Main Menu

Why does Dredd age?

Started by Funt Solo, 25 July, 2018, 07:03:36 AM

Previous topic - Next topic

Steve Green

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)

Richard

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.

Frank

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.

AlexF

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...)

Trooper McFad

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 😄)
Citizens are Perps who haven't been caught ... yet!

Dandontdare

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!

sheridan

I for one want to know more about this top trumps set - what other characteristics were in it?

sheridan

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]

sheridan

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...

Frank

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 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

Magnetica

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.

Frank

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) ...



Magnetica

Yeah thought it was Whitey but Google let me down.....

Steve Green

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.

TordelBack

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.