I know that time passes in Mega-City One at the same rate as time passes for us the readers, but MC-1 is 122 years in the future. Therefore, Judge Dredd ages (unlike other comic characters who can stay eternally whatever age they're presented as being).
But why? Whose idea was it? Has it been that way since prog 2?
Quote from: Funt Solo on 25 July, 2018, 07:03:36 AM
I know that time passes in Mega-City One at the same rate as time passes for us the readers, but MC-1 is 122 years in the future. Therefore, Judge Dredd ages (unlike other comic characters who can stay eternally whatever age they're presented as being).
But why? Whose idea was it? Has it been that way since prog 2?
The first indication I can think of that time is passing in Megacity One in a way it doesn't in a small village of indomitable Gauls:
(https://i.imgur.com/0S5QVYV.png?3)
... I should have pointed out that story ran in prog 45, dated 31st December 1977, pegging the day and month in MC1 to our own. The very first story had established the year as 2099 (http://forbiddenplanet.blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/09/Judge%20Dredd%20Empire%20State%20Building.jpg).
The next time I can remember anyone even mentioning a date was Judge Feyy's prediction of disaster in 2120 (https://i.imgur.com/toj0qCS.png) (156*), 18 years in the future. I'm sure someone must mention the date at some point in-between, but the next indication time is passing that springs to mind is City Of The Damned, which puts that same prediction now just 13 years in the future (393 (https://i.imgur.com/JgKlDVH.png)**).
I don't remember the passing of fictional time being marked again until anniversary prog 520's Ten Years On (520 (https://i.imgur.com/Cb0MM8d.jpg)), and I didn't get the impression the reader was supposed to think it was a huge aspect of the strip until the aftermath of Oz, when John Wagner started seeding mentions of Dredd ageing in preparation for Necropolis and his own exit from the strip (573 (https://i.imgur.com/pG7ngIy.png)).
* March 1980
** November 1984
Cellular senescence, leading to an accumulation of changes in a human being over time, encompassing physical, psychological, and social changes :-P
p.s. I certainly remember knowing in the mid-eighties that Dredd was based 122 years in the future, and that the years in Strontium Dog also increased in line with our own (unfortunately it appears that Grant and/or Wagner forgot all about that later as it went right out of the window).
Quote from: sheridan on 25 July, 2018, 09:27:24 AM
I certainly remember knowing in the mid-eighties that Dredd was based 122 years in the future
Yeah, but the question is when and why it was decided MC1 wouldn't always exist in a permanent 2099.
Best reason I can think of (as opposed to an answer from anyone actually involved) is that Wagner and Mills often go on about how much they hated the comic industry of the sixties and seventies, where the same old characters went on forever, with nothing ever really changing.
Bathe in the irony.
I enjoy this aspect to Dredd's character, but less so as time moves on and John Wagner writes the strip less.
I think it's good to have an element of permanence to the strip. To my mind, it's only really got two things wrong. The first is not really considering how the future would be for people in any kind of consistent manner. This has admittedly got better over time, but we too often have people and Judges pensioned off around 60, when Dredd has for ten or more years now been positioned as almost the last man standing of his era. Surely realistically, the Judges would have a shit-ton of tech to keep their people soldiering on.
The other error was Chaos Day stripping the city back so much. Mega City One never made any sense anyway. 800 million people sounds like a big number, but not in a city of that size. Given how people were crammed together in massive city blocks, the vast, vast majority of the city must have not had any people in – but you never got that impression. As Michael Carroll noted, they should have gone with a population in the billions to make that work. Now, you have a city of 100 million people, covering a massive chunk of the east coast. Either it should be compact and centralised, with massive wastelands surrounding it, or just be pockets of civilisation within nothingness.
Quote from: sheridan on 25 July, 2018, 09:27:24 AM
p.s. I certainly remember knowing in the mid-eighties that Dredd was based 122 years in the future, and that the years in Strontium Dog also increased in line with our own (unfortunately it appears that Grant and/or Wagner forgot all about that later as it went right out of the window).
Did it?
The odd typo aside, the dates stack up pretty well when I was cobbling together a timeline as filler for the fan film page.
Quote from: Link Prime on 25 July, 2018, 09:52:33 AM
I enjoy this aspect to Dredd's character, but less so as time moves on and John Wagner writes the strip less.
#MeToo. It's only really Wagner's extraordinary tenure on Dredd, and the throughline of recurrent themes and consistency that
appears to give the (illusory) unfolding larger narrative of the strip, that makes the ageing aspect anything but a gimmick.
It's the interplay of the fictional history of the strip and the professional history of one charismatic individual that lends the idea resonance - see my comment above about Dredd feeling his age and quitting just as his principle author felt and did the same.
I think that's why, by and large, other writers have left the
Old Man And The MC1 aspect alone
*.
* Rob Williams & RM Guerra's The Man Comes Around (Meg 344) is a really good strip, but it's an example of creators putting themselves in someone else's shoes and walking around for a bit, in the same way they would if they were producing a story about Batman being orphaned or what it's like for Superman to be functionally immortal.
Which is fine, but such stories can't ever have the extra resonance provided by the reader's relationship with the work of an author they've been reading since they were in short trousers when that author uses their relationship with their fictional avatar to communicate that they've decided to move on (https://i.imgur.com/KgBeDDU.jpg), decided that - what the fuck - they're going to carry on (https://i.imgur.com/B0cASe4.jpg), or decided it's time to call it a day (https://i.imgur.com/8xMPZJg.png). How could they?
The first reference of Dredd himself aging that I remember was in the 300s when he ends up getting the tight boots.
Wrt to Strontium Dog also advancing in real time or not, I guess that is harder than Dredd given it doesn't appear every week and a story that takes place over a few days or weeks for the characters could take something like 4 years to be printed e.g The Life and Death of Johnny Alpha.
Anyway it is surely better for characters to age (not necessarily in real time though) than say be at school for 50 years. It's all about character development.
It's probably also the case that they didn't think the strip would still be going on 40 years later and so Dredd reaching old age wasn't meant to be a problem. But hey he has had a rejuve and a medical where he was told he could carry on for years (if not decades), so no problem.
The first episode is set in 2099AD, so it's established as 122 years into the future at the very start. New Year & Christmas usually happen around the same time in reality and in the fiction.
Earliest indication that we see that Dredd has aged is Return of Rico & Mutie the Pig stories, where we get flashbacks to Dredd's earlier life.
Multi-part stories obviously don't have a week's gap in Dredd-time between episodes (*), so there is some drift. There wasn't a Christmas episode between Block Mania/Apocalypse War, but there was one in the contemporary Daily Star strip, which helps to tie the date of the stories around that conflict down.
(*) Although the first few episodes of Robot Wars refer to events of the previous episoed as happening seven days ago!
If it wasn't for acknowledging Christmas and/or New Year they could have strung it out for much longer.
The Apocalypse War took place over a week in Dredd time, but 6 months in the real world.
I think I worked out Johnny's in his 50s in current SD, although he spent 10 years in a magical coma, so...
Quote from: Steve Green on 25 July, 2018, 12:33:22 PM
If it wasn't for acknowledging Christmas and/or New Year they could have strung it out for much longer.
The Apocalypse War took place over a week in Dredd time, but 6 months in the real world.
I think I worked out Johnny's in his 50s in current SD, although he spent 10 years in a magical coma, so...
The apparent lack of aging in Stront does irk me a bit. Ten years between
Final Solution and
Life and Death..., and a
further two years pass early on during the latter story; and with the likes of Evans the Fist and Middenface being (in some cases significantly) older than Johnny to start with, shouldn't they now be the wrong side of sixty? Not a single character looks much older than when we first met them.
Evans talks about his imminent retirement during
Blood Moon, which happens pre-Wulf - so that has to have been nearly twenty years ago!
Quote from: Magnetica on 25 July, 2018, 12:09:19 PM
The first reference of Dredd himself aging that I remember was in the 300s when he ends up getting the tight boots.
It's Morph who talks about ageing, buddy, not Dredd. That story,
A Question Of Judgement (387 (https://i.imgur.com/QNBCDSZ.jpg)), eventually ties into the issue of Dredd's ageing in the stories prior to
Necropolis, but only because Wagner conflates that theme with Dredd's doubts concerning his role in the department, first expressed five years earlier.
Together with the schmaltz concerning a kid, Dredd's resurfacing doubts mean
Tale Of The Dead Man (662-668 (https://i.imgur.com/KgBeDDU.jpg)) and
A Letter To Judge Dredd (661 (https://i.imgur.com/RdOJHl4.jpg)) can be seen as Wagner picking up where he left off with
A Case For Treatment (389 (https://i.imgur.com/t3pIy0p.png)). It's significant that Wagner only returned to these themes, which he thought weakened the character
*, when he thought he was quitting
2000ad for good.
* 'Under pressure from the readers, Wagner & Grant first added major elements of Dredd's self-doubt and fallibility ... Wagner was unhappy with the development: "it was an experiment but I didn't like it. I'm very wary of altering his character at all. If you change a character you're in danger of losing it altogether" Judge Dredd: The Mega-History, p.103
Quote from: Dark Jimbo on 25 July, 2018, 12:54:02 PM
Quote from: Steve Green on 25 July, 2018, 12:33:22 PM
If it wasn't for acknowledging Christmas and/or New Year they could have strung it out for much longer.
The Apocalypse War took place over a week in Dredd time, but 6 months in the real world.
I think I worked out Johnny's in his 50s in current SD, although he spent 10 years in a magical coma, so...
The apparent lack of aging in Stront does irk me a bit. Ten years between Final Solution and Life and Death..., and a further two years pass early on during the latter story; and with the likes of Evans the Fist and Middenface being (in some cases significantly) older than Johnny to start with, shouldn't they now be the wrong side of sixty? Not a single character looks much older than when we first met them.
Evans talks about his imminent retirement during Blood Moon, which happens pre-Wulf - so that has to have been nearly twenty years ago!
Wanting to retire and being able to are two different things.
I had them both down as being 10-15 years older than Alpha (it's a hard life being a mutant, so they look like 20 year old contestants from 1970s game shows)
For me this is one of the strip's real strengths. Time really passes in Judge Dredd, chief judges come and go, characters have children who grow up (Beeny and Giant junior), and there's a real history to the whole thing. It's one of the things that keeps me reading it. I think I would have given up by now if it was like Spider-Man, who has been a student since the 1960s.
Quote from: Steve Green on 25 July, 2018, 12:33:22 PM
If it wasn't for acknowledging Christmas and/or New Year they could have strung it out for much longer.
They could have quietly dropped the idea of matching real time at any point up until the
post-Oz/pre-Necropolis stories
*, which made Dredd's age such a major plot point. To be honest, they could probably have got away with dropping the idea for a good few years after, too.
I don't imagine anyone made a considered, deliberate decision to peg Megacity time to our own, or thought they'd ever have to worry about the consequences. You write a story that picks up on something you wrote a few years prior and make that passing of time a feature in the story, which probably feels original and different to what everyone else is doing, so you keep that going.
* Those stories were the first I'd ever considered that Dredd was more like Coronation Street, where characters who were sexy in black & white had faces like chewed gum in colour, than The Broons, who remain middle-aged or a bairn, respectively, forever. I only started reading in 1987; maybe it was different if you'd been following the strip in real time.
In the first flushes of fandom, around 1987/88, my big brother and I drew up a set of 2000AD Top Trumps. One of the stats we used was 'Year', with the most futuristic being the best, obvs. I remember having to go through the pack several times in the ensuing years, rubbing out and fixing the Year on all the Judge Dredd characters to move them up from 2112-2116 or whenever we stopped playing with them. So this date change in time with real-time was clearly apparent to 10-year-old me.
I also remember arguments about what date was right for Rogue Trooper (definitely more future-y than Dredd, we agreed, but by how much?), and Ace Trucking (which ended up way, way into the future, mostly because they were my favs characters at the time but they had rubbish stats, because, you know, they were lovers not fighters and Top Trumps always favours a fighter...)
Off topic but an official 2000AD Top Trumps would be awesome and you could do a Dredd world set and a 2000AD general set. Nice wee stocking fillers for kids (young and old 😄)
A great side-effect of the realtime thing is that when Dredd sends someone away for 10, 20, 30 years, we have the chance of a sequel when they get out - I wonder if any Dredd writers have trawled their back progs and added a list of perp release dates to their calendar - so that anytime in the next few decades they'll get a pop-up to say so-and-so is due for release next month - instant story idea generator!
I for one want to know more about this top trumps set - what other characteristics were in it?
Quote from: Dandontdare on 25 July, 2018, 05:22:19 PM
A great side-effect of the realtime thing is that when Dredd sends someone away for 10, 20, 30 years, we have the chance of a sequel when they get out - I wonder if any Dredd writers have trawled their back progs and added a list of perp release dates to their calendar - so that anytime in the next few decades they'll get a pop-up to say so-and-so is due for release next month - instant story idea generator!
I want to do that now! [/geek]
Quote from: sheridan on 25 July, 2018, 05:48:23 PM
Quote from: Dandontdare on 25 July, 2018, 05:22:19 PM
A great side-effect of the realtime thing is that when Dredd sends someone away for 10, 20, 30 years, we have the chance of a sequel when they get out - I wonder if any Dredd writers have trawled their back progs and added a list of perp release dates to their calendar - so that anytime in the next few decades they'll get a pop-up to say so-and-so is due for release next month - instant story idea generator!
I want to do that now! [/geek]
Though now I'm wondering - does life mean life (and ten years mean ten years) in the iso-cube, or can people be released early on parole? Can't remember if it's ever come up...
Quote from: Dandontdare on 25 July, 2018, 05:22:19 PM
Quote from: Richard on 25 July, 2018, 01:28:46 PM
characters have children who grow up (Beeny and Giant junior), and there's a real history to the whole thing.
A great side-effect of the realtime thing is that when Dredd sends someone away for 10, 20, 30 years, we have the chance of a sequel when they get out
Not sure that would be the case without Wagner's authorial presence, or at least the informal agreement by management and other creators that everyone tends their own part of their garden.
Don't take my word for it; the only time a non-Wagner got his hands on the toys led to Dead Dekker
*, another Johnny Alpha crossover, the worst PJ Maybe outing, and a sequel to the most sensitive story in Dredd history starring a psychotic chef with a blender.
That's not because the man who wrote
Shit The Dog (https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-IcxYr8c7q0c/WEsY8USL6GI/AAAAAAAAAvc/jXyGnKlUgu4ZmplL5G8iLEw4SCsYt-hSACLcB/s1600/sht%2B3.2%2B001.jpg) has impeccably refined sensibilities, just that he'd learned the lesson about tying himself in knots to give readers more of what they think they want - The Angel Gang and Judge Death being prime examples - and wasn't about to make the same mistakes with DeMarco or Orlok
**.
* See also the brief regency period that took Guthrie off the board and got Vienna up the stick.
** I understand the return of Prager and Trapper Hag were by request of 2000ad's then-new owners, during a period when a return to things that had worked in the past was the prevailing theme
Quote from: sheridan on 25 July, 2018, 05:48:23 PM
Quote from: Dandontdare on 25 July, 2018, 05:22:19 PM
A great side-effect of the realtime thing is that when Dredd sends someone away for 10, 20, 30 years, we have the chance of a sequel when they get out - I wonder if any Dredd writers have trawled their back progs and added a list of perp release dates to their calendar - so that anytime in the next few decades they'll get a pop-up to say so-and-so is due for release next month - instant story idea generator!
I want to do that now! [/geek]
Haven't we already had a couple of those?
Not sure if I'm dreaming, but wasn't there one about a perp who went to get revenge on Dredd and Dredd didn't even remember him.
Quote from: Frank on 25 July, 2018, 08:53:34 AM
Quote from: Magnetica on 25 July, 2018, 06:32:57 PM
... wasn't there (a story) about a perp who went to get revenge on Dredd and Dredd didn't even remember him.
... anniversary prog 520's Ten Years On (520 (https://i.imgur.com/Cb0MM8d.jpg)) ...
Yeah thought it was Whitey but Google let me down.....
That one is Whitey.
There was also Bert Dubinski, Dredd's first arrest.
A couple of other failed judges have come for Dredd too.
The one who Dredd 'adopted', and the Sherman kid who held the city to ransom.
It'd be hard to figure how any kind of significant proportion of Dredd's longer sentencees would be still alive and encubed, after the Apocalypse War, Necropolis and Inferno (cube flooding incident). Although as argued before, iso-cube inmates probably did better than anyone else during Chaos Day...
Did Narcos release perps during his brief rule in Doomsday? It seems out of character.
Quote from: Dandontdare on 25 July, 2018, 05:22:19 PM
when Dredd sends someone away for 10, 20, 30 years, we have the chance of a sequel when they get out
I had the thought of doing a spreadsheet, but when the number of spreadsheets I'm currently working on starts to require a meta-spreadsheet, I know it's time to stop.
Quote from: Trooper McFad on 25 July, 2018, 03:41:45 PM
Off topic but an official 2000AD Top Trumps would be awesome
Yes. It seems likely that the only 2000AD Top Trumps style game currently in existence is the Flesh card game from progs 8-11. Time for an update. Someone tell Tharg.
Quote from: Trooper McFad on 25 July, 2018, 03:41:45 PM
Off topic but an official 2000AD Top Trumps would be awesome and you could do a Dredd world set and a 2000AD general set. Nice wee stocking fillers for kids (young and old 😄)
Not sure if this still works as it requires a plugin my device doesn't support (on holiday so only have my tablet) but there was a set on Barney (always trust Barney) which was great fun.
http://www.2000ad.org/images/games/Trumps.html (http://www.2000ad.org/images/games/Trumps.html)
QuoteYes. It seems likely that the only 2000AD Top Trumps style game currently in existence is the Flesh card game from progs 8-11. Time for an update. Someone tell Tharg.
Oops! My heid was in a fankle. The Top Trumps was Supernova: progs 46-51. The Flesh game was a different beast.
Thanks I checked out Barney's site and found the Supernova set. Defo time for an update 😄👍🏻
Because comics where the characters are allowed to age and change over time, especially in real time, are arguably the best kind of comics.
If I manage to unearth said Top Trumps, (not to mention at least one other set created later in life, around the Prog 1000 mark), I will start a new thread with pictures!
Quote from: AlexF on 26 July, 2018, 09:01:10 AM
If I manage to unearth said Top Trumps, (not to mention at least one other set created later in life, around the Prog 1000 mark), I will start a new thread with pictures!
👍🏻 Look forward to that
Quote from: Steve Green on 25 July, 2018, 07:56:50 PM
That one is Whitey.
There was also Bert Dubinski, Dredd's first arrest.
A couple of other failed judges have come for Dredd too.
The one who Dredd 'adopted', and the Sherman kid who held the city to ransom.
The name Bryce comes to mind, from Huck Finn block?
Quote from: Trooper McFad on 26 July, 2018, 10:31:00 AM
Quote from: AlexF on 26 July, 2018, 09:01:10 AM
If I manage to unearth said Top Trumps, (not to mention at least one other set created later in life, around the Prog 1000 mark), I will start a new thread with pictures!
👍🏻 Look forward to that
And in case that doesn't happen - art competition, anyone?
There was that one female judge that Dredd questioned as part of the executioner case that said she'd get revenge and did like 5 years later. And of course Chopper served most of a 5 year sentence in between the midnight scrawler and super surf 7.
I think the advancement of time in Dredd is really great, but it's also one of those 2000AD things that is best not examined too closely. While time advances in Dredd it's best when it accordions, so sometimes multiple progs cover a single night, or even hour. Having a 52 format or something, where every prog was a new week, would be too much!