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A review by thecommonswings
Judge Dredd: The Complete Case Files 03 by Pat Mills, John Wagner
5.0
This is Dredd finally in his first patch of undisputed brilliance - Wagner seems to now have a complete idea of his creation and slowly begins to fill in the character of Mega City One, arguably one of the finest fictional creations of its kind. Otto Sump turns up, Umpty Candy as well, the first actively important female judges and the first hint of a sympathetic view of the inhabitants of the Cursed Earth. There’s also a feeling that Wagner is testing the ground for later ideas: Albert Sherman is a prototype for PJ Maybe and the bombs in his story are a nice early variation of plot points Wagner would use far more deftly in future (there’s also a rather lovely Megazine story by Michael Carroll that is a companion to this and identifies Judge Hellman rather surprisingly)
We also get the first real sign of the Sov Judges being a long term threat and obviously Judge Death and Psi Judge Anderson also debut here. Wagner still hasn’t quite got the pacing right, and there’s a sense that he’s throwing out so many ideas that he might run out of them (as he kind of did when he turned to Alan Grant as a collaborator). But the confidence and sense of things falling to place are typified by two strips
One is the reappearance of the Kleggs, or at least one Klegg, who is seen as pathetic, sympathetic and as much a victim as he is a monster. Kleggs have been returned to several times (Sensitive Klegg being the best example of late) and there’s a real sense of the scale and horror of these strange alien monsters here. Dredd even pointedly describes Urk as an innocent. Contrast this to the only non Wagner story here, Pat Mills’ Blood of Satanus. It’s not bad but it’s also very lazy in comparison. There’s little of the sense of weirdness of the city here, the transformation just another cliche and it’s only Rex’s final “thanks for killing me” that feels like it’s from the same world as the other stories. Wagner has managed to make this universe so much his own that even one of his own collaborators and friends now feels unable to match his writing here. That’s pretty impressive going for a comic barely into it’s fourth year
We also get the first real sign of the Sov Judges being a long term threat and obviously Judge Death and Psi Judge Anderson also debut here. Wagner still hasn’t quite got the pacing right, and there’s a sense that he’s throwing out so many ideas that he might run out of them (as he kind of did when he turned to Alan Grant as a collaborator). But the confidence and sense of things falling to place are typified by two strips
One is the reappearance of the Kleggs, or at least one Klegg, who is seen as pathetic, sympathetic and as much a victim as he is a monster. Kleggs have been returned to several times (Sensitive Klegg being the best example of late) and there’s a real sense of the scale and horror of these strange alien monsters here. Dredd even pointedly describes Urk as an innocent. Contrast this to the only non Wagner story here, Pat Mills’ Blood of Satanus. It’s not bad but it’s also very lazy in comparison. There’s little of the sense of weirdness of the city here, the transformation just another cliche and it’s only Rex’s final “thanks for killing me” that feels like it’s from the same world as the other stories. Wagner has managed to make this universe so much his own that even one of his own collaborators and friends now feels unable to match his writing here. That’s pretty impressive going for a comic barely into it’s fourth year