Judge Dredd: The Mega Collection discussion thread

[Davgardo]

It is a very puzzling situation regarding SOME of the B&W reprint quality and it'd be nice if someone in the know could come on here and explain the situation. I mean, in one collection we have absolutely awful reprint of Brett Ewins' art with no colour centrespreads and then Steve Dillon art of a similar vintage is much better and HAS colour centrespreads. And the release of The Day the Law Died which is 6/7 years older is likewise of excellent quality.

It's a shame that such an excellent collection is blighted by this problem. To be honest, The Haunting of Sector House 9 (and episode 1 in particular) is that bad it shouldn't have been reprinted.

Is it purely down to the fact there's no better source material, or they can't be bothered finding the best available. I mean, I've got a few Titan volumes in my loft they can have if they want. 

[robert_ellis]

I'm no expert on these matters but the old bog paper 2000ad's scan a lot worse than the better paper that began around 500. I think we've got used to an amazing level of repro - in the past any old crap would do. I think there aren't great copies of many old Dredd's. Of course the Titan volumes could (and I'm guessing will) be scanned in at some point but the cost would break the (amazing) 250 pages for £10 in a hardcover including postage. Printing from old crappy files next to pin sharp digital files is cruel. I'm interested if the files are identical to the casefiles ones. Nothing's perfect but I'm loving this series even if the repro is variable.

[Davgardo]

I'm no expert on these matters but the old bog paper 2000ad's scan a lot worse than the better paper that began around 500. I think we've got used to an amazing level of repro - in the past any old crap would do. I think there aren't great copies of many old Dredd's. Of course the Titan volumes could (and I'm guessing will) be scanned in at some point but the cost would break the (amazing) 250 pages for £10 in a hardcover including postage. Printing from old crappy files next to pin sharp digital files is cruel. I'm interested if the files are identical to the casefiles ones. Nothing's perfect but I'm loving this series even if the repro is variable.

I get that - it's the consistency that's confusing: compare The Day the Law Died stuff to Haunting of Sector House 9 in Horror Stories.

I have to say 'in the past any old crap would do' isn't exactly accurate. The reproductions in the 1980's were exceptional: why stuff could look so good reprinted then (e.g.The Return of Rico in Judge Dredd 2) and so appalling ever since is my main query.

[IndigoPrime]

My guess is it's whatever's currently on file. The Mega Collection is clearly primarily composed of existing material to keep costs down. Hell, even the packaging showcases that this is a low-cost thing, otherwise we'd actually get some bubblewrap to protect the corners and spines of the bloody books.

It's also hard to know what's in the Nerve Centre already, what's viable in terms of repro, and how much time can go into each page. For low-profit items, is the system primarily automated? How much is it tweaked? You could give me a scan of old B&W 2000 AD art and I could spend hours cleaning it up and making it perfect. Or I could run it through a Photoshop action to remove the bulk of the grime and darken the blacks. One of those leads to a business going bankrupt, and so I imagine there's been a mix of automaton and manual fixes, rather than painstakingly solely using the latter option. (Stuff like the Black Hole art suggests this might be the case elsewhere in terms of 'old comic repro', albeit with more balance towards tweaks, looking much like what I ended up with when trying to largely automate something similar myself with Photoshop.)

Fortunately, the bulk of the collection holds up well. And while it'll be an expensive set overall, the individual books are ludicrously cheap, given what you get. On that basis, I'm fine with the odd bit of iffy repro — although I do wish the packaging situation had been addressed long ago.

As for the actual strips, I trudged my way through Inferno two nights ago. Purgatory was every bit as awful as I remembered, with essentially no redeeming features, bar the art. Inferno, though, does have its moments. It's frequently ludicrous and seems to think Mega City One is about the size of Basingstoke, but there's the basis for a decent Dredd yarn there. Ultimately, it kind of comes across as a bit lazy more than anything. The Frankenstein Division, though? Urgh. And it's still highly amusing to see Matt Smith's on-the-nose intros, which have a refreshingly frank and honest feel compared to the cheerleader dross that accompanied pretty much every volume in the Marvel collection.

[abelardsnazz]

The Facebook page has posted the cover of issue 43, The Art of Taxidermy. Cover is by Steve Dillon from Prog 507. Credited are Wagner, Grant, Rob Williams, Ian Gibson, Cam Kennedy, Trevor Hairsine and John Higgins. So it will feature the three Sardini stories and - what else?

[TordelBack]

 More Mega-Olympics stuff? (Staring, Sex, Lunar etc.) And maybe some nice Cam citizen-foucused things (Sunday Night Fever, Flip Marlowe etc.) As for Higgins and Hairsine, no idea.

[Trent]

Wagner, Grant, Kennedy, Hairsine and Gibson cover the Sardini stories totalling 124 pages which leaves say 50 to 70 pages of additional material which includes Williams and Higgins plus any of the aforementioned.
Looked over Barney but nothing jumped out at me. Any thoughts anyone?

[Dash Decent]

issue 43, The Art of Taxidermy

Now, wouldn't it be great to have that name on the spine showing in your bookcase rather than the rectangular Dredd jigsaw?

[Trent]

The spine design is one of the few aspects I don't like about the collection. Nothing again nst the artists or the image but it all feels a bit childish and does the quality of the material a disservice. I would much prefer Casefiles style spines with the title on them.

[IndigoPrime]

They do this with all of their partworks, though; it's clearly designed to make you buy them all, so the spine art isn't incomplete. It's piss-poor from a usability perspective though.

[terryworld]

i'm cherry picking. not buying anything that isn't a "proper" JD book (ie: i've skipped devlin waugh, low-life, etc, and have no intention of buying armitage or any hondo-city stuff).
my daughter is asking "but won't you go crazy when the spines don't line up?!"
nope.
i worked out fairly early on in the run that around a quarter of the books would be "dredd universe" and not actually DREDD. quick maths made me realize; 20 books @ $20 a pop = $400 of stuff i don't want.
i'll have to live with the incomplete spine pic
having said that though......
i did make a trip into Radelaide town today to pick up cursed earth koburn - what can i say? it's Ezquerra and there's a lot of Dredd in there.

[Apestrife]

I was close to buy one book now and then. Classics like Cursed Earth, Apocalypse war, OZ, couple side books such as PJ Maybe, Chopper and Low Life and the modern Dredd epics Origin up to Day of chaos.

But what the hell. Two hardcovers each month are to hard to resist. I'm even happy with the "clunkers".
I'll probably line up my fav. ones later on, with the rest shelved elsewhere.

[IndigoPrime]

terryworld: out of curiosity, have you read any of the non-Dredd stuff? Of the volumes so far released, Anderson, Swimming in Blood, Simping Detective, and Low Life are all excellent.

[IndigoPrime]

Apestrife: Oddly, owning the Marvel collection prompted me to plump for the Dredd one, due to the production values more than anything. Despite some iffy picks in the Dredd set, it feels more consistent to me than the Marvel one, which was very variable. Although perhaps Marvel fans would argue otherwise.

[terryworld]

terryworld: out of curiosity, have you read any of the non-Dredd stuff? Of the volumes so far released, Anderson, Swimming in Blood, Simping Detective, and Low Life are all excellent.

hey IP,

i'm buying all the anderson stuff, that's "real" dredd, in my opinion
i read most of the other dreddworld stuff as it came out in the meg; devlin, armitage, hondo etc.
wasn't my cup of tea.
i was tempted to get low life, but i bought the titan trade instead.
(best mega-epic in the last few years)
so, i'm just being very particular with which issues of the mega collection i get.
as i'm getting them here in Oz, i know which ones are coming out months ahead of time, and i have to say i'm looking forward to the next few months for me; atlantis, sin-city, kleggs, pit, death, anderson, necropolis, pj, doomsday and cal.
i might get struck by thrill-power overload.