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[Don't let my reviews put any of you off buying Vols 1 and 2 off me via Amazon UK (ha ha...)]

Don't let my reviews put any of you off buying Vols 1 and 2 off me via Amazon UK (ha ha...) 

The sourcebooks I'm developing don't make Mongoose's mistake, Mike. They are divided into two series: one that ONLY covers comic book/novel/audio material (and also lists their sources so readers know exactly where that data originated from story by story; there is no RPG material whatsoever), and a second series intended for my RPG project that uses nothing from other Dredd RPGs and starts from scratch, building only on the official material (of course creating a lot of new stuff along the way, but all clearly signposted as fan-fic).

My presumption is that Mayor Ambrose/PJ Maybe is going to impersonate Francisco, remove Sinfield and then take over MC1?

I didn't understand the 'tea-spitting' panel and had to go back to it a few times to make sense of it (I originally thought Dredd was having a brain haemorrhage!). A sound effect might have helped. Oh, but it's fantastic to get that strip back on track - lots of dialogue, PJ Maybe, the ever-so-nice Francisco, and John Higgins art! The Golden Years of Dredd have returned for a short holiday.

OT, 'Future Shocks'. For the longest time (20 years?) I've never read them. There are some strips I take one look at, my eyes glaze over and skip for the rest of their run (it's become an automatic reaction), possibly because I jump the gun and after reading one page make sweeping assumptions about the rest of the story being just as bad

Recent stories that 'glazed' me include Stickleback and that Brit detective by the same author (I don't even know the story's name), as well as Zombo (Zombi?) and that b/w strip about the fighting bald people (Nepholim or some-such? I think its author did that Stalag 666, another strip I developed a mental block about until it was recently brought up in a thread). I also cannot read anything drawn by Richard Eldon (despite not have a rational arguement why I should not), so his entire 2000AD career has passed me by. Sin/Dex is another.

Perhaps my brain is overheating and can't accept any more Thrill-Power...?

I don't think there have been any good Sov-Block stories since the Apocalypse War? (you may argue that there has NOT been a Sov-Block since the Apocalypse War!).

I decided to throw in the towel on this series and have dumped Vols 1 and 2 up on Amazon. That cleanses me of a particularly insidious Thrill-Sucker infestation.

Have to make sure Volume 3 doesn't somehow manage to seak past my (now) well-defended letterbox...

I don't care what is in Prog 3000 (even a prog-length Bison drawn by a blind monkey on steroids), as long as 2000AD actually survives that long--now that's cause for celebration

No Souster?  No Mortal?  No Sladek?  Sacrilege!

PsiDiv also comes out of that pretty light (no Kit Agee, for exmaple)- maybe there's a Psi Div volume on the way?

With better page design (not giving every character regardless of importance at least one full page), there would easily be room for further entries. Odd about Anderson's lack of coverage, yes. I imagine whenever Judge Dredd shows up (in his own volume?), Anderson will get an expanded profile. It's weird that the Justice Department takes up V1-2, then criminals in V3+, but no sign of Dredd.

A technical manual scheduled for one of the later volumes sounds lke the most interesting of the remaining Archives (if they all turn out to be so dubious). Lots of schematics, vehicle cutaways, double-paged spreads?

A good design for Mongoose to have copied would have been Dorling Kindersley's Eyewitness Guides (they did a pretty good job with their superhero and movie-related tie-ins), with plenty of comic art and some fantastic cross-sections/cutaways.

Some interesting publishing options in this thread. I've got a graphic novel ready to go into full production next year (1/4 finished) and all I'm short is a publisher (although Dark Horse has its appeal, I'd rather support British endeavours)

It will definately appeal to 2000AD readers while being quite different to anything from that comic. It was originally positioned as a script for a strange (and cheap!) fantasy TV or radio series set in contemporary England (and still might be).

The problem is it's not being marketed as a RPG sourcebook, but clearly is leaning heavily in that direction. It's as if the agreement was to publish a general purpose Dredd guidebook but is steadily biased towards that publisher's main audience: role-players. If they were conscientiously setting out to 'bag' comic book fans then the books should have been formatted entirely differently.

[Volume 02 in the 13-part Mega-City One Archives deals with the 'personalities' of the Justice Department (the 'Lawbringers'), whereas Volume 01 provided an overview of the Justice Department organisation.]

Volume 02 in the 13-part Mega-City One Archives deals with the 'personalities' of the Justice Department (the 'Lawbringers'), whereas Volume 01 provided an overview of the Justice Department organisation.

The cover art is of the same quality as Vol 01, the three characters (Judges Giant, Guthrie & former Chief Judge Hershey) positioned in rather dull static poses against a background cut and pasted from a Kevin Walker illustration. By the time Vol 02 was published, Hershey is no longer Chief Judge of Mega-City One, so it appears the cover artist was not privy to the comic strip's upcoming plots, dating the Archives very slightly.

The Credits page seems to be making more effort to list the artists involved than Volume 01 (which largely ignored the 2000AD freelancers in favour of lesser-known artists). On examining the preponderance of exotic names in the Artists credits, one wonders if the publisher is struggling with a tight budget by farming out to cheaper artists (operating under a more favourable exchange rate). If so, this definitely hurts the project, especially when some of their efforts are compared to professionally more capable 2000AD stalwarts such as Henry Flint and Carlos Ezquerra.

Volume 02 favours original art over comic book samples, which in principle is good: we expect the book to have a fresh look, but this ambition fails when the art is below par, as is sadly the case with the Mega-City One Archives to date (and very much in evidence in Volume 02). Also of disappointment is the amount of art reused from Volume 01 (this reviewers counts at least five incidences). Many of the illustrations are oversized and unnecessary (how many times do we need to see a full length Street Judge's uniform almost the height of each page?). As with Volume 01, a wonderful opportunity to include panels from the comics (with speech balloons reminding us we are reading a comic book tie-in) has been entirely wasted.

The writing treats the Judge Dredd mythology as something profound and very serious, offering deep psychosocial insights into the Judges and the citizens they oversee. It entirely misses the point of Judge Dredd, which should be fun, action-packed, quirky and satirical, not a psychological treatise for scholars—or the more anally retentive among the role-playing community (who to be fair do not happily all share this mindset, this reviewer included .

The book's layout is exactly the same as Volume 01: predominantly dark background on which large colour illustrations and big blocks of text are overlaid. The writing style, as mentioned in the previous paragraph, is dry and methodical, nary a sense of humour or enthusiasm apparent, rendering the book on the whole a draining reading experience, thrill-sucking the reader into the Abyss. The text font is not suited to endless pages of text and soon grates on the eye, while the boxes that divide the text up only appear to exist to spread out the text and so make up the page count; their removal would make the text flow much easier (also, the single column format would be better replaced by the two-column, making for a quicker read).

The book is divided into many entries, composed of several paragraph boxes and a character illustration. Entries include: Judges Anderson, Beeny, Bonaventura, Brufen, Buell, Cal, Castillo, Dekker, DeMarco, Dirty Frank, Edgar, Feyy, Fish, Garcia, Giant, Giant Jnr, Grampus, Grice, Guthrie, Herriman, Hershey, Izzard, Janus, Judd, Karyn, Koburn, Kraken, Kruger, Kurten, Larter, the Angel Gang(?), Logan, Lopez, McTighe, Morph, Niles, Nimrod, Nixon, Ocks, Odell, Omar, Omar, Pal, Pepper, Perrier, Priest, Plaski, Point, Prager, Quincy, Renga, Rico, Roffman, Roff, Sanchez, Shenker, Slocum, Stark, Steel and Zero. The research is largely accurate, with a minimum of role-playing lore 'interference'.

Where is Judge Dredd's profile? Nowhere to be found! No doubt saved for a later volume. The question has to be WHY? Dredd is THE star of the Judge Dredd comic strip and yet subordinate characters dominate the first two volumes. It would have been without question the best marketing tactic Mongoose could have made to dedicate Volume 01 to Dredd, satisfying new Dredd readers who want to read about his backstory, and putting some steam in the Mega-City Archives' stride, building momentum for future volumes. Instead, the series limps painfully along. It may also be argued that – compared to the colourful and vast gallery of villains and citizens - the Judges as a whole (discounting Dredd and Anderson) are one of the lesser interesting aspects of Mega-City One and do not warrant such a big page count discussing many trivial details that comic book fans can happily live in ignorance of.

I'm trying my best to support The Mega-City Archives, but the publisher has somehow managed to serve up a hugely disappointing second volume. What is sadder still is how good it could easily have been, with fewer volumes, less text and more comic strip illustrations out together in a truly thrill-powered package. Rebellion is advised to seek another publishing outlet. I want to buy Dredd books, but Mongoose is making it a VERY difficult prospect, which is hurtful.

Volume 02 just arrived. Hmmm, if you didn't like Vol 01, then your hopes won't be buoyed by this sequel. A detailed review coming shortly...

I've read the book 2-3 times. I actually like it far less each time and am wavering selling it and not bothering with the rest. It doesn't know seem to know what its audience is supposed to be. I may buy Vol 3 and then make my decision whether to continue.

Interesting. I don't recall any article on that subject. Were they not Brendan McCarthy sketches of Judges in general?

The God-Grud name change was one way of referencing a Higher Power in a non-inflmammatory way (ie. bypassing using real-world names), and also selling the notion Judge Dredd was set in the future.

I imagine that originally, MC1 was supposed to be pretty much the entire focus of the Judge Dredd strip and that Grud was a clumping together of all the world religion faiths into one neat entity.

It appears that organised religion (in the Western world at least) is in the 22nd century in a far worse state than it was in 2010, its only practitioners considered crackpots and comedy relief.

In my my RPG books I occasionally mentioned an alternate name: The Original Holy, just as vague.

Hmmm, maybe Tharg could save lots of oil rations by firing all his script droids and instead pay kids their pocket money to fill in? Good for Tharg, good for kids (might get them reading 2000AD because their friends write it), and good for their parents! 

I've been with Virgin for a few years and have no complaints (before them, I was changing as soon as my contract was up - went through half a dozen providers). I couldn't operate with any download limit imposed, so it's worth paying for a decent service. It's not like it's terribly expensive to begin with?

I'd also not go willingly near a wireless connection again (death to dongles!). My first was fine, but my next two would drop out every few seconds either because of security issues or some weird inability of my router to recognise my PC (only five inches away for the purposes of setting up the initial connection).

I now very happily use a 'powerline' connection (uses the mains electric to carry the internet signal without having to run metres of ugly-looking wiring up the stairs). It's faster than wireless and as stable as externally cabled broadband.