Spurred on by Broodblik's vote re. Dredd writers, I've started thinking about Dredd's age and decided to make my own referendum.
Dredd is old. He began to feel his age over 30 years ago. He can't last forever. It's a problem, and I'm not sure how to solve it. What should happen?
1. Permanent Kraken - He should die, and Rico should take his name.
2. The standard solution - He should die, and (yawn) have his brain / bio-chip inserted into Rico to make them the same person.
3. Dark Knight Returns (kind of) - He should become Chief Judge, and leave the rough stuff to Rico.
4. The Taggart solution - He should die, and an ensemble of supporting characters should take over.
5. The DC solution - the real-time thing should be quietly shelved, and a floating timeline introduced.
6. The Stront - he dies, then we just dip into past cases here and there. (But he isn't resurrected).
7. The half-Stont - he doesn't die, but we still just go back to past cases (like that recent Apocalypse War one).
8. The Dan Dare - the whole strip is dropped, and other writers occasionally resurrect him (though Grant Morrison isn't allowed to have Judge Death do what the Mekon did to Dan in Revolver).
9. The Narcos solution - Dredd's brain is put into a Mechanismo robot, and now HE knows what it is to be discriminated against.
10 - something else.
It's boring, and cliched, but I think with a gun to my head I'd have to go with 2.
EDIT - no, feck it. I'll go with 3. Obviously that's just kicking the can down the road but it's the best I can think of.
Some kind of super-regen technology. Dredd has to stay on the streets and it has to actually be Dredd.
I do not like the concept of reboots but I am sot sure what should happen so I will say keep the status quo as is.
Quote from: Dash Decent on 25 June, 2022, 11:36:10 AM
Some kind of super-regen technology. Dredd has to stay on the streets and it has to actually be Dredd.
Think I could just about live with that. The tech does exist in MC1, as shown by Mike Carroll in
Carousel. Not ideal, but none of the solutions are.
He should disappear in a King Arthur type way just before his entire timeline is absorbed into the forgotten dreams of a small, unregarded planet-sized geranium - except for the scorched left earring of Cassandra Anderson and the indicator arrow off Mean Machine's head. Then the space geranium gets eaten by a cosmic goat and there ends the Dreddverse...
...or does it?
Yes.
Quote from: broodblik on 25 June, 2022, 11:50:32 AM
I do not like the concept of reboots but I am sot sure what should happen so I will say keep the status quo as is.
This for me. Just carry on as it is. He was already told by a Med Judge that he was good for another couple of decades and then had a rejuve treatment.
So basically I ignore his age and just read the strip.
Just keep going as is, but occasionally lampshade how implausibly old he is.
Quote from: Dash Decent on 25 June, 2022, 11:36:10 AM
Some kind of super-regen technology. Dredd has to stay on the streets and it has to actually be Dredd.
This ^^^^
with the lampshades
I'm happy with any of 1, 2 or 3. The other ideas suck balls. 5 and I stop reading it.
1. Permanent Kraken - He should die, and Rico should take his name.
It's a shame that Ezquerra isn't around any more to do the honours but I really would like to see Wagner kill off his most famous character. Not just because the whole age thing will get too silly after a while but because I know he could deliver a great story.
The fact that Rico, Dolman and a handful of unseen others have been around for twenty plus years provides the perfect have-your-cake-and-eat-it solution.
Side-vote: if Wagner did kill off Dredd, and as Ezquerra is not around to draw it, which artist should do the honours?
Space magic or sci-fi regene science type stuff. Fudge it. They have for long enough.
Side-vote: if Wagner did kill off Dredd, and as Ezquerra is not around to draw it, which artist should do the honours?
Higgins, MacNeil or Flint - they've all got a long history with Dredd.
Although, there may be little point in asking MacNeil to do it as no character he's ever killed off has stayed dead.
Definitely McNeil. For feck's sake, let someone he kills stay dead. Hershey's death was pure Dredd perfection, then... Well, never mind.
Break the bank and get Bolland to do it.
he should die. for real. not hersheyied. and his death should be understated and unsignposted. it just is. and then we should have the citizens' pov, the reality of life under a brutal police state and all the damage done by this conceited, dysfunctional, dreddful man.
oh. and mcmahon.
Option 1 & 4, but definitely up for Option 9 to be the final Mega Epic before his brain goes into a re-juved body and THEN gets killed unceremoniously before Rico and co take over, Taggart style.
I'm torn between 4 & 6
4. The Taggart solution - He should die, and an ensemble of supporting characters should take over.
6. The Stront - he dies, then we just dip into past cases here and there. (But he isn't resurrected).
Both sound like they have legs. However, 6 basically does what the Regened issues are doing at the moment, and what Douglas Wolk did a while back with Mega City Two : City of Courts. Neither quiet delivered on their promise.
The Taggart Solution sounds like the best bet, if writers are careful not to stray into Strontium Dogs territory.
Dredd needs to go in to suspended animation to be revived in a late 22nd century Soviet city*.
* see Red Razors for further details.
Quote from: sheridan on 27 June, 2022, 12:20:06 PM
Dredd needs to go in to suspended animation to be revived in a late 22nd century Soviet city*.
* see Red Razors for further details.
While in sus an the supporting cast of Fargo bloodline clones can carry the strip.
Option 3 (Chief Judge), with heavy leaning into Option 4 of ensemble piece (with lots of episodes not including him), followed by Option 2.
Forgive me if I'm wrong, but wasn't there the suggestion that Robo-Hunter was in the same universe as Dredd (ish)? Couldn't we go with the whole unshielded faster-than-light de-ageing a-la Verdus, which could be done behind his back? I'd imagine there's mileage in Dredd being robbed of his one chance at posthumous peace.
I think that just came from both series mentioning a city called Brit-Cit, that's all.
Dredd fatally injured, put into cryo moments before death. Justice Department tries to cover it up, representing Rico as Dredd. The secret gets out. Rico leads a coup to tidy up the Department but becomes a tyrant. The only one who can stop him, Dredd, is resurrected and fixed. Dredd kills Rico and everything goes back to normal(ish).
It seems to me that the whole Dredd run can be subtitled "The Decline and fall of Mega City One" so Dredd should die when the City does.
They sounds pretty similar to what already happened in Necropolis.
Quote from: credo on 27 June, 2022, 12:27:15 PM
Option 3 (Chief Judge), with heavy leaning into Option 4 of ensemble piece (with lots of episodes not including him), followed by Option 2.
Forgive me if I'm wrong, but wasn't there the suggestion that Robo-Hunter was in the same universe as Dredd (ish)? Couldn't we go with the whole unshielded faster-than-light de-ageing a-la Verdus, which could be done behind his back? I'd imagine there's mileage in Dredd being robbed of his one chance at posthumous peace.
There's a few similar themes but too many contradictions as well.
Early Robo-Hunter mentioned Mega-City One in one narration box.
Slade took a zoom to Brit-Cit (both terms used in Judge Dredd) at the end of Day of the Droids.
The year that Slade went to Verdus was 2140, which was the Dredd year in stories published in 2018. The New York depicted in Robo-Hunter doesn't match up that shown in Dredd (people like Slade running around with weapons, etc).
To top it all, the Pacfic Ocean shown in a 2198 map (after Slade has died in 2147, been resurrected*, then naturally aged 51 years, then gets taken on a hunt for the Island of Doctor Droid) has a whole bunch of cities we've not seen in the Dreddverse, plus no sign of the damage from multiple wars.
Also there's the matter of two international Robot Wars which we haven't seen in Dredd.
* it's complicated.
How about: Rico disappears from the strip for ages, Dredd gets very banged up in one episode and has to have surgery. Then a year of normal Dredd stories before it's revealed he had the body/ brain swop a year or so ago, Rico is gone for good, and Dredd has just accepted it and moved on. No fuss.
SBT
Or:
An epic story where Dredd is killed in the line of duty early on, but then the Chief Justice reveals (in the last panel of that week's prog) that the moment has been prepared for.
In the next instalment he explains to the Council (and the readers) that the Dredd we have been following for years isn't the real Dredd we started with in prog 1 but has already been swapped somewhere along the line for a back-up clone.
We know Justice dept has multiple Dredd clones on the streets. Now we learn they put one aside when they realised how useful it was just having the perps know there was a 'Dredd' out there, somewhere, AND ALSO already used the option. They swapped the real Dredd out when he was injured in (some story we can make into a subtle off-ramp). The Justice dept then bring the real Dredd out of cryo, where he's been for 15+ years and is thus 15 or more years younger.
Thus instead of 2000AD having to solve the problem of an old, aged Dredd, and how to legitimise his successor, we "actually" get the real, younger, "legitimate" Dredd.
Quote from: Dash Decent on 28 June, 2022, 12:36:54 AM
In the next instalment he explains to the Council (and the readers) that the Dredd we have been following for years isn't the real Dredd we started with in prog 1 but has already been swapped somewhere along the line for a back-up clone.
See, now - if that had been the plot of The Citadel...
Kill the City, not Dredd. Slowly strip everything away until only Dredd is left; the Last Judge, all alone in the lifeless ruins where justice, finally, prevails.
Quote from: Dash Decent on 28 June, 2022, 12:36:54 AM
Or:
An epic story where Dredd is killed in the line of duty early on, but then the Chief Justice reveals (in the last panel of that week's prog) that the moment has been prepared for.
In the next instalment he explains to the Council (and the readers) that the Dredd we have been following for years isn't the real Dredd we started with in prog 1 but has already been swapped somewhere along the line for a back-up clone.
And the story in which the switchover ocurred would have been The Confeshuns of PJ Maybe, because the starscan that prog featured a barefoot Dredd (http://www.2000ad.org/?zone=prog&page=profiles&choice=633) which (for reasons I don't understand) 'proves' that a member of a group died and was replaced.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 28 June, 2022, 04:04:33 AM
Kill the City, not Dredd. Slowly strip everything away until only Dredd is left; the Last Judge, all alone in the lifeless ruins where justice, finally, prevails.
Wasn't that the premise of the dreadful City of Grass Dredd in the American issues?
The barefoot Dredd picture was a homage to the cover of the Beatles album Abbey Road, in which Lennon was barefoot for reasons known only to him.
paul
Quote from: Richard on 28 June, 2022, 12:26:18 PM
The barefoot Dredd picture was a homage to the cover of the Beatles album Abbey Road, in which Lennon was barefoot for reasons known only to him.
Oh, I know that - the bit I don't understand is why being shown barefoot is supposed to signify that Paul is dead.
I forgot it was Paul. I had assumed the significance had come from Lennon being the first to die. No idea what it means then!
maybe Hippy pish by some heavy paranoid smokers??
Quote from: Richard on 28 June, 2022, 02:26:45 PM
I forgot it was Paul. I had assumed the significance had come from Lennon being the first to die. No idea what it means then!
Nope, the 'Paul is dead' meme started in the same year that Abbey Road (the album) was released.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_is_dead
I just love the madness of how many 'clues' there are to Paul's death.
I have a book on it ("The Walrus was Paul", I think) and my favourite has to be that if you hold a mirror horizontally across the drum kit on the cover Sgt Pepper, the half you see and the reflection really look like it says "HE DEAD" with a diamond/arrow shape in between the two words pointing up to Paul.
Quote from: The Legendary Shark on 28 June, 2022, 04:04:33 AM
Kill the City, not Dredd. Slowly strip everything away until only Dredd is left; the Last Judge, all alone in the lifeless ruins where justice, finally, prevails.
The sentence is ... death?
Quote from: Dash Decent on 29 June, 2022, 12:54:51 AM
I just love the madness of how many 'clues' there are to Paul's death.
I have a book on it ("The Walrus was Paul", I think) and my favourite has to be that if you hold a mirror horizontally across the drum kit on the cover Sgt Pepper, the half you see and the reflection really look like it says "HE DEAD" with a diamond/arrow shape in between the two words pointing up to Paul.
After struggling with that one I turned to the internet - you misquoted the conspiracy theorists - they've convinced that the 'chilling' message is "he die"
Mea culpa, I was going from memory.
I dug out the book to have a look. The first bit is meant to be 11/9 (1 ONE IX), the date he 'died':
(https://i.imgur.com/OFXpacM.jpg)
That's a fair old stretch of pareidolia right there. Lucky the internet wasn't around back then; his 'double' would probably be getting Twitter death threats.
I can guess how someone got to flaffing about with a mirror and a record sleeve, still I'm convinced now.