Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The first great epic, 8 April 2002
By A Customer
This was the Judge's first real epic. John Wagner wanted a break from writing Dredd back in 79 (if memory serves) and Pat Mills took over for a story exploring Dredd's world outside the city. Mills was concerned that Dredd was becoming too predictable and stereotypical. So a plot, loosely based on Damnation Alley became the framework to hang a sequence of unrelated stories about life out in the Cursed Earth, the radioactive wasteland outside the city walls. Mills writes Dredd in a different way from Wagner, he portrays him as more of a hero as opposed to the zero-tolerance quasi-fascist he usually is. This doesn't mean for an instant that Dredd changes character completely, he is still unforgiving and brutal, as seen in the second episode where he beats Spikes Harvey Rotten (you'd never guess this was written in the 70s!) a biker punk last seen in the Mega City 3000 illegal bike race into cooperating with him. Artwork is done by only two artists with vastly differing styles, Brian Bolland and Mike McMahon... I would like to say this was the golden age of Dredd, but it only went on to get better and better. It was one of the formative years / stories. To see the direction Mills would have taken the character if Wagner hadn't been the prime writer is interesting in itself, but Cursed Earth really does stand out as an excellent epic. This is not a criticism, but the story is now very dated, but nostalgia overrides any negativity. You have to remember that this was not written for the adults we became, but for the boys of that era. The punk era.Interesting to note that 4 episodes (2 stories) are not reprinted in this volume. These were not written by Pat Mills, the guy who basically started 2000AD. They comprised of Burger Law and Soul Food. In Burger Law fast food companies like Burger King and McDonalds have become gangs at war, shooting and killing each other. Soul Food saw an evil Jolly Green Giant amongst other trademarked and copyrighted items. As you can imagine, McDonald's was not in favour of children seeing Ronald McDonald in a bad light and threatened legal action. Same for the Jolly Green Giant people, and a hastily drawn half page retraction was published. Since then these episodes have never been repeated, and probably won't for decades to come. If you're that interested in them, you'll have to get the original copies of 2000AD (around issue 70 odd).
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Still the greatest epic ever to appear in a British comic..., 5 Jun 2004
This epic gave the character of Dredd and his environment a poignancy never surpassed in any of the other stories about this character. Pat Mills shows changes in the previously simplistic character of Dredd and gives his trademark slogans such as "I am the Law" a new level of meaning as the Judge fights slavery and vivisection without fear or favouritism. The friendship that Mills shows between Dredd and the alien Tweak is truly moving given the limitations of the graphic novel form. On the subject of graphics, I prefer the deep art of Bolland to the busy visuals of McMahon but they are both superb artists. I defy anyone not to be touched by some of the storylines and dialogue that Pat Mills developed.Scans of the missing episodes (largely irrelevant to the main story by the way) can now be found on websites for comic fans.
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4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
One for fans, 22 Jul 2002
By A Customer
First off, I'd like to commend Titan Books for the job they're doing with the reprints of classic stories -- both for keeping them black and white, and for the quality of the books themselves.That said, this story is more of historic interest than being a good read in itself. As the first epic, it seems to suffer particularly badly from the episodic nature of the comic, so stories are kept brief and cliffhangers happen with predictable regularity. The dialogue and characterisations are also creaky compared to Dredd's later standards. Bolland's artwork is as stunning as ever, but McMahon's art is something that people either like or loathe. Alas, Bolland gets only a handful of stories to draw, a ratio made worse by the omission of the *ahem* controversial episodes. If you're expecting something of the quality of "Judge Dredd Featuring Judge Death", you may be disappointed. Get it for a nostalgia feast or if you're a completionist, but if you're a casual reader, you might want to consider different Dredd.
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by John Wagner
by John Wagner
by Alan Moore
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