Redpill me on Dredd. Where should I start and what are the essential stories worth reading?

Redpill me on Dredd. Where should I start and what are the essential stories worth reading?

>Redpill

Fuck off.

You should start at the Judge Child arc then just start reading from there.

The Complete Case Files are your best bet. You can start with volume 1, but it can be a bit cheesy and oddball. So if it's too much, feel free to skip forward to volumes 3-4. And from there just read the volumes in order.

That said, if you'd like something a bit more modern, check out Judge Dredd: The Pit. It's a pretty good entry point for modern Dredd.

Read the whole fuckin thing. Dredd is fantastic.

Then read Nemesis, the best British comic ever made.

>Then read Slaine, the best British comic ever made.
FTFY

Slaine is also extremely good but I really love Nemesis so I'm biased. First book I ever read that wasn't Big 2 and I was hooked. Pat Mills just fuckin rules in general

I was going to specifically help you but you decided to use retarded slang instead of just asking, "Tell me about Dredd and the marvelous world of 2000 AD, Sup Forums" like a normal human being, so instead you get nothing.

This.

What is the worst Dredd story and why is it Inferno?

Eat a cock fag.

...

He is right. Sup Forums is no place for shitty Sup Forums memes, this board is PURE and perfect.

Because it's a braindead, empty-ass collection of "big" moments tied together by a Dredd who's basically a parody of himself, whose big plan is literally "I'mma go there and BEAT 'EM UP!", and is surrounded by a cast of absolute tools who do nothing but appear in the nick of time and spout exposition for the entire story.
Fucking gorgeous art, tho'. And it does have Hershey saving everyone's ass.
Also, counterpoint: Enceladus.

I can't even really remember what happened in Enceladus desu.

Slaine is occasionally boring, which I don't really remember Nemesis being.

Alien ice monsters that appear to be some mutated form of the surviving Titan inmates attack MC-1. They are literally invincible. Hershey puts on her street judge uniform and sends Dredd to "find a weapon" to stop them, then goes out to hold the line against the monsters... for all of one page. Dredd comes back with Dirty Frank who is there literally just to spout some character exposition about Aimee, then the two rescue the Chief Judge, who is reduced to a near-dead weight for the duration. Dredd puts her and Frank on an evac ship and goes off to have a punch-out with ice monster Aimee. MEANWHILE, on Enceladus, the fucking Brit-Cit architect judge dude who was introduced in the previous story finds a bunch of unguarded life pods with the actual Titan inmates, whose dormant minds are controlling the ice monsters. Brit-Cit judge has a moment of *really* forced doubt and then shoots the pods, killing the inmates and the ice-monsters halfway across the solar system. Mega-City One is saved.
So basically everyone does absolutely nothing of note and the story is resolved with zero difficulty by some OC light years away. Fucking awesome art, tho'.

>and suddenly horse

I'd hit her road if you know what I mean

The horse was cool. Dredd knowing how to ride one is a bit weird.

>not her highway

The horse was a cool visual but it fucked with the ambiguousness of "The Man Comes Around" and was also ultimately pointless. It's not like the ice was messing about with Lawmasters so Dredd had to go low tech or something, and it getting slaughtered by ice monsters was like foreshadowing for something we know will never happen.
That's kind of my problem with Titan as a whole saga: it tries really hard to go for allegorical or introspective stuff, but the story itself suffers like a motherfucker and what little insight can be found is muddled beyond repair.

Grud knows Dredd would never stoop to any kind of political commentary

Did he attempt to steer it into something then jump off at that last minute like he does with all his bikes?

Is this any good? I've heard the stories are little more than "blast the aliens", but reviews for the latest reprints have been raving about it.

why is she so perfect?

It's fucking amazing, but mostly thanks to the art. Massimo Belardinelli just fucking fills every page with crazy awesome bullshit and it's grand. The second series, with art by Gibbons, is more classic but still has some good stories.

>"Turbo boost!"
>"NEEEIGH!"
>"... sorry."

'coz unlike all the other female judges with their icky girly feeeelings, Hershey is here to kick ass and chew bubblegum. And bubblegum was outlawed in 2087.

hey, Judge Anderson also can kick ass

I’d recommend at least skimming the first bits if possible, just to get a sense of where the comic started.

The difference is that Dredd is satire while Sup Forums is sincere.

I always really liked Ezquerra’s H-wagon design.

>user tries to be high and mighty but others have already helped OP before his attempted ideological stand

Ouch!

Oh yeah, make no mistake: all female judges are great characters in their own rights. In fact, objectively speaking, Anderson is a better and more rounded character than Hershey.

Yep. And of course, vol 2 has The Cursed Earth and The Day The Law Died.

It's a cool design, very UFO and otherworldly. Definitely a great fit for Ezquerra's wild MC-1. And way better than the flying bricks most artists went with until the Manta showed up.

>mantas
Drokk yeah

Mantas are the coolest dumbest thing. I love them.

You know "redpill" doesn't just mean "educate", right? It's supposed to mean something more like "enlighten", with a strong implication of removing previously held illusions.

Also it's an instance of that kind of irony-veiled pretentiousness that's basically like academic thesaurus writing but with memes to try thoughtlessly make yourself look cleverer instead of overly long words, common to the especially smug douchebag kind of Sup Forums user, and anyone using it should fuck off.

No, but that would have been hilarious.

Not even top 5 best 2000 AD girls to be completely honest.

Oh, you're that guy that gets super pissed off that people light heartedly joke about a Matrix reference to refer to learning new information that changes your opinions and believes it's an attempt at intellectualism rather than just nerds using a nerd reference, aren't you?

Also the term existed before Sup Forums used it.

2000AD is very sincere in its political leanings especially today.

Those were that early? I do feel at least Cursed Earth is mandatory Dredd, it’s an epic in the early, silly style. I like The Day the Law Died but it is sort of between silly and serious and I don’t think it does either well.

British people can't be sincere without being self-effacing.

Cursed Earth is 100% mandatory, not just in terms of style but because of all the backstory and world-building it gets around to doing. I'd never recommend, say, "Origins" to someone who hasn't read Cursed Earth. Plus, those last five eps are absolute killer.
Day is definitely a weird mix. I enjoy the mix of silly and serious, but I do think it goes on a bit much at times. Still, it does star the greatest, most honorable and just judge in the history of Mega-City One. RIP, Judge Fish.

I did like the H-shaped catamaran design just for the Star Wars letter designation silliness, but Ezquerra’s is the one that looks like it works.

The Manta is a nice complement I think.

Judge Fish was too good for this rotten world. He would have set us all straight.

>BLOOP
>Translation: BE PURE
>BLOOP
>Translation: BE VIGILANT
>BLOOP
>Translation: BEHAVE

>BLOOP!*
>*Fine. I'll handle it MYSELF.

The one thing I enjoyed about the catamarans and the big blocky hovs is when they draw them with like half a dozen judges riding on top, like some fucking rollercoaster cart. But yeah, Ezquerra's wagon is way cooler. Dem Apocalypse War scenes...

>tfw aerospace engineer for justice dept

Fun fact the first use of red pill outside of the matrix film is a feminist comic jokingly comparing the patriarchy to the matrix.

Why is Sup Forumsmblr so sensitive to this term? People have used it since long before the "alt-right" or whatever existed.

>why is Sup Forumsmblr so sensitive to this term
>one person annoyed by it vs. a half-dozen annoyed by them being annoyed

It was a "light hearted joke" and "nerds using a nerd reference" a long time ago at this point, disputant. As we can tell by the fact that Sup Forums Anons don't see the disconnect between their own political opinions and the desire to swallow a black man's ruddy cylinder, it's clearly become an empty linguistic meme that people unthinkingly repeat because of the group they perceive it signifies their belonging to.

There are loads of people in this thread whining about Sup Forums. I'm just curious why they care so much. Its just a silly meme term.

Inferno is a good'un for that for sure, some stellar Ez art tho, the 50 shades of grey parody comes to mind as well, and the recent-ish Judge Anderson story that ran in the lead up to prog 2000

i didnt think Enceladus was too bad, at least nt the first half at least, only went to shit after the Ice Inmates got into the city.

Way it just dropped anything and everything with Nixon was awful though, i suppose its at least good that they're using Judge Sam or whatever instead of dropping him, even if he dosent have much of a character yet

they really need to just retire Hershey at this point

No it isn't.

its ok, honestly i feel like a majority of it was just proto Blackhawk or Ace Trucking, especially the episodic star trek stuff

maybe try reading it online before buying it aye?

Are you gendering Judge Fish?

>they really need to just retire Hershey at this point
To me it's less that and more that they need to start actually showing her being good at her job. There's way too many stories where she's either completely passive (Enceladus, Every Empire Falls) or directly responsible for the problem (like 90% of her non-epic appearances). And what bothers me is that it's not even THAT hard. Think about this panel: Literally the next panel is her getting shivved by an ice monster, and she spends the rest of the story as a bleeding, unconscious potato sack for Dredd and Frank to play catch with. They could've at least saved the shivving for the next episode. They could've shown her holding the line for more than one page. It's not that hard. Instead, it's just a cool moment wasted literally on the same page. And Williams was on the Thrillcast talking about how she was gonna have a cool scene and giving lip service to all the strong female characters in 2000AD...

It's not a matter of retiring or not. It's a matter of having a writer who actually cares for more characters than just Dredd and his OC's de jouer.

He's a canon He. Get your kooky fanon offa this thread.

It's a stupid meme term. In case you forgot the plot of the Matrix films, the original red pill/blue pill choice eventually turned out to be an illusion designed to make malcontents feel like they were being genuine rebels and accomplishing something, but was actually another layer of control designed to keep them ultimately useless and manageable.

It's like when some american hipster with a starbucks coffee in one hand looking at the latest iphone in the other through a pair of designer classes wears a che guevara t-shirt.

i kind of just hate how she's a push over for dredd every other time she show up now to fill in a few panels

These days she's just like 90's McGruder, but without being entertaining in the slightest.

I think the end of the Judge Harvey book is the only time she's actually gone against Dredd's judgement in a long age

I was just taking the piss but how the hell did they even know with a goldfish?

Nah, she's gone against his judgment a couple of times before, but he's always been proven right in the end. Which is actively a problem because it means all we get to see of her being a Chief Judge are her fuckups. We need a story that actually shows why she's Chief Judge, that gives a proper reason other than "'cause nobody wants it."
Boy I hope Harvey turns out OK...

They, uh... asked him? Maybe?

People used that Buddhist good fortune symbol for a long time before it got adopted by some very fine people.

they should do more of those council of five scenes they used to do with Volt and McGruder way back every once in a while, it was a great bit of character and occasional world building in only a few pages in a story

Especially now that they have fucking Beeny in the council. Like, you'd think writers would be trampling over themselves at the idea of getting to write a young, strong-headed idealist politely clashing with an older, pragmatic big-picture leader who *used to be* that idealist. But nah, you know what we really need? More wacky cute mutie thieves!
... I'm a bit mad. At least we got Grant's Anderson Megazine series.

Do things become _too_ morally complex if Dredd is on occasion just plain wrong, not in the wrong?

>e ambiguousness of "The Man Comes Around" and was also ultimately pointless. It's not like the ice was messing about with Lawmasters so Dredd had to go low tech or something, and it getting slaughtered by ice monsters was like foreshadowing for something we know will never happen.
>That's kind of my problem with Titan as a whole saga: it tries really hard to go for allegorical or introspective stuff, but the story itself suffers like a motherfucker and what little insight can be found is muddled beyond repair.

>lets slap a giant judge helmet on the flying tank
AND lets put 2 cannons in the eyeholes

wait
Beeny's on the council...?
When did that happen

>More wacky cute mutie thieves!
Deus Ex chick is kinda annoying but i doubt we'll see her again, she doesn't really work in mainline dredd, feels more like a one time antagonist for Burke and Hare or Saul Cain y'know? Bitch feels 90's

Good to know I plan on storytiming the original Eagle run, Spaceship Away and the astoundingly good Garth Ennis miniseries soon, and I was wondering if it was worth spedning time on a part of Dan's mythos that I've mostly heard referred to as "Oh yeah, that stuff".

I'll save the Grant Morrison miniseries for when I need a Storytime of DEEP HURTING

To me, this is an echo of Ennis' 90s Dredd run. What we've got is a handful of big Dredd fanboys who want to write him as this always-right cool guy anti-hero, and after Tour of Duty and stories like Mega-City Confiential they've been given an almost carte blanche to also write him as a cool rebel who will butt heads with authority if he sees something he thinks is wrong. The end result is a glut of stories where Dredd is always proven right at all times and is always on the right side of history. Another user also theorized that the writers also suffered a bit of a blow from Day of Chaos, since it's kinda traumatic to see big hero Dredd being utterly incapable of stopping such a massive catastrophe, and have been awkwardly trying to "build him back up", so to speak.
The problem is that way back in Tour of Duty, Wagner made it clear that Dredd, even when he's in the right, tends to have problems grasping the execution. He's not a big picture guy and he's not one for subtle, slow-moving changes. He sees a problem and dogs it mercilessly until its solved, and that causes friction with everyone else around him because he can't see or won't see the ramifications of his actions. And that's the kind of complexity a lot of writers seem to get really awkward about for some reason.

How else would they know it's a judge tank?
Also, Sometimes they draw the cannons like tiny eyes.

Happened in a Megazine story from... I wanna say last year, but I could be wrong. Anyway, I don't super mind the mutie chick, but to me she's a good example of one of my pet peeves with modern Dredd writers: they'd rather create new chars that will be completely dropped right after they're gone than build on what they have. Which I'd be OK with it... if they didn't keep shitting on the latter.

>wake up
>make some oatmeal
>check Sup Forums
>dredd thread is still alive but now it's got dozens more posts and there's people talking about best Chief Judge

You're doing Grud's work, Minifig. And yeah, the whole 2000AD era of Dare was kinda lost for years since no reprints. Most people only remembered it 'cause Gibbons and that wacky shit at the end with the robo-hand, but Belardinelli's run is well worth preserving and spreading.

She so fine.

yeah, some America follow up with the son of the guy who shot Bennet Beeny in the original

> they'd rather create new chars that will be completely dropped right after they're gone than build on what they have.
A few i like, Joyce, Pax, lamia.

Should do a Pat Mills and just kill em of in a grand order at the end of the story like he did with Spikes, absolute 10/10 moment

YOU SHUT YOUR MOUTH

I thought having a robotic half face was neat until I looked closer and realized that's not his teeth on top, he has a robotic mustache.

>That spoiler
Boy have I got good news for you... Anyway, killing's good. Another user once suggested doing a story in the Megazine about guys like Rico II, Giant Jr., Pax, etc. being drafted into a task force of sorts. Basically pull a JLI with all the secondary chars nobody's using.

Don't diss the cyberstache.

oh damn what?
She getting a comeback special?

Oh yeah, Giant Jr. is another guy i like, but he's so rarely used, Dan Francisco too as a matter of fact

Unrelated, but any clue how long till the new Bad Company get released?

Lamia was scheduled to reappear in June of this year with a story called "Live Evil", but it got a bit delayed. Taylor has been asking for portraits of people to draw in crowd scenes however, and Edginton said that the strip was mostly done at Thought Bubble (I think). So yeah, after eight years we're finally getting a second Lamia story.

Bad Company: Terrorists is also mostly done. I imagine it'll be showing up early next year.

excellent, good shit all round then

Yep. And in a month and a half we got new Deadworld, and Wagner's got a Harvey sequel also coming out early 2018. Good fucking times.

There's also a new Anderson story coming in the progs soon. Written by Emma Beeby so eeeehhhh, but it's got David Roach art and the return of a certain someone-someone whose name starts with K. So might be cool.

New Deadworld already? Thats nice and fast.

>K
Kleggs? Barry Kurten? Kazan?
Tough one, not a clue
unless you're talking bout my long abandoned waifu Karyn

I can trust Beeby with that

>can
Can't
CAN'T

>tfw Simon Bisley came to my country for a comic convention and I got a sweet Judge Anderson sketch by him.
Feels good man

We'll you'll be happy to know that--

... So uh... so anyway, hey, how 'bout that Deadworld, huh? Yeah, lookin' good, yeah!

JUDGE user I have an important question

what Hershey lipstick color is best, red, maroon or black?

Now now user, Hershey is a judge, a chief judge at that, and is therefore above such petty appearance concerns.
Now that that's outta the way, Black. All the fucking way. Red's great, John Burns and Colin MacNeil in particular do cool things with it ("lips like a slash of blood against her pale skin"), but I fucking love when she matches her lips with her hair. Even if it looks gothy as fuck.

my man thats fucking a

i cry, oh how i cry

>I had the right opinion
YES
IMO really dark red to the point where it looks black except for extreme close-ups is just as good. Who cares if it looks gothy as fuck, goth-type girls do crazy things to me... at least as long as they're not too crazy themselves. Lookin' at you, Oola Blint.

> and is therefore above such petty appearance concerns.
You mean to tell me that female Judges don't have to go through a Justice Dept-approved daily makeup and appearance regimen, especially street judges who have to make the lower halves of their faces look as pretty as possible given the top half is always covered by a helmet? Could've fooled me.

I thought Karyn was like, mindbroken and insane.

thanks, Bisley was a really cool dude. I got really lucky and it was a really pleasure to meet one of my favourite artist.

yeah, kinda anyway, got possessed by some demon or something in the undercity

all good, hype for new Joe Pineapples story?

>IMO really dark red to the point where it looks black except for extreme close-ups is just as good
Best of both worlds. Also, man, the make-up thing is just reminding me of pic related. Brrr.

Kinda. A demon took residence in her mind and erased her personality (and warped her body). It's currently locked down somewhere in Psi Div. But considering it's an Anderson story, I imagine we'll get some deep probing adventures.

What happened to Juliet November

Pretty sure she's still alive somewhere. Or at least, I don't recall her getting offed.
Here's hoping she was off-city during Day of Chaos. Poor girl would've burnt an entire sector down.

he said it was going to be all painted by hand iirc so hell yeah.

I first got introduced to dredd (actually introduced not the "it exists and there's a movie with stallone in it" kind) through threads here on Sup Forums and Judge user's relentless shilling. What really made me want to read it was the "don't do it citizen! littering is an offence!" splash page because it's just so fucking perfect and, again, Judge user's relentless shilling of Ezquerra art. Ezquerra is a guy who is really weird for me because when I first saw it in some Ennis comic it looked ugly, at first glance, but after just 1 page I was hooked. He has a style that is like nothing I've ever seen. Maybe a bit like Ortiz and some Southamericans (Argentinians?) but his is dirtier and more...bulbuous.

Anyway, I've been reading it from the start and it's great. But I'm stalled on Ennis' era right now, can't force myself to read another page and I don't want to skip forward. I've been reading some other AD stuff instead (bit of anderson, shakara, dead meat, ro busters, abc warriors etc).

What did Sup Forums think of this story? A grim and shaggy sendoff to some of the most influential yet least-seen characters in the history of Dredd's world? Or a worthless anticlimax to some poor fucks that deserved better?

the latter, a ok build up with the only solid moment being Morant's last stand

no fucking reason anderson was'nt involved

...

>But I'm stalled on Ennis' era right now, can't force myself to read another page
Oh man, wait 'till you get to the Millar/Morrison era. In fact, don't wait. Just skip to The Pit. Or Wilderlands if you want to know how the whole McGruder/Mechanismo arc goes.
Also, speaking of Ezquerra, Pat Mills (who's pretty much his biggest fan) recently helped him put out a coloring book with a bunch of his commission artwork. Pretty fun stuff.

I liked it. Felt properly low-key and "small", and seeing Dredd awkwardly try to apologize for his negligence while still being clearly an asshole was entertaining. But yeah, I really wish they'd done more than just name-drop Anderson and Hershey. Hell, a part of me wishes it would've just ended with Hershey on a Manta hovering above them and shouting
>"YOU MISERABLE DROKKS, I WAS THERE TOO YOU KNOW! I SHANKED SOVS AND SAW ANDERSON WITH HER TOP OFF TOO! HELL WITH DREDD, YOU COULD'VE ASKED ME!"
Pretty great art, too.

Sensible IMO. Even if it wasall good it'd be a disservice to slog your way through. Just take a break, read some different stuff like you're doing. It'll still be there after a palate cleanser.

Hershey in that picture is wearing some kind of body painting?