Inside Judge Dredd: You know why I keep coming back here?

It has felt like I've been in a slightly abusive relationship with 2000ad this year, so I'm taking a break from the regular prog for now, and will undoubtedly catch up later. But I still get the Dredd Megazine every month, because it's been the best value for money comic book I have access to. And I'm glad I do, because the single best comic story I read all year was 'Old Man Joe' by Ken Niemand, Dan Cornwall, Matt Soffe and Annie Parkhouse in Judge Dredd Megazine #470

Niemand has been a reliable Dredd writer for the past decade or so - he captures the absurdity of life in Mega City-One better than any current regular writer, and that absurdity is the key factor for the strip's success (Dredd isn't the main character in his own story, the city and its citizens is). And Cornwall has become one of the great Dredd artists in recent years, (while also killing it on Rok of the Reds, also running in the Meg).

Niemand's work is often humourous, and can sometimes feel like a gimmick that has got slightly out of hand, and Old Man Joe really should feel like that. It's a semi-sequel to a story where Dredd teamed up with his Stallone movie counterpart to take down a bunch of clones who are clearly Rambo, Rocky, Cobra and Demolition Man, with a retired Dredd from another dimension unexpectedly falling into this particular existence at the end, and this follows his journey. It should be some dumb fun.

But it also says some very interesting things about how Mega City-One has become so fucked up, and how regular citizens get by in the daily life in the Big Meg, and how things could have been so very, very different. 

And then it ends on a note of grace that rarely appears in Dredd tales. Just a simple piece of information that actually make you feel sorry for Old Stoney-face, because it gives him a glimpse of something he never knew he needed, and can never have, and the man who can do anything realsies there's nothing he can do about. All he can do is sit and think about it.

The city might be the real character, but it's a rare story that really gets inside Dredd's helmet, and these 10 pages of comics do just that. It still had a dose of the usual ultra-violence and wicked humour, but sometimes you get a story like this, where you can see the man buried deep within the legend of Dredd. 

Only Wagner does it better - and he's coming back with a story called Death of a Judge in the new year, which might draw me back into the orbit of the galaxy's greatest again - but it's genuinely nice to see there are always new creators out there, ready to pick up the emotional nightstick of Dredd and smack you around the skull with it.