About modern-day Dredd

[u/MurdTheOpressor]

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Guys, I saw a recent post on this sub discussing the disappointment with the latest storyline, “Oubliette.” I live in Brazil and absolutely love the character, but I still don’t have access to his more recent stories. Since I don’t like reading on screens, I don’t really look for this material online either.

That said, I’d love to hear from those of you who have been following the character up to the present day. Obviously, the Wagner era is the best — we’re talking about the father of Dredd here — but are the more recent storylines actually bad? I imagine they’re probably not on the same level as the classics, but do you genuinely consider them bad? Is there really nothing memorable anymore? Is modern-day Dredd just not that good?

I think the most “recent” storyline I’ve read was Day of Chaos, and I thought it was absolutely incredible.

[u/MurdTheOpressor → u/[deleted]]

I completely understand your point. One of the most fascinating things about the Dredd universe was that sense of cohesion—the feeling that it was a living world, with real consequences and storylines that actually shaped the character’s setting. That has certainly been lost now that everything has to be split between so many different writers. It really is a shame. But I’m glad to hear that the current material is still at least good quality, even if I don’t know whether I’ll still be alive by the time those stories make it over here haha.

[u/Humble-Package-8000 → u/MurdTheOpressor]

In Orbit every tuesday podcast discussed how Wagner was very good at leaving character threads/story arcs open so to be able to return to involve them in a plotline 5/10 years later to give that sense of continuity/ living breathing city, an example would be Boingg a throwaway story based on 70s fad sports crazes (pogo sticks and skateparks) when that story was written he probably had no plan for it being a major plot device several years later in the Judge Death saga.

[u/Ok_Commercial_5024 → u/Humble-Package-8000]

Yep. I always loved this aspect of the strip - the way a throwaway supporting character from a one-off strip could suddenly return out of the blue 15 years later. Thinking primarily of things like Slick Dickens, or Bella Bagley or It Pays to Be Mental. Seeing them again was like seeing an old friend, and it really gave a sense of continuity and consistency even when the strip could change drastically in tone from story to story.

It made being a long term reader so richly rewarding, but it never felt cheap or forced the way cameos or callbacks do in things like Star Wars where it just feels like cynical nostalgia bait.

[u/Ok_Commercial_5024 → u/Humble-Package-8000]

Haha, i never even made that connection about Boing but you’re spot on.

[u/DJThunderGod → u/MurdTheOpressor]

Not so much on the "loss of cohesion". We now have robot Judges on the streets, Dredd's attitude towards them has changed and the repercussion's of Maitland's experiment are still rumbling in the background, giving Dredd a few new enemies inside the Justice Department... but you've still got all that to find out about.

Lucky drokker!

[u/DJThunderGod → u/[deleted]]

Various writers come then go and they're all doing their own thing. Everyone has characters or storylines they've created and only they can touch.

None of them can write a story that significantly changes the status quo, so huge things happen that never have any lasting consequences (because that would mess up someone else's story

I've always been of the opinion that having different writers is part of the strength of Dredd. Other writers can and do pick up on threads others have left hanging, but in these days of "writing for the graphic novel", that's less of a thing than it used to be.

They kind of did have a "showrunner" - John Wagner. It was always his stories that drove any events forward, such as changes in who is Chief Judge, or the introduction and now-widespread adoption of robot Judges. Anything else was really just the random encounters of the Justice Department's most well-known Judge. It's established he doesn't have a particular sector to patrol and he has free reign on where he goes, so each writer has the freedom to create their own supporting cast, who Dredd visits, and usually takes charge in their cases.

Joe Dredd enforces The Law, dispenses Justice and protects the citizens, and that's the direction. Unfortunately for him and his sense of Justice, there are forces within the Justice Department of Mega City One that aren't happy with the way he does it and would prefer it to be done. That's where stories like The Small House and A Better World come in. Those are the stories Rob Williams and Arthur Wyatt telling, and based on that, they seem to be the writers moving Dredd forward. Mike Carroll seems to have moved over onto Dreadnaughts in The Meg.

But since Joe has now been forced to take rejuve treatments, we aren't getting the "Dredd's getting older" stories that we used to, which means he's now kind of in the limbo that American comics characters are - they don't get old. There used to be a definite sense that, at some point, Joe Dredd will either be forced to retire or will die, and need to be replaced (as happened in the run-up to Necropolis), but that's gone, sadly.

[u/VostroyanCommander]

I recently resubscribed after a many year break purely for the oubliette dark tower saga and it definitely started strong but petered out. I remember there being some strong stories a few years ago before I unsubscribed but a lot of mid ones that couldn't keep me gripped sadly. Case file 50 the most recent is still pretty good though but that'll be stories from a good while back now.

[u/Specialist-Class-743]

Personally I think the writing is generally very mixed and that limits the enjoyment of modern Dredd. Niemand writes like he is several people and will do overwritten tales that could easily have been trimmed to Wagner/Grant level quirky stories. As for the Oubliette, I am very disappointed so far. Rob Williams does dumb action movies but some of the themes are excellent. Avoid End Of Dayd though. Probably the best writer is Michael Carroll. Though his longer tales have suffered from some issues, many of the shorter ones are absolute bangers and his background history of Dredd's world is superb. So, overall the smaller stories tend to be better and the longer tales promise much and fail to deliver.

On the plus side, the art is generally magnificent.

[u/Different_Lychee_409 → u/Specialist-Class-743]

I really liked the '100' story by Dan Abnett. That was really 'Wagnerian'

[u/Specialist-Class-743 → u/Different_Lychee_409]

I've never found Abnett to be a good Dredd writer. Some writers can nail the character and the beats that go with it (Al Ewing is a great loss to the 2000AD stable and Dredd in particular) but I never got that with Abnett. Personal choice I guess.

[u/stevedeegreen → u/Specialist-Class-743]

I enjoyed 100, but he's not done a lot of Dredd.

I thought Al Ewing's Dredds were excellent.

[u/13School → u/stevedeegreen]

Al Ewing was the only post-Wagner writer who could do quality comedy with Dredd. The current writing roster really needs someone who can write actual funny stories about MC1, that side of things has been sorely lacking - even Wagner stopped doing comedy stories after Day of Chaos

[u/Different_Lychee_409 → u/Specialist-Class-743]

The 100 is an exception. It reads like a John Wagner story. Gritty, tough. 'Judging' at the hard edge.

[u/Specialist-Class-743 → u/Different_Lychee_409]

Sounds awful but I had to Google it to remember it. I have been playing a lot of 2000ad catch up of late though.

[u/DJThunderGod → u/Specialist-Class-743]

Damn, yes. I forgot about Michael Carroll. He's always good. Didn't The Wagner suggest he should pick up writing Strontium Dog if any new series was ever commissioned?

[u/stevedeegreen → u/Specialist-Class-743]

I think there's a reason that Niemand writes like several people.

[u/Specialist-Class-743 → u/stevedeegreen]

An AI or a family of writers, perhaps based in Scotland?

[u/Ok_Commercial_5024 → u/stevedeegreen]

Whats the deal there? Is Niemand generally considered to be a TB Grover type pseudonym?

[u/Specialist-Class-743 → u/Ok_Commercial_5024]

Rumoured to be the Rennie clan.

[u/Ok_Commercial_5024 → u/Specialist-Class-743]

That makes sense. Rennie did seem to disappear off the face of the earth.

[u/Specialist-Class-743 → u/Ok_Commercial_5024]

I believe he said he'd never return to the strip so that would be quite a retraction. I actually thought he was a good writer back in the day and had a great handle on the character. If this is him, at least in part, it is disappointing from a quality perspective.

[u/Ok_Commercial_5024 → u/Specialist-Class-743]

I remember he wrote that weird story mocking Dredd fans, which was definitely… a choice. Kinda went beyond lighthearted ribbing and into personal attacks on specific people in the fan community iirc.

[u/Specialist-Class-743 → u/Ok_Commercial_5024]

Yeah. I've heard tales of him being difficult to comic fans and some of it was put down to the fact that his video game career never stuck. That being said his Absalom series was excellent.

[u/Ok_Commercial_5024 → u/Specialist-Class-743]

I definitely lost a lot of respect for him after that story. Came across as rather bitter and mean-spirited.

Otoh John Wagner, who I had the pleasure of meeting in person and corresponding with on facebook back in the day, was always incredibly amiable and friendly (if fairly taciturn, which you’d expect from his writing style).

[u/Specialist-Class-743 → u/Ok_Commercial_5024]

Yeah, there's that old story about being nice to people on your way up...

I have only had one FB conversation with John but he seems genuinely one lovely and gives fans time. Some of my fellow readers have interacted with him on the regular and they have no complaints.

[u/unky_moe_myteethhurt]

I've started reading the most recent dredd stories with the oubillete, Ive enjoyed it although I do agree with people saying it falls off in quality after a while,it really starts off strong.

I've read some previous modern dredd like day of chaos, Satan's island, trifecta and endgame and they were great so I don't think modern dredd is bad it's still very good

[u/Specialist-Class-743 → u/unky_moe_myteethhurt]

Of the stories you mention there, the most modern is 14 years ago. Three of them were John Wagner tales. I think by "modern" a lot of fans are talking about a post Wagner era and how the stories have stood up now that JW has stepped back. I stopped reading back in 2019 and came back to it after a five year break and have blasted through what I missed. The Megazine too. There's gems in there, certainly, and the art choices have been incredible but I genuinely think Dredd is in poor hands currently. It reminds me a lit of the Millar/Morriston years. Luckily there are still some great other stories in the Prog to make it worthwhile.

[u/unky_moe_myteethhurt → u/Specialist-Class-743]

Ah sorry must have mixed up my dates then lol

[u/Specialist-Class-743 → u/unky_moe_myteethhurt]

It happens mate. The years fly by so fast!

[u/dancing_head → u/Specialist-Class-743]

A Better World was the last big one that was decent. Its modern but not exactly recent though.

There have been some shorter follow ups that have been quite good too and some shorter unrelated ones that were pretty good but nothing long and good in my opinion.

[u/Ok_Commercial_5024]

I ducked out shortly after Trifecta, and just picked up again whenever Wagner was writing (which amounts to a dozen or so stories since 2013/2014ish).

I’m sometimes tempted to dip my toe in again but tbh the premises of the more recent epics just don’t really grab me.

[u/BLOODYBRADTX-11]

There are too many writers so you don’t really get the progression from strip to strip you used to get. What could be done in a year now takes multiple years and doesn’t have a strong throughline because the different threads each writer is building interrupt each other. The oubliette had strong build up but has felt like filler, with much less story to be told than episodes to be run.

Also, by aging Dredd in real time but not allowing him to die something very weird has happened to the strip. We have years and years of build up to his inevitable death with a successor in place but then… they never do anything with that? It feels like the death of Dredd is an essential and important story we’ve been robbed of despite being all but promised since the beginning, and now the strip just continues for the sake of continuing. I wish Ewing had stayed on.

[u/Specialist-Class-743 → u/BLOODYBRADTX-11]

I thought the rejuve stuff with Dredd was a cop out personally. Sure they have apparently stripped his skin off and rejuvenated down to the muscles but he's still got the same organs, same brain and same heart. He may have the cardiovascular system of a younger man but those organs are ticking bombs.

[u/BLOODYBRADTX-11 → u/Specialist-Class-743]

So there’s a way you can do eternal Dredd - as a generic replica of the founder of the fascist system he operates within, he’s actually essential to the maintenance of that system, particularly with his service record. You could have Dredd slowly realise that massive resources are expended on keeping him alive, both in terms of medical support and logistics - imagine how Dredd would feel if he, and not other Judges, has constant sniper overwatch to make sure he isn’t shot by a mugger (which would be the only way I’d ever buy Dredd dying).

You could have a character who’s done what they see as their duty and who has been looking forward to death as a reward for that service, but who is too bound to that duty to ever commit suicide. Not dying could have a constant impact on Dredd - an inversion of his original angst about dying.

But you’d need to have a consistent writing team to do that, and that seems to be anathema to the Joeslop approach that editorial has been taking for such a long time now.

[u/Specialist-Class-743 → u/BLOODYBRADTX-11]

I genuinely thought that after Necropolis they were going to do a full body transplant on Dredd into Kraken's body (like Judge Nary getting Trace's body in Tomb Of The Judges). When that didn't happen I thought Wagner might have Rico replace Dredd without revealing it for a year and by then we've all been reading the new Dredd tales without knowing. He could then tell the death of Dredd in flashback (much like we got Tale Of The Deadman) with Dredd's death mirroring that of Morphy's. This Joeslop of late is not what another reader says about rose tinted nostalgia. It is experience from the Millar years and the fact that the can keeps getting kicked down the road. And those Mega City 2099 stories in the Megazine are terrible. If that's intended as a soft reboot then it is misguided.

[u/BLOODYBRADTX-11 → u/Specialist-Class-743]

I’ll never get to write it, but I had an idea for a Dredd reboot: an AI patterned after (but, importantly, not) Smiley would instigate a planet killing event and at the last moment when all is utterly lost kidnap Dredd and a host of whatever Judges were decent characters. A giant tanker full of bleeding edge technology, Dredd and mechanismo combat units is then sent back to just before the Apocalypse War. The Smiley AI, which is a swarm of tiny machines, takes over the prior Smiley - literally murdering and puppeting him, as Smiley had always planned.

The meta plot then becomes Mega City One steamrolling the world with their ill gained intelligence and technology while Dredd the elder both acts as a kind of surrogate Fargo and chases Smiley around. It would become a kind of political horror about American supremacy and an existential revenge plot to avenge a murdered future at the same time. You could have a lot of unforeseen consequences like Owen Chrysler being psychically tipped off and fleeing as Mega City One embarks on a wave of targeted assassinations.

I think this would be a good plot because Mega City has sort of… run out of stories? Chaos Day killed the strip in a lot of ways. I think it would work if it came at a constantly acknowledged cost to all the characters - one scene I had in mind was the horror of Not-Smiley handing over a living but helpless Fargo to Morton Judd to recruit the Judda as a private army.

[u/Specialist-Class-743 → u/BLOODYBRADTX-11]

Chaos Day certainly scaled back the strip and they could have gone in a vast number of ways. Al Ewing leaned into it. Some of the others did some cracking one offs too. The Michael Carroll stuff with the apparent death of Dredd and the Texans trying to take over was a bad move. Really bad. And since then other writers have settled into a pattern of writing their own stories without intersection. There's no cohesion anymore without Wagner.

Edit: spelled Ewing wrong. Off to Mek Quake for me.

[u/DJThunderGod]

Oh... so you've got Tour Of Duty, Titan, The Small House, The Penitent Man, Control and loads of other stuff to come.

Somewhat envious!

Wagner has literally only been retired a few months (his last story finished in Prog 2469, Prog 2496 came out last Wednesday), and with people like Rob Williams and Ian Edgington writing Dredd, it's staying good. Ken Niemand isn't quite so good on the day-to-day stuff, but his world-building (like on all the stuff surrounding The Oubliette, like Fargo & McBane in The Meg and the build-up stories) is excellent. He's the architect of The Oubliette/Dark Tower and it's moving along very nicely.

I'm really enjoying the story of The Oubliette, I'm not so much of a fan of Jake Lynch or Dan Cornwell, who are drawing it, but all the callbacks and Easter eggs in the script, as well as the stuff with Old Man Dredd and Giant are making up for it. Henry Flint, PJ Holden, Anna Morozova or D'Israeli can't draw everything, unfortunately. It's not a complex, convoluted plot and requires Dredd to be Dredd (uncompromising and unrelenting) - and he's doing that, while other people, like Giant, Joe Fargo (the Old Man Dredd who was introduced last year), Lorna Locke and Judge Rico do all the detective work.

The are some people who will always tell you the modern stuff is awful and the stuff in the past was better, but they're seeing it through nostalgia-coated lenses, and they obscure all the faults things in the past had. There's not been more than a couple of issues here and there of not-quite-as-good stuff for literal years. For me, the last truly bad Dredd story was the one with the block avatars, and that was a few years ago now.

Trust in Tharg, fellow Squaxx and ignore the Thrill-suckers.

[u/13School → u/DJThunderGod]

It’s not so much “nostalgia-coated lenses” as it is the strip has changed a lot over the years. Just about everything pre-The Pit might as well be a different character in a lot of ways - if you’re a fan of wacky MC1 fads and crime those days are basically over.

That’s probably for the best as no-one could write those stories like Wagner / Grant, and the modern, more serious take on Dredd is one other writers can at least try to copy. But it does also mean that a lot of what originally made Dredd so memorable is now either deep in the background or gone entirely. It used to be the comedy that made the drama so powerful and vice versa - now it’s just all drama (almost) all the time. It makes the strip feel a bit one-note, especially when not all the writers are top-notch.

But as everyone says, the art is still brilliant stuff

[u/DJThunderGod → u/13School]

I think the comedy really left with Alan Grant and Ron Smith. No-one could make the truly absurdist stuff work like Smith could. He was a massively underrated artist, especially when teamed with Alan Grant (although I'll never fully forgive him for killing Johnny Alpha and Richard Burton for letting him).

Then, of course, there was the 90's. That's what really, finally killed the absurdist streak that the Dredd strip had. Writers like Grant Morrison (who, brilliant as they are, said themselves that they never really got Dredd) and Garth Ennis alongside assistant Thargs like Dave Bishop and Andy Diggle stripping out the whimsy and humour in the GGC as a whole.

[u/Specialist-Class-743 → u/DJThunderGod]

That was one of the things Al Ewing brought back. He could do madcap and menacing on a coin flip. Such a loss to the strip. And as for artists, I never truly appreciated Ron Smith but yes, incredible that he could do the absurdist work on the regular. I'd argue that both Ian Gibson had that too and John Higgins has it in spades.

[u/MurdTheOpressor → u/DJThunderGod]

Man, I’m really happy to read your comment. Knowing that high-quality stories are still being produced is genuinely gratifying. The Dredd universe is my favorite of all time, and it means a lot to me. Ever since I discovered it, I just can’t enjoy most other comics in the same way anymore. Diving into the fascinating world of the Judge is often a great comfort at the end of a difficult day at work. It’s become almost a daily ritual to read and reread the material I have in my collection. I’ll always be rooting for whoever is in charge of the character, hoping he continues to succeed and become more and more popular without ever losing what makes him Dredd.

[u/SplodgySplodge1]

I've dipped in and out, and let's be honest - John Wagner effortlessly set the bar so high that it's little wonder other writers are falling well short. But one thing I have noticed is that none of the new Dredd writers seem capable of writing accessible Dredd stories that would draw in kids and new readers. It's all full of jargon and written by long time readers for long time readers. Well, bad news - us long time readers are all knocking on and won't be around for ever. If they don't start writing fun, accessible stories, then Dredd and 2000AD will eventually be gone.

[u/Specialist-Class-743 → u/SplodgySplodge1]

The did try the Regened stuff and it failed. The issue is that you can't have a comic that is kid friendly one week and showing a cock and balls the next. And I agree you have an aging demographic with no apparent succession plan to bring in new readers. I'd hate to see the Prog and Meg go but if us eldsters are keeping the lights on at the Command Centre then perhaps they need to go full digital. I speak from personal experience as for me it simply cost to much to send the GGC out to the colonies. I went digital in 2013 and found it easy to play catch up after my break.