Top little strip that. I scanned it from a 1985 Judge Dredd Collection, a compendium of strips that appeared in The Daily Star. There are four of these collections in that huge 2000AD haul I inherited, and I'm really enjoying dipping in to them. Most of the short stories are written by John Wagner, they are all drawn by the criminally underrated Ron Smith. If you've got any interest in Judge Dredd you'll want to read these stories, but I can't believe that many people have seen them. Even as a callow youth I remember finding it odd that Judge Dredd appeared in a downmarket rag like The Star. I mean, The Daily Star?! Come on! If I wanted to jack off, there were always abandoned porn mags to be found in the street (ah those heady pre-internet days), so I didn't need to buy the paper to look at naked ladies, and I wasn't about to part with money earmarked for jawbreakers, chips and proper comics just so I could read an 11-panel Dredd story. Consequently, I missed out on these treasures altogether. Now that I'm discovering them, I'm finding out just how good they are. Honestly, they're very different to the Dredd stories we know from 2000AD, more a guide to Mega-City One than anything else. Dredd does feature (obviously) but his job is usually to deliver a moral soundbite at the end of each story. Nope, the city is the star here and it's rarely looked better. I'd love to see a new omnibus style collection of these underappreciated strips.
2 comments:
Mega-City One was always the best character in Dredd. Like a bottomless well of comedy (with a dash of pathos occasionally thrown in for good measure).
(Those collections were the only way to get the Dredd newspaper strip back home, btw. Back when the UK seemed like a magical, far away land where you could get cool free gifts. Not as magical as the States, of course, where you could anything a kid desired, but pretty magical nonetheless.)
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