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Hope: Nice to see another modern thrill get collected. I didn't like the previous series, but I'd still have bought this if I didn't already own the two Rebellion trades.

The Dark Judges: Not my cup of tea, but nice to see those strips getting collected in print for the first time. Good for the fans.

Savage + Defoe: That one's really interesting, because it feels like whoever's selecting these (Matt?) is properly fulfilling some people's very specific wish lists. Since I imagine those strips are now done, am I right in thinking this volume would mean everything would be collected from them?

On that notion of wish lists, there must be hope for completing The Order yet!

[Dredd vs Shako]

I'm very close to fighting with norton cranes block this week. But let's not gloss over that cover, which is great – an excellent mix of sci-fi and horror.

Dredd vs Shako continues to be a blast, even if there's almost no Shako this week. (Boo!) But, yes, Dredd is being a bit of a dolt at times here. It does sometimes feel like there's a balance to be struck between 'Dredd can tackle anything' and 'Dredd is less effective out of his element', but this episode is trying to do both. Still great, mind.

Aquila has gone for full-on epic fantasy scrap, and I'm all for that. Brink is its usual excellent self, in every way. I'm thinking this has to be a top-tier thrill now, surely? Even if I imagine Kurtis will never make it on to one of those covers depicting Dredd, Rogue, Sláine, Johnny Alpha et all.

For me, Indigo Prime is the only blot in the Prog this week. It feels a bit too much like a certain kind of improv music that I used to partake in myself, which was an awful lot of fun to do, but less fun for anyone else to experience. For me, this entire run has been bouncing back and forth across a barrier of interesting|don't:care. And while I find some of its meta points interesting, I'm not sure I care about any of it. And when I think back to something like Killing Time, that wasn't the case.

As for caring, though: Proteus Vex. Yikes. A rip-roaring episode that should stop people griping that the strip is getting a bit talky. But that final page. Who knows if that means what it looks like on the page. I sure hope not. I guess we'll find out next week!

Quality Proggage, though. Tharg's been on something of a top-notch run of late.

Yeah. Computer Warrior would be a nightmare now. Even though the games were mostly published by a smallish number of companies (mostly US Gold), the rights for those now would be all over the shop. Not least given that a number of them were arcade conversions owned by companies like Capcom and Sega. And some were film licenses (Ghostbusters; Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade) to further complicate matters.

DDC certainly claims rights. Years ago, I wanted to write a Computer Warriors piece for Retro Gamer. I have a (short) interview with Alan Grant about that somewhere. (At the time, I couldn't get in touch with John Wagner.) My plan was to bulk that out with explanations of some of the stories, which would compare them against the game – and that would mean twinning screen grabs and some artwork. DDC did (eventually) give me the go-ahead to do so, although it did very much seem to be down to who at the time the email landed with.

(A pity that article never went anywhere. I spent quite a bit of time working on bits of it, but it never came together, because I couldn't secure the comics for scanning, and I really felt like I needed a bit of Wagner in the mix too. Oh well.)

Get Chunky Comic Reader on iPad, I'd say. The app appears to be abandoned, but it's still the best comic reader on the platform. And Rebellion lets you download CBRs you can add to Chunky and other readers.

Right now, the first volume is NOT in the UC, note. That might change. It wouldn't shock me if we got a surprise Starboard Stront before the collection is done. For now, though, that's not the case. (I bought the first Rebellion HC for that reason, but haven't bought the others. They look great, but there's only so much double dipping even I can justify.)

[Dredd]

Lovely McCrea cover at every size and in print. Dredd was fun, although you half imagine he'll be arresting the manufacturer of that droid shortly. As for Dredd taking that much lip, maybe. But it does also feel like he kind of fucked up in the first place with his heavy-handed tactics.

Nice to read about Time Breakers, but frustrating timing, given that the crowdfunder is over and there's no obvious way to buy now. Hrmm. Nessie/Where are they now/iGor Goldkind were all solid reads for me.

DeMarco continues to be... fine? It looks great. DeMarco seems a bit behind the reader, given that she's a PI. I imagine the pace is such this will read better collected. Armitage, though, starts really well: nice to see his ongoing relationship with his ex-partner, and bits of continuity being threaded through the tale. The set-up is silly and intriguing in equal measure.

Two more text pieces – Steve Kyle (which seemed quite sad) and Ian Rimmer/Scream, before some Scream reprint. Which was a lot more fun than Hook Jaw, which for me remains the comics equivalent of a long, drawn-out sigh. Sorry to the fans. Under Seige was all right, though, despite again being weird as soon as Dredd opened his mouth. (Also, that last page seemed weirdly conciliatory for the Judges of any era. Since when do they give a crap about regaining people's trust? Anyway, not bad, especially for IDW.)

Devlin warrants a re-read, I think. Great art. I hope PJ gets a longer crack at this character. But I kind of feel like I missed something with the story as a whole. No such issues with Harrower Squad, which rattles on with its action movie stylings.

In all, there's a lot to like here, and so I'm not sure why this issue didn't quite click with me, nor why it took a long time to get round to reading it. Dreadnoughts next month replacing Devlin is a good like-for-like quality swap. Does anyone know what we're getting instead of Under Siege? Or how many more months Hook Jaw has to run?

I should also note that it's not the medium that's in danger of extinction – it's the delivery method. One line, I quite often see old farts moaning about how kids don't read these days. I can only go by mine and her friends, but they read loads. However, almost none of them read comics. And very, very few have a regular order for one of the few newsstand publications remaining for children (be they comics or magazines).

The habits are what's shifted. A generation of parents never themselves had the comics habit and so have not passed it on. Many who pick it up again (most notably through The Phoenix's six for a quid offer) still find it effective with a certain cohort (roughly, 6–10). But mostly, kids are reading collected editions.

The sad thing there is this erodes that very British notion of the comics anthology. So Dog Man is huge. Some Marvel books do well. Manga clicks with teens. And it was wonderful to hear Jamie Smart has now sold more than a MILLION books at his current publisher. What's in danger of winking out of existence is the comic with a whole bunch of different things to discover. But then that's the case in media more widely. People these days head immediately to what they think they want or need. There's little time (bar, perhaps in music streaming) for a mix of things they might discover, based on broader interest.

In other words, it's not just newsstand comics that are heading to oblivion, but also things like newsstand magazines and linear broadcast television. Comics seem to slot into that change as much as anything. (And to wrench that back to the subject, that makes Spacewarp an even tougher sell outside of the nostalgia market.)

Also, Wagner himself said several times that if he didn't write it, he tended to ignore it. So whatever his intentions, he nonetheless did fuel this line of thinking to some extent.

All thing said, though, for a strip without an official central authority, Dredd does hang together well. And it mostly lacks the revolving door element that can make eg Marvel quite tedious. Much of that is down to the continual influx of new ideas and the single parters/shorts – which KN excels at.

Although, the last time he talked to MOLCH-R for the thrill-cast, he said that he felt he wasn't done with Dredd.

I mean, maybe there's a 'for now' caveat, but it does feel like his work was a block of content that happened, and there's no telling whether there will ever be any more. I'd like it if there was, but can also fully understand the 'if it's not Wagner' issue. (Although judging by the lack of Wagner these days, that's becoming increasingly moot, unless we day Dredd ended with Day of Chaos and everything since is happening in the fevered imagination of a dying Dredd's final moments.)

The Al Ewing Mega Collection book is a really great collection. And he certainly had the tone down. But... he left. I mean, I'm sure he had good reasons, but his body of work is contained, finite and done. So, for me, while I enjoyed those tales, I'd place Niemand in a different space now. Not everything he writes land, but his hit rate for me is really impressive. And I hugely appreciate his seeming interesting and willingness in the smaller stories – not just massive epics or ongoing arcs designed to shake everything up.

Amusingly, having just worked my way back deep into 2023's reports, the forum kicked me out, claimed I was spamming and attempted to ban me.

2099 is an odd one. I really enjoyed the first one, giving us an extended look into a kind of Elseworlds/What-If Dredd. But I've not really been enamoured with any of the others. It feels a bit too much like repeating a punchline to diminishing returns.

But Megatropolis was interesting. One-Eyed Jacks was entertaining and managed to piss off a whole bunch of people that kind of needed pissing off. And a great many of his Dredd stories have been top-tier.

Re admin/spam, I've not been getting notifications for some reason. I've gone through some recent ones but will have to tackle the queue in chunks. If there's anything pressing, please email me.

Rebellion is always quite tight-lipped about its reprint schedule, but I always thought the Case Files were intended to be evergreen. That said, it can be a very long time before OOP editions of any Rebellion book return to print.