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Judge Dredd: The Mega Collection discussion thread

Started by Molch-R, 10 December, 2014, 03:30:20 PM

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Apestrife

Cool, the alien book seems like itll be allnew for me!

Anderson, what are the stories in that one? Levithans farewell?

IndigoPrime

#1201
The Possessed
Hour of the Wolf
Contact
Beyond the Void
Helios

Three covers
Two text pieces (Molcher on Brett Ewins, and interviewing David Roach)

So with the exception of The Haunting and the Dark Judges story that'll clearly be in another volume, that's all pre-Triad Anderson, I think.

Timothy

Aren't Helios and Triad two parts of the same story? Or am I misremembering things?

Apestrife

Quote from: IndigoPrime on 21 July, 2015, 11:02:46 AM
The Possessed
Hour of the Wolf
Contact
Beyond the Void
Helios

Three covers
Two text pieces (Molcher on Brett Ewins, and interviewing David Roach)

So with the exception of The Haunting and the Dark Judges story that'll clearly be in another volume, that's all pre-Triad Anderson, I think.

Thanks!  I remember The Possessed and Hour of the Wolf being quite good!

glassstanley

Happy with both volumes. Would have been nice to have had the Dredd strip that linked to Helios included. Nice to see the covers reproduced in colour in the Anderson gallery. Shame about the missing picture of Judge Death on the b& w cover.

Timothy

Quote from: glassstanley on 22 July, 2015, 09:30:49 AM
Happy with both volumes. Would have been nice to have had the Dredd strip that linked to Helios included. Nice to see the covers reproduced in colour in the Anderson gallery. Shame about the missing picture of Judge Death on the b& w cover.

That's what I misremembered! Helios links to The Brainstem Man, not Triad.

robert_ellis

Great cover on the Anderson volume & excellent interview with David Roach & feature on Brett Ewins. The repro is pretty bad - but probably same as psi-files. The detail in Roach's stuff is amazing but looks "eaten away" by the resizing. I'm guessing there's another volume to follow with more of Roach. Initially I was disappointed by the lack of the Brain Stem Man and Death's inclusion seemed jarring without any other dark judge stories. Amazing value though for a 200 page hardback & I'm glad it's still available in WHSmiths

Radbacker

oooh, this is just starting to filter into Oz so I grabbed the first one today (America), only $7.99 for the first one regular price $19.99, great value as Rebellion GN's a ridiculously pricey downunder (I paid anywhere from $39 - $69 for the few Case Files I got but found just a bit too pricey for stuff I already had).
NIce production and great to have in Hardcover too, question to those who have been getting this for a while, do they hold up to multiple reads or do they suffer from page loss like most hard covers?

CU Radbacker

IndigoPrime

Robert: I'm not sure it's resizing that's the issue. It looks more like scan/levels work to me—overdoing the levels to get rid of grime, but also eating into the details. The hardback ABC Warriors volume also has this problem in the Black Hole arc.

robert_ellis

Repro problems on b&w stories that have amazing Titan versions seems very odd.  I'm guessing we'll continue to see dodgy versions of the b&w stuff. It's a small price to pay.

Arkwright99

Quote from: IndigoPrime on 22 July, 2015, 04:16:13 PM
Robert: I'm not sure it's resizing that's the issue. It looks more like scan/levels work to me—overdoing the levels to get rid of grime, but also eating into the details. The hardback ABC Warriors volume also has this problem in the Black Hole arc.
Doesn't Rebellion have access to the original films taken from the original artwork* or are they providing Hachette with scans from old progs? Comparing the repro of "The Possession" with the original progs it's (all too) obvious that there's considerable 'bleeding' of Ewins' finer line work which, for me, spoils an otherwise excellent strip. Conversely, as Robert points out, both Barry Kitson and David Roach's art suffers from 'over-exposure' in some panels so there doesn't seem to be a great deal of consistency. Which is not to belittle the effort that goes into the repro work - it feels a bit ungracious to complain about such things for lavish £10 hardback editions - but it's the same sense of disappointment I get from the excision of 'next prog' blurbs in the Zenith hardbacks.

As for the Alien Nations volume, is it me or does 'Raptaur Returns' feel like its missing a second act or something? 'Cos otherwise that's some unresolved cliffhanger it ends on.

*Unless I'm mistaken about how the original artwork was/is reproduced in 2000AD, that is.
'Life isn't divided into genres. It's a horrifying, romantic, tragic, comical, science-fiction cowboy detective novel ... with a bit of pornography if you're lucky.' - Alan Moore

Molch-R

Quote from: demos99 on 22 July, 2015, 06:30:33 PM
Doesn't Rebellion have access to the original films taken from the original artwork

As we've mentioned before, the films of older Progs were really not looked after at IPC/Fleetway and large chunks of them are very damaged or plain missing. KAT-Scan does the very best with what we have access to.

Bear in mind that the old Titan volumes were undoubtedly taken from this film before it was lost/damaged, so it's not fair to compare the two of them. And no, Titan do not have copies of the films; we checked.

IndigoPrime

Quote from: Molch-R on 22 July, 2015, 06:39:55 PMAs we've mentioned before, the films of older Progs were really not looked after at IPC/Fleetway and large chunks of them are very damaged or plain missing. KAT-Scan does the very best with what we have access to.
The one I'd be most interested in finding out what happened to is Swimming in Blood. The first edition (from long ago, before KAT-Scan's time, was woeful—a hideous mess of moiré. The new edition, though, was very good indeed, and so whatever clean-up was done on that was seriously impressive, given the nature of the original art.

glassstanley

Quote from: Molch-R on 22 July, 2015, 06:39:55 PM
Quote from: demos99 on 22 July, 2015, 06:30:33 PM
Doesn't Rebellion have access to the original films taken from the original artwork

As we've mentioned before, the films of older Progs were really not looked after at IPC/Fleetway and large chunks of them are very damaged or plain missing. KAT-Scan does the very best with what we have access to.

Bear in mind that the old Titan volumes were undoubtedly taken from this film before it was lost/damaged, so it's not fair to compare the two of them. And no, Titan do not have copies of the films; we checked.

Wouldn't scans of the Titan volumes produce better results?

robert_ellis

Just read the Anderson book from cover to cover and thoroughly enjoyed it. I really can't be objective about these stories - I must have them in 4 different formats over the years. I really appreciate the text pieces and recoloured covers. retouching heavily letra-toned art must be a git especially when there's different greys and spatter on top.