Judge Dredd the Megazine, ranked part 1: Comedy is so subjective, isn't it.

So it seems that, for my tastes, where the Megazine goes most wrong is when creators are aiming for broad comedy… and missing. Or, possibly, they’re aiming for quite sophisticated comedy, and I just don’t get it? Pretty sure my picks for bottom of the barrel are the former, though…

So, starting off with, in my opinion, the very worst strips to run in the Judge Dredd Megazine...

Brit-Cit Brute by Robbie Morrison and Nick Percival
(Volume 2 issues 31-33 and 61-63)

What was this? The adventures of Judge Newt, a kind of one-man SAS unit employed in Brit Cit to handle the ultra-violent crimes, but surreal and funny! I think the premise was that Newt is a hulking beast of a man, with loads of guns, who caused more harm in property damage and death/maiming to those around him, than he did good in terms of catching perps / saving the day. The whole thing was maybe intended as a pastiche of US comics of the mid-90s, e.g. the likes of Cable and Bishop and other muscled superheroes with big guns? Also the idea was to pile on absurd situations and surreal-type comedy beats, e.g. an extended bit where Newt is saddled with a little girl, to add more comedy.

It did not. Judge Newt was killed off in a nuclear meltdown in Calhab Justice, I think?

For the sake of saying something nice: Percival does conjure up some panels here and there where Newt’s facial expressions are both aiming for, and delivering on, deadpan comedy. He’s a good painter.

Credit where it's due: this is pleasing three-panel comics. Shame about all the other panels.
Concept: Robbie Morrison; art: Nick Percival

Dreddworld relevance? It’s set in Brit-Cit, in the same context as Armitage. Newt’s adventures do nothing to flesh out that world, or to contradict it.

Writing: 2/10 If you squint you can see a way this basic story might be funny? But the plots weren’t there, and neither were the situations or the jokes.
Art: 5/10 Nothing wrong with Percival’s design of Newt the character, and he certainly nails the mid-90s painted art / muscle man aesthetic. But the storytelling is not there yet.
Impact: 1/10 I hate it so much.

Overall score: 8/30

Has it been reprinted? Naturally! Why wouldn’t they collect and reprint the worst strip ever? It's part of Hachette's Judge Dredd Mega Collection, in Volume 55 'The Heavy Mob'.

 

Citi-Def, by Tony Lee and Jackademus
(Megs 279-283)

What was this? A one-off story about a Citi-Def unit from Mega City 1 whose ship crashes in the cursed Earth, where they have Cursed-Earth style encounters involving hyper violence, evil mutants, dinosaurs and an ex-Judge. It is a comedy. It’s not not-funny, it’s just not very funny, with base-level meta-jokes that vaguely poke at things like masculinity and the joy of big guns and plot contrivances.

It irks me that the whole joke of the original idea of a ‘Citizens-Defence-Force’ in general, is that they are a bunch of idiots who like the idea of playing with guns but aren’t necessarily very good at it, or anything like on the level of being as tough as a Judge. This series requires them, in fact, to be exactly at that level. It also irks me that the fairly rote characters are thrown up against exactly the sort of Cursed Earth things seen every time there’s a story set here, without adding anything new to the mix. To be fair, each episode ends with a lovely splash page of some new (but not original) Cursed Earth horror. Frankly, it would be a decent story if was in a Regened-style comic aimed at younger readers (maybe some of the sex jokes could be either cut or at least improved). The jokes would still not be funny to this reader.

Again, credit where it's due: that's a cracking bit of dino action.
Words by Tony Lee; Art by Jackademus

Dreddworld relevance? It’s set in the Cursed Earth, and as such fits in. But to my eyes it miscasts its central crew of Citi-Def folk as competent (if gung-ho), when they oughta be morons (if gung-ho). It certainly misunderstands Dredd continuity when it claims that the heroes fought in e.g. the Apocalypse War, despite appearing to be in their 20s…

Writing: 2/10 Look, Tony Lee is a competent writer who can tell a coherent story with recognisable characters. No complaints there. It’s just this specific story he’s telling, and the characters he has conjured up, are more or less awful.
Art: 6/10 Honestly, the art here isn’t bad, it’s just Regened-appropriate artwork, wedded to a story rather too full of adult jokes to work. Full disclosure – although I haven’t seen/spoken to him in many years, I did once get to know Jack ‘Jackdemus’ Lawrence quite well and he’s a super chap, and a really top tier kidventure artist. Check out Darkham Vale!
Impact: 1/10 I don’t like it, and neither should you.

Overall score: 9/30

Has it been reprinted? Err.. yes. I mean, sometimes you need a theme for a reprint volume, and sometimes to fill out that volume you’ll take whatever fits. In this case, that's 'Cursed Earth Carnage', Vol 68 of the Judge Dredd Mega Collection

 

O’Rork, by Jim Alexander and Lol
(Volume 2 issues 61-62, and a text story in the Judge Dredd Mega Special 95)

What was this? A two-part tale about a private eye (I think? He might be an insurance investigator?) in Future Oz. He has big hair. It is just possible the injuries at the end of his story were meant to be permanent and this might have given future stories something more particular to deal with than just ‘generic non-Judge crime-investigator with vague-noir trappings’. Anyway, he sort of by accident solves a weird crime involving a psychic child who uses metal scrap and a sort-of electricity-power to build a robotic shrine to his abusive but dead mother. I’m in danger of making it sound more interesting than it is…

O'Rork has massive hair AND fancy ties. What more do you want from a lead character?
Words by Jim Alexander; Art by the mysterious Lol

Dreddworld relevance? It’s set in the Sydney-Melbourne Conurb, nothing wrong with that. But it doesn’t do anything to flesh out what life is like there, certainly compared to any of the Chopper tales set in the same place.

Writing: 3/10 Jim Alexander is clearly an intelligent person, who wants to tell interesting stories in interesting ways. This story is a bit weird and a bit funny, two good things. The main character might have turned out to be interesting, although in this one story he’s kind of generically not as bad as an actual criminal, but not as lawful/good as a cop. But the WAY Alexander goes about writing his comics is just hard work. No captions or text-based cues to tell you that we’re switching from one narrator to another, or one location to another. And it doesn’t help that our protagonist very much relies on luck that his lowlife friend happens to point a finger at the actual guilty party. And it doesn’t help even more that I don’t get why O’Rork ‘wins’ at the end. But still it is weird and kind of interesting, so there’s that.
Art: 5/10 Lol’s storytelling chops have certainly cohered a bit since his memorably bonkers run on Calhab Justice. He has reached the level of ‘paid professional’, and I guess his style is kind of interestingly big and in that Jason Brashill tradition of being Beano-esque but kinda for grown-ups. But it’s not very good.
Impact: 1/10 – it could be the least memorable thing to run in the Megazine, which is perhaps a worse sin than being memorably bad…

Overall score: 9/30

Has it been reprinted? Amazingly, yes! It’s in ‘Independent Operators’ (Volume 22) of Judge Dredd Mega Collection – along with Harmony and a random elseworlds-ish Dredd tale.

 

Cabal by John Freeman and Adrian Salmon
(Vol 3 issues 7-8)

What was this? A reasonably interesting idea for a Dreddworld story that a) falls apart under just a little bit of scrutiny and b) is introduced with a specific story that is average at best.

So, the basic idea: Justice Dept has a functioning Exorcism Dept, a sub-group of Psi-Div called in to help with occult crimes. BUT, posits Psi-Div chief Shenker, perhaps the very presence of that team is making the citizenry more aware of occult stuff generally, thus making it a bigger threat? And wouldn’t you know it, a demon has been summoned and is causing major havoc.

The Exorcist Judges would, in fact, return.
Words by John Freeman; Art by Adrian Salmon

Not a bad line of thinking… except, a) wouldn’t it make more sense for Justice Dept to just deny/hide all evidence of its own Exorcism Judges, who are hardly major figures in the first place? and b), isn’t the occult cat rather out of the bag in a world where e.g. Devlin Waugh is a major international celebrity, whose occult exploits have saved the entire world recently and are the subject of TV shows and such?

Never mind that though, what if the story is good? Well, Exorcist Judge Caliban is a neat hero, and there’s a funny/clever bit where he channels a rare kind of belief system through a magic ring. Villain Asmodeus, though, is rather rote and even looks too much like the Joker for comfort.

So yeah, a not-good-enough premise tied to an only-OK story.

Dreddworld relevance? Very much an MCI Judge story, this! Featuring recurring Dredd characters and all, with (in theory) notable repercussions for Justice Dept. (Not really though.)

Writing: 4/10 I will give Freeman credit for packing in a lot of exposition into a short story without making it a chore to read. And the big ‘hero defeats villain’ moment IS cool. But that’s it.
Art: 4.5/10 Salmon is doing his thing, only this time with a colourist added, and frankly that makes a HUGE difference to the intelligibility of the story. But it’s early-era computer colouring, so basically super garish. Overall it’s technically ‘better’ than the previous b+w Salmon work, but feels a lot less stylish.
Impact: 1 Now, it’s entirely possible that Exorcist Judges have not been seen since this story, but I rather doubt it’s because writers are following the continuity beats that the story set up…
We certainly haven’t seen Exorcist judge supreme Caliban again?

Overall score: 9.5/30

Has it been reprinted? It has! In the ‘Weird science’ collection (Vol. 17) of occult Dreddworld stuff, part of the Judge Dredd Mega Collection.

Apocalypse Soon by Alan Grant and Shaun Thomas
(Megs 204-214)

What was this? Told in mostly 1 or 2 pages of strip, this was a VERY broad satire about God sending the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse to bring about the end times. There were two running jokes. 1) The four horsemen couldn’t be bothered. This was usually pretty funny. 2) The world was/is in such a bad state it hardly needs any help bringing about the end times. This joke is funny in itself, but on the page it mostly involved pointing at Blair, Bush and the Iraq invasion without actually saying/showing anything especially funny.
It did not help that Thomas’s art style – which is like a computer-y version of those Simon Bisley pages where he drew rough pencil sketches but didn’t bother painting over them – would occasionally produce some amusing and delightfully weird images, but mostly just did not fit the tone and content of the strip. A bold experiment in matching widescreen comics art with narrowscreen humour comics, but a failed one…

Can you identify the four world leaders in the top panel? Will it make this comic funnier if you can?
Words by Alan Grant; Art by Shaun Thomas

Dreddworld relevance? None whatsoever – it was very much set in the present-day real world of 2004.

Writing: 4.5/10 – the basic idea is funny, and the odd joke does land. But there are too many dud episodes.
Art: 4.5/10 – too weird not to give some credit, but also it’s not very good.
Impact: 1 – I suspect many people never knew this existed, and/or have totally forgotten about it…

Overall score: 10/30

Has it been reprinted? Nope. Can’t quite imagine what kind of a collection it would fit into, neither, although perhaps a ‘Twisted mind of Alan Grant’ compendium would be just the ticket.

 

Black Atlantic, by Dan Abnett and Steve Roberts
(Megs 253-255, 276-278)

What was this? A rare misfire from Dan Abnett. It’s basically a sitcom set aboard a salvage ship that wanders the Black Atlantic. In theory, an interesting setting for weird and funny adventures. In practice, though, there was only time to set up the cast of characters, and then run in with some mutants and monsters, and then everyone kind of realised it just wasn’t working, I guess? The jokes are pretty feeble, and the characters too generic to have got much mileage. Another failed comedy.

It's like the weirdest kids TV cartoon you saw half an episode of once.
Words by Dan Abnett; Art by Steve Roberts

Dreddworld relevance? It’s set in the Black Atlantic, very much part of Dreddworld lore. But apart from that, nothing. There’s a frustrating bit where it imagines the crew of an oil rig have mutated and set up a new society over many generations. But, you know, it’s only 2140 – so like 3-4 generations from now at best, I don’t care how irradiated you are.

Writing: 4/10 One is used to so much better from Dan Abnett – but it does some good to remember that part of his process is being super prolific and giving lots of things a go.
Art: 5/10 This was pretty much Steve Roberts’ final job for Tharg, before trading in comics for Kids TV (big up to Dip Dap! And the Twirly Woos!) for like a decade. He had been experimenting with different styles up to now, to fun effect. He settled here on something largely smooth and simple. It’s easy to read, and has some of the fun visual jokes he’d hones so well, but it didn’t add up to anything very memorable.
Impact: 1/10 It’s bottom-tier Abnett

Overall score: 10/30

Has it been reprinted? nope!