this weeks dredd 1790, wrong episode?

[Eme]

erm.. this weeks dredd, has the wrong one been printed? it reads like some filler episode, not something that continues whats been going on,
or has chaos day just ended, but with no end ? what a massive let down if so.. ( worse than the 'Lost' final episode if it has)

[Pete Wells]

It was a great little story (the Resyk bit was very clever and really had me laughing) but I have to admit the tone of the story, especially after the last Grud knows how many grim episodes was very jarring.

Dredd wisecracking away with an accountant after we've seen him virtually broken was just a case of unfortunate scheduling. As the the bean counter who was enforcing thriftiness while the whole city is still going to shite, well, just no...

It was a cool little tale with exceptional panel layouts but just a result of unfortunate scheduling I'm guessing  I'm assuming this was written some time ago before Wagner had turned in the last episodes of DoC.

Sorry if this post is garbled, I'm writing it at a kids party in a soft play. Day of Chaos indeed!

[JOE SOAP]

or has chaos day just ended, but with no end ? what a massive let down if so.. ( worse than the 'Lost' final episode if it has)

350 million dead, I'd say that's fairly final.

[TordelBack]

or has chaos day just ended, but with no end ? what a massive let down if so..

You say 'massive let down', I say 'absolutely gobsmacking in its audacity, execution and implications'.  Did any of us really believe, even as late as a few weeks ago, that this was going to end with [spoiler]the effective death of MC-1?  I didn't know how, but I thought something could be done to create a soft landing, that Dredd would pull some crazy trick out of the bag at the last minute[/spoiler].  Would I have been happier with blowing up a metaphorical Kit Agee, or a remedial trip in Proteus, or a well-placed nuke?  Bollocks I would.  People knock Wagner's endings:  I think they can be his greatest strength, and this one tops the lot.

I've been reading this thing (and thinking about it) for 30 years now, and I can still be knocked off my feet by a single page of a Wednesday.  That's an incredible achievement, and not (for me) a let down.     

[Eme]

dont get me wrong it wasnt bad, and i didnt expect a surprise rabbit out the hat to save everything, but it just ended, and  this week and seems like everything back to normal, no aftermath or anything.

It just felt like its been cut confusingly short , as though Wagner got bored and just finished it all in one 'im fed up with writing this' go.

When the build up was something like a year, then it ends with a tiny couple of bubble comments, i feel let down.

It wasnt even a shock ending really to leave you thinking, everything building up to this chaos day, then all we get of the chaos day is a couple of prog  summaries and short extracts of whats going on.

the word premature comes to mind.

[Dark Jimbo]

...the word premature comes to mind.

Well, quite.

There are bound to be months of aftermath stories yet to come. You're talking as though DoC is already a closed book, with no possibility of follow-up.

[Eme]

no, just this story seems so out of place it feels like a mistake episode print

[JOE SOAP]

But Day of Chaos has ended.

[WhitBloke]

Indeed, the Day of Chaos is over and now the [spoiler]Second Term of Hershey[/spoiler] is just starting, and since we've just come from one deep end to be thrown into yet another potentially deeper end would be a bit too quick.  With the results of Day of Chaos, the Dredd strip now has a different road to travel and surely it's best to at least start in a lower gear as done with The Bean Counter?

At first, realising this week's story was post-DOC, I would have liked to see a couple of progs more of Day of Chaos, specifically some more details of the effects upon the city.  But by the time I got to about the second or third panel I was already realising, that's not what DOC was about and this story is just the start of what comes now.  Besides which, since they weren't in any way integral to DOC, however much many of us worried and fretted over their absence during the catastrophe, it's now that we might get to see what happened to the likes of Roffman, Giant and so on.  Just as we saw the darkest moments of the Day of Chaos from the Dredd/Beeny perspective in the burning cityblocks, perhaps we're in for a similar way of finding out how Giant et al are coming to terms with the aftermath (and that aftermath's details) from in the thick of things.  Only with that sour old git Joe Dredd popping by to neck tea and steal biscuits.  Well, I guess you can't have it all.

[douglaswolk]

I loved it. Everyone concerned seems to have been very careful to not tip off anyone to exactly when "Day of Chaos" was ending, because that affects what readers expected to happen. If we thought there were 26 more weeks to go, we'd expect Dredd to pull off some kind of miraculous one-man mission of salvation/vengeance... but instead, we got 20 weeks of "Eve of Destruction," then the gorgeous miniature of "Chaos Day" itself--Dredd as helpless and ineffectual as anyone else, Beeny's crisis--and six pages of epilogue, and boom, off we go.

My first reaction, on reading the contents of 1790: "Huh, 'The Bean Counter' really doesn't seem like a John Wagner title..."

On reading the first page of Dredd, reactions, in order:
*Ha!
*But that really doesn't seem like a Wagner line.
*It's great, though.
*I bet it's Al Ewing...
*Yes!
*Wow, I guess "Day of Chaos" really is over.
*Oh man this is good.

[Rog69]

As a Dredd one shot it was a great story but it feels as though it was an existing script that was retooled with a couple of lines to make it post DOC.

It would work fine if this story is set six months after the day itself but not this soon, I find it hard to believe that the bean counters would be back in their regular roles with so much else to do.

[vzzbux]

I think the talk of potential block war niggled me abit but if this was a retool then fair enough. Can't be many blocks left housed side by side.




V

[Mardroid]

I think the talk of potential block war niggled me abit but if this was a retool then fair enough. Can't be many blocks left housed side by side.

That assumes everyone has been spread out. To keep tabs on the surviving citizens (and definitely potential perps*), the judges relocate them into a specific area of the city. Hence lots of full blocks within near location and vast swathes of unpopulated city all around.

*It's been mentioned elsewhere that the difference in ratio between judges and citizens (i.e. there's more judges per citizen than there used to be) means the Judges may be able to police the citizens easier in this post Chaos day city. However, I think all that empty space, could provide a distinct advantage for criminals. Just think at how easy it would be to melt away now. At least until the surveillance system is restored. (Once it is, of course it may be easier to pick people out as there would be no crowds to lose oneself in, but I'm sure an enterprising criminal could get around that.)

[Cthulouis]

This week saw Dredd protect one of the safe blocks that we have seen established during DoC. There are hints of the hell outside, in both the fact that they need defending and the suggestion of what is going on out there.

The thing about safe blocks is that they must, by definition, be safe. Otherwise the judges wouldn't call them safe blocks. As such, and given that the day in question has passed, the safe areas are the quieter parts of the city. Future episodes might well reach out from these to see the wider mess, but this episode set in a comparatively secure place establishes that something has been saved, and now we can go from there.

Add to that the sort of intelligent social commentary we have come to expect from Al Ewing, and the fact that I was laughing from beginning to end, and we have a winning story.   

Edited to add: On the subject of Block War, I think there is the idea that this can be something that happens within a block as well as between blocks, or is that just a movie thing that has wormed its way into my subconscious?

[A.Cow]

I just re-read the end of Chaos Day and realised what was missing: a one-page final establishing shot.

Had we seen a single image of a large chunk of the city -- crumbled but standing, with a little bit of smouldering rubble in a couple of places -- I believe that this would have sold the finish in a much more satisfying manner.  No words needed after Dredd's comments; just an image that says "Chaos Day is over, it won't be the same, and some kind of rebuilding must begin."

Ah well ... too late now.  And, let's face it, John Wagner is a far betterwriter than me so he's obviously got some reason for omitting the obvious big finish.