Sideshow Vote: Years in the making

[broodblik]

This is simple what "epic" do you believe had the best build-up leading into epic? Take note it is not which of these are your favorite but the best build-up:
-   Day of Chaos
-   Apocalypse War
-   Necropolis
-   The Small House
-   Mmmm, if you believe I have missed something please do tell

[Magnetica]

Tour of Duty.

[Aaron A Aardvark]

Necropolis.

Tale of the Dead Man one of my faves as a standalone.

[Big_Dave]

widlerlands

(menchanimso, 10th planet, conpsirasy of silence)

eplilogue - the candidates, death of a lengend

[AlexF]

OOOh excellent question.
Necropolis has two of the best ever run-up stories (The Dead Man + Tale of the Dead Man)
but Wilderlands does indeed have the better long game, with ALL of Mechanismo.

Gonna go with Wilderlands, for the mix of fun and intrigue and teh real sesne of 'how's Dredd going to get out of being arrested and sent to Titan for something he definitely DID do?'

[SmallBlueThing(Reborn)]

Wilderlands. While the main event wasn't- possibly- the best (though I have a huge amount of love for Carlos' episodes- I can't read them without picturing him howling with glee at the Photoshop Add-ons he was playing with- which looks like Kai's Power tools to me- and the thought of that makes me equally happy to have been alive when he was, and sad all over again that we lost him) the build-up was phenomenal.

SBT

[GoGilesGo]

Day of Chaos

It contains at least four epics as part of its build up

Apocalypse War
Doomsday
Satan's Island / Sin City
Total War

25 years in the making

[Southstreeter]

Necropolis. As well as the obvious (Dead Man etc) there were all the stories about Dredd's doubts about the system, plus the Judda/ Kraken stuff. It went back years.

[Southstreeter]

I also have a soft spot for the late 90s Wagner stuff that spun out of The Pit - the DeMarco, Edgar, Chief Judge's Man stories that were all linked in various ways, without being explicitly epic in themselves. There was a real sense of ongoing storylines in the style of a long running TV show. And mostly superlatively illustrated by the maestro John Burns.

[Barrington Boots]

I think the answer is Day of Chaos for reasons above, but Necropolis is the one that looms large in my head simply because I was reading it at the time. The drawing together of the Dead Man, all the Judda stuff, Dredd's doubts over the dems etc just blew me away with the storytelling as a youngster.

[broodblik]

Interesting turn of events as one story that I never expected is taking the lead you have until Wednesday to choose

[Richard]

I agree with everything Southstreeter said.

Necropolis.

SPOILERS FOLLOW!

The build-up here is immense. It starts all the way back with Letter From a Democrat in prog 460, and Revolution, and then stories about Dredd's ageing and his doubts, like John Casavetes Is Dead. Meanwhile there's Oz -- a whole epic in itself! -- and Bloodlines, introducing the Judda and then Kraken. Then after The Shooting Match and A Letter to Judge Dredd, these two previously unrelated storylines unexpectedly collide in the most dramatic way possible in Tale of the Dead Man, in which Dredd almost murders someone and then resigns from the force and Kraken, a character in which we have already become invested over just half a dozen episodes, fails his assessment, seemingly for unfair reasons which are soon revealed to be utterly sinister.

And all this came just in time for the concluding episode of The Dead Man which was an amazing series in its own right, in terms of both story and art.

Then there are three episodes of epilogue in which Kraken secretly replaces Dredd (probably my favourite Dredd plot idea ever), and then two more where the Sisters of Death arrive in Mega-City One (in a story that's so well told it doesn't even need to have Dredd or Kraken in it at all, and so it doesn't).

And those five episodes were collectively a "Countdown to Necropolis" with an actual weekly countdown, as if the tension wasn't already built enough.

(END OF SPOILERS)

To my mind, nothing has ever topped this. It's an absolute tour de force, and practically an epic in its own right.

(And once Necropolis finished, the consequences endured for literally years, including the Mechanismo trilogy and Wilderlands itself!)

[Rogue Judge]

Ditto above comments regarding Necropolis!

[The Mind of Wolfie Smith]

day of chaos (given that it is tour of duty part 2 - they must be read as one for the full scope of wagner's remarkable layering, control and astonishing wide-screen).

[JayzusB.Christ]

 Necropolis.  Oz, all the Kraken stuff, Young Giant, the big Dredd reveal,  all the Dark Judges storylines and all the Democracy stuff.