Review by Frank Plowright

Complete Case Files 46 covers Judge Dredd material published in 2008, and as is customary, separates content originally published in 2000AD from material first seen in Judge Dredd Megazine. Complete Case Files 45 ended with March 2008, so that’s where this picks up. There’s no all-encompassing epic, but it’s only at the end of the 2000AD content that we hit a run of self-contained episodes, ‘Still Mental After All These Years’ unfortunately credited to “John Wanger”. Four, five and six-parters are par for the course.

Although not the focus of all his stories, Wagner’s contributions show a concentration on slowly progressing a plot concerning the rights of mutants in Mega-City One, a matter that culminates in Complete Case Files 47, and would form the basis of two Tour of Duty collections. His opener has an inventive solution, but is otherwise strangely lacklustre, with unappealing stylised art from Nick Dyer as anti-mutant hysteria is stirred up over a kidnapped child while a group of Cursed Earth inhabitants are admitted to the city. In 2025 it’s horribly prescient, as is a follow-up showing relentless persecution of mutants allowed back into the city and allocated housing.

Dave Taylor provides an artistic highlight extrapolating Gordon Rennie’s funny script about a massive amount of wrong’uns in the same place sheltering from a rad-storm. There’s also excellent art from Peter Doherty, Kev Walker and the under-rated Richard Elson (sample art left). There’s no stylistic showboating from Elson, but neither is there doubt about what’s happening. He works on a Robbie Morrison script with a good central idea, but a couple of chapters too long. Morrison’s best contribution spotlights a layabout teenager inheriting a seedy club.

Wagner’s best concerns former Judge Edgar, now dying of cancer supplying Dredd with an investigative trail excellently drawn by Patrick Goddard (sample art right). It’s atmospheric, endangers Dredd and leads to a great ending. Also welcome is another possibility occurring to Wagner about a long unseen character able to circumvent the law by being mental. What happens when his card is revoked?

2000AD great Brendan McCarthy’s idea prompts Al Ewing’s first Judge Dredd strip in which a camp designer’s personality infests a supposedly improved Judge’s costume. Short and funny, it’s very much a homage to the 1980s Wagner/Grant Dredd.

Choose to look at it that way and there’s considerable social commentary in these strips. Pat Mills targets eco-policing directly, while Wagner’s strips look at intolerance for immigrants and social security cutbacks. However, to end with, the film Deliverance seems the inspiration for the extended return of a villainous favourite from Wagner and Doherty, a tense gruesome horror fest atmospherically drawn and building slowly toward a smart ending. It’s also found in earlier collections The Hunting Party and Fink Angel: Legacy. It’s a highlight.

As a collection this doesn’t match the best of Dredd, but there’s great art and solid entertainment.