Judge Dredd: America II & Cadet

[nomadicwriter]

Following on from my "America" post, some scans from the two sequels. "Fading of the Light" was published six years after the original story, and "Cadet" a decade after that. (Since the Dreddverse runs in more or less 1:1 time, the same amount of time passes in-universe between the stories.) 12 pages of scans beneath the cut.

Warnings: References to sexual assault and a euthanasia plotline.

America II: The Fading of the Light

"Fading of the Light" was published in Megazines 3.20 to 3.25. Six years have passed since the events of "America", and Bennett's starting to suffer bad side effects from his full body transplant. (Note that despite adopting a female body, Bennett still identifies as male, and the text and characters treat him as such.)







Bennett is approached by America's Total War allies, who know he's dying and want him to make a suicide attack at an awards ceremony. He turns them down, but still ends up under surveillance from the Judges. When an ill and confused Bennett is later sexually assaulted after a hospital visit, he realises that the Judges were observing but didn't intervene, and it drives him to agree to Total War's plan.



Dredd punishes the Judge who was on surveillance duty when he finds out what happened. (A similar device to the lone Judge shooting against orders in "America", allowing Dredd to keep a fraction more sympathy while underscoring the fact that not all Judges are like him.)



Bennett regrets his decision immediately and goes to the Judges, but Total War kidnap his daughter to force his cooperation. The Judges race to find her as the awards ceremony begins.



Degenerating fast, Bennett collapses on the way up to collect his award. When they realise their plan has failed Total War's operatives open fire and create a bloodbath - but Bennett's determination has bought the Judges enough time, and they manage to rescue his daughter before Total War can harm her.



Bennett is briefly reunited with his daughter, and then goes on to the Euthanasium, accompanied right to the very end by his faithful robot Robert.



Young Ami Beeny, still in the custody of the Judges, receives a letter explaining her father's decisions.





Cadet

America Beeny returns ten years later in a third story, "Cadet", running from Megazines 250-252. Now fifteen, she's reached a point in her Judge training where she gets to run her own assisted investigation. For her topic, she's chosen the events surrounding her parents' deaths, believing that the man the Judges arrested as the Total War ringleader had someone else behind him.



Dredd wants to know why Beeny requested him as her co-investigator.



Beeny reveals that she no longer blames Dredd for his part in her mother's death.



She does, however, indulge in some possibly deliberate subtle torture by making Dredd sit around and do paperwork. It pays off when Dredd finds a potential lead, though it seems at first to come to a dead end. In the process of the investigation Beeny impresses him with her capabilities.



Beeny revisits her father's old house for the first time since she joined the Judges. Rereading the letter he left for her, she realises it must have been Robert the house robot who actually wrote it, since Bennett was too ill. She also discovers her father had his former male body stuffed and fitted with a singing voicebox after the body transplant, and that helps her to twig that one of their suspects has been fooling the lie detectors with a similar voicebox. But the bad guys have already followed her home; they destroy Robert, but Bennett's reanimated body provides a life-saving distration.



And so ends the America trilogy, though it's not the last we see of Cadet Beeny.

Next up: Beeny's part in the Tour of Duty saga.

Comments

[razsolo]

I never really got into Judge Dredd before (the movie didn't help), but these scans are really turning me around on it, thanks! :)

[nomadicwriter]

Glad to hear it! That was my Cunning Plan. :) It's a real shame that Dredd and 2000AD comics in general get so little love outside of the UK. Hopefully the new movie will be good enough to wash away some of the damage done by the terrible Stallone one.

[sir_mikael]

Ditto! I'm really impressed by these posts. Changed my view a lot.

[nomadicwriter]

I've got to admit that when I first started reading Dredd a couple of years ago I never expected it to be half so good as it is. It's really unfortunate that the main reputation it seems to have acquired is just for being a violent action series about a fascist cop, when it's really very intelligently written with a lot of subtle character work and moral complexity. It seems like everybody's impression of it is founded on the terrible film and the worst period of the 90s.

That's why I've been making this series of posts, trying to highlight the stuff that impresses me most, because while everybody loves that "Gaze into the fist of Dredd!" panel, there's really such a lot more to it than just Dredd being a badass.

[beoweasel]

I always read Dredd's dialogue in Ron Perlman's voice, I think it's the chin.

[nomadicwriter]

I can never quite decide who the Dredd voice in my head is, though he's definitely got one. Sort of a mix of Clint Eastwood and Gibbs from NCIS, I think.

[bewareofgeek]

Have you heard Urban's take yet? I'd call it a somewhat softer Eastwood.

[nomadicwriter]

I've heard the snippets in the trailer; need to hear it in context to get a better idea of it really, but everybody who's seen the film seems to have incredibly positive things to say about Urban.

[q99]

I have a distinct voice for him, but not based on anyone in particular.

[espanolbot]

If I ever made a Dredd cartoon series, he'd voice him I've always said.

[q99]

Good stuff. I wish the 'complete case files' collections had gotten this far.

[nomadicwriter]

It seems that the two America stories aren't actually being included in the case files, since it's technically a spinoff rather than a Judge Dredd story. (I think "Cadet" will be, but it's going to be up to about case files 40 by the time we get that far.) There was supposed to be a new TPB collection of the America trilogy released this July, but I guess that's been delayed, since it hasn't showed up on Amazon or anywhere.

[domino_blue]

I only read a couple Judge Dredd stories, but do you have any recommended stories or hell trades. I want to read more but I would prefer to read the best stuff.

[nomadicwriter]

The most recent Dredd epics are really excellent - I'd read Origins followed by the two Two of Duty collections, ToD: The Backlash and ToD: Mega-City Justice. (Day of Chaos is great too, but it's only just finished, so you'd have to buy up the back issues or wait for it to come out in TPB.)

For older stories, The Pit is one of my favourites (I posted a little bit from that here). And if you want to go all the way back to the black and white stuff from the 80s, Case Files 5 is a particularly good one. (The earlier case files are fun, but a bit up and down where they were still trying to settle on a tone for the series.)

To be honest, you can't really go wrong picking up anything that was written by John Wagner. The quality level is very high all round as long as you avoid the Ennis, Millar and Morrison stuff from the 90s.

[domino_blue]

Oh boy can I ask about the Ennis stuff because I was going to check that out since I was a fan of his Preacher and Hitman work.

[nomadicwriter]

It's nowhere near as awful as the Mark Millar and Grant Morrison stuff, but it's mediocre at best by the general standard of the Judge Dredd stories. (Even Ennis himself is on the record as considering his early 2000AD writing to be pretty crap.) I get the impression he was too much of a fanboy of the character to really write him very well; he shied away from being truly critical of Dredd and the Judge system, but at the same time amped up the "cool" flashy ultra-violence, so the end result was that Dredd was treating perps much more nastily and sadistically but the comics were less critical of his actions than they had been before. So there are parts of his run that really misjudge the tone and leave a bad taste.

Much of his run on the title's just sort of forgettable and a bit flat, but I can't think of anything that really stands out as great to balance out the bad stuff.

[silverzeo]

I can't help but think of how much FUN the Joker or V would have with those Judges....

[nomadicwriter]

They did actually do a set of Judge Dredd/Batman crossovers, so you can see the Joker loose in Mega-City 1 in "Die Laughing".