Prog 2358: The Road To Hell

[Richard]

You know who former chief judge Sinfield is! From Tour of Duty!

[Funt Solo]

Forgive me, but who's the reveal at the end of Dredd? ( googling his name only brings up the artist!)

Never mind yer googling - what you need is Funt's handy A-Z, which has a sub-page of some of the most notable Judges: here's Sinfield's page.

[Proudhuff]

You know who former chief judge Sinfield is! From Tour of Duty!

Indeed I do, I meant the Titan Judge with the wooden sign round his neck, is he from a earlier story? sorry cant find the redact button here to write the name.

[Richard]

Wooden sign?

[Funt Solo]

He means Judge Graves from the previous prog.

[Richard]

Oh! He's a new character. Episode 8 explains who he is.

[TheGrunk]

... The "but Hershey died" refrain is getting a little old. I mean - I understand that retcons can sting, and they can be done badly. Hershey being retconned in was done rather well, and with the agreement of Wagner. People keep blaming Williams alone - so that doesn't make sense.

So - of course, you can not enjoy something - but the Hershey mini-saga ran for four books and almost 200 pages of glorious, globe-trotting action with kick-arse art from Simon Fraser. It's not perfect - personally, I'd rather fewer superpowers in my Dreddverse - but it was a brutal, well-told arc with arguably a much more fitting send off.

I'm not a big fan of the whole magic-alien-ice-demons thing from Enceladus, but it happened, so threads of that are naturally going to run into Williams' other Dredd tales.

I suppose one question is - if there's no longer a single voice writing the core Dredd-verse tales, then what options are open to writers? One assumes you don't want people to be limited to snapshot tales with no repercussions - because Dredd has always wowed us the most when call-backs occur and there's a narrative through-line over the years. So, the alternative is that each writer is able to spin out these narratives - and able to utilize core characters so that we feel immersed.

Completely fair, and don't expect people to agree with my POV either - I didn't not enjoy Hershey, but I'd happily trade it all in for the quiet, emotional moment in Guatemala, which I ultimately felt was cheapened. Different strokes for different folks.

To its credit, a big bit of mastery in this story - in my opinion - is that it doesn't depend on the Hershey lore in order to succeed as a story. It's stayed pretty restrained in that regard and doesn't intrude on either party's views.

Again, all in all, very happy to be proven wrong and very happily surprised.

[Funt Solo]

I didn't not enjoy Hershey, but I'd happily trade it all in for the quiet, emotional moment in Guatemala, which I ultimately felt was cheapened.

I hear that. It's not like I could make a strong argument for it being a good policy to kill off characters and then resurrect them. Clearly, it cheapens the sense of jeopardy.

It's interesting that Rogue Trooper had a built-in mechanism for resurrection in his biochip, but it was never utilized, and instead the strip suffered from reboot after rehash after retcon, to the extent that continuity disappeared up its own black hole bypass.

[Proudhuff]

He means Judge Graves from the previous prog.

Sorry, read them together, yeah thought he may have had history in the Dreddverse

[warmachineuk]

I've just noticed the Feral and Foe section is missing the credits.  Prog 2359 has it.