Dredd Epics Ranked - Better! Round 8

[I, Cosh]

Sorry Colin. I promised myself I'd post in all of these and I've already missed a few so here's a rundown of the ones I've missed.

01. Tour of Duty. This is the one that blew my mind on AlexF's original list. There's only two that can conceivably keep it off my top spot overall but we'll come to those in due course.
   For me, this is the centrepiece of one of the most incredible long form narratives in comics. It runs back to Origins, to Six, to Damned Ranger, to Chief Judge's Man, to Fog on the Eerie, to The Edgar Case, et cetera. It wraps around so many ongoing strands and pushes into a whole new direction with the Sinfield and the political intrigue, all the while revelling in the daft genius of Mayor Maybe and his role in it all.
   
   Another part of what makes it special is that it's the only epic that really does move the status quo of the strip for a while. Relocating all the everyday stories that run around the main storyline into the Cursed Earth was a great idea and one that makes the conclusion all the more satisfying. There will never be another Dredd story this good.
   
02. City of the Damned. By default really. It's an actual epic and to answer the question from earlier in thread: the eyes have it.

03. Block Judge seemed like Wagner and Ezquerra having a bit of fun mashing up The Pit and the Graveyard Shift. It's fun.

Runners and riders.

I know Body Count gets over the line on a technicality but Mechanismo isn't an epic and while it's an important building block in the aforementioned long form narrative I don't think any of the individual stories are that great apart from the first one.

Every Empire Falls. The seed of a good idea but not very well executed. To be fair, I've had a Carroll Dredd reread project on the backburner for a while. Maybe I need something to keep me indoors longer.

Dead Zone was a great three part story. One of the few to capitalise on the post Chaos Day potential with that gruesome body-mining premise. The three part follow-up, Invisible, was a bit of a flop. The Chronocops a concept that the writer had already realised wasn't going to work by the time he was halfway through the story. Really, really strong art though. Think it might be the first episode of the sequel which has an utterly stunning page of a mopad/Helltrek wagon/whatever driving through the ruins to the city gate. Beautifully bleak.

Al Ewing's Parker homage Served Cold was a cracking story and while I'm glad he got to give it a big finale I would've loved for it to be a longer running series and The Cop is the lesser part.

Trifecta was a great gimmick once.

[Colin YNWA]

Voting Closed

I mean it was a bit closer...

Propressing into the next round:

Tour of Duty - 56 points
City of the Damned - 29 points
Mechanismo - 28 points
Trifecta - 20 points

Going into the 28 - 21 position play off:

Every Empire Falls - 13 points
Dead Zone - 3 points
Block Judge - 2 points
Served Cold/The Cop - 1

Great to see Every Empire get so many votes, looking forward to re-reading this one soon. Interesting to see City of the Damned actually have a bit of a resurgence, but that's in the detail.

Now Round 9 - the last of these progressive rounds - I'll expalin how next week works later... I'd be AMAZED if this happened again - its going to be by far the most interesting round to date.

See you Monday... well actaully a bit later when I'll dig up an open thread to explain how the next bit works...

[The Enigmatic Dr X]

It gets a little convulted next week. Then we have a last 16 as traditional head to heads - stay tuned....

You sure a head to head is the right way to do this? If you have a draw, you run the risk of what would be the top two, if voted for, coming up against each other.

It is of course your shout but it make sense to keep things in groups until the last eight like you're doing, then have a vote for places 4-8 and 1-4?

[Colin YNWA]

It gets a little convulted next week. Then we have a last 16 as traditional head to heads - stay tuned....

You sure a head to head is the right way to do this? If you have a draw, you run the risk of what would be the top two, if voted for, coming up against each other.

The plan is. Round 9 is the final 'four in - four out'. Then we have a Round 10 BUT that is for seeding 16-9. We use AlexF's seeding for 1 - 8. There isn't a draw its based on seeds. So Seed 16 will meet Seed 1, Seed 15 will meet Seed 2 etc.

We will have 8 going to the next round with the other 8 going into a 'Play for positions 16 -9. That way I hope to avoid the problem you highlight AND make the end a little more fun and a closer examination of the Epics involved.

[BPP]

It gets a little convulted next week. Then we have a last 16 as traditional head to heads - stay tuned....

You sure a head to head is the right way to do this? If you have a draw, you run the risk of what would be the top two, if voted for, coming up against each other.

The plan is. Round 9 is the final 'four in - four out'. Then we have a Round 10 BUT that is for seeding 16-9. We use AlexF's seeding for 1 - 8. There isn't a draw its based on seeds. So Seed 16 will meet Seed 1, Seed 15 will meet Seed 2 etc.

We will have 8 going to the next round with the other 8 going into a 'Play for positions 16 -9. That way I hope to avoid the problem you highlight AND make the end a little more fun and a closer examination of the Epics involved.

Except those AlexF rankings are.... well, contested let's say.

1st - America
2nd - the dead man
3rd - origins
4th - block mania ' the apocalypse war
5th - day of chaos
6th - terror - total war
7th - mandroid
8th - Titan / encaldus
9th - machine law.

Only 3 of those made the readers top 10 after alexF concluded his list (block mania ' apocalypse war - day of chaos - dead man) so using them to rank a head to head seems very strange.

[BPP]

I mean obviously do it your way - just conversation not criticism! 😉

[Colin YNWA]

No its all good.

The main motivation is of course taking AlexF's list and using that as the basis for all this nonsense - well that and a bit of fun. So I've always wanted to respect AlexF's work as the source of all this and this seemed a nice way to do it and also draw closer examination and attention to the top 'Epics' when we got there.

So America vs no. 16 for example, whatever number 16 becomes, will be a very interesting discussion I suspect. America is regarded, in broad terms, as the best Dredd story. So throw in the word Epic and we have a good new discussion about topics and thrills often discussed.

I've been really careful to make sure this isn't seen as a definitive list - its more about the idea that any individual list is never going to work but damn AlexF's was so well presented and considered that it threw so much great conversation - this was a way to keep that going and get all our brain juices going about what makes a good Epic Dredd tale...

... oh and bloody well sort out AlexF's crazy ranking a bit at the same time!...

... I might have over thought this!

[AlexF]

Not sure if this thread is the right place to bring it up, but in my defence part of my ranking system was about giving equal props to the art on any given story. And it's here that I think some of the heavy hitters fall down, Tour of Duty being a case in point. I mean, we can talk all day about the brilliance and importance of the story in tying up long, LONG running plot threads - but can anyone call to mind a single arresting panel/page/ sequence in the whole multi-year saga? Sinfield's face covered in buboes, possibly? Mayor Maybe looking annoyed a few times? That crazy Dragon creature from Cliff Robinson?

It's not Bolland gurning with Judge Cal's face or McMahon drawing Satanus jumping onto a tank, is it.

[Dark Jimbo]

... can anyone call to mind a single arresting panel/page/ sequence in the whole multi-year saga? Sinfield's face covered in buboes, possibly? Mayor Maybe looking annoyed a few times? That crazy Dragon creature from Cliff Robinson?

It's not Bolland gurning with Judge Cal's face or McMahon drawing Satanus jumping onto a tank, is it.

Totally get what you mean, but I think nostalgia plays a huge part here. For someone who read the classic epics for the first time only as the Case Files were released, they don't loom any larger in the mind than Tour of Duty, Total War etc.

I can think of loads of pages and panels I liked from ToD - the twin Macneil splash pages where Dredd cracks heads on the beat for what he thinks is the last time; Inga bursting in on Maybe as dominatrix Hershey; the Judges fighting the giant trapdoor spider; the Ezquerra SJS 'Resevoir Dogs' panel. Maybe because it's in colour, I can actually call to mind more ready images than from the classic black-and-white epics!

[Magnetica]

Can't beat The Cursed Earth, The Day the Law Died, The Judge Child and Block Mania for memorable panels, as far as epics are concerned anyway.

[Funt Solo]

Context is king. My youthful mind read, absorbed then re-read stuff like The Apocalypse War until the comics were falling apart. Tour of Duty got read once then bagged and boxed.

So, I can't say for certain whether Tour of Duty is intrinsically more memorable - I don't recall it as well, but that's no judgement on the art - it's to do with how I've consumed the material.

Solution: I should re-read ToD. (I don't need to re-read TAW - it's imprinted on my brain cells.)

[AlexF]

Jimbo, I bow to your youth! I asked a question, and you skewered me with a clear and concise response! I've read ToD all of twice, but I'm already looking forward to another go around. I will say, for that whole year (and a bit more) of Prog reading, Dredd was absolutely essential, can't-wait-for-next-week stuff. I do think it was the beginning of the end for PJ, though, in terms of any new things Wagner could think of to do with him.

[BPP]

Tod duty does have that great panel gag where Dredd pokes an empty tin of dog food with his daystick, the food being actual dog.

[Dark Jimbo]

Tod duty does have that great panel gag where Dredd pokes an empty tin of dog food with his daystick, the food being actual dog.

I forgot that classic bit where Vienna tells him he should consider a career in private security; followed by a wordless panel of Dredd spraying his tea across the room!

Jimbo, I bow to your youth!

I'm barrelling ever closer towards 40, but - thanks all the same!