Epics 6-4: How much destruction can one city take??

The thing with writing BIG, EPIC storylines for beloved characters is that it's really tempting to just bring on the carnage, to make a story feel as if it has more impact by changing things irrevocably. And often, it feels lazy and irritating. John Wagner, of course, knows how to do this stuff. Not just once, not just twice, but even three times.

To be fair, our next epic involves destruction on a much smaller scale than the other two, but nuclear bombs can do a LOT of damage, oh yes they can...

Epic 6: Terror/Total War, Progs 1392-1399, 1407-1422
Written by John Wagner; Art by Colin McNeil and Henry Flint
(20 episodes, 121 pages in total; epic number 31 in sequence)

The Basics: Pro-Democracy terrorist organisation Total War re-opens a bombing campaign, taking it to the nuclear level. Dredd leads the team investigating a terror cell from the ground up, but can he follow the trail fast enough to prevent more carnage?

 

An early example of Henry Flint rendering Hershey in wide-eyed mode.

Analysis: Bombings in UK cities (especially London) have never not been a thing; Dredd has always featured stories ripped from the day's headlines. And yet, this pair of tales about a terrorist organisation planting and detonating bombs in Mega City 1 felt properly timely in 2006.

Because he is a genius, John Wagner delivers two versions of this story back-to-back. The first, Terror, is a serious, sober and even tender story following a single terrorist, and how one mistake he makes allows the Judges to infiltrate his network. It's pure procedural, while also exploring the ins and outs of terror cells, Battle of Algiers style. There's an emphasis throughout on inter-personal relationships, contrasting the terror cell we meet – and the non-terrorist friend our protagonist meets in episode 1 - with the team of Judges Dredd works with to identify and breakup that cell.

 

Why yes, that reference to Bennet Beeny Block IS meant to put you in mind of America.
'Terror' is very much a continuation of some themes from that story.
Art by Colin McNeil

Meanwhile, the whole story functions as something of a sequel to America (more on this story coming... soon!), partly because it's Colin McNeil on artwork, but also because it explores rather similar themes of that story, if not the characters. How far would you go to uphold your ideals? If you can bear to bomb random citizens, can you also bear to hurt people you know and love? What price betrayal, etc?

Follow-up tale Total War couldn't be more different. It's pure adrenalin-fuelled thriller, and perhaps the single best Judge Dredd page-turner, right up there with Necropolis. Week to week, this was the first Dredd story in ages that I just could not wait to get my hands on, despite, at that point, being a reader of some 15 years. It's a rare skill to capture an adult's fervour as much as a child's. 

The tension mounts! Will Vienna escape in time..?
Art by Henry Flint

 Once again the emphasis is on procedure, and showing Dredd working as part of a team. But where Terror took its time, and allowed the harsh tactics of Justice Dept to sink in, Total War is all about racing against time, and those harsh tactics become harsher and more desperate. Tellingly, the real hero of both stories ends up being PSU Judge Roffman, previously a foil for Dredd and absolutely not a character one likes to root for, but damn it if he isn't terribly good at his job.

All the while, there's a 'Dredd family' subplot, showing the further travails of Vienna Dredd, and indeed the travails of being a genetic engineer trying to make Dredd/Fargo clone DNA work the way you want it too. There's something inherently satisfying about the idea that these clones are somehow primed not to work out perfectly every time.

 

Dredd's latest clone brother - a mistake?
Art by Henry Flint

If there's one part of the story that lets it down, it's that the villains are simply dastardly, and no space is given over to the question of what effect using nuclear bombs would have on the popularity (or otherwise) or pro-democracy organisation Total War. Sure, they've always been at the 'bombing people to make a point' end of the political spectrum, but, in Terror, one gets the sense that plenty of average citizens have some sympathy to the idea that it's vital to remove the Judges from power, and that war of some sort is the only way to achieve that. Random nukes feels like exactly the sort of thing to ensure that many, many more citizens will sign right up to stay under the protection of the harshest, most Anti-Dem version of Justice Dept they can get. But then, Wagner always did have a fondness for writing his villains as massive idiots (even when they're being quite clever).

Do these guys want democracy... or merely destruction?
Art by Henry Flint

Story: 9/10
Art: 10/10 MacNeil is in full-on political/procedural tragedy; Flint delivering a hyper-kinetic race against time and throwing a monster in there for fun while he’s at it. Arguably, Flint would get better still on later work but he's close to the height of his powers here.
Legacy: To an extent, this story brings to an end one of the threads set up in America, specifically the activities of the group first named in that tale, Total War. But it doesn't do much to either push forward or push back on the whole idea of Democracy returning to Mega City 1.

The major subplot further cements Dredd's guilt over his niece, and arguably serves to bring the various Dredd clones/kin closer together – although this is a plot thread rather dropped by John Wagner. Perhaps most notable is the chance to see a crisis dealt with by the combined forces of the Council of Five, which will become more and more common as the epics roll on – rather like the modern iteration of James Bond, Dredd himself is merely a hyper-competent, coal-facing tool of violence, rather than the lone ranger of certain previous epics.

More prosaically, the events of Total War evidently felt big enough that Wagner wrote a selection of shorter tales to deal with the fallout, including 'After the Bombs' and 'Horror in Emergency Camp 4'. It's Gordon Rennie who'd pick up the plot point of putting Vienna in further danger.

Overall Score: 19 out of 20
Want to read it? Terror and Total War and even one of the epilogues are collected in one volume.
Otherwise you can read Terror in Case Files 39, and Total War and quite a few follow-up stories in Case Files 40. (and try to ignore the fact that Case Files 39 might be the single WORST Dredd volume that happens to contain one of the very best Dredd stories in it 😭)

Next, it's that one time that Judge Dredd basically lost his battle with the bad guys...

Epic 5: Day of Chaos Progs 1743-1789
Written by John Wagner; Art by Ben Willsher; Leigh Gallagher; Henry Flint; Colin McNeil; Edmund Bagwell
(Altogether, this is 51 episodes across 299 pages - quite literally an entire year's worth of Progs; this is epic story No. 39 chronologically)

Theoretically this epic is a whole bunch of prologues leading up to a two-part story called 'Chaos Day'. Or at least, that's what I thought when I was reading it as it came out in the Progs, stunned to find that 'Chaos Day' itself was over with super quickly. Reading it over again, it's pretty clear this is best treated as just one long overall story, broken into bits partly to mark out the passing of time, but even more to allow a team of artists to pass the baton in a satisfying way.

The Basics: After 30 years, the survivors of East Meg 1 enact a revenge plot aimed at destroying Mega City 1 as utterly as possible. They succeed, through a combination of spreading a deadly virus and a bombing campaign - with the help of various agents in the city, including one or two deep cover judges. Dredd leads the investigation and the fightback - but is he too late to make a difference?

 

Feel the ire of Judge Dredd
Art by Ben Willsher

Analysis: an extraordinary achievement by John Wagner in slowly, methodically, and perhaps even tearfully tearing down his most famous creation, Judge Dredd. To an extent, this is the grand culmination of the events begun in Origins, and then continued in Tour of Duty. With a little help from that old standby, the Apocalypse War.

The Sovs have always wanted revenge on Dredd and Mega City 1 – and in fact have tried, many times. The Doomsday Scenario strip was about their attempt to get revenge by kidnapping Dredd. It failed (although it sort of allowed a crime lord to take over the city for a few weeks). SinCity aka Satan's Island was an attempt to get a deadly virus into the city. This, too, failed. But now, things are different. The city is gripped by an existential crisis. The Judges, for so many years hated, feared but on the whole respected and trusted, are increasingly distrusted and disrespected.

 

Of course, the Judges do have some warning of doom to come -
but who's going to believe a teenage psi cadet?
Art by Ben Willsher

Why? Well, Dredd himself, the city's hero, has forced the citizens to accept mutants, but the citizens weren't ready (The result of encounter with Fargo in Origins). Then, a wicked Judge managed to take control of the department, ostensibly to 'fix' Dredd's mistake, but actually only serving to remind the citizens that Justice Dept isn't the perfect system of order and honesty it purports to be (in Tour of Duty). On the flip side, a democratically elected mayor seems to be doing a rather good job of improving life in the city. Proof that non-Judges CAN in fact make decent politicians (As seen in various 'Mayor Ambrose' stories). The fact that Mayor Ambrose is actually mass murderer PJ Maybe in disguise doesn't affect this, it just makes the story more fun to read.

So into that mix, the Sovs find a window of opportunity. As Chief Judge, Sinfield is so paranoid about his own department that he unwittingly allows Sovs to infiltrate. Meanwhile Dredd's own judgement is under question more than usual, thanks to his 'error' in overturning the mutant ban. As the prologues to Day of Chaos play out, Dredd is overruled once, and that's what allows the Sovs to get their virus working. The action of the infiltrators is what allows the Sov agents to bring the virus into the city. Nastiest of all, one final agent delivers the hammer blow of creating mass panic.

 

Here's Nadia, agent of destruction.
Art by Ben Willsher

Chaos mean chaos - somehow, the four dark judges get loose...
Art by Colin McNeil

This final blow comes in a rather underplayed scene quite near the end, but I found it especially chilling. It's when the last undiscovered infiltrator manages to slip the media a tape showing how the Judges intend to scoop up infected people and dump them into mass graves even before they die. In the context of Mega City 1, it's believable enough that even the few sensible citizens are inclined to a) panic and b) not do what they're told by the Judges – the one action that probably would have saved lives from the Chaos bug.

How do people know who or what to believe?
In Mega City One or indeed in our own world...
Art by Henry Flint

Anyway, all that careful orchestration allows Wagner to finally bring Dredd down, to present him with an enemy he can't defeat. Sure, he does get to find, capture and kill the bad guys, and to a limited extent the Judges DO save enough of the city and indeed Justice Dept that the whole thing gets to continue – but it's very much the point of this story that Dredd loses, and loses in part because he hasn't been good enough. He wasn't quite in the right in the Apocalypse War, he was definitely not in the right about the mutant law, and he didn't do enough to prevent mistakes made by Sinfield and more specifically Francisco that could, perhaps have saved the city. It’s also relevant that Dredd clearly blames himself not for the first two problems but for the last one – an act of arrogance that a man so used to saving the day has to recognise that maybe having friends and being a team player once in a while would help.

Now, it's plenty fascinating to read a story in which the hero loses. But it's also kind of unsatisfying. Wagner is skilful enough at his job to give us plenty of moments when Dredd could have won, but doesn't quite, eking out all manner of excitement. But when you know the outcome, and when each moment passes Dredd by, it's all a bit much. Day of Chaos is about as good a version of the 'hero does everything he can, but still loses, and kind of deserves what's coming' story – but for me, these are never quite as good as the 'hero ultimately wins' story. Apparently even 35 years of mainlining 2000AD hasn't cured me of being a square.

 

That's foreshadowing, that is.
Art by Leigh Gallagher

Story: 9/10 It's harsh to find fault, but I like my happy endings, what can I say!
Art: 10/10 This is a real triumph of art and scheduling, going back to the glory days of the Cursed Earth, Judge Cal and the Judge Child, with all art handled by a stalwart team, each getting a significant section to handle, even within the massive ‘Eve of Destruction’ storyline. Willsher in particular acquits himself superbly as the young gun flanked by two old hands; there’s something in his lines that feels hyper modern and actively gnarly. Gallagher gets a single but crucial story in the middle, using his skills with eyes and noses to ram home that part where the readers realise that Dredd isn’t going to win this time, and even he is starting to see it, too. At this point, it kind of goes without saying that Flint and McNeil are just superb.

Legacy: the legacy of this particular story is still shaking itself out. By design, it was meant to not just reduce the population of the city and its Judges, it was meant to force some sort of change in the status quo, to make the judges, the citizens and even the readers question whether or not the concept of Justice Department could work anymore, as a force to control a city-state.

There followed a number of stories that dealt with all sorts of fallout from this kind of disaster, from Judges and citizens with PTSD, to life in the ruins, to mistrust of Justice Dept. Many of these are excellent. But, and it's somewhat inevitable, no one has really managed to change anything about the basic set-up of either Mega City 1 or the Justice Dept, despite that being one of the aims of the epic. The closest anyone has come is Wagner finally relenting and having robot Judges released into the world, and seemingly cured of any glitches that send them on kill-rampages (for now, anyway).

This is, I think, a baked in problem of trying to do the 'now the protagonists lose' story. The Judges can’t lose, not too badly, or else the basic mechanics of what makes 'Judge Dredd' an enduring comic strip will disappear, and the strip either becomes a pure plot-based continuity only fest (which would be hard to sustain for too long), or has to hope that a new status quo is found that is as popular as the original (which is frankly very unlikely – strips as strong as Judge Dredd are not born every week, or even every decade). So we’re left with a world-shaking story that kind of didn’t shake the world too hard, allowing things to continue in many ways as they have done for 40 years.

Otherwise, the most obvious legacy is that Francisco resigns as Chief Judge, and Hershey is back in he big chair. Can’t have an epic this big without a new Chief Judge by the end of it!

Overall Score: 19.2 out of 20
Want to read it? Strap in, it'll take you a while! You're gonna want the prologue volume, the main volume, and this aftermath volume.

 

Next up, one could say, is THE story without which 'Day of Chaos' - and practically half of all Dredd epics - wouldn't have happened...

Epic 4: Block Mania/The Apocalypse War Progs 236-270
Written by John Wagner and Alan Grant; Art by Carlos Ezquerra, Mike McMahon, Brian Bolland, Steve Dillon, Ron Smith
(34 episodes, 208 pages, this is epic 7 chronologically)

The Basics: East Meg 1, old enemies of Mega City 1, drive half the city insane, before destroying half of it and invading the rest. Dredd leads the fightback!

 

Nuclear winter! Such a fun backdrop for a war story.
Art by Carlos Ezquerra

Analysis: This is the big one! It's the first that set up Epic Trope 5: gradually sewing seeds of things to come in future Dredd, that blow up into an epic of epic epicness. And of course Epic Trope 6: destroying city-sized parts of Judge Dredd's world, especially Mega City 1 and its citizens.

By comparison to later efforts, it wasn't all that much sewing – a couple of stories in which Dredd fights Sov-block Judges from East Meg 1, then it's into Block Mania, which is a vital prologue to the epic – but in fact it's only the last two parts of this tale that explain the whole thing is a Sov plot. Oddly, one thing that never seems to matter is why East Meg 1 hates Mega City 1, or why they'd particularly want to take it over. They just do, because the Cold War was in full swing in 1982 when the story was written.

Even more than Judge Cal or the Judge Child, this is a story that I just can't imagine reading weekly as it came out – the wait between episodes would've been unbearable! And I'm very much including Block Mania in this. That could've been a fairly ordinary 2-4 parter, but they spin it out until the whole city is out of control. It's practically an epic in its own right.

 

When citizens go especially crazy...
(Art by Mike McMahon)

...Judges tend to over-react.
(Art by Ron Smith)

The Apocalypse War itself, more than any epic before, is a nail-biting thrill ride of action. But, as with Judge Cal before it, there's an awful lot of comedy amongst the thrills. In particular, the mass murder is played for laughs, whether it's crazed cits dancing the Apocalypso dance, or staunch judges hurling themselves off tower blocks to stub-gun their way into martyrdom and legend. And then there's crazed megalomaniac villain Kazan (with sidekick/punching bag Isaaks). Kazan gets the distinction of being the bad guy beyond the pail of the original bad guy – Sov Diktator Bulgarin was already a genocidal menace, but Kazan is painted even worse.

 

One gets the impression that Kazan's real eyes are even blacker than his goggles...
Art by Carlos Ezquerra

Somehow, Wagner/Grant manage to put across both the scale of the war and the big events while always keeping the focus on Dredd. As the story narrows in on his efforts first to help Chief Judge Griffin, then to lead a squad into the heart of Sov territory, we never feel like we're missing out on the action elsewhere. (And a good thing too, otherwise no doubt we'd have been treated to 'Apocalypse War: Front Line' or some other such latter-day retread).

Among all the craziness there's room for Dredd to show off.
Art by Carlos Ezquerra

 

Is there any war-story template so exciting as a crack squad of underdogs
on a suicide mission to win the whole war?
Art by Carlos Ezquerra

And then there's that ending. Or, more specifically, Dredd's final judgement on East Meg 1. I'll be honest, it didn't resonate with me the way it clearly did with Garth Ennis and many others. I think because either I was too young when I read it and didn't understand the implications of mass murder - or, more likely, I didn't actually read the whole epic until after I'd read a fair chunk of classic 2000AD, including Judgement Day. So I was kind of inured to the idea of heroes killing billions as just a standard 2000AD trope...

But I do get that it was and is a big deal, and it remains an interesting way to end a story about war. Arguably, the last big war, in the real world, that came to a conclusive end also did so because someone decided that killing two entire cities at the push of a button was a fair decision. And frankly, the jury's still out on whether this was the right call to make.

 

Story: 9-10/10 Sacrilege not to give it 10? Well, frankly, as someone who didn't read it when it was originally released I never quite got the heartstopping sensation that I imagine many readers did, and there are some story beats that are basically how children's adventure comics work, and don't stand up to the sophistication of later Dredd. These are very minor quibbles, mind! Block Mania on its own is a stone-cold 10/10, though.
Art: 9/10 – The art is of course Carlos Ezquerra's triumphant return to his creation, and he doesn't disappoint, although I would say that his version of Dredd's world would only get better from here on – so that's a half-point off top marks. Meanwhile, in Block Mania, we got McMahon and Bolland's final Dredd stripwork for years and years. Both acquit themselves admirably, although it does leave for a muddled prologue with its 4 artists across 9 episodes, knocking off another half a point.

Legacy: The Apocalypse War didn't get a tidy, one-part epilogue as previous epics had done – instead we got a handful of tales that directly deal with the aftermath of the War, and then over the course of the next year, even the next decade, there'd be stories that hinged on either the War itself, or the consequences of living in a bombed-out city. In many ways, this single story has lasted in the consciousness of Dredd writers more than any other. Indeed, even in the 2020s writers are still looking to East Meg 1 as a source of story fodder and villainy for Dredd.

On a practical note, we also got a proper new villain, Orlok, who comes back many times, although mostly as a foil for Judge Anderson - not to mention Kazan, who would plague Dredd's dreams from time to time. We also got the death of a Chief Judge, replaced by McGruder, and the final farewell – at least, for a very long time – of Walter the damned Robot.

Overall score: 19.5 out of 20
Want to read it? You're spoiled for choice. Case Files 5 is a good way to go, and you get some Judge Death thrown in for good measure. Coming soon is an 'Essential' edition - and in the past there have been many a collection, one of them even }shudder{ colourized.

Next time: "What do you mean, XXXXXXX is a better story than Apocalypse War? You're SO wrong. And just what are you pulling out for the number 2 slot? I guess number one was a forgeone conclusion, given your weird definition of 'epic'. Fair enough."