A review by thecommonswings
Judge Dredd: The Complete Case Files 02 by Mike McMahon, Pat Mills, John Wagner, Brenden McCarthy, Garry Leach, Dave Gibbons, Ron Smith, Chris Lowder, Brett Ewins, Brian Bolland
4.0
And with volume 2 of the Case Files we absolutely get to the point where Judge Dredd as we came to know and fear him takes real form. It seems like all it took was a couple of epics to really focus the strip, but the big surprise is just how much of the Cursed Earth is by Pat Mills. You can occasionally tell the declamatory bore he could become isn’t far away: he has a really weird way of describing plot events - Satanus is the best example here - in a passive voice which kind of kills the drama.
But he does manage to dig up the blackly comic side of the stories, which once Wagner takes over the strips fully - especially with The Day The Law Died - really helps focus Dredd as a character. When a bunch of mutants or simps or futsies or grotesques are battling away, Dredd is the sober straight man to the antics with a common punchline of just basically knocking the shit out of their ridiculousness. That’s the format that really made the character and it’s the one that really kicks in here. Judge Cal is the epitome of this and frankly it’s that saga that really gets Mega City One in focus. A mad city prone to ridiculousness and awful disasters, with Dredd trying to keep it all together. Hell, we even get the under city for the first time as well
But even though dozens of future plot ideas are seeded here, what’s most indicative of the show heading into the early glory years are the artists. McMahon is still great, Bolland is managing to draw astonishingly beautiful work but Brendan McCarthy and Brett Ewins show up here and particularly we get Ron Smith, whose work I think is the archetypal Dredd of this period. He’s struggling with helmets, but he gets the deadpan nature of Dredd himself and is happy to throw incredible amounts of silliness at him in contrast. It’s a strip growing in confidence and assurance, finally realising the potential it can achieve
But he does manage to dig up the blackly comic side of the stories, which once Wagner takes over the strips fully - especially with The Day The Law Died - really helps focus Dredd as a character. When a bunch of mutants or simps or futsies or grotesques are battling away, Dredd is the sober straight man to the antics with a common punchline of just basically knocking the shit out of their ridiculousness. That’s the format that really made the character and it’s the one that really kicks in here. Judge Cal is the epitome of this and frankly it’s that saga that really gets Mega City One in focus. A mad city prone to ridiculousness and awful disasters, with Dredd trying to keep it all together. Hell, we even get the under city for the first time as well
But even though dozens of future plot ideas are seeded here, what’s most indicative of the show heading into the early glory years are the artists. McMahon is still great, Bolland is managing to draw astonishingly beautiful work but Brendan McCarthy and Brett Ewins show up here and particularly we get Ron Smith, whose work I think is the archetypal Dredd of this period. He’s struggling with helmets, but he gets the deadpan nature of Dredd himself and is happy to throw incredible amounts of silliness at him in contrast. It’s a strip growing in confidence and assurance, finally realising the potential it can achieve