Main Menu

Judge Dredd: The Mega Collection discussion thread

Started by Molch-R, 10 December, 2014, 03:30:20 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

davidbishop

Quote from: AlexF on 16 September, 2017, 11:58:56 AM
I'm astonished and delighted that what I'd always thought of as the weaker end of the Megazine Vols 2 and 3 has now been reprinted - is there anything beyond Soul Sisters & Straightjacket Fits that hasn't seen the inside of a shiny hardcover at this point??

I'm not exactly holding my breath for The Soul Sisters or The Straitjacket Fits.

Has the Meg's Middenface story One Man an his Dug ever been reprinted?

The Monarch


IndigoPrime

What's with the balloons in the Mutants collection? Were those rectangles on the original Progs?


Arkady

Quiz question: which issue of the Mega Collection first gave a Volume immediately before or after a previous Volume, numerically speaking?

Davgardo

Grud that World at Law volume is awful. Pan African Judges made me feel ill reading it - I had to go straight to the Mutants in MC1 volume in the hope that reading something with properly written characters and plot could cure me. It did.

That's quite a few volumes now where they've reprinted stuff that is just very very poor: Calhab and Iron Curtain being irredeemably awful with bits of Klegg Hai, Heavy Mob and CE Carnage being likewise. Why reprint this stuff? It's dire, even the editorials concede they're not up to scratch! Is it a case of 'We're never gonna get another opportunity to foist Brit Cit Brute and Sleeze n Ryder on the poor saps' or 'We want to show the full span of the Dreddworld'? If it's the latter (which i assume is the one) it's misguided: sure if the quality is high (Simping Detective, Lowlife, Devlin, Anderson, CE Koburn) it's great but there has to be quality control, don't just throw it out there when it's rubbish. And as the brilliant Mad City volume showed there is just so much fabulous stuff out there that is being omitted!
I didn't enjoy reading Pan African Judges when it was first printed, I enjoyed it less this time and I'm certainly never ever going to read anything in this, Calhab or Iron Curtain ever again.

IndigoPrime

Yep. I get that certain dross (Inferno) pretty much had to be included, but some of these fringe volumes are crap that I can't imagine Rebellion would have considered offering as standalone trades. Quite why we needed to see Brit Cit Brute, the entirety of Calhab, and so on, I don't know. Sure, there's the 'range' argument, but I'd have been happier with the collection if there was a greater level of quality control.

TordelBack

I still think collating/editing this (estimated) 16,000-page collection must have been a truly mammoth task, and one that was largely successful, but I suspect that in addition to the "showcasing range" argument, some of the dodgier stuff got in there through points awarded for (a) colour; (b) digital availability; and just possibly (c) self-contained. I'd imagine the risk of 1,000 pages (5 volumes?) being crappy seemed a bit trivial in the concerns of the overall project.

IndigoPrime

Perhaps. It also feels a bit like a tight, focussed collection that quite rapidly had to get bigger. At 60 books, this would (or at least could) have been almost entirely classic material – and that which wasn't classic would have at least been necessary.

I'm still happy overall. It's just a pity there are piles of poo dotted about the otherwise lovely woodland walk.

TordelBack

Quote from: IndigoPrime on 18 September, 2017, 11:03:44 AM
Perhaps. It also feels a bit like a tight, focussed collection that quite rapidly had to get bigger. At 60 books, this would (or at least could) have been almost entirely classic material...

That's a very good point. Looking at my cherry-picked shelf, there are long consecutive runs of volumes that are pure gold.  Vols 45-54 for example, is there a 2,000 page run of comics anywhere that is better than this?
While I don't own them, it looks like you could push that run back to Vol 39 (although not forward) and barely hit a single dud page (depending on your tolerance for Wilderlands). It's tempting to speculate to what extent the 'padding' was inserted between these blocks to get from 60 or 70 to 80 (and now 90).

Davgardo

Quote from: IndigoPrime on 18 September, 2017, 11:03:44 AM
Perhaps. It also feels a bit like a tight, focussed collection that quite rapidly had to get bigger. At 60 books, this would (or at least could) have been almost entirely classic material – and that which wasn't classic would have at least been necessary.

I'm still happy overall. It's just a pity there are piles of poo dotted about the otherwise lovely woodland walk.

You may have a point re: expansion. However, I would suggest that they didn't have to release rubbish as a result, which hopefully the extra 10 will demonstrate. For instance, we've had nothing of the main PSU/Edgar storyline yet which I see as absolutely vital.
This is all my subjective opinion of course but ploughing through turgid, badly written filler in the WaL volume has put me in a bad mood. Which you may have noticed!! 

abelardsnazz

I also didn't particularly enjoy The World at Law, I think the most positive things I can say about it are that there is some gorgeous art on Pan African Judges and Deathwatch made me chuckle a few times. Overall though it just felt like a filler volume in comparison to some of the belters that we've had. It's going into the bottom 5 issues of the collection for me.

Tomwe

Famous Monsters announced as issue 73 on Facebook. Looks like that will replicate the content of the Rebellion Cry Of The Werewolf book plus extras.

Jamie1000013

Quote from: IndigoPrime on 11 September, 2017, 01:13:33 PM


Mutants in Mega-City One. Oh my. I've been looking forward to this one for ages, and it's now sitting next to #47 and #48, which I've managed to avoid reading, to take the entire thing in one hit.

Is Mutants of Mega city one the start of the three books then? (46, 47, 48) I wish I had known this before reading the other two first, they shipped them out of order which I haven't noticed them do before tbh.

Do you think they will release like a glossary of the sections of the books? I can't really remember if the spine art is meant to correspond with what's in the actual books or not lol. Would be nice to have a list with all the title names of each book matched with their issue number.

IndigoPrime

The spine has nothing to do with the contents. It's the one big failing of this and the 2000 AD books (versus the Marvel ones, which at least show the characters on the spines). And, yes, the Tour of Duty arc was bafflingly released out of sequence.

Jamie1000013

Quote from: IndigoPrime on 24 September, 2017, 10:30:19 PM
The spine has nothing to do with the contents. It's the one big failing of this and the 2000 AD books (versus the Marvel ones, which at least show the characters on the spines). And, yes, the Tour of Duty arc was bafflingly released out of sequence.

Thanks for the info.

I was trying to look up what Hachette did when they finished a graphic novel collection. I was thinking they might give you a special gift on the last delivery like a poster/list of what each book contained. But then I see they still haven't finished a collection yet though, the Marvel collection they do is going on to like issue 170 haha. Glad I cancelled the Marvel one on like Issue 60.