“Muggers Moon”
First print date: July 2 1977
Prog appearance: 19
Writer(s): Gerry Finley-Day
Artist(s): John Cooper
Total episodes: 1

Dredd goes on patrol during what's known as a “Mugger's moon”: a bright, full one. As he heads out on the road, an unlucky citizen is being mugged. Despite surrendering his money to the thieves, he is still to be beaten up “just for fun”. Thinking he is saved when a car comes along the road, he is dismayed to find that the driver does not want to get involved and drives on. In desperation he grabs onto the exhaust pipe of the fleeing car, and burns his hand. Luckily for him, Dredd is on the scene and despatches the muggers, then asks the would-be victim to describe the car that left him and the driver who refused to help. He is determined to make an example and show the citizenry that they can't just bury their heads in the sand when danger is in front of them, that they can't leave their fellow citizens to the mercy of muggers.
http://www.trollheart.com/Dredd19a.png
Catching up on the car, Dredd pulls it over but the driver is cocky: “You ain't got nothing on me Judge” he says with a smirk. “I didn't break no law.” And Dredd, to his chagrin, has to agree: refusing help to a citizen is not a crime. But then his eye lights on the broken exhaust pipe and he smiles grimly. Mega-City One's anti-pollution laws are strict and absolute, and because the exhaust has been (unbeknownst to the driver) spewing exhaust fumes into the pristine air of the city, Dredd carries out the assigned punishment for this crime. Ordering the driver out of the car, he aims at it and destroys it. The driver is aghast: he paid a lot for this vintage car. But now he knows that had he stopped, or at least called the Judges and reported the crime in progress, he might have paid a much lower price.

Quotes
Victim: “Muggers! Here, take all my money! Please don't hurt me!”
Mugger: “We'll take your money all right pal, but we'll hurt you too, just for fun!”

Mugger 1: “What a laugh! He's grabbed the exhaust pipe and burned his hand!”
Mugger 2: “Yeah! Now we're gonna burn him --- permanent!”

Victim: “I'm saved! When that motorist drove off and left me I thought I was done for! Thank you, Judge! How can I ever repay you?”
Dredd: “You can describe the car of the scum who left you in cold blood, Citizen: the law must deal with him too!”

Dredd: “You drove off leaving an innocent citizen at the mercy of muggers, correct?”
Driver: “Sure! It was none of my business. And it ain't a crime, so you can't touch me.”
Dredd: “You're right, Citizen. My bike's computer terminal says you're clean. But my Pollution Meter says your car isn't!”
Drive: “Huh? That guy must have broken off the exhaust purifier when he grabbed it. I didn't know: I'll get it fixed.”
Dredd: “It's too late for that. You have broken the law by polluting the atmosphere. You know the penalty. Get out of the car.”
Driver: “But Judge, this an old twentieth century petrol burner! It cost me a bomb!”
Dredd: “Out of the car! For gross pollution of the atmosphere, this vehicle is condemned to immediate destruction!”
http://www.trollheart.com/Dredd19b.png
I AM THE LAW!
One thing Dredd hates, possibly as much as if not more than perps, is those who turn a blind eye. In doing so, in refusing to come to the aid of an afflicted fellow citizen, they help perpetrate the cycle of violence, as wrongdoers know they can act with impunity, and nobody will interfere. Everyone is too scared; nobody wants to get involved. (Sound familiar?) But much as he wishes to punish this citizen for what he sees as dereliction of the duty of any citizen to do what he or she can to help uphold the law, Dredd is also bound by the strictures of that very law. If he had not seen the broken exhaust, all he could do is probably warn the driver that Dredd would be watching him, and the moment he broke a law --- even a small one --- the Judge would come down upon him.

Luckily for Dredd, though he can't sentence the man to any punishment as he has not committed any crime, the pollution of the air of Mega-City One carries heavy penalties, and the fact that this car cost the man so much is going to mean that its loss (in such a way as he surely has no recourse to compensation or insurance) is going to hit him harder than perhaps a spell in the cubes. You want to hurt a car enthusiast? Wreck his car.

It's interesting to see, too, that common or garden muggers can be shot down as easily as murderers and bankrobbers; seems they all fall into the same category of criminal, and I guess it's to be expected that in general they might go so far as to kill their victims, though this is by no means certain. I suppose in terms of perps, they're seen as one of the lowest, those who prey on the vulnerable for profit and for whom violence is a way of life. There's a definite “police state/totalitarianism” bent though to the fact that Dredd just shoots them out of hand, without any chance of surrender. Then again, they did shoot out his headlights first...

Welcome to the world of tomorrow!
Where, thanks to stringent anti-pollution laws, the air is, as Sinatra once put it “fresh and clean”, and the Judges intend it to remain that way. Consequently, anyone who pollutes is liable to severe penalties. What those penalties are if they don't involve a motor vehicle is not clear, but one would assume incarceration would certainly figure in them. I'm not quite sure what it is that the rest of the vehicles run on --- we've seen, during the “Robot Wars” story, that oil is certainly still in use, though as I postulated this could be only for use in robots and not vehicles --- but whatever it is, it seems not to pollute the air, and can't really, as otherwise the daily cavalcade of Lawmasters tearing up and down Mega-City One's freeways and highways would surely be the biggest offenders?
http://www.trollheart.com/Dredd19c.png
Notes: Generally speaking, this is a very weak and uneventful episode. It could be summed up really in two sentences: Dredd chases after muggers and shoots them all, then goes after a citizen who refused to help. He finds his car's exhaust is polluting the atmosphere and destroys it. The end. Okay, three sentences. But it's telling that this is the first script in a long while that has not been written by creator John Wagner, and while it's action packed for what it is, it adds little to the story or the development of Dredd. Even the previous episode helped flesh out his character by showing that he can be, very occasionally, moved to compassion, and featured him sporting a rarer-than-rare grin, even if this was hypnotically induced. But the only real thing we can take from this is that Dredd will always find a way to make the guilty pay. Other than that, it's a “ridealong” episode without anyone (unless you count us) to ride along with him; a typical night in the life of a Judge.

Wagner would return in the following issue, and the story would be so much better, even introducing a new character who would be a recurring, if not very important one.

“The Comic Pusher”
First print date: July 9 1977
Prog appearance: 20
Writer(s): John Wagner
Artist(s): John Cooper
Total episodes: 1

New character!
http://static.comicvine.com/uploads/...comic_0001.jpg
Max Normal, known as the Pinstripe Freak. In a world where the norm is to dress garishly and to have long hair, Max stands out like a sore thumb in his pinstripe suit, bowler hat, brolly and crewcut hair. He is however one of Dredd's narks, an informer who gives him details about upcoming crimes, or the location of lawbreakers who are on the run, or indeed any juicy information that could be helpful to the Judges.

Dredd meets Max Normal, one of his informers, and though disgusted at the clean-cut image Normal presents, listens as the Pinstripe Freak tells him he has some good information for him. Indeed, it turns out to be a bombshell: the owner of the soda bar across the way, Max tells him, is selling comics to kids. This is highly illegal and Dredd is interested when Max tells him there is to be a big comic drop that night. He thanks the informer and stakes out the comic drop, but he does not bust Sam, the soda bar owner, just yet. He wants, as ever, to find the source of this illegal trade. The bagman unknowingly leads him to a warehouse, the store of an importer which the Judges have long suspected of being involved in the comic book business. Now they have their proof.

Forcing his way into the warehouse Dredd takes down the owners, who try to kill him. Although he shoots them, they are assured by another Judge that they will not die, and will be able to look forward to a nice long stretch in the iso-cubes. Back at Justice Central, the Chief Judge advises Dredd to look at one of the comic slugs, so that he can appreciate how valuable they are. Of course, they turn out to be issues of 2000AD! Dredd is impressed...
http://www.trollheart.com/Dredd20a.png
Quotes
Dredd: “Stomm! It makes me sick just to look at you, Max! Why don't you grow your hair and get some decent wild clothes like everybody else? Why have you young people always gotta be different?”
Max: “Don't be mean to the dude who's clean! I got some tight info. Stretch a lobe and I'll lay it on you!”

Dredd (thinking): “Old comics are worth a fortune. Selling them to kids is one of the lowest forms of crime. After one or two, kids get so they can't give them up. Then the price goes up and up...”

Dredd: “You wiseguys never learn: gunplay don't pay!”

Judge Strong: “2000AD! The famous comic from the twentieth century! Brilliant!”
Dredd: “Fantastic stuff! No wonder those lawbreakers were charging a fortune for it!”

I AM THE LAW!
Another serious crime in Mega-City One, we learn here, is the sale of illegal comic books. Why? Because they are seen as a kind of drug, and worse, one aimed at kids. Once they get hooked, the prices skyrocket and it's likely kids will enter a world of crime to support their habit. Comic pushers therefore are seen as the same as, if not worse than, drug pushers. It's a clever idea, and the logic is really quite sound. Imagine if you had no access to comics via the web and had to pay top dollar in order to follow the adventures of your favourite characters. What would you do to ensure you didn't miss out? I'm talking to you, Batlord! ;)

Those clever little touches
As Justice Central tracks the bagmen, it's reported that they're “heading east on Third and Grover.” T.B. Grover is the pseudonym under which John Wagner wrote “Strontium Dog.”

Laughing in the face of death
You can't help but be amused by the fact that a man who dresses in a suit and has short hair is seen as a freak, among a city populated by long-haired weirdos who are seen as normal. The only sane man in the asylum? Dredd even snarls at him why can't he grow his hair?

It's also a great job of juxtapositioning that Normal, dressed as an English city gent, complete with bowler and brolly, speaks in street lingo, most reminiscent of the great Huggy Bear from “Starsky and Hutch”!
http://www.trollheart.com/Dredd20b.png
Nothing changes?
A new section in which I'll ask the question, even in this so-called enlightened age, when they've cleaned up the air and sorted out the weather, are there some things that are universal, that don't change no matter how far into the future you go?

Here, we see that informers still only impart their information to the Judges in return for money, as Dredd pays Max Normal 10,000 credits for the tip-off.

http://www.trollheart.com/SDtitle.png
Episode IV : “No cure for Kansyr”, part one

First print date: June 17 1978
Prog appearance: Starlord Issue 6
Writer(s): John Wagner
Artist(s): Carlos Ezquerra
Total episodes: 2

On a lonely planet called Metastis in the far-flung system of Pol, where criminals believe themselves safe from the law due to the planet's tough reputation, Johnny Alpha and Wulf fear not to tread. They have come here seeking a man called Kansyr, the boss of this lawless planet, and for Johnny, though a bona fide commission, it's also personal. Seven years ago Kansyr killed Johnny's then-partner, Sniffer Martinez, and the bounty hunter has a score to settle with him. He relates to Wulf, as they wait to take the criminal in, the story of how Kansyr tricked he and his partner with a holographic image created by the technology he had stolen, and was being hunted for, getting the drop on Martinez and shooting him dead.

Just then, Wulf does something very strange: he tells Johnny he does not believe him, that he is the quarry they seek, and begins shooting at him! As Johnny dives for cover, Wulf's form shimmers and in its place is a large alien being...
http://www.trollheart.com/SD6b.png
Quotes
Johnny: “In person, friend: this Strontium Dog's come to call!”
Wulf: “You're pretty good at singing songs about us: now back it up vith action!”

Johnny: “Seven years ago, before Kansyr even had a price on his head, I used to work with another S/D agent: a man called Sniffer Martinez. It was on the planet Laz. Kansyr was a native of the cold western regions, a young west-Laz punk just starting out on the road to crime. He'd stolen a mind weapon from a research lab --- a device called the “Halugin” --- and we'd been hired to get it back.”

Johnny: “I should have known better than to trust the Laz authorities. They didn't reckon killing a Strontium Dog was much of a crime. They let him off with a fine. And now he's one of the most wanted criminals in the galaxy, and one of the most dangerous.”

The Powers that Be
Johnny again uses his uncanny alpha vision to see inside the head of the guy he grabs at the saloon and verify that he does indeed know where Kansyr is, even though he professes to know nothing. He knows then that this man will carry his message to the perp.
http://www.trollheart.com/SD6c.png
Show no mercy?
It seems unlikely that Alpha will be lenient this time as he is personally invested in this job. Of course, he is a professional, and if the warrant specifies that Kansyr be brought back alive, Johnny will forego his own revenge in order to bring the bounty in.

Famous firsts
Sort of. This is the first time we hear Alpha use the phrase “My dok!” so it's likely to get used across the 2000AD universe, not just in Judge Dredd.

Episode V : “No cure for Kansyr, part two”

First print date: June 28 1978
Prog appearance: Starlord issue 7
Writer(s): John Wagner
Artist(s): Carlos Ezquerra
Total episodes: 2

As Johnny and Wulf face each other, Alpha reasons that the only way his partner would attack him would be if he, too, saw an alien, and so he must see Johnny as one. Now he realises that Kansyr must be close by, using the very machine that led to Sniffer Martinez's death, the Halugin. He entreats Wulf to look in the mirror, where the giant viking can see his own reflection, and that of his partner. Kansyr obviously can't control, or forgot to, the images in the mirror and each can see the other as he really is. Foiled in his attempts to have the two Strontium Dogs kill each other, Kansyr uses a heat beam to set fire to the bar. Trapped, Johnny uses a Time Bomb to move them three seconds forward into the future, by which time the asteroid has moved on, but not enough to leave them choking on vacuum, just out into the street.
http://www.trollheart.com/SD7a.png
Here they encounter Kansyr, and go for their weapons, only to find it is yet another image created by the Halugin. Then from out of nowhere a shot takes Wulf down! Next dozens of images surround Alpha, and he does not know which one is the real Kansyr. The criminal is having fun now: he has downed Alpha's partner and now he intends to confuse him until the S/D agent runs out of ammunition, or tires, and Kansyr can pick him off easily. But Kansyr grows impatient, and shoots Alpha, who falls. Standing over him, the alien leers down at him, telling him he wants him to see the man he boned (ooer!) before he dies. Johnny puts his blaster to his head, telling Kansyr he won't give him the pleasure of killing him, but in fact Johnny has set the adjustable range finder in his gun to pass through his head and have the beam explode inside Kansyr as he stands over him. The criminal is dead, and he probably never even realised he had been tricked at the last.

Wulf has of course not been killed, just wounded, and Johnny patches him up as they prepare to leave the asteroid, seven years of hurt and anger assuaged, the job done, revenge accomplished.

Quotes
Johnny: “There he is! Seven years ago he killed my best friend, and I boned his hand. We'll split the reward, but this is my fight, Wulf.”
Wulf: “No, Johnny. Where you go, I go.”

Tools of the Trade
Not strictly a tool, but it's interesting and informative that the blaster can be set to different depths, so that its beam can pass through something and hit something further along. This allows Johnny to fool Kansyr into thinking he is committing suicide when he puts the gun to his own head, when in fact he is lining the alien up for a kill shot.
http://www.trollheart.com/SD7b.png
Aliens!
Lazians
Kansyr is from the planet Laz, and so although the phrase is not used we can assume his species is Lazian. Either way, they're basically humanoid but much taller than a human, with a small bulbous head, powerful arms and legs and a face that reminds me of Spiderman's mask; kind of webbed pattern all over it and all that is visible are the eyes, slanted at an angle, wide and rimmed in black.

Fundian Slime Drippler
Wulf sees Johnny “change into” this form under the effects of the Halugin. The alien is like a huge worm, with a twisting, coiled body, its head ending in a flower-like opening out of which what may be an eye peeks. It seems to have two arms, but unlike humanoids they end in short, clawed hands with three fingers on each.

Preying Zorg
On the flipside, this is what Johnny sees when he looks at Wulf. The Praying Zorg stands certainly as tall as the viking bounty hunter, and possibly taller, with an armoured carapace, two spindly but long arms and two spindly legs. Its head is like that of a grasshopper, with powerful mandibles in which rows of sharp teeth can be seen, and very large black eyes like those of a fly.
http://www.trollheart.com/SD7c.png
Personal Darkness
Here we learn some more of Johnny's past, and see that Wulf was not always his partner. On the contrary, they have been working together for less than seven years, as we're told that prior to this Johnny had another partner, Sniffer Martinez, who fell to the treachery of Kansyr. In this story, Alpha proves that though he usually does his best to play by the book, he is not above a little personal revenge. He again bemoans the social status of mutants when he snarls “They didn't think killing a Strontium Dog was such a crime” and it's clear that he thinks little of the entire world of Metastis, which is known to be an unofficial refuge for the scum of the galaxy, and if he could get away with destroying the entire asteroid, he probably would do it.

http://s414170025.onlinehome.us/wp-c...-paperback.jpg

Chapter II: Absent Friends
( A quote from Elvis Costello: ”And I'm up while the dawn is breaking, even though my heart is aching. I should be drinking a toast to absent friends instead of these comedians.”)

It's the morning of the funeral of Eddie Blake, but Lori does not want to attend the Comedian's burial and so has instead gone to visit her mother. She is shocked to find out that the woman who used to be the Silk Specter, Sally Jupiter, still has feelings for Blake, after what he did, but her mother says the past is history. This leads to recollections about Sally's own past, when she was part of the Minutemen, and she remembers vividly the time Eddie Blake attacked and tried to rape her, she only being saved by the intervention of one of the other superheroes, Hooded Justice. At the graveside, we see a sad and thoughtful Adrian Veidt, as his own memories drift back to a time we're not told the date of, but I'm thinking it's somewhere in the sixties or seventies. He remembers another grouping of superheroes, who called themselves The Crimebusters, but quickly disbanded when it became clear there really was no real interest there. We see Rorschach and Nite Owl, two of the few (other than the organiser, Captain Metropolis) who seem to be into the idea, though Rorschach believes the group is too big and cumbersome, and will only get in the way of the work.

The Comedian spits on the idea, laughing at how little the others seem to know of the world and how futile their attempts to change it will be, must be. “Inside thirty years”, he sneers, “the nukes will be flying like mayflys. Then Ozzy (Veidt, whose alter-ego was Ozymandius) here will be the smartest man on the cinder!” Back at the graveside, we now see the memories of the enigmatic Doctor Manhattan, as he recalls the victory in Viet Nam, 1971. He is keeping company with The Comedian, who tells him he can't wait to get out of the place, when a woman approaches. She is evidently carrying Blake's baby, but he is not interested. Enraged, hurt, she slashes him with a bottle and he shoots her down like a dog, despite Manhattan's protests.

Next to remember is Nite Owl, and he recalls a police strike which resulted in riots on the street as the superheroes (specifically, he and The Comedian) took control and tried to restore order. He noted that Blake seemed to be happiest when he was making the crowd run, throwing tear gas cannisters and basically acting like a riot cop, whereas Danny was more worried about maintaining order but not hurting anyone. The Comedian seems to treat the whole thing as a massive joke, an adventure; it seems to fire his blood and Danny must wonder what sort of person could actually enjoy and look forward to scenes like these?
http://www.trollheart.com/watchmenB1.png
As he leaves the cemetery, a man in an overcoat is shadowed by Rorschach, who knows the stranger as Moloch, one of his arch enemies. Moloch tells Rorschach, after he's been beaten up a little, that he has renounced being a supervillain, paid his debt to society and now just wants to live as an ordinary citizen. He tells Rorschach that Blake came to visit him, without his mask but wearing his costume, so that his old enemy could tell they were one and the same. Blake was drunk, he tells Rorschach, and started babbling about some list, and then an airship and an island, saying he wished he had never got involved. This was all a week before he died. He talked about writers, Moloch tells Rorschach; writers and artists and scientists, on all that island, and he seemed to shudder at what was being done there. And then he left.

QUOTES
Blake: “Once you figure out what a joke everything is, bein' The Comedian is the only thing that makes sense!”

Doctor Manhattan: “Blake! She was pregnant! You gunned her down!”
Blake: “Yeah that's right. Pregnant woman and I gunned her down. Bang! And you know what? You watched me. You coulda changed the gun into steam or the bullets into mercury or the bottle into snowflakes. You could have teleported either of us to Australia, but you didn't lift a finger. You don't really give a damn about human beings. I've watched you.”

Rorschach (from his journal): “42nd Street: women's breasts draped across every billboard, every sign, littering the sidewalk. Was offered French love and Swedish love, but not American love. American love, like Coke in green glass bottles, they don't make it anymore. Thought about Moloch's story on way to cemetery. Could all be lies. Could all be part of a revenge scheme, planned during his decade behind bars. But if true, then what? Puzzling reference to an island. Also to Doctor Manhattan. Might he be at risk? So many questions. Never mind: answers soon. Nothing is insoluble. Nothing is hopeless. Not while there's life.”

Rorschach (from his journal): “Heard joke once: man goes to doctor, says he feels depressed. Says life is harsh and cruel. Says he feel all alone in a threatening world, where what lies ahead is vague and uncertain. Doctor says Treatment is simple. Great clown Pagliacci is in town tonight. Go see him. Should pick you up. Man bursts into tears. "But Doctor, he says, I am Pagliacci!”

Between the Lines

The very first panel shows a statue of an angel in a graveyard, as we witness the arrival of Blake's coffin to the cemetery, and a speech bubble offscreen says “Will you look at her! Pretty as a picture, and still keeping her figure!” The comment is from Lori's mother, directed at her daughter in a sort of offhand jealous/spiteful way, but the positioning of it makes it look like someone is talking about the angel.

As the gates are closed for the ceremony, we see a hand holding a sign down which the rain trickles, leaking down the pole onto the hand. In the next panel we can see it's a doomsayer, plying his trade outside the graveyard. In the background, on the other coast, Lori's mother says “In the end, you just wash your hands of it.”
http://www.trollheart.com/WatchmenB2.png
When Lori's mother asks “Without your health, where are you?” we see again the scene as Blake is lowered into his grave, and in the next panel Lori, annoyed at her mother's attempts to get rid of the smoke from the cigarette she is smoking stubs it out and says testily “There! It's dead. Extinguished.” She might well be talking about Blake.

Lori's mother snarls “It rains on the just and the unjust alike” and we see Adrian Veidt under an umbrella at the funeral. Is he just or unjust? Time will tell, but keep a close eye on the multi-millionaire industrialist.

As Sally breathes “Life goes on, honey” outside the cemetery we see a man walking up and down with a placard that refutes this: “The end is nigh!” it howls. I have my suspicions about the signbearer too, but I don't remember if I'm right so will reserve judgement for now.

Time for some more on-point graffiti: as the smoke clears and Nite Owl and The Comedian walk away, having dispensed the crowds, a rioter with a handkerchief pressed to her nose and mouth stands at one of the walls and again spraypaints the words “Who watches the Watchmen?”

As Rorschach walks past a seedy movie theatre, the attraction is “Enola Gay and the Little Boys”. Obviously, Enola Gay was the B-52 which dropped the atom bomb on Hiroshima and Little Boy was the bomb itself, but even aside from that, the inference of underage homosexual acts is hard to miss.

Those clever little touches

I still find it amazing that this comic book manages to play like TV at times. In one panel (a sequence of three, reproduced below) Lori's mother holds an old photograph of her and the Minutemen, the superheroes from the forties, of whom Night Owl, the Comedian and herself were part, and a tear drops on it. Light shines on the tear. Next panel, a camera flashes and then in the third panel we're back in time as the camera flashes again and the picture she now holds is originally taken. I could see that working onscreen, easily: it may have, I don't recall that much about the movie. But to be able to get that across in a few graphics drawn on paper is truly amazing.

It's interesting too to note that when Hooded Justice rescues Lori's mother, he must believe that there is something in what the Comedian suggested, ie that she asked for it. Rather than help her up or comfort her or ask if she is okay, he stands over her like a judgment, looming down in a personification of distaste and disgust, and growls “Get up, and for god's sake, cover yourself!” as if the sight of her half-naked is both an affront to his sensibilities, and proof of what she has just been involved in.
http://www.trollheart.com/WatchmenB3.png
Another fantastic little link: when we go back to the past, as the new superhero squadron to be known as The Crimebusters (yeah) :rolleyes: fall very quickly apart under the withering contempt of The Comedian, Captain Metropolis, who had organised the group (this was to have been their first meeting) stammers “Somebody has to do it, don't you see? Somebody has to save the world!” While he's protesting about this as everyone leaves, as he appeals for support, we see the thoughtful face of Adrian Veidt, in his mask, then cut back to the present, his face is there again, now without the mask but as pensive as ever. Someone has to save the world? He believes this, and he believes too that he is that someone. And he will. He will save the world. But the world may wish he had not bothered.

And another good one: as The Comedian accuses Doctor Manhattan of being out of touch and not caring for humans, the big blue giant strikes a certain thoughtful pose. As his memories return him to the present and the graveside, he is again in that exact pose.

I'm sure it's coincidence (or maybe not) but when The Comedian shoots at a rioter, the flare from his gun looks like the happy face badge he wears, his own insignia.

As others toss in earth on the coffin, as per our custom, Danny drops his happy face badge (cleaned of blood now) onto the wooden box. It's certainly not the biggest fall this little piece of tin has had recently, but it is the last.

As Rorschach visits the grave of The Comedian to pay his last respects, we see once again Blake's final fall played out, and the last panel of that fall is totally red, signifying obviously the blood as he hits. The next panel shows blood-red roses (which we've already seen and which Rorschach has remarked upon ---”Only our enemies leave us roses”) with rain dripping on them, and the symbolism could not be stronger, as Rorschach snips one off and sticks it in his lapel.

After the storm: Under the Hood

Mason goes on to describe how he became a superhero, the challenges that existed even in as seemingly simple a thing as designing his costume --- “Should I have a cape, or no cape? What sort of a mask should I have? Do bright colours make you more of a target than dark ones?” --- and how he eventually joined the emerging league of superheroes (or masked adventurers, as he prefers to refer to them, and probably more accurately, since as has already been pointed out in the first chapter, these guys had no actual superpowers), together mostly for publicity purposes in the forties, the Minutemen. He alludes strongly to The Comedian's attempt to rape Sally Jupiter, but oddly informs us that Hooded Justice and she were an item (“though I never saw him kiss her”), perhaps making sense of his cold reaction to her almost-rape at the time. He recalls the tragic death of Dollar Bill, one of the younger heroes, who was actually contracted to protect a particular bank, and whose cloak got entangled in the bank's revolving doors, leading to him being shot dead.

He also notes the damage being a superhero or masked adventurer had on some of the people he knew, some ending up in asylums, some dying, some marrying. He speaks too of how while the Minutemen were prancing about America's city skylines, dealing out justice, “Across in Europe they were making soap and lampshades out of human beings” and mentions that some of the heroes held what could only be deemed questionable attitudes, some supporting Hitler, some making racist slurs. By the end of the forties, he tells us that there was simply “Nobody interesting left to fight, and nothing worth talking about”, so they disbanded. But, he says with a sigh, the damage had already been done.

The story so far
All of the ex-superheroes (or as many as are left alive or at liberty) gather at the graveyard to bid farewell to their comrade, as Edward Blake, formerly known as The Comedian, begins his final journey. Thoughts of each drift back to the past, and some of the events we have been told about or which have been alluded to are explored and in part explained, particularly the almost-rape of Lori's mother. Rorschach meets Moloch, one of their old enemies, who has retired now and is dying of cancer. He tells him that Blake visited him about a week before he was found splattered all over the pavement, and spoke in a drunken fog about a mysterious island and some very nefarious things that were going on there, things he was involved in in some way.

Note: incidentally, I was wrong about the clock at the end of chapter one. It actually stands at eleven minutes to twelve, since by the final chapter we want to hit midnight, not one minute to. So chapter two then ends with the clock at ten minutes to the witching hour...

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...x-Nemesis1.jpg
Prologue: “Terror Tube”

First print date: July 5 1980
Prog appearance: 167
Writer(s): Pat Mills
Artist(s): Kevin O'Neill
Episodes: 1

As mentioned in the intro, Nemesis came about almost by accident. Tharg, alien editor of 2000AD, was trying out some rock-themed short stories, under the umbrella term “Comic Rock” (good idea) and commissioned Pat Mills and Kevin O'Neill (writer and artist respectively) to create this story for that series, which was called “Terror Tube” and introduced the protagonists in what would go on to become one of the comic's most-loved, weirdest and successful strips.

We open on the world of Termight (which later will be changed to Terra, or Earth) which has been hollowed out after terrible wars, so that all the inhabitants live underground. Inspired by the song of the same name by The Jam, the opening lines confirm this as we hear “We're going underground!” where we find a labyrinthine network of roads and highways, and the locals cursing the tourists, who don't know how to use the massive roads. “Weekend trippers!” yells one irate driver. “Ya meant to drive on the ceiling!” The road, it would seem, is only for the larger juggernauts that hurtle through these dark tunnels. Next we are introduced to one of the two main protagonists, currently chief of the Tube Police but soon to rise to ruler of all Terra, Torquemada. He tells the public over the airwaves, broadcast to the ever-moving populace as traffic news, that the “deviant” Nemesis has been sighted and intends to disrupt “the sacred traffic laws”. He warns that anyone who helps him risks summary execution.

Torquemada rides in a sleek but deadly chariot, known as his “gundola” (geddit?) and flanked by his footsoldiers, the Terminators (and this four years before James Cameron coined the term), but waiting in one of the service tunnels is indeed Nemesis, in his Blitzspear, an alien looking craft with a long pointed nose. Nemesis is said to be the leader of Credo, the resistance to the tyranny of Torquemada and his terror police, and as a prison craft makes its way towards the vapourisation vats with a batch of condemned people, Nemesis springs into action!

Like the second part of its name, the Blitzspear slices right through the prison van, and the grateful captives spill out onto the road, escaping into the tunnel from where Nemesis has just emerged. From under the road, using a special exit ramp only available to the Tube Police, Torquemada and his Terminators arrive and set off in pursuit of the rebel. Turning sharply Nemesis goes off-road, flying his craft into the city. One of the Terminators jumps onto the Blitzspear with the aid of rocket boots called power pontoons, but Nemesis slams on the brakes and the man ends up flying through a plate-glass window. Now the other Terminators realise that he is heading for Blackhole Bypass.
http://www.trollheart.com/NW2.png
As the mighty rack beams lance out and catch the Blitzspear in their grasp, holding it fast, Torquemada exults. However, he has reckoned without the power of Nemesis's strange alien craft, which the rebel now slams into overdrive, not only breaking the hold of the beams but forcing them to snap upwards, back towards the very watchtowers that fired them, tearing them apart! In the confusion and chaos, Nemesis makes his escape, his mission accomplished, another blow struck against the despotic hordes of Terra!

QUOTES

Child (watching a Terminator fly overhead): “I want to be a Terminator when I grow up, dad!”
Father: “Hush, child, or you may not grow up at all!”

Radio announcer: “There's been another major road accident at the junction of Inquest Alley with Rigor Mortis Roundabout. Drivers heading for Necropolis should take an alternative route down Autopsy Underpass!”

Torquemada: “Brethern! I have been informed that Nemesis --- the so-called freedom fighter --- is going to break our most sacred traffic laws again today! I warn you: do not help this deviant, this road hog, this moving accident black spot! Or your punishment will be severe, probably fatal! My outriders – the Terminators --- are watching at all times. So be pure, be vigilant, behave!”
(This last will become both a rallying call and a dread warning from Torquemada, a bitter reminder that the people of Termight are always being watched, and any slip in their behaviour will be brutally punished.)

Torquemada: “Now! Full power! Rip him apart! Let the people see their hero bleed! Let him die on the rack!”
(Another not-so-subtle reference to the Spanish Inquisition, see further).

Welcome to the world of tomorrow!

Where Earth (Terra) has been ravaged by wars and pestilence, and the population have been driven underground and now live there in the vast cities, the largest of which is the capital, Necropolis. In order to accomodate the transport of billions of human beings (as well as visitors to the underground planet) a network of intricate roadways and tunnels has been constructed, over an artificial black hole which lies at the bottom of the road system, and uses the incredible centrifugal force of a neutron star to fling craft through the stars. The roads are raised and lowered by the Tube Police, who control and regulate the traffic flow.
http://www.trollheart.com/NW3.png
It would appear that in this century (not yet confirmed what date it is) Earth has managed to harness the awesome power of a black hole, even to the point of constructing one and using it as a gateway to the stars. Quite how they managed to make it stable, and ignore the laws of physics that say that anything entering a black hole is pulped to a point of light, and also that there is, at the present time, no evidence that anything can escape from one, much less that they can be used as a wormhole like in Star Trek, is not explained. The idea of black holes would at this point have been popular but still at its theoretical stage, so I guess Mills used some pseudo-science and guesswork, and made a lot of stuff up.

And Death shall have dominion...

The entire setup of Terra/Termight is predicated on the idea of death, pain and obedience. You only have to look at the names of some of the roads, as quoted above --- Autopsy Underpass. Rigor Mortis Roundabout. Cremation Corner. Everything is geared towards the grotesque, the severe and the dark. The Terminators' hoods are pointed, as indeed is Torquemada's, in perhaps a nod back to the Ku Klux Klan, though the overriding impression is of the Spanish Inquisition, and as we will find out later, this is not far from the truth. Even the top man is named after one of the most feared priests of that dread time in Catholic history.

There are references to “not growing up”, from a father to his son, he knowing how dangerous it is to even mention the name of Torquemada's dread troopers, and even the warning cry when Nemesis is sighted is “Black Alert”. Far from the iso-cubes of Judge Dredd's world, it seems here the preferred method of punishment for criminals is to be disintegrated, as when we see the prison shuttle it is on its way to the “Vapourisation Vats”, and the idea is easily planted that this is a normal, even daily occurrence. What these people have done to deserve such a fate we are not told, but it seems that down here on Termight, the merest hint of disobedience can get you a one-way trip to the Vats. By comparison, Dredd seems positively lenient and even soft!

Houston, we have a problem!

Apart from the idea about black holes alluded to above, how did Nemesis know that breaking through the prison shuttle as he did he would not take out many of the prisoners? Are we to assume that he studied schematics of the bus, knew exactly where the prisoners were kept and chose an area of the thing he knew they would be far from? Or did he assume that as they were scheduled to be killed anyway, what the hey? Case of using a sledgehammer to break a walnut? Subtlety is certainly not Nemesis's strong point, anyway.

Separation of Church and State

It's clear that here, on “Mighty Terra”, there is no such thing. The Church is in total control, with its fists tightly closed around the government, the military and all services. Torquemada calls his people “brethern”, like a preacher would, and refers to “sacred laws”, so it's pretty obvious that this is a religious theocracy and dictatorship. In common with many fictional (and real) regimes, in particular The Party in Orwell and the Cardassians in Star Trek: Deep Space 9, the population seem to be kept in a perpetual state of fear and paranoia, dreading the knock on the door and trying to live their lives without attracting the terrible attention of Torquemada or his henchmen. Can't be a fun place to live.

http://www.trollheart.com/Dreddtitle.png
"The Solar Sniper"

First print date: July 9 1977
Prog appearance: 21
Writer(s): John Wagner
Artist(s): Ron Turner
Total episodes: 1

Always on the lookout for new ways to break the law and hit back at the Judges, some hoods have got hold of a gun powered by the sun, which they call a solar gun. Tharg tells us in a note that it is possible to fry a tank using this formidable weapon! Three Judges have already fallen to the “Solar Sniper”, and Dredd is informed that he is to be next. He knows what to do though, and heads to the weather control station we last saw in “Robot Wars”, presenting the controller with a weather warrant, which orders that the day be cloudy and sunless. With their source of power taken away, the criminals are unable to use their special weapon.
http://www.trollheart.com/dreddss1.png
They resort to more traditional methods, but Dredd is too quick for them and they are all shot dead, as their vehicle crashes into the weather station. All but one, their leader, who goes by the name of Gorilla. He jumps out of the ruined car and heads into the weather building, where he pushes his way into a room and awaits the arrival of Dredd. Suddenly though a mechanical voice starts speaking, running a countdown! Too late, Gorilla realises he has just forced his way into a solar capsule, which is being sent to orbit the sun! As he punched the man in the door away just now, the guy dropped a startled chimp he was holding, this animal to have been the test subject for the experiment, to see if it would survive the trip. Now, it seems the perp has unwillingly taken his place, and is headed to the sun, with no hope of rescue, as the probe is totally autonomous and automatic. Though he has lost his quarry, Dredd takes comfort in the delicious irony that the very force with which he killed is about to be the instrument of Gorilla's demise.

Quotes
Note from Gorilla: “Hey Dredd! You got till high noon! Your friendly hit man!”

Weather controller: “The citizens' votes have come in. By a big majority, they want today kept hot and sunny.”
(This is interesting; the first time it has been intimated that weather is controlled in Mega-City One by popular vote. I guess citizens vote online or whatever each day and the majority get the weather they want. Probably as automatic and second nature to them as us checking the weather. I did assume, however, that it was either an automatic programme or that the Judges or some other high-up authority decided how the weather turned out. Guess this is one very small but important example of Mega-City One being a true democracy. At the same time, it seems, as here, that when it suits their purposes the Judges can overrule the vote of the citizenry to get the weather they need).

Gorilla: “OK, fry Dredd! What the --- my gun's going cold! It's losing the heat!”

Computer voice: “Sunprobe 9 on course for three year close orbit of sun. If the test animal comes back alive we will know if we can set up a manned weather station close to the sun.”

Dredd: “No way to take you back, Gorilla. Sunprobes are fully automatic. You killed by the sun, and now you're gonna get the worst case of sunburn ever!”
http://www.trollheart.com/dreddss2.png
Those clever little touches
Reading this, does anyone else notice that the Solar Sniper (Gorilla) is killing Judges alphabetically? First Judge Able, then Judge Baker, then Judge Carter, and finally he attempts to off Judge Dredd?

Houston, we have a problem!
A big one, again. Although solar power may have been in its infancy in the seventies, it's well known now that it's a common fallacy that the sun has to be visible for solar power to work. It just has to be in the sky, which it always is, so a cloudy day will not stop solar power from operating. If it did, nobody in Ireland would have it! So when the cloud covers the sun, that solar gun should not be affected, and therefore the whole premise of the story is based on a misunderstanding --- deliberate or not --- of solar power.

Ch-ch-ch-changes
Dredd calls his gun his “Law Rod” (ooeer!) though it will in time end up being called the Lawgiver.

Again, it's Grand Judge when it should be Chief Judge

Laughing in the face of death
As Dredd approaches, one of the hoodlums says “Here comes the Judge!” which is a line from those old comedy sketch shows like “Rowan and Martin's Laugh-in”.

As he realises what's happened, Dredd says the rocket has taken off with Gorilla inside instead of the chimp. :laughing:
http://www.trollheart.com/dreddss3.png
Famous firsts
Although he used the word on the cover of the previous prog, this is the first time that Dredd uses the exclamation “Stomm!” in a story. Here he says “By Stomm!” but fairly quickly the preposition would be dropped and the expression would be “Stomm!”, an outburst of surprise or dismay.

Return of the Nitpicker!
Although we know that, at this point, the series takes place in 2099 AD (and if we were unsure, it says so in the first panel of this story) when Dredd goes into the weather station the date displayed is clearly 24-2-2090! We also see this on the scroll on which the votes of the citizens are printed, so it's not just a simple mistake, or if it is, it's been made twice.

https://lh5.ggpht.com/8gYY3ALOpdoR8G...NsFsJ4GVU=w300
I'll ask the questions, Creep!

Where in the world did Gorilla get that solar gun? And are there others out there? How did a cheap, two-bit hood like him get a hold of such sophisticated weaponry?

Not really sure what Gorilla thinks he's doing, lying in wait for Dredd in what he doesn't realise is the doorway to the solar capsule. He still has the solar gun: does he think it's going to work now?

“Mr. Buzzz”

First print date: July 9 1977
Prog appearance: 22
Writer(s): John Wagner
Artist(s): Ian Gibson
Total episodes: 1

Taking down a gang suspected of several murders, Dredd gets a tip-off from one of the gang members as to where he can find their leader, Mr. Buzzz (anyone going to take a guess that he's a robot?) and when he finds him in the hotel as expected, he orders it burned down, much to the dismay of its owner. However Dredd reminds him that the owner could technically be accused of harbouring a fugitive from the law, so he is in fact getting off lightly! As Mr. Buzzz jumps from the burning building, it's clear he has no eyes and is in fact a mutant (damn! So much for my clever guess! I owe you a coke!) , however when Dredd pursues him into a store it becomes clear the mutant can see in total darkness. Dredd, as he ducks a knife thrown at him, wonders how this can be, when Mr. Buzzz has no eyes?
http://www.trollheart.com/dreddbuz1.png
He quickly comes to the conclusion that the mutant is listening to the echoes of the buzzing sounds he makes as he speaks, and by calculating the time it takes for those echoes to drift back to him he can home in on any spot with precision. Endeavouring to overload his hearing and throw his calculations off, Dredd fires his Lawgiver on high explosive repeatedly. It works: the mutant cover his ears in confusion and Dredd is able to get the drop on him, punching him out and arresting him.

Quotes
Gang member: “I'll get forty years for this! Reduce my sentence, Dredd, and I'll tell you where you can find our leader, Mr. Buzzz. He's holed up in an cheap hotel in Oldtown.”
Dredd: “Many thanks. In recognition of your co-operation I sentence you to thirty-nine years, three hundred and sixty-four days in an isolation cube.”
(Dredd: he's all heart huh?)

Dredd: “Control, slap a demolition order on the fleapit at third and Grover.”
Control: “Why? Did something happen to it?”
Dredd: “Yeah: it just burned down!”

Hotel owner: “My hotel! My hotel!”
Dredd: “The city'll pay. Just thank your stars I don't arrest you for harbouring a fugitive.”

Driver: “My Dok! He – he hasn't got any eyes!”
Mr Buzzz: “So what? You haven't got any teeth!”

Dredd (thinking): “These muties adapt themselves to make up for their warped bodies. Those buzzing sounds Mr. Buzzz makes act like a bat's radar. By listening to the echoes he can tell exactly where objects are.”

https://lh5.ggpht.com/8gYY3ALOpdoR8G...NsFsJ4GVU=w300
I'll ask the questions, Creep!

Dredd tells himself he wants Buzzz alive. Why? What difference does it make to him if he kills the mutant?

Also, the other officers tell him they can't get Buzzz out. Why not? Have they tried? If you allow that maybe they don't want to try storming the building in case innocent civilians are hurt, then how does that tie in with Dredd's plan to burn the place down? Does he have it on good authority that there are no other residents or guests in there? Has he checked? Does he care? He's given us to understand that he does all he can to ensure innocents are not harmed: is this not totally opposite to his usual behaviour? And what about the adjacent buildings? Has he ensured they won't be caught up in the blaze? Very reckless I feel, from a man who is not know for this trait.
http://www.trollheart.com/dreddbuz2.png
Parallels
There's a direct conflict here between how Wagner writes mutants in Judge Dredd and how he writes about them in Strontium Dog. In the latter, they're a put-upon, pitiable species who get reviled for something that is not their fault, and yet try to retain what remains of their humanity, whereas here Dredd sees them as sub-human, evil and to be feared and objects of contempt. He has of course run into mutants before, during the story “The Brotherhood of Darkness”, so he has some experience of them. He also notes that purely because of their appearance mutants have been banned from the city. This is perhaps harsh: many of these people have probably committed no crime, other than being caught in the nuclear blast that created the Cursed Earth, and yet they are outcasts, treated as pariahs and mere entry into Mega-City One is enough to get them killed.

Famous firsts
Finally, Dredd refers to his gun as a Lawgiver. Whether this remains the case or changes we shall see, though eventually this name was chosen as the standard.

Also here we hear the phrase “My dok!” which is an exclamation of horror or surprise, obviously taken from “My god!”

I AM THE LAW!
Dredd is obviously empowered to make deals on the spot, such as reducing a sentence if decent information is offered. However here the criminal makes a fatal mistake, giving up the info without securing any sort of agreement with the lawman, and thus only gets a single day shaved off his sentence! He has played his hand too soon, and has nothing left to gamble with.
http://www.trollheart.com/dreddbuz3.png
Dredd is also not above twisting the law to suit his purposes, as he orders Control to register the hotel in which Mr. Buzzz is hiding out as demolished, before he sets about demolishing it himself. He has therefore covered himself, even if this is a case of placing the cart before the horse.

We can't be sure, but he might have been considering, as he tells the hotel owner, placing the man under arrest for harbouring the perp, though with the hotel burned down he is satisfied. Interesting that he assures the owner he will be compensated by the city. I guess once Dredd has followed protocol (even if in reverse) the guy's claim will be honoured.

Those clever little touches
Another mention of the street Third and Grover; this time it's where the hotel is located.

http://www.trollheart.com/SDtitle.png
“Planet of the Dead, Part I”

First print date: July 1 1978
Prog appearance: Starlord Issue 8
Writer(s): John Wagner
Artist(s): Carlos Ezquerra
Total episodes: 3

Johnny and Wulf are due to meet someone called McIntyre in one of the empty, dead cities on the desolate planet Circes, on which all life was destroyed thirty years ago in a great war known as The Neutron War. However there is a snag, as the contact turns out not to be a person, but a computer. Johnny is dubious, Wulf dismissive, but the machine tells them it is the sole ruler of City 4, and, well, with all humanoid life-forms having been destroyed, it may very well be right. Ruler it may be, but McIntyre seems to have the temperament of a crusty old man, seemingly straining to hear what is said, and snapping at the answers. It seems the computer is used to being obeyed without question, and these interlopers irritate it.

At any rate, through its adjutant, Crynge, a small robot who calls it “master”, the bounty hunters learn that they have been tasked with hunting down the last twenty humanoid inhabitants of the planet, known as the Jox. These renegades refuse to swear allegiance to McIntyre, and Johnny and Wulf are to capture them and return them to City 4, in order that they might pledge their fealty to the machine. Neither Crynge nor his master know where to find these fugitives, but in order to aid in their location they are given a robot spider called Croll, which has been programmed with all available information on the Jox. In return for carrying out this bounty, Alpha and Wulf may choose one single item from City 4.
http://www.trollheart.com/SDpd1.png
The two friends set off, and perhaps surprisingly, it's not long before they encounter the Jox, but as they give chase, and corner two of them who are trying to open a door, and these two turn around, offering surrender, the trap is sprung! More appear on the balconies above and Johnny and Wulf are caught!

Quotes

Crynge: “As legal ruler of City 4, my master is entitled to choose any name he likes. This year it is McIntyre. Last year it was Zxplok the Terrible. Next year it will be something else.”

McIntyre: “What did they say, Crynge? More rudeness, eh? Eh?”

Wulf: “Ach! I hope this spider is not hafing der bite!”

Wulf: “I am not liking this job, Johnny. Vy should ve be helping a computer against people?”
Johnny: “We're sworn to uphold the law, Wulf. And if I remember my history correctly, the city states handed over power to their computers a hundred years ago. Still, I don't like it any more than you do. We'll make our minds up once we've met these Jox and heard their side.”

Tools of the Trade

Infra-Red Torch: On the face of it, a simple idea. Bodyheat leaves a trail behind, if you have the equipment to detect it, and I suppose in a kind of adjustment to the blacklight idea (not sure if that was in use back in the late seventies) the torch picks out the heat traces and shows the footprints to the bounty hunter.
http://www.trollheart.com/SDpd2.png
Letter of the Law

Although Johnny, and certainly Wulf, balk at the idea of taking orders from a hunk of metal (especially one that seems to have something of a personality problem) they must, as Johnny points out, uphold the law, and as the city states of Circes handed power to the computers over a century ago (and moreover, since there are virtually no other humanoids left alive now) the two are both duty bound and legally obliged to carry out the instructions of the computer McIntyre.

It's interesting though that Alpha retains a secret caveat on the bounty: he intends to see what the idea is behind the apprehending of the Jox, and if he's not happy that they've actually broken the law, he may change his allegiance. This would of course mean losing his commission (to say nothing of breaking the planetary law, and possibly incurring a reprimand from his own control, though there's no confirmation that this bounty is carried out under the aegis of the S/D Agency. It could be a “foreigner”, off the books, a personal thing done without the knowledge of their employers) but as we've seen, it's not always about money with this bounty hunter.

Return of the Nitpicker!

Yes, I could go on every episode about the times when Wulf uses a “w” sound when it should be a “v” to tie in with his Nordic heritage, like when he says “Someone” when it should really be “somevun”, but that would be tiring, for you as well as for me. So for now just be aware that Wagner (or maybe the letterer) tended to make a few slips in the big Viking's pronounciation. I'm more intrigued with how this huge computer heard of, and got in touch with, Alpha and Wulf? I won't call it a “problem” yet, as it may be explained later, but for now it's a loose end, and you know I hate loose ends...

Welcome to the world of tomorrow!

Which could easily have been the world of today! Neutron bombs were all the rage back in the seventies and eighties: weapons that would kill people but leave buildings standing. Surely the ultimate weapon for any army, particularly one that wished to take a town, city or country without destroying its infrastructure? Thankfully though, they never saw service and we stuck to good old Cruise missiles and the like! On the planet Circes though, it seems they did not learn that lesson, and now the computers, unaffected by the bombs, are the ones in charge of the dead cities on the dead planet.
http://www.trollheart.com/SDpd3.png
Laughing in the face of death

It's pretty clever and quite hilarious that the servile robot that issues the proclamations of McIntyre is called Crynge. Also, the link between a trusted chancellor and an old, doddery king is well drawn here. As is ever the case, the real power lies with the servant. McIntyre, though ruler of the city, cannot even hear properly, and needs Crynge to tell him what's going on. Without the little robot, it's doubtful he would be able to do anything.

It's amusing too to hear Wulf referred to as “the fat one” by Crynge. Wulf is a big Viking, but I doubt anyone has dared comment on his weight! Well, not and lived to tell the tale, anyway!

Houston, we have a problem!

Perhaps not a problem, per se, but Wulf's despairing shout “Ve're dead, Johnny! Dead!” just because they've been outsmarted seems a little defeatist. Surely they've been in worse spots than this? I get that it's there to add drama and suspense to the final panel of the first part of the story, but still, what's he going to do next? Cry for his mother? It's a little out of character, I feel.

Also, how on Earth (or Circes, to be precise) did Alpha and Wulf find the Jox so easily, when they're supposed to be in hiding? There's no long search, no clues followed; it's like they walk out of the palace doors and right into the fugitive aliens! :rolleyes:

“Planet of the Dead, Part II”

First print date: July 8 1978
Prog appearance: Starlord Issue 9
Writer(s): John Wagner
Artist(s): Carlos Ezquerra
Total episodes: 3

Natrually, as expected, and contrary to Wulf's despairing assessment of the situation at the end of part one, they are not dead; Johnny and his partner easily get the drop on the Jox, ordering them to surrender before they are killed. Amazed that the two are human, and not robots sent to track them down and kill them, the Jox cease hostilities. Convinced that the bounty hunters may be amenable to their plight, they agree to take them to their underground base, where they were all working, they tell them, when the Neutron bombs fell, and were thus protected from the effects, being so far beneath the planet.

Taken to their leaders (sorry), Johnny and Wulf are filled in on the history of the rise to power of the computer known as McIntyre. It is true, they tell the bounty hunters, that the city handed over power to the machine, thinking it would be able to make better decisions and rule more wisely than humans. But power corrupts, even a computer, and the thing went mad with power. When the city assembled the required number of delegates needed to strip the computer of its authority and return power to them, the machine went mad and set off the bombs that began the war and destroyed all but twenty of the Jox, these twenty. However, one of their women is pregnant, and when the child is born that will make, technically, twenty-seven of them: enough to approach McIntyre and take power from him legally.
http://www.trollheart.com/SDpd4.png
However now the full extent of McIntyre's duplicity and treachery is revealed. He had no intention of allowing the Jox to come to him and swear allegiance; he knew they would not. All he wanted was to find their base, so that he could wipe them out. Now, the tiny robot Croll turns out to be a miniature Neutron Bomb, and arms itself. The Jox, believing themselves betrayed, run for their lives before Johnny can set off a time bomb and save them, so it is up to him to defuse the bomb. Using his alpha ray eyes, he looks inside the tiny robot to see how the bomb is constructed. As the sixty-second countdown runs, Wulf realises Johnny is not going to make it and pulls him into the protection of a time bomb just before the robot explodes. Aghast and furious, both that he has been used, and that the Jox are now all dead, Johnny swears revenge against McIntyre.

Quotes

Johnny: “I aint' keen on killing but you Jox creeps have got my blood up! Drop those monkey sticks, or die!”
Jox fighter: “Blood? Then you're not robots? McIntyre didn't send you here to kill us?”

Jox Elder one: “As you know, over a hundred years ago, City 4 handed over all power to our computer. We thought such a brain would be able to govern better than we mere mortals. How wrong we were!”
Jox Elder two: “Power twisted McIntyre. As the years passed,his decisions grew crazier and crueller. At last, a delegation of twenty-seven senior citizens was organised. This was the number required by law to take away the computer's power.”
Jox Elder three: “But McIntyre had grown to love power too much. Before the delegation could serve their order, the computer gave the command that began the war that destroyed everything: everything except McIntyre and his robots!”

Wulf: “Ve could haf saved them with a time device. They run, but you can't run far enough from a neutron bomb!”

Johnny: “The last of a whole race! And I helped destroy them! That machine played me for a real sucker!”
http://www.trollheart.com/SDpd5.png
Tools of the Trade

Anti-Grav Chutes: Anti-gravity devices have long become part of the stuff of science-fiction, and though we still haven't the technology yet to make this a reality, astronauts today use magnetic boots to allow them to stay achored to the side of a shuttle or the space station as they carry out essential work in space. Here, Johnny and Wulf have been issued with anti-grav chutes which allow them to create their own field which counteracts gravity and essentially allows them to fly, or at least float, to the ground. Very helpful for those moments when, having used a time bomb, you find yourself floating above the city!

Show no mercy?

Despite the fact that they are surrounded by people who mean to kill them, Johnny instructs Wulf to set his blaster to stun. He's not prepared to kill these people right away, at least not before he unearths the true story behind their being hunted by McIntyre. He shoots one and offers the others the chance to surrender, which they wisely take.

Return of the Nitpicker!

I can't be sure, but I think Wagner has got a little mixed up here, as this is the first (I can't say only) time Johnny refers to anyone as a “creep”. That's Dredd's line, and I think he's confusing the stories as he writes. Or maybe he wants to bring a little of Dredd's hardline no-nonsense attitude into the story. Either way, it's a little incongruous.

I also find the speech a little stilted. Johnny uses no contractions when he meet the leader of the Jox, saying “You are” rather than “You're” and “Let us” when he would normally say “Let's”. Odd, particularly when on other occasions he uses more colloquialisms, such as “I ain't keen on killing”, and referring to himself as a “sucker”.
http://www.trollheart.com/SDpd6.png
Famous Firsts

This is the first time we hear Wulf refer to the massive hammer he carries as his weapon of choice (probably a carryover from his ancient Viking ancestors, even a reference back to the Norse god of thunder, Thor ) as his “happy stick”. This is something he will refer to again and again throughout the series.

“Planet of the Dead, Part III”

First print date: July 15 1978
Prog appearance: Starlord Issue 10
Writer(s): John Wagner
Artist(s): Carlos Ezquerra
Total episodes: 3

News of Johnny and Wulf's escape from the trap set by McIntyre reaches the huge computer, who orders robot squads into the city to take care of him. The bounty hunters, however, are already inbound back to the city, where they have a score to settle with McIntyre. Nobody likes to be used, and Johnny's ire is up. When shooting the robots sent after them becomes too easy and unsatisfying, Johnny leaps in with his own version of the Viking berserker fury, wielding the deadly electronux, which allows him to go hand-to-hand with the robots. Watching from the palace, Crynge can't believe the two humans are taking on their finest, and despatches their biggest robot, a giant aptly called Big Boy, to crush them.
http://www.trollheart.com/SDpd7.png
With Wulf ready to fall back against the massive robot's assault, lasers bouncing off its portable force field, Johnny uses the electronux to create a gap in the field (narrowly avoiding being squashed like a bug) and Wulf throws a thermo bomb through the space. Teh robot is torn to pieces, leaving no further resistance as the two make their way to their confrontation with the city computer. But realising that McIntyre is totally dependent on Crynge, Johnny decides that instead of destroying the huge computer, he will instead name his reward. One thing of value from the city, Crynge had said, and now Alpha takes it, choosing Crynge himself. Left without his eyes and ears, McIntyre wails into the unforgiving silence, left to rule alone, over nobody and nothing, unaware of what is happening around it, truly a king ruling a planet of the dead.

Quotes

Crynge: “The Strontium Dog and his partner escaped the explosion we used to kill the Jox, Sire. I've ordered all robot squads out to hunt them down.”
McIntyre: “What's that, Crynge? What's that you say? Eh? Eh?”
Crynge: “I said, the Strontium Dog and his partner are still at large!”
McIntyre: “Well why didn't you say that in the first place? What are you waiting for? Order all the robot squads out to hunt them down!”

Wulf: “He has der killing frenzy, like my Viking ancestors they got. He is very dangeorus like this, but to himself too!”

Crynge: “Never seen anything like it, Sire. They're destroying the robots --- every last one of them! We'll have to send out Big Boy!”

McIntyre: “Power's no good if there's no-one to boss around!”
http://www.trollheart.com/SDpd8.png
Tools of the Trade

Johnny again uses the electronux, which we saw him use previously and also this episode he employs a thermo bomb, or Wulf does anyway. We're not told specifically what that is, but as it's a force capable of melting even the massive Big Boy, then it can be reasonably assumed that it is a miniature thermonuclear bomb. As the robot is encased in a forcefield, and Johnny's electronux only temporarily disturbed that in order to make a gap through which Wulf could throw the bomb, the entire force of the explosion is contained within the forcefield when it is re-established.

Letter of the Law

Here we see Alpha divert a little from his up to now unswerving dedication to the law. Rather like Dredd, he often undertakes jobs that he may not agree with, but always plays within the limits of his authority and what is legal. Here though, he turns on his “employer”, considering, but not implementing in the end, the destruction of the machine which is, like it or not, the legal authority on this planet. Of course, he has been brought here on false pretences and the computer did try to get him killed, so I guess you can cut him some slack. Plus, who wants to be known as the man who was tricked into completing the extinction of an entire race?

Show no mercy?

You could say he does. He is angry enough to blow the computer to bits, but in the end opts for what could be seen as a crueller punishment for McIntyre. Like Wesley in The Princess Bride, on this occasion he prefers not to fight to the death, but to the pain. Forcing McIntyre to live the rest of his --- possibly immortal --- life without the assistance of his robot Crynge is truly a living death for the computer, and while it has already begun to show signs of madness, this will surely only worsen in the years, decades and centuries ahead. He has spared the computer's “life”, but condemned it to a living Hell. And so, in retaining his reputation for showing mercy, he has in fact been the most brutal he has been so far.
http://www.trollheart.com/SDpd9.png
Messages

There are of course two morality messages in this story. One, that the likes of Neutron bombs are too horrible to even consider being used, and that man should try to avoid ever being forced to employ such weapons of mass destruction. And two, that, like much of 2000AD seems to preach (especially Judge Dredd), robots and computers are not to be trusted. Hand power to one and you have a Skynet situation. There is I suppose a third message, this being that power corrupts, no matter your biological or technological makeup. And finally, a fourth even: that those who serve in a lower place can often wield the true power. Without Crynge to tell him what is happening and carry out his orders, McIntyre is nothing more than a massive hunk of metal, just as many presidents, kings and despots have found that without their most trusted advisors they are unable to function.

PCRs

Not quite one, but Johnny does refer to McIntyre as a “tinpot dictator”, a popular term for any third world ruler who seized power and then became a tyrant, or probably more accurately, any “dictator” who didn't fall in line with the wishes of the major powers, mostly America.

There's also something of a reference to two old original Star Trek episodes in the final panel, where we hear the pathetic voice of McIntyre crying out to space that he doesn't want to be alone.

Also, the name of the massive robot is very close to that given to one of the atom bombs dropped on Japan at the end of the Second World War.

Houston, we have a problem!

All right then, let's get into it. How in the hell did this loopy computer get in touch with Johnny? Does S/D advertise its services, or take in commissions? Well I suppose it must, and technically the computer (which, had it contacted the agency, is unlikely to have allowed the fact that it is not human to have been known) was and is the legal authority in City 4, so perhaps it could have asked for help. Still, it would have been nice to have had a quick line explaining this, as otherwise it could be argued that McIntyre contacted Wulf and Johnny personally and directly, so that this would not be an official commission and might therefore have allowed them more scope as to how they carried out the job.

http://www.trollheart.com/Dreddtitle.png
“Smoker's crime”

First print date: July 30 1977
Prog appearance: 23
Writer(s): John Wagner
Artist(s): Mike McMahon
Total episodes: 1

Everyone knows smoking is bad for your health. Some people choose to ignore that risk, and that, in this century, is their right, as smoking is certainly legal (as long as it's only tobacco you're smoking!), however in Mega-City One this is a crime, at least to smoke in public is, and can land you in an iso-cube faster than you can say “I'm gasping for a cigarette!” It is though a relatively minor crime, and not something to really trouble Dredd, until he is called to the scene of a bank robbery, which has also turned into a murder. One bank teller was brave/stupid enough to try to hit the silent alarm and was shot dead for his trouble. As Dredd arrives at the bank, the cops there tell him there are no clues, since the thieves were all wearing old spacesuits, but Dredd reaches down and picks up a cigar butt. All tobacco products carry a special brand on them, and since Dredd chooses to believe that none of these law-abiding citizens could have been smoking and breaking the law in the bank (surely if they had been, the cops there would have arrested them or called the Judges?), this could very well be a clue to the murdering bandits' identities, or at least their location.
http://www.trollheart.com/Dreddsc1.png
He tracks the butt to a cigar shop, where the owner protests his innocence: none of his customers, he tells the angry Judge, smoke on the streets. But Dredd lies in wait for the thieves, who return to the shop to buy a celebratory box of cigars for their leader before hightailing it out of town. Dredd gets the drop on them, but Al, the leader, is outside waiting for his henchmen to bring him his favourite smokes and hears the commotion. He shoots at Dredd, who surprises him by coming, not out of the door, but through the window on his Lawmaster! Pursuing the felon, Dredd warns him he is risking summary execution at the hands of his bike's cannons, but the lawbreaker runs into another building, shooting a guard as he enters.

Unfortunately for Al though, he has blundered into the Smokatorium, the only public place in the city where smoking is allowed, once smokers wear encasing helmets which keeps the smoke away from each other. Stumbling into the thick, choking atmosphere of the Smokatorium, Al staggers and runs blindly out, right into Dredd who, after warning him to drop his gun, drops the perp.

Quotes

Dredd: “You didn't actually light those disgusting objects, so I can let you off with a warning. Now beat it! I got better things to do than lecture stupid kids!”

Teen: “There goes Dredd! Just seein' him makes me edgy!”
(A sentiment many in the city no doubt share!)

Al: “Friend, I just wasted a good cigar! Now I'm gonna waste you!”

Mr.Rizzo: “There you are, gents. But you know the law: no smoking on the streets!”
Thug: “Who cares about pollution? We just robbed a bank!”
(How obliging of the thief to confirm the suspicions of Dredd, who is lying in wait. Not that the lack of such evidence would really stop the Judge, but I guess it's nice to be sure. A readymade confession!)

Dredd: “Only dead men walk out of doors, lawbreaker! Smart ones use the window!”

Dredd: “You have just added dangerous driving to your list of crimes!”
(What does it matter though? The guy murdered someone in cold blood: surely he faces a summary death sentence for that?)

Dredd: “You were given the warning and you ignored it. Now you know too late: smoking damages your health!”
(Ah, John! Did you have to?):rolleyes:

Ch-ch-ch-changes

Looks like they're still working on what to call the criminals. Eventually they would end up being perps (perpetrators) when spoken of, and creep when spoken to, but here Dredd chooses to describe them as lawbreakers. Which of course they are. He has also used the word citizen to describe them, which is technically also true.

Laughing in the face of death

Well it's a kind of obvious last sentence, but I suppose it might be good for a chuckle, back then.

Return of the Nitpicker!

The language here is a little stilted again. Though Al and his gang use the usual rough talk, as they hold up the bank they refer to the customers as “citizens”, when something cruder --- richos, losers, snobs, creeps even --- would I think have been more believable.
http://www.trollheart.com/Dreddsc2.png
https://lh5.ggpht.com/8gYY3ALOpdoR8G...NsFsJ4GVU=w300
I'll ask the questions, Creep!

How is it possible that there's a loophole in the law that allows cigarettes to be sold, as long as they're not smoked on the streets? And how can the owner of the shop declare that his customers don't smoke on the streets? How does he know? Has he signed affidavits from them all? Surely this is the same argument used by warez sites, for instance, when they advise any downloaders to delete the files once they've “researched” them, in the full knowledge that nobody is going to take any notice of this?

Also, where in the good green Hell did those robbers get those spacesuits? And is it coincidence that they link to the smokers' helmets in the Smokatorium? And would not a bunch of guys so dressed, walking into a bank, attract, not only the attention of any passing Judge on their entrance but be easily spotted leaving? How could they have just melted away into the crowd, wearing such easily identifiable outfits? Sure, they probably ditched them soon after, but unless they took them off right at the door (which they couldn't have; astronaut suits take a long time to put on and take off, and the alarm had been raised so they were in a hurry) they would have had to have ditched them either at a safe house (which they don't seem clever enough to have arranged beforehand) or in an alley, where they could be easily found, DNA-printed I assume, and thus tracked down?

Whose hand did Al burn when he put out his cigar on it? We're led to believe it's the teller who raised the alarm, and who he subsequently shoots, but we can see in the next panel that the guy is too far away to have been in direct contact with the perp. He shoots him from a short distance --- a few feet maybe --- away. So he was unlikely to have had him brought up to him, stubbed out his cigar on his hand and then pushed him away before shooting him. Is the hand, then, that of one of his own men? We're not told, but as they exit the bank, none of the robbers are wincing or holding their hand. So who was it? It's a very small niggle, but you know me: I love pulling at loose threads!
http://www.trollheart.com/Dreddsc3.png
The officer Dredd speaks to in the bank has an armband that reads “Bank Squad”. Is this a division of the local police (we saw there are “normal” cops, ie not Judges, in a previous story) hired out to protect the banks, and if so, where the hell were they when the robbery was being committed? If not, perhaps they're a private security firm banks employ themselves. Same question. And if the latter, why would Dredd address him as “officer”? If a cop is talking to a security guard he doesn't use that term, as the man is seen as a civilian.

Is it just me, or does that guy Rizzo look like Hitler?

I AM THE LAW!

Is he though? Twice here, Dredd reveals something of a confusing grasp of the law. In the first panels, he lets some kids go because they had not lit up their cigarettes. But they were in possession of them in the street, and he knows they were about to smoke them, so surely intent is the same in the law as actual action? Should they not have been arrested for, let's say, “intent to smoke”? Was Dredd being kind here, letting them off? Dredd? Kind?

More to the point though: Al and his cronies have killed a bank teller. This surely, in as fascist a city as Mega-City One, carries a mandatory death penalty. Not only that, but Al kills another guy on his way into the Smokatorium and was lying in wait to attempt to kill Dredd when he came out. So why then does the Judge give him the option of surrender? Surely nothing but death awaits the perp, who must know that, and chooses to go out in a blaze of glory. Why then does Dredd say “Your choice”. Was it? We'll see later that Dredd is not above dispensing instant justice on the spot for such crimes: why not here?

Welcome to the world of tomorrow!

Where smoking has been banned, outlawed and is entirely illegal, unless you smoke in the one place in Mega-City One created for that purpose, the Smokatorium. Actually, it may be legal to smoke indoors, as the proprietor of the tobacco shop, Rizzo, goes to great lengths to remind Dredd that none of his customers smoke on the streets. Perhaps what a citizen does in the privacy of their own home is not the pervue of the Judges? Yet...

At any rate, the Smokatorium is a purpose-built building where those who wish to may indulge their filthy habit legally, and in a safe environment: safe for them, and safe for the public. Smokers put on large astronaut-style helmets, to which are affixed something like a breathing tube. The cigarette, cigar or pipe is inserted here and goes through to the person's mouth. Smoking can then be indulged in while all around them smoke their own brand and nobody breathes the smoke of anyone else. This smoke of course floats around in a cloud outside the helmets, deadly with its carcinogens and poisons, but nobody would be stupid enough to enter the Smokatorium without a helmet, now would they? Since it's not fully explained, I can only assume the helmet is fitted before one enters the room, as if you had to wait to get “suited up”, you would probably already be breathing someone else's secondhand smoke.

Messages

Only one clear and rather heavy-handed one: smoking kills. There's really nothing else you can take from this episode, other than that Dredd always gets his man. It's overall a pretty poor and weak episode really, which exists for one reason and one reason alone: to warn kids about the dangers of smoking. And while that's a laudable goal, let's be honest here: no government in reality wants people to stop smoking altogether. Think of the loss to the Exchequer! Think of the unemployment. Think of the foreign investments that would pull out. Think of the loss of advertising revenue and even the reduced need, perhaps, for doctors. No, like it or not, the plague of smoking is with us to stay, and any government that increases the price of a pack of twenty does so in the clear and unambiguous knowledge that smokers will pay. They're a valuable source of revenue, and sure if millions of them die, what of it? The next generation is waiting to take their place, and always will be.

So this serves as almost a campaign advertisement for the anti-smoking lobby. In the hope that the kids would think that if someone as tough and cool as Dredd hates smoking, they will too, the story is written to warn kids off the dangers of tobacco and perhaps to try to counteract, with harsh reality and a dose of black humour, the entreaties of the cigarette companies who, at this point, were still allowed to advertise and make smoking look cool.

There is some delicious irony in the fact that smoking ends up being the perp's undoing. He who loves the cigars so much finds that even he can't stand the unrestricted smoke and it forces him out into the street, into a confrontation with Dredd which costs him his life. Like they say: smoking kills.

Nothing changes?

From the days of the Wild West, cigarette and cigar stores have had (for some reason) a wooden bust of an Indian (Native American) in their shop. Here, even though it's the twenty-second century, it would seem this practice is still continued. Plus ca change, non?

“The Wreath Murders”

First print date: August 6 1977
Prog appearance: 24
Writer(s): Malcolm Shaw
Artist(s): Mike McMahon
Total episodes: 1

A spate of seemingly random murders has been plaguing Mega-City One, all characterised by the leaving of a floral wreath on each body, earning them the dubious nickname “The Wreath Killings”. Frustrated with being unable to solve the crimes and bring the perpetrator to justice, Dredd resorts to quizzing the Hall of Justice's mainframe, MAC (stands for Macro Analysis Computer) and turns up one link: every murder scene was attended by the same ambulance. Can this be put down to mere coincidence or even over-zealousness on the part of the ambulance driver? Dredd thinks not, and tracks the ambulance to the retirement district, where the two are in the middle of the commission of a robbery, to be followed by the removal of the only witness.
http://www.trollheart.com/Dreddwk1.png
Seeing Dredd's bike on the flat's viewscreen, the two pretend to be hurt, allowing one to get the jump on Dredd, but of course he is too quick and that now just leaves one medic to be dealt with. However he has dropped his gun, and now the lawbreaker picks it up, intending the Lawgiver to be the instrument of the Judge's own destruction. Little does he know though, that all Judges' weapons are DNA-coded to their owner and only accept the proper thumbprint to operate them. In the event they are used illegally, the gun has a built-in self-destruct which now activates, taking the perp with it as it explodes. As Dredd tosses a wreath on the two now-corpses, the irony could not be clearer.

Quotes
Citizen 1: “When's the Judge gonna find this maniac?”
Cop: “Aw come on! Give the Judge a break! Has he ever let you down? Trust him!”
Citizen 2: “Well he had better find him soon or he won't deserve the name of Judge!”
(This is an interesting peek into the simmering tensions that are always just below the surface between the Judges and the citizens. They're happy to have Dredd and his people keep them safe (as long as they don't end up on the Judges' wrong side, of course!) but like any crowd, they're ready to turn when fear and resentment and frustration begins to turn to anger and recriminations. And no matter how fascist a force the Judges are, they must be aware that, however emergency their original rise to power was, the people put them there and the people have the power to remove them. Whether or not the Judges would agree to go is another matter, but nobody wants the likes of a civil war on their hands!)
http://www.trollheart.com/Dreddwk2.png
Dredd: “Come on MAC! Search your circuits! There must be some pattern to these crimes!”
MAC: “Terrorised populace ... Ambulance 4-2X removed the bodies from all crimes...”
(It might seem like MAC has hit upon the link here (and it has) but all the computer is doing is listing the facts behind the case. It has not made any connection; to it, there would not appear to be one. It's up to Dredd to make the human leap of logic and connect the dots, see the clue for what it is. Like they say, computers may get bigger and more powerful, but you'll never do away with the human element completely. Take that, Skynet!)


Victim: “Please! Take everything I own, but don't kill me!”
Perp: “We'll take everything all right sucker, but we're gonna kill you too! You'd only blab to the Judges!”
(This is remarkably similar to the guy who gets mugged in “Mugger's Moon”; he too pleaded for all he had to be taken but his life spared, and the thugs replied almost word for word to his abject plea.)

Dredd: “But the odds against that happening are a million to one! That's how they got away every time! Thanks MAC! You're a pal!”
MAC: “What is pal? Insufficient data. Please program data...”
(These computers can be pretty stupid huh? PAL: Policeman And Lawmaker! ;))
http://www.trollheart.com/Dreddwk3.png
Perp: “Dropped your gun, Dredd! Now you're gonna pay! How'd you like to go? High explosive bullet? Hot Shot? What the ---? It won't fire!”
Dredd: “It's programmed to accept my handprint only. It also has a self-destruct mechanism if anyone else tries to use it!”
(There's an inherent flaw here. Say two Judges are fighting a perp. One gets disarmed and the other is down. Can the disarmed Judge grab his partner's weapon (ooer!)? I think they later upgraded this to a DNA response to any Judge, but I'm not quite sure.)

Famous firsts

This is the first time we hear of the Lawgiver's self-destruct capacity, which is triggered once anyone other than its registered owner tries to use it. Annoyingly though, the gun is again not named.

“You Bet Your Life!”

First print date: August 13 1977
Prog appearance: 25
Writer(s): John Wagner
Artist(s): Ian Gibson
Total episodes: 1

As the citizens of Mega-City One search for more and more ways to fill their often dull and boring lives, the staple of the cud-chewing, television-watching common man, the game show, is extremely popular, and one of the biggest hits on the vidscreen is the show You Bet Your Life. It is, of course, carried on an illegal pirate channel, as this show really does take your breath away! Literally. Contestants compete for big cash prizes, and if they fail, they are killed. Dredd has been trying to track down the station for some time, and when he catches his manservant robot Walter watching it, he is furious, but realises that this may be the break he's been waiting for. Taking Walter with him, he uses the robot's tracker to trace the signal. As they home in on it, the show is in full swing. One of the contestants has just condemned his grandmother to a life (presumably, a very short one!) of penal servitude in the plutonium mines in Mutant Land.
http://www.trollheart.com/Dreddybyl1.png
As the woman is led away in shackles, terrified, her grand-daughter is given the choice of taking 10,000 credits or opening the mystery box. Of course, she goes for the box, inside which is a poisonous spider. She is not long for this world either, and Dredd and Walter, though they have located the signal, have not arrived in time to save her. As they kick in the door and shoot the guards posted at the entrance, they see that the remaining member of the family is being asked to spell a word (which does not exist: they made it up) for his chance to win one million credits. Unfortunately, the alternative is to have his head sliced off by the guillotine he is now resting his neck on.

Dredd bursts in, sees the descending blade, thinks fast. As the gameshow host and his assistant leg it, the Judge shoots at the blade, causing it to split in two. The two halves then end up in the backs of each of the fleeing perps. Justice has been served.

Quotes

Baby Bob Nicely: “Okay Sheldon, here's your question. For 10,000 credits or a nasty end for granny: who was the 53rd president of the United States? I'll give you a clue, Sheldon: say President Bates.”
Sheldon: “Uh, I'll say President Bates, Bob.”
Bob: “Wrong!”
Sheldon: “But you said...”
Bob: “I lied! Never mind, Sheldon! Good game, good game!”

Dredd: “Walter! Turn that off this instant!”
Walter: “But ... but Judge Dwedd! This is Walter's favouwite pwogwamme!”
Dredd: “It's also so illegal that you could be dismantled for even watching it! They kill people on that show!”
(Interesting point: Dredd professes to hate Walter (as do we all of course) but here, where he would legally be within his rights to blast the bot to pieces, dispensing instant justice, he hold back and allows Walter to turn off the vid. Is he remembering the Robot Wars, and the part Walter played in them? Is he reluctant to stir up anti-human sentiment, should such an incident be reported? Harmless robot killed for watching television program! Does he just then realise he can use Walter to track the station, or is it something softer, deep down inside him, that stays his hand? Does he in fact not only tolerate the little mech, but actually like him? Or does he just feel sorry for him?)
http://www.trollheart.com/Dreddybyl2.png
Bob: “This is the part of the show where Sheldon's wife Penelope is offered 10,000 credits or the prize contained in the mystery box. What's it going to be, Penny?”
Penelope: “Oh, I don't know, Bob!”
Crowd: “Take the money!”
Other section of the crowd: “Open the box!”
Walter (watching on his screen, behind Dredd on his Lawmaster): “Open the box!”
Dredd: “Shuttup, Walter!”

Bob: “Well Sheldon, you've lost your entire family. How do you feel about answering the sudden death question?”
Sheldon: “Uuh, good Bob. I feel good!”
Bob: “All right then. For one million credits or a one-way trip to the mortuary, spell Glynxxpittle!”

Bob: “Time's up! It's been really great having you on the show, Sheldon! You Bet Your Life it has!”

Laughing in the face of death

Well this whole episode is a laugh riot all the way through. Possibly not too far from the truth either, with the way game shows, which have now pretty much given way to reality shows, are going. Back in '77 though the only kind of reality show was the likes of “Badgers at night” by the BBC Wildlife Studios, and weren't we all much happier? But the dark thread running through this humourous story shows us that the host of YBYL is in no way ready to hand over money to the contestants. From giving them the wrong answer as a “clue” to outright making stuff up, as he does with the word he asks Sheldon to spell (even had he somehow got it right, no doubt Bob would have said it was wrong, and who would correct him?), Baby Bob Nicely makes sure that anyone who is foolish enough to bet their life on his show always loses it. I suppose in a way that makes it even more popular, as citizens vie to be the first to survive and defeat the show, and scoop the million credits it offers, which surely they don't have anyway.

Bob Nicely is a caricature of every smarmy gameshow host you've ever seen, from his glued-on smile to his condescending remarks, his loud clothes and louder personality masking a psychotic killer using this show as a way to stalk his prey --- no, he doesn't even have to stalk them. They come to him, and he gets to practice his art live on television. What more could a serial killer ask?

It is quite mildly funny when Walter, in pursuit of the station with Dredd and as referenced in the “Quotes” section, gets caught up in the show himself and shouts “Open the box!” He's not a very bright robot though, is he? Or perhaps just naive, if he can't understand what's going on in front of his visor. Or maybe he thinks it's all for show.

https://lh5.ggpht.com/8gYY3ALOpdoR8G...NsFsJ4GVU=w300
I'll ask the questions, Creep!

Given that the show is illegal anyway, is there any hope for granny, who is about to begin a short but brutal stay at hotel Mutant? Penelope is dead, nothing the Judge can do about that. But if they chase after the thugs who took his grandmother away, surely they can catch them and prevent her being transported? I don't believe Mega-City One has any sort of matter teleport system, so the muties would have to come for her in a craft, or she be taken to them, (probably the latter, as aren't mutants banned from entering the city?) and a road block could be set up. But is the Judge willing to expend such manpower and time, I wonder, in helping what is technically a lawbreaker? Then again, did granny really realise what her grandson was getting her into? And then again, Dredd often says ignorance of the law is no excuse, so maybe he might be expected to leave her to her fate? We're not told, anyway: I just wondered.
http://www.trollheart.com/Dreddybyl3.png
I AM THE LAW!

Participation in an unlawful enterprise is, to Dredd, as bad as masterminding it, and to prove there is no innocent party here, he announces to all of the audience that they are under arrest. No doubt if he can trace those watching at home, they'll be heading for the cubes too. Later, we'll see him bring in the entire Eurovision (probably Megavision) Song Contest to be locked up!

Messages

The only one really is that man's greed is eternal, and people will do anything --- including risking the lives of their families as well as their own --- to attain a fortune. Also, I guess, that there has to be a ceiling (or floor) beyond which popular entertainment is not allowed to progress. There's taste, there's opportunism, and then there's the law.

Nothing changes?

It doesn't really. People remain as stupid and as greedy as they are now, still prepared to risk everything --- even their lives --- for their shot at that golden ring. Never gonna learn. And whatever is outlawed just goes underground. Happened with radio, then rave parties, drugs and now television shows of a, shall we say, dubious nature. The nature of the beast does not change.

http://s414170025.onlinehome.us/wp-c...-paperback.jpg
Chapter III: “The judge of all the Earth”
(From Genesis: Chapter 18, V. 25: “Shall not the judge of all the Earth do right?”)

The world stands poised on the brink of nuclear armageddon. Everyone expects it, and the whisper of approaching death is loud in the air. Rorschach is predicting the end of the world --- tomorrow, he says, definitely tomorrow. Laurie's world has collapsed as she realises (as if she did not know already, but having it pushed in your face makes it impossible to ignore or deny) that she is not the most important thing in her lover's life. This has been made rather cruelly but abundantly clear by virtue of the fact that Doctor Manhattan has created two copies of himself, one to help in his lovemaking with Laurie while the third continues important research outside. Well, a girl can't help but feel less than a little special, can she?

She goes to see Danny, who says she can tag along with him on his visit to Hollis. On the way they are attacked by a knife-wielding gang. Just the usual night, and they leave battered and bleeding bodies behind them without hardly a thought. Well, they were both superheroes! Manhattan meanwhile has gone to do his first ever Q&A at one of the TV stations, and shocks everyone there by literally transporting himself into the studio. He can do stuff like that, you know. But when the line of questioning leads to dubious links to numerous deaths from cancer being linked to his friends and people who associated with him, and the news is broken that Laurie's mother also has cancer, this is too much for the godlike being and he brings the interview to a close. The reporters latch on to the possibility of a bit of dirt on the big blue giant though, and after he loses his temper he teleports them all into the parking lot, an action which is unfortunately caught on camera, live, coast to coast.

In his absence, Laurie is told she needs to be screened for cancer, which her mother now has, seemingly as a result of close proximity to the Earth's erstwhile protector, and Rorschach greets the newsvendor's jibe that the world didn't end after all yesterday, as he predicted, with a cool “Are you sure?” Shortly afterwards, the news breaks that Russian forces have invaded Afghanistan. With Doctor Manhattan, America's unstoppable ace in the hole, out of the picture, her enemies are ready to strike, and the world moves a step closer to doomsday. Nixon and his military advisers prepare for a pre-emptive strike, but even then, they forecast huge losses. The president decides to wait a week, no doubt hoping for the return of their saviour, who is at this moment staring up at the stars from an alien planet, and trying to figure out what he wants to, or should, do.

QUOTES
Newsvendor: “We oughta nuke Russia and let God sort it out! I mean, I see the signs, read the headlines, look things inna face, y'know? I'm a newsvendor, goddammit! I'm informed on the situation! We oughta nuke 'em till they glow! Of course, that's only my opinion. For what that's worth, y'know? Inna final analysis.”

Newsvendor: “How's the enna world coming along?”
Rorschach: “It'll happen today. I've seen signs. National Examiner reported a two-headed cat born in Queens. Today for certain. You'll keep tomorrow's newspaper for me?”

Laurie's mother: “I remember how, soon after he failed to prevent JFK's assassination, we argued. I said 'John, you know how every damned thing in this world fits together except people!”

Interviewer: “In his first ever live questions-and-answers session, let's have a big hand please for Doc Manhattan himself, Dr. Jonathan Osterman! John, I hope you'll forgive me for asking you this, but what's up Doc?”

Reporter 1: “Also we have reports of more than two dozen other past associates, similarly afflicted...”
Reporter 2: “Doctor Osterman! Tina Price, from the Washington Post! Is there any truth to these allegations?”
Interviewer: “C'mon, let's get out! The mob is getting aroused!”
Reporter 3: “Doc, I'm Jim Weiss from the Enquirer. Do you think you gave Ms. Slater cancer by sleeping with her?”
Doctor Manhattan: “No, please... If you'll just let me through...”
Interviewer: “Let him through! He's not here to answer questions on intimate moments!”
Reporter 1: “How does it feel to know that you may have doomed hundreds of people?”
Doctor Manhattan: “Please ... if everyone would just go away and leave me alone...”

Doctor Manhattan: “Safety regulations. I see. It seems I'm incapable of cohabiting safely either emotionally or physically. Perhaps you'd best tell Ms. Juspeczyk and your superiors that I'm leaving.”
Army guy: “Leaving?”
Doctor Manhattan: “Yes. For Arizona first I think, and then Mars.”
Army guy: “Mars? Oh ha ha ha ha ha! Doc, you had me going there! Ha ha ha! Y'know, you're a regular kind of ...” (Dr. Manhattan vanishes, leaving his clothes in a heap) “... guy ... Holy Christ!”

Newsvendor: “How about you? I see the world didn't end yesterday.”
Rorschach: “Are you sure?”

Interviewer: “Ms. Juspeczyk, I have to ask: did you place Dr. Osterman under any emotional stress last night?”
Laurie: “What! Are you blaming me for something? Who do you think you are? Listen, when Jon gets back you're in big trouble!”
Interviewer: “Jesus Christ, I have taken enough of this! Listen lady! If our psychologists are right, Jon is quite possibly never coming back! Your meal ticket has flown the coop! The linchpin (sic) of America's strategic superiority has apparently gone to Mars! But you're right: I'm in big trouble, and you're in big trouble, and we're all in big trouble!”
http://www.trollheart.com/Watchmenc1.png
Between the lines

As the fallout shelter sign is attached to the wall of an office, we can see that it is called, or at least houses, Promethan Cab Co. Prometheus of course was the god who stole fire from the Heavens and brought it to Man. So too will fire soon threaten to rain down upon mankind. Later we see their catchphrase/strapline: “Bringing light to the world”. Quite what that has to do with cabs is anyone's guess...

The back cover of the issue of Tales of the Black Freighter (which, just for good measure and to add an extra spoonful of irony, we can see is being read by a black kid) shows an advertisement for “The Veidt Method”. Remember Adrian Veidt?

A newspaper on the newsstand asks the question “How sick is Dick?” and mentions that the president has now survived his third heart bypass operation.

Scattered on the ground are empty food containers which bear the name Gunga Diner, which we'll remember was firebombed in the first episode.

Over all of this, and occupying the first page, the newsvendor opines that the US should just nuke Russia.

From another angle, we can see that the building to which the sign was affixed also houses the Institute for Extraspatial Studies, where Doctor Manhattan works.

Laurie laments the fact that in New York, cabs can just disappear, as Doctor Manhattan vanishes from the Institute to reappear nanoseconds later at the TV studios for his interview.

As the guy from Army Intelligence warns him to be careful of the subjects he addresses in the interview, and “not to get into any tight corners”, we see the thugs corner Danny and Laurie as they walk down a dark alleyway.

We see an advertisement for The New Frontiersman (which is actually the magazine Rosrchach was collecting at the newsstand in the earlier pages) which says “In your heart of hearts, you know it's right”, and someone has spraypainted the word “wing”!

Those clever little touches

With so much of Tales of the Black Freighter in this chapter, there's a definite piratical and nautical theme, as we see Laurie stop outside a cinema which is showing Treasure Island and has a flyer for Mutiny on the Bounty. Perhaps even more ironic, as, if you take Manhattan as her “captain”, being her lover, then she has basically mutinied against him by running off.

As the TV receptionist moans “They ain't paying me enough to deal with monsters from outer space!” (shaken by Doctor Manhattan's literal appearance in the studio) Laurie and Dan pass a billboard for the cult classic This Island Earth.

Is it just coincidence that the interviewer at abc looks very like Clark Kent, this being about superheroes and all?
http://www.trollheart.com/Watchmenc2.png
Tales of the Black Freighter

It's only now that the story told in the comic-within-a-comic starts to hove a little closer to the reality of what's going on here. I could write literally pages about the symbolism and the synchrnonicity between the two stories, but that would take too long. For now, let's be content to analyse what we have here, and link them to the story. In essence, it's the story of a man seemingly captured by pirates. The text opens thus, and I'll explain how each panel it adorns is selected for the maximum impact.

“Delirious, I saw that Hellbound ship's black sails against the yellow Indies sky, and knew again the stench of powder, and men's brains, and war.” This first sentence is paired with a closeup of a Nuclear symbol, whereon, with the zoom used here, the top part of the three-pronged symbol does look like a black sail (and has black connotations) against a yellow sky (yellow background) and certainly presages war, if a very short and brutal one.

“The heads nailed to its prow looked down, those with eyes; gull-eaten, salt-caked, liplessly mouthing “No use! All's lost!” The heads of the screws are being tightened as the sign is attached to the wall, proclaiming this to be a nuclear fallout shelter. Despair is heard in the screeching, rasping voices of the screws as they are tightened. If fallout shelter signs are being put up, all surely is lost as the world prepares for nuclear armageddon.

“The waves about me were scarlet, foaming, horribly warm, yet still the freighter's hideous crew called out “More blood! More blood!” We see the back of the jacket of the maintenance guy who is attaching the sign (much in Watchmen happens over a number of panels, the camera, as it were, moving back a step each panel until finally you can see the whole picture, and so it is here) has a big red strawberry on it, for some reason, and I guess that can be linked to the request for more blood. More importantly, however, on the wall to the right is a missing persons poster, a writer reported as missing, and this will have profound implications later, so take note of it.

“Its star-streaked hull rolled over me. In despair I sank beneath those foul, pink billows, offering up my wretched soul to Almighty God, his mercy and His judgement.” I'm not sure, but I think the “foul pink billows” are sexually cast, in that, maybe, sinking into a woman's legs, or her buttocks? Not sure. But then there's judgement mentioned, and look at the title of the episode. We also see, only now, that the kid is sitting on the sidewalk beside the newsstand, reading the comic. These are the kind of slow revelations that make Watchmen such a rewarding read, over and over, and never ever to be rushed through.
http://www.trollheart.com/Watchmenc3.png
“Waking from nightmare I found myself upon a dismal beach-head, among dead men and the pieces of dead men. Bosun Ridley lay nearby. Birds were eating his thoughts and memories. Reader, take comfort from this: in Hell, at least the gulls are contented. For my part, I begged they would take my eyes, thus sparing me further horrors. Unheeded, I stood in the surf and wept, unable to bear my circumstances. Eventually, tears ceased. My misfortunes were small: I was alive. And I knew life has no worse news to offer me.” Immediately this is read, we see a sign THE END IS NIGH and Rorschach arrives, looking for his magazine. It couldn't be more perfect. We also, for the first time, see the actual pages of the mag, but it's scribbly and indistinct. Someone is definitely crying.

“I had a sudden memory of clinging fast to someone through the tempest. The figurehead lay at my feet, blindfolded by seaweed. Alone upon that dreadful shore, she smiled. I made to take the ribbons of kelp from off her painted eyes, then thought better of it, not wishing her to suffer the terrible distractions of that grim tideline. It was all I could do for her, though she had borne me through seas of blood, though her cold wooden breast had nourished me in the heart of the storm. Her damp embrace had prevented me from drifting beyond reach, yet this small comfort was all I could offer. I could not love her as she had loved me.” With this, we switch to the Institute, where Doctor Manhattan is tenderly waking Laurie, and the connection is clear.

“The freighter's murderous onslaugh had surprised us”. This is shown over the revelation that Nova Express, rag of the day which has just been interviewing Janey Slater, is carrying the news of her cancer which can now be linked to her relationship with Doctor Manhattan. “We'd been blasted to fragments before we could warn Davidstown of the hell-ship's approach. I alone survived upon my remote atoll.” If there is any man who is not only an island, but could survive that which nobody else could, it's our Doctor Manhattan. “I thought of my family, vulnerable, unsuspecting, never dreaming that damnation bore down upon them, sails pregnant with a pirate wind, a necklace of heads at its prow. Crazed with helplessness, I cursed God and wept, and wondered if He wept too.” as these words are read, the newsvendor is talking about his wife, and rain begins to fall on the pages of the magazine. “But then, what use His tears, if His help were denied me?” At this point the kid reading the comic book asks the vendor for his cap to protect his comic, but the newsman refuses. “My own sobbing had frightened the gulls. They departed. And in the terrible silence I understood the true breadth of the word “Isolation”. Here, the vendor says “In the end, a man stands alone. All alone. Inna final analysis” as we get a closeup of the rain falling on the metal fallout shelter sign.

“That night I slept badly, beneath cold, distant stars, ponderong upon the cold, distant god in whose hands the fate of Davidstown rested. Was He really there?” Significant because at this point Doctor Manhattan has gone to Mars, from the desert, and all we can see is stars. Also, surely he is the god of whom is spoken? Can there be a being as close? “Had He been there once, but now departed?” Has Earth lost its only chance of staving off nuclear armageddon with the departure (we're unsure at this point whether or not it's permanent, but would imagine so) of the giant superhero?

“The morning sun found me no more wise, no less troubled. Further down the shore, several of the beached corpses had become inflated by gas”. A reference perhaps to the headline of the right-wing The New Frontiersman which screams defence of Doctor Manhattan and blames the Russians? “I set about burying the sodden carcasses, matching odd limbs as best I could. With them, I buried all hope for my family's survival.”

“Using driftwood I began to dig a pit, deep and wide. I had never seen nor imagined so many dead people. Noon came and went, by dusk the crater was deep enough and I commenced hauling those cold, maimed, wretched things into the bed I had prepared. Dragging and cursing, I hoped that my wife and daughters might be tucked in by gentler hands when their time came. The freighter was almost upon them. Who would care for them, now I was gone?” Clearly a collorary with the possible thoughts of the departed Doctor Manhattan, who must indeed have looked upon (his fellow) humans as creatures in his care, things to be protected. As the black freighter of the coming armageddon bore down towards them, who would save them now?

“Exhausted, I slept on top of the grave, my dreams ringing with the horribly familiar screams of children, the black freighter bearing down upon all I loved, and I was powerless to stop it.”

Rather hilariously, the kid, who has been reading this magazine (which we now find he took off the newsstand and just began reading) complains that there's no way he's buying this when it has no ending! A) he probably had no intention of paying for it anyway (why would he? He's read it by now) and B) is he unfamiliar with the idea of a story that continues through several issues? Idiot.

After the storm: Under the hood

In this episode, Hollis talks about the way things changed in the fifties. People began to take superheroes less seriously, and they even became the butt of humour. The marriage between Sally Jupiter and her manager gave rise to many ribald and off-colour jokes, and some of the Minutemen began to turn to other comforts, like Mothman, who took to the bottle. In the midst of all this, even here in Watchmen world, there was the McCarthy era, and each superhero was forced, for reasons of national security, to disclose, privately, his or her secret identity. Most were cleared as being “proper Americans” due to having served in the forces. Others, who had kept less than patriotic company in their youth, were not so lucky. Hollis also mentions the birth of little Laurie, an event which he says looks to have been the catalyst for the breakup of Sally's marriage.

The only hero to refuse to reveal his identity was the original one, Hooded Justice, and after he retired, presumably, events conspired to turn up a body in the river which Hollis reckons was HJ's true identity, an East German strong man who had gone missing about the same time as Hooded Justice disappeared from the scene. It appeared to be murder, or execution, and Hollis floats the idea that the strongman, if he were Hooded Justice, had been eliminated by his own people as a spy before he could be discovered. Whether there is any truth in this he does not know, and admits he's only putting two and two together and may be well short of the mark. He also notes that with the demise of the superhero, or masked adventurer, went the reduction in supervillains. As he points out, it's not so bad being a guy in a crazy costume as long as others join in, but if you're the only one dressed up you're gonna look pretty stupid. He says that the criminals just traded in their supervillain costume for a suit and a briefcase, and got into prostitution and drugs; worse and more merciless adversaries then than they ever had been before.
http://www.trollheart.com/Watchmenc4.png
Another thing that sped the demise of his people was the approach of the sixties, the open criticism of American values, rock and roll, free love, mini skirts, the whole sixties thing. Men out of place, out of time, the Minutemen did not know how to deal with this new era. It's interesting, and obviously quite deliberate, that he twice uses the phrase “bearing down upon us”, as it is liberally used in the Tales of the Black Freighter. He then goes on to describe another thing that was bearing down upon them, the most wonderful and yet most frightening of all, and it was called Manhattan. There is no explanation --- at least, not here --- of how Doctor Manhattan came to be (the author probably assumes everyone reading knows; you may as well explain who Jesus was) but his narrative seems to point to the possibility of his having been created in a laboratory. He also mentions a young man called Ozymandias, who is said to be if not a protege of Manhattan, then a contemporary, and he uses the phrase that best sums up the general feeling at the time at the appearance of these truly superheroes: we've been replaced.

And indeed, having met both Ozymandias and Doctor Manhattan at a charity benefit, this was what impressed itself on the mind of the ageing hero: time to retire. No point patrolling the streets in a silly cape, maintaining the peak of physical fitness and a sharp mind, if your replacement could level mountains with a thought! And so he retired to mend cars, which had been his first love. Believing the day of the masked hero was over, he was surprised to be approached by Danny, who asked him if he could use the name Nite Owl, and a whole new breed of masked adventurers seemed to be about to be born.

The Story so Far

After it is revealed, or postulated anyway, that close association with Doctor Manhattan can be directly linked to cancer, and having been pushed too far, the blue giant abandons Earth (and Laurie), taking himself to Mars, where he sits and thinks. In the absence of their major enemy, Russia decide to take a step they would not have dared to had Manhattan been on the planet, and they invade Afghanistan. The US begins to make plans to retaliate, and the world moves a step closer to armageddon.

And the clock now stands at nine minutes before midnight.

When I began this journal back in 201 , the initial idea was to concentrate on 2000 AD characters and strips, though I acknowledged I would occasionally step outside that universe, as I have done with Watchmen, and will continue to do. However I had no desire to tread on the toes of he who originally had the idea to have a comics journal, and still do not wish to upset Batty. I discussed this with him about a year ago, and had originally considered starting a new journal to tackle the idea, but now that I give it some more thought, it seems to make more sense just to expand this journal to encompass the new direction.

So, with that rather confusing and uninformative introduction, I give you
http://www.trollheart.com/excelsior3.jpg
A new sub-journal, if you will, within my own, in which I will tackle some of the characters from the Marvel universe for the first time. However I will be concentrating on what are generally considered lesser strips, often unknown outside of their own fanbase, with two rather important exceptions, of which more shortly.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...anextwave.jpeg
The Marvel universe is filled to bursting with interesting characters – both heroes and villains – and incredible storylines, much of which tends to get pushed to the background in favour of the bigger acts, those who have been our favourites for decades and whose adventures we avidly read as children, and more importantly, those who have made the transition to the big screen. Spiderman. The Hulk. Captain America. The Avengers. X-Men. Iron Man. All of these names are well known now, mostly thanks to the intervention of Hollywood, though Spiderman was pretty much always up there with the greats, rubbing shoulders with DC rivals Batman and Superman. All of these I love, but I will be steering clear of.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...tspiderham.PNG
My sub-journal will focus on the little guys – not literally small, of course but those who have been passed over, in most cases, by the movie moguls and whose very existence few, other than their fans, are even aware of. I'm talking here about your Inhumans, your Bloodstones, your Silver Surfers. Red Sonja, Dazzler and even Dracula, who of course is a celebrity but whose adventures in the pages of Marvel Comics might come as a surprise to a lot of you. Deadpool is another one. Yes, he has his movie but he's still regarded as a fairly minor character, nowhere in the league of the big boys. Spider-Girl, Spider-Ham (I kid you not!), Ghost Rider ... if there is a minor or not that well known character I can write about, you'll more than likely find them here. There are, as I mentioned earlier, two rather important exceptions to this self-made rule of exclusion.
http://www.writeups.org/wp-content/u...lternate-a.jpg
The Mighty Thor. I grew up reading Thor and his adventures fuelled my interest, first in Norse mythology and then in mythology in general. Beside Spidey he was my all time favourite, so although he's had two movies, I feel they didn't really portray the Thor I spent my childhood reading, where his stories tended to take place mostly in Asgard, not on Earth, and so I'll be including the god of thunder here.
http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pu...range_6534.jpg
Doctor Strange. As I say, I had this idea a year or more ago, and back then there was no whisper of a Doctor Strange movie, so I assumed nobody outside of his fanbase knew of this man. I had already decided to write about him, as he is a fascinating character, and I don't intend to change that decision. I have not seen the movie, but with a character as deep and complicated as Steven Strange, I feel they can hardly have got the essence of the man into a two-hour movie, so I'll be delving deep into his psychology, motivations and of course his many dark adventures.

I'll probably hop, skip and jump around, either taking the best stories from each or perhaps even intermixing an episode of one with an episode of another; I haven't really yet decided the format. This is just to let you few who read this journal know of the change, and if there's a minor character (Marvel universe only: I'm restricting myself to this) that you think I should be covering, let me know.

Don't call them strips ffs. And stay the **** away from Spider-Gwen. I have plans.

Noted. I'm keeping Spider-Ham though. Replace Spider-Tart with?

Excalibur is like the best X-team no one knows about. Go do them.


http://p6.storage.canalblog.com/65/4.../105114121.jpg

Okay, time for something a little different. Although I'm going through the Dredd (and other 2000AD character) stories chronologically, the magazine began in 1977 and is still running today, so there are well over 2000 issues. With that in mind, and a timeline of nearly forty years to get through, it will be a while before I get to the better stories (and let's be honest: some of the early ones don't quite cut the mustard, do they?) so to stem boredom - both in my readers (yes, you two over there! Don't be shy...) and myself, I'm going to introduce two new sections which will allow me to “jump forward” on occasion, and get to the gold without having to wait to wade through some of the ... um, not gold.

First is
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com...457db603e1.jpg
Take your best shot!

This is basically a random Dredd story. No secret to how it's done: take 1 to 1960 (approx number of progs I have to choose from) and throw them into a random number generator. The number of the prog that comes up determines the story I write. Could be a year from the current one, could be ten, or thirty. So what comes up this first throw?
1662
That's a problem, as it's smack in the middle of a multi-part story, which I don't want to get into so soon. So instead I'm going to cheat slightly, and take the number of the prog preceding the opening of that story, which happens to be
1649
where we find this story:

Title: “Under new management”

First print date: August 19 2009
Prog appearance: 1649
Writer(s): John Wagner
Artist(s): Carl Critchlow
Total episodes: 1

This might take some getting used to. We're jumping thirty years ahead, to a Mega-City One which is changed and may be unfamiliar, or even unrecognisable to some of us. There is a new administration being sworn in as the story opens, though the Chief Judge (see? I told you they eventually settled on that!) is hurt, and in a medical vehicle on his way to hospital. Meanwhile his administration has enacted tough new laws banning the immigration of mutants into Mega-City One (so, just like the good old days we've been reading about, then! They must at some point have relaxed their hardline attitude towards mutants in the city, but now they've gone back to the way things used to be, it would seem) while a human, one Bradley Jinks, awaits his fate for the murder of seven mutants. We're told he has been sentenced to thirty years in the “time stretcher”, which hopefully will be explained to us.

Jinks, under heavy guard, meets with his lawyer to see how his plea has been taken. He is admanant that muties don't count, and killing them should not be a crime. He says that Francisco, the new Chief Judge, understands this, thinks as he does, which is why, he says, the new occupier of the highest office in the Hall of Justice has enacted these harsh new anti-mutant laws. Jinks's lawyer, however, does not inspire confidence, being a robot firstly and secondly seeming to be a city-provided rather than a private one. And we all know how hard they work on their cases! There is big news coming out of Justice Central: the whole Council of Five, the legislative and advisory body to the Justice Department, have been replaced with men and women loyal to the new Chief Judge. There is a fleeting refernce to a previous associate of Francisco, who suffered an “accident” that took his life. It would seem that something is rotten in the state of Mega-City One!
http://www.trollheart.com/Dreddrandom1.png
In an antechamber, outgoing Chief Judge Hershey waits to be called, and ruminates over the decisions that have brought her to this pass, in particular her support of Dredd over some unnamed issue, which will probably take us ten years to find out about. Dredd himself is summoned to see the Acting Chief Judge, who is running things while Francisco is recovering in hospital. The man, a new appointee called Sinfield, advises him that it would be best if he disappeared for a while, following what he calls “the mutant fiasco”. Dredd is being reassigned to The Cursed Earth, the blasted nuclear wilderness that stretches between the main Mega-Cities, the remnants of what was once North America, now raddled and radioactive and home to a variety of deadly mutant species. Dredd has been here before. Sinfield tells him that deportations of mutants from Mega-City One will soon begin, and Dredd is the ideal person to oversee the “relocations”. He sees it both as a punishment, which it is, and a way of removing him from presenting any kind of threat to the new administration, which it also is.

Hershey, handing over the Chief Judgeship to Francisco, is advised to “spend some time off-world”, at least “until this mutie thing dies down.” She doesn't seem bitter or resentful, in fact she tells her successor that he fought a fair campaign, and seems more upset with herself than anyone. Obviously, as we're coming in sort of in the middle of this whole arc, I don't know what she means by siding with Dredd, but they've been friends (inasmuch as the tough lawman has friends) since the early days, so it's probably not surprising that she supported him. It's clear though that whatever decision she made, it led - perhaps directly, perhaps not - to her ousting and Dredd's soon-to-be confirmed exile.

Back at the Hall of Justice, as Jinks awaits news of his reprieve, a phone call comes through, but it is not the one he was hoping for. His appeal has been turned down, and he is subjected to the time stretcher, which appears to be a device which artificially ages you. Jinks was sentenced to thirty years, and was fifty-one, so that should have made him eighty-one years old after the event, but his heart was unable to take it and he dies on the time stretcher. There is little sympathy wasted on him.
http://www.trollheart.com/Dreddrandom2.png
Quotes
Vid announcer: “Chief Judge Dan Francisco was today moved to a med-bay. Within the Grand Hall of Justice this morning the new administration issued its first edict, halting all mutant imigration. While the city's mutant population nervously awaits developments, the fate of many normal citizens also hangs in the balance, among them the notorious Bradley Jinks, whose sentence of thirty years in the time stretcher for the gruesome killing of seven mutants is due to be carried out this morning.”
(Interesting developments. Yes, thirty years have passed, and you'd expect a lot to have changed, and it has. But it would appear that the original idea of mutants being banned from Mega-City One was relaxed, and then repealed (as the broadcast mentions the “city's mutant population”) probably under the more progressive and sympathetic rule of Chief Judge Hershey. Now, with her defeat and exit, the new adminsitration looks to re-establish the old laws, not only banning mutant immigration to the city, but, as the new head tells Dredd, actively expelling its current mutant population. Back to square one, it would seem.

It's also worth noting that the newsreader, or his or her scriptwriter anyway, considers even a homicidal maniac more of a “normal citizen” than one who has been warped through no fault of his or her own. The fact that Jinks “only” killed mutants may have something to do with that tolerance.)

Robo-lawyer: “Eye contact with client: exude confidence. I can confidently say that your plea for clemency is in the Chief Judge's hands at this moment, Bradley.”
Jinks: “How long's it gonna take? They're gonna Stretch me in an hour!”
Robo-lawyer: “Best symapthetic voice. Reassuring pat. I assure you, he understands the urgency. Oh yes. I can't guarantee a result, of course, but I've a good feeling about this Bradley. A very good feeling.”
Jinks: “You mean it? Yeah, yeah. That's how I feel too. I mean, muties: they're gonna kick them all out ain't they? What do they matter? It's normal cits like you and me...”
(Let's break this down. Jinks is obviously trying to convince himself he will be reprieved, and has fooled himself into believing the robot has his best interests at heart. This is unlikely. The droid is going through a programme, as evidenced by the (rather ill-advised) way he steps through the parameters - “Exude confidence. Reassuring pat” - and has obviously been supplied by the City, so will not be, shall we say, very good. Jinks sees mutants not even as people, so believes that his crime is not that great, and when the robo-lawyer tells him “I've got a good feeling” he stupidly believes it, forgetting that robots don't have feelings. Also, he thinks the new Chief Judge, with his public anti-mutant stance, will be on his side. Perhaps he is. But it would be a poor first act indeed for the new administration to pardon Jinks, and send the uncomfortable message that it's okay to kill muties. Even if it is.)

Acting Chief Judge Sinfield: “You've been too closely associated with the whole mutant fiasco, Dredd. We feel it would be wise to remove you from the firing line for a while. Some time out of the City would be good for us all.”
Dredd: “My punishment, is it?”
Sinfield: “It has been decided to establish new townships in the Cursed Earth. Modern developments where mutants can live decent, productive lives without fear of prejudice or violence.”
Dredd: “When do the expulsions start?”
Sinfield: “We feel you would be the ideal candidate to administer justice there. No-one else seems to care quite so much for mutant rights.”
(Let's break this down, too. Dredd realises of course he is being censured, punished for, presumably, siding with the mutants against the incoming adminsitration. Though we have jumped thirty years and can't possibly know what happened, it's not too hard to take a wild guess and say that Dredd and Hershey supported mutant rights, something happened (some massacre/catastrophe/tragedy by or involving the mutant population of Mega-City One) and Hershey was voted out. With her went Dredd's (probably) only ally, and he was left to stand alone.
http://www.trollheart.com/DReddrandom3.png
In a sort of revival of the apartheid that plagued South Africa for so long, or the plight of the citizens of the Gaza Strip in Israel, or perhaps even harking back to the plight of Jews in World War II, mutants will now be removed forcibly from the City and sent to live in “townships” created for them in the Cursed Earth. The word could not have been better chosen, and conjures up the filth and poverty of shanty towns like those in South Africa. Here, the Acting Chief Judge assures Dredd with absolutely zero sincerity, the mutants will be free to live their lives free of fear, whereas of course right now they are feared and rejected, and if they're not, the new administration will ensure they are. Dredd, as (apparently) a champion of mutant rights, is being sent to “administer justice” there, which really means he too is being exiled to the Cursed Earth, and basically the new Chief Judge couldn't care less what happens to him.

Having opposed (we assume) the new administration, Dredd is now as he was then their enemy, and Sinfield and Francisco know that, were he left in the City, with whatever powerbase he retains, he would prove a problem and possibly even mount a challenge against the new Chief Judge, rallying people to his cause as the new rule of law tightens around Mega-City One. They don't wish to make a martyr out of him by having him executed (one assumes this might be within their legal power) or jailed, a focal point for a possible backlash and threat to their rule, so they couch the exile in flowery words and non-committal phrases, such as “some time away from the city would be good” and “best man to administer justice there”.

But Dredd can see through the bullshit. He hasn't survived as long as he has without being able to tell when he's being fed a line, and when Sinfield reveals the plan to build townships in the Cursed Earth, Dredd's terse question “When do the expulsions start?” is not even denied by the ACJ. He knows that Dredd knows this “resettlement” is far from voluntary, and amounts to ethnic cleansing of Mega-City One, but he is not about to admit it. Instead, he avoids the question, but Dredd has had the answer a long time ago.)

Chief Judge Francisco: “This isn't exile, Hershey. I have the deepest respect for the work you have done. I hope before long you can return; when the mutant business is sorted out, perhaps. I would be very grateful to have a Judge of your abilities to call upon.”
Outgoing Chief Judge Hershey: “Thank you once again. My congratulations. You fought a fair campaign, Chief Judge. I wi sh you luck. I hope you know what you've taken on.”
(Similar to the treatment Dredd is getting, Hershey is being removed from the picture. She is no doubt still a powerful figure and a possible rallying point should Chief Judge Francisco's edicts not go down as well with the citizens as he hopes. When he mentions “this mutant business” you could substitute “The Jewish question”. It's clear he wants her nowhere near Mega-City One - even Earth - while he “sorts things out”. She, for her part, seems a trifle naive (though again we don't know the full story) and congratulates him, saying he fought a fair campaign. I wonder? But now with both his main adversaries dealt with, it would seem nothing stands in the way of the new Chief Judge running this city as he sees fit.)

Robo-lawyer: “Hang on, Bradley. They're putting me through now. Yes, I see. Yes. Yes. Yes? Yes? (Getting more "excited" or at least animated with each "Yes?") It's a no, I'm afraid.”

Those clever little touches
I like the way that, as Dredd and Hershey are both reaping the rewards of standing against the new Chief Judge and his cronies, the panels jump from one to the other, so that we can see the treatment may be slightly differently meted out, but essentially it's the same. They are the defeated enemy, and are being dealt with similarly. It is a little confusing, as one minute you're looking at Sinfield talking to Dredd, the next panel you see Francisco's face and a shoulder and eagle emblem, and it takes a moment before you realise he's talking to Hershey. But well done and very effective.

Laughing in the face of death

The new incoming Chief Judge's name is Francisco. DAN Francisco! :laughing: Not to mention his second, Acting Chief Judge Sinfield, sounds more than a little like a certain comedian.

The antics of the robo-lawyer, its matter-of-fact way of processing the case, are quite amusing, mostly because we know that most lawyers, if given the chance, would carry out their cases this way too. Too many of them only care about the money, or winning, and not their client or their client's victim, if there is one.

Welcome to the world of tomorrow!

Where there appears to be a punishment instigated that may have been created to deal with the no doubt overcrowding of iso-cubes. Since virtually everything is a crime in Mega-City One, it would appear that more cubes are occupied every day. In the Stallone movie, one of the Council of Five, Judge Silver I think, protested that they needed to be able to hand out death sentences for lesser crimes. That hasn't happened, I don't think, but now it would appear that for murder and other captial crimes a man or woman's lifetime can be sped up in a thing called the Time Stretcher, which prematurely ages the prisoner by whatever number of years the sentence calls for. Of course, as we see here, sometimes it's too much for the human heart to bear and it just snaps, resulting in an actual death sentence.

Messages

Again I'm guessing, but considering that Dredd is being punished by the victorious Chief Judge, it seems fair to assume that he was against him in some battle, legal or otherwise, and was certainly on the wrong side in this “war”. The message is twofold then: to the victor goes the spoils and though some men may be magnanimous in defeat, some will turn on their enemy and exact a terrible price. Dredd, however, does not show any signs of regret for “backing the wrong team”, and seems resigned to, even having been expecting, what comes his way.

The Dichotomy of Dredd

Again, we're talking thirty years forward in time here, but originally when we met him Dredd was resentful of mutants, even hated them, whereas now he appears to have been fighting for their rights. I guess anyone can change over time, but it will be interesting, as we go along, to mark the events that led to this, at our time, most unexpected change.

Nothing changes?

Prejudice is eternal, and man will always have and want someone to blame his misfortunes on. We who do not learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them. Ask any Jew, or Native American, or aborigine. Ask the Incas and the Aztecs, the ancestors of today's African Americans, and the Sunni and the Shia. Ask the Croats and the Serbs, the Chechnyians and the Ukrainians, or any group in history oppressed by another, stronger one.

Final note: Yes, it's three decades on and of course printing techniques have come on in leaps and bounds since the seventies, but it still knocks me sideways the quality of the printing in 2009 as opposed to that in 1977. It's almost like comparing a Mini Minor to a Rolls Royce. The colours are more vibrant, more alive, more ... dramatic somehow. There also appear to be more of them. Whereas back in the earlier Progs we have yellow, red, black, blue, green (and then only partially, maybe one page or one panel on a page) here there are golds, russets, mauves and crimsons.

And every page is in colour (at least, in this Prog) with the drawings almost seeming three-dimensional. Even the lettering is better, more refined, less cartoony, more ... mature, I guess. You can't imagine speech-bubbles with BANG! And ZOK! And THWAK! As they were in the original Progs. Here, it's much more refined and it's almost like reading a novel than a comic. There are also a lot of --- I don't know what the technical term is --- captions? --- those small boxes that describe the action, scene or even sometimes characters' thoughts without being speech balloons. This gives the magazine a much more introspective, cultured appearance. Art, rather than comic book.

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.
http://www.trollheart.com/classdredd1.jpg
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:
http://www.trollheart.com/Dreddfametitle1.png
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!
http://www.trollheart.com/Dreddfame1.png
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?”
http://www.trollheart.com/Dreddfame2.png
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.

https://lh5.ggpht.com/8gYY3ALOpdoR8G...NsFsJ4GVU=w300
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?
http://www.trollheart.com/Dreddfame3.png
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!

First print date: January 9 1982
Prog appearance: 246
Writer(s): John Wagner
Artist(s): Carlos Ezquerra
Total episodes: 25

The Apocalypse War, Episode II

Note: A quick explanation: everyone in Mega-City One lives in massive tower blocks, the equivalent I would guess of skyscrapers, though presumably much bigger. Each block is named, usually after some icon or famous person, hence the rather odd/familiar names used throughout this and other stories whenever dealing with habitation blocks.

As Block Wars rage on through Mega-City One, Sov-Blok nuclear missiles target the city and destroy much of it. The city's laser mesh grid, designed to protect the huge metropolis like, we assume, a force field, is not up to the task as there are thousands of missiles being launched at once, and they were not designed for such an onslaught, so H-Wagon defences are brought up too, but even this may not be enough. The odd Cityblock is able to take out a missile or two, but this is pure coincidence: locked in Block Mania, they assume this is some other block firing and retaliate accordingly, completely unaware that their entire city is under attack. Meanwhile, Mega-City One's retaliatory strike has claimed millions of victims in the East; the Diktatorat, safely underground now in their nuclear-proof bunker, see the destruction and loss of life as vital to drain as much of Mega-City One's defences as possible. The more missiles the Meggers send, the less they'll have to send when the Sovs decide to put the second phase of their attack (one would assume there is a second phase; the Sovs are not just relying on taking out as much as they can with their missiles and then calling it a day!) so everything is going according to plan.
http://www.trollheart.com/Dreddfame2abc.png
Not so of course for Dredd and his people, who are suffering massive casualties and, more to the point, were taken unawares and so have not been able to emulate the Sovs and get their leadership to safety. Any moment now a lucky strike could take out the Hall of Justice. Back in the Sov-Block, Bulgarin contacts the leaders of Mega-City Two and Texas City (which will sometimes be referred to as Mega-City Three) and assures them that their beef is with Mega-City One only; if neither of the other two cities interfere they will not be targeted. Happy to leave Mega-City One to its fate, the Chief Judges of each of the other two cities agree they will not get involved. Bulgarin sneers at what he sees as their cowardice as the communication link is broken, promising their time will come, and then he issues orders to unleash stage three of their attack. Oh yeah: stage one was initiating Block War, the attack is stage two. So what will stage three be? Invasion? Surely not.

Quotes

Bugs Bunny blocker (watching the missiles fall): “Them blockers down south are sure throwing down some heavy stuff!”

Magnus Pyke Block City-def: “We got them! The fleapit was overdue for a cleanup anyway, and we were just the block to do it!” (They disrupted one of the Sov missiles with a sonic cannon and sent it hurtling into the infamous slum known locally as the Flea Pit).

Chief Judge Griffin: “The East-Meg sneak attack has hit us hard! We're losing on all fronts!”

Vlad: “Four sektors down already! Death toll over seven million! Why are we allowing their missiles to penetrate?”
Snekov: “It is vital that we drain as much of their strength as we can at this stage. You worry too much, Vlad. Everything is going to plan.”

Bulgarin: “By now you will be aware of our pre-emptive strike on the warmongering, imperialist Mega-City One. This matter is strictly between our two cities. Our allies will not interfere, unless your cities foolishly decide to aid the enemy.”
Texas City Chief Judge: “We don't want no world war! Texas City will not intervene, as long as the other East-Meg cities keep their word.”
Mega-City Two Chief Judge: “Mega-City Two will also remain uninvolved, provided no hostile act is perpetrated against us.”
Bulgarin: “I assure you comrades, nothing could be further from our minds.”

Laughing in the face of death
As the missiles fall, we see the Bob Oppenheimer Reclamation Project targeted. First of all, this is clever, as Robert Oppenheimer of course was the brain behind the first atom bomb, forerunner of the nuclear missiles now homing in, and second, as a reclamation project this site has obviously been renovated and rebuilt, and is about to be destroyed. As one onlooker groans “Not again!”

One of the I guess street names in the Fleapit is ... Parasite Boulevard.

Although they couldn't have known at the time, the word “vape” is used here, obviously meant as a shortened form of “vapourise”. Interesting that in our twenty-first century culture, this has now come to refer to the smoking of electronic cigarettes...
http://www.trollheart.com/Dreddfame2b.png
Return of the Nitpicker!

Just a small point, and it may not even be one, but when Snekov speaks about the other two Mega-Cities wishing to save their necks, it's spelt “knecks”. Is this a deliberate Russian (Sov) spelling, or has the letter got a little confused with all these “k”s?

I AM THE LAW!

Although he's standing right beside the Chief Judge, and given that, at this point, so far as I know anyway (though I could be wrong: we are after all time-jumping here) he has no special powers, no status other than as a senior Judge, Dredd seems to be taking over, issuing orders, demanding updates, virtually ordering even the Chief Judge around! Not a man to sit and wait for events to overtake him, Dredd knows that Mega-City One has limited time to respond to this sneak attack, and he wants to make sure they make the Sov-Blok pay for their treachery. He defers to Griffin, yes, but kind of only in a paying lipservice kind of way. Reading this prog, it's pretty clear that the man in charge is Judge Dredd.

Final note: when I started synopsising this episode it seemed to me that, not that surprisingly, much, indeed perhaps all of the story would be taken up with the arrival of the Sov missiles and their impact on their target, Mega-City One, and to some extent that's true. Laced with the usual black humour, this second episode does a good job of demonstrating the horrors of nuclear war. However, later in the episode we get two vital and key pieces of information, surely important to the plot.
http://www.trollheart.com/Dreddfame2c.png
The first is when Supreme Judge Bulgarin makes contact with Mega-City Two and Texas City, securing their promise that they will not interfere in the attack on Mega-City One, in exchange for assurances they themselves will not be targeted. Of course, we no more believe these oaths than we would a used car salesman, but the two Chief Judges seem to be taken in, or perhaps are just grateful for breathing space to prepare their cities for an attack they assume will be launched once Mega-City One has been brought to its knees.

The second piece of information is that there is indeed a third stage to the Sovs' plan, which is about to be put into place and which, presumably, we will hear of in the next prog. It's also interesting, if not a little chilling, to see that Snekov and Bulgarin at least are prepared to sacrifice millions of their countrymen to sap the strength of the Mega-City One attack. Vlad seems to be the only one decrying this; one might assume he may not last long into the story.

omg that ****ing avatar kill it!!!!

chula vs TH fight to the death for worst avi of all-time

May I just say, in the spirit of Christmas, **** you both. :)

Actually, you're right: I was wondering where this headache was coming from.
https://media2.giphy.com/media/l2JdX...6vf2/200_s.gif

First print date: January 16 1982
Prog appearance: 247
Writer(s): John Grant
Artist(s): Carlos Ezquerra
Total episodes: 25

The Apocalypse War,Episode III

Judge Snekov proudly explains stage three of the Sov-Blok plan to destroy Mega-City One. Massive ten-megaton nukes are even now detonating all along the eastern seaboard, which will cause a huge deadly tsunami which will take down the huge Atlantic Wall surrounding the city, and leaving it easy prey to the Sov attacks. As Dredd and Grifffin fly over the city they are caught in the backwash of the detonation of one of the missiles, crashlanding into one of the towers, Betty Boop Block. Checking on the Chief Judge, Dredd sees that Griffin is hurt but alive; he needs medical attention soon though, so he and the H-Wagon's pilot, who is uninjured, leave the vehicle and head out into the block, in search of help. Unfortunately, with Block Mania still raging, some locals are watching them with less than friendly eyes...
http://www.trollheart.com/Dreddfame3ab.png
Quotes

Dredd: “Tidal wave! Atlantic Wall breached!”
Griffin: “Estimate damage?”
Tech: “Total!”

Dave Attenborough blocker: “Holy moley! Do you see what I see?”
Other blocker (as water pours in through the wall): “Only Jacques Cousteau Block could have thought this one up!”

The Sov plan, stage three, as explained by Judge Snekov: “Our pre-emptive strike has crippled the enemy. We must now press home our advantage. As the display shows, ten magaton devices are detonating all along the Mega-City One eastern seaboard at this moment. The resulting blast will throw up a tidal wave over a kilometre high and over 1,500 kilometres in length. By the time the wave hits the Atlantic Wall it will have doubled in height. Its destructive power will be, quite simply, unimaginable. For Mega-City One it will be the beginning of the end!”
http://www.trollheart.com/Dreddfame3b.png
Betty Boop blocker: “Stinkin' Judges payin' a social call!”
Other Betty Booper: “What are we waitin' for? Let's socialise 'em!”

Houston, we have a problem!

Maybe. Snekov tells the Supreme Judge about nuclear devices being detonated all along the eastern seaboard. How did they get there? Are we supposed to believe that Sov agents were able to plant them without being seen (“Nothink to see here, Komrade!”), or are there Sov agents working within Mega-City One? Hopefully this will be explained, as otherwise it's a huge plot hole, as the attack on Mega-City One pretty much hinges on this.
http://www.trollheart.com/Dreddfame3c.png

Laughing in the face of death

One of the first tower blocks to go over is called Giant Haystacks Block! I'm sure the huge wrestler never went down so quickly!

The usage of both Dave Attenborough for one of the names of the blocks (as this is, essentially, a natural disaster, although deliberately created) and that of Jacques Cousteau, famous for his television shows of the seventies when he would explore underwater, is particularly well done.

First print date: January 23 1982
Prog appearance: 248
Writer(s): John Wagner
Artist(s): Carlos Ezquerra
Total episodes: 25

The Apocalypse War, Episode IV

Unsurprisingly, the Betty Boop Blockers turn out to be easy prey for Dredd and Daley, as they blow them away with the practiced instincts of Judges, and the fatalistic realisation that these men are too far gone to attempt reasoning with them. Perhaps another, less experienced man might have tried to get through to the manic Blockers, but Dredd and Daley know there is only one way this is going to end. The Blockers are well armed though, and as a hand bomb is lobbed towards them Daley throws himself upon it, sacrificing his life for that of the Chief Judge. Barely breaking stride, Dredd continues on alone, Griffin slung over his already-injured shoulder.
http://www.trollheart.com/Dreddfame4ab.png
Finding an abandoned skimmer in the parkway, he takes it and manages to fly outside the Block, where Justice Central, monitoring the situation, sees him and brings him underground by means of hydraulic elevators which seem to be set into the ground, taking him into the TCB (Tactical Command Bunker) deep underneath the city. There, Dredd hands over the unconscious Griffin and gets his own wounds seen to. As a call from Sov Supreme Judge Bulgarin comes in, Dredd suggests McGruder or Ecks should take it, but McGruder is missing, presumed dead, and Ecks is definitely dead, so it's left to him to shoulder (sorry) the responsibility.

Bulgarin confidently demands Dredd's, and the city's surrender, and by way of persuasion launches a fresh strike, which he says will change Dredd's mind about continuing the fight.

Quotes

Dredd (to Bulgarin): “Don't tell me, creep: you've called to apologise!”

Betty Boop Blocker: “Boop-poop-ee-do, Judgy boys! It's dyin' time!”

Med-tech (trying to fix Dredd's arm on the move): “You're not making this any easier, Dredd!”
Dredd: “Nothing's easy these days! There's a war on, or hadn't you heard?”

Judge Gunton: “Tactical Command Bunker North reports Judge McGruder not yet arrived, presumed dead. TCB West took a direct hit: Judge Ecks is definitely dead.”

Laughing in the face of death

Not a lot to laugh at here. The cry of the Betty Boop Blocker, using Betty's signature catchphrase , is mildly funny, given the context.

Dredd's own grim humour, even in the midst of such chaos and death, comes through as he faces Bulgarin on the screen and tells him he assumes the Supreme Judge has called to apologise about the attack.
http://www.trollheart.com/Dreddfame4b.png
https://lh5.ggpht.com/8gYY3ALOpdoR8G...NsFsJ4GVU=w300
I'll ask the questions, Creep!

It's not really a question so much as an observation, but if TCB West has indeed taken a direct hit, can it be that even down here, miles under the city, the Sov nuclear missiles can hit their targets?

I AM THE LAW!

Dredd makes it clear to anyone who opposes him in Betty Boop Block that he is not in the mood for talking or reasoning his way out of a situation. He shoots first. What do you mean, ask questions later? What questions? He shoots first. That's it. I guess it's interesting also to note that Block Mania by its very nature must now be seen as a crime, or at least, anyone engaging in it seen as a criminal, as Dredd does not rattle off his customary chant - “Attacking a Judge: six years creep!” or whatever – just shoots the guys down. Mind you, it is a case of kill or be killed.
http://www.trollheart.com/Dreddfame4c.png

Nothing changes?

As ever, the ruling classes have their bunkers to flee to, ostensibly from where to direct the defence of their city, but in reality it's a bolt-hole for those who are more interested in saving their skins than facing what's coming. However, in the case of the Judges, it does in fact seem to be an entire underground command-and-control facility. Nevertheless, none but the Judges are invited to attend, though of course by now so much of the city is locked in senseless Block War that they wouldn't even be able to understand if they were told about it. You do wonder, though, if the Block Wars were not raging and people were milling about in confusion, desperately seeking shelter, would the Judges allow them into the highly-defended secret bunkers?

But seriously though, you need to check out Excalibur, Nightcrawler, Kitty Pryde, and Captain Britain in England fighting supernatural weirdness and meeting King Arthur. It's like the most ridiculous moments of late-70s/early-80s X-Men brought into the 90s and turned up to 11.

Ah, Captain Britain. I remember laughing at him in my youth. Maybe. You never know. Are you saying he's in Excalibur?

Hold on a sec: did you just say "Kitty Pryde"?? :rofl:
https://i.imgflip.com/zfotv.jpg

Yes, Captain Britain is in Excalibur. And you do realize he got a shot up the ass by Alan Moore, right?

Confused. What's wrong with Kitty Pryde?

I don't understand this reference.
I suppose it's better than Pussy Pryde, but come on... :rolleyes: It's hardly Nightflash or Starr or the Invisible Girl, is it? I have no idea whether any of the first two exist, but if they do they'd be better names than that.

Captain Britain was rejuvenated by Alan Moore in one of Moore's most celebrated series.

I mean, would you rather hear "Shadowcat"? Who cares when she's so awesome?


Am I legit explaining this **** to you? Do you not know of Alan Moore's tenure with Captain Britain? Do you not know who Kitty Pryde is?

No and no. I'm not quite the comics geek you are. I collected Marvel, but only specific heroes, such as Spidey, the Hulk, Fantastic Four, Avengers, Thor etc and I know of Alan Moore through Watchmen and V for Vendetta, as well as his work with 2000 AD of course, but other than that, no. I have a documentary on him somewhere I must watch at some point.

Also, I must point out the irony in your statement above, re who cares when she's so awesome, when applied to your trashing of the covers of the albums I recently reviewed, without bothering to even check out the music, specifically that Gert Emmin one. Who's being shallow now, huh? ;)

I was trashing a cover, not the thing underneath (and it most definitely was a ****ty cover). Kitty Pryde has been a time honored member of the X-Men for the last three decades, and Captain Britain was Alan Moore's declaration of mad awesomeness to the world. Do yourself a favor and avail yourself.

First print date: January 30 1982
Prog appearance: 249
Writer(s): John Grant
Artist(s): Carlos Ezquerra
Total episodes: 25

The Apocalypse War, Episode V

As the city shakes to the barrage of the Sov missiles, some people take Block Mania a stage further, perhaps developing acute Future Shock Syndrome, becoming full-blown Futsies. These decide literally to dance as they die, resulting in a new craze sweeping Mega-City One, or what's left of it: Apocalypse Fever. The musical expression of this is called Apocalypso, but sadly, music doth not have charms to soothe these savage beasts, and the Apocalypso dancers are vapourised as another missile strikes. Dredd decides enough is enough: if he can't protect Mega-City One, then by Grud he can ensure they take East-Meg One with them! He gives the order to launch the TADs, or Total Annihilation Devices, warheads that make the Sov missiles seem puny in comparison.
http://www.trollheart.com/Dreddfame5c.png
Having done what he can, Dredd visits Chief Judge Griffin, recovering the the med-bay, and tells him of the latest developments. Griffin approves, saying that they must go down fighting, but still wondering why the Sovs began this very short intercontinental war, which must and can only end in both the antagonists' destruction? Dredd has no answers; for him, it's enough that the Sovs did attack, and he has no intention of ruminating on their motives any further. However as the TADs approach East Meg One, Snekov gives the order for all non-essential power to be cut, and channelled to a massive defence shield, like a transparent dome over the city, which he calls the Apocalypse Warp. The TADs, encountering this force field, merely seem to dissolve into it. This is not good: MAD is what kept the superpowers at bay and even though the Sovs have gone beyond that, Dredd and Griffin still believe that though this is the end for them, the Sovs will also be destroyed. If their enemy have some way to neutralise an attack on them, then the scales have been tipped, and in this deadly game of poker the Sovs hold all the cards.

Quotes

The Apocalypso, as sung by Cy: “Apocalypso, apocalypso, everybody sing and shout! Apocalypso, apocalypso, them sneaky Sovs they nuke us out! Apocalypso, apocalypso, the whole city's goin' boom, Apocalypso, apocalypso, we all dancin' to our doom! Apocalypso, apocalypso, the Mega-City going to Hell. Apocalypso, apocalypso, apart from that we doin' swell. Apocalypso, apocalypso the bombs they come to fry our fat. Apocalypso, apocalypso, population's goin'...” He doesn't finish, but the impact of the nuke provides the punchline and the rhyme, as it SPLATS down on him!
http://www.trollheart.com/Dreddfame5a.png
Judge Hackett: “Those murdering East Meggers! Every sector south of the 35th parallel – nuked out!”
Dredd: “Get a grip on yourself, Hackett!”
Hackett: “Don't you understand Dredd! We're talking about 150 million people! Wiped out – just like that! It's monstrous! I can't believe it! I won't!”
Dredd (punching Hackett out): “Prone to hysteria. Somebody at the Academy should have spotted it.”

Bulgarin: “There is no more to be said. You have our terms: unconditional surrender, or the Apocalypse!”
Dredd: “Surrender? And condemn my city to Sov-block slavery? Never!”

Griffin: “What I don't understand is why? Why did they start this insane war?”

Laughing in the face of death

The emergence of Apocalypso is quite amusing. Anything in the fact that it happens to be a black man leading the performance? ;)

http://www.trollheart.com/Dreddfame5b.png
I AM THE LAW!

In the absence of, we assume, any Judge of higher rank, Dredd assumes the awful responsibility for sending certain death hissing through the air towards their attackers. Anyone else would probably hesitate at condemning millions to death at the touch of a button, but for Dredd it's surely seen by him as nothing more than an expected and indeed required response to the battering they have taken from the Sovs.

Interesting, too, to see that Dredd makes no allowances for the pressures of this extraordinary situation on people, as he answers Judge Hackett's hysterical outburst by socking him and growling “Prone to hysteria” and blaming the fact that this most un-Judgelike trait was not caught on the Academy of Law process. All he's really concerned about, in this case, is that Hackett has disgraced his uniform by being weak, and were the situation different and he could afford the time (and were any iso-blocks still standing) he would surely have him charged and imprisoned for dereliction of duty, bringing the force into disrepute, and anything else he could think of.

Welcome to the world of tomorrow!

Where hidden deep in silos throughout the Cursed Earth, under the sea and even on orbiting satellite platforms, TADs sleep, awaiting the call to action which will fling them into battle. Each huge missile is capable of levelling a city the size of Mega-City One. They are the ultimate retaliatory – or indeed, pre-emptive strike – weapon.

No, you were focussing exclusively on the cover and thereby dismissing the contents, which is pretty much the same thing, the classic "judge a book by its cover" argument. Did you listen to the music? If you did, then I withdraw my comment but I somehow doubt you did, which then means you made an assumption based on a cursory outside examination as to what the contents would be. I did the same in the case of Kitty Pryde: the name was /is so ludicrous to me I wondered if she was worth bothering about. We're both guilty of the same shallowness, my friend.

If Ms Pryde though has been in the X-Men then I probably will pass, as Excelsior! is to concentrate on smaller, lesser-known heroes, and I really wouldn't be interested in an ex X-Man, as it were. I might check out Captain Britain though. I feel I may have read some of his stories.

No, you're stupid. Making fun of a picture is not the same as making fun of sound. I didn't say anything about the music and almost certainly wouldn't have listened to it no matter what cover it had. So I did not dismiss it because of that, I dismissed it because it was in one of your journals.

Hah! Got you! It wasn't in one of my journals! It was in the main forum! :tramp:
**** you Batty and have a Happy Christmas. :) :beer:

Who the **** can keep up with all of your lame threads?