Looking back

[JohnW]

Y'see, this is why I'm never visiting the Radback.
Mr. Grumpy I could maybe deal with, but not if he shares a habitat with Mr. Too-Many-Fucking-Legs-For-Comfort, Mr. Bite-You-As-Soon-As-Look-At-You, and Mr. Sting-You-And-Leave-You-To-Die-Under-The-Unforgiving-Sun.

Tell me, Linc – does Mr. Grumpy ever get delusions of grandeur and climb up on church roofs looking for law enforcement officers to eat?

[lincnash]

does Mr. Grumpy ever get delusions of grandeur and climb up on church roofs looking for law enforcement officers to eat?

I'm not sure if skinks dream like humans and some other creatures do.
Although I'd swear he's dreaming of Dredd's first encounter with the 'Son of Old One Eye' just now.



Such gore! Such ultra-violence and published not that long after the castration and then slow death of a neutered ACTION weekly.
How did Tharg and 2000AD get away with it at the time.

[JohnW]

Such gore! Such ultra-violence ...
How did Tharg and 2000AD get away with it at the time?

And look how they skirted the edge of blasphemy by putting the crucifix in the middle, with blood dripping down from the devil beast's maw onto the crucified Christ.
Wow.
I was a well-brought-up Catholic boy and, trust me, we were taught not to take such imagery lightly.
Kids these days, etc. etc.

[nxylas]

And look how they skirted the edge of blasphemy by putting the crucifix in the middle, with blood dripping down from the devil beast's maw onto the crucified Christ.

Remind me, who wrote that again? 

[JohnW]

First of The First Impressions

And this is the big one: the man himself.
What was my first impression of Dredd? Very hard to say. I was so young that most of my impressions were first impressions.
I know I was seven when I first held a prog in my hands, and it was Prog 79, and that meant McMahon. How does a small child react to Mike McMahon's Dredd when the comics he's been used to thus far have largely featured anthropomorphic animals dressed in 1950s clothing? Those comics had stories that at their most adventurous might feature a small sailing boat and would usually end with a slap-up tea. What did Judge Dredd offer? I really couldn't tell.
Seriously – I was barely literate in the first place, and I was supposed to make sense of Chapter 19 of The Cursed Earth? Come on.
But an awareness of a rather ugly, rangy figure with a helmet and a big motorbike did seep into my consciousness over the next couple of years. I couldn't have made head nor tail of the stories, but I recognised the science fiction man who so often featured on the cover of 2000AD.
In fairness, it's not a character design you'd easily forget.

But what stuck in my little mind? More than the big-wheel bike and the warped Americana?
Probably because of those once-upon-a-time comics with anthropomorphic animals, it was the shoulder eagle.
Again, I'm talking specifically about McMahon's Dredd here.
The way McMahon drew it, it was an eagle with personality. It didn't look like an eagle to be at home in a magic wood with the other happy animals. A slap-up tea would not appease it. It was an eagle that looked most likely to take a lunge at you.
If it could speak (and it really looked like it could) it would probably say, 'Creep's still moving – hit him again, Joe.'*

After that there was the Fisher-Price ammo-selector on Dredd's gun. It was ludicrous, but for some reason I thought it was great. He's got a nasty big eagle glaring out from his right shoulder and he's got this clock-face effort on his gun.
Whatever this Judge Dredd looked like, it wasn't a hero.
He didn't have lock of hair falling across his forehead. He didn't have a steely glint in his eye or a winning smile.
He was a stone-faced humourless bastard in a mad uniform.
So yes, it took a while for him to grow on me, I admit.



*And I later discovered that Dredd's name was Joe. How stupidly ordinary was that? It was like Batman's real name being Bruce Batman.

[Trooper McFad]

Been a wee while for one of these and as always appreciated, but has it been a deliberate look back on what a 7 year old was looking for in a lawman (not a cadet!)

I was 9 when I got my first taste of Thrill power (1980 Annual) and I was hooked from the off. But looking back it was a poor story collection I mean only one Dredd strip and text strip but for a 9 year old it was enough to ask for more and search out the prog in my local 2nd hand book store so maybe we should give the Regened issues a break, I mean us auld farts don't have to like them, and hope some 7-9 year olds catch whatever we caught back waaay back then and have a life long love for Thrill power.

[sheridan]

I miss the era when Ian Gibson's Dredd eagle used to react to what was going on around them - like Garp's scarf :-)

[Dash Decent]

there was the Fisher-Price ammo-selector on Dredd's gun. It was ludicrous, but for some reason I thought it was great.

He moves the dial with his finger.  Imagine if every time he holstered it, the dial got pushed around to the sixth setting, just by the action of sliding it snugly into his boot.  A sudden firefight and he'd never know what he was shooting.  "Ricoch-- er, Hi-ex!"

*And I later discovered that Dredd's name was Joe.

Joe Dredd is a cool name.  Joseph is not.  I think he could be just a "Joe" without being a "Joseph".  It's something that came about because of the Stallone movie and (unbelievably, to me) took root instead of withering away.  That said, the movie did remind me that Americans would indeed call the outside beyond the city walls the "Curse-ed" Earth, rather than the "Curs'd" Earth.

[JayzusB.Christ]

I'm with you on the Joe thing. Like Pineapples, he just isn't a Joseph for me. And, as you say, the Joseph thing only came in after the Stallone film.

[JohnW]

Yeah, I'll take Joe over Joseph any day of the week.

Joseph calls to mind a priest insisting on a saint's name at the christening:
"I baptise you Joseph Ignatius in the name of the Father, and of the Son..."

It's easier to imagine the guys at Justice Department Genetic Control looking at the lawman of the future taking shape:
"The clones are coming along nicely. Kids're going to have Fargo's big ugly slab of a face."
"Yup. Going to be an intimidating SOBs, that's for sure."
"Scare the piss outta the cits anyway. We're giving them names to make people – y'know – dread them. How does Judge Fear sound?"
"Judge Fear? I like it. What about first names?
"Who needs a first name? We grow them in a jar; we send 'em to the Academy; we put them on the streets. It's not like they're going to have friends or families or anything."
"But just so's we can tell them apart."
"Jeez, OK – so call that one Joe, and the other one Steve. What do I care?"

[JayzusB.Christ]

Yep, that's the way I would look at it too - first names given by unimaginative Tek-Judges, as an afterthought.  Fred and Ted* would have been my choices.

I picked 'Joseph' as my confirmation name, but in my mind it was 'Joe' of course.  Pretty sure Dredd and Pineapples contributed to my choice.

*Which, now I think of it, are the names of the Cookes, my stand-up comedian mate and his son.  You may or may not know Fred from Dancing with the Stars and the Tommy Tiernan Show, John.

[JohnW]

You may or may not know Fred from Dancing with the Stars and the Tommy Tiernan Show, John.

Alas, no. I don't watch a whole lot of TV, so that's your career as a name-dropper coming to a grinding halt.

[JayzusB.Christ]

Can a man TRULY call himself a squaxx if he doesn't watch the Irish version of Dancing With the Stars?

[JohnW]

A man sits forlorn in an "I Honked On An ABC Warrior And Lived" t-shirt, his LRD filled with supermarket whiskey. Ragged 1980s progs carpet the floor around him. An old congratulatory letter from Tharg is held in his nerveless hand.
It has all been for nothing.
He has been a fraud all along and now the whole world knows it.

[JayzusB.Christ]

Like your whiskey on the back pages of those 80s progs on your floor, the truth would have spilled out (on) Sooner or Later.