Death and Armageddon

Judge Dredd: The Complete Casefiles Volume 5: written by John Wagner and Alan Grant; illustrated by Mike McMahon, Carlos Ezquerra, Brian Bolland, Ron Smith, and others (1981-82; collected 2013): The saga of Judge Dredd reaches what may be its artistic peak in this thick volume of stories from the early 1980's. The peculiar mix of action and scabrous social satire that distinguishes the series reachs markedly different heights in two of the arcs collected herein.

First there's the return of Judge Death in the Dark Judges arc. Beautifully illustrated by Brian Bolland, the Dark Judges brings four judges from an alternate Earth to sprawling megalopolis Mega-City One, the city of 150-million people that occupies a swath of North America from the Eastern Great Lakes to New England and southwards down the East Coast.

Previously, Dredd and telepathic Judge Anderson had battled Judge Death. On Judge Death's alternate Earth, human life itself was outlawed because humans are the source of crime. Then he came to Mega-City One and started killing up a storm. Dredd managed to destroy his body, while Judge Anderson used her psychic powers to trap him inside her mind until Dredd could encase both of them in an impregnable sphere of Boing, a sort of super-lucite.

Now Anderson's body lies in state in the Hall of Justice, encased in that Boing. But someone manages to cut the Boing open. Mayhem ensues, and the only slight chance Mega-City One has against not one but four supernaturally powerful Judges lies with the resuscitated Anderson, who's had Death stuck in her mind since being encased in Boing, though Death has now escaped to a more suitable new body.

This arc is a delight both in Bolland's meticulous, razor-sharp art and in the writing by Alan Grant and John Wagner. It's one of the most straightforward Judge Dredd stories ever done -- the satire is muted, and the awfulness of the Dark Judges makes Judge Dredd's often loopily ridiculous fascism seem positively benign by comparison. It's a great Judge Dredd story, and one of the greatest superhero battle stories ever told (though admittedly Dredd is only very loosely a superhero).

Then we turn to one of the longest arcs in Dredd history, one which begins as Block Wars and ends in the 26-episode Armageddon War storyline. It's all an increasingly nightmarish, bleakly comic story very much of its time -- the Cold War, sabre-rattling early 1980's.

Briefly, East-Meg-One, the Soviet Mega-City, strikes MegaCity-One first with nuclear and conventional weapons. Tens of millions of people die. Then the invasion begins. Things get worse. And worse. And worse. And only Judge Dredd can figure out how to 'win' the war.

Carlos Ezquerra's squirmy, often disturbingly visceral art makes a perfect complement to Wagner and Grant's writing here. The story is propulsive. The satire is horrifyingly apt. Dredd's committment to justice had never before racked up such a body count. And it all goes on and on, for hundreds of pages.

Not many popular comic books make their star into a war criminal. But that's Judge Dredd. Even the fairly faithful movie adaptation of a couple years back made the action too straightforward by half. Dredd's only a hero in comparison to the more awful choices surrounding him. He's the action hero as an undisguised fascist. Highly recommended.

Hero Killer

Marshal Law: The Deluxe Edition: written by Pat Mills; illustrated by Kevin O'Neill (1987-94; 2013): Misunderstood and mismarketed by Marvel's Epic Comics line when it first came out in 1989 as a Judge Dredd clone, Marshal Law became perhaps the most scabrous, irreverent superhero comic book of that self-serious, ultra-violent era of superhero comic books. Marshal Law hunts rogue super-heroes, beings created to be America's super-soldiers. And he was one of them. Now he hunts rogue super-heroes for the former San Francisco police (now, after a devastating earthquake, renamed San Futuro) in the middle of the 21st century.

There's a nod to serious drama in the first six-issue miniseries, as Marshal Law's civilian identity suffers a grievous personal loss, and the dynamics of his horrible future America with its horrible super-heroes is laid out. Later installments would abandon drama in favour of all-out satire, and this actually made the series much more satisfying as Mills and O'Neill cut loose in prose and pictures. Targets of Law's violent justice included thinly disguised versions of Superman, Batman, The Avengers, The Punisher, The Justice Society of America, Captain America,The Legion of Super-heroes, and the X-Men.

O'Neill would gain more fame as the illustrator of Alan Moore's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen; here, he's as anarchic as many of Mad magazine's most anarchic early artists such as Wally Wood or Bill Elder, but with way more graphic sex, nudity, violence, and bodily fluids. He's probably the most grotesque of (sort-of) mainstream superhero artists.

Mills is equally high-energy and bleakly satiric. Mills and O'Neill use the heroes as double-layered parodies throughout of both the history of American superhero comics and of the dark side of American history. It's a brilliant, disturbing romp.

Kudos to DC for re-publishing this series, which will delight people dubious about super-heroes and people who are just a bit tired of their dominance of the mainstream comics marketplace. With superheroes now a dominant force at the box office as well, Marshal Law's vision seems more appropriate than ever. Hopefully, the rights issues to the four Marshal Law team-up books of the 1990's (with The Mask, Pinhead, Savage Dragon, and Judge Dredd) can be worked out simultaneously so that there can be another volume. Or new stories. I'd imagine Marshal Law has only become more violent and jaded over the years. Highly recommended.

Book of Dredd

Judge Dredd Complete Casefiles Volume 4: written by John Wagner, Alan Grant, and others; illustrated by Ron Smith, Mike McMahon, Ian Gibson, Brian Bolland, and others (1981-82; collected 2012): The long-running Judge Dredd comic series exists in a sub-genre the British seem to do better than anyone else -- action-satire. Set in a post-apocalyptic 22nd century, the Dredd comics follow their titular hero as he seeks to keep law and order maintained in the American East Coast's MegaCity One, home to 800 million citizens and protected by the radioactive wasteland beyond by a giant wall.

For more than thirty years, Dredd -- one among thousands of MegaCity One's Judges -- has acted as judge, jury, and often executioner to those who threaten the peace. This can result in battles with gangs, mobsters, aliens, and seemingly supernatural beings. The body count is high, the punishments severe, and the smell of fascism almost overwhelming. Dredd is fair within the bounds of MegaCity One's laws. But you sure wouldn't want to live there.

This volume collects a lot of truly bizarre stories, including a story about how hideous ugliness becomes fashionable and chic which remains as biting in its critique of fashion and body-standards now as it must have been in the early 1980's. The volume also collects the entire epic Judge Child arc, as Dredd and a handful of other Judges journey into the nuclear wasteland (dubbed The Cursed Earth in) and into interstellar space to find the eponymous child, whom a dying precognitive Judge has claimed is the only hope for MegaCity One's survival.

Throughout, writers Alan Grant and John Wagner keep the action and the satire flowing. The stories, originally serialized in very short episodes, seem almost Silver Agey in the density of their plotting, but still very much contemporary in their sensibilities. As a science-fictional hero, Dredd is very much a dark mirror to that other British sf perennial, Doctor Who.

The art, from a rotating group of artists, is mostly solid and clean-lined throughout. Dredd is an art book, but one that stays steadfastly within the more conservative elements of comic-book layout. The reproduction of the pages looks great for the most part. The only problem is really that the volume would be better with a slightly larger page size, as the Dredd stories originally appeared in something closer to magazine than comic-book format. This really only means that the lettering can get a bit difficult to read at certain points. But it's a minor caveat. Recommended.

Deconstruction of the Fables

Earth-2 (Issues 0-16, Annual 1): written by James Robinson; illustrated by Nicola and Trevor Scott and others (2012-2013): James Robinson's revisionist take on DC's 50-year-old 'Earth-2' concept started strong but bogged down over the last few months of his writing tenure in what I assume was the editorially mandated direction for the title -- a set-up for a company-wide crossover in 2014 or 2015. DC forced Robinson off the comic (and out of the company, actually), giving writing duties to a scripter previously best-known for the comic-book spin-off of the DC-universe computer fighting game.

It was a great ride early, in which a world devastated by an alien invasion and the heroic death of Superman, Wonder Woman, and Batman repelling that invasion started to experience the dawn of a new age of heroes five years after those deaths. Altered versions of DC's Golden-Age, 1940's super-heroes The Flash, Green Lantern, the Atom, Hawkgirl, and others started to appear, just in time to fend off an invasion from within the Earth rather than without.

James Robinson's best work for DC over the years has come when he's had something resembling his own playground, whether as an alternate-universe take on classic heroes (The Golden Age) or on a self-created 'legacy' version of a classic hero (Starman). However, he also had an under-rated run on the Justice League, a run undercut again and again by DC's removal of The Big Three (Superman, Wonder Woman, and Batman) from the Justice League roster. Robinson made do with Supergirl, Donna Troy, a 1970's version of Starman, and Congorilla (!) among others, and the result was a lot of fun.

On Earth-2, Robinson and artist Nicola Scott really hummed along as they re-imagined 70-year-old heroes with new costumes, slightly different powers, and slightly altered personalities. Oh, and Green Lantern was now gay. Oh, the buzz in fandom over that one! But this was original Golden-Age Green Lantern Alan Scott, a character most of the people complaining about retroactive gayness probably had never read before. Less buzzy was the creation of a Middle-Eastern Doctor Fate and a Canadian Sandman, both with slightly reimagined powers.

And then things started to gradually slide off-course. What began as a book about hope sprung phoenix-like from the death of the world's greatest heroes moved more and more into despair, death, and devastation. Robinson's last three issues featured defeat after defeat for the heroes, and for Earth's armies, concluding with a resurrection about as coldly, calculatedly shocking as an Apple ad. Then Robinson was gone, hopefully somewhere with at least a bit less editorial interference.

And so ends my interest in Earth-2. It was the best mainstream superhero comic-book from DC for about 12 issues, with solid, old-school art from Nicola Scott. Now, though, abandon hope. Once a new Batman showed up, the book pretty much tanked. Thanks, Batman! Recommended until the last three or so issues, at which point you need to be a masochist to really enjoy things.

　

Judge Anderson: Death's Dark Dimension: written by Alan Wagner and John Grant; illustrated by Robin Smith, Brett Ewins, and Cliff Robinson (Collected 2002): Fun 1980's battle with the Dark Judges and then some obnoxious demons, featuring Judge Dredd's psychic colleague Judge Anderson in the post-apocalyptic world of Mega-City One. Satire takes a bit of a back-seat to action-adventure, but there's still a lot of that patented British weirdness.

Dredd only shows up for a few panels, as Anderson must pretty much figure out on her own how to thwart yet another invasion by the Dark Judges, who have outlawed life itself. The four-page chapters of the original British comic format really ensure things move along at a rapid clip, by which I mean a climax every 4 pages. Nice Brian Bolland cover, too. Recommended.

Dredd (2012)

Dredd: written by Alex Garland based on the character created by John Wagner and Carlos Ezquerra; directed by Pete Travis; starring Karl Urban (Judge Dredd), Olivia Thirlby (Judge Anderson), and Lena Headey (Ma-Ma) (2012): This faithful adaptation of the venerable British action-satire comic-book series Judge Dredd would have been a big hit in the early 1980's. It's old-school action, a somewhat low-key day-in-the-life movie in the vein of John Carpenter's Escape from New York and Assault on Precinct 13.

In the post-apocalyptic urban sprawl of MegaCity One (population 800 million), which occupies much of America's East Coast and stands above a countryside devastated by war and pollution (The Cursed Earth), police officers are judges, juries, and executioners if need be. Judge Dredd is the best of them.

With a new drug on the streets and Lena Headey's psychotic crime boss in control of an entire residential block/building, Judge Dredd and trainee Judge Anderson (Olivia Thirlby) walk into a killing zone. And for about 70 minutes, they try to fight their way out of it.

Karl Urban is solid as Dredd, a character who never removes his helmet. Thirlby is also good as the psychic Anderson, who gets some great on-the-job training here as everyone tries to kill the two Judges. The movie does a nice job of capturing the odd action-satire of its original: Dredd is both a Dirty-Harry-style badass and a pointed commentary on Dirty-Harry-style badasses.

It's too bad this bombed, as I'd have liked to see the film-makers' take on the whole Judge Death saga. But at least this helped wash the memory of the horrible, horrible, horrible 1990's Judge Dredd, starring Sylvester Stallone and Rob Schneider, out of my head, though obviously not completely. Easy the Ferg! Recommended.

Just a Pilgrim

Just a Pilgrim: written by Garth Ennis; illustrated by Carlos Ezquerra (2001): Among Garth Ennis's brutal comic-book characters, the protagonist of this one -- known only as 'the Pilgrim' -- is one of the five or six most brutal. Which is saying a lot, given Ennis characters like Saint of Killers, Hitman, and Bill Butcher. Ezquerra, a standout on Judge Dredd for years and occasional collaborator with Ennis on other projects (including the Saint of Killers miniseries, if memory serves), is in fine form here in this bloody post-apocalyptic tale.

In a near-future world in which the Sun suddenly went into its Red Giant phase hundreds of millions of years early, a small group of survivors seek refuge on a trek across the floor of the former Atlantic Ocean. Set upon by pirates led by Castenado, a blind psychic buccaneer with two peg legs and two hook hands, they're rescued and eventually led by the mysterious Pilgrim, who quotes Bible verses and shoots dogs who "have the Devil in them."

However, the Pilgrim's violent efficiency causes most of the people, including the ten-year-old boy whose diary forms the narrative structure, to put their faith in the Pilgrim and God. Castenado won't give up his pursuit. So on a devastated, emptied seafloor filled with dangerous, mutated creatures, the small band will make their way toward a reckoning with Castenado. Along the way, the Pilgrim's origins in the pre-apocalyptic world will be revealed.

Like pretty much all of Ennis's comic-book output, this is NOT FOR THE SQUEAMISH. It does have some troubling, fascinating points to make about faith and a reliance on heroes that play out in other, longer Ennis works. The relationship between the Pilgrim and the boy plays with expectations caused by similar relationships in famous Westerns that include Shane, Pale Rider, and True Grit. Are we being set up? Ezquerra really is one of Ennis's perfect collaborators, with an ease and skill at portraying action and the grotesque and the occasionally comic. Followed by at least one sequel. Recommended.

Falstaff in Comicbookland

Thor Visionaries Walt Simonson Volume 4: written by Walt Simonson; illustrated by Walt Simonson and Sal Buscema (1986; collected 2004): The fourth collection of Walt Simonson's 1980's run on Marvel's The Mighty Thor marks sort of a slight pause before the last major arc gets fully underway. Norse death-god Hela's curse on Thor would supply the impetus for the final ten-issue arc, and she does curse the Thunder God herein, but most of the collection is concerned with other things.

One of those things is the Simonson/Sal Buscema four-issue Balder the Brave miniseries, part of which takes place during events chronicled in the previous Visionaries volume. It's a pretty entertaining adventure for the Norse sun-god, while also setting up events and situations that lead back into the regular series.

Meanwhile, in the other four issues collected here, Thor teams up with Simonson's homage to Judge Dredd, Judge Peace (who would later appear during Simonson's run on Fantastic Four), to battle two old Thor enemies to save an even older supporting cast member. Most of two other issues tie directly into the line-spanning Mutant Massacre X-Men storyline.

One of Simonson's more endearing side-projects -- his fleshing out of the fleshy, comic-relief Norse god Volstagg -- also proceeds here. Sal Buscema's pencils continue to impress here. He's no Simonson, but the art remains solid and professional throughout, with some unexpected flourishes at points. Recommended.