JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 2:
THE CURSED EARTH (progs 61-85)

 

And here we are in Judge Dredd’s first true epic, The Cursed Earth – for which some of my favorite images come not from the original print in 2000 AD, but the Eagle Comics reprints with their cover art by Brian Bolland.

You may recall the Cursed Earth all the way back from progs 3-4, although it had yet to be christened the Cursed Earth and was simply described as the “wilderness from the Atomic Wars” – if by wilderness, of course, you mean most of the former United States (outside the mega-cities on East and West Coasts and in Texas), now dangerous and mutated badlands (with a running theme of dark, mutated versions of the United States). The Cursed Earth is downright drokking dangerous – mutants, aliens, ratnadoes, the last President of the United States, Las Vegas, war droids…and freaking dinosaurs!

The Cursed Earth combines the essential Judge Dredd epic plotlines – Dredd confronting some threat, often existential, to Mega-City One, and Dredd venturing to some other, often exotic, location, or a combination of the two, Dredd venturing to some other, often exotic, location TO confront some threat, often existential, to Mega-City One. The Cursed Earth epic is just that – except the existential threat is not to Mega-City One, but its West Coast counterpart of Mega-City Two. In this case, it is a deadly virus that turns people into murderous, cannibalistic psychopaths (not unlike Rage virus in the 28 Days Later film(s), or for that matter, the Chaos Bug that almost wiped out Mega-City One in subsequent issues).

And it doesn’t get more exotic, or downright weird, than the Cursed Earth – except perhaps for alien space (both of which we’ll get to visit in The Judge Child Quest epic).

As for the storyline, it is simple and straightforward, much like that in Mad Max Fury Road (which come to think of it, would make for an excellent Cursed Earth storyline – Judge Dredd and Mad Max are even owned by the same studios, hint hint) – all the better to let the SF future satire and absurdist black comedy play it out. Dredd has to drive through the Cursed Earth to take a vaccine to Mega-City Two. Of course, they, ahem, borrowed the storyline from Roger Zelazny’s Damnation Alley. I know it, you know it and they know it. Who cares? It was an SF classic – a former Hell’s Angel has to drive a vaccine from the West Coast to the East Coast in a post-apocalyptic United States after a nuclear war. Judge Dredd just goes in the opposite direction. He even takes his own former Hell’s Angel-style biker with him (by the name of Spikes Rotten).

In Damnation Alley, flight was simply not possible due to the freakish atmospheric conditions as a result of the nuclear war. In the world of Dredd, with its regular aircraft (and space flights!), this excuse doesn’t really seem to wash, although there is a passing reference to the Death Belt of floating (and radioactive) atmospheric debris – which doesn’t seem to recur after this epic. Hell – Mega-City One supersurfer Chopper later crosses the Cursed Earth on a hoverboard! The Cursed Earth storyline offers the flimsy excuse that the plague infectees have taken over the Mega-City Two airport(s?). Surely Mega-City One aircraft could simply land as near the city as possible? Or Mega-City could use drones or similar craft to land anywhere else within the city other than the airports? But again, who cares? Who wants to see Judge Dredd fly over the Cursed Earth? Of course, we want to see Dredd ride across it (in his special Killdozer vehicle) and fight dinosaurs. So strap yourself in for the ride…

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 2:
THE CURSED EARTH 1-2 –
FORBIDDEN FRUIT / INTO THE DARKNESS
(progs 61-62)

You gotta love that title spread!

Forbidden Fruit in prog 61 opens The Cursed Earth epic, setting up its premise. Mega-City Two – Mega-City One’s Californian counterpart on the Pacific coastline – has been stricken with plague. What exactly is this plague (as Red’s co-pilot asks him)? No boring flu or anything like that for Judge Dredd’s first epic – it’s akin to the Rage virus in the 28 Days Later film franchise, although its victims are marginally more intelligent and articulate, not quite the de facto zombies of that franchise. Apparently, “it’s a disease left over from the Great Germ War… you know, the one that came after the Atomic War”. Judge Dredd’s world tends to be post-post-apocalyptic. It’s a wonder that ANYONE is alive in the twenty-second century, let alone the hundreds of millions of people in Mega-City One.

Anyway, plague-infected citizens have taken over the airports of Mega-City Two, conveniently isolating it by air for the plot, and have been transformed them into bestial, crazed cannibals. The plague is virus strain “2T(FRU)T” – adopted by the plague-infected into the strange battle cry – “tooty fruity”. Fortunately, Mega-City One has a vaccine. Unfortunately, the only way to get it to Mega-City Two is by land across the Cursed Earth.

Into the Darkness in prog 62 sees Judge Dredd equipped with his vehicle for the mission – the Landraider / Killdozer. (It’s a dual vehicle). Three other judges and some war droids are to accompany him – but Dredd handpicks Spikes Rotten for the mission, a criminal invoking the Hell’s Angel biker protagonist from Damnation Alley, because of Spikes’ previous experience as a gun-runner in the Cursed Earth.

 

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 2:
THE CURSED EARTH 3-4 –
THE DEVIL’S LAPDOGS / KING RAT
(progs 63-64)

Ratnado!

That’s right, Sharknado – Judge Dredd did it first in The Cursed Earth.

And in progs 63-64, we get to our ‘ratnado’, a tornado of rats known as The Devil’s Lapdogs. After the Atomic Wars, “great winds swept the land” hurling the postwar flotsam and jetsam high into the sky, where it became the Death Belt, a vast belt of flying garbage where nothing could survive, except of course the rats. The mutated rats learnt to glide on the air currents, swooping down with the winds like locusts, particularly upon the poor Cursed Earth town of Deliverance.

Dredd beats the ratnado (by playing Pied Piper with his bike siren).

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 2:
THE CURSED EARTH 5-6 –
THE MUTIE MOUNTAINS / DARK AUTUMN (progs 65-66)

One of my favorite images (colorized from the original black and white art by Brian Bolland) from The Cursed Earth epic – mutant Mount Rushmore! The mutant head I can understand, but Jimmy Carter?! Naturally, 2000 AD couldn’t resist the joke at the expense of the American president at the time.

Judge Dredd hasn’t made it all the way to South Dakota – apparently the Mount Rushmore sculpture was moved to just outside Mega-City One, although I’m not sure for what purpose, as it’s still in The Cursed Earth.

Dredd tries to avoid “mutie country” but the mutant leader, Brother Morgar of the Brotherhood of Darkness – it’s his head in the mutated Mount Rushmore – has other plans. He sets off after Dredd, in a procession of vehicles salvaged together – not unlike Immortan Joe and his war boys in Mad Max: Fury Road. Indeed, Immortan Joe and his mutated warlord state would fit right in the Cursed Earth (and a cinematic crossover between Mad Max and Judge Dredd is entirely possible, not to mention totally awesome – albeit unlikely – as they are owned by the same studio) – or for that matter, it would only take a few cosmetic changes to reimagine Brother Morgar and his followers as Immortan Joe and his war boys (or vice versa).

Needless to say, it does not turn out well for Brother Morgar and his followers. Dredd initially has a mutant standoff in prog 65, by threatening to destroy Morgar’s mutant statue. Obviously he has a big head in more way than one and lets Dredd’s team go. Of course, the Brotherhood pursues Dredd’s party in prog 66 – but the latter are helped by a mutant youth named Novar with powerful psi abilities. He seems to be an all-round psi, at least with telepathy or some similar ability to divine Dredd’s mission of mercy (hence why he aids them) but also telekinesis which he uses to destroy the Brotherhood of Darkness. The episode concludes with a hint that Novar may have more of a role to play with respect to Judge Dredd…but we never see him again, as subsequent writers obviously just shelved or forgot about him.

 

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 2:
THE CURSED EARTH 7 –
NIGHT OF THE VAMPIRE (prog 67)

Dredd vs Dracula!

Well, not quite, although that would be awesome! As we will see in subsequent episodes, there are vampires in the Dreddverse, but they tend to be of alien or mutant origin. Here it’s something much more murderous – the last President of the United States, Robert Booth.

Well, technically the actual ‘vampire’ are a trio of malfunctioning medic robots maintaining him in suspended animation and draining the local Cursed Earth villagers of blood to do it.

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 2:
THE CURSED EARTH 8 –
THE SLEEPER AWAKES (prog 68)

And so we are introduced to President Booth (or “Bad Bob” Booth), a small but important part of the Dreddverse mythology. Some of you may have wondered how Mega-City One came to be governed by the Judges, given that its predecessor United States is not governed by Judges – unless the Judges of the Supreme Court were to start riding around on motorcycles dispensing justice with guns, which admittedly also sounds AWESOME! The answer lies with President Booth. Sorry to say it, but the Atomic Wars started with an American first strike – when President Booth pushed the button:

“My Fellow Americans – we stand on the brink of eternity! Foreign elements are at work in every corner of the globe, conspiring to do us down an’ to undermine our position as the richest, greediest nation on Earth. I have issued an ultimatum to world leaders – get off our backs an’ start playin’ ball or face annihilation, that ultimatum has now expired”.

Booth had deluded himself into believing that the American missile shields would protect the nation. Instead, they DID protect the coastal mega-cities, but the rest of the United States became, well, the Cursed Earth. In response (and in accordance with the surviving outraged public), the Judges – which had been created as the elite police force in the growing mega-cities – assumed control with their Declaration of Judgement, which is what we see in this episode (the backstory of the Atomic Wars was in subsequent episodes).

“Here is the Declaration of Judgement…for crimes against the American people, your presidency is at an end!”

President Booth was tried by a Grand Council of Judges and found guilty of war crimes – but the Judges hesitated to execute the last President of the United States. Instead, they sentenced him to a hundred years of suspended animation in Fort Knox – with three medic robots programmed to routinely check and change his blood.

Which of course brings us to the vampire robots – which Dredd has re-programmed to help work for the local farmers. As for Booth himself, Dredd commutes the sentence to life imprisonment, working alongside the robots to help the farmers bring life back to the Cursed Earth – “Every day, you’ll see the mess you made of America!”

The Declaration of Judgement was also captured in this Brian Bolland cover art for the Eagle comics of the second part of the Cursed Earth epic – flashing back to the Judges sentencing the last President of the United States.

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 2:
THE CURSED EARTH 9 –
THE SLAY RIDERS (Prog 69)

It’s about time we had Judge Dredd’s “I am the Law” – and more classic Brian Bolland art.

This episode sees a return to Brian Bolland’s fantastic art, but also the writer Pat Mills’ misanthropy – a characteristic theme in his writing in which he seems to prefer aliens, dinosaurs, robots and basically anything else to people. Mind you, the people in his stories generally have it coming.

And so we are introduced to one of the most noble characters in any Judge Dredd storyline, who is of course an alien – Tweak. Ironically, for an episode positively dripping in Mills’ misanthropy, it also portrays Judge Dredd at his noblest and most heroic, although Dredd was always something of an exception for Mill’s usual depiction of humanity.

The episode starts as Dredd’s party cross the Mississippi – “the once mighty river is still ablaze with petrol, foul-smelling pollutants, and nuclear wastes from the Great Atomic War…a torrent of fiery death”. To cross it, they take a ferry – drawn by alien slave labor. Aliens? In the Cursed Earth? The ferry operator explains that they were “specimens brought back by the starships…used to be kept on an alien nature reserve around here” – until the war. Hmm, sounds a little…contrived. Among them is Tweak, who resembles a bipedal rock-eating aardvark – and he senses in Dredd an exception to the rule that humanity has proved to him so far.

With regret that he must postpone action against the alien slave trade for his mission to Mega-City Two (but vowing to return to deal with it), Dredd and company continue on their mission.

However, the next day, they see Tweak, having eaten his way out of his cage last night, fleeing as a fugitive from a pack of ‘slay-riders’ – who are admittedly riding some pretty cool mutant, ah, horse-things. The slay-riders run down and net Tweak, who obviously calls out for help, even in his alien language. And Dredd of course responds to the call – “When someone calls on the Law for help, be he mutie, alien, cyborg or human, the Law cannot turn a blind eye! AND I AM THE LAW!”

As I said, the Cursed Earth epic portrays Judge Dredd at his noblest and most heroic. It is a pity that his catchphrase is not often shown at its more expansive, as it is here. Typically, Judge Dredd is cast as an authoritarian figure, often satirically so, with his catchphrase as a reinforcement of that. He certainly is an authoritarian figure, but much more nuanced than the simple satire of a police state – and, as here, his catchphrase is more than a statement of his authority, it is the embodiment of duty.

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 2:
THE CURSED EARTH 10 –
REQUIEM FOR AN ALIEN (Prog 70)

Dredd first rides out to rescue Tweak and confront the slay-riders, led by their Alien Catcher General – a figure with distinctive echoes not only of Confederate hunters of fugitive slaves, but also the Witchfinder Generals of witch hunts. Although ironically the Alien Catcher-General has either a mutation or a mask of the head of a goat – ironically, that is, because he resembles nothing so much as the demonic (or devilish) Sabbat Goat of witches’ sabbaths, the opposite of what you might expect for witchfinder generals or witch hunts. Given the slay-riders’ attitudes to aliens and the general human prejudice against mutants, I’d suspect a mask rather than a mutation. Although they don’t seem to have an issue with mutant steeds, here gloriously depicted by Brian Bolland.

Unfortunately, although Dredd and company defeat the slay riders (losing their second Judge, having lost the first to the Brotherhood of Darkness), Tweak has lost his family – his mate and two young children already killed by the slavers. Dredd and company follow him to their grave in a neighboring plantation. It moves Dredd to one of his rare demonstrations of emotion – “Tweak, ain’t much I can do to make amends, buddy…but you’re welcome to come with us – and I’m sorry”.

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 2:
THE CURSED EARTH 11-12 –
BURGER WARS (progs 71-72)

Burger Wars – Ronald McDonald vs Burger King!

Now we reach the point in Judge Dredd’s Cursed Earth epic where my Mega-City Law has a treat for you – the first of the episodes that were originally censored as a result of lawsuit against 2000 AD. I thought Judge Dredd was the Law?

Anyway, that changed in 2014 with a European directive on copyright law allowing the use of copyright protected characters for parody and 2000 AD’s publisher Rebellion Developments republished the suppressed episodes in a new edition of The Cursed Earth in 2016.

Anyway, Judge Dredd and biker companion Spikes scout out the land and find the oddly named town of In-Between, but they soon find out that the town is in between the two warring hamburger chains (or burger barons) – McDonalds to the north and Burger King to the south. Of course, they find this out when Spikes makes the nearly fatal faux pas of ordering a hamburger, offending the town’s neutral sensibilities as the last “free town” left and raising the suspicion that the outsiders are spies. However, this standoff is diverted when the two warring sides, led by figures costumed as their trademarks, descend upon the town (in pick-up trucks and vans), each claiming the town as their “customers”. Hmmm, one can see how this might have been controversial, although arguably also something of a backhanded compliment to the burger chains’ powers of endurance in a post-apocalyptic world.

Dredd and Spikes are captured by the overwhelming numbers of McDonalds’ men, while Ronald McDonald himself personally dispatches the Burger King – prompting the Burger King forces to retreat.

Ronald McDonald announces his vision of the future to the cheering crowds of McDonalds City – a dream in which he sees “every square inch of this fair land covered by one big McDonalds burger bar…everything that’s decent and American HAS BEEN WIPED OUT and in its place will stand McDonalds – one huge onion-spangled McDonalds, from sea to shining sea”. That ends his “speechifying” – he then pronounces the “burgers and shakes are on me!”

However, there’s a momentary blot on this vision as the crowds (and prisoners) gather in the burger bar, Ronald queries a staff member why a table hasn’t been wiped. When the staff member stammers he’ll attend to it now, Ronald guns him down – “We’ve got standards of cleanliness to maintain”. Hmm – I must admit I’m with Ronald on this one. I bet that would improve service standards considerably – and there’s nothing worse than an unwiped table.

Dredd remonstrates with Ronald McDonald about the purposelessness of burning the town – “You’ve won this ridiculous war! You killed the Burger King!”. However, Ronald McDonald counters that “they’ll just choose another one”, revealing that he and the Burger King are just titled positions – he inherited his own as his father ran “McDonalds in these parts” before the Atomic Wars, and he’s just carrying on the “family tradition”. Although in this case, the family tradition has turned into violent empire-building. Unfortunately for Dredd and Spikes, Ronald McDonald pronounces they’ll just have to remain McDonalds’ “customers” until the war is won – and that might take a while. After all, “this is big country – burger country!”

Dredd and Spikes soon manage to escape (and free other prisoners) by overwhelming their somewhat perfunctory two guards – “both fat and slow from too many takeaways”. They steal one of the McDonalds vehicles, but run into a herd of giant mutated cattle the size of elephants – hence all that beef for burgers. Their truck is overturned when a Burger King ambush drives a stampede of cattle directly at them. They are about to be lynched (as sentenced by a Burger King judge, strangely wearing an English judge’s wig), but are saved in the nick of time by the Land-Raider, guns blazing and commanded by Judge Jack. With that, they leave the Burger Wars behind them (never to be seen or heard from again in the comic) and resume their mission to save Mega-City Two.

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 2:
THE CURSED EARTH 13-16 –
SATANUS (progs 73-76)

Now for the main attraction of the Cursed Earth epic – Judge Dredd vs a tyrannosaurus rex!

And to celebrate, I couldn’t resist using the image of Satanus about to chow down on the bound Dredd from the Eagle reprint comics – which rivals that other Brian Bolland cover’s mutants as THE iconic image of the Cursed Earth epic. Indeed, it was my introduction to the epic, as I saw it as a ‘flashback’ poster in 2000 AD comics well before I read the epic itself, so I was left in suspense for years as to how Dredd escaped those gaping jaws.

So why are there dinosaurs roaming the Cursed Earth? Why the hell not? Everything’s better with dinosaurs! But seriously, Judge Dredd does Jurassic Park – or more precisely, since Judge Dredd did genetically engineered dinosaurs before Jurassic Park, Jurassic Park did Judge Dredd. Where’s the check, Jurassic Park?

Of course, another reason might be that Judge Dredd writer Pat Mills just wanted to shoehorn dinosaurs into the Cursed Earth epic from his beloved Flesh series – a series that started in the opening line-up in the very first issue of 2000 AD (preceding Judge Dredd itself, which only started in the second issue, albeit due to scheduling difficulties). That series had an intriguing premise – that the extinction of dinosaurs occurred because they were herded or hunted to extinction by time cowboys from the future, seeking to feed the meat-starved twenty-third century. Of course, being his usual misanthropic self, Mills tended to prefer the dinosaurs to people, with the occasional exception of characters who effectively went ‘dinosaur’ in any event.

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 2:
THE CURSED EARTH 13-14
THE COMING OF SATANUS / FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS (progs 73-74)

As for what dinosaurs are doing in the Cursed Earth, they are dinosaurs “from Dinosaur National Park, brought back to life by genetic engineering”, but “when the atomic war came, the dinosaurs must have been left free to roam”.

And eat sacrificial offerings from the Cursed Earth township of Repentance, which is how Dredd (and his companion Spikes) find themselves drugged and then bound to be eaten by the tyrannosaurus rex Satanus.

There – I’ve pretty much summed up those two episodes.

I mean, that’s almost literally Spike’s question to Dredd and Dredd’s reply as the Land-Raider gets caught up in a dinosaur stampede in The Coming of Satanus (prog 73)

The rest of the episode deals with the backstory of the re-gened dinosaurs in general and Satanus in particular, but you’ve seen Jurassic Park, haven’t you? It’s pretty much that…although Mills seems to write it almost as reincarnation, with memories of their former lives, particularly for Satanus, as one of the offspring of his tyrannosaur matriarch Old One Eye in the Flesh comic (and was killed by her when he challenged her for leadership of the herd of something). I’m…not sure DNA works that way.

Satanus is the first dinosaur created by the Jurassic Park re-gening process – and yes, they called him that, which seemed to be begging for trouble. And sure enough, he is vicious, with a particular taste for human flesh, even escaping into the mountains of the park where he remained at large – until I guess the Atomic Wars set all the dinosaurs free.

Anyway, the Land-Raider incurs damage to a track so Judge Dredd and his team seek assistance at the nearby town of Repentance. Interestingly, there’s a recurring folk horror vibe to the Cursed Earth, not just in this epic but in subsequent episodes – where towns lure passers-by in with an apparently wholesome friendly welcome, often dressed up in Americana, only for the sacrificial purpose of their dark secret. Indeed, this is the second time that folk horror vibe has played out in the epic – with Deliverance and the ratnado now essentially being replayed as Repentance and the tyrannosaur Satanus.

As Dredd said to Spikes at the end of episode The Coming of Satanus, “they’re too friendly”. And of course his “uneasy feeling” is right. Never ask for whom the bell tolls in the next episode of that title – it tolls for thee, Dredd! Well, more precisely, it tolls for Satanus as his dinner bell to come and eat Dredd, but you get the point.

 

 

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 2:
THE CURSED EARTH 15-16
PICNIC AT BLACK ROCK / BLACK SABBATH (progs 75-76)

Fortunately Dredd manages to use one of Satanus’ own teeth lodged in the rock from a previous sacrifice to saw through his bonds and escape. Satanus then rampages through the town of Repentance.

There – I’ve summarized the two episodes.

It’s a little more involved than that. Dredd has to do a little more than saw through his bonds, as Spikes is also bound as a sacrifice – and Satanus is leading a pack of tyrannosaurs to the feed. After escaping, he then cuts Spikes loose but is picked up by one of the tyrannosaurs. Spikes lobs a grenade (which he was wearing as earring) and a tyrannosaur snaps it up – killing that tyrannosaur and injuring Satanus with the shrapnel. The pack descends in a feeding frenzy on the headless tyrannosaur – which is when Dredd and Spikes are able to get away, making their way back to Repentance.

When they get there, the townspeople of course attack them – before the cavalry arrives in the form of Tweak driving the Land-Raider. In the meantime, Satanus is in a bad mood and decided that all deals are off with the township, attacking the jailhouse and everyone in it in a feeding frenzy, picking up the other surviving Judge on the mission, Judge Jack, in his claws.

Dredd is in his own bad mood, intending to use the Land-Raider to burn Satanus and the town to the ground – “Attention, people of Repentance! This is Judge Dredd! I am going to punish you for your crimes! You have five minutes to evacuate the town, before I raze Repentance to the ground!”

And you have to love that opening panel of prog 76, Black Sabbath – “The Devil Beast Triumphs!”.

But not for long – Dredd manages to save Judge Jack and also use the Land-Raider to raze both Repentance and Satanus – although unknown to Dredd, Satanus escaped death by falling through to the basement of the church in Repentance, emerging in an epilogue to the episode. As the epilogue intones, the world had not seen the last of Satanus. Well, Judge Dredd and Mega-City One had – except for his blood, as we’ll see – but Satanus was to cross over (by time travel) into another 2000 AD story…

 

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 2:
THE CURSED EARTH 19-20 –
LOSER’S LEAP / THE GOD JUDGE (progs 79-80)

(17-18 GIANTS AREN’T GENTLEMEN / SOUL FOOD progs 77-78)

Judge Dredd in Vegas!

After escaping the Cursed Earth tyrannosaur Satanus, Judge Dredd’s Cursed Earth epic finds itself back on track in Las Vegas. Well, Satanus and the Utah Dustbowl silliness in the following two episodes in progs 77-78 (Giants Aren’t Gentlemen & Soul Food). The latter were censored from the the original run because of its reference to Colonel Sanders and other trademark characters – but you’re not missing much, as they were a weird diversion without adding to the epic (and arguably detracting from it).

Anyway, when introduced in the Cursed Earth epic (in Loser’s Leap in prog 79), post-apocalyptic Las Vegas has metastasized into a city entirely based on gambling ruled by the Mafia. So…pretty much the same as PRE-apocalyptic Las Vegas, amirite? (Although I’m not sure how it works in the absence of any national or international tourism).

Judge Dredd and his crew are met with a “welcoming committee” in the form of old-style tanks attacking them. Dredd’s twenty-second century Land-Raider easily destroys the twentieth century tanks, but the numbered flag on each tank was a dead giveaway of their real purpose – they, like everything else in Las Vegas, were all part of a gambling game, much to the enthusiasm of the punters who bet on the “strangers”.

Dredd gets progressively more outraged as he explores the city, noting that Las Vegas has a judge-system and querying why it hasn’t intervened to halt the runaway gambling. (Although it makes me wonder more why the mega-cities, with their judge-systems, have had no contact with the judge-system in Las Vegas – particularly Mega-City Two on the West Coast, of which Vegas should effectively be part). As Dredd looks for the Vegas Judges, his outrage is complete when he happens on the Vegas Hall of Justice, housed in a casino, and sets upon it like Jesus Christ after the moneylenders in the Temple. There he finds the Vegas Judges – in uniforms of the same appearance as Mega-City Judges, but with dollar signs emblazoned on their chests, and with stereotypical Italian accents – operating the tables. Dredd demands to see the Chief Judge – and his request is corrected by Vegas Judges to refer to the God-Judge. Sigh.

Dredd assails the God-Judge as unfit for office but is overpowered by the Vegas Judge Fingers (obviously a mutant because of his giant size and extra fingers). And so Dredd finds himself poised over the precipice at Loser’s Leap because in post-apocalyptic Vegas, even death needs to have side-bets – a literal leap off one of the towering high-storied buildings, with target zones painted on the ground for onlooker bets as to the leapers’, ah, final destination.

After that literal cliffhanger, Dredd is fortunately saved in the next episode (The God-Judge in prog 80) by the intervention of Spikes with a (para)chute and they land a safe distance away from the target. (I hope the bookies offered odds on landing outside the target). More fortunately, they are rescued by the Vegas quasi-religious underground resistance, the League Against Gambling. Dredd is hailed by the League as their Savior, according to their book of prophecy (penned by their former leader) – “And lo – out of the east will come a man in black, his steed will be of iron and his anger will be like the roaring of demons. He will smite the chief evil-doer in his temple”. As Spikes jokes, “that’s you all over, Dreddy!”

And although he disclaims the prophecy, Dredd proceeds to fulfil it in his usual style and hands over the position of God-Judge to the leader of the League before resuming his mission to Mega-City Two. The League leader exclaims that Dredd’s memory will – “No one will forget the day Judge Dredd came to Vegas – and won!”

The house always wins, except against Judge Dredd.

Las Vegas was to recur on occasion in subsequent episodes or other stories set in the Dreddverse, when the action ventured far enough afield to it. Just don’t get too attached to the League, as the Mafia reclaim Vegas – or for that matter, just don’t get too attached to Vegas itself, as the writers presumably grew tired of its one-dimensional schtick. Being Vegas, it does go out in style – nuked by Judge Death. Yeah, the house doesn’t win against Judge Death either.

 

 

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 2:
THE CURSED EARTH 21-
TWEAK’S STORY (prog 81)

You have to love the opening panel of this episode, featuring the beleaguered Mega-City Two. I revisited this image during the Coronavirus pandemic in 2020, featuring as it does a welcome return of the art of Brian Bolland, 2000 AD’s best artist, and indeed one of my favorite opening spreads of the epic – “In plague-torn Mega-City Two, para-medic storm troopers fight a losing battle against the crazed victims of the disease”.

Paramedic storm troopers – now there’s a phrase you don’t hear every day. Or would want to. However, they certainly need it – and them – in Mega-City Two for those homicidal cannibalistic plague victims. At least, Coronavirus doesn’t turn people into crazed homicidal cannibals…yet. Pandemics have certainly played a major role in Judge Dredd’s history, not least the Chaos Bug that all but destroyed the city in the Day of Chaos epic. Mind you, it’s not the worst disease we’ll encounter in Judge Dredd – at least there’s a cure or vaccine, as opposed to Jigsaw Disease or Grubb’s Disease, although neither of those escalated into full-blown pandemic (in the case of Jigsaw Disease, because it is simply too alien and surreal). For that matter, this opening spread evokes some of the same frenetic violence by Mega-City citizenry as in Block Mania, the prelude to my favorite Judge Dredd epic of all time – The Apocalypse War.

I also love the bleak fatalism of the paramedic storm trooper team, as they are reduced to desperately firing off tranquilizer rounds (presumably gas) to hold the line – although their sergeant’s epithet for Mega-City One as “them yankees” doesn’t ring true. After all, this is West Coast Mega-City Two, not Texas City.

Sadly, we leave this intriguing opening spread behind as we continue with an interlude in The Curse Earth epic – but fortunately it’s the backstory of Dredd’s alien companion, Tweak, revealed to be highly intelligent and precognitive, as to how he ended up enslaved in the Cursed Earth. Long story short (and representative of writer Pat Mills’ characteristic misanthropy) – he’s a little like an alien space Jesus and humans are bastards.

 

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 2:
THE CURSED EARTH 22
TWEAK’S STORY (prog 82)

Just in case the whole Tweak as alien space Jesus wasn’t clear, his ‘crucifixion’ in Brian Bolland’s art in the opening panel should hammer it home – that and the tagline for the episode of alien messiah.

Essentially, Tweak has to play dumb to hide the intelligence of his species and avoid their exploitation by humans (as his species harvest gold and diamonds for food). Except of course HE continues to be exploited, first by the laboratory examination seen here, and then by his enslavement in the Cursed Earth, along with his mate and children (who were captured first, hence his heroic self-sacrifice to be with them in captivity).

One exception is Judge Dredd, who queries Tweak – “You sacrificed yourself and your family to save your planet – but what makes you think I won’t report the underground mineral farms on your planet – and a fleet of mining ships be sent out to tear your home apart?”

Tweak replies simply “I trust you, Judge Dredd”. Damn straight, Tweak, damn straight!

 

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 2:
THE CURSED EARTH 23-
LEGION OF THE DAMNED (progs 83)

Well, this is it – Judge Dredd’s Cursed Earth mission is in Death Valley and they can see the lights from Mega-City Two, just a few hours away. Dredd and his companions have survived mutants, slavers and even tyrannosaurs – surely there’s nothing between them and Mega-City Two now, right? Nothing, that is, except for a robot zombie apocalypse…

Or at least the robot equivalent of a zombie apocalypse – the remnants of war droids, mostly buried and dormant in the desert sand, but still functional and capable of being (re)activated.

War droids from what? The episodes expand upon the history of the Dreddverse and introduces the so-called Battle of Armageddon, in the form of Dredd paying his respects to the war memorial statue that honors the fallen Judges from the battle. Although…it seems to defeat the point of a war memorial statue. Mostly because no one would ever see it, given that Death Valley is in the Cursed Earth (and an unpopulated part at that), but also because the war is still going on around it, given that there are still functioning war droids in the location. As Dredd makes clear, the robot army was the only remaining military force loyal to President Booth. Remember him? The “vampire” back in Kentucky – the last President of the United States, who started the Atomic Wars, and from whom the Judges took control, with the Declaration of Judgement? Although it’s not clear why or to what purpose the battle was fought in Death Valley. Anyway, the Battle of Armageddon, was the Judges’ victory over Booth’s robot troopers (“the Judges had to crush them here in Death Valley”) – but one would have thought that victory involved, you know, not leaving active war robots behind on the battlefield. I mean, someone should have done something about that…

Judge Dredd intones that “it was the most savage battle of modern times…worse even than El Alamein, Iwo Jima and Stalingrad” – which seems to be a bit of hyperbole on his part, particularly as he adds that “one hundred thousand Judges and mega-troopers” (presumably a reference to Mega-City troopers fighting for the Judges) “lost their lives fighting for justice”. Sorry, Judge Dredd – it may have been worse than El Alamein or Iwo Jima, but Stalingrad was fought for over five months by over two million men with close to a million lives lost on both sides (not including wounded or captured). And there are other battles, not least in the world wars, that had over one hundred thousand lives lost – although perhaps not so many robots.

Even as Dredd is paying his respects, a robot trooper general – essentially a robot General Patton in the literal form of a tank (and similarly nicknamed with a robot pun twist “General Blood-and-Nuts”) exhorts the remaining robot troopers to resume the battle against the incoming Mega-City Judges. And despite some insubordinate protests that they’re “cosy in the dirt” and “the war’s over”, the robot troopers rise to the occasion – literally, like any good zombie apocalypse, rising from the ground.

The reactivated robot troopers attack Dredd’s party. The only other surviving Judge, Judge Jack – obviously traumatized by almost being eaten by Satanus – cracks and deserts, detaching the Kill-dozer from the vaccine car of the Land-Raider and attempting to surrender. Of course, the robots simply gun him down. Fortunately, the three remaining members of the mission – Dredd, Spikes and Tweak – manage to retreat to an old Spanish fort, where they are besieged by the robots.

 

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 2:
THE CURSED EARTH 24 –
JUDGE DREDD’S LAST STAND (prog 84)

Besieged by the army of the robot zombie apocalypse, Judge Dredd’s Cursed Earth mission comes right down to the wire, before an incoming sandstorm and a heroic sacrifice by a mortally wounded Spikes (equivalent to that of the Hells Angel protagonist in Damnation Alley) allows Dredd and alien Tweak to escape – barely. Each sets off with a pack of vaccine to travel on foot “sixty miles across the Mojave Desert to Mega-City Two”.

Indeed, you could say Spikes made two heroic self-sacrifices, in the last moments of his life and also in death – as Dredd dresses up the deceased Spikes in a Judge’s uniform and places him on the Lawmaster as a decoy to fool the robots into thinking he’s dead. For good measure, Dredd also programs the bike – and the accompanying vaccine car, having extracted two packs of vaccine for himself and Tweak to carry – to detonate. The robots are fooled into believing Dredd dead – and Dredd gives a eulogy for Spikes. “So long, Spikes, you were more than just a punk…you were…the greatest punk of all time!”.

Brian Bolland cover art for one of the issues of the Eagle comics reprint of The Cursed Earth epic depicted the charge of the Spikes brigade in all its glory.

 

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 2:
THE CURSED EARTH 25 –
THE BIG KISS-OFF (prog 85)

This is it – the finale of Judge Dredd’s Cursed Earth epic, with its iconic cover from the original comic (included in the collected edition) and its raw image of Dredd, close to breaking but yet unbroken, shouting his defiance to the Cursed Earth. Even if his eagle shoulder pad is so mangled that it looks like a dead chicken.

And so the Cursed Earth epic is akin to the Odyssey of Judge Dredd (whereas the Apocalypse War – or perhaps The Day the Law Died – would be his Iliad). Like Odysseus, Dredd embarks on a picaresque journey, albeit for a higher mission than Odysseus’ royal homecoming, and ends up in similar circumstances at the end of that journey – Odysseus was stripped of his ships, his men and even his clothes as he was washed up naked on the shore. The Cursed Earth epic doesn’t quite go that far – but Dredd otherwise ends up alone in the Californian desert (having been separated from Tweak in the sandstorm), his uniform in tatters, walking and ultimately crawling his way to Mega-City Two, pursued by some more revived robot troopers, also crawling from lack of power (and maintenance).

Finally, he crawls to an access point in Mega-City Two, itself a city on the verge of death – “Mega-City Two, where the neon lights had gone out…a city waiting to die. Luckily, that access point happens to be in one of the parts still safe from the plague – and they escort him inside.

Eight hours later, he’s recovered (while the city has feverishly processed the vaccine to save itself) and learns that Tweak also made it through – with the other vaccine pack. You see what I mean about Tweak as one of the noblest characters in any Judge Dredd storyline? All to save a city in a world whose inhabitants have brought him nothing but pain and sorrow (not to mention menaced his home planet) – even if his motives were mixed between alien altruism and loyalty to Judge Dredd. Dredd is reunited with Tweak some weeks later (Mega-City Two has assumed Tweak was Dredd’s “pet”) – Dredd offers for the world to know of Tweak’s heroism, but Tweak wants his people to remain secret and only to return home. And so Dredd sees Tweak off at the re-opened Los Angeles space port – before himself departing for Mega-City One, hoping for “a little peace and quiet”. After all, nothing could be worse than the Cursed Earth?

Yeah, good luck with that – as Dredd heads straight back into his next epic, The Day the Law Died…