"not the judge dredd of my youth" Topic

i started reading judge dredd comics about 1981. i am not a comic book guy. in fact, the only other comic i liked was sgt. rock, when i was really young, like the 1970's.
anyway, after not reading the judge since 1992 or so, i looked in…
why is dredd an old man? mean to say, why did the writers follow a time line that is year for year? seems like, i don't know, they are looking to an end point in the series.
now a days, most of the dredd stories are "epic" story arcs. i don't understand why they are aging dredd, or why there are not many "just busting heads and doing streetwork" stories.
anyone fill me in?

This is the thing that makes Dredd (and 200AD as a whole) markedly different from Marvel and DC. Dredd has always been getting older, and older and they are unapologetic about it. They've already flirted with the "what if Dredd dies?" plot line with Necropolis.

But we've had plenty of "head busting" over the years, but traditionally Dredd runs a 3-6 month mega arc every few months and has done so pretty much since the start (Robot Wars, Luna City 1, Cursed Earth, the Day the Law Died, Block Wars, Apocalypse War etc.)

Age is one of the things I like about Dredd. Also, it's not just him. Judge Anderson has seen the issue of age creeping into her story lines as well. How will the Justice Dept cope when he dies? We've seen in the past some attempts at replacing him (clones, drugs etc). Just makes for a different take. As much as I like Spiderman, I have a hard time accepting that Peter Parker has been in his late 20s/early 30s since the 70s!

well, i get the age thing, somewhat, but///
no. i guess i don't get it. heck, how many "mini adventures" does a judge get into in one day on the streets?

There is a story in one of the case files that details an average shift for the Justice Department. I'll see if I can dig it out.

please do.

Ok, found it. Casefiles 7. There's a set of stories called "The Graveyard Shift". Nearly 3 hours into the shift, there has been 18 armed robberies with violence, 97 serious assaults, 4 murders, 0.05 riots and 178 traffic offences per minute. One suicide every 45 seconds and 3 Judges have so far died on the shift. On top of that, there was a block war and a mutant attack on the city wall.

Later on it says, that on average there are 24 armed robberies with violence, 139 serious assaults, 5 murders, 0.09 riots and 230 traffic offences every minute. 7 Judges have died and 25 hospitalised.

Hope that helps.

Thats not bad – that's only 1 traffic offence per 3000 people per day.

More worryingly is how can the Justice Dept sustain such losses. Assuming three shifts a day and using the figures above, that's 21 Judges & 75 injured in a day.

That's 7665 dead Judges & 27375 Judges injured a year.

Also, that's 2,628,000 murders a year!