Brit-Cit research

[Stoonami]

Currently researching a pitch for Black Flame and would appreciate some help from the collective photographic memories of the Board.

Can anyone point me to essential Progs that give background on Brit-Cit?

I have stacks of back issues in my folks loft, but an idea of what to look for before I start plowing through boxes of comics would be grand.

Cheers,

Stu Taylor

Link: http://stutaylorsflakjacket.blogspot.com" target="_blank">http://stutaylorsflakjacket.blogspot.com

[JayzusB.Christ]

If you can find the Dredd / Armitage crossover novel 'Deathmasques' by Dave Stone, you'll get a very detailed bit of backstory. I'll try and remember as much as I can. Dates and years you'll have to guess.

In a nutshell: The Tories, desperate to hold onto power, imposed martial law (I think) in the early 21st century.
A civil war broke out because of it.
Meanwhile, while the general nuclear devastation of the Great Atom Wars was largely fought between larger nations, the fallout spread to Britain and made shite of it.
After the civil war, there was near anarchy. I can't remember who won, or indeed who was fighting. However, crime bosses or 'Overlords' emerged from the chaos and made some money, establishing the city that was to become Brit Cit.
However, they needed a law-keeping force, so based theirs on Mega-City 1's effective judge system, and I think sent some officers over to MC1 for training.
However, the new Brit-Cit judge system became too much like MC1's, and resented being in the pockets of the Overlords. A sort of independence from the bosses was established.
But not total independence: Overlords were not happy about the insurrection, and took a number of measures such as cementing up bombs in undisclosed locations within their developing city's infrastructure.
So now while the judges are not entirely reliant on the Overlords' paronage, the latter enjoy almost total immunity from the law through huge-scale blackmail. All this information is never disclosed, of course, to other mega-cities.

Brit-Cit itself is divided up into a number of regions, most of which I can't remember. One is the law-keeping sector, where the New Old Bailey stands. It is still run in a semi-aristocratic fashion, for example Senior judges buy their positions. Corruption is frequent.
THere is also the Dragon, a roofed square mile devoted to pleasure including prostitution, gambling and other semi-legal activities.
THere is a corporate sector as well, can't remember too much about it.

Brit-Cit still has a royal family, but most of them are so inbred that they are complete halfwits (no change there, eh, anti-monarchists?)

Sugar is legal in Brit-Cit, as is caffeine and tobacco. I think prostitution is too.

Brit-Cit jointly runs the undersea mini-city of Atlantis along with MC1, and judges of both cities are to be seen on its streets.

And that's about as much as I can remember. Sorry about the lack of dates. Read as much Armitage as you can if you want more details.

[DavidXBrunt]

You might want to look out for the Dredd Yearbook that had a Britcit theme, or for the most up to date Britcit stuff read Dredd - The Satanist from 1350(?) the latest Armitage and listen to the C.D. of Dredd - Get Karter!

If any of this is any use then we demand a name check!

[GordonR]

I wouldn't bother paying too much attention to Deathmasques, though.  The old Virgin novels are definitely non-canon.

Some more than others.

[McNulty]

I don't know if you are interested in Cal-Hab at all, but if you are, follow this link...

Link: http://www.users.totalise.co.uk/~rjamieson/Cal-Hab/index.html" target="_blank">The A-Z of Cal-Hab

[opaque]

Deathmasques might not be canon but a lot of the stuff in it has been in Armitage at one time or another (but saying that theres some confusing gaps in my memories of Armitage, like what belongs where) and I'm pretty sure the adventures of the book are mentioned in one of the Armitage stories (although it could have been an editors note)

[JayzusB.Christ]

'I wouldn't bother paying too much attention to Deathmasques, though'
Well thank you very snecking much, Mr Rennie. After all my memory-wringing efforts. It's like Opaque says, anyway - the backstory was often referred to in Armitage, so it DID happen. Just because YOUR Brit-Cit royal family was different :-/

[Stoonami]

Blimey! Thanks for your help, guys. That's plenty to be getting on with as far as background goes.

Names will of course be checked if anything comes of the pitching.

Cheers,

Stu

Link: http://stutaylorsflakjacket.blogspot.com" target="_blank">http://stutaylorsflakjacket.blogspot.com

[GordonR]

The brutal truth:

No-one who writes the Dredd strips knows or cares much what happened in a long-defunct line of Dredd novels.  At no point does anyone ever say to them, "You can't do that, because it contradicts something in one of the old Virgin novels..."

If the guy's wanting to pitch an idea for one of the Black Flame books, he'd be better off coming up with his own take on Brit-cit while referring to whatever Brit-cit stuff's been in the strips (and, Armitage aside, it's still pretty wide open) rather than trying to tie it into the non-canon Virgin stuff.

[opaque]

I guess thats true unless the writer of the book decides to mention it in the back story of a 2000ad or Meg story they are writing in which case it is?

Mind you theres no way I'd expect the Hundredfold problem to ever be mentioned in 2000ad ;)
And Wetworks, although a great book didn't really fit into my mindset of the world Dredd lived in to a great degree.
Dominion shouldn't be referenced either but it's an amazing story that fits in the 'Sci-Fi special' area of my idea of Dredd's world.

A lot of Dreddlocked showed other bits of MC1 that I rather liked, but I agree there is so much scope to show us more of that, it's just up to the writers to be able to and be allowed to do so.

One image I got of Brit-Cit was that is was in many ways so much more low tech, low rise, less well organised and a lot more like todays world than other major cities. But that I think is down to Brit Cit not being shown properly in 2000ad yet, some nice clear artwork would have helped in this regard.

[RyanKingo7]

this site is I'm on is pretty cool
http://dredd.00sf.com

[Max Kon]

i got the 93 dredd book for a pound at bristol. Yah Boo

[thrillpowerseeker]

you might want to check out the early Robo-Hunter stories too

[Richmond Clements]

The Big Finish audio 'Get Karter!' is set in Brit Cit.

[JayzusB.Christ]

I was only having a larf about the Royal Family story, Gordon, but I do think the Brit Cit backstory outlined within Deathmasques is pretty much an elaboration of the same one used for the Armitage strip in general. So it's largely whether you consider Armitage as a decent reference point for Brit-Cit's character and history. I've always found it very interesting in its (slight) departure from the usual MC1-meets-whatever-the-national-stereotype-is used for a lot of Megacities that aren't MC1. That said, the old Civil War thingy doesn't quite fit in with the Volgan Invasion, but Dredd continuity has never been rock solid.