Dredd's progression as a character

[klute]

I'm currently reading through the casefiles again and maybe i've never really took notice before.But it seem's  that early on he was more than willing to let people of with smaller crime's.

Both Maria and Walter in the early cases get away with crimes that carry a sentence as revealed by dredd at the time,so i guess the question is when and why he lost some of that soft touch or was it a progression of his character that was given no reason?

[Hairwolf]

I'm currently reading through the casefiles again and maybe i've never really took notice before.But it seem's  that early on he was more than willing to let people of with smaller crime's.

Both Maria and Walter in the early cases get away with crimes that carry a sentence as revealed by dredd at the time,so i guess the question is when and why he lost some of that soft touch or was it a progression of his character that was given no reason?

Maybe just hardened even more by life as a street judge over time?
Chances are it wasn't so much character progression as a change in the way the writers wanted him to be.
A lot about the strip has changed over the years, the early days being just a comic book supercop to now where it's crime procedural mixed with a heavy dose of cynicism and satire.

[Frank]

Despite the success of Wagner's Robot Wars providing the springboard for Dredd's early popularity, I'd argue that for the first two years of publication, Wagner's trying to work in the style and tone of the early strips, for which Mills was essentially responsible (wacky future crime and a liberal, heroic Dredd). The Day The Law Died seems to have reignited Wagner's interest in the character and the guerilla warfare narrative demonstrated that it was possible to portray a more ruthless version of the character, given the right narrative context.

Punks Rule, the first strip that followed The Day The Law Died, is essentially a re-write of Judge Whitey's basic premise (punk sets himself up as a judge, Dredd goes in alone) that doesn't ask the reader to pity the judge for his noble sacrifice. Dredd's essentially a bully in that story. Instead of wistfully reflecting on his own mortality as he jails a judge killer, as he does in the final panel of Whitey, Dredd ends Punks with a terse, self-negating statement of intent "The law must be obeyed. The law will be obeyed". I tend to view that story as Wagner rebooting the strip in his own image.

From then on, the essential difference in the strip is that Dredd and Wagner both seem to get much more of a kick out of what they're doing, and the classic Wagner tropes come thick and fast- the mealy mouthed do-gooders of The Exo-men, the dumb cultists and terrorist threat of Father Earth and the sardonic O'Henry humour of The Great Plasteen Disaster- Wagner justs seems to have realised the potential of his creation and started putting much more of himself into the stories.

The next exponential leap in the quality of Wagner's Dredd stories came with the dissolution of his writing partnership with Alan Grant and stories like Necropolis and America, about which Wagner commented "I'm finding that now I put a bit more thought into what I'm doing, I'm enjoying it more". In that same interview he describes his childhood self as "a bit of a bully". Wagner also told Alex Garland "the more of a bastard you make Dredd, the more you'll enjoy writing him".

So my answer to the question of what happened to Dredd's character is, John Wagner.

[judgeblake]

yeah I'm rereading the casefiles as well - and you have to remember that the creators intended Dredd to be different at the start, they were also gonna have him as a black character too I believe. Then each writer/artist puts their own slightly different thing on Dredd as well.
But i definately see that beginning casefile as dredd being a hardened lawman who doesnt seem to be out of the academy long enough really or hasnt gained enough experience. Infact Dredd seems like a rightwing young cop who's hungry for experience doing a stint on the moon colonies if my memory serves. Then he is a natural born leader in certain events such as the Robot wars - then he's trusted with the Cursed earth mission where he even gets his own detail - he survives of course and so he becomes known on the streets of mega city of course. Then he really becomes the dredd people know and 'love' in the events of the day the law died when he becomes a sort of rebellion figurehead and leader of the wild bunch old guard. He literally stands for order in chaos. After that having survived that, Dredd basically has immortal confidence and goes into the aftermath of judge cal with his finest dirty harry head on lol

[W. R. Logan]

i definately see that beginning casefile as dredd being a hardened lawman who doesnt seem to be out of the academy long enough really or hasnt gained enough experience. Infact Dredd seems like a rightwing young cop who's hungry for experience doing a stint on the moon colonies if my memory serves.

By the time we see Dredd in Prog 2 he's already been on the streets 20 years.

[thehod]

i definately see that beginning casefile as dredd being a hardened lawman who doesnt seem to be out of the academy long enough really or hasnt gained enough experience. Infact Dredd seems like a rightwing young cop who's hungry for experience doing a stint on the moon colonies if my memory serves.

By the time we see Dredd in Prog 2 he's already been on the streets 20 years.

And that's something I'd love to see more of.

We've seen the very early Dredd years in a number of strips such as Blood Cadets and Origins and we've seen him as a rookie in Garth Ennis's First of the Many (best Ennis Dredd strip ever, imo), but rarely have we seen his progression from regular street judge, albeit a bit of a young hotshot, to justice department legend, which he already is by Prog 2.

How many Cursed Earth's and Judge Child adventures does he have in his past?

[Jim_Campbell]

The Day The Law Died seems to have reignited Wagner's interest in the character and the guerilla warfare narrative demonstrated that it was possible to portray a more ruthless version of the character, given the right narrative context.

I'd peg it slightly earlier than that. I remember buying the Complete Judge Dredd magazine many years ago, and being struck by the singular change at the end of the Luna-1.

I can't remember if it's the first story when he returns to MC-1, but there's an episode (I have a feeling it might have been 'Full Earth Crimes' from Prog 58 but don't have access to the relevant case files) where Bolland squares up the pads on the uniform and adds the lightning flashes to the visor and, for the first time, he looks pretty much exactly like the Dredd we know today; then Wagner has him yelling at a potential suicide leaper: "Don't do it, citizen -- littering the streets is an offence!"

...And I just remember being struck by this being the first time I found the character to be recognisable in the form we know him today.

Cheers

Jim

[TordelBack]

I can't remember if it's the first story when he returns to MC-1, but there's an episode (I have a feeling it might have been 'Full Earth Crimes' from Prog 58 but don't have access to the relevant case files) where Bolland squares up the pads on the uniform and adds the lightning flashes to the visor and, for the first time, he looks pretty much exactly like the Dredd we know today; then Wagner has him yelling at a potential suicide leaper: "Don't do it, citizen -- littering the streets is an offence!"

My memory is flaky at best, but isn't this also the story with the "800 million citizens, each one a potential criminal..." monologue?   That speech gets obliquely referenced in the crucial A Case for Treatment ('Enjoy it? Of course I enjoy it!') , and again (more clumsily) in Twilight's Last Gleaming, highlighting its importance for the development of the character's attitudes.  Looks like as good a start point as any.

Or wait, am I being incredibly thick and that speech is from the post-Judge Child return?  Someone will correct me presently.

[Mikey]

Think bikini kill has it really; don't forget that the comic creators had no idea the comic would last so I don't think the idea of character development had been considered, even in the wider context of boys weeklies! It was only when they knew they had time to work with that he started to coalesce as 'our' Dredd, I reckon.

And I think that speech was at the end of the Judge Child Quest, but a Barney avatar will confirm I'm sure.

.

[ming]

I can't remember if it's the first story when he returns to MC-1, but there's an episode (I have a feeling it might have been 'Full Earth Crimes' from Prog 58 but don't have access to the relevant case files) where Bolland squares up the pads on the uniform and adds the lightning flashes to the visor and, for the first time, he looks pretty much exactly like the Dredd we know today; then Wagner has him yelling at a potential suicide leaper: "Don't do it, citizen -- littering the streets is an offence!"

My memory is flaky at best, but isn't this also the story with the "800 million citizens, each one a potential criminal..." monologue?   That speech gets obliquely referenced in the crucial A Case for Treatment ('Enjoy it? Of course I enjoy it!') , and again (more clumsily) in Twilight's Last Gleaming, highlighting its importance for the development of the character's attitudes.  Looks like as good a start point as any.

Or wait, am I being incredibly thick and that speech is from the post-Judge Child return?  Someone will correct me presently.

Return to Mega-City, Prog 59:

[ming]

I forgot to add that the story with the leaper (Full Earth Crimes, Prog 58) has that great Bolland centrespread followed by McMahon art on the rest of the story...

Yum.

[darren m]

I think when Pat Mills was on script duty on the early progs he wanted Dredd to be more of a heroic character than anti hero(Cursed Earth).  Didn't Alan Grant & John Wagner also have creative differences regarding the character as well. I recall this coming to a head at the end of the OZ story. Didn't Grant want Dredd to shoot chopper in the back whilst Wagner wanted Chopper to surf off into the sunset? Or have I got that the wrong way round.

[TordelBack]

Return to Mega-City, Prog 59:

Hmmph, one Prog out.  Obviously need to up my CPD* hours.





*Continuous Prog Digestion.

[IndigoPrime]

Didn't Grant want Dredd to shoot chopper in the back whilst Wagner wanted Chopper to surf off into the sunset? Or have I got that the wrong way round.

That's the right way round. Grant wanted to make Dredd more extreme, but Wagner was aiming for tough-but-balanced.

[Skullmo]

I read Brothers of the Blood and Tour of Duty for the first time recently, and then DOC, and it struck me, and I am not sure if anyone else thinks this, that a lot of what Judge Dredd was thinking, about who would look after the city after he was gone and the good Judges around him, seemd to perhaps mirror what John Wagner was thining about who would take on the story after he retires.

I think the progression of Dredd's chaacter has been one of, if not the best in comics. But then, where else would you find a series that has run for 35 years and been written almost entirely by the same genius!