Comicon Advent Calendar Day 11: Join Judge Dredd For A ‘Choose Your Own Xmas’
by Richard Bruton
Yes, time to open the comic-shaped window in the Comicon Advent calendar now, as we continue the festive tradition of giving you a seasonal comic delight every day in the run up to Xmas Day…
So, day 12, about time I gave you something 2000 AD related! As you should know, I extoll the virtues of the comic every week here at Comicon in the Weekly 2000 AD, as I honestly believe it’s the best sci-fi anthology you’ll ever find – nearly some 50 years old and still essential reading.
Now, over the course of the years, the Prog, as each issue is called, has had many seasonal offerings, but few as deliciously weird and just so cleverly constructed as Judge Dredd: Choose Your Own Xmas from 2012, by Al Ewing and John Higgins, ably assisted by Sally Hurst on colours and Annie Parkhouse on letters.
Seriously, it’s just wonderfully strange and quite brilliantly done thing, requiring Ewing to write multiple storylines across one single tale, all starting off as poor Mega-City One cit Jackson Packard realises he’s having a very, very strange day…
Yes, for some reason, the universe has decided that Jackson’s about to set off on his very own Xmas adventure, and is talking directly into his head.
He’s given the chance to star in his very own choose-your-own-adventure Xmas thing. Now, it probably helps if you know what they are – and anyone growing up in the 80s will know, and probably have played the whole Fighting Fantasy books by Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone- hence why the poor schmuck here is called Jackson. (Editor Note: And for the Americans, it’s the Choose Your Own Adventure series created by Edward Packard & R.A. Montgomery.) But the basic premise is simple. It’s a story that doesn’t run linearly; instead, you’re given various choices about what to do, and you jump to a different page depending on what choice you make.
Easier to give you an idea with page two of Choose Your Own Xmas…
There you go – you see how it works? Jackson’s given various choices and gets to jump to a particular panel to follow them up. Easy, huh?
Except Choose Your Own Xmas is way, way, way better than that, as you may well realise as you read the page above.
Oh yes, the incredibly clever thing about this one is that it plays out two ways. Sure, you can read it as a choose your own adventure, following the panel instructions that tell you which panel to jump to, or tell which Jackson which panel to jump to, which, given this is Mega-City One and Dredd’s involved, seem to end up with an awful lot of this…
Or this…
Or this…
But there’s another way to read it – and that’s what makes Choose Your Own Xmas so very, very good, so different, and so damnedly clever.
Because it ALSO works as a linear tale, reading the panels in order, with the story flowing seamlessly from panel to panel, as Dredd attempts to figure out just what the hell is happening with this Jackson guy, who seems to keep cropping up again and again, despite being sent to the cubes or killed many, many times.
It’s all explained in a sufficiently satisfying fashion, as it turns out it isn’t the universe talking to Jackson and sending him on this Xmas adventure, it’s actually something much better, all wrapped up in the story that unfolds so well.
Yes, it’s a perfectly constructed thing, a Christmas tale by dint of it happening at Christmas… but that’s all I need to include it here in the Comicon Advent Calendar.
I could go on and on about how good it is, but it’s so much more satisfying for you if I just leave it as this being one of the cleverest and ridiculously funny Dredd Xmas tales and then show you some of the pages….
And we’ll leave it there, that’s quite enough to prove to you this isn’t just fun, isn’t just silly, but it’s also just the most insanely difficult writing to pull off, and Ewing does it perfectly. (Editor Note: If Al Ewing doing a choose your own adventure comic is familiar, but you know it wasn’t a Judge Dredd story, Ewing would revisit the concept in 2018 at Marvel Comics with You Are Deadpool. You’re welcome.)
If you want to see how it all ends up – and you do want to see how it all ends up, you can get the whole thing in the 2000 AD PROG 2012 Special at the 2000 AD shop.
JUDGE DREDD: CHOOSE YOUR OWN XMAS – BY AL EWING AND JOHN HIGGINS. COLOURS BY SALLY HURST, LETTERS BY ANNIE PARKHOUSE
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN 2000 AD PROG 2012 SPECIAL (2012)
