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2000AD - Judge Dredd - The Cursed Earth

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>When someone calls on the law for help... be he mutie... alien... cyborg... or human... The law cannot turn a blind eye! AND I AM THE LAW!

It is the dawn of the 22nd century. Following the atomic wars begun by the last American president, Robert Booth, the world has changed. Humanity survives in the Mega Cities, vast urban conurbations where mass automation and high technology has ensured that almost total unemployment. The restless population is kept in line by the oppressive rule of the Judges, who stand ever ready to break those who break the Law. Even among this fearsome body one stands out above all the others; Judge Joseph Dredd.

Beyond the Mega Cities lies the radioactive, mutant-haunted wasteland to which the old world was reduced: The Cursed Earth. Today we will be looking at one of the first stories to deal with this nightmare environment in an epic story called, oddly enough, The Cursed Earth. The episodic narrative lends itself well as the basis for RPG storylines, not just those set in Dredd’s world: who doesn’t enjoy a ragtag band of misfits making a perilous journey across a dangerous environment, saving lives and defeating terrible enemies like rat cults, mad robots, mutant slavers, dinosaurs and Ronald McDonald. Yes, we’re doing the infamous and only recently unbanned from publication Burger Wars. This story also features Judge Dredd at his most straightforwardly heroic rather than some of his later, more cynical portrayals, which could be helpful for players of lawmen, knights and others of a lawful-good persuasion who still want a little uncompromising edge.
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The Cursed Earth was largely written by Pat Mills (Nemesis the Warlock, ABC Warriors Slaine, Requiem, Punisher 2099) rather than John Wagner or his then writing partner Allan Grant, who together have produced more classic Dredd material than any other author. Mills always pushed for Dredd to be more of a heroic figure than either Wagner or especially Grant, which might seem odd considering his almost all of his other major characters are utter, utter bastards. The Cursed Earth was his actually his second attempt to correct what he saw as a major flaw in Dredd as a protagonist, that he is an “automaton character” responding robotically to plot developments with little internal conflict. His first attempt to correct this problem was the short “The Return of Rico” which introduced (and summarily dispatched) Dredd’s evil clone brother.

In keeping with traditional Pat Mills storytelling, however, expect things to go off the rails at some point and terrible, terrible jokes.
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North America in Dredd’s world at this point in time had three Mega Cities. Mega City One, the first and largest of its kind in the world, stretched from the poisoned Atlantic Ocean to somewhere around Ohio and from parts of Canada down towards Florida. The slightly smaller Mega City Two spread out all along the west coast of the US. Mega City Three quickly abandoned its original name and declared itself Texas City, claiming dominion over Lake Louisina and the mutie territories of what was once the South. Other Mega Cities included Brit-Cit (and its suburbs Cal-Hab and Murphyville), Euro-Cit, East Meg One and Two, Hong Tong, Hondo City, Sydney–Melbourne Conurbation and Ciudad Barranquilla. The moon, Titan, and other deep space colonies are also human-occupied.

In the years since this story several of them, most notably East Meg One, have been destroyed.
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This story was serialised in 2000AD progs 61-85 waaay back in 1978. As you can see, all the core elements of Dredd’s character design were already in place but people are often surprised at how lanky he is compared to later portrayals!
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Judge McArthur is clearly a /k/ommando.
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Sorry, just got the pages a bit mixed up. Ignore the post I just deleted if you saw that.

The "Walter" mentioned here is Walter the Wobot, Joe's lisping robot manservant, back when he had an apartment in Rowdy Yates block and an Italian landlady. They parted ways after some years, Dredd to become an even more hard-assed Judge, Walter to become the first free robot then lead the second robot uprising. He currently lives with Mrs Gunderson, Judge Death's one-time landlady.
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It might surprise you to learn that Dredd has been more than willing to work with all sorts of nefarious characters if they have the skills he needs and the objective is important enough. Years after this he would even recruit violent cyborg Mean "Mean Machine" Angel and alien superfiend Judge Death to join his Three Amigos gang.
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>>53039459
Burger wars was banned from publication? I never realized.
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See, this is how you know that this is a dark dystopian future - they put a peanut farmer on Mount Rushmore!
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>>53039847
Yep! Even the otherwise complete Case Files include the Cursed Earth but they skip that bit. Its only thanks to an EU directive on copyright law in 2014 that protected the use of copyrighted characters in parody that they were able to bring it out of the archives. This book was printed late last year.
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>>53039920
Yeah, I looked it up after posting. Interesting stuff. I figured parody had long been covered, but I guess not.
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>>53039959
>I figured parody had long been covered, but I guess not.
The the writers and artists at 2000AD thought much the same, basically. At the time nobody thought it would cause as much trouble as it did. At the time the big American fast food chains had only just started making inroads into the UK (McDonalds opened its first franchise in 1974, four years before this story). They could probably have fought it, but the management and editorial of the comic at the time really didn't want to rock the boat.

It wasn't the only controversial part of this story, as we'll see. A certain vegetable company really held a grudge.
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>>53039959
Thank you for commenting by the way, its hard going keeping these threads bumped.

I'm convinced Novar here is intended to look a bit like Pat Mills.
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>>53040045
I like to comment whenever I see one of your storytimes. 2000AD is always worth at least that much.

Just happy I saw it before leaving for work.
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Despite what he says here Novar never appeared in the comics again, but I believe he did make a cameo in a novel Cursed Earth Asylum by Dave Bishop.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7JQXgn-cubQ
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Reminder that a velociraptor getting murdered by an alien anteater is canon, as are murderous genetic clones of corporate mascots and that Dredd is saved by the Alka-Seltzer lad.

Reminder that Dredd kills a very possibly demonic T. rex reincarnated from cloning, memories and all, that is total evil and malicious enough to target him, by using flamethrowers on him.

Rest in piece, Satanus: The Unchained. You were the greatest Dredd Villain.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbusENG6hCE

>>53040187
A demonic dinosaur which later helps alien Elric's son to cause a total reality breakdown in time and space by murdering the worst man in history in all his incarnations, mind you.
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>the last President of the United States
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cphNpqKpKc4
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This was one of the first times the extended "pre-history" of Dredd's world came up in any detail. It was substantially expanded upon almost 30 years later in "Judge Dredd: Origins", which makes it clear that the events of the nuclear war and the Judge's subsequent takeover were nowhere near as clearcut as Dredd makes them out to be here.
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Do we have any readers from the Mississippi area?

Note "Petrol" is what Brits call gasoline, small error by the writers there.
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Haw haw what a dumb beasty. What kind of idiot eats rocks. Ho ho ho. Bet he won't be very important.

"Navvies" is a slang term for a group of manual labourers in the UK and some parts of the Commonwealth and US. Was coined in the 18th century to describe the workers who dug out canal systems.
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The quote in the OP comes from this page. Dredd still holds to it even now, more or less.
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The Alien Catcher General's title is loosely based on that of the "Witchfinder General" Matthew Hopkins, who rounded up suspected oculists during the English Civil War and who was the subject of a classic1968 Hammer Horror film starring Vincent Price. His vaguely Baphomet-y appearance is probably also a reference to this.

The medal featuring a dark figure is almost certainly a Robinsons Marmalade jar lid with its contemporary Golliwog logo.
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What's the dumb brute up to now?
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Oh.
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Oh no.
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Oh boy here we go...
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PgNiC2ElLGg
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8Zx-AcO_F4
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"There’s a difference at McDonald’s you’ll enjoy" was the corporate slogan used by the chain in the UK in the 70s to 80s.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XtmaX6Hqyu8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNgJD81SBFc
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Glorious.
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Those last four panels are among my very favourite Dredd bits.
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Given how the Burger Wars were blackholed until the last couple of years, Dredd never did get around to sending out the expedition. By the canonical logic of the series they must still be out there somewhere out there fighting to the death for their chain...

>Next Prog: The Coming of Satanus
Oh yes, >>53040187 will be pleased
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMsJe3TymqY

This part of the story actually pre-dates Michael Chrichton's original Jurassic Park book by some twelve years.
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>>53040764
Since the parody shield's in place, I wonder if they'll do a new prog on it.
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Learning fast there Tweak.

>>53040902
We can but hope.
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Time to play another round of the "Pat Mills tries to link everything he writes for 2000AD together" game.

Old One Eye, Satanus' mother (and killer), was originally featured in book one of a Story called Flesh from the very first issues of 2000AD. Flesh posited that the reason that the dinosaur's went extinct is that time-travelling ranchers of the 23rd century factory farmed them to death after the people of their own time ate all other animals. The man in the cowboy hat is Earl Reagan, the main human character.
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>>53039473
Shame on you for not mentioning Damnation Alley, by Robert Zelazny.
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>>53041181
I had heard that it was very similar, but I haven't actually read it. You're right though, shame on me for not mentioning it at all though
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>>53041203
It's so similar I couldn't stop grinning when I read it because is read cursed earth first. Down to the wacko two-part vehicle. Of course it's west coast to east. And it's still a vaccine. Instead of Dredd it's the last Hell ' s Angel.

But thanks for dumping senpai; I love 2000 AD storytime.
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>>53040720
More than "Gaze on the face of fear"?
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A few years after this, Satanus was captured by a travelling circus. His horrifically violent escape caught the eye of the time travelling alien warlock Thoth, son of Nemesis, who decided to take him on as a pet. Thoth and Nemesis went to war against the universe in general and Torquemada of Termite (undead overlord of the very far future of Earth) and his father in particular. After giving Satanus the ability to breathe fire they rampaged across time and space attempting to destroy Torquemada in the future by murdering every previous incarnation of his soul.

In Nemesis the Warlock Book Five, Thoth eventually tired of his pet's viciousness and allowed him took him back to the Cretaceous. When he died the second time he eventually took over hell and caused a demonic invasion of Mega City One. At some point Satanus had a son named Golgotha (possibly even before he escaped into the Cursed Earth). Golgotha would eventually become the terror of the planet Mars before being killed by the ABC Warrior Hammerstein. No, I don't remember how he got to Mars or if it was the original Golgotha or a clone.

In an almost completely unrelated catastrophe, Mega City One scientists also messed about with Satanus blood samples leading to the creation of an entire line of were-tyranousaurs. Because of course it did.

Whether Nemesis the Warlock, Flesh, The ABC Warriors and all the rest of Pat Mills oeuvre are linked is up to you. Mills would argue that they are, everyone else kind of gently ignores it. Both options work as canon, because Nemesis the Warlock and the ABC Warriors caused a complete reality to breakdown and, in any case, there's loads of alternate universes. And alternate futures. And alternate pasts.
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>>53041470
>an entire line of were-tyranousaurs

I... I don't even...

What the hell did that office smoke in those days?
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>>53041502
The good stuff. Man, imagine if modern comics got this nutty.
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This is the OTHER part of The Cursed Earth that got 2000AD into trouble.

>>53041332
Oh no, not more than that. The Gaze is up there with "Request denied" from Apocalypse War or those pages in America in terms of iconic moments, but how can you not love "BURGER LAW!"

>>53041302
Wow, I hadn't realised it was that blatant. I've been meaning to get into Zelazny for a while, would you recommend Damnation Alley as a good start?
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Speedy the Alka-Seltzer boy was created in 1951. Colonel Harland David Sanders, fried chicken magnate, was 88 at the time of publication. The first UK branch of KFC opened in 1965 in Preston, Lancashire, the very first American fast food company of its kind here.

Oddly enough, KFC never raised any complaints whatsoever over its portrayal here. Maybe The Colonel was a squaxx dekk Thargo.
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Odd really.
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Mr Peanut is the logo and mascot of Planters snack foods. The cuboid creature with a sword is the former Tate & Lyle's Sugar mascot Mr Cube.
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The blobby creatures man-handling Dredd are Michelin Men of Michelin tires (he's known in the original French as Bibendum and is probably the oldest mascot in the world. I've learned something!). The Jolly Green Giant belongs, of course, to Green Giant Frozen and Canned Vegetables. I don't know about the other fruit and vegetable people, unfortunately.

Not a single one of these characters was used with permission.
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Someone wrote to the original writer of this part of the story (Chris Lowder under the pseudonym "Jack Adrian", filling in for Pat Mills because of production difficulties) to call him an idiot because OBVIOUSLY he didn't know that non-Judges can't use a lawgiver without it exploding. In the introduction to the recent collection Lowder responds

>Blockhead! Michelin Man was a vat-created non-hume. Rules don't apply.
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Tweak's the best.
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I need to take a break here but I'll be back to finish this off later. Hope people are enjoying it!
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>>53041928
I've been following all morning, it's good, thanks anon.
how much is left?
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>>53041928
Yeah, it's been a while since I last saw a good dredd dump here, IIRC trifecta was the last I saw you do, so its good to see another one.
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This introduction page is from the new collection. Might as well slide it in here as it gives some context to those last bits.

>>53041961
About 40 odd pages, not counting anything like covers or arty pin-ups. As it'll be into a second thread I'll find at least a couple more things to storytime.

>>53041974
Can you believe that was nearly three years ago now? I did some after that (all of Nikolai Dante with Evasive Action Dante's help, all but the last two books of Nemesis, a fair bit of Slaine, Metalzoic, Shakara again, some other stuff when I could) but it doesn't seem like that long ago at all. Odd, really, considering how much I've done myself since.
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>>53042043
>It was the 70's, everyone was kind of crazy!
do have to wonder why the judges didn't think about adding regular safeties to the lawgivers in addition to the palm sensor/detonator.
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>>53042043
>Three years
It can't be that long can it?
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Lunch time bump for shakira.

Make sure to head down to your local McDonald's™ restaurant for a delicious and nutritious Big Mac® hamburger.
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Reminder that letting Dredd threads fall off-board is punishable by 10 years in the cubes.
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>>53039657
>he would even recruit violent cyborg Mean "Mean Machine" Angel and alien superfiend Judge Death to join his Three Amigos gang.
I remember you putting that prog up - Clinton was there, iirc
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Thank you all for keeping the thread alive. I've nearly sorted everything out here, so I'll be back soon™.

Before we carry on, this seems to be as appropriate a place to put this page. Remember how I said that Green Giant held a grudge? Well, they not only threatened legal action like the burger chains but they were only held off by the promise of an apology and a clear distinction made between the actual Jolly Green Giant and the evil construct versions. Brett Ewins was hastily employed to dash something off and so this page was inserted. I don't think Ewins ever quite forgave his editors for making him do it.
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>>53041540
Is really, ridiculously, blatant.
But that's fine, Zelazny is god tier, good inspiration.

Zelazny ' s best single book is probably Lord of Light. You ready for space Hinduism? Is great. He wrote a Hugo-winning, Nebula-nominated novel Juat so he could use one pun.

My favorite is Nine Princes In Amber, and the related ten volume Amber series. Very epic, very modern without still being current. Scheming, slippery plot, and fun setting.

However, the best if you want time get in without preamble or delay? His short story/novella "For a Breathe I Tarry" can be found online. Faust+AI.

Road marks and Damnation Alley are a little weird but essentially fine. (Though I'm biased and think all Zelazny is) Recently I also got my hands on Unicorn Variations, which is a short story compendium by him, including the title story that he wrote about George R.R. Martin playing chess with a unicorn for the fate of mankind. He promptly sold it to three different anthologies and went on a cruise with the proceeds.
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File: Clinton 1.jpg (186KB, 1280x740px) Image search: [Google]
Clinton 1.jpg
186KB, 1280x740px
>>53048122
Brilliant. Thanks for the advice, anon, you're a scrotnig earthlet.

>>53042724
Two years, ten months to the day since Trifecta
https://archive.4plebs.org/tg/thread/33161091/
The complete Nikolai Dante was Christmastime 2014
https://archive.4plebs.org/tg/thread/36893421
The near complete Judge Death and Anderson was spring 2015.
https://archive.4plebs.org/tg/thread/39647272

Nemesis the Warlock that Christmas, then whenever I could find the time afterwards, most recently Metalzoic in January
https://archive.4plebs.org/tg/thread/51088840

Slightly more horrifying is realising I started doing storytimes semi-regularly and got given the name six years ago last month
https://warosu.org/tg/thread/S14495828#p14499734

I even found my first ever /tg/ post from 2008ish on sup/tg/ fairly recently, which was slightly horrifying. Wonder if I can find it again.

>>53046576
Indeed. Well, technically it was his box-headed mutant descendant. True story, Clinton himself did appear in Dredd when a mutant criminal from Mega City One used time travel/brain swapping technology to switch places with him in order to escape punishment. Clinton-in-crim saw the inside of a cube for some time while the crim-in-Clinton ran amuck in the White House. Turns out he really did not have sex with that woman.
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So who's ready to head for Vegas!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MO1KyNUOIs
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While Judges tend to have broadly similar uniforms, they do adapt them to fit local cultures. Brit Cit has lions instead of eagles and taller, more conical helmets, while Cal-Hab (Scotland) adds tartan and Murphyville (Ireland) has green coats with the Guinness harp as their symbol, for example. Naturally, Las Vegas puts its own spin on things.
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>>53048709
>Two years, ten months to the day since Trifecta
That's one of my favorites. Your dump of that, wally squad stuff, and someone's really, really old dump of Leviathan are what homed me on 2000 ad.
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>>53048934
*hooked, phone posting
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>>53048934
Leviathan was also me. Both times, probably, assuming you read it on /tg/. I did that a day or two after Shakara back in 2011 then again in... I want to say '14, followed by Ampney Crucis Investigates and some other horror stories like Cradlegrave (chavs and Shub-niggurath) and Absalom (Inspector Frost kicks demons in the nadgers)
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Spoiler: Dredd's reforms don't really take. Within a few years the Vegas Judges had gone back to their old ways and grafted the LAG prophet's head onto a dog's body for good measure. Then one day another ssstranger came to town in sssearch of the American Dream and with a sssimple desire to murder absolutely everyone
http://www.mediafire.com/file/u4xukyxsi53lzg5/2000AD_%231354c_%28JDMeg._%23209-216%29_Judge_Death_-_The_Wilderness_Days.cbr
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Remember what Tweak's first action was upon getting free was?
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>>53039459
I just want to thank you anon. This stuff is great. It makes me weep for what 40k could have been.
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>>53049353
40k is one of those setting where you've always had to selectively edit out all the stuff you don't personally like and focus on the parts you do. That was a lot easier when they had a few less omniscient narrators and a lot more obviously biased in-character notes, but so it goes. Apart from the RPG stuff I think I've mentally held onto it around about the end of the first Eye of Terror campaign. Goes even more so for WHF. Thank Grudd for Geheimnisnacht is all I can say.

You especially might like this particular bit because its pushing a mad, bloody war front and centre.
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'Scuse the delay, I was trying to work out a way to include the final pages in this thread. Unfortunately you lose too much combining them so it'll have to be a new one. Ho hum.
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New Thread here >> >>53050254 <<<<
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>>53041470
Satanis is definitely making an appearance in the next game I run.
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>>53049102
Do you happen to have more Judge Dredd download links? I love these when slacking off at my call center job
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>>53050414
If you come on over to the new thread I'll be doing at least a couple more tonight and I'll probably keep better track of questions and stuff. Are you after anything in particular? Old or new, short and sweet or great big epics? Pure Dredd or set in Dredd's world but with a new cast?

Here's a good one to be starting with about one of the Big Meg's biggest subcultures
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/qkpkf9b6sn7rt/Fatties
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