Judge Dredd: America

[nomadicwriter]

For the Crowning Moments of Awesome theme, I give you "America", published in the first seven issues of the Judge Dredd Megazine, and generally agreed to be one of the absolute classic Dredd stories, if not the classic. 15 pages of scans beneath the cut. (The collected story runs 62 pages; I'm not fully certain how it was originally divided up into instalments, but have tried to use no more than 2-3 pages from each.)

Warnings: Graphic violence; dark themes including abuse of power by the authorities, forced abortion, and some creepy violating use of future medical technology.

America

Although "America" is technically a Dreddworld spinoff rather than part of the main Judge Dredd series, Dredd appears as a recurring figure throughout, and we get a number of monologues from him. The story opens with some of the strip's most iconic imagery:





"America" focuses on the lives of two ordinary Mega-City citizens: America Jara, the firebrand activist daughter of Puerto Rican immigrants, and Bennett Beeny, her timid best friend with an unrequited crush on her.





Bennett's confession of his feelings is rebuffed, and the two of them gradually drift apart as they grow up. Bennett goes on to fame and fortune as a comedic singer, but can't maintain a personal life and takes to visiting prostitutes. He's shocked one day to see America among them, but rather than having fallen on hard times as he thinks, she's undercover as part of a terrorist operation. Bennett witnesses their attack on the Judges.



Bennett is shot in the throat by one of America's accomplices, but he survives the injury. As he can't speak, the Judges can't use a lie detector on him, and he's able to cover for Ami when Dredd questions him.



She comes to visit him at his home while he's recovering, asking him for help and money.



Ami tells the story of why she joined the terrorists. She and her boyfriend were part of a peaceful pro-democracy march that the Judges infiltrated and subverted, creating a fake riot to excuse their violent crackdown. (If you read my "Brothers of the Blood" posts a while back, this was a big thing that played into Dredd's "Necropolis"-era disillusionment, and the reason why he ordered a group of pro-Dem prisoners released before he quit.)





They spend the night together. When they meet again, Bennett insists on knowing that the money's for before he'll hand it over.



America and her compatriots arrive at the Statue of Liberty, but find the Judges are already lying in wait for them.









America is left brain-dead, and Bennett takes rather drastic and disturbing steps to commemorate her, arranging for a full-body transplant to have his mind placed in her body.



He gives up doing comedy and instead tries to tell America's story and continue the fight against the Judges' abuses. But Dredd is the one who gets the last word...



There were two sequels to the story published later, covered in my next post.

Comments

[mrosa]

Was this originally colored, or did they add the colors later? I ask because there's something very awkward about them.

[q99]

I'm pretty sure Dredd was in color by this point.

[icon_uk]

I believe it's painted rather than drawn, so I think it had to be in colour.

[nomadicwriter]

The art's all fully painted, so yep, definitely in colour to begin with. (Not sure how good the colour-reproduction was at the time, admittedly, this being circa 1990.) That said, I don't see any particular problem with the colouring; I think it suits the mood of the story pretty well.

[wizardru]

Hey, remember when this would have been a cautionary tale about a bleak future?


...sigh.

[raspberryrain]

I don't know that it was ever that. Judge Dredd glamorized brutal authority, leading its young male audience to accept it in principle, which is the necessary step to build an arbitrary police state. There's no hope here. Its fully-painted message is to suck it up and surrender to the boot.

[espanolbot]

I remember a Dredd story, might even be one of the sequels to this story, where they finally allow elections to return to Megacity after decades if not centuries of martial law. People are given the choice of returning to democracy or keeping the current system...

People chose the Judges, I think as the fear of living without the Judges is too terrifying to contemplate as they don't know who'd protect them or the idea of taking responsiblity for themselves is something they aren't willing to do.

I think that it's a point brought up by the character Lord Ventinari at some point, people are more willing to go with a dictatorship where one man holds all the power as he also has to take all the responsiblity, whereas in a pure democracy EVERYONE has to take responsiblity which some people are just flat incapable of doing. Of course the man was both a selfconfessed tyrant and cynic (albeit far more benevolent than most) so it shouldn't reall be taken at face value.

[nomadicwriter]

Yeah, I think that's an idea that's been at the heart of Dredd's inner struggle since "Origins". He does believe and accept Fargo's words that the Judge system has become something it was never intended to be, but he just can't or won't believe that the people would actually be capable of governing themselves if the Judges were removed. (And how much that's a realistic assessment of how badly MC-1's population has been brainwashed versus how much it's Dredd's own brainwashing talking is hard to say.)

I think the underlying theme of the "America" sequels and the stories that follow is that while Dredd himself is too rigid to ever be capable of implementing true change, he's come to value and support the growth of a new generation of Judges who will be able to handle things differently.

[damar148]

It's hard to sympathize with anyone in this story. America and her people are delusional fanatics, Dredd and the Judges cold and harsh, and Beeny an idiot.

[nomadicwriter]

Yeah. I think that was kind of the point, really; to step outside and take a clear look at Dredd without the sympathetic slant the story usually allows him. And it's done honestly, by having America and Beeny be the kind of characters who could easily be the perps in any Dredd-POV story, rather than turning the Judges into puppy-kickers just to make them look even worse than usual. (Alan Grant's Anderson stories tend to veer a bit too much in that direction for me.)

It's quite interesting to look at the America stories individually, because when they're read as a trilogy there's a definite story arc going from dark to worse to quite optimistic by the end, but of course that actually took place over a sixteen year span. On it's own "America" is definitely a pretty grim and ugly portrait of everybody concerned. But I think it was a necessary step to strip away the illusions of Dredd as a heroic figure and build the foundations for the long-term story John Wagner wanted to tell about Dredd's growing discomfort with the beliefs he's been brainwashed into and the move towards reform of the Judge system.

[domino_blue]

This is the first Judge Dredd story I ever sat down and read....makes me cry every time. I felt so sorry for everyone in the story and while yes they are delusional....they still think they are doing the right thing. People want social change all the time and if I lived in Mega City....yes I would want to do something about it.

[nomadicwriter]

Yeah. Nobody's the good guy here, but none of them are the bad guys, either, not even Dredd. They're all doing what they think is the best thing for everybody, and none of them are right.

[domino_blue]

It's a very grey situation, but I'm glad this work had the balls to be able to make a very complicated situation understandable and tragic for everyone involved. I like Dredd but I will be the first to admit the Judge system is a very cruel solution to a very sad social situation.