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Having tackled the "Best Story" we now ask our reviewers to turn to the world of Dredd and choose their favourite tale from the last 30 years...
 The Day the Law Died
John Wagner, Alan Grant and various
Chosen by Gavin Hanly
It's only when I sat down to write a review myself that I realised what a tall order this task was. With well over 1500 single Dredd episodes to date (not even including the Megazines and annuals) there's a huge amount of Dredd out there. I was half tempted to give the award to "The Dead Man" for pulling off the best sleight of hand the comic has ever seen (even if I was particularly proud for having guessed it a few issues earlier) but decided that I still have fonder memories of an earlier "proper" Dredd tale.
The Day the Law Died, renamed "Judge Caligula" for its first collected outing, was (Tintin/Asterix aside) my effectively my first "trade paperback" purchase. I seem to remember getting into 2000AD around the same time and Titan had just started putting out collections of the stuff I missed. And boy had I missed something in the rise and fall (literally) of Judge Cal.
The mad tyrant is possibly the best villain Dredd has ever come up against, perhaps because he's one that Dredd himself can't take on directly. Dredd's battered and bruised throughout the story but rarely gets neal Cal himself. Even when he finally confronts Cal at the end, it's Fergie who ultimately takes the glory. Indeed, the best thing about this epic, and most of the great Dredd tales, is that Dredd himself is almost a supporting character, with the lunacy of Cal taking centre stage. After all, it's Cal's relationship with Judge Slocum, Judge Fish, Aaron A Aardvark and many other snippets that really stick out and, more importantly, stand the test of time. So it was with great satisfaction that, when picking up Case Files 2, it was cemented in its standing as my favourite Dredd strip ever...
 Mandroid
John Wagner and Kev Walker
Chosen by Adam Crabtree
So, let me set the scene for you. Prog 1459. My first year on the Good Ship Tharg. Savage Book II and Leatherjack are kicking my ass with quality, Sinister Dexter was entering a brief new epoch of quality with “And Death Shall Have No Dumb Minions” (it’d last about a year… c’uh!) and Breathing Space (remember that?) was there. As well.
The prog opens to a page so swathed in smog it could well be the first instalment of “Scenes From a Refinery”. But no, it is underneath a Mega-City bridge, a meet between drug dealers. A sinister figure appears, features obscured by heavy clothing, all except for those glowing red eyes; he shoots one dealer through the eye and absorbs the retaliatory fire of another. His hand flies out on a steel cord, covering the distance in a split second, closing around the gunman’s throat. A nearby Judge motors to the source of the noise as the dealers’ ride beats, oh, what shall we say… a courageous tactical retreat. The killer lets his strangled victim fall to the floor and retracts the hand, running after the van like a panther. He leaps into the air onto the moving vehicle, shoots without discrimination down into the hood, and leaps clear as it crashes, a lean smoke trail following after him from the barrel of his gun. He touches down. He hears sirens from all sides. He crouches and leaps up some forty feet to grab hold of the bridge above and make good his escape.
The reader looks up and is surprised to see that he isn’t in a dark theatre, but in his grotty bedsit in Chigwell…
This, by the way, is three pages of Judge Dredd: Mandroid, and not even three pages that take in the heartbreaking tragedy, keen-eyed characterization and tightly controlled plotting exhibited by this story. It is my defining Dredd experience, and I suppose it will always be my favourite…
 Cry of the Werewolf
By John Wagner and Steve Dillon
Chosen by Stephen Watson
To my mind ‘Cry of the Werewolf’ is the best medium length Dredd tale ever. In an economic seven parts Dredd’s horizons are broadened, his roster of colleagues enhanced and a supernatural element pervades the city for the first time. The story which sees Dredd seek the source of a radioactive agent that causes lycanthopy is mercifully short on werewolf clichés, with silver bullets and full moons dispensed with. In their place we get to see a fully realised under-city and meet some great characters in the form of long walk veteran Prager and tech genius Cassidy, who have been shamefully underused since.
Story elements that lesser writers would have spun far thinner, such as battles with Troggies, robots and the wolf pack, are quickly handled by the never better team of Grant/Wagner in their ‘T.B. Grover’ guise, and the lean 50 pages simply fly past. Added to the mix are some sumptuous visuals from Steve Dillon, who also provided three iconic covers for the original run, and the always reliable Tom Frame who letters an 'Awooooo' like no one else. With the boxes for ‘action’ ‘humour’ and ‘excitement’ all ticked this cracking Dredd adventure would be a perfect starting point for any non-believer.
 Full Mental Jacket
by John Wagner, Steve Parkhouse, Brendan McCarthy and Ian Gibson
Chosen by Paul Stewart
Way back before the paper covers became plasticised, a humble little Judge Dredd tale emerged telling a story of every day life in the Big Meg. The story focused on the Full Mentals, a street gang of thugs from Mac Murphy block who had found a time of peace following a turf war, with gang leader 'Slime' in control. But there is trouble a'brewing when former leader of the gang, Dog Deever is released from the cubes and wants his gang back. Dog returns home to find that his mother ain't happy and blames him for influencing his younger brother, Fonzo to become involved in the gang. Gang politics threatens to explode as Dog seeks revenge for being betrayed, shot and cubed by the disgusting Slime. ...but where is Dredd in all of this?
This is a story where Dredd remains largely in the background while the drama plays out, yet his presence is unmistakable and powerful. He casts a looming shadowy with his presence which affects everything which transpires. He is the embodiment of a resented authority and carries this off perfectly. All too often we have Dredd associated with gunfire, or in the thick of combat. In this story Dredd's weapon is his very presence, and he doesn't even draw his lawgiver, until the very end. That's powerful stuff.
Full Mental Jacket suffers from having a change of artist, which is always a little jarring. The magnificent Ian Gibson starts things rolling, and you could tell that at times he was working quickly. The final two episodes are drawn by the unlikely pair of Parkhouse and McCarthy. Wagner is at his best in telling a story of the misery and desperation of life in the Mega-City where gang warfare may not just be a way of life, but inescapable for generations.
 City Block
by John Wagner and Ron Smith
Chosen by Alex Frith
This may have been the first Dredd story that introduced the idea of citizens living out their entire lives in enormous housing blocks. Although it may not have been...
In any case, the two separate stories are masterpieces of highlighting mad citizens, and Dredd as a mixture of hero and bastard in equal measure. There's this astonishingly well realized panel in part 2 which sums the whole ethos of Dredd up so perfectly. Dredd is chasing a futsie, who has decided that he can't win so he may as well kill himself by jumping out of a window. Enter Dredd. He'll go to any lengths to make an arrest, but in this case he's got the added concern that if the perp falls to the ground he might hit someone, causing a) loss of life, and b) further lawbreaking. Unacceptable, so Dredd dives after the perp. Ron Smith artfully shows how Dredd lodges his boots into the window frame, so that he can hang down far enough to catch the perp without falling himself. And with presence of mind enough to make a wry remark while doing it.
Awesome.
 John Cassavetes is Dead
By John Wagner and Colin MacNeil
Chosen by Oliver English
Inspired by the premature death of John Cassavetes, Prog 627, cover date 20th May 1989 - brought us the Judge Dredd story “John Cassavetes is Dead” – at the time of writing this it has taken me a couple of hours to find the prog in question. I remembered that it was a nicely drawn black & white Dredd story.
So, now I have it in front of me – An old man is sitting in what looks to be a library reading what we know to be an old news paper. The old man looks very much like Father Christmas. The old man is interrupted from his reading by a routine crime blitz. We know that the papers are banned, the writer, Alan Grant has put this in the top of the frame – the old man asking himself why did they ban them. Which I always thought was a nice touch & such effortless story telling.
The Judges then rip his apartment to bits. Then they find his secret. A room full of banned books & newspapers. A complete bastard of a Judge hands the old timer a ten year sentence – refreshingly it’s not Dredd. Dredd is just another Judge – which is to my mind how it always should have been. Dredd is then engrossed by The Guardian. He asks himself ‘why do we hide so much of the past from them? Who decided what they could or could not know?’
"Would it really make any difference if they knew John Cassavetes is Dead?"
Here we had Dredd questioning the system. Wondering why they do certain things the way they do. It was nicely drawn by Colin MacNeil. As I often only found out later – many Dredd stories have one foot in the here & now.
 Block Court
by John Wagner and Cam Kennedy
Chosen by James Mackay
Why is Judge Dredd the mainstay of the comic? Why “2000AD featuring Judge Dredd”, rather than “…featuring Sláine”, or “…featuring Invasion”? It’s because after more than a thousand episodes of the series, John Wagner is still capable of pulling out gems like Block Court that successfully add a new twist to Dredd’s character. Just when you think you know the man, the hard face of justice in a city insane with PTSD, Wagner confronts you with Dredd displaying a brand-new emotion – plaintiveness!
The extraordinary thing about Block Court is that not only does it contain the only funny line in any comic strip that still makes me laugh whenever I read it, regardless of the fact that I know it’s coming up, but that there is so much going on behind the comedy. Dredd’s world is one of black-and-white right and wrong, where famously almost every perp ends up dead or in an iso-cube for a long, long time, and to suddenly put this system’s exemplar into the real, messy world of civilian court is to show just how unrealistic the dream of universal justice can be. The climax, where Dredd bends the system and lies to another judge, shows us his buried humanity in a way that a thousand crying babies couldn’t achieve. Writing for a readership intimately acquainted with Dredd’s struggles, even his innermost thoughts, Wagner suddenly questions the entire moral edifice of the character under the guise of light comedy.
The subtlety of the characterization in a strip that other writers have repeatedly mistaken for a Schwartzenegger action movie is why Judge Dredd remains endlessly readable even 1500 progs in, and shows no sign of running out of steam for another 1500. No sign of Judge Death or anything?
 The Midnight Surfer
by John Wagner and Cam Kennedy
Chosen by Pete McCosh
There have been so many great Dredd stories (and so many different reasons for their greatness) that this should be an impossible choice. It’s not.
I’ve loved this story since I first read it and, from The Apocalypse War to Total War, nothing has been able to knock it from the place it holds in my mind. Why do I love it? A lot is made of Dredd’s role as a window onto the world of Mega City One and the wacky lives of its citizens. This is the perfect example of that, with Dredd barely appearing at all, other than to frame the story of Marlon Shakespeare and deliver the final payoff. More than that, in fact. In stories like Mandroid there are shades of grey but, ultimately, Dredd is in the right whereas Chopper might be breaking the law, but he’s plainly the hero here. Thinking about it, there is rivalry between the surfers, but there isn’t really a villain in this story unless it’s Dredd himself throwing the full weight of the law at the people’s champion.
Future sport stories have been tried again and again and never really work for me. Here Wagner & Grant casually invent one of the best as nothing more than a backdrop for their real story. Perhaps it’s just that Cam Kennedy does such a good job of conveying the sense of speed, motion and danger that I always imagine myself drawn by him when I go snowboarding. Perhaps it’s because there is something more than the usual sport film clichés under the bonnet. (As an aside, I find it interesting that none of the subsequent Chopper solo stories are remotely worthy of note.) What makes this one stand out; the heart of the story; what made it appeal to my adolescent self is the anti-authoritarian streak at the centre. The wish-fulfilment of beating the law and making a mark on the world simply by being the best: Dredd can throw Chopper in a cube, but he can’t make the people forget.
None of that really explains why I love it so much. Call me a nostalgia addled child-man if you like, but the reason is simple. I still get a lump in my throat when I think of Chopper flying out of the Manfred Fox tunnel against the flow of traffic carrying his closest rival. Now that’s skysurfing!
The Taxidermist
by John Wagner and Ian Gibson
Chosen by Richmond Clements
This strip has everything that’s good about a Dredd strip.
It starts off brilliantly. An old man woken from his bed by a menacing mob boss... then we turn the page to the first of many superb jokes as the title is revealed. I mention the jokes and it’s astounding just how many there are in this short tale. What’s more remarkable is that every one of them hits its mark like a heatseeker round. Yes, most of these jokes are puns that are painful enough to induce a haemorrhage, but for every groan inducing gag, there’s a spectacular visual one- like head and shoulders mounted loved ones. Brilliant!
But the real highlight of this strip is the scene that takes up the first three pages of episode two, as we are guided step by step through the process of skinning, gutting and stuffing a human corpse. For my money, this scene is up there with the very best writing that Wagner and Grant have ever produced.
And then there’s Dredd. Or rather the lack of Dredd, because Old Stoney Face is merely a supporting player in this tale, albeit one who acts as a catalyst for the plot.
He and Sardini meet only once, briefly at the end of the story. And this meeting proves to be as equally memorable as any meeting on the Buddy Ebsen Spiral or planet Xanadu. Because in this meeting we get to see one of those oh-so-rare occasions that Dredd slips up and a criminal gets away. That twirl of Sardini’s cane in the final panel speaks volumes about his and our delight at the outcome, which leads on nicely to mentioning the art. Cam Kennedy and Mark Farmer. As some old American comic geezer is fond of saying: ‘nuff said.
 Goodnight Kiss
by Garth Ennis
Chosen by Floyd Kermode
I have a game I play with my son. We watch Dr Who and, at cliffhangery moments, he asks me if the Doctor will be okay. I reply that I think the Doctor will well and truly cark it this time, thus bringing a presumably lucrative 43 year old franchise to an end. It's a giggle, because we know that the good Doctor is not going to breathe his last anytime soon. The cliffhangers are still fun to both of us because they feel dangerous and we feel the strain the Doctor goes through (well, in the good episodes anyway).
Thus it is with Judge Dredd. I know he's going to get through every peril, but I like to see him make the effort. This is the main reason why I've chosen 'Goodnight Kiss' for my 'best Dredd in 30 years' effort (the other reasons are perversity and knowing that the obvious choices have already been taken). This is the first Dredd story I really got into. I liked it before I was a subscriber, before I knew who Garth Ennis was. I liked the art, which keeps making faces that have been torn and sewn back together with cord to look realistic. The other good thing about the art is that towards the end of the story, Dredd appears to beat the shit out of Robert Smith from The Cure. I also liked the extremely Clint Eastwood Western script, with Dredd confronting an array of phantoms, the ghosts of everyone he's ever killed and finally himself as The Dead Man, saying "it was only pain". Years later, after reading many other stories, it's still damn good stuff.
 Monkey on My Back
by Garth Ennis and John Higgins
Chosen by Martin Charlton
Far from the obvious choice (i.e. Apocalypse War, America etc.), this isn’t even written by John Wagner, which for many people precludes the possibility of it ever being the best Dredd. But, as with my choice of best non-Dredd story, this appeared at a time shortly after I first started reading 2000AD and it showed me the possibilities of Dredd’s universe. Dredd/Aliens was going in the prog at the time, and although it was a high octane blockbuster of a Dredd story (like much of Diggle’s work), Monkey on my Back looked more at the political side of Dredd’s world, stressing that Dredd’s commitment to Justice was greater even than his commitment to the law.
Although perhaps simplistic in its moral compared to some of Wagner’s more subtle moments, ‘Monkey’ stands as the moment when I lost my real Dredd virginity. The personal highpoint for me was Dredd’s justification of his killing of another Judge who stood between him and justice: “This monkey freak is out to destroy my city, Chambers. As long as I’m alive, that ain’t gonna happen. Anyone who gets in my way dies. No exceptions. Anyone.”
Brutal stuff, but on the page it positively crackles with potency. Dredd is a man driven to justice, and while his decisions may seem harsh, he is always ultimately right. And that’s all you need to know, really.
Tale of the Dead Man
by Wagner, Simpson and Anderson
Chosen by Robert Cornell
A piece of super-lean storytelling from Wagner, showing his mastery of the streets of the Big Meg.
This story has everything. Action, emotion, pathos, humour. Great characterisation as Dredd loses it and thinks the unthinkable. (Wagner makes it believable.) Kraken out-Dredding Dredd and yet giving himself away. It brings to the boil story lines that have been running for years, and then neatly segues into the next mega-epic, Necropolis.
And it contains my all-time favourite action scene as Kraken takes out a gang of terrorists unarmed and handcuffed! How cool is that?
 America
by John Wagner and Colin MacNeil
Chosen by Steven Denton
America can never be the best Judge Dredd story because of a technicality, but technicalities aside it’s one of the key moments in my comic reading life. Like Watchmen, The Killing Joke and The Dark Knight Returns, America is one of the foundation blocks of my belief in the medium.
Colin MacNeil’s stunning atmospheric painted artwork brought Mega City One to life in a way I had never seen it before - the bright neon lights and deep dark shadows made the future metropolis seem more solid and real then it ever had. The people have a look of authenticity, there is something about the faces, the look in the eyes, the expression and body language that brings every one to life - these people exist beyond the borders of the story. In many ways it was the pinnacle of the Wagner MacNeil partnership and what an amazing high.
John Wagner had written the classic ‘song of the surfer’ not long before and seemed to be in his nihilist phase. There are no whimsical jokes no flights of extreme fancy, no magic and monsters, just cold hard people. America’s gut- wrenching matter of fact realism lends the whole story a tragic documentary edge, the cinematic visuals flow effortlessly to life in your mind. America herself is a person some of us have met, the indie girl at collage or the animal rights activist at university and Mega City One is the world that beats the life out of them. Freed from his central role for once we see Dredd as the citizens of MC1 do - we see the boogie man, the bastard, the physical incarnation of the law. However, he’s not the bad guy, he’s never in the wrong, we see him but we don’t blame him and nor should we.
That’s what is so good about America, for once I felt like there really could be a Mega City One.
Technically America was never a Judge Dredd story but it’s become so much a part of his world I think that can be overlooked.
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