Epics 28-26: sublime and ridiculous

If you thought Wilderlands had a lot of backstory to cover, here's an epic so epic that, had it achieved in art and episode-by-episode writing what it sets out to achieve in sheer scale and enormity of content, might be a contender for all time best...

Epic 28: Tour of Duty  let's say it's Progs 1649-1693, with a direct prologue in Progs 1628-1633
Written by John Wagner, with a couple of chapters by Robbie Morrison and Gordon Rennie; Art by (deep breath): Carl Critchlow, Colin McNeil, PJ Holden, Mike Collins, Cliff Robinson, John Haward, John Higgins, Carlos Ezquerra

But we really must consider all the build-up, which comes in Progs 1542-1548, Prog 2008, 1569-1581, (arguably 1589-1595; 1600-1603); and the Megazine kind of got in on the action with Megs 289-296. (Credit there to Robbie Morrison, Al Ewing and Rob Williams, alongside Kevin Walker, Patrick Goddard, Leigh Gallagher, Mike Collins and Guy Davis)
Even if we just consider the 'core' epic it's still a total of 52 episodes and 336 pages. A full year's worth of comics - phew!

Now, let's be up front. Although this VERY long run was printed under the banner 'Tour of Duty', many of the individual stories within are one-off incidents that Dredd happens across out in the Cursed Earth as part of his exile. Is it fair to include them in this ranking? I say yes! Part of the fun of these truly 'mega' epics is letting them breathe, see how Dredd copes in a different milieu. Shall we get into it?

The very, very Basics: new acting Chief Judge Sinfield kicks Dredd out into the Cursed Earth; Dredd has adventures while waiting his chance to expose Sinfield's failures.

The rather more detailed and hard to abridge Basics: A change in the law allowing mutants into Mega City One has not gone down well, with either the Judges or the citizens. Chief Judge Hershey resigns, and is replaced by new Chief Judge Dan Francisco. He in turn is being manipulated by his deputy, Martin Sinfield. And it's Sinfield who begins the process of kicking the mutants out again, as well as banishing Dredd from the city. Dredd undertakes a 'Tour of Duty' out in the Cursed Earth, supervising the creation of new Townships for the mutants to live in.

Meanwhile, the city's Mayor, who is really PJ Maybe in disguise, attempts to murder Sinfield.

Meanwhile again, out in the Cursed Earth Dredd and young Judge Beeny have a team of poor quality Judges to whip into shape, while also trying to keep the mutants safe, and battle to get proper resources from MC1. After one failure of judgement too many by acting Chief Judge Sinfield, Dredd decides it's time to return to the city to face him down.

 

Dredd is out in the Cursed Earth (on a 'Tour of Duty', see?), while deputy Chief Judge Sinfield
can start manoeuvring his way to the top...
Words by John Wagner; Art by Colin McNeil

Analysis: I cannot imagine reading Tour of Duty as my first Dredd epic. Or even without having read not just the 'official' prologues, but also several years worth of earlier Dredd, at least stretching back to Origins. This epic is steeped and marinated and thoroughly stewed in Dredd continuity and Dreddworld lore. And yet, I bet I'd still find it exciting and dramatic. John Wagner is the king of the page turner, and even more at crafting a page-turner that has a satisfying through-line and resolution. If anything, as a long-term Dredd reader I probably give less credit than I should to the subplot involving Dredd's team of washouts and burnouts who are sent as his crew for the new townships. New characters, distinct characters, and each with their own arc.

But here's the thing – this epic is so very much about the Justice system of Mega City One, and about Dredd's place in it both literally and metaphorically, that it's often hard to get drawn into the plot. The key issue is that of mutants. Dredd decides, after the events of earlier epic Origins, that it's no longer permissible for Mega City 1 to maintain its 'genetic ban'. He persuades Chief Judge Hershey to overturn the ban, and mutants flood into the city. We, the readers, are clearly meant to be on Dredd's side. It's a just decision, and the anti-mutant era that went before was a key example of actual race-based fascism on the part of the Judges.

Sinfield, with his clear anti-mutant stance, is the obvious villain. Especially when he gets into minor squabbles with JD.

 

Frankly, having a senior Judge who stands up to Dredd is story enough!
Art by Mike Collins

 

And yet, by the end of 'Tour of Duty', we as readers are, I think, meant to believe that Dredd is, kind of, to blame for everything. It's not that Dredd was wrong, but that it just wasn't possible to overturn an unjust law in such a bull-headed manner. Weirdly, although the prologues of the epic open with Dredd exposing corruption and horror in Cursed Earth-based prisons/holding facilities, by the end of the epic it's almost the case that life is better in the new Townships (even if they still look quite a lot like those original horro-filled facilities) than it would be in Mega City 1 itself – especially if you're a mutant.

All of which is terrifically interesting stuff to chew over as a Dredd fan. Frustratingly, most of this epic isn't actually about these political and moral goings on. 

Across the three trade collections, about half of the stories are about shenangians involving mutants and petty villainy out in the Cursed Earth. They're plenty good stories, sure, but because there's this really meaty political thriller going on they don't hold the attention in the same way they did in, for example, the Cursed Earth epic.

 

Is it a problem if even the sight of a Judge getting ripped in half isn't memorable?
Words by Robbie Morrison; Art by Kevin Walker

Overall, Tour of Duty is an action thriller. And there's plenty of plot even in the 'big' half of the epic, and I confess I found myself somewhat annoyed to have to read through the plotty bits before getting back to the meat of the debate about 'how DO you solve the mutant problem in Mega City 1?'

This is grossly unfair, as Wagner himself crafts at least one really rather fine plot, in which Dredd and Beeny take on some evil mutants while helping some rather poor Judges earn their way back into being less poor Judges. Then there's the stuff with an increasingly paranoid Sinfield shoring up his position in government, which is pretty great but not always convincing that so many Judges would just go with it. And then there's the other rather large plot, about PJ Maybe offing lots of political rivals, ultimately gunning for Sinfield himself. 

PJ maybe, no longer aged 13 3/4, but still quite the little bastard.
Words by John Wagner; Art by John Higgins

 

I do like some PJ Maybe, and it’s exciting that after so many years he gets to be a big part of an actual Mega Epic – but this is perhaps the weakest of all PJ outings. Something about him being Mayor and having so many resources at his disposal makes his schemes come across as a bit less cunning than usual. Plus the way the three plots come together is  unsatisfyingly convenient for Dredd. Wagner gives Dredd a sort of 'deciding moment' when he plans to come back to the city to confront Sinfield, but his ultimate victory ends up being more the result of PJ Maybe's efforts; Dredd himself has far less agency than we're used to seeing, and that hurts.

Still, as an exercise in moving around lots of major, major pieces on the chessboard of Mega City 1, this really is an epic to end all epics.

Story: 7-10/10 The basic idea of the epic, and the good bits in it, are AMAZING. But there's a lot of churning in there.
Art: 6-9/10
Inevitably, for such a monster epic, there are a lot of artists taking turns. Scheduling these things must be a nightmare, even when tackling shorter stories within the larger story. I confess I found it frustrating getting used to one artist only to have it all change tack. Critchlow does admirable work setting up the political manoeuvring at the beginning, and it’d have been nice for him to tackle the finale – but you can’t say no to Ezquerra. MacNeil is of course the leading Beeny artist, and was a vital part of setting up the early Cursed Earth scenes. In the later chapters, John Higgins makes a mark handling a lot of the PJ Maybe vs Sinfield antics, and again it’s a shame he didn’t get a little more to do. Other artists handle the sideshow stuff in the Cursed Earth. Lots to enjoy, none is all that memorable, bar a rare strip-art appearance from Cliff Robinson, who draw a fun comedy tale about a knight fighting a dragon. No, really! (Kind of)

Legacy: Frankly, this entire story is legacy! It's borne of the legacy of the age-old anti-mutant policy of Mega City 1, and more directly it's following on from ideas first aired openly in Origins. It's also a rare epic that is very much about the upper echelons of Justice Dept, seeing through three Chief Judges and two Councils of Five, and giving more than a little space to practical considerations of how to govern a city and fair ways to allocate limited resources.

And then there's PJ Maybe, who, after years and years of short stories here and there appears in an epic for the first time, as one of the major players no less. He ends the epic behind bars, but he'll be back to cause more mischief all too soon.

One meta-edge to this epic that hasn't quite been resolved – it firmly positions Dredd (and a few other judges) as someone who deems the anti-mutant laws to be immoral and hence it is right that they should be repealed. As such, Dredd is kind of declaring himself to be not as fascist as the state he serves. And in turn this potentially means the Dredd strip as a whole has lost a bit of its satirical bite. The more Dredd is openly noble, the more it becomes the story of a good man doing what he can to fix a bad situation – and less the story of an honest man serving, wittingly or otherwise, a deeply dishonest system. It also sort of demands that as the greater story of Dredd continues, we want to see him (or, better yet, Judge Beeny), gradually whittling away at the sins of Justice Dept until one day it becomes, dare one say it, a Democracy again. A turn of events that would basically bring an end to 'Judge Dredd' the comic strip.

Overall Score: 14.9 out of 20
Want to read it? You'll need to buy lots of books! You can get most of it (and some might say these are the best bits) in two collected editions from Rebellion, ToD: The Backlash, (which covers most of the Prologues) and ToD: Mega City Justice. (which covers the 'big' parts of the story that originally ran as 'Tour of Duty'.) The Hachett Mega Collection fit the whole thing, including lots of the incidental Cursed Earth chapters, into 3 volumes - but arguably even they haven't quite gathered all of the material. In time, it'll all be in case Files... 49-53, maybe?  

  

Now, what could be more forgettable than a crossover story between two unconnected media properties...

Epic 27: Judge Dredd vs Aliens: Incubus Progs 1322-1335
Written by John Wagner and Andy Diggle; Art by Henry Flint
(15 episodes, 96 pages; this is Epic 30 in sequence)

The Basics: A foolish mega-citizen has got hold of some alien eggs. You know the kind of alien I mean. Hell is unleashed first on a hospital, then onto the lower levels of the Grand Hall of Justice. Dredd, aided by a team of city verminators, leads the fightback.

 

The good bits from the alien films played out in comic strip form:
half-seen monsters that are all Barbed tails and sharp teeth.
Art by Henry Flint

Analysis: This is about as straight-forward an action epic as you can get! It also happens to be, I think, an incredibly good synthesis of the first two Alien movies (well, mostly the second one), with the world of Judge Dredd. In itself, that's impressive. Most sequels find it hard enough to deliver the goods; crossovers are even worse as a rule. There's a crew of expendable humans, given just enough panel-time so you care when they get offed one by one. Along the way, they learn about, and learn to cope with, the usual litany of horrors from the aliens - acid blood, face huggers, chest-bursting, all of that good gorey fun.

Don't shoot them! Acid for blood, man.
Art by Henry Flint

But is there any more there there? A wider theme, or maybe just something not seen before in the world of Dredd? Frankly, no. Overall, I can't help but think that this tale is a better Alien story than it is a Judge Dredd story. Odd, considering its creators – but perhaps they were trying so hard to do justice to the legacy of Aliens that they didn't leave enough for Dredd to do. But, given that the aliens at the heart of the strip kind of have to come out of nowhere and then disappear forever (or until the next crossover license is negotiated), there's little room for the joys of Dredd continuity to rear its head.

In fact, technically there was a prologue to Incubus, the four-part 'Out of the Undercity'. That story was really a sequel to 'Cry of the Werewolf', but is relevant here because it introduced villain Mr Bones, undercity dweller. He turns out to be the main human villain in Incubus – and he's got an excellent Dredd-ish backstory, too. Of course he's dead and gone by the time Incubus wraps up!

 

Still, Aliens was a great movie, and this is a great comics homage to that. But, to an extent you can get a lot out of the story by scanning over the covers that came with it, as much as reading the story itself.

 

This Kev Walker special is my fave.

Story: 7/10 Wagner is given a co-credit but it's likely that Diggle did most if not all of the actual scripting. It's competent writing, and I recall this being a compelling read week-to-week, but it's not a masterpiece as a whole.
Art: 8/10 The art, on the other hand, was great. This is the start of Henry Flint’s rise to true Dredd greatness - I'm not giving it more points in part because Flint would go on to do even more exciting work on Dredd epics.
Legacy: None. Not even newly-qualified Judge Sanchez, who gets a sort-of character arc, made any return appearances. 

Overall score: 15 out of 20
Want to read it? There's an out of print standalone collection - which doesn't include the semi-prologue, and a Hardback that also includes Judge Dredd vs Predator (which is fine, not as good as Incubus, and not long enough to earn 'epic' status by my count). I'd recommend instead Case Files 36, which has that prologue, and the epic itself.

Next, speaking of unconnected media franchises...

Epic 26: Judgement on Gotham
Written by John Wagner & Alan Grant, Art by Simon Bisley
(Technically only 1 episode, but it's 60 pages long. It's epic Number 12 in sequence)

The basics: Batman accidentally stumbles into Mega City 1, while Judge Death and Mean Machine Angel stumble into Gotham City. Dredd, Anderson and Batman head over to Gotham to catch the fiends.

 

Inter-company crossovers were not new in 1991, but this one
sure felt like a pairing that was unlikely to happen.
Art by Simon Bisley

Analysis: Yes, it's in on a technicality, and this time just scraping through to epic length, but once again, if you imagine this story in 5-6 page chunks, it'd have filled three months worth of Progs or 6 months of Megazine. I'm sure Simon Bisley thought it was an epic job, the page-count equivalent of an entire book of the Horned God!

To be honest, as a story it comes across above all else as a great slice of fun, rather than an epic adventure of lasting import. It doesn't exactly push anything forward, but, by virtue of being a mass-appeal comic designed to work for people who'd never heard of Judge Dredd before, it does a lot of work as a character study. Dredd gets to shine, mostly in bastard mode, contrasted with the noble Bruce Wayne, and the sensible Cassandra Anderson. 

 

This sort of joke sets the tone neatly. Clever, but also silly.
Art by Simon Bisley

There's lots of posturing and leather fetish-wear going on, a bit of subtext that Simon Bisley leans into hard for all three characters (five, if you count Judge Death and Mean Machine Angel).

 

The crossover is facilitated by Judge Death's dimension jump technology. I don't know why, but this doesn't bother me in the context of Judge Death stories, but here it felt like too much of a convenience, and it took away from the impact of the story.

Compared to Necropolis, this story is 100% played for laughs – for me, it's the tipping point where Judge Death became an out-and-out comedy character, something he didn't get back from until the first Frazer Irving series (and even then series two of that reverted to hard comedy again). Ultimately, the cool factor and the genuinely excellent character work, delicious as they are, never quite adds up to a lasting classic. But it's a guaranteed good time.

 

There's something glorious about quite how much Mean Angel
just does not feel right as a Batman rogue.
Art by Simon Bisley

Story: 7/10 (Wagner and Grant)
Art: 8/10 (Bisley)
Legacy: Unusually for a crossover, this very definitely fits in with Dredd continuity. (And it didn't violate Batman continuity either, although I don't suppose it's ever referenced). Specifically, it follows Judge Death in his post-Necropolis + Young Death status as a free agent at large in the Meg, and ends with his capture.

Overal Score: 15.5 out of 20
Want to read it? The original special isn't hard to find, but it has been reprinted LOADS - but always bundled up with some or all of the other Dredd/Batman tales.

 

Next time: a recent attempt to pit Dredd against the end of the world, the sequel to one of the best-loved epics, and those pesky Dark Judges again...