Comic Review - John Wagner – Judge Dredd -Mechanismo Returns

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2000 AD 1993 – Spoiler alerts. After a whole series of humorous stories in the space of a few issues, Wagner gets serious with a sequel to an earlier dark tale, Mechanismo. The robo-cop Mechanismo was intended to be a mechanical Street cop-Judge, only to have gone haywire and start slaughtering innocent people as well as villains. Dredd had wiped out most of the robots but Mechanismo himself had escaped badly damaged. Now it has returned, found and repaired by sewage workers. Dredd finds himself in a double race against time as a/. Mechanismo is rampaging again and killing anyone in his path. b/. Dredd’s boss, chief judge McGruder has built new Mechanismo machines to hunt the original one down. Dredd hates robots in general and fears the Mechanismo Mark 2 models also going crazy. The shock ending is that the Mark 2 behaves itself and beats the evil Mechanismo but Dredd still destroys the Mark 2, as if it had gone rogue. He vows to bring down McGruder too. This is Dredd at his best, bending and even breaking the law to defend it. Arthur Chappell