Top Tens – History: Top 10 Wars (9) Spanish Conquest of the Americas – Spanish Conquest of the Aztec Empire

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The 1521 Fall of Tenochtitlan by Spanish Conquistador Hernán Cortés, from the Conquest of México series – oil on canvas 17th century (public domain image)

 

(9) SPANISH CONQUEST OF THE AMERICAS –
CONQUEST OF THE AZTEC EMPIRE (1519-1521)

 

Remarkable for just how few Spanish forces conquered such a populous empire in such a short span of time (as it was with the conquest of the Inca Empire).

The Spanish Conquest of the Americas – la Conquista by the conquistadors – falls within the broader native American wars. Indeed, it and the American Indian Wars might be regarded as the two poles of native American wars – whereas the American Indian Wars fall at the tail end of them, the Spanish Conquest is at their very head.

It also propelled Spain, something of a peninsular backwater in Europe that had only just reconquered all its territory from Islamic conquest to the first world maritime superpower.

As for which Spanish conquest to nominate for this entry, I’ve gone with the conquest led by Hernan Cortes of the Aztec Empire. After all, it was either that or the close second for the conquest by Francisco Pizarro of the Inca Empire – and the conquest by Cortes was the influence and model for the latter, as well as effectively the springboard of the whole Conquest of the Americas, at least on the mainland.

Population estimates of the Aztec Empire prior to its conquest vary but generally seem to be about 10 million people, while Cortes had 508 soldiers in his expedition.

And he was lucky to get away even with that, as he set sail only just evading the Governor of Spanish Cuba revoking his commission, as it had become obvious that Cortes had something far more audacious in mind than mere exploration or trade. Cortes also famously scuttled his ships after arriving in Mexico, so that his forces could not retreat and had no other option but to fight.

Of course, Cortes’ forces did have some qualitative advantage of technological superiority. It is tempting to see it purely in terms of the first element of Jared Diamond’s titular trinity of guns, germs and steel – guns.

The Spanish certainly had guns, even cannon, and while the latter gave a useful advantage to the Spanish, I’m not sure I’d want to face down a fanatical horde of Aztec warriors in close combat with my inaccurate sixteenth century muzzle-loading single-shot musket, let alone whatever an arquebus is.

Far more useful were the Spanish crossbows and of course the third element of trinity – steel, in their armor and weapons, which the Aztecs lacked. More useful yet were the 16 horses of the expedition, as the Aztecs (and the Americas) were utterly without and therefore unfamiliar with horses, so that the Spanish cavalry had a real impact of shock and awe on the Aztecs. Probably with less impact but fascinating to me was the Spanish use of war dogs.

Another qualitative advantage was leadership. While Cortes had no experience, he proved himself a capable and charismatic military commander, while the Aztec emperor Moctezuma or Montezuma was generally perceived as weak or hesitant, even by the Aztecs.

Cortes was so capable and charismatic, that he defeated the larger Spanish force sent to retrieve him and then talked its soldiers and cavalry around to joining his conquest. However, this expanded Spanish force was still pitifully small compared to the Aztecs, even with its technological and tactical superiority

Which is where the second element of Jared Diamond’s trilogy was probably decisive – germs. The Aztecs are estimated to have lost almost half their population to smallpox from the Spaniards by the last year of the conquest and Cortes’ assault on their capital.

God and the gods also played their part. Faith in God was an important part of motivation and morale for the Spanish and not least Cortes himself in their conquests, coming as they did on the heels of the Reconquista of Islamic Spain.

One factor may or may not have played a part, reported by Cortes himself, was that he was seen as the return of the Aztec god Quetzalcoatl – but it is disputed as to whether or what extent the Aztecs actually believed this, and impossible to know its effect on them even if they did.

Another factor that certainly did play its part was that of the old saying that behind every great man is a woman. Malintzin, a slave-woman “gifted” to the Spanish with her own gift for languages, who became Cortes’ interpreter, diplomatic adviser and mistress – and who might well be hailed as co-conquistador.

Malintzin was an instrumental part in the true reason for the Spanish victory other than disease – that the Spanish force didn’t win it as such, but rather led the much larger winning force consisting predominantly of their native American allies against the Aztecs.

The Aztecs had their own bloody sacrificial empire that was still new and expanding just prior to the Spanish conquest – for which they were absolutely hated by many or most of their imperial subjects, at least some of whom were all too happy to ally themselves with the Spanish to overthrow the Aztecs.

ART OF WAR

Well obviously when your forces of a few hundred (or few thousand with reinforcements) defeat an empire of millions in a few years, you’re doing something right in the art of war.

And partly this would seem to be down to factors you can’t plan or even predict according to Sun Tzu – good fortune, and even more so, the boldness it favors. Say what you will about Cortes but he had cojones.

Of course, partly this would seem to be down to factors you can draw from Sun Tzu – subterfuge, diplomacy or alliances, and capturing enemy leaders or holding them hostage

WORLD WAR

The Spanish Conquest was the decisive landmark in what might be described, in its total scope, of a world war as the powers of one continent commenced their conquest of two others – the world war that started all the world wars of European maritime empires.

Even more as the Spanish conquest extended beyond the Americas to Asia (where the Spanish conquered the Philippines) and Africa, not least in the slave trade to the Americas.

STILL FIGHTING THE SPANISH CONQUEST

While the Spanish empire in the Americas fought for and (mostly) won its independence, the Spanish conquest casts a long shadow in Latin America – with native American resistance persisting even today, as with the Zapatistas in Mexico.

GOOD GUYS VS BAD GUYS

Modern historical perspective tends not to favor the Spanish as the good guys, although this is often disputed as a continuation of so-called Black Legend of anti-Spanish history – with some fairness. On the other hand, of all people the Spanish conquered, the Aztecs qualify the least as good guys, although again often disputed as historical propaganda against them – with some fairness.

Probably the only people who unambiguously qualify as the good guys are the indigenous population of Mexico caught between the two empires as one conquered the other.

RATING: 4 STARS****
A-TIER (TOP TIER)

Mega-City Law – Judge Dredd Case Files 2: The Day The Law Died

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JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 2:
THE DAY THE LAW DIED (progs 86-109)

 

No rest for the wicked – or those who judge them. Once again, the Law gets EPIC!

The second Judge Dredd epic, The Day the Law Died ran straight on or back-to-back from The Cursed Earth, when Judge Dredd returned to Mega-City One from Mega-City Two. As I said before for the Cursed Earth epic, I still consider the back-to-back storylines of The Cursed Earth and The Day the Law Died to be Dredd’s first true epics – and more fundamentally, where the Judge Dredd comic came of age. This is the origin of the classic Dredd I know, although my introduction to Judge Dredd was The Apocalypse War epic (and its Block Mania prelude), still my favorite (and arguably the best) Judge Dredd epic. Each of the epics (and their precursors in Luna and the Robot Wars) respectively set up the quintessential Judge Dredd epic plotlines – Dredd venturing to some other, often exotic location, or confronting some threat, often existential, to Mega-City One.

We saw the former in the Cursed Earth, now we see the latter in The Day The Law Died. In this case, the existential threat to Mega-City One came from the Justice Department itself, in the form of the insane Judge Cal’s rise to the position of Chief Judge, essentially by way of coup. In this, The Day The Law Died effectively introduced a recurring theme in Judge Dredd – the dangers of corruption, and especially the corruption of power, within the Justice Department, albeit rarely at the level of existential threat to the city as it is in this epic. Ironically, the source of that corruption in this epic is Judge Cal’s position as head of the SJS or Special Judicial Squad, essentially the Justice Department’s equivalent of Internal Affairs or the body of Judges who judge other Judges. Nominally, the Special Judicial Squad is meant to guard against corruption within the Justice Department, but in practice in this and subsequent storylines they tend to have a somewhat antagonistic role to the rest of the Department (and Dredd in particular) at best and be a source of power unto themselves at worst.

In fairness to Judge Cal, most of the existential threats posed to Mega-City One come from Judges, just not usually Judges of Mega-City One. The extra-dimensional Dark Judges, led by Judge Death, are perhaps the most recurring danger to the city and became an existential threat to it in the Necropolis epic, with their warped philosophy that all crime is committed by the living so the elimination of crime involves the elimination of all life – “The crime is life. The sentence is death!” However, when it comes to the most effective existential threat to Mega-City One, the Dark Judges are amateurs compared to the Soviet or Sov Judges, mainly because the Dark Judges typically insist on meting out their dark justice by hand, whereas the Sov Judges typically employed weapons of mass destruction – in the Apocalypse War and subsequently in the Day of Chaos.

As for the storyline, like The Cursed Earth, it is simple and straightforward – all the better to let the SF future satire and absurdist black comedy play out. Indeed, just as The Cursed Earth essentially just, ahem, borrowed its storyline wholesale from Roger Zelazny’s Damnation Alley, The Day The Law Died also borrowed its storyline, but from a more classical source – the ill-fated reign of Roman Emperor Caligula, straight from the pages of Suetonius’ The Twelve Caesars, or more so as it was closer in time to this epic, the BBC TV adaptation of Robert Graves’ I Claudius. Indeed, Judge Cal was named for Caligula (with his appearance modelled on John Hurt’s portrayal in the BBC TV series), and he is even named AS Judge Caligula when the series was introduced (and subsequently collected under that title). Of course, if that was his actual name, it would seem to have been begging for trouble. I mean, what next? Judge Hitler?

Anyway, his insanity mirrors that of Caligula, albeit (somewhat disappointingly) without the depravity – not surprisingly in the more ascetic Justice Department of Mega-City One, or even more so, in the publishing restrictions for 2000 AD. And so as Caligula appointed his horse as a senator of Rome, Judge Cal appoints a goldfish as Deputy Chief Judge Fish, ironically remembered fondly by the Mega-City One citizenry for a death that saved the city.  Speaking of which, the insanity of Judge Cal was such that he sentenced the entire city to death – twice. Which again evokes the historical Caligula, who according to Suetonius wished that all the city of Rome had but one neck.

However, Judge Cal is made more dangerous in his insanity – and hence earns his place among the top tier of Judge Dredd’s villains – in that, unlike his historical predecessor, he at least has the cunning and presence of mind for a technique of mind control to ensure the loyalty of his equivalent of the imperial Praetorian Guard.  And as a failsafe, when Mega-City Judges proved too unreliable, to import a new Praetorian Guard – in the form of alien Klegg mercenaries. The Kleggs and their Klegg Empire – aliens resembling giant bipedal crocodiles with appetites to match – would prove to be an occasionally recurring element in Judge Dredd (and Dredd’s recurring hatred), although the reach of their Empire is obviously limited by their temperament and lack of intelligence.

The Day The Law Died also introduced an element that would prove to be something of a recurring cliché in subsequent Dredd epics (until it was dramatically subverted in the Day of Chaos storyline) – that Judge Dredd becomes the focus of resistance to the existential threat to Mega-City One, leading a small ragtag underground force to defeat it. In this case, literally underground – in the Under-City, which became more fleshed out in this epic from its previous introduction, and contributed a critical ally to Dredd’s resistance, in the form of the dim-witted but hulking brute Fergee. Of course, Dredd didn’t have much choice in this, as he was an important target of Cal’s plans to assume the position of Chief Justice and control of Mega-City One – as he had not been subject to Cal’s mind control technique due to his absence from the city on his mission in the Cursed Earth. Cal’s initial plan is to frame Dredd – and when that fails, to assassinate him along with the incumbent Chief Judge. Sadly, these elements have something of a bad aftertaste as they were adapted into the abominable Stallone Judge Dredd film – including where the character of Fergee was transformed beyond recognition in all but name to comic relief played by Rob Schneider. Sigh.

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 2:

THE DAY THE LAW DIED (PROLOGUE)

Crime and Punishment / Judge Dredd Outlaw / Bring Me the Head of Judge Dredd (progs 86-88)

 

The Day the Law Died, in which the insane Judge Cal becomes Chief Judge of Mega-City One, effectively begins with a prologue of three episodes in which Judge Dredd is framed and arrested for murder (although technically The Day the Law Died commences with prog 89).

The elimination of Judge Dredd is an important part of Judge Cal’s plot for control of Mega-City. Dredd is the most iconic Judge of Mega-City One and a potential focus of resistance – even more so as Dredd’s absence on his Cursed Earth mission has meant that he has not been exposed to Cal’s method for mind control, as revealed subsequently in the epic.

Unfortunately, the prologue leaves something of a bad taste in my mouth, since its plot was adapted almost in entirety for the storyline of the abominable 1995 Judge Dredd film – except even worse, adding insult to injury, by adapting it to involve Dredd’s clone Rico (played by Armand Assante, looking most unclone-like to Stallone’s Dredd), Judge Griffin and the original Chief Judge Fargo in ways completely distorted from their original roles in the comics.

It opens dramatically enough (albeit attributing a population to Mega-City One of 100 million, later increased to 800 million – at least prior to the Apocalypse War), with Judge Dredd on trial for murder before the Council of Five, the governing body of Judges within the Justice Department. It then flashes back to Dredd’s hero’s parade from his Cursed Earth mission, accompanied by the transparently named Chief Judge Goodman, and Deputy Chief Judge Cal, head of the SJS or Special Judicial Squad – the equivalent of Justice Department’s Internal Affairs, or perhaps, given all the trouble it subsequently causes, Justice Department’s house of Slytherin. Judge Cal, true to his slimy and Judas-like character, whines about Dredd’s expense claims for the Cursed Earth mission. Dude – Dredd just saved Mega-City Two! So rightly, Chief Judge Goodman slaps Cal down for the petty bean-counting. Although Dredd collapses from exhaustion in his apartment after the parade, that very night he apparently enters the office of the Mega-Times, Mega-City One’s leading ‘daily-vid journal’ and guns down the editor for not giving his hero’s parade top billing. He has a point – I mean, how does “Film Star Weds Alien” rate the headline?

Dredd is promptly arrested by Cal’s SJS and Cal enthusiastically leads the prosecution before the Council of Five to a unanimous verdict of guilty, including a reluctant verdict (badgered by Cal) from Chief Judge Goodman. Dredd is sentenced to twenty years on the penal colony on Titan (adapted in the film to Aspen in Colorado – must…suppress…gag reflex from film), seen off by a jeering crowd of citizens at Kennedy spaceport. Those Mega-City One citizens sure are fickle!

 

 

Of course, you can’t keep a good Judge down – Dredd knows he’s been framed and escapes. Cal has taken over duties from Chief Judge Goodman (who has suffered near nervous breakdown after the verdict) and unveils his secret weapon to capture Dredd – the same thing that framed Dredd in the first place, a robot replica of Dredd or Dredd-bot.

It’s Dredd vs Dredd-bot! Dredd ultimately tracks down his robot replica and defeats outwits it in a robotics factory, pre-empting the Terminator film.

 

 

But first Judge Dredd is on the lam! While on the lam from the Law, he needs the help of his informant Max Normal – and I’m contractually obliged to remind a fellow Dredd fan with amnesia of the character whenever Max Normal pops up to help out Dredd. And he really helps Dredd out here – while Dredd has correctly surmised that the only way he could have been framed was to use a robot double, Max is the one who tracks it down for Dredd. Hence that Dredd vs robo-Dredd showdown.

 

 

Of course, the Dredd-bot proves Dredd’s innocence and Chief Judge Goodman joyously overturns the verdict. Or rather the robo-Dredd’s head does – Dredd taking it with him to Justice Central, although you have to give it to him as the robot head really does rest his case. The robot head was also the subject of Brian Bolland’s cover art for the Eagle Comics reprints (issue 9) – which I am also obliged to feature as Bolland’s cover art for the Eagle Comics reprints was consistently among my favorite cover art for Judge Dredd. However, as Dredd ominously intones, the robot could only have been programmed by someone with complete access to Justice Department files, so there is a “traitor among us” – “the question is who and why?”. Technically, I suppose those are two questions. Unfortunately, Cal soon provides the obvious answers – well, more obvious than his shifty expression during this exchange – in the form of a much more direct approach to solving his problems, by killing them outright.

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 2:

THE DAY THE LAW DIED 1-2

The Day the Law Died / The Tyrant’s Grip (progs 89-90)

 

Foiled in framing Judge Dredd for murder, Deputy Judge Cal decides to take a more direct approach to gaining the position of Chief Judge and control of Mega-City One – assassination.

In this, Judge Cal is somewhat more proactive than his historical model, Caligula, who awaited his succession to the throne upon the death of his predecessor (and uncle), Tiberius – although my favorite Roman gossip historian Suetonius did advance the rumor that Caligula, ah, sped up his inheritance by smothering Tiberius (amidst the depravity and paranoia of the latter’s old age in personal exile on the island of Capri).

Chief Judge Goodman’s death is not as sordid – he’s assassinated by Cal’s SJS goons. However, he survives long enough to give Judge Dredd, who arrives just in time at the scene, a clue to Cal’s involvement – an SJS insignia he managed to tear off one of the assassins. Unfortunately, Cal has already anticipated Dredd’s opposition or at least simultaneously plotted against Dredd – as Dredd is shot in the head by an SJS judge waiting outside Dredd’s apartment with a sniper rifle.

So Cal becomes Chief Judge. Unlike his historical predecessor Caligula, who at least was credited with initial good rule for six months or so, Chief Judge Cal decides to get a head start on the crazy. When his loyal SJS subordinate Judge Quincy returns, affirming his assassination of Dredd on Cal’s orders, Cal notices Quincy is missing a button and orders him to strip – “Not good enough, Quincy! My judges will dress like judges – or not at all. Take off your clothes!”

Of course, with the historical Caligula, that probably would have been the prelude to something much more depraved, but Cal simply decrees that Judge Quincy is now to carry out his duties in helmet, briefs and boots. Ominously, Cal addresses Quincy while looking at himself in a mirror, like your standard megalomaniac – “There are going to be some changes round here, and the sooner that you and all the people learn that, the better”.

And sure enough – whereas Caligula was reputed to have planned appointing his horse as consul of Rome, Chief Judge Cal exceeds his historical model by appointing his goldfish as Deputy Chief Judge Fish. (In fairness, that fish died a hero, as we’ll see).

Fortunately, the city’s only hope, Judge Dredd, is recovering in hospital from his seemingly fatal head wound, primarily due to the advanced medical technology (by robot surgeons) of the twenty-second century. Meh – this is something you get used to with Judge Dredd, indeed this epic alone has a number of near-death escapes. The number of times he’s been near death in the line of duty… hell, he’s even actually been dead at least once. (He got better). Unfortunately, his recovery is interrupted by his arrest by SJS judges, who bring him before Chief Judge Cal (with head heavily bandaged in lieu of helmet), just as Cal is announcing his appointment of Deputy Chief Judge Fish. Cal takes the opportunity of his new Deputy Chief Judge’s appointment to take the latter’s first verdict (interpreted by Cal from bubbles) – a death sentence for Dredd.

However, Judge Giant, formerly Judge Dredd’s rookie, intervenes and volunteers to execute Dredd. Cal is flattered into granting Giant’s request, blundering into the standard  Bond villain mistake of not personally ensuring the death of his most dangerous opponent. And of course, it’s all a ruse by Giant, who then escapes with Dredd.

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 2:

THE DAY THE LAW DIED 3-6

The New Law / Mega-Riot / The City That Roared / The Kleggs are Coming! (progs 91-95)

 

So Judge Dredd escaped Chief Judge Cal with the help of his former rookie Judge Giant – and becomes the focus of the resistance to Cal, both within the Justice Department itself and in the perception of the Mega-City One citizenry. As usual in a Judge Dredd epic, he is joined by a small select team – in this case, the staff of the Academy of Law, chosen from judges wounded in action, and foremost among them is Judge Griffin, the principal of the Academy.

They are joined by the larger rebelliion of Mega-City citizens against Cal, prompted by insanity on par with his historical namesake Caligula. In fairness, Cal never loses his black sense of comedy (as does the epic itself). Citizens begging to shorten a sentence of 10 years imprisonment for littering prompt a characteristic joke – “I sentence you to death! Ha, ha! You can’t get much shorter than that, can you?”

With jokes like that, no wonder Mega-City One revolts. Just as the Dredd-led revolution is on ther verge of victory, the tide turns against it in the form of the ace up Cal’s sleeve – the alien Kleggs, akin to bipedal crocodiles with appetites to match, and a feature that would occasionally recur in the Judge Dredd storyline. Cal explains his new alien Praetorian Guard to his lieutenant SJS judge Slocum – “They’re called Kleggs, Slocum – a race of alien mercenaries. I’ve had their spaceship waiting in the stratosphere for just such an emergency. Neat, eh?”

To give Cal credit, he certainly shows more cunning and foresight than his historical predecessor Caligula. Although it is difficult to see how the Kleggs became a spacefaring alien species – and as is later revealed, empire – given their general brutish nature and lack of intelligence. Presumably, they were uplifted by other alien species to use as soldiers. They’re cheap to boot (heh, obscure historical Caligula pun) – “they fight for the joy of killing and take payment only in meat”. Of course, Cal thought to “let them eat the citizens”, but Slocum persuades him otherwise – “they might get a taste for human meat and then none of us would be safe”.

In any event, Cal has equally drastic plans for the citizens of Mega-City One, who after all have to be punished for their insubordination – he sentences the whole city to death. Twice – but this is the first time…

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 2:

THE DAY THE LAW DIED 7-8

Judgement Day / Exodus to Mutant Land (progs 96-97)

 

The insanity of Chief Judge Cal is such that he sentenced Mega-City One to death – twice.

The first occasion is prompted by Judge Dredd’s failed popular uprising against the Chief Judge. Of course, Cal is very orderly about it, starting in sector 1 of the city (with the intention of proceeding in numerical order through all the sectors) with its citizen population being queued in alphabetical order (from Aaron A. Aardvark through to Zachary Zzizz) to the execution stations. Although that would seem to have the obvious flaw of being slow, and moreover, allowing ample opportunity for the population of the next sector to flee in advance – or indeed the city in general to do so, as subsequently occurs.

 

Fortunately (albeit not for Aaron Aardvark), Judge Dredd and his resistance have their own perspective, as well as a plan to act on it – abducting Cal’s lieutenant SJS Judge Slocum as part of a greater plan to exploit Cal’s insanity to save the city with a fish. And within an hour, Slocum is at the place of execution – with the casualty of Dredd’s plan, Deputy Chief Judge Fish, in hand (as opposed of course to the unfortunate casualties of Cal in that first hour).

The plan works! Cal immediately cancels the executions for an equally historic event, the funeral of Judge Fish – complete with a grand procession from the Hall of Justice itself, led by Cal in pride of place behind the noble fish’s ashes in a golden bowl.

However Cal doesn’t take it too well when the streets are deserted – “You ungrateful scum! You dare! I spare all your lives and you dare to insult me this way!”

 

 

By the way, Brian Bolland did the best art of Cal ranting and I am here for it – including what might well be characterized as Cal’s catchphrase, “You dare!”(in sheer exclamation).

Meanwhile, the population is prepared to flee the city for the Cursed Earth. Judge Dredd barely survived the Cursed Earth in his last epic and now the people of Mega-City One find it preferable to Cal. And of course, Cal will be having none of it. His solution is the same as that of the Soviets in Berlin in 1961 (as well as more recent political platforms) – building a wall. “I want a wall around the city – a wall a mile high with searchlights and gun emplacements! I want it in three weeks!”.

The population of the city – human and robot – are conscripted into building the wall. Judge Dredd and his resistance launch guerilla attacks on sections of the wall under construction, but ultimately to no avail – the wall is constructed on schedule in three weeks. Ironically, this proved to be one of Chief Judge Cal’s only positive contributions to the city in the long-term, perhaps in parallel to his historical predecessor’s Roman construction projects. The city wall would prove to be invaluable in defending the city from subsequent threats.

In the short term, however, the wall was Cal’s final imprisonment of the city – “Now the whole city is one huge prison! There is no escape, citizens! I own you, body and soul!”

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 2:

THE DAY THE LAW DIED 9-13

The Hunt / Slicey, Slicey – Oncey Twicey / The Crash / Dredd Shock News / The Law & the Looney (progs 98-102)

 

The Day the Law Died settles into a pattern of Chief Judge Cal becoming progressively more insane, while Judge Dredd is on the run from one near-death escape to another as he and his resistance is hunted by Cal’s forces.

Cal’s alien Klegg mercenaries hunt down Dredd with their Klegg-hounds, essentially a cross between bloodhounds and the crocodilian Kleggs themselves. Dredd and his resistance escape the Kleggs in their ‘road-liner’, only for it to plummet 8000 feet to their apparent doom as Cal shoots the road out from under them. (They build their roads high in Mega-City One).

Dredd’s resistance goes underground – literally, as their escape vehicle plummets crashes to the so-called ‘City Bottom’ and then through it to the Under-City. As featured in earlier episodes, Mega-City One is a built-up (again, literally) conglomeration of residential blocks, buildings and roadways extending thousands of feet into the air – and in many cases, built or concreted OVER the former cities or features, now known as the Under-City, such as New York (at least in part), and in this case, the Ohio River, now nicknamed the Big Smelly from its pollution. Indeed “it got so polluted they had to concrete it over.

Cal declares “Judges, today is the third happiest day of my life”, which remains perhaps the biggest mystery of the epic for me as I have no idea as to the other two – presumably the first is his accession to Chief Judge, but the second? Anyway, Cal declares it is cause for city-wide celebration by way of the Purge.

Not a purge, but the Purge as in the films of that name – not by that name of course (although where’s the check, Purge films?), but still the same principle as a criminal Saturnalia. Cal decrees that for the next 24 hours, there will be no law – “Citizens are free to do as they wish, with no fear of arrest!” Hmmm, leave the city, perhaps? However, no one takes advantage of that obvious loophole, even though the threatened exodus of millions of citizens was the whole reason Cal built a wall only a few episodes back – or indeed, takes advantage of the Purge for any criminal activity, as the streets are deserted and the citizens hide in their blocks.

The stated reason is that “blinds are drawn and flags are at half-mast” for Dredd (come to think of it, what IS the Mega-City One flag?), although one might also speculate that other reasons may well be the citizens’ wary fear of Cal’s caprice (or each other for that matter). Cal is enraged and bans happiness, as in literally outlawing happiness – “Laughter is banned! Smiling is banned! Conversation is banned! Happiness is illegal!”. Now that’s totalitarian!

Meanwhile, once again Dredd’s death has been overstated – as Dredd’s plummeting road-liner was a new design, “fitted with a crash-proof command capsule”. And “at the moment of impact, airbags inflated inside the cabin, cushioning the occupants”. Airbags?! Yeah, I’m not buying it. I don’t think any airbags are going to save you after a fall of 8000 feet and crashing through the road into the Under-City. To paraphrase Jerry Seinfeld referring to parachute helmets, after a fall like that those airbags will be wearing Dredd and his fellow judges for protection, not the other way round. It’s like Iron Man’s suit – yes, it may protect you from blows actually penetrating it but not from impact or inertia, with your body bouncing around inside the suit, or your organs bouncing around inside your body.

Anyway, Judge Dredd now fortunately finds himself an unlikely ally in the Under-City in the form of Fergee. Sigh – once again, the bile rises from the 1995 Judge Dredd film’s mangled adaptation of plot elements of The Day the Law Died. It may not be quite so bad as Judge Griffin – one of the leading figures of Dredd’s resistance in the storyline from the comics – being effectively cast into the villainous role of Cal himself, but it’s close.

In the film, Fergee is played by Rob Schneider as everyday Mega-City One citizen and the wimpy comic sidekick to Stallone’s Dredd. True – the Fergee of the comic storyline is something of a comic relief character, as a somewhat child-like simpleton, but he’s anything but a wimp. Indeed, he’s a hulking musclebound brawler so tough he made himself King of the Big Smelly armed only with a baseball bat – and immediately proceeds to go toe-to-toe with Dredd himself in one-on-one combat. Besides, no one deserves to be played by Rob Schneider. Perhaps not even Rob Schneider.

Fergee will also prove to be a decisive ally to Dredd’s opposition to Cal – and savior of the city itself – after of course Dredd proves his worth by beating Fergee in that one-to-one combat, which Fergee takes in good humor, laughing it off and becoming best friends with Dredd. You have to give Fergee credit – no one can call him a bad loser!

In the meantime, once again channeling his historical model for insanity and vanity, Judge Cal is auditioning the cast for a televised drama to commemorate his victory over Dredd. You…don’t want to see the poor misshapen people he’s dredged up for the role of Dredd. For the role of himself, he of course has picked vid-star Conred Conn, “the handsomest man of the world”. Small problem – Conn has retired and doesn’t want the part but that’s nothing a casual threat of decapitation can’t change…

 

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 2

THE DAY THE LAW DIED 14-15

Fergee’s Place / Trapped! (progs 103-104)

 

The Day the Law Died continues to play out with the efforts of Judge Dredd’s resistance – with their new ally Fergee who accommodates them in his Under-City hideout, a former car mechanic “body shop” – to defeat Cal. Fergee gives them his unsurprising backstory – he’s the sort of hulking brute that normally would be in trouble with the Law, despite his apparent good humor, and indeed did so he hid out in the Under-City, where his size and strength make him the equivalent of some sort of feudal king.

More importantly, while at Fergee’s hideout Dredd and his resistance correctly surmise how they alone remain unaffected among Mega-City judges. Judge Cal prepared the subliminal daily crime briefings for the judge force and programmed them for hypnotic obedience to him. It all fits – the Academy of Law tutors didn’t attend the briefings, Dredd was in the Cursed Earth and Giant was on a “month’s leave”. Wait – Mega-City judges have leave?! What do they do with it? That…doesn’t really feature in other story-lines. Despite that story-line quibble, it certainly shows Cal to be a cut above his historical predecessor Caligula – and to demonstrate cunning or intelligence quite apart from his growing insanity.

Dredd hatches a plan for his resistance force – “Easy…we break into Justice H.Q. and use Cal’s own tapes against him. And we do it with the help of our new friend.”

Hmm – that plan doesn’t sound “easy”, Judge Dredd. And indeed it isn’t – as we shall see, it relies on Walter the Wobot once again saving Judge Dredd from one of Mega-City One’s crises (that makes two now with the previous one being the Robot Wars – a third will be added with the Apocalypse War).

Even more so, it ultimately succeeds through a series of incredibly lucky break, albeit one that arises that Cal’s own insanity, poetically enough.

Anyway, the first step in the plan is Fergee taking Judge Dredd back to the surface, where Mega-City One remains under nightly curfew – and which leads to my Mega-City Law equivalent of a title drop drinking game, taking a shot for Dredd’s image excerpted for the Case Files volume cover.

Here the image arises from Fergee being all too happy to throw down (“get heavy”) with the Judges that have sighted them – and Dredd wisely deciding discretion is the better part of valor, particularly when it comes to a Justice Department pat-wagon.

The duo flee but Dredd comes to a literal dead end (heh – Dredd’s dead end). Fortunately, Dredd improvises a plan to impersonate one of Cal’s Judges apprehending a curfew breaker, as a ruse to get the jump on the Judges in the pat wagon and take the wagon for themselves. Fergee of course takes the opportunity to “get heavy” – and Dredd deputizes him with one of the fallen Judges’ badges. Aww – they really do like each other.

That brings them to the second step of Dredd’s plan – using his robot servant Walter to do the actual role of infiltrating Justice Department to retrieve one of Cal’s briefing tapes. Finding Walter is easy enough – he’s in Dredd’s apartment. However, that apartment has unfortunately – and inexplicably given you’d think they have better things to do as Cal’s enforcers AND they think Dredd is dead – been taken over by Cal’s Klegg mercenaries…

 

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 2

THE DAY THE LAW DIED 16-17

Splat / Betwayal (progs 105-106)

 

There’s only one way to deal with Kleggs – “it’s clobbering time!”.

Or as Dredd’s ally Fergee puts it here, as he and Dredd start clobbering the Kleggs occupying Dredd’s apartment – “It gettin’ heavy time!”

Well, that and “easy the Ferg!” as he literally batters a Klegg with his trusty baseball bat.

After making quick work of the Kleggs, Dredd gets down to the second part of his plan – using Walter to infiltrate Justice Department to retrieve one of Cal’s hypnotic briefing tapes, with Walter using the pretext of betraying Dredd (or betwaying Dwedd as Walter’s defective speech unit puts it, hence the episode title).

One wonders why, given the almost limitless number of things that could go wrong with the plan – and indeed almost do, but for a series of incredibly lucky breaks. The obvious flaw in the plan is, as SJS Judge Slocum protests to Cal, “the whole city knows that robot is sickeningly loyal to Judge Dredd!”.

The first lucky break is that Dredd’s ploy plays right into Cal’s insanity vanity (yes I know that should be insane vanity but I couldn’t resist the rhyming play on words) – as Cal sees that as a feature not a bug, making Walter’s apparent betrayal of Dredd even more compelling as a propaganda tool. What’s worse – Cal is right as Mega-City One’s population once again shows itself to be incredibly fickle.

The second lucky break is that Slocum slips up in his protest by calling Cal crazy, which also plays into Cal’s insanity. Slocum tries to pass it off as worry on Cal’s behalf but his days are clearly numbered.

The third lucky break is that Walter is able to just stroll into the right room and retrieve one of Cal’s briefing tape, albeit a few days of propaganda pass before he can do so.

The fourth lucky break is that when Slocum catches Walter red-handed and brings Walter before Cal, that’s when Cal enacts his insane vengeance on Slocum for calling him crazy – paralyzing Slocum with some sort of anesthetic drug before Slocum can warn him about Walter, then literally pickling Slocum in one of his usual warped jokes about “curing” Slocum’s worry lines or wrinkles, playing off Slocum’s excuse for calling him crazy.

The fifth and final lucky break is that Slocum dropped the briefing tape that he had taken from Walter (to show Cal) – and Cal not only gives it (back) to Walter but also asks Walter to take it to the briefing room.

Whew – that’s quite the chain of lucky breaks for Dredd’s plan to work! One wonders if it might have been better for one of his own resistance force to simply infiltrate Justice Department headquarters instead, using the same secret passage they use later in this same epic. Yes – Walter apparently has to open it from the inside, but they drop that implausible detail in the Apocalypse War when Dredd uses it again without any such assistance.

Despite Cal’s monumental stupidity here, I can’t help but admire his “Cal is watching you” posters that are showcased in this episode.

 

 

However, despite all those lucky breaks for Dredd’s plan to work, there’s still a lot that can go wrong – and is about to…

 

 

 

 

 

“Let them hate me so long as they fear me”.

Chief Judge Cal channels his historical namesake and predecessor Caligula as he surveys his mastery of Mega-City One “on the hundredth day of his reign” – “The people are mine, Grampus, body and soul. And why…? Fear, Grampus. Fear wielded with the precision of the surgeon’s scalpel!”

Well, I wouldn’t say you wielded it like a scalpel, Cal – more like bludgeoned the city with it like a sledgehammer.

Also, holy crap! It’s only been a hundred days of Cal’s reign? !What with sentencing the city to death, building the city wall and so on – it’s seemed longer. Well, he certainly puts his namesake to shame – Caligula reigned for about six months of sanity and then somewhat over three years of insanity. I guess when you only have episodes of six pages, you have to condense things. Although, technically, shouldn’t it be The Hundred Days the Law Died…

Also note the city wall – to keep Mega-City in rather than anyone out – with that huge lettering “you are being watched” which seems somewhat superfluous with the wall itself and all those aircraft.

Of course, being Cal, he’s not happy with things being too good for him either, as the voices in his head taunt him that the only way to go from perfection is down.

 

 

 

Now that Walter has retrieved one of Cal’s hypnotic Judge briefing tapes and sent it to them (by post!), the efforts of Dredd’s resistance to undo the subliminal programming becomes a desperate race against time as Cal’s insanity comes to a head and he sentences the whole city to death. You know, for the second time. This time, it’s because he wants to preserve the “perfection” of his city for posterity – and what says perfection better than nerve gas?:

“We can go out, citizens! We can end our lives in a glorious moment of sacrifice – and preserve our perfect city forever in its finest hour! To this end, nerve gas containers have been placed in every district. At noon tomorrow, I will personally press the button to release it!”

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 2

THE DAY THE LAW DIED 19-20

Dredd’s Army / The Final Prog? (progs 108-109)

 

The fall of Chief Judge Cal – figuratively and literally.

As the epic draws to its conclusion, Judge Dredd and his “band of rebels” race against time to substitute their briefing tape for the subliminal hypnotic tape Chief Judge Cal uses to control the Judges in Mega-City One. Racing against time, that is, as it is the dawn of Death Day – when Cal aims to preserve the perfection of ‘his’ city with nerve gas.

Their briefing tape succeeds in dispelling Cal’s hypnotic control over the Judges – with surprising ease given Dredd’s resistance only had a few days to work on it – but we’ll circle back to that. Even Cal’s Praetorian Guard of SJS judges and Klegg mercenaries abandon him, the latter attempting to surrender but Dredd is not inclined to take Klegg prisoners.

However, Cal flees to the iconic Statue of Judgement, where he holes up with the control device for the nerve gas canisters throughout the city, poised to exterminate Mega-City One.

And the epic draws to a close like a James Bond film, with the timer ticking down the doom of the city as Dredd and his colleagues race to Cal in the head of the Statue – “in five minutes, the nerve gas control becomes active!”

Unfortunately, while Dredd’s resistance has neutralized Cal’s hypnotic control of the Judges, in the actual presence of Cal it remains too powerful to resist – and presumably also because Dredd’s rebellion substituted one night’s tape as against months of Cal’s subliminal hypnotism. There – I told you we’d circle back to that. All seems lost as the other judges immobilize Dredd and his rebel judges with Cal’s finger at the button – when Fergee, gravely wounded but still alive after Cal shot him while charging at Cal, saves the day by grappling Cal and leaping over the railing, taking Cal (and the other judges who tried to intervene at Cal’s hypnotic command) with him. In his insanity, Cal proclaims that he can defy gravity by commanding it to stop, which works out for him (and everyone else falling with him) as well as you’d expect. Which is to say, not at all, as the tyrant falls to his well-deserved death.

 

 

And the last page wraps it all up with the aftermath of the end of Cal’s reign of terror – the last Kleggs are hunted down, memorial statues are erected to Fergee as savior of the city and a new Chief Judge is appointed. With respect to the last, the judges clamor for Dredd as Chief Judge but he characteristically refuses. Instead, he proposes the most senior judge amongst his rebel judges, Judge Griffin from the Academy of Law. Of course, Chief Judge tends to be an ill-fated position within Mega-City One, but Chief Judge Griffin doesn’t do too badly in the position in subsequent episodes. As for Judge Dredd, he returns to where he is needed the most – to the streets! Ah, you’re not fooling anyone, Dredd – we all know you just hate the paperwork and politics. And with that, the Day (or technically the Hundred Days) the Law Died is (are) over.

 

Top Tens – History: Top 10 Books (9) Adrian Goldsworthy – How Rome Fell: Death of a Superpower

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Cover – 2010 Yale University Press edition

 

(9) ADRIAN GOLDSWORTHY –

HOW ROME FELL: DEATH OF A SUPERPOWER (2009)

 

 

Adrian Goldsworthy has risen to the status of my favorite historian of the classical Roman empire, mostly on the back of this book although his 2023 book The Eagle and the Lion: Rome, Persia and an Unwinnable Conflict was a leading contender for my wildcard tenth place entry for best history book of 2023.

 

I’ve used the American title for the book because I prefer it as more catchy – and it also prompts to mind one of my personal highlights of the book in its introduction, dismissing the cliché of comparing the decline and fall of the Roman Empire to the modern United States (a cliché with which Goldsworthy entertainingly relates that he is routinely accosted at dinner parties when he informs someone of his historical speciality).

 

As to the question in the book’s title, in a nutshell Goldsworthy answers that they did it to themselves. It’s a little like the twist in Fight Club, with the Romans revealed as the protagonist beating himself up, to the bemusement of the barbarian onlookers – and their delight when picking up the pieces.

 

I think it’s a solid answer. Goldsworthy does not dismiss the various barbarian invasions as the reason for the empire’s demise but that looks to the question of how they did so, given that the empire’s adversaries were not fundamentally different from when the empire successfully resisted them – and in the case of the various German tribes, so surprisingly small compared to the empire.

 

As Goldsworthy memorably observes, no matter who won their seemingly endless civil wars or wars of imperial succession, the losses were all Roman, weakening the empire as a whole against its external adversaries. Another memorable observation is how the Romans never really left the crisis of the third century, just muted it to fewer civil wars and usurpations.

 

Also, the Romans ultimately played a losing game enlisting German tribes as allies or foederati in its own territory – in that the territory occupied by the Germans was no longer Roman territory, with the Romans losing any revenue from those territories, or any manpower beyond that provided by the Germans. Thanks a lot, Theodosius – you empire killer.

 

As for the history itself, Goldsworthy takes the same starting point as that of Gibbon’s famous History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire – itself following on from Roman historian Cassius Dio who marked it as their descent from “a kingdom of gold to one of rust and iron” – the death of Marcus Aurelius and accession of Commodus in 180 AD.

 

However, he pulls up stumps well before Gibbon’s finishing point, wrapping up the book aptly enough with the reign of Heraclius and the empire’s territory lost to the Arabs.

 

 

RATING: 4 STARS****

A-TIER (TOP TIER)

Top Tens – History: Top 10 Empires (10) India – Maurya Empire

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India under Maurya rule c. 250 BCE (based on map p. 69 of Kulke, H.; Rothermund, D. (2004), A History of India, 4th, Routledge) by Avantiputra7 for “Maurya Empire” Wikipedia and licensed under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

 

 

(10) INDIA – MAURYA EMPIRE (322 – 184 BC)

The Maurya or Mauryan Empire ranks in top spot among Indian empires, mostly due to my fandom of its emperor Ashoka, held in semi-legendary regard as one of India’s (and history’s) greatest emperors, as well as the first state to rule almost the entire Indian subcontinent (except the southernmost part that consistently held out against other Indian empires except their own and the British).

The Indian subcontinent has seen the rise and fall of numerous empires that could well be the subject of their own top ten, even if most are little known outside Indian history – reflecting that they almost never extended beyond the subcontinent, at least in direct territorial extent. In fairness, the Indian subcontinent has always been virtually a world of its own, particularly as a proportion of world population and economy (the latter at least until the ascent of Europe).

There are a number of candidates for top spot among Indian empires. There’s the Gupta Empire, from the fourth to later sixth century (and therefore contemporary to the declining west Roman empire), often considered the golden age empire of classical Hindu India.

There’s the early modern Islamic Mughal (or Mogul or Moghul) Empire, which might well be considered the height of empire in pre-British India as well as that best known in general history, not least because it gave India its most iconic landmark, the Taj Mahal.

And of course there was the crown jewel of the British Empire that was the British Raj – although that is usually not ranked among Indian empires as such.

However there can only be one empire for this entry and that is the Maurya empire, which one might consider the Roman Empire of India, or at least the equivalent of the rising imperial Roman republic with which it was a contemporary.

And its founder for which it was named, Chandragupta Maurya, ranks almost as highly in legendary esteem as Ashoka – or Rome’s Romulus for that matter – rising from humble origins from a cowherd and essentially to bandit leader to defeat the Nanda Empire (which had faced off none other than Alexander the Great) and forge his own empire instead.

Back to Ashoka, he extended the empire to its greatest extent before, as it is told, being sickened by the violence of the Kalinga War (against the Kalinga state on the Bay of Bengal), he converted to Buddhism and pacifism, thereafter ruling with legendary benevolence.

Although his empire extended only throughout the subcontinent, its influence extended well beyond that through his patronage of Buddhism and Buddhist missionaries, which arguably played the same role expanding that religion as Roman imperial state patronage did for Christianity.

One of Ashoka’s edicts proclaimed the territories “conquered by the Dhamma”, from the Buddhist term Dharma and reflecting the moral law or sphere of influence within Buddhism, to extend to the west through the Hellenistic kingdoms to Greece itself

The empire declined and fell within fifty years of his death, which shows you where pacifism gets you as an empire. In fairness, that was due as much to the subsequent line of succession, although it hasn’t stopped some historians alleging that Ashoka’s pacifism undermined the “military backbone” of the empire – while others assert that the extent or impact of his pacifism was “greatly exaggerated”.

 

Art of the Samath Lion Capital statue for Ashoka – the closest thing to a flag I could find for the Maurya Empire

DECLINE & FALL

Nothing to see here – it all fell apart quickly after Ashoka. That’s where pacifism gets you – I guess it’s a Darwinian world after all

THE MAURYA EMPIRE NEVER FELL

On the other hand, the Maurya Empire never fell – arguably having the most enduring influence of any Indian empire through its patronage of Buddhism.

THE SUN NEVER SETS

The sun obviously set on the Maurya Empire, which was limited in physical extent, as almost all Indian Empires were, to the Indian subcontinent. However, I think it might properly be reckoned as a world empire, particularly in its “territory conquered by the Dhamma” or influence through Buddhism – a world religion on which the sun does not set.

EVIL EMPIRE

One of the few empires, at least under Ashoka’s legendary benevolence, that avoids the tag of evil empire, albeit arguably at the cost of its endurance.

In The Outline of History, H.G. Wells wrote “Amidst the tens of thousands of names of monarchs that crowd the columns of history, their majesties and graciousnesses and serenities and royal highnesses and the like, the name of Ashoka shines, and shines, almost alone, a star.”

RATING: 4 STARS****
A-TIER (TOP TIER)

Top Tens – History: Top 10 Wars (10) American Indian Wars – Sioux Wars

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Custer’s Last Charge – entered according to act of Congress in the year 1876 by Seifert Gugler & Co. with the librarian of Congress at Washington D. C. (public domain image – “Sioux Wars” Wikipedia)

 

(10) AMERICAN INDIAN WARS –
SIOUX WARS (1854-1891)

The wars that defined the American West and ‘manifest destiny’ of the United States. The wars that put the frontier into Turner’s frontier thesis, as its literal frontier – or front line.

In origin they predate the United States itself, extending to the European colonial powers or American states prior to independence (or union). The American Revolutionary War and War of 1812 were also American Indian Wars, as the British and Americans each had their native American allies.

They were of existential importance to the native American nations or tribes, given that they ceased to exist as independent polities outside of reservations or territories within the United States, if at all. They were also of fundamental importance to the United States as well, given its “acquisition” of territory from those same tribes or nations.

Hence the span, scale and scope of the American Indian Wars in total extends for centuries across a continent. So as for which American Indian War to nominate for this entry, I’ll go with the archetypal or definitive entry, particularly from their place in the culture, history and mythology of the American West – the Sioux Wars.

Even those extended for almost half a century from the First Sioux War in 1854 to the Ghost Dance War in 1891 (and through the Great Plains but as also as far as Minnesota, Missouri and Colorado), with the most definitive Sioux War as the Great Sioux War of 1876 fought by two of the most famous native American war leaders, Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse.

The Sioux Wars feature the archetypal or definitive image of the American Indian Wars fought by mounted native American warriors as well as many of the landmarks of the American Indian Wars – from Colonel Chivington and the Sand Creek Massacre, through the Battle of Little Bighorn and General Custer’s Last Stand, to the Ghost Dance and the Wounded Knee Massacre.

However, the American Indian Wars take their place as wars within even wider themes – indeed, among the widest and oldest in human history.

Firstly, there is the theme of wider native American wars, which the native American nations or tribes found themselves fighting in for half a millennium throughout both American continents against the European colonial powers or their settler successor states, including my next entry.

Secondly there is the theme of wars against tribal nations or tribes, not only in the Americas but worldwide. I’ve heard it said that the basic political states are empires and tribes (or tribal confederacies). That seems somewhat overstated, but certainly tribes or tribal nations throughout the world found themselves under fire in the same period – in the Americas, in Africa, in Siberia and Central Asia, and in Australasia or Oceania.

Thirdly – and overlapping with the previous theme – is the longest theme or war of all, spanning millennia, the wars of sedentary agricultural societies or states against nomadic hunter-gatherers. And it is a war that, despite setbacks at the hands of mounted nomadic herding tribes, has been overwhelmingly won by agricultural states – riding roughshod over the nomadic hunter-gatherers at their frontiers, through their weight of numbers and the things that come with it, the titular “guns, germs and steel” of Jared Diamond.

Even the ghost dance falls within those wider themes over millennia – and millennialism. Of course, I tend to think of all religion as a ghost dance, but particularly so when societies face overwhelming material odds against them and essentially resort to magic to win wars.

And it’s not always tribal societies. The Boxer Rebellion was essentially the Chinese ghost dance – as was the Taiping Rebellion before it, a conflict that tends to be strangely overlooked in history, despite more casualties than the First World War. Of course, the Taiping or Boxer Rebellions show that the ghost dance can get a few good punches (heh) in before it goes down, but it is almost universally doomed to go down, except in fantasy.

Although occasionally even in history the ghost dance wins its weird victories. One tribal confederacy or kingdom that popped up during a power vacuum in its region, but then found itself progressively overwhelmed by successive empires until it existed at the whim of a final one, also resorted to a ghost dance that increasingly substituted heavenly victory for an earthly one.

That of course was the Jewish tribal confederacy or kingdom and its great messianic ghost dance, existing at the whim of the Roman Empire. The Jewish kingdom itself did not survive the Roman Empire, but its ghost dance did – ultimately succeeding first to the imperial cult of the Roman Empire, and then to the remnants of the imperial state itself.

ART OF WAR

The Sioux tactically demonstrated the speed, surprise and shock that is part of the art of war – indeed, similarly to the mounted horse tribes of central Asian steppes that were so effective elsewhere, not surprisingly given the geography of the Plains.

The only problem was they were too little and too late – a few centuries too late, against an industrial adversary that used the true strategic art of war (for winning without fighting) – picking curb stomp battles from a position of overwhelming material superiority.

It also demonstrates something of an issue for guerilla warfare. Guerilla warfare is often touted as the ultimate expression of the art of war – and it often is, avoiding pitched battles to outlast the adversary, but it had one limitation, particularly in pre-modern history.

Mao Tse-Tung wrote that “the guerilla must move amongst the people as a fish swims in the sea” – which is all very well unless your opponent is willing and able to drain the sea, displacing or eliminating the whole people (or at least enough of them).

WORLD WAR

Not of themselves, but the Sioux Wars and the American Indian Wars were part of a wider world war in its total scope, the native American wars as one continent descended on two others

STILL FIGHTING THE AMERICAN INDIAN WARS

We’re still fighting the American Indian Wars – or rather their legacy, although in some cases native American wars are still being fought in the Americas. The American Indian Wars persisted in actual warfare until 1924 (!) – and subsequently in the form of the new and more effective ghost dance of political activism.

GOOD GUYS VS BAD GUYS

Ah USA – although it’s difficult to imagine the contemporary United States without the American Indian Wars, it’s equally difficult to see the US as the good guys from our modern perspective

RATING: 4 STARS*****
A-TIER (TOP TIER)

Top Tens – History: Top 10 Books (10) Anthony Kaldellis – The New Roman Empire: A History of Byzantium

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(10) ANTHONY KALDELLIS –

THE NEW ROMAN EMPIRE: A HISTORY OF BYZANTIUM (2023)

 

 

My wildcard tenth place entry as best history book of 2023 is this history of the eastern Roman Empire – from founding to fall of Constantinople, with more than a millennium of history in between them.

 

By the fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans in 1453 AD– on the threshold of the Spanish discovery of the Americas and marking the start of the early modern period – the empire was effectively reduced to the city itself with some spare change left behind in the couch in the Peloponnese.

 

It had come a long way – and fallen so far – from its glorious founding as new imperial capital from the former city of Byzantium by Constantine in 330 AD, reigning as sole emperor over the whole classical Roman empire. From that point the empire was almost inevitably destined to be divided (again) into western and eastern halves, with the latter ruled from Constantinople and almost inevitably destined to outlast the former.

 

The founding of Constantinople and its rule over the eastern empire that became the sole empire once its western counterpart fell prompts consideration of what to call that empire, which is addressed from the outset of the book – and in its title.

 

It was of course, as they considered themselves to be, the continuation of the Roman Empire, but it also had important distinctions from the former classical empire – distinctions that allowed it to endure as long as it did and not merely as a “pale facsimile of classical Rome” but “a vigorous state of its own, inheritor of many of Rome’s features, and a vital node in the first truly globalized world”.

 

Western history has borrowed from Constantinople’s former title Byzantium – as indeed does the book’s subtitle and its author as self-described Byzantist – to call it the Byzantine empire, often to the detriment of the empire’s continuity with the Roman Empire. I guess Constantinopolitan Empire doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue.

 

That is something which this book resists, advocating persuasively against that usage. While it is no doubt a term with an unfortunate history of usage, much like the general usage of Byzantine as a pejorative adjective, I think the title of Byzantine Empire may well be too ingrained in common usage to shake.

 

The common alternative has been to call it the Eastern Roman Empire – a usage similar to that of various Chinese dynasties to distinguish their geographical extent at different times, such as the Southern Song dynasty.

 

The book makes a persuasive case for a title as the New Roman Empire but then doesn’t really use that beyond the book’s title and introduction, instead preferring to use Romania – a usage that I don’t think will catch on for potential confusion with the modern nation of that name. Also come on – neo-Roman Empire was right there!

 

As for the book’s history of that thousand-year empire, it’s pretty much summed up by that earlier quote about it as a “vigorous state of its own” – one which endured through “innovative institutions and a bottomless strategic playbook”, the latter including what in modern parlance is called soft power and set out in one of the book’s many engaging points.

 

Another engaging point is that the book plays into my preference for thematic history, not simply chronicling what happened but asking how and why it did – above all, the question of how and why the empire “lasted so long lies at the heart of the book”.

 

That can be broken down into further questions, which the book engages. How and why did it survive when the western empire didn’t? How and why did it almost succumb to enemies after that, notably the Persians and Arabs when it came within a heartbeat of falling? How and why did it then rebound after those and other occasions of decline?

 

As to the book’s big question of how and why it lasted so long, a fundamental part of the answer is reflected in its preferred usage of Romania – that the empire transformed itself to resemble not so much subjects under imperial rule as participants in a Roman nation state.

 

A further engaging point is that the author doesn’t shrink on occasion from laying down some snide snark – such as when channelling his inner Procopius, he lets the occasional barb slip that he really doesn’t like Justinian. He quips that the Plague of Justinian was the only thing the emperor didn’t want to name after himself – ooo, sick imperial burn! Of course, in this house, Justinian is a hero – although even I have to admit he overextended the empire.

 

Less engaging for me is when he detours into the endless theological disputes in the broader history of Christianity within the empire. Yes, yes – I know the history of the empire is intimately caught up with the history of Christianity within it but my eyes mostly glazed over when the book went there.

 

Except for the dispute over icons – that kept my interest, although I suppose it helped it just involved the simply use (or prohibition from use) of images and not some mindbogglingly pedantic semantics. Also, there was the book’s insight that the iconoclasts were not as, well, iconoclastic as they were made out to be.

 

Even so, I preferred the book’s more straightforward political and military history of when the empire was kicking ass or having its ass kicked.

 

 

RATING: 4 STARS****

X-TIER (WILD TIER)

Top Tens – History: Top 10 Empires

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“The Rhodes Colossus”, a cartoon by Edward Linley Sambourne published in Punch magazine in 1892

 

Given my interest in military history, it’s not surprising that I’ve also always found empires a fascinating subject of history, again from the fortunate perspective of being well removed from the sharp end of them. Empires are typically creatures of military conquest or power, and rise and fall by war.

Indeed, the two books that define my historical (and political) worldview are Sun Tzu’s The Art of War and Edward Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (yes – I know I’ve shortened the title for the latter) – so it’s not surprising that their subject matter, war and empires, also define my primary interests in history.

Not all empires are equal, however. Not even the same empire, as like the proverbial river of Heraclitus, you cannot step into the same empire twice.

Of course, that is perhaps implicit in their rise and fall, particularly when the fall of one empire is at the hands of the rise of another – such as when you have a tale of two empires, in a strikingly memorable phrase (for the 1945 Soviet offensive against Japan in Manchuria), one “at the absolute top of its game” and the other “dying and insane”.

So these are my Top 10 Empires of History. These are not ranked by how large, populous, rich, powerful or influential they are, but by my historical interest in them – although this tends to overlap with the former criteria. For example, of the ten largest historical empires by area at their greatest extent, all but two of them pop up in my Top 10 (with the other two in my special mentions).

Just some further notes, as with my Top 10 Wars, I have some ratings within each entry:

 

DECLINE & FALL

I have to admit that my particular interest in empires is not so much in their robust rise, but in their decline and fall. But again, not all empires are equal in their decline and fall. Some empires seem to collapse almost overnight, but others hold the line over incredible areas or incredible periods of time (or both), even rebounding or bouncing back. My interest is in the latter, so just how impressive or tenacious was each empire’s decline and fall?

 

THE EMPIRE NEVER FELL

On the other hand, rating the empires by their temporal span, particularly for that arguably never fell, or still haunt the world as ghosts or shadows.

 

THE SUN NEVER SETS

Rating the wars by their geographic scale as world empire. It was famously said of one empire as descriptive of its extent that the sun never set on it. Actually it was said of at least one other empire before that, with precursors even before that, but never mind that now.

 

EVIL EMPIRE

Yes, yes – they’re all evil. But just how evil?

But seriously, no empire rises to or maintains its power by being nice. They do it by crushing their opponents or rebellious subjects – “they make a desolation and call it peace”. Hence rating how brutally or ruthlessly they did so – just how evil was each empire?

But also seriously, history usually does not repay moral judgements, particularly contemporary moral judgements. Almost every empire proclaims itself to be spreading civilisation or bringing some benefit to its subjects – and all but the most destructive have at least some merit in those claims. Empires were often the only means for any political unity above the tribal level, or indeed peace from inter-tribal warfare, although of course both were typically achieved by an imperial “tribe” or nation subjugating others, usually with great death or destruction, even if it subsequently absorbed or adopted the latter as citizens or soldiers of empire.

Also, prior to modern concepts of ethnic national self-determination, I tend to regard all polities as imperial in nature, at least in so far as they comprised any more than one ethnic group, and generally even in the case of more homogenous or tribal polities over their own members, in the absence of any concept of participatory representation.

 

So these are my top ten empires in history. And yes – this is another of my deep dive top tens, counting down from tenth to first place and looking at individual entries in some depth or detail of themselves.

But wait – there’s more! The subject is prolific enough for my usual twenty special mentions per top ten and for honorable mentions beyond that.

 

Top Tens – History: Top 10 Wars

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One of the most iconic photographs of war – Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima by Joe Rosenthal of the Associated Press

 

I’ve always found wars a fascinating subject of history, from the comfortable armchair of hindsight and the fortunate perspective of being well removed from any firsthand experience of them. History, particularly military history, has always been something of a hobby of mine. So of course I have ranked my Top 10 Wars of history.

Just some notes – these are not ranked by scale of destruction or historical impact, although I’d like to think that most or all of these entries would rank highly by those criteria. They are also not ranked by moral justifiability or in terms of being ‘good’ wars, to the extent that such a term can be used for wars, if at all. Rather, they are ranked in terms of historical interest to me – and I tend to be interested in the broader themes of history, so I have preferred a broader classification of the wars in each entry, although I do nominate individual wars (or conquests or invasions) within each entry.

 

Just some further notes – I have some ratings within each entry:

 

ART OF WAR

Rating the wars by the art of war shown in them, typically by the victors of course, albeit based on my more idiosyncratic application of Sun Tzu’s Art of War.

 

WORLD WAR

Rating the wars by their scale – some wars might well be considered world wars (or at least part of world wars) beyond the two twentieth century wars formally designated as such, from World War Zero to World War X.

 

STILL FIGHTING THE WAR

Rating the wars by their span, particularly for those wars we are arguably still fighting.

 

GOOD GUYS VS BAD GUYS

Rating the wars by taking a shot at choosing moral sides or nominating the good guys and bad guys – or not, since history usually does not repay moral judgements.

 

So these are my top ten wars in history. You know the rules – this is one of my deep dive top tens, counting down from tenth to first place and looking at individual entries in some depth or detail of themselves.

But wait – there’s more! The subject is prolific enough for my usual twenty special mentions per top ten and for honorable mentions beyond that.

Top Tens – History: Top 10 Books

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Marble bust of Herodotus, the “Father of HIstory” – public domain image donated to Wikimedia Commons as part of a project by the Metropolitan Museum of Art

 

History repeats itself – the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.

History does not repeat but sometimes it rhymes.

History is just one damned thing after another.

Ah yes, history – and three of my favorite quotes about it.

The first is paraphrasing an actual quote by Karl Marx – often overlooked by people, even Marxists, as someone who could be quite the capable prose stylist when not bogged down in denser prose or theory.

The second is often attributed to Mark Twain – someone who is widely acknowledged as a capable prose stylist, except that he doesn’t seem to have actually said it.

The third quip is often quoted from historian Toynbee – correctly but somewhat misleadingly because firstly, it was adapted from a preceding popular saying about life, and secondly, he was using it to criticize historians who simply sought to chronicle history rather than analyze it.

Toynbee definitely fell in the latter category – a historian whose central theme was identifying, well, the themes of history, its cycles and patterns, its plot and rhythm (or history rhyming if you will).

History has been a subject that has fascinated me since childhood, when I read it avidly – and still does as I read it now, hence my Top 10 History Books.

The subject of history in its broadest sense is perhaps straightforward enough – “the systematic study and documentation” of the human past or past events, usually demarcated from prehistory as the past or events subsequent to the invention of writing systems (or written history in other words, although it might be corroborated by other sources such as archaeology).

Beyond that, it gets a little tricky with all the permutations of the various subjects of history or even the concept of history itself – so many permutations that it could be the subject of its own top ten and certainly has been the subject of debate among historians.

“History is an academic discipline which uses a narrative to describe, examine, question, and analyze past events, and investigate their patterns of cause and effect. Historians debate which narrative best explains an event, as well as the significance of different causes and effect. Historians debate the nature of history as an end in itself, and its usefulness in giving perspective on the problems of the present.”

I’m not here to seek to resolve any of these debates, if such a thing is even possible – I’m just here to read books on history and, you know, live in it. To adapt my own quote of living in a mythic world, I live in a historic world. We all do.

That said, what I will do is clarify my tastes in history books. I definitely lean more towards Toynbee’s concept of history as themes or patterns, preferring history books that are more analysis than chronicle. All my top ten might be said to be analytical or thematic history, albeit some more than others.

I also tend to prefer my thematic history on a grand scale – the scale of comparative or global history. Not always of course, but often – it is a preference after all, characterizing at least six of my top ten books.

I also tend to have a preference for military history – put bluntly, the history of wars and empires, or indeed of war and empire in the general thematic sense. The latter characterizes two of my top ten books as general histories of war and warfare.

Following on from the history of wars and empires, it might be cliched but foremost among my subjects of preference are the Roman Empire and the Second World War (although Alexander the Great and the Cold War are close – and somewhat overlapping – runners-up for each respectively). Two of my top ten books have their subject as a focus on the Roman Empire, while another two are with respect to the Second World War.

I also can’t invoke capable prose style in my introduction without noting my preference for a good or even literary prose style in my books of history – some historians or historical writers are definitely better than others.

So here are my top ten books of history. You know the rules – this is one of my deep dive top tens, counting down from tenth to first place and looking at individual entries in some depth or detail of themselves. Tenth place is my wildcard entry for the best entry from the previous year (2023).

But wait – there’s more! The subject is prolific enough for my usual twenty special mentions per top ten and for honorable mentions beyond that.

Mega-City Law: Top 10 Judge Dredd Epics & Episodes (Special Mention: Themes & Tropes)

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These are my thematic special mentions for the Judge Dredd comic – special mention not so much for individual epics or episodes of Judge Dredd but for the classic or other SF themes or tropes that recur in the comic.

 

 

(1) MUTANTS (CURSED EARTH & UNDER-CITY)

Mutants are a recurring classic theme or trope in SF in general, indeed up there with the top such themes or tropes, albeit not the very top – I’ll be featuring the top two such themes or tropes in my next two (second and third) special mentions.

However, mutants are an SF theme or trope that arguably looms the largest in Judge Dredd, indeed from the outset – with the mutant Brotherhood of Darkness featured as antagonists in the third episode of the comic. This is perhaps not surprising given the nature of Judge Dredd as post-apocalyptic SF – and not just any apocalypse but nuclear war, that most mutagenic of apocalypses.

When the Brotherhood of Darkness were introduced all the way back in the third episode of Judge Dredd, it was as a somewhat low key mutant incursion into Mega-City One, albeit a predecessor of one of my favorite recurring epic or episodic storylines of that type – an incursion into or invasion of Mega-City One from the Cursed Earth. Mind you, the Cursed Earth had a similarly low key introduction in this early episode, simply described as the “wilderness from the Atomic Wars”. However, that “wilderness” soon took its full shape as the Cursed Earth – if by wilderness of course you meant most of the former United States outside the coastal mega-cities (Mega-City One on the east coast, Mega-City Two on the west coast and Texas City on the Gulf coast), now dangerous and above all mutated badlands, the Weird West of Judge Dredd. The backstory is that the coastal mega-cities had their nuclear shields absent from the rest of the country. And so the Atomic Wars saw the United States replaced as a political entity by the three mega-cities, independent of but semi-allied to each other, and the United States government (that had launched the Atomic Wars) replaced by the Judges and Department of Justice in each Mega-City – a pattern apparently repeated almost everywhere else in the world as well.

Not surprisingly, the Cursed Earth took its full shape (and scope) in the epic named for it, in which the Brotherhood of Darkness recurred as more formidable antagonists. Similarly, that first true Judge Dredd epic storyline was the first in another of my favorite recurring epic or episodic storylines, like the previous one only in reverse – an incursion into the Cursed Earth from Mega-City One, usually by judges on a mission or so-called ‘hot dog’ run for training.

Back to our theme or trope for special mention, the Cursed Earth is essentially a mutated United States – not just in its mostly mutant human population, but also in virtually the entirety of its animal population, occasionally characters in their own right. Not to mention its flora, although more as backdrop than characters. Indeed, even the very geography often resembles some mutant abstraction.

Needless to say, Mega-City One and its inhabitants have mostly had an antagonistic relationship with the Cursed Earth and its mutant inhabitants, at least until recently. And by inhabitants of Mega-City One, that included the Judges or at least the Law – mutants were excluded from the city by law, whether mutants seeking to enter the city as illegal immigrants or even Mega-City citizens who were born with (or who manifested) a mutation. (Unless it was useful to the Judges, like a psi power).

However, that has changed recently, with Mega-City One and the Department of Justice evolving (heh) to a progressive policy – one that saw the Cursed Earth and its inhabitants as similarly part of the former United States, even territory or citizens to be reclaimed by the American mega-cities and their jurisdiction. Interestingly, Judge Dredd has always been one of the more progressive Judges when it comes to extending Mega-City One’s jurisdiction to mutants or the Cursed Earth – indeed, at his noblest and most heroic in his embodiment of duty extending the protection of the Law to any or all who call for its help, regardless of whether they are resident in Mega-City One or not, whether “mutie, alien, cyborg or human”. (Although he does seem to have blind spot when it comes to robots as potential citizens).

NOTABLE EPICS & EPISODES FEATURING MUTANTS (OR THE CURSED EARTH)

Too many to mention – essentially any time Judge Dredd leaves Mega-City One to the Cursed Earth, which is frequently after the epic of that name. Also when there are mutant incursions into the Cursed Earth, which is also frequently. Arguably includes the population of the Under-City as well – and Mega-City One has increasingly opened itself up to Cursed Earth migrants, who are, after all, also former Americans.

RATING: 5 STARS*****
S-TIER (GOD-TIER)

 

 

(2) ROBOTS (ROBOT WARS)

For the second of our thematic special mentions, it’s one of the top two recurring SF tropes in general and in Judge Dredd – robots, particularly Mega-City’s robot ‘population’. Robots loom large in Judge Dredd, even more so than mutants as their presence is ubiquitous throughout Mega-City One and the wider world of Judge Dredd. There are few episodes without some robot or other machine intelligence in it, at least in the background quietly performing some role. And indeed, robots were at the heart of the first Judge Dredd ‘epic’ in episodes 9-17, or more precisely mini-epic or longer story arc, albeit one that cemented the comic as an enduring series in 2000 AD – the Robot Wars.

The Robot Wars also covers the familiar SF territory of, well, a robot war – although perhaps not as familiar at the time of its publication prior to the Terminator and Matrix films. In this case, the robot war is led by messianic carpenter robot (oho!) Call-Me-Kenneth, although ‘he’ turns out to be closer to robo-Hitler. Ultimately Judge Dredd and humans in general prevail in the robot war, with a little help from loyalist robots (including recurring character Walter the Wobot), but the Robot Wars continue to cast a long shadow in the comic between humans and robots. There are some discordant notes in the storyline – the robots are likened to slaves for the Mega-City populace to live lives of ease. However, subsequent storylines show quite the opposite, that automation and robots have resulted in unemployment variously stated but at least 90% – with the overwhelming majority of the Mega-City population living lives of crime, drudgery and welfare dependency.

The relationship between robots and Mega-City’s human population in general – and its human Judges in particular – has been almost as problematic as Mega-City’s relationship with the mutant population of the former United States. And just as with mutants, Mega-City would seem to benefit from adopting a more nuanced or progressive approach to its robot population. If its robots do have genuine artificial intelligence (as they often seem to do), shouldn’t they be afforded citizenship status – or at least some legal status or protection? Indeed, its robot population generally seem to be more law-abiding and more observant of others, human or robot, than its human population.

As for Judge Dredd himself, he seems to have something of a blind spot to robots as potential citizens, even if he occasionally seems to be more sensitive to this issue than his fellow Judges on occasion, although not as charitably as he is towards mutants. And he was downright hostile in his opposition to robots as Judges – although he has warmed to them recently after robot Judges have been introduced despite his years of opposition to their use. So too have the Mega-City human population, again after some initial (and often openly hostile) opposition – with citizens now generally liking the robot Judges more than the human ones.

NOTABLE EPICS AND EPISODES FEATURING ROBOTS (OR ROBOT WARS)

Pretty much all of them, as robots are an ubiquitous feature of the twenty-second century

Robot Wars are somewhat less commonplace, most notably occurring in the story arc of that name (in progs 9-17 Case Files 1)

RATING: 5 STARS*****
S-TIER (GOD-TIER)

 

 

(3) ALIENS

And rounding out our top three thematic special mentions is that other top SF trope, up there with robots as the top two tropes of SF and probably exceeding robots to be the top trope – aliens. Interestingly, for such a predominant trope in SF, aliens don’t feature as much in Judge Dredd as their robot counterparts, or even mutants, who would otherwise rank a distinctly distant third to aliens (if that) when ranking general SF tropes by popularity or prevalence.

Yes – aliens are there in Judge Dredd. The highly intelligent and noble alien Tweak, who resembled a bipedal rock-eating aardvark, featured prominently in Judge Dredd’s first true epic, The Cursed Earth – although it’s not entirely clear how an alien would find itself in the titular setting, of all places. The far less intelligent and far less noble alien mercenaries, the Kleggs, who resembled bipedal crocodilians, featured prominently in Dredd’s second epic immediately after that, The Day the Law Died (and unlike Tweek, would pop up occasionally elsewhere). And a whole plethora of aliens and alien worlds as Judge Dredd ventured into space in the Judge Child Quest. And from then on – aliens have featured in Judge Dredd, as occasional visitors or migrants to Earth, or perhaps more so, when Judge Dredd leaves Earth to visit alien space, but neither occurred frequently.

And there’s a reason that aliens feature so infrequently or irregularly in Judge Dredd – it’s because, to borrow a phrase from recent political notoriety, Earth is a shthole. It doesn’t exactly beckon as a stellar destination, and more usually discourages alien visitors, either openly in the form of outright bans and restrictions, or in the form of just being terrible to them. It is a post-apocalyptic planet still mostly uninhabitable from nuclear war after all, with a disturbingly frequent tendency to pile up more apocalypses and add hyphenated post- prefixes to that post-apocalyptic description. And Mega-City One would rank up there by all those descriptors – shthole, terrible place and ever more post-apocalyptic – although by no means the worst place in the future world and depressingly perhaps one of the best. In fairness, to borrow another phrase from recent political notoriety, the aliens usually aren’t sending their best either.

So to paraphrase the War of the Worlds musical adaptation, the chances of aliens coming to Earth, while perhaps not a million to one, tend to be low – but still, they come. From time to time at least – although usually not pleasant for either us or them.

RATING: 5 STARS*****
S-TIER (GOD-TIER)

 

 

(4) SPACE COLONIZATION

American Judges on the moon!

Space – the final frontier. Also one of the definitive tropes of SF – I have a friend, whose running gag is to argue with me that only films set in space are science fiction, much to my frustration.

Now while obviously I dissent from that definition as far too narrow (don’t get me started), it is true that space and space colonization is one of the definitive tropes of science fiction, ranking almost up there with the duo of robots and aliens that feature in my second and third top thematic special mention entries.

And it is a trope that features prevalently in Judge Dredd almost from its outset. There’s the aforementioned American Judges on the moon, in the Luna-1 mini-epic in progs 42-58, where Judge Dredd is appointed Judge Marshall to the titular American lunar colony, first and largest of the lunar colonies, the administration of which was effectively shared between the three American mega-cities. Other mega-cities – notably the Sov-cities and Sino-cities – also had or have lunar colonies.

Even before that, however, Mega-City One’s most infamous space colony played an important background role – the penal space colony on Titan, to which Judges who break the law are sentenced, after being surgically altered with technology to survive un-suited in the colony. The result is not pretty, although I’m not entirely sure it would work either. Anyway, Titan featured in the background to the Return of Rico in prog 30, in which Judge Dredd’s clone brother returns to Mega-City One for vengeance against Dredd.

There’s also various orbital colonies or space ships which are effectively the same thing, just not bound to the surface of any moon or planet, albeit more for those elite enough to afford it, as in the film Elysium.

Mega-City One not only maintained its Justice Department space ship, styled as Justice-One in a similar fashion to the presidential Air Force One, but also maintains a space corps or space marines to “control a limited space empire”, including colonies or stations throughout the solar system, often in competition with space colonies of other mega-cities. There also seems to be regular space traffic to and from Mega-City One.

More far-flung human colonies, deep in alien space, seemingly independent of any mega-city on Earth, feature in the Judge Child Quest, including the planet Xanadu, where the human colony resembled the American West.

RATING: 5 STARS*****
GOD-TIER (S-TIER)

 

 

(5) TIME TRAVEL (ALTERNATE DIMENSIONS)

That archetypal SF theme or trope, time travel was introduced with Justice Department’s prototype Proteus time travel device in the City of the Damned epic – where of course it is the literal plot device to investigate Mega-City One’s destruction predicted by precognitive Psi-Judge Feyy for 2120, thirteen years in the future at that point in the storyline. It also is the literal plot device to resolve that epic as Judge Dredd simply fixes the future in the present. With extreme prejudice.

Once introduced, time travel became more regular in the comic. In the two years after Justice Department used their vast resources to build their prototype time machine, a citizen – albeit a mad scientist- just pops off and builds his own to snatch up Jack the Ripper from the past. We also saw a freak natural wormhole in time that did the same, plucking a German air patrol from the Second World War and throwing it into Mega-City One. Time travel was to recur in both forms, that is by occasional ‘natural’ occurrences, but more frequently by deliberate human invention, primarily by Justice Department itself. For the latter, Justice Department use of time travel technology was so prolific that it created a unit for it, the Future Crimes Unit – which challenges Psi Division for jurisdiction, with its predictive powers of actually going to the future to see it being touted over Psi Division’s precognitive talent. We don’t quite get to see all that prolific use in the comic itself however, but it does recur on occasion in narratives involving Judge Dredd.

And then there’s the dimensional travel between alternate dimensions or parallel worlds that was introduced even earlier – with Judge Death and the Dark Judges, as well as the Apocalypse Warp used by the Sovs.

RATING: 5 STARS*****
S-TIER (GOD TIER)

 

 

(6) APOCALYPSE

If anything defines the world of Judge Dredd, it is that it is dystopian and post-apocalyptic SF satire

And I do mean post-apocalyptic – although the world of Judge Dredd is more accurately post-post-apocalyptic (and so on, with additional prefixes) because recurring apocalypses are a feature of that world. After all, it’s hard to get more apocalyptic than an event called the Apocalypse War (to which this entry and the following entry pay tribute by their titles).

Indeed, the world of Judge Dredd was definitively shaped by an apocalyptic event – the Atomic Wars of 2070, perhaps not surprisingly for the comic’s origins in the heightened Cold War tension of the 1970’s and 1980’s. And most of the world and its oceans still has the scars as radioactive wasteland – with the Cursed Earth, almost the entire interior of the former United States, and the Black Atlantic, as definitive parts of Judge Dredd’s world, the former from the second episode.

However, Judge Dredd is more than just dystopian or post-apocalyptic, it is dystopian or post-apocalyptic satire – in that it plays with virtually every dystopian or post-apocalyptic trope, mostly with tongue in cheek for black comedy.

Of course, there are the standard earth-shattering tropes – literally in the Apocalypse War, where we get to see an entire alternate dimension earth shattered as an aside. As we’ve seen, the world of Judge Dredd originated in nuclear war with the Atomic Wars – and the Soviets had another red-hot go at it in the Apocalypse War, still Judge Dredd’s most apocalyptic epic, at least in terms of Mega-City One’s body count.

Interestingly, reflecting more recent times, the apocalyptic weapons of choice moved from nuclear war to biological terrorism – what the Apocalypse War started, the Chaos Bug all but finished.

However, at least at the outset, the world of Judge Dredd was curiously one of the most populous post-apocalyptic settings due to the huge conurbations or mega-cities with populations in the tens or hundreds of millions that survived the Atomic Wars because of their missile defense systems. And so you have a world that ironically both a post-apocalyptic setting AND a claustrophobically crowded dystopian setting, with the world’s population crammed into mega-cities that are themselves socioeconomic dystopias within the larger global and environmental dystopia.

“What do Judge Dredd, Mad Max and Adventure Time all have in common? They’re three of the best post-apocalyptic narratives we’ve ever seen. And they’re all slightly ludicrous, ranging from outright surrealism to mad social satire. In fact, the best post-apocalyptic storytelling is usually kind of ridiculous”.

RATING: 5 STARS*****
S-TIER (GOD TIER)

 

 

(7) WAR

War, huh, yeah!
What is it good for?

Well in science fiction, quite a lot actually – often critically driving the plot or premise of SF works. And Judge Dredd is no exception – the fundamental premise on which the world of Judge Dredd built, is essentially World War Three, or the Atomic Wars of 2070.

You’d think that the world’s mega-cities might be wary of war, as the post-apocalyptic remnants – albeit populous – of the Atomic Wars. But no – they’re surprisingly keen to duke it out, and nuke it out, in wars. Particularly so for the long-running rivalry between the American Mega-City One and the Soviet East Meg One – which saw its ultimate escalation in the Apocalypse War, wiping out half of the former and all of the latter, with a body count of almost a billion people.

In fairness, international wars – or rather, their equivalent in Judge Dredd’s world, inter-city wars, since the mega-cities are effectively nations in size and purpose – are uncommon.

There’s even wars in space, although wars in the lunar colony are fought as some sort of bizarre sport, Rollerball style. There doesn’t seem to be quite the same restraint in the rest of space though, as demonstrated by Mega-City One’s Space Corps. (And there was that alien planet of nearly war, albeit again fought in a bizarre analogue of televised sport, which Dredd encountered in the Judge Child Quest).

But mostly the wars in Judge Dredd are smaller scale wars – with the majority arguably as civil wars, albeit somewhat one-sided, as with Dredd’s tiny resistance force in The Day the Law Died. More notable, and even more definitive of Mega-City One, are the ‘block wars’ fought between neighbouring residential blocks, usually by the Citi-Def forces of each block – which ironically are intended for civilian defence against external threats (or usurpation of Justice Department by another Chief Judge like Cal).

RATING: 5 STARS*****
S-TIER (GOD TIER)

 

 

(8) CLONES

Send in the clones!

Clones may not have the same prevalence as aliens or robots in SF, but are a recurring trope – which looms large in Judge Dredd, not least because Dredd himself is a clone. Even the Stallone film got that right.

Dredd – Joseph Dredd – is a clone of the first Chief Judge, the Father of Justice, Eustace T Fargo. As was Rico Dredd, Joseph Dredd’s corrupt clone-brother, introduced as early as prog 30 in what is technically his last as well as his first appearance, since Dredd guns him down in a showdown. Technically that is, as Rico did appear in subsequent episodes (set before his death) and remains a fundamental element in the Dredd mythos – metaphorically Dredd will always carry his clone brother with him. Dredd – and his story – remains haunted by this taint in the (clone) bloodline – with Rico as his shadow, the potential corrupt version of himself, and on a larger scale, the Department of Justice (as all Dredd’s best adversaries are dark shadows of himself and the Judges in general – including his ultimate adversary Judge Death and the Dark Judges).

Thereafter we are introduced to other Dredd clones – or more precisely Fargo clones. There’s the rogue Judda in the Oz epic, who sought to clone citizens for obedience and used a number of clone bloodlines including that of Fargo – particularly Judge Kraken, who is rehabilitated by Mega-City One’s Justice Department after the Judda are defeated, only for his fall as tragic figure in Necropolis.

However, despite Kraken, Justice Department has sought other Dredd clones, with a view to replacing Dredd himself when he ages beyond active duty or is killed in duty (essentially the same thing, as we know Dredd will take the Long Walk). Of these, Rico is the best and obvious successor to Dredd himself. That’s not the first Rico – the clone took Rico’s name for surname, feeling the name deserved a second and better chance. The other Dredd clones are more hit and miss, at least as replacement for Dredd himself.

RATING: 4 STARS****
A-TIER (TOP TIER)

 

 

 

(9) PSI

 

Ah – psi! The greek letter adapted by science fiction and used for the full spectrum of psychic phenomena or mental abilities, such as telepathy or telekinesis, to make them sound more science-y. And hence also used in Judge Dredd, where psi not only ranks as one of our thematic special mentions, but also as a division within Justice Department, notably introduced with Psi-Judge Anderson in the first Judge Death storyline. Psi-Division deals in psychic and supernatural phenomena, particularly threats to Mega-City One, using Judges with psychic or psi abilities.

 

And so it’s apt that Psi-Division was introduced along with Judge Death, one of the more horror-themed storylines and adversaries in Judge Dredd, as psi and horror tend to be a matched pair within the Dreddverse – the psychic and supernatural phenomena or threats with which Psi-Division deals tend to resemble standard supernatural horror.

 

Interestingly, psi abilities predated the introduction of Psi-Division within the comics – indeed, introduced with a stray mutant youth in The Cursed Earth epic who brought down the mutant Brotherhood of Darkness with his powers.

 

RATING: 4 STARS****

A-TIER (TOP TIER)

 

 

 

(10) HORROR

 

Horror is a genre that recurs surprisingly often in Judge Dredd. Well perhaps that’s not too surprising given my thematic special mentions feature recurring horror elements or antagonists – most demonstrably spiders (particularly the mutant spiders that occur on the scale they do in Judge Dredd) but also mutants, robots, aliens and dinosaurs to some degree or other, as well as vampires and werewolves. And that’s even before we get to antagonists such as the Dark Judges and Judge Death.

 

You could argue that daily life in Mega-City One is something of a horror story – at least in the survival horror genre. Or that there are muted elements of horror even in epics that are not otherwise horror – for example Block Mania resembles the rage virus you see in some horror films (such as 28 Days Later) and the Sovs use less humanoid robot terminators in the Apocalypse War.

 

Of course, I’m not sure that many epics or episodes would be horror in the purest sense – after all, our protagonist is probably a little too invulnerable and there’s too many other genres bouncing around for that. Yet many at least contain some horror elements – often playfully borrowed from the genre (usually to provide antagonists for Dredd) or ones that could readily be recast as horror.

 

RATING: 4 STARS****

A-TIER (TOP TIER)

 

 

(11) APES

Apes are a surprisingly prevalent trope in SF – an evocation of evolution and echo of human nature. Apes had been used for the latter in literature long predating SF or evolutionary theory, but SF offered a new trope – ‘uplift’ apes. That is, apes ‘uplifted’ through human technological enhancement to a higher level of intelligence, even rivaling humanity. Perhaps the most famous example is the Planet of the Apes franchise.

The world of Judge Dredd is no planet of apes – nor is Mega-City One a city of apes – but there are uplift apes, introduced in the earliest episodes of Judge Dredd no less. Unfortunately, they were introduced as living in a ghetto dubbed the Jungle, which smacks of, ah, apist stereotype. Perhaps even more unfortunately, they were also introduced through the so-called Ape Gang, an ape criminal gang that styled itself on equally stereotypical Italian-American 1930’s mobsters (headed by Don Uggie Apelino with his lieutenants Fast Eeek and Joe Bananas).

Of course, the Ape Gang did not prosper when it went head-to-head with Dredd – and for that matter the Jungle was destroyed during the Apocalypse War. However, uplift apes did survive in Mega-City One, occasionally popping up when the writers remember them – and fortunately as more engaging characters.

More regular or non-uplift apes have also popped up in the Judge Dredd comic. I wouldn’t anticipate many survived the Atomic Wars, even in Africa or Asia given the extent of global devastation, at least in non-mutated form. However, apes appear to be kept as pets – most famously including the orangutan Dave, who was voted in as Mayor of Mega-City One. Indeed, the most popular politician Mega-City One has ever had (not that either the office of mayor or city council count for much), although sadly it did not save him from assassination. It does beg the question of why an uplift ape hasn’t sought the office, hoping to recapture the popularity of Dave.

And also apes or at least ape-like creatures have popped up in the reverse to uplift – as devolved humans, in one of my favorite episodes of Judge Dredd, Monkey Business at Charles Darwin Block. Speaking of monkey business, I’ll expand this entry to include monkeys as well. We’re all primates here!

RATING: 4 STARS****
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(12) DINOSAURS

Or as I like to call this thematic special mention, Jurassic Dredd.

No, seriously – Judge Dredd did Jurassic Park before Jurassic Park. Yes, even the novel. The Cursed Earth epic introduced that there are dinosaurs roaming the Cursed Earth, because why the hell not? Essentially, it was the same premise as Jurassic Park – genetically re-engineered dinosaurs were created for the Dinosaur National Park in the continental United States, but survived and were let loose by the Atomic Wars.

For that matter, the 2000 AD anthology comic (which features Judge Dredd) has a special relationship with dinosaurs, owing mostly to writer Pat Mills. With his characteristic misanthropic style, Mills will essentially favor any antagonist – robot, alien, even great white sharks – over humans, particularly if that antagonist kills humans more violently than most. In fairness, the humans in his stories usually have it coming – indeed, it is the humans that are the antagonists. (With the exception of Judge Dredd – for whom Mills had a soft spot as co-creator and usually showcased human heroism).

And those misanthropic tendencies took shape with dinosaurs in his beloved Flesh series – a series that started in the opening line-up in the very first issue of 2000 AD (preceding Judge Dredd itself, which only started in the second issue, albeit due to scheduling difficulties). That series had an intriguing premise – that the extinction of dinosaurs occurred because they were herded or hunted to extinction by time cowboys from the future, seeking to feed the meat-starved twenty-third century. One can’t help but feel Mills wanted to shoehorn dinosaurs into his Cursed Earth epic from his Flesh series – which he did, not just figuratively in its use of dinosaurs, but literally in that his Cursed Earth tyrannosaur Satanus is some sort of genetic reincarnation of one of the offspring of the main tyrannosaur from Flesh. Somehow I don’t think genetic re-engineering works that way.

Anyway, dinosaurs have been roaming the Cursed Earth ever since, although not in great number and only rarely when writers remember or want to use them. Which is not as often as I would like – which is to say every episode of Judge Dredd, because everything’s better than dinosaurs. Or perhaps not as often as its special mention might suggest, but dinosaurs will always get special mention from me. And because it’s not like I don’t have the cover image of Satanus about to chow down on a bound Dredd – one of the most iconic images, if not the most iconic image, of the Cursed Earth epic – and will not use it any chance I get. Indeed, it was my introduction to the epic, as I saw it as a ‘flashback’ poster in 2000 AD comics well before I read the epic itself, so I was left in suspense for years as to how Dredd escaped those gaping jaws.

RATING: 4 STARS****
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(13) SPIDERS

If dinosaurs earn thematic special mention in Judge Dredd Comics, then so too do spiders, particularly for this arachnophobe fan – Judge Dredd gets spider-iffic surprisingly often, and more often than he gets Jurassic. Although of course the spiders in Judge Dredd are essentially a subset of our special theme of mutants or mutation, courtesy of the Cursed Earth, that endless source of mutant weirdness.

After all, we’re not talking your humdrum household spiders here – we’re talking mutant spiders that are on an entirely different scale of horror. We’re talking mutant spiders on a vast numerical scale – the spider-invasion of Mega-City One by a mega-swarm of billions of insanely toxic Cursed Earth spiders in The Black Plague mini-epic. But in subsequent episodes, we’re also talking mutant spiders on a monstrous physical scale – the usual giant spiders that are stock of schlock horror, not least the titantic tarantula from one Judge Dredd annual special (in our feature image). And we’re even talking a rare disease that turns people into giant spiders, that occasionally pops up in Mega-City One

RATING: 4 STARS****
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(14) DISEASE

 

Yes – disease ranks a special thematic mention, aptly enough in these pandemic times. Disease is something that recurs surprisingly often in Judge Dredd – and at a surprisingly substantial level of narrative importance, indeed holding the fate of mega-cities in the balance. Disease is at the heart of the first true Judge Dredd epic, albeit mostly offstage – as an existential threat to Mega-City One’s West Coast counterpart, Mega-City Two, which prompts Dredd’s epic quest across the Cursed Earth to deliver the vaccine. Of course, they, ahem, borrowed the storyline from Roger Zelazny’s Damnation Alley, just in the opposite direction, as the storyline in Damnation Alley was that a former Hell’s Angel had to drive a vaccine from the West Coast to the East Coast in a post-apocalyptic United States after a nuclear war.

As for the disease itself, no boring flu or anything like that for Judge Dredd’s first epic – it’s akin to the Rage virus in the 28 Days Later film franchise, although its victims are marginally more intelligent and articulate, not quite the de facto zombies of that franchise. Apparently, “it’s a disease left over from the Great Germ War… you know, the one that came after the Atomic War”. Judge Dredd’s world tends to be post-post-apocalyptic. It’s a wonder that ANYONE is alive in the twenty-second century, let alone the hundreds of millions of people in Mega-City One.

Nor is that the last existential threat to a mega-city from disease as a bioweapon, although in subsequent storylines that threat is to Mega-City One – most destructively in the recent Day of Chaos storyline, where the disease once again seems to have a rage virus effect. Also most poignantly, as the Judges fail to avert the disease overwhelming the city and instead must resort to desperate, heartbreaking city-wide triage as they evacuate a small uninfected remnant of the population to safe zones.

And then there are the less existentially threatening but more exotic diseases that occasionally bubble up to the surface of the Dreddverse – usually of a mutant or alien variety. Again – no boring flu or anything like that here. In fairness, one of these might have been existentially threatening if not contained – Grubb’s Disease, named for the ex-mayor who contracted it, although it is not so much a genuine disease caused by bacteria or virus, but an extremely virulent and ultimately fatal mutant fungus that grows on humans. Fortunately, while inescapably virulent (in that its growth cannot be stopped once on a human host), it is slow-acting and hence more readily able to be contained before it spreads by spores (upon death of its host).

And so we come to my personal favorite (and my featured image) from the Judge Child Quest – Jigsaw Disease! You do not want to catch Jigsaw Disease – a disease so alien it does not make any sense. If anything, it doesn’t seem to work on a biological level so much as an extra-dimensional one. Parts of the body vanish, literally like taking pieces out of a jigsaw – and although they are clearly not there as things pass (or fall) through the now vacant spaces, the remaining body parts stay in place and continue to function as if the missing body parts were there, even down to a disembodied eye or mouth. Uh…quantum entanglement? Of course, there’s no real explanation other than magic or fantasy. (Indeed, I’d love to see jigsaw disease or a variant of it in a fantasy setting).

As the patient himself exclaims to his doctor on an alien world (that itself, like Jigsaw Disease, resembles a surreal Magritte painting), “It just doesn’t make any sense! How do I say together? Why don’t I feel any pain? Where am I disappearing to?”. Worse, despite the painlessness of it, jigsaw disease is fatal. As the alien doctor informs his patient – “There is no cure for jigsaw disease. When a piece of you is lost, it’s lost forever! I’d give you forty days at most. You’ll go on wasting, until…you’re just not there!”

 

RATING: 4 STARS****

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(15) FADS

 

Of course, this is arguably the broadest of our thematic special mentions, since as a dystopian future satire Judge Dredd is comprised of one trend or another extrapolated to absurdly or blackly comic intensity – “a society in which every single thing has become monstrously overwhelming”.

This entry is for the recurring storyline idea of which I am particularly fond – Mega-City One’s innumerable consumer fads. Of course, in a mega-city where hundreds of millions of bored and unemployed citizens (from a 90% unemployment rate due to automation) pursue various hobbies, futuristic or otherwise, at best (or commit crimes at worse), even that more narrowly defined theme can be very broad.

My soft spot is for those ill-conceived and short-lived consumer fads that bubble to the surface of Mega-City One life – usually to unintended consequences that range from unpleasant to disastrous, with the latter involving the direct intervention of the Justice Department, usually by banning them. Weird and dangerous consumer fads are a recurring feature of Mega-City One – we have never seen Justice Department’s Consumer Protection Division, but it must surely be the most unsung and hardest working division within the Department.

A substantial proportion of consumer fads originate it with Otto Sump, introduced in Case Files Volume 3 – Mega-City One’s ugliest citizen handpicked by Judge Dredd himself as bait to root out criminals preying on the winners of the hit TV show, Sob Story. Sump then used the fortune he won – the highest ever on the show – to bankroll one dubious fad after another, much to the disdain of Dredd whom Sump persists in seeing as a friend, although at least the fads Sump promoted tended to be unsightly and more unpleasant than disastrous.

One of my favorite examples of such fads is also representative of their idiocy and that of Mega-City One’s citizens – the things marketed as couch potatoes depicted in my feature image. One wonders how such monstrosities – weird genetically engineered vegetative lifeforms, but of creepy humanoid appearance with some mobility and ability to “talk” – could ever catch on as household ‘companions’, notably in their titular role of sitting beside people as they watched television. And of course, as usual, there’s a catch with unintended consequences – the couch potatoes are designed with some rudimentary psychic ability to ‘read’ people’s thoughts, all the better for ‘conversation’ about television shows with their owners. Unfortunately, that ability also allows the couch potatoes to control thoughts as well – only of course, with people themselves of the most rudimentary intelligence, but as Dredd dryly observes, in other words two thirds of Mega-City One’s citizen population…

 

RATING: 4 STARS****

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(16) DRUGS

 

Drugs also rank a special thematic mention – although they aren’t as prolific as one might expect in storylines about crime in a dystopian future police state. In fairness, they probably do feature as often as other special thematic mentions – probably more so than apes, dinosaurs, and spiders or about as much as disease, but not quite looming as large as the latter’s narrative importance unless of course you count Oracle Spice or the chemical agent that induced Block Mania. And like disease, we’re not talking any boring contemporary drugs – not least because that might have been too much in the nature of adult content for the initial publication of the comic, which similarly had to edit sexual references and language (hence the use of drokk as an expletive) – but more exotic futuristic or even alien drugs.

As mentioned, one drug of substantial narrative importance was the alien Oracle Spice featured in the Judge Child Quest, indeed to the point that the Judge Child Quest might have been titled in part the Oracle Spice Quest. It was extremely psychoactive, so much so that it induced psychic ability – particularly as its name suggests, precognitive visions. However, those visions were about as cryptic as historical oracles and killed the single unfortunate Judge who used them – not to mention that its sole source, the giant alien toad Sagbelly, was killed by Judge Dredd, so there’s no more where that came from and hence it was limited to that storyline.

Another drug or chemical agent of fundamental narrative importance as the one planted in Mega-City One’s water supplies by the Soviets to induce city-wide Block Mania and cripple the mega-city prior to the Apocalypse War. As such, it was second only to the Chaos Bug bioweapon in its city-destroying potential, albeit indirectly as the real destruction came from the affected citizens to each other and the Soviet attack on the weakened mega-city.

Of course, some drugs are even used by the Judges, notably anti-aging drugs that seem to be part of a whole panoply of anti-aging technologies or treatments – which of course accounts for Judge Dredd in his eighties having the health and fitness of a man half his age.

As we mentioned, criminal ‘street’ drugs tend to be exotic futuristic or alien drugs. An example of the latter is another anti-aging drug, but which is illegal in this case – as it has to be lethally harvested from the glands of a sentient alien species known as Stookies. Otherwise, the usual named criminal street drug that recurs in Judge Dredd stories is the stimulant Zziz.

More interestingly – and thematically consistent with the dystopian future police state theme – are those substances that have been outlawed as drugs, allowing the writers to use them as analogous to contemporary drugs in storylines. The most notable of these is sugar, which is written as a direct parallel to cocaine, even in its point of origin in the corrupt Pan-Andean conurb. And it looks like Mega-City One criminals have a sweet tooth because another outlawed substance is the fictional Umpty candy, originally manufactured lawfully (presumably without sugar) but then outlawed as it was just so delicious it was addictive, even to machines (somehow).

Perhaps the most significant drug of all ironically did not originate in the comics, but in the 2012 Dredd film – the drug Slo-Mo, which pretty much is exactly what it says on the tin causing a ‘high’ of slow-motion perception, and is the basis for the antagonist Ma-Ma’s criminal empire.

 

RATING: 4 STARS****

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(17) MAGIC & GODS

 

That’s right. Magic.

Not psi. Magic.

Judge Dredd is a SF fantasy kitchen sink in which anything goes – including magic. Of course, usually the comic attempts an SF veneer of psi over what, to all intensive purposes and functional effect, is magic. Every so often however it defaults to pure fantasy magic – albeit usually for comic effect, with magic coming up second best against the Law.

The definitive classic story – and I believe the first – to this effect was The Genie in prog 514, which featured a cover in which Dredd substitutes three years in the cubes for the genie’s three wishes, and for the concluding punchline “Judge Dredd proves that magic is no defence from the law”. And also the magic premise of a literal genie of the lamp, three wishes and all. That’s right – we were dealing with outright magic here, without even any bare pretence at it being some sort of mutation or psi. Judge Dredd is predominantly SF, albeit very much on the softer side with all that psi and so on, but every so often it defaults to fantasy, including magic. Not too often of course, but enough to bubble up to the surface every now and then, as here, even if it is a little silly.

Although it wasn’t the first time we encountered magic in Judge Dredd, as Murd the Necromancer literally resurrected Dredd with it in The Judge Child Quest. Of course, back then, we weren’t sure it was magic, given that the quest was driven by psi, as well as all that weird galactic alien stuff and Oracle Spice. For that matter, the Dark Judges are clearly supernatural or magic in nature, but of course that just seemed part of their extradimensional schtick (and of course psi featured heavily with them as well).

We definitely see more magic for comic effect in the Judge Dredd comic subsequent to The Genie. And I’m totally going to include Toots Milloy, the witch in my feature image, in my Top 10 Girls of Judge Dredd when we reach her.

And then there are gods. That’s right – actual gods, ot at least their functional equivalent. They exist, but usually to the same comic effect as magic in Judge Dredd.

We’ll include God in this as well or at least His functional equivalent, although Hé’s usually called Grud in the Judge Dredd comic – not, I suspect, because it was a plausible evolution of language but to avoid any issues with publication. Later issues have tended to drop Grud for God.

 

RATING: 4 STARS****

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(18) WEREWOLVES & VAMPIRES

Werewolves and vampires, oh my!

As I noted in its thematic special mention entry, horror is a genre that recurs surprisingly often in Judge Dredd – and given that the world of Judge Dredd is a regular SF fantasy kitchen sink in which anything goes, sooner or later werewolves were going to appear. As they did in The Cry of the Werewolf epic (which got its title from a film) in Case Files 7.

Of course, the Judge Dredd comic tends to prefer SF rationales for its fantasy, even if that SF is extremely soft on the Moh scale of SF hardness. So not surprisingly, the introduction of werewolves into Mega-City One strove to give them an unconvincing scientific explanation, as unconvincing as the spider bite in Spider Man – a mutagenic or more precisely lycanthropic chemical that had bubbled up in the Undercity.

And where werewolves went, vampires were sure to follow – as they did with the vampire Judges in the City of the Damned epic. In that epic, the comic doesn’t even bother with a SF explanation, except in so far as ‘psi’ powers are a SF catch-all explanation for what is basically fantasy magic – all (future) Mega-City One Judges have been turned into vampires by the Mutant. Well, except for future Dredd. He’s a zombie.

That epic might readily have seen vampires become a one-off feature. After all, the vampires in that epic were the Judges from the future 2120 timeline transformed into vampires by the uniquely powerful psi ability of the mutated Owen Krysler or Judge Child. However, Volume 9 reintroduced vampires with its Noseferatu storyline, opening the floodgates for them becoming a recurring and surprisingly regular feature with its Nosferatu storyline. Not so much werewolves though, as it’s difficult to adapt the classic werewolf so that they are recognizable as such – whereas the basic themes or tropes of vampires can be readily adapted by any number of fantasy or SF rationales. One such was the Nosferatu storyline in Case Files 9 – the name was a dead giveaway of course, although the vampire tropes were adapted to a spider-like alien with similar abilities and appetite for blood.

RATING: 4 STARS****
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(19) DRAMA & TRAGEDY

Day of Chaos – gruddamn you, 2000 AD, you tore my heart out with that story!

As a sci-fi fantasy kitchen sink, Judge Dredd extends to a diverse range of genres, albeit obviously not pure or high fantasy – and admittedly not particularly hard SF either. Of course, it is not primarily science fiction or fantasy – it’s primarily a dystopian satire or black comedy in a science fiction setting. For that matter, it has shared elements of genres beyond science fiction or fantasy, albeit in the usual suspects for its central premise – crime or heist fiction, espionage, or war fiction, and of course drama, particularly police drama.

And then there is the diversity of tone. Predominantly its tone is that of tongue-in-cheek black comedy or satire. Primarily, Judge Dredd is funny or comic, in contrast to what might otherwise be an unbearably tragic post-apocalyptic setting – the best post-apocalyptic fiction is absurdist at heart. Judge Dredd is a futuristic Dirty Harry in a post-apocalyptic dystopian SF satire. As such, its predominant tone is comedy, albeit generally absurdist or black comedy, “ranging from outright surrealism to mad social satire”.

Yet even here it can vary, particularly as Mega-City, its Judges and its citizens have engaged more depth of emotional reaction – from comic to dramatic and indeed to tragic. Every so often it varies, the writers recall that the Judges are essentially a police state, but that a police state necessarily involves police – with all the potential for drama or personal tragedy that police or crime stories can involve.

The tragic stories could be heartbreaking or heartrending – they typically involved stories of individuals crushed by life in Mega-City One, often not so much by deliberate cruelty but by the vast impersonal carelessness of the city, and some so that even Dredd was moved by their tragedy. And then occasionally Judges or the whole city are overwhelmed by tragedy – apocalyptic crises for Mega-City tended to be somewhat absurdist, but not always so as they ventured beyond the absurdist or comic to tragic, as in the Day of Chaos epic. Such stories – particularly the heartbreaking individual ones – tend to stand out among other episodes of the Judge Dredd comic as a result, as well as among my personal favorites.

You could argue that drama and tragedy feature close to the very origin of Judge Dredd, with his brother Rico (“He ain’t heavy – he’s my brother!”), but also that its poignant high point was in the democracy storyline, starting with Letter from a Democrat in Case Files 9

RATING: 4 STARS****
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(20) DEMOCRACY & TERROR

A thematic special mention entry, which is alliterative to the preceding special mention entry for drama and tragedy – aptly so, as they overlap in Judge Dredd. One might say that the Judge Dredd comic is at its most dramatic – and tragic – in episodes revolving around Mega-City One’s democracy and terror movements. And of course, there’s an overlap between democracy and terror in Judge Dredd – firstly, as Justice Department tends to see even Mega-City One’s peaceful democracy movement as terrorists, and secondly, as that a large part of that movement devolved into or fed Mega-City One’s terror movements when doomed to Justice Department’s boot in its face forever (or Justice Department’s own state terror).

It is through the underground democracy movement that we see Justice Department and the Judges at their darkest, but ironically also the comic at its most morally ambiguous or complex.

From the outset, Judge Dredd and his fellow Judges were intended as a dystopian satire of the worst excesses of police and government authority fused together into a post-apocalyptic police state. And yet, also from the outset, Dredd co-creator Pat Mills, best known for his anti-authoritarian themes, wrote Dredd – the ultimate authority figure – as a heroic character. As I’ve said before, Judge Dredd is essentially Dirty Harry in a dystopian SF satire, reflecting both the heroic and anti-heroic nature of that character as his predecessor. That has deepened over time to other Judges and the Justice Department in general, as those intended figures of authoritarian satire have earned their writers’ respect as potentially heroic characters.

Of course, that’s easier when the Judges face off against the violent crime or criminals that threaten to overwhelm Mega-City One – let alone the apocalyptic threats to the mega-city’s very existence. Although it might be noted that the most characteristic enemies or apocalyptic threats have essentially been dark inversions of the corruption or authoritarian violence of the Judges themselves – from Dredd’s rogue clone Rico at a smaller scale, to the insane Chief Judge Cal, or Judge Death and the Dark Judges at a larger scale, even arguably the Judge Child Owen Krysler or the Soviet Judges.

However, that’s dramatically reversed when the Judges are pitted against their own citizens, particularly those in the substantial democracy movement – for whom the Judges and Justice Department are definitely not the good guys. Indeed, from our perspective, it is difficult not to share their viewpoint of the democracy movement as the true heroes of Mega-City One, while the Judges and Justice Department as the true villains. Certainly, Justice Department and the Judges, included Dredd, are at their most villainous – or at least anti-heroic – when it comes to stamping down on the democracy movement, which they identify as terrorist.

And yet…

TV Tropes stated it best:

“By his very nature and purpose, anti-hero Dredd is firmly committed to his organization’s authoritarian, brutal, and ruthless methods of law enforcement, but it’s established that Mega City One would collapse without him and his fellow Judges, and more than once has. Though Dredd is impeccably honest and honorable, despises corruption, does not discriminate, goes out of his way to save innocents…and has been given cause to question his purpose more than once, he is an unapologetic authoritarian. In this setting, democracy within his society has been shown to be simply unworkable”.

This moral complexity is also apparent in the heroic self-sacrifice of the ideal Judges, such as Dredd, sworn to uphold the law and protect Mega-City. Dredd himself has consistently accepted the potential sacrifice of his own life to protect the citizens or even a citizen of Mega-City One (and even the residents of the Cursed Earth or anyone looking to the protection of the Law). The life of a Mega-City Judge is somewhat monastic, even deliberately Spartan. After years of training, their duty is entirely to uphold the Law, enduring constant danger of death, typically without personal relationships, certainly without personal riches or reward or even retirement – as the practice of Judges is to retire from active duty with the Long Walk, a quintessentially American Western image of leaving Mega-City and roaming the Cursed Earth, to bring law to the lawless.

Often Dredd is characterized as a fascist, with much – dare I say it? – justice (and indeed dangerous tendencies in that direction), but ultimately I would argue that he is not a fascist (and Mega-City One is not totalitarian) in the strictest sense. Dredd and his Mega-City One are undeniably authoritarian – part of a police state that is almost casually brutal and draconian in its enforcement of law – but Dredd would seem to be a little too legalistic to be a true fascist and lacking the definitive characteristics of historical fascism.

RATING: 4 STARS****
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And here are all 20 of my thematic special mentions:

 

 

S-TIER (GOD TIER)

 

(1) MUTANTS (CURSED EARTH)

(2) ROBOTS (ROBOT WARS)

(3) ALIENS

(4) SPACE COLONIZATION

(5) TIME TRAVEL (ALTERNATE DIMENSIONS)

(6) APOCALYPSE

(7) WAR

 

A-TIER

 

(8) CLONES

(9) PSI

(10) HORROR

(11) APES

(12) DINOSAURS

(13) SPIDERS

(14) DISEASE

(15) FADS

(16) DRUGS

(17) GODS & MAGIC

(18) VAMPIRES & WEREWOLVES

(19) DRAMA & TRAGEDY

(20) DEMOCRACY & TERROR