Name: Regie Rigby
Regie is a strange, almost ethereal creature. Who can plumb the hidden mysteries of his dark and murky past - a past which contains a terrible secret. A secret that taught him that with great power comes great responsibility, that criminals are a cowardly superstitious lot and just who exactly knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men.
By day, he assumes the appearance of a mild mannered teacher, bringing the joy of literature and the English Language to classes of enthralled and enthusiastic students. But by night?
By night he goes home and writes lesson plans. Sorry. That's as interesting as he gets. Really.
The rumours about rooftop struggles with underworld uberfiends, the gossip about the hidden cave filled with hi-tec equipment and the suggestion that his car might be fitted with turbo lasers are all nonsense.
When he's not teaching he reads comics. Sometimes he combines the two activities. When he's not doing that he's either playing computer games or asleep.
Dredd: Origins - A Mega Epic In The Making...
By Regie Rigby
If you read comics in the UK, then you know about Judge Dredd. If you read comics anywhere else in the world, then the chances are the most you know about “Old Stoney Face” is Stallone’s woeful depiction of the future lawman in the utterly utterly execrable 1995 movie of the same name.
But unless you’re very old (well, as old as me at least), you probably don’t remember the very beginnings of Judge Dredd. He’s been around almost as long as 200AD itself. Not quite as old – he actually made his debut in Prog 2 if the Galaxy’s greatest Comic – but he’s still been around nearly thirty years. That’s not bad going. I honestly can’t think of a single non-humour British comics character that’s been in continuous publication for that long. (The longest running humour characters have been around since the thirties of course, featuring as they did in The Beano and the Dandy.)
Like all characters that have been around for a long time, he’s changed a little since that first appearance. This is to be expected – I know I’ve changed in the last thirty years, and there are many famous examples of this phenomenon. Back in the day, Superman couldn’t fly, merely “leap tall buildings at a single bound”, even more striking, early Batman comics show him killing and carrying a gun!
Dredd hasn’t changed anything like so much. He was what some of my students would refer to as a “Badass Mo’Fo’” (And they would, you know. Some of them listen to far too much Gangsta Rap…) when he first hit the streets, and he is still a badass. He’s older now, having aged considerably since his debut. Not quite in real time perhaps, but much more realistically than other long running characters.
He was always a senior and well respected Judge with a reputation for harshness – described as “our best man” and a “hardliner” in one very early episode – but now he’s very definitely the “grand old man”. An old-timer still dedicating his life to the preservation of Law and Order long after his contemporaries have been killed in the line of duty or taken the long walk into the Cursed Earth. (Retirement is not an option for a Judge.) Like most people I know, he’s also become a damn sight more right wing as he’s aged.
Back in the day, Dredd was a “harsh but fair” no nonsense, “whatever it takes to bring down the lawbreakers and make the city safe for decent people” type cop in the “Dirty Harry” mode. These days I think he would be best described as a “benign fascist”. Absolutely authoritarian, a fierce opponent of democracy and a merciless destroyer of all challengers, foreign and domestic.
(There’s a real howler in that terrible terrible movie where Fargo holds up a Judge’s badge and tells Dredd that he want it to stand for what it used to stand for “freedom and democracy”. I once saw a screening of the movie with live commentary from John Wagner and (I think) the then editor of ‘Tooth David Bishop. Wagner’s reaction to that comment was both hilarious and unrepeatable.)
But the basic concept – that Dredd and his fellow Judges are quite literally Police, Judge, Jury and Executioner – has not changed one iota. Ol’ Stoney Face hasn’t gained a single power or ability that he didn’t have in the first place. Nor has he had any of the gimmicky costume changes so many other long running characters have endured. What has changed, and changed considerably, is the world in which Dredd operates.
One of the highlights of this past week has been the arrival of review copies of the first four editions of the Complete Case Files collections of every Dredd story, in order from the beginning. These are truly impressive tomes ( full review will follow in a week or so, when I’ve had chance to read them properly – for now just trust me, they’re gorgeous), and I’ve spent the last two days poring over Volume One, which reprints Dredd’s adventures from Prog 2 right the way to Prog 60, and there are some striking differences between the Big Meg we see in those early issues, and the Big Meg we see now.
The first episode sets the action firmly in “New York 2099AD!”, making no mention of “Mega City 1”. Although it’s described as a “small building”, existing landmarks like the Empire State building are still in existence. What really struck me when I read those early episodes though was the existence of regular police officers. I’d forgotten that little detail. In the Big Meg today, the Judges function in the roles not just of a combined police and judiciary, but as the government, army, navy and air force as well. They do everything.
Yet in those early stories there are several examples of a Police Force working alongside the Judge Force, with the Judges acting as a sort of elite “best of the best” or “special forces” organisation. Early adventures also show Mega City One as being protected by a vast dome – something else which has been consigned to history.
This raises some questions about how the world we know now was changed into the world of Dredd. We know from various adventures that the Mega Cities grew up after the “Great Atom War” which destroyed the previous civilisations (a prospect that seemed only too likely back in the late seventies). In the first major Dredd epic “The Cursed Earth” we discovered that the last President of the United States was deposed and replaced by the Judges after his failure ot protect America during that war.
But why was the Judge Force founded in the first place. We know that Fargo, Dredd’s clone father, was the first Chief Judge, and that he is known as the “Father of Justice” but what was his background? What happened to the Police? What happened to the Army? Why did every other city develop along the same lines? Whether it’s Texas City, the East Megs, Brit-Cit, Oz, Hondo City, Sino-cit, any of the others, they’re all large densely populated “City States” ruled and protected by a Judge style force.
How did that happen?
Well, finally, we might be about to get some answers.
John Wagner & Carlos Ezquerra, the writer and artist combination that created Dredd all those years ago are finally going to reveal the genesis of the Justice system and the society in which it operates. Judge Dredd – Origins starts In 2000 AD Prog 1505 (on sale 13th September) and will run into the magazine's own 30th anniversary in February 2007 next year.
As you would expect, details are a little sketchy – you wouldn’t want the epic ruining, now would you? But, just to whet your appetite I’ve managed to get hold of these sample pages:
I’m liking the look of that already! I've always regarded Ezquerra as the "good" Dredd artist, although he's probably better known for his work on the Strontium Dog stories that moved into 2000AD from the short lived Starlord comic. Bolland might catch more attention, but Ezquerra can really tell a story.
Mind you - is it me, or is Hershy starting to look pretty old? I remember her when she was a hot (in many senses of the word - it might have been something to so with my age at the time) young street judge. I suspect I'm getting old myself...
If you want even more, well, click here to view the trailer at 2000adtrailers.com .
A lot of people don’t read 2000AD, because they see that the issue number in the corner has exceeded 1500, and they worry that there’s be just too much catching up to do.
Well, if that’s you, worry no more. This is another chance to get in on the ground floor – a sort of “Ultimate Judge Dredd”, but without all the continuity bollocks. It’s rather a pleasing thing that this should happen at a time when 2000AD is going through a serious phase of quality stories. There has never been a better time to jump on board - and I seriously suggest you do!
By the way, if you're one of the poor unfortunates that has never read Bryan Talbot's reality hopping epic Adventures of Luther Arkwright, I should tell you that it is now available online. Go HERE to find out more.
This was possibly one of the greatest comics of all time - you know me, I prefer these things on paper, but I know some of you wacky young things are quite happy with the screen so go and enjoy!
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