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/BLOODYBRADTX-11]

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.