Mr Wagner... Listen to me!

[Thread Zero]

I want a Dredd story set on Titan.

Much potential for drama.

Dredd investigates a murder on Titan. Dredd versus corrupt judge inmates.

Man it could be good!

scojo the ideas man

[The Amstor Computer]

Wasn't Titan pretty comprehensively nuked? I don't remember the facility being rebuilt...

[Mudcrab]

Yeah, after Inferno? That was almost set on Titan, at least bits of it were. Don't remember it being nuked but it seems highly likely given the time it wes out!

[Thread Zero]

Ah but that was written by M Millar.

And who cares about him?:)

John can ignore that and pretend it never happened.

scojo

[Wood]

Titan nuked? Naaah.

Titan wasn't nuked at all, even by Mark Millar. The corrupt warden and most of his staff were killed, and most of the inmates ended up being blown up as they were sent 'back to Titan', but the prison was not destroyed.

Bent judges were being threatened with the 'Titan Trip' within about a year.

And Wagner didn't pretend it never happened, either. For example, the story where Walter is reintroduced and Giant Jr. gets his badge ('Judge Giant', it got reprinted in the last Best of Jd collection a couple years back), there's a reference to the 'bad judges from Titan'.  

Wagner's pretty magnanimous on this point, actually.

[paulvonscott]

It's a shame a lot of the backdrop to Dredd gets treated so casually.  A few mentions of something, its usually never explored properly, then its nuked or killed off a few years down the road.

The Megazine could have been great, I always thought there were enough stories waiting to be told to fill each issue about ten times over.  Instead it was a lot of lazy crap that didn't barely seemed to have much to do with the Judge Dredd I'd read.

Considering all I generally had was six pages of decent dredd a week, that really pissed me off.  Great ideas getting a shallow treatment has been the constand bane of Dredd.  I think it was Mike Baron who once said Dredd was 'pop-off writing, it looks good, its sounds good', but there's really nothing too it.  I think with a few exceptions when Wagner has really turned the heat up that has been regretably true.

[Thread Zero]

So he can write the story then with no probs.

I didn't like that Purgatory strip. It was like purgatory to read it!

Inferno was ok I suppose. Bearable. Some nice Carlos art though.

You know I have run out of things to say...

Yikes.

scojo silent

[Matt]

I hate sloppiness in the JD continuity. What the hell did that tech judge in Crusade discover that every Mega City wanted it? What was the Sino Cit crisis that never appeared but warranted McGruder using Dredd as a guinea pig for some new combat drug thingy? And why was the word AVANT scrawled on walls throughout Dredds visit to Luxor and appeared again in the stories that followed on for a couple of weeks afterward? And don't even get me started on The Bad Man....

[fraston]

shurely that was a Sean Connery movie some 15 years ago?

[Thread Zero]

Wow that is quite an indictment on Dredd PVS.

I think you are a little harsh. I think there is more to Dredd than that.

It is hard to do Dredd justice you know PVS.

We tend to take Wagner for granted, perhaps.
I think that 90% of his Dredd stuff over the last 25 years has been superb. Although I do think in he has gone off the boil a little in the last year or two.

Sorry John!

You have to research Dredd's world a little and treat it with respect. I feel other writers don't really respect the character or his world enough. One off Dredd's may be easy to get away with, but any story with substance has to be handled with care.

Take Helter Skleter. No please take it! It was a bit laughable how Garth tied up all the loose plot ends in one page!
I do believe the t-rex is still out there in the city!

Surprised no one has seen a 100 foot dinosaur roaming around but still....

It is kind of lazy writing. I feel the same about some of Alan Grant's recent Dredds. Just take the superficial elements of Dredd and his world and hope you get away with it.

Maybe the fundamental problem is familiarity breeds contempt. It's impossible for Dredd to still be as fresh and exciting as it was 25 years ago.

I think we have to accept this.

Any thoughts?

scojo

[Thread Zero]

Matt,

Learn this rule:

If it isn't written by Wagner, odds are it won't be developed.

Millar wrote the Sino teaser story. Same with Crusade (along with Grant Morrison).

That is why we shouldn't get too excited by this new skull guy character written by Alan Grant

I would like it to be developed but who knows if it will?

scojo trying for a typo free post

[paulvonscott]

I don't really expect that much from a six page strip, there really is only so much you can do in six pages and it takes it place in 2000AD weekly admirably.  The fact it has acheived so much is a miracle, it really is.

I remember being very annoyed with Mike Baron's comment at the time, but I have regrattably come to agree with him almost ten eyars later.

Nor do I mean to criticise Wagner, he's like the last bloody jedi in the shop.  He's the only one we've got to get the job done properly.  Who knows perhaps he has a twin sister out there, or somebody else can do it.

My wrath is largely based at the waste that was the megazine.

Surely the responsibility of the editorial staff for that could have made the effort to make sure all the strips that claimed to be set in the Dredd universe really did fit in properly.  And it can't have been beyond their befuddled wits to have been able to ensure continuity.

The Megazine was an almost complete disaster in my opinion, there were good strips, but at what cost? From the very first issue and that feeble childish graph paper scribbled Logo replacement for the classic Dredd Logo with badge.

Murkily painted half arsed stories everywhere.  orignal concepts like the Mega City soap opera, telling about the lives of everday meg folk, just chucked out and more people with guns thrown in.

Okay this is a rant, but its born of all the frustration of seeing it all treated like crap in the nineties and I'm feeling particularly tired and irritable.  So please take this post with two-three tablespoons of salt.

Cheers

Paul

[Thread Zero]

The meg wasn't that bad PVS, was it?

I actually preferred it to 2k during the mid 1990's. You had Anderson, Taxidermist, Dredd of course, Armitage, Devlin Waugh and other decent stuff.

Not the creep. Remember that?

The meg tried to show us other Dredd like cultures set in Africa, Brit cit, Japan etc.

I think that has to be applauded if nothing else.

Of course it hit hard times, ironically after the release of the Dredd movie, and was forced to go back to a monthly frequency and include the dreaded reprints.

Anyone remember the 20 plus page Necropolis reprints?

Not a popular move was that!

scojo

[2000AD Online]

I think Mike Baron's comment re: Dredd does have some truth in it but it's a bit rich coming from the creator of 'The Badger'.

Have to agree with PVS as to the Megazine's wasted potential. Loved the early issues but it soon lost its way once 'America' came to an end. As with 'The Prisoner', it's the environment in which the stories take place that makes them interesting. Both McGoohan's and Dredd's characters rarely amount to anything more than cyphers allowing the plots to unfold. I mean, there must be hundreds of stories that can be told involving a city nearly a third the size of the United States.

Oh, and if someone could enlighten me about 'Armageddon / The Bad Man', I'd appreciate it.

Ta very much.

[paulvonscott]

I wasn't conferring any cudos on Baron, believe me.  I even think he was largely wrong at the time when he said it (and it was unfair as it was a 6 page weekly strip) but his comment in the light of the Megazine development came to echo in my mind (as if I were a cheap 1930's movie character who has been hit over the head with a sap).

Perhaps a bit of this money 2000AD is going to be making from merchandise this year could go into getting the megazine sorted out.  It really could be good, but I think they should take a hard look at what happened to the Megazine in the nineties.