JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES VOL2
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UTTERLY BRILLIANT WHAT A TREAT TO READ THESE MAGNIFICENT STORIES AGAIN, ALMOST TIME TRAVEL WHEN I OPENED PAGE ONE SUPERB STUFF
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Two fantastic epics in one book, what more could you ask for
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Dredd gets his first big multi-part stories in this book with The Cursed Earth and Judge Cal - The Day The Law Died. The Cursed Earth story is a load of fun, Dredd gets to do battle with some outrageous characters and creatures with some amazing artwork from Bolland and McMahon. When Dredd successfully completes The Cursed Earth saga, instead of getting a proper thank you, he's immediately targetted by 'head of SJS' Judge Cal, who rapidly rises to Chief Judge, and so begins Cal's reign of terror. It's an awesome story with plenty of entertaining characters and a fittingly insane ending, a real classic.
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JUGE CAL
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JUDGE CAL, enough said really.
What happens when you get Mega City 1 controlled my a psychotic madman with an ego the size of cursed Earth and a god complex? Well I don't want to spoil things too much, but the answer is absolute mayhem, with guns, bombs, guns and bombs and aliens and explosions and slap bang in the middle of it all Judge Dredd.
Whilst the Cursed Earth saga is good, and by good I mean very, very good with its Mafia Judges and Tweak, it pales in comparison to the "Day the Law died" story line.
Two fantastic epics in one volume.
Great!
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Getting better and better
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Whereas some of the first volume feels extremely dated and often naive( but still vital reading), this is where the style of Dredd begins to develop. The Cursed Earth remains a land mark as does the second epic The Day the Law Died.
By comparison to later Dredd the story telling may not flow as well and the second epic suffers somewhat in terms of continuity from the constant changing of artists but overall the book rolls along at a cracking pace.
It's great to see Dredd leaping out of one epic and straight into another. Maybe 2000ad's current editors could learn a lesson from this. The longer stories always offer much more in so many ways. A great purchase and one not to be missed.
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And here's where it really got good...
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Whereas the continuity of the first Dredd Case Files collection was very slap-dash, here we start to get a lot of much-needed history and backstory for Dredd's world, establishing why the Judges came about, how their world became like it is, what surrounds the city, etc. In short, Dredd's world finally feels three-dimensional and fully-realised, and is much the better for it.
The bulk of the book is taken up by Dredd's first two epics, and this creates a far more stable line-up of creators (only two writers, for instance) that again give the adventures a more coherent voice and feel. The first tale, Pat Mills' The Cursed Earth, is absolutely manic - mutants, tyrannosuars, vampires, aliens, punk bikers, vengeful robot armies and gambling-obsessed mafia judges all throw themselves at Dredd in a roaring blood and guts epic that never lets up once. By the time you get to the base-under-seige ending, you'll actually be breathless, I guarantee it. John Wagner's The Day the Law Died slows things down (but only a little) and lets a raving maniac take complete power of Mega-city One. The results are too brilliantly mad-cap to go into here, but the wonderful satire and black humour in this tale mean the more unstable line-up of artists doesn't really matter. It's worth it anyway just to see a goldfish become Deputy Chief Judge.
As for the art - Mike McMahon and Brian Bolland are of course the stars, dominating the book as they do, McMahon's sometimes scratchy-looking art still conveying a madcap energy and glee at working on such stories, and Bolland producing some of the most intricate, detailed, well-handled art in comics. An essential purchase, containing classic Dredd tales only possibly bettered by what's to come in Books 4 and 5...
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