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Judge Dredd: The Mega Collection discussion thread

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

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Richard

QuoteHowever, the stories does hop from 'DeMarco is a Sector Chief' to 'DeMarco has been kicked off the force' without explanation as to the latter.  It's a bit jarring.

That happened in The Scorpion Dance, which was a direct sequel to Beyond the Call of Duty. Seems a bit odd to reprint one without the other. This is why I stick to the Case Files.

Apestrife

Beyond the call of duty as an intro to Doomsday for Dredd is a surprising choice. It's been a while since I read it, will be an interesting read.

Perhaps then The Scorpion Dance will show up in Doomsday for MC1.

Apestrife

For me Beyond the call of duty was the best thing about Doomsday, but the rest held up quite well. Better than I remember. Looking forward to reading the MC1 book.

The alien book was also cool. I quite like these thematic collections. Raptaur was the high light, fun origin to Jack Point's "pet" :)

Tjm86

Quote from: radiator on 21 August, 2015, 08:57:25 PM

Could be wrong, but I think I'm right in saying that readership for 2000ad and the Meg was probably at its lowest ebb during this time (the dark, post-Stallone, pre-Rebellion years, and it also ran during what is undoubtedly the Megazine's most controversial period) so there's this whole wonderful era of Dredd that many will be reading for the first time via the Case Files. Large swathes of it has rarely - if ever - been reprinted until now.

This was the period that saw my return to tooth after an absence of a few years.  I had picked at a few bits but nothing had really stood out.  Didn't bother much with the megazine at the time.  Not sure why.  Perhaps the odd times that I had really hadn't impressed.  I'd always felt like with so much potential in the Dreddverse it was wasting the opportunity with dross.  Even now with a meg-slog they are hard work.

I would heartily agree though that this period was the start of the return to grace.  Great artwork, cracking writing, interesting new characters and stories.  The move to Rebellion massively ratcheted up the quality but it was growing for a while beforehand.

radiator

Doomsday is a tricky one to collect due to the sheer number of related stories and the constant overlap/recapping of story between the prog and Meg segments. The old Hamlyn books made a good stab at it - 'Blind Justice' was a John Burns-heavy book that collected, among other things, all of PSU/Edgar's appearances - Statue of Judgement, The Cal Files and Sleaze. The Scorpion Dance had it's own book that collected that story and Beyond the Call of Duty, then two complementary volumes collected the Doomsday arc, one was material from 2000ad, the other being mostly Megazine stuff, essentially splitting the story in half rather than trying to organise it chronologically.

Pretty good books, but not 100% definitive as they did imo skip over several fairly crucial stories, including (IIRC) Bad Frendz (first appearance of Vitus Dance and the Mega City Frendz/Nero Narcos), Worst of Frendz, Gun Play, The Contract and The Cal Legacy. There were also several follow-up stories (Incident at Rowdy Yates, Lobsang Rampage, Short Circuit etc etc), though I wouldn't consider them essential to the main plot.

Tombo

Quote from: radiator on 26 August, 2015, 05:50:35 PM
Pretty good books, but not 100% definitive as they did imo skip over several fairly crucial stories, including (IIRC) Bad Frendz (first appearance of Vitus Dance and the Mega City Frendz/Nero Narcos), Worst of Frendz, Gun Play, The Contract and The Cal Legacy. There were also several follow-up stories (Incident at Rowdy Yates, Lobsang Rampage, Short Circuit etc etc), though I wouldn't consider them essential to the main plot.

"The Pit" is in Volume 40 so perhaps Vol.41 will include all of the other Frendz/Edgars stories, or at least the most relevant ones.

TordelBack

Given the complexity of the task (how do you deal with stories that fork into/inform many others? E.g. the Vienna stuff, Blood Cadets, Total War, all important parts of each other's stories), TMC really has been very well handled.

Apestrife

Quote from: radiator on 26 August, 2015, 05:50:35 PM
Doomsday is a tricky one to collect due to the sheer number of related stories and the constant overlap/recapping of story between the prog and Meg segments. The old Hamlyn books made a good stab at it - 'Blind Justice' was a John Burns-heavy book that collected, among other things, all of PSU/Edgar's appearances - Statue of Judgement, The Cal Files and Sleaze. The Scorpion Dance had it's own book that collected that story and Beyond the Call of Duty, then two complementary volumes collected the Doomsday arc, one was material from 2000ad, the other being mostly Megazine stuff, essentially splitting the story in half rather than trying to organise it chronologically.

Pretty good books, but not 100% definitive as they did imo skip over several fairly crucial stories, including (IIRC) Bad Frendz (first appearance of Vitus Dance and the Mega City Frendz/Nero Narcos), Worst of Frendz, Gun Play, The Contract and The Cal Legacy. There were also several follow-up stories (Incident at Rowdy Yates, Lobsang Rampage, Short Circuit etc etc), though I wouldn't consider them essential to the main plot.

I've heard about a Hoover-story that contradicts Origins. In what ways? Is it an essential one?

Quote from: TotalHack on 27 August, 2015, 09:02:00 AM
Given the complexity of the task (how do you deal with stories that fork into/inform many others? E.g. the Vienna stuff, Blood Cadets, Total War, all important parts of each other's stories), TMC really has been very well handled.

Fully agree. Feels like a punk-ish puzzle of sorts.

The Smith and Molcher intros and outros of each book is of great help also, tying it together. Michael's views on Anderson made me appreciate her solo stuff by Grant alot more than I did before!

I'm especially interested in how America, Democracy now, Total War and The dead man (and if there'll be another of those. Brothers of the blood perhaps?) plays and ties into each other with clones, doubts and long con reformation.

robert_ellis

I'd love to see an index volume form part of this series. Not listing the entire contents (as the DC Graphic Novel Collection has done) has added a lot more fun and speculation - but I don't know how anyone could find a story without flipping through all the covers. Great series - really liking the text pieces & extras!

Jade Falcon

I thoroughly enjoyed this volume though I did enjoy the Orlok sections more than the Narcos bits.  It did seem a bit of a leap between the time DeMarco was sector chief to when she was suddenly a civvie.
When the truth offends, we lie and lie until we can no longer remember it is even there, but it is still there. Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth. Sooner or later, that debt is paid. That is how an RBMK reactor core explodes. Lies. - Valery Legasov

radiator

QuoteI've heard about a Hoover-story that contradicts Origins. In what ways? Is it an essential one?

The Cal Files revolves around Dredd tracking down a data disc (how quaint) that contains confidential files, including a 'secret that could bring down Justice Department'. This turns out to be [spoiler]an insinuation that Chief Judge Fargo had an affair with a woman, and Dredd considers the possibility that a) Fargo was a massive hypocrite and Justice Department was founded on a  lie, and that b) Dredd himself is the natural son of Fargo, and not his clone. At the end of the story, the woman Fargo was photographed fraternising with turns out to have actually been his half sister (?), not his lover, the trumped-up 'evidence' of the affair collected by Edgar for the purposes of blackmail, and the files are destroyed[/spoiler].

This doesn't really marry up with the 'revelation' in Origins that [spoiler]Fargo conducted an affair with his secretary/deputy(?), and that this has always been an open secret within Justice Department - which totally was founded on a lie - and everyone is totally fine with it, including Dredd[/spoiler].

There's been arguments on this forum as to whether this is or isn't a plot hole/continuity error. My personal opinion is that it is a continuity booboo, and that most likely John Wagner simply forgot the earlier story. He doesn't strike me as someone who gets too hung up on continuity stuff. I think there's a quote somewhere where he says that you just need to 'accept that there will be mistakes and get over it', and I agree.

TordelBack

#1331
It's a favourite topic of Sc*j*'s, but the simple in-universe explanation is that Dredd has accepted a single romantic lapse (he more-or-less says so in Origins 'never had the benefit of the Academy'), and he accepts much the same from [spoiler]DeMarco in The Pit[/spoiler]), but evidence that Fargo actually just couldn't[spoiler] keep it in his Emphatically Yesses, lied about it, fathered children and never told Joe and Rico their true, errr, origins[/spoiler] is a different matter (see DeMarco's handling of Maggio in Beyond the Call of Duty). So I really don't see it as inconsistent.

But yeah, my guess is that in baseline reality John didn't worry about it too much.

Colin YNWA

Yeah its worth remembering that there are 11 years (about) between The Cal Files and Origins and if there's one thing long term readers of Dredd should accept, he's not the immovable object the short view of Dredd can paint him as. Over those 11 years and the subsequent 10 years, I'm sure more contradictions could be found, and you'd hope so to, as he's changed.

Rio De Fideldo

That Oz colour work is great. Are there any other books in the Mega Collection which print the original colour spreads in colour ? I was disappointed that the Apocalypse War one didn't.

Does anyone know if you can buy individual books from Hachete or is Ebay/Amazon the way to go?

With the benefit of a Post Origins reading re the Cal Files I'm assuming we can say that Cal didn't know about the open secret re Fargo which was why he thought he could use it to blackmail/destroy.

I really get a brain freeze when it comes to the Cal Files/Origins but I'm like with with Ben Kenobi in Star Wars and then watching it post the Prequels.

Colin YNWA

Quote from: Richard T Field on 28 August, 2015, 11:48:34 AM

With the benefit of a Post Origins reading re the Cal Files I'm assuming we can say that Cal didn't know about the open secret re Fargo which was why he thought he could use it to blackmail/destroy.


Or maybe she did, couldn't evidence that so fabricated the evidence for an equal crime believing doing so was justified if not specifically true.

Don't know if that theory would stand up to close reading as I've read neither for a while, but its a possibility?