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Sideshow Vote: Just an average day in the city

Started by broodblik, 13 April, 2022, 04:35:02 AM

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broodblik

When Day of Chaos super mega-epic ended it was the epic with the greatest number of episodes (48). It was an epic that left the world of Dredd in a devastated state. Mega City 1 was literally destroyed with almost the whole population wiped-out. Now we are years later, and we should still see the lasting effects of the chaos. So here we are do you believe:
-   The epic has a lasting effect on the city, the stories still reflect this
-   The epic had a few stories afterwards, but we do not see the effect anymore
-   The epic did not really change the landscape of what we are seeing
-   The epic should never had seen the light of day
-   The epic should have left nothing standing not enough destruction
-   Huh, never heard about this!!!!
-   Any alternative views please tell us
When I die, I want to die like my grandfather who died peacefully in his sleep. Not screaming like all the passengers in his car.

Old age is the Lord's way of telling us to step aside for something new. Death's in case we didn't take the hint.

Tjm86

Hmmm, an interesting one.  Are we running this as a vote or a discussion?  Looking at the options here they seem to relate to the impact of the story over the long term ... fair enough.  Is it worth reflecting on the tale's foundations though? 

- The epic built on threads that have been around for some time and fits the overall 'mega-narrative'
- The epic used a few loose threads from 'run-up' stories but not much else
- The epic was a bolt from the blue that only tenuously referenced past events


... or is this another thread in which we are going to have a vote on what we are voting about?  ;-)

broodblik

No it is a vote but discussion is always welcome :)

You vote per supplied options but with the sideshow vote alternative options is welcome and people can vote for them as well
When I die, I want to die like my grandfather who died peacefully in his sleep. Not screaming like all the passengers in his car.

Old age is the Lord's way of telling us to step aside for something new. Death's in case we didn't take the hint.

IndigoPrime

For the most part: "The epic did not really change the landscape of what we are seeing".

I still see this as being a mis-step by 2000 AD. Wiping out so much of the population of a city that, if you let reality bleed in, would already have hardly been a bustling metropolis wasn't the greatest of moves.

I see the numbers are creeping up again: MC-1 has "180 million citizens" according to a recent Prog. Although that feels more like repair work than anything – given that, what, 50 million survived, 130 million have just appeared over the subsequent years, which feels vanishingly unlikely.

The biggest issue is that Tokyo today is a city of almost 40 million. Delhi tops thirty. Fast forward a century and MC-1 would, given its land area, be sparse. Really, that 800 million, which seemed so big back in the late 1970s, should have been more like eight billion, and in a smaller area.

Outside of the numerical side of things, it also feels like the strip didn't shake things up that much. In part, that's down to Wagner smashing up the toy set and then walking away. Others weren't aware of the scale of what had been done, so we had almost immediate reversion. Compare that to the extended aftermath of Apocalypse War.

Today, most Dredd tales could have been set during any era. It feels like there's a concerted effort to sneakily hit a reset switch. So although the build-up was tense and the reveal shocking, I don't feel Chaos had much lasting impact (bar bringing down MC-1 a peg or two) and is overall not the best move for the strip.

AlexF

I find it to be mostly "The epic has a lasting effect on the city, the stories still reflect this", but only in regards to the idea that the City overall has lost status and power on the world stage, and the Judges are even more underfunded than usual.
I don't think that, beyond the first year of post-Chaos stories, there has been much examination of what it does to a city's psyche when so many die from a horrible illness (might be a bit more of that coming now...)
and especially I think they've massively dropped the ball on citizens' loss of respect for the Judges following the fake news threads within the Chaos epic.

For all that, I do think most writers are genuinely trying to remember that Chaos Day happened - while also getting on with the business of dreaming up bizarre future crimes fro Dredd to tackle - and to an extent, I'd rather keep reading fun one-off Dredds versus the constant slow burn of 'what is the BIG story of Dredd's world'.

The Mind of Wolfie Smith

since it is hardly ever mentioned, i assume that official media has simply hammered home some extreme conspiracy theory denial nonsense. an increasingly believable explanation.

Funt Solo

Carry the Nine still referenced the after effects. It's a bit like the rad zones from after the Apocalypse War - there was still a massive city, but the writer could pop a rad zone in when they felt like it.

Now, a writer can pop in an old, crumbling Chaos Day block - you can have any mixture you want in the city - new zones, old zones, partially crumbling zones, no-go zones.

Most of the time, though, it just looks like MC-1 looked before Chaos Day. It behaves like it did before Chaos Day. Without a strong editorial or creative hand at the tiller (I'm not dissing Tharg here) of the Dreddverse, you need MC-1 to be malleable - you need each of the creators to be able to carve out their own niche without upsetting the apple cart too much.

Or - you make the decision to have a strong overall requirement for continuity - but that needs someone to be in charge of driving the Pat Wagon.

Nerd thread: JD Writer Donuts
++ A-Z ++  coma ++

Magnetica

It's  definitely one of these:


-   The epic had a few stories afterwards, but we do not see the effect anymore
-   The epic did not really change the landscape of what we are seeing


After the build up and that last scene of a broken Dredd, what we got afterwards had to go down as a disappointment and a missed opportunity. All we really had were one or two follow ups and then it was pretty much as you were.

Yes there is the occasional story that references it, but mostly it's ignored. 99% of Dredd stories could easily have taken place before.

So it's not like the Apocalypse War. At all.

Dandontdare

I'd say it's had a definite long term impact (as AxelF says, MC1's reduced global power is a constant thread), but it's also an untapped potential. There have been some great stories in the last few years that directly addressed post-chaos effects, and I can get behind the idea of Justice Dept recreating a "normal" mega city, albeit in a much smaller area.

What I want to know, and what I think has been neglected for story ideas, is what's happening in all those abandoned sectors?

broodblik

The city is waiting for an answer but Wednesday is when the gates of the city is closed
When I die, I want to die like my grandfather who died peacefully in his sleep. Not screaming like all the passengers in his car.

Old age is the Lord's way of telling us to step aside for something new. Death's in case we didn't take the hint.

Aaron A Aardvark

There hasn't been much made of Chaos Day since but for me the scale of the destruction was overkill in the first place.

I think they should have stuck with 100 million in New York which seemed to be the idea way way back. Of course at the time that seemed impossibly huge...

Anyway for the vote. There has been a lasting impact. Some of the stories reflect this. Most don't.

Richard

It was 800 million originally. It was 100 million in only one episode, which was clearly an error, and then 800m again.

Even with 800m, as IP points out, the population density would not be as much as is depicted in the stories.

broodblik

This one was not easy so it looks like mots of us see the outcome as:

Voting closed the winner:

"The epic did not really change the landscape of what we are seeing"
When I die, I want to die like my grandfather who died peacefully in his sleep. Not screaming like all the passengers in his car.

Old age is the Lord's way of telling us to step aside for something new. Death's in case we didn't take the hint.

GoGilesGo

Guess I am too late to vote, but I think I somehow agree with both The epic had a few stories afterwards, but we do not see the effect anymore & The epic did not really change the landscape of what we are seeing

I enjoyed a lot of the aftermath stories in the year after the event, mostly picked up in the Day of Chaos : Fallout collection. Debris, The Forsaken, Wastelands were all particularly good. But other than these and perhaps the mini epic Dead Zone, you might be forgiven for thinking, ten years on, DoC had never taken place. 

The aftermath to Chaos Day could have led to all sorts of in-city experiments: imagine if the North West HabZone had been untouched by the virus and was now the richest part of the city. Or maybe more blocks went down the Debris route and started their own mini republics within MC1, under control of the judges but pushing for more autonomy. I know there have been have been a few stories that covered work-for-food programs clearing Chaos blocks but shouldn't the employment situation have been completely changed? DoC should have eradicated unemployment. And as Alex points out, should this not have led to a massive revolution in the way that news is both produced and consumed?

Maybe a naive opinion, but I've also been amazed people in MC1 and still so brutal to each other. I'd like to image if I was in the surviving 13% of the population wrecked by a virus I'd be a hell of a lot nicer to my fellow citizens.