Judge Dredd: The Complete Case Files - Volume 03

Mega-City One, 2101. The city is recovering from the rule of the insane tyrant Cal and, as usual, it's up to the firm and unyielding vigilance of Judge Dredd to make sure stability is maintained. But with his niece Vienna being targeted by criminals, crime rising in the city hab blocks, and a vast invading army of flesh-eating spiders headed towards the city, Dredd has his hands full. And that's before the sinister Judge Death arrives from another dimension...

The previous two volumes in the Complete Case Files series presented two different sides to the Judge Dredd mythos. Volume 01 was mostly stand-alone stories with little linking material. Volume 02 is divided into two huge arcs, The Cursed Earth and The Day the Law Died, with only a few standalone stories. Volume 03 is, once again, mostly stand-alone stories, although these are now usually mini-arcs of 2-4 issues apiece, with the occasional one-off strip.

This approach, coupled with a greater interest in worldbuilding and continuity (things that were more optional in the first volume) means that the omnibus covers a lot of ground. Several Judge Dredd core concepts are explored here, such as city fads that the population of Mega-City One latches onto to avoid going totally insane, with "boinging" (jumping around the city in indestructible plastic bubbles) the first to be investigated. We also learn more about Mega-City One's TV stations and what kind of shows are popular, and we get several arcs in which the city is under threat from a vast horde out of the Cursed Earth, being, er, druid-led hippies and killer insane spiders respectively. In another story, Dredd joins forces with a talking cat (genetic engineering, natch), fights horror-themed robots running amuck (Dredd vs. the Hunchback of Notre Dame is an underrated face-off) and has to take part in an international incident as Mega-City One has to evict Sov-Block warships from the Black Atlantic off the coast. Smaller-scale stories see Dredd having to deal with the introduction of the most amazing-tasting chocolate in the history of the city, and dealing with a super-genius child whose parents did not set appropriate boundaries (this story gets a sequel a mind-boggling thirty years later).

But the volume saves the most memorable story for almost last. Dredd's most iconic, famous foe is Judge Death, a semi-incorporeal being from another dimension who killed his homeworld's population, ensuring justice by making life itself a crime. Dredd has to join forces with Psi-Judge Anderson, arguably the second-most-iconic judge in the whole franchise apart from Dredd, to take down the enemy. This is a foe so formidable that it's hard to see how Dredd can plausibly win, and to their credit the writers realise that as well, and come up with a novel solution that doesn't resolve the situation permanently, but puts it on hold for another time (in this case, Volume 05).

Those looking for another long-running, epic arc may be disappointed not to find one here, but this collection of shorter arcs is head-and-shoulders better than Volume 01. The stories are funnier, the satire is sharper and the world is feeling more consistent. This is still far from Dredd at its best, but we're certainly well on our way to getting there, and it's satisfying to finally meet Dredd's most formidable adversary, and one who will continue to plague him for decades to come.

The Complete Case Files Volume 03 (***½) contains every Judge Dredd story printed from Prog (issue) 116 to Prog 154 of the comic 2000AD, published from June 1979 to March 1980. The stories are set in the years 2101 and 2102. The writers in this collection are John Wagner and Pat Mills. The artists in this collection are Brian Bolland, Dave Gibbons, Mick McMahon, Brendan McCarthy, Ian Gibson, Garry Leach, Ron Smith, John Cooper and Barry Mitchell.

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