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I can understand the concern over those van shots.  We all want this film to do really well and we also want every bit of it to really sing, bringing MC1 alive for us and faithfully so.

When I first saw the vans it made me dispair for the Lawmaster - going along the same lines Dredd could just be riding a standard Suzuki or something.  Then I remembered that we know the Lawmaster has bike cannons.  And if the bikes have cannons then the other Justice Dept vehicles should be armed, which these are not - yet.  I don't see that anyone would go to the trouble of painting Justice Dept livery on them if they were going to cover it up with CGI later, but I think there may be some extra bits to add on.

Also, as others have said here, the vans may just sit in the background.  If Dredd joins in a pursuit, we may just register the black blurs with sirens as he speeds past.  Similarly they may just sit brooding in the background of a night-time scene with lights flashing making us aware of their presence without being particularly visible.

I also think the film makers have to recognise the Stallone film to a degree.  The casual punter will have an vague idea of Dredd from that - enormous futuristic metropolis, flying cars & bikes, etc.  I think said cinema-goer would be thrown for a minute if the film looks like it was set only 20 minutes into the future.

Anyway, I'm happy to wait and see the film before making any judgement.  I know how I hope they'll be used, but even if the film-makers do something different I'll make my own decision when I see the movie.  All the news I've heard about the film ticks the right boxes for me - involvement of Jock, John Wagner, the Kingsleys; getting the helmet right; an actor who knows the background and will keep the helmet on; no gold codpiece, etc - so I feel I can trust them on this one too.

Stamps, tissues and a photo of the family.

Two new titles now pre-listed on Amazon UK:

Judge Death: The Life and Death Of, 224 pages, 12th July 2011.

Hondo-City Law by Wagner/Quitely, 144 pages, 16th August 2011.

There's not a huge technological leap from the dog-bot to a six-foot long robo-spider with metal fangs dripping acid. Imagine being pursued by one (or more) of those monstrosities through a wintry forest!

It's Forbidden Forest all over again!

For a moment there I thought Dredd was about to whack Batman across the fingers with his daystick to make him fall - "No vigilante justice in my city, creep!"

Part of the "Dredd vs Death" game takes place in the Undercity.  I don't know whether that can be considered canonical in any way, but parts of it were very well realised.

Jimmy Perry and David Croft

Control: "Dredd, there's an armed perp on the rampage at the Joey Ramone Block Shoparama.  Can you deal?"
Dredd: "I'm free!"

Neal Stephenson.

As long as that's not the entire costume....

I remember, as a young punk in the 80's, reading Judge Dredd with my mates and all of us being pleased that almost everyone would be a punk in the future.

I always liked the character of Blank Reg in Max Headroom -  a guy who'd been a punk all his life, right into his old age (mohawk and all).  "Remember when we said 'no future'?  Well this is it."

I received Masters 02 yesterday.  It has Dredd's trip to Egypt in it as well as the recent dimension Alpha/Hard Rage story.  Being used to the Hamlyn reprint, "Book of the Dead" seems tiny!

I think the cover is woeful - I wouldn't have dropped the draft Cliff cover for this.  I really like the draft cover for Masters 03 (Dredd on Lawmaster), so I hope they retain it for the actual release.

The outside?

I can understand Dash's reticence concerning the other models as, I'll admit, the thought did occur to me as well. That's more a reference to the design of the characters though, not 3A's work, if that makes sense.

Yes, that's exactly my thinking.  You can see the detailed work that has gone into these but it was the identity of the characters that I wasn't aware of.  If they're established comic book characters then it makes sense that the soup can fans want a Cream-of-tomato-bot[TM] as much as I want a Rogue trooper with an accurate gunnar rifle etc.

Though Ming does imply that the Adventure Kartel doesn't have any other media to it so it appears to be a 'love of 3A' thing rather than love for those characters.

I'm sure I've seen a licenced Boba Fett guitar.  It was reasonably cool, but the same company made volume knobs that looked like R2D2 and C3POs head.  Now that just seems a bit too far for me.

That's what you said last time at those toilets in Atlantis!