IDW's Complete Cam Kennedy...

[blackmocco]

Just arrived this morning. Beautiful. Repros are good and clean. Blacks are solid. Great reminder what a fantastic artist and contributor to Dredd's world and look Cam is. Highly recommended, in my opinion.

[johnnystress]

Is this on general sale now? Quick..take my money

[johnnystress]

just bought it 

[Steve Green]

I just picked up vol 2 of this - really lovely to see Cam's artwork at this size.

Highly recommended.

I just need to get vol 2 of the Carlos collection, and I would really love to see a collection of Mick's work (particularly the color annual stories)

[TordelBack]

Think I'll have to get this.  Re-reading the Casefiles at the moment and I'm becoming more and more convinced that Cam is my all-time favourite Dredd artist. 

[JOE SOAP]

Think I'll have to get this.  Re-reading the Casefiles at the moment and I'm becoming more and more convinced that Cam is my all-time favourite Dredd artist.

It's a close one all right.

[Steve Green]

Just fantastic characters, wonderful vehicles and environments, and brilliant storytelling.

[Fungus]

Think I'll have to get this.  Re-reading the Casefiles at the moment and I'm becoming more and more convinced that Cam is my all-time favourite Dredd artist.

Cam beats Bolland? Really?

[Jim_Campbell]

Cam beats Bolland? Really?

Bolland's Dredd is definitive; "Gaze into the fist of Dredd!" is not only the definitive depiction of the man himself but unarguably one of the mightiest single panels ever committed to paper in the whole medium.

But... as is so often stated: the city is easily as much the star of the strip as Dredd himself. Cam takes Ron Smith's effortlessly eccentric citizenry and transplants them to this thrillingly well-realised future city, where the sense of the environment being worn and lived-in is heightened by the fact that it all looks like it works.

Mention Mega-City 1 and this is what I see:



Cheers

Jim

[Frank]

The brilliant Brian Bolland's city is composed of generic sci-fi afterthought buildings and citizens wearing modern dress with added kneepads. Everything from vehicles to incidental characters are a hotch-potch of 20th century pop culture imagery and familiar sci-fi tropes. The architecture of Kennedy's MC1, its vehicles, and the citizens (and robots) who populate it, are so chunky and practical looking they're almost tangible. There's such a consistent and utterly original feel to the technology and the culture of the city Kennedy depicts that I feel I've walked those streets, driven those vehicles, and eaten in those hottie houses.

[Spikes]

That Cam Kennedy DPS is brilliant. So brilliant in fact, it could almost be a Mick McMahon DPS...

[Jim_Campbell]

So brilliant in fact, it could almost be a Mick McMahon DPS...

Even Mick's MC-1 didn't teem quite the way Cam's did. I won't dispute that Cam was fairly directly picking up the McMahon baton when he transferred to Dredd from Rogue (rescuing the latter from a wave of strangulated Bolland-lite artists), but Mick's MC-1 was always a flight of fancy — those flocks of white birds and jungle-like roof gardens! — but, as sauchie notes, I felt like I could walk the alleys and pedways of Cam's city.

Cheers

Jim

[GordonR]

Think I'll have to get this.  Re-reading the Casefiles at the moment and I'm becoming more and more convinced that Cam is my all-time favourite Dredd artist.

Cam beats Bolland? Really?

Easily. He drew.... y'know....backgrounds, landscapes, characterisation, wackiness, individual-looking characters and other crazy stuff that filled in the imaginative spaces Bolland often left blank.

Oh, and movement. Cam drew movement. Think how exciting that first Supersurf story felt, and how you could really feel the speed of that race. Bolland too often had to draw in fairly awful speed lines to communicate movement in a panel.  (Killing Joke is particularly blatant in this regard.)

Bolland is a better illustrator, but Cam is easily the better comic strip artist.

[TordelBack]

Oh, and movement. Cam drew movement. Think how exciting that first Supersurf story felt, and how you could really feel the speed of that race. Bolland too often had to draw in fairly awful speed lines to communicate movement in a panel.  (Killing Joke is particularly blatant in this regard.)

Bolland is a better illustrator, but Cam is easily the better comic strip artist.

That's it exactly. 

Even something effectively daft.  The scene in 'Warlord' where a giant Samurai takes out a Manta with a bow and arrow (pre-Rambo?), should be a bit ridiculous, but in Cam's hands it becomes utterly believable, because he draws the momentum of the impact so perfectly, the stance of the archer so convincingly... it's true genius.

[Jim_Campbell]

That's it exactly.

Pretty sure it was you who pointed out the brilliance of Cam's Taxidermist strip, which I hadn't consciously picked up on until you mentioned it: you can tell which characters are stuffed from their lack of motion. In a still image, that's remarkable.

Cheers

Jim