tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-73212537994110576542024-03-13T02:55:05.984-07:00Dredd ReckoningEvery Judge Dredd book, reviewed.Douglas Wolkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10691167073493285913noreply@blogger.comBlogger89125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7321253799411057654.post-28256900040825518302013-02-10T13:40:00.004-08:002022-10-06T19:40:06.964-07:00Housekeeping #3: Index and Guide<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:DocumentProperties> <o:Revision>0</o:Revision> <o:TotalTime>0</o:TotalTime> <o:Pages>1</o:Pages> <o:Words>3134</o:Words> <o:Characters>17867</o:Characters> <o:Company>Dark Beloved Cloud</o:Company> <o:Lines>148</o:Lines> <o:Paragraphs>41</o:Paragraphs> <o:CharactersWithSpaces>20960</o:CharactersWithSpaces> <o:Version>14.0</o:Version> </o:DocumentProperties> <o:OfficeDocumentSettings> <o:AllowPNG/> </o:OfficeDocumentSettings> </xml><![endif]--> <!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:TrackMoves/> <w:TrackFormatting/> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:DoNotPromoteQF/> <w:LidThemeOther>EN-US</w:LidThemeOther> <w:LidThemeAsian>JA</w:LidThemeAsian> <w:LidThemeComplexScript>X-NONE</w:LidThemeComplexScript> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:SnapToGridInCell/> <w:WrapTextWithPunct/> <w:UseAsianBreakRules/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> <w:SplitPgBreakAndParaMark/> <w:EnableOpenTypeKerning/> <w:DontFlipMirrorIndents/> <w:OverrideTableStyleHps/> <w:UseFELayout/> </w:Compatibility> <m:mathPr> <m:mathFont m:val="Cambria Math"/> <m:brkBin m:val="before"/> <m:brkBinSub m:val="--"/> <m:smallFrac m:val="off"/> <m:dispDef/> <m:lMargin m:val="0"/> <m:rMargin m:val="0"/> <m:defJc m:val="centerGroup"/> <m:wrapIndent m:val="1440"/> <m:intLim m:val="subSup"/> <m:naryLim m:val="undOvr"/> </m:mathPr></w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" DefUnhideWhenUsed="true"
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Welcome to "Dredd Reckoning"! This blog is no longer being regularly updated--although the book list below is occasionally updated, well beyond the date of this post--but it includes discussions of all Judge Dredd-universe graphic novels as of January 2013. (To be more specific: every squarebound book reprinting </span><i style="font-family: inherit;">Judge Dredd</i><span style="font-family: inherit;"> comics, or other comics set in that world, that's not made redundant by a later book.)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">If you're wondering where to begin with the <i>Dredd</i> comics, there's a special post about that: <a href="http://dreddreviews.blogspot.com/2012/06/where-to-start-reading-judge-dredd.html">Where to Start Reading Judge Dredd</a>. (Short version: nearly every volume is self-contained, although there's a definite historical progression. My personal favorites among the in-print volumes are <i>America</i>, <i>Case Files</i> 5 and 14, the two <i>Day of Chaos</i> books, <i>Brothers of the Blood</i>, and <i>Trifecta</i>. Of the spinoffs, I especially like <i>Chopper: Surf's Up</i>, <i>Mega-City Undercover Vol. 02: Living the Low Life,</i> <i>The Taxidermist</i>, and <i>Devlin Waugh: Swimming in Blood</i>.)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">For those of you who don't want to monkey with the sidebar--or for those of you who want the complete, anal-retentive chronological reading order for all things Dredd-related--here are all the relevant books with otherwise unreprinted content, in order of "earliest otherwise unreprinted story," as closely as I can approximate it, with links to the blog entries:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://dreddreviews.blogspot.com/2011/06/complete-case-files-01.html">The Complete Case Files 01</a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">(<i>Judge Dredd</i> stories from <i>2000 AD</i> Prog 2-60 and <i>Judge Dredd Annual 1981</i>, and <i>Walter the Wobot</i> strips from <i>2000 AD</i> Prog 50-58)<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://dreddreviews.blogspot.com/2011/07/restricted-files-01.html">The Restricted Files 01</a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">(<i>Judge Dredd</i> stories from <i>2000 AD Summer Special</i> 1977, <i>2000 AD Annual</i> 1978-1985, <i>2000 AD Sci-Fi Special</i> 1978-1984, <i>Dan Dare Annual</i> 1979-1980, and <i>Judge Dredd Annual</i> 1981-1985)<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
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</span></span> <span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The Complete Brian Bolland</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">(<i>Judge Dredd</i> stories from <i>2000 AD</i> Prog 41, 47, 50-52, 57, 58 (partial), 75, 79-82, 86, 87, 94, 95, 98, 101, 102, 110, 120, 123, 127, 149-151, 156, 162, 172, 173, 182, 224-228, 244 and <i>2000 AD Annual</i> 1982, and <i>Walter the Wobot</i> strips from <i>2000 AD</i> Prog 52-61, 67 and 68; the only unduplicated material here is five one-page <i>Walter</i> strips and a bunch of covers)</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://dreddreviews.blogspot.com/2011/07/complete-case-files-02.html">The Complete Case Files 02</a><span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">(<i><span style="color: #1a1a1a;">Judge Dredd</span></i><span style="color: #1a1a1a;"> stories from <i>2000 AD</i> Prog 61-70, 73-76, 79-108 and 110-115)<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
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</span></span> <span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #1a1a1a;">The Cursed Earth Uncensored</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #1a1a1a;">(<i>Judge Dredd</i> stories from <i>2000 AD</i> Prog 61-85)</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://dreddreviews.blogspot.com/2011/07/complete-case-files-03.html">The Complete Case Files 03</a><span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">(<i>Judge Dredd</i> stories from <i>2000 AD</i> Prog 116-154)<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://dreddreviews.blogspot.com/2011/07/complete-case-files-04.html">The Complete Case Files 04</a><span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">(<i>Judge Dredd</i> stories from <i>2000 AD</i> Prog 156-207)<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://dreddreviews.blogspot.com/2011/07/complete-case-files-05.html">The Complete Case Files 05</a><i><span style="color: #1a1a1a;"> <o:p></o:p></span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i><span style="color: #1a1a1a;">(Judge Dredd</span></i><span style="color: #1a1a1a;"> stories from <i>2000 AD</i> Prog 208-267, 269-270; note that <i>The Apocalypse War</i> is a subset of this material, but in color)</span><span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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The Daily Dredds Volume One<br />
(<i>Judge Dredd</i> weekly strips from the <i>Daily Star</i>, Aug. 29, 1981-Dec. 20, 1986, plus daily strips, Jan. 6-Jul. 4, 1986; a subset of this material is discussed as <a href="http://dreddreviews.blogspot.com/2011/08/judge-dredd-mega-collection.html" style="font-family: inherit;">The Judge Dredd Mega-Collection</a><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: inherit;">)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://dreddreviews.blogspot.com/2011/08/complete-case-files-06.html">The Complete Case Files 06</a><span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">(<i>Judge Dredd</i> stories from <i>2000 AD</i> Progs 271-321)<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://dreddreviews.blogspot.com/2011/08/complete-case-files-07.html">The Complete Case Files 07</a><span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">(<i>Judge Dredd</i> stories from <i>2000 AD</i> Progs 322-350, 353-375)<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://dreddreviews.blogspot.com/2011/08/judge-anderson-psi-files-volume-01.html">Judge Anderson: The Psi Files Volume 01</a><span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">(<i>Anderson Psi-Division</i> stories from <i>2000 AD Annual</i> 1984 and <i>2000 AD</i> Progs 416-427, 468-478, 520-531, 607-609, 612-622, 635-647, 657-659, 669-670, 712-717 and 758-763, plus <i>Judge Corey</i> from <i>2000 AD Sci-Fi Special</i> 1989)<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://dreddreviews.blogspot.com/2011/09/complete-case-files-08.html">The Complete Case Files 08</a><span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">(<i>Judge Dredd</i> stories from <i>2000 AD</i> Prog 376-423)<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://dreddreviews.blogspot.com/2012/03/judge-anderson-psi-files-volume-02.html">Judge Anderson: The Psi Files Volume 02</a><span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">(<i>Anderson Psi Division</i> and <i>Anderson Psi</i> stories from <i>Judge Dredd Annual</i> 1985, 1986 and 1988, <i>2000 AD Annual</i> 1987, <i>2000 AD</i> Progs 700-711, and <i>Judge Dredd Megazine</i> #2.08, 2.10, 2.11, 2.14, 2.22-2.24, 2.27-2.34, 2.37, 2.50-2.60 and 2.73; see also <o:p></o:p></span></span><a href="http://dreddreviews.blogspot.com/2011/12/judge-anderson-psi-division-shamballa.html" style="font-family: inherit;">Judge Anderson Psi-Division: Shamballa</a><span style="color: #1a1a1a;">, which is material from this and volumes 03 and 04)</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://dreddreviews.blogspot.com/2011/09/restricted-files-02.html">The Restricted Files 02</a><span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">(<i>Judge Dredd</i> stories from <i>2000 AD Sci-Fi Special</i> 1985-1988, <i>2000 AD Annual</i> 1986-1990, <i>Judge Dredd Annual</i> 1986-1990, <i>Judge Dredd Mega-Special</i> 1988-1989, <i>2000 AD Winter Special</i> 1988-1989)<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://dreddreviews.blogspot.com/2011/09/complete-case-files-09.html">The Complete Case Files 09</a><span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">(<i>Judge Dredd</i> stories from <i>2000 AD</i> Prog 424-473)<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://dreddreviews.blogspot.com/2012/10/the-restricted-files-04.html">The Restricted Files 04</a><span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">(<i>Judge Dredd</i> stories from <i>Dice Man</i> #1, <i>Judge Dredd Poster Prog</i> #2-5, <i>2000 AD Sci-Fi Special</i> 1994-1996, <i>Judge Dredd Mega Special</i> 1994-1996, <i>2000 AD Yearbook</i> 1995, <i>2000 AD Winter Special</i> 1994 and 2005, <i>Judge Dredd Yearbook</i> 1995, and <i>2000 AD Free Comic Book Day Prog</i> 2012, plus extra material from early <i>Judge Dredd Annuals</i>)<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://dreddreviews.blogspot.com/2011/09/complete-case-files-10.html">The Complete Case Files 10</a><span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">(<i>Judge Dredd</i> stories from <i>2000 AD</i> Prog 474-522)<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></span> <span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The Daily Dredds Volume 2</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: times;">(</span><span style="font-family: times;">Judge Dredd</span><span style="font-family: times;"> daily strips from the </span><i style="font-family: times;">Daily Star</i><span style="font-family: times;">, Jul. 7, 1986-Jan. 30, 1989)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://dreddreviews.blogspot.com/2011/10/complete-case-files-11.html">The Complete Case Files 11</a><span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">(<i>Judge Dredd</i> stories from <i>2000 AD</i> Prog 523-570)<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://dreddreviews.blogspot.com/2013/01/judge-anderson-psi-files-volume-03_20.html">Judge Anderson: The Psi Files Volume 03</a><span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">(<i>Anderson Psi Division</i> stories from <i>Judge Dredd Megazine</i> #2.74-2.80, 3.01-3.07 and 3.14, <i>2000 AD</i> Progs 1045-1061, 1076, 1087-1090, 1102-1103, <i>2000 AD Annual</i> 1988 and 1990, <i>2000 AD Winter Special</i> 1988, and <i>Judge Dredd Annual</i> 1991)<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://dreddreviews.blogspot.com/2011/10/complete-case-files-12.html">The Complete Case Files 12</a><span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #1a1a1a;">(</span><i><span style="color: #1a1a1a;">Judge Dredd</span></i><span style="color: #1a1a1a;"> stories from <i>2000 AD</i> Prog 571-618)<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://dreddreviews.blogspot.com/2011/10/chopper-surfs-up.html">Chopper: Surf's Up</a><span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #1a1a1a;">(</span><i><span style="color: #1a1a1a;">Chopper</span></i><span style="color: #1a1a1a;"> stories from <i>2000 AD</i> Prog 594-597, 654-665, 964-971 and 1387-1394, <i>Judge Dredd Megazine</i> #1.01-1.06 and 2.36, and <i>Judge Dredd Poster Prog</i> 4)<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://dreddreviews.blogspot.com/2011/10/complete-case-files-13.html">The Complete Case Files 13</a><span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">(<i>Judge Dredd</i> stories from <i>2000 AD</i> Prog 619-661)<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://dreddreviews.blogspot.com/2011/10/dead-man.html">The Dead Man</a><span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">(<i>The Dead Man</i> from <i>2000 AD</i> Prog 650-662, and <i>Judge Dredd</i> story from <i>2000 AD</i> Prog 662)<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://dreddreviews.blogspot.com/2011/11/complete-case-files-14.html">The Complete Case Files 14</a><span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">(<i>Judge Dredd</i> stories from <i>2000 AD</i> Prog 662-699)<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://dreddreviews.blogspot.com/2011/11/restricted-files-03.html">The Restricted Files 03</a><span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">(<i>Judge Dredd</i> stories from <i>Judge Dredd Mega-Special</i> 1990-1993, <i>2000 AD Annual</i> 1991, <i>Judge Dredd Annual</i> 1991, <i>2000 AD Winter Special</i> 1990, 1992, 1993, <i>2000 AD Sci-Fi Special</i> 1991, <i>2000 AD Yearbook</i> 1992-1994, <i>Judge Dredd Yearbook</i> 1992-1994, and <i>Judge Dredd Poster Prog</i> 1)<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://dreddreviews.blogspot.com/2011/11/complete-case-files-15.html">The Complete Case Files 15</a><span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">(<i>Judge Dredd</i> stories from <i>2000 AD</i> Prog 700-735 and <i>Judge Dredd Megazine</i> #1.01-1.10)<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://dreddreviews.blogspot.com/2011/11/judge-death-life-and-death-of.html">Judge Death: The Life and Death Of...</a><span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">(<i>Judge Death</i> stories from <i>Judge Dredd Megazine</i> #1.01-1.12, 2.15 and 209-216 and <i>2000 AD</i> Prog 1289-1294, and <i>Judge Dredd</i> stories from <i>2000 AD</i> Progs 1114-1115 and 1168)<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
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</span></span> <span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The Mega Collection 01: America</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a;">(</span><i style="color: #1a1a1a;">America</i><span style="color: #1a1a1a;"> stories from </span><i style="color: #1a1a1a;">Judge Dredd Megazine</i><span style="color: #1a1a1a;"> #1.01-1.07 and 3.20-3.25, and </span><i style="color: #1a1a1a;">Judge Dredd</i><span style="color: #1a1a1a;"> stories from <i>2000 AD</i> Progs 736 and 819 and </span><i style="color: #1a1a1a;">Judge Dredd Megazine</i><span style="color: #1a1a1a;"> #250-252 and 300; note that most but not all of this material is discussed as </span><a href="http://dreddreviews.blogspot.com/2011/12/america.html" style="font-family: inherit;">America</a><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: inherit;">)</span></div>
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The Complete Cam Kennedy, Volume 2<br />
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(<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Judge Dredd</i> stories from <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">2000 AD</i> Progs 643-645, 1133-1134, 1183-1185, 1200-1202, 1234-1236, 1241, 1282-1284, 1336-1337, 1400-1404, 1477-1479, <i>Prog 2000</i> and <i>Prog 2002</i>, and from <i>Judge Dredd Megazine</i> #3.46, 3.50, 4.01-4.03, 228-229 and 238-239, as well as <i>Beyond Our Kenny</i> from <i>Judge Dredd Megazine</i> #1.01-1.03; note that most but not all of this material is discussed as <a href="http://dreddreviews.blogspot.com/2011/12/art-of-kenny-who-cam-kennedy-collection.html" style="font-family: inherit;">The Art of Kenny Who?: The Cam Kennedy Collection</a>)</div>
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</span> <span style="color: #1a1a1a;">Mutants in Mega-City One</span></div>
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a;">(<i>Judge Dredd</i> stories from <i>2000 AD</i> Progs 22, 471, 956, 1227, 1277, 1375-1377, 1542-1548, 1612, 1730 and Prog 2011, <i>Judge Dredd Megazine</i> #1.10 and 4.16-4.18, <i>Judge Dredd Annual</i> 1984, <i>Judge Dredd Mega Special</i> 1989 and <i>Judge Dredd Poster Prog</i> #5, as well as <i>Judge Edwina's Strange Cases</i> story from <i>Judge Dredd Megazine</i> #1.07)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://dreddreviews.blogspot.com/2011/12/red-razors.html">Red Razors</a><span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">(<i>Red Razors</i> stories from <i>Judge Dredd Megazine</i> #1.08-1.15 and <i>2000 AD</i> Progs 908-917 and 971)<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://dreddreviews.blogspot.com/2012/01/mean-machine-real-mean.html">Mean Machine: Real Mean</a><span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">(<i>Mean Machine</i> stories from <i>2000 AD</i> Progs 730-736 and <i>Judge Dredd Megazine</i> #2.47, 2.63-2.72, 3.69, 3.74 and 218-220, plus <i>Judge Dredd</i> story from <i>2000 AD</i> Prog 450)<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://dreddreviews.blogspot.com/2012/01/judge-death-young-death-boyhood-of.html">Judge Death: Young Death - Boyhood of a Superfiend</a><span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">(<i>Judge Death</i> stories from <i>Judge Dredd Megazine</i> #1.01-1.12 and <i>Judge Dredd Mega Special 1991</i>)<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://dreddreviews.blogspot.com/2012/01/complete-case-files-16.html">The Complete Case Files 16</a><span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #1a1a1a;">(<i>Judge Dredd</i></span><span style="color: #1a1a1a;"> stories from <i>2000 AD</i> Progs 736-775 and <i>Judge Dredd Megazine</i> #1.11-1.20)<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><br />
</span></span> <span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #1a1a1a;">Judge Anderson: The Psi Files Volume 04</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #1a1a1a;">(<i>Anderson Psi Division</i> stories from <i>2000 AD</i> Progs 1132-1137, 1140 and 1263-1272, <i>Judge Dredd Megazine</i> #214-217 and 221-236, <i>Judge Dredd Yearbook</i> 1992 and 1993, and <i>Judge Dredd Mega Special</i> 1992)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://dreddreviews.blogspot.com/2012/12/the-batmanjudge-dredd-collection.html">The Batman/Judge Dredd Collection</a><span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #1a1a1a;">(<i>Batman/Judge Dredd: Judgement on Gotham</i>, <i>Vendetta in Gotham, The Ultimate Riddle</i> and <i>Die Laughing</i>, as well as <i>Lobo/Judge Dredd: Psycho Bikers Vs. the Mutants from Hell</i>; see also the earlier discussion of </span><a href="http://dreddreviews.blogspot.com/2012/01/batmanjudge-dredd-files.html"><i>The Batman/Judge Dredd Files</i></a><span style="color: #1a1a1a;">)<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://dreddreviews.blogspot.com/2012/01/heavy-metal-dredd.html">Heavy Metal Dredd</a><span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">(<i>Heavy Metal Dredd</i> stories from <i>Judge Dredd Megazine</i> #1.14, 1.16-1.19, 2.13, 2.19, 2.21-2.25, 2.34-2.36, 2.61-2.62, 3.15, 3.17, 3.33)<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://dreddreviews.blogspot.com/2012/02/complete-case-files-17.html">The Complete Case Files 17</a><span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">(<i>Judge Dredd</i> stories from <i>2000 AD</i> Progs 776-803 and <i>Judge Dredd Megazine</i> #2.01-2.11)<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://dreddreviews.blogspot.com/2012/02/devlin-waugh-swimming-in-blood.html">Devlin Waugh: Swimming in Blood</a><span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">(2004 DC/Rebellion edition contains <i>Devlin Waugh</i> stories from <i>Judge Dredd Megazine</i> #2.01-2.09, 2.26 and 3.72-3.73, <i>Judge Dredd Mega Special 1993</i> and <i>Judge Dredd Yearbook 1994</i>, and <i>Judge Dredd</i> stories from <i>Judge Dredd</i></span></span><i style="color: #1a1a1a;"> Megazine</i><span style="color: #1a1a1a;"> #3.26-3.30</span><span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">; 2014 Rebellion edition omits the </span></span><i style="color: #1a1a1a;">Megazine</i><span style="color: #1a1a1a;"> #3.26-3.30</span><span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> material and the <i>Yearbook 1994</i> story, and appends <i>Devlin Waugh</i> stories from <i>2000 AD</i> <o:p></o:p></span></span><span style="color: #1a1a1a;">Progs 1149-1173; 2015 Hachette/Rebellion edition (as <i>The Mega Collection 14</i>) is the <i>Devlin Waugh</i> stories from </span><i style="color: #1a1a1a;">Judge Dredd Megazine</i><span style="color: #1a1a1a;"> #2.01-2.09, 2.26, 201-213 and 224-225)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://dreddreviews.blogspot.com/2012/12/the-garth-ennis-collection.html">The Garth Ennis Collection</a><span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">(<i>Judge Dredd</i> stories from <i>2000 AD</i> Progs 727-732, 775, 780-785, 804-807, 810-814 and 819, and <i>Judge Joyce</i> story from <i>The Judge Dredd Yearbook 1993</i>)<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://dreddreviews.blogspot.com/2012/02/complete-case-files-18.html">The Complete Case Files 18</a><span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">(<i>Judge Dredd</i> stories from <i>2000 AD</i> Progs 804-829 and <i>Judge Dredd Megazine</i> #2.12-2.26)<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://dreddreviews.blogspot.com/2012/07/complete-case-files-19.html">The Complete Case Files 19</a><span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #1a1a1a;">(<i>Judge Dredd</i> stories from <i>2000 AD</i> Progs 830-855 and <i>Judge Dredd Megazine</i> #2.27-2.43; see also the earlier discussions of </span><a href="http://dreddreviews.blogspot.com/2012/03/muzak-killer.html">Muzak Killer</a><span style="color: #1a1a1a;"> and </span><a href="http://dreddreviews.blogspot.com/2012/04/mechanismo.html">Mechanismo</a><span style="color: #1a1a1a;">)<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://dreddreviews.blogspot.com/2012/07/inferno.html">Inferno</a><span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">(<i>Purgatory</i> from <i>2000 AD</i> Progs 834-841, and <i>Judge Dredd</i> stories from <i>2000 AD</i> Progs 842-853, 867 and 879)<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://dreddreviews.blogspot.com/2012/03/missionary-man-bad-moon-rising.html">Missionary Man: Bad Moon Rising</a><span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">(<i>Missionary Man</i> stories from <i>Judge Dredd Megazine</i> #2.29-30, 2.43 and 2.50-59, and <i>Judge Dredd Mega-Special</i> 1994)</span></span><br />
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<a href="http://dreddreviews.blogspot.com/2012/09/devlin-waugh-red-tide.html" style="font-family: inherit;">Devlin Waugh: Red Tide</a><br />
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a;">(2004 DC/Rebellion edition, covered here, contains <i>Devlin Waugh</i> stories from <i>2000 AD</i> Progs 1149-1173 and from <i>Judge Dredd Megazine</i> #201-213; 2015 Rebellion edition contains <i>Devlin Waugh</i> stories from <i>Judge Dredd Megazine</i> 201-213, 224-225, 227, 231-235, 237, 253-256, and <i>Judge Dredd Yearbook 1994</i>)</span><br />
<br />
The Mega Collection 55: The Heavy Mob</div>
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(<i>Judge Dredd</i> stories from <i>2000 AD</i> Progs 122-125 and 1792-1796 as well as <i>Judge Dredd Megazine</i> #240-243,<i> </i>plus <i>Brit-Cit Brute</i> stories from <i>Judge Dredd Megazine</i> #2.31-2.33 and 2.60-2.62, "Wynter: Cold Justice" from <i>Judge Dredd Megazine</i> #2.70, and <i>Holocaust 12</i> stories from <i>Judge Dredd Megazine</i> #3.20-3.23 and 3.29-3.33)<span class="s1"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://dreddreviews.blogspot.com/2012/11/hondo-city-law.html">Hondo-City Law</a><span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a;">(<i>Judge Dredd</i> stories from <i>2000 AD</i> Progs 608-611, <i>Shimura</i> stories from <i>Judge Dredd Megazine</i> #2.37-2.39, 224-226 and 228-230, <i>Judge Inspector Inaba</i> story from <i>Judge Dredd Megazine</i> #3.21, and <i>Hondo City Justice</i> stories from <i>Judge Dredd Megazine</i> #300-303)<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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</span></div>
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<a href="http://dreddreviews.blogspot.com/2012/04/taxidermist.html" style="font-family: inherit;">The Taxidermist</a></div>
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">(<i>Judge Dredd</i> stories from <i>2000 AD</i> #507-510, #1070 and #1087-1089, and <i>Return of the Taxidermist</i> from <i>Judge Dredd Megazine</i> #2.37-2.46)<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></span> <span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The Complete Case Files 20</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">(<i>Judge Dredd</i> stories from <i>2000 AD</i> Progs 856-887 and <i>Judge Dredd Megazine</i> #2.44-2.56)</span></span><br />
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The Mega Collection 61: Shimura<br />
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(<i>Shimura</i> stories from <i>Judge Dredd Megazine</i> #2.50-2.55, 2.72-2.77, 3.14-3.17, 3.34-3.35 and 238-243 and <i>Judge Dredd Mega Special</i> 1996, and <i>Judge Dredd</i> story from <i>Judge Dredd Megazine</i> #3.19; see also the <a href="http://dreddreviews.blogspot.com/2012/04/shimura.html" style="font-family: inherit;">Shimura</a> entry, which overlaps heavily with this)<br />
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The Complete Case Files 21</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">(<i>Judge Dredd</i> stories from <i>2000 AD</i> Progs 888-915 and <i>Judge Dredd Megazine</i> #2.57-2.68; supplants </span></span><a href="http://dreddreviews.blogspot.com/2012/05/wilderlands.html">Wilderlands</a>, which has its own entry<span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">!)</span></span></div>
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The Complete Case Files 22<br />
(<i>Judge Dredd</i> stories from <i>2000 AD</i> Progs 916-939 and <i>Judge Dredd Megazine</i> #2.69-2.80; see also the entry for <a href="http://dreddreviews.blogspot.com/2012/04/crusade.html" style="font-family: inherit;">Crusade</a>, which is material from this and <i>Case Files 20</i>)<br />
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: inherit;">The Complete Case Files 23</span></div>
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">(<i>Judge Dredd</i> stories from <i>2000 AD</i> Progs 940-959 and <i>Judge Dredd Megazine</i> #2.81-2.83 and 3.01-3.07; see also the entry for </span></span><a href="http://dreddreviews.blogspot.com/2012/02/goodnight-kiss.html" style="font-family: inherit;">Goodnight Kiss</a>, which is material from this and <i>Case Files</i> 17 and 19)<br />
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The Complete Case Files 24<br />
(<i>Judge Dredd</i> stories from <i>2000 AD</i> Progs 959-983 and <i>Judge Dredd Megazine</i> #3.04-3.16; see also the entries for <a href="http://dreddreviews.blogspot.com/2012/05/blind-justice.html" style="font-family: inherit;">Blind Justice</a>, which includes material from Progs 959-963, and <a href="http://dreddreviews.blogspot.com/2012/05/pit.html" style="font-family: inherit;">The Pit</a>, which is material from Progs 970-999)<br />
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The Complete Case Files 25<br />
(<i>Judge Dredd</i> stories from <i>2000 AD</i> Progs 984-1028 and <i>Judge Dredd Megazine</i> #3.16-3.18; see also the entry for <a href="http://dreddreviews.blogspot.com/2012/05/judge-death-death-lives.html" style="font-family: inherit;">Judge Death: Death Lives!</a>, which is material from Progs 1000-1006 and elsewhere)<br />
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The Complete Case Files 26<br />
(<i>Judge Dredd</i> stories from <i>2000 AD</i> Progs 1029-1052 and <i>Judge Dredd Megazine</i> #3.19, 3.22 and 3.26-3.33; see also the entry for <a href="http://dreddreviews.blogspot.com/2012/06/hunting-party.html" style="font-family: inherit;">The Hunting Party</a>, which is material from this and <i>Case Files</i> 25)<br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://dreddreviews.blogspot.com/2012/04/shimura.html">Shimura</a><span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a;">(<i>Shimura</i> stories from <i>Judge Dredd Megazine</i> #2.37-2.39, 2.50-2.55, 2.72-2.74, 2.76-2.77, 3.14-3.17 and 3.34, <i>Judge Dredd</i> story from <i>Judge Dredd Megazine</i> #3.19, and <i>Judge Inspector Inaba</i> stories from <i>Judge Dredd Megazine</i> #3.21 and 3.37-3.38--only the last of these is unduplicated)</span></div>
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a;">The Complete Case Files 27</span></div>
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a;">(<i>Judge Dredd</i> stories from <i>2000 AD</i> Progs 1053-1083, and from <i>Judge Dredd Megazine</i> #3.34-3.38)</span><br />
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</span> <span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: inherit;">The XXX Files</span></div>
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">(<i>Judge Dredd</i> stories from <i>2000 AD</i> Progs 444, 1066, 1070, 1074-1076, 1230, 1271, 1272, 1281, 1357, 1388, 1405, 1521, 1635-1636, 1672-1673 and 1705, from <i>Judge Dredd Megazine</i> #3.15, 3.40, 3.43, 4.15, 203, 213 and 295, and from <i>Judge Dredd Mega Special</i> 1991, as well as <i>Judge Hershey</i> story from <i>Judge Dredd Yearbook</i> 1994)</span></span></div>
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Predator Vs. Judge Dredd Vs. Aliens</div>
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">(<i>Predator Versus Judge Dredd</i> #1-3 and </span></span><i style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: inherit;">Judge Dredd</i><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: inherit;"> </span><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: inherit;">stories from</span><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: inherit;"> </span><i style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: inherit;">2000 AD Prog 2003</i><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: inherit;"> </span><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: inherit;">and Progs 1322-1335; see entries for </span><a href="http://dreddreviews.blogspot.com/2012/07/predator-versus-judge-dredd.html" style="font-family: inherit;">Predator Versus Judge Dredd</a> and <a href="http://dreddreviews.blogspot.com/2012/10/judge-dredd-vs-aliens-incubus.html" style="font-family: inherit;">Judge Dredd Vs. Aliens: Incubus</a>)<br />
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</span> <span style="color: #1a1a1a;">The Complete Case Files 28</span><br />
<span style="color: #1a1a1a;">(<i>Judge Dredd</i> stories from <i>2000 AD</i> Progs 1084-1110, and from <i>Judge Dredd Megazine</i> #3.39-3.45)</span></div>
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<a href="http://dreddreviews.blogspot.com/2012/07/judge-anderson-psychic-crime-files.html" style="font-family: inherit;">Judge Anderson: The Psychic Crime Files</a></div>
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">(<i>Anderson: Psi-Division</i> stories from <i>2000 AD</i> Progs 657-659 and 1102-1103, as well as <i>Judge Dredd Megazine</i> 272-278 and 300-304, and <i>Cadet Anderson</i> stories from <i>2000 AD </i>Progs 2011 and 1734-1739)<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The Complete Case Files 29</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">(<i>Judge Dredd</i> stories from <i>2000 AD</i> Progs 1111-1140, and from <i>Judge Dredd Megazine</i> #3.46-3.51; see entry for an excellent subset of material from this and Case Files 28 as </span></span><a href="http://dreddreviews.blogspot.com/2012/07/scorpion-dance-featuring-beyond-call-of.html" style="font-family: inherit;">The Scorpion Dance Featuring Beyond the Call of Duty</a> )<br />
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The Complete Case Files 30<br />
(<i>Judge Dredd</i> stories from <i>2000 AD</i> Progs 1141-1164, and from <i>Judge Dredd Megazine</i> #3.52-3.59; see entries for this material as <a href="http://dreddreviews.blogspot.com/2012/08/doomsday-for-dredd.html" style="font-family: inherit;">Doomsday for Dredd</a> and <a href="http://dreddreviews.blogspot.com/2012/08/doomsday-for-mega-city-one.html" style="font-family: inherit;">Doomsday for Mega-City One</a> )<br />
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The Complete Case Files 31<br />
(<i>Judge Dredd</i> stories from <i>2000 AD</i> Progs 1164-1185, and from <i>Judge Dredd Megazine</i> #3.60-3.69)<br />
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<a href="http://dreddreviews.blogspot.com/2012/03/lenny-zero-and-perps-of-mega-city-one.html" style="font-family: inherit;">Lenny Zero and the Perps of Mega-City One</a></div>
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a;">(<i>Lenny Zero</i> stories from <i>Judge Dredd Megazine</i> #3.68, 4.01-4.02 and 4.14-4.15, <i>Bato Loco</i> stories from <i>Judge Dredd Megazine</i> #208 and 229-230, and <i>Judge Dredd</i> stories from <i>2000 AD</i> Prog 505, 1279 and 2002, as well as from <i>Judge Dredd Megazine</i> #2.34-2.35, 202 and 258-259)</span><span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><br /></span>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://dreddreviews.blogspot.com/2012/11/mega-city-undercover.html">Mega-City Undercover</a><span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a;">(<i>Lenny Zero</i> stories from <i>Judge Dredd Megazine</i> #3.68, 4.01-4.02 and 4.14-4.15, and <i>Low Life</i> stories from <i>2000 AD</i> Progs 1387-1399, 1425-1428, Prog 2006, 1484-1490, and 1521-1524)</span></div>
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The Complete Case Files 32<br />
(<i>Judge Dredd</i> stories from <i>2000 AD</i> Progs 1186-1222, and from <i>Judge Dredd Megazine</i> #3.70-3.73)<br />
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The Complete Case Files 33<br />
(<i>Judge Dredd</i> stories from <i>2000 AD</i> Progs 1223-1249, and from <i>Judge Dredd Megazine</i> #3.74-3.79)<br />
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a;">The Complete Case Files 34</span></div>
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a;">(<i>Judge Dredd</i> stories from <i>2000 AD</i> Progs 1250-1275 and <i>Prog 2002</i>, and from <i>Judge Dredd Megazine</i> #4.01-4.06)</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal">Banzai Battalion: Just Another Bug Hunt</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #1a1a1a;">(<i>Judge Dredd</i> stories from <i>2000 AD</i> Progs 437, 1135-1137, 1183-1185, 1268-1270 and 1800, and <i>Banzai Battalion</i> stories from <i>2000 AD</i> Progs 1257-1262, 1501-1506 and <i>Prog 2003</i>; see entry for a subset of this material as <o:p></o:p></span><a href="http://dreddreviews.blogspot.com/2012/08/banzai-battalion.html">Banzai Battalion</a>)</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #1a1a1a;">The Complete Case Files 35</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #1a1a1a;">(<i>Judge Dredd</i> stories from <i>2000 AD</i> Progs 1276-1301, and from <i>Judge Dredd Megazine</i> #4.07-4.13; see entry for a subset of this material and parts of Case Files 36 and 37 as </span><a href="http://dreddreviews.blogspot.com/2012/10/satans-island.html">Satan's Island</a><span style="color: #1a1a1a;">)</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #1a1a1a;">The Complete Case Files 36</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #1a1a1a;">(<i>Judge Dredd</i> stories from <i>2000 AD</i> Progs 1302-1335, and from <i>Judge Dredd Megazine</i> #4.14-4.18)</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div class="MsoNormal" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: -webkit-standard; orphans: auto; text-size-adjust: auto; widows: auto;"><div class="MsoNormal"><div class="MsoNormal"><div class="MsoNormal"></div></div></div></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #1a1a1a;">The Complete Case Files 37</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #1a1a1a;">(<i>Judge Dredd</i> stories from <i>2000 AD</i> Progs 1336-1364, and from <i>Judge Dredd Megazine</i> #201-206; see entry for a subset of this material and parts of Case Files 33 and 34 as </span><a href="http://dreddreviews.blogspot.com/2012/09/the-chief-judges-man.html" style="font-family: inherit;">The Chief Judge's Man</a><span style="color: #1a1a1a;">)</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"></div><div class="MsoNormal"></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #1a1a1a;">The Complete Case Files 38</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #1a1a1a;">(<i>Judge Dredd</i> stories from <i>2000 AD</i> Progs 1365-1387 and <i>Prog 2004</i>, and from <i>Judge Dredd Megazine</i> #207-213; see entry for a bit of this material and stories from Case Files 32, 35 and 37 as </span><a href="http://dreddreviews.blogspot.com/2012/09/brothers-of-blood.html" style="font-family: inherit;">Brothers of the Blood</a><span style="color: #1a1a1a;">, as well as the Prog 1387 story covered in </span><a href="http://dreddreviews.blogspot.com/2011/12/art-of-kenny-who-cam-kennedy-collection.html" style="font-style: italic;" target="_blank">The Art of Kenny Who?</a>)</div><div class="MsoNormal">
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<div class="MsoNormal">The Complete Case Files 39</div><div class="MsoNormal">(<i>Judge Dredd</i> stories from <i>2000 AD</i> Progs 1388-1407, and from <i>Judge Dredd Megazine</i> #214-223)</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The Complete Case Files 40</div><div class="MsoNormal">(<i>Judge Dredd</i> stories from <i>2000 AD</i> Progs 1408-1436 and <i>Prog 2005</i>, and from <i>Judge Dredd Megazine</i> #224-227; some of this material, as well as some from Case Files 39, is discussed as <a href="http://dreddreviews.blogspot.com/2012/11/total-war.html" style="font-family: inherit;">Total War</a>)</div><div class="MsoNormal"><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://dreddreviews.blogspot.com/2012/08/mega-city-masters-03.html">Mega-City Masters 03</a><span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">(<i>Judge Dredd</i> stories from <i>2000 AD</i> Progs 305-307, 492, 503, 595, 600, 658, 1112-1113, 1206, 1273, 1437-1439 and 1476; <i>2000 AD Prog 2001</i>; <i>Judge Dredd Megazine</i> #3.39, 3.61, 211-212, 214 and 296; <i>Judge Dredd Annual 1981</i>; and <i>2000 AD Annual 1987</i>, plus <i>Heavy Metal Dredd</i> from <i>Judge Dredd Megazine</i> #2.61)<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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The Mega Collection 06: Mandroid<br />
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<span class="s1">(<i>Judge Dredd</i> stories from <i>2000 AD</i> Progs 1285-1287, 1453-1464, 1555-1566 and <i>2000 AD Prog 2001</i>; note that most of this material is discussed as </span><a href="http://dreddreviews.blogspot.com/2012/12/mandroid.html" style="font-family: inherit;">Mandroid</a>)</div>
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<div class="MsoNormal"><a href="http://dreddreviews.blogspot.com/2012/06/when-judges-go-bad.html" style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: inherit;">When Judges Go Bad</a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div class="MsoNormal" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black; font-family: -webkit-standard; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; text-align: start; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0px; text-size-adjust: auto; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px;">
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a;">(<i>Judge Dredd</i> stories from <i>2000 AD</i> Progs 615-618, 623-625, 872, 968-969, 1306-1307 and Prog 2006, and from <i>Judge Dredd Megazine</i> #4.04 and 230)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="http://dreddreviews.blogspot.com/2012/06/mega-city-masters-01.html" style="font-family: inherit;">Mega-City Masters 01</a><br />
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a;">(<i>Judge Dredd</i> stories from <i>2000 AD</i> Progs 130, 205, 342, 374-375, 435, 456, 472-475, 577, 585, 640, 1012-1013, 1194, 1214, 1240, 1320 and 1600-1603, <i>Judge Dredd Megazine</i> #1.14, 1.18 and 280-281, <i>2000 AD Annual</i> 1982 and 1989, and <i>2000 AD Sci-Fi Special</i> 1983)</span><br />
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<a href="http://dreddreviews.blogspot.com/2012/06/henry-flint-collection.html" style="font-family: inherit;">The Henry Flint Collection</a></div>
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a;">(<i>Judge Dredd</i> stories from <i>2000 AD</i> Progs 1063-1065 and 1207-1208, and from <i>Judge Dredd Megazine</i> #3.63, 214, 237, 258-259 and 261-263)</span><br />
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<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: inherit;">Fatties</span></div></div></div></div><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #1a1a1a;">(<i>Judge Dredd</i> stories from <i>2000 AD</i> Progs 273-274, 331-334, 440-441 and 1694, <i>Judge Dredd Megazine</i> #4.01-4.03 and 227, and <i>Judge Dredd Annual</i> 1982 and 1985)</span></div>
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<a href="http://dreddreviews.blogspot.com/2012/09/the-carlos-ezquerra-collection.html" style="font-family: inherit;">The Carlos Ezquerra Collection</a></div>
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a;">(<i>Judge Dredd</i> stories from <i>Judge Dredd Megazine</i> #2.10-2.11, 4.15, 201 and 211-212 and <i>2000 AD</i> Prog 1250-1261, and <i>Cursed Earth Koburn</i> stories from <i>Judge Dredd Megazine</i> #221-223, 228, 239 and 241-244)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="http://dreddreviews.blogspot.com/2012/10/cry-of-werewolf.html" style="font-family: inherit;">Cry of the Werewolf</a></div>
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">(<i>Judge Dredd</i> stories from <i>2000 AD</i> Progs 322-328 and 1313-1316, and from <i>Judge Dredd Megazine</i> #4.05 and 293-294)</span></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div></div>
<div class="MsoNormal"><a href="http://dreddreviews.blogspot.com/2012/09/the-complete-pj-maybe.html" style="font-family: inherit;">The Complete P.J. Maybe</a></div><div class="MsoNormal">
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a;">(<i>Judge Dredd</i> stories from <i>2000 AD</i> Progs 534, 592-594, 599, 632-634, 707-709, 820-822, 1204, 1210 and 1211, and <i>Judge Dredd Megazine</i> #221-222 and 231-234)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://dreddreviews.blogspot.com/2012/11/the-simping-detective.html">The Simping Detective</a><span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">(<i>Mega-City Noir</i> story from <i>Judge Dredd Megazine</i> #220 and <i>The Simping Detective</i> stories from <i>Judge Dredd Megazine</i> #221-227, 234-239, 253-257)<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: inherit;">Hondo City Justice</span></div>
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">(<i>Shimura</i> stories from <i>Judge Dredd Megazine</i> #238-243, <i>Hondo City Justice</i> stories from <i>Judge Dredd Megazine</i> #324-326 and 332-334, and <i>Tiger Sun, Dragon Moon</i> from <i>2000 AD</i> Progs 1426-1432)</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></span> <span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Judge Anderson: The Psi Files Volume 05</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">(<i>Anderson: Psi-Division</i> stories from <i>2000 AD</i> Prog 1773 and <i>Winter Special 2014</i>, and from <i>Judge Dredd Megazine</i> #238-241, 257-264, 272-278, 300-304, 309-313 and 327-331)</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://dreddreviews.blogspot.com/2012/04/mega-city-masters-02.html">Mega-City Masters 02</a><span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a;">(<i>Judge Dredd</i> stories from <i>2000 AD</i> Progs 513, 613, 740, 800-803, 855, 859-866, 895-896, 954, 1482, 1613-1616, 1640-1648)<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://dreddreviews.blogspot.com/2012/12/origins.html">Origins</a><span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">(<i>Judge Dredd</i> stories from <i>2000 AD</i> Progs 1500-1519 and 1529-1535, as well as <i>Prog 2007</i>)<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://dreddreviews.blogspot.com/2012/12/tour-of-duty-backlash.html">Tour of Duty: The Backlash</a><span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">(<i>Judge Dredd</i> stories from <i>2000 AD</i> Progs 1520, 1536, 1542-1548, <i>Prog 2008</i>, 1569-1575, 1577-1581, 1589-1595, 1600-1603, 1611-1612 and 1628-1633)</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><o:p></o:p></span></span><span style="color: #1a1a1a;">Blaze of Glory</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #1a1a1a;">(<i>Judge Dredd</i> stories from <i>2000 AD</i> Progs 1611, 1612, 1635, 1636, 1699, 1705, <i>Judge Dredd Megazine</i> #278, 291, 292, 303, 305, 318, and <i>2000 AD Sci-Fi Special</i> 2020)<br /></span>
<span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The Cape and Cowl Crimes</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">(<i>Judge Dredd</i> stories from <i>2000 AD</i> Progs 529-530, 585, <i>2000 AD Sci-Fi Special 1991</i>, <i>2000 AD Free Comic Book Day 2016</i>, and <i>Judge Dredd Megazine</i> #1.17, 297 and 323-324, plus <i>Marauder</i> stories from <i>2000 AD Prog 2009</i> and <i>2000 AD</i> Progs 1617-1627)</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://dreddreviews.blogspot.com/2013/01/mega-city-undercover-vol-02-living-low.html">Mega-City Undercover Vol. 02: Living the Low Life</a><span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">(<i>Low Life</i> stories from <i>Judge Dredd Megazine</i> #271-274 and <i>2000 AD</i> Progs 1624-1631, <i>Prog 2010</i>, and 1700-1709)<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></span> <span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Fink Angel: Legacy</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">(<i>Judge Dredd</i> stories from <i>2000 AD</i> Progs 193-196 and 281-288, and from <i>Judge Dredd Megazine</i> #273-277 and 328-330)</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://dreddreviews.blogspot.com/2013/01/insurrection.html">Insurrection</a><span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">(<i>Insurrection</i> stories from <i>Judge Dredd Megazine</i> #279-284 and 305-310)<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://dreddreviews.blogspot.com/2013/01/tour-of-duty-mega-city-justice.html">Tour of Duty: Mega-City Justice</a><span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">(<i>Judge Dredd</i> stories from <i>2000 AD</i> Progs 1649-1667, 1674-1693 and <i>Prog 2010</i>)<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></span> <span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Day of Chaos: The Fourth Faction</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">(<i>Judge Dredd</i> stories from <i>2000 AD</i> Progs 1700-1704, 1740-1751 and 1753-1758, and from <i>Judge Dredd Megazine</i> #307, 308 and 310)</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Chopper: Wandering Spirit</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #1a1a1a;">(<i>Judge Dredd</i> stories from <i>2000 AD</i> Progs 1712-1713 and 2033-2034, and from <i>Judge Dredd Megazine</i> #311, plus <i>Chopper</i> stories from <i>Judge Dredd Megazine</i> #395-399)</span><br />
<span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></span> <span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Mega-City Undercover vol. 3</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">(<i>Low Life</i> stories from <i>2000 AD</i> Progs 1750-1761 and <i>Prog 2015</i>, and <i>Lenny Zero</i> stories from <i>2000 AD</i> Progs 1792-1799)</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></span> <span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Day of Chaos: Endgame</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">(<i>Judge Dredd</i> stories from <i>2000 AD</i> Progs 1759-1789)</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></span> <span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Day of Chaos: Fallout</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">(<i>Judge Dredd</i> stories from <i>2000 AD</i> Progs 1792-1796, 1798-1799, 1801-1802, 1816, 1819-1822, 1824-1825, 1830-1841 and 1845-1849, and from <i>Judge Dredd Megazine</i> #332 and 336)</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #1a1a1a;">Control</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #1a1a1a;">(<i>Judge Dredd</i> stories from <i>2000 AD</i> Progs 1800, 1888-1889, 2011, 2035-2036, 2073-2074, 2088-2089, 2130 and 2141-2145)<br /></span>
<span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></span> <span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Trifecta</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">(<i>Judge Dredd</i> stories from <i>2000 AD</i> Progs 1803 and 1806-1812, <i>The Simping Detective</i> stories from <i>2000 AD</i> Progs 1804-1811, and <i>Low Life</i> stories from <i>2000 AD</i> Progs 1805-1811)</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></span><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: inherit;">Dredd: Urban Warfare</span><br />
<span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: inherit;">(<i>Dredd</i> [not <i>Judge Dredd</i>!] stories from <i>Judge Dredd Megazine </i>#328, 340-342 and 350-354)</span><br />
<span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: inherit;">Ghost Town</span><br />
<span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: inherit;">(<i>Judge Dredd</i> stories from <i>2000 AD</i> Progs 1837-1841, 1922 and 1948-1949, and from <i>Judge Dredd Megazine</i> #343-349)</span><br />
<span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: inherit;">Every Empire Falls</span><br />
<span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: inherit;">(<i>Judge Dredd</i> stories from <i>2000 AD</i> Progs 1850-1854, 1934-1939 and 1973-1990, and from <i>Judge Dredd Megazine</i> #371-374)</span><br />
<span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></span> <span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The Mega Collection 75: Alien Nations</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">(<i>Judge Dredd</i> stories from <i>2000 AD</i> Progs 204, 1033, 1133-1134, 1241 and 1855-1857, <i>Judge Dredd </i></span></span><i style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: inherit;">Megazine</i><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: inherit;"> #1.11-1.17, 2.53-2.56 and 2.73-2.76, and </span><i style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: inherit;">Judge Dredd Mega Special</i><span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: inherit;"> 1995)</span><br />
<span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span> <span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: inherit;">Titan</span><br />
<span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: inherit;">(<i>Judge Dredd</i> stories from <i>2000 AD</i> Progs 1862-1869, 1873, 1924-1928, 1940-1947 and 1961)</span><br />
<span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></span> <span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Dead Zone</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">(<i>Judge Dredd</i> stories from <i>Judge Dredd Megazine</i> #350-355 and from <i>2000 AD</i> Progs 1929-1933)</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #1a1a1a;">Lawless: Welcome to Badrock</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #1a1a1a;">(<i>Lawless</i> stories from <i>Judge Dredd Megazine</i> #350-354, 361-366 and 371-376)<br /></span>
<span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></span> <span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Dark Justice</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">(<i>Judge Dredd</i> stories from <i>2000 AD</i> Progs 1912-1921 and <i>Prog 2015</i>)</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Dredd/Anderson: The Deep End</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">(<i>Dredd</i> [not <i>Judge Dredd</i>!] stories from <i>Judge Dredd Megazine</i> #367-371, and <i>Dredd/Anderson</i> stories from <i>Judge Dredd Megazine</i> #377-379)</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Nobody Apes the Law</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">(<i>Judge Dredd</i> stories from <i>2000 AD</i> Progs 39, 184-185, 1189, <i>2000 AD Sci-Fi Special 1979</i>, <i>2000 AD Annual 1983</i>, and <i>Judge Dredd Megazine</i> 3.47, 376-377, 386 and 392-395)</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span><span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black;"><span style="color: #1a1a1a;">Guatemala</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="color: black;"><span style="color: #1a1a1a;">(<i>Judge Dredd</i> stories from <i>2000 AD</i> Progs 2000, 2023 and 2150-2157, and from <i>Judge Dredd Megazine</i> #400 and 424-426)<br /></span><span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>Cold Wars</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">(<i>Judge Dredd</i> stories from <i>2000 AD</i> Progs 2001-2003, 2045-2049 and 2055-2068)</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The Small House</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">(<i>Judge Dredd</i> stories from <i>2000 AD</i> Progs 2004-2006, 2100-2109 and 2134)</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Lawless: Long-Range War</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">(<i>Lawless</i> stories from <i>Judge Dredd Megazine</i> #380-385 and 389-394)</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Mechanismo: Machine Law</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">(<i>Judge Dredd</i> stories from <i>2000 AD</i> Progs 2024-2029 and 2115-2122)</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="caret-color: rgb(26, 26, 26); color: #1a1a1a;">Dredd: Final Judgement</span></div><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">(<i>Dredd</i> [not <i>Judge Dredd!</i>] stories from <i>Judge Dredd Megazine</i> #386-388 and 392-396)</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(26, 26, 26);"><br /></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">Dreadnoughts: Breaking Ground</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">(<i>Judge Dredd</i> stories from <i>2000 AD</i> Progs 2082-2086 and <i>Dreadnoughts</i> stories from <i>Judge Dredd Megazine</i> #424-429)</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(26, 26, 26);"><br /></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">Devlin Waugh: Blood Debt</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">(<i>Devlin Waugh</i> stories from <i>Judge Dredd Megazine</i> #388-393, 397-400 and 415-420)</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(26, 26, 26);"><br /></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">Lawless: Ashes to Ashes</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">(<i>Lawless</i> stories from <i>Judge Dredd Megazine</i> #400-409)</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(26, 26, 26);"><br /></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">End of Days</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">(<i>Judge Dredd</i> stories from <i>2000 AD</i> Progs 2184-2195 and 2197-2205)</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(26, 26, 26);"><br /></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">Lawless: Boom Town</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(26, 26, 26);">(<i>Lawless</i> stories from <i>Judge Dredd Megazine</i> #415-424)</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></span> <span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Judge Dredd: City Limits Vol. 1</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #1a1a1a;">(collects IDW's <i>Judge Dredd</i> #1-12)</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #1a1a1a;">Judge Dredd: City Limits Vol. 2</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #1a1a1a;">(collects IDW's <i>Judge Dredd</i> #13-30)<br /></span>
<span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><br />
</span> <span style="color: #1a1a1a;">Judge Dredd Year One</span><br />
<span style="color: #1a1a1a;">(collects IDW's <i>Judge Dredd Year One</i> #1-4)</span><br />
<span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><br /></span><span style="color: #1a1a1a;">Mars Attacks Judge Dredd</span><br />
<span style="color: #1a1a1a;">(collects IDW's <i>Mars Attacks Judge Dredd</i> #1-4)</span><br />
<span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><br /></span><span style="color: #1a1a1a;">Judge Dredd: Mega-City Two</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #1a1a1a;">(collects IDW's <i>Judge Dredd: Mega-City Two</i> #1-5)</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<span style="color: #1a1a1a;">Judge Dredd: Anderson, Psi-Division</span><br />
<span style="color: #1a1a1a;">(collects IDW's <i>Judge Dredd: Anderson, Psi-Division</i> #1-4)</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #1a1a1a;">Judge Dredd: Mega-City Zero</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #1a1a1a;">(collects IDW's <i>Judge Dredd: Mega-City Zero</i> #1-12)</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #1a1a1a;">Judge Dredd: The Blessed Earth Vol. 1</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #1a1a1a;">(collects IDW's <i>Judge Dredd: The Blessed Earth</i> #1-4 and <i>Judge Dredd Annual 2017</i>)</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #1a1a1a;">Judge Dredd: The Blessed Earth Vol. 2</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #1a1a1a;">(collects IDW's <i>Judge Dredd: The Blessed Earth</i> #5-8)</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #1a1a1a;">Judge Dredd: Under Siege</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #1a1a1a;">(collects IDW's <i>Judge Dredd: Under Siege</i> #1-4)</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #1a1a1a;">Judge Dredd: Toxic!</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #1a1a1a;">(collects IDW's <i>Judge Dredd: Toxic!</i> #1-4)</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #1a1a1a;">Judge Dredd: False Witness</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #1a1a1a;">(collects IDW's <i>Judge Dredd: False Witness</i> #1-4)</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><br />
</span> <span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: inherit;">One other note: if you buy any books from Amazon via the bar at the bottom of this page or the images at the top of (some) individual posts, I get a little cut of the proceeds. And if you happen to have both a Kindle device and Amazon Prime and would like to do something that puts money in my pocket but won't cost you anything, I'd love it if you could borrow my Kindle Single "Comic-Con Strikes Again!" from the Kindle lending library. Thanks. I hope this site is helpful to you.</span></div>
<!--EndFragment-->Douglas Wolkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10691167073493285913noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7321253799411057654.post-43937279678819814652013-02-10T13:27:00.000-08:002015-04-07T12:25:27.351-07:00Housekeeping #2: The Uncollected Dreddverse<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">More listmaking, with BARNEY's invaluable assistance. These are the series set in Dredd's universe in the era of the Mega-Cities that have not yet been collected, even partly, in book form. (Some have been collected in <i>Extreme Editions</i> or the <i>Megazine</i>; also, I've probably missed a few one-offs.)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Series that first appeared in <i>2000 AD</i>:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Helltrekkers (Prog 387-415)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Tales of Mega-City One (Prog 523, 525, 526, 532-534, 539,
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">The Corps (Prog 918-923)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Series that first appeared in <i>Judge Dredd Megazine</i>:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Armitage (Meg 1.09-1.14, 2.10-2.21, 2.31-2.33, 2.63-2.71,
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Sleeze 'n' Ryder (Meg 2.19-2.26)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Harke and Burr (Meg 2.27-2.28, 2.40-2.42, 2.47-2.49, 2.83,
3.04-3.07)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The Creep (Meg 2.41-2.44, 2.50-2.54)</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Pan-African Judges (Meg 2.44-2.49, 3.06-3.13)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Harmony (Meg 2.55-2.60, 2.62, 2.73-2.76, 3.01-3.06,
3.08-3.10, 3.18-3.19, 3.24-3.25, <i>Judge
Dredd Mega Special</i> 1996)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">O'Rork (Meg 2.61-2.62)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Plagues of Necropolis (Meg 2.78-2.83)</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Cabal (Meg 3.07-3.08)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Deathwatch (Meg 3.08-3.13)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The Inspectre (Meg 3.23-3.33)</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Treasure Steel (Meg 3.34-3.35)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Demarco P.I. (Meg 3.70-3.71, 4.03-4.08)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The Kleggs! (Meg 201)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Juliet November (Meg 202-204)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Whatever Happened To...? (Meg 214-219, 230)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Johnny Woo (Meg 231-233, 298-299)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Zancudo (Meg 231-233)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Tales from the Black Museum (Meg 244-252, 256, 265, 275,
284-286, 289, 291, 298, 299, 302, 304, 315, 317, 322, 327)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The Angel Gang/Fink Angel (Meg 258-265)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Tempest (Meg 266-271, 292-297)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Citi-Def (Meg 279-283)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Meet Darren Dead (Meg 240, 287-289)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Samizdat Squad (Meg 305-308, 311-314, 323-326)<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Strange & Darke (Meg 319-323)</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Series that first appeared elsewhere:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Max Normal (<i>Judge Dredd Annual</i> 1981-1984)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Judge Hershey (<i>2000 AD Mega Special</i> 1989, Meg 2.09, 2.12, 2.14-2.17, 2.25-2.30, 2.35-2.40, 3.9-3.13, 3.18, 3.28)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Janus: Psi Division (<i>2000 AD Winter Special</i> 1993, Prog 953, 980-984, 1024-1031)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Karyn: Psi Division (<i>Judge Dredd Mega Special</i> 1994, Meg 2.56-2.61, 2.67-2.72, 3.08)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Pandora (<i>Judge Dredd Mega Special</i> 1994, Meg 2.77-2.81)</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div>
<o:p><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></o:p></div>
<br />
<!--EndFragment-->Douglas Wolkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10691167073493285913noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7321253799411057654.post-21711581011012965292013-02-10T13:16:00.000-08:002019-09-07T12:56:18.925-07:00Housekeeping #1: The Uncollected DreddSince I put together a few lists for my own benefit (with the invaluable assistance of <a href="http://www.2000ad.org/" target="_blank">BARNEY</a>, of course), I figured they might be useful for other people reading this site.<br />
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<br /></div>
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There are a ton of Dredd comics that haven't yet been
collected in book form (although some have been reprinted in <i>Extreme Editions</i>, <i>Megazine</i> floppies, and the like). Here's a quick rundown of the
stories completists may want to track down, many of them still available in one
form or another from <a href="http://shop.2000adonline.com/">2000 AD Online</a>.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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From <i>2000 AD</i>:<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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1262, 1267, 1274-1276, 1278, 1288: one-offs</div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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1293, 1302, 1304-1305, 1308-1312, 1318-1319, 1321,
1338-1341: shorts</div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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1358-1374: shorts and (in 1365-1370) Smith and Siku's
"Meatmonger"<o:p></o:p></div>
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1382-1386: Gordon Rennie and Charlie Adlard's
"Gulag"<o:p></o:p></div>
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1389-1391, 1406-1407: one-offs<o:p></o:p></div>
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1423-1436: miscellany<o:p></o:p></div>
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1440-1452: the first ten of these are Rennie and Andrew Currie's
"Blood Trails"<o:p></o:p></div>
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1461, 1465-1475, 1480-1481, 1483-1499: miscellany<o:p></o:p></div>
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1522-1528: "Origins" interludes<o:p></o:p></div>
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1537-1541: one-offs<o:p></o:p></div>
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1549-1554, 1567-1568, 1576: miscellany<o:p></o:p></div>
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1582-1588: first five of these are Rennie and Dave Taylor's
"Road Stop"<o:p></o:p></div>
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1596-1599, 1604-1610: miscellany<o:p></o:p></div>
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1617-1627: first ten of these are Wagner and Marshall's "The
Ecstasy"<o:p></o:p></div>
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1634, 1637-1639: miscellany<o:p></o:p></div>
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1668-1671: "Tour of Duty" sequences that aren't
in <i>Tour of Duty: Mega-City Justice</i><o:p></o:p><br />
1695-1699, 1706-1711, 1714-1729, 1731-1739: miscellany<br />
1752: Michael Carroll and Ben Willsher's "Day of Chaos: Downtime"<br />
1790-1791, 1797, 1804-1805, 1813-1815, 1817-1818, 1823, 1826-1829, 1842-1844, 1858-1861, 1870-1872, 1874-1911: various<br />
1923, 1950-1960, 1962-1972, 1991-2000, 2007-2031, 2035-2044, 2050-2054, 2069-2099, 2010-2133: more miscellany</div>
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...and then nothing from 2135 onward has yet been collected in book form, to my knowledge.<o:p></o:p><br />
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Also still unreprinted: stories from the year-end progs 2000,
2004-2006, 2009, and 2011-2014.<o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
Note that there were no Dredd stories in Progs 1, 109, 155, 1100 and 1138; the episodes in Progs 268, 351 and 352 were reprints.</div>
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<i>Judge Dredd Megazine</i>
vol. 4<o:p></o:p></div>
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3, 6-14: shorts<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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<i>Judge Dredd Megazine</i>
post-volume numbering<o:p></o:p></div>
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201: Gordon Rennie and Lee Sullivan's "War Crimes"<o:p></o:p></div>
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204-206: Garth Ennis and John Higgins' "Monkey on My
Back"<o:p></o:p></div>
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207-210, 214-220, 223-226, 235, 236, 238: various (two uncollected
episodes apiece in 215-217, 225, 236; three in 224)<o:p></o:p></div>
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244-249, 253-256: various</div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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257-265: Pat Mills and John Hicklenton's "Blood of
Satanus III: The Tenth Circle" (additional uncollected episodes in 260,
264, 265)<o:p></o:p></div>
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266-272, 278, 279, 282-292, 297-306, 309, 312-327, 329-335, 337-342, 356-370, 375, 378-385, 387-391: various</div>
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...and then nothing from 396 onward has yet been collected in book form<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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Other as-yet-uncollected Dredd comics:<o:p></o:p></div>
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<i>Judge Dredd</i> (DC
series) #1-18<o:p></o:p></div>
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<i>Judge Dredd: Lawman
of the Future</i> #1-23</div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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<i>Judge Dredd: Legends
of the Law</i> #1-13<o:p></o:p></div>
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<i>Judge Dredd: The
Movie</i> one-shot<o:p></o:p></div>
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...and innumerable newspaper strips, which I can't keep
track of (although <i>The Daily Dredds vol. 1</i> has mopped up all the weekly strips from the <i>Daily Star</i>)</div>
</div>
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Douglas Wolkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10691167073493285913noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7321253799411057654.post-69938700066530045902013-01-27T23:00:00.000-08:002013-01-27T23:00:07.473-08:00Tour of Duty: Mega-City Justice<a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1907992391/ref=as_li_ss_il?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1907992391&linkCode=as2&tag=readcomi-20"><img border="0" src="http://ws.assoc-amazon.com/widgets/q?_encoding=UTF8&ASIN=1907992391&Format=_SL160_&ID=AsinImage&MarketPlace=US&ServiceVersion=20070822&WS=1&tag=readcomi-20" /></a><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=readcomi-20&l=as2&o=1&a=1907992391" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" width="1" /><br />
<br />
<br />
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(Reprints <i>Judge Dredd</i> stories from <i>2000 AD</i> Progs 1649-1667, 1674-1693 and Prog 2010)</div>
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For our final special guest here, I'm delighted to introduce Carl Wilson. Carl is a Torontonian journalist and arts critic; he writes for <a href="http://www.theglobeandmail.com/"><span class="s1"><i>The Globe & Mail</i></span></a>, blogs about all kinds of culture (with Chris Randle and Margaux Williamson) at <a href="http://backtotheworld.net/"><span class="s1">Back to the World</span></a>, and tweets at <a href="https://twitter.com/carlzoilus"><span class="s1">@carlzoilus</span></a>. He's also the author of the remarkable <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/082642788X/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=082642788X&linkCode=as2&tag=readcomi-20">Let's Talk About Love: A Journey to the End of Taste</a><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=readcomi-20&l=as2&o=1&a=082642788X" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" width="1" />--a book about Céline Dion's bestselling album that's also a book about aesthetics, criticism and taste. (A new, expanded edition is due out at the end of this year.)</div>
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*****</div>
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<b>DOUGLAS:</b> Carl, I'm afraid I've stuck you with the toughest gig of any of our guests: you get to come in more or less in the middle of a story. Between 2007 and 2009, the John Wagner-written episodes of <i>Judge Dredd</i> in <i>2000 AD</i> (and sometimes <i>Judge Dredd Megazine</i>) set up an increasingly tight set of subplots: Dredd changing his mind about mutant rights when it turns out he has mutant relatives himself, using his influence with Chief Judge Hershey to get the mutant laws changed, then taking the fall with her once they didn't work out; P.J. Maybe killing and replacing Byron Ambrose, then getting elected mayor of the city; Dredd trying to act as a mentor for Judge Beeny without associating her with himself too closely. And you're coming in right in the middle of it.</div>
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<br /></div>
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On the other hand: the serial that doesn't bother with recap or exposition for new readers is a relatively recent development in comics, as well as TV. The assumption used to be that readers could hop on at any point, and any given issue of a series would include enough background information to understand what was going on; <i>2000 AD</i> still nods to that with the little inside-front-cover descriptions of each serial. But <i>2KAD</i> has also been doing "jumping-on point" issues for a long time: generally every 50th issue, and one or two more a year, will launch an entirely new set of stories.<br />
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Wagner's very good at providing context in passing, usually, but I'm looking at the first couple of episodes here and noticing a lot of stuff that might have flown past anyway. I suspect it's clear that what's going on in the early episodes is a major shift of power that's put the protagonist in a significantly reduced position, but I don't know if it's clear where the mutants are immigrating from, or what "The Streets of Dan Francisco" is, or why Dredd is saying his protegée Beeny is "unsuitable," or what the deal is with his niece and with Edgar--and I also don't know if those read as "hmm, here's a thing to keep an eye out for later" or as "nobody's even speaking my language as a reader." I'm curious what the ratio of "immersive" to "baffling" was for you, and what stuck out at you about the fictional world here.</div>
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Another curious thing about "Tour of Duty": formally, it's much more a series of blocks than a line of dominoes or a tower. Some of Wagner's long serials just keep ramping up their intensity from beginning to end, most obviously his and Grant's "Block Mania/The Apocalypse War" (and I think "Song of the Surfer" would fit that description too); the 2011-2012 sequence "Day of Chaos" is nearly a year of setup followed by a short-sharp-shock payoff. But this one, like "The Pit" and "The Hunting Party" before it, is a set of mini-serials, each drawn by a different artist and each a fairly complete little arc.</div>
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As he occasionally does in sequences like this, Wagner falls back on narrative setups with which he's very comfortable. (Our protagonist is leading a small group, one of whom gets nailed right away, one of whom has a problem she's not willing to admit to, one of whom is a troublemaker with no respect for the protagonist's authority, etc.: he can write that one in his sleep.) "Tour of Duty"--the Colin MacNeil-drawn sequence--is a "prison run by one of its inmates" story, the sort of thing that can be transplanted into lots of different idioms. "Pink Eyes"/"Gore City" is a barely disguised "sheriff kills the hell out of a bunch of outlaws" Western. For me, though, "The Talented Mayor Ambrose" is where this volume takes off: a "serial killer vs. police" formula--like all the earlier P.J. Maybe stories, really--made much more interesting by additional X-factors perpetually derailing both sides' plans.</div>
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I'll get into specifics on some of the stories (and some of the artwork) a bit more later, but first I want to turn it over to you: what did you make of this book?</div>
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<b>CARL: </b>The startling thing was that I have avoided the Dreddiverse in all its manifestations because I'd understood it to be a kind of Thatcherite, vigilante-culture, right-wing fantasy. So then I start "Tour of Duty: Mega-City Justice" and here is Dredd being railroaded for his alliance to a liberal political administration and his defense of minority rights. It was a bit disorienting.</div>
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I didn't find it too difficult to get the gist – as you said, Wagner seems deft at dropping hints, and the basic hierarchy and outlines of the MC1 world I needed to understand came across swiftly.</div>
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But you're right, every one of those details you mentioned was pretty opaque. It was a little frustrating not to be able to grasp the relationships. But if I understand properly, withholding is Dredd's emotional m.o. So while I was puzzled by the subtext of his exchanges with Beeny, niece, Edgar and Judge Hershey (are they friends or just sometime allies?), the characters themselves would have shared some degree of that puzzlement, no?<br />
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Either way, it's par for the course when one is joining a serial already in progress. Some people are averse to that experience but I'm not – partly because if I fall in love I will always go catch up on what I've missed. I'm not sure this story got me to that point with Dredd. But enough so that I did go back, after finishing the book, to research some of the outstanding questions, such as where the judges came from, why there is a Cursed Earth, and the backstory of PJ Maybe, which were all helpful.</div>
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<br /></div>
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That <a href="http://io9.com/5944097/top-11-essential-judge-dredd-stories"><span class="s2">background reading</span></a> also reinforced my impression that this book was somewhat aberrant. It seems like it's a little less baroquely comic-book fantastical than other major Dredd epics – there's the Pink-Eye mutant's pain powers, and some of Maybe's assassination techniques, but not alternate-universe, nuclear-annihilation-level spectacle. At its heart it's a political melodrama about the balance of power between utterly corrupt and only partly corrupt factions of the regime. That was one of the most entertaining paradoxes of the Maybe storyline in fact –while as an utter imposter and wanted psychopath he is the least legitimated of the authority figures, in his actual performance as mayor he's also the most enlightened and effective, earning even Dredd's respect. If I were Slavoj Zizek, I'd spin out of that some parable about violence and authenticity – that since Maybe's private relationship to murder is the least hypocritical, he's liberated into a more generous perspective on the social good. But I'm not Zizek, so I can't carry that too far.</div>
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What I did wonder is whether these half-steps towards liberalization of Dredd's political philosophy is part of the series' long endgame, planted (so I read) by the deathbed statement of his clone-father that this system was not meant to endure. Are we to take it that his ultimate destiny is to bring the fascist rule of the judges down? It could also be part of the series of feints and reversals that are endemic to decades-long comics series, but the continuing presence of co-creator Wagner make me want, at least, to imagine that there's an overall arc being played out.</div>
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Sidebar: I didn't quite get the legal dynamic between the municipal government and the judges' council – I take it the civilian authority has pretty limited scope?</div>
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The internal contradictions of the view of the mutants also reminded me of the moral ambiguities around the status of the cylons in the 2K version of <i>Battlestar Galactica, </i>and made me wonder if the political shift is less driven by the storyline of Dredd itself and more a post-9/11-world awareness. There were other historical resonances, though, of course – the deportation of the mutants to purportedly wonderful-but-separate colonies reminded me particularly of the creation of the Native American (and Canadian) reservations. Loved the newscaster who said, "I can imagine many <i>normal </i>citizens would <i>love </i>a chance like that!" Then comes the reality-check storyline.</div>
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So I see how the Cursed Earth section of the book reinforces the main story, and moves toward the ultimate confrontation with Sinfield and his agenda. But like you I thought it was weak stuff compared to what follows from "The Talented Mayor Ambrose." That title, of course, directly recalls Patricia Highsmith's <i>The Talented Mr. Ripley</i>, and one of the reasons you recruited me to this discussion was that I am a huge fan of Highsmith and her own disguise-loving psychopath. What we might take from those parallels I'll leave to our next round.<br />
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Meanwhile, a starting point for discussing the art, which I'll admit up front will be a remedial exercise. My mainstream-comics reading came to a stop when I was a tween in the 1980s, after which my picture-book reading was confined mostly to comix-with-an-x, zines, <i>Love and Rockets</i>, graphic novels, etc. I don't know if there was any one big influence (don't imagine it was Dredd?) that replaced the more brightly coloured, high-contrast comics style to which I was accustomed with the mainly-black-bordered, more dense and cinematic art I see in superhero-ish comics now. No doubt technology also had a huge effect.</div>
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But my eye doesn't discern well between one instance of today's (to me) murky look and another. Mike Collins' approach to the Cursed Earth stories seemed more lively and creative than Colin MacNeil's more conventional action-movie frames; the Ezquerras' art in "Mega-City Justice" seemed lumpier (more British?) than the group effort on "Mayor Ambrose." But those are crude calls. I'm sure you can open my eyes to the subtleties I'm missing.</div>
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<b>DOUGLAS:</b> Taking your questions in order: Interesting that you had gotten the impression that <i>Dredd</i> was a right-wing fantasy! Which of course he is if you take him straight, but it's very rare that the context permits that. For all that he's effectively a liberal reformer here, he's still taking baby steps in the context of a totalitarian political system to which he subscribes wholeheartedly; it's just that he'd like to see everyone equally subject to that system's oppression. One of my favorite little moments of the whole series is in the middle of "The Graveyard Shift," back in 1983: Dredd and Hershey have some time to kill, so Hershey suggests they "work a couple of 59Cs." "Which block?" "First one we come to, I guess." A "59C" is a "crime swoop," where they kick somebody's door in at random and arrest them for whatever contraband and infractions they happen to have in their home. ("Nobody's innocent, citizen. We're just here to determine the level of your guilt.")</div>
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Withholding is pretty much all Dredd knows how to do emotionally, yes. (See Rob Williams' <a href="http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=43316"><span class="s1">interview</span></a> about his story in next week's issue of <i>2000 AD</i>, in which Dredd basically appears as a symbol of erotic repression.) But most of his conversations in here have some context from earlier in the series. Dredd and Hershey's relationship is an interesting case: she was once effectively his protégée, about thirty years ago, and is now his boss (because she was willing to rise through the ranks; Dredd, despite his formidable reputation, just wants to be a street Judge). They got along well when they were peers; he still tends to treat her as one, or to try to pull rank on her (sometimes by threatening to quit if he doesn't get his way), and it's strained their relationship considerably. As far as friendship goes: I think he's half-admitted being someone's friend exactly once--Anderson, at the end of "Satan"--and that was like pulling teeth.</div>
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I like the idea of the series having a "long endgame," and the fact that it <i>does</i> seem to be creeping toward an eventual end is something I love about it. But I also can't imagine Joe Dredd bringing the Judges down. (Part of Fargo's deathbed speech is telling Joe that he and Rico can do it together--and of course Joe killed Rico decades ago.) He's the law; that's all there is to him. He can acknowledge that sometimes the law gets it wrong, but he's still going to enforce it. "Day of Chaos" made the Judges' near-total failure impossible to get around, even as it cemented the necessity of their authority; their rule may not have been meant to go on forever, but now it's the only thing keeping what's left of the city alive. And what would Zizek say about that, I wonder?</div>
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<br /></div>
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The municipal government vs. the Judges: I gather that the civilian authority has almost no power at all. See the hilariously straight-faced <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mayor_of_Mega-City_One"><span class="s1">Mayor of Mega-City One</span></a> article on Wikipedia for more, but two relevant points: the most popular mayor the city has had (at least before Byron Ambrose) was an orangutan who was voted into office as a joke; and, while "Day of Chaos" nominally hinges on a mayoral election, it ended more than six months ago and we still haven't found out who won.</div>
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<br /></div>
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As far as the effect of Dredd (and more broadly <i>2000 AD</i>) artwork on American comics: I've had a few conversations here about the enormous effect that the <i>writing</i> in <i>2000 AD</i> had on American comics, and the writers who shifted from one primary audience to another. But it's harder to see a causal connection between the <i>look</i> of this stuff and American comics--in part because the British comic book tradition was, until about 20 years ago, mostly a black-and-white tradition. I suspect the big change in the look of American comics was indeed technological, and had to do with computer coloring and, more recently, the rise of drawing on Wacom tablets.<br />
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A few Dredd-linked artists have certainly become big names in the U.S. (Brian Bolland is the most obvious example; another one is Charlie Adlard, who's been drawing <i>The Walking Dead</i> for 100 issues or so now, and also drew the first three books of <i>Savage</i> and a bunch of <i>Dredd</i>. See also Frazer Irving, Kevin Walker, Steve Dillon, Brendan McCarthy and a few others.) Carlos Ezquerra has done a lot of work in American comics over the past 15 years or so--largely in collaboration with one writer or another with whom he's worked on <i>Dredd</i>, actually.</div>
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(I actually think of Ezquerra's artwork as being more Continental in its look than British, as such--I associate the distinctive raggedness of his line and his very broad variation in line density with French and Spanish-language adventure comics. Although there are some things he does, like the thick, jagged panel borders, that are Ezquerra-and-nobody-else. I miss some of his old black-and-white-era techniques, like the way he'd signal a flashback by giving every line the same very light weight--that doesn't work in color comics--and I miss the supersaturated colors of the period when he was painting his colors, too.)</div>
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I think it's interesting, though, that there's much <i>more</i> Dredd artwork in the past couple of decades that could pass for something from mainstream American comics than there had been before that. When <i>2000 AD</i> went full-color (quickly followed by the birth of the <i>Megazine</i>), there was a certain adjustment period as artists who had worked in black-and-white for most of their careers were jolted into working in color, but there was also a lot of painted artwork and other unconventional approaches. There's still a lot of that in both series--the <i>Ampney Crucis Investigates</i> serial in <i>2000 AD</i> right now, for instance, or almost every <i>Anderson Psi Division</i> story, or the enormously distinctive appearance of the black-and-white(-ish) artwork in the recent <i>Simping Detective</i> and <i>Low Life</i> stories.</div>
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Over time, the basic look of <i>Dredd</i> has settled into being pen-and-ink line art with color, and often (but not always) on a sort of American-looking template; that applies to most of this volume. Even John Higgins, who's done some extraordinary Dredd material based more on color and form than on linework ("Joe Dredd's Blues" comes to mind), goes for a straighter pen-and-ink look in his section of "The Talented Mayor Ambrose." (That may also have something to do with drawing a section of a long serial that has very little leeway on when it has to run...)</div>
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And yes: I'd love to know more about what you think P.J. Maybe and Tom Ripley do or don't have in common, and about how this story fits into the conventions of crime stories and detective/cop stories.</div>
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<b>CARL: </b>Thanks for all the illumination, Douglas. On rereading, especially with the background you’ve given me, the black humor of the Dredd style is even clearer. And I think that, more than anything, is where the aesthetics of the series and of Patricia Highsmith most connect.</div>
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The comparison between PJ Maybe and Highsmith’s Tom Ripley doesn’t run too deep: Yes, they both use disguise, though not having a face-changing machine, Ripley’s method is more to use forgery and other deceits to steal traits from others and incorporate them into his own identity. And they are both sociopathic killers. But where Maybe is a dedicated connoisseur of death and suffering, Ripley is an opportunistic gold digger who simply has no compunctions about also digging a grave or two along the way, when he is cornered, to sustain his deceptions and con games.<br />
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The one exception is his first murder, of his friend Dickie Greenleaf – when the subtext is that it is partly out of sublimated desire, and rage at sexual rejection, which does become a bloodlust. Once he’s successfully ensconced himself in a French-countryside upper-class lifestyle with his art collection and trophy wife, he prefers to keep things serene, but suspicious meddlers keep showing up and needing to be disposed of. There’s also an element of class and sexual subversion to his story that seems absent here.</div>
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PJ Maybe is much more of a cartoonish psychopath – if the Judges had gone further than just matching his DNA with Mayor Ambrose’s and actually mapped his genome, it seems like they’d have found as much of the Joker and a Bond villain or two in there as of Tom Ripley.</div>
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What Wagner might have found more inspirational is the way that Highsmith turned the typical thriller/mystery point-of-view inside out, by telling the story from the psychopath’s point of view, and making the suspense about his efforts to evade detection rather than about the authorities’ steps in detecting him. It was a startling move when the first Ripley book came out in 1955. Today the technique is familiar, for instance in cable TV series such as Breaking Bad, Dexter, The Sopranos and even Mad Men (Don Draper, as a similarly shape-shifting class-queue-jumper, is kind of a Ripley of the American Dream, who uses advertising – and his penis – instead of a knife to make his kills). They get their thematic tension from the audience’s uneasy complicity with the likeable but morally indefensible protagonist, from rooting in many ways for the wrong side.</div>
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We don’t go quite that far along with PJ Maybe, but what he offers in the bleak emotional landscape of the Mega-City is the rare sense of someone enjoying himself, of pleasure in an anhedonic dystopia. Inga the Swedish love robot may be an idiotic male fantasy, but at least it means someone in this dull battle of greed versus law actually has a fantasy. The sequence when she role-plays Judge Hershey to dole out naughty-schoolmarm S&M, faking out both the reader and PJ himself at first, is maybe the single funniest thing in the story. And of course it pays off both in murder and in Maybe's ultimate undoing.</div>
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So that's the trick to the police-procedural side of the plot here: The Judges’ detective work is generally piss-poor, and all the revelations really come from the screw-ups of Maybe, Inga and Sinfield (who, we should pause to note, is also playing his own game of con and disguise, mirroring Maybe at the opposite end of multiple spectrums). If Sinfield didn’t keep having improbable recoveries from Maybe’s biological attacks, if Maybe had come up with a better cover story in advance (and didn’t have his DNA all over his lovebot), and so on, this bunch of purse-lipped lunkheads might never have been the wiser. Dredd doesn’t even figure out how Sinfield was controlling Francisco till Maybe straight-up tells him. At first that seemed a bit like sloppy plotting, but on second read, it rings more like a carnival-ride flip on that clunking <i>Law & Order</i> music. The (supposed) heroes don’t outsmart the villains, they just wait around till the schemes grow to such ridiculous scope that they’re impossible to miss.</div>
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In a word, fun.</div>
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The ending still seemed over the top. Dredd’s "gotcha" line about having been one of the two the Judges to vote against commuting Maybe’s sentence was nothing but misdirection to keep the reader from thinking that there’s no way the others would have voted for it either, given Maybe’s record. Prisons can't hold him. Hell, even if he were executed he might cheat death again. So it comes off as typical case of comic creators being unwilling to give up their juiciest villains. Maybe you could argue that’s another metajoke, that keeping Maybe around to chortle and kill another day is a further satirical wink. But it’s not the one with the most gleam.<br />
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<b>DOUGLAS:</b> Fair enough--his escape from doom here is indeed pretty credulity-bending, and there's no denying that he seems to be a pet character of Wagner's. P.J.'s whole raison d'être, though, more even than being a psychopathic identity-stealer, is that he <i>does</i> get away, over and over, through avoiding suspicion or byzantine plans or pure luck. Nobody else gets that in this series (other than the Dark Judges, for whom immortality is baked into the premise): the Angel Gang are dead (aside from Mean Machine, who's now a helpless old man), the Judge Child is dead, Orlok the Assassin is dead, and so are Call-Me-Kenneth and Cal and Borisenko and Edgar and the Judda and Mister Bones and Kraken and Armon Gill and Nero Narcos and basically every other character in <i>Dredd</i> who's ever been a serious threat. Chopper's alive, as far as we know, but he isn't a threat any more--really, he never was. Only this one homicidal dork keeps smelling like roses instead of pushing up daisies.</div>
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Thanks again to Carl! A bibliographic note: this volume doesn't quite reprint all of "Tour of Duty"--there were seven episodes by writers other than Wagner, all set during the "Dredd posted to the mutant township" sequence. (The best of those is probably Prog 2010's Al Ewing/Paul Marshall one-off "Bethlehem," a Christmas story with a very funny formal conceit, but none of them really advance the overall "Tour of Duty" narrative.)</div>
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And that's it for "Dredd Reckoning"--I've covered all the Dreddverse comics stories reprinted in squarebound books to date, I believe. I'll be back with one or two more housekeeping-type posts, and will also be announcing a forthcoming comics-related project or two here when the time comes. Thanks to all the amazing thinkers and writers who've done me the honor of making guest appearances here, to all the commenters here and at the <i>2000 AD </i>Forum<i> </i>who've made this such a fun project, to the Mighty Tharg himself and everyone else at the Nerve Centre for the ultimate honor of the Krill Tro Thargo, and most of all to Messrs. Wagner, Ezquerra, Grant, and all the rest for the many years of delight I've gotten from their work. </div>
Douglas Wolkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10691167073493285913noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7321253799411057654.post-74366340767111454482013-01-20T23:00:00.001-08:002013-02-08T20:17:00.256-08:00Judge Anderson: The Psi Files Volume 03<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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(Reprints <i>Anderson Psi Division</i> stories from <i>Judge Dredd Megazine</i> #2.74-2.80, 3.01-3.07 and 3.14, <i>2000 AD</i> Progs 1045-1061, 1076, 1087-1090, 1102-1103, <i>2000 AD Annual</i> 1988 and 1990, <i>2000 AD Winter Special</i> 1988, and <i>Judge Dredd Annual</i> 1991)</div>
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A confession up front: I haven't actually seen this book yet--it's out in the U.K., but not yet in the U.S. But! I do have the original issues it draws from. So if the <a href="http://shop.2000adonline.com/products/judge_anderson_the_psi_files_volume_03"><span class="s1">listing on the official Web site</span></a> is off, I'm writing about the wrong thing this week, and I beg your forgiveness.</div>
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In any case, this is the volume that almost-but-not-quite wraps up Alan Grant's '90s run on <i>Anderson Psi Division.</i> Grant apparently lost some enthusiasm for writing the series after "Crusade"; there were a smattering of short stories after that, as well as the six-part "Horror Story," and then he tabled the character for four or five years, aside from 2001's "R*Evolution." (By the time <i>Anderson Psi Division</i> returned in the <i>Megazine</i>, John Wagner had put Cass into another of her many comas.) But that's one of the glories of the British anthology model: there doesn't have to be a new <i>Anderson</i> story every week or month to keep the franchise alive, it just comes back when it's ready to come back.</div>
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Since this period of <i>Anderson </i>is all about broad statements, here's a broad statement about it: I rarely love the particular ways that Grant engages with enormous issues of philosophy and religion and human experience here--but I do very much like <i>that</i> he decided that this series about a nebulously psychic, distinctly callipygian future cop was going to be his vehicle to engage with those issues, damn it all, and I totally love the way that he makes these stories vehicles for <i>artists</i> to engage with them.</div>
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Arthur Ranson's color Anderson stories--especially "Shamballa" and (this volume's) "Satan"--are the most gorgeous stuff I've ever seen by him. (I recommend having a look at the <a href="http://www.arthurranson.com/content/anderson-psi"><span class="s1">Anderson page</span></a> on Ranson's site. I like his notes on the earlier <i>Satan</i> collection's cover, above, that "some of the graffiti is personal," and on the two-page spread of Cass in space: "smug having done this without use of white paint.") And Steve Sampson was drawing a significant amount of material for <i>2000 AD</i> and the <i>Megazine</i> around this point, but his <i>Anderson</i> pages are by far the best--the most eye-lingering, the most elegantly composed. (The only Anderson cover he drew during this period is below; don't know about that facial expression...) Too bad Angel Unzueta doesn't acquit himself quite as well on the one-off throwaway "Danse Macabre," whose opening image is an <a href="http://eschergirls.tumblr.com/"><span class="s1">Escher-girl</span></a> Anderson with lens flare (or pinpoint lasers?) on both buttocks. Lens flare was big in those days.)</div>
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This volume begins with another obligatory Anderson ass shot, at the start of "Something Wicked"--a previously unreprinted story whose art is half really nice-looking (the Sampson-drawn half), half not-quite-there great-grandson-of-Bisley. It's a setup for "Satan," which picks up immediately after its ending--but couldn't run just then, because Vol. 2 of <i>Judge Dredd Megazine</i> only had three issues left to go at that point. An interesting point of comparison: when Grant writes about trepanation, we get the killer in the second chapter here, with the psychedelic tornado of demons shooting out of his psyche on its final page; when Wagner writes about it, more or less, we get the Branch Moronians. Grant's also got an unshakeable habit of punningly naming characters after significant mystical-literary figures or ideas: in "Something Wicked," we have Adam Kadman, who's not very effortfully disguised from <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Kadmon"><span class="s1">Adam Kadmon</span></a>.</div>
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The back of the book is, as with the first two volumes, "restricted files"-type Anderson stories, and that section is still catching up with the main sequence, although I think there are only a few stories from early-'90s <i>Judge Dredd Yearbooks</i> and a <i>Judge Dredd Mega Special</i> left to reprint--"Dear Diary" and "Colin Wilson Block" are old enough that they happen before Corey's suicide! The latter appeared in the <i>2000 AD Winter Special 1988</i>, an odd, banged-together thing with some color material, some black-and-white material, a Zenith story drawn by one M. Carmona (who?), etc.</div>
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And "Colin Wilson" is generally a what's up with that?" story. The "alien mind-parasites" bit is a nod to real-world author Colin Wilson's novel <i>The Mind Parasites</i>, and it seems to be getting into position to be an "Anderson vs. Cthulhuesque psychic demon" story, when all of a sudden, it just--stops: Anderson (after waking up in her bed with her little Judge cuddly toy) concludes that the entity sacrificed itself for something nefarious to do with children, and rides off, the end. What? Was this supposed to be the beginning of a longer story that got called off for whatever reason? Anyone know?</div>
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But children-and-trauma is, inescapably, a recurring theme in Alan Grant's Anderson stories--it's the core of the 17-episode "Wonderwall"/"Crusade" sequence from 1997 that began the feature's return to <i>2000 AD</i>, almost a year and a half after it left the <i>Megazine</i>. (Specifically, it returned with the cover of Prog 1045, below, and its obligatory Anderson ass shot.) A <a href="http://www.ninthart.co.uk/display.php?article=318"><span class="s1">quote from Grant</span></a> in 2002: " I think the only story I'd consign to oblivion would be the ANDERSON tale 'Crusade'. I thought Steve Sampson made a valiant effort with the artwork, but in the end the story sank under the sheer weight of children (and not very good writing)." In the same interview, he cites "Satan" as being among his best work, on the strength of Ranson's artwork.<br />
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I'm not especially fond of "Crusade" as a story, although I do like its dreamlike tone, and I'm not the first to observe that it's one of the biggest things that's ever happened in Mega-City One that's had absolutely no follow-up. But I wouldn't consign it to oblivion either, because, again, it's a shining example of something Grant does terrifically well: figure out what artists can draw beautifully and build a script around that. Considered as the Steve Sampson Show, it's gorgeous--those full-page and two-page shots of the Cursed Earth landscape built around simple color palettes! those repeated panels that are more powerful than changing their image could have been! those photo-modeled head shots finessed into a few psychedelic lines!</div>
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It's even got a significantly different look-and-feel from "Wonderwall," the Sampson-drawn story immediately before it. The art saves this one from collapsing under the weight of the series' tics: the Children Good! Child Abusers Bad! gavel-pounding (back when I looked at <i>Shamballa</i>, I compared Satan denying responsibility to something out of Ditko, and<i> </i>Deeter Malthus' attempt at self-defense also reads like what a villain in a <i>Mr. A</i> comic would say), the forced wordplay (clearly it's a case of title preceding story), the rundown of what Grant had been reading lately (at one point he just slaps in a quote from Andrew Vachss), the straw-man role of Judge Goon, and the general doing-of-the-obvious: if I never see <i>Alice in Wonderland</i> used as an image of the fragility of childhood innocence again, it'll be too soon.</div>
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Of the shorter pieces here, I'm partial to "Witch," mostly because I grin at the thought of a retirement home for Psi-Judges nicknamed "Dunthinkin." (Points off for severe historical inaccuracy, though: there was not a "Lizbet Anderson" involved in any way in the Salem witch trials, as far as I can tell, and the accused witches were hanged rather than burned.) "Lawless," as I noted in the context of <i>The Psychic Crime Files</i>, is effectively Anderson encountering Grant's terrific creation Anarky; "The Great Debate" is less an Anderson story than a Dredd one-shot with Anderson subbed in for him, and less either of those than a Monty Python skit.</div>
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A bibliographical quirk: Grant and Mick Austin's "Confessions of a She-Devil" appeared in <i>2000 AD Annual</i> 1990, two years after the <i>Annual</i> included the Grant-co-written Dredd story "She-Devils." That '88 volume also features Peter Milligan and "Eddy Cant"'s Anderson prose story "Dear Diary"--the latter doesn't seem to have ever drawn anything else, and the kid's-scribble illustrations suggest that it's a pseudonym for somebody. Milligan himself? Anyone know? "Dear Diary," incidentally, reappeared a bit over a year ago (sans illustrations), alongside this volume's "Exorcise Duty," in the digital-only prose collection <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B006B9OGAE/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=readcomi-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B006B9OGAE">Sweet Justice: Selected Short Stories from the 2000 AD and Judge Dredd Annuals</a><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=readcomi-20&l=as2&o=1&a=B006B9OGAE" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" width="1" />.<br />
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It's pretty easy to imagine a <i>Psi Files Volume 04</i> that would wrap up the late-'90s <i>2000 AD</i> stories with "Horror Story" and "Semper Vi," re-reprint "R*Evolution," then jump to Cass's return in the <i>Megazine</i> in 2004 with "Half-Life," "WMD," "Lock-In," "City of Dead" and "Lucid"--that'd be 294 pages right there, with some more first-rate artwork. Crossing my fingers.</div>
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Next up, the final review in our weekly series: <i>Tour of Duty: Mega-City Justice</i>. See you here.</div>
Douglas Wolkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10691167073493285913noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7321253799411057654.post-37372809643790993802013-01-13T23:00:00.000-08:002013-01-13T23:00:11.769-08:00Insurrection
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(Reprints <i>Insurrection</i> stories from <i>Judge Dredd Megazine</i> #279-284 and 305-310)</div>
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It might be fitting that I have constantly fluctuating feelings about <i>Insurrection</i>. It's a beautiful-looking project--Colin MacNeil seems to have worked up yet another new style for it, this time a black-and-white technique that touches on both the painted look of late-'70s/early-'80s high-end comics SF (I'm thinking, in particular, of Jim Starlin's <i>The Price</i>) and charcoal, with a bit of fancy 3-D texture modeling too. It's also one of my favorites of Dan Abnett's comics that I've read; I've enjoyed the <i>Nova/Annihilation </i>material, but I've never quite gotten into <i>Sinister Dexter</i>, and <i>Warhammer </i>is completely alien territory to me. And it's got a very smart premise (colonial marshal rebels against the imperial power that sent him as a matter of principle, but in outer space, and with Judges), and in places an even smarter execution. There are just some things about it that <i>almost</i> work.</div>
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In places, it seems like the <i>Dredd</i>-universe aspects of <i>Insurrection</i> are mostly window dressing; I think I've seen at least one or two people online suggesting it could be a retooled <i>Warhammer 40,000</i> idea (although <a href="http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=41865"><span class="s1">Abnett says it's not</span></a>). Occasionally, it's hard to reconcile with the continuity we know. I can very easily see the Hershey administration accepting the fruits of K-Alpha 61's struggle without sending any support to it; it's harder, though, to imagine that Mega-City One has the resources that would be involved in giving the SJS alone a whole fleet of starships.</div>
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There are ludicrous plot points and contrivances ("we can make all the chips at the other end of the galaxy malfunction by remote control, which will cripple Earth, even after the Second Robot War made people really cautious about that stuff..."); there are ingenious bits of dialogue and invention (like the SJS prison ship being <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Fry"><span class="s1">"Elizabeth Fry"</span></a>). Karel Luther's name is resonant, too: one name from an author who was one of the first to use the word "robot" and wrote about post-human sentients, the other from a reformer who broke with his instructors' dogma. The third chapter of "Insurrection II," in which Freely explains the mechanics of the conflict to Luther (here are the machines they're using, here are the tactics we're using in return) is almost a case of telling rather than showing--but it also lets MacNeil unleash his design chops for page after page, which is "showing" if anything is. (The "catts"! The "spyders"! The Uglydoll-ish "botsmiths"!)</div>
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Droids as born-again religious types is a legitimately amusing idea; having them refer to "God" and "Jesus Christ," rather than "Grud" and "Jovis," opens up a whole other can. (Which reminds me: I recently noticed that Prog 1 not only contains several uses of "My God!," but a "Drokk it!"--spoken by none other than Dan Dare!) One of the small details that I enjoy in latter-day <i>Dredd</i>, though, is the implication--without explanation--that at some point between now and 2099 something happened that made the new names the ones everyone uses, that "god" is now only the generic form (as in "the God-City"), and that the few people who use the old names are being deliberately archaic about it.</div>
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Abnett's proposal, reproduced at the back of the book, is fascinating reading (I especially like the detail that the alternate title was "Rebellion")--although he notes both that he doesn't intend the story to be "one-sided in terms of reader sympathy" and that "the reader should be rooting for the rebels and hissing the Judges." In practice, it's closer to the latter: Abnett stacks the deck by making Luther's opposite numbers in the SJS cruel bastards--Senior Judges <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culottes"><span class="s1">Kulotte</span></a> is all but a moustache-twirler, and Laud isn't far behind him. (Nice design on the mute psychic Siren, though.) For that matter, having Luther genuinely believe that robots have rights of full personhood and citizenship makes his political position more extreme in the other direction than, I would guess, just about any of the story's readers. (And if it's morally defensible for Luther to destroy "automated systems" but not "droids," it might have been useful to explain the difference.)</div>
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But that ending, that ending--that's what really won me over on this volume. Apparently there's going to be a third <i>Insurrection</i> series this year, inevitably set on a battlefield called "Equality" (are some more equal than others?). I'll be happy to read it, but I also cherish the idea of <i>Insurrection</i> ending where it does in this collection, at the end of its second serial, with Luther finally understanding the hard limit of his rebellion's viability; having made one "tough decision" after another that's actually easy enough to square up with his ideology, he's come to a moment where his decision is not between folding and continuing the struggle (and maybe going out in a blaze of glory), but between betraying and destroying two different legitimate claimants on his ultimate allegiance, and <i>he doesn't know what to do</i>. If this is a story happening in the Judges' universe, we know how it ends--we have to, since there hasn't been a worldwide equipment failure--but, considered on its own, that is a beautiful ending to this particular story.</div>
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Next week: one more last-minute addition to our running order: the brand-new third volume of <i>Judge Anderson: The Psi Files</i>, collecting most of Cass's late-'90s appearances.</div>
Douglas Wolkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10691167073493285913noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7321253799411057654.post-28477718664055096812013-01-06T23:00:00.000-08:002013-01-06T23:00:04.629-08:00Mega-City Undercover Vol. 02: Living the Low Life
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(Reprints <i>Low Life</i> stories from <i>Judge Dredd Megazine</i> #271-274 and <i>2000 AD</i> Progs 1624-1631, Prog 2010, and 1700-1709)</div>
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This is the sequence in which <i>Low Life</i> really took off--where the series went from being a fun <i>Dredd</i> spinoff to taking on a life of its own. That had a lot to do with two big shifts during this period. One is that the remarkable D'Israeli took over drawing, for the two longer serials in here--"Creation" and "Hostile Takeover." Rob Williams' <a href="http://www.robwilliamscomics.co.uk/?p=303"><span class="s1">checklist</span></a> of things he keeps in mind while writing comics includes "What are the cool set pieces?" and "How visual is this? And whatever the visuals are, how can we make them bigger?" He keeps handing D'Israeli big, cool set pieces, and D'Israeli keeps making them bigger and cooler.</div>
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I've sung D'Israeli's praises here before, but I can't get over how good his <i>Low Life</i> stuff has been, right from the outset--he thinks a lot about how to show <i>everything</i>, in terms of both design and pacing, and it pays off. See, for instance, <a href="http://disraeli-demon.blogspot.com/2009/02/lowlife-creation-part-one-borrowed.html"><span class="s1">this blog post</span></a>, which touches on how the no-solid-blacks technique he uses for the flashback sequences in "Creation" is a deliberate echo of Carlos Ezquerra's style in the flashbacks of "The Apocalypse War."</div>
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Or how about this--there's that page early on in "Creation" (below) where we see the Low Life in a rainstorm. It's a six-panel page, with two scenes going on (including the first look at the Big Man). But look how he stages it: a gorgeous full-page establishing shot with grayscale used to indicate depth of field; one inset panel marked off with a border; another just set atop it, at the end, with its relatively huge masses of pure black and pure white making it look different enough from the background that a border isn't necessary (and making it a greater shock that we're seeing the Big Man, not to mention establishing that the Satanic under-lighting on his face is coming from the lights of the city below); the big, slashing, white raindrops the same size almost all over the page (except for the even bigger ones next to the extreme close-up on Jenkins' head), acting as a unifying element as we switch scenes; the Big Man visible when you go back and look at the inset panel, which he hadn't been on an initial reading...</div>
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The other notable change with the material in this volume is that Williams doubled down on the idea that the series is called <i>Low Life</i>--not <i>Judge Nixon</i>, not <i>The Wally Squad</i>, not even <i>Dirty Frank</i>. It's about a corrosive place, and the damaged people who keep it alive. (That said, I wish we had a little more of a sense of the Low Life as a place, rather than as a set of backgrounds and rackets.) Nixon, who'd been the "anti-Batman" (as Deb Chachra put it) in most of the earlier stories, recedes after "War Without Bloodshed"; most of the regular cast is in a very different state after "Hostile Takeover"; and Frank, who'd been mostly the comedy relief character early on, moves into the spotlight, and turns out to be a good sight deeper than he'd appeared at first.</div>
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Frank becomes a much more interesting protagonist as his story is revealed to be more tragic than it once seemed. (He reminds me a little of E.C. Segar's version of Popeye: funny in a way that's also forthright about his terrible scars.) His voice clicks into position here, along with the running gag that despite his constant blabbing of the truth (and occasional fourth-wall-denting), nobody ever catches on that he's an undercover Judge. "Creation" is really the first time we get to take him seriously, because it's the first time we understand what motivates him: his absolute, crystalline devotion to the law is the only thing holding this mess of a person together. (The brilliant payoff to "The Deal" is what presents that idea most clearly, but it's also present here courtesy of the snowflake motif in "Creation" and the final sequences of "Hostile Takeover." See also his "justice" one-liner in "Trifecta"...)</div>
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"Creation" is a very, very ambitious story, not least because it tries to double as Dirty Frank's origin story (another meaning to the title)--and the missing pieces of <i>that</i> don't start getting filled in until "Saudade." It has the shared-universe problem of introducing technology so powerful that it's hard to see how subsequent stories can get by without mentioning it (nanotech that can make religious visions real?), and the not-enough-pages problem that the "religious visions" we see are all straight-up Judeo-Christian stuff. Even so, it's funny, and full of exciting little incidents, and hints at a bigger landscape; I can't blame it for aiming high.</div>
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"Jive Turkey"--that's the one I don't know about. (I also don't get the joke of Mortal naming members of the E Street Band every time Cameron pukes, but maybe I'm overlooking something.) I get that Williams and Smudge are trying to compress the "<i>Low Life</i> as absurdist comedy" and "<i>Low Life</i> as Aimee Nixon's tragedy" strains of the series into one eight-page story, but it just comes out as dissonant, and pitting Frank against another over-the-top lunatic means that they're jostling to control the same parts of the scene they share.</div>
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The one other curious flaw in Williams' scripts here is that, in trying to not pound in the concluding points of his stories, he can understate them to the point of obscuring them. The ending of "War Without Bloodshed," for instance: Aimee speaks Russian to the dying Bernie <i>twice</i>? And he says "I know you... you won't tell": why wouldn't she, now that he's dead? Is the implication meant to be that she's a covert Sov agent too? Likewise with "Hostile Takeover": the first chapter offers one implication about the Big Man's identity, the last contradicts that implication outright and offers another one, without coming out and stating it.</div>
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When Williams is on, though, he's totally on. (The callback to the I-can't-believe-they-got-away-with-that-design "Heavy Metal Kid" robot from the earliest era of <i>Judge Dredd</i> is sharp on its own, but making it "Cross-Dressing Trev"--with the implication that it actually hates its own design--is terrific <i>because</i> it gilds the lily.) Once again, every episode manages to have some kind of setup-development-climax dramatic arc of its own, including at least one big visual set-piece and a concluding cliffhanger, in <i>five pages</i>. This is also a series that gets better with every new serial: I like "The Deal" even better than "Hostile Takeover," and "Saudade" even better than either. I still don't think I'd want to read about Dirty Frank's adventures every week, but I hope I get to check in with <i>Low Life</i> for a few months a year for a while to come.</div>
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Next week: out into deep space for the collection of the first two <i>Insurrection</i> serials.</div>
Douglas Wolkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10691167073493285913noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7321253799411057654.post-53396062871609633422012-12-30T23:00:00.000-08:002012-12-30T23:00:02.484-08:00Tour of Duty: The Backlash<div style="text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1907519238/ref=as_li_ss_il?ie=UTF8&tag=readcomi-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1907519238"><img border="0" src="http://ws.assoc-amazon.com/widgets/q?_encoding=UTF8&Format=_SL160_&ASIN=1907519238&MarketPlace=US&ID=AsinImage&WS=1&tag=readcomi-20&ServiceVersion=20070822" /></a><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=readcomi-20&l=as2&o=1&a=1907519238" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" width="1" /></div>
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(Reprints <i>Judge Dredd</i> stories from <i>2000 AD</i> Progs 1520, 1536, 1542-1548, Prog 2008, 1569-1575, 1577-1581, 1589-1595, 1600-1603, 1611-1612 and 1628-1633)</div>
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As we careen toward the end of this blog (and hit the really good stuff from the past few years), we're going to have a few more special guests; this week I'm delighted to be joined by Jamaal Thomas, one of the geniuses behind <a href="http://www.funnybookbabylon.com/"><span class="s1">Funnybook Babylon</span></a>. (He also Twitters <a href="https://twitter.com/jamaal30"><span class="s1">here</span></a> and Tumblrs <a href="http://infectedworldmind.tumblr.com/"><span class="s1">here</span></a>.) He was kind enough to send over his own bio: "Lifelong reader. Loved comics as a child, fell out of love as a teenager. Started reading again in my twenties. Day job: lawyer and planner (fundraising and program planning/evaluation) for a NY nonprofit. Other: lawyer for small businesses, (occasional) writer/podcaster at Funnybook Babylon."<br />
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<b>JAMAAL: </b>Thanks for inviting me to discuss <i>Tour of Duty: The Backlash</i>. It's amazing to see how much the franchise has changed in the years since I read Dredd on a regular basis in the mid-1990s. When I first started reading Dredd books, the tensile permanence of the status quo in Mega-City One made me slightly uncomfortable. The books were filled with military attacks, massacres and riots, but the essential features of Mega-City One - the massive city blocks, brutal justice and absurdly long prison sentences - seemed eternal. Mega-City One felt almost as static as Batman's Gotham City, but far more terrifying. Even as my discomfort waned, the impression stuck with me over the years. </div>
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<b>DOUGLAS:</b> One of the things that's interesting to me about this series, actually, is that the status quo <i>isn't</i> so permanent: every blow the city suffers is one from which it takes a long time to recover; characters age; things slowly crumble. But I think that the <i>Dredd</i> most American readers have encountered is one where everything's pretty much the same: the Grant-Wagner period's stories have been reprinted over and over, but the later material like this has been pretty hard to come by in the States. This is a long-game volume for sure--"The Edgar Case," in particular, is the final piece of a subplot that had been simmering for more than ten years, with dying Judge Edgar taking her friends <i>and herself</i> down just to get one last knife-twist in on Dredd. (The still-unreprinted sequence "The Cal Legacy" is part of the setup there...)</div>
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<b>JAMAAL: </b>Even though I knew that time was continuing to pass in this world, there was still a small piece of me that was surprised to read a Dredd story that shows us a MC1 in decline, and an aging Dredd grappling with his legacy and struggling to define himself in a changing world. It’s particularly noticeable in the stories illustrated by Patrick Goddard ("Fifty-Year Man," "The Edgar Case"). I'm so used to reading adventure comics that take place in an eternal present that Goddard's depiction of a slowly aging Dredd was slightly jarring. Goddard’s Dredd is still a powerful figure, but the decades of battles had taken their toll. It felt like we were watching the beginning of the end of Dredd’s story. I loved MacNeil, Fraser and Dyer’s contributions to <i>The Backlash</i>, but Goddard’s was the one that haunted me the most. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Dredd as tormented as he was in "Fifty-Year Man" or "The Edgar Case."<br />
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<b>DOUGLAS:</b> I love the title of "Fifty-Year Man," in particular, because it's easy to read as "Fifty-Year-Old Man"--and Dredd hadn't even been that for a while. This particular story was, as I understand, planned to appear in the 30th anniversary issue of <i>2000 AD</i> (it was pushed back a bit because of the delays in "Origins"), and the point is that when Dredd first appeared he'd already been on the force for 20 years--so he's now been on the streets for fifty years. Goddard actually strikes me as the most "American-style" of the significant British <i>Dredd</i> artists; I can imagine his artwork in an issue of, say, <i>Amazing Spider-Man</i> much more easily than Nick Dyer's or Rufus Dayglo's, for instance.</div>
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But yes, the tormented Dredd is a relatively recent phenomenon. (I think John Wagner had occasionally written omniscient-but-basically-from-Dredd's-POV captions before, but he's been doing it in earnest from "Fifty-Year Man" onward.) When Wagner and Alan Grant tried it with the "A Case for Treatment" sequence in the early '80s, it didn't quite work--it seemed to run in opposition to some of what readers understood about the character. This time, it's right on the money, especially since "Fifty-Year Man" ran immediately after "Origins." ("The Streets of Dan Francisco" actually ran <i>during</i> "Origins," as a fill-in.) Dredd's just had everything he knows about the world upended, and he's shaken--but he's not willing to let on. Maybe the most effective "no, seriously, time has passed" gesture in that story is Mean Machine's cameo appearance: one of Dredd's classic adversaries, now old and decrepit and harmless. In any other series, Dredd would be right that Mean's putting on an act and planning to go right back to his Yosemite Sam act the moment he gets out. In this one, that's it--Mean's been shuffled off for good, it appears.<br />
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<b>JAMAAL: </b>There was something genuinely tragic about that scene with Mean Machine. In some sense, was Wagner showing us who Mean Machine always was - an unstable disabled man with a malfunctioning implant? I couldn't help but wonder if Mean's "rehabilitation" can be attributed to his advanced age or the repair of his implant (and removal of his claw arm). I'm sure that it's some mix of both, but it changes our view of Mean Machine.</div>
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Wagner also presents a far more complicated Dredd than the one who lives in my memory. He’s more measured and pensive and far less assured. He seems to recognize the human impact of his actions and is even questioning his legacy. At the same time, Wagner doesn't let the reader forget that Dredd's motives aren't entirely pure. "Origins" did open his eyes to the possibility that the system was broken (the most heartbreaking moment in the story was when the dying Fargo told him that the system wasn’t meant to last forever), but there's something meaningful about the fact that Dredd only developed a commitment to justice after being personally affected by the laws. He only recognized the humanity of the mutants when he found out that some of his relatives were mutants too - it offsets some of the sympathy the reader develops for Dredd, but makes him seem more fully human.</div>
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He's slowly evolving. Early on, we see Dredd behave sympathetically toward the parents of a mutant baby. He gets involved in the world of Mega-City One politics. Wagner shows us a Dredd chafing against his external and internal limitations (he does a particularly brilliant job of this in "The Edgar Case"). But he can only go so far. Although he's a tactical genius, his strategy frequently comes up short - not only does he underestimate the potential backlash to mutant law reform, he seriously misreads sentiment within the judicial forces. The street violence and petty corruption are just distractions, and even when Dredd is aware of that, he is unable to avoid them. He has to be focused on the small picture, it’s just fundamental to his nature (I guess that this is one of the reasons he never ran for Chief Judge). Wagner does a great job of subtly forcing Dredd out of his comfort zone. The stakes aren't just different, they feel elevated. Dredd may be a hyper-competent judge, but he's still a naif in the world of politics.<br />
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<b>DOUGLAS: </b>Absolutely. Dredd's never really been written as a fully sympathetic character, and I particularly like the sympathy switcheroo Wagner pulls off here: he pretty much spells it out that discrimination against the mutants is totally wrong, then gets Dredd to do the right thing for the wrong reasons, and sets it up so that "doing the right thing" is <i>incredibly</i> problematic and not easy to defend (and brings down Hershey, too). Same thing with Dan Francisco: he's a cheesy glory-hound, and the familiar action-comics formula has gigantic neon signs saying "this guy is actually a corrupt, incompetent bastard" with arrows pointing at him. But Francisco turns out to be a reasonably competent cop himself, with a talent for playing to the cameras; he's an ideologue, but he genuinely has the convictions he claims.</div>
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And yes, of course Dredd can't see the forest for the trees; in a lot of ways, neither can the Judges as a group. This volume makes it even clearer that they can deal with immediate threats of violence, but not with systemic corruption. (Even the bit about the crime boss who had his larynx replaced with a robotic voice to evade lie detectors--which I think had also shown up in "Mandroid" a few years earlier--suggests that they can't do much about certain major crime problems they know exist.)</div>
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<b>JAMAAL: </b>After "The Streets of Dan Francisco," I expected that Francisco would turn out to be corrupt or have feet of clay. I even suspected that he would be the antagonist for this arc. I wonder if we're meant to see Francisco as an updated version of Dredd (as iconic street judge) for an era in which public perception and media savvy have become more important. I’m also fascinated by Wagner’s emphasis on Mega-City One’s internal politics (although there’s plenty of traditional crime-busting action). It’s interesting to see how the will of the citizens is expressed in an explicitly authoritarian society.</div>
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I may be reading too much into this book, but it felt a lot like a passion-play of post-Civil War America. There was something eerily familiar about the way that citizens define themselves against the "other," and their willingness to use terrorist tactics to enforce a tyranny of the majority against a discrete and insular minority. The violence that pervades "Mutie Block" and "Backlash" were reminders that the Judge-monopoly on the use of force and violence was tenuous (you even see this in Al Ewing and Simon Fraser’s hilarious "Mutopia," when Dredd states that almost half the citizens of Mega-City One are capable military tacticians). The end of the book is a sad reminder that domestic terror is an effective way to subvert official policy.</div>
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<b>DOUGLAS:</b> Oh, there's all kinds of political commentary going on in this one--I don't think it's possible to read "The Facility" and "The Secret of Mutant Camp 5" without thinking of Guantanamo Bay (or, for that matter, of Potemkin villages, various sorts of American internment camps, and so forth).</div>
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<b>JAMAAL: </b>Agreed. I think Wagner did a great job of balancing commentary relevant to our current state of affairs with universal political themes. The mutant drama seemed to be an allegory for post-Civil War America, but could easily be applied to any aggrieved minority striving for equality' story. I don't know anything about Wagner's personal politics, but I'm also struck by the ambivalence of the political messages in this volume. The mutant story can be read as a critique of the violence that surrounds the expansion of political rights or as a cautionary tale about an overbearing government imposing change from above before the people were ready. The camp sequences evoked our tradition of detaining suspect groups (and deception around the detention), but also suggested that they just needed better regulation and oversight. I wonder if this reflects Wagner's political philosophy or if he's aiming for political ambiguity to keep things timeless.</div>
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I fear that I’m making this book sound like a bit of a downer. It’s also a ton of fun. While Wagner tells his big political story, the individual episodes and arcs constantly shift in genre and tone, which complemented the style of the individual artists. Colin MacNeil's clean style and clear storytelling aligns perfectly with the frontier justice meets the Silver Age style of the mutant-camp sections of the book as well as the more modern feel of "The Life and Crimes of PJ Maybe." Nick Dyer's more cartoony style matches the lighter tone of the Fargo visit. When Wagner switches to a more noirish style, Goddard is there to meet him in the darkness. And, of course, Kev Walker captures the dark humor of Dredd in his unique fashion. When the backlash finally hits, Carl Critchlow's loose style leads us through the chaos.</div>
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<b>DOUGLAS:</b> The stories reprinted here are from another one of Wagner's periods of stepping his game up--in this case, integrating the satirical and dramatic and violent sides of the series more tightly than ever. The funniest piece in the book is probably Ewing and Fraser's <i>X-Men</i> parody "Mutopia"--can't have a book about human-mutant relations without having a one-eyed mutant named Scott, a manipulative professor, and so on. But there's something amusing (or at least grimly amusing) in almost every story here: the subtle mock-documentary format of "Mutieblock," the "Tree Ham" ("suitable for vegetarians"), Quilp good-naturedly agreeing to kill his co-workers, Dredd automatically giving his niece's friend the third degree...<br />
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<b>JAMAAL: </b>Don't forget about the Fargo clan! I expected the grim humor, but was pleasantly surprised by the lighter, funnier stuff in this volume. It's a great contrast to the darker elements of the book. I was also pretty impressed by Wagner's balance of episodic and long-form storytelling. I imagine that it must be difficult to satisfy monthly readers (especially when the story is part of an ongoing anthology) while telling an epic narrative.<br />
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I've got to say, this volume is surprisingly dense... and that's not even touching on the terrific procedurals littered throughout the story. I feel like I'm barely scratching the surface of this - there are all the parallels between Dredd, Francisco and Beeny, the mystery of PJ Maybe (I suspected that he was going to play a greater role in the story) and the surveillance motif that runs through the story.</div>
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<b>DOUGLAS: </b>The surveillance motif has been an ongoing one--although it was a big part of the Judge Edgar sequence, in particular. But the rest of what you mention has a lot to do with the fact that this is really the first of a two-volume story: "Tour of Duty" proper, the sequence that ran in <i>2000 AD</i> #1650-1693, is collected in <i>Tour of Duty: Mega-City Justice</i> (which this blog will be getting to in a few weeks), and this one is really pretty much the immediate set-up for it. In particular, yeah, the PJ Maybe business doesn't pay off in this volume; that happens much more in the next. It would have been useful to see "The Gingerbread Man"--in which PJ-as-Ambrose is elected mayor--in this volume, although it turned up in <i>The Henry Flint Collection</i>. And Beeny's history and significance aren't really clear unless you've read "Fading of the Light" and "Cadet," but she's an absolutely terrific character, and I've been glad to see Wagner continuing to use her.<br />
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<b>JAMAAL:</b> Ah, that explains a lot. I've got to read the second volume of the story (and "The Gingerberad Man"). Yeah, Wagner's depiction of Beeny was a real highlight of this volume. It's fascinating to see how other judges solve mysteries, particularly less experienced ones. That may also explain why Maybe-Ambrose wasn't killing more people and seemed like a reasonably competent mayor. I know, I know, he killed his biographer and planned on killing a young killer inspired by his legacy, but I was surprised that he wasn't secretly massacring dozens of people. Some quick final thoughts: </div>
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*I haven’t seen Steven Spielberg’s <i>Lincoln</i> yet, but after reading the PJ Maybe arc, I suspect that the political procedural may have benefited from a murder mystery/thriller plot.</div>
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*Wagner should have showed us more interrogation/torture scenes. We should see the price of "justice" in Mega City One.</div>
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*Am I the only one who wants to read a Nick Dyer-drawn Wildy (Fargo Clan member who solved the Larssen kidnapping with his unusually powerful sense of smell)/Judge Beeny adventure?</div>
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*Is Judge Francisco Judge Dredd 2.0? Is he the ideal/iconic judge for the modern Mega City One?</div>
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*Did you read this story as it was being released? I imagine that this reads very differently in serial format.</div>
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<b>DOUGLAS: </b>Good questions! I think there've been a lot of terrific/scary interrogation scenes in the series over the years--maybe to the point where it's almost a cliché--but Wagner rarely pulls a <i>Zero Dark Thirty</i>: the torture in "Total War" yields nothing of value, Dredd and De Gaulle get nothing but corrosive enmity out of their respective humiliating grillings of each other in "The Executioner" and "The Interrogation," etc.</div>
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Is there a Dredd 2.0? That's been a big question for a long time, too--Kraken was obviously one candidate, Rico II is another, and I really like Ewing's suggestion in <a href="http://www.sfx.co.uk/2012/12/05/blog-judge-dredd-writer-al-ewing-on-2000ads-surprising-crossover/" target="_blank">an interview a few weeks ago</a> that as far as he's concerned it's Giant Jr. Francisco, though, seems like another kind of character altogether; as we can see from the way Dredd treats the media in "Fifty-Year Man" and "Mutieblock," neither of them really has any patience for the way the other does things.<br />
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I actually didn't read any of this volume as it was being serialized (with the exception of "The Spirit of Christmas"). I read <i>2000 AD</i> weekly--or as often as I could find copies, which rarely showed up weekly at whatever American comic book store I was frequenting at the time--from Prog 253 or so (smack in the middle of "The Apocalypse War") until around Prog 1350, at which point I moved across the country and the weekly issues' spotty availability became non-availability. I think the only issues I was able to pick up over the next few years were actually the ones almost immediately after this volume: #1637-1639, with Gordon Rennie and Paul J. Holden's "It Came from Bea Arthur Block" (because Bea Arthur, that's why). ...And then when Wagner was announced as writing a long storyline that started with #1740, right around the time I started this blog, I got back on board, and have been following it ever since. Boy was that ever a good idea.</div>
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A quick bibliographical note: This volume collects 42 episodes from about a two-year span. The as-yet-unreprinted material that ran during this time includes the Gordon Rennie-written serials "Judgement" and "Road Stop," the conclusion of Ian Edginton and D'Israeli's time-travel trilogy, a bunch of Robbie Morrison-written one-offs, and the Wagner/Paul Marshall ten-parter "The Ecstasy," which is one of those "sometimes Homer nods" situations.</div>
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Thanks again to Jamaal! Next week: back to the Low Life, with <i>Mega-City Undercover 2</i>.</div>
Douglas Wolkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10691167073493285913noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7321253799411057654.post-85749297090054003952012-12-23T23:00:00.000-08:002012-12-23T23:00:01.851-08:00The Garth Ennis Collection<div style="text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1781080674/ref=as_li_ss_il?ie=UTF8&tag=readcomi-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1781080674"><img border="0" src="http://ws.assoc-amazon.com/widgets/q?_encoding=UTF8&Format=_SL160_&ASIN=1781080674&MarketPlace=US&ID=AsinImage&WS=1&tag=readcomi-20&ServiceVersion=20070822" /></a><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=readcomi-20&l=as2&o=1&a=1781080674" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" width="1" /></div>
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(Reprints <i>Judge Dredd</i> stories from <i>2000 AD</i> Progs 727-732, 775, 780-785, 804-807, 810-814 and 819, and <i>Judge Joyce</i> story from <i>The Judge Dredd Yearbook 1993</i>)</div>
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Wait, didn't we cover these already? ...Almost. Most of Garth Ennis's Dredd stories have already appeared in the <i>Case Files</i> series, and some of them have been reprinted several times over in various formats. The one previously unreprinted piece here is the Steve Dillon-drawn seven-page <i>Judge Joyce</i> throwaway "When Irish Pies Are Smiling," another entry in Ennis's "bumbling Irish criminals" sub-subgenre. (And the three Ennis-written Dredd-universe stories that I mentioned last week as not being in here are the John Higgins-drawn "Monkey on My Back," from 2003, which is distinctly reprint-worthy, and the lesser spinoffs <i>The Corps</i> and <i>Sleeze 'n' Ryder</i>.)</div>
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Otherwise, this is a decent sampling of Ennis's spotty tenure on <i>Dredd</i>, featuring both of the significant Dredd-and-Joyce sequences ("Emerald Isle" and "Innocents Abroad")--the former holds up particularly well--plus "Raider," praised on the inside front cover by Karl Urban, and some shorter stuff. It'd have been nice to see a bit more historical context; Greg Staples' brief commentary on the same inside front cover is about all there is here.</div>
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Still, this makes sense for an audience that's going to be picking this up for the writer credit on its cover more than than for the guy with the gun. These are arguably the Dredd stories that most anticipate, in germinal form, the tone and themes of at least some of Ennis's later comics. (He does love his gross-outs: human eyes turn up in processed food in both "Emerald Isle" and "Irish Pies.") It's interesting that Ennis found most of his enduring collaborators right out of the gate--John McCrea on <i>Troubled Souls</i> (the only Ennis/McCrea Dredd piece was "The Craftsman," which doesn't appear here), Carlos Ezquerra on "Death Aid" (Ennis's first published Dredd story), Steve Dillon on "Emerald Isle" (his second). I do wonder, actually, what a more extensive Ennis/John Burns project might be like, absent the shiny costumes and such of "Raider"--Burns is particularly good at drawing fraught moments and significant glances, and that's right in Ennis's wheelhouse.</div>
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Next week: back to longer discussions, as Jamaal Thomas and I take on the ferocious <i>Tour of Duty: The Backlash</i>.</div>
Douglas Wolkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10691167073493285913noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7321253799411057654.post-72082095100489423352012-12-16T23:00:00.000-08:002012-12-16T23:00:21.024-08:00Origins<div style="text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1781080992/ref=as_li_ss_il?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1781080992&linkCode=as2&tag=readcomi-20"><img border="0" src="http://ws.assoc-amazon.com/widgets/q?_encoding=UTF8&ASIN=1781080992&Format=_SL160_&ID=AsinImage&MarketPlace=US&ServiceVersion=20070822&WS=1&tag=readcomi-20" /></a><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=readcomi-20&l=as2&o=1&a=1781080992" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" width="1" /></div>
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(Reprints <i>Judge Dredd</i> stories from <i>2000 AD</i> Progs 1500-1519 and 1529-1535)</div>
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This week, we've gotten to one of the biggest <i>Judge Dredd</i> stories, so we've got <i>two</i> special guests to discuss it with! Sara Ryan is the author of two award-winning young adult novels, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0142500593/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0142500593&linkCode=as2&tag=readcomi-20"><span class="s1"><i>Empress of the World</i></span></a> and <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Rules-Hearts-Sara-Ryan/dp/0142412376/"><span class="s1"><i>The Rules for Hearts</i></span></a>, and has written some terrific minicomics; Dark Horse will be publishing her and Carla Speed McNeil's graphic novel <i>Bad Houses</i>. Gordon Dahlquist is the author of the Victorian fantasy thrillers <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002QGSYKE/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B002QGSYKE&linkCode=as2&tag=readcomi-20"><span class="s1"><i>The Glass Books of the Dream</i></span></a>, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004J8HXUO/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B004J8HXUO&linkCode=as2&tag=readcomi-20"><span class="s1"><i>The Dark Volume</i></span></a> and <a href="file:///ttp/::www.amazon.com:gp:product:0670921637:ref=as_li_ss_tl%3Fie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0670921637&linkCode=as2&tag=readcomi-20"><span class="s1"><i>The Chemickal Marriage</i></span></a>, as well as a whole lot of plays. I was delighted to talk to both of them about <i>Origins</i>.</div>
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<b>DOUGLAS:</b> <i>Origins</i> has to be one of the oddest origin stories I've ever seen in comics. For one thing, it's an "origin" that showed up thirty years and 1500-plus episodes into its series--after decades' worth of hints about the backstory it revealed. For another, it's not really Judge Dredd's origin, or rather there was nothing all that secret about his origins. We knew that he and Rico were clones of Fargo, that he had no real memories of anything before he entered the Academy of Law, and that we'd first seen him in 2099, when he'd already been a Judge for twenty years. (The "revelation" about him here was mostly that his cloning process had been accelerated, which was a bit of retroactive continuity explaining how he could have been born in 2066 and joined the force in 2079.)<br />
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It's not entirely clarifying on the subject of Fargo's early life and career; Dredd points out that the expository movie he sees in Fargoville is partly falsified. (That may have a bit to do with the messy and slightly contradictory information about Fargo that had turned up earlier in the series, when John Wagner and company were more or less winging it; <i>Origins</i> doesn't even touch on the Arden Polders business from "The Cal Files.") It also elides over most of the Pat Mills universe's putative connection to the Dreddverse; if the chaos of the 21st century started with a Volgan invasion of Britain in 1999, Wagner doesn't touch on it here (but also doesn't contradict it).</div>
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What <i>Origins</i> is the origin of is mostly how Dredd's world got to be as horribly messed up as it is. It's been pointed out more than a few times that the real subject of the series isn't Dredd himself--that he's basically the catalyst for stories about Mega-City One, and about the Judge system. Wagner had also been hinting for many years that there was a "big lie": that the Judges' power was fundamentally illegitimate, or that they weren't worthy of it. Fargo's inability to abide by his own rules is part of his "original sin," although arguably the greater error is that he isn't able to forgive himself for it, putting his honor above the greater public good. The payoff of this story is its next-to-last scene, in which the dying Fargo (who's not only effectively Dredd's father but his other self) disavows the system he created--the world-view that's the only one Dredd has ever known ("It was never meant to be forever, Joe!")--and Dredd lies about it to cover it up in the <i>very next scene</i>.</div>
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The amount of backstory here means that <i>Origins</i> is also heavily weighted toward info-dump, which is unusual for a series whose hallmark is usually worldbuilding-in-passing. There's a bit of present-day plot near the beginning (and I kind of think the biggest misstep in the story is that it instantly gets sidetracked into the subplot with the mutants), and then chapter after chapter of rattled-off history until it finally gets to the big fight scene at Booth's compound.</div>
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So my first question for the two of you is a broad one: What's an origin for? Why do we, as serial readers, always want to know about a character's (or setting's) beginnings? How much is it possible to imply about a science-fictional world before you have to sit down and spell out its internal workings? What do you think <i>Dredd</i> gained or lost by deferring this story for thirty years, and by finally telling it--and what does this one tell you, or suggest to you, as readers who are getting your first exposure to the series at this point?</div>
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<b>SARA:</b> I think an origin story is a kind of reverse fortune-telling. It's just as compelling as the standard variety, but instead of asking what's <i>going</i> to happen, you're finding out what happened <i>then </i>that made things the way they are <i>now. </i>And particularly in a speculative fiction context, with an origin story you're working your way back to the "what if?" questions that the creators asked themselves to generate the setting and characters; in this case, <i>what if</i> a combination of social unrest and political corruption gave rise to the professionalization of vigilante-style justice as a means of keeping order? </div>
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And Douglas -- even though you explain that it isn't actually Dredd's origin and I believe you -- as a new reader, that <i>is</i> how I read it; the macrocosm origin of the world-as-it-is-now juxtaposed with the microcosm of Dredd's place in it. </div>
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I also experienced it as a mashup. Within the overarching genre of 'origin story', we go through a lot of other genres, and every time another one showed up, it was like hearing another hook. And there was a self-aware quality to the narrative; I liked the moment in "The Connection"<i> </i>when one judge explains to another that the box (which we don't know yet contains a sample of Fargo's tissue) is a Maguffin. (I also really liked the name 'Brad Pitt Eldsters' Condo,' although I was somewhat disappointed to read it in full, since when the words "Brad Pitt" first appeared, I interpreted them as a sound effect to associate with the cars that were also present in that panel.) </div>
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"How much is it possible to imply about a science-fictional world before you have to sit down and spell out its internal workings?"</div>
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I think you don't ever have to spell them out; it's often the case that a reader can fill in the gaps more compellingly than the writer(s). And yet there's also a readerly appetite for consistent, resonant worldbuilding, especially when, in the words of the immortal Lester Freamon of <i>The Wire</i>, "all the pieces matter."</div>
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<b>GORDON: </b>Well, it seems like one reason to keep world-origins fuzzy in science-fiction is the same as to make your character embody a few big ideas - justice, violence, law, order - without necessarily cluttering that up with a bunch of sidebar stuff, like 'emotional complexity'. I don't mean that negatively, and I don't mean JD can't be emotionally complex - just that this structure allows the complexity to rest more in the realm of ideas than in personal dynamics, and that seems a pretty classic way of structuring things in sci-fi. Which is maybe only to say, that when you have characters who are even broadly emblematic, then whatever they're doing carries an automatic interplay between those embedded ideas and an immediate story line, and their creators have an enormous and ongoing flexibility about what they can address, since the given circumstances aren't so much bound by fact as theme. Which is really a long way round to say that my first response to <i>Origins</i> was to wonder "Why now, after all this time, when things were going so well? Weren't they?"</div>
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My sense is that <i>Origins</i> doesn't speak so much to Dredd's actual conception - that is, material they didn't have time to address or include at the time - as much as how our world might have changed in the meantime. I can't read the subplot about Booth exploiting computerized voting to steal an election without thinking of Diebold's disputed role in various elections, especially Ohio in 2004. Booth's plotting feels well in the range of standard, internalized 2006 paranoia - and however extreme the consequences for the world, those sections of <i>Origins</i> strike me as weirdly prosaic. Similarly, while we hadn't seen the Tea Party by 2006, certainly the worst of post-9/11 nationalism can be seen to inform Booth's ideologies. So one question I have about Dredd's origin is whether it comes when the necessarily paranoid machinations have become more credible?</div>
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My other question was about the info-dumping. I found "The Connection" to be a pretty crisp trail of mayhem with a genuine mystery at its center, and while "Origins" definitely follows up that mystery, it's nowhere near as crisp in its story-telling - again, so deliberate is this that I don't even mean it as a criticism, just an observation. Sara's point about mashups struck me as well. "Origins" repeatedly swerves between the quest for Fargo itself and a handful of extreme side-trips - and hook is a good way to describe the way each manages to seem relevant as much because we recognize it as because what happens naturally follows. But of course, I don't know if the short-hand here - mutants! <i>Mad Max</i>! Westerns! - is itself old news to anyone who's actually up on past excursions through the Cursed Earth. Or is it that narrative structure gets mutated there as much as anything else?</div>
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<b>DOUGLAS:</b> Dredd is fundamentally unknowable in some ways; he's the embodiment of justice without goodness, of a person subsumed by the law. The most obvious symbol of that, famously, is that we never see his full face. (Which leads to some visual side-stepping in "Origins": since Dredd's a clone of Fargo, he would of course look like him, so we never get to see Fargo's face either! He's always wearing his riot gear, or a football helmet, or in too long a shot to make out his features, and so on.) Still, you can't publish 2100-plus episodes about a character without at least hinting at some kind of interiority; the compromise with Dredd is that he <i>denies</i> having emotional complexity, even to himself.</div>
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You're right about the relative narrative murkiness of "Origins," Gordon. The best long Dredd stories have some kind of very solid structure--the constant escalation of "The Apocalypse War," the focal shifts of "Necropolis," the gradual convergence of "Trifecta," the domino-setup/knockdown of "Day of Chaos." But the climax of "Origins"' action, the showdown with Booth's people, doesn't have a lot to do with the information it's been throwing at us; the <i>emotional</i> climax is Fargo's deathbed confession, which still doesn't quite hold together everything that's come before it.</div>
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That's also a really good point about narrative structure getting mutated in the Cursed Earth. Mutants/Mad Max/westerns is indeed the usual formula there, but what also tends to happen is that everything gets really jumpy and episodic. That may be a function of the way that particular setting was established (a 25-part serial that mostly subdivides into pretty-much-self-contained increments, four of whose episodes are permanently out of print), but the idea that "the way the story's expected to go gets derailed" is also true of a few other Cursed Earth stories, especially "The Hunting Party" and, most famously, "The Dead Man"...</div>
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As for the "why now": it might have been that a lot of the best Dredd stories in the five years or so leading up to "Origins" had circled around the Fargo bloodline, or had directly addressed the force of history. ("Cadet," one of the most effective Wagner stories to make use of many years having passed since an earlier sequence, ran in the <i>Megazine</i> at the same time as "Origins"!) Or it might have been that there had been so many stories addressing the backstory piecemeal that it had to get codified before it got impossibly tangled. No idea.</div>
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Sara, I like your comment about genre mashups too. One of the things that's particularly interesting to me about this series is that it's wide open in terms of genre--the character and setting are almost flavor enhancers for whatever you combine them with. There are good-to-great Dredd sequences that are undiluted slapstick, body horror, Westerns, war stories, police procedurals, thrillers, and on and on. There's almost always at least a little comedy in there, though. The hillbilly stuff in "Origins" generally seems a bit forced, but I did crack up at Booth's fate: "We want another president, we can always elect one. That's democracy, ain't it?" (And, again, what a perfect name for the final American President, shared with a Presidential assassin...)</div>
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<b>GORDON: </b>I also appreciated the humor that runs throughout, both the this-is-how-it-works-here gags like Dredd being flogged and doing back-breaking manual labor still wearing his riot helmet, and the guignol slapstick like the unlucky leaders of Fargoville who've tried to use the Judges' weapons and stand gobsmacked looking at their bloody stumps (cue sad yokel trombone). But the cynicism behind the entire <i>Origins</i> narrative demonstrates another, darker vein of humor, a blasted irony where even the honest efforts of the various hard-working judges are seen to be in service of a routinely corrupted and misunderstood ideal. It's this darkness that I've always associated with Dredd, despite not having read it - and frankly, what surprises me most in Origins is how the narrative takes pains to portray the Judges struggling to to keep Fargo's legacy - Solomon, Goodman, etc. - in such a positive light. While I assumed that the martial-law violence of <i>Dredd</i> came from a fundamental pessimism about the human character - that, on some level, or in many circumstances, Dredd's actions made sense - there's also a lot of old Roman virtue on display as well. Despite that end-note of Fargo repudiating his work, the villain of the piece - and the destroyer of worlds - is clearly Booth, and only for the Judges was anything saved at all. So even in that last moment - which I agree, is the emotional climax - I'm unsure what impact his revelation is supposed to have, since in <i>Origins</i>, at least, the Judges seem the best of a battered world. Or is it that no one looks back upon their origins without feeling regret?</div>
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One more thing, too, about the "why now" - or maybe I just can't let go of the topicality. But as an American, I can't read Fargo's last words that "it wasn't supposed to be forever" and not think about the Bush/Cheney national security state, something that's only become more deeply entrenched under Obama. While the nuclear scenarios in <i>Origins</i> that lead to the Cursed Earth and the other destroyed Mega-Cities may seem like a sci-fi cliche we (fingers crossed) have moved past, almost everything else seems perfectly credible as an outgrowth of our present, even up to the environmental destruction.</div>
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<b>DOUGLAS:</b> I agree that it's pretty fascinating that <i>Origins</i>' fascists generally aren't shown as being evil or megalomaniacal; they genuinely believe they're doing what's best. Booth, on the other hand, is nakedly an American exceptionalist--remember, this is a series by and (mostly) for British people: "Foreign states have been every opportunity to come to a reasonable settlement over their reserves. Foolishly, they insist on holding our country to ransom." Ouch!</div>
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One of my favorite tricks in this series, though, and one that's come up here a few times, is that it's constantly switching where its readers' sympathies lie. Mega-City One is, absolutely, a national security state: a "war on crime" with exactly as much of its concluding conditions defined as our world's "war on terrorism." (Maybe Fargo's real error was not figuring out how the Judges' reign could end.) The bitter twist is that it has in <i>no way</i> made its citizens safer, and a lot of the worst things that have happened to the city, including Chaos Day and what Hershey refers to in #1812 as "the Titan rebellion" (I see what she did there), are directly or indirectly the Judges' fault--they're consequences of the Judges' actions, at least.</div>
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<i>Origins</i> is almost totally a story from the Judges' point of view, so of course they're the protectors of the broken world in it; the more distance any story in that world gets from them, the more they look like the ones who broke it. A state whose citizens are forced to be lawful is not at all the same thing as a state whose citizens are helped to be good. That reminds me, actually, that there's a sharp insight in Simon Spurrier, Al Ewing and Rob Williams' <a href="http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=42506"><span class="s2">discussion</span></a> at Comic Book Resources of the crossover that just concluded between <i>Dredd</i> and two spinoffs involving undercover Judges, <i>The Simping Detective</i> and <i>Low Life</i>: that those three series' protagonists each occupy the Venn-diagram intersection of two of the three categories "good," "lawful" and "sane"...</div>
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Let's talk a little about the visual side of <i>Origins</i>--"The Connection," drawn by Kev Walker (who had previously drawn a couple of mood-intensive Dredd stories in 2002 and 2005) and "Origins" itself, drawn by Carlos Ezquerra, Dredd's co-creator. Before I say anything more, though, I'm curious about your thoughts.</div>
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<b>SARA: </b>I'm not sure I have much of interest to say about the art. I was struck by the frequency of panels featuring giant heads (which strategy, I am informed, is technically known as Large Vignetted Inset Closeups), and also of figures breaking panel borders. I loved the way the mutants were drawn, and felt like there was something Northern-Renaissance-grotesque about the approach; the hat-wearing wood-carrier in the beginning of "Legacy" would be right at home in a Bosch or Brueghel painting. And paging through the issues quickly again, I note a lot of purple tones throughout, which made me think of the book that analyzes the symbolism of color palettes in film, <i>If It's Purple, Someone's Gonna Die: The Power of Color In Visual Storytelling</i> -- implying, perhaps, that someone's always gonna die in the world of Dredd. </div>
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<b>GORDON:</b> Douglas, I have to say that my first reaction is to prefer Kev Walker's art for "The Connection." The clean lines and sparse compositions - mainly setting simply drawn figures against an all-but-monochrome field - foreground the noirish procedural plot pretty effectively, and deftly throw the focus onto Dredd's internal process. In contrast, Ezquerra's art strikes me as oddly crude, a weird mix of too much detail and broad, coarse characterization. And yet, I can't deny that this coarseness fits the black humor and the ultraviolence. I might not like it per se, but no doubt it carries a charge. How much of this is about Dredd being a non-American comic, I wonder? There's a slickness to "The Connection" - it reminds me of the few <i>Hellboy</i> comics I've read - that seems very consistent with American comics. But Ezquerra's art seems really non-American to me, or at the least quite out of the mainstream. I'd be curious what your take on the art is, and how Ezquerra's art works in dialogue with the other visual takes on Dredd's world. It's interesting to me that, if his is the mainstay art, or the template, that the comic would stray so far in different directions.<br />
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<b>DOUGLAS:</b> One of the ways that Dredd's unusual in British and European comics is that there isn't necessarily a single "definitive" artist associated with the look of the series--or, rather, there are lots of different ideas about who the definitive artist would be. Americans often tend to think that it's Brian Bolland, who drew most of the phenomenal early covers for the 1983 Eagle Comics reprint series--the first exposure a lot of Americans had to the character. (The one that appears above was for a reprint of the part of "The Cursed Earth" that introduced President Booth.) The image on the cover of <i>Origins</i> is, I believe, the final <i>2000 AD</i> cover Bolland's drawn to date. </div>
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But I've also talked to people who think the definitive Dredd artist is Ezquerra (his work is always at least interesting, and when he's on, <i>it's on</i>), or Ron Smith (who drew the weekly newspaper strip for its early years). Ben Saunders <a href="http://dreddreviews.blogspot.com/2012/09/brothers-of-blood.html"><span class="s2">waved the flag</span></a> for Mike McMahon, whose work I totally didn't get when I first encountered it thirty years ago, and now love. Al Ewing named Henry Flint in an <a href="http://www.sfx.co.uk/2012/12/05/blog-judge-dredd-writer-al-ewing-on-2000ads-surprising-crossover/"><span class="s2">interview last week</span></a>, and it's hard to argue with that, given the way Flint's been knocking it out of the park lately. You could make a solid case for Cliff Robinson, who drew the image of the cadets below. And so on.</div>
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Ezquerra's an interesting case, though, because his stuff <i>is</i> so idiomatically unlike American mainstream comics. (And that's a good point, Gordon, about how <i>Hellboy</i>-ish Walker's art on "The Connection" looks, although I think some of that may be that his color sense shares something with <i>Hellboy</i> colorist Dave Stewart's.) Ezquerra's a European artist through-and-through--a European <i>pulp</i> artist, really, with his background in Westerns and war stories. (I can't think of any other American artist who does the sort of thick, scalloped lines that he tends to use for the contours of Dredd's helmet.) He's drawn a few American comics, virtually always working with Garth Ennis or Wagner or Grant... and it's true that his work is really coarse-looking at times, but that grit is a lot of the fun of it for me. In a lot of ways, his work reminds me of Steve Ditko's; neither of them can get very near "pretty," but they do "grotesque," both people and spaces, <i>really</i> well, and they're incredibly good at communicating complicated action visually. We don't get a lot of that here--the action of "Origins" is sparse and mostly straightforward--but we get a few tastes of it, like the escape from the hospital. That's the Ezquerra I love as much as the one who draws Brueghelesque mutants.</div>
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Thanks again to Gordon and Sara! Next week, an unexpected addition to our running order: <i>The Garth Ennis Collection</i>. But what previously unreprinted-in-book-form Dreddverse Ennis story ended up in there--and which three didn't? (If you know already, sssh, no telling!)</div>
Douglas Wolkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10691167073493285913noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7321253799411057654.post-21368931659721938142012-12-09T23:00:00.000-08:002012-12-09T23:00:10.288-08:00Mandroid<div style="text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1905437501/ref=as_li_ss_il?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1905437501&linkCode=as2&tag=readcomi-20"><img border="0" src="http://ws.assoc-amazon.com/widgets/q?_encoding=UTF8&ASIN=1905437501&Format=_SL160_&ID=AsinImage&MarketPlace=US&ServiceVersion=20070822&WS=1&tag=readcomi-20" /></a><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=readcomi-20&l=as2&o=1&a=1905437501" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" width="1" /></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">(Reprints <i>Judge Dredd</i> stories from <i>2000 AD</i> Progs 1453-1464 and 1555-1566)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">We've got another special guest this week. Rachel Edidin has thought more about the internal workings of comics than just about anyone else I know. She's an Associate Editor at Dark Horse Comics, tweets at <a href="https://twitter.com/raebeta"><span class="s1">@RaeBeta</span></a>, Tumblrs at <a href="http://postcardsfromspace.tumblr.com/"><span class="s1">Postcards from Space</span></a>, <a href="http://scrapscallion.tumblr.com/"><span class="s1">Scrapscallion</span></a> and <a href="http://allkevin.tumblr.com/"><span class="s1">Kevin!</span></a>, led the legendary <a href="http://postcardsfromspace.tumblr.com/post/29993651871/i-really-hate-the-idiot-nerd-girl-meme-so-i"><span class="s1">Idiot Nerd Girl meme-coup</span></a>, co-edited the <i>Pete & Pete</i> zine <a href="http://petezine.tumblr.com/"><span class="s1">Waiting for October</span></a>, and wrote a story in the issue of <i>Womanthology: Space</i> (#3) that came out this week. I had the pleasure of discussing the collection of "Mandroid" and "Mandroid: Instrument of War" with her.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>RACHEL:</b> I came into <i>Mandroid</i> completely cold: I'd been wanting to read <i>2000 AD</i> for a while, but when you asked me to do this, I decided it would be more interesting for both of us if I held off. So, this is my first and only Judge Dredd: No comics, no movie, not even Wikipedia.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Given my Dredd virginity, the intimidating volume of material that technically precedes <i>Mandroid</i>, and the notoriously intricate chaos of the world (worlds?) of <i>2000 AD</i>, I went into this expecting to be confused, and I was pleasantly surprised at how accessible it proved. John Wagner's very good at integrating information into dialogue that's not otherwise expository, and he's written himself a premise that allows for a lot of Mega-City 101 lessons without the impression of infodumping, as Nate and Kitty struggle to navigate first the city and later the justice system. Plus, it's part police procedural, which is a signed, sealed, and laminated license to exposit.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Speaking of the justice system, the one place I found myself consistently confused was with the Judges themselves. They might be designed to represent a faceless, fascist system, and it's done well enough that I have a hell of a time telling them apart, which I'm obviously supposed to be able to do easily. I can't. I had to poke around for clues and re-read sections, and it screwed up the pacing, and I suspect there's a whole lot of ongoing intrajudicial intrigue and drama that sailed straight over my head.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>DOUGLAS:</b> Good point on police procedurals as an excuse for exposition--<i>Dredd</i> is sometimes, if not always, that. (Sometimes it's a comedy, sometimes it's a straight-up action piece, sometimes it's something else altogether.)</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">One very odd thing about Kev Walker's artwork on the first "Mandroid" sequence--that's a Walker cover above, by the way--is that he doesn't show anyone's badges, which are usually a useful sign of which Judges we're seeing. (When he shows us one who isn't Dredd, he usually still gives us some visual indication that it's somebody else: Tillson in part 2 is a trainee, which is why he's wearing a white helmet, and the other Judges in part 6 don't have Dredd's jawline.) And while there's a touch of intradepartmental intrigue in <i>Mandroid</i> (the SJS stuff near the end), there's actually not nearly as much as there usually is: Dredd is, unusually, the <i>only</i> recurring character who appears in this sequence.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Here's a question for you: as somebody who knows the internal clockwork of American comics very well, what seems formally different to you about this stuff (other than page dimensions and six-page episodes)?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>RACHEL: </b>Honestly, not much that can't be accounted for by the larger format. If you'd told me this was an American book, I wouldn't have blinked. I don't know how much of that is era-specific--I came into comics mid-Vertigo, post-British Invasion, so it could be that what an older reader might see as specifically British comics sensibilities are, to me, what a significant swath of comics have always looked like.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">That said, the difference in what you can do with pacing and layout in a larger page is really striking.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Do you know if Wagner wrote the first Mandroid story with a sequel in mind? It's such a quasi-conclusive ending--Slaughterhouse limbless, in prison; and coming back two years later to start a story with <i>his escape</i>--still limbless, mind you--is both straight-up insane and a little brilliant.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>DOUGLAS: </b>I have no idea! Wagner doesn't talk much about his long-term plans--he talks about his work, in general, as little as he can get away with--but he does tend to let stuff sit for a long time, and if he hasn't actually killed a character off, that means it's a character we stand some chance of seeing again at some point. The third "Chief Judge's Man" story, for instance, appeared almost two years after the second, the idea being that Armon Gill has been rotting in jail for a long time, waiting for his contact to come through... and Vienna showed up again close to twenty years after her first appearance.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>RACHEL: </b>Yeah, but "jail-break after two years of rotting in jail" and "jail-break after two years of rotting in jail <i>while fully dismembered</i>" are two pretty different animals. the former is pretty standard sequel fodder; the latter is such a direct inversion of what's usually a decisive end to a story--<i>Johnny Got His Gun</i> notwithstanding--that it's hard to imagine it wasn't set up as such.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>DOUGLAS: </b>True enough--except in mainstream comics, where if you see the corpse the character <i>might</i> be dead, and if you don't the character definitely isn't. To be fair, "dead is dead" usually applies in the Dreddverse, with very few exceptions.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>RACHEL:</b> But, again, usually not dismembered! In some ways, that kind of mutilation is <i>more</i> final than death in comics.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">As for the exposition I mentioned earlier, I'd love to test it out--tell you how I think the world works based just on the story, and see how close I am to the real deal.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>DOUGLAS:</b> Bring it on!</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>RACHEL: </b>Okay, so, the world, based off <i>Mandroid</i>: The U.S. is under totalitarian government--how the judges connect to the military is unclear, but they're obviously not the same body. Whether or to what extent that influence extends to other nations isn't clear; we establish in "Instrument of War" that Canada, at least, is outside of the judges' jurisdiction, so I assume relative sovereignty's roughly the same as what we've got now.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Mega-City One, where the story takes place, is a sprawling megalopolis divided into districts or neighborhoods. Here, we see mostly the slums; presumably there are higher-class sections.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">The Judges seem constrained to some extent by due process--Shultz, for instance, can't be held without charges--but at the same time, they're law enforcement and court rolled into one, and they seem to have little to no external oversight, at least within these couple stories. What they do have is rocky and factionalized internal politics; Dredd himself seems significantly more moderate than most of his compatriots.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">As with most authoritarian states, there's a pretty wide class divide, and thriving organized crime, which controls--at the least--drugs, human trafficking, and extortion rackets. The judges are aware of this stuff but have limited power to take it down--which, again, speaks to limits on their power to act discretionarily.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">All we really see of the military in these stories is Space Corps--presumably national, although if they're dealing with extraterrestrial conflicts, they might be a coalition force. Either way, they're at war, or at least engaged in an ongoing conflict of some kind.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">This is made possible by significantly advanced tech--in <i>Mandroid</i>, we see someone rebuilt from almost nothing, not even a full torso; crazy battle armor; and brainwashing with electronically enabled remote-control.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>DOUGLAS:</b> That's very sharp reading, and also speaks to how much information Wagner's able to sneak into a story that's about something else. The backstory--most of which was hinted at for several decades, and had its details spelled out in "Origins," which ran between the two "Mandroid" sequences (and which will be covered here next week)--is fairly close to what you figured. (Although, for instance, the U.S. doesn't exist any more in these stories, following an atomic war 29 years before the series starts and 58 years before the events of "Mandroid." Despite e.g. the American flag on the Boo Cook cover shown above.)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Since the war, the Judges have been basically all Mega-City One (roughly the Boston-to-Washington corridor) has in the way of government--judicial, executive, legislative, you name it. The Space Corps are their extraterrestrial military affiliates: a professional army, rather than Judges as such. (I believe they were invented by Garth Ennis for a 1994 storyline that he's subsequently more or less disowned; Wagner, as he often does with ideas someone else has dropped into the series, let it sit for a while, then picked it up and ran with it.) </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">The Judges do have internal regulations, which are subject to change, but they don't have an overseeing body (although they have internal police, the "SJS"--Special Judicial Squad--mentioned near the end). One department doesn't necessarily know what the other is up to, as tends to happen in a bureaucracy. They have a relatively hard time dealing with organized crime because it's, well, organized; the Judge system was formed to combat street crime with "instant justice," but it's less well suited to dealing with systemic problems. Which may be why Mega-City One has wall-to-wall systemic problems.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Dredd is not always more moderate than other Judges--in some ways, he's the hard-liner to end all hard-liners--but he <i>does</i> tend to be sympathetic to people who believe they're acting in the public interest, as long as that's compatible with his view of acting in the public interest. The Judges are, in some ways, Plato's philosopher-kings, raised from the age of five to be in the service of the law and nothing else.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">So are there things that bug you about the two "Mandroid" stories?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>RACHEL:</b> Nothing overwhelming. Wagner is remarkably unsubtle--especially in the second sequence, I worked out both the twist behind Kitty's remarkable recovery from freezer burn (see what I did there?) and General Vincent's angle almost immediately, and the execution of those wasn't artful or satisfying enough to make up for the transparency. Speaking of Kitty, I was disappointed to see how quickly she was out of the story as a character--between her and Nate, she's the one whose PoV I found <i>way</i> more interesting, and I genuinely thought at first that Wagner was building her up as the main character. That she was instead <a href="http://www.unheardtaunts.com/wir/"><span class="s1">fridged</span></a> to inspire Nate's hackneyed vengeance spree was a damn shame; in addition to objecting to how flat-out <i>tired</i> that device is, I think the bulk of the story would've been much stronger for her inclusion.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqoY81D05QMACUgNWNEEggAbliA8LojRlAki396nZCGAjtIGhLbXZxbppJRNAnx9ieu5qGvPZG5p4Zx3tFjENvQHqoKCtjYhivkzB4A5ZAW9xRV3_Jl21mysZS8M96s1OUx2ZJkiouYOAD/s1600/1564doherty.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqoY81D05QMACUgNWNEEggAbliA8LojRlAki396nZCGAjtIGhLbXZxbppJRNAnx9ieu5qGvPZG5p4Zx3tFjENvQHqoKCtjYhivkzB4A5ZAW9xRV3_Jl21mysZS8M96s1OUx2ZJkiouYOAD/s400/1564doherty.jpg" width="305" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>DOUGLAS:</b> True enough on the unsubtlety, although if subtlety were what Wagner were selling here, he probably wouldn't have named the central character Slaughterhouse. I'm of two minds on whether Kitty counts as a woman-in-refrigerator, i.e. killed to give our hero motivation, and on whether I think it's as weak an aspect of the story as you do. Kitty's definitely set up as a sympathetic character--much more than Nate--but she gets all of ten pages before she disappears. What motivates Nate isn't that she's dead; it's that he doesn't know what's happened to her. (Tommy, on the other hand, is fridged for sure; I definitely thought that was pretty cheap.)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">When we see her again in "Instrument of War," we know just about immediately that the real Kitty isn't coming back--but Nate <i>doesn't</i> get that. So what's driving him isn't entirely vengeance, it's also (misguided) hope. Even after we know exactly what's happening, though, it's something of a shock when we see Dredd speaking through her mouth: that's the moment when we know that everything's lost. Really, both parts of "Mandroid" are stories in which <i>nobody</i> gets what they want. Everyone, from Nate to Tillson to Melody to Shultz to Lefty, gets hammered for even trying. For the first few chapters, what we want--and what we think we're going to get--is a story about Kitty; we never really get that either.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">***</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Thanks again to Rachel! Next week: novelists Sara Ryan and Gordon Dahlquist join me to discuss <i>Origins</i>. </span></div>
Douglas Wolkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10691167073493285913noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7321253799411057654.post-41335387098832526272012-12-02T23:00:00.000-08:002012-12-02T23:00:08.950-08:00The Batman/Judge Dredd Collection<div style="text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1401236766/ref=as_li_ss_il?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1401236766&linkCode=as2&tag=readcomi-20"><img border="0" src="http://ws.assoc-amazon.com/widgets/q?_encoding=UTF8&ASIN=1401236766&Format=_SL160_&ID=AsinImage&MarketPlace=US&ServiceVersion=20070822&WS=1&tag=readcomi-20" /></a><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=readcomi-20&l=as2&o=1&a=1401236766" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" width="1" /></div>
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(Reprints: <i>Batman/Judge Dredd: Judgement on Gotham</i>, <i>Vendetta in Gotham, The Ultimate Riddle</i> and <i>Die Laughing</i>, as well as <i>Lobo/Judge Dredd: Psycho Bikers Vs. the Mutants from Hell</i>)</div>
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I'm going to keep it extra-short this week, since a) we're going to be going long from here on out (only six books left to go, and they're all doozies), and b) Brenna Zedan and I <a href="http://dreddreviews.blogspot.com/2012/01/batmanjudge-dredd-files.html"><span class="s1">discussed most of this one's contents</span></a> at some length early this year. So just a few points:</div>
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*This came out a couple of weeks ago; it's the complete collection of the Dredd/DC Universe material: all four of the Batman crossovers (including the previously uncollected <i>Vendetta in Gotham</i>, which is among other things an excuse to use that lovely Mike Mignola piece on the cover), plus the 1995 Lobo/Judge Dredd team-up <i>Psycho Bikers Vs. the Mutants from Hell</i>. The Lobo story is... uh... I'm not really sure why it happened, or how it happened, other than that Alan Grant was writing a <i>lot</i> of Lobo comics in the mid-'90s. Dredd and Lobo appear together in all of six panels, perhaps because they don't really make sense in the same story. This is, for all practical purposes, a pretext for Lobo to fight Mean Machine Angel, who's just at the outer rim of the Dreddverse's level of acceptable lunacy (and was prominently featured in the <i>Judge Dredd</i> movie that came out in '95).</div>
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*Man, Carl Critchlow's painted artwork in <i>The Ultimate Riddle</i> looks different from his pen-and-ink-and-color work in "Trifecta" this week in <i>2000 AD</i>. I think I like the latter much better, though.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiscTlVA6zH6qnwJNaPEsRluKfI5NUxoamBxUMmcbevdfbh0NURa0i3eERhuyLEa2OieiyNifiOTBYhQcoJDf9VcdTCu0rmaF6XkPqeHAJdfUBc5qFDy0b-yQE3yGwxFd9IRxsMhyphenhyphenJ7HEfH/s1600/thor371.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiscTlVA6zH6qnwJNaPEsRluKfI5NUxoamBxUMmcbevdfbh0NURa0i3eERhuyLEa2OieiyNifiOTBYhQcoJDf9VcdTCu0rmaF6XkPqeHAJdfUBc5qFDy0b-yQE3yGwxFd9IRxsMhyphenhyphenJ7HEfH/s400/thor371.jpg" width="258" /></a></div>
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*I'm trying to imagine who else in the DCU would make for an interesting intersection with Dredd, and coming up blank. It's worth noting, though, that Dredd analogues have turned up in Marvel comics a couple of times, notably Justice Peace in <i>Thor</i> #371 (back in 1986, above) and Boss Cage in <i>Dark Avengers</i> recently (below--although he's kind of a Dredd/Iron Man/Luke Cage/Thor/Captain America mash-up). And then there was Judge Elmer Dwedd in the 1997 <i>Howard the Duck Holiday Special</i>...</div>
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Next week: Rachel Edidin joins me to discuss another volume with Critchlow's work in it, the collection of <i>Mandroid</i>. </div>
Douglas Wolkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10691167073493285913noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7321253799411057654.post-81172922988736598592012-11-25T23:00:00.000-08:002012-11-25T23:00:10.306-08:00Hondo City Law<div style="text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1907519912/ref=as_li_ss_il?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1907519912&linkCode=as2&tag=readcomi-20"><img border="0" src="http://ws.assoc-amazon.com/widgets/q?_encoding=UTF8&ASIN=1907519912&Format=_SL160_&ID=AsinImage&MarketPlace=US&ServiceVersion=20070822&WS=1&tag=readcomi-20" /></a><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=readcomi-20&l=as2&o=1&a=1907519912" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" width="1" /></div>
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(Reprints <i>Judge Dredd</i> stories from <i>2000 AD</i> Progs 608-611, <i>Shimura</i> stories from <i>Judge Dredd Megazine</i> #2.37-2.39, 224-226 and 228-230, <i>Judge Inspector Inaba</i> story from <i>Judge Dredd Megazine</i> #3.21, and <i>Hondo City Justice</i> stories from <i>Judge Dredd Megazine</i> #300-303)</div>
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Another anomaly within the Dredd-verse reprint catalogue: the only volume devoted to a place, specifically Hondo City. The core of it, as with the earlier <i>Shimura</i>, is the four brief episodes written by Robbie Morrison and drawn by Frank Quitely, published in 1993 and 1996--Quitely's cover from "Babes with Big Bazookas" is reused as the cover here. This one, though, opens with "Our Man in Hondo," the 1989 <i>Dredd</i> sequence that introduced the city. (It's got a clever John Wagner plot and some nice design work from Colin MacNeil--and also featured the splendid Brendan McCarthy cover below--but captions like "Judge Dredd succeed in destroying Mega-City agent robot who killing Nip-Cit bigwigs. But honourable Judge Inspector Sadu, he far from satisfied..." make it tough to read in 2012.)<br />
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Designing a futuristic Japan for comics has to be a challenge, because so much of Japan is at the edge of the possibilities of design already. (<i>Legion of Super-Heroes</i>, for instance, always seems to look like the Tokyo of 20 years after any given issue's publication date... and it's set 1000 years in the future!) So I occasionally think that the idea that post-nuclear Hondo has kinda-sorta gone back to the model of feudal Japan is a bit of a cop-out. The best example of extrapolated futurism in these Shimura/Inaba stories' art is Quitely's mall in "Babes with Big Bazookas" (and even that looks a little bit contemporary, 16 years after its publication)--but I always find myself wanting to know more about the relationship between the culture of Hondo City and the present culture of Japan.</div>
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After the Quitely episodes, this volume leapfrogs past the rest of the material reprinted in <i>Shimura</i> to the 2004-vintage "Executioner" and "Deus X" serials, and then to 2010's "Hondo City Justice." The first two are both drawn by Andy Clarke, who's a <i>very</i> effective artist when he's got a story he can really dig into, or a scene that something just this side of "realism" can make extra-uncanny--the opening sequence of "Deus X," with the suicide bomber shredding everyone on the train with those planar discs, is exactly his forte. (My favorite thing Clarke's drawn is probably <i>Thirteen</i>, in part because as that story cranks up its scale, his style connects even the craziest sequences to the small-scale beginning.)<br />
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There are lots of other set pieces in "Deus X" that let Clarke show off: the showdown at Senso-ji, Shimura's "the art's in knowing when not to move" moment, the smashing-through-the-window bit. (And, in its way, the shower scene near the end, although that one made me feel like I'd suddenly switched to reading an adaptation of "Shimura: the B-Movie.")</div>
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"Executioner," though, is more of a stretch as a story. Dredd flying around the world to farm out an extra-judicial execution to someone else isn't entirely in line with how we usually see him (although Robbie Morrison makes a decent case for it); Sesoku and Inaba training by fighting robots with light-sabers is the equivalent of those X-Men stories where somebody realizes that there hasn't been a fight scene in a while so we get a Danger Room sequence; Sesoku turning out to be a thoroughgoing creep in every possible way makes the story's resolution less satisfying, because Shimura's not doing anything morally complicated by executing him, just making his own life more difficult.<br />
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"Hondo City Justice" introduces another new artist to the (retitled) series, Neil Googe, whose habit of filling every bit of space on the page with panels whose borders don't include a lot of right angles works in the context of a story in this setting in a way that it might not in another--this is one of those wall-to-wall-action stories that <i>2000 AD</i> and the <i>Megazine</i> seem to specialize in but don't often actually do in such a concentrated way. The protagonist gets thrown out a window on the first page; a page involving characters observing cherry blossoms (which still has seven panels on it) is immediately followed by several with detached body parts flying everywhere.</div>
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Maybe as a consequence, it's more a chain of chaotic events than a focused plot. (This is also the second story in this volume whose villain explains his evil scheme to Inaba while she's chained up.) Giving Inaba a protégée of her own--since she's now pretty much taken over the series from Shimura--is a fun idea, and so is having that protégée be a bloodthirsty psychic Magical Girl type, and the eyeball-robot monster is an attractively weird piece of design. But Morrison still doesn't offer much of a sense of what drives Inaba, other than being a solid cop, and the story doesn't have as much of an anchor as it deserves. The second episode did, however, feature the spectacular Quitely cover below.<br />
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For the record, the still-unreprinted Shimura and/or Inaba stories are "Heavy Metal," from #2.75; the Dredd story (guest-starring Inaba) "Warriors," from #3.31-3.33; "Scary Monsters," from #3.35; "The Harder They Come," from #238-243, drawn by Colin MacNeil in black and white (which might have looked odd in this volume, although I'd still have liked to see it here); "Sumos and Sporrans," from <i>Judge Dredd Mega Special 1994</i>; and "Angels of Death," from <i>Judge Dredd Mega Special 1996</i>. (Plus, of course, the recent <i>Megazine</i> serial.)</div>
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Next week: we circle back around to material we've sorta-kinda-except-not-entirely covered before, with <i>The Batman/Judge Dredd Collection</i>. </div>
Douglas Wolkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10691167073493285913noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7321253799411057654.post-43630474304728122402012-11-18T23:00:00.000-08:002012-11-18T23:00:05.958-08:00The Simping Detective
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(Reprints <i>Mega-City Noir</i> story from <i>Judge Dredd Megazine</i> #220 and <i>The Simping Detective</i> stories from <i>Judge Dredd Megazine</i> #221-227, 234-239, 253-257)</div>
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This week's special guest is <a href="https://twitter.com/TimCallahan"><span class="s1">Tim Callahan</span></a>, who blogs at <a href="http://geniusboyfiremelon.blogspot.com/"><span class="s1">GeniusboyFiremelon</span></a>, has been writing about most of Alan Moore's work <a href="http://www.tor.com/Tim%20Callahan"><span class="s1">at Tor.com</span></a>, and has a weekly column at <span class="s1"><a href="http://www.comicbookresources.com/author/timothy-callahan">Comic Book Resources</a>. H</span>e's also the author of <i>Grant Morrison: The Early Years</i>. We got to discuss the collection of Simon Spurrier and Frazer Irving's collaboration on "The Simping Detective." Tim?</div>
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<b>TIM:</b> I still don't have as much background with Judge Dredd as I would like. I really got into the character and the world of Mega-City One and its surroundings when I picked up the Titan edition (with constantly cracking binding that spits out pages) of the Pat Mills and mostly-Brian-Bolland "Cursed Earth" collection, and then grabbed an early edition of the Judge Dredd role-playing game back when Games Workshop published a version. The RPG was a great crash-course in the history of the character and the city, but it wasn't a game I ever actually played. And since <i>2000 AD</i> was pretty impossible to find where I grew up, those late-1980s experiences with Dredd were pretty much it, and in all the years since, I've only dabbled with Dredd. I've looked at a lot more pages of "Judge Dredd" art then I have actually read Judge Dredd stories, you know?</div>
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But I have read "The Simping Detective" stories, which at least intersect with Dredd's world. Well, I've read the ones collected as a book, anyway. Pure Si Spurrier and Frazer Irving. I bought it for the Irving artwork -- probably not too long after I first saw him blast into American comics with <i>Seven Soldiers: Klarion</i> -- but I found the conceit of the series pretty fascinating, particularly the way Spurrier absolutely tears into the hardboiled cliche language of the genre and shows off his verbal dexterity. It's a pastiche of detective noir, but Spurrier goes for incisive wit rather than clownish gags, even if the protagonist wears floppy shoes and a rubber nose to work every day.</div>
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<b>DOUGLAS:</b> The "Simping Detective" stories collected here were all there was until about a month ago, when the excellent new serial "Jokers to the Right" started running in <i>2000 AD</i> (with Simon Coleby replacing Irving). And I imagine that if what you've read of Dredd before is the Cursed Earth stuff, looking at this has to be a little bit like... going straight from Kirby's <i>Demon</i> to the Seven Soldiers <i>Klarion</i>!</div>
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The conceit of "The Simping Detective" is ridiculous enough that it was originally planned as a one-off six-page story: an undercover cop whose cover is that he's a P.I. But it does make for a terrific series. Spurrier's enthusiasm for Jack Point's wordplay ("Clever scum. Like the froth on a Mensa milkshake...") keeps it really funny, page for page--Spurrier mentions <a href="http://comicsbulletin.com/interviews/4839/si-spurrier-the-only-hope-for-the-ravaged-masses-of-humanity/"><span class="s1">here</span></a> that his favorite Point-ism is "more layers than a dyslexic dragon." In fact, the whole concept of the series is a multi-layered pun: Jack Point's name previously belonged to the <a href="http://pinafore.www3.50megs.com/hlyyeo09.html"><span class="s1">jester in </span><span class="s2"><i>The Yeomen of the Guard</i></span></a> (another comedy with tragic undercurrents), and the main character of Dennis Potter's <a href="http://www.museum.tv/eotvsection.php?entrycode=singingdetec"><span class="s2"><i>The Singing Detective</i></span></a> is Philip Marlow, as in the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Marlowe"><span class="s1">Philip Marlowe</span></a> whose narrative voice Point's parodies.</div>
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Irving has a similar gift for twisting the visual language of noir. (Doorways! Canted angles! Venetian blinds! White shapes that emerge out of black space!) My favorite thing about his artwork here, though, has to be the spot colors that pop up in an otherwise black-and-white story (a gesture that's turned up again in "Jokers to the Right"--and, in fact, made a memorable appearance in <i>Low Life</i> last year).</div>
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A lot of the fun of this project is that it can take advantage of the massive amounts of prefabricated world-building associated with Dredd's history without having a tone <i>anything</i> like the main series. There are cast-offs from Dredd continuity everywhere--Jack Point's "pets" Cliq and Larf are Raptaurs, ravenous creatures from a story that appeared ten years earlier, for instance. But "Simping Detective" always seems like it's lurking on the fringes of the main event, which gives it license to do pretty much anything.</div>
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That said, a lot of the "heeeey, do you recognize <i>this?</i>" gags are clustered into "Fifteen," which is by far my least favorite story here: it was put together for the 15th-anniversary issue of <i>Judge Dredd Megazine</i>, and if it wasn't at least something of a rush job, I'd be surprised. It's also one of a few stories that do the only thing that actively frustrates me about "The Simping Detective"--turning DeMarco into a boop-be-doop "sexy" caricature. The essence of the character as she'd appeared earlier had been that she <i>wasn't</i> that, just a super-competent, driven cop whose libido was her Achilles' heel.</div>
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I get the sense that Spurrier, at least, had some plans for further Simping Detective stories that he didn't get to carry out at the time--like, what's the story with Miss Anne Thropé and her crack team of ex-Judges? (To be fair, there's more of her in "Jokers to the Right.") After "No Body, No How," the Spurrier/Irving team shifted to working on the long-delayed <i>Gutsville</i>--although, at New York Comic-Con, Irving noted that he was going to be finishing <i>Gutsville</i> this year, so that's a good sign.</div>
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So here's a question for you: what do you make of this book in the context of Frazer Irving's work before and since?</div>
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<b>TIM: </b>I suspect a reader going straight from Kirby's <i>Demon</i> to the Seven Soldiers <i>Klarion</i> would be confused and yet completely thrilled by the possibilities of comics. That sounds like an ideal progression to me!</div>
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Anyway, back to Frazer Irving and how "The Simping Detective" fits into the larger scheme of his work.</div>
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When I think of Irving's work, I don't picture it in black and white. For me, his use of color is an essential part of who he is as an artist. I think of Irving's painterly approach to shapes and compositions, and I picture the bold oranges of <i>Xombi</i> or the soft blues of <i>Klarion</i> or the vibrant-but-pastel shades of <i>Silent War</i>. Even though I knew "The Simping Detective" was mostly black and white -- with distinctive flashes of color -- from when I first picked up the collected edition, I still thought of it as a bright, colorful comic when I sat down to read the whole thing for this discussion. I was surprised by how proportionally little color there actually is in the comic.</div>
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I know much of Irving's early work -- or at least other things I've read like <i>Fort</i> or <i>Necronauts</i> -- were also black and white comics, but I place "The Simping Detective" outside of the "early work" category, I guess. It seems more confidently Irvingesque.</div>
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He also does this thing throughout "The Simping Detective" where he seems to invert the normal black-and-white approach to making art. He works digitally, of course, and that's obvious looking at the rounded globs of brush strokes on every page, but he's apparently working from a black canvas and painting the grays and whites on top. The comic repeatedly has the effect of inky blackness with process white splashed on top to highlight this dark, weird underbelly of Mega-City One. Stylistically, it's fascinating, because the globs and splashes of white are almost completely abstract shapes when you focus on them, but when you pull back to look at a panel as a whole, the balance of light and shadow creates a clear composition that's easy to read and yet maintains an unsettling quality. It's as if the whole world is a bit unstable, or that the world is illuminated by flashlights in back alleys, and you're a bit frightened to peek outside the shaft of light to see what else is out there.</div>
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And all of this is in a comic about a detective dressed like a full-on clown, which makes it even weirder.</div>
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<b>DOUGLAS:</b> I'm pretty sure the simps first appeared in Prog 527, in an episode drawn by Cliff Robinson; for a little while, Robinson seemed to be first in line to draw any simp-related stories ("Simp About the House," "Dead Simple"). At first, the idea was pretty uncomplicated--"It's the new look! You wear whatever you want - the dumber the better! Guy over in Timmy Mallett started it..." The first clever move John Wagner (and, initially, Alan Grant) made was on the simp front was to bring it back a few times; the second was to set it up as a growing subculture; the third was, in a very Wagnerian long-game way, to let it very gradually become a religious and political force (via Bishop Desmond Snodgrass and, more recently, Ribena Hardly-Lucidberry).</div>
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Wagner's never really gone too far into what's involved in simping, or why people would be attracted to it other than that it's a stupid idea; he just tosses it into the story and keeps moving. But that leaves lots of room for writers like Spurrier to play around with it. In "Jokers to the Right," it turns out that simping has become a full-on, officially recognized religion that gets special breaks from the government. Fantastic.</div>
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Irving is indeed digitally painting with white on a black background here, according to his interview in that <i>Modern Masters</i> volume that came out last year; as he puts it, "the light is the star, not the shadow." (That book also points out a Jack Point-ish character he'd drawn on one of a set of sample pages when he was auditioning to draw for <i>2000 AD</i>!) His earlier black-and-white work had generally been much starker-looking, but while working on a serial called "From Grace," he decided to keep some gray tones in his pages too.</div>
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I'd actually remembered <i>The Simping Detective</i> very differently than you had--I'd thought of it as black and white with few gray shadows (and those occasional bursts of color). In fact, there's relatively little undiluted white anywhere in it: lots of specific gradations and painterly textures, but the light that's the star is always at least a bit elusive. I love Irving's color work too--he's one of the few comics artists I can think of who obviously works up a new palette for every project--but I think this counts as color considered in terms of its absence. Neat!</div>
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I also love that Irving draws all of these characters with slapstick-comedy body language (in noir compositions and lighting). The extra-armed, windmilling Jack near the end of "Crystal Blue" would never pass in a Dredd story, as such--or even in most of Irving's other work--but here it totally works.</div>
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One more question for you, Tim, since I think you've read more of Spurrier's comics than I have (although I'm going to have to remedy that); how does this fit into <i>his</i> body of work?</div>
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<b>TIM: </b>I'm afraid I'm woefully underinformed about Spurrier's work. I doubt I have read much more of his work than you have, though I did read some of his American work over the past couple of years, like the still-unfinished <i>Gutsville</i> and his initial dabblings at Marvel with a <i>Ghost Rider</i> and <i>Punisher War Journal</i> <i>Annual</i>. I know he's done a billion things for <i>2000 A.D.</i> that I haven't read, and while my revisit with <i>The Simping Detective</i> has made me more inclined to check out his other work, I still can't generate enough enthusiasm for his new ongoing American project, the son-of-Professor-X-focused <i>X-Men Legacy </i>series. If I do explore more Spurrier, I'll likely go deeper into his back catalog.</div>
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I have some curiosity about his prose novels, too, since his verbal showmanship is such a powerful aspect of his work with Frazer Irving here. But can he really show off his prose stylings in a work-for-hire <i>Strontium Dog</i> novel? I don't know if I'm <i>that</i> curious.</div>
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What I can say about the little Spurrier that I have read is that <i>The Simping Detective</i> is far more exuberantly expressive than what I've seen in his American superhero work. His <i>Ghost Rider</i> and <i>Punisher</i> seem to be on par with someone like Daniel Way -- completely perfunctory and dots-connecting -- but this sly, energetic <i>Simping</i> stuff is on a whole different level. It looks like Spurrier doesn't quite have a strong sense of how to balance the pastiche with the verbal gamesmanship and still balance out a satisfying plot (endings feel abrupt, particularly in the later stories), but I'd read these comics a hundred times before I'd read another rote tale of Marvel vengeance.</div>
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Thanks again to Tim! Next week, Dredd Reckoning stays in spinoff-land for <i>Hondo-City Law</i>, a second cross-section of the Shimura/Inaba material. </div>
Douglas Wolkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10691167073493285913noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7321253799411057654.post-3791926971488994042012-11-11T23:00:00.000-08:002012-11-11T23:00:06.741-08:00Total War
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(Reprints <i>Judge Dredd</i> stories from <i>2000 AD</i> Progs 1392-1399 and 1408-1422)</div>
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We've got another special guest this week! <a href="http://www.cozyjamble.com/"><span class="s1">Josie Campbell</span></a> is a <a href="http://www.comicbookresources.com/author/josie-campbell"><span class="s1">Comic Book Resources writer</span></a>, sketch comedian, and freelance writer, who joined me to talk about the 2004 <i>Judge Dredd</i> sequence of this book's title story and its bookends "Terror" and "After the Bombs."</div>
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<b>JOSIE: </b>First off, Douglas, I’m very glad to be a part of the discussion -- I’m a fairly recent convert to the Dredd-verse, and "Total War" typifies both what I love and what troubles me about <i>Judge Dredd</i>: that you’re never wholly on the Judges’ side.</div>
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I should say upfront that the vast majority of my <i>Dredd</i> knowledge comes from the much sillier early days, when Dredd would strand criminals on highway medians and openly hate Walter the Wobot (to be fair, it was very easy to openly hate Walter). There was a weirdly refreshing quality to how out of proportion Dredd’s actions came across and how insanely over the top Dredd’s punishments were--to my mind, more like <a href="http://axecop.com/"><span class="s1">"Axe Cop"</span></a> or <a href="http://goldenageheroes.blogspot.com/2008/12/stardust-super-wizard.html"><span class="s1">"Stardust The Super Wizard"</span></a> than the gritty American comics emerging during the same period. The rest of what I know about <i>Dredd</i> comes from a handful of other stories from the period we're looking at here, as well as the kick-ass new movie (which also did a good job of me not wholly thinking the Judges are a good thing).</div>
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In "Total War," you want Dredd to break down the terrorist cell and catch the bad guys, you really do. But then when he does get his hands on them, the Judges are so awful you start to rethink whether you want them around -- but then a city block goes up in ash and you’re back on Dredd’s side again. It’s a morality carousel, going round and round with no sign of stopping.</div>
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On the Judges' side, you have the fact that a terrorist group is nuking the city. This is, obviously, bad. But on Total War’s side, the Judges run a fascist police state, and Mega-City One probably <i>should</i> get rid of them, or at least take their governing powers away since, frankly, they’re bad at it. From a practical standpoint (and one from which I, as the daughter of government workers and a kid who grew up in D.C., can’t disengage my brain), their draconian policies are a total failure. Violent crime runs rampant in Mega-City One. The Judges spend so much time enforcing the letter of the law that they squander their resources on sending regular citizens to iso-blocks when there’s a Mega-City Al-Qaeda planting nukes right under their noses--not to mention that their overzealous torture techniques kill Oddie, their connection to the terrorist cell, without procuring any usable information.</div>
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But at the same time, what grabs me about "Total War" is the fact that it’s a dystopia told from the position of power. That’s not something you see in most science fiction. Dystopias are things to rebel against ("Hunger Games," "Star Wars") or escape ("Logan’s Run," "Fahrenheit 451") or tragically perish from ("1984," "Brave New World"). In these worlds, there are no terrorists, only revolutionaries. So it’s fascinating to see <i>Dredd</i> take the opposite track. The audience knows the Judges are morally bankrupt by our standards, but the Judges and Dredd see themselves as the last bastion of justice and hope for the Mega-Cities.</div>
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<b>DOUGLAS:</b> Right--and one thing that keeps the which-side-are-you-on question interesting is that Dredd's writers often suggest that the Judges <i>are</i> the least of the available evils, and even that the people of MC1 are fine with them more often than not. Given the option (back in "The Devil You Know"), the city appeared to reject democracy--although Garth Ennis was a little bit cagey about whether the results were a fix or not--and "Terror," the first story in the <i>Total War</i> collection, opens in a bar where patrons can watch videos of the Judges beating up democratic protesters.</div>
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On the other hand, "Terror" is pretty clearly a thematic sequel to John Wagner and Colin MacNeil's first two "America" stories, which were as absolute a condemnation of the Judges' rule as the series has ever seen: Zondra Smith even lives in Bennett Beeny Block. (This is exactly the kind of character-focused story at which MacNeil excels--although, oddly, he never really sells Sonny as being a decade or so younger than Zondra.)</div>
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We know that Zondra and Sonny are doomed from the get-go--that's just the kind of story this is--but what we don't know is <i>how</i> they're going to go. Zondra's death is just a case of the cavalry not getting there in time; Sonny's is a product of John Wagner's particular gift for realizing where a story could use some extra chaos. Having him killing his contact and then be killed by Dredd is the natural conclusion of the story--but having him kill his contact <i>by beheading him with a mechanical dinosaur </i>is a total Wagnerism. (So is the scene where the Judges concur on Sonny's fate to reassure themselves: "He asked for it." "He wanted it." Sure.)</div>
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See also "After the Bombs," in which the amusingly named Gaia Innocenti, we know, is going to have to pay for her crimes somehow, despite the fact that she no longer remembers them and is effectively no longer capable of recidivism. It was a good idea to have this one drawn by Jason Brashill, too: his work is far removed from Henry Flint's in "Total War," but its soft curves and rubbery textures are entirely appropriate for a story about a character losing her grip on identity and reality. The closer Gaia is to innocence, the more likely she is to suffer a fate worse than death--and that's what she gets at the end of the story. It's fair to say that she is, or used to be, a terrible person, and also fair to say that she gets the raw end of the deal.</div>
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<b>JOSIE: </b>We’re seeing "Total War" from the Judges' perspective, so we end up rooting for them, and if you put all the actions on a scale in this particular instance, the Judges are less wrong then the Total War members--so you basically keep rooting for them throughout. The only things I can think of that come close to this bleakness in American literature are the later "Dune" books or Robert Heinlein’s early novels or Orson Scott Card’s work -- but in those cases there’s a real-world conservative ideology being purposefully pushed forward that I don’t think exists in the Dredd-verse. "Total War" isn’t a primer on how the Judges are right (as they would be penned by any of those aforementioned authors). It's turned on its head by the fact that you’re constantly reassessing whose side you’re on.</div>
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This is made a little harder by the fact that "Total War" is exactly the type of terrorist plot that only ever happens in fiction. A city is taken hostage, there’s a race against time, and in the end the terrorists, who had some sympathetic goals, turn out to be run by bad guys. Rich bad guys!</div>
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But this is where the art kicked in and made the story interesting again for me. Henry Flint’s depictions of the sheer carnage the bombs caused are disturbingly compelling. You can almost feel the heat from the explosions--I spent half an hour poring over the part of "Total War" where the bomb wipes out the thousands of evacuees on the bridges. I don’t know if I’d like this story half as much if it wasn’t for the art; there’s a sad poignancy to it. Flint understands that, in this story, no one is the winner.</div>
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Speaking of which: poor Nimrod! Still being fairly new to Dredd, this story was the first time I found out that Dredd was a clone or that he had a niece. But this knowledge parlays into my ultimate takeaway from the story. "Total War" isn’t really about a political attack -- it’s a mediation on waste. Total War is wasting the lives of innocents to kick out the Judges, who don’t really leave, and the rich idiots in charge never really intended for there to be any compromise. The Judges waste the individual members of the organization, and the cell’s middlemen, like Cliff Richard or Jericho, disagree with their leader’s bombing plans, which makes their involvement in Total War a waste, and both throw away their lives. Cliff literally wasting away in his apartment, Jericho ready to waste away in Iso. In this light, Nimrod is the last level of the story’s waste, literal human waste in his case.</div>
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In fact, the only time Dredd overcomes the waste is when he goes to rescue Vienna, refusing to waste any time to get to her. It’s then no accident that Nimrod saves Vienna, a mistake rising from the ashes, coated with the literal and figurative waste of the city. His is the only death in "Total War" I wouldn’t classify as a waste -- it’s an act of mercy and a reward.</div>
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Thus, when Dredd tries to resign, it’s not really about going soft or a dereliction of duty. He goes against the thematic basis of the Judges -- he did something that wasn’t a total waste, in order to help his family, what little he has. I don’t think you can really say the Judges saved the city (that’s a lot of burned buildings and irradiated people for a "win") but Dredd does save Nimrod, and indirectly saves Vienna. And if Chief Judge Hershey can recognize the importance of those two acts, maybe there’s hope for the Judges.</div>
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<b>DOUGLAS:</b> Interestingly, the one part of "Total War" that doesn't work at all for me is the Nimrod subplot. Having him show up for the first time in the same story in which he's trotted off means that his death (and, likewise, the "we have to find somebody to sign the euthanasia order" routine) doesn't have the dramatic force it seems like it ought to, and the "creature who just happens to have super-senses" business makes his Frankenstein's-monster rescue of Vienna way too convenient. (I note, though, that his "I seem to have forgot my maracas" scene seems to prefigure the look and tone of Flint's <i>Zombo</i>.)</div>
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I see how it should be a compelling idea to have a personal-level conflict for Dredd to ground the big kaboom of a story like "Total War," and I always like seeing Vienna turn up (although having her perpetually in peril stretches credulity a little). As Ben Saunders and I <a href="http://dreddreviews.blogspot.com/2012/09/brothers-of-blood.html"><span class="s1">discussed a few months ago</span></a>, Vienna's the one person who really matters to Dredd, since she's the only survivor of his greatest personal failure. So, structurally, this is <i>almost</i> there. "Total War" is effectively a story about a grand-scale failure of the Judges, and not the first of its kind: the "nukes hidden across the city" plot had turned up in different guises a few times in the first couple of years of the series, and Wagner occasionally likes to show a race against time to defuse a bomb that ends with the bomb going off. (The most reliably competent Judge in this story is the loathsome Roffman, as usual.)</div>
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In the light of "The Return of Rico" and "Necropolis," though, Dredd mercy-whacking Nimrod is maybe one "Dredd kills his corrupted other self" scene too many. And as dramatic as Dredd trying to turn in his badge on the final page is, that's also a card he's played a few times over the limit (and, by the end of "Day of Chaos," he seems to have taught Beeny to do the same thing). I practically cheered at "Bullet to King Four" a few weeks ago, when Hershey lets Dredd have it for his eagerness to "barge into my office at regular intervals to blackmail me with a badge you'll never hand in." Dredd's fear of personal failure--the specter of Rico that hovers over the story whenever Vienna turns up--doesn't <i>quite</i> work as a parallel to the systemic failure of the Judges at large; the Nimrod plot seems out of place, or maybe at the wrong scale, in the context of the nukes-going-off plot.</div>
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<b>JOSIE: </b>I do think that in terms of emotional impact both "Terror" and "After The Bombs" work much, much better. Like I said, while I enjoyed "Total War" overall and felt I got the thematic impact of Nimrod and the plot, boil it down and it is a pretty standard "terrorists take a city hostage/monster turns savior!" plot. With "Terror" we basically get a noir story (albeit one with, as you pointed out, a very Wagnerian dino-decapitation) and "After The Bombs" is Gaia running from the Judges and her past when there's no way to escape either.</div>
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Interestingly, I think "After The Bombs" also brings us back to the fact that the Judges are bad at their jobs. Psi Division is underperforming, there are mentions of unmet quotas, and in the end it seems Gaia’s punishment is not in response to her actions so much as it is about internal politics. Psi missed out on the bomb "glory" (and what an interesting choice of words), so they’ve now got their own bomb-predicting brain. Whether this will actually help them or become just one more justification for extreme action remains to be seen -- but to judge from "Terror" and "Total War," I doubt that trapping Gaia in bureaucratic hell will do anything but mark another skirmish in the ongoing war for the city.</div>
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<b>DOUGLAS:</b> One other thing I appreciate about this whole sequence: Wagner, unlike nearly every American mainstream comics writer, understands the distinctions between terrorism, politically motivated violence, and people blowing stuff up just to blow it up. Total War are genuinely terrorists. They actually have a goal in mind (get the Judges out and replace them with... uh, they'll cross that bridge when they get there), and their violence is meant to be <i>coercive</i> violence: they want to force the Judges to do what they say. They are also really stupid and counterproductive in terms of directing violence at the people they'd like to be their allies, but that's another matter. (See also Rage Against the Megs, more recently.) Borisenko's faction in "Day of Chaos," conversely, aren't terrorists as such, just revenge-seekers, because there's nothing in particular they want Mega-City One to do except die. The cover of Prog 1770 calls them "The Sov Terrorists," but as I recall the Judges never call them that--at least to each other--and Dredd later mentions Borisenko's "negotiations with terrorists." Points for precision.</div>
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Thanks again to Josie! Next week, it's back to (timely) spinoff territory, as Tim Callahan joins me to discuss <i>The Simping Detective</i>. </div>
Douglas Wolkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10691167073493285913noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7321253799411057654.post-23644009709069310842012-11-04T23:00:00.000-08:002012-11-05T00:34:50.358-08:00Mega-City Undercover<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">(Reprints <i>Lenny Zero</i> stories from <i>Judge Dredd Megazine</i> #3.68, 4.01-4.02 and 4.14-4.15, and <i>Low Life</i> stories from <i>2000 AD</i> Progs 1387-1399, 1425-1428, Prog 2006, 1484-1490, and 1521-1524)</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">This week's special guest is </span><a href="http://www.debcha.com/" style="font-family: inherit;">Deb
Chachra</a><span style="font-family: inherit;">, an associate professor of materials science at the Franklin W.
Olin College of Engineering, who does work on the engineering student
experience. She also thinks a lot about </span><a href="http://www.zedequalszee.com/" style="font-family: inherit;">music,
culture and technology</a><span style="font-family: inherit;">, is behind the </span><a href="http://dailyidioms.tumblr.com/" style="font-family: inherit;">Daily Idioms</a><span style="font-family: inherit;"> site, and is very much
worth following on </span><a href="https://twitter.com/debcha" style="font-family: inherit;">Twitter</a><span style="font-family: inherit;">. Kick it
off, Debcha!</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>DEB:</b> Dredd, and <i>2000 AD</i>, has always been a giant hole in my knowledge of contemporary comics, and "Low Life" is the first Dredd that I've read. I must admit I cheated; I knew it was a long-running and beloved series, and I'd be throwing myself into the middle of it. I wasn't really confident that I'd be able to handle a black start, so I skimmed the Judge Dredd Wikipedia entry to try to orient myself to the universe.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">I probably needn't have bothered—not because there are references I wouldn't have gotten (like "Black Atlantic"), but because it's completely full of references I don't get, or so I infer from the copious presence of references I <i>do</i> get.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">But it's clear, even from this small set of stories, how much the sensibility of a cohort of UK creators—not just comic book writers and artists, but also writers, designers, and more—has its roots in the Dredd universe.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>DOUGLAS:</b> That's a big statement to make (designers!), but a defensible one, I think--but I'm going to ask you to defend it! I'd love to know what sensibilities, exactly, or maybe what creators' sensibilities (especially creators outside comics) you see as being connected to what you see here...</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">It's true enough that a lot of comics writers from the British Isles, in particular, got early breaks in <i>2000 AD</i> and then started doing work in the U.S., too: Alan Moore, Grant Morrison, Dan Abnett, Mike Carey, Mark Millar, Peter Milligan, Garth Ennis, and a handful of others. (Neil Gaiman wrote four Future Shocks and a prose Judge Hershey story; Warren Ellis wrote... one five-page Dreddverse horror story in an early issue of the <i>Megazine</i>.)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">But one thing I think is interesting about "Low Life," in particular, is that it's sort of the sensibility that came out of <i>2000 AD</i> and then passed through <i>other</i> comics returning to the source. "Low Life" first appeared in the spring of 2004, and in some ways it's a <i>very</i> post-<i>Transmetropolitan</i> series--its rhythms, its sense of comedy, its grime, its overall sense that the city is a damned place. (And Dirty Frank is, visually, Alan Moore by way of early Spider Jerusalem.) In the second volume, D'Israeli takes over as the main "Low Life" artist... and he'd previously drawn the Ellis-written series "Lazarus Churchyard" in the early '90s (which was reprinted in the <i>Megazine</i> in the early 2000s).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">(Side note: D'Israeli's just astonishing. I particularly love his <a href="http://disraeli-demon.blogspot.com/"><span class="s1">recent blog posts</span></a> on how he's been drawing the current "Low Life" serial--which turns out to allude to a lot of imagery he saw in early <i>2000 AD</i>!)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Similarly, "Con Artist"--the serial-killer convention story--keeps recalling Gaiman's serial-killer convention in <i>Sandman</i>. And "Rock and a Hard Place" has roots in "Heavy Metal Dredd" and maybe Alan Moore and Alan Davis's "The Hyper-Historic Headbang"... I want to say filtered through Sex Bob-Omb, but it's hard for me to imagine that Rob Williams or Simon Coleby would have read <i>Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Life</i> before they started working on a story that was serialized in early 2005.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgd2HTH87DlfN1S3NmwDBAK3PnmLLU9hLa2s5H7XJeOgWsj4UplqRGZJm7EYfSgF9ImZRx9Zr2Gr6SQjhD4Nl9Qsqz2KInrCHZTCaXFUGajGFuuPHiJTIMw95vItVxAhwlR7aQH3CgsKDcX/s1600/1428flintmetal.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgd2HTH87DlfN1S3NmwDBAK3PnmLLU9hLa2s5H7XJeOgWsj4UplqRGZJm7EYfSgF9ImZRx9Zr2Gr6SQjhD4Nl9Qsqz2KInrCHZTCaXFUGajGFuuPHiJTIMw95vItVxAhwlR7aQH3CgsKDcX/s400/1428flintmetal.jpg" width="305" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>DEB: </b><span style="color: #1a1a1a;">In terms of recognising the <i>Dredd</i>
sensibility from UK creators, including non-comics creators...I talked to my
friend </span><a href="http://speedbird.wordpress.com/"><span style="color: #386eff;">Adam</span></a><span style="color: #1a1a1a;"> to
help articulate this, and he reminded me of the piece Matt Jones, of the
influential London-based design consultancy BERG, wrote for io9 a couple of
years ago: <a href="http://io9.com/5362912/the-city-is-a-battlesuit-for-surviving-the-future" target="_blank">"The City Is a Battlesuit for Surviving the Future"</a></span><span style="color: #1a1a1a;"> (although watching my friends in NYC deal with Sandy this week, it feels a bit
like that particular exoskeleton took a direct hit and seized up, with its
human trapped inside). When I think of London’s design community, I think of
future-facing/experimental work on cities, sensors, and </span><a href="http://superflux.in/work/generation-gap"><span style="color: #386eff;">biology</span></a><span style="color: #1a1a1a;">—sound
familiar? To my North American perspective, the whole UK tech and design scene
has this uniquely British-feeling mixture of humour and the unexpected–playfulness,
in other words—and that’s what immediately felt familiar to me when I read “Low
Life.” That community seems deeply rooted not just in <i>2000 AD</i>, but in <i>Boys’ Own</i>
and <i>Dan Dare</i>, and other British
visions of the future (versus, say, <i>Star
Trek</i>) And BERG themselves </span><a href="http://www.warrenellis.com/?p=7672"><span style="color: #386eff;">were
named by Warren Ellis</span></a><span style="color: #1a1a1a;">, who is closely linked
with that scene, after the </span><a href="http://matthewsheret.com/2009/08/20/the-british-experimental-rocket-group/"><span style="color: #386eff;">British Experimental Rocketry Group in The Quatermass
Experiment</span></a><span style="color: #1a1a1a;">.</span></span><br />
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<!--StartFragment--><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #1a1a1a;">And of course, given a choice of ur-texts to inspire
the scenius of creative technologists, I’ll take the <i>Dan Dare</i> and <i>2000
AD</i> of Silicon Roundabout over the <i>Atlas Fucking Shrugged</i> of Silicon
Valley any day of the week.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><br /></span><span class="s3" style="font-family: inherit;"><b>DOUGLAS: </b><i>YES</i>. High five.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p5">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Another thing that fascinates me about "Low Life" is how well it works. It debuted within a couple of months of "The Simping Detective," the <i>other</i> durable series about undercover Judges in the nasty parts of town that's currently running in <i>2000 AD</i>, and the first serial wraps up in a fairly conclusive way... but, by my thumbnail calculation, "Low Life" has run the fourth-greatest number of pages of any Dredd spinoffs, after "Anderson - Psi Division," "Armitage" and "Devlin Waugh." Part of that may be that it's become a very different sort of series over the past eight years or so: first it's Nixon's story, then it's an ensemble piece, and by the end of this volume Dirty Frank is stealing so many scenes that the way the series later shifts to belong to him makes sense. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">I'm curious about the references you don't get vs. do get balance; rereading the "Low Life" this volume with that in mind, the only part of it I noticed where a joke would be entirely lost if you didn't know its antecedent was "Dirty Frank wants to take the Long Walk." How much did you end up picking up from context? (A different way of asking that: If you'd believed "Low Life" and "Lenny Zero" shared a setting but didn't directly refer to anything earlier, what might you have made of them?)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>DEBBIE:</b> Yeah, no, totally didn’t get the Long Walk allusion, and would not have seen any relationship between “Low Life” and “Lenny Zero” besides that shared setting.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="text-align: center;">In terms of references that I get and don't get, there are really two kinds: those that are internal to the Dreddverse and those that are allusions to the larger culture. Just in the Lenny Zero section, the latter case includes the reference to the Laws of Robotics in "Dead Zero" and the </span><i style="text-align: center;">Resyk Dogs</i><span style="text-align: center;"> and </span><i style="text-align: center;">Usual Perps</i><span style="text-align: center;"> posters in Zero's apartment. But those are just the references that I twigged--which suggests that there are others I don't get. For example, the poster on the bottom left of the last page of "Wipeout" looks tantalizingly familiar. </span></span></div>
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</span>Like pretty much everyone else, I love pop (and, for that matter, high) culture references. When you get them, they inevitably make you feel like one of the cognoscenti (and when you don't get them, they usually just slide past you, rather than making you feel dumb). I'm convinced that a large component of the success of <i>The Simpsons</i> was its ability to make viewers feel like they were in on an endless series of in-jokes, although it'll be interesting to see <a href="http://www.salon.com/2011/03/08/simpsons_pop_culture/"><span class="s5">how well they date</span></a>, bereft of their original cultural context. But the other reason why I love these sorts of references is for how they both define and celebrate a cultural commons--their success is predicated on a shared knowledge of cultural touchstones, whether it's Tarantino movies or Asimov novels. <span class="s4"><br />
<br />
</span>Conversely, references to other parts of the Dreddverse (like the allusion to "Black Atlantic," which I only got because of my Wikipedia cheatsheet) help cement its reality, its independent existence. As a non-superhero reader I had heard of DC- and Marvel-universe partisans, but didn’t really believe they existed until the day that I got caught in the crossfire between a comic book store clerk and a customer. But I am sympathetic to having grown up within these giant connected worlds and the power they hold over you.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">I didn’t read comics as a child—I didn’t get into them until I was a teenager, and started straight in on Morrison and Miller and Gaiman. But I <i>did </i>grow up on <i>Star Wars</i> and Tolkien. My favourite moment in the movie <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0177789/"><span class="s2"><i>Galaxy Quest</i></span></a> is when Captain Nesmith contacts the young fanboy, Brandon, who begins by protesting that he knows it’s just a story. Nesmith cuts him off with, “It’s all real,” and Brandon’s first response is, “I KNEW IT!” Similarly, <a href="http://www.believermag.com/issues/200504/?read=interview_mieville"><span class="s2">China Miéville talks about</span></a> how “There are people playing home-brewed RPGs set in Bas-Lag and there is no higher compliment.” It’s like there’s a bit of our brain that squirts out some endorphins when we make the connection between different bits of the universe that reveal its unity. Not, now that I think of it, unlike my moment of revelation in high school when I understood how trigonometric identities in calculus worked—that they weren’t just algorithmic steps but the logical consequence of the underlying structure of mathematics.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>DOUGLAS:</b> Absolutely. Tangentially to that, though, for shared-universe (science) fiction to really have power for me as a reader, I think it has to have something beyond what Wikipedia calls "a primarily in-universe" perspective--that is, it can't rely <i>only</i> on knowledge of the fictional world for its meaning. (This is one of the reasons I have trouble enjoying <i>X-Men</i> comics, even though I absorbed nearly all of them for an eight-year-or-so period in the '80s and like a lot of other comics by other people who work on them these days; when I look at them now, they're just about moving the familiar pieces around in circles.)</span></div>
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I like this period of <i>Low Life</i> at least in part because it's a nifty premise on its own--"undercover cops have gotten in so deep they kind of don't belong topside any more." (<i>Lenny Zero </i>has a sort of similar premise--"undercover cop flips to the dark side"--as well as a tone borrowed from the <i>Reservoir Dogs</i>/<i>Usual Suspects</i> cluster of movies, which I understand were much bigger in the U.K. than in the U.S.) Both of them are <i>secondarily</i> made much richer by the Mega-City One setting, which has a whole lot of pre-established fun stuff on its own, as well as a much-larger-than-life aesthetic that means there can be something new and outlandish at every turn.<br />
<br />
By "every turn," I mean in part every page turn. I think some of the reason that cluster of British creators hit it big in America is that they'd all gotten used to working in miniature. Most of the episodes of <i>Low Life</i> in this volume are five pages long; distilling a complete, satisfying chunk of story (that ends with a cliffhanger) into that little space isn't easy. Even so, Williams is great at making space for visual spectacle. I think every episode of "Paranoia" opens with an impressive splash panel and includes some other striking image somewhere. (He's gotten even better at that, now that he's working with the intensely simpatico D'Israeli; there's something worth staring at on every page of the current serial, "Saudade.") <i>Lenny Zero</i> doesn't have quite as many set-pieces to look at, but it has that plot-twist-every-page trick that I like a lot too. <br />
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There's another Rob Williams-written Dredd-universe spinoff, "Breathing Space," a serial that ran back in 2005. It's a clever concept--a noir/hard-boiled detective story set on the moon--and I enjoyed most of it enormously, until it hit its resolution, which hinges on some things that had been well established in that fictional universe but never mentioned in the story itself up until that point, and that don't have anything to do with "Breathing Space"'s genre, either. It's as if it reached <i>out</i> to the fictional universe to solve its plot, which feels like a little bit of a cheat. <br />
<br />
(On the other hand, I do appreciate what I read as a metafictional touch in "Heavy Duty": the suggestion that while <i>Judge Dredd</i>'s occasional use of enormously fat characters for comedy's sake sometimes <i>does</i> work, there's also something really offputting about that kind of body-policing. Are Williams and Flint trying to have it both ways? Maybe--although the specialty of this particular shared universe is having things both ways.)<br />
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This is, as you suggest, a (fictional) world in which it's easy to spend lots of time, both with a book in your hands and without one; over time I'm coming to appreciate, even more, the devotion of <i>2000 AD</i>'s readers and creators to each other. This week's issue, #1807, includes a big, beautifully executed surprise; people have been saying things online like "wow, I've been reading this series for 20/25/30 years and I didn't see that coming." And as nice as it is that it's still capable of thrilling surprises like that, the fact that so many people have been reading it for that long is even more heartening.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="s4"><b>DEB: </b></span><span class="s6">It’s funny that you describe <i>X-Men</i> as ‘just about moving familiar pieces around in circles’–that is also, of course, how people normally describe soap operas, another medium that is defined and constrained by its own pocket universe. But people writing comics have far less excuse to run out of ideas, since they have the whole multiverse to play in. I often describe the difference between ‘realistic’ fiction and science fiction/fantasy as the difference between whole numbers and real numbers: both are infinite, but the infinity of real numbers is still <i>bigger</i>.</span><span class="s4"><br />
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</span><span class="s6">My Twitter feed was all abuzz about prog #1807—I haven’t seen any spoilers about what happens in it, and to be honest, a newcomer to <i>2000 AD</i> I doubt I would understand it (and I certainly wouldn’t appreciate the impact) of it. But I’m really delighted that the investment of long-time readers into the universe was repaid.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="s6">You commented on how hard it is to write a satisfying story in miniature, and one of the things I noticed was how closely linked the visuals are to the text. Douglas Hofstadter talks about this in his book on translation, <i>Le Ton Beau de Marot</i>, which riffs on a 16th-century French poem in which each line is only three syllables long, with a tight rhyme scheme that alternates with the sentence breaks. Translating the poem is an exercise in trying to juggle the semantics and the structure, with basically no wiggle room. Six pages seems like a comic book analogue of that—trying to figure out how to most effectively combine the two elements (text and graphics) to convey everything about the story. In “Low Life: Paranoia”, you could see this in the economy of the flashback sequences, but it was most evident in the temporal gaps. When the narrative transitions from Nixon fighting her way out of the club to recovering at Link’s place, it’s heralded by a single floating squared speech bubble, the tiniest fraction of the page, but the transition actually happens during the page turn. A pretty efficient use of real estate!</span></span><br />
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</b></span> <span class="s6"><b>DOUGLAS:</b> I think more even than soap operas, most mainstream comics franchises are required to put the pieces back where they started. My favorite Marvel-and/or-DC series in recent months was the Kieron Gillen-written run on <i>Journey Into Mystery</i>, which ended a week and a half ago in a very impressive way that I will also attempt not to spoil. (Gillen's another one of those British writers whose work has <i>2000 AD</i> somewhere in its DNA, I suspect.) Tom Ewing wrote a really good piece about it called <a href="http://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2012/10/the-house-always-wins/"><span class="s1">"The House Always Wins,"</span></a> which centers on what Stan Lee supposedly called "the illusion of change": the Big Thing that happens and then, eventually, un-happens, to restore the original premise of superhero comics, basically every single time. Neil Gaiman touched on it, thematically, in <i>Marvel 1602</i>;<i> </i>I haven't gotten to finish reading <i>AvX</i> yet, but as I understand it ends by undoing most of the major changes Brian Michael Bendis set up at the beginning of his <i>Avengers</i> run.<br />
<br />
And one thing I love about <i>2000 AD </i>is that it very often <i>does</i> kick over the toys for keeps. Supporting characters die and don't (usually) come back. Lead characters even die and don't come back, Johnny Alpha notwithstanding. There's no cosmic reset button. Changes are permanent. Stories end. <i>Low Life</i> can't go back to "Aimee Nixon's latest wacky mission." Even old reliable <i>Dredd</i> is structured to head very slowly toward some kind of ending: I can't imagine it'll be any time soon, but it also can't go on forever. (He's close to 70 years old now; over the past 35 years' worth of stories, MC1 has lost over 90% of its population. His job is shifting from defending the city to deferring the inevitable.)</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>DEB:</b> <span style="color: #1a1a1a;">A number of people I
know—probably not coincidentally, mostly in the UK comics scene—are
super-excited about </span><a href="http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/105134/risk-legacy"><i>Risk Legacy</i></a><span style="color: #1a1a1a;">, the newest version of the boardgame, which came out
last year. One of the amazing things about the game is that the rules all
evolve as you play, depending on the choices made by players. It comes with a
number of sealed components, and each has a specific condition under which it’s
opened. Those new rules take effect permanently (as in, “affix this sticker to
the board,” “rip up this card,” and the like). So it’s more like the <i>2000 AD</i> of boardgames—decisions made
lead to continuing changes—than the ‘everything resets to the beginning’ mode
of most boardgames and comics.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: inherit;">Jumping back a bit, I wanted to pick up on </span><span style="font-family: inherit;"> your thoughts on the body-policing and enormously fat characters: I thin</span><span style="font-family: inherit;">k that they are, to some extent, trying to have it both ways. At the start of “Heavy Duty” I was like, “Oh yeah, here we go, getting the comedy from the fat people.” I was surprised by how sensitive it was, including Tyrone Appleby’s comeuppance for the crime of, basically, making his overweight charges feel like shit. Having said that, Rob Williams pretty much went straight to the “let’s make fun of women who don’t look like Barbie” well for in “Rock and a Hard Place” by putting Thora into full fetish gear, for no adequately explained reason.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The way these stories handled the
visual portrayal of gender was similarly schizophrenic. I was immediately
impressed that Lenny Zero’s girlfriend ‘Mona’ was shown, on the very first page,
as pretty normal-looking. Overly-sexualized female characters are the canary in
the comic coal mine for me – if open a book and see a character whose boobs are
falling out of her top and whose ass is on display for no reason, it’s usually
a clear sign that the creators don’t care about the character, or her
contribution to the story (as with Thora in “Rock in a Hard Place”). And “Low
Life” does a decent job with its female characters, although there’s the
occasional move into T&A territory, sometimes explained (Aimee Nixon was
required to dress as a prostitute in two successive cases, really?) and
sometimes completely inexplicable (who goes out on a mission in underwear, a
trenchcoat, and nothing else? or why do most Judges get armour over their
chest, but Nixon gets a transparent panel?).<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #1a1a1a;">Speaking of Aimee Nixon... Dirty Frank is amusing, but Nixon is my
favourite of the three protagonists, hands-down. She’s the anti-Batman. Bruce
Wayne watched the killing of his parents when he was a child, and he grew up to
be a fabulously wealthy loner vigilante, who uses his money to make boys’ toys.
Not only was Nixon <i>not</i> helpless in
the face of her parents’ death, but it was her own actions as a child
(patricide) that made her an orphan. Rather than standing outside the system
like Batman, she chose to find a place in the system and became a Judge.
Instead of living alone in a fabulous manor, her home is together with the
poorest people in Mega-City One. And while Batman famously has no special
powers, Nixon had her arm amputated, voluntarily, and replaced with a prosthetic.
That’s a fascinating lacuna, incidentally: the only explanation given is that she wanted to “blend in,” which
seems fairly inadequate, especially when you look at all the other Low Life
Judges. </span><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/neurophilosophy/2012/may/30/1">Body Integrity Identity Disorder?</a></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>DOUGLAS:</b> Neat link! I think the running joke with Wally Squad Judges is that they're able to "blend in" <i>because</i> they look unlike anybody else around them--nobody expects freakish-looking, mentally unstable types to be cops.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">I love the idea of Aimee Nixon as the anti-Batman, though. I think you can extend that, too. Batman obsessively stays to his side of the border between himself and the people he opposes; Nixon knows that the difference between herself and her perps is not much more than nominal--that she's not just in the Low Life but of it. Remember, she <i>does</i> have one special power of sorts: she can lie exactly as convincingly as she can tell the truth. And without giving anything away about subsequent "Low Life" stories (some of which I'll be getting to in January), that becomes significant later on (so does the arm, actually!), and is relevant to the "not putting the pieces back where they used to be" point. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b><br />
*****<br />
<br />
</b>(A small bibliographical note: the book we're looking at is the first <i>Mega-City Undercover</i> collection, which is, I believe, still in print in the U.K., but got carved up oddly for the States. The early Lenny Zero stories have gotten bumped over to the American collection <i>Lenny Zero and the Perps of Mega-City One</i>, alongside the Bato Loco and Slick Dickens material; the Low Life stories from this volume are collected in the U.S. as <i>Low Life: Paranoia</i>--except that "He's Making a List" isn't included there. Who knows why?)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Thanks again to Deb! Next week: Josie Campbell joins me to discuss <i>Total War</i>.</span><br />
<br /></div>
Douglas Wolkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10691167073493285913noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7321253799411057654.post-84475851208689086832012-10-28T23:00:00.000-07:002012-10-28T23:00:06.925-07:00Judge Dredd Vs. Aliens: Incubus<div style="text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1569719837/ref=as_li_ss_il?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1569719837&linkCode=as2&tag=readcomi-20"><img border="0" src="http://ws.assoc-amazon.com/widgets/q?_encoding=UTF8&ASIN=1569719837&Format=_SL160_&ID=AsinImage&MarketPlace=US&ServiceVersion=20070822&WS=1&tag=readcomi-20" /></a><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=readcomi-20&l=as2&o=1&a=1569719837" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" width="1" /></div>
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(Reprints <i>Judge Dredd</i> stories from <i>2000 AD Prog 2003</i> and Progs 1322-1335)</div>
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We've got a special guest this week: the extraordinary <a href="https://twitter.com/laura_hudson"><span class="s1">Laura Hudson</span></a>, former editor of Comics Alliance, current contributor to the <i>L.A. Times</i>, and star of every karaoke joint she's ever walked into. Before she leaves Portland for her awesome new gig, she agreed to talk about <i>Judge Dredd Vs. Aliens: Incubus</i>. We counterbalance each other's cultural gaps: Laura hasn't read much <i>Dredd</i> before, and I've managed, somehow, to never watch any of the <i>Alien</i> movies, but she's seen them all--and rewatched them all this past summer. Take it away, Laura!</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibqojCAKlA7VigHm5wcmA3GVuwJDNogGQlaeEjiVqPzKROLyU68VYPsX9RIt97eC2few_LXhdKtBssfulZGkCCp4vQ93axnOmfL5mZDcJNaHLUWKXO2dazzEN3TUcZ4RZcDc_Q3NuylI-x/s1600/powertower.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibqojCAKlA7VigHm5wcmA3GVuwJDNogGQlaeEjiVqPzKROLyU68VYPsX9RIt97eC2few_LXhdKtBssfulZGkCCp4vQ93axnOmfL5mZDcJNaHLUWKXO2dazzEN3TUcZ4RZcDc_Q3NuylI-x/s400/powertower.jpg" width="333" /></a></div>
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<b>LAURA:</b> There's a nice bit of visual mimicry on the first page of <i>Incubus</i> where we see the power towers extracting energy, structures that just so happen to look an awful lot like Xenomorph mouths, frozen in that iconic moment of toothy, gaping glory, especially when you juxtapose them with the cover.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiWs02AiKmyIKlBupub17_QZxbR-VbJbJogZ6dTEv-FWomXG1T-vY37163XSizWIB8GVJza3mqZNzzkASaX-wPCwIyTIOdciVcH-k1kS5Z7qHIaD-fYYGyQ4HNlBERdRgndxE508lmHwFC/s1600/incubustpb.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiWs02AiKmyIKlBupub17_QZxbR-VbJbJogZ6dTEv-FWomXG1T-vY37163XSizWIB8GVJza3mqZNzzkASaX-wPCwIyTIOdciVcH-k1kS5Z7qHIaD-fYYGyQ4HNlBERdRgndxE508lmHwFC/s400/incubustpb.jpg" width="277" /></a></div>
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<b>DOUGLAS:</b> That's a great observation about the Xenomorph-ish power towers. (And beyond that, nearly every single image in the story seems to have teeth... and that shot of Harry Dean Stanton Block on the next-to-last page is very Xenomorphy too.) Henry Flint is absolutely on fire here. He'd drawn most of the best-looking parts of "The Hunting Party" five or six years earlier, but had mostly just done one- and two-part Dredd stories since then; this one, I think, is what cemented him as a first-rank artist for this series. (He's done some fantastic stuff on other <i>2000 AD</i> series too--I think <i>Zombo</i> might be my favorite of all.) I particularly love the sequence with the alien plunging downward over four skinny vertical panels, then smashing a giant hole into the Undercity.</div>
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A couple of things I'd like to point out about <i>Incubus</i> as a whole before we get into specifics: As with the earlier Dredd/Batman crossovers, it's not just in continuity with the rest of the series but <i>integrally</i> in continuity. The Mr. Bones subplot resolves threads from "Out of the Undercity," which had run a few months earlier; the robots who show up at the end are, I believe, the last few survivors of the Mechanismo storyline from the mid-'90s (and I don't think we've seen Mechanismos since). Also, Sanchez, who's introduced here, later shows up again in "Origins."</div>
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There are a couple of bits of the story that are slightly recycled, on the other hand. Sanchez's arc--in which she doesn't know if she's cut out for the force, but then she does OK in a tight spot, and Dredd eventually approves of her--is pretty much the same role Judge Castillo had played in "Wilderlands." Castillo had been killed off in "Lawcon" in 2001, though, so perhaps it was time to start that cycle again. And, of course, there had been an <i>Alien</i> homage in <i>Dredd</i> in 1983, "The Starborn Thing," complete with a climax in which it impregnates Dredd. (M-preg ahoy!)</div>
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The story's co-written by John Wagner and Andy Diggle--at the time, it had been a good 15 years since Wagner had written collaboratively on a regular basis with anyone, I think, and I don't know if Diggle's ever done much other collaborative writing. I like the result; this has one <i>remarkably</i> complicated plot for what's essentially a chase-and-fight premise, and it's got a lot of sharp character moments.</div>
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<b>LAURA: </b>In that opening scene, where Dredd gets called in to disperse a demonstration against the power tower by the Earth Mothers, the Judges' "dispersal" tactics are pretty brutal. It's a bit funny to me that my immediate thought was "fascism," while my second thought was, "hey, is this really that different from many of the police responses to the Occupy movement?"</div>
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<b>DOUGLAS: </b>Yeah, the brutal tactics and fascist overtones are very deliberate; the scene where the Mechanismos are announcing "You creeps are breaking the law!... You've brought this on yourselves!" while blasting the bugs is pretty funny. One of the things I enjoy about <i>Dredd</i> as a series is that it's always messing with the reader's sympathies--whenever you find yourself admiring the Judges, it reminds you that they're actually kind of awful, and vice versa.</div>
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So here's a question for you: One thing that this story has to do as a crossover is introduce the premises of both of the series that go into it, as well as serve (and not talk down to) the readers familiar with one or both of them. This one's pretty good at presenting the Judges' milieu within the first few pages, I think. I also appreciate how it switches off between calling back to familiar aspects of the world and introducing new ones; I'm pretty sure the Verminators have never been seen before (or since).</div>
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But I don't know how it does in terms of presenting the <i>Aliens</i> world; is there more to the Xenomorphs than attack-kill-reproduce? To put it differently: how does "Incubus" act as an <i>Aliens</i> story--which of the <i>Aliens</i> tropes does it follow, which does it tweak, which does it miss? And how does it fit in with the movies thematically? I gather that the scene in the maternity ward, and Bones' "It's me--d-daddy!," have some resonances with the movies, but I couldn't tell you more than that.</div>
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<b>LAURA: </b>The more you deconstruct the <i>Alien</i> franchise in terms of its themes, the more you start to realize what a startling change it represents from the usual horror movie approach to gender. Rather than portraying women as helpless, scantily-clad victims who get penetrated by the knives of male attackers – with the obvious rape analogies that implies – females take center stage in <i>Alien</i> not as objects or victims but as agents that drive the action, while feminine themes like pregnancy and birth infuse both the heroism and the violence of its characters.</div>
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Which is to say: instead of a horror movie that is metaphorically based on male sexuality being inflicted on women (i.e. most horror movies), Alien is a film about female sexuality inflicted on men. This turnabout isn't totally equivalent to the way women are treated in horror movies – the men aren't sexualized per se – but it's still a really fascinating and refreshingly different take on the genre.</div>
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Horror movies typically link female sexuality with violence in a way that is intended to excite the audience or punishes women for being sexual, but in <i>Alien</i> female sexuality becomes something powerful, something that creates power and inspires fear rather than being exploited for titillation. The most iconic and terrifying image of the franchise is that of an alien fetus bursting from the body of a writhing, impregnated man.</div>
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Dan O'Bannon, the writer of the original <i>Alien</i> film, even called the movie “payback,” and spoke very frankly about how the movie was intended to play on male fears and superstitions about penetration, rape, pregnancy, and birth:</div>
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“One thing that people are all disturbed about is sex... I said 'That's how I'm going to attack the audience; I'm going to attack them sexually. And I'm not going to go after the women in the audience, I'm going to attack the men. I am going to put in every image I can think of to make the men in the audience cross their legs. Homosexual oral rape, birth. The thing lays its eggs down your throat, the whole number.”</div>
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Pro-choice advocates often like to imagine how differently abortion would be treated if men could get pregnant, and <i>Alien</i> is that very truism realized in the form of a horror movie. In a certain way, <i>Alien</i> is a a fuck you not just to to the horror movies that portray women as supersexy knife pincushions for angry men, but to the Todd Akins of the world who treat women and their bodies as, well, something alien.</div>
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One of the biggest departures from canon in <i>Judge Dredd vs. Aliens</i> is necessitated simply by the fact that Judge Dredd is a guy, which means that we've got a male protagonist rather than a female one, and the implications of that are even bigger than you might think. The most significant female figure in the book is Sanchez, a newly graduated female Judge that Dredd takes under his wing, although she's a figure of inexperience and self-doubt, and far more of a sidekick than a central character. The absence of a female lead negates so much of what the <i>Alien</i> movies are about, and while it's possible that the comic could find some interesting terrain to explore here with a testostorone-fueled character like Dredd -- well, it just doesn't.</div>
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After Dredd and company head back to the hospital to deal with the Xenomorph on the loose there, we get our first hint that we're going to be name-checking the birth themes of <i>Alien</i> in really ridiculous ways when the judges chase down a hallway marked “OB/GYN MATERNITY” and find a Xenomorph menacing a baby. Seriously: the comic just throws in a baby and has an alien loom over it with giant teeth.</div>
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Relationships between mothers and children played a big role in the movie sequel <i>Aliens</i>, particularly after Ripley learned that her real daughter died of old age while she was in cryosleep, and when she later took on a motherly role towards an orphan girl named Newt who of course was kidnapped by the aliens. This scene in Dredd may be going for something similar, but since Dredd has absolutely no relationship to the baby, it all just comes across as a rote “children in danger” cliché. In the <i>Alien</i> movies, the point wasn't simply that a child was being threatened; it was about the maternal instinct those threats awoke in Ripley, and similarly in the Alien Queen when her eggs were threatened. This, on the other hand, is just a random fucking baby.</div>
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The comic also subverts the most basic metaphor of the movies with its very subtitle: Incubus. It's the nickname given to the Xenomorphs by the people of Dredd's city, and it's based on a mythological demon that took male form and was said to rape and impregnate women in their sleep. Listen: the entire point of <i>Alien</i> was male terror of sexual violation and the transformation of pregnancy from something female to something male. By reframing the aliens in the context of an incubus, the comic takes the rape, violation and pregnancy represented by the Xenomorphs out of the uncomfortable realm of men and places them back in the default realm of women, fundamentally undermining the entire concept.</div>
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It's interesting; while I was reading about the <i>Alien</i> franchise, I came across a reference to “male rape,” and it got me thinking. While in a lot of contexts "male" is assumed to be normal or default while <a href="http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2012/01/27/one-for-normal-people-and-another-one-for-women/"><span class="s1">"female" is considered something irregular</span></a>, when it comes to rape, it is too often considered inherently female and needs to be specially qualified as male. That's what the horror of the <i>Alien</i> movies is designed to address, and it's a little disappointing to see that crucial aspect of the films ignored and subverted in the comic in such shallow ways.</div>
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It all culminates in the most hamfisted and obvious dialogue ever when Sanchez and Dredd are both cocooned by aliens and implanted with embryos, and Dredd tells her (the primary female character in the book), “You're going to have a baby – only it's not going to be the human kind!” Thanks for 411, Dredd. I think it would have been a lot more interesting to see the comic deal with what it means for an ultra-masculine warrior like Dredd to be impregnated, especially since dealing with that tension is the motivating force for the horror in the franchise, but sure, let's just talk about how the lady judge is knocked up instead. And don't forget to tell her it's “too late for tears” afterwards!</div>
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The one hint we get about male paternity is the most superficial one possible, when the villainous Mr. Bones, who has been raising an army of Xenomorphs to unleash on the judges, refers to himself as their “daddy.” Of course this never gets developed beyond literally this one word, and Bones refers to the aliens earlier as nothing more than a “means to an end." Absent any sort of relationship or paternal tenderness, it's just a cheap throwaway line he shouts before he dies. The comic seems to want to play with the obvious tropes of the movie, but unfortunately it doesn't seem to understand them well enough to do anything besides make thematic check marks next to babies and stuff. Also, I truly wonder whether there was a conscious decision to realign the metaphors according to more traditional gender roles and thereby obliterate them, or whether it just happened by default because the writer didn't give it any thought.</div>
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Absent the compelling and iconoclastic themes of the films, the comic becomes just another space alien horrorshow, and not a particularly interesting one at that. When Dredd takes out the Queen and her eggs, it doesn't pack the same punch as when fellow mother-figure Ripley does it because there's no special thematic resonance; it's just another dude with a gun blowing up a monster.</div>
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In the end, when the teks surgically remove the embryos from both Dredd and Sanchez for scientific and/or bioterror applications – much as they did with Ripley in <i>Alien: Resurrection</i> – Dredd averts the entirety of that terrible, terrible movie by incinerating the offspring and saying a line that sums up the <i>Judge Dredd vs. Aliens</i> comic and its failings: “I'm not the motherly type.”</div>
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<b>DOUGLAS:</b> Whew! Fair enough--although I think there's a <i>little</i> more than reversion to stereotypes going on with the gender-role stuff than you argue there is (if not a lot). I imagine the difficulty of playing up the horror of an impregnated Dredd is that a) it would of necessity be another callback to "The Starborn Thing" (one of whose memorable moments is Dredd, dragged back to camp by his bike, gasping "I'm... going to have... a <i>baby!</i>"--see below) and b) it would mess with the running gag of his being the ultimate stoic ("I'm just not scratching").</div>
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But we do see Bones telling Dredd "you're hanging there for two now," Packer's "Come on, you alien freaks! Come to momma!" (and the gender dynamics of the Verminator team are at least a little outside-the-norm), Shook taking a pass on the mission because he's got a wife and kids, and--maybe best of all--Dredd announcing that they'd better get Sanchez back to HQ because she's been impregnated, to which Giant asks "You as well...?" "That's affirmative," Dredd snaps, and promptly changes the subject. Similarly, we do see Sanchez complaining "The thing inside me... I-I think I just felt it <i>move</i>!"--but earlier we saw Jimmy saying the same thing. The one thing that does make me roll my eyes is Sanchez having to shed her Judge uniform; I can see where it would make sense just for storytelling's sake not to have the two human characters dressed identically, but come on.</div>
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One other thing that might complicate some of what might seem to be possible angles for playing with pregnancy and parent-child stuff in this particular series: Judges are celibate, or rather supposed to be celibate. Although we do see Sanchez, about four years later (in "Origins"), saying "Not sure I agree with this whole monk thing anyway."</div>
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<b>LAURA: </b>Honestly, I think that everything you said only lends more weight to my criticisms. All of the parentally-themed exclamations you mention are just that: exclamations. The comic's approach to the themes of maternity/paternity don't go any deeper than <i>Duke Nukem</i>-style catch-phrases like "come to momma." Also, it's kinda hard to celebrate the gender diversity of the Verminator crew for including a woman after she gets fridged with alacrity in order to make her fellow Verminator boyfriend rageface at the Xenomorphs for the rest of the comic.</div>
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But I think my primary concern boils down to what you acknowledge as well: actually dealing with the notion of maternity and the male horror associated with both rape and pregnancy would "mess with the running gag of [Dredd] being the ultimate stoic." When you get down to it, Dredd is a really poor choice of character for a horror narrative in general, because being the ultimate badass means that he can't acknowledge fear, or viscerally experience horror in a way that connects with the audience.</div>
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The power of the aliens is derived significantly from the horror of emasculation -- of a man being treated as a woman, especially with regards to rape and impregnation -- and because the comic doesn't want to "debase" Ultimately Manly Man Dredd or take away his power, it can't really let that happen in a way that means something emotionally. So instead, it ends up gutting the most powerful and subversive female metaphor in horror films to protect his masculinity. Where the <i>Alien</i> movies laser-targeted male discomfort and used it to provoke horror, the comic itself actually becomes an expression of that male discomfort, and by avoiding rather than confronting those gendered fears, it turns the aliens into something far more banal and less frightening.</div>
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Thanks again to Laura! Next week: Debbie Chachra and I take on the first volume of <i>Mega-City Undercover</i>, featuring the earliest Low Life serials. </div>
Douglas Wolkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10691167073493285913noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7321253799411057654.post-86952480558799480372012-10-21T23:00:00.000-07:002012-10-21T23:00:02.415-07:00Cry of the Werewolf<div style="text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1781080321/ref=as_li_ss_il?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1781080321&linkCode=as2&tag=readcomi-20"><img border="0" src="http://ws.assoc-amazon.com/widgets/q?_encoding=UTF8&ASIN=1781080321&Format=_SL160_&ID=AsinImage&MarketPlace=US&ServiceVersion=20070822&WS=1&tag=readcomi-20" /></a><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=readcomi-20&l=as2&o=1&a=1781080321" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" width="1" /></div>
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(Reprints <i>Judge Dredd</i> stories from <i>2000 AD</i> 322-328 and 1313-1316, and from <i>Judge Dredd Megazine</i> #4.05 and 293-294)</div>
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First things first: I didn't have time to mention this here before last week's post went up, but I'm deeply honored to have been presented with the <a href="https://twitter.com/douglaswolk/status/257205374191546368/photo/1"><span class="s1">Krill Tro Thargo</span></a> at New York Comic-Con. Thank you so much, Tharg and minions.</div>
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Just how Simon & Schuster picks what's going into their <i>2000 AD</i> reprint program continues to mystify me a little, but that's why they're book publishers and I'm not--and in any case I'm not going to complain about color reprints of largely long-out-of-print stories. This one's kind of a Halloween-themed Dredd/horror volume, anchored by the title story, from Progs 322-328. (Is it the first Dredd collection with a sound effect on the cover?) Rereading "Cry of the Werewolf" now, it really seems like it was written one episode at a time, without thinking much about what was going to happen next. Judge Prager shows up four pages before the end to resolve the plot, and he's an inspired character ("How's things down there anyway?" "Grim"), but that's the first we've seen of him. It's also fun to see Manhattan as "the Undercity" in full-on <i>Escape from New York</i> mode, although Times Square looks... pretty much like it did in 1983.</div>
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For all that, "Cry" is one of the smartest of the "Dredd vs. supernatural monster" stories that pop up from time to time. Dredd's favored method of thinking about problems is reducing them to the lowest common denominator, which is usually a bullet; he's not the Anderson type who prefers to work things out metaphysically. The virtue of this one is that it <i>does</i> let him treat lycanthropy as just another perp to be dispatched, and shows us the man-as-law turning bestial as he descends into the space that's both literally and figuratively below his customary realm of action.</div>
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Including Wagner and Carl Critchlow's "Out of the Undercity," from 2002, makes a lot of sense, since it's a direct sequel to "Cry of the Werewolf." (It's also Wagner writing in the mode of several decades earlier: the wreckage of "the old White House" is totally a pre-1985 move on his part.) The logical (but absent-from-this-volume) successor to that story, though, is the <i>Judge Dredd Vs. Aliens</i> serial "Incubus," which started a few weeks later, follows up the Mr. Bones plot thread from "Undercity," concerns a bunch of monsters doing horrifying things, and even ends with a moment of tension-breaking comedy, like "Cry of the Werewolf." I mean, it's understandable that it would be hard to sneak the <i>Aliens</i> creatures into a book with a werewolf on the cover, but still.</div>
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We also get Robbie Morrison and Leigh Gallagher's "Dog Soldiers," a "Tour of Duty"-era piece involving antagonists who look vaguely like werewolves but aren't. (I really like Gallagher's rendition of Dredd, who genuinely looks like he's in his late sixties and has been through a lot.) And finally--and out of chronological sequence--there's Gordon Rennie and Frazer Irving's "Asylum," which features a bad guy with big sharp fangs who isn't quite a werewolf either. Irving's got particular gifts for horror and for color design, both of which serve him well here: every artist's got a way of drawing Psi-Judge Karyn's hair, but Irving's rendering of it as a radiant glob of hot pink (see above) makes it look eerie rather than just gravity-defying. ("Wurdolak" is an unusual spelling of the monster here; it seems to be related to the Greek <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vrykolakas"><span class="s1">vrykolakas</span></a> almost as much as the Russian <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Family_of_the_Vourdalak"><span class="s1">vourdalak</span></a>.)<br />
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We don't, however, get to see the sequel to "Asylum," Rennie and Boo Cook's "Descent," which brought the Karyn/Wurdolak plot down into the Undercity, and has a genuinely scary/creepy ending. (Without "Descent," "Asylum" doesn't have much of a conceptual link to "Out of the Undercity.") It's possible to imagine a more-perfect-universe version of this book that would have gone "Cry of the Werewolf"-"Asylum"-"Out of the Undercity"-"Incubus"-"Descent." As entertaining as all four of the stories actually in this volume are, that one would have had a clearer overall dramatic arc--about the Undercity as the ugly subconscious space of the city from which monsters sometimes escape and in which monsters sometimes settle comfortably, and about Judges trying and often failing to look out for one another.</div>
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Next week: Laura Hudson and I take on the aforementioned Judge Dredd/Aliens crossover, <i>Incubus</i>.</div>
Douglas Wolkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10691167073493285913noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7321253799411057654.post-13121604882138587562012-10-14T23:00:00.000-07:002012-10-14T23:00:07.377-07:00The Restricted Files 04<div style="text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1781080461/ref=as_li_ss_il?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1781080461&linkCode=as2&tag=readcomi-20"><img border="0" src="http://ws.assoc-amazon.com/widgets/q?_encoding=UTF8&ASIN=1781080461&Format=_SL160_&ID=AsinImage&MarketPlace=US&ServiceVersion=20070822&WS=1&tag=readcomi-20" /></a><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=readcomi-20&l=as2&o=1&a=1781080461" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" width="1" /></div>
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(Reprints <i>Judge Dredd</i> stories from <i>Judge Dredd Poster Prog</i> #2-5, <i>2000 AD Sci-Fi Special</i> 1994-1996, <i>Judge Dredd Mega Special</i> 1994-1996, <i>2000 AD Yearbook</i> 1995, <i>2000 AD Winter Special</i> 1994 and 2005, <i>Judge Dredd Yearbook</i> 1995, <i>2000 AD Free Comic Book Day Prog</i> 2012, and <i>Dice Man</i> #1, plus extra material from early <i>Judge Dredd Annuals</i>)</div>
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This week we're going a little bit back in the original-publication-dates chronology for a volume that just came out a few weeks ago in the U.K. (and, obviously, even more recently in the U.S.): the fourth and presumably final volume of <i>The Restricted Files</i>, filling this year's third Dredd <i>Case Files</i> slot.</div>
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The material here--aside from John Wagner and Rufus Dayglo's throwaway four-pager from the most recent <i>Free Comic Book Day</i> one-shot, and two even more lightweight stories Wagner wrote as showcases for winners of a Stabilo drawing competition in 2005--mostly comes from the mid-'90s, when the <i>Mega Specials</i> and <i>Yearbooks</i> and so on were firmly in the category of "overflow." Before <i>2000 AD</i> was in full color, the specials were an opportunity to print full-color stories; before the <i>Megazine</i>, they were an opportunity to print stories that wouldn't quite fit in six-page episodes. And once the <i>Megazine</i> was around, they were an opportunity to run material that didn't fit in either of the two regular periodicals. That seems to have fallen into a few major categories in the period covered by this volume:</div>
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*Stories that were tonally weird or "off-model" in one way or another. Mark Millar and Peter Doherty's "Mr. Bennet Joins the Judges" is a cute concept, although I'm betting it's based on some bit of kids' entertainment that everyone in the U.K. has grown up with and nobody in the U.S. has ever heard of. (Anyone care to enlighten me?) "Fat Bottom Boys" is really just an opportunity for John Hicklenton to go over the top in his Heavy Metal Dredd mode; I'm not sure who demanded a sequel to "Judge Planet" that wasn't written by Peter Milligan, but hey, there one is, and it's more Shaky Kane. Also, remember how I was going on about "Sin City" last week? I didn't realize that there had already been the not-as-funny-as-it-should-be parody "Sinned-In City" many years earlier, although it reminds me that I'd like to see more of the stories Adrian Salmon drew in his own style reprinted.</div>
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*Alternate-universe or out-of-continuity stories. Somehow, those don't work terribly well with Dredd, the cover image of "Dredd of Drokk Green" notwithstanding. It's interesting to see Paul Neary reaching for a new technique for his Dredd-vs.-Al-Capone story "The Incorruptibles," but in the process he seems to have abandoned everything he ever knew about storytelling. And as nicely as Pat Mills' update of "The Return of Rico" had worked, his script for the what-if-Rico-hadn't-had-Joe-around fantasy "Perchance to Dream" is vague and sloppy.</div>
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*Stories that were stuck in inventory. It's not too hard to imagine, for instance, that "Raptaur Returns" was meant to be a sequel to the original "Raptaur," and never got completed beyond its first episode--it does rather seem to end on a cliffhanger, and the fact that Tony Luke and Dean Ormston used pseudonyms for it when it ran is a little odd too. But there was a rule in those days that everything that got completed had to get published eventually... I believe the 1995 <i>Dredd Yearbook</i> also included Chris Halls' artwork for his abandoned stab at the first chapter of the Mean Machine serial "Son of Mean," for the same reason. (I'm grateful for that, though!)</div>
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*Stuff that was just plain substandard. Roberto Corona is one of the few artists not to get a bio in the back of this volume; his artwork on the Dredd/Missionary Man team-up "True Grit" is poor fake Quitely, and the story's not much to speak of either. (Gordon Rennie had some swell Dredd stories ahead of him, but his three stories from the '95 <i>Dredd Yearbook</i> are nonstop beginners' jitters; even "Through the Peephole," from a bit later, is sturdier.) "Confessions of a Vegetarian" makes <i>no sense at all</i>, its Bob Burden shout-out notwithstanding. "Black Day at Badrock" was one of Robbie Morrison's earliest Dredd stories, and you can see him trying to get a firmer hold on how to write the series, but setting it during "The Pit" just makes it look much weaker by comparison.</div>
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Despite all of that, this volume isn't a total wash. A couple of the <i>Poster Prog</i> stories are fun--Wagner and Carlos Ezquerra's "Could You Be Judge Dredd?" is a nice if obvious gag. I groused about "House of Death," from 1986's <i>Dice Man</i> #1, not showing up in the previous <i>Restricted Files</i> collections, and I'm happy to see it turn up here with its splendid Bryan Talbot images of the Dark Judges. The bonus material at the back of the book is entertaining, too; it seems to come from some of the first few <i>Judge Dredd Annuals</i> (the last few pages are post-Apocalypse War, and clearly drawn by Ian Gibson). Anybody want to identify which pages come from what, and maybe even who wrote them?</div>
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So what's left to collect in book form at this point? There's the rest of the <i>Case Files</i>, which will eventually cover a <i>lot</i> of long-lost material--well over 400 yet-unreprinted episodes from <i>2000 AD</i>, a bunch more from the <i>Megazine</i>. (The longest unreprinted-as-books storylines include Mills and Hicklenton's "Blood of Satanus III," Wagner et al.'s "Dead Ringer," and John Smith and Paul Marshall's "Darkside"--although the last of those did show up as an <i>Extreme Edition</i>. And, although it ran under several titles, Rennie's extended sequence involving Giant, Guthrie, Rico and Vienna could really stand to be collected on its own.) It'd be amazing to see comprehensive reprints of the <i>Daily Star</i> strips, although I gather that there are some logistical problems there. There are also the two DC series and <i>Lawman of the Future</i>, but I imagine those are unlikely to see print again any time soon either.</div>
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Next week: another newly released book, the Halloween-themed <i>Cry of the Werewolf</i>. </div>
Douglas Wolkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10691167073493285913noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7321253799411057654.post-39557781172609079612012-10-07T23:00:00.000-07:002012-10-07T23:00:11.395-07:00Satan's Island<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">(Reprints <i>Judge Dredd</i> stories from <i>2000 AD</i> Progs 1289-1299, 1303, 1317, 1336-1337)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">The "most awesome overall progs of <i>2000 AD</i>" question comes up from time to time. Besides a couple of earlier issues (503! 662!) and later ones (1633!), I'd have to nominate Prog 1289, which only included three stories, but what stories they were--the opening episodes of "My Name Is Death," "Thirteen" and "Sin City." (Okay, fine, I hadn't actually read "Thirteen" until last week. I don't know what took me so long. It's really good!)</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Using the title "Sin City" in 2002 must have been a deliberate tweak at Frank Miller (although this collection got a different title, presumably to avoid confusion). Miller had been doing his own <i>Sin City</i> comics since 1991, and "The Babe Wore Red" had been reprinted in 1998's <i>Judge Dredd Megazine</i> #3.42-3.44. In 2000, as <a href="http://viciousimagery.blogspot.com/2010/09/that-frank-miller-judge-dredd-cover.html"><span class="s1">David Bishop noted</span></a>, Andy Diggle commissioned the Miller cover that appears above for the tenth anniversary issue of the Megazine; it ended up not running. (See the link for the longer version of that story.)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">What Kev Walker's artwork looks like here, though, has much less to do with Miller than with <i>Hellboy</i>-era Mike Mignola and Dave Stewart. See, for instance, the image of the New New Kremlin below: almost nobody but Stewart uses that particular palette that much! "Sin City" is an attractive story, consistent-looking, a reasonably suspenseful thriller with a big multiple-pronged payoff. John Wagner's clearly having some fun writing it (not least because it lets him write a bunch of scenes of people enjoying the opportunity to do horrible things: "For our entree, we will be serving slices of tender young <i>boy</i>. Those who do not wish to partake will be offered an alternative"). And it ties in with past and future storylines in a satisfying way--it's fun to see what Guthrie's up to at this point, for instance, and Dredd being insubordinate to Hershey is part of the long-simmering conflict that bubbled over in "Bullet to King Four" last week.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">That first, double-length episode of "Sin City" is particularly sharp. I love Mr. Sin's song of greeting (any time there's a musical number in <i>Dredd</i>, it's a fine thing), El Muerte's companion announcing "El Muerte said a <i>kind word</i> once and cut out his own tongue to punish himself!," the idea of "de-Megification"... The "Dredd pretending to rough up the informants" scene in the following episode is pretty great too, although the presence of Sin City police does make me wonder what laws they're there to enforce. If it were all that good, it'd be one of the best Dredd serials, but as so often happened in this period, it starts wobbling partway through.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">The plot against the Big Meg is wildly and unnecessarily convoluted: the Sovs get Orlok, for whom they know the Judges are on permanent alert, to deliver the plague to Ula Danser, who can in turn release it in Sin City, so that it can infect people in Mega-City One. Why not simply use an agent nobody's heard of to deliver the bug directly to the Big Meg? (Which, of course, is what happens some years later in "Day of Chaos.") "The Doomsday Scenario" had very strongly implied that Dredd destroyed the entire New Kremlin, but apparently they've somehow gotten a new version up and running. And El Muerte being a Judge gone bad, and Dredd's personal responsibility (in his mind), would be a bit more dramatically effective if we'd seen him before, which I don't <i>think</i> we had--please correct me if I'm wrong.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">The three follow-ups are all smart and surprising, though, and densely packed in that uniquely Wagnerian way. "Case for the Defence" reopens the very good question of whether Dredd's genocide of East-Meg One was necessary, or even did any good for his cause. ("Day of Chaos" is a pretty convincing argument that it did vastly more harm than good even for a best-case scenario.) Setting up some sort of equivalency between Dredd's actions and Orlok's is a fair point, but "you did the same thing!" is hardly a defense. It finally establishes something like the long-missing motivation for <i>why</i> the Sovs would have launched a biological attack and land invasion of Mega-City One in 2104--they'd seen a (contingency?) plan for a first strike from MC1. But it sure didn't look like that at the time, and it's also not clear what either side would have stood to gain from attacking the other.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">(The questions of <a href="http://www.iep.utm.edu/justwar/" target="_blank">proportionality and discrimination</a> are also swept away from the discussion as soon as they're brought up. Looking at the end of "The Apocalypse War" now, everyone's actions are dramatic but borderline nonsensical. How, for instance, do you accept surrender from a state that you've literally bombed to a cinder? What does surrender even mean under those conditions?)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">"Reprisal" is an odd duck: it picks up on a thread its artist Paul Marshall and writer Garth Ennis had established eight years earlier in the not-very-good spinoff "The Corps," concerning the Space Corps and its genetic infantry. (Which hints that <i>Dredd</i> is in the same universe as <i>Rogue Trooper</i>, an idea that's never struck me as particularly useful.) Has anything been seen since of Commander Kreig, who doesn't seem to be any relation to Harmony Krieg?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">It's nice to see a Brian Bolland cover on the first half of "The Trial of Orlok"--his first in almost nine years--but the really extraordinary thing about that story is what <i>doesn't</i> happen in it. The formula for every "archvillain taken into custody" story ever is that the villain makes some kind of last-minute escape, or there's some legal technicality that forces the villain to be set free, or something along those lines. So when Orlok's escape attempt at the end of the story fails and is followed by an on-panel execution, it's a genuine shock: this <i>never</i> happens. It's not "realism," exactly--asking for realism in science fiction always seems like a dubious proposition--but a very smart snapping of genre conventions, and a reminder that the stakes in <i>Judge Dredd</i> stories tend to be pretty high.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Next week: <i>Restricted Files Vol. 4</i>, wrapping up the "stories that appeared in British comics that weren't <i>2000 AD</i> or the <i>Megazine</i>" sequence.</span></div>
Douglas Wolkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10691167073493285913noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7321253799411057654.post-38579395198678341772012-09-30T23:00:00.000-07:002012-09-30T23:00:10.901-07:00The Carlos Ezquerra Collection<div style="text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1905437358/ref=as_li_ss_il?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1905437358&linkCode=as2&tag=readcomi-20"><img border="0" src="http://ws.assoc-amazon.com/widgets/q?_encoding=UTF8&ASIN=1905437358&Format=_SL160_&ID=AsinImage&MarketPlace=US&ServiceVersion=20070822&WS=1&tag=readcomi-20" /></a><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=readcomi-20&l=as2&o=1&a=1905437358" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" width="1" /></div>
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(Reprints <i>Judge Dredd</i> stories from <i>Judge Dredd Megazine</i> #2.10-2.11, 4.15, 201 and 211-212 and <i>2000 AD</i> Prog 1250-1261, and <i>Cursed Earth Koburn</i> stories from <i>Judge Dredd Megazine</i> #221-223, 228, 239 and 241-244)</div>
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I'm very glad to see people waving the flag for Carlos Ezquerra's artwork. He's the guy who created the look of both Dredd and Mega-City One, of course, even though he only drew two of the first 250 or so episodes of the series--and if you haven't been reading Pat Mills' reminiscences of the early days of <i>2000 AD</i> over on <a href="https://patmills.wordpress.com/"><span class="s1">his blog</span></a>, you owe it to yourself to have a look. I was delighted to see him nominated for the Eisner Hall of Fame this year, and I'm looking forward to IDW's big black-and-white collection (or collections?) of his early Dredd stories. (Incidentally, since Chris Ryall tweeted it a few days ago, I'll mention here that I'm going to be writing some kind of Dredd-history piece as backmatter in each issue of IDW's new <i>Judge Dredd</i> series!)</div>
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This volume's got some interesting stuff in it, but it's not really the peak of Ezquerra's work on Dredd. It's mostly devoted to two projects he worked on, neither of which is quite enough to justify a volume of its own of the length Rebellion tends to publish: "Helter Skelter" and the <i>Cursed Earth Koburn</i> material, and otherwise mops up his otherwise uncollected <i>Dredd</i> episodes from the <i>Megazine</i>.</div>
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A bit of history, involving a notable piece of Ezquerra's work that <i>hasn't</i> been reprinted, is relevant to "Helter Skelter." 1988 saw the first issue of <i>Crisis</i>--or, as the cover had it, <i>2000 AD Presents Crisis</i>--the "more mature" companion magazine that ran for 63 issues over the next three years. Pat Mills' "Third World War" was its anchor series for its first few dozen issues, and Ezquerra drew 15 of the early episodes. (I'd love to see a collection of that, too, although I can't imagine it's too likely.)<br />
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After John Smith and Jim Baikie (et al.)'s "New Statesmen" serial ended, one of the series that started in <i>Crisis</i> #15 was "Troubled Souls," by Garth Ennis and John McCrea. Ennis has no particular love for that series, I gather--he was 19 years old when it started--but it's where he introduced a couple of supporting characters named Dougie and Ivor. Ennis and McCrea brought them back in "For a Few Troubles More," a bit later, and then in <i>Dicks</i>, a project they've been doing on and off since 1997. But--whoops--Fleetway still owned the rights to "Troubled Souls," and hence to Dougie and Ivor, from what I gather.</div>
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So, according to David Bishop's <i>Thrill-Power Overload</i>, in 2001, Rebellion, Fleetway and Ennis worked out a deal, whereby Ennis would write a 12-episode <i>Judge Dredd</i> serial in exchange for the rights to the "Troubled Souls" characters. The result was "Helter Skelter," which was mostly drawn by Ezquerra--although he was distracted by problems with a home renovation going on at that time (and, apparently, by drawing the Ennis-written <i>Adventures in the Rifle Brigade</i> at the same time), and Henry Flint ended up jumping in to take care of a couple of episodes. (The three Dredd covers that ran during "Helter Skelter" were by other artists too, curiously, including the Glenn Fabry one a few paragraphs up and the Frazer Irving one below.)<br />
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It's not Ennis's final Dredd story (that would be "Monkey on My Back," a couple of years later--and Ennis was also mentioned as <a href="http://www.newsarama.com/comics/080627-WWCDynamiteDredd.html"><span class="s1">working on</span></a> the <a href="http://forums.2000adonline.com/index.php/topic,22753.msg392120#msg392120"><span class="s1">prematurely announced</span></a> American <i>Dredd</i> series from Dynamite in 2008). It is, however, his undisguised love letter to the <i>2000 AD</i> of his youth: a chance to bring back all the <i>Dredd</i> characters he loved, and throw in cameos and quotes from <i>Rogue Trooper</i> and <i>Halo Jones</i> and <i>Ace Trucking Co</i>. and <i>The V.C.'s</i> and so on, on the pretext that they're all in nearby alternate universes, of which there are "at least two thousand," ha ha. And it lets him write Dredd the Total Badass to End All Badasses one more time, when he doesn't stoop to killing Rico with his gun but kills him by <i>throwing his badge at him so hard it embeds itself in his skull</i>, then makes a misguided young democracy-loving engineer see the error of her ways.</div>
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The thing that bugs me about "Helter Skelter" is that it's just the nostalgic kind of reference: "do you remember when Judge Cal took over the city? Wasn't that an awesome story? How about Don Uggie Apelino! Wasn't he cool? And oh man, how about that D.R. and Quinch? How we laughed!" A lot of the last few years' worth of <i>Judge Dredd</i> episodes have been about the weight of history--the way things that happened long ago can bear on the present--in a way that doesn't bug me at all. (See, for instance, the new issue's "Bullet to King Four," which not only pulls up dangling plot threads from "Gulag" and "The Family Man" but reaches all the way back to "right after that nasty business with that awful man and his <i>fish</i>," i.e. right after "The Day the Law Died," and no, I have no idea who the "little glowing friend" is.)</div>
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The crucial difference is "Helter Skelter"'s implication that the lost paradise for <i>readers</i> is the past. Ennis mentioned in his interview with David Bishop that he thought the last genuinely great issue of <i>2000 AD</i> was "the last one printed on bogroll"--that the spell was broken after it went full color. That's an excuse to not try to push it forward.<br />
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The back half of <i>The Carlos Ezquerra Collection</i> is all the Gordon Rennie/Ezquerra <i>Cursed Earth Koburn</i> stories published up to that point (there was another one serialized in the <i>Megazine</i> last year. The point of <i>Koburn</i> would have been entirely lost on me without an explanation: between 1976 and 1978, Ezquerra drew "Major Eazy," a well-loved series in <i>Battle Picture Weekly</i>, whose protagonist was a laid-back British officer with no interest in anyone's rules but his own, and modeled on James Coburn's character from <i>The Magnificent Seven</i>. <a href="http://insidepulse.com/2004/10/01/21210/"><span class="s1">This Alan Barnes interview</span></a> suggests that Ezquerra mentioned to Rennie that "he'd love to do a desert rat story," and Rennie came up with the idea of transplanting a thinly disguised Major Eazy to the Cursed Earth.</div>
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Ezquerra clearly enjoys drawing this stuff, even though the stories here don't give him a lot of leeway to come up with particularly impressive visuals. The design of Eazy/Koburn presents a couple of the same challenges to an artist that the design of Dredd does: we can't see their eyes, and they have one facial expression almost all the time. Dredd, though, has a certain amount of body language to communicate with, and Koburn mostly just slumps. There's some solid writing here--I especially like the scene where Koburn's getting shrapnel picked out of his body and gets through it with booze rather than painkillers--but the Cursed Earth setting (guess what: it's full of hicks!) is much flatter than Mega-City One.<br />
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As for the other, shorter stories here (besides "The Taking of Sector 123," which <a href="http://dreddreviews.blogspot.com/2012/02/complete-case-files-17.html"><span class="s1">Jog and I dealt with</span></a> a while back, and which is probably my favorite piece of Ezquerra's work in this volume), there's not a lot to say. "The Girlfriend" is effectively the same idea as Inga from the P.J. Maybe stories, and probably more effective as a background joke than as the focus of a plot. And for the launch of what was effectively the fifth volume of the <i>Megazine</i>--the renumbering and reformatting that began with #201 in 2003--Wagner and Ezquerra couldn't do any better than "Phartz!," a 20-page fart joke?</div>
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A bibliographic note: at this point, there are only 11 episodes' worth of unreprinted, Ezquerra-drawn Dredd from <i>2000 AD</i>--although that includes the two-part "Time Machine" and the five-part "Bad Frendz," both of which could use a new look. ("The Adjudicators" from <i>Megazine</i> #323-324 isn't included here either, but it's not fair to expect this volume to have a time machine of its own.)</div>
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Next week: <i>Satan's Island</i>, in which Orlok's fate is revealed.</div>
Douglas Wolkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10691167073493285913noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7321253799411057654.post-83311902957394115392012-09-23T23:00:00.000-07:002012-09-23T23:00:04.778-07:00The Chief Judge's Man<div style="text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1904265812/ref=as_li_ss_il?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1904265812&linkCode=as2&tag=readcomi-20"><img border="0" src="http://ws.assoc-amazon.com/widgets/q?_encoding=UTF8&ASIN=1904265812&Format=_SL160_&ID=AsinImage&MarketPlace=US&ServiceVersion=20070822&WS=1&tag=readcomi-20" /></a><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=readcomi-20&l=as2&o=1&a=1904265812" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" width="1" /></div>
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(Reprints <i>Judge Dredd</i> stories from <i>2000 AD</i> Progs 1244-1247, 1263-1266 and 1342-1349)</div>
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<i>The Chief Judge's Man</i> is a near-miss of a Dredd sequence: a long-form story that's pretty good, and very nicely executed in some ways, but doesn't quite live up to its promise, mainly because its structure keeps promising a twist that never arrives. The premise that the first episode sets up--a lone lunatic killing the enemies of Justice Dept. may actually be being controlled by Chief Judge Hershey--is a solid one, and what we've come to expect from John Wagner is that Hershey's involvement is probably not what it seems but might be something even more surprising.<br />
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That's not what happens here, though. DeKlerk (who shares his last name with <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F._W._de_Klerk"><span class="s1">a former South African president</span></a>) is introduced midway through the first serial, in a scene that signals "newly introduced character is <i>sinister</i>," which indeed he turns out to be barely more than a dozen pages later. So the plot shifts from "is Hershey the secret force behind Armon Gill?" to "when will Dredd figure out that DeKlerk is the secret force behind Armon Gill?"--it becomes a detective story whose readers know more of the solution than the protagonist. By the time the plot makes its second shift, to "...well, now Dredd's figured out that DeKlerk is" etc., the story's run out of steam: having Gill try to kill Hershey isn't especially suspenseful, becuase Hershey doesn't actually get to do anything except shrug "always knew Chief Judges didn't last long."</div>
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That highlights a surprising thing about Judge Hershey, which is that she's still pretty much a black box--we don't really know anything much about what drives her, or what she's like other than "very competent." And this is after several decades of intermittent appearances in <i>Dredd</i>, not to mention 25 or so episodes of her own series (mostly unreprinted) and a Neil Gaiman-written short story (recently reprinted in <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B006B9OGAE/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B006B9OGAE&linkCode=as2&tag=readcomi-20">Sweet Justice</a><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=readcomi-20&l=as2&o=1&a=B006B9OGAE" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" width="1" />, if Kindle counts as print). Is she capable of skullduggery along the lines of manipulating Gill? Well, maybe, as subsequent stories have suggested--but at this point in the series she was effectively the character we see in Colin MacNeil's image on the first page of "On the Chief Judge's Service" (below), a glyph with perfectly shiny hair, in perfect profile. I don't tend to play the casting game with comics, but I always imagine her being played by Anjelica Huston.<br />
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Colin MacNeil's painted artwork in "On the Chief Judge's Service" is fantastic--this was the period when MacNeil was giving every scene a dominant color, and for a story as full of flashbacks and scene-shifts as this one, it works really well. I can't say quite as much for "The Chief Judge's Man" proper, the only time Will Simpson has drawn Dredd in <i>2000 AD</i> since "Tale of the Dead Man" a decade or so earlier. The fragility of Simpson's watercolor style worked nicely in a few of his older sequences, especially "Curse of the Spider Woman," but his pen-and-ink work here just looks uncomfortable. (Compare Simpson's artwork in the first episode to Wagner's script in the back: he's drawing what Wagner's asking for, but not always in the most convincing way. "His grim, helmeted visage bleeds into a pic of Hershey's head taking shape on his Holo-com" gets interpreted as the sort of divided-down-the-middle face Steve Ditko used to do with Spider-Man and Peter Parker, which doesn't parse visually.)</div>
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Splitting the story into two acts separated by a couple of years, though, was a great idea, and another example of Wagner playing the long game--it's easier to imagine the devoted servant Gill flipping out and revolting after being incarcerated for ages. So was splitting the first act into halves (separated by 15 weeks' worth of stories, including Garth Ennis's "Helter Skelter," which we'll get into next week): it makes "On the Chief Judge's Service" more suspenseful if he's been at large for a while.<br />
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(This reminds me: has anybody put together a list of dangling plot threads in <i>Judge Dredd</i>, along the lines of <a href="http://www.uncannyxmen.net/db/article/showquestion.asp?faq=18&fldAuto=329&page=2" target="_blank">this remarkable <i>X-Men</i> list</a>? It occurred to me a few days ago that there are a couple of significant unresolved bits of "Day of Chaos"--especially what Haldane and "Garf" were up to, and why Rowdy Baker killed the guy he killed.)</div>
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As for "Revenge of the Chief Judge's Man": it's good to see John Burns back for a story involving Judge Edgar, and it's a pity she doesn't get much time on panel. (When he gets to draw action or nature scenes, he's in his element. I particularly love his Texas Ranger and the scene with the vultures and the mesa that follows it, because it's obvious how much fun he had painting them.) The "prisoner freaks out and tries to go over the wall" routine is the kind of cliché I'd have expected would have vanished from <i>2000 AD</i> around the time of "Harry Twenty on the High Rock," although on reflection it echoes the "Dear John letter" theme of Gill's experience. Once Dredd works out the mystery, though, the final few dozen pages of the story are a foregone conclusion, which is bad news for a thriller. The Gill thread and the DeKlerk thread resolve at the same time rather than together. There's some smart writing in the final scenes--I grinned at "a sixteen-lane speedway all the way to the Hab Zone without the crime problems of the overland route"--but after all of the story's intimations that the readers don't actually know everything there is to know about this situation yet, it's a letdown when it turns out that we do.<br />
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As a side note, I get that it'd have been hard to feature Armon Gill on the cover of <i>2000 AD</i>, since he keeps changing his appearance, but the relevant covers for this sequence are nearly all evergreen shots of Dredd. Only the cover of Prog 1246, above, makes any reference to the story itself--and that only in its background text.</div>
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Next week: <i>The Carlos Ezquerra Collection</i>, a.k.a. "Helter Skelter," a bunch of Cursed Earth Koburn stories, and change.</div>
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Douglas Wolkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10691167073493285913noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7321253799411057654.post-38751819678659825572012-09-16T23:00:00.000-07:002012-09-16T23:00:00.236-07:00The Complete P.J. Maybe<br />
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(Reprints <i>Judge Dredd</i> stories from <i>2000 AD</i> Progs 534, 592-594, 599, 632-634, 707-709, 820-822, 1204, 1210 and 1211, and <i>Judge Dredd Megazine</i> #221-222 and 231-234)</div>
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This week's guest is Mairead Case, a fiction writer, <a href="http://www.bookslut.com/features/2011_09_018088.php"><span class="s1">critic</span></a>, editor, and <a href="https://twitter.com/maireadcase"><span class="s1">bon vivant</span></a> who lives in Chicago and is very interested in youth and art-making. I was delighted that we got to discuss <i>The Complete P.J. Maybe</i>, the collection of the slippery killer's first 18 years' worth of appearances.</div>
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<b>MAIREAD: </b>Like <a href="http://dreddreviews.blogspot.com/2011/12/america.html"><span class="s1">Alyssa Rosenberg</span></a>, I came to <i>Judge Dredd </i>pretty much cold---I definitely follow the blog, but as a fiction writer who wants to see how all these characters fit together. What their clock is, when you add another storyline. I'd never actually held any of the comics in my hands, so reading <i>The Complete P.J. Maybe </i>was a treat, maybe like finally getting to hear music I'd only ever read about.</div>
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One thing I hadn't realized, while fretting over what <i>Dredd</i>'s map is, is how there are so many funny parts too. "Funny" like gross-out summer camp funny, for example the sexy cheapo face changer ads ("Flo Blo / Face Jobs"), the goofball murder weapons (copper foil surf pants!), and Floris, whose eyes look like butterfly wings (all yellow and irisless, then blue all the way to her eyebrows). And the nimbly clever names, like Lili Solo or Diego Urchison (head of Universal Armpit). Like Willy Wonker (ehrmagehrd!).</div>
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I liked how P.J. Maybe's name works, too---as you know his birth name was "Philip Janet," Janet because his parents wanted a girl (which feels Important because we don't really learn anything else they ever want---they are a little zombielike. Chatty and up but not really active, like parents behind scrim). "P.J." also works as a mashup of "Psycho Juve," which is yelped about him during a spree. And it really works as a "good old boy" kinda nickname, all the P.J.s I know are either sweet little brothers or sons and heirs. In that light the look on his face on the cover is apt, he looks guilty but like he knows he'll get away with it.</div>
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At first the surname "Maybe" seemed too cutesy, too easy for a man who brings in only "meh" ideas to work (Pants that turn poison when wet? Great! But what if it rains before you need to self-destruct?) but later I liked how it turned sinister, flipped into a taunt or power play. "Is this the end, Maybe?" "Maybe."<br />
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<b>DOUGLAS: </b><i>Dredd</i>-as-comedy: yes indeed! I lose sight of that a lot too, but it <i>is</i> a satire most of the time (sometimes grimmer than others), and sometimes it tips over into full-on comedy. I love that the "primitive tribesmen" are the residents of Cal-Hab (i.e. what's left of Scotland, from which John Wagner himself hails), and I especially grinned at the wicked double backhand of Baranquilla growing "500 million tonnes of clean, exportable <i>treemeat</i> every year... some say, with such abundance, why not feed it to our <i>own</i> people? But that would only make them greedy and lazy. Far better to sell it to you, for the benefit of all--no?"</div>
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And sometimes I find I'm taking Wagner's gags for granted--Chopper's real name, for instance, is Marlon Shakespeare, which made me giggle the first three or four times before I got used to it. He does that trick a lot, as with Judge Stalin (!) in the final sequence here. There are certain jokes he returns to again and again, but they're generally pretty good ones, like the people to whom P.J.'s administered his brainwashing drug genially agreeing to complete insanity ("just taking a little shortcut through Pavarotti"). </div>
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<b>MAIREAD: </b>So we picked this storyline when you asked me what I was working on right now, and I said "a novel about teenagers and death," and then you said "P.J. Maybe!" And so I want to talk about how he fits in here as a protagonist. One thing is really cool, and that thing was especially clear to me as a Dredd newb---P.J. makes Dredd seem like a straight up good guy, so much so that the cat and mouse game feels not as dramatic as it could. P.J. is bad because he kills people, Dredd is good because he's trying to stop P.J. from killing people. And so on.</div>
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<b>DOUGLAS: </b>(What's funny about that is that Dredd spends so much of his time in this volume shaking his fist in an I'll-get-you-yet way! That's pretty uncharacteristic, really.)</div>
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<b>MAIREAD: </b>That said, one thing I found sort of terrible was how P.J.'s youth was fetishized, kept a prop not a force for change in the narrative. This series takes such a rich look at good guys vs. bad guys, blood vs. no blood, etc., that I expected it to treat youth vs. adults similarly. But no!</div>
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P.J.'s motives and backstory are fairly uncomplicated---while I guess there is a whiff of protecting the family name, in the beginning, once P.J. realizes there's more money for him elsewhere he has no qualms switching not just his name, but his face too. And after that it's the simple "money gets you forever comfort, money gets you forever love" kinda equation. The only way we really know he's a kid are the "what I did on my summer vacation" titles, and several pages in crayon. Immature visions of girlfriends aside, really the only way we know P.J.'s a kid is that he misspells words sometimes. If my students wrote this story I'd tell them grammar and spelling don't make voice, they're a choice you make about how people hear your voice.</div>
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We know some kids in a play about fairies were once mean to P.J., but beyond that we don't really know anything unique about his history (plus he was mean to them too). To me this makes his story straight horror, which I feel was irresponsible for such talented writers (and maybe just in general as well---I'm not sure but this came out before, during, and after Columbine right?). The patterns seems to be morph, kill, chase; morph, kill, chase, and since P.J. doesn't have sidekicks or pop loves or an endpoint, since we have nothing to blame when his patterns change (meaning when the murders get messier, when they incorporate dentist offices and Christmas tree ornaments), we're left thinking he's just crazy---or worse, just young. I feel like that's as grave an underwriting as saying his girlfriends are just blow-up dolls---but, is that a fair reading? What did you think?</div>
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<b>DOUGLAS: </b>Columbine was 1999, and the "Bug"-to-"Mock-Choc" sequence appeared between 1987 and 1993 (PJM turns 18 on the final page of the latter)--by the time he appeared again post-Columbine, he was already 25 years old or so. The most significant source of the character, I suspect, is <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrian_Mole"><span class="s1">Adrian Mole</span></a>, the protagonist of a series of novels by Sue Townsend, which were popular enough in Britain in the '80s that they were adapted into TV series, a stage musical and a couple of computer games; P.J. is effectively Adrian Mole as a serial killer.</div>
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I should also note that <i>The Complete P.J. Maybe</i> was complete when it was published (in 2006), but is no longer. A previous comprehensive P.J. collection appeared in 2004 (as <i>2000 AD Extreme Edition 2</i>, with a new cover by Cliff Robinson, above), and was promptly made obsolete by "Six" and then "Monsterus Mashinashuns"; a year after this book appeared, P.J. returned in a couple of <i>Megazine</i> stories, which led into "Emphatically Evil" and his significant roles in both "Tour of Duty" and "Day of Chaos." He's probably been a more significant player in the period <i>after</i> this book than he has been at any time since the late '80s. And his later appearances make him more complicated as a character: P.J., as Byron Ambrose, eventually manages to get himself elected mayor, and as I recall he's a pretty good one.</div>
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The other funny thing about P.J. is that he's kind of a stand-in for the reader. In his earliest appearances, he was roughly the age of the target audience for <i>2000 AD</i>; as the joke goes, Dredd's most devoted readers in 1977 were seven-year-old boys, and now they're 42-year-old men. P.J. has grown up along with them, which is why it's a little bit of a shock to see him balding and fat at the beginning of "All New Adventures" (at which point it'd been seven years since readers had seen him last); have the cubes really done that to him? Well, no; it's not really him! But we get a bit of a fake-out too.</div>
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<b>MAIREAD: </b>Oh man I love that, PJ as reader-mirror. That's so rad.</div>
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So does Columbine resonate here at all or was that microminded of me? To be fair Dredd's hardly required to share My Grand Vision of Politically Responsible Storytelling, and uh also to be fair, I get a little watchdog around stories boiling down to "crazy lonely teenager, coldblooded killer." Which might not really be what's happening here, especially given the latter appearances you mention---I'm going to sleuth those out!</div>
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Adrian Mole!! When I compare PJ to Adrian---also helpful because Adrian's story unfolds serially too, with sidetracks and a real sense of time---PJ's still frustratingly flat. Adrian can be a whiner and a child, Pandora a priss and a child, but they were still affected by their world, they wanted approval from it and in it. We don't always know where Adrian is going to end up (or if we should root for him to get there), but PJ's world is fixed. We do always see Future PJ by a pool with a droid Fleshlight and a grin. (Or hmmm, maybe not---I should track down the Ambrose.)</div>
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Townsend wrote teenage anxiety really well I think---the sincerity of it and how it makes you smell gross and break out sometimes, how it can be sweet or cruel on a dime (and not always intentionally!). If Townsend wrote PJ (which of course is different than PJ being Adrian as a serial killer), he'd have a wider emotional spectrum, say, also his cockiness would have a nervous edge to it and we'd find ouselves identifying with him at least an eensy sliver of the time. I wish PJ had a Rosie, or better a Robert Stainforth.</div>
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<b>DOUGLAS: </b>Yeah, I don't quite feel the Columbine thing at all. P.J.'s not an alienated kid, not snapping under unbearable pressure: he's just a gifted psychopath. The clue to the model of what he's like as an adult (and was always kind of like as a kid) is in the title of "The Talented Mayor Ambrose": he's shifted from being an Adrian Mole to being Patricia Highsmith's <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Ripley"><span class="s1">Tom Ripley</span></a>.<br />
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As for P.J.'s youth--my take on it is that he's aged, but he's never grown up emotionally in any way. He's the kid who always demands what he wants, except instead of pitching a fit if he doesn't get it, he kills anyone who stands in the way of that particular moment's happiness. He can be charming when he needs to be; he even likes the idea of being a humanitarian, when it suits his purposes (as Don Pedro and, later, Byron Ambrose). But his closest bond is still with his will-less sexbot, and his immediate gratification, no matter how small, takes precedence over everybody else's lives. When you're a 13-year-old boy, the dream of having a Liana (or, in Adrian Mole's case, a Pandora) in your life can seem to take precedence over everything else. When you're a 25-year-old man, if all you want is an Inga, there's a problem. (Although he's not <i>always</i> seeking out pure luxury--by the end of "Day of Chaos," though, he's managed to connive himself into a position that's kind of comfortable but <i>very</i> powerful, with a companion who's not especially Inga-like.)</div>
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<b>MAIREAD: </b>Though I tripped up a couple times on it too (did people's mannerisms morph as well, or is everyone just that far into the story?), I loved the idea of Face Changer as Game Changer. The brutal visceralness of it (do those machines burn? slice? chew? rearrange otherwise somehow?) kept it from being too cute. It stayed sci-fi, straight pure power---not theory, not Joseph Campbell's mask or Jay Gatsby's wealth. I really loved the shrug "no copyright on a face."</div>
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<b>DOUGLAS: </b>The face-changers were established pretty early on as technology that's, you know, around. (There's a scene in "Day of Chaos" where a face-change machine operator is examining P.J.'s face and noting that it seems like he's had a lot of work done.)</div>
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<b>MAIREAD: </b>The book I read was dedicated to Tom Frame, can we talk a bit about him? He did the majority of lettering for <i>Judge Dredd </i>up until this point, yes?</div>
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<b>DOUGLAS: </b>For all that I've talked about the enormous stylistic variety of <i>Dredd</i> stories, their one unifying visual element was Frame's lettering. (I associate the series' first three decades with his hand the way I associate the classic <i>X-Men</i> era with Tom Orzechowski, <i>Sandman</i> with Todd Klein, Walt Simonson's <i>Thor</i> with John Workman...) There are a few episodes lettered by other people, and they just look a little off somehow. I believe Annie Parkhouse took over as the series' letterer after Frame died, and she's been doing it ever since. I do wish he'd consistently corrected "Cuidad Baranquilla" (sic), though.</div>
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<b>MAIREAD: </b>Ah right, me too! This is probably a "duh Mairead" kind of moment but I'd never thought about the tone and focus consistent lettering can give a story, especially in one like this where there's all kinds of things whizzing past everyone's nose all the time. Maybe too that's why I was feeling the misspellings in PJ's dialogue more than the passages in crayon---the crayon felt cutesy, a Dad joke. The misspellings snuck up, which is much creepier.</div>
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The art I loved the most---dress in the window catches your eye-style---was Anthony Williams', especially the sour candy colors in the section where Junior's cruelly offed. And the eyebrows, how people touch their chins when they're thinking. The tufts of hair like prairie dogs popping up from holes, the smirky angle of the pink straw in P.J.'s mouth, when the judge is DANGGGG!ing on the door---it's perfect.</div>
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I also liked the sexy androgyny Williams gifts certain characters, especially P.J.'s mom. (Admittedly she is near death in this scene, but that's less creepy than it sounds!) Her green wristbands and low blue pumps were a nice contrast to the boring centerfoldy balloon buns we see elsewhere.</div>
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Though I did love the cherry pop pink mohawk she has when we meet, P.J.'s first girlfriend, Liana, is wet and in a bikini more often than not! On the one hand (and like Laura Hudson said better), come on already. So I would not give this to my little sister but on the other hand, <i>Judge Dredd </i>is not required to cater to my vision of a dream woman. It's more helpful, for the sake of this conversation, to talk about how that look works in this story---and well, pretty well.</div>
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P.J. is a certain kind of horny fourteen-year-old boy, and so if you extend that gaze to his girlfriends, it makes sense, how they're really just shapes and hair in heels. And on that note I was really impressed with how Inge, his favorite girlfriend (not coincidentally, literally also a robot-girlfriend!)---how her eyes are drawn so blank. Her body's a centerfold but her shoulders are never square, she's only half-there. She's an automaton, and creepy-weirdest of all P.J.'s not chagrined by this. He's proud. Everyone knows he's getting laid by a beautiful woman who never talks back.</div>
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<b>DOUGLAS: </b>Liana never gets to be anything but a fourteen-year-old's wish-fulfillment pin-up. Inga is a much sharper bit of writing: P.J. actually loves her <i>because</i> she has no will of her own. (A great one-two pair of sentences: "I do'nt think I could ever find a better companion than Inga. She was custom bilt by Per Lunquest, the virtuoso of the Swedish love droid.")</div>
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<b>MAIREAD: </b>Inga is, and a sharper bit of drawing too I think. Vacant eyes work on a droid, and I loved the moment when her hair changes in the car on the way to the abandoned dentist's office. But my beef with the wish-fulfillment pin-up schtick isn't so much the perky-perky-perkiness, which is annoying of course! But that's not unique to <i>Dredd</i>. Here it's more that Wagner's missing an opportunity to tell a more colorful story---characters want things, and what PJ wants can't change or respond to him. When Liana's bikini chilling, does she miss her pals at the Juve Club? When Inge's not murdering anyone, does she live in the closet on a hanger? If nothing else, blurry spots like these keep PJ's character underdeveloped as well.</div>
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For example, I loved the scene where Stalin picks Inge up and the two get to chat without PJ hovercrafting. She puts her hand on his Iron Ron, Stalin acts surprised, and we get to chuckle. Best, now we know Inge functions without PJ around or a murder weapon in her hand, so any scene where those two are in public together feels brighter, richer---even if she never says another word.</div>
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One page I'd like to talk about is the second in "Wot I Did During Necropolis"---maybe I'm being a doof but maybe it's my absolute favorite, spooky alchemy-wise. It's when P.J. is breaking out of the cubes, and facing a lean, spiderleg-haired guy with a bloody axe. I <i>think </i>P.J. scares the guy off with an invisible---imaginary---buzzsaw, then actually slices a guard's head with that buzzsaw. At this point my mother is horrified that her daughter has such a gory favorite, but... did P.J. just manifest a buzzsaw, and did other people see it, and then did it change the storyline?</div>
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<b>DOUGLAS: </b>I really like your reading of the mysterious invisible chainsaw, although I confess it wouldn't have occurred to me. The weird thing about "Necropolis" proper, to which that story's a tiny coda, is that we never actually got to see much of the havoc the Dark Judges (and Phobia and Nausea) were wreaking on panel; I gather that when all hell was breaking loose, P.J. just strolled through it and made the most of it. ("Wot I Did During Necropolis" started a little tradition of following up catastrophes with stories showing him turning lemons into lemonade, most recently "Wot I Did During the Worst Dissaster in Mega-City History.")</div>
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<b>MAIREAD: </b>Admittedly an invisible chainsaw would be uh, a huge inconsistency in the text. And I suppose Looey Dewey [sic] could have dropped his axe, then PJ could'ove used it to scalp the warden and get the keys. Maybe.</div>
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<b>DOUGLAS: </b>So here's a question for you. The world-building here--what do you make of it? How much of a sense of a political and economic and social world do you get from what you see here? <i>Dredd</i> had a period of super-intense world-building that went up through, I'd say, its first dozen years, and has tapered off since: just opening the book randomly to the Floris scene, the belliwheels and mock chocs and professional eaters, and the robot and pod designs, were all established relatively early on. How much of it holds up for you as someone coming in at this point?</div>
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<b>MAIREAD: </b>I definitely didn't always get the specifics---to me Floris was just a lady with cool eyes and a terrible weight problem, and so I guess I wondered why PJ was picking on her in particular. That said, we know he's nuts so I didn't stall there too long---it's very clearly established that this is a set other world with fixed rules, fashions, limits, etc., which was a help. I never expected magic to happen or a curtain to lift. If anything, I was confused by how class functions in this world, how power works. It obviously has a presence, Dredd's obviously a force to be reckoned with and PJ's parents' marriage was politically complicated. So why does PJ's world never risk being shattered? In the beginning I kept wondering when he'd fall on his nose, but nope it seems like as long as he has his brains and a face changer and keeps moving, he's all set.</div>
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<b>DOUGLAS:</b> The basic rule is that all power proceeds from the Judges; it's a police state in the most literal sense. To the extent that anyone else has political power, it's power that the Judges allow them to have, usually to offload things it's inconvenient for them to control. P.J.'s world never risks being shattered because he lives a charmed life.</div>
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Another question: life is very, very cheap in this series--even beyond P.J. killing 20,000 people to get at one, slaughter routinely happens to provide a punch line or punctuation. We don't see much of the Justice Dept. supporting cast in this particular volume, but even when Stalin kills himself (to become "Chief Justice in Heaven"!), Dredd brushes it aside: "The end of a career--it happened so often that way." Can there really be much in the way of dramatic tension under those circumstances? Do you find yourself caring about what happens, or just drifting along with the mayhem?</div>
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<b>MAIREAD: </b>On the one hand, I drifted along okay. You're right, dramatic tension isn't much of a hook here so after a point it felt like watching Saturday morning cartoons, and I liked those laughs---Orin Scrivelloesque squirming in the dentist office, Lili who is "burst" by a compressed oxy capsule in her breakfast. Fingers in sugarplum cake. On the other, the woman suspended "like a Christmas fairy" was six o'clock news, she frightened me for real. We don't know who she is, right? And why, when most of the other murders happened behind closed doors, did PJ need to show her to the city? Who does he need to scare? I read this scene at a bar in my neighborhood and felt cold walking home. It felt like a scene from our world not Dredd's.</div>
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<b>DOUGLAS:</b> Ah--yeah, Wagner doesn't quite spell that out until near the end of the story. The victims in "Six" were the kids who appeared in the holiday pageant with P.J. when he was a six-year-old; he'd sabotaged their hoverjets, they figured out it was him and got mad at him, and several decades later he's getting his revenge ("It was me who doctored their hoverwings. They'd just no right to say so, that's all"), in each case in a way thematically appropriate to the fairy they played in the pageant. Miasma Fung (the one impaled on top of the building) played the Christmas Fairy, Floris McDonald was the Mock-Choc Fairy, etc.</div>
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One more question: What do you make of PJM as a <i>foil</i> for Dredd? As Ben Saunders and I were discussing last week, he's one of the very few long-term recurring antagonists Dredd has had, since most people can't go up against him for too long without taking a bullet to the head (or a missile to the territory). Chopper's effectively retired, Mean Machine Angel has aged out; the Dark Judges are still around, since "you cannot kill what doesssss not live" etc., but P.J.'s been around for the long haul, since his whole deal is being slippery. How does that work dramatically (or not) for you as a reader? </div>
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<b>MAIREAD: </b>Potentially he works brilliantly---youth and wealth and clever-as-a-foxness are great for tension. But---in this collection, at least---I felt like the writing relied too heavily on face changers and different environments. This was really sweet as far as the look was concerned (I loved the Gypsy Rita scene, and the segue from Godfrey Stiggis's body and PJ's heart to Pedro Julio Montez!), but weak, I felt, as far as plot and character development go. At times it felt like PJ starts as a teen just for time, just so the artists could draw a maximum amount of scenes and faces---and don't get me wrong, I loved that! I just wish the writers could've used all the colors they had too. Each section builds up to a shake-fist and a smirk, then off we go again, verse-chorus-verse.</div>
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<b>***</b></div>
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Thanks again to Mairead! Next week: thriller time, as I take on <i>The Chief Judge's Man</i>.</div>
Douglas Wolkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10691167073493285913noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7321253799411057654.post-70931047306962876732012-09-09T23:00:00.000-07:002012-09-09T23:00:08.199-07:00Brothers of the Blood<div style="text-align: center;">
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(Reprints <i>Judge Dredd</i> stories from <i>2000 AD</i> Progs 1186-1188, 1215-1222, 1280, 1281, 1300, 1301, 1350-1356 and 1378-1381)</div>
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We've got another remarkable guest this week. Ben Saunders is a Professor of English at the University of Oregon, where he's the founder of a new undergraduate minor in Comics and Comics Studies, and author of <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/082644198X/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=082644198X&linkCode=as2&tag=readcomi-20"><span class="s1"><i>Do The Gods Wear Capes?</i></span><span class="s2">: </span><span class="s1"><i>Spirituality, Fantasy, and Superheroes</i></span></a>. He's also an old-school Squaxx, and joined me to discuss this collection of stories from the early '00s in which we see more of Dredd's extended family.</div>
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<b>BEN: </b>First of all, Douglas, I have to thank you for providing me with an excuse to read Dredd again, for the first time in many years.</div>
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I was an impressionable nine-year-old, living in Cardiff, Wales, in 1977 when <i>2000 AD</i> initially launched <span class="s3">--</span> back when that title actually evoked the future, in other words <span class="s3">--</span> and the folks at IPC had me hooked from my very first Prog (#4, the first one with no free gift attached). I quickly became obsessed by all things Zarjaz and Scrotnig. Of course, I already adored the handful of SF themed TV shows that were broadcast on British TV in the 1970s <span class="s3">--</span> <i>Dr. Who</i> and <i>The Tomorrow People</i> and Gerry Anderson’s stuff, occasionally supplemented by reruns of <i>Star Trek --</i> and since many stories in <i>2000 AD</i> borrowed elements from these various shows, I was predisposed to like the comic. But the creators at <i>2000 AD</i> were also able to present these borrowed elements in much more compellingly nasty ways than I was used to, and could get away with things that would not have been allowed on television.</div>
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Take <i>M.A.C.H. 1</i>, for example. Superficially, this story was just a straight-up rip-off of <i>The Six Million Dollar Man</i>, with British agent John Probe standing in for American Steve Austin. But even the earliest episodes contained scenes of vivid cruelty that would never have made it to the small screen; for example, I can still recall the opening page of an early story wherein an evil sultan forces a screaming man to drink molten gold through a funnel. (I’m pretty sure this horrible example of “orientalist” stereotyping was drawn by the great Massimo Belardinelli, one of the most admired of Tharg’s “art-robots” during these seminal years). What’s more, while Steve Austin never seemed to have any doubts about the decency of his US government superiors (represented as they were by the avuncular Oscar), John Probe’s boss, Sir Denis Sharpe, was a monster of mendacity. Sharpe regarded Probe as little more than piece of military hardware, exploited his vulnerabilities, and lied to him about his origins. This was the <i>Six Million Dollar Man</i> as it might have been reconceived by John Le Carre and Philip K. Dick, and then repackaged for the consumption of schoolboys growing up in soon-to-be-Thatcherite Britain: a paranoid vision of heroism without glamour, without honor, and ultimately without hope.<br />
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Importantly, then, the first <i>2000 AD</i> stories <span class="s3">--</span> <i>M.A.C.H. 1,</i> <i>Flesh, The Harlem Heroes</i>, and the re-vamped <i>Dan Dare</i> <span class="s3">--</span> were not just spectacularly and sadistically violent, to a degree that you would rarely find even in more overtly “adult” British entertainments of the period (although they certainly were that). These stories were also fabulously, subversively, and perhaps <i>refreshingly</i> cynical. Looking back now, it strikes me that in all of these serials, the dominant structures of power <span class="s3">--</span> the British Secret Service in <i>M.A.C.H. 1</i>, the corporate masters in <i>Flesh</i>, the sports/entertainment industry in <i>The Harlem Heroes</i>, and the Space Federation in <i>Dan Dare</i> <span class="s3">--</span> are represented as fundamentally corrupt. In fact, one of the most repeated suggestions across this otherwise quite thematically disparate group of genre tales is that while there may indeed be heroes in the world, they are almost never in positions of authority. <i>The good guys are not in control</i>. On the contrary, and more often than not, those who strive to be good guys will themselves fall victim to institutions that prize ideological purity and the profit motive over individual human lives. (The possible exception here was the ghastly <i>Invasion</i>, the most unimaginative and simplistic strip in the comic in those early days, with its straightforwardly racist opposition of “good” British subjects and “evil” foreigners. But even this generally worthless story placed an essentially anti-authoritarian hero at its center; although almost never rising above the stereotypes of English working-class machismo, resistance fighter Bill Savage is protrayed as regarding the discipline and traditional hierarchy of the British Army with disdain.)</div>
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I think it is significant that this message regarding the corruption of institutional authority <span class="s3">--</span> with its attendant negative implications for the heroic project more generally <span class="s3">-- </span>should be so pervasive throughout the comic that would eventually bring <i>Judge Dredd</i> to the world.</div>
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Because at first blush Dredd would appear to express the very opposite idea. He’s not an outsider battling a corrupt system, but is instead the ultimate authoritarian <span class="s3">--</span> the hardnosed lawman of the future, both a tool and a figurehead for the institutions of power and control in Mega-City One. But of course, it turns out that the issue of how we should respond to Dredd’s authoritarianism has become one of the key questions <span class="s3">--</span> perhaps THE key question <span class="s3">--</span> in our critical discussions of the character. Are we intended to admire him or not? Is he a hero or a monster? Or is he a more complex satirical figure? And if so, what is he satirizing? Do his stories constitute a parodic assault upon the myth of the loner-hero, primarily associated with US cultural values, as handed down in countless westerns and cop-dramas? Or are the real targets of the strip closer to their British home? Were Dredd’s creators motivated by their opposition to Thatcherism? Or were the skewering the xenophobic island-dweller-mentality? Or were they in fact critiquing the democratic-socialist nanny-state?</div>
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Confusingly, I think the answer to all of these questions might be “yes” <span class="s3">--</span> at different times in the history of the series. And because <i>Judge Dredd</i> can (and has) operated within a different variety of hermeneutic horizons over the years, the strip can be difficult to summarize or even generalize about <span class="s3">¾</span> as well as difficult to introduce to first time readers, or to sell to audiences outside of the United Kingdom. Even long time fans of the strip will have conflicting ideas about which incarnations of the character represent the most successful or essentially “Dredd-like” versions of Dredd.</div>
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Nevertheless, it appears (from looking at some of your earlier columns, Douglas) that during my time away from the strip, Dredd’s more problematic dimensions have been increasingly emphasized in stories like <i>America</i> and <i>Judgement Day</i>. But the potential for Judges to abuse their powers has been an overt theme of the series from very early on. Thus, looking back, the first story to feature Dredd’s clone-brother Rico can easily be read as a classic projection of Dredd’s own capacity for evil and corruption onto a conveniently Jungian doppelganger or shadow-figure.</div>
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And at the same time, a lot of the grim humor in the strip during its first few years <span class="s3">--</span> a lot of what I liked about it as a child and a young teenager, in other words <span class="s3">--</span> emerged from the representation of Dredd not as straightforwardly admirable figure, but rather from the relatively undisguised hints of malice that would shine through at key moments. I’m thinking now of the cold, almost James Bond-style one-liners that Dredd would casually dispense in the course of his duties (telling a grotesquely overweight crook he has a “fat chance” of getting time off for good behavior, for example); or of more sadistic moments, such as the early story in which Dredd has an arson suspect’s skin removed so that he can analyze the results for minute traces of fire-raising chemicals.</div>
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The (slightly tricky and perhaps too readily misunderstood) point that I’m trying to make here is that Dredd’s malicious, bullying, abusive side was (at least originally) part of the <i>appeal</i> of the character from the very beginning, at least for me (and I think for others, too, or I wouldn’t admit to it). Moreover, this dark side to the character was <i>not</i> merely a side-effect or unacknowledged consequence of the fascistic tendencies of the “supercop” genre, and <i>not </i>just an implicit element of the character that later stories would draw out more critically and explicitly. On the contrary, even from <i>Case Files Volume One</i>, Dredd quickly emerges as a bit of a dick <span class="s3">--</span> and we <i>like </i>him for it. Well, <i>you</i> may or may not like him for it, I supposed; but the point is that, tonally, in these stories, we are not asked to judge Dredd, as it were, for his malicious tendencies, but are instead invited to take amused pleasure in them. Indeed, I think it was Dredd’s dickishness, at least as much as any Clint Eastwood-style display of implacable determination and unstoppable lethal force, that really made his character distinctive and appealing in the Britain of the late 1970s and early 1980s.</div>
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And yes, Dredd’s dickishness may subsequently have been harnessed for satirical purposes, and explored further in relatively self-conscious psychological tales examining the authoritarian mindset, and even held up for criticism in stories that also function as political allegories. But initially, I think, it was the humorous tensions that emerged from his contradictory status as an “admirable asshole” that made Dredd such a compellingly original figure, at least within British comics, and which significantly contributed to his ultimate ascension to the position of <i>2000 AD'</i>s best-loved character.</div>
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Which brings me, finally, to what I liked about <i>Brothers of the Blood</i>. With this collection, John Wagner and his various collaborators seems to have found a way to get back to the <i>feel</i> of those earliest Dredd strips -- despite the weight of established continuity, and the various and at times ideologically contradictory uses to which Dredd has been put, in the intervening years. Wagner pulls off this trick by sidelining Dredd, to a large degree, and focusing on a newer younger judge-in-training <span class="s3">--</span> who just happens to be a clone of Dredd himself. Resisting the temptation to produce a predictably Oedipal tale of rivalry and conflict, Wagner instead takes the opportunity to revisit the experiences that make Dredd Dredd -- his education and training, and his first encounters with the bizarre and grotesque “crimes of the future” that are his brief as a Mega-City One Lawman. By presenting the younger character following in the footstep of the older, Wagner inevitably invites us to take a more reflexive stance on the processes that combined to turn Dredd into the rigid, inflexible, hyperbolically hard-assed figure that he is. We see the loneliness of the younger Dredd clone (who takes the resonant name of Rico) as he attempts to fit in with his first sector house, only to find himself policing the other judges for signs of imperfection and weakness. And thus, a character that it might have become harder to like over the years becomes sympathetic again <span class="s3">--</span> even as he continues to behave like the dick he has to be.</div>
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<b>DOUGLAS:</b> You've touched on one of the things I think is fascinating about <i>2000 AD</i> in general, which is that its most enthusiastic readers at this point seem to be almost entirely men who are just about our age--people who discovered it as boys (you were lucky enough to get in a few years earlier than I did), and with whom it's grown up. <i>Judge Dredd</i>, in particular, has aged along with its audience; we've gotten to see 35 years' worth of the character <i>and the society around him</i> changing, as Dredd has gradually transformed from an "admirable asshole" charging in to save the day to a living symbol of how violence propagates more violence and ultimately brings down disaster.</div>
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(As a side note: have you read the Pat Mills-written <i>Savage</i> series from the last few years? It's a very smart, very clever riff on what 30-years-older readers of <i>Invasion!</i> would see differently: it begins five years after the Volgan invasion, in occupied England, where Bill Savage is a sociopathic resistance fighter who's pretty much as fatal to be allied with as to be plotting against. Oh, and the Volgans turn out to have invaded England for its oil reserves...)</div>
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A lot of <i>Brothers of the Blood</i> is directly about Dredd's history coming back to haunt him--specifically, some of the actions he took in the period when you were reading. (I'm curious: when did you get off the bus, exactly? Sometime around "Necropolis"?) Rico II turns out to be one of the clones Dredd rescued in "Dredd Angel"; "The End of the Affair" is a sequel to the two earlier Bella Bagley stories on which John Wagner and Ian Gibson had collaborated (in Prog 444 and <i>Judge Dredd Mega-Special</i> 1991), now that Dredd mistakenly thinks he understands a little bit more about love (post-DeMarco).</div>
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"Sector House" is a return visit to the territory of "The Pit," which had run about five years earlier: the extended, partly Ezquerra-drawn storyline in which Dredd gets assigned to clean up a dirty precinct and has to deal with the consequences of a pair of his co-workers having an affair. In "The Pit," Dredd manages to handle a lot of things--not everything--more or less diplomatically; Rico II makes a mess of the same challenges in "Sector House" because he doesn't have his older clone-brother's experience. And bringing in Roffman to come up with a clever surveillance technique is twisting the knife, since Roffman played a big role in making things difficult for Dredd in the fallout from "The Pit."</div>
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"Leaving Rowdy" (which appeared in the 25th anniversary issue of <i>2000 AD</i>) has callbacks to most of the earlier stories set in Dredd's apartment in Rowdy Yates Block, but its first emotional zinger is Dredd's memory of having selected Lopez to die in "The Judge Child," and its darker one is a reference likely to be lost on anyone who wasn't paying close attention during "Necropolis": Dredd gives Rico II his copy of his <i>Comportment</i> with his handwritten notes. That's the same copy Kraken was reading during his breakdown, when he saw Dredd's note in the margin: "What about the <i>big lie</i>?"--which I think is one of the key moments in the entire series, the moment at which we discover that even Dredd understands that the Judges' authority isn't legitimate. (He's already sort of warned Rico II about that with his speech at the end of "Sector House" about having to believe a lie.)<br />
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And then there's "Blood and Duty," which seems to have had its origin in Wagner wrangling with the problem of what he'd called <a href="http://www.2000ad.nu/classof79/jw_interview.htm"><span class="s1">"Dredd's impossible niece"</span></a> in 2000, a couple of years before he wrote it. Vienna had first appeared in Prog 116, as the four-year-old-or-so daughter of Dredd's late clone-brother Rico. But Rico had died in Prog 33, having just returned from serving a 20-year sentence on Titan; there's no way he'd have been able to conceive a child five years before that... and so Vienna stayed off-panel until Wagner figured out a solution in time for her to reappear close to twenty years later.</div>
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The great thing about Vienna is that she's not just the only genuine family Dredd has (and we've seen him grow gradually more urgent desires to feel some kind of familial connection, although as with his attachment to DeMarco he simply doesn't understand that that's what he's feeling), she's the living symbol of his worst failure and fear. Dredd killing Rico was the first real turning point of the series, and Mike McMahon's close-up of Rico's face, surgically mangled and twisted with fury, is maybe the image we've seen redrawn or referred to most often in the course of <i>Dredd</i>'s past 35 years. (The guy Rico shoots on the page where Simon Fraser draws it again in "Blood Cadets" is wearing a T-shirt that says "McMahon Copiers Ltd.") The point of "Blood Cadets" is that Rico was Dredd's "other self"--the part that was susceptible to corruption--and that killing him was how Dredd symbolically destroyed his own weakness, and also destroyed the only family he had. (And it's generally the case that the over-the-top maliciousness and sadism Dredd shows in those earliest stories evaporates quickly, if not completely, after "The Return of Rico.")<br />
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So then, a year and a half after Rico's death, Vienna turns up, and--as Wagner explains 25 years after the fact--Dredd <i>has no idea what to do</i> about her. She represents what he's cut off from himself, so he cuts her off too. I complained about the stories that immediately follow "Vienna" in <i>Case Files 03</i> when I wrote about it, but they make a lot more sense in the light of Wagner's later stories. Having pushed Vienna out of his life, he tries to be more merciful (in "City Block" and the one where he forgives Walter), and he tries to make Ralph Bryce his surrogate child--although that totally fails to take, as we see much later in "Judging Ralphy." (Even the wretched "The Guinea Pig That Changed the Law" makes sense if you read it as part of Dredd's attempt to be a little less cruel, and even though I figured we'd never again see a reference to the "Dredd Act" that outlawed animal experimentation, there's a lovely throwaway bit about it in a "Lenny Zero" episode that appeared a few weeks ago.)</div>
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But Dredd turns out to be incredibly protective of Vienna, in his generally inept but sometimes very useful way. (See the great line in "The Satanist," which otherwise is a pretty wobbly story: "the trouble was, he didn't know what young people were like.") There's that story where he's standing around glaring at her boyfriend--Gordon Rennie's "Blood Trails," maybe? And, more recently, in "Tea for Two," the episode with her near the end of "Day of Chaos," we see Dredd peeling himself away from one of the most urgent (if hopeless) jobs he's ever done to make sure Vienna's okay. He threatens to arrest her if she doesn't agree to come with him to safety; "Oh, come on! You sound just like yourself!," she says. She knows he wants more than anything to preserve her (at arm's length), which is why she genuinely doesn't fear him.</div>
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Finally, there's "Brothers of the Blood" itself, which has snuck up on me over time. The opening sequence, with Dolman putting on his trainee's helmet and getting ready to meet his superiors, echoes the beginning of "By Lethal Injection," the prologue to "Necropolis" in which Kraken goes to meet what he believes is his doom. This is something I love about Wagner's long-term control of the series--he's great at showing us history <i>sort of</i> repeating itself, but turning out differently. Of the Fargo clones we've met, Dredd and Rico II took one path; Rico I and Kraken took another. But Dolman's role is to suggest that that's a false dichotomy: he rejects the game altogether. That's why I'm disappointed that Dolman turned up in the recent storyline "Debris," flouting the rules but essentially doing his thing for the Judges like it's no big deal. I prefer the idea of him leading the life Dredd might have had if it had ever occurred to him to choose it.</div>
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One thing I'm curious about: can you tell me a bit more about how your experience of reading these stories compares to the earlier experience of reading Dredd stories--some of them by the same people!--back when you were a kid? I generally think that Wagner seems to step his game up pretty impressively every five years or so: his dialogue and pacing and ability to juggle plot threads are miles beyond what they were in the early years. There's that great transition in "Sector House" where we see Levine and Rico assigned to work together, and then boom, it's a few hours later and everything's gone horribly wrong--I can't see Wagner having pulled off something like that even a few years earlier.<br />
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<b>BEN: </b>I haven’t seen Mills’ <i>Savage</i>, but it’s a neat idea. I seem to remember reading that the original strip was Mills’ conception, but most of the scripts were written by Gerry Finley-Day -- whose career at <i>2000 AD</i> seems largely to have involved taking generic war stories and giving them a bit of a futuristic patina. Not the strongest talent they had, in other words, though serviceable when paired with a strong artist.</div>
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I’m not sure exactly when I stopped reading Dredd, y’know. My old Progs are still in the attic of my parents’ house in Wales. “Necropolis” sounds about right -- I think I can remember reading the start of that one, but I’m not sure I ever finished it. So I am intrigued by your reference to “the big lie,” because I don’t know what it is. The foundational illegitimacy of the Judges’ authority isn’t a part of my sense of the backstory (although the tendency towards over-reaching has obviously been part of the strip from the earliest days, as I noted already).</div>
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On the subject of Dredd over-reaching or abusing authority <span class="s3">--</span> one of the first stories I can recall making this a theme in a fairly obvious and satirical way was "The Art of Kenny Who?" I remember talking with school friends about this story at the time, because <span class="s3">--</span> for perhaps the first time, and at least for us as early-teenage readers <span class="s3">--</span> that story made it almost impossible to identify with Dredd. It was clearly about something else: art and freedom of expression versus the drive to conformism. Now, bear in mind, I haven’t read that story in about twenty-five years, so I’m reluctant to say more in case I have the details wrong. But I’d like to think it’s a compliment to Wagner and Kennedy that I can still recall it pretty distinctly, and felt it as something of a challenge to the audience <span class="s3">--</span> or at least, the admittedly rather small sample of the audience constituted by me and my friends at the time!</div>
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Picking up on one of your many insightful observations about the stories in <i>Brothers of the Blood</i> <span class="s3">--</span> yes, I too was struck by Dredd’s recollection, in the Rowdy Yates story, of his decision to make Lopez sample the oracle spice (from which he died), back during the “Judge Child” saga (still probably my personal favorite early Dredd epic, although “Judge Cal” and the “Cursed Earth” storylines were pretty amazing to read week-by-week, too).</div>
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Is that the first time (as far as you know) that Wagner has evoked this moment? I seem to recall Hershey accusing Dredd of victimizing Lopez <span class="s3">--</span> and of course there were the repeated jokes about Lopez’s facial hair, which Dredd did not like. But Dredd himself never reveals any doubt about his decision in the original story, does he? So this would be an interesting acknowledgement from Dredd himself about his own shadow-side, in that case. It might become even more interesting when you consider that the original Judge Child saga is yet another shadow-projection story <span class="s3">--</span> in which the boy who is supposed to represent the salvation of Justice but who turns out to be evil serves as yet another blind for the possibility of evil in Dredd himself.</div>
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In this context of the “shadow of Justice” <span class="s3">--</span> in an essentially Jungian sense <span class="s3">--</span> your remark that “Mike McMahon's close-up of Rico's face, surgically mangled and twisted with fury, is maybe the image we've seen redrawn or referred to most often in the course of Dredd's past 35 years” really caught my attention.</div>
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First, I should thank you for that observation <span class="s3">--</span> I had no idea. But now that you point it out, I’m inclined to see it as related to the “problem” of Dredd’s authoritarianism that I take to be the most recurrent critical issue in discussions of the character. Rico is the first clear example of a Jungian shadow or doppelganger to appear in the series: Dredd’s own brother, and not just a brother, but a twin, and not just a twin but a clone <span class="s3">--</span> a mirror image who is also Dredd’s opposite, evil to Dredd’s good, chaos to his "law."</div>
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As Otto Rank suggested years ago in his famous Jungian study of doppelgangers in literature and early cinema, such shadows or doubles are almost always a projection of some denied or repressed or otherwise unbearable knowledge concerning the protagonist.<br />
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Now, in Dredd’s case, the denied or repressed knowledge at issue is the knowledge of Dredd’s own capacity for evil. In the earlier, more ethically naïve or straightforward strips, Dredd’s shadow or dark side is obviously projected onto villains such as Judge Rico, or Judge Cal, or the Judge Child, or Judge Death (and I’m now noticing for the first time just how strongly these great Dredd villains are associated with the institution of Justice that Dredd is supposed to uphold <span class="s3">--</span> they are <i>all</i> symbolic doubles for Dredd in some crucial way).</div>
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And perhaps it was the <i>reader </i>as much as Dredd himself who was being “protected” from the knowledge of Dredd’s own shadow side by these classic devices of projection and containment.</div>
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But over the years, the shadow of Justice has moved from outside Dredd to inside him, in stories that hint at or actively play up that dark side. Dredd’s “new” memory of his own hostility to Lopez way back during the Judge Child saga <span class="s3">--</span> his new willingness to acknowledge his own shadow <span class="s3">--</span> is a sign of just how far this process had advanced by 2000 or so when Wagner wrote the story.</div>
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And this would at least partly explain why writers and artists on the strip keeping coming back to Rico’s distorted face. He’s Dredd’s original double, so to speak. His story therefore represents the first significant moment that the possibility of Dredd’s own evil erupted into the narrative, in the form of a classic “shadow” figure <span class="s3">--</span> although at the time it was not consciously acknowledged as such, perhaps not even by the creators, and certainly not by most readers. As Dredd’s first encounter with his Shadow, it is therefore a foundational trauma within the series, and it makes perfect sense that as writers of the character have become more self-conscious about Dredd’s dark side they would repeatedly (even compulsively) return to that initial encounter.</div>
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One last thing: you asked about you how my experience of reading these stories compares to the earlier experience of reading Dredd stories back when I was a kid, and point out that Wagner seems only to have improved over the years.</div>
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At one level, I think you are absolutely right <span class="s3">--</span> Wagner has clearly continued to raise his always considerable game. His sense of the emotional beats of a story seems stronger than ever. I’m not sure if this is just a matter of experience, or if it has to do with how much the audience for genre comics of the kind that 2000 AD represents has transformed since 1977.</div>
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But in some ways Wagner just seems less afraid of the accusation of sentiment, when he goes for a moment of pathos <span class="s3">--</span> and I think this is entirely a good thing. There was always a winking referentiality to early <i>2000 AD</i>, but sometimes it would wink at exactly the wrong time, in a way that could radically undercut the writers' own intentions. Witness the “he ain’t heavy –- he’s my brother” line in Pat Mills' original “death of Rico” story. It bugged me even as a kid when reading that story that at the emotional peak of the script I was suddenly hearing The Hollies in my head. Nowadays, I don’t think Wagner would be quite so likely to undercut the drama with such an incongruous piece of citation.</div>
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Having said that, the real difference when I read Dredd now, and think about how I responded to Dredd back then, has less to do with any elements of the writing. I liked the stories in <i>Brothers of the Blood</i>, and will probably seek out some more recent Dredd collections. But what seemed comparatively lacking when I compare those stories to the ones I read as a child was the quality of the art. As a young reader I had an intuitive sense that these comics were as inventively drawn as they were written, and I just don’t get that feeling anymore.</div>
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Carlos Ezquerra is as great as ever, of course. (I was instrumental in having him nominated for the Eisner Hall of Fame this year, and admire the hell out of his work.) But when it comes to the other artists in the collection, I prefer Gibson’s earlier work to his current style <span class="s3">--</span> and artists like Fraser and MacNeil, while solid, just don’t hold a candle, IMO, to folks like Bolland and McMahon at their peak.</div>
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As kids, it was the art that we pored over, copied, and discussed in detail when we talked about and shared these comics. I don’t recall us ever worrying about who <i>wrote</i> the best Dredd, but the debate over who <i>drew</i> the best version of the character <span class="s3">--</span> well, in my immediate cohort, that was a live one. In particular, I used to have long conversations about this issue with a friend named Chris Bowden (who ultimately went on to get a PhD in astrophysics <span class="s3">--</span> proof that comics make people smarter!). We studied the styles of the chief Dredd artists together, and attempted to reproduce them in blue ball-point on the covers of our exercise books in school. (Yeah, we were big nerds.) I have clear memories of Chris explaining the key differences between Dredd’s chin as rendered by Ron Smith versus Dredd’s chin by Bolland. I can recall us both puzzling over Carlos’s tendency to put those black bumpy lines around the outlines of his figures, and wondering if that was just an effect of his preferred tools or a deliberate stylistic choice.</div>
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Perhaps most revealing was the way in which our attitude towards Mike McMahon’s work changed as we aged. We did not like his work at all when we were very young (pre-teen) children, and basically wished the hyper-detailed Bolland could draw the strip all the time. But at some point we came to re-evaluate McMahon, and there were days when <span class="s3">--</span> with a sense of disbelief at the transformation of our own taste <span class="s3">--</span> we might even name him as the greatest Dredd artist of all.</div>
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I know my conversion was at least partly inspired by the conversations I was then starting to have with an unusually perceptive and open-minded art-teacher at my high school <span class="s3">--</span> about the differences between “realism” (and which I would now be more inclined to think of as a kind of conventional representationalism) and other art-styles. Ms. Lace loved expressionist art, and gave me a vocabulary to begin to understand more abstract and distorted drawing styles <span class="s3">--</span> and one day it just clicked for me that I was imposing rather dull representational standards on McMahon, when he was clearly engaged by a completely different kind of artistic project.</div>
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In fact, nowadays, if I could own any original art from the Dredd strip, I think I’d want a piece by McMahon, ahead of anyone else, including Bolland. I think his earliest work was produced under the editorial mandate of “look as much like Carlos as you can.” But around the time of the “Cursed Earth” stories his unique style really began to emerge. I think the color stories he did in those early Dredd annuals ’81 and ’82 are just outstanding. In fact, I think McMahon may have produced some of the best art in the history of British comics, at least in so far as the genre of the action-adventure comic is concerned <span class="s3">--</span> in part because his work is so entirely unlike that of any other British adventure comics-artist (where the masters tend to work the edge of the hyper-real, like Hampson and Bellamy and Burns).</div>
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McMahon, on the other hand, reminds me more of an American master of the form like Kurtzman, if only in his embrace of cartoony expressionism and his astonishing command of storytelling (although I confess I have no idea who McMahon himself would cite as an early comics influence <span class="s3">--</span> and Kurtzman is probably not someone he would have likely encountered?).</div>
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I also love the way McMahon kept on developing over the years. When he moved from <i>Dredd</i> to <i>Slaine</i>, he seemed to take yet another step forward into the realm of pure abstraction, at the level of rendering, even as his storytelling became even more controlled.</div>
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I suppose I might be accused of nostalgia, but I don’t think my evaluation of Bolland and McMahon’s importance is based entirely on such feelings. I see those two (very different) artists as the great originators of the strip. Building on Carlos’s initial designs, I think they contributed more than any other creators (with the possible exceptions of writers Mills and Wagner) to Dredd’s initial popularity with his target audience. Those who followed them are therefore in my mind like the host of artists who have followed Ditko and Romita on Spider-Man, or Kirby and his many inkers on the FF. No matter how accomplished subsequent artists like Andru or Kane or Buscema or Byrne might have been, they are in the end working within parameters that were already established by even more visionary forebears. I think the same is true for artists like Fraser or MacNeil working in the wake of Bolland and McMahon.</div>
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Still, like I said, I enjoyed this collection quite a bit, and I’d be curious to read some more mid-and late-period Dredd. What would you recommend?</div>
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Please bear in mind that I generally can’t stand the <i>Case Files</i> collections because I think they look like absolute shit. I just hate the way the <i>Case Files</i> and related <i>2000 AD</i> collections reproduce the art at an even more reduced size, and (presumably) shot from old comics or fiches without any serious effort at clean-up or detail-restoration <span class="s3">--</span> and with no color for the center spreads and covers! If the stories in question are available in some other format, that would be preferable to me.</div>
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I mean, we are talking about some of the most important British comics material of the last fifty years, at least. So why can’t someone do a limited series of quality reprints, at the right size, with colored center spreads and covers? (I find the standard reprint collections are even more inadequate when it comes to other classic strips like the <i>ABC Warriors</i>. There was a period around Prog 110 or so when we were getting gorgeous color spreads on that strip by artists like Brendan McCarthy and Kevin O’Neill. It’s just a crime to reproduce those at a reduced scale and in black and white.)</div>
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Surely there’s a market for more archival reprints of such great material, in both Britain and the USA. Maybe IDW will see the wisdom of such a line of reprints now they are doing new Dredd stuff?</div>
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<b>DOUGLAS: </b>Yes, I'm pretty sure "Leaving Rowdy" was the first time Lopez had even been mentioned since "The Judge Child." (Wagner seems to have re-read it at some point a few years earlier--around the same time as "In the Year 2120" appeared, he'd written a <i>Megazine</i> serial called "Dead Ringer," which was essentially "The Judge Child" replayed as a farce.)</div>
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Excellent point that most of Dredd's great antagonists are his shadow-self or double ("Judge" somebody-or-other)--the chief exceptions being, I'd say, Chopper, who simply disregards the law instead of redefining it, and P.J. Maybe, who gets to keep coming back because his whole raison d'être is wriggling away from both suspicion and punishment (as we'll see next week). There's never really been a first-rate recurring master criminal in <i>Dredd</i>, a Moriarty or Joker or Lex Luthor, not least because Dredd tends to solve problems with his Lawgiver, but also because Dredd is himself something of an antagonist to the more sympathetic characters in his series! The closest to a crimelord-type recurring bad guy we've ever gotten was Nero Narcos, and (as we saw over the past couple of weeks) that fizzled fairly quickly.</div>
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As for Dredd's clones--Kraken is definitely a kind of shadow-self. Rico II, though; is he something Dredd has repressed? Dolman definitely isn't. Eustace Fargo is still another variation on that setup: arguably, Dredd is <i>his</i> shadow-self, the terrible possibility that he denied until too late. ("It was never meant to be forever, Joe"!)</div>
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On Wagner's ongoing ramping up of his skill: I agree that he's defter with the emotional beats of his plots, and much better at stepping around or understating potential moments of bathos. I also love how tight his writing has gotten--nearly every bit of dialogue tells us a lot more than its literal meaning, and he rarely devotes pages to shoehorned-in action scenes the way he sometimes did in the '90s. (A handful of people have mentioned that throwaway "Good people" line near the end of "Day of Chaos" as a particularly great bit of understatement, and I have to agree.) And one other thing makes his more recent stuff valuable to me is its moral complexity, and its understanding that everyone's in the right according to their own convictions, and wrong according to someone else's. The Sovs of "The Apocalypse War" are cackling villains; in the more recent stories, they're out for what they perceive as justice.</div>
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On the art of Dredd: I agree that there's nobody in the current rotation of artists who's as instantly striking as Bolland or McMahon, although there are a lot of artists I like a lot (especially Henry Flint, who gets to cut loose much more when he's working on, say, <i>Zombo</i>). I think it's significant, though, that Dredd's most important early artists--those two, Ezquerra and Ron Smith, in particular--were <i>so</i> different from each other. Anyone who's drawn <i>Fantastic Four</i> in the past 40 years is, as you note, working in the shadow of Jack Kirby. But the Bolland/McMahon contrast alone opened up <i>Dredd</i> to many, many more visual styles, and almost nobody feels obligated to maintain the look-and-feel of any previous artist. (I don't see Fraser or MacNeil, for instance, as working in a particularly post-Bolland mode, and even less in a post-McMahon mode; if Dave Taylor, who just drew a really nice three-parter in the <i>Megazine</i>, owes a stylistic debt to anyone, it's Moebius...) The most recent prog's Laurence Campbell-drawn episode begins with a three-panel flashback to "The Apocalypse War," and all Campbell has to do to evoke that era is emulate Ezquerra's jagged, curved-cornered panel borders and throw in a super-thick contour on Dredd's helmet; it's also one of the very few examples I can recall of one Dredd artist channeling another's work, other than all those callbacks to the revelation of Rico's face!</div>
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(I also suspect that, for several reasons, it's just not possible for any one artist to crank out as many pages a week in a contemporary style as Ron Smith and Ezquerra used to. There was a discussion at some point of the longest consecutive number of weeks a serial by a single writer/artist team had appeared in <i>2000 AD</i>. I believe the winner was the 50 episodes of Alan Hebden and Massimo Belardinelli's "Meltdown Man," followed by 31 weeks' worth of Wagner and Ezquerra's "Countdown/Necropolis" and 25 weeks of the John Smith/Steve Yeowell "Devlin Waugh" serial we covered last week. The only thing that's come close in the past decade is 18 weeks of Smith and Paul Marshall's "Leatherjack.")</div>
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As for mid- and late-period Dredd recommendations--I'm going to turn that over to this blog's readers! I'll wave the flag for <i>Tour of Duty</i> and <i>Day of Chaos</i>, but there are a lot of the books I'll be covering over the next four or five months that I either haven't read or have read only once, quickly, a while ago. Looking forward to 'em.</div>
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And I'd agree that it'd be great to see some more handsome, oversized reproductions of some of the particularly gorgeous <i>2000 AD</i> material--and that some of the newsprint era's art, in particular, hasn't been especially well-served by the <i>Case Files</i> reprints. (When <i>Dredd</i> goes full-color, though, so do the reprints.) I'm very curious to see what IDW's plans are for reprints beyond the Bolland hardcover--which apparently will be the <i>third</i> book this year to use his cover from Prog 848!</div>
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Thanks again to Ben. Next week, Mairead Case joins me to discuss <i>The Complete PJ Maybe</i>.</div>
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Douglas Wolkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10691167073493285913noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7321253799411057654.post-76749790822172124642012-09-02T23:00:00.000-07:002012-09-02T23:00:09.766-07:00Devlin Waugh: Red Tide<div style="text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/140120578X/ref=as_li_ss_il?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=140120578X&linkCode=as2&tag=readcomi-20"><img border="0" src="http://ws.assoc-amazon.com/widgets/q?_encoding=UTF8&ASIN=140120578X&Format=_SL160_&ID=AsinImage&MarketPlace=US&ServiceVersion=20070822&WS=1&tag=readcomi-20" /></a><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=readcomi-20&l=as2&o=1&a=140120578X" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" width="1" /></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">(Reprints <i>Devlin Waugh</i> stories from <i>2000 AD</i> Progs 1149-1173 and from <i>Judge Dredd Megazine</i> #201-213)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">It's been a bit since we've had any guests here, but we've got a fantastic one this week. I've known my former Techland comrade <a href="http://levgrossman.com/blog/"><span class="s1">Lev Grossman</span></a> for a couple of decades now, on and off; among other things, he's the author of the remarkable novels <i>The Magicians</i> and <i>The Magician King</i>, and <i>TIME</i> magazine's chief book critic. So I was delighted to discuss the second <i>Devlin Waugh</i> collection with him...</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>LEV: </b>I got into <i>Judge Dredd</i> during a particularly low moment in my personal and professional life, when I was living in a cabin in the middle of nowhere in Maine after college. My one source of joy was this ratty drugstore where you could buy packets of old <i>2000 AD</i>'s three for a dollar. I think the grimness suited my mood. I got very emotionally invested in it.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">But I never really followed any non-Dredd stories in the Dreddverse, and I'd never even heard of Devlin Waugh before I started reading <i>Red Tide</i>. I flashed on it because of the name -- I'm also a committed Evelyn Waugh fan. Obviously it's just a throwaway gag, but Devlin's not miles away from a pumped-up vampire superhero version of Sebastian Flyte (or maybe Anthony Blanche). He's campy as hell, obviously ("Why should I be forever expected to martyr myself for the world's misfortunes when I can't even decide which cravat to wear?"), but the writer (John Smith) lets him have real emotions underneath it.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">I was worried that we were in for yet another can-I-be-a-good-guy-if-I'm-a-vampire story, but the source of Devlin's dark side seems to be elsewhere. He's not defined by his vampirism; it doesn't even seem to come up that often. He's just a guy with a manic-depressive streak. The artist does his mania especially well -- he's always grinning a bit too broadly, with that ludicrous gap in his teeth. Devlin often looks ridiculous, and you can tell he's not really aware that he's looking ridiculous. Which makes me like him more. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>DOUGLAS:</b> I think Anthony Blanche is a fine reference point--I'm remembering Waugh's line about how Blanche's "vices flourished less in the pursuit of pleasure than in the wish to shock." That's probably the case with Devlin Waugh; I get the sense that he loves to stay just <i>barely, technically</i> on the side of the angels. But he knows where to draw the line--I crack up when he sternly reminds his mother, with her Bride of Frankenstein hair and her Dan Dare eyebrows, that his brother was "a roue and a libertine." He, on the other hand, is simply a gentleman! (And his face, including the moustache and the gap, is straight-up <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/fawbs/3467447876/"><span class="s1">Terry-Thomas</span></a>.)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>Red Tide</i> is actually the second collection of Devlin Waugh material--the first is <i>Swimming in Blood</i>. (It's also worth noting that several chunks of dialogue were inadvertently omitted from the <i>Red Tide</i> collection--an eagle-eyed reader has reproduced them <a href="http://forums.2000adonline.com/index.php?topic=13626.0"><span class="s1">here</span></a>.) The character was wildly popular from the outset, but he's appeared remarkably little for that: apart from the half-year that the "Chasing Herod"/"Reign of Frogs"/"Sirius Rising" sequence ran weekly in <i>2000 AD</i>, there have been just 36 episodes' worth of Devlin Waugh stories published over the course of the 20 years since he first appeared in the <i>Megazine</i> (plus two text stories and appearances in a pair of Dredd serials), none in the past five years. That seems to be partly because of the false starts that bedeviled the feature early on, but mostly because John Smith's attitude is "it'll be ready when it's ready." So be it! After all, Devlin's not getting any older any more...</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">One of the things that's particularly neat about Smith's writing, I think, is that he's a really enthusiastic worldbuilder--he likes to construct enormous amounts of information that his characters take for granted but that is unknown to his readers, and eventually let us have some of it. He's gotten more adept at that over time, too. I was reading his old <i>2000 AD</i> project <i>Firekind</i> recently, and that one's almost nothing but "check out this crazy world!" with a pre-formed plot stapled on; the marvelous <i>Cradlegrave</i>, on the other hand, lets its worldbuilding, and even the fact that there <i>is</i> worldbuilding in the sense beyond "here's a variation on a familiar urban setting," trickle out subtly.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Smith isn't at all subtle about building Devlin's part of the world of the Mega-Cities, of course, but I really enjoy what he does here instead of subtlety, which is bombarding us with exposition, some of it relevant and some of it just entertainingly phrased, with the <i>very</i> occasional addition of a reference to something longtime readers will recognize. Devlin mentions a Black Museum in passing; the Vicomte Henri LaBas--great name, funnier explanation ("Born in Paris in 1849 but got catapulted into the future when he activated a freak window area during a botched sex magic ritual")--name-drops Sabbat the first time he shows up. And you can tell how much Smith loves writing lines of dialogue like "Seems that ruddy cockatoo of his is a black ectoplasm homunculus." The point isn't to make everything clear, it's to demonstrate that there's <i>way</i> too much going on for <i>anything</i> to be explained, so shut up and hold on and enjoy the ride.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">A question for you: as somebody who's obviously thought a lot about magic in fiction, what are your impressions of how the magical and Lovecraftian stuff works (or doesn't work) here?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>LEV: </b>As somebody who does his own professional line of sorcerous crypto-babble, I'm simply in awe of Smith: <i><a href="http://members.chello.nl/~a.vanarum8/EliotProject/Waste_notes/fabbro_N.htm" target="_blank">il miglior fabbro</a></i>. The way he improvises the technical vocabulary of magic-working is just remarkable: it has approximately the same fullness and complexity that the real world does, and creating that effect takes either a lot of hard work or a little bit of genius. It's master-level stuff, literally sublime, in the Burkean sense: you feel like you're glimpsing just one corner of a vast, orderly, self-consistent body of theory and terminology.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">To cite just one example: watch when they send Pussy Willow into India, after its center of pestilence "goes critical." She checks for "damage to the aethyric levels," recalibrates her mismatched steampunk goggles, the rhetoric downshifts abruptly and:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">"Oh. Wow. A spirit engine in the sky."</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">I felt actual awe. (With an assist from the trippy psychedelic palette of the art.) It's not far off from perfection.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Mind you, as you say, it's mostly Lovecraftian horror-magic: twisted shapes, psionics that drive you mad, garbled prophecies, that sort of thing. Man and beast in the grip of irresistible, unspeakable forces. I wouldn't have minded seeing something more in the practical, Harry Potter style -- watching somebody throw around some Dr. Strange-type force bolts now and then. But that's just personal taste.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">I confess I wrote my last post before I'd finished the actual "Red Tide" half of this diptych, and now I realize I sort of don't understand the rules of vampirism that Devlin is operating under. I get that the aquatic vampires are all mutated and evolved, and that's why they don't look human, and Devlin and Lilith do. (Devlin's dashing good looks seem to have been passed down to his spiritual descendant, Shore Leave on The Venture Bros.) But how does he control his bloodlust? How does he slake it? Do we ever find out how he feeds?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">I very much like the well-judged note of amorality at the book's end (mild spoilers): everyone's raging at Lilith for being a horrible semi-immortal daywalking vampire queen. But Devlin just treats her as an equal, a formidable fellow traveler. He acknowledges her gift, and then spends the last couple of panels preening. Which seems about right.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>DOUGLAS:</b> I assume Devlin feeds the way vampires tend to--there's that early scene where we see him asking his boyfriend Antonio for "a little <i>liquid refreshment</i> before the <i>premiere</i>... I promise I shan't take a drop more than I need." (We also see him looking in the mirror in that scene, so I assume that these vampires do appear in mirrors; I don't see how Devlin could bear it otherwise!) There's also that sequence early in "Reign of Frogs" where Devlin's in a funk and talking to his Surinamese houseboys (while holding a snifter of some red liquid we can assume isn't wine), and they try to distract him: "We'll run you a <i>blood bath</i>, then Philippe will give you a nice long massage."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">As for "Red Tide"-the-story: I don't quite know what to make of it either. It's slicker-looking than the long Steve Yeowell-drawn sequence for sure--Colin MacNeil renders it in a particularly gorgeous fully-painted style that he doesn't pull out very often (it's turned up before in <i>America</i> and his <i>Chopper</i> storyline, among others), and given that "Red Tide" ran in the first year's worth of the revamped <i>Megazine</i> that launched in 2003, I can only guess that the art budget of the <i>Megazine</i> had briefly gone way up again.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">But I think I actually like both the story and the appearance of "Chasing Herod"/"Reign of Frogs"/"Sirius Rising" a lot more. Yeowell's a terrific artist in a post-Steve Ditko vein: he strips his images down to their essential figures and forms, but then he lets facial expressions and body language do a lot of work for him, and when he has to deliver a knockout of a weird image, he's always got one at hand. The Catechist--and what a name/schtick he has!--is a particularly Ditkovian design, with his short-cropped hair and little white glasses. (I also tend to associate Yeowell's artwork with Grant Morrison's freakier writing, thanks to his work on <i>Zenith</i> and the early sequences of <i>The Invisibles</i>, and Smith's better work often owes something to Morrison's better work.) And as much as MacNeil's storytelling decisions on "Red Tide" make a lot of sense conceptually--everything dimly-lit and soft-edged, almost every scene dominated by a single color--in practice they make it harder to read and to follow, and when you're dealing with a writer who has as little interest in Smith in spelling everything out, Yeowell's <i>here! look at </i>this<i> thing!</i> sort of clarity is probably a better idea.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">"Red Tide" seems to be partly a homage to a particular strain of British comics that Smith must have grown up on, a formula that I suspect was created with "Hook Jaw" in the British <i>Action</i> series (no relation to <i>Action Comics</i>), and continued later with <i>Flesh</i> and <i>Shako</i> and <i>Helltrekkers</i> and even, in its way, "Wilderlands." You put an ensemble cast together; you set them against a catastrophic force of nature; then you kill them off, one by one. But Smith partly bobbles the setup--we never get much of a sense of who the people on the boat are, or why we should care one way or the other about who gets slaughtered and who survives--and, for that matter, the story is sort of a rewrite of "Swimming in Blood," the first Devlin Waugh serial. He's supposed to be the world's greatest occult investigator; it'd be nice to see him investigating something other than more underwater vampires...</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">I'm totally with you on Smith and "glimpsing just one corner of a vast, orderly, self-consistent body of theory and terminology." I'm pretty sure he actually knows how all of it works--even his minor characters appear to have wandered in from some other wildly complicated story. (Sometimes they have: Pussy Willow eventually turned up in another Smith-written series, <i>Pussyfoot 5</i>, and various other Smith-written stories turn out to be loosely connected to each other.) The flip-side of Smith's gift for world-building is that he sometimes tries to shoehorn in some clever idea or other just because it happens to be in his notebook. There's an interview with him somewhere where he mentions that he had the character of Eddie Whyteman sitting ready to be used for many years before "Reign of Frogs"--and, having finally gotten to introduce him, he promptly killed him off.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">One final question for you: as someone who's probably read a lot more of the literature Smith has read than I have, how do you see the Devlin Waugh stories connecting to other fiction about magic, and to the sort of fiction with hyper-British, stiff-upper-lip protagonists of whom he tends to seem like a parody?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>LEV: </b>Taken as a story about magic, as fantasy literature, <i>Devlin Waugh</i> (I know that's not the name of the book, but it seems less confusing somehow to call it that) is hard to place in the magical landscape because it's so aggressively syncretic. Smith seems to have no fear of or even awareness of genre boundaries: he throws sorcery and technology and horror and new-age psychobabble into the mix and then blends them so smoothly that you can't tell what came from where. What I particularly like is his instance on magic being a technical field -- there's no soft focus or cutaways, you see exactly what's going on all the time, on a very granular level, and the people interacting with the supernatural treat it like yeah, this is just my day job. Smith describes mystical phenomena the way you'd explain how to use a dishwasher. Like when that fat dude with the headset (never figured out who he was) mutters "That's one of the sunless ones. A qlippothic parasite from the transyuggothian spheres. Critter shouldn't even <i>be</i> in this reality ... " </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Taken as piss-take of the great lineage of debonair, boy's own adventure British heroes, it's rather devastating. Devlin seems to have infinite resources when it comes to displaying sang-froid in the face of other people's suffering -- he's a low-empathy guy, though always in a charming way. Which is nicely balanced by his willingness to go completely to pieces when his own life is on the line (e.g. screaming "I'M TOO YOUNG TO DIE" as he's airlifted out of the clutches of the Herod).</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">And there's another distinctive quality to the parody that I'm tempted to tag as more broadly and characteristically Dreddian: the way that they take the piss out of their hero, but they don't set up any particular ideal in his place. As a result the books have a centerless quality -- there's no safe place to put your sympathies, nobody is entirely reliable or exempt from mockery. If someone is good, they tend to be weak or ugly or ridiculous too. "Chasing Herod" opens from the POV of a callow papparazzi who's watching an equally callow celebrity, i.e. Devlin. There's something chillingly, recognizably bleak about that kind of echo chamber; voids gazing at voids. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Are there actual good, relatable people in the Dreddverse? A guy like Whyteman seems like the closest thing one gets to a solid fellow, and that's just because he's so underdeveloped as a character. (Though he does a nice line in neo-noir patter: "If luck was a lady she was my goddamn ex-wife.")</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>DOUGLAS:</b> That's true about the general unsympatheticness of everyone in the Devlin Waugh stories: they invert the usual order of things, but they don't really give you even an admirable antihero to cling to. I'm not quite so sure it's true of Dredd stories. Dredd himself is a cruel cipher in a helmet--he's not usually the sympathetic figure--and it took a while for supporting cast members to show up who weren't just caricatures of one kind or another. It's usually women who've ended up filling that role, interestingly: Anderson, very tentatively, at first, and later Castillo and DeMarco and (especially) Beeny. (I suppose Bekky Darke, from Smith and MacNeil's recent <i>Strange & Darke</i> serial, counts as one of those as well.) The only major male character that we're encouraged to genuinely cheer for is Chopper, who has his deep personality flaws for sure, but is absolutely Our Guy in the context of <i>Judge Dredd</i>. --And, of course, Chopper's survived two attempts by his writers to kill him off, and by now is <i>really</i> too old to be pulling his sky-surfing routine. (Incidentally, I don't know if you saw that image of the new <i>Dredd</i> movie's poster "defaced by Chopper graffiti" recently, courtesy of a very clever Photoshop job by https://twitter.com/Rex_Banner_ ...)</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">There's also the received wisdom on Dredd stories, which I think isn't far off: that the actual point of sympathy is not any of the characters in particular, but Mega-City One itself--a recognizable version of Western-and-especially-American culture in which everything gets a "but more so"--and that Dredd just serves as the catalyst for action. (A.k.a. violence, or "thrill-power.") In that case, our protagonist has had a hard time of it. At the beginning of the series, there are 800 million people living in MC1 (the voice-over that opens the new movie concurs). Following the Apocalypse War, there are 400 million. As of the end of "Day of Chaos," there are 40 million left. It's no wonder John Wagner's returning to the idea that the Judges' authority deserves some serious examination, even by the Judges themselves--they've done a remarkably poor job of protecting "our protagonist."</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">*****</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Thanks again to Lev! Next week, we've got another guest--Ben Saunders, author of <i>Do the Gods Wear Capes?: Spirituality, Fantasy, and Superheroes</i>, who will join me to discuss the clonetastic <i>Brothers of the Blood</i>.</span></div>
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<br /></div>Douglas Wolkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10691167073493285913noreply@blogger.com2