JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 20

Mega-City One 2115-2116

(1993-1994: progs 856-887 / Megazine 2.44-2.56)

 

We’re still in the darkest part of the Dark Age of Dredd (as written by Morrison and Millar) but there is one bright shining light in Case Files 20 – perhaps the brightest shining light in the entire Dark Age or Case Files 17-23.

I am of course talking about The Book of the Dead, the standout story arc in this volume or any other in the Dark Age.

It’s Judge Dredd vs the Mummy! What’s not to love?

It’s also our introduction to Egypt’s mega-city, Luxor – and what an introduction! The Luxor Judges may rank as yet another mega-city of villains but you have to love their uniforms – absolutely top tier, with their pharaonic chic.

It helps that it is illustrated throughout by artist Dermot Power, with some of his best art – or indeed, some of the best art featured in the Judge Dredd comic, up there with Brian Bolland. Hmm…note to self – compile my Top 10 Judge Dredd Artists.

Sadly, the same can’t be said of The Sugar Beat, the other exotic story arc introducing Dredd to another foreign mega-city – the Pan-Andes Conurb.

The Pan-Andes Conurb and its Judges had much potential – even if the latter were essentially just glorified security guards for the criminal sugar cartels – but instead that potential is squandered by what is arguably the laziest and most blatant stereotyping in the Judge Dredd comic. And we’re talking about that period of time in the comic’s history when stereotyping was most on the nose – after all, they had a Sov Judge named Traktorfaktori.

We’re talking literal flies buzzing about the Pan-Andes Conurb Judges – which is more the pity as they actually have one of the better uniform designs of foreign mega-city Judges, with condors instead of the eagles used in Mega-City One uniforms.

Now we get it – the Pan-Andes Conurb Judges are meant to be in the same casually brutal and corrupt category as the Judges of the only other surviving South American mega-city, Ciudad Baranquilla, the latter otherwise mimicking Mega-City One in their use of eagles in design. However, at least the Ciudad Baranquilla Judges have a genuine edge of menace and cunning to them, not to mention get some sly digs in at Mega-City One’s expense whenever there are dealings between the two mega-cities. The Pan-Andes Conurb Judges are just pathetic – literally fat and lazy in the case of their Chief Judge, seemingly in perpetual siesta but for when they are roused by corruption.

One wonders how these bozos survived Judgement Day when Ciudad Baranquilla just barely scraped by – and the two other South American mega-cities, Brazilia and South-Am City, went under and got nuked.

There are some other middling arcs and episodes, with points of interest but nothing to write home about – although enough to do brief recaps or reviews.

For arcs or stories of more than one episode, there’s the opening arc in Roadkill – but I’ll also briefly stop in on Frankenstein Division, The Manchu Candidate and Scales of Justice.

For episodes, we’ll have stopovers at I Hate Christmas, Crime Prevention and Top Gun. However, as in Case Files 19, the Megazine stepped in with the standout episode – It’s a Dreddful Life.

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 20:

ROADKILL (prog 856-858)

 

Judge Dredd does a combination of Christine and, um, Robocar?

Yes – that’s a play on Robocop. I stand by my opinion – and I understand not only my opinion – that Robocop was inspired by Judge Dredd. However, in this particular story arc of three episodes, instead of putting a dead police officer’s brain (and what’s left of his body) into the titular cyborg, it’s putting a dead criminal’s brain into a car’s automated guidance system.

As you might guess, it does not work out too well.

The set-up for the plot involves elderly citizen Merv Whitstable due for his statutory eye test to retain his driving licence. Dredd pulls him over for a traffic violation (and gives him sixty days in an iso-cube). Dredd also advises him to use his nest egg savings to “invest in a new pair of eyes”.

Dredd would know of course – he’s had his own bionic eyes since losing his original organic eyes from gruesome injury all the way back in City of The Damned in Case Files 8 (nine years earlier in both episode publication time and in-universe time).

Although it is a little puzzling that 22nd century medicine has not extended people’s health more – as his licence indicates when Dredd pulls him over, Merv is 73, which you’d think would perhaps be comparable to someone a decade younger in our time. For comparison, Dredd is 54 at the time of this episode – and he’s in robust health. (It’s a little complicated – Dredd was “born” in 2066, but by virtue of acceleration during “gestation” in the cloning process was physically and mentally five years of age at “birth”).

There is a nice gag that Dredd could tell Merv’s eyesight was bad because Merv drove into a Justice Department vehicle park.

Unfortunately, his eyesight has deteriorated to the point he can’t pass the eyesight test for a driving licence. Instead of bionic eyes, his car dealer – who also strangely conducted the eyesight test and renews his licence – sells him and his wife the robo-car, or “living brain guidance system”.

And you guessed it – because they had limited money to spend, the dealer fobbed them off a “living brain guidance system” using a dead criminal’s brain. He’s nice enough to introduce himself to them – and for some reason is able to replicate his former face on their monitor – as Lenny-Lee Lucas, who we later learn was known as the Karaoke Killer, “part-time runner for the White Lotus Triad”.

“An’ boy-oh-boy…does ol’ Lenny have some scores to settle!”

For someone who finds himself posthumously as a car automatic guidance system, Lenny adapts quickly to his situation – with his first stop almost literally a pitstop at a local mechanical body shop to pimp out Merv’s modest vehicle (by holding one of their mechanics as hostage at, ah, bonnet-point against a wall, threatening to crush him). All this while holding Merv and his wife captive in their own car.

And by pimp out, I mean equip with wings and weapons, including missiles – which I’m not sure would have been part of the inventory of the average body shop, but then it is Mega-City One. As the Judge investigating the strange hold-up tells Dredd, the vehicle “demanded a full systems conversion and armaments fit-up” – which makes the latter sound relatively routine.

The investigating Judge also fills Dredd on the background as to how Lenny-Lee’s brain ended up in the car – “Vehicle is equipped with a Quantrak auto-pilot. Uses brains from repeat offenders. Med-Division supplies ’em straight from the slabs”.

As Dredd dryly asks, “whose bright idea was that?”

Apparently, it was Chief Judge McGruder’s as part of her business initiative for closer cooperation with private enterprise. In fairness, “the brains are wiped and reprogrammed from scratch. We got a 100% success rate. Well, we did have, up till today”.

It’s always that one glitch that ruins it. Anyway, Lenny-Lee is out for revenge on the Triad that left him out to dry – and die – on a botched organ bank job. You know how it goes – he essentially goes all Christine on them. Yes – that’s a reference to Stephen King’s demonic car of that name. Except Lenny-Lee likes to sing twentieth century songs as he kills people – hence his karaoke killer moniker.

Dredd apprehends Lenny the hard way – entangled by an anti-personnel net on the vehicle windscreen, he manages to extricate himself and cling long enough to the airborne vehicle in order to literally pull Lenny’s organic brain out the guidance system. Or as Dredd says, “time I got my hands dirty”.

So Dredd effectively kills Lenny for the second time but was injured by Lenny’s attempts to shake him – although not too badly by the standards of Dredd’s misadventures. It’s enough to wonder how he does maintain his robust health at his age.

Merv’s wife does less well – as in dead from cardiac arrest while held captive by Lenny. Merv himself does marginally better – paralysed from the neck down. My biggest problem with the story arc is that Dredd arrests him as “accessory to about thirty major variations” because the vehicle was registered in his name. I know Justice Department in general and Judge Dredd in particular are heavy-handed in their police state, but this just doesn’t seem to sit right – given that Dredd knows exactly what happened. Normally Dredd would target the dealer who sold Merv the automatic guidance system as the accessory or for criminal negligence – possibly even Subaro Autopods that holds the exclusive contract, or the Med-Division staff who supplied them.

To be blunt, Merv and his wife out of all the people involved were innocent victims – indeed, the only innocent victims as the people Lenny actually killed were Triad mobsters. Not to mention that Dredd used Lenny to lead him to the Triad gangsters who otherwise had eluded Justice Department.

Some names dropped not so much for blocks as for apartments – Arcudi for Merv’s residence, possibly a reference to comic writer John Arcudi, best known for his work on The Mask, which this story arc seems to invoke at times. Also – sigh – Sax Rohmer, author of the Fu Manchu books, for the Triad kingpin’s residence.

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 20: BOOK OF THE DEAD (prog 859-866) has its own page.

 

 

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 20:

FRANKENSTEIN DIVISION (progs 868-871)

I Hate Christmas (prog 867)

 

“An unholy amalgam of the Sov Judges who died in the Apocalypse War, Project X is the ultimate Judge with one mission in life…”

There – I’ve saved you actually reading the four episodes of Frankenstein Division.

I suppose I have to mention this story because once you see it you can’t unsee it but as you can tell, I’m not a fan.

You can guess the premise from the title and my feature quote – some weird Soviet project to create a Super-Judge from the best body parts of Sov Judges killed in the Apocalypse War. Which serves as something of a metaphor for writer Mark Millar picking over the pieces of the Apocalypse War to stitch together this monstrosity. At least when Garth Ennis warmed up his leftovers of the Apocalypse War, you very much had the impression he was a fan of the epic.

Not so much here. It makes no sense, not even as a weird play on Frankenstein. The Sov Judges who oversaw the project – Yeltsin and Andropov (sigh) – explain it to Chief Judge McGruder and Dredd.

But first – Yeltsin can’t even get the Apocalypse War right when fawning over Dredd. “It’s an honour to meet you, Judge Dredd. Though our mega-cities were once at war, you are a much respected figure in East Meg Two”.

Not so – at least with respect to East Meg Two and Mega-City One being at war. That was East Meg One – which was nuked by Dredd. There was a whole plot point in the Apocalypse War about East Meg One’s sister city not being involved in the war – it was how East Meg One kept Mega-City Two and Texas City out of the war.

I suppose it’s possible that Yeltsin could have been speaking as or on behalf of the East Meg One veterans who went to East Meg Two after the war – it was another plot point how Dredd just had the Sov Judges who surrendered and were taken prisoner dropped off at the site of their former city (with at least one Sov Judge announcing his intention to head to East Meg Two). But you’d think he’d say something more along those lines.

Anyway, it’s all downhill from here – and we didn’t even start high up. I’m talking the ridiculous plot of surgically combining the body parts of Sov Judges killed in the war into a literal superhuman Judge. How does that even work? How does it make him apparently invulnerable, since his body parts literally came from Judges who were killed?

When did the Sovs even ship back the bodies of their Judges killed in the war? And to East Meg Two, since any they shipped back to East Meg One would have been destroyed? And did they just put them on ice for all the years before Project X?

Drokk – even Dredd has a better explanation than the actual story. “So what’re we dealing with, Yeltsin? Some kind of robot?” That would have made for a better story – and perhaps help tied in with the dormant Mechanismo storyline, even reviving it to deal with the new threat. Or just cloning or genetic engineering.

Anyway, it’s “synthi-brain” malfunctioned and the Soviet Frankenstein escaped, with the single-minded pursuit of vengeance against Dredd for killing the Sov Judges making up its body. What – all of them? And yes, I know the story says so but come on. Did Dredd singlehandedly kill every Sov Judge in the Apocalypse War? Or just the “best” ones they just happened to use for Frankenstein Division.

Also – how do its body parts “remember” being killed by Dredd? The story kinda says they do – “Judge Dredd. The name on the badge. The last thing the Sov Judges saw when they died in the Apocalypse War – but again, come on. Surely that would at least have to involve the brain from those Judges. And if the Sovs created a “synthi-brain” for their Franken-Judge – then unless that too used the brains of fallen Sov Judges killed by Dredd – why is it consumed with the desire for vengeance against Dredd?

And yes – it’s Dredd vs Frankenstein for the showdown in the finale. Dredd wins when the creature stops to monologue, which serves it right for being a wordy monster – perhaps somewhat at odds with the inarticulate monster of the Frankenstein films, but on point for the monster in the book, which met its fate from going around quoting Paradise Lost.

Okay, okay – I’ll admit I’m a fan of the epilogue, where Dredd executes Yeltsin and Andropov after their Franken-Judge wreaked havoc on Mega-City One, with the endorsement of the Sov Chief Judge from East Meg Two disowning them and their Frankenstein Division. Dredd echoes the notorious scene from the Lethal Weapon film. Diplomatic immunity? It’s just been revoked.

British sitcom Oh No, It’s Selwyn Froggit is name-dropped for a Mega-City One block Dredd attends at the outset of the storyline.

And I skipped over the episode of I Hate Christmas in prog 867 – another Dredd Christmas episode with Dredd being grumpy about Christmas, notable only for another Judge going futsie (and Dredd having to take him out). Oh – there is a brief interlude at Gus Grissom Spaceport, named for an American pilot and astronaut, where Dredd cold-heartedly sends a stow-away from Simba City straight back, despite the man’s pleas about fleeing famine in the African Dustbowl.

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 20:

CRIME PREVENTION (prog 872)

 

“Standard psycho test revealed Stubbs to be a potential perp. 87% probability. Better we cube him now…” Judge Dredd does Minority Report by psych profiling.

That pretty much sums up this episode, although the Minority Report psych profiling thing MC-1 has got going in it doesn’t pop up again. That’s not surprising, since you’d imagine they’d have to pre-emptively cube almost all their citizens. I mean, who in MC-1 isn’t a potential perp?

There’s a interesting titbit in the opening of the episode – apples or at least apple trees would seem to be extinct, as Dredd recovers an apple stolen from the “Fresh Fruit Museum”, which suggests that enough fruit is functionally extinct to have a museum. Dredd’s reference to apples not growing on trees any more suggests that apples may originate from other synthetic sources, perhaps like the munce that is the main meat product in MC-1.

Anyway, one of the juvenile onlookers to Dredd arresting the apple-stealing perps is a fan. He tried out to enrol as a cadet Judge at the usual intake age of five but failed. Now he’s applying for the second round intake at age twelve – again a feature that seems to pop up in this episode but I don’t recall elsewhere. In fairness, that second round intake doesn’t qualify as street-Judge cadets, but does qualify for off-world Judges or Judges in the lunar colonies.

“All we had to do is pass a stringent psychological profile test”.

No prizes for guessing that test is just the cover story for the one to pre-emptively profile potential perps – or one for me for that alliteration. Needless to say, Dredd’s young fan – Ricky Stubbs by name – is sorely disillusioned about his hero. “Now I think he’s a monster”.

He has a point – the whole thing seems massively unfair, which may be why it never popped up again. Dredd doesn’t pass any sentence, which he does even for the worst actual perps, so it’s unclear what term of encubement Ricky has to serve. It may even be indefinite. Also, MC-1 does distinguish between juvenile and adult offenders, so 12 year-old Ricky should be in juvenile detention.

 

 

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 20:

THE SUGAR BEAT (prog 873-878)

 

I’d say Case Files 20 is giving us a treat with a second foreign mega-city after Luxor…but it’s the Pan Andes Conurb.

Sigh. It’s not that bad – spoiler: okay, it’s still pretty bad – but it can be goofy fun if you look at it just right and ignore some of the worst stereotyping of a mega-city. And since stereotyping is the point of mega-cities, that’s saying something.

The Pan-Andes Conurb and its Judges had much potential – even if the latter were essentially just glorified security guards for the criminal sugar cartels – but instead that potential is squandered by what is arguably the laziest and most blatant stereotyping in the Judge Dredd comic. And we’re talking about that period of time in the comic’s history when stereotyping was most on the nose – after all, they had a Sov Judge named Traktorfaktori.

We’re talking literal flies buzzing about the Pan-Andes Conurb Judges – which is more the pity as they actually have one of the better uniform designs of foreign mega-city Judges, with condors instead of the eagles used in Mega-City One uniforms.

Now we get it – the Pan-Andes Conurb Judges are meant to be in the same casually brutal and corrupt category as the Judges of the only other surviving South American mega-city, Ciudad Baranquilla, the latter otherwise mimicking Mega-City One in their use of eagles in design. However, at least the Ciudad Baranquilla Judges have a genuine edge of menace and cunning to them, not to mention get some sly digs in at Mega-City One’s expense whenever there are dealings between the two mega-cities. The Pan-Andes Conurb Judges are just pathetic – literally fat and lazy in the case of their Chief Judge, seemingly in perpetual siesta but for when they are roused by corruption.

Grud knows how these bozos made it through Judgement Day when two other Latin American mega-cities – Brasilia and Chile’s South-Am City – did not and Ciudad Baranquilla just barely scraped by. Even Ciudad Baranquilla has a certain brutal ruthlessness – these guys are just hopeless

Oh – and the premise of this arc involves growing sugar, classed as an illegal drug in Mega-City One, as an analogy for cocaine, although you wonder why they don’t just grow cocaine. Anyway, Judge Dredd is sent there to sort out the sugar trade from the Pan-Andes Conurb to MC-1 – and given that the PAC “Judges” are all in the pocket of the sugar cartel, that means sorting both the cartel and the PAC Judges as well.

 

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 20:

THE SUGAR BEAT 1 (prog 873)

 

Dredd’s stopping the sweet stuff hitting the streets of MC-1 at its source – the Pan Andes Conurb. “It’s high quality refined glucose, primo stuff”.

That’s the premise of the Sugar Beat, sugar as illegal drug in MC-1 being a stand-in for cocaine. Ah – can sugar grow at that climate? Why not just grow and traffic cocaine? Of course, this is a world in which the potato – the potato, originating in the very location of the Pan Andes Conurb – has gone extinct!

It amuses me that Dredd’s introduction to this new flood of sugar on to the streets of Mega-City One is the speed with which a mugger attempts to flee him. Attempts, as in Dredd shoots the mugger with a heat-seeker bullet, killing him. However, as Dredd observes during pursuit – “he’s fit, I’ll give him that” – and after shooting him – “kid was fast, too fast” – before solving the mystery with satchels of sugar. Um, I don’t think sugar works like that. It’s not a performance-enhancing drug or anything. Although maybe this twenty-first century sugar is, perhaps with genetic engineering?

Anyway, that’s where that primo stuff line comes in – from Chief Judge McGruder of all people, albeit quoting the “tech boys”, as she assigns Dredd his mission to stop the sugar trade at its source. Of course, as Dredd queries her, she has an ulterior motive for getting Dredd out of the city, reflecting the simmering tension not only between Dredd and her, but with other senior judges as her mental faculties continue to deteriorate.

Dredd touches down – presumably on one of the Justice line of official space shuttles. And that’s where we’re introduced to the Pan Andean Conurb judges in all of their stereotyped glory, lazy and corrupt, down to the flies buzzing around them. As I said, it’s a pity because despite the offensive portrayal of the Judges themselves, I actually like their uniform design.

The shoulder condors in substitution for the American eagles are a nice touch. They’re not top tier by any stretch – they seem to be from military fatigues rather than biker leathers and have non-standard footwear – but they beat the Ciudad Baranquilla uniforms, which wouldn’t look out of place in a Mardi Gras parade.

Dredd gets only bad jokes from the Pan Andes Conurb Judges – despite the promised “full diplomatic cooperation from the Pan Andes Conurb Justice Department”. When he asks them where his official transport is, they joke about Yankee’s pony (as well as calling him gringo) – presumably a reference to the pony in the lyrics of Yankee Doodle Dandy.

They’re not off to a good start with Dredd – and it only gets worse from here…

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 20:

THE SUGAR BEAT 2 (prog 874)

 

I guess Dredd just had a thing for pyramids at this time – he’s only recently back from Luxor but here he is checking into Sector House 12 in Pan Andes Conurb

However, the interior of the Sector House 12 pyramid is not as impressive – just Pan Andes Conurb Judges clubbing their hapless citizens

Also Judge Guacamole? Sigh. That’s pretty much as bad as Sov Judge Traktorfaktori. It’s like Judge Dredd doing Asterix.

The Sector House reception Judge tries to stall Dredd by having him wait for the Chief Judge but Dredd isn’t having any of it and just asks for the quickest route to the docks. Although I’m not sure why – does he know the cartels literally ship their sugar? It is the twenty-second century after all – although given how antiquated the Pan-Andean Conurb is, maybe they do.

And yes – Dredd does ask the name of “the freighter that’s been illegally transporting sugar to Mega-City One”, so I suppose he does know that. The criminals at the dock also knew he was coming, as the Sector House reception Judge tipped them off immediately that Dredd was out of earshot. So no surprise that Dredd is set upon by one of the heavies at the dock – although I am surprised that the heavy rebukes Dredd for his lack of jurisdiction. And impressed – they obviously have a high quality of mob muscle in the Pan-Andes Conurb docks, such as to dispute a legal point with Dredd. What’s more, as far as I can tell, the heavy is right – Dredd indeed does not have jurisdiction and just pulls his gun on the heavy. “This is all the jurisdiction I need”. The heavy swipes away Dredd’s Lawgiver and a melee ensues.