Judge Dredd: Mega-City Masters Volume One

Mega-City One sure does sound like an awful place to live. With a population of 800 million and an unemployment rate of 87%, well, it’s easy to see that things might get a little out of control there. This is the grim future in which Judge Dredd lives. Crime and chaos call for some harsh justice, and Dredd and company are there to make sure that citizens abide the law at all times. 

Running through the streets when you should really only be walking? Say goodbye to your kneecaps.

Holding down multiple jobs when nine out of ten people can’t even get one? You’re holding society back, citizen.

Judge Dredd is just a guy doing his job. He’s great with his gun, maybe a little less great with his people skills. But after reading Mega-City Masters Volume One, I got hooked on  the world that is presented in the 2000 AD stories.

This collection was made to showcase how great these British comics are to an American audience. I’m really glad that 2000 AD is expanding and bringing their stuff across the pond in a more direct fashion than they have in the past. This is just one book out of many that have only recently been printed up for people who might otherwise not have the chance to experience them.

It’s quite the “who’s who” in the credits on this book. That was, of course, a major selling point for Mega-City Masters: it’s an effort to get people in the US to realize “hey, this guy worked on Judge Dredd? And so did this person? Cool.” So it’s tons of fun to see that Steve Dillon drew a story in this collection, as did Alan Davis and Charlie Adlard.

Another thing that I really appreciated about this book was that it took stories from across the different eras of 2000 AD. Dredd has been filling pages for over 30 years now, and it’s amazing that John Wagner, one of the Judge’s creators, is still involved with the writing. Sure, he’s had a lot of help from Alan Grant, but you can tell that there’s a unity to the Judge Dredd saga that’s really lacking in, say, the American superheroes.

I found it interesting that in the older stories, there are two pages in color while the rest is in black and white. I think that manga does this a lot too. I’m on the fence about whether it’s neat or if it’s simply jarring.

The last bullet point I want to touch upon while I’m extolling the virtues of this collection is that I loved the format for the stories. 2000 AD is a weekly anthology and Judge Dredd only makes up a part of it every issue. So the stories in here typically run to 6 or 7 pages. It makes for some tight-paced stories. I remember reading an Alan Moore interview where he said that it was such a great challenge to write concise stories for 2000 AD (sadly I don’t know of any Dredd stories he worked on). There is so much that can be done in such a small amount of page space, and Wagner, Grant, and company prove it over and over throughout Mega-City Masters.

Onwards to a few standout stories:

Steve Dillon draws “The Wreckers,” and it’s a story that is genuinely creepy. A bunch of people hang out around an abandoned war zone. The highway goes right through it, and drivers know that they are taking their lives into their own hands as soon as they enter. A sign reads “MAINTAIN SPEED. CLOSE ALL WINDOWS. DO NOT STOP FOR ANY REASON.” Breaking any of those commandments is like saying that you want to be killed by the wreckers. They’ll have no problem with beating your windows until they break and throwing you out of the car and driving off. It comes to a point where the wreckers are just causing so much damage that the judges can’t afford to ignore the problem any longer. Judge Dredd gets called in with a few of his pals and everything gets cleared up, at least for now.

“The Law According to Dredd”: Kevin O’Neill is the artist here, and he is absolutely perfect for it. An ugly, brutish monster guy claims to be Judge Dredd. He’s ruling a little town all by himself. When the real Dredd comes to pay a visit, he is surprised to be accused of being an impostor. The fake Dredd really, really annoys the Judge. Take a guess who walks away from this fight.

“A Mega-City Primer”: This one really stands out because it is painted by Simon Bisley. The text is almost entirely reprinted from another story in the collection (“Joe Dredd’s Blues”), which is a little strange, but I enjoyed the comparison between this version and the original, which was drawn by John Higgins of Watchmen fame. If only comics could have sound to go with them...the “Primer” is a song about Judge Dredd and his typical day. It’s quite humorous.

“The Rise & Fall of Chair Man Dilbert”: Trevor Hairsine draws what is probably the most messed up tale in Mega-City Masters. A big part of the appeal of the Judge Dredd shorts is their emphasis on satire, and this one is really taking it to the extreme. Dilbert Bowels inadvertently becomes the world’s first-ever human object d’art. He poses as a chair for people to sit on. Famous people are calling him up for his services, he gets his own exhibit in which he poses as a different piece of furniture every day...things are looking pretty good for him. He’s not used to success. Now what happens to priceless works of art? Well, sometimes lowlifes like to steal them. And this is what happens to Dilbert Bowels...he winds up hidden away in a cell forever because he was such a great piece of art.

“Block Out at the Crater Bowl”: John Byrne must have pulled some strings to get to work for 2000 AD at the peak of his career. Dredd is called in to do some crowd control at a riotous sporting event. Thousands of people are all crammed into one place, and the wacky game of Block Out gets their collective blood boiling. Dredd’s final line in this story: “Next year, we use the riot foam before the game starts!” Just classic.

Mega-City Masters Volume One gets the praise that 2000 AD would be pleased to hear: I’m already looking for Volume Two. Consider me the latest person to become a fan of Judge Dredd.

To close things out, a really nice Alan Davis cover.

PunisherMAX: Kingpin

Once upon a time, there was a book called Preacher. Garth Ennis wrote it and Steve Dillon drew it. It was a series that featured violence, profanity and sex in quantities previously unseen in comics. Preacher was a book that was unlike many others that were published in its time: it was actually good, and the mid to late 90’s aren’t generally regarded as one of comics’ high points.

After Ennis and Dillon ended their 66-issue run on Preacher, they were recruited to do some work across the pond for Marvel. In no time, the Punisher had the E&D stamp on his head, although the Preacher formula had to be considerably watered down to make things appropriate according to guidelines of the Marvel Knights imprint. Dillon eventually left to go do other things (sadly, crappy things like Wolverine: Origins) and Ennis carried on, eventually having a long run on the Punisher with the MAX line. MAX is a good place for the Punisher to be hanging out, and the Vertigo-esque rulebook gave Ennis a way to tell whatever crazy Punisher stories he had kicking around in his head.

All of this introduction is pretty much a necessity when discussing the new book entitled PunisherMAX. It’s a road that sure seems awfully familiar, but there’s a good reason for staying the course. This is the way the Punisher should be.

So one half of the E&D formula is still working this machine. The new guy is Jason Aaron, and to be completely subjective, I love Scalped and I wish that his Ghost Rider run could have lasted longer. Aaron is tapping into the same kind of writing that Ennis does, and who can blame him? He does it well.

The title of this book is Kingpin. I don’t think there has ever been a story that fleshed Wilson Fisk out so well. It turns out he had a pretty rough childhood and hated his dad. He hated his dad so much that he wound up killing him when he was still just a disturbed little kid. Fisk also didn’t just start out as the Kingpin, as it turns out. He was originally just a bodyguard for this other criminal named Rigoletto who winds up really getting on Fisk’s bad side…

I just have to interject with a moment straight out of Preacher: the use of over-the-top violence that becomes comical because you just can’t figure out how else to react to it. I guess that’s as comical as eyeballs popping out of one’s head can get. That’s what happens to some random guy when he gets on Rigoletto’s nerves and he sends Fisk on him. I’ll spare you the pictures from that scene.

Now I hope that nobody reading this book actually thought for even a second that the Mennonite (a “strong guy” character who looks like a farmer from two hundred years ago) would be a real threat to the Punisher. He’s okay in a sideshow freak kind of way, but did he really even have to be in this book? Oh well, just add him to the list of funny Punisher villains, a la the Russian and Jigsaw.

Like any good Punisher story, by the time Frank Castle is done wrecking shop he’s taken quite a beating. You know, this kind of thing also happens in every Wolverine story that comes down the pipeline, but at least that guy has the mutant healing factor thing going for him. In this story the Punisher gets hit a lot with a mallet by that weird Mennonite guy. It results in a direct hit to the chest, smashed fingers, and then a smashed hand, profuse amounts of blood (you get the picture). Now to Wolverine that would all amount to nothing, but Frank is an old buck who has to heal for awhile. Makes you wonder how he does it.

And can we talk about the end? I wouldn’t consider it to be mean saying that Bullseye shows up on the last page. The next volume should be fun…