this post was submitted on 07 Sep 2023
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the_dunk_tank
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Can someone give me a quick run down on what Judge Dredd is? I understand the irony as a literary device in that they're likely a bad guy and a personification of some flaw in the justice system.
It was a feature in a British comic called '2,000 A.D.' Most of the features were ultra violent and/or satirical. Dredd is a Judge in Mega City 1, the future version of New York City. Nuclear war has devastated the outside world, and only a few Mega-Cities survive. After the fall of the Constitution, the citizens put the Judges in charge. A Judge can arrest, try, and sentence any lawbreaker. The Judges aren't elected, they self select by picking the best young cadets and training them.
The stories range from straight forward adventure to obvious send ups.
I've never seen it either but I'm going to say it's the cop version to Starship Troopers military parody.
Only if Starship Troopers were cranked up to 11.
It was a satirical, originally underground (I think) comic book series made in the UK during the Thatcher years. In the comic, Judges in the future dystopian society are cop/judge/executioner all rolled into one. The stories have a lot of ultra-violence and the judges are often portrayed as corrupt, though Judge Dredd himself is generally a incorruptible paragon who believes fully in the system, despite how horrific it is.
Much like early 40k, the satire goes over the heads of CHUDs who see the ultraviolence and extreme police overreach and just think "Fuck yeah! So cool!" and don't really look at the deeper themes at all.
2000 AD and therefore Dredd was never underground, it was originally a large publisher's attempt to cash in on the Star Wars craze (the first issue came out in 1977 too).
It's funny how people itt talk of the comic in the past tense as if it's not still ongoing to this day.
Huh, I thought 2000 AD ended sometime around 2008 or so for some reason. I was talking about it in the past tense because I thought it was! TIL.
Why did they make Dredd a paragon though? Seems like that'd ruins the sature
He's someone who believes fully in the system and has absolute faith in it, despite the system being obviously corrupt and never actually improving things.
It has been a long time since I've read 2000 AD, so I'm probably a little rusty on it.
Just seems weird to me that they'd make him competent rather than a fool
that's the point of Dredd - he's an immovable force in a world that is always changing - 2/3 of MC1 was destroyed in The Apocalypse War (maybe the best Dredd story of all time, with The Small House being a close second) and while the system utterly collapsed he pulled everything back from the brink. Although in later years, as Dredd has grown older, the storylines have gave him a lot more depth and perspective - recent events caused him to seriously question the system he spent an entire lifetime protecting and it's a theme that crops up now and then in subsequent story arcs proving him to be way more than the Future Dirty Harry he was initially created and satirised as.