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So now when Dredd is taking an absolute pounding he's thinking 'oh well, I'll be a bit narked having to get off the street for some rejuve'

Seems a bit PSI rod for your back in the long run.

What annoyed me more was how dull, decompressed and yank TV the whole thing was. 'Oh moley, not my family... You're family is fine, but my family....' Ugh. Don't care. Dull characters, no reason for us to care about them or anything happening to them. No humour, nothing original. Yuck.

Does Jock have family or besties over in Ireland? For such a big name artist he's frequently here. Which is lucky for us.

IDWs 'zoids' to focus on talking plant pots because 'traditional Zoids don't work in the Americian market'.

Maybe likely will start from the bottom and work his way up dredds allies so thus yeah walter (and by extension mrs g) is first if that next prog tags accurate

Heh, that would be magnificent - a 20 part epic where Maybe takes out the whole Wagner-Dredd supporting cast. And thereby stops lesser writers tarnishing them.

A Tharg adventure featuring Alec Trench, Denise and drawn by Gibson is the only fitting tribute to this unsung heroine of the thrillways.

(she once fixed a problem for me. She's officially ace).

I'd imagine 2000AD could simply put one reprint or all new Dredd tale in under '2000AD: Judge Dredd'. It might actually boost sales to those usually reluctant to buy an anthology.

It does seem pandering to the two companies who make least effort with FCBD - whose efforts are usually reprinted dross that even their fanboys note is sub-par. Companies like BOOM! and Fanatgraphics are going to be hit more by the 'no anthologies' rather than Rebellion with is one big 'draw'.

Stray Bullets and She-Wolf winning the monthlies for me atm.. apparently these sell zilch however so what do I know about popular comics...

I'm not fucking grinning.

The Judges tone is totally off, the action dumb as rocks, the lawmaster looks wonky but it's still a fun comic. It's a STOOPID comic but well enough executed to be enjoyable and 'bring on the aliens....'

There is lots to nit pick and if you're precious about Dredd then it might bug you but if you can accept Inferno level Dredd it's grand.



(Someone should point out to the evil genius he would be a billionaire in MC1 given his tech's capabilities)

I thought it was more interesting that the IDW Dredd atm has three inconsistant personalities  - two of which are not that far from a 2000AD Dredd. 'MC1 Dredd' is pretty on the money Prog Dredd, right down to the prog continuity references. The main 'Grasslands' Dredd is very Tales of the Dead Man and so not that out of character given he's 'been' in the grasslands over a year. Its not great and the writing has many vague inconsistant moments that may seem 'out of character' but overall the tone is there.

The other one is just straight up James Stokoe Rogue Trooper (http://www.forbiddenplanet.co.uk/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/tumblr_m7ipjofLjQ1qf1pjzo1_1280-540x834.jpg) and it even looks odd in the comic. It comes across as just straight up bad writing, especially when it happens a second time by the same trigger (stranger in a strange land scenarios).

Have no idea if this Dredd is a success (you can see reasons why it wouldn't be regardless of the personality of Dredd - this is straight up an ODD comic on many levels) but it does seem an oddly familar Dredd given the authors statements reported above.

Part of the reason Dredd wont work in the States by now is just the bad rep. The old movie, the 'failed' new movie, the terrible Quality reprints, the translation of page sizes.... these micro-factors of reputation keep the massees away.

The Dredd V A V P comic atm is a good idea - if AvP fans read it and think 'thats a good character' its likely to draw more of them to check out more Dredd. Sadly IDW's main title dosen't seem too likely to capitalise on that. Imagine if you gave those AvP readers the Wagner / Diggle / Flint 'Dredd v Aliens' and then something like Titan.. they'd be hooked. If they check out 'the old man and the sea' vs anthropomorphic chickens on social media story its not clear they'll connect.

Having read through 1-8 in one sitting it's a strange but not bad comic. Certainly way better than the first IDW and the truly baffling Wolk fiasco but curious in a number of ways.

For those that haven't read it the story starts with Dredd in a grassy wastelands around the remenents of one city block. That block is the only structure for miles. It is guarded by Mechanismos that don't recognise Dredd. Dredd arrests then becomes ward of three feral children with whom he infiltrates the block. The block seems run on a social-media credit heirarchy that rejects law and encourages trolling up to a limit. There is a truely strange issue (3) where Dredd arena fights a troll (in the Internet sense) who grows Tetsuo-style in relation to how inflamed / angry he gets. The kids get expelled from the block and Dredd sets off in pursuit passing through the under city (4), going against and into a 'male' 1950s VR (5-6) and then a sort of high brown guardian reader cult of political correctness (7) before rescuing said colony's children from a gang infusing the kids with fluids from the Dark Judges 'in order to protect them' from the grass (8). In effect it all reads as a Cursed Earth saga with Internet communities replacing the traditional cursed earth cults.

Set against this, and somewhat out of nowhere, issue 5 seeds the 'explaination' for all this. Post Chaos Day a AI has begun manufacturing and distributing a drug called Green (grass anyone?) which is causing mass disappearance and suicide. A young judge, Berger, sees parallels in her own work on reducing crime which has some sort of social media / The Matrix vibe to it. Dredd and Anderson investigate but respirators are ineffective and Anderson becomes addicted. Berger teams up with Dredd and seems left in a position to further her strange reform ideas...

What to make of it all? It's certainly interesting when read as a whole. The main criticism is that it's incredibly decompressed and is taking far too long. The 'real MC1 Dredd' bits put the story back on an interesting footing but it took 5 issues before this was introduced. Or 15 of your earth pounds. To the creative teams credit 'real MC1' Dredd is pretty convincing. He acts, speaks and operates largely as the Prog Dredd would do. It sort of rebuts the 'you have to do something different with Dredd' line used when IDW Dredd acts like a loony. Furthermore after issue 5 we only get small progression in the 'real MC1' story element as the writer returns to his goal of critiquing / parodying online life.

As to whether it's 'our' Dredd it's hard to say. The 'real MC1' Dredd is convincing but only in the piece sporadically. In the latter issues the 'future / grass' Dredd has become more of a ward to the children while trying to comprehend better what the link of the green drug to the grass is. He's not a bad 'old man on the Long Walk' version of Dredd. What is odd however is both issues 1 and 6 where Dredd 'wakes up' in a new environment (first in the grass and secondly in a 1950s male-topia) Here Dredd acts completely inconsistently with both 'our' Dredd and the character in the bulk of the story. In both he runs around shouting he's the law, trying to beat up everyone and wasting his ammo. It makes no sense on any level. Given that's the 'Dredd' of issue 1 you would be concerned about how new readers would take to the character and just when the comic seems to have got to a more rational, logical realistic Dredd it goes and does the exact same thing with the 1950s VR machine. Frankly it's odd and poor writing / editorial.

The art is okay to good. It suffers a bit of very wonky figure work (Dredd seems to have permanently dislocated shoulders) and the colours can be muted-to-confusing. However there is good kinetic work and some very atmospheric work at times. The descent into the under city was a great couple of pages that would grace the Prog. However the children are clearly causing the artist problems, their body shapes and sizes seem to constantly change, one minute Dredd is pulling out 'adult' scale children from refuse, the next the children are pre-puberty formless bodies. And on that the whole 'naked' children thing in issue 6 is very very weird and unnecessary (although that was the guest artist).

Overall I'd put the series so far on a mid to high score. It's definately not without flaws but on its own rhythm it works. I'd hope this story resolves by issue 12 (4 to go) and the same creative team get down to some MC1 stories because they certainly have shown that they can deliver that. And frankly I'm not too sure how much more 'critiquing Internet culture' the story can take.

Cal hab Justice?

Again?


Lordy.

Cheers Jim.

You're undoubtably right about Button Man, had forgotten that.

If thats right about Scarlet Traces its very interesting. Given the other options that are out there - the possibility of crowd-funding to the multiple of creator-rights US publishers atm to give away / sell the rights to Rebellion is something different.

Obv. I've no idea about the legal specifics of the thing so apologies to the creators or rebellion if I've said something out of place. Just one of those things as a lawyer I find interesting.

Quick thought / question - is Scarlet Traces the first Creator Owned thing in the prog? (My thinking is yes as the Creator Owned slot in the Meg is of recent vintage).

I'm assuming its creator owned given its heritage outside of the Meg...

Totally ace summer prog.

You can't call it a 'special' tho as there was no quiz or 'top ten bad guys stomped by Judge Dredd' lists!

Hope Tharg can get McCarthy back for more Dredd soon.