Should Dredd ever be killed off?

[CAN1F]

If he is killed off then you don't replace him you have a new person take up the mantle.

Where Dredd is gung ho and done it all the new person probably female will not be so sure and there more available to the story.

[paddykafka]

I don't think Dredd should necessarily be killed off, per se. Instead, I would like to see his last appearance in the Prog tied in with a story-line in which Mega-City One finally becomes a fully functioning Democracy. This would maybe come about following a Civil War of some sorts, with Dredd having to make a choice between an increasingly tyrannical and oppressive Justice system and a Democratic uprising led by the Citizens. Thanks largely to Dredd - and with a nod to Fargo - the citizens prevail and full Democracy is restored to Mega-City one. Under Dredd's instruction, the Judges cede their authority to the Democrats and become a police force more akin to current times, with all the accountability and scrutiny that entails. (At least in theory!) Having helped bring an end to the former Justice System which he has served for so long - and as a symbolic gesture - Joe Dredd takes the Long Walk into the Cursed Earth for the last time and into the worlds of Myth and Legend.

[Magnetica]

That's a way to end the strip.

Which is fine if that is what you want.

I personally would prefer the strip to continue with the core ethos of it as intact as possible. That means the Judge's remaining in power and Dredd himself continuing to be prominant.

[AlexF]

As things are at the moment, is it still possible, in a weekly Prog, to run a story about either an idiotic fuiture fad or a bizarre future crime in MC1, then have Dredd turn up at the end to make an arrest + say something pithy?

I do think you could kill Dredd and not lose this basic premise, although I can't see a good long-term reason for doing so. Unless you just flat-out ended the series.

Or is it vital to the strip to remind readers every episode that the Justice Dept in MC-1 is fundamentally too small and ill-equipped to deal with routine crime-busting?

I worry that if the overarching narrative goes too far in the direction, we can perhaps never again have a 'normal' Dredd epsiode, as served the Prog so well for 2,000 progs...

Basically, this is your age-old geek debate about continuity vs story engine.

[Dark Jimbo]

As things are at the moment, is it still possible, in a weekly Prog, to run a story about either an idiotic fuiture fad or a bizarre future crime in MC1, then have Dredd turn up at the end to make an arrest + say something pithy?

Or is it vital to the strip to remind readers every episode that the Justice Dept in MC-1 is fundamentally too small and ill-equipped to deal with routine crime-busting?

Certainly possible - I think it's just more the case that the current writers are more interested in developing their respective supporting casts and doing multi-part thrillers than self-contained funny sci-fi episodes.

[Jim_Campbell]

Or is it vital to the strip to remind readers every episode that the Justice Dept in MC-1 is fundamentally too small and ill-equipped to deal with routine crime-busting?

To be fair, after all the bitching about Chaos Day seeming to have little or no aftermath, it's a bit harsh to complain that there's now too much reference to it in ongoing stories...

Cheers

Jim

[Misanthrope]

How well did the Strontium Dog fare without Johnny Alpha?

Like Judge Dredd, the universe Johnny inhabited was interesting. But without the central character it fell apart.

[Frank]

is it still possible, in a weekly Prog, to run a story about either an idiotic future fad or a bizarre future crime in MC1, then have Dredd turn up at the end to make an arrest + say something pithy?

Certainly possible - I think it's just more the case that the current writers are more interested in developing their respective supporting casts and doing multi-part thrillers than self-contained funny sci-fi episodes.

The ability to write a six page gag strip isn't a transferable skill in the wider comics marketplace, so there's little incentive to learn how.  Plus, whimsy is difficult to pull off and very divisive - look at the mixed reception afforded to Undercover Klegg.

I'm sure Tharg has a few six-pagers on file, to plug holes in schedules, but I doubt they're of the wacky crime variety. That's fine with me; we had 11 good years of those kinds of stories and another 18 okay years that illustrated the law of diminishing returns.

[Richard]

Most Judge Dredd stories aren't really about Dredd himself. They're mostly about some other character, or about the city, or about some situation. It's quite rare to have a story about the man. So if Dredd ever was killed off, you could still tell all of those stories, and just have a different judge to hang the story on. The only downside is that if that replacement judge was identical to Dredd, then everyone would wonder what the point was of killing off the original -- there would have been be no real change to the strip. Alternatively, you replace him with a very different character, say Beeny, and then you risk losing one of the things that really appealed to the readers: Dredd's harshness / bluntness / single-mindedness / toughness or whatever you think defines his character. In either case, you risk diminishing the strip, leading to his eventual return one day like Johnny Alpha and so many other examples. So in the long run, it was just a "comic book death" all along, and not the bold move it was intended to be.

And it's naive to think that 2000 AD would kill off it's biggest commercial asset. (Unless it was swiftly followed by a reboot, and nobody wants that.)

So I don't expect, or want, Dredd to be killed off. It would make a fantastic story, and Michael Carroll has shown us how it could be done, which was fun, and he handled it well. But wisely, he didn't do it for real.

What does need to happen one day is for Dredd's ageing to be addressed somehow. We can't just keep saying "70 is the new 40" for the next ten years.

[JayzusB.Christ]

Or is it vital to the strip to remind readers every episode that the Justice Dept in MC-1 is fundamentally too small and ill-equipped to deal with routine crime-busting?

To be fair, after all the bitching about Chaos Day seeming to have little or no aftermath, it's a bit harsh to complain that there's now too much reference to it in ongoing stories...

Cheers

Jim

Point.

[Magnetica]

is it still possible, in a weekly Prog, to run a story about either an idiotic future fad or a bizarre future crime in MC1, then have Dredd turn up at the end to make an arrest + say something pithy?

Certainly possible - I think it's just more the case that the current writers are more interested in developing their respective supporting casts and doing multi-part thrillers than self-contained funny sci-fi episodes.

The ability to write a six page gag strip isn't a transferable skill in the wider comics marketplace, so there's little incentive to learn how.  Plus, whimsy is difficult to pull off and very divisive - look at the mixed reception afforded to Undercover Klegg.

I'm sure Tharg has a few six-pagers on file, to plug holes in schedules, but I doubt they're of the wacky crime variety. That's fine with me; we had 11 good years of those kinds of stories and another 18 okay years that illustrated the law of diminishing returns.

Yes to me there is nothing in the current post Day of Chaos set up that prevents the witty bizarre crime 6 pager, its just a matter of having the right script.

I don't expect, or want, Dredd to be killed off. It would make a fantastic story, and Michael Carroll has shown us how it could be done, which was fun, and he handled it well. But wisely, he didn't do it for real.

I do wonder if the current story was a dry run to see how the readers would react. A bit like I suspect that the whole Tharg replaced by the MiB of Vector 13 in the 90s was a toe in the water to see if they could change the name of the comic post Y2K.

[13school]

A reason I (and almost certainly no-one else) think might be a good one for killing off Dredd is that he's become an obstacle in his own series to telling the kind of stories his series does (or did) best.

For a long time Dredd was the straight man in a strip where a lot of the comedy came from his stoney-faced reaction to the craziness around him. But those stories are a lot harder to tell now that the focus has shifted to him being an old man worn down by decades of pointless crime-fighting and questions about a system that has obviously failed anyway.

It's reflected too in the way the strip has moved away from telling stories where the threat is silly and threatening at the same time. Time was Dredd would be menaced by nutty foes that still managed to provide convincing menace (or would simply deal with a crime that wasn't a direct threat to his life and limb), whereas these days it feels like Dredd is largely up against sinister conspiracies of one stripe or another. Again, this fits in perfectly well with today's Joe Dredd, a man defined by his long grueling history and the failure of the system he's sworn to uphold. But those kind of stories can't be told forever either.

The trouble is that it's hard (for me) to see how the strip could change away from these kind of stories with Dredd the way he currently is. It's not that the strip has "grown up" either – personally I think good comedy is harder to do and more rewarding to read than straight drama, and Dredd used to be very good comedy indeed. It's evolved into more of a drama and that's fine, but if it's to keep going for another thirty years Dredd (and Joe Dredd) will have to keep evolving. While it's perfectly possible to simply start telling different kinds of stories again it feels like the character has gone too far down his current road for the writers to simply pretend he's not now a sadder, more complex character.

Which ironically, limits the stories that can be told with him – when he was more of a cypher various kinds of stories could be told and dropped, but now that he's become locked in as a relatively straight dramatic character that's pretty much the only kind of stories current Dredd works in (as some of the reaction to the recent Sensitive Klegg story shows).

(then again, Dredd always had a touch of the cranky, "get-off-my-lawn" old man about him. Perhaps in the future Justice Department and MC1 could evolve itself into a more moderate place and the comedy could come from Dredd still being a dour, brutal hardliner who's now over-reacting to the new cuddly world around him.)

(Forget I said anything.)

[Magnetica]

Personally, and its just my opinion, the problem I had with the recent sensitive Klegg story, wasn't that it didn't fit with the strip anymore, it was just that it wasn't very good.

The other earlier one, where he was being pursued by the Hunters' Club (hmmm hope I have got that apostrophe right) was perfectly fine.

[SuperSurfer]

Here's me holding out for a Dredd tv series (having almost given up all hope for a Dredd movie sequel).

And then there's a bunch of true fans who don't even want Dredd in the comic!

Captain Beefheart: "Somebody's had too much to think."

[Brendan Rowland]

Dredd lives in a comic world so why not cure old age. Come up with a story that see Dredd not able to do his duty on the street. Where the crime win so a solution has to be found or Dredd retires or he has to get this new fountain of youth treatment that has just become law for aging population of Mega City One. Society can not cope with old age citizens in it system. So a Fountain of youth treatment is found so they are not a burden on the City and can work and be produced. Dredd is treated and get a new lease of life younger fitter and more brutal in this punishment of the law.