Epics 31-29: reaching for the heights

Big ideas on show this time, but big ideas don't always make for the best stories. We start this selection with a cross-over to beat all other 2000AD crossovers...

Epic 31: Helter Skelter   Progs 1250-1261
Written by Garth Ennis; Art by Carlos Ezquerra and Henry Flint
(12 episodes, 72 pages; Epic #28 in sequence)

The Basics: on the surface, this epic is about Judge Cal (the main villain from a much better epic), from a dimension where he defeated Dredd, coming to the 'main universe' to wreak havoc. Along for the ride he brings a variety of Dredd's old enemies; by accident, he also brings a host of 2000AD legends from yesteryear who also wreak havoc. Dredd, with help from Dimension-physics expert Darien Kenzie, leads the fightback!

 

"Two Thousand Worlds" - geddit?
Words by Garth Ennis; Art by Carlos Ezquerra

Analysis: under the surface (but barely hiding), the story is really about Darien Kenzie learning why it might be OK for the Judges to hold power in MC1. A couple of times, she and Dredd almost have a conversation about what might be bad about the Judge system – and why it might not be so bad given that the Judges are, on the whole, good and noble people who put their lives on the line and don't abuse their power.

And you know, there's some excellent stuff in those moments – just a shame there's not nearly enough of them! Kenzie constantly makes reference to living in fear, which Dredd just ignores. Basically, if Ennis had been allowed / chosen to take up an entire episode of the epic with a proper talking heads bit between the two leads, there might've been more meat on the bones of this tale.

And in fact, Ennis kind of does get to achieve one deeper aim – he forces Kenzie to be the one to blow-up her own research facility, in order to properly defeat Cal. This is very much a call back to the ending of the Apocalypse War, in which readers were genuinely shocked by Dredd's fairly quick decision to nuke an entire megacity, killing billions. Kenzie couldn't imagine making such a choice – until Ennis concocts a situation in which she (and by extension, us?) have to.

Helter Skelter could've done with more of this.
Art by Carlos Ezquerra

 

So much for the subtext (or rather, text, since all of this is pretty openly discussed by Kenzie and Dredd!). One could argue that what Helter Skelter is really about is wallowing in nostalgia for the good old Dredd days of Progs 0-400(ish), aka 'when Garth Ennis and at least 50% of 2000AD's readers were little boys'). So yes, there's an emotional hook going on with the plot, but what each episode revels in is throwaway dialogue and the odd panel referencing characters and stories from yesteryear. And even though I'm a little younger than Ennis, I get a kick out of it every time I read it. If there's a negative at all, it's perhaps that Carlos Ezquerra, for all his genius, isn't always the best artist at rendering other people's creations (in direct contrast to Henry Flint, who gives perfect nostalgia despite being a 'modern' artist by 2000AD standards).

 

Writers do like going back to Judge Cal, but frankly no one can draw him like Bolland drew him.
But Flint does a fab job on the rest, eh?
Art by Henry Flint

Story: 7/10
Art: 7-9/10 Somewhat famously, Carlos Ezquerra was unable to complete two episodes of this epic, which were passed on to a young and hungry Henry Flint. This creates two weird problems. On the one hand, Flint couldn't quite get a handle on protagonist Darien Kenzie, a fine Carlos Ezquerra creation, and having a sub artist is always a shame for a long story, especially as it's only for two episodes. On the other hand, Flint was WAY better at drawing most of the 2000AD legend characters, in particular Judge Cal. I hate to say it, but it might have actually been a better fit for Henry Flint to draw the whole story...
Legacy: Arguably none, as Kenzie pointedly 'never heard from Judge Dredd again', so we never got to find out if she actually came to embrace the Judge system. In theory, the story also got rid of 'dimension-hopping' as a feature of Mega City 1. And as far as I remember, even the Dark Judges - not part of this story - haven't used their D-jump devices since. However, Judge Cal (again from another dimension) did show up decades later in Prog 2000.
-and from a 2024 perspective, the whole 'let's play around with 2000AD crossovers' is becoming something of an annual tradition...

Finally, it's worth noting that Ennis chose to specify that all the random 2000AD characters were sucked back in the dimension warp – or killed – except for:

the Fiends of the Eastern Front, and Old One Eye. One supposes that both could be used in a future Judge Dredd tale, without needing any of the timey-wimey explanations to set it up.

Overall Score: 14.6 out of 20
Want to read it? There is an old Titan books collection out there, but it's also in Case Files 34.

 

Next, a recent epic that made a real splash in the pages of 2000AD as it came out week by week, complete with meta-twist - but sadly it's a story that isn't quite so fun on a re-read.

Epic 30: Trifecta  Progs 1804-1812
Written by Al Ewing, Rob Williams, Si Spurrier; Art by Henry Flint, D'Israeli, Simon Coleby, Carl Critchlow
(22 episodes, 163 pages; number 40 in sequence)

Unofficial Prologues: The Bean Counter, which introduces Maitland (Prog 1790); Family Man, which introduces Judge Bachmann (Megs 312-313), and arguably it’d help to have read some (if not ALL) of Low Life and The Simping Detective, although no specific tale from either series feeds directly into this one. There's one 'official prologue': Bullet to King Four, from Prog 1803.

The Basics: Black Ops Judge Barbara Bachmann concocts a plan to set up a new city literally on top of the ruins of post-Chaos Day Mega City One, ousting Chief Judge Hershey and any other Judges who stand in her way. For once, Dredd isn’t able to lead the fight back on his own. Instead, a mysterious benefactor combines the strengths (and madnesses) of Dredd with Low Life’s Dirty Frank and the Simping Detective’s Jack Point – not to mention a brief cameo from ex-Judge Galen DeMarco.

 

Tight black hair, pony tail, glasses. That's Bachmann - she's a villain alright.
Art by Henry Flint (and words here by Al Ewing)

Analysis: It’s the crossover epic to end all crossover epics! At the time this strip first ran in the Prog, it wasn’t even announced as a crossover, it was just this weird set of Progs that had an intriguing but slightly confusing Judge Dredd story, a really out-there Low Life with Dirty Frank, and a Simping Detective tale that felt especially out of place, being as this was a Megazine series. Then, suddenly, Dredd kicked his way out of a panel of his own strip and into the first page of Simping Detective, and the whole thing launched into high gear. Dirty Frank explicitly joined in one prog later and it gave the whole thing a boost of such potency that the overall story can never quite live up to the excitement on a re-read, especially when it’s collected in one volume. But it’s still a joyous achievement, one of the most thrilling in 2000AD’s long history of tricking and surprising the readers.

What about the actual story?

It’s OK I guess. To be honest, it’s quite confusing. There are a lot of parts to juggle. And three very different authorial voices writing three very different characters. For my money, the Low Life tale is far and away the most fun to read, and the most straightforward to understand. The Simping Detective tale is actually pretty neat but the whole conceit of the narrator being a bit noir and very keen on describing everything obliquely and wittily is tiring to read, even when it’s clever and funny. And it IS clever and funny, no mistake. Still tiring. The Dredd strip ends up being the straight man to the other two clowns, and because the villains don’t cross over until the very end the big bad, clearly Judge Bachmann (no offences to co-villains Mr Turner and Mr Overdrive), doesn’t quite get the prominence she deserves, as she keeps disappearing offstage. This even bleeds through into the final big mega-story, Trifecta itself, which filled up an entire Prog. That, too, was written by three writers each handling their own pages. And even with a single artist carrying us through, you can still hear the different voices at work.

How do you go from this...
(Williams 'n D'Israeli)

...to this?
(Spurrier 'n Coleby)

Basically, it’s a massive success on paper but a little underwhelming when you actually wade through it. Although I suspect I’ll like it more with each subsequent re-read, when I’ve stopped trying to understand what’s actually going on and start just enjoying it.

 

Story: 6-9/10 (Ewing, Spurrier, Williams)
Art: 8/10 (Flint, Coleby, D’Israeli, Critchlow)
There’s no getting around the fact that this epic is under the pen of four artists who could not be more different. This is in part by design – they start off working on strips that have a root connection in place, but absolutely no thematic or tonal connection. As such it’s an awkward reading experience. I’d almost want to get hold of a new collected edition where I can read each strip in one go, before the finale. That would be imperfect for other reasons! In any event, each artist handles their segment just right, but the shifts hurt.

Lovely dream-sequence flourish here from Carl Critchlow;
good luck making sense of this scene without reading some LowLife first
(not to mention more Rob Williams Dredd later)

Legacy: For an epic written by ‘not John Wagner’, this is perhaps the boldest yet in terms of setting up events that played out over the years for Dredd. Most specifically, there’s the idea that Justice Dept has at least two Black Ops units in the background, one of which ends this epic in a position of great power. The two key points of legacy are specifically Judge Smiley, one of those very Black Ops leaders, who is going to haunt Dredd and the Justice Dept in future stories. The other is the clearest yet spoken divide between Dredd and Hershey. Dredd is perhaps too pig-headed to truly appreciate it, but it’s clear by the end of the story that Hershey no longer feels she can trust or be trusted by Dredd, and has had to admit how many compromises a Judge must make when becoming Chief Judge.

For good measure, this epic marks the point at which Low Life stops being its own series, and instead its protagonists, Dirty Frank and Aimee Nixon, start appearing in Judge Dredd stories. Spare a thought too for Accounting Judge Maitland, who becomes a key ally of Dredd going forward, not to mention Sensitive Klegg. I’m still hoping Mr Overdrive somehow rises from the dead, too, he's an all-time great Mega City villain.

Overall Score: 14.7 out of 20
Want to read it? Here's a collected edition! (But like I said, you might wanna read some Simping Detective and especially Low Life, first, too...)

 

Onto an epic that acted as John Wagner's big 'welcome home' party for readers of the Prog, the end point of a couple of years' build up in the Meg...

Epic 29: Wilderlands  Progs 904-918 and Megs 2.63-2.68
Written by John Wagner; Art by Carlos Ezquerra, Trevor Hairsine; Mick Austin
(If you add up all the prologues and epilogues, it's 32 episodes / 195 pages)

A big story like this needs breaking down. Let's start with:

Prologue 1 Conspiracy of Silence (Progs 891-894)
Prologue 2 Prologue + The Tenth Planet (Megs 2.57-2.62)
Written by John Wagner; Art by Mark Harrison, Peter Doherty and Carlos Ezquerra

The basics: Dredd discovers a conspiracy between Chief Judge McGruder and the techs in charge of the Mechanismo program to push the robots through to active Judge status without proper safety testing. But Dredd is found guilty of falsifying his own evidence of the failure of the program. On the way to Titan, Dredd, Chief Judge McGruder and various others stop off on the Tenth Planet, Hestia, to visit the colonists and perhaps to sell them some Judge robots.

Shady wranglings from senior judges kick things in motion.
Art by Mark Harrison

Analysis: It's very hard to appreciate this epic fully without the background of the Mechanismo trilogy. But, as ever, John Wagner makes it accessible. It starts with 'Conspiracy of Silence', a four part tale in which it becomes entirely clear that Dredd has broken the letter of the law, but also that McGruder has gone beyond the pale (pail?), breaking the spirit of the law. Also featuring some very early art from future superstar Mark Harrison – ropey in places, but oozing with atmosphere that really adds to the 'conspiracy' feel.

In the actual prologue – part one even titled 'Prologue', before leading into 'the Tenth Planet', the solution to this impasse is that McGruder has Dredd arrested. In theory he'll be shipped to Titan, but McGruder decides to save space-rocket fuel by going with him, and making a stop at Hestia on the way. In part, one wonders, so she can test out the new Mechanismo MkIII units, and in part to prove to Dredd that she was right and he was wrong. Guess how that works out!

Peter Doherty delivers the prologue bit, with some of his best-ever work. Dredd and McGruder exchange such glances; Hershey gets called out, it's all super intense, with just a hint of comedy. 

I do love an artist who likes to focus on the eyes.
-in this case, that's Peter Doherty

 

Then it's over to Carlos Ezquerra to provide the scene-setting on Hestia, and to introduce new supporting character Laverne Castillo. To be honest, the build up to this epic is better than the epic itself, not least because of the consistency of the art.

 

Judge Castillo gets to have quite the arc over this and future epics, too.
Art by Carlos Ezquerra

Which leads is onto Wilderlands proper...

The Basics: McGruder, Dredd and co crash land in the deadly Wilderlands of the planet Hestia. How will they survive?

 

I'm a sucker for 'a collection of people get stuck on a Death Planet after a crash' set-up.
Art by Trevor Hairsine

Analysis: This is the story in which Ezquerra began tinkering with computer art and colouring techniques, and boy does it show. Essentially, he found appropriate photos and played with them to try to get them to fit with his own art style. Yes, it makes sense for things like alien skyscapes, lava pits and such, but that doesn't mean it looks great. Even at the time it was odd; enough time has passed that it's no longer horrible to look at, it's more of a time capsule. Of course, the character work and storytelling remain impeccable -

-except for that one jarring part where Ezquerra left the story in one place in one episode, only for co-artists Trevor Hairsine and Mick Austin to be left, at different times, without knowing what went before and sort of skipping some crucial action beats. I mean, you always know Judge Dredd isn't going to die, but you need to see how he gets out of each cliffhanger or it feels like cheating. It's no one's fault that it didn't work out in this story, but it's a shame.

The actual story was something new – it has hints of the Cursed Earth, with Dredd and a gaggle of folks trapped in the wilderness trying to get home, but it's not at all episodic, instead it's one long journey through hell, with a bit of a split narrative when Castillo heads off with a partner to find help. Castillo’s character arc is fascinating and really well told, moving from broken and grumpy to hopeful and hyper-competent. Dredd’s antics on a Death Planet™ offer plenty of fun moments, mostly involving moan-y characters complaining about frivolous things then getting offed.

It ends up as a coherent whole, just, but the messy parts really stick out. Perhaps saddest of all, Wagner had been carefully seeding a whodunnit mystery to run alongside the action, and it's actually a rather excellent mystery – only the solution was sort of botched somewhere along the way by some art giving things away. If it had been an epic all told in just the Meg or the Prog, with one artist (or tighter editorial control), then this might've been an all-time classic.

Story: 8/10 Wagner has to take some of the blame for the story as a whole not quite working, especially after such a strong opening section.
Art: 4-9/10 There's greatness from Doherty and Ezquerra, marked down by the computer not really keeping up with him. Hairsine also terrific. Poor Mark Harrison is delivering his first ever published work for 2000AD, and would get a LOT better. Mick Austin has done good Dredd, but evil robots are evidently not his forte. He's good in the epilogue!
Legacy: Well, we get another farewell to another Chief Judge, but this time, she doesn't have to die! So that's something fun. In fact, the two follow-up stories to Wilderlands, in which Dredd himself runs for Chief Judge, count as a direct and rather neat epilogue. We also come to the end of the Mechanismo cycle, at least for a very long time. New character Judge Castillo completes a satisfying arc within the epic, and becomes a fairly regular new supporting character. Also, completely mysteriously, the dune sharks from Hestia end up in the Cursed Earth, bringing woe to Judge Dredd in a handful of future stories, including the epic-length ‘Hunting Party’.

Overall Score: 14.8 out of 20
Want to read it? Case Files 21 has you well covered, prologues and all.

 

Next time: Perhaps the single most ambitious Dredd epic ever - too ambitious to really work on the page? And then two bits of fluff that are infinitely less memorable, but don't really do anything wrong.