Dredd Epics Ranked - Better! Round 3

[Colin YNWA]

Look at the list of 8 Dredd stories below and tell me your top three:

1 (your favourite of the 8) will get 3 points
2 (your 2nd fav) will get 2 points
3 (your 3rd fav) will get 1 point

Advanced from the previous rounds:

The Chief Judge's Man - Progs 1244-1247, 1263-1266, 1342-1349

City of the Damned - Progs 393-406

Doomsday - Progs 1141-1164; Megs 3.52-3.59

The Hunting Party - Progs 1033-1049

Next four from Dredd Epics Ranked:

Mechanismo - Megs 2.12-2.17; 2.22-2.26; 2.37-2.43

Mandroid 2 - Instrument of War - Progs 1555-1566

Darkside - Progs 1017-1028

Cold War [The Adventures of Judge Dredd in the Land of the Soviets] - Progs 2055-2069

Voting will close on the morning of Wednesday 3rd March and the 4 Epics with the most votes will progress to the next round.

All links go through to AlexF's simply brilliant Dredd Epics Ranked blog. You may need to scroll to find his write up of a particular story - but I'd suggest just reading the whole thing anyway - it's fantastic stuff.

Baffled by what's going on here - well we have a a thread for that - though that might leave you more confused than anything.

Rules for what they are worth.

Not sure about anything just ask and I'll blag it.

[broodblik]

1. Mechanismo
2. The Chief Judge's Man
3. Mandroid 2 - Instrument of War

[abelardsnazz]

1.Mechanismo. A huge legacy and some magnificent art.
2. City of the Damned; For reasons stated before.
3. Darkside. Not necessarily John Smith's finest work on Dredd, but it's still Smith and a sequel to 2.

[Magnetica]

1 Mechanismo. Not only is it the best story here, it's one of the best Dredd tales ever. I've never thought of it as an epic, but even taking that into account it comes out top in this particular vote.

2 Doomsday. The only actual epic here, but it's not a great one.

3 The Chief Judge's Man. Again a good story, but not an epic.

[Huey2]

1. City of the Damned
2. Raptaur
3. Dead Ringer

[Huey2]

Sorry.
I meant-
1). City of the Damned
2), Mechanismo
3). The Chief Judge's Man

[Dark Jimbo]

Okay, this is starting to require a bit more thought.

More of a saga than an epic, the Mechanismo programme's written itself right into the warp and weft of Dredd-world history; it begat the Wilderlands epic, its shadow looms over Doomsday's rebellious robots, it makes Dredd uneasy about the short-lived Banzai Battalion programme, and of course it leads to Harvey and the Machine Law shenanigans. But even beyond legacy, I just adore that first story in particular, with Macneil's glorious full colour paints. I love the mini-saga of Number 5's brief reign of terror, too. Minus points for fizzling out a bit in the third act, but it still gets my vote.

Doomsday is, let's face it, less than the sum of its parts. But I really like most of those parts! Edgar, Oola, Orlok; the build-up with Narcos and Vitus Dance; Demarco P.I., Roffman's only Epic outing, etc. So this admittedly flawed epic is still edging a vote from me (but I suspect this won't last much longer)...

And, I guess, The Hunting Party? No, it's probably not as well-crafted as CotD, say, but it gets a vote as I'd much rather sit down and read it. Not all the vignettes work for me, but the ones that do are really good fun, and the art is mainly magnificent.

[Tomwe]

1- Mechanismo

2- City of the Damned

3- The Chief Judge's Man

[Barrington Boots]

1. Mechanismo - first real, genuine classic on this list imo. Massive impact, interesting ideas and some lovely artwork especially from Colin Macneill: his work when the robot goes beserk blew me away.
2. Doomsday - as per last round, this is flawed but still good and there's still a lot on this list that I don't think qualifies as an epic.
3. Hunting Party - again not much to add since round 2.

Things are starting to get trickier now. Mandroid sadly goes the way of Mega Rackets in that I don't think it qualifies.
Chief Judges Man is my HM again - I was tempted to put in at 3 but I voted Hunting Party over it in round 2 so  decided to stick with it here.

[The Enigmatic Dr X]

1. City of the Damned
2. Mechanismo
3. Chief Judge's Man

Damned was ranked waayyyy too low in the original list.

[Bolt-01]

1. Mechanismo
2. The Chief Judge Man
3. Darkside.

[WhizzBang]

1. Mechanismo
2. The Chief Judge Man
3. Doomsday

[IndigoPrime]

Mechanismo: solid action but with greater repercussions

I don't really understand why Mechanismo is a combined epic, but Mandroid is not. On that basis, I'll bring through two from the previous round:

2. Doomsday
3. Chief Judge's Man

[AlexF]

1. Mechanismo - I adore book 2, love the art and the jokes in Book 1, like the story but struggle with the art in book 3. I find it a little frustrating, storywise, that the robots in the story are a million times less sophgisticated, AI-wise, than the robots all over Mega City 1, from servo dorids like Walter to the Robo-surgeons who surely must have life-or-death programming in them somewhere.

2. City of the Damned - no denying the cool factor of Dillon's art, frankly.

3. Mandroid 2 - I like a bit of pathos, me.

To me, the Mechanismo trilogy feels as if it was conceived as one story, broken up by the passage of time. Mandroid 2 feels much more like 'gosh, that first story turned out really rather well, wonder if I can get another idea out of the same character?' - which is one reasons why I treated one lot as a lump, and the other as two separate things.

But also, by my own ridiculous 'what counts as an epic' rules, Mandroid and Mandroid 2 are both long enough on their own; only Mechanismo Book III is of epic length, so the other two were bundled up as prologues...

[sintec]

• Mechanismo - by far the best of the Epics we've had so far
• Doomsday - mostly getting the vote because it's more pic than the other options, can't see this carrying it much further than this round though
• Mandroid 2