Epics 39-36: you'd be forgiven for skipping over these

Eminently forgettable fare this time round, and it's a wonder these three didn't end up lower. Perhaps I'm too forgiving to the artists, who are all doing fine work but not amazing work as many Dredd epics boast. I mean, the art shown is here is great, but the best of Dredd is brain-meltingly great. 

 

We start with a full-on sequel, the only one that actually goes right out and uses the number '2' in the title...

Epic 39: Mandroid 2 Instrument of War Progs 1555-1566
Written by John Wagner, Art by Simon Coleby and Carl Critchlow
(12 episodes, 72 pages in total. This one's epic 36 in chronological order.)

The Basics: Nate Slaughterhouse, the Mandroid, is back! He escapes from prison, finds a 'friend' in retired (and very wealthy) General Trig, who rebuilds his body even deadlier than before, and persuades him to help attack the Judges with the promise of rehabilitating Nate's braindead wife, Kitty. Judge Dredd, and a team of helpers, investigate.

 

Mandroid 2: he's angry, and there are lots of explosions.
Art by Carl Critchlow

 

Analysis: it's that rare beast, a direct sequel to a previous epic. Mandroid, rightly, is hailed as a classic Dredd, and may even be considered a Mega Epic despite its relatively short length (more on Mandroid quite a lot further down the ranking...). Mandroid II, not so much. It's the classic example of a sequel no one really asked for, and doesn't have quite enough of an engine under its hood to give it the emotional or visceral heft of the original. But, you know, it does have its moments, and it does boast a compelling protagonist in Nate Slaughterhouse.

He's still plagued by the existential angst that marked much of the original series, only now it's even more nihilistic. He's looking for reasons not to kill himself, and it's pretty obvious, even to him, that the dangled promise of getting Kitty back is more or less a lie. Perhaps even darker still is the subplot about General Trig's terminally ill daughter, who is asking herself similar questions to Slaughterhouse – is life worth living, how important is it to have a functioning body, and what sins might she be willing to commit to win those things. As a counterpoint to the Mandroid, she's the beating heart of this tale.

In many ways, this story is just as tragic as Mandroid 1
Art by Carl Critchlow

The other good bits are watching Dredd on the case in procedural mode, this time with a strong emphasis on the problem of human error, even within the all-powerful and ultra-disciplined Justice Dept. Themes that could, perhaps, have been picked up by Dredd tales going forward, except that was never going to squeeze in around the build-up to 'Tour of Duty', which was in full swing both before and after this mini-epic ran.

It's also worth commenting on the ending. Mandroid, the original tale, ended with a full-on 80s action movie siege, complete with gunplay and vigorous murder. The sequel does have its action moments, and heavy use of rocket launchers and Hi-Ex ammo, but it all builds up to a deliberate act of non-violence. It absolutely makes thematic and character sense, but it's also inherently less fun to read than the more straightforward take of the first story.

 

With a suit like that, you'd expect someone to get a good kicking before the story's end.
Art by Carl Critchlow

 

Story: 6/10 Nothing wrong with it, but its themes are minimal, and its mix of procedural and action beats are at best 'as good as normal'.

Art: 7/10 Actively good work from Simon Coleby (on the first two episodes only) and especially Carl Critchlow, but both have done better in other stories, and it lacks the gravitas of Walker's work on the original.

Legacy: none – although in theory a reasonably large supporting cast could return, and the concept of angry veterans / people who think the Judges aren't hardline enough could also be used again one day.

Overall Score: 13 out of 20
Want to read it? There's a digest-sized edition collecting both Mandroid stories, or you can read this one on its own at the start of Case Files 45.

Next, another epic that could be considered a sequel of sorts - at least, it features one villain from an old, unloved epic...

Epic 38: Darkside Progs 1017-1028
Written by John Smith; Art by Paul Marshall
(12 episodes, 72 pages, number 20 in sequence)

The basics: Following a tip-off from Moroccan Psi-Judge Hassan, Dredd accompanies him to Luna City to investigate a string of grisly murders, that seem to imply Judge Dredd himself is the villain...

Judge Dredd: murderer? Can it be??
Art by Paul Marshall

Analysis: Writer John Smith's first crack at a feature-length Dredd tale, and he goes the route of 'picking up on an old, dangling Dredd plot thread', and seeing what he can do with it. To be fair to him, Smith may have borrowed an old Dredd foe to be his villain, but he's telling a very different tale with that foe. Unfortunately, the telling of that tale doesn't quite come off. Somewhere buried in this epic is a psychological horror, in which Dredd gets caught up in Hassan's visions, and at times imagines that he himself IS committing gruesome murders. That would be neat, and very Smithian.

More death-dreams, please, this story is too procedural for my tastes.
Art by Paul Marshall

What we actually get on the page is a far more straightforward story that follows several characters in and around Luna City, and never really leaves you thinking Dredd could be guilty. Not least because we see glimpses of the real murderer early on, and he's green! A version of this thrill with black and white art by someone like Brendan McCarthy could've conveyed both the mystery around the killer's identity - and perhaps some general weirdness - more effectively.

 

Great panel, should have been a great reveal.
Art by Paul Marshall

 

Which is not meant to be a slight to Paul Marshall, who delivers some great character designs, neat murders and thrilling sections involving zero gravity chases and oxygen-free suspense sequences, but it's not enough to lift Smith's uncharacteristically ordinary writing.

So yes, what starts as a mystery is more or less explicitly solved a couple of episodes in, and from there it’s just a matter of watching Dredd investigating and going through some police action movie clichés, complete with bumbling sidekick character who karks it before the end.

Story: 6/10

Art: 7/10

Legacy: Sadly little. An old Dredd foe is dispatched for good – but so is Judge Hassan, who was arguably strong enough to become a recurring character. I guess that's pretty standard as Dredd stories go, but it makes it all too easy to forget this particular epic.

Overall Score: 13 out of 20
Want to read it? Check out Case Files 25.

And now for an epic I imagine rather forgotten, that I could only refer to in honour of Tintin as...
 

Epic 37: The Adventures of Judge Dredd in the Land of the Soviets Progs 2055-2069
Written by Michael Carroll, Art by PJ Holden, Colin McNeil and Paul Davidson
(14 episodes, 90 pages, epic number 47 in sequence)

[There is as yet no official name for this epic, originally three consecutive stories: Black Snow, Echoes and The Shroud – although they form as coherent a whole, if not more so, than e.g. The Cursed Earth]

The Basics: Dredd leads a team of judges into Siberia for reasons that aren’t 100% clear, and ends up having a series of misadventures in and around the ruins of East Meg 1.

Despite the real Cold War ending in 1991, Dredd's version is still compelling.
Art by Cliff Robinson

Analysis: This is the epic that came out of nowhere. The build-up to it comes from single mention in Tharg’s Nerve Centre of a ‘major new Dredd thriller from Michael Carroll’, but with no suggestion that it would run on for really quite a few episodes, including going into and beyond the end-of-year Prog.

A couple of minor irritations – Dredd had rather recently been into Sov territory under the pen of Rob Williams, and there were two whole series in the Megazine – the Inspectre and Samizdat Squad – that had explicitly dealt with the ghosts of the dead in East Meg 1. Nothing in Carroll’s tale goes against any of these, but it’s kind of sad not to get any overlap. Especially in the detail of the Williams story that Dredd and co have access to a translator device that allows them to speak Sov.

So that’s the story we don’t have, what about the one we do?

Well, there are two things going on. One is, what happens if you throw Dredd into an environment and social situation that he knows nothing about, and then proceed to have him fall down one hole after another? Two is, what is going on in the wider world of Dredd, and how does Mega City One keep abreast of it? The first parts works, although it turns out that Dredd is so hyper-competent and hard that it’s never in enough doubt that he’ll survive. The second part seems to work at first, but then sort of gets lost in the action.

Here’s the thing – Black Snow, the first part of the story, is about Mega City Judges rushing in to interfere with a Soviet scam, trading on the fact that East Meg 2’s Justice Dept is so bureaucratic that it’s too slow to react. It’s a throwback joke to the 1980s period of Cold War that could be funny if it was ever brought up again – but it isn’t. A bit of worldbuilding that goes nowhere. Then there’s the question of what Dredd and his team actually want – is it to get money (specifically rare minerals from meteorites)? Or is it just to annoy East Meg 2? Again, once the mission goes wrong, this interesting thread is lost.

There’s also a bit of a mix-up between the clash of corrupt Sov Judges running a facility, local ‘natives’ who are either out for revenge, or money, or both, then actual loyal Sov Judges, except one or more of them seem to be rather friendly towards Mega City 1?

 

Dredd does not make easy alliances.
Art by PJ Holden

 

By the time we end up in first ‘Echoes’ (Dredd + a Psi vs ghosts of East Meg 1 dead) 

 

Burned out ruins of East Meg 1 = great backdrop for a spooky tale.
Art by Colin MacNeil

 

...and then ‘the Shroud’ (Dredd in a work camp vs a super-tough alien villain), any sense of what Mega City One wants vs what East Meg Two wants vs what the random locals they encounter want, there’s no thread. So this epic becomes basically three extended action stories after the other. Each are full of fun Sci Fi ideas, neat action beats, and some classic ‘how hard is Dredd!’ moments. But without even the sense of ‘gosh, will our hero ever get back safely to MC1’ I never quite cared enough.

Sometimes, it's fun to pit Dredd against a super-strong monster
Art by Nick Percival

But you know, it has its charms, in a 'what if we re-did the Cursed Earth, but set it in Siberia' kind of way. All it needed was a more solid wrap-around.

Story: 6-7/10 Nothing wrong with the writing, and week to week there’s a great sense of ‘bloody hell, how’s ol’ Dredd gonna get out of this one?’ But there’s not enough to hold it all together.

Art: 7-8/10 For me, PJ Holden is best in show, but special mention to Quinton Winter for some vibrant colours. MacNeil is never bad, but his style at this point has sort of settled into something that works really well, but he wasn’t moved to produce anything spectacular in his story arc. Paul Davidson has some fun with ice and snow colours, and his designs for super-baddie Maul and weird bite-y worms are memorable without being all-time great.

Legacy: So far, none. Although one imagines that Sov Judge Zima will re-appear in a Michael Carroll story at some point down the line. And no doubt some other writer will set a story in East Meg 1 again, but likely making no reference to this one. (I'm looking at you, End of Days)

Overall Score: 13.5 out of 20
Want to read it? Are you sure? It's in Judge Dredd: Cold Wars, a collection that includes the rather superior, but less epic-in-length tale 'War Buds'.

 

 

And now for an epic that some readers loathe, and others hold a torch for. Bit of both for me - and it's relevant that I love me some zombies...

Epic 36: Judgement Day Progs 786-799; Megs 2.04-2.08
Written by Garth Ennis, Art by Carlos Ezquerra, Pete Doherty, Dean Ormston and Chris Halls
(20 episodes, 150 pages; Epic 14 in sequence)

The Basics: An evil space wizard arrives on earth and raises the dead to life, intending to hold every city in the world to ransom. Dredd, with a team of international judges - and a certain mutant bounty hunter from the future - leads the fightback!

An all-too rare moment of zombie horror in this zombie apocalypse tale.
Art by Carlos Ezquerra

Analysis: For the first time in a decade, a new writer tried their hand at a Dredd epic. Garth Ennis had some great ideas, and also some less great ones. For me, the best thing of all is the ingenious use of the Necropolis-dead as a source of bodies to create an army of zombies. Dredd hadn't fought zombies much before, and certainly never on this scale. It felt new, and with Peter Doherty on art in the early episodes, it was plenty scary, too – a horror epic, in the way that Necropolis had ended up as more of an action epic.

 

When there are scenes of action/horror zombie fighting, this epic really shines.
Art by Peter Doherty

But it went a bit wrong from there. And for me it's because Ennis wanted to make it a world-wide conflict. On the one hand, this was a good thing. It added Epic Trope 8: Dredd teams up with a bunch of judges from around the world. The whole thing makes liberal use of characters we'd met before but didn't get to see often, which is the sort of thing that often gets criticised as 'fan-service', but speaking as a fan I love this stuff.

On the other hand, it didn't really make sense. Zombies plaguing Mega-City 1 I could accept, because of Necropolis. You see, there were mass graves all around the city. Practically begging for an evil wizard to use them as a zombie army. But no other city had had this problem (maybe Mega City 2 still had many corpses from the 2TFr(u)T virus some 11 years earlier that hadn't completely rotted way yet. Maybe). But where did all the other zombies come from, around the world? Resyk plants on the fritz, maybe? And why were some cities having a harder time than MC1? It was purely an excuse to allow Ennis to relive his favourite moment from the Apocalypse War, when Dredd condemns an entire city to death – only this time he can do it to like seven cities at once, but with none of the emotional impact.

But for me this is the epic's only major sin. A bunch of the story beats are perhaps too similar to bits for the Apocalypse War and others, but Ennis knew enough even then about writing action comics that it was compelling stuff, moving at exactly the right pace to get through to the end with a proper body count along the way. I even rather like villain Sabbat. He's a right bastard, and Ennis gives him a fun backstory that references the Beano in a way that makes up for the ridiculousness of the character.

 

You can pretty much read the part in the script here where Ennis tells the artist
to go re-watch that scene from 'The Thing'.
Art by Dean Ormston

And the team-up with Johnny Alpha is 100% spot on. Giving Dredd the chance to be the bad guy in his own strip is what it's all about, and Alpha, who is a touch nicer than Dredd, lets this happen organically. Indulgent, yes, but so what? Why shouldn't action stories be indulgent from time to time?

What didn't help Ennis was the rotating art team. Splitting the story across the Prog and Meg presumably meant no one artist could do it all (some weeks, there were two episodes at a time). But boy it would have helped to have just one artist on each publication, and maybe it'd have helped to try to get some sort of consistency of tone. Doherty was great, drawing an action horror comic; Ezquerra is reliable as ever, especially, in the final run as the Judge squad draws nearer to Sabbat, but he's doing an action comedy. Dean Ormston ended up doing a police-procedural, with a touch of horror. Nothing wrong with his art, but I can't help but think he was on the wrong episodes. His bit in Sabbat's cave felt much stronger than mucking about with Hondo Judges. Chris Halls, with a single episode, is in itself rather lovely, but frankly it felt indulgent on his part rather than doing anything to sell the story or to match what had gone before. Even more than Oz, this epic has weird art shifts all over the place, not enough to make up for the fact that each episode on its own was high quality.

 

The master at work
Art by 'King' Carlos Ezquerra

Story: 6/10 - for my taste, there's more good than bad, although some plot points do rankle. 
Art: 7-10/10
Legacy: You can't destroy several major cities in Dredd's world and not leave at least some legacy – but to be honest it's almost all been about Mega City 2. I can't even remember which other cities were nuked. So any stories in the decades since about Mega City 2 have a strong undercurrent of resentment, but they don’t come up often, despite Michael Carroll’s best efforts to make an ongoing sub-plot out of Sov citizens helping to run a section of MC2.

On a more immediate level, there were a couple of post-Judgement Day one-offs that were pretty great, (I love 'the kinda dead man') and then of course the whole thing set in motion the Mechanismo storyline, that would in itself seed the next really big epic to come.

In a more meta-narrative vein, Garth Ennis opened up something of a can of worms. As a fan turned writer, he couldn't resist bringing back some old favourite characters: Hershey, Dekker, Perrier, Armour, Bruce, Sadu. Since he was writing a Dredd epic, he also basically had to kill them all (well, apart from one). This is partly because epics demand death, but also because it messes with reader's minds – if you know a character, you assume they're going to be safe. Nuh-uh.

I get the general impression that most fans were unhappy with Ennis's decision to both use and dispose of these characters. And so, since then, when anyone not named John Wagner writes a long Dredd story using an old favourite character, you kind of feel that they ought to kill them sometimes, but aren't really ‘allowed’ to, because fans will complain. Tricky!

Overall Score: 13.7 out of 20

Want to read it? It's been reprinted loads! These days the easiest way is Case Files 17.

 

 

Next time, an epic that isn't, a dry run, a contractual obligation and a fanboy's dream...