the comic genius of John Wagner

When Ron Smith was drawing Dredd, it was definitely very funny - more so during deadpan things like 'The Graveyard Shift' rather than the over-whimsical 'Citizen Snork' (although I'd kill for something that funny to happen to Dredd now. These days it's all 'John W is on holiday so we must talk of the BLOODLINE the BLOODLINE YES THE BLOODLINE for I am Dredd's clone AEEEEIIII.')

There was a definite snarky deadpan sarcasm inherent in Dredd's personality in those days which has since been lost as he's been drawn as more and more of a bruiser...

The classic 'satire' Dredd stories - Uglies, Fatties, Umpty Candy etc etc. - are all gems and justly deserve their classic reputation. Somewhere along the line though that kind of witty sci-fi got replaced by "Wahey lets do a spoof of [insert TV show here]" and the whimsical stuff - do those kind of things still happen?

I think probably what happened was that the writers and editors started taking the setting too seriously.

There's elements of that when 'The Pit' happens - instead of a mega-epic, they turned Dredd into an NYPD-Blue style police-procedural strip with a fixed supporting cast, and it worked so incredibly well they kept it up for some years - but then they did pretty much the same thing for the Graveyard Shift, and that was one of the big funny ones (and about the subtlest Dredd story ever done, as it was played so incredibly straight).

Occasionally someone like Rennie will try a 'craze' story and fail. Funniest Dredd-related strip recently was Rob Williams' excellent 'Low Life' (aka Wally Squad The Series) which explored the nonsensical 'rock scene' of MC1 through the eyes of an equally deranged protagonist. That was great slapstick rather than pointed social comment, though.

but what about Robohunter?

And the Bogie Man!
Wagner really should have written for Taggart with Danny Boyle.