I am the Law: How Judge Dredd Predicted Our Future

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At Griffin’s urging, Rico foments more chaos, which should be enough to unseal Janus and allow Griffin to tighten the reins, as it were, with his private army of clones. Rico uses his knowledge of judge procedure and his big-ass robot to kill more than a hundred judges. This massacre, and subsequent rioting, leads the council to unseal Janus so Griffin can re-create it. The remaining judges want Dredd to be the new chief justice, but he insists on staying a street judge. However, Hershey does kiss him. (Insert Hershey’s kiss joke here.) And then Dredd drives off on his cycle. Dredd takes down the van, which kills two of the occupants. He chases the third into a food court where he stops the third despite his having taken a hostage. However, the 2012 movie also failed to find an audience in theatres, though it has performed better on home video platforms, and there are rumblings of a sequel.

Judge Dredd first started appearing in the British comics magazine 2000 A.D. in 1977. That magazine has, over the years, featured work by such British superstar comics creators as Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, Brian Bolland, Grant Morrison, and Pat Mills and John Wagner. At Mills’s urging (he was editor at the time), Wagner created Dredd, along with artist Carlos Ezquerra, who designed his iconic outfit.And then there’s Rob Schneider. Sheesh. Though he does do a good Stallone impersonation at one point, which is also the only actual laugh the character gets. Both movies nailed their lead, at least. Stallone does fine when he’s actually playing Dredd in the first twenty minutes, before it goes from being a Dredd movie to a Generic Stallone Action Movie, and Urban is superb, channeling Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry (a major influence on the original comics character) to good effect. And both actors have distinct jaws, which is a vital component of playing the role…

Judge Dredd: You're one of the smartest of a new breed, but you've only been on the street a year. You haven't gotten used to the isolation yet. Dredd is riding his bike through Mega City, chasing a van that is obviously being driven by someone under the influence. The occupants are taking Slo-Mo, a new narcotic on the streets that makes time go by very slowly. (Why this would appeal to junkies, most of whom want to escape from misery, is an exercise for the viewer, unless there’s a concomitant high, though that’s not at all clear from what we see of the drug.)Players of Strontium Dog may find a few familiar ideas within the core rules of Judge Dredd. This game heavily expands on those skirmish rules, however, to reflect the urban environments of Mega-City One. The Judge Dredd rulebook contains everything you need to know about playing the game and includes rules for fighting within buildings and using vehicles. As well as a number of scenarios, there are rules for developing your chosen faction in a series of linked games.

The game does not rely on the IGOUGO system but is much more unpredictable but in common with a lot of games produced by Warlord Games, especially Strontium Dog. Every figure in the game is assigned an activation chip and these are placed in a bag to be drawn out one at a time until they have all been drawn, thus completing that turn. Rinse and repeat. You can never be sure who gets drawn first, which makes gameplay more of a challenge. I like this mechanic. Games are designed to be played with just a few figures per side. Figures are permitted two actions per turn, either two simple actions such as move or snap-fire, or one double action such as sprint or aimed fire. Play continues until one side defeats the other. It is simple, fast and fun and works very well. Dredd and Anderson go on the run, with Kay in tow, taking care of all the thugs who try to stop them. TJ refuses to let them into the medical center. Dredd accuses him of taking sides; TJ says there are no sides, that Dredd’s already dead.I know I said I’d do The Mask and Son of the Mask this week, but I was in more of a Dredd mood for whatever reason. We’ll dive into the Tex Avery-esque adaptation of the Dark Horse character next week. Central reports a triple homicide in Peach Trees, a two-hundred-story apartment complex. The three bodies were thrown from the two-hundredth floor after being flensed. They were also high on Slo-Mo when they were tossed, so they got to really savor the experience of falling to their doom.