Is V for Vendetta meant to be satirical? I remember it being pretty straightforward in what it's trying to say
Judge Dredd is so misunderstood. The writing rules were Dredd is the villain but he's the hero.
Always did love the strip where a candy inventor created a new candy that didn't have any sugar (sugar being illegal in MegaCity One) but was almost addictive in it's deliciousness
The candy maker wasn't breaking any laws, nor was his product intended to cause any strife or violence amongst the populace
Flummoxed by what he should do in this situation, Judge Dredd and the rest of the judges decided to launch him into space for the rest of his life
From what I remember Judge Dredd is all over the fucking place with what it's trying to say. Like some of it's a piss-take on American superheroes and particularly Batman, some of it's a general satire of an automated industrial welfare state, some of it's commentary about how inhumanly incorruptible someone would have to be to responsibly wield the sort of power that police have, and some seems to be playing Dredd as a ruthless antihero who "makes hard, but right, choices." And that's even before you get to the long arcs that are like "what if Judge Dredd was in a post-apocalyptic desert?" or "what if Judge Dredd was in space?" that are generally weird but usually portray him unambiguously positively from what I remember.
Like on the one hand you have a character that unquestioningly enforces accountability for himself and other Judges (including one gag where he arrests himself for a petty noise violation on Christmas), frequently goes after the ruling class for their corruption and the abuses they inflict on the public, tries to non-violently deescalate violent situations involving people suffering from mental health crises, and declares that sapient non-humans have rights and can't be farmed like livestock, and on the other hand you have a character that actively commits genocide against the Soviet Union, ruthlessly enforces arbitrary rules, frequently massacres people, and violently upholds the house of cards that is Mega-City One's capitalist welfare state.
So in some story arcs he's written as a genuinely good character who seeks to preserve the safety and wellbeing of sapient beings regardless of what the law says, in some arcs he's a satire pointing out how incorruptible someone would have to be to wield the sort of power that law-enforcement or fictional vigilantes have, and in some arcs he's a complete monster but the story tries to justify it.
From what I remember, Judge Dredd is also pretty unique in comics in that everything that is made about the character occurs in the same canon. So there's no reboots, retcons etc
There's a documentary about writing Dredd that's meaningful for a significant amount of the run. Like I said the rules were Dredd is the villain but he's also the hero. I think they got bought up at some point but when that was I can't remember
Satire as a method of thought propagation is honestly just shit. It doesn't work.
Loadsamoney was a fun song. Good heart warming message about the aspirational just about making its
WH40K unironically helped me come to terms with my own non-straightness and other peoples' transness; it's really annoying to see the setting overrun with fash types.
No, it's cool. Basically, I grew up in an extremely conservative Catholic family, and as a kid I internalized a lot of the queerphobia inherent to Catholic doctrine. I also knew, probably from the time I was 14, that I was attracted to people of pretty much every sex and gender. Adolescence wasn't an easy time for me because of this, and WH40K was one of the hobbies I got into to get away from everything. I didn't think too deeply about why I liked it so much it until I started getting into the lore around the Chaos Gods, especially Tzeentch.
In the lore, Tzeentch is the God of Change. Change and transformation personified, in fact. Their followers, to varying degrees, embrace radical social, psychological and even physical transformations as divine gifts, rather than as something to be feared. Of course, embracing those gifts often leads to Tzeentch's followers' being persecuted, excluded and straight-up executed by the close-minded theocratic society in which they live. Reading about those Tzeentchian characters and how they chose to buck Imperial culture to live freer lives, even in the face of that kind of backlash... I don't know. Something just clicked for me. I remember sitting up one night reading a short story about Tzeentch followers and thinking, "wait, if these guys have better lives for telling the Imperium to go fuck itself, why can't I do the same for the Church? And 'embracing change?' Isn't that what trans people do pretty much every day just by virtue of existing?"
It's silly, I know, but I still have a soft spot in my heart for the setting because of that.
I'm still not fully taking Watchmen as a satire here because Moore literally didn't even know what "who watches the watchmen" meant. Srs. There was an interview where he said, after quoting that old graffiti, "so the point is, the watchmen are looking out for us, but who's looking out for them?" It was great.
Judge Dredd is satire? Never read it or anything, but if it's satire I might check it out
It started as a reaction against Thatcher's state policies. It's satirical like warhammer 40k is, real reactionaries don't get it and idolize it, and over time the writing gets wonky and the line starts to blur.
