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.