JUDGE TOUR OF DUTY: MEGA-CITY JUSTICE PDF, EPUB, EBOOK

John Wagner,Carlos Ezquerra,John Higgins | 208 pages | 23 Jun 2011 | Rebellion | 9781907992391 | English | Oxford, United Kingdom Dredd Reckoning: Tour of Duty: Mega-City Justice

The front half of this collection is a bunch of one shot Cursed Earth stories set when Dredd is in charge of building the mutie townships outside MC1. Invitation to a Hanging is my favourite of these in both the story twist and the art. Then comes the two part arc of The talented Mayor Ambrose and the titular Mega City Justice which are both page turning dips into Dredd's doubts over the Justice system and the irregularities of Chief Judge Sinfield's grab for power. It also helps that PJ Maybe s The front half of this collection is a bunch of one shot Cursed Earth stories set when Dredd is in charge of building the mutie townships outside MC1. It also helps that PJ Maybe sits at the heart of both of these, in MC1 you can never keep a good psychopath down for long. Mar 29, Johnny Andrews rated it it was amazing. A very good collection that shows in the latter half a much more mature Dredd strip featuring the politics of in house department and how even Justice Hall can be crooked and malignant. Even mirroring the now this works as it starts with the anti-mutant stuff from before and Dredd in exile because of his now lenient views or slightly more liberal views on the mutants within the city. Now as you read you look at the brutality of everything happening and you think this is like the world-UK and US A very good collection that shows in the latter half a much more mature Dredd strip featuring the politics of in house department and how even Justice Hall can be crooked and malignant. Now as you read you look at the brutality of everything happening and you think this is like the world-UK and US etc and the prejudice against foreigners. Makes even ol' stone face question his past ethics. Jun 28, Bob Solanovicz rated it it was amazing. So far, none of the Mega Collections I bought disappointed. Neither did this one. I can't image reading Dredd that's not written by John Wagner, to be honest. There are one or two writers who could do a decent job, maybe even better than decent, but none of them will ever understand or be able to develop this character as Wagner does. Steven Miscandlon rated it it was amazing Oct 23, Bailey rated it liked it Aug 07, Apr 17, Leila Anani rated it really liked it Shelves: ad , america , cyborgs-robots-androids , dystopian-future , futuristic-law-enforcement , graphic-novels , murderers-serial-killers , mutants , satire. Dredd's been relegated to the Cursed Earth to oversee mutant resettlement issues. Meanwhile back in MC1 - Sinfield is acting chief having drugged his predecessor out of office and is undoing all the mutant legislation Dredd introduced. He comes unstuck however when he threatens Mayor Ambrose who is none other than the psychotic mass murderer P J Maybe. Maybe tries to assassinate Sinfield and Dredd is on the case - a wonderful irony since he has cause to hate Sinfield more than anyone. This Dredd's been relegated to the Cursed Earth to oversee mutant resettlement issues. This one is Dredd at its finest - plotty, satirical and ironic with top notch art. Maybe is one of the best characters in the Dredd universe - both humorous and an evil genius. I love how despite being a mass murderer he is also probably the best mayor the city has ever had. Pit him against the corrupt judge Sinfield and you have a tense and exciting conflict before you even add Dredd and the mutant issue into the equation. This one kicks off with a few shorts first to introduce the mutant issue - particularly liked invitation to a hanging. Overall I adored this one from start to finish. Paulo rated it really liked it May 09, Chris Quinn rated it really liked it Feb 02, Colin Sinclair rated it it was amazing Mar 18, Pryder rated it really liked it Apr 04, Juho Pohjalainen rated it it was amazing May 25, Shane Pleasance rated it really liked it Sep 22, John Somers rated it really liked it Apr 08, Iain Ross rated it really liked it Apr 24, This has blown me away,the writing and art were terrific , and the storyline like the other story about the revolt of the Mutant immigration into Meg City One is just wonderful -- I know its a cliche , but i COULDN'T put this down I even stopped playing world of tanks till it was finished - which lets you know how absorbed i was of the story told inside. One person found this helpful. Fast delivery and fast shipping. A must buy. I total recommend it. But instead of abandoning mutants completely, he surprises everyone by actually hitting on a good idea - separate Cursed Earth townships for mutants, protected by Mega City Judges. Frustrated at this 'forced retirement', Dredd knows he will probably never see his precious streets again. Worse still, he's left them in the hands of lesser men, who plot to seize power from Francisco. And if anyone can murder a Chief Judge it's definitely Maybe! It also ties up a lot of themes which have been running through the series for years. Certainly since the end of this story, the regular strip in AD has mainly been written by other writers. If so, this is an incredible story to go out on. The excellent writing is well supported by some excellent artists - primarily Mike Collins with a smattering of Ezquerra. I fully agree with C. Poole from Wales: great volume, our ''old stony face'' Joe Dredd at a high point for His age and Wagner's , competent drawing even some Ezquerra art, at the very end , and a fine story, though not my favorite overall; IMHO it lacks a bit of character development of secondaries like Rico or Beeny, but Dredd's fine and we see again PJ Maybe-Mayor Ambrose, always a refreshing experience if you survive it In a nutshell, a very good volume for Dredd fans, though NOT for newbies there's a lot of assumptions, you need to know some ''recent events'' of Dredd's universe I have read and ad since i was a nipper and this was such a joy to read and re-read. I love how Dredd is incorruptable, steadfast, loyal and still able to kick arse. John Wagner's writing is so enjoyable - i love how much the Judge Dredd stories have matured from early days. Bascially this is Dredd on top form , Brilliant writing great art and great story. However Amazon have described it as hardcover and its not! See all reviews. Unlimited One-Day Delivery and more. There's a problem loading this menu at the moment. But my eye doesn't discern well between one instance of today's to me murky look and another. Mike Collins' approach to the Cursed Earth stories seemed more lively and creative than Colin MacNeil's more conventional action-movie frames; the Ezquerras' art in "Mega-City Justice" seemed lumpier more British? I'm sure you can open my eyes to the subtleties I'm missing. Which of course he is if you take him straight, but it's very rare that the context permits that. For all that he's effectively a liberal reformer here, he's still taking baby steps in the context of a totalitarian political system to which he subscribes wholeheartedly; it's just that he'd like to see everyone equally subject to that system's oppression. One of my favorite little moments of the whole series is in the middle of "The Graveyard Shift," back in Dredd and Hershey have some time to kill, so Hershey suggests they "work a couple of 59Cs. We're just here to determine the level of your guilt. Withholding is pretty much all Dredd knows how to do emotionally, yes. See ' interview about his story in next week's issue of AD , in which Dredd basically appears as a symbol of erotic repression. But most of his conversations in here have some context from earlier in the series. They got along well when they were peers; he still tends to treat her as one, or to try to pull rank on her sometimes by threatening to quit if he doesn't get his way , and it's strained their relationship considerably. As far as friendship goes: I think he's half-admitted being someone's friend exactly once--Anderson, at the end of "Satan"--and that was like pulling teeth. I like the idea of the series having a "long endgame," and the fact that it does seem to be creeping toward an eventual end is something I love about it. But I also can't imagine Joe Dredd bringing the Judges down. Part of Fargo's deathbed speech is telling Joe that he and Rico can do it together-- and of course Joe killed Rico decades ago. He's the law; that's all there is to him. He can acknowledge that sometimes the law gets it wrong, but he's still going to enforce it. And what would Zizek say about that, I wonder? The municipal government vs. See the hilariously straight-faced Mayor of Mega-City One article on Wikipedia for more, but two relevant points: the most popular mayor the city has had at least before Byron Ambrose was an orangutan who was voted into office as a joke; and, while "Day of Chaos" nominally hinges on a mayoral election, it ended more than six months ago and we still haven't found out who won. As far as the effect of Dredd and more broadly AD artwork on American comics: I've had a few conversations here about the enormous effect that the writing in AD had on American comics, and the writers who shifted from one primary audience to another. But it's harder to see a causal connection between the look of this stuff and American comics--in part because the British comic book tradition was, until about 20 years ago, mostly a black-and-white tradition. I suspect the big change in the look of American comics was indeed technological, and had to do with computer coloring and, more recently, the rise of drawing on Wacom tablets. A few Dredd-linked artists have certainly become big names in the U. Brian Bolland is the most obvious example; another one is Charlie Adlard, who's been drawing The Walking Dead for issues or so now, and also drew the first three books of Savage and a bunch of Dredd. Carlos Ezquerra has done a lot of work in American comics over the past 15 years or so--largely in collaboration with one writer or another with whom he's worked on Dredd , actually. I actually think of Ezquerra's artwork as being more Continental in its look than British, as such--I associate the distinctive raggedness of his line and his very broad variation in line density with French and Spanish-language adventure comics. Although there are some things he does, like the thick, jagged panel borders, that are Ezquerra-and-nobody-else. I miss some of his old black- and-white-era techniques, like the way he'd signal a flashback by giving every line the same very light weight--that doesn't work in color comics-- and I miss the supersaturated colors of the period when he was painting his colors, too. I think it's interesting, though, that there's much more Dredd artwork in the past couple of decades that could pass for something from mainstream American comics than there had been before that. When AD went full-color quickly followed by the birth of the Megazine , there was a certain adjustment period as artists who had worked in black-and-white for most of their careers were jolted into working in color, but there was also a lot of painted artwork and other unconventional approaches. There's still a lot of that in both series--the Ampney Crucis Investigates serial in AD right now, for instance, or almost every Anderson Psi Division story, or the enormously distinctive appearance of the black-and-white -ish artwork in the recent Simping Detective and Low Life stories. Over time, the basic look of Dredd has settled into being pen-and-ink line art with color, and often but not always on a sort of American-looking template; that applies to most of this volume. Even John Higgins, who's done some extraordinary Dredd material based more on color and form than on linework "Joe Dredd's Blues" comes to mind , goes for a straighter pen-and-ink look in his section of "The Talented Mayor Ambrose. And yes: I'd love to know more about what you think P. And I think that, more than anything, is where the aesthetics of the series and of Patricia Highsmith most connect. And they are both sociopathic killers. But where Maybe is a dedicated connoisseur of death and suffering, Ripley is an opportunistic gold digger who simply has no compunctions about also digging a grave or two along the way, when he is cornered, to sustain his deceptions and con games. The one exception is his first murder, of his friend Dickie Greenleaf — when the subtext is that it is partly out of sublimated desire, and rage at sexual rejection, which does become a bloodlust. It was a startling move when the first Ripley book came out in Today the technique is familiar, for instance in cable TV series such as Breaking Bad, Dexter, The Sopranos and even Mad Men Don Draper, as a similarly shape-shifting class- queue-jumper, is kind of a Ripley of the American Dream, who uses advertising — and his penis — instead of a knife to make his kills. Inga the Swedish love robot may be an idiotic male fantasy, but at least it means someone in this dull battle of greed versus law actually has a fantasy. And of course it pays off both in murder and in Maybe's ultimate undoing. The ending still seemed over the top. Prisons can't hold him. Judge Dredd: Tour of Duty - Megacity Justice (Paperback) – Warlord Games Ltd

Add all three to Basket. Some of these items are dispatched sooner than the others. Show details. Sent from and sold by Amazon. Customers who viewed this item also viewed. Page 1 of 1 Start over Page 1 of 1. John Wagner. Only 3 left in stock more on the way. Judge Dredd Day of Chaos: Fallout. Only 4 left in stock more on the way. Judge Dredd: Trifecta. . Only 11 left in stock more on the way. Judge Dredd: Cold Wars. See all free Kindle reading apps. Start reading on your Kindle in under a minute. Don't have a Kindle? About the Author John Wagner has been scripting for AD for more years than he cares to remember. He also co-created Strontium Dog. He has also illustrated A. He also pencilled two special Preacher episodes. He also enjoys creating large abstract paintings. He says it's art therapy! Holden is a Belfast-based comic artist who's been working for the Galaxy's Greatest Comic for over a decade. He's married and has two kids. Really it's a wonder he gets anything done -but he does, including work on Judge Dredd, Rogue Trooper and The 86ers. Numbercruncher, the strip that he co-created with , is being published in the . Customers who bought this item also bought. Judge Dredd: The Small House. Book 2 of the Tour of Duty story. Read more Read less. Fire Phones Fire Phone. Books In This Series 2 Books. Page 1 of 1 Start Over Page 1 of 1. Previous page. John Wagner. Next page. Complete Series. What other items do customers buy after viewing this item? Page 1 of 1 Start over Page 1 of 1. Judge Dredd: Every Empire Falls. Create a free account. About the Author John Wagner has been scripting for AD for more years than he cares to remember. He also co-created Strontium Dog. He has also illustrated A. He also pencilled two special Preacher episodes. He also enjoys creating large abstract paintings. He says it's art therapy! Holden is a Belfast-based comic artist who's been working for the Galaxy's Greatest Comic for over a decade. He's married and has two kids. Really it's a wonder he gets anything done -but he does, including work on Judge Dredd, Rogue Trooper and The 86ers. Numbercruncher, the strip that he co-created with Simon Spurrier, is being published in the Judge Dredd Megazine. Customers who bought this item also bought. A very good collection that shows in the latter half a much more mature Dredd strip featuring the politics of in house department and how even Justice Hall can be crooked and malignant. Even mirroring the now this works as it starts with the anti-mutant stuff from before and Dredd in exile because of his now lenient views or slightly more liberal views on the mutants within the city. Now as you read you look at the brutality of everything happening and you think this is like the world-UK and US A very good collection that shows in the latter half a much more mature Dredd strip featuring the politics of in house department and how even Justice Hall can be crooked and malignant. Now as you read you look at the brutality of everything happening and you think this is like the world-UK and US etc and the prejudice against foreigners. Makes even ol' stone face question his past ethics. Jun 28, Bob Solanovicz rated it it was amazing. So far, none of the Mega Collections I bought disappointed. Neither did this one. I can't image reading Dredd that's not written by John Wagner, to be honest. There are one or two writers who could do a decent job, maybe even better than decent, but none of them will ever understand or be able to develop this character as Wagner does. Steven Miscandlon rated it it was amazing Oct 23, Bailey rated it liked it Aug 07, Apr 17, Leila Anani rated it really liked it Shelves: ad , america , cyborgs-robots-androids , dystopian-future , futuristic-law-enforcement , graphic-novels , murderers-serial-killers , mutants , satire. Dredd's been relegated to the Cursed Earth to oversee mutant resettlement issues. Meanwhile back in MC1 - Sinfield is acting chief judge having drugged his predecessor out of office and is undoing all the mutant legislation Dredd introduced. He comes unstuck however when he threatens Mayor Ambrose who is none other than the psychotic mass murderer P J Maybe. Maybe tries to assassinate Sinfield and Dredd is on the case - a wonderful irony since he has cause to hate Sinfield more than anyone. This Dredd's been relegated to the Cursed Earth to oversee mutant resettlement issues. This one is Dredd at its finest - plotty, satirical and ironic with top notch art. Maybe is one of the best characters in the Dredd universe - both humorous and an evil genius. I love how despite being a mass murderer he is also probably the best mayor the city has ever had. Pit him against the corrupt judge Sinfield and you have a tense and exciting conflict before you even add Dredd and the mutant issue into the equation. This one kicks off with a few shorts first to introduce the mutant issue - particularly liked invitation to a hanging. Overall I adored this one from start to finish. Paulo rated it really liked it May 09, Chris Quinn rated it really liked it Feb 02, Colin Sinclair rated it it was amazing Mar 18, Pryder rated it really liked it Apr 04, Juho Pohjalainen rated it it was amazing May 25, Shane Pleasance rated it really liked it Sep 22, John Somers rated it really liked it Apr 08, Iain Ross rated it really liked it Apr 24, Mike rated it really liked it Nov 19, Becky rated it it was amazing Oct 21, Andrew Simpson rated it really liked it May 17, Jeff rated it really liked it Sep 30, Corey Milne rated it really liked it Oct 13, Jim Racine added it Apr 18, Tour of Duty (Judge Dredd story) - Wikipedia

Bolt Action. Bolt Action Korea. Blood Red Skies. Konflikt ' Cruel Seas. Napoleonic Wars. Other Black Powder Wars. Black Seas. Getting Started. Hail Caesar. Strontium Dog. Warlords of Erehwon. Warlords of Erehwon - Getting Started. Gates of Antares. Doctor Who. Paint Tools and Terrain. Modelling Equipment. Warlord Medals. Featured Products. Product Code: Having sidelined Judge Dredd into managing Add to Wish List. Customer Reviews. Shipping Options NB. Pick up at Show : available at checkout depending on date. We're nice guys and we'll do our best to solve the problem: Call : 9. Friend Reviews. To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up. To ask other readers questions about Judge Dredd , please sign up. Lists with This Book. Community Reviews. Showing Average rating 4. Rating details. More filters. Sort order. Mar 21, Bodicainking rated it it was amazing. A surprisingly difficult read at times. Judge Dredd's insistence on righting on injustice creates a chain reaction of horrible side-effects that lead to his disgrace and exile, while his city and Justice Department labour under the rule of a conspiracy of morally ambiguous Judges. The mob violence, the simple and petty bigotries lampooned in the "anti-mutant" aspects of this story clearly mirror similar re- world spasms of hatred and one is struck by the nature of the conclusion - that some hate i A surprisingly difficult read at times. The mob violence, the simple and petty bigotries lampooned in the "anti-mutant" aspects of this story clearly mirror similar re-world spasms of hatred and one is struck by the nature of the conclusion - that some hate is too big to just brush away. Oct 15, Lord Humungus rated it liked it. Certainly one of the more thought-provoking and introspective Judge Dredd collections, dealing with anti-mutant sentiments and the fallout of new legislation regarding mutants in MC1. Lots of good story from John Wagner, more speech bubbles than I'd seen in a long time in any Dredd series. My favorite contributing artist had to be Colin MacNeil; I really liked his clean style and the way he painted the judges. The conclusion to your of duty Completes one of the greatest Dredd stories ever. Again, Dredd is not a simple man, in fact, over the years he has grown more complex as this story will tell. Mutants, the big meg, an evil and brilliant serial killer, the wrong chief judge. Read this. If you're already a Dredd fan, you'll like it more. If new, you'll be sucked right in. Henrique Kotlinski rated it really liked it Dec 28, Johnny Mandoline rated it really liked it Apr 15, JJ rated it it was amazing Sep 28, Colin Birchall rated it it was amazing Dec 24, Jacob Goretzky rated it really liked it Feb 13, David Wardrop rated it liked it Jan 24, Nausicaa rated it really liked it Jul 16, Luke Bell rated it it was amazing Oct 10, Lono rated it it was amazing Apr 09, Finbarr Heather rated it it was amazing Sep 16, Joe rated it really liked it Oct 22, Rhys rated it it was amazing Oct 17, Mark Estlea rated it it was amazing Feb 10, Ben rated it really liked it Jul 04, Scott rated it really liked it Jul 23, Michel Baeten rated it it was amazing Jun 01, Andrew19 rated it really liked it Jul 28, Ian Hewitt rated it it was amazing Oct 23, Kris Kwinn rated it it was amazing Sep 28, Zoe Robinson rated it liked it Aug 05, Damjan M. Manatees rated it really liked it May 22,

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Guy Davis Artist ,. Mike Collins Goodreads Author Artist ,. Colin MacNeil Artist. Dredd has been exiled from the city and taken up a posting in the Cursed Earth, overseeing the construction of the mutant townships. Meanwhile, back in the metropolis the corrupt acting Chief Judge Martin Sinfield continues to strengthen his powerbase. Get A Copy. Hardcover , pages. More Details Edition Language. Friend Reviews. To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up. To ask other readers questions about Tour of Duty , please sign up. Lists with This Book. This book is not yet featured on Listopia. Community Reviews. Showing Average rating 4. Rating details. More filters. Sort order. Jun 04, Martin Nisbet rated it really liked it Shelves: comicbooks. The front half of this collection is a bunch of one shot Cursed Earth stories set when Dredd is in charge of building the mutie townships outside MC1. Invitation to a Hanging is my favourite of these in both the story twist and the art. Then comes the two part arc of The talented Mayor Ambrose and the titular Mega City Justice which are both page turning dips into Dredd's doubts over the Justice system and the irregularities of Chief Judge Sinfield's grab for power. It also helps that PJ Maybe s The front half of this collection is a bunch of one shot Cursed Earth stories set when Dredd is in charge of building the mutie townships outside MC1. It also helps that PJ Maybe sits at the heart of both of these, in MC1 you can never keep a good psychopath down for long. Mar 29, Johnny Andrews rated it it was amazing. A very good collection that shows in the latter half a much more mature Dredd strip featuring the politics of in house department and how even Justice Hall can be crooked and malignant. Even mirroring the now this works as it starts with the anti-mutant stuff from before and Dredd in exile because of his now lenient views or slightly more liberal views on the mutants within the city. Now as you read you look at the brutality of everything happening and you think this is like the world-UK and US A very good collection that shows in the latter half a much more mature Dredd strip featuring the politics of in house department and how even Justice Hall can be crooked and malignant. Now as you read you look at the brutality of everything happening and you think this is like the world-UK and US etc and the prejudice against foreigners. Makes even ol' stone face question his past ethics. Jun 28, Bob Solanovicz rated it it was amazing. So far, none of the Mega Collections I bought disappointed. Neither did this one. I can't image reading Dredd that's not written by John Wagner, to be honest. There are one or two writers who could do a decent job, maybe even better than decent, but none of them will ever understand or be able to develop this character as Wagner does. Steven Miscandlon rated it it was amazing Oct 23, Bailey rated it liked it Aug 07, Apr 17, Leila Anani rated it really liked it Shelves: ad , america , cyborgs-robots-androids , dystopian-future , futuristic-law-enforcement , graphic-novels , murderers-serial-killers , mutants , satire. Dredd's been relegated to the Cursed Earth to oversee mutant resettlement issues. Meanwhile back in MC1 - Sinfield is acting chief judge having drugged his predecessor out of office and is undoing all the mutant legislation Dredd introduced. He comes unstuck however when he threatens Mayor Ambrose who is none other than the psychotic mass murderer P J Maybe. Maybe tries to assassinate Sinfield and Dredd is on the case - a wonderful irony since he has cause to hate Sinfield more than anyone. This Dredd's been relegated to the Cursed Earth to oversee mutant resettlement issues. This one is Dredd at its finest - plotty, satirical and ironic with top notch art. Maybe is one of the best characters in the Dredd universe - both humorous and an evil genius. I love how despite being a mass murderer he is also probably the best mayor the city has ever had. Pit him against the corrupt judge Sinfield and you have a tense and exciting conflict before you even add Dredd and the mutant issue into the equation. This one kicks off with a few shorts first to introduce the mutant issue - particularly liked invitation to a hanging. Overall I adored this one from start to finish. Paulo rated it really liked it May 09, Chris Quinn rated it really liked it Feb 02, Colin Sinclair rated it it was amazing Mar 18, Pryder rated it really liked it Apr 04, Juho Pohjalainen rated it it was amazing May 25, Shane Pleasance rated it really liked it Sep 22, As he occasionally does in sequences like this, Wagner falls back on narrative setups with which he's very comfortable. Our protagonist is leading a small group, one of whom gets nailed right away, one of whom has a problem she's not willing to admit to, one of whom is a troublemaker with no respect for the protagonist's authority, etc. For me, though, "The Talented Mayor Ambrose" is where this volume takes off: a "serial killer vs. Maybe stories, really--made much more interesting by additional X-factors perpetually derailing both sides' plans. I'll get into specifics on some of the stories and some of the artwork a bit more later, but first I want to turn it over to you: what did you make of this book? CARL: The startling thing was that I have avoided the Dreddiverse in all its manifestations because I'd understood it to be a kind of Thatcherite, vigilante-culture, right-wing fantasy. So then I start "Tour of Duty: Mega-City Justice" and here is Dredd being railroaded for his alliance to a liberal political administration and his defense of minority rights. It was a bit disorienting. I didn't find it too difficult to get the gist — as you said, Wagner seems deft at dropping hints, and the basic hierarchy and outlines of the MC1 world I needed to understand came across swiftly. But you're right, every one of those details you mentioned was pretty opaque. It was a little frustrating not to be able to grasp the relationships. But if I understand properly, withholding is Dredd's emotional m. So while I was puzzled by the subtext of his exchanges with Beeny, niece, Edgar and Judge Hershey are they friends or just sometime allies? Either way, it's par for the course when one is joining a serial already in progress. Some people are averse to that experience but I'm not — partly because if I fall in love I will always go catch up on what I've missed. I'm not sure this story got me to that point with Dredd. But enough so that I did go back, after finishing the book, to research some of the outstanding questions, such as where the judges came from, why there is a Cursed Earth, and the backstory of PJ Maybe, which were all helpful. That background reading also reinforced my impression that this book was somewhat aberrant. It seems like it's a little less baroquely comic-book fantastical than other major Dredd epics — there's the Pink-Eye mutant's pain powers, and some of Maybe's assassination techniques, but not alternate-universe, nuclear-annihilation-level spectacle. At its heart it's a political melodrama about the balance of power between utterly corrupt and only partly corrupt factions of the regime. That was one of the most entertaining paradoxes of the Maybe storyline in fact —while as an utter imposter and wanted psychopath he is the least legitimated of the authority figures, in his actual performance as mayor he's also the most enlightened and effective, earning even Dredd's respect. If I were Slavoj Zizek, I'd spin out of that some parable about violence and authenticity — that since Maybe's private relationship to murder is the least hypocritical, he's liberated into a more generous perspective on the social good. But I'm not Zizek, so I can't carry that too far. What I did wonder is whether these half-steps towards liberalization of Dredd's political philosophy is part of the series' long endgame, planted so I read by the deathbed statement of his clone-father that this system was not meant to endure. Are we to take it that his ultimate destiny is to bring the fascist rule of the judges down? It could also be part of the series of feints and reversals that are endemic to decades-long comics series, but the continuing presence of co-creator Wagner make me want, at least, to imagine that there's an overall arc being played out. Sidebar: I didn't quite get the legal dynamic between the municipal government and the judges' council — I take it the civilian authority has pretty limited scope? There were other historical resonances, though, of course — the deportation of the mutants to purportedly wonderful-but-separate colonies reminded me particularly of the creation of the Native American and Canadian reservations. Loved the newscaster who said, "I can imagine many normal citizens would love a chance like that! So I see how the Cursed Earth section of the book reinforces the main story, and moves toward the ultimate confrontation with Sinfield and his agenda. Ripley , and one of the reasons you recruited me to this discussion was that I am a huge fan of Highsmith and her own disguise-loving psychopath. What we might take from those parallels I'll leave to our next round. Meanwhile, a starting point for discussing the art, which I'll admit up front will be a remedial exercise. My mainstream-comics reading came to a stop when I was a tween in the s, after which my picture-book reading was confined mostly to comix- with-an-x, zines, Love and Rockets , graphic novels, etc. I don't know if there was any one big influence don't imagine it was Dredd? No doubt technology also had a huge effect. But my eye doesn't discern well between one instance of today's to me murky look and another. Mike Collins' approach to the Cursed Earth stories seemed more lively and creative than Colin MacNeil's more conventional action-movie frames; the Ezquerras' art in "Mega-City Justice" seemed lumpier more British? I'm sure you can open my eyes to the subtleties I'm missing. Which of course he is if you take him straight, but it's very rare that the context permits that. For all that he's effectively a liberal reformer here, he's still taking baby steps in the context of a totalitarian political system to which he subscribes wholeheartedly; it's just that he'd like to see everyone equally subject to that system's oppression. One of my favorite little moments of the whole series is in the middle of "The Graveyard Shift," back in Dredd and Hershey have some time to kill, so Hershey suggests they "work a couple of 59Cs. We're just here to determine the level of your guilt. Withholding is pretty much all Dredd knows how to do emotionally, yes. See Rob Williams' interview about his story in next week's issue of AD , in which Dredd basically appears as a symbol of erotic repression. But most of his conversations in here have some context from earlier in the series. They got along well when they were peers; he still tends to treat her as one, or to try to pull rank on her sometimes by threatening to quit if he doesn't get his way , and it's strained their relationship considerably. As far as friendship goes: I think he's half-admitted being someone's friend exactly once--Anderson, at the end of "Satan"--and that was like pulling teeth. I like the idea of the series having a "long endgame," and the fact that it does seem to be creeping toward an eventual end is something I love about it. But I also can't imagine Joe Dredd bringing the Judges down. Part of Fargo's deathbed speech is telling Joe that he and Rico can do it together-- and of course Joe killed Rico decades ago. He's the law; that's all there is to him. He can acknowledge that sometimes the law gets it wrong, but he's still going to enforce it. And what would Zizek say about that, I wonder? The municipal government vs. See the hilariously straight-faced Mayor of Mega-City One article on Wikipedia for more, but two relevant points: the most popular mayor the city has had at least before Byron Ambrose was an orangutan who was voted into office as a joke; and, while "Day of Chaos" nominally hinges on a mayoral election, it ended more than six months ago and we still haven't found out who won. As far as the effect of Dredd and more broadly AD artwork on American comics: I've had a few conversations here about the enormous effect that the writing in AD had on American comics, and the writers who shifted from one primary audience to another. But it's harder to see a causal connection between the look of this stuff and American comics--in part because the British comic book tradition was, until about 20 years ago, mostly a black-and-white tradition. I suspect the big change in the look of American comics was indeed technological, and had to do with computer coloring and, more recently, the rise of drawing on Wacom tablets. A few Dredd-linked artists have certainly become big names in the U. Brian Bolland is the most obvious example; another one is Charlie Adlard, who's been drawing The Walking Dead for issues or so now, and also drew the first three books of Savage and a bunch of Dredd. Carlos Ezquerra has done a lot of work in American comics over the past 15 years or so--largely in collaboration with one writer or another with whom he's worked on Dredd , actually. I actually think of Ezquerra's artwork as being more Continental in its look than British, as such--I associate the distinctive raggedness of his line and his very broad variation in line density with French and Spanish-language adventure comics. Although there are some things he does, like the thick, jagged panel borders, that are Ezquerra-and-nobody-else. I miss some of his old black- and-white-era techniques, like the way he'd signal a flashback by giving every line the same very light weight--that doesn't work in color comics-- and I miss the supersaturated colors of the period when he was painting his colors, too. I think it's interesting, though, that there's much more Dredd artwork in the past couple of decades that could pass for something from mainstream American comics than there had been before that. When AD went full-color quickly followed by the birth of the Megazine , there was a certain adjustment period as artists who had worked in black-and-white for most of their careers were jolted into working in color, but there was also a lot of painted artwork and other unconventional approaches. https://files8.webydo.com/9589453/UploadedFiles/78091165-8BE1-E6C8-8EA5-3C18837D82C3.pdf https://files8.webydo.com/9590976/UploadedFiles/7A42E8E9-BF2C-3904-233B-425D9F94DE78.pdf https://static.s123-cdn-static.com/uploads/4642814/normal_6020a0ef9bdc7.pdf https://files8.webydo.com/9585955/UploadedFiles/0DDD993E-2218-C63F-259E-F07490581B7F.pdf https://static.s123-cdn-static.com/uploads/4642436/normal_601f65c946921.pdf https://static.s123-cdn-static.com/uploads/4639798/normal_601ecb5ba0486.pdf https://files8.webydo.com/9588759/UploadedFiles/65951390-DA02-2CC7-EA42-D60FE31FD4D4.pdf