I'm reading Judge Dredd and, at least from the first 5 "volumes" it's a lot more wacky and satirical than what I expected. It might pull a 40k and become grimdark, but so far the Stallone movie is more accurate to the source than the film with Cersei Lannister.
The official start of Judge Dredd going grimdark around 2000AD 460, which is in Casefiles V9.
#460 is "A Letter From A Democrat"; a dark tale published in 1986 that is the official start of the Democracy storyline. In it, a housewife and some of her friends take hostage a TV station and demand a return of democracy to the Mega City and list off all of the overt fascist elements of the Judge system that are never shown in the comic but were always around the edges and implied. The story ends with Dredd massacring the mom and her cohorts and then, to the still live TV camera, gives a super dark quip mocking the idea of democracy to viewers watching the hostage crisis.
The story itself was a complete 100% last minute thing (originally it was going to be a parody of nudists with nudists taking over the TV station to promote nudism in MC1) but it was shot down even though Wagner and Grant BOTH promised the art would be done in a way that no nudity would be shown on panel. So Alan Grant (who had come down with a major hate boner for Judge Dredd and how kids idolized him) pitched the story being about a mom who snapped and went on live tv and said the quiet part out loud: that Mega City 1 was a fascist dictatorship and the Judges tyrants who rule by violence and terror and actively HATE the citizens they are sworn to protect.
The story pissed off a bunch of readers, which made Grant decide to go on a full-on crusade to destroy Judge Dredd ala Bendis destroying Scarlet Witch.
He got John Wagner to go along with it by pitching him the idea of doing a story exploring the elephant in the room about the nature of the Judge system as a running storyline that would be explored every couple of months. The plotline was revisited the first time in 1987, when in 2000AD #531-533 (Casefiles V11), you had a bunch of pro-democracy protest groups revealed to have been formed after the mom's death and announcing a big march to protest against the Judges refusal to allow representative government in the city.
At this point, Grant went full heel turn as Chief Judge Silver (the black guy with silver hair who ran the Judges at this time) demanding Judge Dredd crush the protest through any means necessary and basically telling him the laws will be whatever Dredd wants the law to be in terms of card blanch to do all sorts of vile shit to crush the movement, including threatening the dead mom's husband and having agent provocateurs start violence to give the Judges the right to use violence to destroy the protest march (all the while Silver is giving TV interviews denouncing the protesters as violent thugs and evil agitators who want chaos to run amok).
Now this REALLY fucking pissed people off. Super duper pissed people off that Dredd was breaking the law and doing beyond the pale shit that went against the character and his beliefs. Grant was again, pissed that he hadn't completely turned fans against Dredd/was now getting heat over him engaging in character assassination and decided to TRIPLE DOWN in the upcoming Oz (2000AD #545-570) storyline (the first major epic Dredd had done in about 3-4 years after taking a break from doing storylines that span half a year).
In the story, collected in V11 as well), Dredd goes to Australia to arrest escaped fugitive Chopper, a sky surfer and supporting cast member who had appeared several times in the book prior and had gone to Australia to participate in a big sky surfing race. Grant INSISTED that the story end absolutely positively HAD to end with Dredd crossing ANOTHER moral event horizon by sneaking up behind Chopper at the end of the race and cowaredly putting a bullet in his back killing him instantly.
The backlash against Dredd in #531-533 had spooked the shit out of John Wagner, so he said fuck no. Grant refused and basically told Grant he wanted Dredd to be an complete and total monster, one who shoots unarmed people in the back to kill them and who represented ALL of Grant's inherit hatred of the police and authority/what he considers fascism. Even though, at the same time he's pushing this, he is also writing Psi Judge Anderson's spin-off serial and explicitly simping for her HARD portraying her as a goody goody type heroine to be admired for being a free spirit and shit.
Wagner REFUSED to let Grant do his ending. And editorial took John's side so Oz ends with Dredd allowing Chopper to get away scott free and doesn't drag him back to MC1.
This led to the end of the Wagner/Grant working relationship as they basically spent the next couple of years splitting up the work they did collectively and John basically writing Judge Dredd by himself but allowing Grant to get a cowriter credit (and allowing the opposite and Grant allowing John a cowriting credit on Detective Comic even though Grant was writing that book by himself after a couple of months on the title).
What followed was Wagner doing his DAMNEST to have Dredd walk back/apologize/renounce all of the shit he did in the first two Democracy stories and finally break/resign from the force, but not before having everyone Silver had him arrested in the protest march be let go free. Dredd vanishes into the cursed earth, and is replaced by a defected clone who becomes corrupted by the Dark Judges and sets up the Necropolis storyline where Silver is killed and Mega City 1 laid to waste with millions killed before Dredd frees the city and defeats Judge Death.
Afterwards, Wagner left Judge Dredd for a couple of years with his last story being that Dredd forces the other Judges that survived Necropolis to hold a public vote on whether or not to abolish the Judge system and restore Democracy. He left a young writer to actually end the Democracy storyline with full blessing to resolve how the vote goes down.
Sadly, that young writer?
Garth fucking Ennis.
Ennis had the Democracy vote end with the Judges winning flawless victory and Dredd rubbing his nose in the leaders of the Democracy movement's faces that they lost.
Wagner was pissed the fuck off as he had wanted, personally, for the Democracy side to win but for them to set up a power sharing deal with elected officials running things but the Judges staying active but with their powers scaled back so they were accountable to the civilian government.
Wagner wrote "America" as a coda for the Democracy storyline, as he didn't want to make trouble and override Ennis. BUT when Wagner returned to writing Judge Dredd in the mid-1990s, he backpeddled hard on Ennis's status quo and used another apocalypse level event tha had happened to restore limited democracy in Mega City 1 and scale back the powers of the Judges.
I always hated the Eldritch bullshit. Gotham at it's heart was very much Chicago's politics with New York's geography, making it because there's some starspawn making people evil is dumb. It's just people who see civil service as a means to enrich themselves ruining the city with bad policy to the point where organized crime is the only way for most people to survive. Bruce is trying to revive legitimate business in Gotham and cull the influence of organized crime. If you wanted to have a realistic Gotham it'd literally be an all-black city council or majority black city council fucking any of Bruce Wayne's plans while the retired mafia live in the suburbs after turning most of their businesses legit. Bruce would be hated by some people for gentrifying Gotham and pricing out residents. He'd have to tear down old apartments without central heating or hot water only to be caught in a half-decade long legal battle against some protest group that says it's a historic part of Gotham.
Actual honest to god superhumans is just the wrench in his plans, he beats the fuck out of gangsters shaking people down for protection money or selling drugs to school kids. Batman shouldn't be a ninja, but a way for Bruce to get evidence that people are selling out the city. Would people believe Bruce? No, but the Batman is an urban legend. No one thinks he's just a guy.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=d43HnLhkcJ0 I like the Gotham Knights segment "Have I Got a Story For You" for that reason.
You have details reversed.
Gotham is a mob city and its local government is corrupt BECAUSE it's a mob city. The mob runs and has control over everything and elected officials are either 100% controlled by the mob, hapless career politicians desperately trying to make it to retirement without getting killed, and the occasional reformer who is impotent to fix things on the large scale, only on smaller scale stuff.
Bruce runs the sole charity in the city that actually does anything for the public and MOST writers address the impact on the charity work Bruce does, by focusing on the small shit Bruce does (offering homeless people, sex workers, ex cons trying desperately to go straight) to make a difference in the city. Also, Bruce doesn't have unlimited money. Being Batman is expensive and while he lives a frugal personal life in spite of his persona as a playboy (something I'm shocked has not been explored; the idea that Bruce is seen by his peers as a penny pincher who espouses living frugally and avoiding all forms of conspicuous consumption consoomerism), he also runs a business and employs a lot of people. So he has to hyper focus his charity on the poor to find ways to help people in need so that his money has an impact.
It's canon that Bruce can't magically fix shit with his money, like some people want him to. It's also established that while the mob's grip falters once Batman comes on the scene, the mob's velvet glove terror is replaced with people like Joker and other costumed villains killing people left and right and running elaborate schemes left and right that leave huge bodycounts in their wake.
Ironically, it was Morrison of all people who came up with the notion of why people live in Gotham in spite of it being a Lovecraftian slaughterhouse of horrors. Gotham is a city of extremes that draws in people wanting the best: the white collar jobs you can get in Gotham (which is the DC equivalent of the financial heart of the US) can make you rich. It has the best night life/music scene in the US for those into that sort of thing. Best sports team, best art museums, best restaurants... even the best criminals.
And you can toss in a lot of fan theories to even explain the crime angle: Chads all across the country come to Gotham to get henchmen jobs for the chance to fight Batman. Because even the social stigma of being a convicted felon can't beat the bragging rights of having had a one-on-one fight with Batman even if you lose. Or that working as a Gotham City villain's henchman pays out huge money assuming you don't get killed by your employer and that people come to the city to hench for the Joker or Penguin or Two Face or Riddler, because once you do a stint with them and survive it, you can get hired by any regular crime syndicate in the country if not start your own or even become a super villain yourself!
It's nice having Gillen back to writing for the X-books. I will never get tired of modern Sinister.
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I disagree. Silly sassy camp gay Sinister is horrible.
I want scary as fuck Tim Curry playing evil 100% straight ala Legends Claremont Mr Sinister back.
