The specific issue with continuity in the post-DoC stories is this: the judges lost, completely and irrevocably, and the MC-1 Our Hero was created to serve is dead. Dredd's story at the moment is scurrying about trying to do something with the pieces that are left. As a surviving citizen, it is very likely that your entire family and most people you knew are dead (as cleverly evoked in Rennie and Beeby's collaboration). This is not some temporary overthrow of power or some supernatural disaster, this is the sad protracted self-inflicted end of the greatest city on Earth.
Without including this event, which happened in the past year, there's no way of telling any valid story about MC-1 in 2135.
For my money, the earlier post-DoC stories (or the retro-fitted ones) suffered from not grasping this nettle, presumably because it really wasn't apparent when the story was pitched or scripted. Even in the current hard-hitting story, I don't really see the full horror of what has happened: we see riots, lawlessness, hopelessness, but we don't see what it was those things were consciously created to serve: the spread of the Chaos Bug itself.
Which isn't to say that I want things to stay like that forever, but for now, for better or worse, Dredd stories that don't acknowledge and foreground what's just happened are missing the point.
Also, and as a more general point, gripes about stories requiring knowledge of past stories annoy me. Yes, it'd be great if things were entirely self-contained for the new reader, but after 36 years week-in week-out it'd also be completely ridiculous.
