Dredd help

[Jase]

Hi Everyone,
Can anyone briefly explain, why Dredd at the moment is "not flavour of the month"/discredited in the current storyline- Just started reading the Galaxys greatest after a loooonng absence- cheers fellas!

[Banners]

His coming out was as unpopular as it was unexpected.

M@

[Jase]

Jeez,  I have been away longer than I thought

[Dark Jimbo]

Well, in a nutshell (bearng in mind this storyline has been playing out gradually for the last three years or so) - Dredd met some previously unknown relatives in the Cursed Earth, descended, like  him, from Fargo - but while being perfectly friendly chaps, they were all mutants. It rankled with him that they were, therefore, not allowed into the Meg, even to visit, and this combined with some recent doubts that perhaps the Justice System had become too harsh and draconian of late, to make him wonder if they shouldn't re-think their long-held and rather harsh stance on the mutant issue.

Long story short, he persuaded Hershey to open it for a vote, and Dredd managed to twist enough arms among the senior judges that the old mutant laws were repealed. The resulting influx of mutants was altogether a bit of a disaster, however, with few of the Meg's citizens wanting to share an already overcrowded and overpopulated city with their mutant brethren. Cue months of violence and civil unrest, resulting in Hershey being booted out of office, the mutant laws being reinstated once more and Dredd, as instigator of it all, shunted out into the Cursed Earth.

[Mike Gloady]

During the storyline collected in "Origins" (it's brilliant, get that collection, you won't regret it) Dredd met a tribe of mutants descended from Eustace Fargo's brother.  Turned out they were good eggs.  

That, and other events I won't spoil led Dredd to question MC-1's anti-mutant policy.  Didn't his city owe it to the mutants to protect them and allow them limited settlement rights in the city itself?  Dredd thought so and lent on Chief Judge Hershey to support him.  The bill eventually went through, mutants were allowed to settle in the city itself.

Sadly many of the citizens were prejudiced and many of the mutants, unable to get work and settle, turned to crime.  A backlash against the policy, Chief Judge Hershey and Dredd (who many saw, rightly to some degree, as having twisted Hershey's arm).  An election followed and Dan Francisco (from, I kid you not, a fly-on the wall Judge documentary series called "The Streets of Dan Francisco" and hugely popular figure with the citizens) was the winner.  He announced the mutants would be expelled, but that townships where they could live in peace under the protection of the city would be built.

Following this fall from grace, Dredd was appointed as the head of the security detail of the townships which are currently being built.

Progs 1649 to current should take you from there.  Good luck.

[Jase]

During the storyline collected in "Origins" (it's brilliant, get that collection, you won't regret it) -

Indeed I will!
Thanks for the updates fellas

[Emperor]

I think the guys have summed it up well but you can also catch up here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origins_(Judge_Dredd_story)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutants_(Judge_Dredd)

[TordelBack]

Interesting.  I read it a bit differently.  Be warned, monstrous spoilers for Origins follow:

[spoiler]In the course of Origins, Dredd is repeatedly exposed to the horrors wrought on the American people by the Bad Bob Booth's Atom War.  Notably, he encounters the Wiseheads, a truly appallingly mutated elder, whose sickly people are living on badly contaminated land.  As Dredd reflects on the past and the present, the story sets out the case that mutants are the direct victims of Booth, whose evil the Judges were too slow to stop.  Fargo's Justice Department sought to repair that damage in the city through adopting draconian policing and controls, part of which was the exclusion of mutants.  At the end of the story Fargo uses his dying words to tell Dredd (and, we discover later, Hershey too) that he never intended these measures to be permanent.  In effect these policies were post-war crisis management, not a blueprint for the next 60 years.  He urges Dredd to make things better.  It's at this point that Dredd accepts the mutant exclusion as an unacceptable injustice, and possibly only the starting point in his attempts at reform.

The mutant Fargo clan exist to show that 'mutants are people too', and they provide a useful focal point for Dredd's new ideas, but I don't think they're the reason behind them.  [/spoiler]Dredd has always known and respected 'good' mutants, and fought with 'bad' Cursed Earth norms like the inhabitants of Fargoville.  What's new is that he now sees that the unjust mutant laws aren't an integral part of Justice Dept.  

[Dark Jimbo]

That's pretty much how I see it too, Tord, but I was just recapping the major events to date rather than evaluating why Dredd decided what he did.

[Jase]

Can't wait to read this!

[Jim_Campbell]

I'm with TB on this.

[spoiler]The change here is Fargo's death-bed revelation that he never intended the Justice system to become what it has, rather than some realization that mutants are 'people' too. As the closest thing to Fargo's son, he feels tasked with doing something about Fargo's words and, I agree entirely with TB, that it would be a mistake to assume that Dredd's newfound desire for reform would begin and end with the mutant issue.
[/spoiler]
Cheers!

Jim

[Dark Jimbo]

Oh, undoubtedly - but I was reluctant to mention [spoiler]Fargo's deathbed words[/spoiler] for fear of spoling Origins for Jase.

[TordelBack]

Oh, undoubtedly - but I was reluctant to mention [spoiler]Fargo's deathbed words[/spoiler] for fear of spoling Origins for Jase.

You're too nice, Dark Jimbo, you'll never make it as an internet know-it-all by considering others.

[Dark Jimbo]

Alas, I'm too terminally middle-class to ever be anything other than polite and courteous.

It's my curse.

[TordelBack]

It's my curse.

That, and eyeless zombieism.