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[Dash Decent]

Judge Dredd the XXX Files by John Wagner

It's a typo - It's meant to be "Judge Dredd: The Zzz files, a collection of the most boring Dredd tales from the last 35 years."  Can you guess what's in it?

[Proteus4]

Judge Dredd the XXX Files by John Wagner

It's a typo - It's meant to be "Judge Dredd: The Zzz files, a collection of the most boring Dredd tales from the last 35 years."  Can you guess what's in it?

Having just read Darkside and Fetish I'd have to nominate both. Shite.

Love
Dave

[TordelBack]

Having just read Darkside and Fetish I'd have to nominate both. Shite.

Takes all sorts!  Fetish is a very odd thing, but I'd hardly call it boring.  And Darkside is a bit of a classic.

[Link Prime]

Having just read Darkside and Fetish I'd have to nominate both. Shite.

And Darkside is a bit of a classic.

I'm a big fan of Darkside too.
Two factors in it's favor for me;

A continuation of sorts to 'City of the Damned'.
Marshall's artwork.

[radiator]

I remember quite enjoying Darkside, but IIRC it's never actually explained why [spoiler]zombie-Dredd suddenly reanimates[/spoiler]. Possibly because the story was heavily edited so it could be run in the prog (it was originally supposed to appear in the Megazine in 9 page episodes?

[Skullmo]

Every time I try to read it the colours burn my eyes

[TordelBack]

Every time I try to read it the colours burn my eyes

Yes, there is that.

[Link Prime]

Crying out for a re-coloring job alright.

[Proteus4]

I'd heard so many people speak fondly about john smith's work I was surprised that Darkside and Fetish were both as poor as they were. I nearly stopped reading both! The colouring on Darkside was shocking, as u rightly point out. I did really like the one panel in the second or third prog where u see the collectors stash and it's bunged with artefacts from dredd world like choppers board, spikes earring etc. I spent a wee while trying to spot it all.

Dave

Ps - I'm still confused why people like either of those stories (although devils Waugh is supercoolasfuck).

[Colin YNWA]

Having read both quite recently as part of my John Smith retrospective I'd say neither are amongst his best work by a long way. I think Fetish suffers. horribly with poor art. Its just not for me. Now I did read the DC reprint which apparently does a pretty shocking job of the reproduction but its hard to see it ever actually being great. The storytelling is just poor.

Darkside is pretty good... but pretty good isn't good Smith. It felt a bit over long to me and might have worked better two to four episodes shorter. Its not bad, in fact its good. Just I kinda expect John Smith to be magnificent and its not. It probably also suffered from being read back to back with a load of his other wonderful stuff. Though Dredd doesn't bring the best out of the mighty Smith so that might be a factor too.

[radiator]

To be fair, Fetish was heavily cut down. Iirc it was intended to be a proper 'Dredd in Africa' epic but there were endless delays with art so that's probably why it takes forever to get going then wraps up really quickly when he gets there.

[Colin YNWA]

To be fair, Fetish was heavily cut down. Iirc it was intended to be a proper 'Dredd in Africa' epic but there were endless delays with art so that's probably why it takes forever to get going then wraps up really quickly when he gets there.

Did not know that.

[radiator]

And yes it's hard to overstate how horrible the repro in the Dc reprint is. It's so murky that I found it unreadable. The art as presented in the Hamlyn version is infinitely better - gorgeous, rich colours - though storytelling was never Siku's strong point.

[Skullmo]

I'd love it if Mr Smith could shed light on what should have been for Fetish and Darkside - and if they were considerably cut. I know he sometimes haunts the halls here.

[Proteus4]

Siku's art was beautiful in fetish but I don't like his Dredd and his storytelling was awful in that strip.

On another note, can anyone tell me what the fork the 'fetish' was and why it was called fetish?

Dave