Judge Dredd Casefiles Vol 15

The Judge Dredd Casefiles are a collection of trade paperbacks that publisher Rebellion (current owners of 2000AD and Dredd) have been releasing now for the last few years, collecting together all of the Judge Dredd stories, in complete chronological order, from his first appearance in Prog 2 (2000AD issues are referred to as Progs) to, hopefully, the present day. Or at least, a couple of years behind the present day, so as not to interfere with more prestige Graphic Novels of individual stories. That's my hope anyway, I don't know what the plans are at Rebellion, but they certainly are showing no signs of slowing down with these books anytime soon. There are currently 16 volumes in the Casefiles series but in this post I'd like to discuss No. 15. Partly because I have yet to pick up No. 16 but mainly because it is in No. 15 that we get the stories marking the handover of control from the renowned veteran Mr John Wagner to the brash young upstart Master Garth Ennis.


At the beginning of the 1990's the then editor of weekly anthology comic 2000AD had a problem. John Wagner, creator and main writer of the titles flagship character, Judge Dredd, for most of the comics life (nigh on 15 years at that point) had expressed a desire to step back from writing the strip. He would continue to provide scripts featuring Dredd for The Judge Dredd Megazine (a newly launched spin-off comic that would feature stories from all around Dredds world) but the main strip in the weekly would require a new regular writer. Given that John Wagner is, in the eyes of all right thinking individuals, a God among writers, and his work on Dredd, especially in the couple of years leading up to this point, had been pretty much peerless, (it wouldn't be surpassed for years and only then when Wagner returned to the character for a run that has become one of the best on any comic ever), it would be very difficult to find a replacement that would a) be up to the task and b) meet with the approval of the readers.

Enter Garth Ennis. Not comic book industry superstar Garth Ennis with acclaimed books like Preacher, Hellblazer, Hitman, The Boys, War Stories, Punisher, Crossed, and Battlefields to his name, among others. This Garth Ennis was young, inexperienced and pretty much the last name anyone would have expected to be appointed, had they even considered him at all. But appointed he was and it was up to him to prove the doubters wrong and make the biggest character in British comics his own. Would he succeed? We'll see.

I am a huge fan of Garth Ennis. I have read and enjoyed a lot of comics by the man and consider him to be in my top 5 comic writers (as is John Wagner) so it is very difficult for me to be totally objective here. Every man has an off day though, and Ennis himself has admitted that his Dredd writing is not exactly his best work. Be fair though, he was young, and this was by far the highest profile gig he'd had to date. Seems only natural that he might take a while to find his feet. With that in mind, there is a lot to like about the first couple of Ennis stories and I can see a lot of potential here for his future on the title.

Only one Ennis story falls flat here and, perhaps tellingly, it's the only one not to riff on a pre-existing piece of continuity. It's called Emerald Isle and sees Dredd visiting Ireland, which has been forced to accept corporate money to aid in it's rebuilding after the Atomic Wars, and as a result has been turned into one big theme park based on Irish cliches. Write what you know they say, so for his first proper contribution to the Dredd mythos it's perhaps understandable that Ennis falls back on his Irish heritage but all in all the whole thing just seems a little bit too silly. Dredd as a strip has a long and distinguished history of incorporating comedy, ranging from slapstick to subtle satire, so it's not the inclusion of jokes that doesn't work, merely that the jokes aren't all that funny. It is, if nothing else, an interesting artifact, in that marks a very early collaboration between the Preacher dream team of Ennis and artist Steve Dillon.

The book also contains the first few Dredd stories written for the Megazine. Sadly, they do not seem to be particularly good. It's possible that I'm allowing my opinion to be clouded by the rather murky art on one story (The Gippers Big Night) and the (in my opinion) messy and unpleasant style of art on another (Black Widow) but hey, a great script can overcome poor art and these scripts didn't.

I hate to end on a downer when talking about a series which I really do love so I'll reiterate here that with the exception of Emerald Isle and the early Megazine mis-fires this book is chock full of arsomness. John Wagner on form is guaranteed class and even sub-par Ennis is better than a lot of stuff out there.

Droid Files

This was going to be about Cross Bones (Kathy Reichs) or Judge Dredd Case Files vol 15 (John Wagner, Garth Ennis and various artists) but sadly, childcare commitments prevented me from finishing either of them in time. So instead I'm going to talk about the Rebellion collection I read immediately prior to starting JD15. Namely this little beauty. Robo-Hunter : Droid Files Volume 2.



John Wagner and Alan Grant between them wrote all of the original run of Robo-Hunter and if you are in any way familiar with the world of comics you will know that those two names together is as close to a guarantee of quality as you're likely to get. So two great writers with an excellent pedigree, a superb artist in Ian Gibson (also responsible for drawing the sublime Ballad Of Halo Jones amongst many others) and one of the best characters of 2000AD's early years, all of which had led me to absolutely adore the first volume. Imagine my disappointment then when I found myself struggling to fully engage with this one.

The problem is that the first two stories are very gimmicky runs that really don't stand the test of time all that well. The first was based around a football (soccer to our American chums) tournament in which all the players and pundits were robots and someone was sabotaging them. I don't follow the sport and I'd have struggled to get all the jokes if it was published now so I was completely flummoxed by the lampooning of personalities from decades ago.

Then we move into a story about men banding together (The Human League, which I'll concede is genius) to commit hate crimes against robots and Sam having to put a stop to it. Now, in theory this should have been a good story but unfortunately it's set against a backdrop of a new law being enacted that requires everyone to sing all the time. Seriously, pretty much every line of dialogue is presented in song form. Now, as annoying as that is (imagine having to sing every conversation in your head as you read it) it's multiplied 10x by the fact that if you don't actually know the tunes you are meant to sing to the lines become meaningless. I mean, you can still understand what they are getting at but the lines just don't flow properly. Words and phrases are distorted/shortened/elongated to match the music and it doesn't read right at all as straight dialogue.

Not to worry though, all is forgiven with the 3rd story, as gimmicks are put aside and we get back to good solid comics storytelling. First up is 'The Slaying of Slade' in which some old enemies return to, well, slay Slade. This leads into 'Sam Slades Last Case', and from there we get 'Farewell My Billions', which is introduced with the somewhat classic line "Sam Slade, Robohunter, in his first case since his last case". These 3 long stories combined comprise an epic arc that sees Sam rise higher than he ever has before bringing him back down to Earth and depositing him right where he started at the very beginning of Volume One. They also mark the end of the original run and of John Wagner and Alan Grants writing tenure on the character. (Grant would return to the series many years later with a run of stories considered by most to be okay but far from classic, focusing on Sams Granddaughter, with the man himself playing a much reduced role)

The book also contains a one off story by John Smith and Chris Weston and the final stories in the 90's revival, written by Peter Hogan and drawn by Rian Hughes. These stories are excellent, managing to combine the strengths of the new guys with everything that was great about Wagner/Grant. The only slight niggle here is that Chris Weston and Rian Hughes are both absolutely incredible artists whose work sadly doesn't shine *quite* as much as it should after the greyscaling process. Some colour artwork translates better than others and some of the stuff here suffers. That's only a minor niggle though, and I'd much rather this than the stories not be included at all as they can sometimes be overlooked. Here is an example of Hughes Robo-Hunter in the intended colour, the cover to 2000AD issue 910:



Not included are the stories that started the 90's revival. These stories were written by Mark Millar and are somewhat, well, loathed, by fans of the character. Millar is not the most popular of writers to have worked on 2000AD with many fans and his Robo-Hunter run is a big part of this (along with his run on Judge Dredd, considered one of the worst ever). I can't comment, because I've never read his stuff, coming as it did before I started reading the anthology. To be honest, I kind of wish it had been included, so I could make my own mind up about it. There is a tendency to dismiss a lot of 2000AD's output from the 90's as unrepresentative and unworthy of reprinting and I'm starting to despair of ever getting the chance to read it. Maybe the push into the US will prompt a reprint of Millars stories to cash in on his name value there. Time will tell I suppose.

So that's my first attempt to write up a book I've read. I hope it wasn't too bad. I'm dithering over whether I should include a rating system on here? Am I going to 'review' stuff or just waffle about it? Which does the above read like? I'll see how the next couple turn out.