The complete case files

Original Title. Other Editions 8. Friend Reviews. To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up. To ask other readers questions about Judge Dredd , please sign up. Lists with This Book. Community Reviews. Showing Average rating 3. Rating details. More filters. Sort order. Dredd is a law enforcement officer in the futuristic North American Mega-City 1, empowered to pass death sentences or jail terms on the job.

Robots perform most traditionally human tasks, providing the million people living in Mega-City 1 with an abundance of wealth and leisure time.

And what better way to enjoy all that wealth an "Judge Dredd" is the most popular title of the British science fiction anthology AD , and this first volume collects the title's earliest stories from And what better way to enjoy all that wealth and leisure time than to commit crimes, right? Well, it certainly is a scenario that provides fictional justification for the police-state methods personified by Judge Dredd.

After all, the reader is not likely to feel sorry for a bunch of bored "degenerates" who go on crime sprees just to keep themselves entertained. The notion that widespread wealth spells disaster is a bit silly, though unless you happen to be a member of the Tea Party , and the fictional world of Judge Dredd generally feels rather half-baked at this early stage.

The characters are underdeveloped, the stories predictable, and the humor often does not work. Still, there is potential here, and the highly polished Brian Bolland artwork that starts to appear towards the book's end is a real treat. Here's hoping things will start to fall into place soon! Mar 11, Sr3yas rated it it was ok Shelves: comics-undated , comics. Welcome to Mega-City One: A highly populated city with staggering crime rates. To ensure peace and uphold the law of Mega-City One, the justice department uses judges: An officer of the law who acts as police, judge, jury and executioner if necessary.

Who is the toughest and smartest of them all? Judge Dredd The collection contains some brilliant stories a lot of terrible ones. A gun that shoots six types of bullets? Face changing machines? A Fingerprint triggered g 2.

A Fingerprint triggered gun? Perfectly planned terrorist attack using dream machines? So awesome! A Robot that reprograms third law of robotics by talking to other robots? Robots leaking oil when crying? So dumb. So the law must strike back! And spectacular criminal names! Scroodge, a special Christmas villain.

Yep, the writers were not very subtle. But the first adventures of Dredd featured in this book lacks substance at places that matters and most of the stories are bogged down by lackluster thrills. Was this supposed to be ironic?! Like a lot of people, I only know Judge Dredd from the pair of movies and the times he teamed up with Batman. In my quest to fill in some gaps in my comics knowledge, I picked this up.

This is a collection of page shorts, some linked, featuring Judge Dredd, lawman of the post-apocalyptic future.

He patrols Mega City-1, a sprawling metropolis that encompasses half of North America from what I gather. This volume collects Judge Dredd's earliest appearances. Dredd fights street crime, quells a robot uprising, and goes to the moon and back again. The writing is nothing spectacular in and of itself. World building takes a back seat to dark humor and violence. The stories remind me of EC crime or war comics more than anything else, what with the short length and punchiness. The art ranges from crude to spectacular.

Brian Bolland is on the spectacular end of things. It's no wonder he was tapped to do The Killing Joke a few years after this. I might take a crack at some newer Dredd once I knock out a few other things.

It was never a "drop everything to read" kind of book, though. Jan 23, Mark rated it really liked it Shelves: comics , sci-fi. While some of the early stories suffer from format issues as it tries to find its feet the incident, Dredd says no-one is above the law, sorts the baddi A fantastic idea from AD, the Complete Case Files reprint every Dredd story that appeared in the comic. The artwork is consistently good Dredd was my first exposure to Brian Bolland , the black humour, which would have been lost on 8-year-old me, works more often than not and some of the one-liners are smart and the things that rankle the writers - war, crime, poverty - come through without being preachy.

My highlights of the book include Call-Me-Kenneth and the war of the robots, the brainblooms issue 18! Great fun, well written and superbly illustrated, well presented and thoroughly iconic, I very highly recommend this. Jul 28, Eric Couchman rated it it was ok. These case files are amazing value for money. You a get a years worth of Dredd stories printed on a pretty good paper. These are a bloody bargain; with other comic companies you would get issues at this price point.

Now onto the content. I thought he was 80s, not 70s. The writing is, well, 70s. It follows a pretty rigid formula for the most part. I read this whole thing though.

He has to come back at a later date. There is depth here, hidden away. Going to the moon for the last section of the book was a terrible idea. The only thing keeping me going was the cool world and then it was stripped away. This was a tough read right up until the last few stories. Dredd is fascist, man. There is no other way to say it. The man was always an arsehole throughout this book but the last couple of stories, he changed.

He gave a guy 6 months for littering, the littering being his attempted suicide. Banned from driving for 12 years! Holy shit guys, I think Dredd might be both the hero and villain here.

Jan 03, Andrew rated it it was amazing. Ok I am irrational and biased - so there! This is a collection of the Judge Dredd comic strips collected together and presented in one book- they are taken from the pages of the British Comic AD yes there are other publications as well but this is really his home admit it.

The reason for the high praise for what is essentially a dated and simplistic comic strip - simple - my past. Growing up in a village - not really in to reading yet mind you , this was my slice of escapism.

A friend of Ok I am irrational and biased - so there! A friend of mine would get each week a copy of AD and i would beg to get a chance to read it. It was amazing to a young impressionable boy who really didn't know what was out there and wonders I could find. So to this day I still respect and love these comic strips even though comics and graphic novels have matured and moved on - this to me still is the heart of escapism. View 2 comments. Reason for Reading: I've read quite a few Judge Dredd collections now including book 5 of these Case Files and knew it was time to start at the beginning.

This is where it all started! The very first Judge Dredd stories collected together in chronological order are a delight for any fan to read. I had such a fun time reading this book. The book starts off with single episode stories but it doesn't take long until the Robot Wars issues start and we have a long running sequential story. After this Reason for Reading: I've read quite a few Judge Dredd collections now including book 5 of these Case Files and knew it was time to start at the beginning.

After this the stories vary from one short episode to several long running issues. Midway through the book Dredd is sent to Lunar-1, the moon, as the new Marshall, and the rest of the book takes place there which was a little disappointing as such little time was spent in MegaCity 1 for this book.

However just at the very end he returns home to earth. I had not ever read any stories that took place on the moon so this was all interesting for me and I have to say I enjoyed everything in this collection along with all the cheesiness involved in the early days of Dredd. First, I had not realized Dredd started in the late '70s, I had thought it was early '80s, and this makes a difference in how the comic was presented. My first shock right on page one was being presented with a skinny Dredd!

This skinny '70s Dredd is surrounded by other skinny people with Afros and Charlie's Angels' haircuts. It takes the whole book for Dredd to develop into a muscular Terminator-type though not quite up to his '80s self yet. Also MegaCity 1 is in the US and Judge Dredd though a British comic is very American in presentation, however as we start to read the first couple of comics I was hit by the "Britishisms".

Right away way the word "lorry", then came "petrol", "lift", etc. In the collections I've read so far I haven't gone back this early, and have paid particular note to how "American" the MegaCity culture is so this was surprising. Another difference was the lack of Block names, instead of the amusing famous people names for the city Blocks MegaCity is just divided into numerical Sectors, Sector 64, etc.

It will be interesting to see when the Block names are incorporated. Finally, a major difference in the early Dredd is his personality. Dredd, of course, always gets his man and is on the side of justice no matter what, but this early Dredd is a bit of a goody two-shoes compared to the mids onwards Dredd. Every crook is captured and goes to prison.

Dredd drives around handing out fines to citizens for jaywalking and driving too slowly. He main concern in life is following the law to the letter. He's really a bit of a jerk when it comes down to it, not the complex character he is now, and I wouldn't love him if this was my first exposure to him. But it's not and I do. I could go on about "this" Dredd and the later Dredd but when all is said and done this was a load of fun for a fan.

I would not recommend a newcomer start here; you probably wouldn't "get" what the big deal is, a lot has changed. But these stories are fun, yes some are cheesy, but some are very good. I loved seeing how Walter was introduced, the first glimpse of Judge Rico, the whole Robot Wars episode, the "red shirt" syndrome of any other Judge who went out on a call with Dredd, the introduction of Judge Giant and the introduction of Sov-City.

Looking forward to volume 2 which promises to bring the epic "Cursed Earth"! Apr 04, Simon rated it liked it Shelves: reviewed , britain-and-ireland , crime-fiction , science-fiction , action-adventure , dystopia , humour-and-satire , s , antiheroes. I got inspired to read this by the "Dredd" film starring Karl Urban: One of my favourite science-fiction action films in a long while, which basically felt like a cyberpunk "Die Hard" directed by John Carpenter.

The comics, however, turn out to be a level weirder than the movie at least. Most of the stories herein are episodic one-shots with a couple longer epic story arcs appearing. In the comics it's clearer than the films, both the Sylvester Stallone version from the mid 90's and the rece I got inspired to read this by the "Dredd" film starring Karl Urban: One of my favourite science-fiction action films in a long while, which basically felt like a cyberpunk "Die Hard" directed by John Carpenter.

That genre comes across as faintly ridiculous to UK audiences, who prefer their action heroes closer to James Bond or Sherlock Holmes. A good deal of the humour at first comes from putting a straight-laced hard-boiled supercop into the type of patently ridiculous futuristic society typical of the more satirical strain of UK science-fiction, and having him act like the "straight man" to everything around him.

Unfortunately, the one-note joke character Dredd starts as gets tedious at first when you read more than one story a week like intended for the original audience. As the omnibus goes on, however, the stories get more inventive. You see the writers satirise utopian not dystopian SF, or at least schemes by s-era futurologists to create a more efficient society, by thinking up ways for criminals to exploit them and for totalitarian surveillance states like Mega-City One do so as well.

Things get really exciting once the long term story arcs start to appear. The bent-over droid at far right is "Burt," a. In any event, it seems as if Dredd stories had been stockpiled in advance of "Oz," which was the first "epic"-length Dredd story that had been attempted since "City of the Damned" a few years earlier. The 22 episodes 11 storylines that precede it in this volume are drawn by ten different artists--only Liam McCormack-Sharp gets two stories, and they appear consecutively.

And Tharg's stern note that the droids have one week to get "Oz" in order hints at how hurriedly it must have been put together: when the first three episodes of a part story are all drawn by different artists and nine different artists in all contribute , there's clearly some frantic catching up going on. Jim Baikie seems to have been the speed demon of the lot--not only did he draw the final two episodes, he drew the three that followed them in the next volume. This one deals with either of them only during the Judda sequences; it's basically a Chopper story.

Dredd is entirely absent for long stretches of it, which was awfully unusual; so's the thematic two-page splash that opens the first episode. The Judda business turns up out of nowhere in the seventh episode and when Chopper returns two weeks later, he picks up right where the sixth episode left off ; the Judda and Chopper only appear in the same installment a few times, and the two plots' resolutions have almost nothing to do with each other.

Also, the Judda sequences are something of a distraction: Chopper's story is so compelling that mysterious violent weirdos shouting slogans, interspersed with chunks of exposition, get tiresome quickly. On the other hand, Brendan McCarthy's artwork here is a much better fit than it had been in Case Files you can see him trying to give the series a consistent look. Unfortunately, it's a look that all the other artists ignore; when Will Simpson takes over for the conclusion of the Judda business, the visual energy goes way down all of a sudden.

It's interesting to imagine what "Oz," or in fact this era of Dredd, could have been like with a more consistent visual approach. There are very few artists who can handle a 6-topage weekly strip, but it's just possible that Brendan and Jim McCarthy and Brett Ewins might have been able to tackle it together, at least for a while. The latter two were mostly off drawing "Bad Company" during this era, though.

I reread "Oz" after not having seen it in a long time, but a few months after rereading "Song of the Surfer"--which we'll be getting to in a few weeks. The "dangerous sports" aspect of this story goes over the top; there's a tragic thrill in the idea of a sport whose championship not everyone may survive, but a sport whose championship routinely slaughters most of its competitors doesn't seem like it could attract a lot of top athletes, you know?

Wagner addresses that a bit in "Song of the Surfer," but it passes without comment here. So the pleasures of "Oz" are less about its overall arc than its individual moments.

I particularly love the sequence where the turtle gets another chance at life, which lasts all of five panels, but there are lots of other well-turned bits: Chopper going down in the storm, hearing everyone calling his name again; the "Space World" sequence, which gives Barry Kitson an opportunity to draw a very different sort of sci-fi image; McCarthy's image of Wipeout crouching on his board; the colour spread being reserved for the final two pages of part Whoops, that's another one that's not so effective in the printed book.

Wagner has said that "Oz" was less a factor than their miniseries "The Last American" a few years later; Grant claims that Wagner divided up their collaborative gigs at the end of , which would've been right after "Oz. Grant's recollection is that "John wanted Chopper to win, but Dredd to let him go free because he respected him," and says he never read the final episode.

In fact, Wagner's ending is a smart solution to the dispute, and doesn't resemble Grant's description. It's not as if the partnership was producing inferior work although it probably helped that they don't seem to have been quite as overworked in this period ; they'd also gotten back to thinking about Dredd as a long game, setting plot threads that could reach into the future.

The Judda routine set up the long-running "bloodlines" sequence, but the most durable invention here is an unlikely one: "Bug," the one-off that introduces PJ Maybe, who's still appearing regularly in the series almost 25 years later.

Its other curious aspect: "Karen Berger Block," which appears in the first panel--Berger was arguably the most forward-thinking editor at DC Comics at that point.

The democratic coalition's intentions are a lot more specific than Occupy Wall Street's, but it's kind of unnerving that Wagner and Grant assume the people's right to assemble is something even the Judges wouldn't dare to mess with, when that currently seems to be anything but the case.

No one who is a wage slave which is the overwhelming majority of the population can afford to have an arrest record, even a misdemeanour, in this age of short job tenures and rising use of background checks. It's smart that John Higgins draws this story, too, and his artwork here is much sharper than it was on "Letter. The only sour note is Dupre's earnest monologue on the final page, which is stirring where it needs to be stinging.

Enjoy the hit mystery crime series that launched Endeavour and Lewis. Prickly, gracious, intuitive and smart, Morse John Thaw has a taste for English real ale and opera, a soft spot for his Mark II Jaguar and intelligent women, and a nose for crime. All 33 episodes in all 7 series. We use cookies to improve our services and your shopping experience. If you continue browsing you are deemed to have accepted our cookie policy. You will not be able to checkout in your local currency on this store.

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