50-Word (Comic) Review: Judge Dredd//The Beating-Part Three- The end of an arc, and a compromise that destroys all that came before

Writer: John Wagner
Artist: Patrick Goddard
Published in: PROG 1960 of 2000AD
Release Date: 9th December 2015


Spotlight on state sanctioned violence, on the order following sociopath Dredds of the world, and as the finish line draws near, a compromise. Stockholm syndrome cowardice bows to slave state programming. Why? Writer? Editor? Owner? A false dawn of ‘Rebellion’ then back to the slave game of Police state obedience.


Rating: 5/10 (Good, but then three panels destroy it all)



How do they expect the reader to feel? Do they not care? I say ‘they’ because I don’t know who blame for what has happened at the end of this arc. Was it the writer? Did he not know how to end the story? Did he feel like he had gone too far, and deliberately rein himself in? Or did the editor look at the story, get worried that it was a bit too close to the truth, and order a compromised ending where everything would be brushed under the carpet? Who knows? They do, but they’re not going to tell me, are they?

The entire story arc of Judge Dredd/The Beating was about Police brutality. It was about the Police (as representatives of the state) and how they are given the authority to murder anybody that doesn’t instantly surrender, prostrate themselves on the floor and kiss their royal boots. 

This wasn’t a story about racism or racial profiling, or anything like that. It was a story about what the cops are allowed to get away with, because they ARE the state. Cop violence is the reality of the state. It is what the state actually is. The state is coercion backed up by the threat of violence from uniformed order following thugs. That statement is as true in a democracy as it is in any third world Islamic s***hole (hello Saudi Arabia). 

The state is always going to back-up it’s uniformed enforcers, because without the uniformed enforcers, there is no state. There’s a huge debate still raging in the US about this, and although the majority of protestors have mixed up ‘racism’ with what it actually is (statism) the issue of Police brutality is quite a hot button topic at the moment. So to see good old 2000AD deal with it over the past three weeks was a nice surprise for a comic book reader like myself who has become depressingly used to seeing reality being COMPLETELY IGNORED in his comic books. 

I read the last two issues of this arc, beamed like a anarchist Cheshire cat, and ran to the Internet to tell everybody how great it was that Matt Wagner was writing about something that actually had some kind of relevance in the real world. Do you know how many people actually review 2000AD on a weekly basis? Worldwide it’s hardly anybody at all, just me. I’m the only one who can be bothered. What does that say? Seriously, if the comic was so bloody cutting edge and essential reading, how many reviews do you think that it would get? It would be a heck of a lot more than just my half-hearted, moaning and complaining efforts, that's for sure. 

I want to say good things about this comic book. I really do. I’m always looking on the bright side, searching for the gems amongst the muck, and hoping, hoping, hoping that it will break through the toxic, circle-jerk cloud of neoliberal, progressive, multicultural guff that is choking the US comic book industry in 2015. I want 2000AD to be a beacon of sanity amongst the comic book progressive unreality that is coming out of the US right now, and occasionally, it gets close. 

And now, here comes the comedown to my goodwill party of delusional naïve optimism. In this, the final instalment of the Judge Dredd/The Beating arc, John Wagner has taken all of that goodwill, all of that hope and expectation, all of that praise that I showered upon him over the past two weeks, digested it, and cr***d it back all over face. 

Why am I so upset? What exactly has John Wagner done? 

He has written an ending to the arc (in the final three panels) where he reveals that Judge Dredd didn’t actually beat anybody to death at all, and is in-fact a hero working for the greater good. John Wagner has turned the embodiment of state sanctioned violence into a misunderstood hero, and in such a bumbling, unsatisfactory and unconvincing way that it reads like an addendum, added onto the story at the request of a panicking government/cop worshipping editor. The story ends as cuckolded as possible, signifying to the readers that there is no problem with cop violence, no problem at all. Go back to sleep. Thanks for reading. Reality is now closed for the foreseeable future. 

Do you see why I might be a little bit upset about this? A narrative that was exploring the very real problem that cops can beat you to death, and get away with it, has been turned into a story about the individual personality of Judge Dredd, and how he’s not really as bad as you first thought him to be. 

All of the contemporary concerns about state sanctioned violence have been left hanging in the wind. Nothing has been resolved. State authority is still legitimate. State sanctioned violent coercion is still legitimate. It was all about Judge Dredd. He didn’t beat a man to death. You have nothing to worry about now.

 I trusted a writer, and at the final hurdle, he massively compromised, and went back on everything that came before. This feels like (and here’s a dated reference) the Bobby Ewing shower scene in Dallas. Trust has been betrayed, and there’s no coming back from this one. 

Who made the decision? Will I ever find out? Does anybody at 2000AD even care? Probably not, and that’s the worst thing of all. I have read the story. I paid to read it. I reviewed it. I wasted my time, and my money. I’m the sucker here. I’m the idiot. They are laughing at me, and my anger, frustration and sense of betrayal will be completely ignored.

Judge Dredd//Serial-Serial: Is it time to kill off the serial killer genre?

Judge Dredd//Serial Serial (2) is written by John Wagner and published in PROG 1951 of 2000AD.



A very, very long time ago I decided to write. I did so in an attempt to escape the apathetic emptiness in which I was existing. My writing was a desperate, hopeless and ultimately fruitless attempt to connect with the world around me, a world that felt empty and devoid of all meaning and hope.

I was a young guy, rudderless, with no mentor, and with very little experience of real human 'adult' interactions. So, with no practical experience of life, no insight into anything really, and with nothing to say about the world other than- ‘I’m hopelessly adrift here,’ what could I possibly write about?

I looked at the world around me, and saw apathy and people stuck in routines. I saw dull faces and dull lives. I could have written about that, and probably should have, but the last thing I wanted to do was to relive the disapointingly mundane world around me. So, making the first in a long list of bad life decisions, I decided to write scary stories about the easiest narrative protagonist that I could think about. That protagonist was the ‘serial killer’ a villain loudly lauded over all mainstream media, in films, books, television shows, and just about every other form of mass media entertainment.

Another creative death in a moribund genre.

The serial killer was cool, exciting, menacing, infamous and most importantly, very easy to write fictional stories about.

I would sweat all day in a soul-sucking job, and spend the evening writing ‘cool/sick’ stories about serial killers, in the misguided hope that the stories would offer me a connection to the world.

Everybody loved serial killers. How could I fail?

Guess what? I failed. The connection with the outside world never happened. I wrote my stories, they were ignored, and my isolation from the world around me continued. My stories were terrible, and I feel embarrassed now that I was so blinded by the apathy of the world around me that I used to write such meaningless tosh.

Now zoom forward to October 6th 2015 and imagine my reaction to a ‘new’ story arc in 2000AD that features a serial killer sending cryptic, taunting messages to Judge Dredd, as the big chinned cop looks out into the empty city sky-line asking:

‘Who is he? Where is he? How do we identify him? How do we stop him?’

That short example of dialogue in ‘Serial-Serial’ by John Wagner is the kind of nonsense that I was coming out with twenty years ago, the kind of generic serial killer cliché crap that says nothing about the world, because it’s not even trying to. It is the kind of dialogue that you would expect to come from a lonely, isolated young man, not a professional writer working for a long time established comic book like 2000AD.

When I read stories like ‘Serial-Serial’ I get this horribly despairing feeling that twenty years have flown by, and nothing has changed, that humanity is just as purposefully blind and dumb today as it always has been.

I got over ‘cool’ serial killer stories a long, long time ago. Today, when I read them I am taken back to the lonely lost kid that I was, and I don’t particularly want to go back to those empty, useless times.

I do however understand why John Wagner is writing a story about a Serial Killer.

Serial killer stories offer thrills, twists and ‘cool’ whilst safely avoiding all of the important issues of our time. They are easy to write, uncontroversial, and simple. They are stories for children. A heroic cop chases a crazy villain. Spin it out for a bit, throw in some bodies, have a twist at the end, wrap it up, then onto the next villain. They are stories wearing reality blinkers, refusing to look at the world around them, refusing to reflect the reality in which they are being produced, and if that’s what 2000AD wants, that’s what they’ll get.

A veteran writer like John Wagner will find it ridiculously easy to write these generic bad guy stories, and if 2000AD publishes them, who’s to blame, the writer or the publisher?

A celebration of sickness and authority in uniforms

I blame the publisher. They should demand more, and reject this kind of story. They should have higher standards. They should want their stories to say something, to reflect something, and not just settle for mediocre 90’s thrills to pay their 2015 bills.

The last thing I want is reality obsessed stories featuring stony-faced crowds staring like zombies into their I-phones, but I would prefer blank pages over the tired, lazy, useless, anachronistic, dull, sad and pathetically childish nonsense that is the ‘serial killer’ genre.

Is ‘Serial-Serial’ a bad story? No, it’s not bad. It’s something worse than that. It’s a competently structured story that is pushing suspicion of strangers and dependency on authority figures. That pushing of suspicion makes the world less friendly, people less approachable, and reinforces the sense of isolation that I myself felt as a young man. It’s a story that tells you that the world is scary, and that you are probably safer keeping yourself to yourself, doing what you are told, and relying on the ‘authorities’ to keep you safe from all of the imaginary evils that exist in the world.

That’s not a good message. It keeps people afraid, isolated and dependent upon authority figures. It’s a message that benefits the state, and damages social interaction and overall human happiness.

Today I look at this kind of story and it makes me feel sad, sad because the fear porn lies are the same, and sad that 2000AD is still prepared to publish them.

I’ve lived a little, and learnt a lot in the past twenty years, but when I read stories like ‘Judge Dredd//Serial Serial’ it’s like the world has stood still. Serial killer stories are silly and lazy, they always have been, and all they do is reinforce social isolation and dependency on uniformed authority. I have no time for them anymore. I used to write them, but that was a very long time ago. I changed. I grew up. I stopped wasting my time. I moved on. I started to live, and to write about life. Is it asking too much of 2000AD to do the same?