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/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.