat and slow from too many takeaways”. They steal one of the McDonalds vehicles, but run into a herd of giant mutated cattle the size of elephants – hence all that beef for burgers. Their truck is overturned when a Burger King ambush drives a stampede of cattle directly at them. They are about to be lynched (as sentenced by a Burger King judge, strangely wearing an English judge’s wig), but are saved in the nick of time by the Land-Raider, guns blazing and commanded by Judge Jack. With that, they leave the Burger Wars behind them (never to be seen or heard from again in the comic) and resume their mission to save Mega-City Two.

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 2:
THE CURSED EARTH 13-16 –
SATANUS (progs 73-76)

Now for the main attraction of the Cursed Earth epic – Judge Dredd vs a tyrannosaurus rex!

And to celebrate, I couldn’t resist using the image of Satanus about to chow down on the bound Dredd from the Eagle reprint comics – which rivals that other Brian Bolland cover’s mutants as THE iconic image of the Cursed Earth epic. Indeed, it was my introduction to the epic, as I saw it as a ‘flashback’ poster in 2000 AD comics well before I read the epic itself, so I was left in suspense for years as to how Dredd escaped those gaping jaws.

So why are there dinosaurs roaming the Cursed Earth? Why the hell not? Everything’s better with dinosaurs! But seriously, Judge Dredd does Jurassic Park – or more precisely, since Judge Dredd did genetically engineered dinosaurs before Jurassic Park, Jurassic Park did Judge Dredd. Where’s the check, Jurassic Park?

Of course, another reason might be that Judge Dredd writer Pat Mills just wanted to shoehorn dinosaurs into the Cursed Earth epic from his beloved Flesh series – a series that started in the opening line-up in the very first issue of 2000 AD (preceding Judge Dredd itself, which only started in the second issue, albeit due to scheduling difficulties). That series had an intriguing premise – that the extinction of dinosaurs occurred because they were herded or hunted to extinction by time cowboys from the future, seeking to feed the meat-starved twenty-third century. Of course, being his usual misanthropic self, Mills tended to prefer the dinosaurs to people, with the occasional exception of characters who effectively went ‘dinosaur’ in any event.

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 2:
THE CURSED EARTH 13-14
THE COMING OF SATANUS / FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS (progs 73-74)

As for what dinosaurs are doing in the Cursed Earth, they are dinosaurs “from Dinosaur National Park, brought back to life by genetic engineering”, but “when the atomic war came, the dinosaurs must have been left free to roam”.

And eat sacrificial offerings from the Cursed Earth township of Repentance, which is how Dredd (and his companion Spikes) find themselves drugged and then bound to be eaten by the tyrannosaurus rex Satanus.

There – I’ve pretty much summed up those two episodes.

I mean, that’s almost literally Spike’s question to Dredd and Dredd’s reply as the Land-Raider gets caught up in a dinosaur stampede in The Coming of Satanus (prog 73)

The rest of the episode deals with the backstory of the re-gened dinosaurs in general and Satanus in particular, but you’ve seen Jurassic Park, haven’t you? It’s pretty much that…although Mills seems to write it almost as reincarnation, with memories of their former lives, particularly for Satanus, as one of the offspring of his tyrannosaur matriarch Old One Eye in the Flesh comic (and was killed by her when he challenged her for leadership of the herd of something). I’m…not sure DNA works that way.

Satanus is the first dinosaur created by the Jurassic Park re-gening process – and yes, they called him that, which seemed to be begging for trouble. And sure enough, he is vicious, with a particular taste for human flesh, even escaping into the mountains of the park where he remained at large – until I guess the Atomic Wars set all the dinosaurs free.

Anyway, the Land-Raider incurs damage to a track so Judge Dredd and his team seek assistance at the nearby town of Repentance. Interestingly, there’s a recurring folk horror vibe to the Cursed Earth, not just in this epic but in subsequent episodes – where towns lure passers-by in with an apparently wholesome friendly welcome, often dressed up in Americana, only for the sacrificial purpose of their dark secret. Indeed, this is the second time that folk horror vibe has played out in the epic – with Deliverance and the ratnado now essentially being replayed as Repentance and the tyrannosaur Satanus.

As Dredd said to Spikes at the end of episode The Coming of Satanus, “they’re too friendly”. And of course his “uneasy feeling” is right. Never ask for whom the bell tolls in the next episode of that title – it tolls for thee, Dredd! Well, more precisely, it tolls for Satanus as his dinner bell to come and eat Dredd, but you get the point.

 

 

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 2:
THE CURSED EARTH 15-16
PICNIC AT BLACK ROCK / BLACK SABBATH (progs 75-76)

Fortunately Dredd manages to use one of Satanus’ own teeth lodged in the rock from a previous sacrifice to saw through his bonds and escape. Satanus then rampages through the town of Repentance.

There – I’ve summarized the two episodes.

It’s a little more involved than that. Dredd has to do a little more than saw through his bonds, as Spikes is also bound as a sacrifice – and Satanus is leading a pack of tyrannosaurs to the feed. After escaping, he then cuts Spikes loose but is picked up by one of the tyrannosaurs. Spikes lobs a grenade (which he was wearing as earring) and a tyrannosaur snaps it up – killing that tyrannosaur and injuring Satanus with the shrapnel. The pack descends in a feeding frenzy on the headless tyrannosaur – which is when Dredd and Spikes are able to get away, making their way back to Repentance.

When they get there, the townspeople of course attack them – before the cavalry arrives in the form of Tweak driving the Land-Raider. In the meantime, Satanus is in a bad mood and decided that all deals are off with the township, attacking the jailhouse and everyone in it in a feeding frenzy, picking up the other surviving Judge on the mission, Judge Jack, in his claws.

Dredd is in his own bad mood, intending to use the Land-Raider to burn Satanus and the town to the ground – “Attention, people of Repentance! This is Judge Dredd! I am going to punish you for your crimes! You have five minutes to evacuate the town, before I raze Repentance to the ground!”

And you have to love that opening panel of prog 76, Black Sabbath – “The Devil Beast Triumphs!”.

But not for long – Dredd manages to save Judge Jack and also use the Land-Raider to raze both Repentance and Satanus – although unknown to Dredd, Satanus escaped death by falling through to the basement of the church in Repentance, emerging in an epilogue to the episode. As the epilogue intones, the world had not seen the last of Satanus. Well, Judge Dredd and Mega-City One had – except for his blood, as we’ll see – but Satanus was to cross over (by time travel) into another 2000 AD story…

 

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 2:
THE CURSED EARTH 19-20 –
LOSER’S LEAP / THE GOD JUDGE (progs 79-80)

(17-18 GIANTS AREN’T GENTLEMEN / SOUL FOOD progs 77-78)

Judge Dredd in Vegas!

After escaping the Cursed Earth tyrannosaur Satanus, Judge Dredd’s Cursed Earth epic finds itself back on track in Las Vegas. Well, Satanus and the Utah Dustbowl silliness in the following two episodes in progs 77-78 (Giants Aren’t Gentlemen & Soul Food). The latter were censored from the the original run because of its reference to Colonel Sanders and other trademark characters – but you’re not missing much, as they were a weird diversion without adding to the epic (and arguably detracting from it).

Anyway, when introduced in the Cursed Earth epic (in Loser’s Leap in prog 79), post-apocalyptic Las Vegas has metastasized into a city entirely based on gambling ruled by the Mafia. So…pretty much the same as PRE-apocalyptic Las Vegas, amirite? (Although I’m not sure how it works in the absence of any national or international tourism).

Judge Dredd and his crew are met with a “welcoming committee” in the form of old-style tanks attacking them. Dredd’s twenty-second century Land-Raider easily destroys the twentieth century tanks, but the numbered flag on each tank was a dead giveaway of their real purpose – they, like everything else in Las Vegas, were all part of a gambling game, much to the enthusiasm of the punters who bet on the “strangers”.

Dredd gets progressively more outraged as he explores the city, noting that Las Vegas has a judge-system and querying why it hasn’t intervened to halt the runaway gambling. (Although it makes me wonder more why the mega-cities, with their judge-systems, have had no contact with the judge-system in Las Vegas – particularly Mega-City Two on the West Coast, of which Vegas should effectively be part). As Dredd looks for the Vegas Judges, his outrage is complete when he happens on the Vegas Hall of Justice, housed in a casino, and sets upon it like Jesus Christ after the moneylenders in the Temple. There he finds the Vegas Judges – in uniforms of the same appearance as Mega-City Judges, but with dollar signs emblazoned on their chests, and with stereotypical Italian accents – operating the tables. Dredd demands to see the Chief Judge – and his request is corrected by Vegas Judges to refer to the God-Judge. Sigh.

Dredd assails the God-Judge as unfit for office but is overpowered by the Vegas Judge Fingers (obviously a mutant because of his giant size and extra fingers). And so Dredd finds himself poised over the precipice at Loser’s Leap because in post-apocalyptic Vegas, even death needs to have side-bets – a literal leap off one of the towering high-storied buildings, with target zones painted on the ground for onlooker bets as to the leapers’, ah, final destination.

After that literal cliffhanger, Dredd is fortunately saved in the next episode (The God-Judge in prog 80) by the intervention of Spikes with a (para)chute and they land a safe distance away from the target. (I hope the bookies offered odds on landing outside the target). More fortunately, they are rescued by the Vegas quasi-religious underground resistance, the League Against Gambling. Dredd is hailed by the League as their Savior, according to their book of prophecy (penned by their former leader) – “And lo – out of the east will come a man in black, his steed will be of iron and his anger will be like the roaring of demons. He will smite the chief evil-doer in his temple”. As Spikes jokes, “that’s you all over, Dreddy!”

And although he disclaims the prophecy, Dredd proceeds to fulfil it in his usual style and hands over the position of God-Judge to the leader of the League before resuming his mission to Mega-City Two. The League leader exclaims that Dredd’s memory will – “No one will forget the day Judge Dredd came to Vegas – and won!”

The house always wins, except against Judge Dredd.

Las Vegas was to recur on occasion in subsequent episodes or other stories set in the Dreddverse, when the action ventured far enough afield to it. Just don’t get too attached to the League, as the Mafia reclaim Vegas – or for that matter, just don’t get too attached to Vegas itself, as the writers presumably grew tired of its one-dimensional schtick. Being Vegas, it does go out in style – nuked by Judge Death. Yeah, the house doesn’t win against Judge Death either.

 

 

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 2:
THE CURSED EARTH 21-
TWEAK’S STORY (prog 81)

You have to love the opening panel of this episode, featuring the beleaguered Mega-City Two. I revisited this image during the Coronavirus pandemic in 2020, featuring as it does a welcome return of the art of Brian Bolland, 2000 AD’s best artist, and indeed one of my favorite opening spreads of the epic – “In plague-torn Mega-City Two, para-medic storm troopers fight a losing battle against the crazed victims of the disease”.

Paramedic storm troopers – now there’s a phrase you don’t hear every day. Or would want to. However, they certainly need it – and them – in Mega-City Two for those homicidal cannibalistic plague victims. At least, Coronavirus doesn’t turn people into crazed homicidal cannibals…yet. Pandemics have certainly played a major role in Judge Dredd’s history, not least the Chaos Bug that all but destroyed the city in the Day of Chaos epic. Mind you, it’s not the worst disease we’ll encounter in Judge Dredd – at least there’s a cure or vaccine, as opposed to Jigsaw Disease or Grubb’s Disease, although neither of those escalated into full-blown pandemic (in the case of Jigsaw Disease, because it is simply too alien and surreal). For that matter, this opening spread evokes some of the same frenetic violence by Mega-City citizenry as in Block Mania, the prelude to my favorite Judge Dredd epic of all time – The Apocalypse War.

I also love the bleak fatalism of the paramedic storm trooper team, as they are reduced to desperately firing off tranquilizer rounds (presumably gas) to hold the line – although their sergeant’s epithet for Mega-City One as “them yankees” doesn’t ring true. After all, this is West Coast Mega-City Two, not Texas City.

Sadly, we leave this intriguing opening spread behind as we continue with an interlude in The Curse Earth epic – but fortunately it’s the backstory of Dredd’s alien companion, Tweak, revealed to be highly intelligent and precognitive, as to how he ended up enslaved in the Cursed Earth. Long story short (and representative of writer Pat Mills’ characteristic misanthropy) – he’s a little like an alien space Jesus and humans are bastards.

 

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 2:
THE CURSED EARTH 22
TWEAK’S STORY (prog 82)

Just in case the whole Tweak as alien space Jesus wasn’t clear, his ‘crucifixion’ in Brian Bolland’s art in the opening panel should hammer it home – that and the tagline for the episode of alien messiah.

Essentially, Tweak has to play dumb to hide the intelligence of his species and avoid their exploitation by humans (as his species harvest gold and diamonds for food). Except of course HE continues to be exploited, first by the laboratory examination seen here, and then by his enslavement in the Cursed Earth, along with his mate and children (who were captured first, hence his heroic self-sacrifice to be with them in captivity).

One exception is Judge Dredd, who queries Tweak – “You sacrificed yourself and your family to save your planet – but what makes you think I won’t report the underground mineral farms on your planet – and a fleet of mining ships be sent out to tear your home apart?”

Tweak replies simply “I trust you, Judge Dredd”. Damn straight, Tweak, damn straight!

 

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 2:
THE CURSED EARTH 23-
LEGION OF THE DAMNED (progs 83)

Well, this is it – Judge Dredd’s Cursed Earth mission is in Death Valley and they can see the lights from Mega-City Two, just a few hours away. Dredd and his companions have survived mutants, slavers and even tyrannosaurs – surely there’s nothing between them and Mega-City Two now, right? Nothing, that is, except for a robot zombie apocalypse…

Or at least the robot equivalent of a zombie apocalypse – the remnants of war droids, mostly buried and dormant in the desert sand, but still functional and capable of being (re)activated.

War droids from what? The episodes expand upon the history of the Dreddverse and introduces the so-called Battle of Armageddon, in the form of Dredd paying his respects to the war memorial statue that honors the fallen Judges from the battle. Although…it seems to defeat the point of a war memorial statue. Mostly because no one would ever see it, given that Death Valley is in the Cursed Earth (and an unpopulated part at that), but also because the war is still going on around it, given that there are still functioning war droids in the location. As Dredd makes clear, the robot army was the only remaining military force loyal to President Booth. Remember him? The “vampire” back in Kentucky – the last President of the United States, who started the Atomic Wars, and from whom the Judges took control, with the Declaration of Judgement? Although it’s not clear why or to what purpose the battle was fought in Death Valley. Anyway, the Battle of Armageddon, was the Judges’ victory over Booth’s robot troopers (“the Judges had to crush them here in Death Valley”) – but one would have thought that victory involved, you know, not leaving active war robots behind on the battlefield. I mean, someone should have done something about that…

Judge Dredd intones that “it was the most savage battle of modern times…worse even than El Alamein, Iwo Jima and Stalingrad” – which seems to be a bit of hyperbole on his part, particularly as he adds that “one hundred thousand Judges and mega-troopers” (presumably a reference to Mega-City troopers fighting for the Judges) “lost their lives fighting for justice”. Sorry, Judge Dredd – it may have been worse than El Alamein or Iwo Jima, but Stalingrad was fought for over five months by over two million men with close to a million lives lost on both sides (not including wounded or captured). And there are other battles, not least in the world wars, that had over one hundred thousand lives lost – although perhaps not so many robots.

Even as Dredd is paying his respects, a robot trooper general – essentially a robot General Patton in the literal form of a tank (and similarly nicknamed with a robot pun twist “General Blood-and-Nuts”) exhorts the remaining robot troopers to resume the battle against the incoming Mega-City Judges. And despite some insubordinate protests that they’re “cosy in the dirt” and “the war’s over”, the robot troopers rise to the occasion – literally, like any good zombie apocalypse, rising from the ground.

The reactivated robot troopers attack Dredd’s party. The only other surviving Judge, Judge Jack – obviously traumatized by almost being eaten by Satanus – cracks and deserts, detaching the Kill-dozer from the vaccine car of the Land-Raider and attempting to surrender. Of course, the robots simply gun him down. Fortunately, the three remaining members of the mission – Dredd, Spikes and Tweak – manage to retreat to an old Spanish fort, where they are besieged by the robots.

 

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 2:
THE CURSED EARTH 24 –
JUDGE DREDD’S LAST STAND (prog 84)

Besieged by the army of the robot zombie apocalypse, Judge Dredd’s Cursed Earth mission comes right down to the wire, before an incoming sandstorm and a heroic sacrifice by a mortally wounded Spikes (equivalent to that of the Hells Angel protagonist in Damnation Alley) allows Dredd and alien Tweak to escape – barely. Each sets off with a pack of vaccine to travel on foot “sixty miles across the Mojave Desert to Mega-City Two”.

Indeed, you could say Spikes made two heroic self-sacrifices, in the last moments of his life and also in death – as Dredd dresses up the deceased Spikes in a Judge’s uniform and places him on the Lawmaster as a decoy to fool the robots into thinking he’s dead. For good measure, Dredd also programs the bike – and the accompanying vaccine car, having extracted two packs of vaccine for himself and Tweak to carry – to detonate. The robots are fooled into believing Dredd dead – and Dredd gives a eulogy for Spikes. “So long, Spikes, you were more than just a punk…you were…the greatest punk of all time!”.

Brian Bolland cover art for one of the issues of the Eagle comics reprint of The Cursed Earth epic depicted the charge of the Spikes brigade in all its glory.

 

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 2:
THE CURSED EARTH 25 –
THE BIG KISS-OFF (prog 85)

This is it – the finale of Judge Dredd’s Cursed Earth epic, with its iconic cover from the original comic (included in the collected edition) and its raw image of Dredd, close to breaking but yet unbroken, shouting his defiance to the Cursed Earth. Even if his eagle shoulder pad is so mangled that it looks like a dead chicken.

And so the Cursed Earth epic is akin to the Odyssey of Judge Dredd (whereas the Apocalypse War – or perhaps The Day the Law Died – would be his Iliad). Like Odysseus, Dredd embarks on a picaresque journey, albeit for a higher mission than Odysseus’ royal homecoming, and ends up in similar circumstances at the end of that journey – Odysseus was stripped of his ships, his men and even his clothes as he was washed up naked on the shore. The Cursed Earth epic doesn’t quite go that far – but Dredd otherwise ends up alone in the Californian desert (having been separated from Tweak in the sandstorm), his uniform in tatters, walking and ultimately crawling his way to Mega-City Two, pursued by some more revived robot troopers, also crawling from lack of power (and maintenance).

Finally, he crawls to an access point in Mega-City Two, itself a city on the verge of death – “Mega-City Two, where the neon lights had gone out…a city waiting to die. Luckily, that access point happens to be in one of the parts still safe from the plague – and they escort him inside.

Eight hours later, he’s recovered (while the city has feverishly processed the vaccine to save itself) and learns that Tweak also made it through – with the other vaccine pack. You see what I mean about Tweak as one of the noblest characters in any Judge Dredd storyline? All to save a city in a world whose inhabitants have brought him nothing but pain and sorrow (not to mention menaced his home planet) – even if his motives were mixed between alien altruism and loyalty to Judge Dredd. Dredd is reunited with Tweak some weeks later (Mega-City Two has assumed Tweak was Dredd’s “pet”) – Dredd offers for the world to know of Tweak’s heroism, but Tweak wants his people to remain secret and only to return home. And so Dredd sees Tweak off at the re-opened Los Angeles space port – before himself departing for Mega-City One, hoping for “a little peace and quiet”. After all, nothing could be worse than the Cursed Earth?

Yeah, good luck with that – as Dredd heads straight back into his next epic, The Day the Law Died…

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 2
Mega-City One 2100-2101
(1978-1979: progs 61-115)

Judge Dredd gets epic!

Judge Dredd: Complete Case Files Volume 2 essentially consists of the back-to-back Dredd epics, The Cursed Earth (progs 61-85) and The Day the Law Died (progs 86-108).

I consider these two epics to be Dredd’s first true epics – and more fundamentally, where the Judge Dredd comic came of age. This is classic Dredd.

Of course, the two epics had their precursors in the two longer story arcs (or mini-epics) of Volume 1 – The Cursed Earth in Luna-1 and The Day the Law Died in Robot Wars. Each of the epics (and their precursors) respectively set up the essential Judge Dredd epic plotlines – Dredd confronting some threat, usually existential, to Mega-City One (Robot Wars, The Day the Law Died), and Dredd venturing to some other, usually exotic, location (Luna-1, The Cursed Earth), or a combination of the two, Dredd venturing to some other, usually exotic, location TO confront some threat, usually existential, to Mega-City One (arguably The Cursed Earth, although it involved an existential threat to Mega-City Two, at least in the immediate sense).

Yes – there’s a few episodes at the end of Case Files 2 which serve as something of an epilogue to the epics, particularly Punks Rule as an epilogue to The Day the Law Died. It also effectively replays the very first episode with Dredd taking on the punk street gang that has arisen as a law unto themselves – with Dredd’s characteristic schtick of taking them on alone, to restore the authority of Justice Department that had lapsed in The Day the Law Died.

Otherwise, Case Files 2 is almost entirely the two epics – each of which deserve its own consideration in depth.

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 1
Mega-City One 2099-2100
(1977-1978 progs 2-60)

 

In the beginning was the Law, and the Law was with Dredd, and the Law was Dredd.

This is where we go back to the beginning, the very first episodes of Judge Dredd. For these and indeed all subsequent episodes, I’ll be referring to the collected editions of Judge Dredd in the Complete Case Files. Of course, in this case, I’ll be referring to Volume 1, which collected 2000AD ‘progs’ 2-60, or the year 2099-2100 in Judge Dredd’s storyline. (Remember in Judge Dredd that each year in real time equates to a year in story time, which is something of a rarity in comics).

And while Judge Dredd was the Law from the outset, it took some time for Dredd as well as his setting (Mega-City One) and his story to find their more definitive forms subsequent fans would recognize, with some story elements – particularly the setting of Mega-City One – taking until Volume 3 to do so.

Volume 1, as the first year of publication – reflected the usual concerns for longevity of a series in an anthology comic. However, Judge Dredd proved an enduring hit with fans from the outset, such that his story-line could feature its first extended story arc or ‘mini-epic’, The Robot Wars, from its ninth episode (or ‘prog’ in 2000 AD’s lingo) and finish its inaugural year of publication with its second extended story arc or mini-epic, Luna.

However, despite its exploratory nature, a surprising number of iconic elements were introduced in and endured from the episodes in Volume 1.

For one thing, there’s those two story arcs or mini-epics, The Robot Wars and Luna, which not only had narrative elements recurring in later storylines, but also laid the foundations for the first genuine and archetypal Dredd epics in Volume 2, The Day the Law Died and The Cursed Earth.

For another – there’s major narrative elements such as the Cursed Earth (although not christened as such until the epic of that name) and its mutant population, the Statue of Justice (towering over the Statue of Liberty), the unseen face of Dredd beneath his helmet, Walter the Wobot, the yet unnamed Lawgiver guns the Judges use, the yet unnamed Lawmaster motorbikes the Judges use, Max Normal, Judge Giant, the Department of Justice (with its Hall of Justice and Academy of Law), Rico Dredd, the Undercity, the apes of Mega-City One, American lunar colonies, and the Soviet or Sov Judges.

As well as more minor ones like face-changing machines, the precursor of the invariably disastrous consumer fads that sweep Mega-City One and riot foam (one of my personal favorites).

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 1:
WHITEY (prog 2)

 

This is where it all began…

The very first episode of Judge Dredd – which was ironically in the second episode or so-called ‘prog’ of 2000 AD, because they couldn’t get their act together sooner.

It’s a solid introduction to Dredd and his world, not dazzling or thrilling perhaps, but solid enough to lay the groundwork for an enduring series. As a necessity for a strip of 5 pages (2000 AD is an anthology comic, typically of 5 stories or so), the plot is pared right down – to the classic storyline of Dredd rooting out criminals or perps from a building. Of course, a pared down plot works to its advantage, particularly for an introductory story. One might note that this was essentially the plot to the 2012 Dredd movie, a primary reason why it captured the essence of the comic much more effectively than the 1995 Judge Dredd movie with its convoluted storyline unsuccessfully trying to insert too many elements from the comic for its own good.

Of course, that plot is ultimately the essence of any Dredd story and indeed his character – apprehending perps. It’s his job after all. The introductory episode also has the essence of the Dredd mythos – a futuristic Dirty Harry in a dystopian satire, although the emphasis in this episode is on the former rather than the latter. Indeed, there are some missteps here – Dredd’s setting is introduced as New York 2099 AD! As corrected by the next story, New York is effectively part of Mega-City One, as it and other cities have been absorbed into the latter as it sprawled along the American eastern seaboard. In this episode, it is not yet clearly post-apocalyptic or even particularly dystopian – “huge star-scrapers soar miles high into the air”, literally overshadowing buildings like the Empire State Building, which have become part of a literal and metaphorical underworld, fallen into ruin and used as hideouts by “vicious criminals”.

The first Judge we see is not THE Judge, Dredd himself, but the short-lived Judge Alvin, in the distinctive uniform (resembling motorcycle leathers) on the equally distinctive motorcycle (not yet named Lawmasters, but recognizably so).

Anyway, the leader of the Empire State Building criminals, ‘Whitey’, kills the patrolling Judge Alvin with his “laser cannon”. Interestingly enough, the Judges themselves don’t use lasers but guns (named Lawgivers of course) and bullets, albeit more advanced guns and bullets (with the latter more as miniature missiles). Whitey scavenges the helmet from the fallen Judge’s uniform, mockingly declaring himself as Judge Whitey – although he and his gang are disappointed that it isn’t THE Judge, Judge Dredd, who is apparently already notorious as the embodiment of the Law and the “toughest of the judges”.

Whitey taunts the Judges – sending the motorcycle with Judge Alvin’s body chained to it and a note “WHO YOU GONNA SEND AGAINST ME NOW PUNKS, JUDGE WHITEY”. Well, we all know the answer to that question. The Chief Judge initially wants the “air squad” to raze the building to the ground, but Judge Dredd suggests that they should send a solitary Judge to apprehend the Empire State Building gang, to reinforce respect for the Law – as later episodes will disclose, this is a recurring thing for Dredd and he does it again and again. Of course, when that one Judge is Judge Dredd, it’s all over but the shooting – using his automated bike as a distraction, Dredd successfully surprises and outshoots the gang, with the “lightning reflexes” from his training.

And here we have our dose of future satire, as Judge Dredd sentences the captured Whitey to life imprisonment as a Judge killer – on Devil’s Island, which spooks even Whitey into begging for mercy. Devil’s Island turns out to be a traffic island at the center of a highway network, cut off by the automated trucks that drive by it non-stop at 200 miles per hour, and prisoners are ‘marooned’ on it. J.G. Ballard had a similar story of people marooned on a traffic island in his story The Concrete Island. A satirical touch, but one that doesn’t seem to be practically effective – for one thing, it seems that prisoners might escape by throwing something (weaker prisoners for example) to cause some sort of pileup or awaiting breakdown. As it turns out, it isn’t secure as Whitey subsequently escapes – and future storylines abandon it for dependable iso-cubes and penal colonies, most notoriously the space penal colony on Jupiter’s moon Titan for Judges gone bad.

And yes – my feature image is actually Brian Bolland’s cover art for the first issue of the Eagle reprint comics.

Also yes – it did not actually reprint the first issues from the original 2000 AD episodes. Fortunately, it does reprint Punks Rule, that epilogue to The Day the Law Died and the basis for the cover art – which is also not dissimilar in its plot device of Dredd’s recurring schtick to suggest for a solitary Judge, himself of course, to take out dangerous gangs to reinforce respect for the Law.

However, this cover art is such an iconic image of Dredd that I have to feature it upfront with Case Files 1.

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 1:
KRONG (prog 5)
The New You / The Brotherhood of Darkness (progs 3-4)

 

Funnily enough the next Brian Bolland cover art for the Eagle Comics reprint in order of the original episodes was issue 34, which flashed back to the fifth episode, featuring a robotic King Kong knockoff known as Krong in an episode of that name. The episode is…not as exciting as it sounds and sadly did not feature Dredd arresting Krong as in the cover art. Instead Krong was used as the instrument of crime (to destroy a building) by a museum curator of special effects.

And there were some iconic features of Mega-City One introduced even as early as progs 3 and 4. Face-changing machines – seemingly a common and easy form of cosmetic surgery – were introduced in episode 3, The New You. Mutants and “the wilderness from the Atomic Wars” – yet to be named the Cursed Earth – were introduced in prog 4 The Brotherhood of Darkness. They would subsequently reprise their role as antagonists to Dredd in The Cursed Earth epic in Case File 2.

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 1:
THE STATUE OF JUDGEMENT (prog 7)
Frankenstein 2 / Antique Car Heist (progs 6 & 8)

 

Possibly the most iconic feature of Mega-City One – this landmark feature of Mega-City One introduced in prog 7 named for it, the newly constructed Statue of Judgement – the gigantic statue of a Judge that towers over the neighboring Statue of Liberty.

Prog 6 “Frankenstein 2” sadly does not quite recreate the story of Frankenstein but involves the theft of bodies for illegal transplant surgery.

Prog 8 “Antique Car Theft” involved the not so interesting premise of 20th century petrol-fuelled cars being valuable antiques. The more interesting premise was almost a throwaway gag – the rare occasion of Dredd taking off his helmet (at gunpoint). We don’t see his face but the perps do and it’s apparently so horrifying that it shocks them enough Dredd has time to pull his Lawgiver out to shoot them. Although we have never seen Dredd’s face – ever – in the comic (well, except unrecognizably as the Dead Man), they did seem to abandon his hideousness as a plot point and it became more a matter of his mystique. And while we haven’t seen his face, we have seen that of his clone-father Fargo which didn’t have any such issue.

 

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 1:
ROBOT WARS (progs 9-17)

 

The Robot Wars was the first Judge Dredd ‘epic’ – or more precisely longer story arc, since 10 episodes hardly seems to count as an epic, although Dredd’s first longer story arc saw it come of age as an enduring series.

And yet…meh, it’s okay. Of course, it is at a disadvantage as I was introduced to Judge Dredd by the Apocalypse War epic (and its Block Mania prelude), still my personal favorite Dredd epic. For that matter, I still consider Dredd’s first true epics and coming of age to be the back-to-back storylines of The Cursed Earth and The Day the Law Died – which feature in (and essentially comprise) Volume 2 of the Complete Case Files.

So The Robot Wars pales in comparison. It seems a little…contrived or even heavy-handed at times. Of course I can hear you exclaim – O Stark After Dark, isn’t being heavy-handed one of the fundamental characteristics of Judge Dredd? True – but that heavy-handedness is usually leavened by or indeed part of its absurdist humor, black comedy or satire. The Robot Wars still has some of those qualities, but the balance of them just doesn’t seem (or hasn’t had time to develop to be) as effective as in subsequent epics or episodes.

The Robot Wars also covers the familiar SF territory of, well, a robot war – although perhaps not as familiar at the time of its publication prior to the Terminator and Matrix films. In this case, the robot war is led by messianic carpenter robot (oho!) Call-Me-Kenneth, although ‘he’ turns out to be closer to robo-Hitler. Indeed, he announces himself to be a fan of Adolf Hitler, which begs the question – who programmed that into him?! There are some discordant notes – the robots are likened to slaves for the Mega-City populace to live lives of ease. However, subsequent storylines show quite the opposite, that automation and robots have resulted in unemployment variously stated but at least 90% – with the overwhelming majority of the Mega-City population living lives of crime, drudgery and welfare dependency.

Of course, having previously been introduced to mutants, The Robot Wars introduces us to another of the most recurring SF tropes and equally problematic themes for Judge Dredd, Mega-City’s robot ‘population’. (Mutants, robots and aliens are the big three SF tropes – and themes – for Judge Dredd). The relationship between robots and Mega-City’s human population in general – and its human Judges in particular – will be almost as problematic as Mega-City’s relationship with the mutant population of the former United States. And just as with mutants, Mega-City should seem to adopt a more nuanced approach to its robot population. If its robots do have genuine artificial intelligence (as they often seem to do), shouldn’t they be afforded citizenship status – or at least some legal status or protection? Indeed, its robot population generally seem to be more law-abiding and more observant of others, human or robot, than its human population. Once again, Judge Dredd seems to be more sensitive to this issue than his fellow Judges, although not quite as charitably as he is towards mutants.

 

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 1:
ROBOT WARS (prog 9-17)

 

The Robot Wars story arc also introduced recurring character Walter the Wobot, so-called because he lisped his R’s as W’s – a loyalist robot crucial to Dredd’s victory over the robot rebellion and rewarded with full citizenship as a result (as seen in the final episode here), although he chose to become Dredd’s robot servant (and fanboy).

I also include this image as part of a running theme equivalent to a drinking game for a title drop in a film – spotting the image used for Dredd on the Case Files cover and he was certainly striking a pose here.

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 1:
BRAINBLOOMS (prog 18)

 

Brainblooms in prog 18 might seem a strange episode to single out for attention, but for one thing – the introduction of one of my favorite features of Mega-City One commonly used by the Judges against its unruly citizens, riot foam!

A sprayed foam that hardens like concrete almost instantaneously, encasing those rioting citizens within it. Hopefully it’s porous so people can breathe – or the Judges have damn good aim. I seem to recall that Justice Department has a solvent for it – either that or they just chip away at it the good old-fashioned way to extract those rioters.

Here they use it for the titular brainblooms, some sort of illegal alien or mutant plant that their owner uses to hypnotize Dredd. It doesn’t take – and he’s back with the riot foam to use on the plants. The brainblooms may also count as a proto-fad – a theme we’ll see a lot more of with the bizarre future fads among Mega-City citizens.

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 1:
THE COMIC PUSHER (prog 20)
Mugger’s Moon (prog 19)

 

Literally introducing Max Normal – “It’s Max Normal, the pinstripe freak. One of my informers…”

The “pinstripe freak” – so-called because he wears pinstripe suits and sports twentieth-century fashion or style as part of the ‘normals’ fad which he led, as opposed to the usual punk biker or skater chic of the majority of Mega-City One, including the Judges with their uniforms.

“Stomm! It make me sick just to look at you, Max. Why don’t you grow your hair and get some decent wild clothes like everyone else? Why have you young people always gotta be different?”

Not that we learn it here but in subsequent episodes we learn Max is one of the 1% – the wealthy of Mega-City One. Not mega-corporation billionaire wealthy or anything like that, but at least millionaire wealthy – through his normals fad but probably more through being a champion player of shuggy, Mega-City One’s weird variant of pool.

Also an interesting sight into Justice Department resembling the East German Stasi, with its cohort of civilian informers. In this episode, what Max informs on to Dredd is the titular illegal comic pusher – and of course the comic that is being pushed is 2000 AD, a nice little plug for the Dredd’s own comic – “2000 AD – the famous comic from the twentieth century. Brilliant!” and “Fantastic stuff! No wonder those lawbreakers were charging a fortune for it!”. Although it’s not entirely clear why the comic is illegal in-universe…

Oh – and Mugger’s Moon in the preceding prog 19 is a somewhat bland episode featuring muggers. It also features Mega-City One apparently having no air pollution (from a combination of Clean Air Acts and technology) – I can’t recall that popping up again, although I do recall radiation warnings from time to time. Also Mega-City One apparently has no Good Samaritan-type laws, so Dredd has to deal with a callous motorist who failed to render assistance to a mugging victim on a technicality. That does surprise me – later episodes would certainly feature criminal penalties for failing to inform the Judges about a crime, even as a bystander, which would seem to have applied in this episode so Dredd need not have relied on that technicality.

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 1:
THE ACADEMY OF LAW 1 (prog 27)
The Solar Sniper (prog 21)
Mr Buzzz (prog 22)
Smoker’s Crime (prog 23)
The Wreath Murders (prog 24)
You Bet Your Life (prog 25)
Dream Palace (prog 26)

 

Introducing the Academy of Law – where all Mega-City One Judges receive their training as cadets or rookies (from early childhood) – here we see Dredd checking out his honor roll class of 2079 (twenty years earlier than 2099, the year of this episode in-universe).

Other episodes I skipped over to get here
• The Solar Sniper (prog 21). Pretty much what it says on the tin – a hitman using a solar-powered super-rifle to take out Judges. Introducing Mega-City One’s Weather Control (which Dredd uses for clouds to beat the sniper) – in a distressingly landbound building (and called Weather Congress), not the aerial station we see in subsequent episodes
• Mr Buzzz (prog 22) – a mutant perp that uses bat-like sonar
• Smoker’s Crime (prog 23) – introduces smokatoriums as smoking is illegal on streets. Later episodes would outlaw tobacco altogether (presumably leaving a synthetic tobacco as legal)
• The Wreath Murders (prog 24) – Dredd apprehends a street murder gang that uses wreaths as their calling card
• You Bet Your Life (prog 25) – Dredd apprehends a deadly underground game show. It’s rigged of course
• Dream Palace (prog 26) – features dream machines as a popular leisure activity in Mega-City One, sadly never to be featured again. There goes my Total Recall Judge Dredd crossover…

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 1:
THE ACADEMY OF LAW 2 (prog 28)

 

Introducing Judge Giant – one of coolest characters in the Judge Dredd universe and one of the most popular recurring judges, other than Dredd himself.

Yes – he was introduced in the previous episode, but as a cadet rather than as a Judge (graduating from rookie in my featured image).

And although he was to be killed five years on, he effectively came back in new and improved form through his son (from an extra-Judicial liaison).

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 1:
THE RETURN OF RICO (Prog 30)
The Neon Knights (prog 29)

 

“He ain’t heavy – he’s my brother!”

Introducing (and concluding) Dredd’s corrupt clone-brother, Rico Dredd (prog 30). Caught by (Joe) Dredd himself and sentenced to Titan, where Mega-City One sends its worst criminals – Judges gone bad. It’s not as secure as you’d expect for a prison in space – as there’s frequent escapes, including Rico – returning for vengeance on his brother, but outgunned by the latter. However, he remains a fundamental element in the Dredd mythos thereafter – to an extent, Dredd will always carry his clone brother with him.

For one thing, as subsequent episodes reveal, Rico had a daughter, Vienna Dredd, who grows up as Dredd’s niece – and given that Rico was his clone, Vienna is virtually his own daughter. She of course symbolizes Rico’s original corruption – as, like Jedi, Judges are forbidden from sexual relationships (although this is relaxed much later in the series, while still frowned upon by the Justice Department). Dredd distances himself from her, but subsequently assumes a closer paternal role to her – as she in turn grows into one of the strong female characters of the storyline.

For another, Dredd – and his story – remains haunted by this taint in the (clone) bloodline – with Rico as his shadow, the potential corrupt version of himself, and on a larger scale, the Department of Justice. Indeed, Dredd’s best adversaries are dark shadows of himself (and the Judges in general), as symbolized by Rico – although Rico remains as more a symbol of Dredd’s own potential for inner conflict. However, Rico foreshadowed even darker inversions of Judge Dredd and the Law to come, culminating in Dredd’s ultimate adversary – Judge Death and the Dark Judges. Whereas Rico was the corrupt shadow of Dredd, Judge Death is his absolute dark inversion. Rico at least was tempered by his own humanity and corruption. Judge Death and the Dark Judges are utterly inhuman and zealous to their Law, in which the crime is life and the sentence is death.

The previous episode, The Neon Knights, in prog 29 essentially involved the titular Ku Klux Klan analogy – even referred to as one of a number of secret vigilante klans – targeting robots in the wake of the Robot Wars. There’s a twist in the tale as their leader is revealed as a secret cyborg.

 

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 1:
DEVIL’S ISLAND (prog 31)

 

And we return not only to Whitey, the first perp we ever saw Dredd apprehend – and show us how dangerous he really was – but also to Devil’s Island, that weird traffic island prison they phased out for proper iso-cubes.

As I said back for prog 3, nice satire a la J. G. Ballard’s The Concrete Island, but one that didn’t seem to be practically effective, as an escape simply relied on disrupting traffic. Which Whitey does here by enlisting another prisoner to jury-rig a device to hack into Mega-City One’s weather control for a snowstorm – although that just raises more questions.

Fortunately Dredd’s in the vicinity at the time and just apprehends him again, returning him to Devil’s Island. Which again raises more questions, given how Whitey just orchestrated an escape from there – within the same year he was apprehended. No wonder they phased it out for iso-cubes.

 

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 1:
THE TROGGIES (prog 36-37)
Komputel (prog 32)
Walter’s Secret Job (prog 33)
Mutie the Pig (progs 34-35)

 

Introducing the Under-City, a setting (and inhabitants) almost as full of weirdness as the Cursed Earth – indeed, essentially the Cursed Earth under Mega-City One – albeit not quite as we know it.

It wasn’t quite introduced in the same subterranean form it evolved into in subsequent episodes. Here it is simply referred to as the underworld, consisting of an old network of subway stations – and Dredd appears to be surprised by it (whereas in much more recent episodes we’ve seen him and Rico venture into it as cadets).

Here the inhabitants – the titular troggies – seem to copy twentieth century clothing and slang, the latter to a cloying extent. Again, this was dropped as the Under-City dwellers evolved more into weird or semi-mutated inhabitants similar to those in the Cursed Earth – although the Under-City itself often contained relics of the twentieth century cities. Like New New York in Futurama, Mega-City One often did not simply grow out of the existing cities on the eastern US seaboard but over them.

As for the other episodes, we skipped:
• Komputel (prog 32) – Judge Dredd deals with an automated hotel that has become murderous. Have they learnt nothing from the Robot Wars?! Also hotels seem somewhat anomalous to the dystopian setting MC-1 we know
• Walter’s Secret Job (prog 33) – more early instalment weirdness as Walter the Wobot moonlights (from being Dredd’s robot servant) as a taxi driver. The weirdness is Dredd referring to Walter taking the job from human drivers – where in the Mega-City One we know, automation or robots have taken virtually all jobs. Also, why don’t they just automate the cab rather than have a robot driver?
• Mutie the Pig (progs 34-35). More moonlighting, but this time a crooked Judge – a classmate of Dredd, no less, named for the artist Ian Gibson – moonlights as a perp with a mutant mask.

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 1:
THE APE GANG (Prog 39)
Billy Jones (prog 38)

 

City of the Apes!

My disappointment is immeasurable that the Judge Dredd comic didn’t go with that title. I would also have taken the Apes of Wrath.

Apes are a surprisingly prevalent trope in SF and the Judge Dredd comic is no exception – so much so that it is one of the thematic special mentions to my top ten Judge Dredd episodes and epics. Apes have been used to echo human nature in literature long predating SF, but SF offered a new spin – ‘uplift’ apes. That is, apes ‘uplifted’ through human technological enhancement to a higher level of intelligence, even rivaling humanity.

The world of Judge Dredd is no planet of apes – nor is Mega-City One a city of apes – but there are uplift apes, introduced here in one of the earliest episodes of Judge Dredd no less. Unfortunately, they were introduced as living in a ghetto dubbed the Jungle, which smacks of, ah, apist stereotypes. Perhaps even more unfortunately, they were also introduced through the so-called Ape Gang, an ape criminal gang that styled itself on equally stereotypical Italian-American 1930’s mobsters (headed by Don Uggie Apelino with his lieutenants Fast Eeek and Joe Bananas).

Of course, the Ape Gang did not prosper when it went head-to-head with Dredd – and for that matter the Jungle was destroyed during the Apocalypse War. However, uplift apes did survive in Mega-City One, occasionally popping up when the writers remember them – and fortunately as more engaging characters to rival their human citizen counterparts.

As for the episode we jumped over:
• Billy Jones in prog 38 featured the premise of a Mega-City trillionaire, transparently named Hugh Howards, and his criminal plot to substitute duplicate robot spies for the children of owners of rival companies…as industrial espionage? Ah – as a trillionaire, does he really need to resort to such shenanigans, and even if he did, surely there is a more legitimate and profitable way to spend his money achieving it, not to mention a more practical means of industrial espionage ? I do like the way the episode features Mega-City One using Dredd as a boogeyman to scare their kids into being good…

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 1:
THE MEGA-CITY 5000 (progs 40-41)

 

Judge Dredd does Death Race!

Largely unexceptional (and little odd in Mega-City One itself – more Mad Max than Judge Dredd) but for two things.

It was the first appearance of Brian Bolland’s art in the Judge Dredd comic – and it introduced “Spikes” Harvey Rotten, albeit very different in appearance than we saw him next in The Cursed Earth (although I understand that might have been due to an accidental art mix-up between him and another character in the Mega-City 5000).

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 1:
LUNA 1 (progs 42-58)

 

“By order of the Triumvirate, you are hereby appointed to the office of Judge-Marshall of Luna1, the United Cities of North America Colony on the Moon. You are instructed to seek immediate passage on the first available lunar shuttle”.

And so begins Luna-1, another Judge Dredd ‘mini-epic’ or longer story arc – the second after The Robot Wars and just prior to the first true (and classic) Dredd epics, The Cursed Earth and The Day the Law Died. Longer than the Robot Wars (at 17 episodes), but like The Robot Wars before it, it was formative of subsequent Dredd epics. Indeed, the two of them respectively set up the essential Judge Dredd epic plotlines – Dredd confronting some threat, usually existential, to Mega-City One, and Dredd venturing to some other, usually exotic, location (or a combination of the two). However, it is more episodic than The Robot Wars – essentially Dredd in his judicial duties on the moon. I also like it more than The Robot Wars – it has more of the feel of the subsequent epics and introduces some important elements in Dredd’s world, namely the other two American mega-cities (Mega-City 2 on the West Coast and Tex-City in Texas) as well as the jointly administered American lunar colony, the latter essentially recast as a space Western setting.

The highlight for me was the introduction of the Soviet or Sov Judges, the most persistent recurring antagonists of Mega-City One. The introduction of the Sov Judges – and their main epic The Apocalypse War – was written prior to the fall of the Soviet Union. Subsequent storylines seem to redress this as some sort of neo-Soviet revival, perhaps as part or a result of the Atomic Wars

The Sov Judges are also the most effective recurring adversaries of Mega-City One (and that’s in a universe with such omnicidal maniacs as Judge Death and the Dark Judges), as they wiped out half the city in the Apocalypse War and almost the other half in the Day of Chaos. All that comes later (much later for the Day of Chaos) – for now, we are just introduced to the Sov Judges. And what an introduction – with classic art by Brian Bolland, one of my favorite Judge Dredd artists, particularly in this classic image.

I always loved the look of the Sov Judges, with all their Soviet paraphernalia of which Stalin himself would be proud – they just look so damn cool! Indeed, there are times when I think they look cooler than their American Mega-City One counterparts.

 

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 1:
THE FIRST LUNA OLYMPICS / LUNA-1 WAR (progs 50-51)
Luna-1 (prog 42)
Showdown on Luna-1 (prog 43)
Red Christmas (prog 44)
22nd Century Futsie (prog 45)
Meet Mr Moonie (prog 46)
Land Race (prog 47)
The Oxygen Desert (prog 48-49)

 

I will never tire of this image – so here it is again in color as Brian Bolland’s cover art for the Eagle comics Judge Dredd reprint issue 2.

As I said, the Sov Judges were introduced in the Luna-1 mini-epic – specifically in the two episodes The First Luna Olympics and Luna-1 War in progs 50-51. It is not surprising that the Sov Judges were introduced as the antagonists of the American Judges, reflecting their contemporary Cold War antagonism at the time of the episodes in 1978. And it’s also not surprising that we were introduced to the conflict between the Sov Judges and the American Judges in the arena of the Olympic Games, again reflecting one of their arenas of Cold War rivalry. Of course, in the twenty-second century, the big difference in their Cold War rivalry – apart from there already have been the global Atomic Wars – is that the Olympics are on the moon.

Although in fairness, as the title says, it’s the first lunar Olympics. What hasn’t changed is the American-Soviet rivalry and mutual protests of cheating, although it’s interesting that competitors are allowed up to 20% bionic components (but no more – hence the protests). Of course, given the low-gravity, terrestrial records are easily broken – but one could only assume they’ll be keeping separate record books from now on.

Anyway, the cheating culminates in the assassination (by an assassin in the stands) of the Soviet star sprinter (worse in the deciding event to break the medal count tie between the Americans and the Soviets). Sov Judge Kolb goes to execute the assassin and Dredd intervenes because apparently Mega-City One’s Justice Department rejects the death penalty (which would become more of a loose guideline in subsequent episodes), killing Kolb. And as the other Sov Judge – Sov-Judge Cosmovich – tells Dredd, this means war!

Except not really – or not as we know it. In their introduction here, war was somewhat more ritualized between the American and Soviet mega-cities, at least in their lunar colonies – effectively as a death-sport, somewhat like Roller-ball. Back on earth in subsequent episodes, however, the Sovs proved to be recurring adversaries of Mega-City One – and looming as a threat of actual war. Guess those were just moon rules?

Anyway, Dredd wins of course, so the Americans don’t have to give up any lunar territory – which were the “stakes”.

As for the other episodes:
• Luna-1 in prog 42 gave Dredd his marching orders – or spaceflight orders – apponting him as Judge-Marshall of Luna-1 and of course Walter stowed away in his luggage. The position of Judge-Marshall proves to be a hot seat – as Dredd is targeted by repeated assassination attempts, which brings us to…
• Showdown on Luna in prog 43, where Dredd has the classic Western showdown with a gunslinging robot, showcasing Luna-1 as a space Western setting, with the lunar frontier essentially the new Wild West for the American mega-cities
• Red Christmas in prog 44 sees Dredd celebrate Christmas 2099 on the moon – the red is yet another assassination attempt by means of holding Walter hostage
• 22nd Century Futsie in prog 45 not only sees in the titular 22nd century on New Year – but also introduced ‘futsies’, an occasional recurring feature in Mega-City One in which citizens run amok or go crazy from ‘future shock’, a term (and book title) coined by Alvin Toffler
• Meet Mr Moonie in prog 46 sees Dredd go after the source of assassination attempts on him – the reclusive billionaire (trillionaire?) owner of the moon
• Land Race in prog 47 sees the titular race for staking claims to lunar land

The Oxygen Desert in progs 48-49 sees Dredd stranded in the titular desert – i.e the lunar surface outside the pressurized atmosphere domes – but survives, only to feign resignation to lure in the outlaw stranding him there

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 1:
THE FACE CHANGE CRIMES (prog 52)

 

We’ve already seen face-changing machines in the earliest episodes, as well as Brian Bolland’s art in this epic (in Land Race and The First Luna Olympics / Luna-1 War), but here they come together – showcasing Bolland’s skill in portraiture.

In particular – Stan / Stanley Laurel and Ollie / Oliver Hardy, along with Charlie Chaplin. And that pretty much tells you the premise – a criminal gang uses face changes to disguise themselves for a heist (a good old-fashioned bank hold up with guns). To be honest, I admire their creativity – and the commitment to the bit, since they call each other by the names to their faces. Of course, one drawback is that those faces are distinctive, although perhaps less so in the twenty-second century – triggering Dredd’s recognition of their faces as “twentieth century comedians”. That might have been an asset – since they change their faces again to escape under the guise of hostages…except they change their faces to the Marx Brothers. (Well, three of them anyway, but the most famous of the three). However, that does allow us to see more portraiture in Bolland’s art…

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 1
THE FACE CHANGE CRIMES (prog 52)

 

I just couldn’t resist some more of Brian Bolland’s skilled portraiture – this time of the face-change gang as the Marx Brothers, specifically Groucho, Harpo and Chico (let’s face it, the big three – no one remembers Zeppo or Gummo).

Although, is there any reason they are quoting the title of A Night at the Opera, or “Harpo” is so committed to the bit that he’s honking a horn rather than speaking (part of the real Harpo’s signature act)- while no one is around?! Unless you count the two ambulance officers they took captive upon hijacking the ambulance for their getaway, even if they don’t look like they’re in a position to observe it? Certainly not the guy on the floor. (I hope they released them later unharmed).

But wait – there’s more! There’s quite the surprising depth to an episode which basically looks designed for the simple gimmick of a criminal gang using face change machines to impersonate twentieth century comedians for their heists, a gimmick tailor-made for Brian Bolland’s art. Dredd does the easy thing – tracking down the purchase of face change machines through the only company on Luna-1 that sold them. What’s not so easy is all he has the law enforcement technique of profiling the usual suspects – in this case, the Tooley brothers – without any further evidence. “The trouble is…proving they robbed the bank!”

I think this is the first time that we are confronted with the apparent anomaly of an authoritarian or even fascist police state abiding by the niceties of legality. I mean, isn’t Dredd a fascist? Why doesn’t he just arrest the Tooley brothers, evidence or no evidence? This may be the first time this anomaly comes up in the comic but it won’t be the last – it’s a recurring feature, which arguably goes to the very heart of the comic and character of Judge Dredd.

Setting aside that fascism can be lawless and it can be lawful, I’m not sure there’s any clear or easy answers to the question of whether Judge Dredd or Justice Department is fascist (or whether Mega-City One is a fascist state) – or perhaps questions, since while they overlap, they seem to me somewhat separate considerations.

Both Judge Dredd and Justice Department are undoubtedly authoritarian – and I think it would also be inarguable that they have fascist elements, indeed from the outset in their design. An interesting opinion piece featured this as its theme in its very title – “Fascist Spain meets British punk: The subversive genius of Judge Dredd”. That piece attributed the “design emphasis on fascist chic” to Spanish artist Carlos Ezquerra, as something of a tribute to the artist who has passed away.

Quick side bar – I particularly liked how the piece echoed Chris Sims on how Judge Dredd’s ‘costume’ is ridiculously over the top – “Dredd looks like no other comic character before or since. His design makes no practical sense. It has no symmetry or logic to it. No one at the time thought it would work. “F*cking hell,” his co-creator John Wagner said when he first saw the designs. “He looks like a Spanish pirate.” But somehow, for reasons no one can quite articulate, it is perfect”.

Back to the point, I think part of the (probably irreconcilable) tension of whether Judge Dredd is fascist or not derives from the two competing strands that I see have been combined in the core concept of Dredd – a futuristic Dirty Harry in a dystopian post-apocalyptic SF satire. On the one hand, you have the dramatic tension of a Dirty Harry obstructed in his instinct for justice by what he perceives to be the loopholes, red tape or technicalities of due process or the legal system. On the other, you have that dystopian SF satire of an authoritarian state, the whole point of which is that it has purportedly dispensed with all those obstructions for a system of instant summary law enforcement. In short, as the agent of a police state, Judge Dredd should not have the hassles of a Dirty Harry with due process – but he does because that’s part of his core concept as a character.

Here the pesky need for evidence is compounded by the gang having a defence lawyer – and being able to call off their interrogation until they see him. However, Dredd was able to use their own game against them – using the lunar Justice Central face change machine, he impersonates their lawyer and records them while they freely confess to the crime (although that presumably must have involved detaining their lawyer without charge so that Dredd could substitute for them – and I’m not sure how their confessions would hold up as evidence, at least in contemporary law, when it was recorded by subterfuge of impersonating their lawyer).

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 1:
THE OXYGEN BOARD (prog 57)
The Killer Car (prog 53-56)

 

“A smart man can beat the law, but, baby, only a fool bucks the oxygen board!”

That’s pretty much the twist in the tale for this episode – as the criminals of the biggest heist (and disaster) in Luna history forgot to pay their oxygen bill and get their just desserts (by suffocation)

Bonus irony as the gang essentially used the same means of oxygen delivery to the lunar colony – the pipelines from the astro-tankers pumping it in – as the means for their colony-wide heist, adding tranquilizer gas to ‘roofie’ the whole colony. Disappointingly, the writers forfeited the opportunity to call them the tranq gang, going with the tranq gas raiders instead.

It’s not exactly like the colony taking a nap either – there are thousands of casualties, the effects of vehicle and other machine accidents that result from the entire colony being unconscious at the same time. Well, not the entire colony – the Judges have their respirators. And all the robots are still running – with the Judges activating their emergency protocols for assistance. Still – the death toll is stated to be 53,000, and over half a million injured…which might mean more if I actually knew what the population of the lunar colony was. (Looking it up, the Judge Dredd role-playing game apparently had the lunar colony with a population of 25 million in the middle of the twenty-first century…which is a little hard to imagine as at 2023).

And they would have got away with it too if it wasn’t for that meddling Oxygen Board, apparently a government monopoly with an extreme form of robodebt recovery – robots cutting off the oxygen of (and indeed vacuuming it from) customers with overdue bills, suffocating them. Despite having robots and video calls for the debt recovery, there appears to be no remote means of payment (instead requiring personal attendance at an oxygen board showroom) or electronic door key lock (as the gang dropped their key in their loot and can’t find it before suffocating).

As for The Killer Car in progs 53-56, essentially it replays rogue robot Call-Me-Kenneth from the Robot Wars on the moon but with a robotic car (called Elvis).

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 1:
RETURN TO MEGA-CITY ONE (Prog 59)
Full Earth Crimes (prog 58)
Firebug (prog 60)

 

Classic Judge Dredd – poster boy for the Lawful Neutral alignment.

Prog 59 sees Dredd return to Mega-City One from Luna, in one of the best characteristic (and comic) illustrations of the Judge himself – just how legalistic he can be towards the Law, the perfect embodiment of the Lawful Neutral alignment. It opens beautifully with Mega-City One citizens looking on in amazement and bemusement as Dredd nonchalantly strolls past a robbery in progress, stopping only to cheerfully admonish the robbers – “Good morning, citizens. I would remind you that armed robbery is illegal in Mega-City 1”. But then, he just continues strolling – doing none of head-kicking things we’ve come to expect in his approach to law enforcement. What is going on? The robbers themselves thank their good luck and continue with the robbery, speculating that Dredd must have gone “moon crazy”. He walks past yet another crime – until a rookie Judge arrives with Dredd’s reinstatement papers, allowing him to be sworn back in as a Judge of Mega-City. He immediately takes the rookie Judge’s bike to go back to the scenes of the crimes to kick some heads for the Law – “Look out, you lawbreaking scum! Judge Dredd’s back in town!”.

Of course, the answer to his previous inactivity lies in that he wasn’t officially sworn (back) in as a Judge – “it’s illegal for an ordinary citizen to take the law into his own hands”.

Before returning to Mega-City One, we had Dredd’s final episode on the moon – Full Earth Crimes in prog 58, transferring the gimmick (and myth) of increased criminal activity and insanity with a full moon to the effect of a ‘full earth’ on Luna-1.

And after his return, we have the last regular Judge Dredd episode in Case Files 1, Firebug, in prog 60, featuring a serial arsonist of city blocks.

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 1
BONUS MATERIAL – UNPUBLISHED JUDGE DREDD PILOT EPISODE
Walter the Wobot (progs 50-58)

 

“I am the Law and you better believe it!”

As much as I like the final panel of this unpublished first episode, I’m glad they tided up his catchphrase!

But wait – there’s more!

Well, not much more, but still there’s some bonus material in Case Files 1 beyond the regular Judge Dredd episodes.

Walter the Wobot got his own spinoff strips, Walter the Wobot Fwiend of Dwedd. Yeah, they really leant into his robotic lisp in that title. The strips themselves were light-hearted comedy, because you can’t take Walter seriously (even though he saved Dredd multiple times in the comic – notably in the Robot Wars which introduced him, in The Day the Law Died, and in the Apocalypse War). The strips were okay, I guess – and some of them were illustrated by Brian Bolland so there’s that.

The other bonus material was the previously unseen first episode of Dredd, drawn by Carlos Ezquerra, as much an influence in the creation of Dredd as writers Pat Mills and John Wagner. I anticipate it was drawn for the first issue of 2000 AD but simply wasn’t written in time (or revised) so another episode featured as Dredd’s first episode in the second issue of 2000 AD. (You following along? You may recall that although Judge Dredd was 2000 AD’s flagship character, he didn’t actually make it into their first issue and only started in their second issue).

According to the editorial in Case Files 1, the story was printed in it to showcase the original art – distinctively featuring Dredd as judge, jury, AND executioner, which was somewhat different to how he was introduced. As we see later, Mega-City One Judges usually don’t sentence people to execution, although there are exceptions (and they often kill people who resist arrest or attempt to escape).

This unpublished pilot episode did showcase some of the different types of ammunition used by the Judges (ricochet and heat-seeking), as well as Dredd’s Lawmaster – although it also featured regular police units separate from the Judges, something that occasionally popped up elsewhere in the early episodes until it was quietly dropped. It is amusing to think of the Judges as some sort of special elite force that also announces and executes (literally) their sentences at the same time. (Keen eyes might notice the “police cam” in this panel).