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).
