Dredd Epics Ranked - Better! Round 4

[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

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

Next four from Dredd Epics Ranked:

Judgement Day - Progs 786-799; Megs 2.04-2.08

The Ecstasy - Progs 1617-1626

Blood Trails - Progs 1440-1449

Sin City - Progs Progs 1289-1299

Voting will close on the morning of Saturday 6th 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. Sin City
2. Mechanismo
3. The Chief Judge's Man

[Rogue Judge]

1. Mechanismo
2. City of the Damned
3. Sin City

[Magnetica]

Hmmmm this is getting a bit harder as some strips I don't really remember enter the fray. Plus one I know very well but which really wasn't very good. I think I am going to have to use how memorable strips were as a factor in determining my vote. That's maybe a little unfair as I remember some better than others, either because I happen to have reread them recently or because I didn't like them.

Anyway I'm going to stick with my vote from last time:

1 Mechanismo
2 Doomsday
3 The Chief Judge's Man

[abelardsnazz]

1. Mechanismo
2. City of the Damned
3. Judgement Day. I have time for Garth's epic and haven't read or can't remember much about the other additions to the list.

[Dark Jimbo]

Hmmmm this is getting a bit harder as some strips I don't really remember enter the fray.

... haven't read or can't remember much about the other additions to the list.

Sorry if I'm stating the obvious, but if you click the names of the epics in Colin's first post, you can go to Alex's blog and read all about them - might jog the memory a bit.

[Barrington Boots]

A couple on here I haven't read as they fell between the time I stopped reading and where I've caught up on the Case Files / Hachette stuff.

I can't bring myself to vote for the odious Judgement Day, which has more bad about it than good, but Sin City is worthy of a place in this round. I go for:

1. Mechanismo
2. Sin City
3. The Chief Judge's Man

[BPP]

1 - city of the dammed - still the most epic at this stage
2 - sin city - Kev Walker bringing it
3 - mechanismo - at this point bk 2's art hurts it's overall standing.



So fairwell chief judges man which has been top 3 for 3 rounds for me.

[The Mind of Wolfie Smith]

1. chief judge's man
2. city of the damned
3. mechanismo

[Bolt-01]

1. Sin City
2. Mechanismo
3. The Chief Judge's Man

[AlexF]

1. Mechanismo
2. Judgement Day
3. The Ecstasy

We're still in 'deeply flawed' territory here! I'll never not love a Wagner-penned story about robots, and for me the good bits of Judgement Day (Doherty and Ezquerra's art; the early zombie attacks, that final panel...) linger in the mind so well that I can overlook the bad bits (the overall story making little sense, nuking all those cities for insufficient reason). I'm also in that minority camp who thinks Sabbat is a fun villain!
The Ectasy I'm mostly voting for to give this forgotten story a boost. Sure, Marshall's art is at the mediocre end of his abilities, but the story is actually a lot more compelling and fun than it's given credit for. And, as I may have ventured before, it's actually not a bad first story to introduce readers to Judge Dredd and Mega City 1...

[IndigoPrime]

Never a good sign when you don't remember some of these strips! Still:

1. Sin City
2. Mechanismo
3. Doomsday

Chief Judge's Man finally drops out of my list, but, well, it's not really an epic anyway, is it?

As for Judgement Day, it for me comes across like a poor man's Apocalypse War combined with some real throwback sensibilities. There are good moments, but fridging Dekker wasn't great in a strip with a dearth of female characters, sort-of Dennis wound me up, and the lack of logic felt out of place. That said, as much as I don't really care about that strip, it's leagues ahead of the shit Morrison and Millar churned out and it's at least readable.

[The Enigmatic Dr X]

1. City of the Damned
2. Mechanismo
3. Judgement Day

[Colin YNWA]

The Ectasy I'm mostly voting for to give this forgotten story a boost. Sure, Marshall's art is at the mediocre end of his abilities, but the story is actually a lot more compelling and fun than it's given credit for. And, as I may have ventured before, it's actually not a bad first story to introduce readers to Judge Dredd and Mega City 1...

The Ecstacy is a weird one. I re-read it recently and it was such a revalation when I learnt from your post (links below folks check out AlexF's blog if you haven't already - its brilliant!) that it was originally designed to be a 3 issue US series introduction to Dredd. That made the pacing make a lot more sense and explained why when I read it I was thinking - really you've taken 12 parts (or whatever) to cover this. John Wagner would normally do this is 3 parts... and he was... just longer parts...

[SmallBlueThing(Reborn)]

I've had a bit of a rethink, and swopped my besties around a bit between last round and this.

1. Mechanismo
2. City of the Damned
3. Sin City

SBT