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.

22: The Searchers

Another Gordon Rennie one-shot exploring the aftermath of Total War, with Judges Dredd and Guthrie out in the Cursed Earth looking for survivors who fled the nuclear detonations. I think I actually enjoyed this one a fair bit more than Visiting Hour however. While Rennie felt constrained there by having to deal with the complex family connections between Dredd and Vienna, here he is able to tell a very simple story about a single Mega-City family that fell victim to the crazy events that continually afflict the Big Meg.

Rennie's stark story rams home the oft-made point that a true win is very hard to come by in this world. Nothing is solved or fixed here. A family are killed by scavengers in the Cursed Earth, and then the final surviving member has to be taken out by the force meant to protect them - the Judges. Just one among millions. The only lesson Dredd can pull out of it is to get tighter boots, focus on the job and move on.

What really kicks this up a notch for me though is Carl Critchlow's artwork. I really love his scraggly lines and textures, which seem to fit particularly well for the Cursed Earth setting. I'm looking forward to seeing more of his artwork in further Volumes.

21: Visiting Hour

The aftermath of Total War continues with a quick one-shot that picks up Vienna's story after she is nearly killed, and watches Dredd put Nimrod out of his misery. I have a soft spot for these short, character-driven pieces, and I've always liked Vienna as a character. Her background and situation are about as melodramatic as possible, yet there's a core of strength, resilience and straightforwardness that belies her desire to escape the Fargo bloodline.

This short episode mostly unfairly suffers from having to continue the subplot from Total War, which just didn't work for me. Vienna's anger at Dredd doesn't really ring true here - yes he initially refused to deal with Nimrod, but he did not ask Vienna to get involved, and actively tried twice to get her to leave the city.

We get a similar plot to Blood and Duty, with Dredd once again unable to see Vienna as he has work on the streets. I like Gordon Rennie's work, but I don't think he quite nails Vienna's character here when compared to John Wagner in that story from Volume 1. But the ending sums up Dredd's unconventional family - confused and distant, and with Dredd unable to be who Vienna might like him to be.

20: After the Bombs

As we'll see with future epic turning points in Volumes to come, John Wagner likes to explore the aftermath of big events in Mega-City One. After the Bombs follows up the carnage of Total War by touching on how long and slow the clean-up after the nuclear blasts is, and wraps up the loose ends of the terrorist organisation itself by obliquely showing Dredd and the Judges take down the remaining leaders.

As usual, Wagner doesn't choose the obvious route to do this. After the Bombs takes one of the leaders of Total War, Gaia Innocenti, gives her amnesia and a sudden ability to see the future, and then puts her at the pointy end of a very, very cranky Judge Dredd.

The story itself is pretty dark and brutal, and this is backed up by Jason Brashill's smooth, cartoony renderings - almost like some sort of ultra-violent Pixar movie. The art isn't exactly to my taste, but Brashill is clearly enjoying himself with some of the over-the-top touches.

The ending is pure Judge Dredd, and another grim reminder that although we were forced to side with the Judges as they faced the nuclear destruction of their entire City, they are not the good guys. The final page where Gaia's shrapnel, the "antenna" that allowed her to see the future", is forcibly re-inserted so that Psi-Division can make up for their failure to foresee the events of Total War is nasty stuff.

Total War strayed a little more into "good guys versus bad guys" than is usual for John Wagner. After the Bombs feels like a subtle course-correction, with some sympathy evoked for one of the leaders of the terrorist organisation that killed millions of people, and another reminder what lengths the Justice Department will go to in order to stay one step ahead.

19: Total War

So after years of build-up and small-scale violence killing dozens, Total War take things far beyond anything that could have been suspected in Volumes 1 and 2. In a lot stories, there are moments, events, choices of storytelling that are so big they can obscure everything around it. It's hard to look critically at this story without moving past the three nuclear explosions and the millions dead that form the shocking heart of what we're reading.

Writer John Wagner knows this, and each time the bombs go off, he lets artist Henry Flint take up multiple pages with blinding light and blackened carnage. The story pauses and takes a horrified breath, just as the citizens of Mega-City One not caught in the actual blast do. There's an audacity to this storytelling that still sets the reader back a step.

Yes, Wagner and others have done this kind of thing before in terms of original publication, but it's the first one we get in the order of Mega Collection Volumes. Even if they're now less shocking than they originally were, in an era of "world-shattering" and "game-changing" events that are rebooted and reset in most other series, it's still incredible to think this is one story, one continuity - what happens here matters to the story, and will continue to.

I'm looking big picture here, because zooming in reveals that the details aren't quite as good here. The story is a pure action thriller, a countdown against the terrorist bad guys. There's a tension here that works well, and Wagner is direct and straightforward in showing how Dredd and the Judges face the challenge. There are some other highlight moments, such as Hershey announcing the Judges will stand down in the face of more detonations. Even though we know it's a ploy, it's still effective. But the mechanics of the story aren't new or portrayed in interesting ways.

The Vienna and Nimrod subplot also jars with the main action, and doesn't really seem to go anywhere, or tell us anything new about Dredd or his relationship with his "family". But with so many stories in the Dredd universe, I'm OK with looking at ones like Total War in terms of its impact, and its atmosphere. On both of those points, it's a powerful story.

18: Terror

There are a lot of obvious parallels and callbacks to America in Terror. A lot of it is Colin MacNeil's moody painted artwork; the similarity between Zondra and America Jara; the bombings of terrorist group Total War. At the heart is a tragic love story entangled with violent terrorism that can have no happy ending.

But there's also more here than just a rerun of an old classic. Terror is about setting things up for the dramatic and explosive events of Total War, so needs to remind us about the terrorist group and their modus operandi. Doing it by reflecting "America" also gives us an idea of how Dredd and the Justice Department can't seem to definitely end this violent group despite their hardline efforts.

There's a cynicism and weariness floating over this story. America was America and Beeny's story, with Dredd and the Judges as dark forces tearing them apart. We saw their childhoods, their love story and its bitter aftermath - and through their daughter, their future. Zonda and Castinello have a love story here, but with none of the depth. John Wagner seems to be deliberately echoing his past classic, and uses the big ideas and themes there to make a larger point - for Dredd, nothing's changed. Despite everything that's happened since America, Dredd is still facing Total War and their blunt force tactics.

Worse, there can be no relief. Just as America Jara felt forced by her circumstances to join Total War, Castinello felt he had no other option. The system of harsh law enforcement can do nothing but create more broken people prepared to throw bombs. America can only continue to be echoed in the series.