Dredd Epics Ranked - Better! Round 1

[Colin YNWA]

Seems that I missed something. Nobody to mention Day the Law Died, Oz and Apocalypse War (i find these classic Dredd arcs the best).

As Dark Jimbo says its working bottom to top from a list AlexF put together. There's a load of links to checkout that list which I highly recommend cos his blog was excellent

All links go through to AlexF's simply brilliant Dredd Epics Ranked blog. You may need to scroll to find his write up of a particular story - but I'd suggest just reading the whole thing anyway - it's fantastic stuff.

Baffled by what's going on here - well we have a a thread for that - though that might leave you more confused than anything.

of course you could quite legimately not be arsed to read that in which case patience we'll get to the other stuff in good time is the quick answer.

[Colin YNWA]

One days voting? Oh. Whatever...

Two days for these - lets me get two in a week (avoiding weekends) as they can't run in parallel like other votes. So the plans is
One vote Monday - Tuesday (counted up Wednesday morning)
Second vote - Thursday to Friday (counted up Saturday morning)

and ffrom next week the placing vote running Monday to Thursday (I think I might have just changed that!) with results on Friday.

[JayzusB.Christ]

Seems that I missed something. Nobody to mention Day the Law Died, Oz and Apocalypse War (i find these classic Dredd arcs the best).

This is only Round 1...!

Aye, Colin's hardly going to include Crusade and Purgatory, while forgetting that The Cursed Earth, Necropolis and Day of Chaos ever existed

[abelardsnazz]

I've just read Crusade, to see if I could find anything redeeming about it. Er...no. The plot as a whole, not just the summary, must have read something like "Let's stick a bunch of World Judges together, all after the same thing which we won't properly explain, introduce a new Judge who's as badass as Dredd, and, er, see what happens". The only thing I liked was the design of Cesare's uniform - have the Vatican Judges been seen anywhere else - I can't recall seeing them in Devlin Waugh?

Intrigued by Blood of Satanus III - presumably this will appear in the Case Files at some point.

[Funt Solo]

My mini-review said:

Crusade is like Battle Royale on ice, with Judges! Vatican-Cit Judge Cesare has a cape: he's a caped crusader! Mix in Judges from Oz, the Emerald Isle, Brit-Cit, Hondo, East-Meg Two, Luxor, Indo-Cit & Pan-Africa and you've got your high concept all lined up waiting for the axe to fall (and the lava to flow).

[maryanddavid]

1) city of the dammed
2) chief judges man
3) purgatory / inferno

Never understood the dislike lumped upon City of The Dammed.

Neither can I, love City of the Damned

[Funt Solo]

My only disappointment with City of the Damned, on my first read, was that it ended so soon. It was a 14-prog mini-epic after waiting over two years since The Apocalypse War, which (when you stuck it together with Block Mania) was a 34-page epic. So...City of the Damp Squib, was the only problem. Expectations were not met.

1977: 17-prog Luna-1 sequence.
1978: 25-prog Cursed Earth saga.
1979: 23-prog Caligula sequence.
1980: 26-prog Judge Child
1981: 15-prog Mega-Rackets and 9-prog Block Mania
1982: 25-prog Apocalypse War
1983...
1984...
1985: 14-prog City of the Damned

[AlexF]

Purgatory/Inferno. I'm sure somebody's already made this joke but was Paradise when this rubbish finally ended?

Cosh, someone may have made this joke already but I've never heard it before! Genius.
Given the wraparound plot of 'Crusade' being about finding the head of God, I wonder if that was, at some point, meant to be the Paradise part of this potential trilogy? Although Millar spunked all his best ideas about questing for God in the first Canon Fodder.

[JayzusB.Christ]

Intrigued by Blood of Satanus III - presumably this will appear in the Case Files at some point.

I wouldn't get TOO excited.  It's more of a curio than anything else.  Pat Mills of course has done some amazing Dredds, but this isn't one of them. There are a few jarringly off-character Dredd quotes, such as '[spoiler]I get my kicks from polishing my gun[/spoiler]', the reader response to which Pat seemed irritated and puzzled by, and Dredd's not-very-original pun when someone is demanding justice - '[spoiler]There's just us.[/spoiler]'

John Hicklenton is one of my favourite artists the prog has ever had.  But he's not at his best here - I'm not sure why, maybe it's TOO detailed or maybe the reproduction process hasn't been kind to it.  Or maybe a bit of both.

Sorry, I've just realised how scathingly negative this post is.  It's better than anything I could ever write or draw, of course, and a million times better than Crusade.  (I don't feel too bad about criticising Millar and Morrison's stuff; I'm sure if they read this they'd cry all the way to the bank.)

[TordelBack]

I unapologetically hate BoSIIII as a Dredd story, and I think this coloured my view of the art at the time, about which I was shamefully, unforgiveably  rude. Going back to it, it has some of the most fantastic involving images of all of Hicklenton's incredible work, and that's more than enough justification for any praise it gets. As always, it speaks to Pat's genius for giving the right artist the right conditions to shine.

But it's over-long Dark Matter Cenobite nonsense nonetheless.

[I, Cosh]

John Hicklenton is one of my favourite artists the prog has ever had.  But he's not at his best here - I'm not sure why, maybe it's TOO detailed or maybe the reproduction process hasn't been kind to it.  Or maybe a bit of both.

What I alluded to earlier in the thread and TB has just mentioned. This is what I remember about the situation now. If I'm off anywhere I unreservedly apologise and please correct me here.

John was already quite ill. One of the big effects of MS is the gradual loss of fine control of delicate movements. Like drawing. To offset this, each panel of the finished comic was drawn as a separate piece and the final pages are a collage of these scaled up and down accordingly.

[abelardsnazz]

Thanks for the responses and insights on BoS III. I'm even more intrigued now! For something to cause so much comment and debate there has to be a uniqueness about it.

[IndigoPrime]

Pat Mills of course has done some amazing Dredds

*checks Barney*

It looks like Mills did only ten Dredd stories. Two are of course instrumental world building (Return of Rico and Cursed Earth) although are still in that period where the comic was figuring out what Dredd was. (Read Cursed Earth now and an awful lot of it is very out of character.) Blood of Satanus was solid at the time and remains enjoyable now, but I don't remember the sequel and I abhorred the third story, bar Hicklenton's mad genius.

Looking at Mills's other strips, it feels like everything he did for Dredd past the old classic era didn't click with me: needlessly stretching out Return of Rico to three episodes; the Ill-advised Hammerstein crossover. Mind you, I can't remember Steamers and Birthday Boy, and so perhaps they were good.

[TordelBack]

Mind you, I can't remember Steamers and Birthday Boy, and so perhaps they were good.

They were not, art from Smudge and the great Vince Locke aside. Steam-powered hillbilles driving unaccosted around MC-1 in the Arkansas Chugabug, and a serial killer thing with the angel Moroni and an Undercity time portal.

But the fun and worldbuilding of his earlier Dredd stuff makes up for a lot.

[Colin YNWA]

Mind you, I can't remember Steamers and Birthday Boy, and so perhaps they were good.

They were not.

I reread Steamers recently. It wasn't great I have to say. I think it was meant to lead into something else... but it hasn't and it all kinda washed over me.