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haha! my new signature if you don't mind?

Given your superior War Robot status, it would rude of me to refuse.  Go for it.

Cheers Radiator.  Will get myself a copy of Brothers of the Blood.  Really enjoyed the appearance of Rico in the interlude tale - I like his bolshie attitude. He's Dredd but gobbier.   

Looks like I'm going to need a quick Rico history lesson.  I'm assuming he's not the "he ain't heavy, he's my brother" Rico. 

Can anyone please tell me what progs should I read to get up to speed?

In the Christmas issue story from a couple of years back, Dredd hands Hershey a letter of resignation in a private meeting, then persuades her to bring the mutant issue back on the agenda, and this time not abstain from voting herself. So as Jim says, Dredd did strong-arm Hershey with his threat to quit. 

It's a brilliant piece of writing that got me reading 2000AD again - despite not knowing much of the background.  And what a joy it was to catch up. 

For me it was the art.... Normally love O'Neills stuff but I just could not for the life of me make out what was going on in this from panel to panel. I read it all, but it did leave me feeling cold. I think this was originally a full colour comic though, which probably made it easier to follow??? Could be wrong...

I've recently read Metalzoic from the original progs and I have to agree that, storywise, it was somewhat tedious.  But it was definitely not helped by the lack of colour, which left lots of white space and made things difficult to follow.  They reprinted one episode in full colour, which was amazing and you could finally really appreciate O'Neill's stunning designs.

And for the record, definitely a non-skipper in the current progs.  Don't get why people would - perhaps they have more going on in their lives than I do.

I have been doing a prog slog from Prog 1 (up to 500 now).  After Belardinelli finished drawing weird aliens, I decided that Dan Dare was not for me.  Didn't read much of Rick Random either but I'm pretty sure I've read everything else in its entirety.

   

I've been following this forum for a year or so and this is the first time I've been compelled to post.  I just can't get over the underwhelming reaction to Al Ewing's Rehab.  I'm not here to flame or have a go at anyone, just interested in what people think. 

So far I believe Rehab is one of the best (non-Wagner) Dredd stories I've read in ages.  Having built nicely over the first three parts leading to the hilarious "I am the Community" reveal of the alternative Dredd, I thought part four was brilliant.  The alt Dredd deals with Trebeck with the same economy of effort and style as his MC-1 counterpart, but is brutally undone by the man himself and the "minimum use of force" line was great.  Ok, so as a previous poster pointed out, how did Dredd gets his bike into the prison cell where the gateway opened?  But I can forgive this continuity leap of faith in the name of comedic violence. 

People were disappointed that the Dredds encounter was so brief and there was no face-off and trading of one-liners, but isn't it great to have your expectations dashed in such a manner?  Isn't it preferable to be surprised by a narrative twist than find a story plodding along in the way you anticipated.  I loved the fact that Dredd has no interest in his alternative self and just incapacitates him and moves on to reapprehending his perps. 

Then we cut to Rage Hard and his frustrated attempts to get the alt MC-1's population angry - again very funny with some amusing decapitations and the like - followed by Dredd's arrival at the scene with another great line ("I'm not too happy" - or something like that) and the scene is set for another brutal fight to match the one in part one. 

Is this is not what people want from a Dredd story?  Violence, humour, great dialogue, neat twists on established characters, fine new ones, lovely artwork. 

People seem obsessed with the canon and over-arching narratives and are quick to dismiss any story that isn't dealing with the mutant storyline.  From the strip's point of view, you need to have these interludes.  After all Dredd is a working judge so no matter what political rumblings are going on, he's going to be on the street busting heads.  Besides the kind of things dealt with in the mutant stories - elections, enacting and repealing laws - take time. 

In general this obsession seems unfair on the other writers (and Wagner) and not really how Dredd has worked in the past.  Maybe I've missed changes thanks to my absence from the comic in the 90s and early 00s, but early Dredd stories were nearly always stand-alone stories with the occasional epoch-changing epic thrown in every couple of years.  And the brilliant thing about this is that Wagner was able to use these seemingly insignificant tales to occasionally drop in some morsel of information or introduce a character that would suddenly become important later on. 

Perhaps that's the issue.  When you see Al Ewing's or Ian Edginton's name in the credit box, you know none of this will be relevant to whatever direction Wagner decides to take Dredd.  Maybe Tharg needs to persuade Wagner to give the other Dredd writers some little tit-bits to drop into their stand-alone stories.  But maybe we shouldn't be that concerned and simply enjoy quality writing and a great tale to add to Dredd's world. 

Just for the record, I too am really looking forward to prog 1650 and the resumption of the mutant saga.  Rehab was great but not as great as Backlash.