Who's Who in the CBU 2008

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.

Toothsome: Part One

By Regie Rigby

OK. So last week I talked about the anthropomorphic SF Fest that is Reynard City, and not, as promised, the long running icon of British Comics that is 2000AD, which is what I’d promised I’d do.

So? So I’m a week late with a subject. Like that’s unusual.

Besides, I’m one of those generous teachers that can be relied upon to give you an extension on your homework deadline – and you did have homework for this edition. If you remember, I asked you to take a look at a recent issue of 2000AD, the self styled Galaxy’s Greatest Comic. Tharg’s Thrillfest turns thirty this year, and after reviewing David Bishop’s excellent Thrillpower Overload; I thought it might be time to have a look at the comic itself.

‘Tooth has confounded the sceptics and survived longer than every single comparable title ever published in the UK. In fact I think I’m right in saying that only the venerable D.C.Thompson humour titles The Beano and The Dandy have exceeded ‘Tooth’s quite exceptional longevity.

That, however, proves nothing. Being old doesn’t necessarily make you good. It suggests popularity, since to survive a long time a comic needs to be able to maintain sales at a reasonable level. But it’s a mistake to assume that popularity and quality are somehow linked – especially in entertainment. How many excellent TV shows have been cancelled because of low ratings? How many bloody awful TV shows regularly pull in audiences of millions?

Exactly.

So – we return to the key question. Is 2000AD still worth reading after all these years? Does it deserve its popularity, or has it survived simply because a bunch of sad old gits like me continue to buy it out of habit, regardless of content or quality?

(And before we go any further, I should really declare an interest. I’ve been reading 2000AD every week for twenty of its thirty years on the racks. I’m a fan. It’s been a part of my life for longer than pretty much everything else I value. I will, of course, endeavour to maintain professional objectivity, but as readers you really ought to take that into account when you read the rest of this two part exploration.)

Let’s start with now.

What’s currently in 2000AD? Well, hanging in there, jaw firmly set in a permanent frown is everybody’s favourite fascist Judge Joe Dredd. Dredd, the Judge Force he belongs to, and the world he inhabits (which just keeps getting bigger and more real) have long been the cornerstone of ‘Tooth.

It wasn’t meant to be like that – indeed Dredd didn’t even appear in the first issue of the comic. The flagship strip was meant to be a revamp of that icon of British S/F Dan Dare. I don’t like to judge historic comics too harshly – they are for the most part products of their time – so let’s just say that the Dan Dare strips from the early days of 2000AD don’t hold up very well under a modern gaze, and leave it at that.

Like all good ideas, Dredd evolved slowly. He started out as a sort of “Dirty Harry of the future” (or should that be “Dirty Harry Beyond”?). In the beginning his beat was not Mega-City One, but New York, and he patrolled alongside regular cops. But there’s always been an edge there. Reading the recently released reprints of those first Dredd Strips I was reminded that however tough Dredd is now, you don’t get many summary executions on the street in the Big Meg these days. You did back in ’77.

Nowadays he’s an old man – although he’s been considered that since the early ‘nineties. But his age makes him interesting, as does the three decades of continuity that has built up around him. (And yes, I know I don’t normally approve of strict adherence to continuity, but I’ll be addressing that next week, so just shut up about it for now, OK?)

The continuity is different because he’s really grown as a character over the years. He’s still tough. He’s still fair. He’s even still a stickler for the rules. (He is the law, after all…) But as he’s aged, he’s also gained experience and wisdom, the way real people do, and like most real people he’s begun to question the laws that he is sworn to uphold.

The crucial thing here though, is that however much he wrestles with his conscience, however much he questions the rightness of the law, he continues to enforce it to the letter. That contradiction is now the very essence of Dredd, and that internal conflict is what lifts the stories above mere “Dirty Harry rip-off” status.

Take this recent story sequence as an example:

First you have Origins.

This was an epic multi episode arc concerning the hunt for the body of the “Father of Justice”, Chief Judge Fargo, the first Chief Judge of Mega-City One. Through flashback sequences that were, in fact rather more important than the main action, we were presented with the new definitive version of how the Judges came to take power in what used to be America, and what the role of the young cadets Joseph and Rico Dredd had been.

All good retconning stuff, but it also put Dredd centre stage. Without him, the last President of the United States might never have fallen. The Judges might never have taken power. But the clincher comes at the end. They find Fargo. He’s not dead. Not quite. The last thing he says to Dredd before the end? That he thought the Judges were wrong to have taken power. That they had gone too far. That the citizens had been given security at the cost of their liberty, and that the cost had been too high. Then Fargo died and left Dredd to work that one out all on his own.

What’s happened since?

Well, Dredd has tried and failed to get the laws banning all mutants from the city repealed. His experiences in the Cursed Earth while he was looking for Fargo had strengthened his belief that such laws were unjust, and so he tried to do something about it.

But having failed, he was there personally to turn away the mutant relatives he had met on his quest, and who like him could claim descent from Fargo. He was offered a special dispensation allowing his mutated “family” to visit, but he maintained that the law must apply equally to all, or it wasn’t a law at all. Then he set about rooting out corruption and malpractice in the Cursed Earth establishments where his city’s mutants were sent.

In other words, he was given a dilemma, and he dealt with it, in character. The reader was invited to make their own judgement about whether he was doing the right thing, and we’re left to examine his motives for taking on the mutant establishments in the Cursed Earth. Guilt? Duty? Or is he trying to engineer a situation whereby he makes the ban on mutants unworkable, forcing the legislative “Council of Five” to change the law?

That would imply that the law isn’t as infallible as Dredd has always maintained, and that opens up a whole new raft of storytelling possibilities.

Worth reading?

You bet.

It’s a cliché that the essence of storytelling is conflict, but that doesn’t make it any less true. Internal conflict is all the more interesting, and we’re getting that in spades here. Dredd could be a dull, two dimensional character. But he isn’t, and he never has been (unless you count that bloody movie). There is morality in Dredd, and there is politics. There is usually an acknowledgement in the narrative that the reader not only has a brain, but that they quite like using it.

But that’s just one character.

‘Tooth is an anthology. What’s the rest of it like?

Tell you what – come back next week, and we’ll discuss it!