Meg 454: Final Flight

[nxylas]

I don't even bother with City of Courts.

I just gave up on it, for me it is one of the worse strips to published in the meg or even the prog.

I actually don't mind it. I'm not going to argue that it's an underrated gem, but it is at least different, and sometimes it's good to mix things up a little.

[Fenscape]

Ugh, why are we having to suffer the MC2 crappy reprint? Utterly self indulgent toss from a team that really doesn't understand the world of Dredd, its simply awful. The Meg is off the boil lately, even the Soul Sisters was better than this...

[A.Cow]

Ugh, why are we having to suffer the MC2 crappy reprint?

We know why, and it's about keeping the Meg affordable.

The real question is "why the hell did Rebellion let IDW near their brands in the first place, without checking the quality of what they'd produce?"

[The Enigmatic Dr X]

I am quite enjoying the IDW stuff, on the basis that I ignored it first time round and find it curious.

[Funt Solo]

1. There's been reprint in the Meg since 1996 - so get used to it, already.
2. For reasoning, see Meg 3.63's Judge Dredd tale --> J.D. Megson: A Near-Death Experience
3. Nothing's worse than Soul Sisters*.
4. MC-2 doesn't seem unaware of the setting, or lazy - rather, they're carving their own slice.



*I don't really believe that - it's just that Soul Sisters is the Milton Keynes of the early Megazine.

[Fenscape]

Ugh, why are we having to suffer the MC2 crappy reprint?

We know why, and it's about keeping the Meg affordable.

The real question is "why the hell did Rebellion let IDW near their brands in the first place, without checking the quality of what they'd produce?"

That goes to the heart of the matter and I totally agree. It's a lack of quality control here, it's not Dredd, it's dreadful.

[Fenscape]

1. There's been reprint in the Meg since 1996 - so get used to it, already.
2. For reasoning, see Meg 3.63's Judge Dredd tale --> J.D. Megson: A Near-Death Experience
3. Nothing's worse than Soul Sisters*.
4. MC-2 doesn't seem unaware of the setting, or lazy - rather, they're carving their own slice.



*I don't really believe that - it's just that Soul Sisters is the Milton Keynes of the early Megazine.

I've been with the Meg from the start, I completely understand the strategy for reprints but let's be honest here, what stands up better - MC2 or the Leopard from Lime Street? In my eyes it's better to dig back into British classics from over 40 years ago than reproduce recent rubbish that doesn't come within a million miles of fitting the original Dredd brief. Mills, Wagner and Ezquerrea were pretty prescriptive in the character they wanted to portray and the IDW vision has missed more than they have hit IMHO.

I accept that the Meg has commissioned its own stinkers in its times (yes, the Soul Sisters being a stand out wtf) but most of the reprints and floppies have been great - Darkies Mob, Charleys War, Preacher are classics and were just scraping the surface. I'd like to see the Meg reprint stuff from Crisis, Revolver, even Toxic going forwards... The New Statesmen, Third World War, Rogan Josh, New Dan Dare and some of the stuff John Smith did during that time too. Just please, no more rubbish from IDW. Please. Pretty please.

[Funt Solo]

I entirely understand that you hate the MC2 stuff. But, to answer your question - I'd rather MC2 than The Leopard from Lime Street. See, it's just a matter of taste.

On a purely factual level, MC2 does try to honor the milieu. It's set in the past (of the current Dredd timeline), so CJ Goodman has sent Dredd on a mission. MC2 was never really depicted with any detail, so it's a blend of a Mega-City with the tropes of the west coast of the USA: which is pretty much exactly what they did with Texas City in The Judge Child. And Dredd's a grumpy stickler - which is true to the character.

You're still allowed to hate it, but saying it doesn't fit the setting is a bit off the mark.

(I can pick things from the Meg reprint list that I don't like very much. Isn't this just the nature of an anthology?)

I do agree that there's some gold to be mined out of Toxic, Revolver, Crisis and ... who owns Warrior?


---

Never found anywhere to publish these:

[broodblik]

Toxic, Warrior and Dan Dare does not belong to Rebellion and will most likely not be re-published in the meg. The Crisis and Revolver material I believe Rebellion would rather reprint them and sell them as Graphic Novels. So this scenario is also highly unlikely. I would mind older British classics to grace the pages of the meg. IDW stuff not that great but the upcoming Anderson story is very good - story by Matt Smith and art by Carl Critchlow

[nxylas]

I found The Leopard from Lime Street boring as a kid, and nostalgia hasn't made me any fonder of it. I wouldn't seek out the MC2 stuff as a standalone title, but I don't mind it being used as filler to pad out the page count. At least this way I get to read it without having to pay extra for it. And if I decide that I no longer want to read it, I'll just skip over it.

[Richard]

There was a very good one-off Anderson story as a back-up strip in issue 2 of IDW's main Judge Dredd title back in 2012, with art by Brendan McCarthy. I wouldn't mind seeing that again in the Meg, as it deserves to be seen by people who missed it the first time around. (Forgotten who wrote it.)

[AlexF]

I haven't read the Wolk interview yet but I do thinkk Mega City 2 is a lot better than people here are giving credit for. I agree that it's not especially memorable as a DREDD story - doesn't give much insight into our man - but it's an absolutely trememendous exploration of what a future LA might be like, from a man who presumably grew up in / lives around there.
The art is part of the greatness here - Farinas is going to Book Cook / Belardinelli levels of extra-tiny-detail filling in the background. Again, the central herois kind of off-model but if you think of this as a Dreddworld story first, and Dredd as a necessary but minor part of that it's much more fun!
(And actually I don't think Wolk gets Dredd 'wrong', he's just using him as a straight man in all the weirdness, which is fine but e.g. Wagner would've found more fun/surprising ways for Dredd to react to the LA scene.)

[IndigoPrime]

For me, it feels like a lot of off-model Dredd. The voice is just alien. But also, it needs at least one more pass from an editor. It's the lack of storytelling coherence that primarily puts me off. I get that part of the story's foundation is a kind of semi-contained chaos, but it's just so messy. That said, reading the Wolk interview was interesting and I might give it another go one day; I certainly don't resent its appearance in the Meg, even if it doesn't fare well when alongside the far superior Year One.

I will, however, have a sense of humour failure if we have to put up with years of Swierczynski Dredd, Mega-City Zero or Blessed Earth, all of which comprise some of the worst Dredd I've ever read. (Anderson, Mars Attacks, Deviations, Under Siege, Toxic and False Witness would all work fine, though, even if you're into diminishing returns in the second half of that list. There's also a 100-page giant collection, but I never read that.)

[broodblik]

Father Xmas Dredd please no

[Proudhuff]

Flip's sake... Dinnae dae that. I thought I was experiencing a genuine bout of deja vu just then.

My work here is done!