2000AD-related whatnot in other publications/ media.

[SmallBlueThing]

Have we got a thread like this? Couldn't find it if so- please feel free to merge if one exists.

I had cause to buy the latest Dr Who Magazine yesterday (NOT for me!) and, since I wasn't to be seeing the person I had to give it to until today, I had a brief read last night.

Two things of interest:

1. Photo of Pat Mills and mini-interview with the man himself (pages 44 and 46), regarding his long-lost Dr Who script 'Song of the Space Whale', now recorded for Big Finish under the title of 'Song of Megaptera', due in June 2010.

2. (Sigh) Clayton Hickman, ex-editor of DWM, has another go at 2000AD in this month's 'Time Team' (page 40). Regarding the Sylvester McCoy stories: "if there is a problem, it's that they manage to rediscover the essential core of Dr Who, but then they overlay it with a lot of portentious, quite adolescent significance, like you might get in comics. For example, you look at the first few years of Judge Dredd and its beautifully simple and effective, accessible to anybody. As soon as it develops its own myth and starts playing to its fandom it becomes impenetrable to non-believers."

To which I say: Oh, just fuck off.

SBT

[TordelBack]

As soon as it develops its own myth and starts playing to its fandom it becomes impenetrable to non-believers

This is so far from the truth it's quite staggering. Apart from the almost incidental subtleties of Dredd's changing character, how is this week's tale of a tough future cop cleaning up the Cursed Earth much different from 1978's?

There is truth there in a general sense about modern comics, but not Dredd!

[Colin YNWA]

I know its a bit of a knee jerk reaction to leap to Dredd's defense here AND since I am a fan I might not be answering from a useful perspective BUT surely it is still by and large a simple and effective strip and very far from impenetrable. I can think of very few if any Dredd stories that would be accessible to a first time reader????

[Mike Gloady]

To be honest, it's not until the Apocalypse War started in the Case Files that I found myself enjoying them (one or two exceptions aside).  Very early Dredd is, for me at least, a much less interesting beast than what it would later become.

There.  I've said it. 

[TordelBack]

There.  I've said it.

For me, it's the Judge Child.  There's an enormous amount of fun in those early stories, and the Cursed Earth and DtLD are full of mad ideas and great visuals, but its not until we meet Hershey and Lopez, and see Dredd reflected in them, that it becomes the strip I really love.  The anti-climactic end is so unexpected as to be Wagner's first masterpiece.

[Mike Gloady]

That IS a watershed, isn't it?

Anyway.  My previous post suggests I didn't enjoy the previous parts, which is far from the case.  It's just not QUITE what I think of as Dredd yet.