Why do you love Judge Dredd?

[Judge Brian]

 Tour of Duty: The Backlash was my reintroduction the Judge Dredd. It was a little tricky for me to figure out how fit the picture Wagner was painting together, but once I did I was hooked.

[Steve Green]

I couldn't honestly say what I liked as a kid - maybe it was the excessive aspects of American culture which hadn't really crossed the Atlantic - I'd never even seen a McDonalds or Burger King when those episodes appeared in the Cursed Earth.

I think the obsession with minor celebrities and the language of skeds and pedways alongside the general insanity of the citizens of the big Meg was also a factor.

As for Dredd himself, as was pointed out in Trifecta, he was always good at taking a beating, whether it was the Cursed Earth, or City of the Damned - that he wasn't a superhero made that appealing.

A really cool gun and bike don't hurt either.

[Proteus4]

For me it was very much the tragi-comic aspect of the stories.  It was like the strip was very grown up because it wasn't just being funny all the time, sometimes it was really sad.  The madness of life in mega city one was so bleak and unending that the citizens would behave in ever more crazy ways just for something to do and it inevitably ended with them dying or doing time.  The man whose wife became a spider, the man who tried to give his wife a proper burial, the family who all got wiped out at christmas time, stookie glanders (one of my favourite early dredd stories) - all have an element of sadness about them.

The stories that were going on when i first started reading were the democracy stories, followed a few years later by dead man and necropolis.  I loved the whole build up to necropolis, the paving of the way with the stories about Kraken in Bloodline, or going back even further to Oz and letter from a democrat.  The fact that this story built for so long was mind bending to me at that time.

I bought a lot of back progs all the way back to the 200's - spent all my pocket money every week on 2000ad back progs for about 2 years - and i loved city of the damned.  He had to fight his own double, he got his eyes gauged out, hershey was a vampire.  this was the bleakest stuff id ever read.  It was a shame it all ended so abruptly (i hear wagner got bored - shame).  I also read apocalypse wars and judge child in Titan reprints - but i wasnt that fussed on either of them - really early dredd, with its tweaks and spikes and killdozers and walter the wobot? No thanks.  Silly, i like.  Childish, i dont.

I'm currently reading through everything i've missed (i ditched the weekly back in the late nineties after ennis smith and morrison shat all over my childhood) and i have really loved some of the one shot stories that wagner has done - hottie house siege, driller killer etc and when i finally got round to reading young death and then the three amigos i was actually laughing out loud (in a good way) which is something i thought i would never do.

So, i digress.  I love the fact that its sad, that it's epic, that it changes in real time, that it's smart, that it's satirical, that it's funny.

One more thing - american comics are really boring in the way that they're drawn.  One of the things that is so unusual about 2000ad and Dredd is that there are such strong styles in how he's drawn - bolland, holden, mcmahon, dillon, ezquerra, fraser, - everyone draws him differently and that variety adds immeasurably to the strip.


Cheers
Dave

ps - sorry for rambling