>When someone calls on the law for help... be he mutie... alien... cyborg... or human... The law cannot turn a blind eye! AND I AM THE LAW!
It is the dawn of the 22nd century. Following the atomic wars begun by the last American president, Robert Booth, the world has changed. Humanity survives in the Mega Cities, vast urban conurbations where mass automation and high technology has ensured that almost total unemployment. The restless population is kept in line by the oppressive rule of the Judges, who stand ever ready to break those who break the Law. Even among this fearsome body one stands out above all the others; Judge Joseph Dredd.
Beyond the Mega Cities lies the radioactive, mutant-haunted wasteland to which the old world was reduced: The Cursed Earth. Today we will be looking at one of the first stories to deal with this nightmare environment in an epic story called, oddly enough, The Cursed Earth. The episodic narrative lends itself well as the basis for RPG storylines, not just those set in Dredd’s world: who doesn’t enjoy a ragtag band of misfits making a perilous journey across a dangerous environment, saving lives and defeating terrible enemies like rat cults, mad robots, mutant slavers, dinosaurs and Ronald McDonald. Yes, we’re doing the infamous and only recently unbanned from publication Burger Wars. This story also features Judge Dredd at his most straightforwardly heroic rather than some of his later, more cynical portrayals, which could be helpful for players of lawmen, knights and others of a lawful-good persuasion who still want a little uncompromising edge.
The Cursed Earth was largely written by Pat Mills (Nemesis the Warlock, ABC Warriors Slaine, Requiem, Punisher 2099) rather than John Wagner or his then writing partner Allan Grant, who together have produced more classic Dredd material than any other author. Mills always pushed for Dredd to be more of a heroic figure than either Wagner or especially Grant, which might seem odd considering his almost all of his other major characters are utter, utter bastards. The Cursed Earth was his actually his second attempt to correct what he saw as a major flaw in Dredd as a protagonist, that he is an “automaton character” responding robotically to plot developments with little internal conflict. His first attempt to correct this problem was the short “The Return of Rico” which introduced (and summarily dispatched) Dredd’s evil clone brother.
In keeping with traditional Pat Mills storytelling, however, expect things to go off the rails at some point and terrible, terrible jokes.
Brody Hill
North America in Dredd’s world at this point in time had three Mega Cities. Mega City One, the first and largest of its kind in the world, stretched from the poisoned Atlantic Ocean to somewhere around Ohio and from parts of Canada down towards Florida. The slightly smaller Mega City Two spread out all along the west coast of the US. Mega City Three quickly abandoned its original name and declared itself Texas City, claiming dominion over Lake Louisina and the mutie territories of what was once the South. Other Mega Cities included Brit-Cit (and its suburbs Cal-Hab and Murphyville), Euro-Cit, East Meg One and Two, Hong Tong, Hondo City, Sydney–Melbourne Conurbation and Ciudad Barranquilla. The moon, Titan, and other deep space colonies are also human-occupied.
In the years since this story several of them, most notably East Meg One, have been destroyed.
Ayden Perry
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Jace Ortiz
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Lincoln Sullivan
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Hudson Turner
This story was serialised in 2000AD progs 61-85 waaay back in 1978. As you can see, all the core elements of Dredd’s character design were already in place but people are often surprised at how lanky he is compared to later portrayals!
Julian Cook
Judge McArthur is clearly a /k/ommando.
Colton Cook
Sorry, just got the pages a bit mixed up. Ignore the post I just deleted if you saw that.
The "Walter" mentioned here is Walter the Wobot, Joe's lisping robot manservant, back when he had an apartment in Rowdy Yates block and an Italian landlady. They parted ways after some years, Dredd to become an even more hard-assed Judge, Walter to become the first free robot then lead the second robot uprising. He currently lives with Mrs Gunderson, Judge Death's one-time landlady.
Adrian Gonzalez
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Zachary Miller
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Noah Morgan
It might surprise you to learn that Dredd has been more than willing to work with all sorts of nefarious characters if they have the skills he needs and the objective is important enough. Years after this he would even recruit violent cyborg Mean "Mean Machine" Angel and alien superfiend Judge Death to join his Three Amigos gang.
Jason Lewis
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Gabriel Walker
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Noah Murphy
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Aiden King
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Nolan Perry
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Adam Young
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Luke Rivera
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Ethan Collins
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Christian Rogers
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Brandon Reyes
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Dylan Bennett
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Anthony Clark
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Luke Ramirez
Burger wars was banned from publication? I never realized.
Oliver Martinez
See, this is how you know that this is a dark dystopian future - they put a peanut farmer on Mount Rushmore!
Chase Taylor
Yep! Even the otherwise complete Case Files include the Cursed Earth but they skip that bit. Its only thanks to an EU directive on copyright law in 2014 that protected the use of copyrighted characters in parody that they were able to bring it out of the archives. This book was printed late last year.
Michael Williams
Yeah, I looked it up after posting. Interesting stuff. I figured parody had long been covered, but I guess not.
Elijah Parker
>I figured parody had long been covered, but I guess not. The the writers and artists at 2000AD thought much the same, basically. At the time nobody thought it would cause as much trouble as it did. At the time the big American fast food chains had only just started making inroads into the UK (McDonalds opened its first franchise in 1974, four years before this story). They could probably have fought it, but the management and editorial of the comic at the time really didn't want to rock the boat.
It wasn't the only controversial part of this story, as we'll see. A certain vegetable company really held a grudge.
Benjamin Powell
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Benjamin Barnes
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Carson Sullivan
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Bentley Kelly
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Nathaniel Miller
Thank you for commenting by the way, its hard going keeping these threads bumped.
I'm convinced Novar here is intended to look a bit like Pat Mills.
Ian Rodriguez
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Benjamin Bennett
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Camden Cooper
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Aaron Green
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Grayson Perry
I like to comment whenever I see one of your storytimes. 2000AD is always worth at least that much.
Just happy I saw it before leaving for work.
Dylan Harris
Despite what he says here Novar never appeared in the comics again, but I believe he did make a cameo in a novel Cursed Earth Asylum by Dave Bishop.
Reminder that a velociraptor getting murdered by an alien anteater is canon, as are murderous genetic clones of corporate mascots and that Dredd is saved by the Alka-Seltzer lad.
Reminder that Dredd kills a very possibly demonic T. rex reincarnated from cloning, memories and all, that is total evil and malicious enough to target him, by using flamethrowers on him.
Rest in piece, Satanus: The Unchained. You were the greatest Dredd Villain.
A demonic dinosaur which later helps alien Elric's son to cause a total reality breakdown in time and space by murdering the worst man in history in all his incarnations, mind you.
This was one of the first times the extended "pre-history" of Dredd's world came up in any detail. It was substantially expanded upon almost 30 years later in "Judge Dredd: Origins", which makes it clear that the events of the nuclear war and the Judge's subsequent takeover were nowhere near as clearcut as Dredd makes them out to be here.
Brayden Jackson
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Jacob Turner
Do we have any readers from the Mississippi area?
Note "Petrol" is what Brits call gasoline, small error by the writers there.
Kayden Morgan
Haw haw what a dumb beasty. What kind of idiot eats rocks. Ho ho ho. Bet he won't be very important.
"Navvies" is a slang term for a group of manual labourers in the UK and some parts of the Commonwealth and US. Was coined in the 18th century to describe the workers who dug out canal systems.
Hudson Butler
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Hudson Wilson
The quote in the OP comes from this page. Dredd still holds to it even now, more or less.
Brayden Russell
The Alien Catcher General's title is loosely based on that of the "Witchfinder General" Matthew Hopkins, who rounded up suspected oculists during the English Civil War and who was the subject of a classic1968 Hammer Horror film starring Vincent Price. His vaguely Baphomet-y appearance is probably also a reference to this.
The medal featuring a dark figure is almost certainly a Robinsons Marmalade jar lid with its contemporary Golliwog logo.
Those last four panels are among my very favourite Dredd bits.
Bentley Parker
Given how the Burger Wars were blackholed until the last couple of years, Dredd never did get around to sending out the expedition. By the canonical logic of the series they must still be out there somewhere out there fighting to the death for their chain...
>Next Prog: The Coming of Satanus Oh yes, will be pleased
This part of the story actually pre-dates Michael Chrichton's original Jurassic Park book by some twelve years.
Juan Williams
Since the parody shield's in place, I wonder if they'll do a new prog on it.
Angel Price
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Lucas Ortiz
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Jacob Johnson
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Christian Bailey
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Adrian Smith
Learning fast there Tweak.
We can but hope.
Andrew Mitchell
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Logan Lewis
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Isaac Johnson
Time to play another round of the "Pat Mills tries to link everything he writes for 2000AD together" game.
Old One Eye, Satanus' mother (and killer), was originally featured in book one of a Story called Flesh from the very first issues of 2000AD. Flesh posited that the reason that the dinosaur's went extinct is that time-travelling ranchers of the 23rd century factory farmed them to death after the people of their own time ate all other animals. The man in the cowboy hat is Earl Reagan, the main human character.
Hudson Green
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Christian Miller
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Elijah Jenkins
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Mason Powell
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Liam Nelson
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Luis Morgan
Shame on you for not mentioning Damnation Alley, by Robert Zelazny.
Camden Moore
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Isaiah Brown
I had heard that it was very similar, but I haven't actually read it. You're right though, shame on me for not mentioning it at all though
