Your favorite 2000 AD 'Twists' - Major spoilers within

[credo]

Overall, I actually think it is just about my favourite Dredd story of all time.

Love it, but I always felt that it read a little like a repurposed Strontium Dog story. With the exception of the Lopez part, I can imagine Wulf and Johnny pretty much slipping into this story with very little fuss.

[Mikey]

I'm going to say the revelation that Benny Beeny gets himself transplanted into America's body, in Judge Dredd: America.

How the hell did I forget that? That's probably the biggest emotional punch I've felt from the house of Tharg - it actually did bring a tear to my eye when I first read it.

M

[Theblazeuk]

Have to admit the Vort reveal was not great as someone who had never read Lobster Random at that point

But despite not reading any Indigo Prime I enjoyed the Dead Eyes twist. Now if Cradlegrave had seen an Inspector Absalom show up.... I would probably not have enjoyed it that much

[Link Prime]

A damn fine thread.

For me;
1) The Dead Man. The original rug-pull, and still the best. Like Greg, I was the right age for maximum impact (12 I believe).
2) Zenith Phase IV. "We are, we were, we will be The Lloigor".
3) Trifecta. Not just because it was absolutely ingenious, but the pedigree of the creators involved- Ewing, Spurrier, Williams, Flint, D'Israeli, Coleby, Critchlow- reads like a who's who of modern Thrill-Makers.

[IndigoPrime]

I'm going to say the revelation that Benny Beeny gets himself transplanted into America's body, in Judge Dredd: America.

How the hell did I forget that? That's probably the biggest emotional punch I've felt from the house of Tharg - it actually did bring a tear to my eye when I first read it.

And, as noted in the podcasts, you can see the surgical scar on the fourth page of the script—that episode of which drops some heavy hints about what happened that are blindingly obvious in retrospect but not necessarily when you first read; great writing.

[glassstanley]

In recent years, Trifecta. As a younger Squaxx, it was the end of Block Mania - everything has gone to hell in MC-1 and suddenly it was going to get worse.

On a much smaller scale, I remember enjoying the Trifecta-lite crossover between the first Anderson solo strip and the Dredd 'Aftermath in Ron Reagan' story. Love that the Dark Judges are on the prowl and Dredd is just assigned to clean up duties"

[The Enigmatic Dr X]

My favourite twist ever was the Future Shock where the guy in the bar... didn't get away, and has alien eggs in his brain.

[abelardsnazz]

I'd like to think I had an inkling of the Dead Man twist back in the day, but memory plays tricks.

I'd also like to recognise the brilliant artwork of John Ridgway on that story, he'd illustrated Dredd before but this had a huge amount of atmosphere and took the story exactly where it needed to be.

I haven't read Trifecta, but having read the comments it sounds pretty cool. Hope to catch up with it in the JD mega collection.

[Jacqusie]

I for one, didn't see the Mad Tommy twist when first reading Bad Company.

The story was so well paced with the characters personalities very well fleshed out, the Mad Tommy and Kano Black box twist was really well done at the end.

Bad Co could have ended with the big Krool base fight (wham.. bam.. uggh) & then who lived & who died, but it was much better than that and we had another episode or two in admiration.

As for the best Dredd? It HAS to be the Dead Man. You had to be there I guess at the time to appreciate it's simple genius and jaw dropping moment.

I absolutely adored the Zenith Chimera/ Peter St John moment at the end when a simple 'Ha!' from him blew my brains out.

cheers

Si

[Hawkmumbler]

Having just started in my big Zenith read, [spoiler]the sudden and grotesque death of Siadwell Rhys was a real "HOLY SHIT" moment.[/spoiler]

[sheridan]

[spoiler]Having just started in my big Zenith read, [/spoiler]

Good one - after having spent the whole episode [spoiler]getting him into a state to face the enemy, you expect him to last more than a few seconds[/spoiler].

[13school]

I'm still not over the reveal of Toby as the killer in Halo Jones

I was deeply scarred by the death of Toy in Halo Jones book 3 - in part because I'd only been reading 2000AD for a year or so at the time, and so hadn't really been expecting the whole "anyone can die at any moment" ethos. And in part because the whole "she's been dead for hours" thing was so jarring.

Dredd losing his eyes in City of the Damned was a bit of a shock too... though even then I figured he wasn't going to be blind from there on out, no matter how many "Justice is blind" one-liners it set up.

[TordelBack]

[spoiler]Having just started in my big Zenith read, [/spoiler]

Good one - after having spent the whole episode [spoiler]getting him into a state to face the enemy, you expect him to last more than a few seconds[/spoiler].

'Course we say that, as if a beloved character had completed a long road to redemption only to be cut down, but its only half-a-dozen pages over a fortnight.  Characters in US comics spend longer placing their order at a drive-thru.

[Greg M.]

'Course we say that, as if a beloved character had completed a long road to redemption only to be cut down, but its only half-a-dozen pages over a fortnight.

It's a great bit of writing – after all the bloody hippies and ex-hippies and Tories and Nazis, with their Machiavellian schemes, Morrison introduces a proper two-fisted, no-nonsense bloke to sort things out, and our first reaction is probably much the same as Zenith's – he sounds brilliant! We really do fall for it, hence the disproportionate impact of his demise.

[Hawkmumbler]

Also the irony of it. If Rhys had just shut up and dropped the bloody rock he would have killed Masterman.