Just started wading through Case Files 20, and I have to say that the Morrison/Millar era is so, so much worse than I had remembered. Everything about the character is wrong, the dialogue is truly awful, the plots are pathetic and the concepts are idiotic at best, and downright offensive at worst.
Perhaps the most glaring example is Book of the Dead. I remember really liking this as a kid. I was always a sucker for international judge uniforms and was struck by Dermot Power's designs. Now, especially given our cultural awareness of arab/islamophobia, the story just comes across as utterly racist, not to mention poorly conceived and paper thin. Why would a future Egypt hark back to a long dead culture (and not have any hint of its more recent islamic past)? Why would all Egyptian names suddenly be related to ancient Egypt? Even if we judge it by the standards of Our Man in Hondo (the typical bar for is-it-racist Dredd questioning), it fails miserably.
Let's not get on to the crap toilet gag, inexplicable mummy from nowhere and usual Millar "Dredd as one-note grump who hits things" trope. Perhaps the worst thing, however, is that this is, at best a 2-part filler Dredd that is somehow stretched over eight progs. Eight! Dredd arrives in Luxor, has a quick look around. A mummy kills the chief judge and Dredd fights it in a pyramid/body processing plant. Judge Death Lives was only 5 episodes! The Graveyard Shift was 7! Midnight Surfer was 6! How can fight with a mummy justify 8 episodes!
The sooner we're out of these dark days in the Case Files, the better.
