Judge Dredd Casefiles

[Pink Gregory]

I can't be doing with the colouring; I know it's fairly canon but the green gloves/boots ruins the uniform for me.

[Dayraven]

I'm not quite sure how Rico had a kid who is so young (I'd put her at seven or eight at the very latest) but perhaps life on Titan wasn't as bleak as suggested.

Continuity is a bit wobbly this early on, isn't there a story that seems to say cloning's a new thing despite Dredd himself being a clone?

[Norton Canes]

Surprised the laffalong Walter bits were still in the strip as late as Ron Smith's tenure, thought they'd disappeared once Mick McMahon stopped having to draw like Carlos Ezquerra

[Small Man Big Horse]

I can't be doing with the colouring; I know it's fairly canon but the green gloves/boots ruins the uniform for me.

I don't mind when they started doing Dredd in full colour in 2000AD, but the Quality Comics colouring is really ugly and so I feel the same way.

Continuity is a bit wobbly this early on, isn't there a story that seems to say cloning's a new thing despite Dredd himself being a clone?

Sort of, though the villain is trying to clone a fully grown male adult, whereas Dredd and Rico were clones but "born" aged five.

Surprised the laffalong Walter bits were still in the strip as late as Ron Smith's tenure, thought they'd disappeared once Mick McMahon stopped having to draw like Carlos Ezquerra

I'm not expecting him to be around for much longer, but they've done a couple of strips as "Tales from Walter's Scrapbook", so I presume he must have been popular with the readers at some point.

[Pink Gregory]

Walter's around into Block Mania/Apocalypse War as far as I remember

[Norton Canes]

Ah yes. Doesn't he eventually

Spoiler alert

get nutted through a wall by Mean Machine? And makes a comeback sometime in the 2000's as the leader of a new robot rebellion? (I'd gone on my prog-lapse by then)

[close]

[Pink Gregory]

Believe I only got up to Vol.6 (Block Mania/Apocalypse War is Vol.5) so we haven't seen Mean Machine again yet.  Still on

Spoiler alert

Chief Judge Magruder

[close]

at my stalled point.

[13 schoolyards]

I think Mean Machine comes back in Vol.6 (if not, then just after) - there's one story with him drawn by Ezquerra, and then a later one by Ron Smith.

I think the Ezquerra one is possibly

Spoiler alert

the last we see of Dredd's non-Justice Department supporting cast for a while

[close]

[Pink Gregory]

My mistake, I think I meant Vol. 5

[Ron Maels Moustache]

Started Case File 03 last night and it starts off strongly with Vienna, Dredd's niece, being kidnapped. I'm not quite sure how Rico had a kid who is so young (I'd put her at seven or eight at the very latest) but perhaps life on Titan wasn't as bleak as suggested.

The existence of Vienna was a huge plot-hole that did eventually get addressed by Wagner decades later, leading into one of the better story arcs of the early 2000s. But that's quite a way off!

[Small Man Big Horse]

The existence of Vienna was a huge plot-hole that did eventually get addressed by Wagner decades later, leading into one of the better story arcs of the early 2000s. But that's quite a way off!

Ah, that's interesting to hear, and I like the idea that Wagner still cared enough about the series to address the issue. But as you say, that's a while off, and as much as I love the character / world I do find that once I've finished a case book I like to take a week or two off and read something else before returning to it.

[Pink Gregory]

What's contrasting to my experience of reading the casefiles is that, possibly because I'd not read any other Dredd/2000AD, the continuity didn't really bother me.

I suppose it was the first serialised comic I'd really read at that point (apart from League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, but that's a much different prospect), and with the changing artists and writers perhaps I was expecting a certain amount of inconsistency?

[13 schoolyards]

When I first started reading Dredd / 2000AD as a pre-teen (prog 393 was the first one I actually bought, having been reading it in the newsagents prior to that), continuity just wasn't a factor at all. There was no way to read old stories, and if the newsagent didn't get it one week, and I couldn't find it anywhere else, it was lost forever.

Was the Apocalypse War something that had been a story, or was just a weird thing made up to be the background for this week's strip? No idea. I remember there was a one line reference to Judge Death in City of the Damned and I spent months wondering who or what a "Judge Death" could be.

You kids these days with your Case Files and your internet, you don't know you've been born

[SweetPomPom]

When I first started reading Dredd / 2000AD as a pre-teen (prog 393 was the first one I actually bought, having been reading it in the newsagents prior to that), continuity just wasn't a factor at all. There was no way to read old stories, and if the newsagent didn't get it one week, and I couldn't find it anywhere else, it was lost forever.

Was the Apocalypse War something that had been a story, or was just a weird thing made up to be the background for this week's strip? No idea. I remember there was a one line reference to Judge Death in City of the Damned and I spent months wondering who or what a "Judge Death" could be.

You kids these days with your Case Files and your internet, you don't know you've been born

Apocalypse War wasn't even the beginning, we had 4 months of Block Mania running into it - all planned out and scripted.
I can never remember which came first of the Dredd epics but I don't think Death's original appearance was that many progs, it was almost throwaway by comparison.

[Norton Canes]

Three episodes I think, and even its sequel Judge Death Lives was only five. Those five progs were peak 2000 AD as they also included early instalments of Nemesis book one, classic Strontium Dog tale 'The Gronk Affair', Meltdown Man roaring to a conclusion and the first instalment of Rogue Trooper. And Mean Arena.

[Small Man Big Horse]

I finished the 3rd Case File last night and your right about Judge Death, it seems slightly crazy that it's only 3 instalments given the legacy of the character, but for me it feels better that way as it's such a tight, dark and weird story, beautifully told.

Judge Dredd Case Files 03 - Initially this feels a little Walter heavy and the humour gets a little repetitive, but that's only a very minor complaint as then there's Father Earth and it 's classic Dredd at its best, with Bolland's art especially impressing here, as the City holds a mayoral election at the same time as thousands of muties lead by the Swamp Thing-ish titular character wish to destroy the city. The last couple of parts see Ron Smith taking over art duties and it's a bit of a shame, I normally like his art a great deal but it feels like he's almost including too much detail, the panels are packed with too many incidents, and if the narrative didn't comment on the lava at certain points I'm not sure I'd have noticed what was causing people to panic in some panels.

Still, Smith's great with all of the other strips, and this is one superb story after another, including Boing, The Black (Spider) Plague (Henry Ford the Horse so should have had his own strip), Judge Minty going slightly soft, The Blood Of Satanus (which yes, is a bit daft, but the idea of a Were-Tyrannosaurus Rex amused me no end), the aforementioned Judge Death story, the Sob Stories killer, and even the one with a talking cat who wants Dredd to save the life of a hamster, which yes sounds ridiculous, but it's so well written I didn't care. 4.5/5

[Pink Gregory]

I don't know if you've seen it but somebody made a fairly competent fan film of the Judge Minty strip.

Know what you mean about Smith, definitely the case with some of his as well that the original drawings haven't made it too well onto the reproductions.

[Small Man Big Horse]

I don't know if you've seen it but somebody made a fairly competent fan film of the Judge Minty strip.

I have, yeah, it was a while back but I remember being impressed by it, and there's not many fan films I can say that about.

Know what you mean about Smith, definitely the case with some of his as well that the original drawings haven't made it too well onto the reproductions.

Ah, that's interesting, I hadn't thought about that but have seen comic art at galleries in the past and been surprised at the size of it. It's the only example in the third case file that I was critical of as well, and I love a lot of his other work, The Black Plague is beautifully drawn and captures the horror of the situation of it really effectively.

[Ron Maels Moustache]

I have, yeah, it was a while back but I remember being impressed by it, and there's not many fan films I can say that about.

Ah, that's interesting, I hadn't thought about that but have seen comic art at galleries in the past and been surprised at the size of it. It's the only example in the third case file that I was critical of as well, and I love a lot of his other work, The Black Plague is beautifully drawn and captures the horror of the situation of it really effectively.

Yeah, I would say Ron Smith of all the early artists tends to suffer in the reprints due to the reduced resolution, in some strips a lot of his background detail kind of fades into invisibility because the linework is so fine. I also remember some of Ian Gibson's Halo Jones art suffered the same fate.

Even though Titan are a fairly shitty publisher, their run of 2000AD reprint volumes had the advantage of being printed at larger scale than the Rebellion volumes, meaning their reissues of the likes of The Day The Law Died, Nemesis Books 1, 3 and 4 etc are still pretty much definitive, but now quite rare and expensive sadly.

Just for comparison, here's a page from the Titan Halo Jones compared to the later reprint and the difference is pretty shocking:

[Pink Gregory]

Ooooof, you're not wrong, hope the originals have been preserved at least

[Small Man Big Horse]

That really is pretty appalling, I'd love to own Halo Jones but I find the recent colour edition to be quite gaudy, so unless I get lucky and find the Titan version in a charity shop I'll probably never do so.

[13 schoolyards]

In a lot of cases the original Titan collections were shot from the original art, so they look better than the progs did. I'm pretty sure some of them (Nemesis book 4 for sure, which was Titan's book 3 as they skipped the one with the spiders) have some blood and gore that was censored in the original progs too.

And yeah, sadly it's been all downhill since then. There's been a bit of discussion as to why that is - shooting new negatives from the Titan collections would be a big step up from the art in a lot of the early Case Files - but it seems to boil down to Rebellion not having the time or money (or possibly interest) to create new, definitive versions.

Their recent collections of Charley's War were an improvement reproduction-wise on the Titan hardcovers, so it can be done. And not everything from the 80s now looks crap - the recent Strontium Dog reprints are pretty snazzy (though for some reason Ezquerra's 2000AD art has always been well served by reprints - the Strontium Dog files are a massive step up on the Dredd case files reprinting strips from the same era).

And I don't know what hefty prices the OG titan reprints of Halo Jones are going for, but they're worth it.

[Ron Maels Moustache]

To give Rebellion their due, they generally do a fantastic job with their GN range, just the fact they've reprinted so much obscure and forgotten material under their Treasury Of British Comics banner is a big mark in their favour, and they clearly do put a lot of work into restoring old material if the best sources aren't available. The recent Trigan Empire reprints look absolutely incredible, although you can tell in that case they had access to the original art unlike a lot of 2000AD stuff.

My feeling is that series like the JD Casefiles and their collected Nemesis volumes were initially intended as a cost-effective and more affordable way of having that material in print (following the same model as the old Marvel Essentials phonebooks), hence them initially being printed on cheaper paper in lower quality than a standard GN, so the loss of image quality was a bit of a trade-off in terms of just keeping the series in print. And it must've paid off as well as the Casefiles line is still running after all these years.

[Small Man Big Horse]

To give Rebellion their due, they generally do a fantastic job with their GN range, just the fact they've reprinted so much obscure and forgotten material under their Treasury Of British Comics banner is a big mark in their favour

I knew Rebellion had reprinted some non-2000AD comics but until now had no idea just how many, and I'd love to buy a sod load of them! It's a shame there's no Doomlord (I know Hibernia reprinted one of the drawn stories, and on their facebook page it's heavily suggested that while they'd love to reprint the photo strips they're unable to), and I hope one day it happens.

[13 schoolyards]

Yeah, Rebellion are doing a great job of getting loads of older stuff back into print, it's just a shame that at the moment a lot of the classic Dredd material is only available in a substandard format. Again, the difference in print quality between the early Dredd case files and the other similar collections is really noticeable - Strontium Dog and Ace Trucking both look really good, and I think the Robo Hunter ones are also pretty solid.

It's a surprise they haven't tried to do a deluxe version of early Dredd, they seem to be able to come up with new editions of The Horned God and Halo Jones and Nemesis every few years but clearly they're self-contained. Outside of the epics, Dredd is a never ending story (and they did reprint The Cursed Earth recently, which came up well).

Doomlord would be great, and I'd love to see the 80s Dan Dare from Eagle, though the Dan Dare corporation are the ones to speak to there. I'm still holding out for Rebellion to do a proper reprint of the pre-ban Action strips, but I don't know what condition that art would be in now - the Hook Jaw hardcover Titan put out before they lost the license had a few dodgy pages. But Martin Barker's (now crazily expensive) book reprints a lot from the original art so there's that.

[Pink Gregory]

Yeah, Rebellion are doing a great job of getting loads of older stuff back into print, it's just a shame that at the moment a lot of the classic Dredd material is only available in a substandard format. Again, the difference in print quality between the early Dredd case files and the other similar collections is really noticeable - Strontium Dog and Ace Trucking both look really good, and I think the Robo Hunter ones are also pretty solid.

Been a while since I looked at Dredd and Strontium Dog but I feel like Ezquerra's art didn't tend to suffer as much as some others, maybe McMahon and Bolland as well, somehow.  I think maybe Smith's art is a bit more scrappy, despite its detail, hence why he's got so many strips while Bolland et al become rarer as time goes on.

[13 schoolyards]

I would have thought Ian Gibson would come off badly with shoddy printing, he always seemed fond of fine fiddly lines in B&W (as did early Smith, though he moved away from that with later Dredds). But I had a flick through the Robo Hunter case files and they largely seem fine.

Maybe the older Dredds have been reprinted so many times the archival material is starting to show its age?

[Small Man Big Horse]

I've found myself pretty happy with the Case Files, as mentioned there's the occasional story which isn't what it could be but the majority of the time it looks fine to me. I have read some of the later Case Files before they become colour and some of the reproductions of the colour pages is quite dark and a bit ugly, but as I've been paying between £6 - £10 for the majority of each collection I don't mind too much,

Out of interest, when Judge Dredd The Megazine is launched does it then become a mixture of 2000AD and Megazine stories? And are stores like America published in it, or those which are set in Mega City One but barely include Dredd? I know I could look it up but I'm trying to avoid spoilers (even though I was buying both for a fair old while back in the nineties, but my memory is a terrible thing which has forgotten a great deal from back then).

[13 schoolyards]

Once they reach the Megazine then yep, the megazine Dredd stories appear in the case files. BUT it turns out there are also a few stories pretty much everyone would assume are Dredd stories (as they feature him) that aren't collected on a technicality and America (controversially) is one of them.

So you'll have to buy that separately - fortunately they keep releasing new editions so it shouldn't be hard to pick an old one up cheap.

[Small Man Big Horse]

Once they reach the Megazine then yep, the megazine Dredd stories appear in the case files. BUT it turns out there are also a few stories pretty much everyone would assume are Dredd stories (as they feature him) that aren't collected on a technicality and America (controversially) is one of them.

So you'll have to buy that separately - fortunately they keep releasing new editions so it shouldn't be hard to pick an old one up cheap.

Thanks for the info there, for the time being (which probably means the next few years!) I'll just stick to the case files unless I spot something in a charity shop, I know America's a much loved classic but I read it when it was first published and a second time about ten years ago online, so while I'll definitely get it one day I won't rush.