2005-05-22

Recently, a generous friend kindly lent me part of her rather vast collection of Marvel's Ultimate titles. It's all good stuff. Let's be honest; for the most part it's bloody brilliant stuff.

Okay, there are a few duff moments here and there, but on the whole the Ultimate titles are among the best superhero comics I've read in years.

They work for two reasons; first, because the writers and artists involved are very, very good, and second because the stories ignore the forty-odd years of continuity and start from the beginning. The characters and costumes are updated, character relationships have been redefined, and, well, pretty much anything goes.

So, as you'll have guessed from the title of this article, how about Rebellion doing something similar with Judge Dredd?

Now, I'm not suggesting that the current Dredd continuity should be chucked out; the Ultimate Judge Dredd story could be presented as, say, a ten-part mini-series in the Megazine, eight pages per episode. That would leave us with a nice eighty-page graphic novel at the end. Can't you just see that working? Yes, you can! And can't you just see the wee credit box that says, "Script: Sprout"? Well, you can if you have a good imagination.

Some might argue that Dredd hasn't been around long enough to require such a restart, but look at it this way: The Fantastic Four - Marvel's oldest title - predates Judge Dredd by a mere sixteen years. I mean, sixteen years ago (as I write this) we were on Prog 626, which featured the classic Dredd tale "In the Bath" and the first episodes of Rogue Trooper: "Cinnabar", Sláine: "The Horned God Book One", and Zenith: Phase Three. Not so long, really, is it?

Look at it another way: Marvel's profile (and sales) shot up when the Ultimates lines appeared. Why? Partly because of the aforementioned excellent writers and artists, but also because - and this is mostly speculation on my part - a lot of Marvel fans got fed up with stuff like whether or not Jean Grey was dead this month, or exactly which superhero Hank Pym was supposed to be, and abandoned the comics citing confusion as the reason. The Ultimates titles give them a chance to return to the comics without having to worry whether a minor villain introduced a couple of decades ago would suddenly reappear and claim to be yet another clone of Spider-Man.

Luckily (and despite all the clones), Dredd's continuity isn't nearly so convoluted. In fact, considering that he's been around for twenty-eight years it's a bloody marvel (subliminal hint there!) that his continuity is as clear as it is.

But I still think that - sales and profile-wise - a nice little reboot could be good for ol' Joe. Plus, it would give us die-hard life-long fans something to complain about, which is always nice.

Of course, most of us die-hard life-long fans are well aware that... Wait for it! ... Dredd has been "rebooted" before! Yes, there's been more than one version of Judge Dredd. Newbies might not be aware of these other versions, so here's a brief run-down...

1. "Prototype" Dredd. The Dredd that could have been, but wasn't. In this version, Dredd was one of a small number of Judges, who were basically a cross between a high-court judge and a police officer. They existed in a future New York City (not Mega-City One), and the stories were (or would have been) set in the early twenty-first century.
2. "Proper" Dredd. This is the Judge Dredd that first appeared in 2000 AD prog 2, in 1977, and has been going since in both the weekly prog and the Megazine. This Dredd includes the newspaper strips (Daily Star and Metro) even though some of those stories were re-tellings of previous Dredd tales, audio productions, novels, strips in Rock Power, etc.
3. "Movie" Dredd. As mortalised (the opposite of "immortalised", courtesy of Sprout's Contradictionary) in the 1995 movie. This version presents Dredd's world as a smaller place with a re-jigged judicial system and an awkward new title for the Chief Judge. Plus, Dredd takes off his helmet, thereby forever upsetting many die-hard life-long fans who felt that Dredd should never be without his security hat. "Movie" Dredd includes the comic and novel adaptations of the movie, plus the Lawman of the Future strips (even though they're closer to "Proper" Dredd than the movie was).
4. "Regular DC" Dredd. Back in 1994 DC Comics launched two Judge Dredd titles. The first of these was a complete re-vamp of Dredd's world; it begins much earlier in Dredd's time-line in order to show how the judicial system came into being. Why the script droid thought this was necessary I can't even begin to imagine. Or tolerate. Then after a few issues Dredd goes into suspended animation for fifty years, emerging in more or less the same time frame as the initial "Proper" Dredd stories, where everything has changed (except, for some reason, the Judges' uniforms). The other DC Dredd - Legends of the Law - was mostly set in this same world.
5. "Crossover DC" Dredd. Although with some imagination and a good hammer it's possible to insert the Batman and Lobo crossovers into the "Proper" Dredd continuity, to the best of my knowledge none of the crossover adventures have ever been referred to outside of themselves, so I consider them to be a stand-alone version of Dredd. I could well be wrong about this; if I am, please feel free to send me a lengthy letter of complaint (enclose a stamped, addressed envelope and a billion pounds for administration costs).
6. Ah! The version of Dredd that everyone forgets about... Er... Hold on, I've forgotten it too... I'll come back to it.

In the meantime, what would Ultimate Judge Dredd be like? Well, he'd be hard as depleted uranium nails, for a start. He'd use abandoned elements from the "Prototype" Dredd; he'd be Judge, Jury and Executioner all in one. Also harking back to the prototype days, there would be regular police too.

His costume would retain some of the elements with which we are familiar, but the silly bits would be replaced. No giant shoulder-pad that looks like it would rip his arm off if he went too fast on his motorbike. No enormous eagle on the other shoulder. No name on his badge (which will make things easier for Judge Nahasapeemapetilon). The uniform wouldn't be all bright primary colours, either: he'd want to be able to sneak around in the dark. Likewise, the standard Judge's uniform definitely wouldn't feature a heavy chain (the reason for this is mentioned in an earlier Sprout column!).

He'd keep the helmet, though. The helmet is good. Well, it's good when some artists draw it. With others, it's more like he's wearing a bell on his head. Or, in the case of McCarthy and Ewins, it's more like a wok (question: since Dredd's helmet doesn't feature a chin-strap, how does it stay on when he's hanging upside-down off something or other?). Okay, so maybe the helmet in its current design isn't all that good, but I'd still keep it if I was me. Which I am, so I will. However, I'd make sure that - as with the rest of the costume - there was some sort of continuity between the different artists. Wow! Imagine that! Judge Dredd looking like the same character from one issue to the next!

As for the stories: No Walter the Wobot, no Maria the Italian-stereotype cleaning woman, no "being mates with other judges". No "poignant" tales about the exploitation of sweet likkle aliens who are as cute as a barrel of buttons. In fact, no aliens at all.

We'd open with, say, a bloody big gun-battle between lots of bad guys and the regular cops, then Dredd would arrive and kick the appropriate bottoms. Now, you might be thinking, "so far, so exactly what happened in the movie", but, see, this is where it gets interesting! This is where we put in the brilliant twist that, while mostly in keeping with the Dredd with whom we're all familiar, is also something that none of the readers would anticipate! This absolutely excellent and unprecedented twist is going to make all you Dredd fans go "Oooh!" a lot, followed by comments along the lines of "I wish I'd thought of that!" Come to think of it, John Wagner and Gordon Rennie will react the same way too. Oh, they're going to be so jealous of ol' Sproutie!

You'll be pleased to know that I'm not going to reveal the twist just yet - in case, by some miracle, I actually do get picked to write Ultimate Judge Dredd - but I promise that it's something really, really, really cool! It's cooler than a fridge riding a Harley Davidson. Wearing a leather jacket. And shades. In the winter.

Wait a second! Now I remember what the sixth version of Judge Dredd is! It's "Pants" Dredd! Yes, those stories that exist in a special continuity that looks a bit like "Proper" Dredd but it isn't, because they are stories that really should never have seen print, the ones we like to pretend never happened, and to which the writers never refer again. If you're a die-hard life-long fan, you'll know which stories I mean... They're the sort of embarrassing stories that, if they crop up often enough, cause comic characters to shed their continuity like a snake sheds its old skin, and then spontaneously regenerate like a phoenix rising from the ashes to become something new, and astonishing, and beautiful, like a butterfly emerging from a chrysalis or a frog emerging from... er... its past life as a tadpole. That kind of thing.

Anyway, there you have it! Feel free to bombard our webmaster Gavin with your drawings of what Ultimate Judge Dredd would look like. We can't promise to use all of your entries, but we will sneer at the ones that are rubbish.