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Predator vs Dredd vs Aliens

Started by Bat King, 05 October, 2014, 11:01:57 PM

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Bat King

Loved it - not re-read either story since publication.

Stays true to Dredd & true to Predator & Aliens. Great art.

Full review on my blog
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http://judgetutorsemple.wordpress.com/

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Proudhuff

at £25 this will have to be under the Huffmas tree  :'(
DDT did a job on me

Hawkmumbler

Quote from: Proudhuff on 06 October, 2014, 06:54:43 PM
at £25 this will have to be under the Huffmas tree  :'(
Maybe we should have a forum secret santa and just let the droid give us stuff like this?

Frank


I read the Alien team-up recently, for the first time since it was in 2000ad. It's a six parts too-long version of the standard Dredd monster story, like Cry Of The Werewolf (good) or Nosferatu (not as good), but with Giger's alien doing a special guest star cameo, like Patrick McGoohan on Columbo.

Wagner's described being bored by the limitations of the Alien and Predator stories * so, like Michael Carroll's recent Goblin King story, there are sympathetic rookie judges who have to prove themselves and Undercity-dwelling villains with roles in wider Dredd continuity to extend the story beyond a 26 page punch-up between Dredd and the Xenomorph. Mr Bones gives Henry Flint a chance to see how his Zombo/Nimrod designs will look on the page, and I like the way all his shit plans to conquer the city involve using essentially quite unpredictable classic movie monsters. Maybe he set Dredd up with The Mummy in Book Of The Dead.

The Verminators quickly reveal themselves to be the team of mis-matched professionals with their own distinctive verbal shorthand every Alien story seems to have at its centre. The only difference is that their role here isn't central; they're peripheral characters who don't get the page-space necessary to emerge as individuals before they go splat, because Dredd has to do all the big action stuff and Sanchez has to stuff up so she can eventually win Dredd's respect and round off the story. I'm not sure why they weren't just the usual mix of mouthy-judge, rebel-judge, and judge-with-a-secret who populate other Team Dredd stories.


* "some characters are a pain from the word go. I call them 'who cares' stories. Every picture you write, every scene you try to force yourself to dream up, you're asking yourself why am I DOING this? Stories like Aliens and Predator, for instance. Both are 'one-joke' stories. They have one controlling idea and when that's been written you can only repeat yourself" (http://homepage.eircom.net/~okku/scifi/jwagner.htm)

Bat King

Well yes to John Wagner the stories are corporate tie-in stories that have to fit both the Dredd & the paired movie. So I imagine it was a grind for him. The result though I found fun.

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Frank

Quote from: Bat King on 06 October, 2014, 09:35:43 PM
Well yes to John Wagner the stories are corporate tie-in stories that have to fit both the Dredd & the paired movie. So I imagine it was a grind for him. The result though I found fun.

Yeah, it was fun and Flint is fantastic. It uses the monster in MC1 template I've enjoyed on other Dredd strips, I just thought it was too long. That's what The Verminators and Mr Bones are there for, isn't it; to string things out beyond Dredd-finds-Gigermonsters/Dredd-punches-Gigermonsters. The broad arc of the story wouldn't really have played out any differently if they hadn't been there.

I thought Andy Diggle was probably there to save Wagner reading up on Aliens lore, and they certainly make more use of the acid for blood angle than I remember the films doing. The potency of Alien blood seems further towards the red end of the PH paper than it was previously, mind - would one alien's splatter really have been able to burn a crater-sized hole all the way through the sked and the foundations that support the entire city?



HdE

I remember this was billed with thee tag line 'and other stories'.

Already owning the Aliens book, and having a dog eared copy of the Predator crossover, I'm wondering what else is in here?
Check out my DA page! Point! Laugh!
http://hde2009.deviantart.com/

Dash Decent

I liked the confrontation scene where the Judges suffer splashback damage as a consequence of trying to take down the Alien in a warehouse.  I thought it was a logical given what we were told about their 'acid blood' in the movies, and it seemed true-to-form in terms of humans reacting to a new threat.

Good use of a road flare too, if I remember rightly.

My son was only little when I first read this and seeing the Alien brooding over the baby in the crib was quite chilling for me at the time.

The art can only be described as Flintastic!
- By Appointment -
Hero to Michael Carroll

"... rank amateurism and bad jokes." - JohnW.

Dash Decent

Quote from: HdE on 07 October, 2014, 12:30:46 AM
I remember this was billed with thee tag line 'and other stories'.

Already owning the Aliens book, and having a dog eared copy of the Predator crossover, I'm wondering what else is in here?

Nothing, according to the review at Bat King's blog (mentioned above):

The wording on the cover is slightly odd 'Incubus and other stories' There are only two stories reprinted here. Incubus is an alternative name for Judge Dredd vs Aliens.
- By Appointment -
Hero to Michael Carroll

"... rank amateurism and bad jokes." - JohnW.

HdE

Check out my DA page! Point! Laugh!
http://hde2009.deviantart.com/

Daveycandlish

I'm always wary of picking a book off the shelf in my LCS which is shrink wrapped. What are they trying to hide?
An old-school, no-bullshit, boys-own action/adventure comic reminiscent of the 2000ads and Eagles and Warlords and Battles and other glorious black-and-white comics that were so, so cool in the 70's and 80's - Buy the hardback Christmas Annual!

Hawkmumbler

The Flint pop up chest buster center spread.

James Stacey

Quote from: Daveycandlish on 12 October, 2014, 10:12:02 PM
I'm always wary of picking a book off the shelf in my LCS which is shrink wrapped. What are they trying to hide?
If it's got a dustjacket, probably to stop it getting wrecked.

Recrewt

Yeah, they had some shrink-wrapped copies of this in my LCS.  From the outside, it looks like a nicely done book but as others have mentioned, I'm not sure the stories are good enough for me to pay the RRP.

IndigoPrime

It'll be interesting to see if this Dredd strip is skipped in the Case Files.