Dredd Epics Ranked - Better! Vote for positions 52 - 45

[Funt Solo]

I'm seeing "lunacy" in "Luna-City".  Deliberate punnage or me reading too much into it?

[SmallBlueThing(Reborn)]

1. Raptaur
2. Satanus III
3. Crusade

SBT

[DrJomster]

1. The mega rackets
2. Luna city
3. Robot war

Thanks!

[Rogue Judge]

This vote has seen some of the most diverse responses yet! Goes to show how subjective and individual our preferences really are.

[I, Cosh]

Don't really understand what's going on now and I've already blah-blahed about these ones in the previous threads, so:

01. Crusade.
02. Robot War
03. Luna City.

[BPP]

1 - Mega-rackets - prime dredd. Not an epic but if you're listing it....
2 - purgatory / inferno - at the end of the day it's full of Carlos
3 - robot wars - because it's the OG.

[Dark Jimbo]

Well I've only read four of these eight, which helps narrow the field. Of those four:

Robot Wars - goofy as all hell, but it was the first, dammit. It's arguably the reason that Dredd (and by extension Tooth) are still here today. Plus Call-Me-Kenneth is great, first in a long line of gregarious Wagner comedy robots.
Luna City - Generally less goofy than Robot Wars, despite Walter and CW Moonie's best efforts. Some of it's actively great (Oxygen Board, Olympic/Sov War, Face-change crimes). Plus it gave us our first futsie.
Mega Rackets - Solid Dredd worldbuilding with little to fault, but less pioneering than the others.

[Southstreeter]

I'm not sure I care too much about these, but in a bid to keep Blood of Satanus III out of the points I'll go for
1. Inferno
2. Mega Rackets
3. Robot War

[Colin YNWA]

Whoops forgot to say - this one closes in the morning so if you want to impact on the final positions 52 - 45 get your votes in TODAY!!!!

[Colin YNWA]

VOTING CLOSED

Final position for the bootom eight and in and here there haven't been any massive moves, as might be expected, but rather its all about the shuffling. Without further a do:

52: 48 - Dead Ringer - 3 points = down 4 places

51: 52 - Crusade - 4 points = up 1 place.

50: 51 - Blood of Satanus III - 4 points = up 1 place.

49: 49 - Purgatory / Inferno - 12 points = no move.

48: 50 - Luna-City - 18 points = up 2 places.

47: 44 - The Robot War - 22 points = down 3 places.

46: 46 - Raptaur - 26 points = no change

45: 43 - The Mega Rackets  - 31 points = down 2 places.

So any thoughts about our final placings? Is Dead Ringer victim of simply not being well remembered? Is Mega Rackets victim of not really being an Epic... are you all just sick of voting for these Epics?

Positions 44 - 37 next Friday.

[TordelBack]

There's nothing wrong with Dead Ringer, it just feels inconsequential, a bit of light fun trading on Judge Child nostalgia - so not really epic in any sense beyond page count. Correctly relegated to its place at the bottom of the heap on largely technical grounds.

I'm a bit surprised by Robot War's placing (I forgot to vote in this one, so share any blame), it's surely the best of this bunch: it might be very short, but it is definitely epic.  Reading through the Robot Wars supplement for the current Judge Dredd RPG recently I was reminded of the sense of large-scale threat it manages to convey. Both victim and beneficiary of where it falls in the shaky early history of the strip.

The Mega Rackets, while highly enjoyable stories in their own right, had no place here at all, merely a telling artefact of AlexF's twisted mind.  Now if we're talking The Crime Files...

[Colin YNWA]

Yeah I thought Robot Wars would do better. Its place in the pantheon of Epics is assured for so many. Its the original and AlexF was right to have made an exception to give it a place. That said it is early Dredd and early Dredd isn't that good.

Similarly I agree that we will see some stories caught between being quite good - or very good, but not really being an Epic in a lot of folks minds and Mega Rackets is a prime example of that.

[AlexF]

Poor Dead Ringer. As Tordel says it's very light, but doesn't deserve to go down in infmay as worse than Crusade! But I guess Crusade is, for sure, memorable. Can't have helped that Dead Ringer ran in the Megazine at what may well have been its lowest point, sales-wise. (It was towards the end of Volume 3; Volume 4 was, for my money, the start of the rise of the Meg).

I wonder if my assertion that the Mega Rackets does count as an epic is because I first read it in the Best of 2000AD Monthly, where it dominated for a few issues in a row. And also because almost all of its villains ended up in the old Judge Dredd board game, making them loom larger in my mind than they did in the actual Prog...

Still trying to wrap my head around the idea that a Judge with all legal powers to execute can 'know' that e.g. Slick Ike Colarado is a gang boss, but somehow not have evidence to allow him to convict. Who are these judges showing evidence to, exactly? And who would complain if they just executed these perps?

[TordelBack]

And also because almost all of its villains ended up in the old Judge Dredd board game, making them loom larger in my mind than they did in the actual Prog...

This was my first thought on seeing its original inclusion in your list. Like yourself I wouldn't read most of the Mega Rackets until they appeared in Best Of, but all the characters were already old friends from the board game. (Similarly, I've seldom experienced such a sense of anticlimax as when I actually read 'The Invisible Man' - Edwin the Confessor had been such a big part of my life, why was he a footnote in a minor story! ).

The continued existence of known gang bosses in MC-1 is as bizarre a contrivance as the overland Trek to MC-2, but just as welcome a one!

[BPP]

Still trying to wrap my head around the idea that a Judge with all legal powers to execute can 'know' that e.g. Slick Ike Colarado is a gang boss, but somehow not have evidence to allow him to convict. Who are these judges showing evidence to, exactly? And who would complain if they just executed these perps?

Without a reread to check but haven't Beeny and Gerhard both officially interrogated Dredd as to past decisions meaning the system checks and rechecks individual instances of justice being dispensed. Therefore there are burdens of proof and evidence needed. Given that it would then be perfectly possible to have circumstantial evidence that Slick Ice is a crime boss but no actionable evidence sufficient to displace the burden and allow action.

/thatoldlawdegreeprovinguseful