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Judge Dredd: The Complete Case Files + The Restricted Files+ The Daily Dredds
Judge Dredd: The Complete Case Files 14
The Dark Judges return to destroy Mega-City One!
The Big Meg is under siege from the Dark Judges, Dredd has been exiled to the harsh wastelands of the Cursed Earth and time is running out for the citizens he once swore to protect. With the body-count rising and hope running out, will the Judges be able to turn back the tide of death?
The Big Meg is under siege from the Dark Judges, Dredd has been exiled to the harsh wastelands of the Cursed Earth and time is running out for the citizens he once swore to protect. With the body-count rising and hope running out, will the Judges be able to turn back the tide of death?
272 pages, Paperback
First published January 20, 1990
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173 people want to read
About the author
John Wagner
1,281 books188 followersJohn Wagner is a comics writer who was born in Pennsylvania in 1949 and moved to Scotland as a boy. Alongside Pat Mills, Wagner was responsible for revitalising British boys' comics in the 1970s, and has continued to be a leading light in British comics ever since. He is best known for his work on 2000 AD, for which he created Judge Dredd. He is noted for his taut, violent thrillers and his black humour. Among his pseudonyms are The best known are John Howard, T.B. Grover, Mike Stott, Keef Ripley, Rick Clark and Brian Skuter. (Wikipedia)
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Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews
July 8, 2020
"Necropolis" was the culmination of every major "Judge Dredd" plot line John Wagner had written over the past few years; it reads as if it had been intended to actually complete his run (more on that shortly). This volume--"Necropolis" and its lead-ins--is I think, the strongest so far in our trawl through the Dredd bibliography: smarter, bolder and more consistent than anything that led up to it, even the "Apocalypse War" sequence. Also, believe it or not, it's the only volume of the Complete Case Files to date whose sole writer is Wagner. (It's the only such volume we're going to get for a while, too; that might happen again around the "Doomsday Scenario" sequence, but we probably won't see that for a few years yet.)
Back in the entry on Case Files 8, I was talking about how each of the Dredd epics somehow addresses the relationship between Dredd and the city. "Necropolis" is, effectively, the story of the city without him: Dredd himself appears in it only briefly before its final act, and everything up until then is the consequence of his leaving to be replaced by a version of himself who's technically better but not as attuned to the place and its history. The city without Dredd (or, at least, without the promise of Dredd's return) is lost, almost immediately. Dredd's allegiance is to the law; Kraken's is to playing the part of a Judge. ("Like a Judge" is the key phrase in the way he keeps telling himself to act.)
You can also read "Necropolis" as a twisted variation on The Odyssey, with Kraken as its tormented Telemachus and Mega-City One as both Ithaca and Penelope. The slaughter of the possessed Judges is rather like Odysseus laying waste to the suitors--and by then Giant Jr. has revealed himself as a truer Telemachus than Kraken, the legitimate inheritor of both his actual father's legacy and Dredd's.
But the crucial moment of the story, for me, happens very early on, in chapter 3, as Kraken is reading Dredd's own copy of his "Comportment" and sees his handwritten annotation: "What about the big lie?" Wagner never directly follows up on that within this volume, but it echoes. The big lie is the one behind the system itself: the claim that the Judges are entitled to power indefinitely, by whatever means necessary. Dredd knows it's a lie, and has always believed it anyway. The city loses him when he stops believing it for a little while, and it turns out that without the lie, the city is doomed.
Or maybe he's the one that's doomed. 2000 AD had been hinting for a while that one of its major characters was going to die (see, for instance, that Abbey Road-inspired image I posted a couple of weeks ago). The one who actually did die was Johnny Alpha ("The Final Solution" concluded in the same timespan when "Necropolis" was running, after dragging on in fits and starts for more than a year and a half). But I have to wonder if Wagner thought he might kill Dredd off at some point too--to be replaced by Kraken, or in some other way. By midway through "Necropolis," though, it's clear that Kraken's getting the chop--his failure is absolute--and, in fact, we see him with his missing hand in chapter 12, although it's not clear that that's what's happening from the way the image is framed.
I gather from Thrill-Power Overload and a few other sources that Wagner had been wanting to step away from the ongoing grind of Dredd for a while, although it turned out not to be that easy. It was another year after "Necropolis" before he officially handed the baton off to Garth Ennis with "The Devil You Know"; Wagner didn't write any Dredd episodes in 2000 AD from Prog 754 until Prog 889, although he did co-plot "Judgement Day" and write a bunch of Megazine material during that two-and-a-half-year period. In any case, Wagner seems to be thematically wrapping up his own run on Dredd in "Necropolis," bringing back a lot of the ideas and characters he'd created for one more appearance.
The "Tale of the Dead Man" sequence that opens this volume reintroduces a handful of inside-the-Judge-system concepts from earlier in the series: besides the Judda/"Bloodline" subplot and the democrats from the "Revolution" sequence, it touches on Dredd's "Comportment" (first mentioned way back in "The Making of a Judge"), and recalls Judge Minty (from Prog 147) and Judge Morphy from "A Question of Judgement." Wagner's underscoring the idea that Judges have to be utterly loyal to each other and to the cause: the flash of insubordination that damns Kraken--"your time is over, old man"--contrasts with Dredd telling Morphy "you're not ready for the boneyard yet, sir." This story is absolutely crawling with daddy issues: Kraken's rejection of Dredd is a son's rejection of his father--but his actual father figure is Odell (who's willing to die for him), as Dredd's is Morphy (who does die in front of him).
One other note on "Tale of the Dead Man": the bit about how Dredd gets to keep his Lawmaster bike "as a special privilege" is covering up for the slip-up in "The Dead Man" where Dredd finds the ruins of his bike. (It's usually "the Long Walk," not "the Long Ride"!) Will Simpson's art on the first part of the sequence is, as usual, a little too delicate for Dredd; aside from one Megazine story, he didn't draw Dredd again until "The Chief Judge's Man" more than a decade later. As for Jeff Anderson's episodes... well, they don't look jarringly different from Simpson's.
And then Carlos Ezquerra shows up to start kicking ass for the rest of the book. "By Lethal Injection," the first of his long sequence here, is as perfectly arranged a piece of work as Wagner and Ezquerra have ever done. The second page (above) is a great example of what they were up to, one fantastically well-executed image and storytelling shortcut after another: Odell framed in Kraken's doorway as a watercolored silhouette without black lines (echoed in the next chapter when Kraken wakes up), the shadow of Odell's cane, Kraken pulling on his boots and adjusting his belt for what he believes will be the last time, the little splotch of blue and red that sets off Odell's head where no background's really necessary (and the way the light makes the side of his head open up the border of the page), the yellow-lit sequence of Kraken and Odell walking toward the deputy principal's office (with their earlier conversation continuing over it to get there faster), the refrain of Kraken thinking of Odell's oldness (the same charge he'd leveled against Dredd)... it's entirely a talking-heads sequence, but Ezquerra makes it so foreboding and suspenseful that it's as thrilling as the chaos of "Necropolis" proper.
"By Lethal Injection" is also a master class in Wagner's strengths of narrative compression and shock-after-shock--there's some twist in the story on nearly every page, some of them whoa moments, especially Kraken grabbing the syringe. (There's one great, dark Wagner joke, too: Odell's "all very tasteful...") And the punch line of the story, the revelation of the badge--the same image that provided cliffhangers in "The Shooting Match" and "The Dead Man"--is accompanied by dialogue that cuts off in mid-sentence for an additional aaah what's gonna happen next effect. It's clear what Kraken's about to say, but just think how much less dramatic it would be if he actually said it on panel.
Points to Ezquerra, too, for the way he draws Kraken as having a younger version not just of Dredd's face but of his body. And I absolutely love the way he uses color in "Necropolis": massive blurts of purples and greens and reds, the red of Dredd's helmet the only consistent tone, everything else shifting from one register to another like a bruise. (Anderson's face is pale blue for most of the story, because why not.) I sometimes get frustrated by Ezquerra's airbrushed-looking computer colouring of recent years; the thick, juicy colours here are so much more blunt and satisfying.
"Necropolis" itself is an intense, frantically paced story, but it's also the most strangely structured of any of Wagner's Dredd epics this side of "The Judge Child Quest." The way the back cover of this volume describes the plot is that "The Big Meg is under siege from the Dark Judges, Dredd has been exiled to the harsh wastelands of the Cursed Earth, and time is running out for the citizens he once swore to protect. With the body count rising and hope running out, will the Judges be able to turn back the tide of death?"
That's a straightforward way of describing what happens--but it's not actually what we see on the page. The first act of the story is actually about the decline and fall of Kraken: it's a psychological thriller in which the protagonist is gradually losing his mind, and Anderson and Agee are brought in as near-primary players. (We don't actually see Dredd at all for the first 11 chapters of the story.) It's a little odd that this story brings in Kit Agee only to corrupt and dispatch her. Notably, though, she serves exactly the same function as Judge Corey did in Alan Grant's early Judge Anderson stories, and also seems to have picked up Anderson's habit of referring to the Chief Judge as "CJ." Corey was off the board at that point, having killed herself in "Leviathan's Farewell" about a year earlier; anybody happen to know if Agee was originally supposed to be Corey and got rewritten/redrawn sometime during the process of constructing "Necropolis"?
Act two starts in chapter 12 with the big symbolic splash (of the city overtaken by a smear of festering greenness), with two red splashes on it: one of the inset panels is about the escapees from the gates of the city, one about the death of Silver. That's the meat of the story as it would ordinarily be described--but immediately after the Dark Judges show up (and we get that weird image of Kraken turning away from them and pumping his right, Lawgiver-less fist at us), Wagner elides over the effects of what they've been up to as hearsay. We don't even get a representative scene of the conflict, as we did with the "Dan Tanna Junction" sequence in "The Apocalypse War." And the ambiguity of what's happened to Silver leaves the gaps that Wagner subsequently started filling in with "Theatre of Death" (and that Garth Ennis filled in some more with "Return of the King").
After that opening scene, we finally get back to Dredd (for the first time in four months), in a Cursed Earth setting that Wagner and Ezquerra are once again playing as a fairly straight Wild West scenario, then to McGruder--the redesign with the goatee is pretty brilliant--and the Benedict Arnold Citi-Def group. (How many British readers would even know who Benedict Arnold was?)
But once it's been established that Dredd and McGruder have teamed up, the story of them getting back to the city isn't where the action is, so after the scene-shift provided by the Dark Judges' morning newscast (Wagner can't resist parodying the tone of public service announcements, not that anyone would want him to resist it), we move on to the lengthy sequence with the cadets. (Led, of course, by young Giant, who's got some father issues of his own.)
The cadets give us another image of the city without Dredd-as-the-Law, and another image of children without parent figures; they also give Wagner an opportunity to show us a bunch of high-energy scenes while two of the story's protagonists are in a rowboat and two others are comatose. The plot mechanics require that McGruder and Dredd meet up with Anderson and compare notes--but, of course, the setup of the story makes it very difficult for them to get to the same place, and the mobile judges are in a trip-through-the-underworld situation rather than one that permits much suspense or action. When they finally hit the Big Smelly, the full-page splash panel Ezquerra draws feels like a sigh of exhaustion rather than a revelation. And, again, a big scene that would've taken a while to show is elided over: Anderson wakes up, and there's Dredd, who's met up with the cadets and somehow convinced them that he's not under the Dark Judges' influence, despite the way he looks now.
The third act is a short one, just the final seven chapters: Dredd and his little crew retake Control (and jeez, Giant's pretty cold-blooded about killing Judges), they get rid of the Sisters by killing Kit, they reinstate McGruder, they dispense with the Dark Judges, and at last we get that jaw-dropping confrontation between Dredd and Kraken, who once again faces death without flinching. So how do you end a story like "Necropolis"? With a joke, as Judge Dredd almost always does. (I never understood the final panel until I looked it up. "Muggins" is a Britishism, a deprecating reference to oneself: Anderson is effectively saying "yeah, I'm probably going to have to be the one who takes care of that.")
"Necropolis" has to have required even more careful timing than "The Apocalypse War": this time, Ezquerra drew 31 consecutive episodes in full color, all of which were published on time. (Remember, "The Apocalypse War" missed a week, and shifted to black-and-white only, near its end.) And just before "Necropolis" ended, the Megazine launched, with Wagner and Ezquerra's "Al's Baby" in its first batch of issues. I'm guessing that at least some of "Al's Baby" had been drawn earlier (as I understand, it had been prepared for Toxic!, then rejected by Pat Mills, and the introductory page of the first episode was clearly grafted on after the fact--although Toxic! didn't launch until half a year after "Necropolis" ended). Still, that is one hell of a lot of work for a single artist.
So it's not entirely surprising that Ezquerra only drew a handful of covers over the course of "Necropolis," although one of them is among his best (that terrifying shot of Kraken preparing to "execute" himself). Ezquerra has all but disappeared from 2000 AD's covers over the second half of its run to date: believe it or not, he's only drawn six Dredd covers for the weekly since the end of "Necropolis," plus a couple more for the Megazine. Maybe it's that his sensibility isn't quite in line with what post-1990 comic book covers are supposed to look like, but that's a shame: he's got more raw power than nearly any other contemporary cartoonist I can think of.
A few "Necropolis"-era Dredd covers are other artists' attempts to work with the material Ezquerra was drawing on the inside (the best by far is Steve Yeowell's Judge Death from Prog 696). A lot of others seem to be stock Dredd cover images that 2000 AD had lying around, although I particularly like two of them, both homages to modern artists by David Hine: #666's Andy Warhol pastiche and especially #678's riff on Gilbert & George. How many of 2000 AD's readers even got that joke? I suppose more British than American readers would, but it still seems like it might have been sailing over a few heads.
Back in the entry on Case Files 8, I was talking about how each of the Dredd epics somehow addresses the relationship between Dredd and the city. "Necropolis" is, effectively, the story of the city without him: Dredd himself appears in it only briefly before its final act, and everything up until then is the consequence of his leaving to be replaced by a version of himself who's technically better but not as attuned to the place and its history. The city without Dredd (or, at least, without the promise of Dredd's return) is lost, almost immediately. Dredd's allegiance is to the law; Kraken's is to playing the part of a Judge. ("Like a Judge" is the key phrase in the way he keeps telling himself to act.)
You can also read "Necropolis" as a twisted variation on The Odyssey, with Kraken as its tormented Telemachus and Mega-City One as both Ithaca and Penelope. The slaughter of the possessed Judges is rather like Odysseus laying waste to the suitors--and by then Giant Jr. has revealed himself as a truer Telemachus than Kraken, the legitimate inheritor of both his actual father's legacy and Dredd's.
But the crucial moment of the story, for me, happens very early on, in chapter 3, as Kraken is reading Dredd's own copy of his "Comportment" and sees his handwritten annotation: "What about the big lie?" Wagner never directly follows up on that within this volume, but it echoes. The big lie is the one behind the system itself: the claim that the Judges are entitled to power indefinitely, by whatever means necessary. Dredd knows it's a lie, and has always believed it anyway. The city loses him when he stops believing it for a little while, and it turns out that without the lie, the city is doomed.
Or maybe he's the one that's doomed. 2000 AD had been hinting for a while that one of its major characters was going to die (see, for instance, that Abbey Road-inspired image I posted a couple of weeks ago). The one who actually did die was Johnny Alpha ("The Final Solution" concluded in the same timespan when "Necropolis" was running, after dragging on in fits and starts for more than a year and a half). But I have to wonder if Wagner thought he might kill Dredd off at some point too--to be replaced by Kraken, or in some other way. By midway through "Necropolis," though, it's clear that Kraken's getting the chop--his failure is absolute--and, in fact, we see him with his missing hand in chapter 12, although it's not clear that that's what's happening from the way the image is framed.
I gather from Thrill-Power Overload and a few other sources that Wagner had been wanting to step away from the ongoing grind of Dredd for a while, although it turned out not to be that easy. It was another year after "Necropolis" before he officially handed the baton off to Garth Ennis with "The Devil You Know"; Wagner didn't write any Dredd episodes in 2000 AD from Prog 754 until Prog 889, although he did co-plot "Judgement Day" and write a bunch of Megazine material during that two-and-a-half-year period. In any case, Wagner seems to be thematically wrapping up his own run on Dredd in "Necropolis," bringing back a lot of the ideas and characters he'd created for one more appearance.
The "Tale of the Dead Man" sequence that opens this volume reintroduces a handful of inside-the-Judge-system concepts from earlier in the series: besides the Judda/"Bloodline" subplot and the democrats from the "Revolution" sequence, it touches on Dredd's "Comportment" (first mentioned way back in "The Making of a Judge"), and recalls Judge Minty (from Prog 147) and Judge Morphy from "A Question of Judgement." Wagner's underscoring the idea that Judges have to be utterly loyal to each other and to the cause: the flash of insubordination that damns Kraken--"your time is over, old man"--contrasts with Dredd telling Morphy "you're not ready for the boneyard yet, sir." This story is absolutely crawling with daddy issues: Kraken's rejection of Dredd is a son's rejection of his father--but his actual father figure is Odell (who's willing to die for him), as Dredd's is Morphy (who does die in front of him).
One other note on "Tale of the Dead Man": the bit about how Dredd gets to keep his Lawmaster bike "as a special privilege" is covering up for the slip-up in "The Dead Man" where Dredd finds the ruins of his bike. (It's usually "the Long Walk," not "the Long Ride"!) Will Simpson's art on the first part of the sequence is, as usual, a little too delicate for Dredd; aside from one Megazine story, he didn't draw Dredd again until "The Chief Judge's Man" more than a decade later. As for Jeff Anderson's episodes... well, they don't look jarringly different from Simpson's.
And then Carlos Ezquerra shows up to start kicking ass for the rest of the book. "By Lethal Injection," the first of his long sequence here, is as perfectly arranged a piece of work as Wagner and Ezquerra have ever done. The second page (above) is a great example of what they were up to, one fantastically well-executed image and storytelling shortcut after another: Odell framed in Kraken's doorway as a watercolored silhouette without black lines (echoed in the next chapter when Kraken wakes up), the shadow of Odell's cane, Kraken pulling on his boots and adjusting his belt for what he believes will be the last time, the little splotch of blue and red that sets off Odell's head where no background's really necessary (and the way the light makes the side of his head open up the border of the page), the yellow-lit sequence of Kraken and Odell walking toward the deputy principal's office (with their earlier conversation continuing over it to get there faster), the refrain of Kraken thinking of Odell's oldness (the same charge he'd leveled against Dredd)... it's entirely a talking-heads sequence, but Ezquerra makes it so foreboding and suspenseful that it's as thrilling as the chaos of "Necropolis" proper.
"By Lethal Injection" is also a master class in Wagner's strengths of narrative compression and shock-after-shock--there's some twist in the story on nearly every page, some of them whoa moments, especially Kraken grabbing the syringe. (There's one great, dark Wagner joke, too: Odell's "all very tasteful...") And the punch line of the story, the revelation of the badge--the same image that provided cliffhangers in "The Shooting Match" and "The Dead Man"--is accompanied by dialogue that cuts off in mid-sentence for an additional aaah what's gonna happen next effect. It's clear what Kraken's about to say, but just think how much less dramatic it would be if he actually said it on panel.
Points to Ezquerra, too, for the way he draws Kraken as having a younger version not just of Dredd's face but of his body. And I absolutely love the way he uses color in "Necropolis": massive blurts of purples and greens and reds, the red of Dredd's helmet the only consistent tone, everything else shifting from one register to another like a bruise. (Anderson's face is pale blue for most of the story, because why not.) I sometimes get frustrated by Ezquerra's airbrushed-looking computer colouring of recent years; the thick, juicy colours here are so much more blunt and satisfying.
"Necropolis" itself is an intense, frantically paced story, but it's also the most strangely structured of any of Wagner's Dredd epics this side of "The Judge Child Quest." The way the back cover of this volume describes the plot is that "The Big Meg is under siege from the Dark Judges, Dredd has been exiled to the harsh wastelands of the Cursed Earth, and time is running out for the citizens he once swore to protect. With the body count rising and hope running out, will the Judges be able to turn back the tide of death?"
That's a straightforward way of describing what happens--but it's not actually what we see on the page. The first act of the story is actually about the decline and fall of Kraken: it's a psychological thriller in which the protagonist is gradually losing his mind, and Anderson and Agee are brought in as near-primary players. (We don't actually see Dredd at all for the first 11 chapters of the story.) It's a little odd that this story brings in Kit Agee only to corrupt and dispatch her. Notably, though, she serves exactly the same function as Judge Corey did in Alan Grant's early Judge Anderson stories, and also seems to have picked up Anderson's habit of referring to the Chief Judge as "CJ." Corey was off the board at that point, having killed herself in "Leviathan's Farewell" about a year earlier; anybody happen to know if Agee was originally supposed to be Corey and got rewritten/redrawn sometime during the process of constructing "Necropolis"?
Act two starts in chapter 12 with the big symbolic splash (of the city overtaken by a smear of festering greenness), with two red splashes on it: one of the inset panels is about the escapees from the gates of the city, one about the death of Silver. That's the meat of the story as it would ordinarily be described--but immediately after the Dark Judges show up (and we get that weird image of Kraken turning away from them and pumping his right, Lawgiver-less fist at us), Wagner elides over the effects of what they've been up to as hearsay. We don't even get a representative scene of the conflict, as we did with the "Dan Tanna Junction" sequence in "The Apocalypse War." And the ambiguity of what's happened to Silver leaves the gaps that Wagner subsequently started filling in with "Theatre of Death" (and that Garth Ennis filled in some more with "Return of the King").
After that opening scene, we finally get back to Dredd (for the first time in four months), in a Cursed Earth setting that Wagner and Ezquerra are once again playing as a fairly straight Wild West scenario, then to McGruder--the redesign with the goatee is pretty brilliant--and the Benedict Arnold Citi-Def group. (How many British readers would even know who Benedict Arnold was?)
But once it's been established that Dredd and McGruder have teamed up, the story of them getting back to the city isn't where the action is, so after the scene-shift provided by the Dark Judges' morning newscast (Wagner can't resist parodying the tone of public service announcements, not that anyone would want him to resist it), we move on to the lengthy sequence with the cadets. (Led, of course, by young Giant, who's got some father issues of his own.)
The cadets give us another image of the city without Dredd-as-the-Law, and another image of children without parent figures; they also give Wagner an opportunity to show us a bunch of high-energy scenes while two of the story's protagonists are in a rowboat and two others are comatose. The plot mechanics require that McGruder and Dredd meet up with Anderson and compare notes--but, of course, the setup of the story makes it very difficult for them to get to the same place, and the mobile judges are in a trip-through-the-underworld situation rather than one that permits much suspense or action. When they finally hit the Big Smelly, the full-page splash panel Ezquerra draws feels like a sigh of exhaustion rather than a revelation. And, again, a big scene that would've taken a while to show is elided over: Anderson wakes up, and there's Dredd, who's met up with the cadets and somehow convinced them that he's not under the Dark Judges' influence, despite the way he looks now.
The third act is a short one, just the final seven chapters: Dredd and his little crew retake Control (and jeez, Giant's pretty cold-blooded about killing Judges), they get rid of the Sisters by killing Kit, they reinstate McGruder, they dispense with the Dark Judges, and at last we get that jaw-dropping confrontation between Dredd and Kraken, who once again faces death without flinching. So how do you end a story like "Necropolis"? With a joke, as Judge Dredd almost always does. (I never understood the final panel until I looked it up. "Muggins" is a Britishism, a deprecating reference to oneself: Anderson is effectively saying "yeah, I'm probably going to have to be the one who takes care of that.")
"Necropolis" has to have required even more careful timing than "The Apocalypse War": this time, Ezquerra drew 31 consecutive episodes in full color, all of which were published on time. (Remember, "The Apocalypse War" missed a week, and shifted to black-and-white only, near its end.) And just before "Necropolis" ended, the Megazine launched, with Wagner and Ezquerra's "Al's Baby" in its first batch of issues. I'm guessing that at least some of "Al's Baby" had been drawn earlier (as I understand, it had been prepared for Toxic!, then rejected by Pat Mills, and the introductory page of the first episode was clearly grafted on after the fact--although Toxic! didn't launch until half a year after "Necropolis" ended). Still, that is one hell of a lot of work for a single artist.
So it's not entirely surprising that Ezquerra only drew a handful of covers over the course of "Necropolis," although one of them is among his best (that terrifying shot of Kraken preparing to "execute" himself). Ezquerra has all but disappeared from 2000 AD's covers over the second half of its run to date: believe it or not, he's only drawn six Dredd covers for the weekly since the end of "Necropolis," plus a couple more for the Megazine. Maybe it's that his sensibility isn't quite in line with what post-1990 comic book covers are supposed to look like, but that's a shame: he's got more raw power than nearly any other contemporary cartoonist I can think of.
A few "Necropolis"-era Dredd covers are other artists' attempts to work with the material Ezquerra was drawing on the inside (the best by far is Steve Yeowell's Judge Death from Prog 696). A lot of others seem to be stock Dredd cover images that 2000 AD had lying around, although I particularly like two of them, both homages to modern artists by David Hine: #666's Andy Warhol pastiche and especially #678's riff on Gilbert & George. How many of 2000 AD's readers even got that joke? I suppose more British than American readers would, but it still seems like it might have been sailing over a few heads.
July 25, 2022
Necropolis. A good read. Dredd on top form
April 24, 2016
Back to business after a wobble with the new coloured art. This volume holds the full Necropolis story, which is awesome sauce. Ezquerra's art is great fun in colour. Nice.
EDIT: I've removed a star after reading the next volume. Like the Dredd/Kraken aspect of Necropolis but the general change in tone at this point is annoying. Intriguing but annoying. Ezquerra's art IS much better in colour but he's still far from my preferred Dredd artist. Can't help but feel that the Dredd I loved has moved on to something different. It's well-documented that this was the start of a transitionary phase in the 2000AD galaxy. I hope I feel at home with the future output.
EDIT: I've removed a star after reading the next volume. Like the Dredd/Kraken aspect of Necropolis but the general change in tone at this point is annoying. Intriguing but annoying. Ezquerra's art IS much better in colour but he's still far from my preferred Dredd artist. Can't help but feel that the Dredd I loved has moved on to something different. It's well-documented that this was the start of a transitionary phase in the 2000AD galaxy. I hope I feel at home with the future output.
June 2, 2021
John Wagner should be much more appreciated and mentioned along other big names in comic writing. Mainly because he surpasses them with flying colors. He is always good and in megalong mega-epics like Necropolis here, he is just brilliant and should be worshiped. And Ezquerra art does not hurt either.
September 14, 2010
This is roughly where I got into 2000AD and Dredd as a kid, so nice to read them all in one go without episodes missing, and with a vague idea of who everybody is! The Case Files is one of the thinner volumes, but contains Necropolis, which was great (although ended in a bit of a rush).
January 13, 2016
Necropolis one of the greatest Dredd epics
Dredd takes the long walk. He's replaced by a clone formerly an enemy. Then the sisters of death arrive... their plan to bring back judge death and his cronies and bring judgement to mega one!
Dredd takes the long walk. He's replaced by a clone formerly an enemy. Then the sisters of death arrive... their plan to bring back judge death and his cronies and bring judgement to mega one!
December 19, 2021
One of the quickest and most delightful case files I’ve had the pleasure of digging into yet. This volume collects the entirety of the mega-epic Necropolis, and is, basically, perfect. This stands proudly next to Volume 5 and The Apocalypse War as the very finest of Dredd.
August 22, 2018
After years of slow build up, Wagner finally explodes everything in Necropolis, the best arc since Apocalypse War. The rest of the stories are pretty good too.
October 9, 2022
The preludes to Necropolis are the best Judge Dredd stories yet!
December 31, 2023
This volume is the stone cold classic Necropolis epic, often collected but appearing here in the right place for the complete Dredd. Essential.
June 25, 2020
Judge Dredd goes soft! He's in charge of breaking up a riot by democrats and a few heads get busted as usual. Then he gets a letter from a child asking why peaceful protesters were killed by Judges who are meant to uphold justice. He gets doubts about the system he serves! It's like Dirty Harry Callaghan becoming a social worker.
An honourable man, Joe Dredd decides he must quit rather than serve a cause he is no longer sure of and decides to take the long walk. His last assignment is to assess Kraken, a clone brother of his who was raised from birth by the evil Judd to overthrow the Mega-City judges but has now been reconditioned to join them. (I don't know who the evil Judd was either but in a long-running series you have to accept a bit of murky back story). Anyway, Kraken performs brilliantly and Dredd fails him on the test. He doesn't trust him: a hunch.
Then Dredd takes the long walk out into the Cursed Earth.
For a large chunk of the book that bears his name, Dredd is not even on the scene. This doesn't matter because the story proceeds nicely. The Chief Judge decides that the city still needs Dredd so he gives Kraken his name badge and puts him to work. Only a few at the top know he isn't the real thing, for as a clone brother he has the same jaw. Will the jaw help him cope when the Sisters of Death bring back Judge Death and his crew to turn Mega-City One into Necropolis? Not much.
The tale is written by John Wagner, co-creator of Dredd, and illustrated mostly by Carlos Ezquerra who designed the look of both the judges and Mega-City One way back in 1977. This is from 1990, Progs 662-699 of 2000 AD. The first part of the book is drawn very nicely by Will Simpson. I'm not a big fan of Carlos Ezquerra but I must say his art looks better in colour than it does in black and white and he turns in a good job here. So he should because the story is very good.
An aside here: one always thinks of comic creators as young, rebellious hippie types - and no doubt they were, but John Wagner was born in 1949 and Carlos Ezquerra in 1947! They’re probably grandfathers by now. Happily, they still produce good work, the wisdom of experience perhaps compensating for the loss of youthful enthusiasm. And the work here is 20 years old, of course.
As a poor person, I am always aware of the cost/benefit ratio in books, the amount of reading pleasure per penny, as it were. These 272 colour pages come with a recommended retail price of £18.99 but you can get them for less than eleven quid from certain retailers. At that price it's worth it.
An honourable man, Joe Dredd decides he must quit rather than serve a cause he is no longer sure of and decides to take the long walk. His last assignment is to assess Kraken, a clone brother of his who was raised from birth by the evil Judd to overthrow the Mega-City judges but has now been reconditioned to join them. (I don't know who the evil Judd was either but in a long-running series you have to accept a bit of murky back story). Anyway, Kraken performs brilliantly and Dredd fails him on the test. He doesn't trust him: a hunch.
Then Dredd takes the long walk out into the Cursed Earth.
For a large chunk of the book that bears his name, Dredd is not even on the scene. This doesn't matter because the story proceeds nicely. The Chief Judge decides that the city still needs Dredd so he gives Kraken his name badge and puts him to work. Only a few at the top know he isn't the real thing, for as a clone brother he has the same jaw. Will the jaw help him cope when the Sisters of Death bring back Judge Death and his crew to turn Mega-City One into Necropolis? Not much.
The tale is written by John Wagner, co-creator of Dredd, and illustrated mostly by Carlos Ezquerra who designed the look of both the judges and Mega-City One way back in 1977. This is from 1990, Progs 662-699 of 2000 AD. The first part of the book is drawn very nicely by Will Simpson. I'm not a big fan of Carlos Ezquerra but I must say his art looks better in colour than it does in black and white and he turns in a good job here. So he should because the story is very good.
An aside here: one always thinks of comic creators as young, rebellious hippie types - and no doubt they were, but John Wagner was born in 1949 and Carlos Ezquerra in 1947! They’re probably grandfathers by now. Happily, they still produce good work, the wisdom of experience perhaps compensating for the loss of youthful enthusiasm. And the work here is 20 years old, of course.
As a poor person, I am always aware of the cost/benefit ratio in books, the amount of reading pleasure per penny, as it were. These 272 colour pages come with a recommended retail price of £18.99 but you can get them for less than eleven quid from certain retailers. At that price it's worth it.
December 31, 2022
Or basically Necropolis in its entirety. It reads a lot better after the long, slow preamble and definitely feels a bit like Wagner was writing his final and definitive version of Mega City One. Douglas Wolk has written some fine work on this era, especially bringing up the overwhelming amount of daddy issues going on (one complicated by McGruder essentially being both a mummy AND daddy figure after their mutation in the cursed earth and their new found tendency to talk about themselves in the third person plural). The Dark Judges always act as a sort of mirror version of Dredd’s world (or at least have done until their current shitty Megazine phase - Kek-W is doing far better world building in his Fall of Deadworld work), but Kraken, Giant, Dredd, Agee, Silver, Morphy and many more are all working throughout as some kind of mirror image during the story. Essentially it’s summarising elements of the entire 600 odd issues that went before in some way or another
Which also explains that unlike the Apocalypse War (and it’s shit cover version Judgement Day) it’s not remotely linear. Like Wagner would perfect in Day of Chaos, it’s all slow and jittery build up followed by very little shown of the actual horrors, instead giving way to the aftermath and clean up (which in Day of Chaos is essentially Dredd realising he has overwhelmingly failed). It’s not like the strip couldn’t have shown us the devastation throughout the Big Meg, but it has no desire to. Far more effective to show the response of the victims and survivors to the horrors unfolding around them. It’s also interesting that although Death and co. are obviously the prime monsters here, it’s actually his Sisters that are the powers behind the fall - another nicely judged contrast to Dredd needing McGruder and Anderson to defeat the threat
Which also explains that unlike the Apocalypse War (and it’s shit cover version Judgement Day) it’s not remotely linear. Like Wagner would perfect in Day of Chaos, it’s all slow and jittery build up followed by very little shown of the actual horrors, instead giving way to the aftermath and clean up (which in Day of Chaos is essentially Dredd realising he has overwhelmingly failed). It’s not like the strip couldn’t have shown us the devastation throughout the Big Meg, but it has no desire to. Far more effective to show the response of the victims and survivors to the horrors unfolding around them. It’s also interesting that although Death and co. are obviously the prime monsters here, it’s actually his Sisters that are the powers behind the fall - another nicely judged contrast to Dredd needing McGruder and Anderson to defeat the threat
October 24, 2023
In the riveting world of Mega City One, this case file stands as a testament to excellence, making it a delight to review. From the very outset, the artwork captivates, with Will Simpson initiating the journey and Carlos Esquerra masterfully carrying the torch throughout the narrative. It's a visual spectacle, an epic tale meticulously crafted over time.
Case Files 13 weaves a complex tapestry, seamlessly intertwining the sagas of Judge Death and his sinister cohorts from Case Files 3 and 5 with the introduction of intriguing new characters, the enigmatic Sister of Death. As chaos ensues, these characters take center stage, their malevolence threatening to engulf Mega City One. In this dire moment, Judge Dredd reemerges, alongside a former Chief Judge, the indomitable Judge Anderson, and the valiant Rookie Giant, to combat this malevolent force.
What sets this case file apart is its meticulous buildup, the crescendo of madness, and the triumphant return of Dredd. The narrative flows effortlessly, guided by the skillful hands of storytellers who expertly merge images and words, creating a dynamic and engaging experience. This epic tale, long anticipated, does not disappoint; it delivers with precision and flair. From its compelling storyline to its visually stunning execution, this case file exemplifies storytelling at its finest, leaving readers eagerly anticipating what Mega City One's future holds.
September 16, 2022
Like all of the case files they improve as they go on, this is no exception ,better than 13 which was better than 12, you get the idea.
A true comic book hero, complex and shifting , sometimes he’s a hero sometimes he’s an anti hero, but always brilliantly well written and usually beautifully drawn.
A true comic book hero, complex and shifting , sometimes he’s a hero sometimes he’s an anti hero, but always brilliantly well written and usually beautifully drawn.
September 22, 2025
Im really not sure what to make of the color
It's alright. Not quite as good as Apocalypse War or Cursed Earth Saga. Dredds not in alot of it as himself & it definitely hurts the story. It immediately gets better once he's in it
It's alright. Not quite as good as Apocalypse War or Cursed Earth Saga. Dredds not in alot of it as himself & it definitely hurts the story. It immediately gets better once he's in it
December 26, 2019
It's a fact: Necropolis is the first really good colored story with Dredd!
A real pageturning epic that you must read!
A real pageturning epic that you must read!
February 3, 2023
Necropolis. Bloody hell!
June 23, 2023
A edge of the seat ride from the begining, plots twists, stunning art, daring and jaw dropping events! :D
August 8, 2024
Life is a sin and the sentence is death. Judge Death is back! And this time he’s bringing his entire cabal of baddies to try and take over Megacity 1. Easily the best reoccurring villain in the entirety of the Dredd canon makes his triumphant return in what is easily the best Dredd storyline up to this point. For nearly 2 years Wagner had been working his progs to culminate in his magnum opus, combining multiple plots, characters, and arcs into this penultimate event. And I think that is why this entire volume is so damn good. It’s easy enough to understand on its own, and the story is top notch, but there are so many different events leading up to the return of Death, that it feels entirely worth the time spent getting there. From the Oz/Judda arcs, to the Bloodline story, to elements of the Hot Dog Run, “The Cursed Earth”, and a few other popular 2 or 3 issue progs, and they all combine effortlessly…almost how the final stage of the MCU all lead up to the near perfect “Avengers: Infinity War” and “Endgame”. Like most, I’m not usually a fan of Ezquerra’s black and white artwork, but here, the color really adds to the overall bleak and unsettling tone. Death and Mortis, as well as the sisters look awesome with a full color palette, and watching the destruction of Megacity 1 with all the right shades and tones adds yet another amazing aspect to this one. As far as I know this was the last full and complete arc entirely by Wagner until “Dredd: Origins” and man, what a way to go out for such a long time. The bummer is that there aren’t that many more popular and recognizable arcs for quite some time in the Dredd catalogue, so it’s gonna be quite a while until we get something as great as the “Necropolis” storyline included in “Case Files 14”.
February 13, 2017
This is the first volume to feature all Dredd stories in colour! The entire volume is consumed by the Necropolis story, with the first half setting it up and the second half devoted to the epic in which the city is transformed into a supernatural death factory. It is all gripping stuff, but Necropolis could have been fleshed out more - parts of it seem repetitive and unnecessary. Great to see the whole Dredd / Kraken story unfold (we have never seen Dredd so vulnerable) and am curious as to where it will lead in the next book.
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