Epics 45-43: actually these are quite good

A trio of tales that have as many strengths as weaknesses, but sadly those weaknesses block them from being true classics. Perhaps this is a reflection that all three count as 'epics' on some sort of techicality.

We start with a 'split' epic - a story told in several chunks separated by time, that still add up to an epic-length whole...

No. 45: The Chief Judge's Man  Progs 1244-1247, 1263-1266, 1342-1349
Written by John Wagner; Art by Will Simpson (part 1), Colin McNeil (Part 2, On the Chief Judge's Service), John Burns (Part 3, Revenge of...)
(16 episodes and 97 pages; epic storyline number 27 if you want to count from the beginning)

-I'm counting it because it has been collected (a couple of times) as a single storyline, and I imagine it was conceived as such, even though no single part is quite long enough to meet my 'epic' criteria. Part of the point of this story is that it plays out in ‘real time’, meaning the gaps between each chunk of story were deliberately baked into it, while the protagonist bides his time in different situations. It’s the sort of neat trick Wagner knows how to use well in Judge Dredd - a character whose life plays out kind of in real time as weekly episodes are written and published.

The Basics: Armon Gill, an ex-special forces space soldier for Mega City 1, is under instructions from the Chief Judge to carry out various, usually political, assassinations. Or is he? Dredd is on the case, first to capture Gill, and then, in the bigger half of the epic, to re-capture him and find out just who is really controlling him.

It's moody, this story.
Words by John Wagner; Art by Will Simpson

Analysis: The first 4-part outing for this tale I remember being pretty shocking - Chief Judge Hershey had a private assassin that even Dredd didn't know about! And, given a lot of the history of the strip, it felt plausible that a Chief Judge might use this tactic – although the idea that it might be Hershey made it extra-shocking, being as she's as heroic and 'good' a person as Dredd himself. And overall, the epic itself makes excellent use of the real-time conceit of Judge Dredd. Gill can go into hiding, and even undergo a spell in prison, and Wagner can pick up the story first months, then years, later.

But the whole thing rather falls apart half-way through Part 2, in which it's made abundantly clear that this does not, in fact, have anything to do with Hershey, but rather a sinister senior Judge (inevitably, not one of the secret Black Ops Judges who would dog Dredd in much later epics. Although one supposes it could be retconned to say those baddies were in charge of the senior Judge in question). At which point, the tale becomes something of a fairly straightforward thriller, with super-cop vs super-deadly assassin. There are some fun action sequences, to be sure, and you get to see two people doing everything they can to out-smart, out-run or out-fight each other. But there's nothing more.

Art by Colin McNeil, in intense painting mode.

Part 3, Revenge of the Chief Judge's Man, is a big improvement over part 2. Mostly, I think, due to a combination of John Burns' artwork and mixing up the setting, putting Dredd out of his element (until the very end). It also adds in a chunky 'detective work' angle that felt missing from Part 2 of the epic. We know who the real bad guy is, but Dredd doesn't, and it's fun watching him piece it all together, especially with the reluctant aid of former foe Jura Edgar. 

 

Atmospheric prison break fun. Love a bendy police-siren sound effect.
Art by John Burns

 

Another new wrinkle is that the end of part 2 revealed Armon Gill to be something of a genetically engineered super-soldier. In part this explains his success vs Dredd in the earlier parts, but it's really in Part 3 that Wagner runs with the idea of Dredd fighting a mutant with, for want of a better word, super-powers.

Story: 6/10 (but, you know, it might've been 9 if it really had been Hershey in control...)

Art: 6-8/10. Burns best in show comfortably, but not really doing anything new or better than he'd delivered on previous Dredd work. Will Simpson was working in very different mode to his previous Dredd efforts, and frankly he loses out when he’s not got his paintbrushes. Colin McNeil, meanwhile, is the right man for a noir-tinged action thriller, but he had the least interesting story to work with. He’s an artist who brings his A game to A grade material, and has no need to prove himself on B grade business.

Legacy: None, although it's notable to get another appearance out of Edgar, and to an extent the idea of work camps in the Cursed Earth is a small step towards the Tour of Duty epic. The idea that there are senior Judges operating outside the purview of the Chief Judge is one that other writers have run with.

No one does pouty Dredd quite like John Burns

Overall Score: 12.8 out of 10
Want to read it? Your best bet is the collected edition, but if you want to get the full slow-burn effect, you can read separate chunks in Case Files 33, 34 and 37.


So, from the one technicality to another, and it's Dredd's very first multi-part storyline...

 

No. 44: The Robot War Progs 9-17
Written by John Wagner; Illustrated by Ron Turner, Carlos Ezquerra, Ian Gibson and Mike McMahon
(9 episodes, 46 pages, making it too short to count, except that this is Epic number 1, and earns its place here as such!)

The Basics: An evil robot starts a robot revolution and takes over the city. Dredd leads the fightback!

Call-Me-Kenneth loses his head. He gets a new one,
and a new far less interesting body in the next episode.
Art by Carlos Ezquerra - his first second published Dredd!

Analysis: We launch into the world of Dredd epics with a one-episode prologue, in which we learn that robots are incredibly sophisticated and clearly the moral equivalent of persons. Nonetheless, most humans don't agree, and some even delight in mistreating robots. We also learn that although robots are programmed not to harm humans – indeed, to obey their every word (although it's not clear if there's some sort of Asimov-esque logic circuit that stops these two programs from conflicting with each other) - sometimes, robots are able to break their programming. Dredd suspects bad things are imminent...

You'll believe a droid can cry...
Words by John Wagner; Art by Ron Turner

Which leads into episode 1 of the epic itself, in which multiple robots rebel, and kill many humans. Pretty soon, they take over the city (or at least, a big chunk of it), setting up Epic Trope 1 of Dredd epics: the city is taken over by a dastardly villain, and Dredd must lead the fightback and save the day! Behind it all is a master villain, megalomaniac robot Call-Me-Kenneth.

There's an impressive amount of general chaos crammed into a handful of episodes, before Dredd takes it to a more personal level. With help from friendly robot Walter, he infiltrates the villains' central HQ, and soon saves the day. Then there's a final episode showdown with Call-Me-Kenneth, who burns to death in a flying oil tanker. Given that this was the first ever multi-part Dredd, one can't really fault it. But it would've been much more epic had Wagner written it even a year later. In many ways, it's crying out to be twice as long, with the action a little more spread out. But in April 1977, nobody knew what Judge Dredd was going to be capable of as a strip.

Story: 7/10 (Wagner)

Art: 5-7/10

McMahon: good but would be better

Gibson: good but still developing, and very murky in places (especially in my paperback edition of Judge Case Files 1)

Ezquerra: streets ahead of the others; slightly annoying that his design for Call-Me-Kenneth in episode 1 was forgotten or otherwise ignored in favour of a more childish villain design

Turner: Nice work on prologue, less good elsewhere

Frankly, having four artists sharing duties on just nine episodes, and with such varied styles, didn’t do any favours.

Legacy: Dredd's antipathy towards robots is made pretty clear, and that'll come back in a big way with the story Mechanismo, and its many, many folow-ups. But honestly, many of Wagner’s big ideas about robot/human interaction get carried over into another series, RoboHunter (which was originally set in a future Mega City One, to boot). Then there's the character of Walter, who'll stick around for quite a while as comic relief. Call-Me-Kenneth and the Heavy Metal Kids are also occasionally remembered.

Following Carlos Ezquerra's lead, Ian Gibson gives it his all in setting up how Mega Mega City One can be.

Overall Score: 12.85 out of 20

Want to read it? Case Files 1 is the book for you!

Another early outing for Dredd, this time exploring the possibility of organised crime in the far future. It's...

 

Epic 43: The Mega-Rackets Progs 209-223
Written by John Wagner and Alan Grant, Illustrated by (big breath): Barry Mitchell, Ian Gibson, Ron Smith, Colin Wilson - and you kind of have to count a handful of classic Brian Bolland covers, too.
(15 episodes, 93 pages, epic 6 in order)

The Basics: Dredd tackles mob-style rackets as they play out in Mega City 1, including an all-out mob war.

Loan sharks of the future WILL use liquid nitrogen in their schemes. Art by Brian Bolland

Analysis: Another epic that isn't an epic, this one is included in large part because it had a consistent logo across its 14-prog span, but also because it does play as an overall narrative. Every two episodes we meet a new mob boss, learn what their racket is, and find out why Dredd wants to stop it but can't.

Classic Dredd-ian overkill - send in a senior Judge on a bike to arrest some 10 year-olds for eating sweets.
Words by Wagner and Grant; Art by Ron Smith

It builds up to a big finish in which there's a major mob war, and Dredd basically shuts down all the big racketeers, but acknowledges that the rackets themselves will never be wiped out. Although as big finishes go, it's kind of weak sauce – Dredd defeats a gang of electric-powered aliens by hosing them down with water...

Electric powered aliens. Come on, guys, you can find a better arch-villain than this?
Art by Ron Smith

(Even more annoying, just a few progs later we get the introduction of the Gila Munga, used by the mob as assassins to hunt down an informer, and that story could've functioned as a much more tense finale to the Mega Rackets. As it is, it just about qualifies as an epilogue.)

Back to the epic itself, it's really about the details of the crimes each mob controls. Writers Wagner and Grant were having a blast coming up with SF spins on classic Mafia activities, such as protection from psychic accidents, or future drugs umpty candy and youth-giving stookie capsules. Possibly the oddest one is the 'Numbers' racket. Back in 1981, this would have referred to a gambling con. Wagner/Grant turn it into a computer-based scam, and had to go to great lengths to explain what basically amounts to theft of security passwords on a company's internal IT system. It's weirdly prescient, and understood the issue that the best 'hackers' in the real world aren't people with mad coding skillz, they're just plain old fraudsters, who con or bully people into giving away passwords. The weakest link in any computer system is always the end users!

More overkill as Dredd takes down a mob boss by blowing up his car real good.
Art by Colin Wilson

An awful lot of the stories end up with Dredd fixing a problem through extreme mayhem, which is of course fun to draw, but it's an odd fit, tonally. Perhaps even more oddly, these tales of more or less horrific future crimes actually make Mega City One feel less dystopian than typical Dredd fare. If these fairly uninspiring gangsters can get away with running rackets despite living under a fascist police state, how much power can the Judges really claim to have?

Story: 6-8/10 Some clever ideas, plenty of good jokes, and some characters you'll love to hate. The stories themselves end up more of an afterthought.

Art: 6-9/10 Exemplary work from Ron Smith, startling work from newcomer Colin Wilson, a couple of all-time classic covers from Brian Bolland – but the epic is let down by some lacklustre Ian Gibson, a struggling Barry Mitchell, and, if you count the epilogue tale Assault on I-Block 4, a miscast John Cooper, who captures the crooks and the tone very well, but doesn't seem to like Sci-Fi very much.

Legacy: Mob bosses weren't exactly new to this epic (Mr Moonie in Luna City, for example, but also the one-off Lips Lazarus tale), but this story did more work to define them, and they recur sporadically in Judge Dredd, not least in the Pit and the Doomsday Scenario. Wagner would have another go at showing a more 'realsitic' version of how the Judges might be able to crack down on ganglords many, many years later in Block Judge. But even then, it's not at all clear how lawyers work in the world of 'judge, jury and executioner rolled into one', but these stories only work on the idea that Judges have to find evidence before they pass judgement. Who they have to present this evidence too, on the other hand...

Even today, Judge Dredd stories still allow for mob-boss style villains, who control crime but at enough of a remove so they can't be arrested. Perhaps more directly, the epic set a template for a delightful series of one-offs that ran about a year later, in which the 'syndicate of crime' (a new version of the racketeers) develop bizarre new crimes and amusing attempts to kill Dredd.

I fully acknowledge that my fondness for the Mega Rackets is partly based on the fact they were reprinted in early issues of 2000 AD Monthly, my introduction to 2000AD; the mob bosses were also heavily featured in the Judge Dredd Board Game that I played quite a bit in the late 80s.

If you know the context for this scene, it's actually pretty horrific. That's alien blood on the floor there.
Art by Ian Gibson

Overall score: 12.9 out of 20
Want to read it? It's all in Case Files 5.

Next time: Judge Dredd in the 1990s!