The other regular deviation from our chronological trawl through the thousands of
Dredd stories will be this, which will occur at unspecified but relatively regular intervals.
The Judge Dredd Hall of Fame
A classic
Dredd story, often a multi-part one, and one that has earned its place in the Dredd Hall of Fame. As time went on and Judge Dredd became more popular - eventually, the most successful story in
2000AD (no other character has had not one, but two movies made about his exploits) - readers began to tire of the one, two or three-episode basic stories, and the writers wished to stretch themselves too. So larger, multi-episode plots were envisaged, and thus was born the
Dredd epic, which would run over multiple issues, often stretching into months at a time. In theory, this really began with Robot Wars, but that was a paltry nine episodes long, and didn't really qualify as a true epic. In time though, there would be many. Of note the ones that come to mind include
The Day the Law died, The Four Dark Judges, The Judge Child, Unamerican Grafitti, and the granddaddy of them all,
The Cursed Earth. But the one I want to look at this first time out is this:
Title: “The Apocalypse War”
First print date: January 2 1982
Prog appearance: 245
Writer(s): John Wagner and Alan Grant
Artist(s): Carlos Ezquerra
Total episodes: 25
The Apocalypse War, Episode One
The dire warning in the opening panel leaves no room for doubt that this will be a hard-hitting story: “For millions of people, today will be the end of the world”.
Prior to this, Mega-City One has been in the grip of what has been known as first Block War and then Block Mania. To quickly explain: all citizens live in tower blocks, and during Block War hostilities broke out between blocks, and there were was fighting, death and destruction of property. It now seems, with Block Mania, a condition known to exist that pushes inhabitants over the edge of sanity and heightens aggression, leading to the outbreak of Block War, under some sort of control, that this has all been a dastardly plot orchestrated by Sov-Blok, the Russian counterpart to Wagner's futuristic America. In East-Meg One, their capital city, the Diktatorat, the ruling body of the Sov-Blok, holds a meeting in which they plan nothing less than the total destruction of Mega-City One.
At just past 3 AM, missile silos launch their deadly payload into the skies, while orbiting the Earth, a fleet of war satellites take down America's own orbital platforms. The oceans are no refuge either, as deepsea defence pods known as SKUNKS (Solo-operated Concealed Underwater Nuclear Kill-pods) are blasted by torpedoes dropped from East-Meg strato-v bombers. Finally, Mega-City One's own missile silos in the Cursed Earth are destroyed by sov bombers. Taken completely by surprise, Mega-City One is left reeling from the unexpected and unprovoked attack, and with Block Mania still in full flight, most of the citizens neither realise nor care that they are at war: they're already at war, with each other! Dredd orders that the antidote for Block Mania be issued to key personnel, ensures that a retaliatory strike has been ordered, and then has a moment to wonder why? Why are the Sovs launching an all-out attack? They must know there can be no winner here. Haven't they been paying attention to history, especially that between these two superpowers? MAD mean nothing to them?
Still, the war has begun and Dredd is damned if Mega-City One is going to go down without a fight!
Quotes
Judge Vlad: “We will hit them without warning! Without mercy! We will pay them back for the indignities they have heaped upon us! Before this day is out, I promise you, Mega-City One will be crushed, and its decadent citizens will be slaves to the might of our glorious East-Meg!”
Supreme Judge Bulgarin: “Spare us the speech, Vlad. I assume we're ready? Let the apocalypse begin!”
Bulgarin: “We have waited a long time for this moment. Let us hope your plan works, Judge Snekov.”
Judge Snekov: “It will. Our enemy is strong. Naturally we must expect to receive some damage in the initial stages of the war. I estimate.... let me see ... up to twelve percent of our population will perish in the first hour.”
Judge Vlad: “Twelve percent? But that's alarming! We must broadcast to the people immediately! Advise them of the reason for their sacrifice...”
Bulgarin: “The people? What have
they to do with it?”
Chief Judge Griffin: “I suppose I'd better inform the citizens.”
Dredd: “The citizens? What makes you think
they'd be interested?”
Griffin: “I don't understand, Dredd. It's illogical. The Sovs must know it's a war they can't win!”
Dredd: “Maybe. Or maybe they know something we don't!”
Those clever little touches
I like how the responses of Dredd and the Sov Supreme Judge to the idea of informing the citizenry of the situation are mirrored, though while the Sov dismisses the people with a contemptuous snort: to him, they're nothing more than cattle and he doesn't care if they die, Dredd is more worried about that fact that most of Mega-City One is deep in the throes of Block Mania, and fighting nonsensical Block Wars amongst themselves, thus depriving the city of any means of defending itself. The two quotes seem very close, but they are in fact a world apart. Still, you can't help wondering if, deep down, Dredd doesn't really harbour the same contempt for his people. Were he to be presented with a foolproof way to save his city by sending millions to their deaths, don't you think he'd take it, and think the bargain cheap?
Laughing in the face of death
Hard to laugh about something as horrifying as all-out nuclear war, but it's amusing that the Sov Judges have such interesting names. Judge Snekov, who masterminded the “sneak” attack, Judge Vlad, who must be based on our old friend upon whom Stoker drew for the character of his famous vampire, and doesn't Judge Bulgarin (whose first name is Josef) look very like Stalin?
Other than that though, nothing to laugh about. War's a serious business, nuclear war even more so.
I'll ask the questions, Creep!
The obvious one is the one Chief Judge Griffin voices. For years now, both Russia and the USA have known that they can't launch nuclear attacks as this will provoke an immediate and fatal response from the other, and each will destroy the other. It's what kept the peace in the Cold War, and was referred to as MAD, or Mutually Assured Destruction. When you know you can kill someone but that he will without question kill you if you do, then you find it harder to pull the trigger. The old Mexican standoff. So each may hate the other, but they're both afraid to push too hard: nobody in their right mind wants nuclear war. So why are the Sovs now making the first move? Sure, as expected, Mega-City One has retaliated, and within minutes there will be millions dead on each side. But what will that accomplish? Most of America (and presumably Russia and the rest of the world too) is already nuclear wasteland, so this has been done before. Is anyone really stupid enough to try it again?
Seems the Sov-Blok is. But what can they possibly expect to get out of it? Or is there some deeper, darker purpose behind their plan, something Dredd and the Judges of Mega-City One can only wonder at?
I AM THE LAW!
Faced with the almost unthinkable prospect of nuclear war with the Sovs, Dredd acts almost like a Chief Judge himself, issuing orders and deriding Griffin's attempt to announce the onset of the war to the city's population. One thing is certain: he will make sure the Sovs pay for this day's work, and if Mega-City One goes down, he's going to make sure he takes the Sov-Blok with him!
Messages
Obviously the clear one will be that there are no winners in war, especially a nuclear one, and all the preparedness in the world can't protect you against a sneak attack, as the US found out on December 7 1941. But I'm unsure whether Wagner and Grant are here saying it's better to have your defences on alert, or that it's a waste of time spending your budget on them. It's clear that there have been strained relations between the two powers, as we're told at the start of the story, though whether this has been alluded to previously or not I can't remember, and as we're jumping forward five years here I can't say for sure, but certainly in the real world this was eight years before the Berlin Wall would fall; Brezhnev was in power and would be succeeded by Andropov as Premier, and only with the arrival of Gorbachev in 1985 would the USSR (as it was at the time) begin to pull back from the frosty relations it had maintained with Europe and especially the USA.
Writing in 1982, Grant and Wagner must still have been happy to view the USSR as a threat, and comfortable enough to write a story that might seem believable back then. Yes, the Cold War was more or less over, but each superpower existed in its own separate bubble, in an uneasy state of truce, as Soviet spy planes passed over American installations and vice versa, and the arms race heated up. History has sadly shown us that, though one man can make a difference, he doesn't live forever and if his successor does not carry on his work then all that work can have been for nothing. A drunken boorish Yeltsin was not what Russia needed to follow Gorbachev, and slowly and rather alarmingly, they've slipped back to almost the Cold War days of Kruschev, again seen as a threat to world peace.
Perhaps, bleak as it may be, the message is never trust the Russians.
Nothing changes?
You would think after, at this point one hundred but at the time of writing two hundred years, the Russians and the Americans would have sorted out their differences and learned to live in peace. But even as we see today, with Putin pushing against his so-called allies and doing whatever the damn hell he wants, the days of Gorbachev and Glasnost are well and truly over. And when you have two superpowers in the world, there's always going to be tension and there's always going to be the potential for conflict. Not quite the Earth Gene Roddenberry imagined, where war, poverty, crime and injustice have been eliminated!