Favourite Dredd stories

[Batman's Superior Cousin]

Mine are Trifecta, Monkey On My Back, Meet The Umbersons, Regime Change, Terror Rising, The Cop, Serial Serial, Ladykiller, Road Stop, House of Pain, Great Expectations, Choose Your Own X-Mas & the Every Empire Falls arc.

What are yours???

[WhizzBang]

There are so many! I picked an old Case File volume off the shelf and flicked through it and saw Destiny's Angels, The Executioner and The League Of Fatties and thought how they would never spring to mind like The Cursed Earth but they are all great.

Judge Death Lives was the first story I read and might be my favourite.

Origins and Tour Of Duty might be my favourite 'arc'.

Trifecta is my favourite non-Wagner Dredd story. So is The Return Of Rico.

[james newell]

yes me too, there are lots o fthem, Banana City comes to mind though, Wager, Simpson, Frame, Dredd under cover to in track down rogue judge in Mexico city I think.

Blade runner influenced art, by Will Simpson, love it!

[Richard]

Banana City is an excellent story.

My favourite is still Tale of the Dead Man, which is just brilliant. It also has art by Will Simpson, but the reasons I like it so much are that it is the story where Dredd resigns, setting up Necropolis, and because even in such an important Dredd story the main character is really Kraken, who is the most interesting and tragic character in the entire series. And that scene where he walks into a hostage situation, unarmed and handcuffed, and kills four terrorists and rescues all the hostages is perfect.

It's epilogue, By Lethal Injection, is also brilliant. Dredd isn't even in that story, but it's one of the best Dredd stories ever written. You're rooting for Kraken, but he's doomed. A brilliantly written scrip which makes the story atmospheric, tense, and mysterious, with moody art by Carlos Ezquerra. I have the prog for the first episode framed on my wall.

My favourite one-episode story is Death of a Judge, in prog 127 or 137, art by Ron Smith, one of my favourite artists because he makes the city look so amazing and enormous. It starts (spoiler alert) with a female judge being killed, and you think that is the death referred to in the title. But then another judge, who loved her, loses his head and goes berserk, vowing to hunt down and kill the perpetrators. He pursues them, with Dredd in pursuit of him because he's out of control. He kills two of the murderers, and the third one is helpless at his mercy, ready to be arrested but the judge is going to kill him anyway, illegally. Dredd shoots him dead to save a judge-killer from being murdered, and that is what the title really refers to. That story encapsulates the essence of Dredd's character -- his devotion to duty and to the law, above what his real inclinations must have been, and his ruthless determination to uphold the law above all other considerations. It's one of the first Dredc stories I ever read, back when I was a kid, and it made a huge impression on me. Re-reading it again recently, it still holds up. I was delighted to find it in full colour (it was black and white originally) in an old graphic novel from the 1980s or early '90s, which I gave as a birthday present to an eight year old. It was very well received, apparently.

All those stories were, of course, by John Wagner.

Recently re-read the Mandroid stories, and they're fantastic too.

Giving other writers a look-in, The Return of Rico (original version) is a superb story. And Raider (Karl Urban likes that one too). Choose Your Own Xmas was very, very cleverly done.

[TordelBack]

I've a new answer for this old chestnut: Mega-Collection Vols 45-51.  Origins-Mutants-Tour of Duty-Day of Chaos-Trifecta. Around 1,500 pages of purely magnificent comics.  I appreciate that you could extend this at either end to encompass Doomsday, Sin City, Chief Judge's Man and Brothers of the Blood without diminishing the hit rate (and maybe you should), but they don't have the same coherence as that core run, which just flows so naturally as one wonderful long-form narrative, complete with diversions and gags, taking us from the rise of the judges to their ruin. 

No, I'm not cheating.  It's my favourite Dredd story.

Well, that or The Graveyard Shift, Midnight Surfer and Sunday Night Fever.

[Richard]

No you're not; that does work as one massive story arc. We should come up with a name for it.

[TordelBack]

We should come up with a name for it.

"Legacy".

[Magnetica]

It's impossible to answer this. Any think I write will be what occurs to me at the time of posting and I will miss something out.

Regardless, here goes:

Best epic: Judge Child
Best comedy one-off: Xmas comes early to Des O'Connor Block
Best black and white art: Judge Death Lives
Best painted art: America ( vol 1) and Mechanimo (vol 1). Sorry can't split them.
Best series of interconnected shorts: The Mega Rackets
Best long form arc - what Tordels said Origins- Tour of Duty- Day of Chaos
Best non Wagner Dredd: Trifecta
Best villan: P.J. Maybe
Most missed artist: Bolland, Ron Smith, McMahon
Other stories that come to mind: Judge Death, all those shorts in the mid to late Prog 100s,
Story with most far reaching consequences: The Apocalypse War
Story that should have had far reaching consequences but didn't: Day of Chaos

[Swerty]

I'd go with The Judge Child as well.Love the contrasting styles of Bolland/McMahon/Smith.
I'd like to see an epic again using multi artists again.

[SmallBlueThing(Reborn)]

Always nice to write this down, if only to have a record of what they are *at this moment*.


The Apocalypse War (but not Block Mania)
Cry of the Werewolf
Trapper Hagg
Monkey Business at Charles Darwin Block
Chaos Day
Tour of Duty
and at number one, probably forever, The Pit.

SBT

[AlexF]

I've narrowed it down to a shortlist of 32. And I'm pretty sure there should be some Al Ewing one-offs in the list, but I haven't re-read them in ages and can't remember the standouts. (I mean, that might suggest they can't be 'favourites', but it's unfair to compare stories I've read once and remember loving with the stories I read over and over again as a youth when I had more time and fewer Progs.)

Take a breath:
The Magnificent Obsession; Judge Death; Monkey Business at the Charles Darwin Block; It Pays to be Mental; The Cursed Earth; The Haunting of Sector House 9; Phantom of the Shoppera; Alone in a Crowd; A Case for Treatment; The Further Adventures of PJ Maybe; Alzheimer's Block; Young Giant; Are you tired of being mugged?; America; America II; The Pit; Mechanismo + The Tenth Planet (but not Wilderlands); When the El breaks; Bury my Knee at Wounded Heart; Hottie House Siege; Blood Cadets; S.A.M.; The Strange Case of Bill Clinton/Whatever happened to Bill Clinton; Curse of the Spider-Woman; The Streets of Dan Francisco; Judgement; Road Stop; Rehab; Debris; Ferals; Titan/Enceladus; That Extra Mile; Fit; Full Mental Jacket

[glassstanley]

The Graveyard Shift.

Prog 335 was an astonishing issue. Completely different and challenging art styles from McMahon & O'Neill on Slaine & Nemesis. Yet even though Ron Smith was still drawing in his usual style *it felt as fresh and vibrant* as the others. For some reason, Smith didn't need to change his style to remain contemporary. No idea how he did it.

[Greg M.]

Hitman (as you'd expect!)
Necropolis (including the 'Countdown to...' stories.)
Young Giant
Crazy Barry, Little Mo / Banana City
In the Bath
The Raggedy Man
The Lurker
Alien Seeds
Death of a Legend

[The Adventurer]

I'm going to stick to the modern era (2001 to current), mostly because that's 'my era' and while I appreciate the classics, they will never have the same punch as reading the ones I read in the weekly.

Sector House (Brothers of the Blood)
Brothers of the Blood  (Brothers of the Blood)
Terror (Total War)
Total War (Total War)
Mandroid (Mandroid)
Origins (Origins)
Bring Me the Heart of PJ Maybe (Complete PJ Maybe)
The Gingerbread Man (Henry Flint Collection)
The Life and Crimes of PJ Maybe (Tour of Duty - Backlash)
The Talented Mayor Ambrose (Tour of Duty - Mega City Justice)
Trifecta (Trifecta)
Block Judge

Undoubtfully many more. But these all jump out at me as 'must reread' time and time again.

[norton canes]

I honestly hardly know where to start. But...

The Graveyard Shift.

Prog 335 was an astonishing issue. Completely different and challenging art styles from McMahon & O'Neill on Slaine & Nemesis. Yet even though Ron Smith was still drawing in his usual style *it felt as fresh and vibrant* as the others. For some reason, Smith didn't need to change his style to remain contemporary. No idea how he did it

can't help but agree with this.

'The Hotdog Run' would be another strong contender.