JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 19

Mega-City One 2115

(1993: progs 830-855 / Megazine 2.27-2.43)

 

Our next stop is Case Files 19 but just make sure to remain near the Mega-City Law bus – we won’t be staying here long.

 

That’s right – we’re perhaps at the darkest part of the Dark Age of Dredd, when Garth Ennis passed the torch as main writer to Grant Morrison and Mark Millar. As I said previously for the Dark Age of Dredd, this was often seen as a low point for Judge Dredd and the 2000 AD comic in general.

 

Don’t get me wrong – I like Morrison and Millar as writers, indeed as two of my favorite writers of comics…just not for Judge Dredd here. For whatever reason, they just weren’t the best fit for the character or 2000 AD comic at this time (although both had written some of their best work for 2000 AD), particularly as a writing team duo.

 

Although don’t get me wrong about that either – I do like some of their Judge Dredd episodes or storylines even at this time. There’s just slim pickings from those collected in this Case Files volume.

 

The standout for me was easily the episode War Games – not least for its introduction of the Sino-Cit Judges – although sadly subsequent episodes did nothing with its premise, either the pending crisis predicted by Psi-Division (in eighteen months, maybe less) or the “aggro-drug” they experiment on with Dredd to prepare for that crisis.

 

Ironically, the Megazine episodes collected in this volume offer up the runner-up for standout episode with Revenge of the Egghead – ironically, that is, because for me the (monthly) Judge Dredd Megazine is generally secondary to the (weekly) regular 2000 AD issues, but because we’re dealing with the Dark Age of Dredd here, the Megazine episodes often stepped up to take their place.

 

Anyway, there were some other episodes or arcs of interest collected in this volume – the Muzak Killer returns, as does another recurring antagonists penned by Garth Ennis, Johnni Kiss.

 

The episodes in Case Files 19 did feature an epic storyline – epic that is, in length as it consisted of 12 episodes, albeit towards the shorter end of Judge Dredd epics. Not so epic in terms of story quality – I am of course talking about Inferno, which I’ll mostly be passing over with a couple of panels or so. Among other things, it set in place something of a trend for the space penal colony of Titan, reserved for Judges who break the law, to become almost as bad a revolving-door prison for escapees as Arkham Asylum in Batman. Well, perhaps not quite that bad but still annoying – and at least a recurring problem in general for Mega-City One.

 

There was also the return of the Mechanismo robot judge storyline in the Megazine. Heh – more like Meh-chanismo, amirite?

 

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 19:

ENTER JONNI KISS (prog 830)

 

Judge Dredd vs John Wick. Well not really (and not quite yet) but similar in the whole legendary assassin thing.

Okay, okay – I have to admit Case Files 19 opens with a bang and badass assassin Jonni Kiss looks cool when introduced, although everyone looks cool when they’re in art by Greg Staples.

And okay – he proves to be more dangerous than other antagonists for Judge Dredd. That is, when we return to him after his introduction here – two years later or so in the Goodnight Kiss arc compiled in Case Files 23.

But we’ve been here before – the badass or cool hitman or assassin pitted against Judge Dredd, often doing surprisingly well or even seeming to take Dredd out but then doing the Bond villain thing of gloating over him rather than just shooting him already.

Drokk – we’ve even done the exact same foreshadowing in an introductory episode a few years before returning in a longer story arc to kick Dredd’s ass but drop the ball just before touchdown. Remember Wu Wang – or as I like to call her, Lady Deathfist, out to avenge martial artist Stan Lee? Yeah – they did the same thing for her.

Let’s face it – Dredd has faced and will continue to face a long line of badass or skilled assassins, agents, bounty hunters, hitmen or just someone with a grudge against him, all with a bullet (or something) with his name on it, arguably going all the way back to his own clone-brother Rico. Grud – there’s probably enough for their own top ten – Top 10 People Out to Get Dredd or even just Top 10 Judge Dredd Assassins & Hitmen. As Dredd himself says when he hears someone is out to get him or has a grudge, they’ll just have to get in line to take their shot.

Indeed, the Megazine episodes compiled in this same volume include a parody of that same character type of the badass cool assassin out to get Dredd – Slick Dickens, amusingly written as a character of that type written by a Mega-City One citizen, which of course sees him repeatedly jailed by Dredd (although you suspect Dredd’s secretly a fan),

In fairness, Jonni Kiss does better and is better at it than most, as evidenced by his trophy wall of Judge badges.

And he is introduced with a literal bang – assassinating no less than East Meg Two’s Supreme Judge Traktorfaktori. Sigh – I liked him and he seemed a decent sort when introduced into the Glasnost storyline. And yes – Judge Dredd continues its 90s trend of names for foreign Judges seemingly straight out of Asterix. It gets worse in this episode – as we hear of two rival contenders for succession, Riboflavin and Markimarkov, although at least it gives us the great line from Dredd “one Sov’s as bad as another.”

Of course, it helped that Trakforfaktori seemed to be well past it and that Kiss had a little help from some Gila-Munja mutant offshoots, although he double-crosses them, I wouldn’t put it past the Sovs that he had a little inside help as well, given the lax security we see here – possibly one of those rival contenders or even just anyone from the Diktatorat because that’s just how they roll.

But in fairness, Kiss does seem to be the best at what he does – taking out the Supreme Judge as well as the Gila-Munja out for revenge. And those were just test runs to prove his worth for his real target – who is of course Dredd. Although weirdly Kiss seems to go in for a good old-fashioned fax for receiving his instructions, even though those instructions are literally just the one word “DREDD”, setting up his subsequent appearance…

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 19:

THE GREAT BRAIN ROBBERY (progs 835-836)

The Judge Who Lives Downstairs (prog 831)

The Chieftain (prog 832-834)

 

Judge Dredd’s memories are so bad they literally make your head explode!

Why? “Because they’re all bad, meathead”

No, seriously – that’s the plot twist of the two-episode storyline, The Great Brain Robbery, and I am here for it, even if it does not make sense or seems impossible in biology or physics.

I mean, this story is a hoot, both in its premise and plot twist.

Yes, the premise involves yet another new crime driven by technology – memory theft (or thought theft as it is called in the episodes), courtesy of the neuron extractor. Although I don’t recall it featured anywhere else other than these two episodes, which might reflect how flawed its premise is as a crime when you look at it too closely.

We’re introduced to it through a Mega-City ‘tap’ gang, literally mugging one of MC-1’s many down-and-out citizens of his memories. In fairness, they seem a cut above the usual street gang.

For one thing, they carry it out in broad daylight on a crowded street. Sure, they seem to be relying on that common tendency to look the other way, even in our contemporary cities, let alone the dystopian giant mega-city city of the future – particularly where the victim is someone socially invisible like a homeless beggar. That’s further explained by the narration in the second episode – which notes that half of the Judge force has been wiped out by Necropolis and Judgement Day, so “the creeps are making the most of it”.

For another, this memory-mugging gang has more resources than your average street gang. Apparently that’s because memory theft has a high-end market, with rich citizens paying big to live vicariously through the stolen memories. That’s the part that doesn’t make sense to me. The lives of the overwhelming majority of Mega-City One’s citizens – at least 90% – are defined by their dystopian quality of grinding welfare dependency and drudgery.

Why would Mega-City One’s richest citizens – who can afford to actually live top-end experiences – want to buy memories of lower-end experiences? Sure there may be some thrill of ‘slumming’ it in someone’s crappy memories. More probably, there may be the thrill of experiencing some violent crime that is the other definitive feature of life in Mega-City One, although one anticipates that the market would be more for memories of perpetrators rather than victims, as the equivalent of playing some video game like Grand Theft Auto. However, the narrative makes it clear that the neuron extractor only extracts a few memories and that it’s a matter of potluck which ones you get.

More to the point, the subject of the stolen memories actually referred to in the storyline are mostly banal – “best memory my supplier ever sold me was one of picking up this measly account’s clerk med bills”. Sheesh! That guy can buy all my crappy memories. Although I do like the drug analogy.

Anyway, at least the main antagonist of the storyline – Vito Colletta – has the right idea for a target with memories that promise to be exciting. That’s right – it’s Judge Dredd. After all, we read the comic for excitement.

The memory thieves get their opportunity from Dredd doing his usual thing – going in solo into a city sector gone wild. Chief Judge McGruder initially tells him “you’re going to need serious backup” and the withering look he gives her is priceless. (She immediately retracts her statement – “Uh–no offence, Joe…!”).

 

 

Anyway, that gives the memory thieves the chance to do a drive-by shooting with the neuron extractor. They only get a “handful” of memories but that’s apparently worth “at least 5 mil”. Although I’m a little worried – does this mean that Dredd has lost those memories? Going by that homeless victim we see in the story, it does. On the bright side, Dredd does end up apprehending the rich receivers behind the memory thieves and they have some device to play the memories, so he could have used it to restore the stolen memories.

That of course brings me to that plot twist. Vito Colletta tries on Dredd’s memories for size – after not only reneging on paying anything for them, let alone 5 million, but also having his henchman literally throw them off the building. No honor among memory thieves, I guess.

Anyway, as I said, Vito tries on Dredd’s memories for size – “Judge Dredd’s memories! The action of Necropolis–crossing the Cursed Earth in a killdozer. Soon I’ll have the memories of a hero!” – and they blow his mind. Literally – as in his head explodes. And just before Dredd raids them too, hence his line to the rest of the memory receivers, to which he adds “Guess that creep wasn’t tough enough to handle ’em!”

And yes I skipped two stories

 

• The Judge Who Lives Downstairs (prog 831) – A fun little episode of Dredd doing the rounds in his home block, Randy Yates Block, which the episode notes is “the safest place to live in Mega-City One”. No surprise there.
• The Chieftain (progs 832-834) – an ex-Brit Cit ranger from Cal Hab (Caledonian Habitation Zone) on a roaring rampage of revenge in Mega-City One. He even has a weaponized bagpipe droid that kills with sonic waves – the Psycho-Piper, a “tight focus sonic disruptor on a robot chassis”. Dear Grud. Still – probably sounds better than regular bagpipes.

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 19:

MUZAK KILLER – LIVE! (progs 837-839)

 

Video killed the radio star – the Muzak Killer’s back and this time he’s live! And again in that glorious Dermot Power art!

Yes – it’s Marty Zpok, back from when we last saw him a couple of years back in Case Files 16. I mean, there’s only been a global zombie apocalypse in the meantime but not much seems to have changed for Zpok and the 22nd century ‘muzak’ he hates.

Well, except of course, he’s doing time in the cubes from his run as the Muzak Killer, when he targeted a thinly veiled version of the 1990s English music producers Stock Aitken Waterman and their expatriate Australian artists from the long-running (and highly popular) soap opera Neighbours, foremost among them Kylie Minogue.

Apart from time in the cubes, that has also seen him as the butt of the running gag in these episodes – being called “sad”, as in pathetic or a loser. It starts slowly and subtly with the abuse of his fellow inmates – as they beat him up in the shower, leaving him with a gap-toothed grin from a missing tooth like Mad Magazine’s Alfred E. Neuman for the rest of the story – but escalating to pretty much everyone, including Dredd, calling him out as sad or pathetic.

As “sad” as he is, his luck changes as we find out the Muzak Killer has his own fans. Not many of them to be sure, but quality counts over quantity for fans that are willing and able to break him out of prison in an aerial raid, led by his biggest fan called – what else? – Indiana Saddoe, presumably yet another play on the recurring gag of Zpok being sad. The raid doesn’t exactly go without a hitch. Unluckily, Judge Dredd happens to be in the vicinity and a well-aimed hi-ex shot takes out the “stratorover”, although Zpok and Saddoe survive the crash to escape to Saddoe’s apartment.

And from there they plot – well, mostly Zpok plots and Saddoe just goes along with it like the saddo he is – to hijack a ‘vid’ broadcasting station and broadcast Zpok’s war on muzak live. Needless to say, it does not go well for them, although it ends in a surprisingly lucky turn of events for Zpok. Lucky lucky lucky!

 

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 19:

MUZAK KILLER – LIVE 1 (prog 837)

 

I’ve already covered most of the first episode in my introduction to this arc but the first episode concludes with Saddoe and Zpok holed up at Saddoe’s apartment.

Interestingly, Saddoe is such a fan that he’s even purchased a copy of Zpok’s original Muzak Killer outfit from the first story for Zpok to wear in this one. (Of course, Zpok was wearing his original outfit when apprehended by Dredd). Nothing is said – we just see Zpok wearing it as opposed to his iso-cube regulation clothing so Saddoe must have bought it for him in advance.

 

Sadly, Zpok is less impressed with Saddoe’s music collection, even though it’s “the hippest alterni-music vibes in the Meg). For Zpok, all new music is muzak – “Exactly, Indy. Lesson one – music is only cool when it’s old.”

 

Although he contradicts himself with the very next words out of his mouth – “Down to business, Indy. How’s the music scene doing? Who’s big? Must be some pretty good bands about, since I wiped out the bad ones!”

 

O well – I suppose we shouldn’t look for consistency in the mind of a deranged killer. I suppose he could be talking about covers bands…

 

Anyway, that prompts Saddoe to reply that “lots of new muzak stars popped up and took over from the dead ones”.

 

Zpok is incredulous – “Eh? They didn’t even notice me?”

 

Well yes, they did – but not in any good way. Saddoe produces all of the “press clippings” from the so-called Ramsay bop or Zpok’s first murder spree (weird to think that there’s still paper press clippings or no digital scans in the twenty-second century). And upon reading them Zpok is barraged with descriptions of how pathetically sad he is…which makes him angry.

 

To appease him, Saddoe sees if there is any news of Zpok’s escape on the vid news and sure enough there is. Even better, Zpok rebounds with a newfound sense of purpose upon seeing the latest ‘vid’ entertainment show, Word Up, featuring live muzak. Now he’s a man with a plan – “Heh heh heh…Indy, my boy? You and I are going to be vid stars”.

 

I just love the look on Indy’s face, which says it all really…uh oh. 

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 19:

MUZAK KILLER – LIVE 2 (prog 838)

 

“Oh my drokking Grud!”

I mean, haven’t we all wanted to take a monster chainsaw to that one annoying ponce mouthing off about us? You know the one. And this was before social media – now you could cut through whole swathes of online critics.

Joking aside, I can’t help but feel that writer Garth Ennis or artist Dermot Power are using the Muzak Killer to work through some issues here. That journalist – David O’Steven – has an awfully distinctive appearance. I suspect there’s some inner joke in his name or appearance that I just can’t get through the dust of all these years later.

Anyway, David O’Steven was the journalist whose gutter press writing about the Muzak Killer’s last appearance enraged Zpok on reading it – “Marty Zpok’s slaughter of muzak stars proves just how sad some people are. The love of a good woman might help – but he’s so sad he’s probably never had a girlfriend, the sad jerk”. So there you have it – Judge Dredd did i-n-c-e-l-s first by decades.

And as luck would have it, prompted by Zpok’s escape, he’s writing – or dictating – more of the same when Zpok decides to pay him a visit with Saddoe in toe. Well, you can guess how that goes, particularly with that chainsaw. Mind you, you’ve got to love O’Steven’s last words – “I’ll print an apologaaaagh!”. Sorry Dave, I’m afraid you can’t do that.

Meanwhile, Dredd is hot on Zpok’s trail, although it’s hard to miss. As Dredd observes – “I’m in O’Steven’s hab, Control – he’s all over the place.” Let’s say the visual image of the panel matches that.

However, as we know, Zpok has bigger plans than petty personal revenge – or perhaps rather bigger plans that overlap his petty personal revenge against the world of muzak. And those plans involve hijacking the popular vid broadcast Word Up.

A quick tangent – we see the host of Word Up interviewing “aging star Conrad Conn”. Now there’s a blast from the past – Conrad Conn featured all the way back in The Day the Law Died (as collected in Case Files 2), as Mega-City One’s most popular vid star conscripted by Chief Judge Cal to star as Cal in the Chief Judge’s video ode to himself. That’s what I love about Ennis writing Dredd – you can tell he was a real fanboy for the classic early episodes.

Anyway, that’s what Zpok and Saddoe do – hijack the vid broadcast. Saddoe takes over the control room, with a randomizer to block the Judges from jamming the broadcast (and to keep the control room robots and staff broadcasting at gunpoint). And Zpok’s our host, after throttling the actual host Gerry Hindu and shooting female co-host Kati Mukkrake.

And you know – I think he may have missed his calling as a vid broadcast host, because he’s quite entertaining. Perhaps he and Mega-City One’s muzak industry might have been happier if he’d gone that route as a host of a music vid broadcast, a metaphorical Muzak Killer as it were with snide snarky criticism of muzak stars he doesn’t like. Sadly now he’s the literal Muzak Killer – and as he announces to his live audience, he’s just getting started with the show’s guests…

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 19:

MUZAK KILLER – LIVE 3 (prog 839)

 

“And now…the end is near…And so I face…the final curtain”

Well it’s time to wrap up this show – and by this show, I mean the vid broadcast Word Up hijacked by Marty Zpok a.k.a. the Muzak Killer. He must have known how this would end but he planned to go out with a bang – you might say he did it his way. Indeed, he does more than say it – he sings it, which I found quite surprising since I hadn’t picked him for a Sinatra fan. I mean, I know he liked old music – it’s his moniker after all – but I thought he preferred the different genre of classic or alternative ‘rock’.

And as I said, he goes out with a bang – indeed, several of them. He killed the two broadcast hosts last episode and now he gets started on the guests. Mairaid McSlaphead – I’m pretty sure she was a parody of Sinead O’Connor. Demanda – another of the broadcast’s hosts. Clarence from the Crazy Sked Moaners – not sure of the reference, but ironically he kills himself trying to carve the word ‘real’ into his forehead with a las cutter. Not sure we can chalk that one up to Zpok’s tally, although arguably Zpok egged him on – and you have to admit Zpok quipping “that’s not how you spell real” is funny. In fairness, it wouldn’t be easy getting the letters right on your own forehead.

Zpok gets another good gag in when he asks Anni O’Boge, sister of Syreen O’Boge whom he killed in the ‘Ramsay Bop Massacre’, about her sister “two years ago”. She starts to answer him but belatedly recognizes him – “Hang on a mo’…ain’t you the bloke who…?”. “Yep” says Zpok as he shoots her.

Quick side bar – Anni would presumably be a parody of Danni Minogue, sister of Kylie Minogue parodied by Styreen. And I hadn’t noticed before now that the ‘Ramsay Bop Massacre’ would also be a reference to Ramsay Street, setting of the Australian soap opera Neighbours, beloved in England and from which Kylie and her fellow ‘muzak’ pop stars originated.

Anyway, that’s the last shot Zpok gets in – as Judge Dredd has answered the call by Justice Control to attend the studio, shot Saddoe, and had the hostage studio staff shut down the broadcast (bypassing Saddoe’s jammer).

Which brings us to Zpok singing My Way with its apt lyrics – and Dredd brings down the curtain with a gunshot to the head. “Sad, creep.”

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 19:

MUZAK KILLER – LIVE 3 (prog 839)

 

But wait – there’s more. I can’t resist this epilogue (“six weeks later”) of how Marty Zpok learned to stop worrying and love the muzak.

 

Of course it helps that Dredd’s headshot effectively lobotomized him.

 

Lucky, lucky, lucky.

There’s two episodes after Muzak Killer, which represented Garth Ennis handing over the reins of primary writing duties to the duo of Grant Morrison and Mark Millar:

• Tough Justice (prog 840), penned by Mark Millar, in which juves exchange the equivalent of campfire horror stories about Judge Dredd embodying the titular tough justice to scare one of them straight (sadly too late as Dredd catches them trying to dispose of a blaster)
• Down Among the Dead Men (prog 841) also penned by Milar – in which grave-robbing seems to make a 22nd century revival, except snatching corpses from Resyk for medical students. Except…isn’t most medicine done by robots?

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 19:

INFERNO (progs 842 – 853)

 

I should be excited.

Firstly, Inferno is a Judge Dredd epic, albeit of twelve episodes rather than the usual ‘full’ epic length – the first epic after Judgement Day and yet another existential threat to Mega-City One (as well as potentially to other mega-cities), made more dire by how much Justice Department was weakened by Judgement Day.

Secondly, it’s Grant Morrison’s debut as primary writer for Judge Dredd, taking over (in tandem with Mark Millar) from Garth Ennis.

I should be excited but I’m not. That’s because Inferno is distinctly underwhelming. I’m not entirely sure why – it hits all the right beats for a Dredd epic, but yet feels strangely by the numbers, like Morrison was phoning it in. As indeed it felt for his and Millar’s run as the primary writers on Judge Dredd and 2000 AD – as much as I enjoy both writers for their work elsewhere (indeed Morrison’s earlier story Zenith for 2000 AD remains my second favorite comic of all time, second only to Judge Dredd), ranking them both in my Top 10 Comics, they just didn’t seem to be the right fit here. I’m not the only one that regards their run as where the Dark Age of Dredd was at its darkest, although it still has its highlights – but Inferno isn’t one of them.

It’s essentially a jailbreak – from the penal colony of Titan back to Mega-City One. How anyone pulls this off is beyond me, but Inferno started the trend for Titan as some sort of revolving door prison IN SPACE, rivalled only by Arkham Asylum in Batman for ease of escape or riot (or both). Even worse, the jailbreak effectively happened off-panel before the epic, in the prequel Purgatory by Mark Millar featured separately in the Megazine.

By his own admission, Morrison wrote Dredd simply as “just a big bastard with a gun”, but despite some tantalizing glimpses to the contrary, Morrison also wrote the antagonist – ex-Judge Grice returned from his exile and imprisonment for his conspiracy against the referendum and Judge Dredd back in The Devil You Know / Twilight’s Last Gleaming – equally as one dimensional “bastard with a gun”. Except, you know, not just a gun but also armed with an apocalyptic virus. I’ll give him ram-raiding the Hall of Justice with a spaceship for style though.

I tend to agree with the observations of the Dredd Reckoning blog about Inferno:

“Instead, there’s so much horribly clumsy writing here. Morrison asks us to believe that Grice’s small team of disgraced, hobbled ex-Judges could drive all the current Judges out of the city (off-panel); that the Grand Hall of Justice is built directly on top of iso-cubes; that Dredd would unblinkingly slaughter a building’s worth of prisoners rather than allow them to potentially be freed (although “it was only a parking offence!” strikes me as a very Morrisonian joke…that the Titan escapees would be packed on board a “pre-programmed robot ship” (cough) so Dredd could blow it up; that the Statue of Judgement is perched adjacent to the Cursed Earth, i.e. on the western border of Mega-City One (hint: it’s directly adjacent to the Statue of Liberty, which is on the eastern edge of North America); that the Judges would have an oh-well attitude to germ warfare decimating the population of MC1 (“fewer citizens means less crime”–er, that’s Judge Death’s position); that, after killing a bad guy in a career-record gruesome way, Dredd would go for a James Bond-style one-liner; that hand-to-hand combat between Dredd and Grice could settle the entire problem…”

I also tend to agree with the observation that Wagner’s Day of Chaos not only was an effective sequel to the Apocalypse War, but was “also in some ways, a vastly improved variation on a lot of the plot devices of Inferno…It involves psychic premonitions of doom, germ warfare, turncoat Judges, the Statue of Judgment and Hall of Justice attacked)”

Still, it did have some classic Ezquerra art, so I’ll essentially go from one art highlight to the next while being as economic with the epic’s storyline as possible.

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 19:

INFERNO 1-2 – Inferno / Titan Fall! (progs 842-843)

 

“Death from the skies!”

Sigh – Psi-Division being useless as usual without Anderson.

Okay – I have to admit that’s a badass introduction to Inferno in the final panel of the first episode.

And you have to give it to the epic that it hits the ground running – literally ram-raiding the Hall of Justice FROM SPACE!

And it’s badass introductions all round this episode – not least for Judge Dredd himself, as he takes out the Bazooka Brothers, a dubious duo using their titular weapon of choice to destroy shops or something.

But before Dredd, we’re introduced to Psi-Judge Janus – literally on her 19th birthday. Although that just shows how useless Psi-Division is that this raw Psi-Judge, presumably fresh out from graduating as a cadet, is their replacement for Psi-Judge Anderson (on mission off-world). I mean, she’s, like, likable enough – that’s a play on her Valley Girl verbal mannerisms by the way – but she’s no Judge Anderson.

Sadly, Psi-Division is even more useless than that as they also have to rely on a secondment from another mega-city – which sees the first introduction of an Indian mega-city, Delhi-Cit (sometimes written as Nu Delhi), and an Indian Judge, Psi-Judge Bhaji.

It’s his precognitive dream quoted in that panel – “death from the skies”. Bhaji is only marginally more useful than Psi-Division. I mean, at least he had some precognitive alert to the impending disaster about to strike Mega-City One – although apparently “every single Judge in Psi-Division had the same dream” but it’s not exactly helpful advice in terms of warning or preventative action, is it? It’s even less helpful timing as it’s literally just before it happens. That’s barely precognitive. It’s like Lisa Simpson tells a fortune teller in one episode – wow, you can see into the…present. That dream is barely better than looking out the window.

Or screen in this case, as Mega-City One detects fifteen incoming spaceships as the second episode opens – after the reader has been introduced to the epic’s antagonist, ex-Judge Grice and his fellow escapees from Titan, “carrying a deadly germ weapon, the meat virus”.

Which seems to have a nearly instantaneous effect in the dispersion area as they use their ships to ram raid the Hall of Justice and other buildings. We see a Judge Noonan succumb to it as she reports back from Mick Travis Block – named for a fictional film character. “Rapid…toxic…effects!”

We also see Grice swooping in with a jetpack – “This is your wake-up call, Mega-City One!”

I guess that space prison time on Titan left a little to be desired for rehabilitation.

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 19:

INFERNO 3-4 Descent into the Maelstrom! / Kill or Cure! (progs 844-845)

 

“No! It was only a parking offence! My Grud! It was only a parking offence…!”

Classic Morrison gag, although not up there with his best one-liners – for that, you have to go to Zenith.

Anyway, Grice and his renegade ex-Judges overwhelm Justice Department with their spaceship ram-raids – and above all the “meat virus”, apparently a weaponized virus they were developing on Titan. McGruder tells the other senior Judges in the Hall of Justice bunker that they have about an hour before showing symptoms – masks are useless as it spreads through the skin.

Still not sure how Grice’s few ex-Judges and spaceships are able to achieve the spread – of ex-Judges, ram raids or the meat virus – to overwhelm the entire Justice Department throughout Mega-City One but there you have it. There’s also Citi-Def but the writers forgot them for the other recent crises of Necropolis and Judgement Day as well.

There’s a grisly scene replaying that brutal torn apart by horses thing you see as a trope in pre-modern torture or execution. You know the one – where you have four horses pulling in opposite directions on a rope or chain to each of a person’s limbs. Except here of course they use Lawmasters – begging the question of how they bypassed the security protocols of the Lawmaster computers. You know, being ex-Judges convicted and sent to Titan.

Anyway, Grice and his renegade Judges ram-raid the Hall of Justice itself, as well as pumping the gas with the meat virus through the vents. McGruder orders a strategic evacuation – but says they can’t “afford to let Grice free the prisoners in the iso-cubes”. Um – why? As in why would he free them? And why can’t they afford to let him free the prisoners – would they really be reliable allies for Grice, or allies at all? Although it does give us that parking offence gag, as Dredd orders the cubes to be flooded. Since when did the Hall of Justice have iso-cubes? And follow-up question – why are they rigged to be flooded? Fortunately, the flooded cubes do serve a more useful – and less callous – purpose later in the epic.

We get to see Judge Hershey pull a big damn heroes moment similar to McGruder gunning down zombies in Judgement Day, but for the renegade judges threatening to gun down the evacuees, Dredd and McGruder among them. She also has a H-wagon, begging the question of where every other H-wagon in the city is and what they are doing.

As they fly away in the H-wagon – apparently part of a general and implausible retreat by all Justice Department outside the city, something which has never occurred in any crisis before or since – McGruder explains the meat virus. An alien virus (from actual dead aliens on Titan), Justice Department were developing it as a weapon. Secondary stage symptoms are sores appearing on the skin a couple of days after infection – more seriously, they all have two weeks to live as that’s when the terminal tertiary stage symptoms or complete tissue breakdown appears unless the antidote is administered before then. (And it has to be before the tertiary stage).

You’d think Justice Department might have had some antidote in Mega-City One in case something went wrong on Titan…but no. You’d be wrong. Of course, Grice and his renegade ex-Judges have the antidote. So that probably explains why McGruder heads off on a Lawmaster, presumably to make amends for her lapse of judgement – perhaps offering herself up to Grice in return for the antidote – and Dredd pursues her.

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 19:

INFERNO 5-6 – Long Live the Chief Judge! / Judges with Grudges (progs 846-847)

 

“Long live the new Chief Judge! Long live the Lord of Misrule!”

That’s ex-Judge Grice’s declaration of usurpation, as he usurps the position of Chief Judge in MC-1.

Of course, Dredd is having none of it – “When are you gonna get sick of the sound of your own voice, Grice? ‘Cause I’m already sick of it.”

Before we get there, episode 5 opens with the narration – “Forced out of Mega-City One by Grice and his renegades, the Judges have established a makeshift encampment in the Cursed Earth”.

By makeshift encampment, it means H-wagon parking lot – and by Cursed Earth, it means literally parking their H-wagons right outside the walls of Mega-City One.

The whole scenario is implausible, but perhaps above all that this entire epic makes it seem that the entirety of Mega-City One consists of not much more than a short stretch of the West Wall. Hence, Grice’s ridiculously small force of ex-Judges straight outta Titan in a ridiculously small flotilla of ridiculously small spaceships was able to eject all the Judges from Mega-City One – an Atlantic seaboard super-conurbation of 400 million from New Hampshire to North Carolina – and apparently to the one encampment as H-wagon parking lot outside the West Wall.

It gets worse. Dredd saves a citizen about to be randomly killed by two of Grice’s renegade Judges – and by randomly, it means because the citizen’s ‘eyes are too close together”. Really? Surely Grice’s renegade Judges have some motivation beyond terrorizing random citizens for no reason? Or at least something better to do? Like some sort of plan or orders from Grice?

After saving the citizen, Dredd directs the citizen to report to the cubes “when this is over” for doing nothing more than pleading with the renegade Judges “what do you want?” and offering them “everything I’ve got” – “I’m giving you six months for attempted bribery”. Really? They weren’t actual Judges but renegade ex-Judges and hence criminals – something Dredd is at pains to point out when the epic plays this scene again almost beat for beat a few episodes later, albeit more true to Dredd’s character dealing with the citizen he saves in that scene. Dredd wouldn’t charge a citizen being robbed by other citizens for trying to offer the robbers what they want because of their actual or threatened violence (although he might charge a citizen for flaunting wealth as enticement) – that’s essentially the nature of robbery. Of course, this is an example of how Morrison misfired with the character in this epic, essentially parodying Dredd as embodiment of the Law consistent with his catchphrase, except Dredd isn’t enforcing the Law so much as some deliberately obtuse distortion of it. And even if Dredd was obtuse enough to effectively charge victims of a crime as a party to it, it makes no sense or strategic timing for him to do so here.

Meanwhile, McGruder is being beaten up by Grice as he taunts her – “What did you think you were doing coming here, McGruder?”

Um, he has a point – what was her plan? Presumably it was offering herself up to Grice – but you’d think she planned to do so in exchange for something. You know, perhaps Grice handing over the antidote to the Judges? Or the citizens?

Anyway, Grice offers an exchange – her life for her loyalty to him, which we also saw him offer to that Judge he had dismembered by Lawmasters. Um, what was Grice’s plan here if she accepted? Which she should have – or more precisely feigned it to buy time to get the antidote or plot against Grice, hence my query what was Grice’s plan here if she accepted. Hence the query of what her plan actually was offering herself up to Grice – and what Grice’s plan was if she accepted his offer.

Fortunately for him, she neither has a plan nor accepts his offer, so instead he decides to use her for a much more dramatic and demoralizing display in the style of the Mongol conquests – which, come to think of it, his violent takeover of MC-1 resembles. Or perhaps more in the style of defenestration – except for throwing her out a high storey window, he just launches her on her Lawmaster off the Wall in full view of the aghast onlooking Judges.

Hence his declaration of usurpation. That might have been more interesting as some sort of declaration of anarchy – Lord of Misrule – or some sort of inversion in the style of a Department of Injustice, but Morrison doesn’t do much with it.

McGruder is a tough old bird – she survived injuries in the Apocalypse War, she survived her Long Walk in the Cursed Earth, and she survives this, albeit barely and with critical injuries.

And Dredd picks this moment to somehow materialize on top of the Wall for a dramatic showdown with Grice. Um – what was Dredd’s plan here, exactly? Yes, yes, it’s literally a baseball bat as we see a couple of episodes later. But what was his plan?! I’m so confused!

Anyway, it works out as well as you’d expect for him, given the showdown is only halfway through the epic. Which is to say, not too well, as Grice and his fellow renegade Judges easily best the sickened Dredd. Dredd is saved by a literal deus ex machina – well, literal ex machina anyway – in the form of Walter the Wobot, who also materializes out of nowhere, and out of a prolonged absence since his regular appearances as Dredd’s comic sidekick (which also seems misplaced here). Walter manages to get him out of the City (through some strange shafts or tunnels in or through the Wall) to the Cursed Earth – where it’s a case of out of the frying pan, into the fire as a horde of cannibal mutants attack them…

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 19:

INFERNO 7-8 – Death Dance! / Trial by Fire (progs 848-849)

 

“I got my plan right here!”

Okay, okay – I admit it. I can’t help but like this panel – the best of the epic – even if it doesn’t make sense.

I mean, his plan is a baseball bat?! Usually Dredd has better plans than that.

Also where did he get the bat? He literally just woke up in a makeshift hospital bed in the Justice Department encampment (where they didn’t take his helmet off).

I’m not done with the bat as his plan. Yes, yes – I know it’s Dredd announcing that he’s still in the fight (“who’s with me?”) but a literal fight? That is, a one on one, hand to hand – or rather bat to bat – smackdown with Grice? You know, the same plan as before, that saw him end up in the hospital bed, except with…a bat? You know you have a gun, don’t you, Dredd? Which if you had simply used last time you confronted him – shot first and spoke later – it would now be over. Instead, you did the whole  “I’m taking you in” routine which made no sense – as Grice even said and he had a point. And you only ended up in a hospital bed by grace of deus ex machina in the form of Walter – and Psi-Judge Janus tracking you before the mutants ate you.

Oh yeah – that’s how episode 7 opened. Dredd is about to be eaten by cannibal mutants after Walter helped him out of the city – but Psi-Judge Janus leads a team of Judges to find him and gun down the mutants. “Judge Janus picked up your psi-profile and led us to you”. Hence the hospital bed.

In the meantime, we do have some entertaining internal villain monologues from Grice, who in his usurped position of Chief Judge appears to have become completely deranged, combining the capricious psychopathy of Chief Judge Cal with the omnicidal mania of Judge Death. No, seriously – he muses happily to himself of the death of the entire population of Mega-City One – “Everyone has to die. No one is innocent” – before taking it on world tour. “And then Grice will stretch out his hand to touch and corrupt each of the great mega-cities in turn”.

I mean, replacing the eagle head with a skull on the Chief Judge uniform is something of a dead giveaway (heh).

Surprisingly, there’s only one sane man among his renegade ex-Judges trying to take him out before he kills everyone – “Grice has gone loco! He just wants to kill everythin’ now. Figger he reckons he’s Judge Death or sumthin'”. Unfortunately, he only has one flaky co-conspirator who betrays him to Grice, so Grice has him “executed” (along with the co-conspirator). By chainsaw.

I guess Dredd’s bat is looking better now…

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 19:

INFERNO 9-10 – Here Comes the Judge! / Girl Trouble! (progs 850-851)

 

You know I love a good panel of Dredd’s catchphrase – “I am the Law!”

Also roll credits as Grice replies – “Welcome to the Inferno, Dredd. Burn in hell!”

That’s at the end of these two episodes. Before we get there, we left episode 7 with Dredd heading off, a man with a plan with a bat in his hand, to beat up Grice.

In fairness, this time the epic does Dredd right as he saves a female elderly citizen from two renegade Judges. They were extorting fines from her under pain of execution, but as she pleads with them that she has not money, they switch to killing her as penalty “for flaunting poverty”. Although you’d think the renegade Judges, having the run of the city, could pick more lucrative targets. You know – banks, corporations, wealthier city blocks. But no – I guess street mugging it is.

At least this time there’s no nonsense from Dredd about charging the citizen. Instead he tells her – “On your way, citizen. Anyone you meet, tell ’em Judge Dredd is back!”.

Meanwhile, Grice has been busy setting his own charges – explosive charges on the Statue of Judgement. And yes – he detonates them, bringing the Statue down on top of a large section of the West Wall and tearing it down, conveniently right in front of the exiled Judges encamped outside the Wall. This becomes their cue, spurred on by exhortations from Psi-Judge Janus and Judge Hershey, to charge in and take back the city. Although – couldn’t they have just gone in with Dredd through the underground access he used? Or just flown in on the H-wagons which Hershey exhorts to get “rolling” into the city.

Somehow Bundy, the extremely butch chief henchperson of Grice, manages to find and get the jump on Dredd. Finally he uses his gun to just shoot her, as he should have done with Grice those few episodes back, albeit after the cavalry arrives in the form of Hershey and other Judges. RIP Bundy.

And that brings us to Dredd hunting out Grice for another showdown as the latter is getting started on burning down the Hall of Justice with a flamethrower, declaring there is no law – hence Dredd’s signature catchphrase. Although once again you could have just shot him, Dredd, rather than announce your presence. You’re even shown pointing your gun right at him (with Grice busy flamethrowing in another direction). It’s easy – you just did it with Bundy.

Anyway, there goes the element of surprise again as Grice turns his flamethrower on Dredd.

 

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 19:

INFERNO 11 – White Heat! (prog 852)

 

I’ve come to that time in my Mega-City Law recap when I play my Dredd drinking game – matching up the Case Files volume cover art with the comic panel art.

And what glorious art! By Brian Bolland of course – you can see his signature peeping out from under the 2000 AD title logo, meaning that it wasn’t the comic panel art but the comic issue cover art, Bolland’s specialty by that time.

Unfortunately – and unforgivably! – Case Files 19 does not include this cover, seemingly breaking the rule for Case Files volume covers including art from the episodes compiled in them, and usually compiling the Dredd cover art (where issues featured it as opposed to cover art for other storylines as 2000 AD is an anthology comic), typically at the end of the volume.

Worse, it was the cover for the wrong episode, symbolising what a mess this epic was. As you can see from the cover (if you zoom in), it was the cover of prog 848 – which was the seventh episode of the Inferno epic (titled Death Dance).

 

 

The cover art would actually appear to correspond to prog 852 or the epic’s 11th (and second last) episode – particularly this scene evoking the titular inferno as Dredd confronts Grice (again) while the latter is burning down the Hall of Justice with a flamethrower.

My assumption is that Bolland was given the description or draft art for this episode by inadvertence or mistake for the cover art of the earlier episode which featured nothing like this scene.

This scene also shows us how Dredd gets out of this one. He shoots the floor – for which Grice mocks him in this panel – into the flooded iso-cube cell hallway conveniently right below him, allow him to escape by swimming (and extinguishing the fire while he’s at it).

Dredd retrieves his Lawmaster and has another showdown with Grice outside the Hall of Justice. He finally just shoots at Grice, but then seems reluctant to get another shot in to finish Grice off, allowing Grice to go hand to hand with Dredd – seemingly poised to strike the final blow to Dredd…

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 19:

INFERNO 12 – Mortal Kombat! (prog 853)

 

Grice comes to a grisly end at the wheels of Dredd’s Lawmaster – and so too does Inferno with that Bond one-liner “What’s the matter, Grice? Feeling run down?”

If there’s a running theme (heh) to Inferno, it’s that protagonist Dredd and antagonist Grice spend too much time monologuing at each other rather than just finishing the other off or just shooting him. At least Dredd breaks the habit enough here to have his Lawmaster finish Grice off first before shooting off his one-liner.

And that pretty much wraps up Inferno, but for the usual epilogue bits. As the episode itself narrates, “Grice’s coup is collapsing” – and the coup finishes collapsing with the Judges led by Hershey regaining the city and either killing or capturing Grice’s renegade ex-Judges from Titan. And I suppose also whatever Judges defected to him in the city itself, presumably for the antidote – Grice mentions them but we never see any. What we do see is the last of them – Grice’s renegades – loaded onto a robot-crewed spaceship to be shipped right back to Titan.

Oh – and Hershey casually mentions that they won’t be able to produce enough of the antidote for all the citizens, so there’s going to be a death toll. How many? Who knows, other than Hershey quipping resyk will be working overtime and Dredd quipping back fewer citizens means less crime. It’s lazy writing. Just like we never see when or how the Judges captured the antidote from the renegade Judges – it would have been nice to feature a panel to show this, perhaps even some surrendering renegades offering it up for amnesty.

Speaking of amnesty, you didn’t think they were really shipping the renegade Judges back to Titan, did you? Where presumably they’d just escape all over again, maybe next week? Not on Dredd’s watch! Yeah…Dredd’s not doing that Batman putting the Joker back in Arkham Asylum and the whole revolving door prison thing. Instead he pushes the button and pulls a gotcha on the Titan escapees.

 

 

Nice if somewhat predictable twist but did he really have to waste the ship and robots for it, not to mention the elaborate ploy? And so Inferno ends with a bang – although really epic itself was a story not with a bang but a whimper.

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 19:

WAR GAMES (prog 854)

 

“Judge Dredd! For crimes against justice — you are sentenced to death!”

Finally – a bright shining light in the darkness that is Case Files 19 with my favorite episode, at least among the regular 2000 AD episodes and apart from the Megazine.

Unfortunately, it does have its problems and I’ll get to those, but they do not so much arise from the episode itself as the failure to do anything with it subsequently (and its timing as the very next episode after Inferno).

But what’s not to love about that very first panel, with our very first look at the Chinese or Sino-Cit Judges, rendered in superb art by Paul Marshall? Of course, that would be Sino-Cit 2 as Sino-Cit 1 was overrun by zombies in Judgement Day and nuked.

I mean, just look at them! Those uniforms come very close to knocking off those of the Sov Judges and Mega-City One Judges from their pedestal as my favorite. But for the fact that we don’t see them again for many episodes (as I have difficulty recalling their reappearance in the regular episodes) and then only after changing their uniforms, they might well be my favorite Judge uniforms.

I believe that they toned down the uniforms – which is frankly outrageous. If anything, they should have toned them up! But they’re perfect as they are. I note that there appears to be two regular Judge uniforms and one in a more senior or commanding position, although both uniform designs are in the red and yellow designs of the present Chinese flag.

As for the regular Judges, there’s the helmets styled in the traditional conical Asian design. The dragons as shoulder pad similar to the eagle for Mega-City One Judges. The Chinese characters which I presume to be their name, similar to the badges for Mega-City One Judges. The only issue I have is the shuriken belt buckles – which are a bit too much and also a potential source of injury.

The senior or commanding Judge has a similar coloring and design – but with some big boss shoulder pads going on and a dragon helmet. He also has skulls on his collar and badge, suggestive of perhaps a similar role to the SJS in Mega-City One, as well as a giant Chinese character on his chest.

And we’re still just in the very first panel – but I haven’t finished admiring it. You just have to love that grin on the Sino-Cit Judge on the right.

Of course, it’s the Sino-Cit Judges that are in trouble here. It’s that old adage – Dredd’s not locked in there with them, they’re locked in there with him…

 

 

“Not just Sino-Cit Judges, imperialist pig!”

Sino-Cit Judges and Sov Judges and stomm – oh my!

Yes, yes – just bask in that glory of Paul Marshall’s art in these panels from this episode, particularly as we have so few episodes like it in Case Files 19.

Despite being strapped into what appears to be an electric chair for his execution by the Sino-Cit Judges, with a leap Dredd is free! And suddenly armed with two Lawgivers to take them out instead, allowing us to get a look at the back of those Sino-Cit Judge uniforms and see they’re even cooler with the yin-yang symbols on the back.

But no sooner has Dredd escaped from the Sino-Cit Judges, calling for backup from Control (“We’ve got a nest of Sino-Cit Judges right here in Mega-City!”) then he is ambushed by a nest of Sov Judges, prompting an expletive of “stomm” from Dredd.

Or dare I say it, the stomm-bomb! So little used compared to the much more popular f-word substitute drokk. I believe stomm is the s-word equivalent. You often get a good drokk in Judge Dredd but you rarely get a good stomm. Mind you, we also get a good drokk coming up…

 

 

“You failed, Dredd! Welcome to hell!”

Sino-Cit Judges and Sov Judges and drokking hell – oh my!

Out of the frying pan, into the hellfire. The Grand Hall of Justice in flames and Dredd overwhelmed by SJS zombies.

 Just what the hell is going on?!

 

 

And it was all a dream!

Well, by dream I mean experimental psychotropic drug hallucination.

If anything, that’s even darker in some ways than the literal hellscape we saw in Dredd’s drug-fuelled nightmare vision – and as much as I love this episode, that’s where my problems with it start.

Not so much with the darkness of it – that Justice Department is prepared to resort to some extremely callous calculus from grim desperation. The callousness is obvious with the pile of poor chumps that Dredd has brutally killed in his literal drug psychosis and whom McGruder even calls “guinea pigs” – “Perps…we picked them up this afternoon — most of them minor offences but we needed some guinea pigs”.

Good Grud! Picked them up this afternoon? Minor offences?! You may have needed guinea pigs but you need them that badly and that quickly? You couldn’t have, say, used more serious offenders? You know, death row inmates – or the equivalent, as Mega-City One doesn’t have the death penalty…mostly.

Also…did they arm these chumps with, ah, spatulas or fly swatters? And I’m sure one of them just had a skateboard?  Against Dredd with a daystick and Lawgiver?!

Of course, they probably didn’t want anyone – or anything – more dangerous against Dredd, as they doped him to the eyeballs with their experimental “new aggro drug”. That’s the other part of their callous calculus here – the risk to their own Judge, let alone a Judge of the stature of Dredd, from an untested drug affecting their sensory awareness and perception, let alone doing so in some sort of extreme combat simulation to the death. What if it had incapacitated him, of itself or in combat? Not to mention they went all MK-Ultra with it – doing it without his consent or even knowledge.

It prompts to mind the official use of methylamphetamine in World War Two, originally for its perceived performance enhancement but ultimately banned for its negative effects – presumably including a deterioration of that performance (and one anticipates quite a bit of friendly fire).

But my problem is bigger than that. There’s the timing of it – literally the next episode after Inferno. What about Dredd recovering from his injuries, let alone McGruder?

However, the biggest problem is that they do exactly nothing with it – neither with its premise nor with the drug, both of which are never seen again. The premise is essentially one of grim desperation – “according to Psi-Division, there’s a crisis coming on. At our current depleted strength, we’re not strong enough to deal with it”. That crisis is further stated – or rather predicted – to be 18 months away or less, originating in the eastern blocks. “Somethin’ bad is headed this way”.

Spoiler alert – it isn’t and didn’t. While it is on brand for Psi Division to be useless as usual, that’s probably on the writers. No doubt the writing team – including Mark Millar who wrote the episode – intended and planned for something big and bad to hit Mega-City One, but they must have quietly dropped that story idea, whatever it was.

As for that drug tested on Dredd, no doubt it would have come in useful for Mega-City One’s Judges once they ironed out the kinks, not least in one of the crises that did come to Mega-City One, but again they must have quietly dropped it as story idea.

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 19:

JUDGE TYRANNOSAUR (prog 855)

 

“Stomping citizens is illegal, meat-mouth! You’re toast!”

You may be cool but will you ever be Judge Dredd taking out a T-rex with a flamethrower cool?

And that’s pretty much the point of this episode (which wraps up the regular 2000 AD episodes in this volume) but I’m always a fun of Jurassic Dredd – whenever dinosaurs pop up in the comic. Although by dinosaurs, let’s face it – it’s almost always tyrannosaurs. Or is that T-rexes?

There is another point of the episode – yet another episode showing Mega-City One’s citizens to be lovable idiots, although the lovable part may be an acquired taste. They’re certainly idiots – which is where the Judge Tyrannosaur of the episode title comes into play.

You guessed it – by contrived but fortuitous happenstance, a tyrannosaur that has wandered a long way from its Cursed Earth home to Mega-City One just happens to eat the right person, a perp holding Mega-City One’s “favorite granny” or oldest citizen hostage for ransom. This happens at the West Wall – the art suggests at one of the gaps still in the wall, so it may have been even more fortuitous that the tyrannosaur slipped through the gap at just the right time.

Although mind you, I’d have expected the oldest citizen to be older than 130 years in twenty-second century Mega-City One. I seem to recall body transplants in one episode.

Anyway, naturally Mega-City One’s lovable idiot citizens in the crowd hail the tyrannosaur as hero – with one oddball “Jurassic expert”, transparently named Dr Michael Crichton, lobbying for it to be made a Judge. How and why the tyrannosaur was taken inside (or further inside) the city, let alone restrained in chains, is not clear. Nor is why the Judges at the hostage situation either did it or let the citizens do it.

However, Judge Dredd is not having anything to do with this mother-drokking dinosaur in his mother-drokking city – “This nonsense has gone far enough!”

And just as well too, since that fortuitously coincides with the tyrannosaur escaping from its bounds just as the citizens were about to give it a giant Judge’s badge. It doesn’t seem to eat anyone but does stomp on the unfortunate Dr Crichton, despite him keeping still – as he tells the panicked citizens, the tyrannosaur responds to sudden movement (another nod to Jurassic Park). Hence the rebuke by Dredd to the dinosaur, before he fries it and finishes it off with a high explosive round.

As he tells the citizens, they don’t need heroes, dinosaurs or otherwise – “You citizens don’t need heroes – you already got us! Appreciate it!”

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 19:

THE HOTTIE HOUSE SIEGE (Meg 2.31)

The Jigsaw Murders (Meg 2.27 – 2.29)

Ladonna Fever (Meg 2.30)

 

“They practice progressive lobotomy…They have bits of their brains systematically burnt out to bring them closer to Grud. Ignorance is bliss, as they say.”

Normally I feature just one notable or standout story from the Megazine episodes in a Case Files volume, but there’s a four from this volume – one as my favorite episode in the volume, even above War Games in the regular 2000 AD episodes, and three for storylines that were to continue or recur in later regular episodes.

Of course, that might say something for the Dark Age of Dredd in the regular episodes at this time – allowing for the episodes in the Megazine, which I think were written by Judge Dredd’s best writer, John Wagner, to shine.

Although not so much in the first two storylines in the Meg – the Jigsaw Murders in the three Megazine episodes 2.27-2.29 and Ladonna Fever in Megazine 2.30.

The former is a ho-hum story about a deranged serial killer targeting a replacement arm for surgery to replaced his own amputated one but I’ll admit the latter is fun – an obvious parody of Madonna and her performances at the time. Naturally they breach Mega-City One’s public decency laws but Dredd hadn’t anticipated the city-wide riots in response to her arrest. They pull a fast one releasing her before serving her thirty year sentence – by releasing her after serving it, via some sort of “time stretcher”. Now she’d unappealingly old to the Mega-City crowds. Even better, her management contracts expired after three years – so her contracts no longer protects her records and assets are confiscated by the city. Hmm – I’m not sure it would work that way, as only Ladonna went through the time-stretcher. Interestingly, she apparently was a model citizen before her transformation into a pop star (essentially through total body plastic surgery). American actress and Madonna associate Sarah Bernhard is name-dropped for the block citi-def in which Ladonna served with exemplary record – during Necropolis or the Big Nec, which is somewhat surprising as Citi-Def resistance was omitted from the epic itself.

The Hottie House siege – an obvious satire of the Branch Davidian cult and its leader David Koresh, famously besieged by federal law enforcement at Waco in Texas – proved such a popular storyline that it was to recur in subsequent episodes. Mega-City One’s Branch Moronians – led here by David Wacovitz – were just the black comedy gift that kept on giving. A nice comic touch is the one or two members who lag behind other cult members in lobotomy and are therefore smarter. Not much smarter, of course, but enough to constantly trigger their leader David Wacovitz – although he implicitly relies on them for his plan of taking the hot dog outlet or Hottie House hostage to have any coherence or indeed purpose. Although even with those members lifting up the bell curve, the whole thing is doomed and Dredd takes out the cult single-handed.

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 19:

SLICK DICKENS: DRESSED TO KILL (Meg 2.34-2.35)

The Al Capone Story (Meg 2.32)

Bagging the Bagwan (Meg 2.33)

 

Judge Dredd does literary criticism!

“Thought you killed me in your last one, Kaput?…I’m giving you another five years for this pile of garbage!”

The most amusing thing about this all is that Dredd obviously read the book to pick plot points, pixie dust and all .

That book being the latest Slick Dickens book – Slick Dickens: Dressed to Kill – by Truman Kaput, an obvious play on Truman Capote. We last saw Kaput and his literary creation, sartorial hitman extraordinaire Slick Dickens, all the way back in episode 505 in Case Files Volume 10 – when Kaput found himself doing cube time for practising the crimes in his Slick Dickens book for realism. Dredd obviously read that book too (as he sentenced Kaput for practising other crimes in the book) – he’s a fan!

When he was introduced, Kaput had his literary creation kill Dredd – hence Dredd’s dry observation “Thought you killed me in your last one, Kaput?”

In these two Megazine episode, Kaput’s written a sequel – in his characteristic overblown style – in which Slick is back to finish the job, which has his fictional Dredd spooked. Well, his more fictional Dredd – as opposed to our fictional Dredd, who is less than impressed. Hence the five years Dredd adds to Kaput’s sentence – personally, I think Dredd just wants him to write another sequel and gave him the time to do it.

The preceding two Megazine episodes were also interesting but do not reflect a recurring character like Slick Dickens.

The first episode, The Al Capone Story (Megazine 2.32) features its titular protagonist growing up as a disappointment to his thuggish family – placid, good-natured and intelligence. That’s in marked contrast to Herman Schwartz, born on the same day to the next door neighbors of the Capones, and a constant terror in his delinquent behaviour, although the two boys become best friends. Capone’s father pre-empts the twist in the tale, bemoaning whether there was a mix-up at the block hospital – although Al Capone ultimately lives up to his name, imprisoned for tax fraud (albeit doing better than Schwartz, killed in a shootout with Judge Dredd on his way to arresting Capone).

People name-dropped for blocks include the mob bodyguard and successor to Capone, Frank Nitti (for the birthplace block of the two boys), gangster Joe Bananas (from Joseph Bonanno – for the block the families move to), and white collar criminal financier Michael Milken (for the block in which Capone settles down). I don’t know – it seems unlikely Justice Department would approve naming blocks for notorious twentieth century criminal figures.

The second episode, Bagging the Bagwan (Megazine 2.33) features Dredd having to protect a Dalai Lama-like figure – except less a figure of resistance and more a figure of annoying pacifist obsequiousness (his religion is named kowtowism) – from assassins hoping to claim the fifty million credit put on the Bagwan’s head by the Organization of Extremist City States. Sadly, as far as I know that organization is never featured again and we are not told anything about which cities are members of it – although they’re probably the usual suspects of villainous mega-cities in Judge Dredd.

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 19:

REVENGE OF THE EGGHEAD (Meg 2.36)

 

“Of course, why didn’t I think of it before! I’ll tranquillise the whole block!”

And believe me – this block needs tranquillising.

Ironically named after Kenneth Clark (albeit with misspelt surname Clarke), British art historian and TV presenter of Civilization, there’s not much civilization in this block, populated with the dregs of Mega-City One. As one of its own residents proudly proclaims, “this is a low IQ block”.

Which makes it all the more strange that Egward Shelduk, university nerd with a penchant for chemistry, lives there – but the answer is quickly revealed that it’s a Department of Housing mistake. Although to say he lives in the block is an overstatement – survives might be more accurate. And barely at that – even then it looks like he won’t last much longer.

By the way, this is it – my favorite single episode in Case Files 19. Yes – even more than War Games, because unlike War Games it actually goes somewhere, in self-contained fashion to boot. Also yes – I’m just as surprised as you are that it was not one of the regular 2000 AD episodes, usually the source of my favorite episodes, but one of the Megazine episodes. But perhaps not too surprised – this was the Dark Age of Dredd in the regular episodes after all.

My favorite Judge Dredd episodes often resemble the finest Greek tragedies. Yes – I stand by that comparison, with the common element being that the best Judge Dredd black comedy and the best Greek tragedy boil down to their tragic hero falling through no flaw or fault of their own but from being screwed over by fate. Indeed, often the tragic hero fights against their fate, only to bring it about or make it worse – the tougher they fight, the harder they fall.

Which is exactly what we see with Egward here – he tries to do everything right to peacefully avoid the relentless and violent bullying by his neighbors, only for none of it to work. We see the conga humiliation line pile-up in messages – his girlfriend leaves him a Dear John letter by video message as she can no longer see someone living in “that block” and his house loan application is turned down because his block is classified as “high risk”.

Worst of all, the Department of Housing pulls a good news bad news joke on him. The good news is that they have identified their mistake – he apparently was meant to be housed at Swingle Singers Swinging Singles – and are “rectifying their mistake immediately”. The bad news is that by immediately – or their “urgent priority” list – they mean the year after next.

The worse news is that Egward isn’t going to make it to the day after next the way he’s going, let alone the year after next. So again he does the right thing – he calls in Justice Department on his assailants. Of course, Justice Department shows up in the form of Dredd. Egward pleads with Dredd – “I don’t want any trouble – if you could just have a word with them.” Unfortunately for Egward, Dredd doesn’t do just having words with perps. Dredd arrests the family of bullies and now the whole block is out for Egward – “No judge to protect ya now, egghead!”

And that’s when Egward gets his bright idea – to tranquillise the whole block. “It’s so simple! I can make it up myself from common chemicals you’d find in any highly advanced laboratory!”. Sadly, nothing in Mega-City One is ever simple…

 

 

“Control! Med-wagons to Kenneth Clarke! We have a mass gassing!”

You sure do, Judge Dredd, you sure do. And how!

But also – and how? Well, we know the how. Block egghead Egward Selduk tranquillised the whole block. You know, to avoid being killed by the other occupants, which seems reasonable to me.

Not so much to Justice Department, who are alerted to the block being tranquillised when the crime in and around Kenneth Clarke drops to zero – “Normally we’d expect a crime every three minutes!”

Judge Dredd is called in to investigate and with the protection of his helmet respirator uncovers that everyone in Kenneth Clarke is out cold. Well, except Egward who protected himself with nose filters.

But that’s getting ahead of our story. Dredd disables the tranquilliser gas feed and the block residents awaken, in an even more violent mood than usual and ready to rumble. Or riot in this case – such that Dredd has to call in reinforcements who deploy my favorite Justice Department feature, riot foam.

And right then with the riot quelled Dredd’s off to deal with the perpetrator…

 

 

“You put the whole block to sleep, creep!”

“But that’s impossible! The – the tranquilliser wasn’t strong enough!”

“Not on its own, maybe — but combined with the tranquilliser WE pump into the block system –”

Ah yes – Mega-City One Justice Department tranquillizing its own citizens again. And yet again another citizen who discovers it – by mishap in this case – paying the price. Which for poor Egward Selduk is twenty years in the cubes.

And I for one will not stand for this – justice for Egward!

For one thing, it sounds like Justice Department should have been upping the dose. As Judge Dredd tells Egward, Justice Department’s tranquillizer was “just enough to keep them under control”. I’m not so sure about that, given that whole “crime every three minutes” thing.

For another, Egward had little choice to avoid being killed by other block residents – having tried everything else, including calling in Judge Dredd, none of which worked. He then chose a non-violent means of protecting himself – which would have worked but for Justice Department doing it first, outside his knowledge and obviously not as effectively.

And one last thing – Egward is exactly the sort of person Justice Department should be looking to enlist as a civilian auxiliary. Drokk – Justice Department in general and Judge Dredd in particularly cut deals to conscript peepers to use their spying for the city. Why not the same here? On his own and without any of the experience or resources of Justice Department, Egward tranquillised a whole block, peacefully putting it to sleep to protect himself and dropping its crime rate down to zero. Sure, the block rioted when they woke up, but you could argue that’s on Dredd for disabling the tranquillizer gas without calling in any Tek Division support or other Judges to deal with the citizens as they roused beforehand. So why not cut Egward a deal to conscript him as an auxiliary for Tek Division rather than encubement?

Although you do have to love Dredd’s wry observation at how he was able to identify Egward as the perpetrator – “No one else in the block is smart enough!”

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 19:

MECHANISMO – BODY COUNT (Meg 2.37 – Meg 2.43)

 

And we wrap up Case Files 19 with the ongoing Mechanismo storyline in the Megazine episodes. For me, it was more like Meh-chanismo (heh) but it had too big an impact for me to ignore in my Mega-City Law – and one that would continue for many more episodes yet. It makes quite the Megazine episode tally for Case Files 19. Normally I just feature the best Megazine episode, Revenge of the Egghead in this case (heh), but Case Files 19 had three recurring storylines which had to be featured – Slick Dickens: Dressed to Kill, Hottie House Siege, but the most important of all was Mechanismo: Body Count.

I’ll be quick about it, however, because none of the Mechanismo storyline really grabbed me – except for the climactic and fateful decision by Dredd here.

Judge Stitch – the Tek-Division Judge who masterminded the Mechanismo robot Judge project – is continuing with his insane pet project searching the sewers for his little lost robot which malfunctioned with lethal consequences, Mechanismo Number Five, having escaped psychiatric treatment to do so.

Meanwhile, Chief Judge McGruder is continuing with her pet project to fill the city’s depleted Judge ranks with robot Judges, rolling out the Mark Two models a year after the failure of the original Mark One models, not least Number Five – while Dredd continues to oppose robot Judges.

And Number Five is still out there continuing its pet project of law enforcement with ever more extreme prejudice. It’s pretty much executions all round for Number Five

McGruder conceives the perfect operational trial for the Mark Two models – search and destroy for the rogue Number Five. Dredd opposes this as well but realizes that he has only one option to prevent the Mark Two models becoming fully operational – find Number Five first.

And he does just that, tracking it through the illegal salvage crew that found and reactivated it, but unfortunately it manages to evade him into the sewers – where he, one of the Mark Two units, and Judge Stitch all converge on it. Dredd has already disabled it with a well-aimed shot and disables it further with another, but the Mark Two that destroys it despite Dredd’s order to “hold your fire!”

And that’s when Dredd does the darker side of his catchphrase by taking the law into his own hands – shooting and destroying the Mark Two unit. Dredd compounds this by exploiting the extremely impressionable state of the onlooking Judge Stitch (in his psychiatric breakdown) to effectively implant that the two robot Judges had destroyed each other.

As Dredd muses to himself – “A deception, but necessary under the circumstances. Enough to make McGruder pull back from commissioning the Mark 2s — for a while at least. Long enough to figure out how to deal with McGruder…”

And yes – you know that Dredd is just kicking the can down the road but it’s going to have some big consequences when it catches up to him, or he to it. I forget how that metaphor works. Sometimes you catch the can and sometimes the can catches you, but it’s going to have some big consequences in either case.