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What if the Megazine had a different remit?

Started by matty_ae, 03 June, 2021, 03:46:39 PM

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matty_ae

So this week 2000AD ended up this week with three Dredd-world strips.
I didn't mind but online this concentration was greeted with a resounding "But that is the job of the Meg"

So what if the remit of the Megazine was changed. And it featured old-school 'classic' characters set in their prime continuity. So more Rogue Trooper (a la Cinnabar) or Zombo or Nikolai Dante adapted from the novels.
Anything goes but old-school characters in new stories.

And then 2000AD is Dredd with the new world stories. The Brinks. Feral & Foe. So unchanged.
Would this attract more than 50% numbers to the Meg?

Funt Solo

Or ... The Megazine: Regened

Featuring:
- Little Lawless
- Anderson's Daughter
- Devlin Waugh: Eton's No Picnic
- Deadworld: The Littlest Woofie
- Tales from the Palais de Boing
- DeMarco's Pony Academy of Law
- Armitage: Urchin [the musical]
- Kid Koburn
- Soul Sisters: Brit-Cit's Got Talent [that's enough - ed.]
++ A-Z ++  coma ++

Dog Deever

I'm not really on board with the whole 'Megazine should be all Dredd-world stuff' idea anyway. 'All Dredd-world' can get a bit ho-hum pretty quick- I sometimes think it's the Meg's Achilles Heel. I buy anthology comics because I like variety, once that variety starts getting restricted for no actual concrete reason beyond mere words, it just sucks a little bit of the joy out of it.

I liked it when we had Black Siddha, Fiends- Stalingrad, Bendatti Vendetta etc- even American Reaper in principle (if it hadn't turned out to be such a repetitive, self-indulgent, laborious, never-ending yawn-fest). There's been a lot of good non-Dredd world stuff in the Meg over the years.

It's already different enough from 2K with higher page count episodes allowing for a different approach to the story telling- more room to explore more complex or nuanced stories without it taking a gazillion episodes and the need for an episode ending every 5 pages. It also allows writers to indulge some ideas that might get trimmed from shorter page counts.
That, plus the text articles/ interviews and the bagged reprint or other stuff in the floppies (I'd take more strip over articles any day but at least it's mostly relevant and interesting enough so it's fine). It all feels different to the weekly anyway so that it doesn't need to be hemmed in by artificial 'remit boundaries'.

'A good monthly anthology comic from The House of Tharg with an extra Dredd for those with upgraded Thrill buffers' is enough of a remit for me. I just don't get this burning desire to 'differentiate' it from the weekly just because an editor said so back in 1990 or whatever- that sounds like a bit religion to me. lol

Maybe it's a perception of 'difference' that keeps the other 50% of 2k readership away from the Meg?
Just a little rough and tumble, Judge man.

broodblik

I am with Dog Deever on this one and to add it to it I am definitely missing a non-Dredd story in the meg
When I die, I want to die like my grandfather who died peacefully in his sleep. Not screaming like all the passengers in his car.

Old age is the Lord's way of telling us to step aside for something new. Death's in case we didn't take the hint.

TordelBack

Biggest impediment to Meg purchases remains the price. Not much you can do about that, although the digital option helps. Even so, I remain a casual reader, rather than an irredeemable addict. What would change that, I wonder?

Agree that the most interesting Meg stuff has often been non-Dreddworld (and often creator-owned): I'd list Lily MacKenzie, Realm of the Damned, Family, Ordinary, Numbercruncher, Demon Nic as some of my favourites. Replacing any of those with Funny Looking Judge Uniform/Cursed Earth Ensemble Story would be undesirable. The extent to which the appeal of Meg all-timers like Insurrection, Lawless and Devlin Waugh have had any need for the Dredd setting is also debatable, but that might be a self-defeating argument, since telling good, distinct, different stories under the marketable Dredd masthead was surely the goal.

As it is, I often find the actual Judge Dredd (or Anderson, or Dark Judges) strips in the Meg to be of relatively little draw, unless they are Wagner outings or extensions of stories I'm reading in the prog. I'm not in the "retire compulsory Dredd" campaign, but I probably get enough of the big chin week to week.  When I do consciously seek out the Meg, it's something else that's caught my eye, and that's often a favourite creator name (e.g. an all-new new Simon Fraser, Pye Parr, PJ Holden, Dan Abnett etc strip, and I'll find the money).

Barrington Boots

I'm an occasional Meg reader and Dog and Tordel pretty much sum up the situation for me too. It's an expensive read and whilst I think it's good value with the floppy, there's generally not enough in it of interest to justify it's purchase. I find the Dreddworld stuff to be far from essential so I generally keep an eye on the reviews for and then if it's any good try and pick it up later in a TPB or similar. The exception is Lawless which makes the Meg a must-buy for me.

I much prefer it when the Meg features new, different thrills like Lily Mackenzie or Realm of the Damned, and that's when I tend to pick it up.

I'd personally prefer it as a monthly anthology, perhaps leaning a little towards stuff that couldn't get into the Prog due to length / theme / art or whatever. matty_ae's suggestion is something I'd definitely not buy - sorry dude! I'm not a fan of revisiting old strips like that at all. 

You're a dark horse, Boots.

zombemybabynow

After trifecta - my subconscious brain keeps hoping / thinking the prog stories might be linked [let alone same universe]

when trifecta was done it was pure mastery but i love that usually the prog stories are based in different universes
Good manners & bad breath get you nowhere

AlexF

I can't help but specualte that another reason why things tend to be Dreddworld related is that it stops the copyright / ownership problem from coming up. e.g. GRennie is happy to write (great) stories about the Angel Gang, who are both enitrely new characters but also not new characters - so he's clearly doing a work for hire job. See also Koburn and even El Maldito, who are homages to Rrebellion-owned properties. Whereas your Monsterology type stuff is wholly new and so something he (reasonably) wants to write and publish under a different model. At least, I assume this is what's going on.

Not sure why the 'creator-owned' slot has disappeared from the Meg, but perhaps it was becoming too expensive for Rebellion, or not attractive enough for the creators?

Not sure how this works for a strip like 'The Returners', which makes use of the idea of Judges and some of the locations from wider Dredd, but is, frankly, something entirely unlike any Dreddworld stuff. I guess anything with any sort of Judge/Mega City in it is automatically part of Rebellion's copyright, though.

Jim_Campbell

Quote from: AlexF on 21 July, 2021, 10:39:15 AM
I guess anything with any sort of Judge/Mega City in it is automatically part of Rebellion's copyright, though.

Yes... a 'derivative' work, so you'd only be offered a work-for-hire contract on that type of story. In other media, it's not unheard of to get a mixed ownership model — with the old Virgin Dreddworld novels (I believe), the broad copyright for the novel remained with either Fleetway or Virgin, as the licensees (I'm not sure which), but the actual text remained copyright of the author, meaning that theoretically the author could simply find/replace out any Dredd/Dreddworld terminology and re-sell the text itself as a new work.

I'm not aware of any such deals in UK comics, though. Maybe the old Grant/Ezquerra 'Armageddon/Bad Man' thing? (Since that was listed as creator-owned, but had it run to its completion would have been closely tied to Dredd and its associated continuity... although I have zero info on whether that was actually the case.)
Stupidly Busy Letterer: Samples. | Blog
Less-Awesome-Artist: Scribbles.

IndigoPrime

Quote from: Jim_Campbell on 21 July, 2021, 10:53:48 AMthe author could simply find/replace out any Dredd/Dreddworld terminology and re-sell the text itself as a new work
Didn't that actually happen on one of those books, too? I'm pretty sure one of the Dredd ones was reworked in that manner.

Jim_Campbell

Quote from: IndigoPrime on 21 July, 2021, 10:56:14 AM
Didn't that actually happen on one of those books, too? I'm pretty sure one of the Dredd ones was reworked in that manner.

Yes... now, that I've checked — John Grant's 'The Hundredfold Problem', and also an unpublished Dave Stone Dredd novel that got re-tooled as a Dr Who novel.
Stupidly Busy Letterer: Samples. | Blog
Less-Awesome-Artist: Scribbles.

The Corinthian

Quote from: Jim_Campbell on 21 July, 2021, 10:59:57 AM
Yes... now, that I've checked — John Grant's 'The Hundredfold Problem', and also an unpublished Dave Stone Dredd novel that got re-tooled as a Dr Who novel.

Not quite. 'Burning Heart' was supposed to be a Dredd/Doctor Who crossover novel that didn't happen because Virgin lost the licence to the Judge Dredd novels. It went ahead with the Doctor meeting someone who was suspiciously like Dredd but wasn't for copyright reasons.