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Judge Dredd: The Mega Collection discussion thread

Started by Molch-R, 10 December, 2014, 03:30:20 PM

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IndigoPrime

The repro on the colour pages is very good, especially when you consider the age of the comics in question. It's a very nice collection, too, although it's a bit weird from a numbering perspective that the Chopper volume appears to be #29. It'll be interesting to see how everything hangs together once all the books are on the shelves.

IronGraham

I think the reason these were in colour is to do with what they had in stock in terms of the films, they were always intended to be in colour (why volume 11 has some such murky repro), unlike the Apocalypse war which was black and white with colour added later for the comic centre spread. I'm more then likely wrong and some lovely gents will point this out for me.
We're werewolves not swearwolves

bedlamvr

I have just finished Oz - a story I do not remember I think I started reading a little after that, I do wonder if they are going to put some more context around the story particularly, Unamerican Graffitti,  the Midnight Surfer and the Song of the Surfer.

I think I had read somewhere that the song of the Surfer is likely to be included somewhere so I am kind of expecting another Chopper volume at some point along the line.

I am also assuming there will be at least one more Anderson book given the ones we have right now are volume 8 and 10.

I know people keep talking about lack of context but I think this is where 2000AD differs from a lot of comic books, the characters change and evolve - Matt Smith eluded to this at the begging of Doomsday for Dredd it was and common for characters to be introduced months before a major story line and gets interwoven with other stories so it is very difficult to grasp what is included and not in a specific arc and what can be trimmed and what are necessities.

Still the only clunker in this series so far has been the heavy mob issue...

Dash Decent

Quote from: BPP on 17 August, 2015, 01:39:54 PM
Thanks for putting this into colour, I'm glad we were listend to after the first few books neglected the colour spreads.

(maybe a sign the CF are bring prep'd for special edition reissues?)

It's quite possible.  They need to keep selling the reprints and to do that they have to come up with different ways to tempt repeat purchases.
- By Appointment -
Hero to Michael Carroll

"... rank amateurism and bad jokes." - JohnW.

Dark Jimbo

Quote from: IronGraham on 18 August, 2015, 12:28:32 PM
I think the reason these were in colour is to do with what they had in stock in terms of the films, they were always intended to be in colour (why volume 11 has some such murky repro), unlike the Apocalypse war which was black and white with colour added later for the comic centre spread.

Yep, as with the Trapper Hag page below, the early colour spreads had colour done seperately from the inks on a sheet of acetate, usually by a different colouritst (I think Tom Frame used to do a lot of these?) If you know a reprint is going to be black and white, just re-scan without the colour acetate. By the time of Oz a lot of the artists were producing full-colour painted spreads, with no seperate linework available.

@jamesfeistdraws

Dark Jimbo

Quote from: Dash Decent on 18 August, 2015, 01:36:50 PM
Quote from: BPP on 17 August, 2015, 01:39:54 PM
Thanks for putting this into colour, I'm glad we were listend to after the first few books neglected the colour spreads.

(maybe a sign the CF are bring prep'd for special edition reissues?)

It's quite possible.  They need to keep selling the reprints and to do that they have to come up with different ways to tempt repeat purchases.

I would snap up a colour CF11 so frickin' fast. Not only (but mainly) for Oz, but the colour spreads for other litle stories like Pit Rat and The Raggedy Man, which are almost impenetrable as is. Plus I'd love it to be as slim as CF12+.
@jamesfeistdraws

Jim_Campbell

Quote from: Dark Jimbo on 18 August, 2015, 03:51:48 PM
Yep, as with the Trapper Hag page below, the early colour spreads had colour done seperately from the inks on a sheet of acetate, usually by a different colouritst (I think Tom Frame used to do a lot of these?)

Frame did. I believe he did the majority of the colouring from the newsprint days. Difficult to believe in this digital age that the colour guide would then go off to a 'separator' whose job it was to interpret each of those colours to a limited CMY palette and create the colour plates that would print over the black.

I'm fascinated but utterly baffled as to why there is cyan lettering on the colour overlay, unless the acetate itself has physically picked up a blue tint from the ink in Frame's markers while the sheet has been in contact with the art...

Cheers

Jim
Stupidly Busy Letterer: Samples. | Blog
Less-Awesome-Artist: Scribbles.

TordelBack

Quote from: Dark Jimbo on 18 August, 2015, 03:51:48 PM
Quote from: IronGraham on 18 August, 2015, 12:28:32 PM
I think the reason these were in colour is to do with what they had in stock in terms of the films, they were always intended to be in colour (why volume 11 has some such murky repro), unlike the Apocalypse war which was black and white with colour added later for the comic centre spread.

Yep, as with the Trapper Hag page below, the early colour spreads had colour done seperately from the inks on a sheet of acetate, usually by a different colouritst (I think Tom Frame used to do a lot of these?) If you know a reprint is going to be black and white, just re-scan without the colour acetate. By the time of Oz a lot of the artists were producing full-colour painted spreads, with no seperate linework available.

30something years reading this comic, and I never knew that. Always assumed colours went straight onto the art, and was somehow 'toned out' for B&W reprint in what I now realise would be a process unknown to science.

Apestrife

any extra story in oz?

looks awesome. cant wait to read it :)

Zanti Misfit

Quote from: Apestrife on 18 August, 2015, 06:43:38 PM
any extra story in oz?

looks awesome. cant wait to read it :)

Good question.
My old Titan reprint of Oz includes the follow-up tale 'Hitman'. Can someone tell me if this is included in the Mega Collection Oz?
(Yes, I am greedy....)

DarkDaysBish-OP

Quote from: IndigoPrime on 22 July, 2015, 07:58:59 PM
Quote from: Molch-R on 22 July, 2015, 06:39:55 PMAs we've mentioned before, the films of older Progs were really not looked after at IPC/Fleetway and large chunks of them are very damaged or plain missing. KAT-Scan does the very best with what we have access to.
The one I'd be most interested in finding out what happened to is Swimming in Blood. The first edition (from long ago, before KAT-Scan's time, was woeful—a hideous mess of moiré. The new edition, though, was very good indeed, and so whatever clean-up was done on that was seriously impressive, given the nature of the original art.

Some of the problems with Swimming in Blood stem from the repro processes used at the time. The size of the original artwork created some challenges, as did the fact that some pages had layers of collage art. Sean's originals looked amazing, but we struggled to get good scans because the depth of field was too fine to capture all the levels of the art with an even focus. Those problems were disguised by the hyper-absorbent bogroll paper the Meg was being printed on at the time, but became apparent when seen on nice glossy paper from the Mandarin edition onwards.

Sorry!

IndigoPrime

Bish-OP: The Hamlyn collection isn't too bad, and although the art was quite dark in the Meg, it looked fine to me. It was that first Rebellion collection that was terrible, presumably a result of scanning and not cleaning up well. The latest version (and, I assume, the Mega Collection one) look good again.

Apestrike: nope—it's just Oz. My guess is the hitman story will be in the volume about assassination attempts on Dredd.

glassstanley

Quote from: Dark Jimbo on 18 August, 2015, 04:03:12 PM
Quote from: Dash Decent on 18 August, 2015, 01:36:50 PM
Quote from: BPP on 17 August, 2015, 01:39:54 PM
Thanks for putting this into colour, I'm glad we were listend to after the first few books neglected the colour spreads.

(maybe a sign the CF are bring prep'd for special edition reissues?)

It's quite possible.  They need to keep selling the reprints and to do that they have to come up with different ways to tempt repeat purchases.

I would snap up a colour CF11 so frickin' fast. Not only (but mainly) for Oz, but the colour spreads for other litle stories like Pit Rat and The Raggedy Man, which are almost impenetrable as is. Plus I'd love it to be as slim as CF12+.

Put me down for a colour CF11 as well. The second centre-spread of Fairly Hyperman is sorely lacking without the colour.

Though there are still a few b&w strips that could be revisited as well (Father Earth...)

James Stacey

Quote from: Jim_Campbell on 18 August, 2015, 04:39:33 PM

I'm fascinated but utterly baffled as to why there is cyan lettering on the colour overlay, unless the acetate itself has physically picked up a blue tint from the ink in Frame's markers while the sheet has been in contact with the art...

Cheers

Jim
He's painted over a cyan lined repro hasn't he ? you can see similar faint markings bottom right where there are movement lines around Dredds helmet (oo er)

Big_Dave

Quote from: James Stacey on 19 August, 2015, 11:48:21 AM
He's painted over a cyan lined repro hasn't he ?

Yes

Teh top image is an acetate copy if the b/w line art (including speech bubbles)

The middle image is a copy of the b/w line art printed faintly (in blue line) on board which has been painted with poster color

Teh bottom image shows the top (acetate) image placed over the middle (poster color on board) image