2000 AD Online Forum

As Tour of Duty reworks The Cursed Earth and The Day the Law Died so seed 5 Day of Chaos went on to recreate Apocalypse War... well okay, okay in my mind only then... Oz has two letters in its title and two main strands to it tale... okay okay look I've churned these intros out and I doubt any bugger bothers to read them, all you need to do is look at the title and you know what you do after that... so sometime they get ropey - sue me... ahem...

Seed 5 Day of Chaos (https://dreddepicsranked.blogspot.com/2020/12/epics-6-4-how-much-destruction-can-one.html) Progs 1743-1789

Vs

Seed 12 Oz (https://dreddepicsranked.blogspot.com/2020/12/epics-16-14-two-of-these-are-many.html) - Progs 545-570

Back to the simple purity of popping the name of the Epic you prefer in a reply to this thread (remember to mark it clearly so I can spot it - bold tags are good) and then say whatever the heck you like to about these two great stories.

We're also back to 3 day votes so this one will close first thing in the morning Sunday 4th of April - Easter - there is no holiday!!!! Winner advance to the Quarter Finals - loser goes into the 16th - 9th playoff vote.

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.

Day of Chaos - One thing I always hated about the story was the total destruction and it felt like the heart of the strip was ripped out. It was an awesome story but another of those stories focus on the destruction of everything.

Day of Chaos

Day of Chaos.

Dammit, I knew a choice between these two was coming. I don't mind the variety of art on Oz and the two storylines, both seeding things to come. Chopper was the ultimate free spirit in Dredd's oppressive world, and his surf across the Pacific was joyous. And then there's Wagner tearing down most of what he'd built, the steady climb and then the ultimate crash. Because I think Wagner should have gone with his original instinct and not brought the Dark Judges into DoC, Oz pips it for me.

I hate you.


Day of chaos is masterful. It's my fave of the origins-chaos-duty epics that were the zenith of Wagner's writing on Dredd. and Flint's final page - wow.

Oz is still fantastic and also masterful in how it pulls off a ton of reversing reader expectations - that chopper is a pawn of justice department, that Dredd's arrest is a fake to lure the judda, that chopper looses. That the art changes is part of 2000ad for me - that way we get Dillon's dolphin, McCarthy's birdmen, Simpson's Uluru explosion. I wouldn't want the story without any of those.

So what swings it is Chopper, this should have been his swansong - the midnight surfer (oh man that cam Kennedy art) and Oz. A one-two fuck you to the authority of the judges. Chopper was pure punk rock - almost the essence of what Pat mills try's to channel - and all done so beautifully by Wagner at the expense of his own most famous creation.

I imagine this is the last time I'll be able to rally to its cause but still, Oz wins the day.

Really tricky but got to go with Day of Chaos.

DOC, just.

It's not my favourite, but I'm going for Oz, if only because I really dislike the end of Day of Chaos. I get what Wagner was trying to do, but in reducing the Meg's population (which was already, if you totted up the numbers, extremely sparse) into something closer to a modern-day Tokyo, the end result robbed the strip of something that it's never quite got back—unless writers basically ignore Chaos (which quite a few of them do).

doc

I did like Day of Chaos a lot, but agree with IP - Mega City 1 lost one of its defining characteristics; i.e. the massive overcrowding.

I know this is partly nostalgia, but I was really, really invested in Chopper's journey back when Oz came out.  The wait between episodes was almost unbearable.  Also, sporting event aside, a lot of very important threads were established in Oz, and it was the first time Dredd's ageing had been addressed properly.  Also, it was a sort of halfway point for the comic's maturing, being a full-on action romp that was setting the stage for more adult themes of politics and age - pretty much where I was in life back then.  And the 'Chopper for Oz' slogan was so iconic that it spilled out of the comic and ended up on the Berlin Wall. 

So Oz for me.

Not sure I buy into the school of thought that Day of Chaos stripped away an essential ingredient of the Dredd strip, making it harder to do certain stories from then on. It was definitely intended to shake things up, but as IP says most writers just ignore it. Indeed the talk on this forum for a couple of years after it, was how little impact it was having on subsequent Dredd stories.

For me, any perceived lack of quality in the strip in recent years is due Wagner, understandably, writing less and less of it; I'm not seeing a fundamental barrrier to any particular type of story.

Day of Chaos

SBT

Day of Chaos.

Day of Chaos for me even though I loved the Judda storyline...

Day of Chaos for its build and build of things just keeping on going wrong!

Only read Day Of Chaos once, OZ is as engrained in my early tooth experience as Necropolis.

Haven't read heaps of the epics but Day of chaos and Oz I have  :)

Both very good but it's Day of Chaos for me

Oz is like this carefree story - like it's namesake, The Wizard of Oz. Sure, there are villains, but they're pompous and ridiculous. Day of Chaos is more like an emotional brutality that carefully and methodically extinguishes all hope. In terms of wider context, Oz wins because the author ties the new facts neatly into a wider vision, whereas Day of Chaos takes both the readers and the other writing teams entirely by surprise, to such an extent that it feels almost as if nobody could quite filter in the new information.

There's that post-epic drive to bring everything back to a Mega-City Normal. After The Apocalypse War, that meant rad-pits and a smaller (but still massive) city. After Chaos Day, we're not quite sure what we're looking at. Neither are the writers. You can fictionally cherry-pick and have bits of ruined city and bits of immaculate city, but it still feels like it hasn't quite been addressed. The sector-renumbering after the War gave us a neat visual of what had happened, but we've not had (probably because there isn't one) any sort of unified vision for post-Chaos MC-1.

For grit and tension, then, if not wider coherence: Day of Chaos

Oz has a special place in my heart. It felt like a real big event and was graced by a superb roster of artists - the switch between artists never seemed to jar. It was brilliant.

However I'm going for Day of Chaos. It was brutal in a way we hadn't seen before. It was magnificent.

Oz!

I cant vote! Haven't read Day of Chaos...been waiting for Case Files for most stories, but that might be 8 or so CF away and I'm not sure I can wait that long. I've been excited to read this epic for a while.

I do like Oz but will hold my judgment for now...

You can always get the complete collection of DoC:

https://shop.2000ad.com/catalogue/GRN465 (https://shop.2000ad.com/catalogue/GRN465)

https://shop.2000ad.com/catalogue/GRN474 (https://shop.2000ad.com/catalogue/GRN474)

https://shop.2000ad.com/catalogue/GRN506 (https://shop.2000ad.com/catalogue/GRN506)

It's well worth it. Its very good.

Thank you for the links broodblik and recommendation Colin...I might have to just order these and enjoy now. More double dipping...I can just pass these along to my brother when the case files comes out (he gets a fair share of trades from me due to double dipping!). Thanks gents.

DOC
loved how things just kept getting worse and worse, and also that bit when we thought Dredd's head had been blown off (ok we knew it hadn't, but it was a hell of a cliffhanger).

Seems that again i am in minority here as my voice goes to Oz. I like Day of Chaos uncompromising brutality, but I like more how Oz plays out. Judda storyline intertwined with Chopper's misadventures, with breathtaking climax. Somewhere i read that the climax is one of the reasons for breaking up the partnership between Wagner and Grant (Grant favored to have Chopper shot by Dredd).

Oz

Think I see where this is headed but can change if the votes come in before I count up in the morning.

Day Of Chaos

I was never that keen on Oz, it's Day of Chaos for me.

Wow, what a choice.

The scale of DoC is something to behold, yet the spread of the virus is portrayed so intimately. I still think one of the most heart-breaking moments is when you believe the North West Hab Zone is going to escape unscathed, then the two muggers drop the virus on their tongues believing it to be a new narcotic.

An outstanding epic and I'm sure I will get to vote for it in a future round but here, for nostalgic reasons, for Dillon's Pacific for McCarthy's Judda uniforms, for the Dredd to Oz feint, for 'Now get out there - Do it for Mega City One.'

I'm voting for Oz

Oz.

VOTING CLOSED

Another relatively quiet one, but not as close as I thought on first look. Many might have enjoyed Choppers run across the ocean and the Judda but its no competition when you compare it to the slow grinding burn that ranked up the tension and crushed Mega City One and

Day of Chaos

Takes this uncomfortably