Epics 49-46: don't bother

Grant Morrison is known in some quarters as the God of All Comics. And you know, he's written some crackers, even for 2000AD. He's also, arguably, the worst of all writers to have a go at Judge Dredd. Before he co-wrote Crusade, which has the advantage of being both forgettable and easy to ignore, he delivered an epic that more or less 'matters' in the comics history of Judge Dredd.
Co-scripter Mark Millar must share some blame, but since nobody calls him the 'god' of anything (except perhaps self-promotion?), he can get away with it more.

Anyway, here's that team again, for the second and final time...

No. 49: Purgatory/Inferno, Progs 834-841/842-853
Written by Mark Millar and Grant Morrison; Art by Carlos Ezquerra
(a total of 20 episodes / 121 pages; this is epic 15 in sequence)

The basics: An evil judge breaks out of prison on Titan, and overtakes Mega City 1. Dredd leads the fightback!

If nothing else, this epic is a strong argument that prison REALLY doesn't work,
either at keeping dangerous criminals locked up, or at rehabilitation.
Art by Carlos Ezquerra

 

Analysis: This storyline is notoriously bad, but a lot of people comment that the art is rather good. I can't disagree on either front. It deserves taking on its own terms, and remembering the context in which it first appeared. It was part of an experiment in making 2000AD deliberately offensive and over the top. At a time when, arguably, some readers felt too many stories were either tame or childish, or, when aiming for grown-up readers, being too pretentious. Inferno is none of those things, so I guess that's a plus. But, it's also very out of keeping with the previous history of Judge Dredd and his world.

Purgatory, a direct prologue, sets the scene by indulging in some rather fun ultraviolence. The basic premise becomes Epic Trope 9: bad Judges want revenge. It's a neat idea, and would be used to far better effect some 20 years later, in Titan. The focus this time is on Judge Grice, whose only crime, really, had been to try to prevent the referendum that asked Mega Citizens if they still wanted the Judges (I would recommend reading those stories first, except Grice's character is so different here it's actually more confusing than helpful. Still, the curious can check out 'Twilight's last gleaming' in Case Files 16). Otherwise, he was painted as a pretty solid Judge, if not an especially nice guy. You could even argue that Grice is a political prisoner, and that his escape/revenge mission has some nobility behind it.

Mark Millar doesn't make that argument. His Grice is in the grip of a deep-rooted mania that revolves around making Dredd suffer – and that's it. (In fact, his original beef with Dredd is that he's not quite fascist enough). Millar does find a way to generate some sympathy for Grice – by pitting him against a prison warden so utterly contemptible that it leaves you wondering what on Earth the Judges in MC1 think happens on Titan. Again, the mechanics of a super-harsh Judge prison could be interesting. Here, they're just cliché fodder. But again, that was the point – bad guys being beaten up by worse guys so you get all excited when they stage a bloody coup. Millar provides plenty of ideas for inflicting bodily pain on two-dimensional characters, and Ezquerra delivers plenty of breathtakingly horrible panels of gore. The best bits, for me, are the grimaces of anguish, mania and pure evil that spill across Grice's face as the insanity escalates. But I do think Millar could've made Purgatory into an even more compelling story without having to have such an OTT evil warden in charge.

If you want an SF version of a 1980s prison escape exploitation movie, give this a go I guess.
(but you'd be better off watching Fortress)
Words by Mark Millar; Art by Carlos Ezquerra

 

Inferno switches the story round to Dredd's point of view, and also sees writer Grant Morrison adding a new dimension to the epic – plotting. It's actually pretty decent plotting, on a 'tab A into slot B, with a detour via underground tunnel C' kind of way, that would be perfectly fine except that Morrison, too, ignores a whole lot of Mega City history and geography. And the rules of the flesh-eating virus do that thing they always do in action stories, where it infects/dissolves people either immediately, or over the course of days - following a schedule that suits the plot, not consistent science. Which I find lazy in a screenwriter and a comics scribe alike.

But again, that wasn't the point. The point seemed to be, let's re-run the story of Judge Cal (whose epic will appear in this ranking much later 😉) but with the violence dialled up to some point well beyond the dial's limits. Grice is in full-on megalomania mould, complete with Ezquerra using his haircut and grin-size to indicate ever increasing levels of madness. The ultra-bloody ultraviolence of Purgatory continues, complete with the 'personal' element that adds a vicious streak that was, for me, rather new. Dredd has always played its violence for laughs, but not often with a sadist bent. In this epic, we get to see the villains really being horrible, and even Dredd's revenge seems unusually nasty. Yes, it's all played for laughs, and Ezquerra makes the worst excesses palatable, but it's a shift in tone.

I guess it's 'clever' to shoot through a person and destroy a secondary target behind it,
but it reads as cruel.
Words by Grant Morrison; Art by Carlos Ezquerra

 

TL, DR: it sucks and I hate it, but the art really IS very good. And on a critical analysis level, I can just about admire the idea of forcing readers to examine their desire to witness extreme acts of violence, as committed both against and by a police force. If only I could believe this is what Millar or Morrison actually intended...

Story: 3/10 (Millar and Morrison)

Art: 8/10 (Ezquerra)

Legacy: Let's not forget that Grant Morrison is sufficiently adept at his trade that he almost causally dashed off a whole new character, Judge Janus, who with minimal effort was recognisable and complete enough to sustain her own series. I can't put my finger on how it works, but Janus, on paper a young, anti-authoritarian Psi Judge just like Anderson, is in fact not at all like her, and her later adventures had a very different flavour to Anderson's, too. Ripe for re-introduction to MC1 if you ask me. Judge Bhaji, also introduced in Inferno, not so much.

Janus may be a walking speech pattern, but it's a memorable one.
Words by GMoz; Art by King Carlos

 

As for the plot, Inferno was not forgotten. The Statue of Judgement, toppled by Grice, becomes the focus not only of a rebuilding storyline, but the very locus of a long-running thread of MC-1 political intrigue, when Jura Edgar takes residence there.

The details, as I recall, were rather glossed over, but the events on Titan required a bit of handwaving to get that colony back into some kind of shape, as seen very soon in Wilderlands, and then decades later in Titan/Enceladus.

One could even argue that the severe beating McGruder takes in Inferno is what sets her on the final path to the illness/madness that brings her tenure as Chief Judge to an end.

Inferno is not fondly remembered, but at the time it had a job to do and did it – including showing future Dredd writers what not to do.

Overall Score: 11 out of 20
Want to read it despite all that? Purgatory was reprinted as a floppy with Megazine 322; Inferno can be found in Case Files 19.

On now to an epic that's very much ignored. Do you remember...

No. 48: Dead Ringer Megazines 3.64-3.69
Written by: John Wagner; Ilustrated by: Duncan Fegredo, Jock, Wayne Reynolds, Simon Coleby, Anthony Williams, Ben Oliver, Richard Elson
(7 episodes, 72 pages, this is epic 26 in order)

The Basics: Dredd must get hold of a citizen to help solve a minor diplomatic crisis. Said citizen runs away, and Dredd ends up chasing him into space to get him back. Also relevant – each episode of the story is drawn by a different artist.

The idea of Dredd leaving a note in someone's apartment is perhaps the best joke in this story.
Words by John Wagner; Art by Duncan Fegredo

 

Analysis: Well, it's The Judge Child lite, isn't it. Indeed, it's almost as if Wagner had recently re-read that epic and had fond memories of it, and thought he'd have another play in the same sandbox. (Actually, it turns out it was then-editor Andy Diggle who asked Wagner to do this.) He almost exactly mirrors the basic beats of chasing his man into the Cursed Earth, and then out into space, along the way encountering a mix of unusual cultures, including a revisit to one specific planet seen in the original Judge Child epic.

Now, the details of the plot are entirely different – this story plays with Hitchcockian 'wrong man' tropes (except in this case he's the right man, he just doesn't realise it). And it does one thing rather well, which is an extended version of an old Dredd staple, the problem that citizens are so terrified of Judges that they don't trust them.

But beyond that it's really just a series of farces, none of them bad but none of them really funny or memorable enough to stand up to the greatness of previous episodic epics such as the Cursed Earth and indeed the Judge Child quest. Perhaps the most notable sequence is on the planet of Umpty addicts, allowing for a Cliff Robinson cover showing Dredd off his nut on Umpty. But it's all over and done in an episode and a half.

Art by Cliff Robinson

The rotating art team feels like a gimmick, but there's no reason for it, except of course that it's easier to schedule, especially given that this was a Megazine epic, so each episode was worth at least two episodes of a Prog-based epic. I suppose it also allowed some new artists to have a go at a John Wagner script, which is a great place to do a try-out.

So yeah, a forgettable and forgotten epic.

Story: 5/10 Wagner trying to be funny on his own is about half as successful as Wagner/Grant doing it together.

Art: 6-8/10 There's some early work from Jock, always dramatic, and a rather good Anthony Williams, but despite perfectly decent work from the rest none stick out, and frankly nothing even comes close to direct comparisons with the holy trinity of McMahon, Bolland and Smith.

Legacy: None – except it's possible the relative failure of this tale was enough to convince Wagner (and perhaps editors?) not to retread old ground to dream up long storylines for Dredd.

Art by Anthony Williams

Overall score: 11.8 out of 20
Want to read it? Check out Case Files 31


Speaking of bits of fluff from John Wagner with rotating artists...

No 47: City of the Damned Progs 393-406
Written by John Wagner & Alan Grant; Illustrated by Steve Dillon, Ron Smith, Kim Raymond and Ian Gibson
(14 episodes, 93 pages, the 8th Dredd epic historically speaking)

The Basics: Judges Dredd and Anderson travel to the near future to check on that prediction of doom from the start of the Judge Child, and discover that the city has turned into Hell. Can they discover how and why it happened, and travel back to the past to prevent it? (Spoilers - yes, they can).

Analysis: Famously hated by Wagner and Grant, this story was the inevitable consequence of needing an epic of some sort, because it had been a long time since the last. A dangling plot thread from an old epic, namely the Judge Child, seemed a reasonable hook. Two problems – 1) it needed a time machine to get the epic going, which can always be a dangerous device to introduce into any plot. 2) Beyond the idea that Mega City 1 in the future would be hellish and scary, Wagner and Grant didn't seem to have any big ideas to explore.

I maintain a fondness for the story. As part of my own history with 2000AD, it was a long-running saga that I, at first, only had access to a handful of episodes in back progs. Which made it feel longer and more epic, and made me assume the missing parts were going to be full of good stuff! It turns out the episodes I had access to were probably the best ones, and the missing bits were full of fluff.

Now that's a cracking 'what if the police were vampires' joke.
Words by Wagner n Grant; Art by Ron Smith

 

Good ideas: the Hell St Blues, a TV-inspired pun that sees the Judges turning into blue vampires.

The Mutant, an awesome piece of villain design by Steve Dillon (could have had a better name, mind). He is, for some reason, without any eyes – which makes him scarier to look at, and also foreshadows the fact that Dredd himself will be blinded in the course of the story (another good idea). Evil zombie Dredd, programmed by the Mutant to hunt down and kill hero Dredd. Finally, probably the best idea Wagner/Grant had in some ways, was to not use the time machine as a cure-all. It's used twice – to get Dredd and Anderson into the future, and to take them home again. No messing around!

The final episode has even less messing around, as Dredd and Anderson return to Xanadu (the final planet from the Judge Child) and just put an end to everything in like 3 pages. They could have spun all that out for weeks, with free robots and mutant mayhem providing obstacles. But they didn't. Heigh ho.

In between all this, Dredd and Anderson (his companion for the adventure, and a welcome one although she's not terribly well used) stumble around the 'Damned' city, mostly fighting off monsters. Literal monsters. The nightmare logic of streets turning to goo, and black fogs descending are good ones, but I don't get why there are serpents and beasties and such. I wonder if Wagner and Grant had been a bit spoiled by having worked with super-imaginative artists in the past – McMahon and Bolland, most obviously – and relied on them to bring the idea of a scary monster to life in a way that you'd enjoy the atmosphere and not worry about any logic behind it?

Story: 6/10 (and that's with my nostalgia goggles on, mind you!)

Art: 5-9/10

City of the Damned, more than any epic since the Robot War, suffers from too many artists. If Steve Dillon, who gets the lion's share, had drawn the whole thing, I reckon it'd be both better and more fondly remembered. Nothing really wrong with the pages put in by Ron Smith and Ian Gibson, although both had done better. Poor old Kim Raymond bears the brunt of the ill-will. In fact, I rather like his rendering of Dredd and Anderson – but I'll concede that his layouts, and, in this story, lack of background detail, are a weak point. He'd done better work before, but didn't get much more work after this.

Legacy: Bits and pieces have stuck around. Dredd's bionic eyes, which earn a classic quip at the end, have been oft-referenced going forward. Proteus, the time machine, has shown up a handful of times. In fact, in three rather neat stories – Mean Machine: Travels with muh Shrink, Judge Dredd: the Time Machine and the Exterminator. Unfortunately, the main thrust of the Judge Child saga was rather soured by the experience. There's a well-drawn but somewhat empty sequel in the Year 2120, mostly notable because the creators actually waited until the year 2120 (Dredd time). Finally, there's zombie Dredd, a creature who returns in... Darkside (coming to an episode of the Dredd ranking fairly soon).

Dredd and Anderson exploring a broken down, hellscape version of Mega-City One.
It's such a great setting, how did this story fail to add up to anything?
Words by Wagner + Grant; Art by Steve Dillon

Overall Score: 11.9 out of 20
Want to read it? It's in Case Files 8.


Speaking of monsters in Mega City One, here's...

No. 46: Raptaur Megs 11-17
Written by Alan Grant; Art by Dean Ormston
(7 episodes, 62 pages; Epic 13 in sequence)

The Basics: An alien beast arrives in Mega City 1, and starts killing citizens. A tougher-than-usual case for Judge Dredd.

Anyone remember this fresh Dredd logo from 1991?
Art by Dean Ormston

 

Analysis: You might call this a micro-epic: it scrapes into this list on page count. But for me it's not too much of a stretch. After all, this story was collected up and sold as a trade paperback almost as soon as it finished its run, an honour not afforded many series at the time. I've a feeling that 2000AD fans aren't especially hot on it, but presumably wider comics fans do rather like it – or at least, they did in 1991.

There's no way to escape the fact that it reads an awful lot like 'Judge Dredd does Predator 2, only the Predator has bonded with the Venom symbiote from Spider-Man'. (Predator 2 had come out in cinemas about three months before Raptaur episode one was printed; Venom was HUGE in the superhero comics world. It's likely the writer Alan Grant and artist Dean Ormston hadn't seen the film before they began work, but for adult readers it must have been fairly fresh in the mind). Probably a more direct and actual influence was Judgement on Gotham. As in, let's get a graphic-novel length Dredd story out there with some kewl painted art and maybe a monster and a psychic.

This is the sort of page I imagine makes Dean Ormston cringe
- it shows how new he was to the comics game, and how much he liked Bisley,
but there's something about it that still strikes me as fresh and legitimately cool.

 

As a result, this tale feels rather slight, even with the passage of time. It's not adding much new to Dredd's world, or telling a story that hasn't been told before. Monster kills people; Dredd investigates; nearly gets killed; finds the creature's weakness (which totally isn't copied from Venom...) and kills it. Along the way, there's narration of sorts from a comedy news reporter. The end.

What was new, really, was Dean Ormston's artwork. Yes, he got a lot better later on, but even in this very Bisley-esque early work there's a spark of something pretty amazing. His design for the Raptaur (I think I read somewhere it was adapted from an original design by someone else?) is neat and all, working very well as something that you can describe in some detail, but never actually get a good look at. Basically, he's pulling off the trick of the first Alien film, where you can sort of picture the creature without ever really getting to see it in much detail (and knowing that if you did it'd just look like a stuntman in a rubber suit). And his version of the city is totally atmospheric, all pipes and twilight and shadows and grime. And he does that 2000AD thing of combining gnarly violence and dark atmosphere with some comedy, almost Beano-ish poses.

In the middle, Alan Grant conjures up Psi Judge Karyn, who made a big impact despite not that much panel time – not unlike Judge Anderson in her first outing. I've a feeling Anderson herself was unavailable for this adventure; perhaps if she had been Grant wouldn't have bothered with Karyn?

Story: 5/10 - lazy plotting and lack of theme lets it down a lot.

Art: 7/10 - I find the kewl-factor is enough to make up for some flaws, others would be less generous.

Legacy: For a throwaway action tale, this one had bigger legs than you'd think. Psi Judge Karyn got her own solo series, and the Raptaur creature itself had its own legacy as a monster that very occasionally prowls the city. Two raptaurs in particular had stints as Wally Squad Judge Jack Point's personal familiars.

The series certainly had more of an impact than Skar, a shorter tale that appeared a few years later and was in many ways identical, only with a different hot new artist (Ashley Wood) at the wheel drawing the alien-esque monster.

Who needs a helmet when you have this much hair?
Words by Alan Grant; Art by Dean Ormston

Overall Score: 12 out of 20
Want to read it? You might be able to find a copy of the Hamlyn graphic novel on ebay, but why not go for Case Files 16?

What's coming next? The first crop of stories that are actually good comics, albeit riddled with flaws.