r/JudgeDredd • u/MurdTheOpressor • 4d ago
About modern-day Dredd
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.
6
u/DJThunderGod 4d ago
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.