Okay so instead of my normal blather I'll intro this one with some logistics. Quarter finals. I've matched pairings by taking the highest Seed and putting it against the lowest Seed. One a day (with play-offs running along side) 3 days for these ones. Winners in the semis, losers into a play-off for positions 12-5... you're confused - look I'm running this thing and I'm hanging on by my fingernails too!
Seed 2 The Dead Man (https://dreddepicsranked.blogspot.com/2020/12/epics-3-1-bitter-end.html) Progs 650-662
Vs
Seed 10 Tour of Duty (https://dreddepicsranked.blogspot.com/2020/12/epics-28-26-sublime-and-ridiculous.html) - Progs 1649-1693
Still with 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 3 day votes for these ones so this one will close first thing in the morning Friday 9th April - winner advance to the semis - loser goes into the 12th - 5th place 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.
Tour of Duty
I'm going to contradict myself from the America/Judge Child vote - is TDM an epic in its own right or even a proper Dredd story? It does however remain one of my favourite Tooth stories of all time, the atmosphere, the reveal, the Sisters - just brilliant. ToD is great also, but I'm going with my heart here and voting for The Dead Man.
Tour of Duty.
The Dead Man always and forever.
tod
Tour of duty.
Tour of Duty
Tour Of Duty.
Tour of Duty
It goes on for about a year and has so much going on. The Dead Man is a very fine short story.
Tour Of Duty
Yassa. The Dead Man. Morlocks. Ridgway. The reveal.
Sinfield. Francisco. Maybe. Inga. Beeny. Pink Eyes. Rico. Mutants. Ezquerra. Macneil. Higgins. Tour of Duty has so much more to offer.
Defo Tour of Duty.
How is TDM seed two? I mean, it's good, but...
Anyway, Tour of Duty.
Tour of Duty.
SBT
I've just re-read The Dead Man after listening to Conrad and Fox discuss it on their podcast. Even without the reveal, it's a perfect little story - a perfect script with perfectly-suited art, and it was really nice to see [spoiler]Dredd's weird-looking bionic eyes[/spoiler] acting as a useful plot-point.
Obviously Tour of Duty is brilliant, and far denser a story, but I'm going with The Dead Man.
The Dead Man.
The Dead Man is great, but it's not a stand-alone epic, as it is essentially part of Necropolis. My vote goes to that stalwart of late 80s television, the serialized 'Nam epic Tour of Duty. Bandanas in the jungle, man!
Tour of duty [please]
Tour of Duty.
DM isn't even Dredd...
Martin Sinfield exits stage left, his cape unfurling as he leaves the frame.
Fade to black.
TITLE CARD - Tour of Duty
TDM is seed 2 because I read it in weekly installments when I was 11 with no idea of the reveal, plus the horror of it all shit me right up in a way that lingers.
I guess it's not 'epic' in the scale of ToD but 13 weeks in pre-teen years is worth about 1 year of being 30-something.
The Dead Man.
I only read this for the first time about 4 years ago but was still surprised by the reveal. I managed to avoid explicit spoilers, but knew enough to read it before the CF with Necropolis (thanks to this forum). Knowing it was Dredd related, I assumed/guessed that the Dead Man was a Dredd clone, maybe Rico (who I knew of from recent progs). I was wrong [spoiler]the Dead Man was Dredd!! [/spoiler] and my mind continued to be blown moving into Necropolis. Maybe not a true epic, but the Dead Man is a favorite read each revisit.
Quote from: AlexF on 06 April, 2021, 08:07:41 PM
TDM is seed 2 because I read it in weekly installments when I was 11 with no idea of the reveal, plus the horror of it all shit me right up in a way that lingers.
I guess it's not 'epic' in the scale of ToD but 13 weeks in pre-teen years is worth about 1 year of being 30-something.
Awesome memory! I wish I could have read it as a youth for the first time instead of being 30. Still, I had just moved from Marvel to 2000ad and found the horror and B&W art unsettling (in a good way!).
I'm tempted to give my 10 year old nephew a copy of the Dead Man and changing his life forever...but his mother would never have it!
The Dead Man...
Tour of duty as it's more epic. The Dead Man is awesome but a bit short for full epic points.
The Dead Man is a great story but still serves as a intro into Necropolis
Tour of Duty.
The Dead Man
This one is coming to an end - The Dead Man will have looked nervously at the fate of America and wonder if it can defy the idea its neither Dredd nor an Epic. Its having a late surge in votes and so... who knows. If you want to affect result get your votes in today and I'll count up in the morning.
Tour of Duty.
I consider Tour of Duty to be a number of different stories bundled together in to an epic sequence. By the same reasoning (as others have pointed out) The Dead Man is merely one of three prologues to Necropolis (the others being the Letter story and Countdown).
So despite thinking The Dead Man is a more striking story on its own I'm voting for Tour of Duty.
VOTING CLOSED
Well this was more clear cut than I thought. In part because The Dead Man, absolutely brilliant story that it definately is for many just isn't Epic enough, for some isn't even Dredd. Of course the main reason is
Tour of Duty
Is chuffin' awesome and my favourite of them all - so I might forgive you The Cursed Earth's brutal treatment makes it to the Semi-Finals and The Dead Man enters the vote for 12-5th place. See you tomorrow to find out whether Necropolis joins it...
I think The Cursed Earth may be suffering from the anti-Pat Mills sentiments that are often expressed on this board.
Nah, Pat has many cheerleaders here including myself - the cursed Earth and judge child quest have both been subjected to the same non-Pat critique - they're very episodic rather than one developing story like TAW or necropolis. Mike Carroll's soviets stories got even shorter shrift for the very same issue. People love lots about TCE - from the art to the characters to their own nostalgia - but the structure hasn't aged as well as the big cataclysmic tales.
Also: little bit of credit. It's entirely possible to love Pat's work on established classics (like Nemesis), to still bathe in the glorious waters of treats like The Black Hole, entirely appreciate his work as one of the founding creative forces of the comic and yet still balk at some of his more modern polemicising, or retreading, or aggressive online nature, or obvious hypocrisy around the sharing of ideas.
We can be anti-bits-of-Mills and pro-bits-of-Mills at the same time. Because people are complicated.
The biggest problem for me with Cursed Earth as I mentioned before it is very fragmented stories. Great art but the story just felt like a lot of small stories weaved together.
Quote from: broodblik on 10 April, 2021, 06:49:55 AM
The biggest problem for me with Cursed Earth as I mentioned before it is very fragmented stories. Great art but the story just felt like a lot of small stories weaved together.
See that's its great strength for me, or one of them. Its is a relatively loosely bound series of adventures which give it its scale. Its an exploration of a world we've not seen yet in the strip and the flights into different aspects of it. The fact that its episode mean we know we're only seeing bits of it, that there's much more even in this journey and for many more to come. It leaves gaps for future exploration. That each story is relatively brief is what gives the challenge of the Cursed Earth its scale and wonder. The episodic nature gives the over-arching narrative its sense of pace and desperation. Its other strengths
1. It casts Dredd as hero - which makes sense as he's 'freed' of the system that makes him the evil bastard he is, even while that System defines a lot of what he does here.
2. Is bound in nostaglia - not in the bad sense in they way we are meant to be careful of, whallowing in the past, rather in the positive sense of helping you understand what shapes how you view whats good in the world and that which entertains you. Nostalgia in the way it fires up the energy, imagination and passion we have as kids that the world chips away at as we get older. So for me yeah its a very personal thing. It hit me at the perfect time in a way Judge Child only seemed to try to replicate.
3. Dinosaurs jumping on top of Kill Dozers.