Judge Dredd and the beat before annihilation

It's arguably the biggest moment in the history of Judge Dredd. It's the climax to the Apocalypse War, and the only way Dredd can save his beloved Mega-City-One requires the annihilation of half a billion souls. And he doesn't hesitate, replying to the poor Sov begging for the lives of his countrymen for some mercy with a terse 'request denied!'. And then he pushes the button, and murders 500 million people. 

This was in a kid's comic, and I thought it was rad when I read it as a kid, and it's no less awesome all these years later.

It's a moment that has been reprinted often, and referenced even more in the strip itself - Dredd's actions have catastrophic consequences for his own city, for decades to come. In the wider context of the 50-year history of Dredd, there are no bigger moments than this one.

And the exact moment the button is pushed is also slightly remarkable for one tiny choice - that panel break between Dredd's grim visage and his finger on the button.

It's all one big picture and it's not a terribly dynamic premise, with Dredd reaching over and pushing a button. But that break into two panels gives the moment a beat, a chance for the reader to catch their breath before Armageddon reigns. It's also a moment of emphasis, drawing attention to a single finger, and the terrible power that can be unleashed with the flex of a digit.

While there is a chance that the mighty writing team of Wagner and Grant asked for this beat, it's more likely that it was artist Carlos Ezquerra's doing, because he was always pulling clever shit like this.

He did this thing where he would have one of his badasses fire their weapon, and their target exploding, and in a way that doesn't actually make sense logically, or adhering to any form of physics, and it didn't matter, because it always looked fucking awesome, and his moments of action felt right and natural, as long as you didn't think about them too hard.

I just know that one day in the early 1980s, Ezquerra was drawing this moment, and he knew it was a big deal, and it just needed a tiny - almost subliminal - touch to give it an impact, and he did it by inserting the thinnest of panel gutters right in the middle of it. It was the right thing to do, even if the vast majority of readers never even notice it, because this type of epic climax deserves an extra second.