What do you think?
Rate this book
Judge Dredd: The Complete Case Files + The Restricted Files+ The Daily Dredds
Judge Dredd: The Complete Case Files 16
It's business as usual in Mega-City One. From mutant teddy bear killers to deadly alien predators on the loose, mayhem and madness are as rife as ever. Thankfully Judge Dredd is around to dispense justice, both on the streets and in the classroom!
Collects:
- Firepower (Prog #736)
- Teddy Bear's Firefight (Prog #737)
- Garbage Disposal (Prog #738)
- Watchdogs (Prog #739)
- Talkback (Prog #740)
- Twin Blocks (Prog #741)
- School Bully (Prog #742)
- A Clockwork Pineapple (Prog #743-#745)
- Muzak Killer (Prog #746-#748)
- The Vidders (Prog #749)
- The Devil You Know (Prog #750-#753)
- Twilight's Last Gleaming (Prog #754-#756)
- One Better (Prog #757)
- The Flabfighters (Prog #758-#759)
- Teddy Choppermitz (Prog #760)
- Rough Guide to Suicide (Prog #761)
- Art of Geomancy (Prog #762-#765)
- Justice 1 (Prog #766-#771)
- Koole Killers (Prog #772-#774)
- First of the Many (Prog #775)
- Raptaur (Meg #1.11-#1.17)
- The Hand of Fate (Meg #1.18)
- The Boy Who Thought He Wasn't (Meg #1.19)
- I Was a Teenage Mutant Ninja Priest Killer (Meg #1.20)
Collects:
- Firepower (Prog #736)
- Teddy Bear's Firefight (Prog #737)
- Garbage Disposal (Prog #738)
- Watchdogs (Prog #739)
- Talkback (Prog #740)
- Twin Blocks (Prog #741)
- School Bully (Prog #742)
- A Clockwork Pineapple (Prog #743-#745)
- Muzak Killer (Prog #746-#748)
- The Vidders (Prog #749)
- The Devil You Know (Prog #750-#753)
- Twilight's Last Gleaming (Prog #754-#756)
- One Better (Prog #757)
- The Flabfighters (Prog #758-#759)
- Teddy Choppermitz (Prog #760)
- Rough Guide to Suicide (Prog #761)
- Art of Geomancy (Prog #762-#765)
- Justice 1 (Prog #766-#771)
- Koole Killers (Prog #772-#774)
- First of the Many (Prog #775)
- Raptaur (Meg #1.11-#1.17)
- The Hand of Fate (Meg #1.18)
- The Boy Who Thought He Wasn't (Meg #1.19)
- I Was a Teenage Mutant Ninja Priest Killer (Meg #1.20)
336 pages, Paperback
First published June 22, 1991
11 people are currently reading
137 people want to read
About the author
Garth Ennis
2,624 books3,170 followersEnnis began his comic-writing career in 1989 with the series Troubled Souls. Appearing in the short-lived but critically-acclaimed British anthology Crisis and illustrated by McCrea, it told the story of a young, apolitical Protestant man caught up by fate in the violence of the Irish 'Troubles'. It spawned a sequel, For a Few Troubles More, a broad Belfast-based comedy featuring two supporting characters from Troubled Souls, Dougie and Ivor, who would later get their own American comics series, Dicks, from Caliber in 1997, and several follow-ups from Avatar.
Another series for Crisis was True Faith, a religious satire inspired by his schooldays, this time drawn by Warren Pleece. Ennis shortly after began to write for Crisis' parent publication, 2000 AD. He quickly graduated on to the title's flagship character, Judge Dredd, taking over from original creator John Wagner for a period of several years.
Ennis' first work on an American comic came in 1991 when he took over DC Comics's horror title Hellblazer, which he wrote until 1994, and for which he currently holds the title for most issues written. Steve Dillon became the regular artist during the second half of Ennis's run.
Ennis' landmark work to date is the 66-issue epic Preacher, which he co-created with artist Steve Dillon. Running from 1995 to 2000, it was a tale of a preacher with supernatural powers, searching (literally) for God who has abandoned his creation.
While Preacher was running, Ennis began a series set in the DC universe called Hitman. Despite being lower profile than Preacher, Hitman ran for 60 issues (plus specials) from 1996 to 2001, veering wildly from violent action to humour to an examination of male friendship under fire.
Other comic projects Ennis wrote during this time period include Goddess, Bloody Mary, Unknown Soldier, and Pride & Joy, all for DC/Vertigo, as well as origin stories for The Darkness for Image Comics and Shadowman for Valiant Comics.
After the end of Hitman, Ennis was lured to Marvel Comics with the promise from Editor-in-Chief Joe Quesada that he could write The Punisher as long as he cared to. Instead of largely comical tone of these issues, he decided to make a much more serious series, re-launched under Marvel's MAX imprint.
In 2001 he briefly returned to UK comics to write the epic Helter Skelter for Judge Dredd.
Other comics Ennis has written include War Story (with various artists) for DC; The Pro for Image Comics; The Authority for Wildstorm; Just a Pilgrim for Black Bull Press, and 303, Chronicles of Wormwood (a six issue mini-series about the Antichrist), and a western comic book, Streets of Glory for Avatar Press.
In 2008 Ennis ended his five-year run on Punisher MAX to debut a new Marvel title, War Is Hell: The First Flight of the Phantom Eagle.
In June 2008, at Wizard World, Philadelphia, Ennis announced several new projects, including a metaseries of war comics called Battlefields from Dynamite made up of mini-series including Night Witches, Dear Billy and Tankies, another Chronicles of Wormwood mini-series and Crossed both at Avatar, a six-issue miniseries about Butcher (from The Boys) and a Punisher project reuniting him with artist Steve Dillon (subsequently specified to be a weekly mini-series entitled Punisher: War Zone, to be released concurrently with the film of the same name).
Taken from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garth_Ennis
Another series for Crisis was True Faith, a religious satire inspired by his schooldays, this time drawn by Warren Pleece. Ennis shortly after began to write for Crisis' parent publication, 2000 AD. He quickly graduated on to the title's flagship character, Judge Dredd, taking over from original creator John Wagner for a period of several years.
Ennis' first work on an American comic came in 1991 when he took over DC Comics's horror title Hellblazer, which he wrote until 1994, and for which he currently holds the title for most issues written. Steve Dillon became the regular artist during the second half of Ennis's run.
Ennis' landmark work to date is the 66-issue epic Preacher, which he co-created with artist Steve Dillon. Running from 1995 to 2000, it was a tale of a preacher with supernatural powers, searching (literally) for God who has abandoned his creation.
While Preacher was running, Ennis began a series set in the DC universe called Hitman. Despite being lower profile than Preacher, Hitman ran for 60 issues (plus specials) from 1996 to 2001, veering wildly from violent action to humour to an examination of male friendship under fire.
Other comic projects Ennis wrote during this time period include Goddess, Bloody Mary, Unknown Soldier, and Pride & Joy, all for DC/Vertigo, as well as origin stories for The Darkness for Image Comics and Shadowman for Valiant Comics.
After the end of Hitman, Ennis was lured to Marvel Comics with the promise from Editor-in-Chief Joe Quesada that he could write The Punisher as long as he cared to. Instead of largely comical tone of these issues, he decided to make a much more serious series, re-launched under Marvel's MAX imprint.
In 2001 he briefly returned to UK comics to write the epic Helter Skelter for Judge Dredd.
Other comics Ennis has written include War Story (with various artists) for DC; The Pro for Image Comics; The Authority for Wildstorm; Just a Pilgrim for Black Bull Press, and 303, Chronicles of Wormwood (a six issue mini-series about the Antichrist), and a western comic book, Streets of Glory for Avatar Press.
In 2008 Ennis ended his five-year run on Punisher MAX to debut a new Marvel title, War Is Hell: The First Flight of the Phantom Eagle.
In June 2008, at Wizard World, Philadelphia, Ennis announced several new projects, including a metaseries of war comics called Battlefields from Dynamite made up of mini-series including Night Witches, Dear Billy and Tankies, another Chronicles of Wormwood mini-series and Crossed both at Avatar, a six-issue miniseries about Butcher (from The Boys) and a Punisher project reuniting him with artist Steve Dillon (subsequently specified to be a weekly mini-series entitled Punisher: War Zone, to be released concurrently with the film of the same name).
Taken from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garth_Ennis
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
December 31, 2023
Still a good collection but now with too much Garth Ennis who mistakes edginess and silliness for satire and whose stories finish too abruptly.
February 13, 2017
A great music based story in this volume, with gentle jibes being made of Australian soap stars-come-pop-singers and the Jive Bunny as the Muzak Killer hunts them down in an effort to keep pop music to his tastes. Other highlights include the Edward Scissorhands parody, The Art of Geomancy (where Dredd gets his butt kicked by a female assassin in the name of Stan Lee), Space murder mystery (and great artwork) in Justice One, the return of Dredd's first ever arrest in First of the Many, scary hi-jinks in Raptaur, and lots of fun, violent one-off episodes. There is also some time devoted to the desperation of democracy in this fascist Mega-City world. Oh, and there's also the bizarre I Was a Teenage Mutant Ninja Priest Killer for those who like a little shake up in style and humour every so often.
June 5, 2019
Around this collection is where Judge Dredd hits its worst slump, not really recovering until The Pit. This being Judge Dredd, it's still not that bad, but it's quite far removed from the heights the comic could hit.
October 2, 2021
In my review of the previous volume, Complete Case Files 15, I summed up my feelings with a relatively pithy "Garth Ennis is no John Wagner". But after trudging through another volume of this dreck, I feel maybe I should explain just what I mean by that. Because there is a world of difference between being a satirist and being a cynic, if not an outright nihilist. Wagner is the former; Ennis, the latter.
While Wagner's creation lived in a post-apocalyptic nightmare world of insane street crime and tyrannical authoritarianism, there was a clear critical point to the tales he wove. His work criticized the blatant hypocrisies, contradictions, and institutional failings of America, exaggerating them to the point of abject absurdity as a WARNING about the direction that society was slipping towards. He never lost sight of the fact that Dredd's world was a broken wasteland, that the rule of the Judges was a tragic outcome... and that telling stories in this world could spur readers to recognize the same failings in their own world, and maybe, possibly, spur them on to do something about it. Satire by its very nature is optimistic, in that it assumes that its worst depictions of human nature CAN be avoided-- because otherwise, what point would there be in pointing them out?
But Garth Ennis is not a satirist. He's a cynic. His work on Judge Dredd suggests the viewpoint that human nature is intrinsically selfish, base, and venal-- and so his Dredd adventures aren't about critique or satire, but about indulgence. Ennis uses Dredd as a symbolic avatar to dish out violent just desserts to people who just grind his gears: tourists, pop music stars, crappy parents, snotty children, radio D.J.s, sappy sentimentalists, etc. The point of the stories isn't to make a statement about contemporary society, but to thinly justify scene after scene of grisly, gratuitous violence in which big papa lawman Dredd mows down wave after wave of people in a hail of gunfire. And the worst thing about it is... you can tell that Ennis is on Dredd's side. Given the world full of sociopathic, self-centered monster people that he's concocted, Judge Dredd makes sense as a deterrent to crime-- which means that under his tenure, Judge Dredd became a comic that voiced full-throated support of a fascist police state.
I don't think the man is actually a fascist, though. I don't give him that much credit. Garth Ennis is just a juvenile edgelord-- another writer who learned all the wrong lessons from the comic renaissance of the '80s-- and this is some of the worst material he's ever written.
(And yes, this even includes Democracy, which comes closest to being a decent story but hinges its status-quo-preserving resolution entirely on the majority of the populace of Mega-City One being too brain-dead to press a single button on their remote controls. And it also features the loudest proponent of democracy, Blondel Dupre, privately fawning over how much integrity and honor Dredd himself possesses-- suggesting that all liberals secretly long for the iron grip of a charismatic strong-man leader deep down. It's reactionary horsesh*t.)
While Wagner's creation lived in a post-apocalyptic nightmare world of insane street crime and tyrannical authoritarianism, there was a clear critical point to the tales he wove. His work criticized the blatant hypocrisies, contradictions, and institutional failings of America, exaggerating them to the point of abject absurdity as a WARNING about the direction that society was slipping towards. He never lost sight of the fact that Dredd's world was a broken wasteland, that the rule of the Judges was a tragic outcome... and that telling stories in this world could spur readers to recognize the same failings in their own world, and maybe, possibly, spur them on to do something about it. Satire by its very nature is optimistic, in that it assumes that its worst depictions of human nature CAN be avoided-- because otherwise, what point would there be in pointing them out?
But Garth Ennis is not a satirist. He's a cynic. His work on Judge Dredd suggests the viewpoint that human nature is intrinsically selfish, base, and venal-- and so his Dredd adventures aren't about critique or satire, but about indulgence. Ennis uses Dredd as a symbolic avatar to dish out violent just desserts to people who just grind his gears: tourists, pop music stars, crappy parents, snotty children, radio D.J.s, sappy sentimentalists, etc. The point of the stories isn't to make a statement about contemporary society, but to thinly justify scene after scene of grisly, gratuitous violence in which big papa lawman Dredd mows down wave after wave of people in a hail of gunfire. And the worst thing about it is... you can tell that Ennis is on Dredd's side. Given the world full of sociopathic, self-centered monster people that he's concocted, Judge Dredd makes sense as a deterrent to crime-- which means that under his tenure, Judge Dredd became a comic that voiced full-throated support of a fascist police state.
I don't think the man is actually a fascist, though. I don't give him that much credit. Garth Ennis is just a juvenile edgelord-- another writer who learned all the wrong lessons from the comic renaissance of the '80s-- and this is some of the worst material he's ever written.
(And yes, this even includes Democracy, which comes closest to being a decent story but hinges its status-quo-preserving resolution entirely on the majority of the populace of Mega-City One being too brain-dead to press a single button on their remote controls. And it also features the loudest proponent of democracy, Blondel Dupre, privately fawning over how much integrity and honor Dredd himself possesses-- suggesting that all liberals secretly long for the iron grip of a charismatic strong-man leader deep down. It's reactionary horsesh*t.)
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 18, 2021
A slight return to form. The "Referandum Day" storyline is one of the best Dredd stories ever, and surprisingly relevant to today's elections. The "Justice One" is a good murder mystery. The "Raptaur" storyline is a good manhunt story. Funny one-off stories, including a parody of my favorite TV show Twin Peaks. Garth Ennis is really holding his own as the new main writer.
Most of the common artists in the previous volume are gone, but John Burns is there to pick up the slack.
All-in-all a big improvement from the last volume.
Most of the common artists in the previous volume are gone, but John Burns is there to pick up the slack.
All-in-all a big improvement from the last volume.
September 22, 2018
Some good stories, some not so good. Ennis does a great work replacing Wagner on Dredd, you can tell he loves the character and his world. This collection also includes the grand finale of the "Democracy" Storyline. I guess you could consider this the end of the first Dredd era.
August 29, 2021
Garth Ennises take on Dredd just not work for me. The big thing like the whole Democracy storyline seems just drift away without too much ripples.
But there are some really good one in this collection. Like Raptaur. That is a really good one.
But there are some really good one in this collection. Like Raptaur. That is a really good one.
January 7, 2024
Epic plot twists that you won't see coming from the beginning, full of unbridled heroics from the start, great great eye popping art, three dimensional characters, and roller coaster ride from begining! :D
February 25, 2019
another good set of satirical stories featuring the toughest lawman
May 6, 2020
So so for this volume
A decent, if not great volume. The stories and art run the gamut from good to poor. The last story has an artist who must have been channeling Vaughn Bode.
A decent, if not great volume. The stories and art run the gamut from good to poor. The last story has an artist who must have been channeling Vaughn Bode.
May 19, 2021
This volume had a bit of everything. Fantastic art, interesting stories. I think this is my favourite Case Files thus far, hopefully there are more good ones to come.
December 4, 2025
I am on a reading marathon bing reading of rereading the Judge Dredd graphic novels as I simply love them. I can't get enough of them as they are so additives.
Best wishes Sean
Best wishes Sean
May 16, 2022
Ugh. I say this as a HUGE Garth Ennis fan--this was exceptionally disappointing. We've hit the 90s nadir of Dredd stories, all hyper violence and none of the satire to take the edge off.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews