Everything comes back after 20 years: The Prog's New Dark Age

[JamesC]

There are some US creators that I'd like to see take on a Dredd.
I reckon Brad Meltzer could give it a good go - certainly if you want a multi-part mystery with plenty of characters.
I'd also like to see Chuck Dixon's take. He writes great action strips and has some experience of Sci Fi. I'd love to see what he could come up with.
Has Dabnett ever tackled the lead Dredd strip? I'm sure he must have? He seems to have all the required skills and experience to write some top notch Dredd. I guess he's just not interested?

[The Adventurer]

Tom King's Judge Dredd would be a thing of legend.

[Magnetica]

Has Dabnett ever tackled the lead Dredd strip? I'm sure he must have? He seems to have all the required skills and experience to write some top notch Dredd. I guess he's just not interested?

I don't recall him ever writing a Dredd, and I'm sure he would do a great job.

The thing is he is already writing Grey Area, Brink, Sinister Dexter and Lawless for Tharg, plus also writes for other publications, so I'm not sure that is going to work.

[I, Cosh]

Abnett wrote a couple of Dredds around Prog 900 but nothing since. I guess having Sinister Dexter running for so long let him get all the daftness out of his system.

[Banners]

Reluctant to add to this thread, but confess to being in the same camp as several others, sat beside a pile of Progs that have largely gone unread over the past few months.

The artwork is always great and there's still much to enjoy – such as Culbard's glorious storytelling in the latest Brass Sun – but for me the problem lies with the stories, and Lawless is the only story I'm genuinely excited about currently (that said, Hope was great, and the new Dredd and Coburn strips in the Meg have started well).

When I compare the monthly cost for a joint subscription to the amount of content I get from Netflix in a month, it's not pretty. And it's tough for the Prog to engage me in the same way when life's priorities have changed (Trump, Brexit etc) and when I'm generally miserable these days.

In terms of the branding, the production values, the community, the professionalism – then no, we're nowhere near going back to the dark age. Absolutely not. And I doubt I would ever cancel my subscription. But if there's something the Prog could go back to, then three-act stories with status quo, conflict, resolution might be the answer. Because, although I love the creators and am indebted to them for so much joy and creativity over so many years – and despite such a fractious political landscape rife for rebelling against – the Prog's not speaking to me at the moment.

I accept the problem for that may well be with me. But as much as I'm ashamed to say it, I just don't care at the moment. Again, I am sorry about that.

[IndigoPrime]

Like crime novelist Duane Swierczynski, who wrote the first couple of years of the IDW Dredd comics, you mean?

I read all those recently, having grabbed the IDW Humble Bundle. What a strange set of comics. The series actually isn't too bad at first, and I wondered what all the griping was about. But then after the second book or so: oh boy. It's not literally unreadable, but it's pretty close – terrible writing, bordering on the incoherent. It's a wonder the comic lasted as long as it did. (And I'm not against an alternate take on Dredd – just a bad one. And IDW's original take was a very bad one.)

Something that breaks with recycling Wagner's old characters and also breaks the writing-for-trade format. MC1, beaten and battered as it is, is huge and I'd like a story that oozes that.

I still think Chaos was a big mistake in hindsight. I get why they wanted to cut the city back to size in the early days, because it had become ridiculous. That 'city' stretching from Canada to Florida made no sense whatsoever. But now MC-1 is in theory a husk – a city-state that was the most crazy and dominant force on the planet, but that should by all accounts now be getting a serious kicking from the enemies it made.

But it mostly comes across like nothing's really changed, bar those odd moments where it's mentioned that the city is broke, or someone ventures into a dead sector. Compared to the follow-up we got after the war, it seems oddly inconsequential, given that the damage inflicted during Chaos was much greater. But also in this case, it appears impossible to realistically build the city back up again.

But if there's something the Prog could go back to, then three-act stories with status quo, conflict, resolution might be the answer.

Perhaps it's time for a big run of Future Shocks or 3h3ri33lers (or whatever they're called), to break up the series that have been running forever. Right now, alongside Dredd, we've got the trade-oriented Brass Sun and ABC Warriors running (the former being very slow burn, and the latter mired in decades of continuity hell), Savage Book 406, and a reboot of Bad Company that's heading towards multi-bookdom.

Perhaps the lack of Abnett right now is what I'm missing. He's a writer who, even with long-running series, seems very capable of packing in a complete story within an arc. With Mills these days, I often feel like he's giving us a chapter of a book, and holding back on the pace. (Sláine is terrible for this now, with its sluggish plotting.) But with Kingdom, even when we're on book X, a ten-week run feels like a coherent, solid standalone thing.

Still, I'm not considering quitting the Prog (and never have since the days of Grudgefather – unlike the Meg, which has been on 'one more year' several times). Even though I'm not that excited about it right now, I have no doubt it'll be firing on all cylinders soon enough.

[GordonR]

When I compare the monthly cost for a joint subscription to the amount of content I get from Netflix in a month, it's not pretty.

I bought a book last week.  It cost me slightly more than a monthly Netflix subscription, and yet only took a few days to read.

Come to think of it, I paid about a tenner to see Black Panther the other day, and yet only got about two hours of entertainment out of it.

Clearly, publishers, cinema chains and movie studios are cheating me bigtime, and all entertainment media should be based on the yardstick of £5.99 for pretty much unlimited content.

[Banners]

Clearly, publishers, cinema chains and movie studios are cheating me bigtime, and all entertainment media should be based on the yardstick of £5.99 for pretty much unlimited content.

Argh! I was very self-conscious posting all that and really didn't want to be vituperative. Apologies again.

I get relative cost, different mediums, economies of scale etc. I get all that. I love your stuff, I love 2000 AD – I will always be a fan, and no doubt always be a subscriber too. But I do sometimes have to justify each entry on the bank statement when things are getting tight elsewhere.

[NapalmKev]

I buy the Prog and Meg regularly and enjoy both. Having said that I do think Dredd could do with a shake up. I'm not a Wagner purist, plenty of others have written good tales based on the character, but I think there could be more cohesion regarding long-term changes that happen in the strip.


Cheers

[Daveycandlish]

Ignoring Dredd for a moment I feel an anthology should have a mix of length of story. Whats missing is a five page one shot story to grab the casual reader. Personally, I dislike Pat Mills current output (only reading Savage for the artwork) and I'm no fan of Bad Company. Brass Sun is such a slow burn its barely warmed up. The prog needs a punchy strip.

[Andy Lambert]

You know what I'm missing from the prog at the moment? A good old fashioned horror along the lines of Cradlegrave or Stone Island...
I know The Fall Of Deadworld is pretty much horror, but it's still rooted in fantasy/sci fi. I'd just like to see a good Earthbound horror story among all the spaceships, robots and future tech.

[Swerty]

I like the idea of Star Scans returning.Three page future shocks in every prog trying new creative teams.A letters page is compulsory.Pull a few surprises.Those cover stories that appeared in the very first progs were wonderful.The artwork is just as good now as back in the day.

[Aaron A Aardvark]

I don't think it's quite a new Dark Age but the Prog isn't doing it for me right now.

Dredd is in the dolldrums generally. Needs a big story to shake things up.
I like that Mills is tying up his future/alternative history but it's taking forever (Blackblood & Mek Quake left the Warriors in 2007!) and two per prog is too many.
Not keen on the new Bad Company & Brass Sun has never really done it for me.

I agree that regular short-form strories freshen things up but good 2000AD needs good Dredd. 

[Bolt-01]

So what's the solution.All new stories?New editor?

Buy Zarjaz and DogBreath instead!

Ah, thanks Sharky!

These days we have trouble shifting even the miniscule print run we do for these books, despite the astounding quality and value for money (48 pages for £3.00, come on!) but I really appreciate the sentiment.

[Magnetica]

I have been reflecting on this whole thread (and indeed previous similar ones) and a few more things occur to me.

I have previously defended Michael Carroll's Dredd and I stand by that in as much as his best Dredd is fairly decent. Certainly when it is part of a mix that includes Wagner Dredds, then it is fine. The problem comes when he is expected to write the lion's share of the strips, with Wagner having scaled back the number he writes, which is the case right now. At that point we get to see weaker ideas make it into print, like the recent story. Now one bad story does not make anyone a bad writer - it is more that a way to filter out the weaker ideas needs to be found. Also as others have said, it must be incredibly hard to keep coming up with new plots after 40 years. I can imagine that, as with the future shocks, a lot of ideas have to be scrapped as they have been done before.

I'm not sure what the answer is though.

As to the point about 2000AD needing a punchy house character / strip that various writers could have a go at, the issue for me is not a lack of a suitable strips rather a lack of suitable writers. I can think of many existing 2000AD strips that could be used in this way, including Gray Area, Sinister Dexter, Ro-Busters (going back to basics), Strontium Dog (but would people accept someone other than Carlos Drawing it?), Robo-Hunter, DeMarco, Jack Point etc. No the issue, for me, as with Dredd, is coming up with the ideas in the first place. (I also think the same good idea could be adapted to fit more than one of these strips acting a vehicle- backing up the point that it's not a lack of a suitable character that is the issue).