The best H-Wagon?

[Funt Solo]

I'm trying to recall the first episode to feature the Manta. IIRC it was a design of Tech Judge Brufen (later to fall foul of the Judda incursion), and was rolled out in Rumble in the Jungle (343-345, drawn by Ian Gibson).

Then they showed up, I think, in Sunday Night Fever (416-418, a sort of sequel to The Graveyard Shift), and got their asses handed to them in The Warlord (451-455).


Here's a general purpose, Manta-like, H-wagon from Echoes (prog 2061):

[Richard]

I think an H-Wagon is a general term for any Justice Department vehicle that flies, of which their are various kinds. So you can do pretty much whatever you like. How many guns it has depends on what it has to do in the story.

[Rogue Judge]

Yes , this is unpaid research work , but I can put your names on Judges in return for good image reff .

I may not be an expert on H-Wagons, but "Foster" would look great on the name-badge of a tall and lanky Judge...just saying .

The larger/blockier H-Wagons are what come to my mind, like drawn by MacNeil!

[Magnetica]

It's the kind of thing I would have thought McMahon would have done, but I'm struggling to find an example. He might he done one in that famous annual story where he did the blocks, but I don't have it to hand.

Other examples you might like to to look up are as follows (sorry I don't know how to add images):

The Invisble Man part 1 , Prog 134 by Ron Smith. A kind of flying saucer type thing.

Pirates of the Black Atlantic, parts 2 and 3, Progs 198 and 199. Ron Smith again, a sort of rectangle with a "Space 1999 eagle" inspired cockpit. That one crops up again in Block Mania part 5, in Prog 240.

Unamerican Graffiti part 2, Prog 207. Ron Smith again, but a slightly different design.

Judge Death Lives, part 5, Prog 228, by Brian Bolland.

Block Mania part 2, Prog 237. More a near ground floaty type thing than a full on H Wagon, by Mike Mahon.


In more modern times, I get the impression the design moved more to an actual H, as others have said. And as has already been stated, there doesn't seem to be a standard, definitive design.

[The Legendary Shark]

MK IXb SF Class H-Wagon (Codename "Fraser's Hammer")

Manufactured by: Sharky's House of Screams Inc.
Cost: Cr[classified]
Crew: 3-12
Armaments: [classified but deadly]
Top speed: Plot +/- X

[JohnW]

Sounds like a winner to me.
Fraser's Spanner: the future of aerial law enforcement.

[Funt Solo]

Reckon this is Colin Wilson:




And the classic McMahon Pat Wagon from Block Mania:

[Funt Solo]

Chris Weston has a model he's used in various stories (Cadet Dredd, Control etc.):

[Simon Fraser]

Thanks for you help. It seems that the consensus is that there isn't a consensus , beyond the basic H shape. I'm leaning towards a more utilitarian, brutalist McMahon/McNeil/Wilson kinda thing.

Credo! , JWare , The Legendary Shark, Magnetica, Indigo , Dark Jimbo, Barrington Boots, gogilesco, Lawman of the Present,if you want your names on a Judges , I'll need to know what they are - si@simonfraser.net works if you want to remain incognito.

Holden can put his name on any Judge he likes , so he's exempt.

Cheers

Si.

[JohnW]

I didn't really contribute anything, Simon, but I'm not going to turn down the chance of Justice Dept immortality.
By uncanny coincidence, my real name is J (for John) Ware.
If you want to capture my likeness faithfully, you should know that I'm right-handed and that my eyes betoken both the man of action and the philosopher.
I also have a slight deformity of the toes which isn't evident but does cause me to wear out socks faster than is convenient.
I trust your pen will do me complete justice.

[The Legendary Shark]

St. Carlos made me "Sharkman," a perp (see my avatar), so there's that option if you need a background heavy. "Judge Sharky" would be wonderful also. 

[Magnetica]

That sounds great Simon. I've just emailed you. Thanks.

[Funt Solo]

My surname is "Porteous" - fit it on a Judge-badge challenge!


Funny - I did have all the variant H-Wagon designs sketched out for the JD-RPG - but that was in the before-times, and is now lost to the dustbin of history.

I think there's a nice long-range, multi-purpose H-Wagon in Alabammy Blimps (by the superlative Steve Dillon), but I don't have easy access to the images for that.

I realize you don't really need any more ideas, but it's like a game of whack-a-wagon now. Here's Arthur Ranson's bulky-insect design from Triad:

[Trooper McFad]

Well done guys I look forward to seeing your names in the Prog/Meg.
I hope your not the Justice Department equivalent of Star Trek "red shirts" and there for never seen again 😂😂😂

[The Legendary Shark]

I've had a bit of wine, so I'm afraid I'm going to have to hi-jack this thread to go on a weird personal ramble. (So it's okay to ignore it, probably even advisable.)

I have had one indirect and two direct impacts on Judge Dredd's world*. And it's a proper buzz. They're tiny, insignificant specks in the overall weft and weave of 2000AD and the Dreddverse, but they are there. Specks that will remain and, hopefully, endure. There is a tiny corner of Thrillpower that will be forever me.

And it struck me, thinking about these tiny pinpricks, that they may be my only lasting legacy, once the few who know me have died. It's unlikely that my writings are going to make any kind of impact for two very good reasons, the first of which is obvious and the second of which is that I don't believe in copyright. So I'm unlikely to get anything into the Prog, or anywhere else for that matter, but I love writing 2000AD properties so I'm afraid you're my nichest of niche audiences - the vanishingly small percentage of people who love Our Comic, have the time to read, and have a high tolerance for the distinctly mediocre. I love you all. (Donations accepted; cash only.)

So maybe those three little pinpricks are the best legacy I can hope for. Best case scenario, I become a future comics expert's dream pub-quiz question; "who inspired Carlos Ezquerra to create the character 'Sharkman' and, for a bonus point, why?" I think that would be pretty cool - more than I deserve and more than most people get. Assuming the Prog (long may it prosper!) has been preserved in, say, a thousand years, maybe dissertations will be written upon it. And maybe some uber-niche of post-grads is reaching back through time, digging through centuries of data to arrive here, investigating her "Sharkman Hypotheses," to these very words. Penned centuries ago, by a (probably) long dead man who affected himself a shark in the primitive digital ecology of the day. And thus I become a footnote in a scholarly paper I'd never begin to understand. You're welcome.

Which is all a long-winded way of trying to convey to Simon how much something so simple as having one's name on a judge's badge (or a sporadically recurring 'Sharkman' character (created by Carlos Ezquerra, or did I mention that?) who always gets mangled but is never destroyed and appears as a background detail NPC only drawn by the coolest of art-droids in-the-know...) means to me, personally. It's my place in eternity; my tiny mark in Mankind's Database, which will endure as long as there are energy and computers, hopefully beyond. Judge Sharky will live forever - as will the Sharkman, the Yap Shop, and the Underhang...

I suspect those of us with children might feel less strongly about it, but that may be due to general tiredness...




*And if anyone's interested, they are Carlos portraying me as "Sharkman" in an Anderson strip, Colin naming the Dale Winton Underhang after my suggestion and Colin, again, immortalising the short-lived but totally groovy Rowdy Yates Block Citizens' Yap Shop, which I created and he (and many others) frequented in the Wonderful Before Times - although, as I recall, the Le Yap Shop ad was initially obscured by the Judge Dredd logo. I think it's in the GNs, though.