Messages

The big four will always be Ron Smith, Brian Bolland, Mick McMahon and Carlos Ezquerra.  Not necessarily in that order. They defined Dredd.

I agree with that. My order would be Bolland first...then dunno lets call it a draw.

I'd give the next place to Ian Gibson, especially his work in the early progs.

I would put Gibson in a group with Brett Ewins*, Brendan McCarthy, Cam Kennedy, Steve Dillon, Cliff Robinson and John Higgins as "classic " Dredd artists after the big 4.

And I view that there is a modern "holy trinity" of Henry Flint, Colin MacNeil** and Ben Wilsher.

And of course, sitting proudly along side the modern holy trinity, as a guiding father figure if you like, we have....yeah you guessed it ....Carlos Ezquerra.

*And yes Brett actually drew very few episodes of Dredd and is probably better know for Anderson, but the stuff he did on the Day the Law Died with Brendan is just awesome (even though I can't tell which bits were Brett and which were Brendan )

**And yes #2 MacNeil has been around since the late 80's but he seems to draw loads of Dredd episodes these days

Painted Dredd in the Percival / Staples style just doesn't do it for me. Hugely skillful, but just doesn't have the energy. The 'Dark Justice' GN has some penciled pages at the back which are gorgeous: it's a shame they were painted over.

There is an interesting interview with Dermot Power in this month's Megazine in which he says with painting it's very hard to do the little background details of Mega City One and you can only really get that with pencils and ink.

Thanks ...I was wondering as it looks a bit like a "Ryan Brown" but the credit is "Adam"...so thanks for clearing that up.

I've actually enjoyed the thread....
As controversial as this thread may be, I'm glad I started it, because I've had some good feed back. 

Yes quite...I don't think you should apologise for starting the thread or expressing your opinion. This is exactly the kind of discussion I like to see on the board.

Now no-one has picked up on something else you said in the original post  - you are placing Nick Percival in the top echelon of Dredd artists.

So for me - no. Yes its all nicely painted and photo realistic, but a bit like Clint Langley's* stuff, I find myself looking at it and thinking "yes I am sure this is technically amazing, but there is just something lacking in it and I can't quite put my finger on it".

Well actually Joe Soap has explained it beautifully - it lacks "visual energy". So sorry - not for me.


* Now Clint is great at images, but story telling, not so much. I met him at the 40th - lovely chap too. So sorry for any criticism.

Only read Havn and Lawless so far. But so good so far.

Quick question - who was that at the end of Lawless?

I don't know why I wrote CQ instead of CE, I did have a few glasses of wine last night so that might explain the error. My apologies, no disrespect intended. Thing is, I love the original Strontium dog run, and that's all Carlos Ezquerra, I just don't like the way he draws Dredd. After reading Dark justice, I just thought to myself "oh man, could you imagine if all the Dredd stories looked like this?" I really liked the art in Day of chaos as well, PJ Maybe looked great.

Yeah all the Dredd stories could look like Dark Justice.

It's just that you would only get 6 episodes every two years.

Speaking for myself only, I'm not offended. You are entitled to your opinion and I actually like discussions such as this.

I remember my brother (who used to read my Progs) telling me years ago that he didn't like Carlos' art. I was surprised but that's up to him.

Yes Bolland is better at drawing than anyone else (in my opinion) and I long to have him draw Dredd again, but a) it's probably never going to happen and b) as with Staples he is notorious slow.

So it depends what you want - a tiny amount of pages that are wonderous to look at, or a higher volume of pages that are still great, but maybe not quite at that level - as art. But Carlos is a great story teller. I can't recall any of his stories where it wasn't clear what was going on - the story flows beautifully with him.

Sadly I can't say the same for all artists.

Yes Greg Staples work is beautiful but now long does it take him to produce a story? Same with MacNeil's painted stuff, it's great but simply takes ages - and he said so himself.

There is an original Carlos Dredd page at the Cartoon Museum in London, which is painted, and frankly it is great.  Every bit as good as Staples, Bisley or MacNeil.

Overall I think you will be hard pressed to find an artist who has made a bigger overall contribution to 2000AD than Carlos.

  Creator of the most popular character - check
  Creator of the 2nd most popular character - check
  More pages than any other artist - well I haven't counted, but I should think so

Also can't think of anyone who was there at the start who is still drawing for the Prog (cameos in Prog 2000 don't count as still contributing).

An almost impossible question with 40 years of stuff to choose from, so my answer will change depending on how I feel and what I have read lately.

So I will go, for now, with what occurs to me off the top of my head.

Judge Child quest
Judge Death Lives
Mega City Rackets (Umpty Baggers, Organ Leggers, Chump Dumpers etc)
Six
America

Honourable mentions:

Day of Chaos
The Pit ( but suffers from too many non-complementary artists)
Plus one I am expecting to place highly but haven't read since it was originally published: Tour of Duty.

Not forgetting many pithy one offs , mainly with Ron Smith on art (you know the ones back in the day, from I dunno early 200s upto Prog 500 something).

Just out of interest, how do people find the time to read so many comics each month?

I ask as someone who only gets 2000AD and the Megazine plus a few Mega Collection issues, the odd Rebellion trade and the IDW Dredd stuff.

And the thing is, I generally only keep up to date on reading the Prog and the Meg. The Meg takes me all month. The Mega Collection, the trades and the IDW stuff is generally sitting there for ages before I get round to it. And I only occasionally read the floppy.

( I take the point that "buying" and "reading" aren't the same, but presumably you do eventually read the stuff that you buy for yourself?).

I guess you don't watch much TV?

Another great Prog.

Can't wait to see how Harvey finishes up next week.

Loving Colin MacNeil's art on Defoe. Indeed liking this strip far more than I ever did before.

Brink had become may favourite "new" thrill.

Had to read Scarlet Traces twice before I "got it".

Most interesting thing about Deadworld was seeing how the page from Dave Kendall's "From the Drawing Board" episode turned out - there seem to be a few subtle differences to my eye.

A good example of what I'm talking about (which involves doubts about the system and action taken by a Judge who questions it) is the recently-concluded IDW 12-issue Judge Dredd series that tells the story of "Mega City Zero".

As far as I am concerned nothing that happens in the IDW version of Dredd is canon in 2000AD Dredd.

There has been a lot of discussion on this forum about Dredd's age,  and it should be noted that he has recently had a re-juve in the Megazine, and the month before that had a medical with the med judge saying he was in great condition and good for many years yet.

Also,I am pretty sure John Wagner said on a recent panel that he has no plans to kill off Dredd, especially after the hoops they had to jump through to bring Alpha back.

Given all that, I have stopped worrying about his age and just get on with reading the strip.

Tordels, I stand corrected - Wikipedia reveals that cosmic rays consist of 9% alpha particles. Learn something new everyday.....

Just out of interest, when was Murd mentioned in Strontium Dog?