ABSTRACT - ENNIS, GARTH & BURNS, JOHN - JUDGE DREDD - EX-MEN in JUSTICE ONE 2002 TITAN BOOKS – A dark satirical Dredd
adventure that takes on a new ominous prophetic edge in the age of the modern suicide bomber. Ex-Men, (not a pun on Marvel’s X-Men as you might expect) are men who are terminally ill, who decide to make money for their families by letting themselves be used as suicide bombers. They tend to go for one to one assassinations. We first see an ex-man in action at an opera, where a singer performs old classics, i.e. football chants about Spurs going to Wembley. An Ex-Man blows up a member of the audience. Judge Dredd realises that the Ex-Men are becoming a growing menace. He uses a nark to track down a Dr. Quack (great pun that) who is responsible for sending such killers out. He fills them up with a Nitro-glycerine like liquid explosive. He likes to use fat men as they can make a bigger mess. Dredd captures Quack, but not before he has sent out another killer, a man hoping to raise some money for his daughter once he is dead. When Dredd is unable to stop him from exploding, he throws him off a high building to blow up harmlessly alone. The man laments the fact that his daughter will not now benefit from his death. The police are baffled and ultimately indifferent to whom the girl named even is. Dredd wonders how many other Ex-Men are out in the world, and he knows how hard it can be to find them. The story ends as one man counts the money gained from an ex-man killing he arranged, just as an Ex-man walks up behind him, clearly getting ready to explode. The story reads as satire, as it was penned before 9/11. Now it seems almost like a prophecy. http://www.2000adonline.com/