Prog 2268 - Against all odds!

[Blue Cactus]

Bit of an odd Prog after the recent and long high. A nice cover and great to see further confirmation of The Out, but then we're into the strips, and they were a mixed bag for me.

Dredd didn't land. I quite liked the broad twist, but not the execution. The ending felt like something from 1979, and them having to freeze someone with chronic heart defects? Really? Hmm. Art was good, but one element of Caldwell's colouring irked: in all the frames, the sole non-white face was Dredd's judge partner (who on page 4 briefly turns white in the second frame). Come on—it's the USA 122 years into the future. The Prog needs to do better here. (And, I know: artists/colourists often draw/colour themselves. And this is a relatively small detail. But this episode in that way felt more like it was taking place in Surrey in 2022 than MC1 in 2144.)

I was just popping on here to say the same thing having just read the prog. I really liked Califano's art a lot and would happily see her work again. I was particularly thinking she had a real handle on the type of future clothing all the citizens are wearing - something we don't see all the time in the strip but that is very much a traditional feature of Dredd. That's when I started noticing the citizens, and there are a lot of citizens in this strip, and they are ALL white. It really pulled me out of the story.

Is it too much to ask for to have Mega City 1 be multi-ethnic, in 2022, PLEASE? This has been annoying me since I was a kid in the 80s and it doesn't seem to ever get any better. Same with the judges... almost always male, almost always white (I realise there's a black judge in this this particular episode, bar that one colouring mistake panel). I really dislike it. As a kid in the 80s I loved seeing non-white judges, women judges, and always have.... this should be STANDARD.

Anyway, don't want to derail the thread, I just wanted to get that off my chest!