4: Judgement Call

This one-shot was originally published in Issue 300 of the Judge Dredd Megazine, so I assume that it brings back now-Judge America Beeny as a way of linking back to the very first issue of the Megazine that included the beginning of "America". What I most love about this is that artist Colin MacNeil has now drawn that incredible finale - America Jara gunned down in front of the Statues of Liberty and Judgement - four times. He could probably do it by heart now.

This story felt like a "check-in" with Beeny, now graduated from the Academy of Law and on the streets as a full Judge. She's still roughly the same as we saw her in "Cadet", a little older and wiser but still full of the same confidence and strength. She still has Dredd's respect and even admiration, as evidenced by the fantastic final page where Dredd seems to take some amount of joy at Beeny's removal of a sentence that some Judges didn't think was harsh enough.

"Judgement Call" isn't as strong as the previous three stories I've covered, but it seems unfair to directly compare them. This is a much smaller-scale story that shows us that Beeny is still trying to do what her father wanted and change the Justice Department from the inside. The fact that she does it by being "lenient" on the survivor from a family caught up in terrorism means that she's accused of allowing her own past to cloud her judgement. But the fact she's still wearing the uniform and cubing criminals means that she's still committed to changing the system from within.

I really like how Dredd is portrayed here. His own experiences with doubting the system have clearly given him a window into Beeny's approach, but while he still advocates for a black and white approach to the law he's willing to let Beeny go about her job in her own way. When you consider that, from the perspective of this collection Volume of the Mega-Collection at least, three stories ago he was a nightmarish vision of unstoppable power, it's a testament to John Wagner's ability to write with shades of grey that he is still the same character here.

Although I would have liked to have seen more forward momentum in Beeny's personal story, as what we get here doesn't put her a huge way head of where she was in "Cadet", this is still a good look at one of the great characters in Dredd history.

3: Cadet

"This whole family seems blighted by tragedy."

Cadet America Beeny there with the understatement of the century. "Cadet" picks up the story of little Ami, the daughter of Bennett and America Jara, as a tenth-year cadet. The framing structure of the story here is really great, with Beeny asking for Dredd's help to reconcile Total War's involvement with her father's death. The opening few pages are nominally just recapping the events of "America" and "The Fading of the Light", but are electric to read. Beeny is essentially interrogating Dredd on his role in those stories, and seeing the calm and confident Beeny grilling the taciturn lawman is just fantastic storytelling.

The story itself provides some semblance of closure to the events of those two previous stories. As with all of Bennett's decisions, it's impossible to judge if what he did was "right", but we see that his decision to enrol Beeny with the Judges has at least kept her safe as he hoped. She's also become a smart, confident and very able Judge, earning Dredd's respect and a positive evaluation. The tangled history of Beeny and Dredd is the centrepiece of this story, but Wagner doesn't go the obvious route. Dredd is clearly expecting her to be angry at him for his role in the death of her mother - and while Beeny clearly has some complicated feelings about it, she doesn't hate Dredd. She is open about her concerns with the culture of the Justice Department, but acknowledges directly to him that he is her best chance of solving the case.

We end with a trip back to Bennett's house, and a showdown with the final (we assume) person involved in the Total War cell that America Jara was a part of. It's touching to see Robert the robot still there tending to the place, and then even more affecting to see him die protecting Beeny one last time. "Cadet" is nowhere near as intense or twisted as the previous two stories, but Wagner pulls one last twisted bit of irony here as we see that - in yet another example of Beeny's bizarre decision-making - he had his own body stuffed and displayed after he took over America's. It's also been given some robotic movement, and is used to allow Beeny to rescue herself at the end of the story. So, just as throughout his whole life, right at the end Bennett - or at least his body - is used and controlled to achieve an end. At least this time he gets to actually, properly save someone he loves.

The closure of this story is exactly the right kind. Beeny seems to put a lot of her ghosts to bed, but is still committed to remaining a Judge and changing the system from within. The story is hers now, and she has an ally of some kind in Judge Dredd himself. After all the twisted craziness of "America" and "The Fading of the Light", this is a powerful cap on the complications raised by these stories. Beeny is alive, but part of the system. Her chances of changing things are small, but there's a chance. Beeny's self-aware observation that her family is not exactly normal really highlights the troubling depths beneath the final line of this story, spoken by Dredd as he lays a uniformed hand on her uniform shoulder.

"We're your family now."

2: The Fading of the Light

The overwhelming thought after finishing off this sequel to America is just how complicated everything is. America really is as good as its reputation, and there are significant layers of complexity in how Mega-City One and its society is viewed and portrayed. But there is a clear direction and motivation to how the story progresses, and how the characters behave.

The Fading of the Light asks a whole lot of uncomfortable questions that can't be answered, taking the final revelation of America - that Bennett Beeny had his brain transferred to America's body - as its starting point to question almost everything about America the story, America the character, Beeny himself and the society around him.

Nothing in this story is simple or clear - and a lot of it is uncomfortable. Beeny taking over America's body is problematic at the very least, but to then impregnate that body and give birth to Ami, their daughter, is an absolute minefield of troubling ideas. Complications are piled on top of this as America's body begins to fail Beeny - even from beyond death she pushes him away. Beeny's final decision to enrol Ami in the Academy of Law needs a 10,000-word essay just by itself. It is so difficult to classify anything that happens in this story as "right" or "wrong", which I imagine was exactly John Wagner's intent.

Ami is really the central issue here. Her very creation is troubling, and highlights Beeny's inherent selfishness. This is evident not only in her birth, but then in her being left without a family as his stolen body fails - something he must have thought would be a possibility. Wagner is an absolute twisted genius in having a fairly unsettling character like Victor Portnoy actually make good points as he calls out Beeny's treatment of America. But then you can't help but admire Beeny's final point that as a Judge, Ami can have a profound affect on the system that bombs and violence can't.

Interestingly, Wagner takes a very different tack with Dredd here. In America, Dredd is the terrifying enforcer of the state. This story provides a more traditional portrayal of Dredd, balancing out his negative and positive qualities. His removal of the Judge that failed to stop Beeny's rape - a truly shocking scene - highlight's Dredd's code of honour with the Law. Wagner's drive to complicate every aspect of this story even extends to Dredd and the Judges, re-introducing the tension of their place in Mega-City One after their dark totalitarian portrayal in America.

Overall, I came away thinking of The Fading of the Light as less of a sequel to America then as an extended epilogue. The story takes what we learned in America and then probes the messy and complicated fallout of the actions taken there. It's hard to end this story liking Beeny or agreeing with everything he's done, just as it's hard to like Total War although they are fighting an oppressive regime. It's a testament to the writing skills of John Wagner, and Colin MacNeil's depiction of the characters, that Beeny's final end - euthanised with his final friend, a robot butler - is as moving as it is.

It's hard to know after these two intense stories whether Beeny deserves our affection, pity, hatred or ambivalence. Or all of them at once.

1: America

It’s hard to find anything to say about America that hasn’t already been said. It’s John Wagner at the height of his writing powers, relentlessly moving through a plot that tackles the biggest themes of our societies - law, rights, safety, justice - while also bringing it all back to one “ordinary” man trying to make his way through it all. And find love.

So instead, I’m going to talk a bit about what I often hear in relation to America: that it’s a great introduction or starting point to the world of Dredd. I don’t necessarily agree. For me, America works best as a response to what’s come before it, and a significant touchstone for what comes after. Wagner wrote this story after worrying that readers had come to sympathise with Dredd and the Justice Department, even going so far as to support their authoritarian rule over Mega-City One. America pulls no punches in making the Judges, including Dredd, a force of utter, implacable totalitarian power.

But this wasn’t the first time that Wagner had highlighted this part of the Dredd saga. As we’ll see in upcoming posts as part of the “Democracy” storyline, Wagner and other writers had already made clear that the Judges were problematic, to say the very least. Yes, Dredd had often been portrayed as a hero and saviour, and earlier progs had often been simplistic in their portrayal of Dredd and the Judges stopping crime, but it was never forgotten that they worked in a non-democratic system that stomped all over citizen’s rights.

So America to me can only really work as it’s meant to in that context. It’s Wagner removing all subtlety and complexity about Dredd and the Judges, by introducing subtlety and complexity to the citizens through Ami and Beeny. This isn’t Dredd’s story, it’s theirs - which means we see it through their eyes. With the Judges looming over them with daysticks.

But if this had been the very first time we’d seen Judge Dredd, I doubt we’d still be reading these stories today. Because it isn’t the whole story. Judge Dredd, and the series itself, is more complicated than that. It may have all happened by accident, but introducing Dredd in 1977 with “light” and even ridiculous storylines before introducing darker tones of politics, and then delivering the killer blow in this story, is the right progression. America as a starting point doesn’t give us anywhere to go. The key facet of Dredd is that he is an upholder of a totalitarian system and is prepared to be brutal to uphold it, but that there is also more to him. He has his own, possibly twisted, sense of justice and order. He has a code and sense of fairness, if not respect for rights and equality. Trying to introduce those parts of him if this had been our only knowledge of Dredd wouldn’t have worked, and would have seemed cheap. America works by fitting precisely into the past and future of the character, and the series.

Moving along from that point, I can only echo what others more eloquent than myself have said. The combination of Wagner’s writing and Colin MacNeil’s art is fantastic, and the images that make up the conclusion of the story are some of the most powerful ever seen in the series - if not wider. It’s hard to picture a more perfect summation of some of Dredd’s key themes than the enormous Statue of Judgement standing over the Statue of Liberty, while a citizen is crushed beneath them both.