There's a thread explaining about what's going on this week as the Tourney prepares to move into its knockout phase. One thing that seem certain however, given the Epics entering this round is we won't have the same four thrill marching on. We now enter the realm of Epics that have the power of nostalgia, as well as being fantastic stories, on their side... can any of the 'unstoppable' 4 survive?
Look at the list of 8 Dredd stories below and tell me your top three:
1 (your favourite of the 8) will get 3 points
2 (your 2nd fav) will get 2 points
3 (your 3rd fav) will get 1 point
Advanced from the previous rounds:
City of the Damned (https://dreddepicsranked.blogspot.com/2020/08/epics-50-47-dont-bother.html) - Progs 393-406
Mechanismo (https://dreddepicsranked.blogspot.com/2020/07/epics-43-41-these-stories-are-real.html) - Megs 2.12-2.17; 2.22-2.26; 2.37-2.43
Trifecta (https://dreddepicsranked.blogspot.com/2020/12/epics-31-29-reaching-for-heights.html) - Progs 1804-1812
Tour of Duty (https://dreddepicsranked.blogspot.com/2020/12/epics-28-26-sublime-and-ridiculous.html) - Progs 1649-1693
Next four from Dredd Epics Ranked:
Oz (https://dreddepicsranked.blogspot.com/2020/12/epics-16-14-two-of-these-are-many.html) - Progs 545-570
The Pit (https://dreddepicsranked.blogspot.com/2020/12/epics-16-14-two-of-these-are-many.html) - 970 - 999
The Small House (https://dreddepicsranked.blogspot.com/2020/12/epics-16-14-two-of-these-are-many.html) - Progs 2100 - 2109
Necropolis (https://dreddepicsranked.blogspot.com/2020/12/epics-13-10-nostalgic-favourites.html) - Progs 662 - 699
Voting will close on the morning of Wednesday 24th March and the 4 Epics with the most votes will progress to the next round.
All links go through to AlexF's simply brilliant Dredd Epics Ranked (https://dreddepicsranked.blogspot.com/) blog. You may need to scroll to find his write up of a particular story - but I'd suggest just reading the whole thing anyway - it's fantastic stuff.
Baffled by what's going on here - well we have a a thread for that (https://forums.2000ad.com/index.php?topic=47367.0) - though that might leave you more confused than anything.
Rules (https://forums.2000ad.com/index.php?topic=47367.msg1053448#msg1053448) for what they are worth.
Not sure about anything just ask and I'll blag it.
1. The Small House
2. Necropolis
3. Trifecta
Wondering whether my previous top 3 will now fall by the wayside...hmmm...ok then:
1. Necropolis. As this includes The Dead Man, it had to take the top slot. Wagner expertly bringing together numerous threads, King Carlos drawing the whole main epic, and a huge impact on Dredd and the city. A timeless classic.
2. Oz. The variety of artists suits the episodic nature of the story, the race itself is exhilarating, and Brendan McCarthy's designs of the Judda are fantastic.
3. Tour of Duty. I did think about The Pit here, but again ToD's tying together different threads and its impact give it the edge.
I do like The Small House, but for me it isn't as big a hitter as those above.
1. The Pit
2. Tour of Duty
3. Mechanismo
SBT
So the big hitters are now entering the fray.*
1 Tour of Duty
2 The Pit
3 Necropolis
Tough call not to vote for Trifecta, but I guess there are a load of tough calls coming soon.
* I'm surprised to see the Small House so high in Alex's listings; I liked it, but it's not better than some placed much lower IMO. Buy hey I guess it's stuff like that, that inspired this tournament in the first place.
1. Tour of Duty: Dredd out of his element, but without the excesses and episodic direction of those earlier epics (Judge Child; Cursed Earth). Properly epic, too, given the number of episodes.
2. The Pit: the one that redefined Dredd. Some unfortunate art switches, but on the whole one of the best things Wagner's done.
3. Necropolis: Harrowing at the time, with the city in the gloom for so long. A few dodgy script moments, but did 'Dredd as action movie' really well, and it was a breath of fresh air when those final scenes happened.
Finally, some change!
- Tour of Duty
- Necropolis
- The Pit
First time for ages I've been conflicted on a vote as there's some real crackers here.
1. Necropolis. I was a kid reading this in the weekly prog and it was the greatest thing ever at the time. The Dead Man reveal, the tying up of so many subplots, and then the amazing sequence with the city under the thrall of the dark judges all drawn by Carlos... it's immense. I'm sure there's some nostalgia in play but I feel this and Zenith redefined comics for me.
2. The Pit. Another landmark Dredd for me, having binned off the Prog after I went to university, with occasional purchases finding it full of rot like Outlaw, I acquired the Hamlyn collected edition and was hooked. As IP says this redefined Dredd, and I think this could potentially be my favourite Dredd story. Only let down by some shonky art changes.
3. Tour of Duty. Already discussed, still great.
Hurts to leave out Oz, and that's before I even get to Small House (or Trifecta)
Tour of Duty still riding high for one more round, at least.
The Pit changed the strip for ever. We'd have action-adventure stories again, but no longer was Dredd 'just' an action-adventure strip. Now it was a sci-fi crime procedural, and the Judges themselves were positioned well and truly as the main characters. It isn't perfect (some of the art is awful, and Craddock's colours do it zero favours) but for legacy alone it scores high.
And Necropolis nudges its way in, too. Gorgeous peak-period colour Ezquerra. Also the last time the Dark Judges felt vital - taking over the whole city felt like a natural, and terrifying, evolution for them, an escalation of all their past appearances to date; it'd be diminishing returns from here on, as they struggled to feel as threatening as they do here without actually repeating themselves. Add in all the Oz/Judda/Bloodline threads (much more interesting than the DJs, to be honest) and a legacy second only to the Apocalypse War, and you've got a winner.
1. Necropolis.
2. The Pit.
3. City of the Damned.
1 City of the Damned
2 Necropolis
3 Pit
Staggered not to see more love for Oz here! I think I must be a sucker for endings - a lot of epics got lower scores than they might have because of slightly limp endings, despite being amazing (Necropolis and the Pit, I'm looking at you.) But Oz is killer - shame it only became real using a bajillion mis-matched artists.
But yeah, this is where the big hitters come in.
1) Oz
2) Necropolis (and NB from my ranking 'the Dead Man' is a separate entity, because my my blog my rules)
3) The Pit
I find the Small House to be solid all the way through, and it does tie up some old Rob Williams / Al Ewing plot threads really nicely, I think with a clever ending - but perhaps because I didn't read it when I was 12 it hasn't lingered in my brain as much as the older stuff. But it got a lot of points on my ranking by not doing anything wrong, and doing a few things very right (mostly using Henry Flint as a deadly weapon on art).
Oz - the only thing to come close to the apocalypse war in pre-1000 progs
City of the dammed - classic prog 400 era goodness
The small house - Rob Williams trying up a ton of threads he'd laid down over the previous 10 years and killing off a slew of his characters. Genuinely exciting weekly read.
Big round of votes.
Oz needs more votes
- choppers greatest tale
- McCarthy judda
- simpsons uluru nuke splash page
- dillons chopper and the dolphin
- Dredd tossing the pigskin nuke
- Dredd thwarted in oz
- McCarthy's birdmen
- brilliant fusion of two great stories (chopper / judda)
Just an amazing story from the golden age of 2000ad.
Tour Of Duty
Necropolis
The Pit
Yeah not much love for Oz from me. It's not a patch on stuff like the Judge Child or the Day the Law Died for me, which is what I was compact to when I first read it. I know Jim Baikie has his fans, but I'm not really one of them and the art in Oz doesn't compare to Bolland, McMahon and Ron Smith. So right from the start I had it down as not a top tier story.
And it's not better than what I voted for here either:
Tour of Duty took epics to a whole other level and seem to really turn Dredd's world upside down....at least until it went back to normal.
The Pit is possibly the story that saved 2000AD, not just Dredd, in a much as it was a shining beacon of brilliance in what was otherwise a period filled with many mediocre strips. And it showed a different type of Dredd story was possible.
Necropolis was 6 months of mayhem with brilliant Carlos art and the culmination of a lot of build up.
1. Necropolis For me, Necropolis is possibly the best drawn epic of all. You just can't beat painted Ezquerra art from this era. Necropolis is dark and exciting, definitely one of my favorite epics.
2. Oz I enjoy the Chopper arc more than the Judda story, but the whole thing is great. Chopper for Oz!
3. The Pit The Pit meandered on a little long for me, but it was full of great characters that stuck around for a long while.
Fare thee well, City of the Damned! You fought bravely, and long, but now we witness the time of giants!
---
1st - Oz
Weird zealot judges torch Brufen! Chopper's epic quest! The bats flying out of Uluru! Supersurf! The love lavished on this from editorial!
2nd - Necropolis
We'd seen the dark judges take over a city block, here we see the results when they take the city. Spinning out from the Judda through-line and The Dead Man blind-sider, narratively this shook the foundations of Dredd's world. Beside the twisted sisters, a bearded long-walk McGruder seemed normal. And young Giant has a significant role as well. Not the final answer to the bloodline question, but an exclamation mark.
3rd - Tour of Duty
I'll admit I've been swayed strongly by Cosh's previous-round explanation of why Tour of Duty hits the right notes of epicness. Or epicuity. Spinning all the threads together and sidelining Dredd (albeit temporarily), but still tying into the long-running muties arc while making strong use of arch-nemesis Maybe - it really is a master work. (Not first place, only because my nostalgia glows more strongly for those I have better memories of.)
---
The Pit - the epic that took us out of the mid-90s doldrums and made us care about Dredd again. Hill Street Blues in Mega-City One. The major flaw here, and you can see it on the covers of the time, is the treatment of the character DeMarco as mostly a weak-willed sex fiend. I mean - why is she in love with Dredd?
The Small House - I gave a fair but rather scathing review (https://forums.2000ad.com/index.php?topic=45315.msg1048682#msg1048682) of this flawed gem.
1. city of the damned
2. city of the damned
3. city of the damned
Wolfie Smith using his mind powers to hypnotize the judges!
Quote from: Funt Solo on 22 March, 2021, 04:05:09 PM
Wolfie Smith using his mind powers to hypnotize the judges!
Yeah why's he voted for 'Tour of Duty' three times???
1. Tour Of Duty
2. Necropolis
3. The Pit
Here come the big boys!
1) Necropolis
2) Oz
3) Mechanismo
Genius
(http://i.imgur.com/d3k85.jpg)
Yup - Necropolis is top (Where was Smiley while the Dark Judges were rampaging? Busy not existing, I'd assume)
followed by:
Oz
Followed by:
Mechanismo
1. Necropolis
2. The Pit
3. Oz
"Yeah why's he voted for 'Tour of Duty' three times???"
y'know, the best thing about these polls is going back, all nostalgia-fuelled, to things you haven't read in an age, and realising how much more you like something than you thought you did (the reverse is also true).
reading it now, cotd seems to be a flawed narrative around the most quintessential dreddness we've ever had - in terms of tying up the plots of years, instating new ideas that still matter decades later, and in giving joe the kind of believable psychology that we never really had before - and that fleshed out character is still with us today. so what i once thought was just superior hokum, well, i've revised my opinion in the last few days - and now i think it's just superior.
Sorry I was just playing with the fact that I refused to see three votes for CotD and all I could see was three votes for my favourite Tour of Duty.... It is three votes for Tour of Duty here isn't it... Tour of Duty... right...
That birdman is an homage to The Treasure of the Serra Madre (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8WbLU958Lg).
1. Oz!
" But Oz is killer - shame it only became real using a bajillion mis-matched artists"
At the time, IIRC, Burton and MacKenzie said in Speakeasy that they wanted Oz to be a real artistic showcase and had really put a lot of thought into which artists got which bits.
Perhaps, the interview coloured my thoughts because that's how I saw it at the time. Some fantastic stuff there from McCarthy whilst Dillon, Baikie and Kitson are doing their very best work on the strip.
And it's a great tale too!
2). The Pit
3). Necropolis
Jus saying
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CHET1jnXEAA_hLq?format=jpg&name=medium)
And the previous Big Four are hitting some turbulence.... we have incoming!
1. The Pit
2. Tour of Duty
3. City of the Damned (hanging on in there!!! Could have been Mechanismo on a different day, but this is not that day!)
Quote from: BPP on 22 March, 2021, 09:22:05 PM
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CHET1jnXEAA_hLq?format=jpg&name=medium)
Ooooh yuss! I think all the Simpson bits, along with the McCarthys, are my favourite. And this in a strip that has Baikie, Robinson, Higgins, Kitson and Dillon!
(Not to encourage ye to vote for it, mind, similar artistic wonderland City of the Damned needs your points).
Whoah those color spreads are awesome! I've only read Oz in the B&W case files, I've been missing out.
Hey Tharg! How about an Essential Dredd Oz collection and/or a re-release of the case files with color spreads intact?? Please...
Oz
City of the Damned
Necropolis
The nostalgic favourites are doing well here and I think are safe for their last 16 slots (think) but I'm not quite sure where the fourth slot will go. This one seems pretty close and today's vote will almost certainly decide final positions so if you haven't yet get ya votes in today as I'll count up in the morning.
oh Stomm, picking only three of these is pure Sophie's Choice.
with sincere apologies to the great Necropolis and Small House (hey, perhaps if you live to fight another day you will get a future vote from me)
Tour of Duty
Oz
The Pit
VOTING CLOSED
Well that was quite a vote and I've said it before and I'll say it again, after an astonishing run, it's... It's over (https://youtu.be/D475j4sZyz0) as we lose an epic that has had a truly epic run through 9 rounds. We've also had a lot of other change at the top. Enough the result already
Progressing into the next round - which will decide seedings for places 16-9:
Necropolis - 40 points
Tour of Duty - 28 points
The Pit - 26 points
Oz - 23 points
Going into the 20 - 17 place play-off*
City of the Damned - 15 points
Small House - 4 points
Mechanismo - 3 points
Trifecta - 1 point
So next round no one goes out but it decides the seedings for places going into the knockout and *the play off for places 20-17 will only have four candidates - why do it as we have placings here - well the answer is simple the removal in the high impact epics will expose extra votes - quite possibly for thrills that have scored low here and may well shift the positions, we'll see...
It's a shameful place where Harvey is considered better than City of The Dammed.
I'm off for a cry now...
I've been letting the ranking system wash over me (because I haven't spent the time deciphering it) and just voting on each sub-vote as if it's a standalone thing. It's, like, zen.
I'm pretty sure most readers at the time thought* City of the Damned was a bit of a let down after the scope of Block Mania and The Apocalypse War.
---
* Yes - I am a psychic time traveler.
I'm pretty sure they thought it was amazing and weren't on Facebook seeing who could be the most mardy about 2000ad.
I think it's less-than rep comes years later when we all could read interviews and Wagner sorta poo-poo'd it as his least fave.
I mean...
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CvnHiHcXEAEKJjt?format=jpg&name=large)
Honestly at this stage I knew one other person who read 2000ad and we both thought it was the bollox.
city of the damned out?
just another avoidable tragedy.
even the precogs, even feyy himself, wouldn't have foreseen this scandal. oh well, only 88.8% accuracy, i suppose. bet he wouldn't have seen brexit either.
Such a lovely spread on that episode. I was reading at the time, and from memory I was really enjoying it, wondering where it would go and then it seemed to end prematurely - and it was the sudden "oh, that's it?!" feeling that was the major negative, rather than the content of the story up until that point.
And, not to dis other artists, but nobody wants to be the follow-on act from Steve Dillon. So, there was a sense of disappointment when he wasn't on some episodes.
If we imagine that we'd not had the double-act of BM & TAW (with the amazing treat of Ezquerra drawing the entire second part of that conjoined epic), then COTD would never have that negative comparison, and would be the longest single narrative strip of the prog up to that point.
Thanks for posting that up - one of the best moments in Dredd history, there.
(https://i.redd.it/eaunlyal5wm41.png)
But remember, Harvey is the better epic....
Quote from: BPP on 24 March, 2021, 09:24:26 PM
(https://i.redd.it/eaunlyal5wm41.png)
But remember, Harvey is the better epic....
Harvey is a great storyline, but
very little in comics beats that centrespread.
"your beloved city"
oh my, it's the best ...
(sorry, my mistake, 17th best)
😢
Quote from: The Mind of Wolfie Smith on 24 March, 2021, 10:19:09 PM
"your beloved city"
oh my, it's the best ...
(sorry, my mistake, 17th best)
😢
I imagine trifecta and mechanismo will overtake it again and it ends 19th.
Heathens.
COD is great, time travel, zombies, mutants, bionic eyes, stuff with actual repercussions actually happens, AND great art, moves up deservedly.