Judge Dredd: The Cursed Earth Uncensored signing at Gosh!

I do not often go to signings by comics creators despite my deep love for the form. I am not entirely sure why that is but I suspect that part of the reason is that many comics professionals make other appearances, e.g. at talks and conventions, and so I have had the opportunity to meet several of my heroes over the years.

The last signing event that I went to was also at Gosh! Comics and that was for Sally Heathcote, Suffragette. Unfortunately that was not a good guide for what to expect this time.

This signing was for a new high-quality printing of Judge Dredd: The Cursed Earth which carries the "uncensored" label as it had been impossible to reprint some of the issues previously. The reason was some copyright issues and the poster for the event hints at what those were. The people behind the Jolly Green Giant were not too amused either. Since then laws have changed slightly and common sense has prevailed and the full story can now be retold.

I have the story in another collected edition (I was not reading 2000AD in Summer 78) and while it is clearly worth rereading and it is always nice to have a high-quality comic book to read, the reason that i wanted to be at the signing was because of the people.

Brian Bolland went on from 2000AD to become an even bigger comics legend at DC Comics famous for many covers and for 1988's Batman: The Killing Joke written by Alan Moore. Almost thirty years later and the book still sells well, and rightly so.

Mike McMahon was the main reason that I went to the signing. His art defined what was best about 2000AD for me and I am a major fan of his. I got into 2000AD via Starlord when the two merged in 1978, oddly enough in the issue after Cursed Earth concluded.  At the time I associated him most with Ro-Busters, which later morphed into ABC Warriors, but he drew several stories for 2000AD and I loved his art on all of them.

And that is why I found myself in Soho on a Saturday afternoon queueing in the sun.

There was far more queueing than I, or Gosh!, expected. I arrived at 12pm for a 1pm start to find the queue already well established and most of the copies of Judge Dredd: The Cursed Earth Uncensored already sold. I wanted to buy two but was only allowed one. They had also stopped taking online orders a couple of days earlier.

I left the shop and joined the queue. Because of the high demand they started the signing a little earlier than planned, around 12:45, but it was still almost exactly 2pm until I got back to the shop door and a few minutes after that before I got to the table. It then took just another couple of minutes to get my things signed and to say a few nice things to the artists. I got a bit star-struck with Mike McMahon, which was fine.

I also got somebody in the shop to take this picture of me basking in their greatness.

Queueing for two hours to spend two minutes getting two signatures may sound like a poor deal but when it means meeting these two gentlemen then it was a bargain.

2000AD Prog 1947 with Judge Dredd on a charge

My deep dive into the last two years of 2000AD continues and while I am trying to draw attention to some of the lesser known, or almost unknown, strips there are times when the old favourites demand attention and Henry Flint's cover to Prog 1947 is one such moment.

In the current Dredd story line, Enceladus, he is up against fallen judges who had been exiled to the penal colony on Titan and then had moved to another of Saturn's moons, Enceladus. Somehow that had led to Mega City 1 being engulfed by ice and under attack from ice monsters. The strip carries these longer stories from time to time and I love them. Writer Rob Williams takes the credit for this one.

But it is Henry Flint's art that makes this Dredd story something rather special.

I also like the reference to the classic Doors song, Riders On the Storm, in the title. 2000AD does a lot of that sort of thing.

2000AD Prog 1936 with Harry Absalom

My catching-up with 2000AD is going well, if not quite well enough for me to be up to date by the time that I start my new job. There has been a lot of enjoy as I've tried to read four issues a day and I wanted to highlight one of the less well know stories - Absalom.

Harry Absalom is a police inspector who fights supernatural forces in a version of modern day Britain. His police procedures are far more The Sweeney than Line of Duty and that is part of the charm of the stories. These are penned by 2000AD regular Gordon Rennie who has written several Judge Dredd and Rogue Trooper stories as well as creating other titles such as Aquila.

The artwork by Dom Reardon is deliciously quirky and ideal for the strip.

Absalom is something a little different and a cracking read with it.

2000AD Prog 2014 - and many others

Somehow I let my unread pile of 2000ADs grow to around two year's worth, just over 100 issues.

I have long intended to catch up and then keep up to date and finally I have the chance to do so with a four week break between finishing one job and starting another. That works out at around four progs a day and I have more or less kept up with that for the first two and a bit weeks. I think the required read rate has crept up to five a day but I think that I can increase the rate as I head towards the deadline and even if I fail that target then reading just one prog a day will allow me to get right up to date within a week or two.

Catching up may sound like a chore but it is proving to be a real pleasure and I have thoroughly enjoyed the sixty issues that I have read so far.

One of the nice things that 2000AD has done in recent years is have jumping on issues, like prog #2014, where all the strips start new story lines. Prog #2014 also has a triumvirate of mega-stars inside and on the cover, namely Strontium Dog, Judge Dredd and Slaine. Good days indeed.

Another task I have given myself for this break is to sort out my comics that were arranged, not organised, in piles in three rooms by bagging them all and putting them into boxes. This has meant several trips to Raygun Comics, always a good place to go, to buy boxes and bags followed by hours spent at the top of the stairs carefully putting comics into bags and bags into boxes. Those hours were made palatable by listening to drama on BBC Radio, starting with seven hours of Evelyn's Waugh's Men at Arms.

Once I have dealt with the 2000AD backlog I can start on the other piles of unread comics.

Revisiting Zenith, and loving it

I am rereading Zenith by mistake.

The book that I really wanted for Christmas was the first volume of the collected Dan Dare stories from 2000AD but nobody picked up on my unsubtle hints, not even the shop, so not only did nobody buy it for me I was unable to buy it for myself.

I still needed a present and so I chose Zenith Phase One, the first of four volumes collecting the Zenith stories that appeared in 2000AD between 1987 and 1992, which I read at the time.

They were written by Grant Morrison who was virtually unknown at the time and this was his first ongoing series. Since then he has become a comics superstar and an MBE. It is Grant Morrison's name that has brought the series back into print in this collection of high quality hardback books.

The artist, Steve Yeowell, is also notable but mostly for this and other work that he has done at 2000AD, including the long running saga The Red Seas that ran from 2002 and 2013.

Zenith is one of a small few British superheroes in Thatcher's Britain, Thatcher makes some appearances and one of the other superheroes is in her Cabinet. He's also a pop star and something of a spoiled brat. Unfortunately there are significant threats to Britain and the World and Zenith's help is needed.

Zenith did not make that much of an impression on me the first time around, which is why I had not rushed out to buy the collected editions earlier, but rereading Zenith now has been a joy. So much so that Phases Two, Three and Four were immediately put on my birthday list, together with Dan Dare.

One of the things I like about Morrison's writing is the amount of detail that goes into his prose. To give just one small example to make the point, when Chimera becomes the solar system (don't ask) she mentions "the tortured rock of Venus, the metal dry sands of Mars". That is poetry. Incidentally, it also reminded me of some other poetry, "the vermillion deserts of Mars, the jewelled forests of Venus" by Hawkwind legend Bob Calvert.

The stories are fast paced with lots of action and lots of large (and irregular) panels. At one level it is a simple, but satisfying, read and then there is the poetry in it that slows me down as I savour the word craft that delights on another level.

The book itself is a work of art with top quality paper and crisp printing. I understand that I lot of work went into creating the new pages from the original artwork which was created in the days before comics were produced digitally and the effort was worth it.

I have just finished Zenith Phase Two and will wait a little while before continuing to the other two volumes so as to prolong the pleasure.

#DayofDredd

Today is the Day of Dredd when the legion of fans of the chisel chinned Judge from the pages of 2000AD raise their voices in unison to call for a sequel to the rather good 2012 film starting Karl Urban. I quite like the 1995 film starring Sylvester Stallone too but it is probably best not to mention that.

I have done my little bit to raise the profile of Judge Dredd today by tweeting with the hashtag #DayofDredd and by writing this blog post, which also gives me the opportunity to dig out a photo of me wearing the 30th anniversary t-shirt on holiday in Tunisia in 2007 when it was new.

2000AD Prog 1864: Mek-Quake v Mongrol

I have been following these characters for almost thirty five years and still they excite me. This is especially true when they are drawn by Clint Langley. This cover is phenomenal.

Clint Langley is the latest in a long and very prestigious line of illustrators of these battling robots and my other favourites are Kevin O'Neill, Mike McMahon, Bryan Talbot and Simon Bisley.

Pat Mills has written all of their stories which is am amazing achievement.

Celebrating 30 years of Slaine in 2000AD Prog 1848

I am rapidly eating in to my 2000AD backlog and it is now down to 4 issues from 16. That's a real benefit from not having to work away from home for several days each week which I have had to do for the last two years.

The Slaine story is based on Celtic myth and features all sorts of gods and monsters, as well as a troublesome dwarf and an axe called Brainbiter.

I started reading 2000AD with Prog 86 (October '78), when it merged with Star Lord, and I remember when Slaine first appeared in Prog 330 (August '83). The stories have never been complex but they have had a cute mix of myth, gore and humour.

The Slaine celebration was a series of four single-issue stories all written by creator Pat Mills with each drawn by one of Slaine's major artists, these were Mike McMahon, Glenn Fabry, Simon Bisley and Clint Langley. I like all of them but have a special fondness for McMahon so it is his cover of Prog 1848 that I have chosen.
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Nemo: Heart of Ice fails to excite

I first came across the erratic genius that is Alan Moore in 2000AD in his future shocks short stories and I have some faint memories of some of those. He soon made a bigger and more lasting impact, again in 2000AD, with the serious The Ballad of Halo Jones and the wildly funny D. R. and Quinch, both of which were blessed with top-notch artists.

Soon after came V for Vendetta and his run on Swamp Thing, which are my favourite works of his.

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen started in 1999 as a story featuring fictional Victorian heroes.

There have been more stories since then each set in a different era and each making wilful references to fictional characters of that time, including in one story Rupert Bear and Tiger Tim. This started to infringe copyrights and Volume 3, The Black Dossier, was not generally available in the UK (I have it, of course) and after that it moved from to smaller publishers less at risk of being sued.

Throughout this journey the art has been provide by Kevin O'Neill who I also first came across in 2000AD, notably with Robusters and Nemesis the Warlock.

The latest story in the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen saga is Nemo Heart of Ice. The new captain of the Nautilus, and hence the bearer of the name "Nemo", is Janni Dakkar the daughter of Prince Dakkar the original Captain Nemo in the stories by Jules Verne.

This tale takes us to the Antarctica of HP Lovecraft with its Mountains of Madness, buried cities, sightless penguins and nameless monsters lurking in shadows.

As in the previous books, I liked spotting the literary references and I am sure that I missed most of them. Somehow though, that was all the story did and the main plot failed to engage me. It was rather like watching a repeat of a 70's TV show, something like Minder or Lovejoy, and looking at the clothes and cars rather than the story.

Kevin O'Neill's artwork, however, is as superb as it always is and I am delighted that he has retained the sharp lines that I first fell in love with many years ago.

Nemo Heart of Ice was a disappointment but not a disaster and I am sure that I'll be reading the next League of Extraordinary Gentlemen story too.

Brian Bolland speaks at Comica

Brian Bolland is one of the grandees of British comic book art and so I leaped at the chance to hear him speak at a Comica event.

The venue for this was the new home of Central Saint Martins which has grown out of disused industrial buildings just north of Kings Cross Station. This is already an impressive site and building with a large courtyard of fountains outside and large open spaces inside. Comica has held in the Platform Theatre. That is at the back of the site where the next stages of the sites redevelopment are in full swing.

The Platform Theatre has a comfortable bar so arriving a little early was not a problem, I always like to allow some time in case of tube hold-ups.

Brian came prepared with a presentation with dozens of examples of his work from throughout his career. He went through these are some pace pausing momentarily to tell us about some of the more important milestones, such as Killing Joke which launched him as a major force in the USA too.

Another milestone, and a much less obvious one, was Brian's move to digital working and his views on this were interesting.

Brian saw the original pen and ink work as the definitive look and feel and with digital he is trying to replicate that, not to do something new, though he has done some playing with the capabilities of Photoshop such as incorporating photographs.

His reason for using digital is for the improvements it gives in the mechanics of drawing. An obvious benefit is the ability to change or delete things easily. A less obvious benefit is that drawing on a slate with the picture appearing on a separate screen means that the drawing hand does not get in the way of the eye and the drawing.

The other insight that I found interesting was that Brian prefers the traditional 9-panel structure of a page believing that the panel should be a window on to the art rather than part of it. He found complex page structures distracting.

This was a whirlwind presentation that could only scratch the surface of his long and wide career. Unfortunately the timetable for the evening meant that the journey was shorter than I would have liked and the host thought that questions from the audience were more important than just letting Brian tell his story.

This was a Chinese meal of a talk that left me satisfied but wishing for more. Hopefully Comica will deliver that something more one day.

RO-BUSTERS in 2000AD Prog 1810

I am a subscriber to 2000AD as that is the easy way to get every issue and it is a nice bonus that subscribers get their comics a few days before the official publication date. The latest issue has just been delivered and what an impact it makes!

The cover is by Clint Langley, who has been mentioned here a few times before, and features RO0-BUSTERS in a menacing mood. I can't wait to read Pat Mills' story inside.

This is why 2000AD is still the galaxy's greatest comic.

The Dark Judges are back in 2000AD Prog 1781

It has been far too long since I mentioned 2000AD and even longer since I said anything about Judge Dredd so it is good to redress the balance with a look at the cover story Prog1781.

2000AD has always had the courage to run long Judge Dredd stories alongside those that stretch for just one, two or three issues and the current storyline is literally mega.

Mega-City One is being attacked by Russians in revenge for Dredd destroying East-Meg One in a massive nuclear strike at the climax of the Apocalypse War (another epic tale). Their weapon is a lethal and virulent virus that has so far killed hundreds of thousands of people and which is spreading quickly.

That is the main plot line but there are lots of side-shows like a civil war, the destruction of the Justice Department's flagship building and the escape of the city's former major and mass-murderer PJ Maybe.

This is epic and then some.

And now we have the Dark Judges too dispensing their instant justice, "The crime is life. The sentence is death." Epic just got epicer.

To make the point Henry Flint has drawn this exceptional cover.

The Day of Chaos, the tile of this epic, is now just days away and even if Dredd somehow "wins" the city will still be largely destroyed and millions will have died.

The story has been gripping me for over forty weeks now (it started in Prog 1742) and I hope it carries on doing so for quite a few more weeks yet. Then I'll need a rest.

Mazeworld by Alan Grant and Arthur Ranson

Mazeworld first appeared the the pages of 2000AD in the regrettable period of my life when I was not reading it so this new collection allows me to recover some of that mistake.

Mazeworld is a fantasy set in the dreams somewhere between life and death, not unlike Life on Mars which came some years later.

The central character is hanged for murder but refuses to die. Instead he finds himself in a world of many mazes each ruled by a tyrant. One of the ways they keep their power is by not revealing the maps of the mazes.

The story is rich with ideas. There are mazes with traps, a captured angel, doctors hoping to profit from his non-death, demons trying to break through to our world and strange prophecies.

Arguably none of these ideas is earth-shattering by themselves, and a lot of them have echoes in other stories, but it is the wealth and diversity of ideas that grabs you. Alan Grant is an established and revered write of stories and Mazeworld shows why.

By itself that would make Mazeworld a good read but the sumptuous art work of Arthur Ranson makes it something special.

The level of detail in each picture is far more than you have any right to expect in a weekly British comic and the layout of the panels is imaginative without being fussy.

The familiar horizontal and vertical lines with clear borders between them are stretched in to irregular sizes that retains the form while allowing the art to follow the pace of the story.

I also love the use of colour and of shade. Some scenes, like this one, are bright with clearly defined lines and in others, when we venture deep in to some of the mazes, the pictures are very dark and the outlines of the shapes are made fuzzy by the shadows.

Mazeworld was originally published in three chapters each of which is a self-contained story using the same settings and main characters, not unlike the Narnia stories.

There is a bigger story that crosses all three chapters so it makes sense to read the whole collection in a single sitting.

Less obvious is the original structure of three or four pages per week. It is there if you look carefully but Alan Grant skilfully avoids the use of blatant cliffhangers each week and this gives the story a more natural pace that is dictated by the needs of the story rather then the demands of the publication.

This is one of the nice things about 2000AD. The weekly format of four or five stories allows each one to set its own mood and pace safe in the knowledge that the combined effect of the stories delivers enough thrill-power and suspense to bring the readers back next week. It works for me.

Mazeworld, like Meltdown Man, shows the strength of 2000AD and of the talent in the UK comic industry that denies the myth that comics means American superheroes.

The Winter Palace reimagined by Simon Fraser

The saga of Nikolai Dante in 2000AD is drawing to a close and is doing so in style. The story is propelled by intra-familial rivalries that out-do Eastenders with their violence (torture is a family habit) and inspire bloody revolutions that engulf a large empire.

Capturing the dynamism of the action and the grandeur of the setting is the stunning art work of Simon Fraser.

This is his view of the Winter Palace in St Petersburg rebuilt in the twenty-seventh century by Dmitri Romanov, Patriarch of the Romanov dynasty (and Nikolai's father), as the symbol of the new empire.

Nemesis the Warlock, Volume 1

The reprints of strips from 2000AD continues to provide me with much pleasure.

The latest one to bubble to the top of my reading pile is Nemesis the Warlock, Volume 1, which reprints the first four stories of the epic saga that started in 1980, appeared frequently until 1989 and finally finished in 1999.

The author is Pat Mills who is a 2000AD stalwart for all the right reasons, i.e. he writes a lot of very different strips very well. I've previously mentioned his recent excellent work on ABC Warriors and on Slaine and I've had the extreme pleasure of meeting him a couple of times.

Pat Mills is a genuine star of comics and Nemesis the Warlock is just another example of why this is true.

But comics require artists too and Nemesis the Warlock has been blessed here too.

Kevin O'Neill started the ball rolling with his distinctive sharp angular style.



O'Neil's style defined the look of the strip but, not surprisingly, the detail in his artwork meant that his speed of drawing was too slow for a regular weekly comic and he had to be replaced.

Several other artists were used, including Jesus Redondo, but it's Bryan Talbot (again) who had the most impact for me.

And I'm ashamed to say that I had forgotten that he had even drawn it. My bad.

Bryan is supreme on the fourth story, The Gothic Empire. This plays nicely into Bryan's love of steampunk that he has returned to in Grandville.

The Gothic Empire uses the idea of an alien civilisation that has been listening earnestly to Earth's earliest radio communications to learn about and copy our largest civilisation of the day, the British Empire.

This gives a world that combines Victorian culture with modern technology. Perfect.

Bryan throws himself into the task with glee giving us panels rich in detail and imagery.

I love the way that this train looks like the Palm House at Kew.

It's thirty years since I first read Nemesis the Warlock, and I do remember when it first appeared.

Sometimes returning to an old story is a disappointment as the memory fails and what seemed like a classic through the mists of time is revealed to be merely average, or even worse.

In this case the opposite is true, Nemesis the Warlock is even better than I remember it. And I've got Volumes 2 and 3 still to look forward to.

Simon Fraser excels in 2000AD

I've heaped quite a lot of justified praise on 2000AD over the years but so far I've not mentioned Simon Fraser or Nikolai Dante before. I'm delighted to change that.

Nikolai Dante is a swashbuckling adventure set in the Russian empire of the 27th Century written admirably by Robbie Morrison and rendered with ridiculous aplomb by Simon Fraser.

This double page spread from Prog 1733 is just ridiculously good.

This is the Dubai of the future. You can tell that it's Arabic from the curved lines, domes, minarets, camels and flying carpets, but look at the detail and there is a real feast in there, such as the boats in the harbour and the writing on the towers.

This is a picture to savour slowly again and again. And remember, it's just part of one of the stories in the weekly 2000AD, the galaxy's greatest comic. Zarjaz!

2000AD Prog 1727

Just a quick reminder, if any were needed, of why 2000AD is still the galaxy's best comic.

The exceptional cover was drawn by Henry Flint who does the art for the story Shakara which ended its fourteen part run this week. I'll miss it.

In other stories this week, Judge Dredd protects a potato alien that may have absorbed human characteristics, some gun totting cowboys take on flesh eating dinosaurs with gory results and a practitioner of the mystic arts who looks like Peter Wyngarde is troubled by visitors.

Four fine stories, British made, and not a spandex superhero in sight.

SFX Weekender: Tie-in and shared universe fiction

The session on tie-in and shared universe fiction might not have been the sort of thing that I went to SFX Weekended for but it sounded interesting enough and it meant that I could keep my hard-won front-row seat for this and the following session too.

There were a couple of names I knew on the panel; I've read several of Dan Abnett's stories in 2000AD and in various Marvel Comics (e.g. Guardians of the Galaxy) and I'd seen Ben Arronovitch on the Dr Who panel earlier that day.

There were a few times that day when panellists were repeated, but that's a good thing when the panellists contribute knowledgeably and appropriately. There was no repeating of favourite stories here.

The conversation flowed immediately and we were treated to many insights in to the life of a writer working within the boundaries set by other people.

And perhaps the most interesting aspect of this was the way that a pre-defined world and characters takes some of the hard work away from authors, leaving space to play with the story.

The differences between canonical stories and spin-offs filled a large part of the session. During this Stephen Baxter produced an old Stingray book that I recognised as I have a copy in the attic!

We also learnt that Dan Abnett had been commissioned to write a Primeval story that the producers wanted to tell but which would have been too expensive to do on TV.

There are various reasons why copyright owners want to extend their franchise in to print media ranging from the obvious one of making more money from the brand to finding a way to keep fans engaged when the main product is not available.

The obvious example here is Dr Who that was kept going for several years in books and audio. Similarly the Warhammer books let game players in to the world of space Marines and Tyranids from places other than Games Workshop.

From the author's perspective there is the need to play within the rules and that's a question of getting the tone right (would the character behave like that?) as well as the continuity. And the continuity problem is getting bigger all the time as the back-catalogue grows. Imagine how much a new Dr Who or X-Men writer has to read and watch.

Ben Aaronvitch also made the interesting point that writing within a shared universe means a writer has other people they can talk to about their story, e.g. to discuss exactly how a character would behave in a given situation.

So what I initially treated as a fill-in session proved to be much more than that and I learnt a lot and gained even more respect for authors.

SFX Weekender: 2000AD panel

The fist session on the Saturday of SFX Weekender was on 2000AD and i was not going to miss that!

Driving down from London in the grey morning flecked with intermittent rain still got me there before most of the weekend residents and so I was easily able to get a front row seat for the 2000AD session that started they day at a leisurely 10am.

On stage we had Al Ewing (author of Zombo and Judge Dredd), Leigh Gallagher (artist on Defoe) and Keith Richardson (head of the graphics novel line).

There was no facilitator for this session and that hurt as the session got of to a slow start while the panel worked out what they wanted to talk about.

But these are all creative types and so do not need much prompting to get talking and a few questions from the audience helped too.

And so we learned some things about the new Dredd movie, what it's like to draw him and to write stories for him, the Nikolai Dante saga will end next year, one day soon you'll be able to buy Zombo underpants and, best of all, there's an iPad app on the way.

A bit disjointed and unstructured it may have been but, despite the early out for them and us, the panel entertained and informed easily and before you knew it signals were being passed and it was time for session to end.

I doubt if the session did much to win new fans to 2000AD but those of us who already were fans had a good time.

Clint Langley is a real star

I had a fun day at the SFX Weekender and in telling that tale I'll start and the end, which was the best bit, thanks to Clint Langley.

I'm a big fan of Clint's artwork for 2000AD and have written about it a few times here over the last couple of years and so I was delighted to see that we was part of the 2000AD delegation.

Sadly I was kept busy in sessions until late in the afternoon and missed Clint's official signing session but I was able to catch him when he returned to the stall not long before it closed. I then expressed my admiration for his art in much the same gushing manner that teenage girls use for the latest boy band, but with slightly less screaming.

Clint was very approachable and signed my copy of ABC Warriors enthusiastically, as author Pat Mills had done earlier, and with the same gold pen.

But the unexpected icing on the already rich cake was the sketch of Slaine that Clint drew for me. It was worth going to SFX just for that.