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A review by marthmuffins
Essential Judge Dredd: America, Volume 1 by John Wagner, Carlos Ezquerra
4.0
Essential Judge Dredd: America - 4/5
Collects the main "spine" of the democracy storyline which featured in 2000AD's Judge Dredd strip from the mid-80s to the early 90s, where efforts are made to bring democracy back to the fascist-run streets of Mega-City One. Got 6 stories here, almost all fairly good:
Letter From A Democrat - 6/5. 2000AD Prog #460, Written by John Wagner, Art by John Higgins
A classic, one episode story that manages to ground the world of the strip and realise that whilst Dredd might be fighting deranged Mega-City inhabitants, science experiments gone wrong, and Dark Judges bent on wiping out all life he's still a fascist who imprisons countless people for minor infractions and belongs to a system which is thoroughly corrupt and rancid. I definitely feel the response it was meant to be against those idolising Dredd or the Judges, and it works so well in a way only one-off stories can often do.
Revolution - 5/5. 2000AD Progs #531-533, Written by John Wagner & Alan Grant, Art by John Higgins
You can hear Grant's voice here as Dredd and the Judges get up to their nefarious scheme to disrupt the pro-Democracy march. Really shows the highly satirical and pointed side of Dredd in his hands, being a caricature more than anything. It works really well here, and I love how explicit it is in the well-worn tactics they use to get their way against protesters.
Politics - 5/5. 2000AD Prog #656, Written by Alan Grant, Art by Jeff Anderson
Alan Grant's Dredd unrestrained from John Wagner's more character-focused beats. A really strong and very dark one episode comedy about the lengths the Justice Department will go to suppress the growing democracy movement. Grim in the way the best Dredd satires can be. Makes me wonder what Dredd would've looked like if Grant had become the primary Dredd writer over our own, John Wagner led, timeline.
America - 3.5/5. Judge Dredd Megazine #01-07, Written by John Wagner, Art by Colin MacNeil
The main event. Dredd always works well as a looming background threat, one which truly reveals the inhuman and horrible nature of the Judges in regards to the average citizen. I love the noir feel a lot, and especially seeing flashes of the main characters life as various events in Mega-City history unfold, but the culmination of this first arc of the democracy storyline is really good. It's not subtle, and I know the fact that one of the characters is called America and that name is used to hammer home the point the story is making really irritates some readers, but it works really well for me. We don't deserve subtilty.
My main issue is the treatment of the character of America. She’s a symbol, she exists as a kind of exoticised image in the main character’s head, both in a political and in a sexual sense. She’s not a character but an idea. At no point does she get to breathe on her own but is an object pursued by both the main character and Dredd, her body is more important than her personhood. Things happen to her, and at times she’s reduced to biological functions like her ability to have kids and it all feels very eh. In the end she has less of an individual character than the one-off person introduced in Letter From A Democrat. It's an issue not unique to this story, or even how comparable people are framed in real life, but it being so central here really got at me, and it’s why I reduced my rating.
However, if you can get passed that then there is a really solid story worth reading here and I highly recommend it.
"The Devil You Know..." - 3.5/5. 2000AD Progs 750-753, Written by John Wagner, Art by Jeff Anderson
Gearing up for the Referendum on democracy. Here there are issues just in terms of what is and what isn't included. The story itself is fine, if a little convoluted for what it's trying to tell, and it gets at the heart of Judge corruption which constantly raises its head. The issue is that in this collection we don't see the change in Dredd, why he's shifted from his hardline anti-Democracy stance (which he was so committed he'd break the law itself to stop it) and towards being the main Judge supporting a referendum on democracy.
Now most of that is a gradual shift between America and this story, with most the change happening in the huge Dredd epic Necropolis which has a whole Essential Collection to itself, but it does feel jarring here nevertheless, especially if this is where new readers are jumping in with the Essential Collection releases. Even a short continuity note detailing that shift in Dredd would be good.
As it is though this is still a decent story and continues the themes on well.
Twilight's Last Gleaming - 2/5. 2000AD Progs 754-756, Written by Garth Ennis, Art by John M. Burns
This is the story I'm most mixed on. I don't hate the resolution to the referendum itself, makes sense. My issue comes with the reaction of
It's a reversal which ends up reinforcing the fascist ideals of the Judges rather than refuting them in the way the other stories here do. It ends up stating that "no, the Judges are necessary actually so just suck it up and live with what you have". Again, my issue isn't that the referendum doesn't pass, that angle works well for me, or that Dupre gives up and is resigned to Judges control, it's that the story goes out of it's way to have a final monologue about how the Judges really are just what Mega-City One needs after all in a way which doesn't feel ironic, satirical, or pointed in any way. It'd be easy to excise too, with just a few panels difference on the second-to-last page needing changed.
Those issues really hurt this final story, and without them it would be a far stronger ending, both of this story and of the primary democracy storyline in the Dredd timeline.
Overall - 4/5
A really strong collection let down at the end by a wet fart of a final episode. Still, it remains highly recommended for the rest of the stories here!
Collects the main "spine" of the democracy storyline which featured in 2000AD's Judge Dredd strip from the mid-80s to the early 90s, where efforts are made to bring democracy back to the fascist-run streets of Mega-City One. Got 6 stories here, almost all fairly good:
Letter From A Democrat - 6/5. 2000AD Prog #460, Written by John Wagner, Art by John Higgins
A classic, one episode story that manages to ground the world of the strip and realise that whilst Dredd might be fighting deranged Mega-City inhabitants, science experiments gone wrong, and Dark Judges bent on wiping out all life he's still a fascist who imprisons countless people for minor infractions and belongs to a system which is thoroughly corrupt and rancid. I definitely feel the response it was meant to be against those idolising Dredd or the Judges, and it works so well in a way only one-off stories can often do.
Revolution - 5/5. 2000AD Progs #531-533, Written by John Wagner & Alan Grant, Art by John Higgins
You can hear Grant's voice here as Dredd and the Judges get up to their nefarious scheme to disrupt the pro-Democracy march. Really shows the highly satirical and pointed side of Dredd in his hands, being a caricature more than anything. It works really well here, and I love how explicit it is in the well-worn tactics they use to get their way against protesters.
Politics - 5/5. 2000AD Prog #656, Written by Alan Grant, Art by Jeff Anderson
Alan Grant's Dredd unrestrained from John Wagner's more character-focused beats. A really strong and very dark one episode comedy about the lengths the Justice Department will go to suppress the growing democracy movement. Grim in the way the best Dredd satires can be. Makes me wonder what Dredd would've looked like if Grant had become the primary Dredd writer over our own, John Wagner led, timeline.
America - 3.5/5. Judge Dredd Megazine #01-07, Written by John Wagner, Art by Colin MacNeil
The main event. Dredd always works well as a looming background threat, one which truly reveals the inhuman and horrible nature of the Judges in regards to the average citizen. I love the noir feel a lot, and especially seeing flashes of the main characters life as various events in Mega-City history unfold, but the culmination of this first arc of the democracy storyline is really good. It's not subtle, and I know the fact that one of the characters is called America and that name is used to hammer home the point the story is making really irritates some readers, but it works really well for me. We don't deserve subtilty.
My main issue is the treatment of the character of America. She’s a symbol, she exists as a kind of exoticised image in the main character’s head, both in a political and in a sexual sense. She’s not a character but an idea. At no point does she get to breathe on her own but is an object pursued by both the main character and Dredd, her body is more important than her personhood. Things happen to her, and at times she’s reduced to biological functions like her ability to have kids and it all feels very eh. In the end she has less of an individual character than the one-off person introduced in Letter From A Democrat. It's an issue not unique to this story, or even how comparable people are framed in real life, but it being so central here really got at me, and it’s why I reduced my rating.
However, if you can get passed that then there is a really solid story worth reading here and I highly recommend it.
"The Devil You Know..." - 3.5/5. 2000AD Progs 750-753, Written by John Wagner, Art by Jeff Anderson
Gearing up for the Referendum on democracy. Here there are issues just in terms of what is and what isn't included. The story itself is fine, if a little convoluted for what it's trying to tell, and it gets at the heart of Judge corruption which constantly raises its head. The issue is that in this collection we don't see the change in Dredd, why he's shifted from his hardline anti-Democracy stance (which he was so committed he'd break the law itself to stop it) and towards being the main Judge supporting a referendum on democracy.
Now most of that is a gradual shift between America and this story, with most the change happening in the huge Dredd epic Necropolis which has a whole Essential Collection to itself, but it does feel jarring here nevertheless, especially if this is where new readers are jumping in with the Essential Collection releases. Even a short continuity note detailing that shift in Dredd would be good.
As it is though this is still a decent story and continues the themes on well.
Twilight's Last Gleaming - 2/5. 2000AD Progs 754-756, Written by Garth Ennis, Art by John M. Burns
This is the story I'm most mixed on. I don't hate the resolution to the referendum itself,
Spoiler
voter apathy, ignorance, fear, and willingness to settle for "the devil you know"Spoiler
Blondel Dupre. It's not so much that she's resigned to the Judges power, that makes a lot of sense and is a good, pessimistic way to end her story which has stretched over this whole collection, but it's that she so readily accepts Dredd's reasoning for why the Judges are needed in the end.It's a reversal which ends up reinforcing the fascist ideals of the Judges rather than refuting them in the way the other stories here do. It ends up stating that "no, the Judges are necessary actually so just suck it up and live with what you have". Again, my issue isn't that the referendum doesn't pass, that angle works well for me, or that Dupre gives up and is resigned to Judges control, it's that the story goes out of it's way to have a final monologue about how the Judges really are just what Mega-City One needs after all in a way which doesn't feel ironic, satirical, or pointed in any way. It'd be easy to excise too, with just a few panels difference on the second-to-last page needing changed
Those issues really hurt this final story, and without them it would be a far stronger ending, both of this story and of the primary democracy storyline in the Dredd timeline.
Overall - 4/5
A really strong collection let down at the end by a wet fart of a final episode. Still, it remains highly recommended for the rest of the stories here!