All along, you’re being made to ask the question, what the hell did this guy do to get Dredd to come this far and throw this much at him. Then there’s the multi-part ‘Cincinnati ‘, with art from Carl Critchlow, with Dredd on a rare trip to one of the dead cities in this post-apocalyptic America, with Joe in typically dogged pursuit of a perp and willing to have every gang in the wastelands of the city at each other’s throats to get him. From ‘The Good Man’ by John Wagner and Jim Murray Of course, there’s the obvious twist, but it gives Wagner yet another opportunity to do what he’s always done so well – show us that Dredd really is an uncaring bastard at heart. It’s one of those where Wagner sets it all up to have Dredd question the law – this time by showing us a citizen working out in the Cursed Earth, a doctor who really does seem to be the ‘Good Man’ of the title. And he manages to do it in so many different ways, many of them on show here.įor example, let’s take his first story here, ‘A Good Man’, with Jim Murray on art, a longer than usual one-off tale from Prog 2004, the 2003 Christmas Special. ![]() Well, quite simply, it’s because he’s just got the tone and the style and the writing to really make Dredd sing. So, what is it that makes Wagner so masterful when it comes to Dredd? Yes, there are four writers in here, but Alan Grant and John Smith get one story apiece – albeit that Smith one is one of my favourites, while Gordon Rennie gets three. They’re too easily overlooked for sure, but they’re also where you find so many of the great Dredds.Īnd a hell of a lot of the reason it’s so damn good is because this really is John Wagner’s show. Far more important to the entire history of the strip, to the history of the man, to the history of Mega-City One is the short story, the one, two, three-parter, the stories that get under the skin of what’s going on in one small bit of Dredd’s world. Because Judge Dredd works on so many different levels, with those rare mega epic storylines just one small part of it. But, unlike Marvel and DC and so many others, where the BIG EVENT is the thing, 2000 AD, and especially Judge Dredd, has never been about that.
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