“Brainblooms”
First print date: June 25 1977
Prog appearance: 18
Writer(s): John Wagner
Artist(s): Mike McMahon
Total episodes: 1
What an absolutely horrible, creepy idea! Talking plants that look like human heads! Urgh! Seems they're also illegal, as Dredd has to sternly point out to his landlady when Maria buys one for his birthday! Giving her a warning, he sets off in search of the source of the crime, whoever is growing the repugnant things. This turns out to be a “harmless old lady” called Mrs. Mahaffy who lives in Tower House. Dredd pays her a visit, and when she crumbles and agrees to come quietly (well, she's a hundred years old: where's she gonna run?) he grants her request that her plants sing her one last song.
That turns out to be a mistake though, and will probably haunt Dredd, as it's contrary to his nature to be accommodating. Getting the brainblooms to sing “their special song”, Mahaffy ensures that the music --- a loud, penetrating hum --- assaults Dredd's ears and brain and threatens to overwhelm him, and he becomes susceptible to her commands. He has been hypnotised by the ugly head-shaped flowers. He returns to Control, reporting he was not able to pin anything on the old lady.
But Mahaffy's control over Dredd is more sinister than just covering her tracks. She knows that once the hypnotism wears off, as it always does, he will remember or guess what happened, or at the very least begin to question why he let her go. In order to prevent this, she has arranged for him to kill himself by riding his Lawmaster into an oncoming truck. The driver, however, seeing the Judge, swerves and Dredd misses him. He does however hit a crash barrier, and the shock of the impact jars him back to reality. Grimly, he radios in a new report, requesting that a riot squad meet him on the roof of Tower House.
As the old woman, realising she has been outfoxed, tries to pull the same trick Dredd has the riot squad spray the plants with foam, which smothers their voices and prevents them from hypnotising anyone else. The threat now nullified, Ma Mahaffy is taken into custody.
QUOTES
Dredd: “Maria, have you lost your sense? Mere possession of a brainbloom carries a severe penalty! Brainblooms grow like flowers but can imitate any known sound --- the result of bio-organic grafting of plant and human!”
Dredd (thinking): “It's not the shopkeepers and the ordinary citizens I'm interested in, it's the evil person who's growing these things.”
(Like cops all through history, at least recent history, Dredd is not interested in the small fish, the users, the clients. He wants the person who is perpetrating this evil upon Mega-City One. Interestingly, this is directly opposite to the view he took on illegal organ transplants some progs back. There, he reasoned that without customers the business would dry up, here he places the blame squarely on the shoulders of supplier. Different methods of dealing with different crimes.)
Mahaffy: “You caught me fair and square, young fellow. I'll come quietly. But first, you wouldn't deny me one last song from my precious pets?”
Dredd (thinking): “It can't do any harm to let her have this last comfort.”
(A rare lapse in discipline and an even rarer show of compassion for Dredd, both of which he will pay for.)
Mahaffy: “You should have remembered that, in the hands of an expert, brainblooms can be made to emit a sound so hypnotic that no human can resist it! Now you're in my power, young man, and you'll do exactly what Ma tells you!”
Dredd: “Yeehaa! Here goes! That truck will squash me to a pulp! It'll take them days just to scrape me off the road!”
The Long Arm of the Law
Age, it would seem, is no barrier to prosecution and incarceration in Mega-City One. Ma Mahaffy is, Dredd tells us, 100 years old, but she's going to get sent to the Cubes like any other lawbreaker, and for a very long time: probably the rest of what remains of her life. She did, after all, try to engineer the murder of a Judge and make it look like suicide. Still, for a woman of such advanced years she's pretty sprightly; perhaps using age-defying drugs, which are surely available in Mega-City One to those who can afford them?
I'll ask the questions, Creep!
How did Ma Mahaffy acquire the brainblooms? She doesn't look the sort to be well in with bio-engineers, particularly those who operate on the wrong side of the law. And what is it that the plants are fed on? Dredd refers to it, saying that the reason they had to be banned was because of their diet, but we're never told what it is. We can guess, but it's never established for sure.
Welcome to the world of tomorrow!
Stuck for that special gift? Want to do something totally different this year? Want to send a message and make sure it's heard? If you don't mind stepping outside the law and risking being sent to the iso-cubes, you can purchase a brainbloom. Shaped like human heads (and kind of looking like devils with their sharp chins and pointed ears) these plants can replicate any known sound, from music to a high-pitched scream and from a jet engine to the sound a tennis ball makes as it travels across the court from racquet to racquet. Exactly how they came into being is uncertain, but Dredd mentions that they are the result of grafting human organs on to living plants. It's a thoroughly horrible idea, but just another example of the wild and wacky diversions available in Mega-City One to those who can afford them.
Laughing in the face of death
It's quite amusing that when we see Mahaffy talking to her plants, they all sing “You'll never walk alone”, the well-known anthem for Liverpool Football Club. Are we being told, in a sly, oblique way, that she is a scouser, the implication (not to be taken seriously of course) that every Liverpudlian is a “scally”, or untrustworthy person? Does Wagner support “The Reds” and is inserting a private joke here? Whatever the truth of it, it's hilarious to see a row of heads sing “When you walk through a storm, hold your head up high”, especially as these plants are basically entirely made of head, and couldn't hold them up high if they tried!
I AM THE LAW!
Dredd must be pretty pissed at Ma Mahaffy, considering she just tried to have him effect his own removal from this Earth. And yet, he approaches her caution and arrest with the same cold, clinical, detached professionalism that he displays when confronting any lawbreaker. There is no question of revenge here: Mahaffy broke the law, and must pay the price. Also, though he tut-tuts that even at age 100 she is still engaging in criminal activity, Dredd has no compunction about sentencing her as the law requires and locking her up, although it's probably likely she will die in custody.