Ignorance is Strength

[JohnW]

I was dismayed recently by an amateur reviewer who, besides holding forth on my shortcomings as a writer and my more repellent flaws as a human being, accused me of not knowing how a Lawgiver works.
In fairness to the pipsqueak, I genuinely don't know how a Mk 1 Lawgiver works. Does anyone? If pressed, I'd say, 'Through futuristic technology,' and leave it at that.
Grud knows we've all seen the thing being used often enough, but the ballistic nitty-gritty remains unclear.
For instance, McMahon's lawgiver looks nothing like Ron Smith's. We've seen it being reloaded (McMahon). We've seen the ammunition up close (Ezquerra). Garth Ennis even gave it a calibre, if I remember rightly.
But has anyone gone to the trouble of attempting to reconcile all this accumulation of evidence? Like, how are you supposed to get all those different types of ammunition into one little box magazine?

Anyway, I'm new to this forum so I don't know if there's been a school of Dreddverse canon lawyers beavering away on suchlike stuff these past years.
Is there a thread? 'How Mega-City Works (or doesn't)?'

[Funt Solo]

There have been a couple of diagrams, which were then used as the basis for the rules in the JD RPG, back in the day. But that's all Mark I, and canon usually means "what works best for the plot in this moment".

[GoGilesGo]

This iconic spread (from an early 80s annual?) was probably the best explanation of how the Mark I worked...though i think every artist since has ignored that goofy looking heat seeker bolt on.



regarding 'How Mega City Works', the most fun thread (IMHO) recently was this one, Is There a Middle Class in MC1?

https://forums.2000ad.com/index.php?topic=47070.0

[Jim_Campbell]

Let's be honest here: the Lawgiver has never made much sense, having been developed piecemeal over the first year or so of the strip's very episodic, throw-stuff-at-the-wall-and-see-what-sticks, developmental period. Most of that development consisted of "What will seem cool to a ten-year-old this week?"

The ricochet round is largely ignored these days (I suspect mainly because the level of contrivance required to introduce a scenario where it would actually be useful), the heat-seeker (if it's ever referred to at all) is usually only mentioned in a reference to why it can't be used.

Armour piercing makes very little sense as a round to be routinely deployed in an urban environment by law enforcement, since the potential for unintended fatalities is obvious.

I'm not sure anyone's ever adequately explained the difference between Hi-Ex and Grenade — has Dredd ever used a grenade round in a story?

[pauljholden]

I wrote a blog post with how I thought the gun might work. And as a working pro I can confidentially say: it doesn't matter.

https://www.pauljholden.com/2021/07/17/the-science-of-judge-dredd/

[JohnW]

This iconic spread (from an early 80s annual?) was probably the best explanation of how the Mark I worked...though i think every artist since has ignored that goofy looking heat seeker bolt on.



regarding 'How Mega City Works', the most fun thread (IMHO) recently was this one, Is There a Middle Class in MC1?

https://forums.2000ad.com/index.php?topic=47070.0

I'd forgotten that one.
I have to admire the way Gibson didn't show any actual mechanical workings and filled in everything with non-specific circuitry.

Thanks for pointing me toward the Mega-City middle class thing. Makes me wonder all of a sudden about all that traffic we see zipping along the skeds and overzooms. Who are all these car owners and where do they need to get to in such a hurry?

[Jim_Campbell]

I'm not sure anyone's ever adequately explained the difference between Hi-Ex and Grenade — has Dredd ever used a grenade round in a story?

Thinking about it now, I have some vague recollection of the Games Workshop RPG describing 'grenade' as being something akin to a shotgun round, although I'm not sure why you'd call that a grenade... and I don't think that's canon because, as I say, I don't think it's ever actually been used in a story.

[JohnW]

I wrote a blog post with how I thought the gun might work. And as a working pro I can confidentially say: it doesn't matter.

https://www.pauljholden.com/2021/07/17/the-science-of-judge-dredd/

No, in this case it doesn't matter. If the story is sound then such detail is immaterial.

On the other hand, for the sake of accuracy in historical fiction (where 'in-my-head canon' won't cut it), I once spent a day trying to track down Irish railway timetables from 1915 and seeking the load capacity of an army general service wagon (2 horse) – because there's always some awkward bugger waiting to pounce on your plot holes the second you get sloppy.

[pauljholden]

Luckily historical fiction doesn't apply to judge Dredd. :p

[JohnW]

Don't tell that the Those Who Guard The Continuity!

[Funt Solo]

This iconic spread (from an early 80s annual?) was probably the best explanation of how the Mark I worked...though i think every artist since has ignored that goofy looking heat seeker bolt on.

This is from prog 34, then reprinted in the 1981 Judge Dredd Annual (but in black and white). ISTR it also showed up in a collected edition of the Daily Star Dredds, but that might have been the Lawmaster diagram (from prog 89, and also reprinted in b&w in the same JD Annual).

There's a thread around somewhere with all of these - including diagrams for the mark II...


EDIT:

Just for reference, the diagrams are from:

- Lawgiver Mark I - prog 34
- Lawgiver Mark I (updated) - prog 996
- Lawgiver Mark II - meg 3.50

[Richard]

The grenade round has never been in any story, only in that feature. It occupies the position that rightfully belongs to the heat seeker round, which in the same feature is added separately to the end of the barrel as a seventh round, while that has never been seen in a story either. In the stories it's just in the magazine, like a normal bullet.

As to how such a tiny magazine can hold all those different kinds of bullet, and how the gun selects which kind to fire, I don't think that has ever been explained in the comic. They didn't try to explain it in the films either, and nobody seemed to mind.

Tell that amateur reviewer to fuck off!

[JohnW]

Because I should have been doing something more important this afternoon, I added up a lot of big numbers, divided by another big number, took a wild guess, and concluded that, given MC1's pre-war land area and its pre-war population of 800 million citizens, then every one of those potential criminals could have had a nice bungalow with a sizeable garden. No need at all for towering city blocks.
But personally, I'll stick with the city as given to us by Ezquerra and Ron Smith.

[Jim_Campbell]

No need at all for towering city blocks.

Ohhhh... we had a thread for that. Can open, worms everywhere.

[The Enigmatic Dr X]

No need at all for towering city blocks.

Ohhhh... we had a thread for that. Can open, worms everywhere.

Here it is. Quite probably one of the best threads ever. And started when the late Si Spuruer asks just one innocent question...

https://forums.2000ad.com/index.php?topic=21095.0