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It's been almost a decade since I read any monthly US titles. What do less xenophobic readers than myself and the foul Dweezil reckon would sell Dredd comics to a US comic reading audience?

From my position of ignorance, Dredd's a bit like Batman and The Punisher - so maybe they should emphasise more personal revenge narratives, as well as novel ways of killing people and/or cool gadgetry?

The more soapy elements of The Pit and the strip's now quite sizeable female supporting cast could be a bit like eighties X-Men?

I realise I'm just displaying my ignorance about current trends in US titles, but that's your cue to tell me what American nerds go buck wild for these days - apart from the words FIRST ISSUE on the cover, which seems to account for most of the top twenty:

http://www.comichron.com/monthlycomicssales/2016/2016-06.html

Judging by the majority of DC and Marvel's output that I've purused, I'd suggest all female judges, Anderson, Hershey, etc to have disproportionate sized breasts, a sprayed on uniform and none of them to look older than 19, oh and bent over suggestively or legs akimbo at every possible opportunity, then, and only then, is Dredd in for a fighting chance!

You've been perusing the wrong books.

[/size]I'm actually enjoying this one. Compared to the last main strip omnishambles this one is far better. Not prog standard but certainly late 90s Meg standard. Nothing wrong with trying something different.

That's about how I feel about the newest series - hoping that reboot happens though.

I started up with the usual defense tactics but after two failed movies

I wouldn't say 2012 was an unmitigated failure - I've not read a bad review of it, and it was number one in the box office the week it was released.  It's also been number one in whatever-category (sci-fi, dvd, blue-ray, etc) on amazon a few times.

I love the 2012 movie but sadly, it was an unmitigated failure at the US box office. There may well be various different reasons for that failure but at the end of the day, nobody went to see it over here.

Fuck. I must be going blind. Been searching for this thread for weeks now and couldn't find it.

Anyway: I got to hang out with the writer (and City Of Courts artist) Ulises Farinas at SDCC (we'd both been asked to take part in the official Star Trek 50th anniversary art show and ended up doing a signing together) and we got talking about Dredd quite a bit. I've been very harsh on IDW's Dredd title bar the mini-series/spin-offs but Farinas talks a good game. His reasoning towards this version of Dredd was pretty simple: Dredd as he appears in 2000AD has never really worked over here in the US and he wanted to try something radically different with the character to see what happened. He also felt a bit like the current Dredd stories in 2000AD are too po-faced and dour, with no humor- something I happen to strongly agree with. I started up with the usual defense tactics but after two failed movies and God-knows how many comic companies and titles have tried over here, I have to admit I felt a bit stumped trying to explain what's wrong with this version.

He's a big fan of both Dredd movies too for various reasons and all this would have been so easy to torpedo except he's a genuinely nice guy. We ended up having a good natter about our favorite shite movies and a pathetically satisfying and in-depth discussion about all things Star Trek.

In any case, yeah it's most certainly not the Dredd we're used to and I don't know how on board with it I am but I'm certainly a bit more open to it than before after talking with him. Apparently they're talking about rebooting it again possibly and returning it to a more conventional approach but honestly, whatever reservations I might have about this current run, I prefer it to what came before with the initial team.

Been buying like crazy since SDCC. All apologies if some of these have already been covered but I'm not trawling through this thread to check.

I'm never going to stop giving a huge shout-out to Giant Days. My current favorite. Not a superhero, alien, or robot in sight and all the more entertaining for it. If there's proof there's new life in the comics medium, this is it. Some decent contribution from our Mr. Campbell, too. As if that wasn't reason enough for you to check it out...!

Harrow County is awesome as well. American gothic horror with beautiful, beautiful painted art. Loving this one too.

The Discipline, written by 2000AD alumnus Pete Milligan. Not 100% sold on this yet. It's very much adult-themed, tons of demon sex, but something about the story not quite grabbing me yet. Feels a little forced. I'm sticking with it though. Beautiful art.

Satellite Falling Is working for me as well. Actually could almost belong in 2000AD. Great unapologetic sci-fi that clips along, kickass heroine, tons of aliens.

Currently working my way through Paul Dini's Dark Night. It's a great, if tough, read. A great insight into the life of an animation artist (something I can wholeheartedly relate to) and, unfortunately, into the trauma that comes with being violently mugged. Highly recommended. Some mind-blowing art from Eduardo Risso too.

And IDW's Dredd title. McDaid's art is great, I think. Not sure it particularly suits Dredd but I like his style. The story-- well, it is what it is which is NOT really a convincing Dredd. I'm trying to give it a chance because I got to, by a weird coincidence, hang out with the writer Ulises Farinas at SDCC and he's a lovely guy who means well and likes all the same shit movies I do. He defended his choices with the point that Dredd has never really taken off here in the US as presented and what with two failed movies and fuck knows how many different comic lines, I found my usual defense of Dredd somewhat lacking. He wanted to do an Elseworlds Dredd and in that regard, he's succeeded even if, in my opinion, he missed the point that MC1 herself is as much a character in Dredd as Dredd himself. Nonetheless, I've been guilty of napalming this one on sight, so I'm trying really hard to keep an open mind.

Rolling Stone's review: "Forget Batman v Superman — at least it tried. This botch job makes Fantastic Four look good."

(I doubt it's THAT bad!)

I thought the re-shoots were in response to the success of Deadpool to give it an 18 rating? Maybe I heard that wrong.

Rating hasn't changed over here since reshoots. The reshoots were to lighten the movie, apparently, and add some humor. 

Reviews are coming in and they are not pretty. Dang. Spoke to someone at SDCC who'd seen it and sounds like it lines up with his opinion: [spoiler]Short on plot, confusing tone, hope you like Will Smith, the entire movie is in the trailer. Lower your expectations, basically.[/spoiler]

A lot of Trek episodes were written to make use of existing sets and props, to keep the budget down.  I'm currently in the middle of season 3 and though some episodes are completely new to me, it's still tough going sometimes, especially when they beam down to planets that are just black backgrounds.

Everything about season 3 is hard work. New producer, slashed budget, weak scripts. There's barely a handful of solid scripts in there. Spectre Of The Gun and The Enterprise Incident are the highlights.

It's interesting that this version of Kirk doesn't have the same bravado or optimism as the classic version. [spoiler]He's paralyzed here with the "no-win scenario" that Shatner's Kirk would have battled his way through. Pine's really not much of a Captain. Broody and whiny and full of doubts and hesitation. But in saying that, this is the first time I felt comfortable enough writing that off as an alternate/Elseworlds version of the character.[/spoiler]

As for Krall, yeah, I just think everything about him was handled pretty clumsily. Maybe a bad edit, a weak script, something. He just never felt properly explained throughout.

And yeah, I'm willing to edit out STID and just jump straight into this one.

I see I've missed a few posts overnight!

Blackmocco, so glad you got chance to share those images at a larger size- do you mind if I post 'em on the Q blog later?

As for the strip- it is one of my fave things we've done in Zarjaz over the ten years we've been in charge. The mix of horror and joy you must have felt as a creator s there on every gruddam page.

Seriously- if any of you out there haven't got a copy of the new Zarjaz, you are a grexnix. We won't be doing an issue like this again for a loong time. All the creators went above and beyond for the cause.

Yep, go for it, Bolt. No problem.

Lobo, sorry. Had no idea. My Zarjaz collection's a bit spotty!

And yeah, I know I'm a bit biased but it's a very strong issue. Bolt's right. Be a shame if people were thinking because it's small press it's not worth the effort. David Broughton's ABC Warriors is worth the cover price alone. Man's a workhorse. His productivity makes me wail and gnash my teeth.

Speechless.

That clatter you heard was me throwing my laptop away. I simply can't compete. Brilliant story, fabulous art.

It truly ain't called Zarjaz for nothin'!

Well, thankee for the kind words, good sir. However, you should pick up your laptop and start plugging back at it. We need you, Shark! (It IS a great issue though!) Big props to The Dave and The Richmond for pulling it all together and for foolishly and easily capitulating to my prissy the-man-from-LA-demands: A4 and color. Dave even sent me a note with mine telling me this was all my fault! Haha!

And if it makes you feel any better, Shark- the strip's art got the royal thumbs-down from Tharg himself who felt the style doesn't suit the prog's requirements. I kinda suspected that was going to be the case (it's a bit goofy, I'll concede) while also simultaneously hoping that same fact might be the thing to catch his Betelgeusian eye. Nonetheless, we battle on.

I assumed the whiskey scene at the start of the film [spoiler]where Kirk and McCoy pour a third glass for the absent Checkov[/spoiler] was a homage to Yelchin.

I assumed the third glass was intended for Kirk's absent father...? But it works as a Yelchin tribute too.

Please forgive me. This turned into a bit of a ramble. There is a point, I promise:

So, I contributed a Nemesis/Comic Rock Presents... strip to the latest issue of Zarjaz. Think it's safe to say I was pretty excited. Kev O'Neill's art and Nemesis quite literally fried my ten year old brain courtesy of prog 224 back in 1981 and has continued to do so ever since. No other artist that inspired me as much. When I saw the world that O'Neill had envisioned, it transformed my drawing habits from a cute little hobby, fishing for compliments from my folks and friends, to a manic obsession. When I was sixteen, I got a job at Don Bluth's studio in Dublin working on Land Before Time (fulfilling my other great obsession: drawing dinosaurs) on the back of the 2000AD art I had created (no doubt horrendous, but I still wish I had kept them). It's almost thirty years later now, I'm sitting in Los Angeles working for Family Guy and there's no doubt in my mind that opening prog 224 all those years ago was the springboard for all of it.

With all that in mind, writing and drawing a Nemesis strip was a daunting and simultaneously exhilarating experience. Nemesis had never been tackled before in Zarjaz and that was intimidating enough ("DON'T FUCK THIS UP!") but on top of that, rumours had always abounded that Nemesis was off-limits as Pat and Kev were apparently quite protective of everyone's favorite demon alien agent of chaos and freedom fighter. Maybe that's all second-hand bollocks. I don't know. They both said yes when I asked them. Maybe no-one had asked them before.

Anyway, the strip got done (once I'd gotten over the mental hurdle and realization that I'm NOT Kev O'Neill, I can't draw like Kev O'Neill, neither can anyone else, therefore please stop worrying about it and have some fun instead) and if I do say so myself, I'm very proud of it. It's dangerously compressed storytelling. Two pages in, I realized my story was too large for a mere twelve pages but I ended up embracing that and just went fucking mad with it instead. Comics are too dragged out these days anyway. 22 pages of talking heads. Fuck that. My only big regret was elaborate chase sequences and fight scenes I'd imagined taking pages to flesh out became mere panels instead. So be it. Pat and Kev probably could have hammered out the same story in five pages and done it infinitely better, but hey. We do what we can with what we have at hand.

The story I wrote involved a vacuous celebrity, a Termight-ian Kendall Jenner-type becoming infatuated with Nemesis and I'd always wanted a panel revealing a scrapbook containing imagery she'd collected from various sources so she could have something to secretly ogle. Anyway, along the way I also managed to pull in some collaborators from artist friends, most of whom had never, sadly, even heard of Nemesis. (Needless to say, that's all changed now.) Thought it might be fun to share some of the contributions on here as this became a little bit of a project.

Here's the opening page:



One of American Dad's character designers, Jeff Rebner:



Family Guy assistant director Mark Covell:



Illustrator Peter Donnelly:



Illustrator and comic artist Neil McClements:



Family Guy character designer Sharon Ross:



Family Guy director Joe Vaux:



And finally, Family Guy director Joseph Lee. Bearing in mind these are all busy people and these images were always going to be pretty small in the strip itself, I beseeched everyone not to spend too much time on them. Then Joseph hands me this. Thanks Joseph. Let me just go home hang myself now.

Yeah, it's not bad, have to say. Kinda nice to just have a Dredd tale plucked out of context like the glory days where the strip didn't have so much dour baggage. Part Island of Dr. Moreau, part Hotdog Run. Think it gets more right than wrong. It's not quite Dredd, but it's a closer shot than what IDW have currently been peddling. Art's decent too. Manages to just about touch the cloak of vintage Cam Kennedy. Nice and gritty.

I'll give it the thumbs-up. For whatever that's worth...

Lovely, Jimbo! Holy shit!