Judge Dredd in Colour

[Dash Decent]

I have a question. Can anyone tell me what's in the MEGA CITY MASTERS collections? Not sure how many of those there were... at least 3 volumes, though. And are they in color?

There were only three volumes of "Mega City Masters".  They're all a mix of colour and black & white stories.

Volume 1 has the most B&W content - about half - and strangely includes both "Joe Dredd's Blues" (from 2000AD Annual 1989) and the near-identical "A Mega-City Primer" (from JD Megazine 1.14).

Volume 2 has the most colour, with only five pages in B&W ("The Comeback", seven pages but with two colour pages), though I regret to inform you it also contains "Book of the Dead".  "Book of the Dead" gets plus points here for being in colour, but minus points for being "Book of the Dead".

Volume 3 has "Trapper Hag", "The Power of the Gods" and "Attack of the 50 Foot Woman" in B&W but on the plus side is mostly in colour, including "Bad Mother" (with Cam Kennedy on art duties), "Safe Hands" (Jock), "Sturm und Dang" (Carlos Ezquerra), "Turkey Shoot" (Henry Flint) and "PF" (Arthur Ranson) amongst others.

[Richard]

Ennis wrote some really good stories, but J Day wasn't one of them. Karl Urban said that Raider was one of his favourite stories that he read when he was researching the role.

[positronic]

There's a difference between things liked by core fandom and those that might attract a wider audience. Publishing tries to balance the two, usually tending towards the latter, although I'd argue Rebellion if anything cares at least as much about the core fans, given the trades we've got over the years. So Ennis is something of a no-brainer, given his reach outside of the UK, and also when you bear in mind that initial run of trades was done in collaboration with DC Comics.

Oh, I'm not doubting what you say, Indigo. It's just that I wondered about "the Garth Ennis Collection" because that one wasn't one of the DC/2000 AD releases. But I completely take your meaning here. I generally enjoy Ennis' work, but I definitely enjoy some things much more than others (his Punisher was outstanding... best version of the character ever), but his war stories are what really stand out to me as exceptional (of which the Punisher, in a way, is one). Some other things like The Boys started out fine, but should have been more self-contained... it suffered as a whole from dragging on far too long.

But I know exactly what you're talking about, some writers are just not well-suited to some characters -- they seem to want to write them in a way that leans towards their particular strengths or interests, but is essentially all wrong for that character -- they're just not following in the spirit or tradition of the character's roots. Or perhaps in this instance, it's just too early in Ennis' career, before he'd developed into a better writer. Might even be that this is one of those instances of "Oh, he's great on his own creator-owned stuff or some obscure sixth-string character, but please -- just keep him away from the company icons". I've seen a few writers like that -- J. Michael Straczynski comes immediately to mind.

[IndigoPrime]

Ennis himself has said Dredd was too soon for him, and I think it's clear he'd not really clocked the character's nuances that Wagner had increasingly instilled. So while Dredd had been gradually shifting from hardliner to very slightly less hardliner, Ennis and others from that era turned Dredd into something more akin to the most extreme take on the character. The problem is, a lot of the satire was paper thin and the undefeatable hero aspect didn't work. Millar was far worse at this, and Ennis did also manage to write some decent stuff, but I can't imagine Judgment Day's too high up anyone's list of favourites. That said, it does – bar a few really awful scenes – read better in collection. I certainly didn't feel miffed about it being in the Mega Collection, unlike the irredeemable garbage that was Inferno. (And, yes, I know: nice Ezquerra art. Still not nearly enough.)

[positronic]

Ennis himself has said Dredd was too soon for him, and I think it's clear he'd not really clocked the character's nuances that Wagner had increasingly instilled. So while Dredd had been gradually shifting from hardliner to very slightly less hardliner, Ennis and others from that era turned Dredd into something more akin to the most extreme take on the character. The problem is, a lot of the satire was paper thin and the undefeatable hero aspect didn't work. Millar was far worse at this, and Ennis did also manage to write some decent stuff, but I can't imagine Judgment Day's too high up anyone's list of favourites. That said, it does – bar a few really awful scenes – read better in collection. I certainly didn't feel miffed about it being in the Mega Collection, unlike the irredeemable garbage that was Inferno. (And, yes, I know: nice Ezquerra art. Still not nearly enough.)

Well, I bought it a long time ago. Sometimes graphic collections get backed up for years for me. As I mentioned, it was one of the few of those DC/2000 AD things that I saw back then, but somehow I always knew it would be a while before I'd get to it, because I needed to get some info backup on the (tons of) stuff I'd missed in the years leading up to it. I hadn't read a Dredd story (at the time) since the Titan album days, apart from the DC and Dark Horse crossovers. I wasn't even buying it for Garth, I was buying it for the Dredd/Alpha mashup. Well, now that I'm sitting and waiting on a few deliveries of collections I've ordered, I guess I'll just polish it off and not fuss over it too much.

Yes, Wagner & Ezquerra! Close to as perfect Dredd as you can get. Loved ORIGINS.

[mattp9989]

Doing a search to find the first full color Dredd strip in 2000AD i came up with this thread...anyone know which prog contained it?  I thought it would be easier to find!

[JOE SOAP]

Doing a search to find the first full color Dredd strip in 2000AD i came up with this thread...anyone know which prog contained it?  I thought it would be easier to find!

Judge Dredd: Twister Part Three PROG#590 was the first Dredd story in 2000AD to go full colour.

It's a parody on The Wizard of Oz with the first instalment in black + white and the second going full colour in its last three pages.

[mattp9989]

Thanks for letting me know!