23: Horror in Emergency Camp 4

We get our first real all-out horror story for Dredd here, at least in terms of the Mega Collection. There's something about Dredd and horror tropes that works really well. Dredd's blank-faced refusal to engage with the stereotypes and just take the monsters down cuts against many of the cliches of the horror genre. On that score, Horror in Emergency Camp 4 is mostly a success. The emergency camp setting is atmospheric and fits in well with the aftermath of Total War. It allows us to see the food shortages, societal decay and opportunistic crime that naturally follows big disasters.

John Wagner uses the story to point out that the real monsters in these situations are actually the humans who prey on their own kind. Nosferatu, the vampire-like monster on the hunt for blood, is largely just following its biological requirements and is also far from its own home. As usual, Mega-City One citizens don't have to be pushed too far to do the wrong thing in their own backyard.

Wagner also attempts to make this a "rematch" of sorts, with Dredd having encountered Nosferatu before. We haven't seen him in this order of reading of course, and I genuinely can't remember if that first encounter is in the Mega Collection at all!

This is the first art from D'Isreali in the Mega Collection, and while I appreciate the technical effort from the artist it doesn't quite work for me. The cartoon-like lines and colouring just don't seem the fit the horror story that's being told, at least for me. I know more is to come from D'Israeli, and I'm looking forward to seeing it work with more broad and comedic stories.