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Dredd in america....err again

Started by The Monarch, 28 June, 2008, 05:19:04 PM

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nameuser

As previously mentioned, the comic could go the young Dredd route. Dredd as a new Judge on the streets. We've had a few flashback stories - but not a continuous run of early Dredd. I doubt John Wagner would want to write about early Dredd in 2000AD or the JD Meg. An American title could be the right home for it. It's possible Ennis would be interested in Dredd's early years. He doesn't have to stick to existing Wagner continuity.

Robin Low

Quote from: "The Adventurer"Or 2)A non-canonal/young Dredd series, which Also doesn't work because in such a series nothing consequential can possibly happen.

Actually, I don't think that's necessarily true.  Dredd's been on the street 20 years by the time we first see him, and I think that gives plenty of room for stories that show just how he acquired his reputation.

It could start with his assessment with Morphy and move from there. After Origins, we have more solid background to build the early setting on. We can see Rico's fall in full detail, and how it affects Dredd.

Clearly, it would need some work to make it fit with continuity (when was the bubble covering the city before Cal had the wall built put in place, and so on), but I think it could be made into something appealing to the American market and adding depth to the official 2000AD series, without annoying long-time UK fans.

Regards

Robin

JamesC

The trouble with making it an exclusively young Dredd title is that you can't have Death or any of the Dark Judges, Anderson, The Angels, Chopper or any of the other supporting characters that lapsed fans may want to see.

Leigh S

Quote from: "JamesC"The trouble with making it an exclusively young Dredd title is that you can't have Death or any of the Dark Judges, Anderson, The Angels, Chopper or any of the other supporting characters that lapsed fans may want to see.

True enough, but what ahve those characters contributed to the dreddiverse in recent times?  To be honest, I think Dredds best when we see new things, and just about all you list are either already dead or past their sell by - just bringing them back because they were great in a story in 1981 doesnt seem to me the most creative thing you could do.

Robin Low

Quote from: "JamesC"The trouble with making it an exclusively young Dredd title is that you can't have Death or any of the Dark Judges, Anderson, The Angels, Chopper or any of the other supporting characters that lapsed fans may want to see.

I think if you're trying to sell to a primarily American market (which is the apparent aim here), it's best starting with something that doesn't have a whole heap of existing background. The advantage of a Young Dredd is that you avoid the baggage, but can still tell stories that are of interest to us old fogies.

Regards

Robin

Max Thrillpower

I seriously hope that this project works.

Speaking as your local representative from the Americas, well perhaps not so local as all that, America has a hard time understanding Dredd, not me of course though as I have been a fan for years of 2000 AD Weekly.

He doesn't fly, lift automobiles, shoot lasers from parts of his anatomy and he is most definitely not an Avenger, Wolverine or a Wolverine clone.  He never takes his hat off.  He hasn't large breasts, skimpy outfits and shapely curves.  His side-arm is not larger than he is.  This makes it hard for most typical Yanks to look past the cover and get interested.

I enjoy 2000 AD and its properties because they are diverse in art, story, and characters as well as the staff that produce them.  I am old enough to appreciate serialized entertainment but this is not so for most of the collective "us" in the USA.

Something happens and something changes in a serialized entertainment.  Hollywood would call this a Bad Thing TM.  American entertainment is geared towards syndication and perpetual "re-runs" so characters growing, changing, entering, leaving can be quite disturbing to most.  Wars, long walks in the desert looking for children, nuclear terrorism, not something that happens in our entertainment.  Bend continuity all you want but it MUST snap back to normal before the last commercial break or by the end of the miniseries.

Even in our comics our continuity is "ret-conned", reset and generally fooled with multiple times a year to make things "fresh" and "new" and to bring in new consumers who haven't been around since Prog 1 or 100 or whenever and might feel cheated that something happened before they became a fan and they don't know about it or cannot purchase it because it is out of print.  Not departing from a status quo so much as making a new status quo and following it up with an international marketing program to let people know that there might possibly be some changes in our continuity.

Often it is change in a backwards sense and not progress in a story.  Or perhaps it is to make a clone of an established character that does happen to have large breasts, skimpy outfits and shapely curves and a side arm larger than the person who wields it.

I used to scoff when I heard that English plays had to be re-written to be performed in the US.  I don't anymore.  American entertainment producers want the money for their books and movies and merchandise NOW and wouldn't think about running one title with virtually intact continuity for more than 30 years.  They think with a balance sheet mentality of the immediate bottom line and not one of building a perpetually growing customer base.

I just hope that it converts well, and is marketable and popular without polluting the Dreddiness of Dredd.

Max Thrillpower
Foreign Correspondent
The Americas
Max Thrillpower
Foreign Correspondent
The Americas

Grant Goggans

Thumbs up to the Adventurer in reminding people who are going "Wow!  It'll be great to see Dredd again!" that there was nothing stopping them from reading him all this time... man, people drive me nuts.

TordelBack

Sorry to even be contemplating this, but Ultimate Dredd (v. 2.0) seems to be the only workable route to take if you wanted to avoid alienating one group or the other.  Might even be fun - Ultimate Spiderman was (is).  

Ennis understands the perilous tightrope act that is Dredd better than almost anyone, if only because he's cocked it up so often.  It's worth noting that his last, and one of his best Dredd outings would sit quite comfortably in an Ultimate Dredd publication - Monkey on my Back could be the start of an interesting retelling of the Goodman and Cal saga.

JOE SOAP

The unfortunate upshot of this may be Wagner writing less for Twoth and the Meg, his attention drawn elsewhere, something that doesn't fill me with warm stuff.

Ignatzmonster

It would help if the various companies quit trying to make Dredd 'accessible.' F**K off! Quit trying to pre-chew our food!

Prolonged exposure to John Wagner's Dredd leads to love of Dredd. Nothing more, nothing less. Mess with that formula and you will fail.

Leigh S

Quote from: "garageman"The unfortunate upshot of this may be Wagner writing less for Twoth and the Meg, his attention drawn elsewhere, something that doesn't fill me with warm stuff.

Yeah.. that would be my fear too - that it means even less Strontium dog than were getting at the moment - as I say, one way this might work without unduly increasing Wagners Dredd output would be for the Meg to reprint the US stuff rather than have him writing the lead strip?

CraveNoir

Also reported on comicbookresources
//http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=16995

QuoteAs the new "Judge Dredd" series will be only the first title in a proposed Dynamite/Rebellion pact, Barrucci did explain that reprint materials of classic Dredd stories by Wagner, Ennis and others will be a large part of the rollout plan with reprints being a backup feature in the new monthly being a possibility. "We have decided to look at all possibilities before making a decision.

"There will be as many trades as we can handle. Our output is going to be slow and meticulous at first. It's a focused rollout so we can create the market. We want to create the market for Judge Dredd that hasn't been there since the '80s."

As far as other Rebellion properties that he wants to see under the Dynamite banner, Barrucci says that there are a number of properties he'd like to work with, including Dredd's twisted mirror image. "Judge Death is ripe for a really dark mini series. He's the 'Killing Joke' character of the Judge Dredd universe."

Will this turn into yet another opportunity to publish Ennis' back catalogue, and ignore the good stuff?  :(

IndigoPrime

Of course, what would make more sense would be for them to issue their own monthly and push the existing trade collections, but hey-ho. This sounds like it'll end up in the same scrappy rip-off mess IDW's ended up in with Transformers.

TordelBack

QuoteJudge Death is ripe for a really dark mini series

Wow!  Why has no-one thought of that before, it'd be great!  You could get someone like Frazer Irving to do the art and make it seriously dark with Death killing kiddies and putting Anderson in  a coma and what not... then you could send him off to Vegas on Billy Connolly's motorbike!  Wicked!

Sorry.

I do support the idea of (yet again) 'breaking' America (anything that gives Rebellion and 2000AD a strong future gets my vote), but I would be concerned that it might have a bearing on the way Wagner is currently writing Dredd, with that pain in all the diodes down his left side, his family worries, unpopularity in the force, and painfully apparent mortality that means so much to us 30-year men, but so little to a 'new' audience.

IndigoPrime

Quote from: "TordelBack"Wow!  Why has no-one thought of that before, it'd be great!  You could get someone like Frazer Irving to do the art and make it seriously dark with Death killing kiddies and putting Anderson in  a coma and what not... then you could send him off to Vegas on Billy Connolly's motorbike!  Wicked!
Mm. I can't figure out if these guys are being wilfully ignorant or astonishingly arrogant. Either way, it's pretty annoying, and has coloured my perception of these releases already. Next they'll be suggesting the great idea of packaging up Judge Dredd reprints in phone-book volumes, just like Marvel does.