The Mega Collection - Origins and Shamballa

The next two volumes in the Mega Collection arrive bearing gifts in the form of some Judge Dredd coasters and two books that could be excellent contenders for that always tricky dilemma of what to hand to a new reader in the hopes of luring them in to the world of Dredd.

First off, Origins by John Wagner, Carlos Ezquerra, Kev Walker and Colin MacNeil, with that famous Brian Bolland cover image. This does an excellent job of covering the back story that led to the Judges taking control of America while at the same time showing how Joe Dredd's character has developed since those early years. And along the way there's plenty of kickass action with cursed earth mutant gangs, deluded townships, and some bonkers robots. This is easy to review as it has several of the 2000AD elite creators all performing at the top of their game. The reproduction is perfect and there are some extra features with sketches by Carlos, an introduction by Matt Smith and a nice afterword by Michael Molcher. I think this is a great book to hand to a Dredd newbie and in fact that is what I plan to do with these volumes once they overtake the space I have available for them (about now in other words).

The Anderson Shamballa volume is similarly beautiful to hold and behold. Alan Grant explores all his interest in mystical matters while Arthur Ranson's artwork is simply stunning. As well as Shamballa this also includes the stories The Jesus Syndrome, Satan, The Protest, and R*Volultion.

Again it is all beautifully produced with another Matt Smith introduction and a very interesting five page essay by Mr Molcher. I have a friend who is into French and other European comics and I think I'm going to pass this one on to him as Ranson's glorious art reminds me of some of the work produced by Moebius and other European artists.

The Mega Collection continues to impress and excite.

The Daily Dredds Volume one

Now this is a hardback that an editorial team can be proud of. The first volume of Dredd strips originally published in the Daily Star newspaper from 1981 to 1986. Written by John Wagner and Alan Grant with most of the artwork by the legendary Ron Smith, although there is also work by Ian Gibson, Mike McMahon, Steve Dillon, Brett Ewins and John Higgins. Beautiful black and white strips, many of which have never been reprinted before, presented in a landscape format book with an excellent standard of reproduction throughout.

Several things stand out when reading this terrific collection. Firstly the lengths that graphic novels editor Keith Richardson went to in order to get good copies of all the published strips, which he details in his introduction. The story of how this book was produced is almost as interesting as the contents. It represents a triumph for Richardson and for the many fans (including our very own Orlok) who responded when the call went out to find the missing strips. I know Keith and Michael Molcher touched on this in their youtube review of recent releases but I would quite happily watch a further film all about the search, the fans' involvement, and the details of the reproduction and design of this lovely volume.

Then there is the sheer inventiveness of Wagner and Grant in being able to churn out these witty little strips on a daily basis. There are some great gags and a variety of fantastic stories that must have introduced that distinctive Mega-City madness to many an unsuspecting newspaper reader. Quite how they managed this as well as writing the weekly Prog is beyond me. The boundless energies of being young and paid per completed script must be the answer.

If the story of the creation of this book belongs to Keith Richardson and the fans then the book itself belongs to Ron Smith. Sitting there at his drawing board with his alarm clock set to remind him when it was time to put one page aside and move onto the next, all the while producing his trademark madcap depictions of Dredd's world. His artwork is just sublime and this book is a fitting tribute to one of 2000AD's "immortals".

Rebellion seem to be all about high quality hardbacks at the moment and this one will be a fantastic addition to any bookshelf. I imagine it turned up in many a 2000AD reader's Christmas stocking but if it wasn't in yours then it's time to cash in that postal order you got from Aunt Gladys and add this to your collection. It is available as a cheaper digital download from the 2000AD online store but you really want the hardback, it's gorgeous and well worth it. Congratulations to Mr Richardson and the rest of the Rebellion staff for producing this Star Stunner. Let's hope we hear more about its production at some point. A five star volume

Robbie Burns: Witch Hunter

After hearing the review on the ECBT2000AD podcast I was intrigued enough to pick up a digital copy of this through Comixology. The concept is initially a familiar one: take a famous historical figure, add a supernatural creature, and mix well, however there is more going on with this particular mash up. As our own Munkeh pointed out there was a lot of actual witch hunting going on in the 18th century and the paranormal theme fits in well with Burns’ famous poem Tam O’Shanter. Instead of the fictional Tam and his drunken encounter with a witches’ coven Rennie and Beeby have Burns himself stumbling into the midst of the action and needing to be rescued by a pair of experienced witch hunters.

It’s a neat fit and very well executed with Burns going on to learn the secrets of witch hunting from the fiery redhead Meg and an elderly curmudgeon called Mackay who sees young Robbie as his possible successor. Mackay is a great character, you’ve got to love a grouchy old Scottish expert of the occult, and it’s not too hard to imagine him as a ancestor of old Harry Absalom himself.

Trevallion’s artwork is as sublime as ever. His character work and story telling are fantastic and he fills in the background details with all manner of bogles, ghoulies, ghosties, long leggedy beasties, and things that go bump in the night. And of course it’s lovely to see his work in full colour. As far as DVD extras goes there are some character sketches by Trevallion and a short biography of Burns written by Jerry Brannigan. There are also some selected poems including the full version of Tam o’ Shanter.

I enjoyed this and came away knowing a lot more about Robbie Burns then I did before. The ending does make a sequel possible and I would certainly be on board for that. In the meantime if you’re missing your fix of Absalom in the prog then this book will fill the gap very nicely. Four out of five stars and recommended.

IDW Judge Dredd The Complete Carlos Ezquerra volume 1

This collection from IDW has been out for some time but it was on special offer in Forbidden Planet so I caved in. Turns out there might be a good reason for the reduced price but I’ll get to that in a moment. This features stories written by John Wagner and Alan Grant that date all the way back to the Bank Raid story that was supposed to run in the first Progs. It goes on to include a number of classic stories including Fungus and Destiny’s Angels and some other stories from around the Apocalypse War.

Good stuff first: this is presented in the same large format hardback binding as the splendid IDW Apocalypse War reprint . The artwork is reprinted at a slightly larger side than in the original Progs, and of course the stories from that golden age of 2000AD are great, but that’s about it for the plus points.

Unlike the beautifully coloured Apocalpyse War collection this is a black and white book and there have clearly been some issues with the reproduction of some pages. This is most notable on the first two pages of each story chapter, the pages that usually got the full colour centre spread back then in the Prog. Here they appear in monochrome with large chunks of the pages just reduced to heavy blocks of black with no detailing visible. It looks exactly like the result you get if you run a coloured comic page through a slightly dodgy photocopier. Other pages are also spoiled by odd splashes of black that didn’t appear in the original comics.

Clearly there has been a problem with the reproduction. I don’t know if IDW were able to work from the original plates or if they just had scans of the Progs, but somehow this has been allowed to slip through without the editors knowing (or caring). And I don’t have a one off dodgy copy, the reviews on Amazon mention the same problems.

The last story in the book is The Man Who Knew too Much from 1985 and here IDW has dropped the ball again and managed to miss out the last two pages of the story completely. Extra features include some classic Carlos covers printed in black and white apart from a couple of more recent covers which are in colour.

This was a major disappointment from IDW. I know it was one of their earliest releases of collected 2000AD material and maybe they managed to sort out the reproduction issues by the time they got to the Apocalypse War. I note from other Amazon reviews that there are similar problems in the first Brian Bolland collection. Although Matt Smith and Keith Richardson are thanked in the book for their assistance I can’t believe they were involved in the final product. It doesn’t seem likely that anyone from the House of Tharg would allow such a shoddy product to go, especially when they have been producing such high quality hardbacks of their own in the last few years.

0 of 5 stars. Get your King Carlos fix elsewhere and avoid this mess of a book.

To End All Wars - The Graphic Anthology of the First World War, edited by Jonathan Clode and John Stuart Clarke with an introduction by Pat Mills.

During 2014 we have all spent some time thinking about the "Great" War which started 100 years ago. I know I have tried to picture myself as one of those lads sent to fight in muddy fields and wondered how I would have felt as I marched off to war. Would I have had the jingoistic hope that it would indeed all be over by Christmas, or does the gift of 100 years hindsight make it impossible to be that soldier boy without knowing of the horrors that awaited him and his friends? There have been commemorations aplenty and here is a comic book version which I put up on this site because of Uncle Pat's introduction.

Clode and Clark have compiled another impressive looking hard back edition containing 27 different black and white stories by a variety of new names in British comics. It's a well bound heavy weight volume that retails at £18.99 and for every book sold £2 goes to the Doctors without Borders organisation, Médecins Sans Frontières. Pat Mills' introduction takes up three pages and, as ever, he doesn't pull his punches and is almost worth the price of admission alone. To quote from his second paragraph: "This anthology is important because A Very British Lie is currently being perpetrated about World War One. In summary, the Sandhurst trained revisionists are rewriting history in the most outrageous way to claim that 'sacrifices' like the Somme were necessary to help Field Marshall Haig win the war; even though Britain's Daily Telegraph itself admits, 'what a terrible shame it was that Haig's progress along his learning curve had to be greased by such deep floods of blood'".

It clearly a gross simplification and far too easy to just trot out the statement that all war is wrong, that every war is by its nature a crime, though even the most professional soldier probably knows this deep in their hearts, as do we all. But the first world war does stand out as one of the most pointless and bloodthirsty examples of mankind's foolhardy nature. It was supposed to be that mythical war to end all wars, the conflict that killed nine million combatants and caused the death of millions more civilians. A bloody, brutal and terrible time in our history, and one that is dealt with very well by the writers and artists of this compilation.

Uncle Pat picks out the first story by Brick in which the main culprits behind the slaughter are brought to a mythical war crimes tribunal and questioned by a simple soldier as to the reasons for going to war. And it is an effective tale, although as we may just about recall from our schoolbook histories the cogs and levers that led the world to war were complicated, and at the same time trivial, so it is no surprise that most of us have clung on to that single detail about a minor European royal being shot in an open topped car. Personally I found some of the other stories about the common men and women affected by the war much more effective, but I do agree with Mills in being glad that the voices of all sides are heard, including German, French and African soldiers as well as us Brits.

Possibly the most moving piece is the final one of the book, Joe Gordon's impassioned prose 'Memorial to the Mothers' illustrated by Kate Charlesworth. A simple reminder that for every male name we see on a war memorial there was at least one other wounded person, the mothers and wives who bore the terrible brunt of the criminal throwing away of their loved ones' lives. Apart from this there was nothing in the volume that quite reached the heights of Mills and Colquhoun's Charley's War, or Jacques Tardi's It was the War of the Trenches for me.

Competition for the 2000AD pound is strong at the moment and I should imagine that this fine volume is probably not going to be on many people's lists. But if you come across it in a bookshop do read Uncle Pat's powerful and polemical introduction, and if you do then think about giving that day's sandwich money to Médecins Sans Frontières. Cheers and a Happy and Peaceful Christmas to us all.

Stickleback - Number of the Beast

This volume follows on from the previous England's Glory book and collects the next two adventures of Ian Edginton and D'Israeli's mysterious pope of crime and his gang of bizarre assistants who have become London's defenders against some weird and wonderful assaults. In the first story Stickleback fights an aerial battle with Countess Bernoulli, the mad mistress of the mechanical. He then returns from an apparent watery grave to take on some reptilian bad guys who also have London in their sights.

Edginton and D'Israeli are two of the most talented and reliable creators on the 2000AD roster, and Stickleback may be their finest creation. There's no doubt that Edginton relishes the Victorian milieu that he has populated with his clockpunk characters and a host of murderous monsters. And Stickleback himself is a remarkable figure who bestrides two underworlds, the criminal classes and all the illegal business of the capital, and a much darker and deeper hell which spews forth some truly nasty creatures.

D'Israeli yet again proves himself the master of black and white art with his lovingly rendered figures and the vast amount of different textures that he uses to delineate them. Goodness knows how long this strip takes him to produce. I've watched his videos about creating the textures in these stories that he has produced for Pete Wells' 2000AD Covered Uncovered blog and I am baffled and amazed by it all.

As ever there are lots of lovely references to all kinds of other fictional characters hiding in the background of many of the panels, the sort of thing that delights a pop culture junkie like myself. And, of course, there is the ongoing mystery of Stickleback's true identity with several hints along the way. Regular Prog readers will know the answer by know and it is fascinating to read these two collections again and see where Edginton and D'Israeli have teased us with their foreknowledge. This volume also includes an introduction by the two creators, an extra Christmas story illustrated by INJ Culbard which appeared in the 2009 Christmas edition, and some character design sketches by D'Israeli to round out the package.

The great thing about an anthology comic like 2000AD is how it has constantly produced strange and surreal strips which feel like they wouldn't find a home in more conventional comics. Long may it continue, and long may the adventures of the bizarre antihero Stickleback continue as well. Five stars for the weird wonders of Stickleback and his complex world, and now there's no excuse for me not to finish my annotations project.

Predator, Aliens and Dredd!

Here's another competitor in the 2000AD hardback market, a joint publication by Dark Horse and Rebellion that collects Dredd's encounters with two of cinema's most memorable beasties. I confess that I caved in and bought this one on a recent trip to Forbidden Planet even though I already have the soft cover Dredd vs Aliens Incubus book. The addition here is Dredd's three issue battle with a Predator that first appeared in a US release by Dark Horse in 1997 and ran in the Megazine from 97-98.

The Predator story runs pretty much as you expect when one of them lands in Mega-City One and decides that the most dangerous prey has to be the Judges with Dredd at the top of the tree. Pretty soon the body count is rising and golden badges are appearing in the Predator's trophy room. There's a nice nod to the original movie when a member of Psi division turns out to be a descendant of Dutch Schaefer, although she seems to have forgotten her ancestor's advice about smearing herself with mud at every opportunity.

The artwork is by the Argentinian artist Enrique Alcatena who does a fair job of representing Dredd and his world although there is an odd moment when the Versace cod pieces from the Stallone movie make an appearance but they disappear as quickly as a Predator activating it's cloaking device. John Wagner's writing is also a little bit off in places with Dredd musing in unfamiliar thought bubbles which were fine in the early years and suit the intended US readership but seem a bit strange now. Likewise the Predator's behaviour doesn't seem quite right (because, obviously, I'm a noted expert on fictional alien psychology), particularly in the scene where it trusses up a captured Judge and then kills him. Aren't these vicious alien killers supposed to be all about the thrill of the hunt and not just dispatching helpless victims? (Someone is now going to point out a scene from the movies where they do exactly that.)

The Wagner, Diggle, Flint Aliens story is much more enjoyable but I've covered that one already. Henry Flint also turns in a tremendous cover although it should come with a slight health warning that no such scene appears within. The other covers from 2000AD and the Dark Horse comics are included with powerful images by Brian Bolland, Jock, and Frazer Irving standing out from the crowd.

It's another nice hardback, this time in the traditional US comic size, but whether it represents value for money just to get hold of an average three part Predator story is questionable. Most 2000AD fans will probably be looking to spend their Christmas money elsewhere but hopefully it will sell well in the States and pull in some more new readers. A middling 2.5 out of 5 stars for the whole thing although the Aliens story would score better on its own.

Brass Sun - The Wheel of Worlds

It's big, it's bold. it's certainly brassy, but is it boring? The Brass Sun series by Ian Edginton and INJ Culbard has been a divisive one in the pages of 2000AD with some readers entranced by Edginton's clockpunk world building and Culbard's beautifully coloured art, and others finding the storyline slow and unengaging. Now here it is collected in a lovely large format hardback, one of a number of high quality recent releases from Rebellion.

I've written in previous reviews about how much I enjoyed this series when it was collected in a six issue US style mini series and here I am triple dipping with this collection so you can probably guess where this review is headed. I am a big fan of Ian Edginton's weird creations for 2000AD from Scarlet Traces to Stickleback and thoroughly bought in to this strange new universe modelled on an Orrery where the central cog like mechanism that powers it is slowly winding down. The central character Wren's journey to uncover the mysteries of this process is a great bit of science fiction built around a classic hero quest complete with special weapons and companions, and a mystical wizard like mentor.

Culbard's artwork is even more lovely to behold in this large glossy format. He and Edginton have previously worked together on adaptations of Conan Doyle and Lovecraft stories but this is their finest collaboration. Culbard's pen work is somewhat minimalist in places and this can lead to some confusion between the many different characters that Wren encounters, but his depiction of the different planets and the bizarre creatures that inhabit them is fantastic. The way that Culbard changes the colour palette to represent the transition from one world to another is clever and effective.

The overall package is impressive although the extras are limited to an introduction by Edginton about how the idea for the story started and the four covers that appeared during the 2000AD run. The only other problem for this hardback is that there's quite a bit of competition for our attention at the moment with the IDW coloured version of the Apocalypse War and the must have collection of all the Daily Star Dredds which is probably going to be appearing under the Christmas trees of many 2000AD fans this year. Personally I enjoy Brass Sun and look forward to the strip returning in the future but I can see it's not everybody's cup of tea. Four out of five stars for me

Going Viral

Satan's Island by John Wagner, Kev Walker, Ben Willsher, Paul Marshall, Cam Kennedy, Chris Blythe and Tom Frame.

Here's another collection from my 2000AD gap years, and it's one I picked up after a suggestion from Flintlockjaw from the ECBT2000AD podcast about other Dredd stories which featured biological warfare. This one concerns the arrival of the floating Sin City in the waters off the coast of Mega-City One. With no laws on board it allows visiting citizens to gamble and debauch themselves to their hearts content while the Judges can only look on with disapproval. Chief Judge Hershey ostensibly allows it because it brings in much needed revenue for the Meg's coffers but her ulterior motive is the hunt for a wanted terrorist agent rumoured to be on board the pontooned palace of perversion, and naturally she sends Dredd to head up the investigation.

As ever the civilians get up to all kinds of futuristic nonsense and inevitably the terrorist is revealed and there is mayhem aplenty as one of Dredd's oldest foes steps out of the shadows. Look away now if you don't want any spoilers but it's that man again, Orlok the assassin is back and he's carrying vials of another deadly microbe to unleash on the unsuspecting citizens of the big Meg. This time it's a bacterium as opposed to the block mania neurotoxin that kicked off the Apocalypse War but it does seem that the Sov Judges are a bit repetitive in their attacks. Presumably all meetings of the Polit bureau feature some bright spark asking if they have ever considered weakening their enemies by poisoning their water supply first?

The recent IDW collection of the Apocalypse War led me to muse on how these comic book stories reflect society's fears at the time they were written, and made me almost nostalgic for the nuclear paranoia of the 1980s. Even further back in the 1950s when the space race was just getting started comics were full of mysterious invaders from other planets, and all sorts of heroes were gaining powers from strangely glowing meteorites. In 1963 the amazing Spider-Man, like most of his fellow Marvel superheroes, gained his powers from radioactivity but by the time it came to his first big movie in 2002 we seemed to have all lost our fear of the power of the atom and the spider that bites Tobey Maguire represents another branch of scary science, genetic modification. Although ten years later when they rebooted we seemed to have decided that GM was no big deal after all and it was, once again, an atomic powered arachnid that led Andrew Garfield to don the red and blue unitard. Maybe it was the fear of some terrorist with a dirty bomb that pushed radioactivity back to the top of the lethal list, or perhaps the writers just loved that line about radioactive blood from the cartoon show song. And to continue my theme I bet there were all sorts of comics in the 1970s about environmental concerns, Swamp Thing was created in that decade and he would go on to be at the forefront of Alan Moore's stories about man's careless attitude to his home planet.

One of John Wagner's great talents is how he uses the Dredd strip to satirise so many of the stranger aspects of our own modern lives, and he certainly knows what frightens us. Whether it is the horrors of nuclear war or the flesh eating terror of a contagious disease with a 90% mortality rate. This series originally appeared in 2002 so possibly Wagner had New Labour's plans to introduce super-casinos to the UK in his mind rather than our fear of a microbiological catastrophe, but reading it now when Ebola victims in Africa are literally bleeding from their eyes is a sobering experience.

In the case of Orlok the agent he releases here is said to be a bacterium which means that Wagner has run the full gamut of different microbial menaces. It was a virus with the catchy name of 2T(FRU)T which infected Mega-City Two and led Dredd to make his epic trek across the Cursed Earth. In 1982 the Judges had to deal with a lethal Fungal infection that left victims growing a nasty crop of mushrooms on their skin. And to bring things right up to date the Chaos Day organism was based on a Protozoa called Toxoplasma Gondii. The Block Mania agent is, I think, just referred to as a toxin so I presume it was something pharmacological that sent the citizens crazy and not a bug. That only leaves a few rare wee beasties for the Sovs to try unleashing on the big Meg.

Turning back to this volume there is terrific art from the accomplished Kev Walker and some very early Ben Willsher on the sequel Orlok story from Prog 1303. Then Paul Marshall and Cam Kennedy illustrate the last stories which puts Orlok on trial. All three of these back up stories are coloured by Chris Blythe and the whole volume is lettered by Tom Frame. It's another fine Dredd collection which was a pleasure to read, and so cheap and easy to download on the iPad app. Four stars and recommended.

Apocalypse Now

IDW's licence to produce Judge Dredd comics for the US market includes some reprint material. They have produced a number of impressive hard backed volumes including this one which collects the classic Apocalypse War story. The creators involved represent most of the 2000AD hall of fame: it's written by John Wagner and Alan Grant, the artists are Mike McMahon, Ron Smith, Steve Dillon, Brian Bolland and Carlos Ezquerra, and the letterers are Steve Potter and Tom Frame. The majority of the original pages were black and white so here they have been sensitively coloured by Charlie Kirchoff and Tom Mullin, and the whole thing is topped off with a striking new cover image by Jim Fern and Charlie Kirchoff.

The large format allows the pages to be reprinted pretty much in their original Prog size instead of the reduced format of the black and white Case Files, and they certainly look fantastic. Kirchoff and Mullin have done a lovely job with the colouring. They have clearly taken their palate from the original colour centre-spreads so that the colours perfectly suit all the different artists. And the artistic lineup is unbeatable: McMahon begins the Block Mania story and then Ron Smith takes over before Steve Dillon and Brian Bolland introduce the character of Orlok and reveal the truth behind the craziness afflicting the citizens of Mega-City One. And then in steps King Carlos Ezquerra returning to the character he co-created for the first time since his original designs. He drew all 25 successive parts of the Apocalypse War and it's an absolute artistic tour-de-force, and his pages beautifully coloured by Tom Mullin are worth the price of admission alone.

Wagner and Grant wrote an intense story line which swung from some typical Mega-City madness to the overwhelming devastation of nuclear war and then the resistance fight back led by Dredd. My memories of this epic were mainly about the Block Mania episodes and then Dredd's mission to East-Meg One. I had forgotten the horrors that Wagner, Grant and Ezquerra depicted in the middle section when the nukes fly back and forth. It is strange to think about now but in 1982 we were living in the shadow of the Cold War and the real possibility of nuclear war. The protest at Greenham common had started in 1981 and membership of CND was almost compulsory for me and my fellow students at university. It seemed an inevitability that one of the two super powers would at some point be pushed to the brink of war. Wagner and Grant took all of this unease and gave us a devastating portrait of a nuclear holocaust in the pages of a simple comic book. Two years later television viewers would be terrified when ITV broadcast the film Threads. And in 1985 the BBC finally had the guts to release Peter Watkins' The War Game which it had kept on a shelf for 20 years. But before all that 2000AD showed us the full horrors of nuclear war in the Judge Dredd strip. Reading it now is a genuinely unsettling experience and it really makes this epic tale stand out from the crowd.

And that is all before Dredd gets to do his stuff and save his city in his usual stoic and unstoppable fashion. Dredd is particularly brutal in this story as he wipes out Sov Judges, dying citizens and collaborators alike without even a flicker of emotion crossing his stony face, And of course his no negotiation policy with his retribution would return to haunt him in later life as that faithful button push would lead to the events of Day of Chaos. There's also a disdainful attitude to the citizens of the opposing Mega cities as both the East-Sov leader and then Dredd are asked about making announcements to the public about the war. Their replies are remarkably similar along the lines of "What has it got to do with them?". This is despite knowing that millions of the citizens were going to die as the missiles flew.

There is a long running debate about which book is best to hand to a new reader who wants a good introduction to the Dredd character. This beautiful hardback gives us the artwork at pretty much the original size and with the colouring job that the artists themselves would have done, and it has Wagner and Grant writing the epic tale against which all future Dredd epics would be judged. All this is available on Amazon for a mere £16 so this is the book I will be recommending to new readers from now on. Well done to IDW for a beautiful presentation of an immense story. Five stars to everyone involved.

Dredd - The Illustrated Script

2000AD readers generally agree that the 2012 Dredd 3D movie was a fantastic adaptation of all the best features of the comic strip. It has achieved a certain cult status but unless the campaign to make a sequel succeeds then we are unlikely to see any more of Karl Urban as the iconic character. However thanks to this illustrated script book by Alex Garland and Jock we can learn a bit more about the behind the scenes work that went into the film.

Jock actually started producing art for how he thought a new film should look before he was contacted by the film-makers who had seen his work and invited him to work on storyboards and on character designs and other visuals for the production team. And his images are collected here in all their glory.

There are some interesting differences between the draft script and what we finally saw on screen. In Dredd's first action sequence he deliberately shoots through the body of an innocent bystander to bring down a perp. Although the bystander's wound is not life threatening I presume this was dropped so as not to make Dredd seem too unsympathetic. Ma-Ma is also depicted as a much older character than the Lena Headey version. Similarly the Clan Techie is shown wearing elaborate electronic goggles rather than the more subtle bionic eyes we saw in the movie. There is more background about the clan member Japhet and his wife whose apartment Dredd and Anderson seek shelter in. This looks to have been dropped for time reasons and instead Anderson's psychic flashes and a simple family picture tell us all we need to know.

The biggest change is the final showdown between Dredd and Ma-Ma which here is a more physical one on one fight without the detail of the bomb linked to her heartbeat. Like all the other big changes the version we finally saw makes much more sense and works better for a film, but it's intriguing to see how some of this stuff changed on its journey to the screen. The other thing this book tells me is quite how much work goes into making a film. It's no wonder we see all those hundreds of names listed in the end credits. Some of the effort that goes into even minor features that will only be glimpsed for a few seconds boggles the imagination.

It's a lovely package and Jock's illustrations are always great to look at. I have the paperback version which is currently about £25 on Amazon. The limited edition hardback is sold out but copies are presumably still out there for silly money. If you have not already picked up a copy then this may be a good one to add to the Christmas list, although you might be hard pressed to choose between this and the upcoming Daily Star Dredd collection. Recommended. Four stars.

Scarlet Traces

This is 2000AD related as it appeared in the Megazine, and it's by two of Tharg's finest droids, Ian Edginton and Matt 'D'Israeli' Brooker. The front cover of the edition I have describes it as a murder-mystery sequel to H.G.Wells' War of the Worlds and it is a rather splendid bit of sinister steampunk.

Set about ten years after the events described in the original novel the British Empire has harnessed all the technology left behind by the Martian invaders and used it to ensure that Britain remains a world superpower with flying machines and advanced weaponry. Major Robert Autumn and his redoubtable butler Archibald Currie are two retired soldiers who investigate the case of a number of young women who have gone missing, but of course they are going to discover much more than that.

The original idea and the execution by Edginton is nearly flawless. Not all of his 2000AD projects meet with universal approval but his writing here is superb. The clever integration of Martian technology into everyday British life is extremely good, and the murder mystery is also very well done. Meanwhile fan favourite D'Israeli delivers lovely coloured art which is full of vibrant details. If you enjoyed his recent work on Ordinary then take a look at this.

The steampunk world that they create is just great fun, so much so that it deserved and got a sequel called The Great Game which advances the story into the 20th century and adds a new twist. Both books are also filled with lots of clever references and nods to various other classic science fictions ranging from Quatermass to Thunderbirds. Some might find these in-jokes intrusive or tiresome, others will just love that kind of thing. I am so much in the latter camp that I went so far as to compile a website listing all of these references which you can find here.

The only downside to Scarlet Traces is that the original book is now out of print but second hand copies are reasonably easy to get hold of. The sequel The Great Game is still available, as is the pair's comic book adaptation of Wells' novel itself.

If you like a bit of the old steampunk delivered with D'Israeli's lovely art then track this down. Recommended.

ABC Warriors - The Solo Missions

Picked this up at the 2000AD stand at London Super Comic Con. Well I was asking them to sign stuff and do interviews so it seemed rude not to buy something.

Most of the ABC Warriors stories happened while I was not reading 2000AD so I'm playing catch-up. The recent stuff in the Prog has confused me with Clint Langley's varying art styles but I'm starting to get to grips with it. And here we have four stories featuring Hammerstein, Blackblood, Joe Pineapples and Deadlock dating from 1984 to 2000.

Cover is by Pye Parr and is probably the best thing I've seen of his. I love how he manages to work in references to all the other Warriors. His blog details how he produced this stunning piece of comic art.

Hammerstein: Red Planet Blues by Alan Moore, Steve Dillon, John Higgins and Steve Potter.

This was in the 1985 annual which means it was published for Christmas 1984. At that point Alan Moore was just getting into his stride on Swamp Thing and Watchmen was two years in the future. Yet here we have some foreshadowing of what is to come with a melancholy figure sitting on Mars staring at the red sand. There's even a strange spiky structure that appears to be made of glass.

Moore's recent works have left me cold so it was an unexpected thrill to read this short piece from back in the day when he didn't think that writing simple but effective comic stories was beneath him. It's a tale about the early days of human colonists on Mars and their encounter with an indigenous life form that recalls Ray Bradbury's Martian Chronicles. Moore manages to do more in these seven pages than he has achieved in the last three League of Extraordinary Gentlemen books put together. Art by Steve Dillon and beautiful colours by John Higgins make this story a little gem from the golden age of 2000AD.

Blackblood: Dishonourable Discharge by Pat Mills, Kev Walker and Annie Parkhouse

Another quickie, this time from 1992 explains how Blackblood was programmed to betray, and how he lost that eye. It's a short but fairly entertaining story from 2000AD's painted era. So far I have found Blackblood a less interesting character and after the Moore/Dillon story this one suffers slightly. Not bad as filler though.

Joe Pineapples: His Greatest Hits by Pat Mills, Tom Carney and Ellie De Ville

The story of the universe's greatest assassin is reasonably entertaining and it's clear that Uncle Pat's tongue is firmly in his cheek here. I'm not sure if the art was painted, or if it's an early experiment with digital colouring but the primary colour palate is too brash and bright for me. Give me the pulpy black and white stuff any day.

Deadlock by Pat Mills, Henry Flint and Tom Frame

And speaking of black and white artwork here is a multi-part story with some gorgeous Henry Flint madness from the year 2000. It's a return to the world of Nemesis the Warlock with Purity Brown and Deadlock dealing with the aftermath of the final battle between Nemesis and Torquemada, and in particular with a serial killer stalking the tubes of Termight. If any 2000AD artist can match the whacky weirdness of Kevin O'Neill then it has to be Mr Flint who produces some monstrous mayhem and tube scenes that took me right back to that first issue where this series began.

The Deadlock story makes up the bulk of this collection and it is well worth the price of admission, but pick of the book is the surprise of reading an Alan Moore story from back in the day when he was just a wizard of words instead of a real beardy-weirdy wizard.

Life on Mars

I don't do many book reviews here but this is my book of the year so far which I have read twice in quick succession, and I can't remember ever doing that before. The Martian by Andy Weir is what you might call hard science fiction about a possible Mars landing set in the near future. When the Ares 3 mission is hit by a violent sand storm on the surface they are forced to make an emergency lift off and head back to their larger space craft and return to Earth.

In the chaos of their rapid evacuation one of the astronauts is struck by a broken satellite array and appears to be dead. Their commander has to make the difficult decision to abandon the search for his body and launch. Except through a bizarre sequence of events he is still alive and the book details his struggle to survive and to make contact with mission control and his team who are already heading for home.

It's absolutely fantastic stuff and very gripping, Written as a series of log entries by the stranded astronaut, Mark Watney, although I'm probably not giving too much away when I say that Mission control and the other astronauts do get involved eventually. Watney is an incredibly resourceful scientist who uses all the equipment left behind to survive. It reminded me of the series Space Odyssey: Voyage to the Planets which we reviewed on the British Invaders podcast.

If ever a book could be described as a page turner then this is it. I gobbled it up and then went right back to the start again. Highly recommended and pretty cheap on the Kindle right now, or you could try and pick up a signed copy of the hardback like I did.

Return of the Mach

Greysuit by Pat Mills, and John Higgins, with colours by J.H. and S.J. Hurst and letters by Ellie De Ville and Simon Bowland. This originally ran in the Prog back in 2007 and 2009.

The Greysuit of the title is an enhanced secret agent who begins to rebel against his programming when he discovers something unpleasant about a Minister in charge of his department. In a neat story point Pat Mills links the programme back to an earlier one which produced Mach 1 all the way back in 1977.

This is a much more gory strip than the original with lots of ultra violence when the Delta agents go into action against ordinary human beings. It reminded me of Mark Millar's Authority comic for the way it portrays what happens when super powered humans punch someone (see, I can remember reading one of Millar's books). Inevitably the secret department sends other agents to try and terminate the rogue Greysuit so he gets to pick on someone his own size as well.

The other thing this reminded me of was the Jason Bourne films which is no bad thing. And of course all the problems with the authority in this story plays right into some very familiar territories for Pat Mills who does like to remind us not to trust any privileged elite.

The art by John Higgins is new to me. Like most people I am most familiar with his work as a colourist on Watchmen where he developed a whole new colour palate to use on Dave Gibbon's art.  Here he does a good job as the artist although some of his male characters do tend to look the same as each other which is confusing. Interestingly for a book by a renowned colour artist the palate here is a bit weird. It may be because I was reading a digital version but there seems to be an awful lot of green hair in this story.

The setup and story are pretty cool, and I loved the link back to Mach 1. The battles between the super powered agents did get a bit repetitive after a while, but on the whole this is a cracking bit of thrill power. I look forward to its return to the Prog at some point in the future.

Finding Nemo Dull

Not really anything to do with the Prog but it is by two of Tharg's former droids, and I want to let off steam about the latest instalment of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen franchise which arrives in a slim but pricey hardback from Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill.

The plot in a nutshell, and really there's not much more to it than this, is that Captain Nemo's daughter Janni, and her lover Broad Arrow Jack head into Berlin to rescue their own daughter. In the process they kill a lot of Nazis and various characters from the fictional worlds of The Cabinet of Dr Caligari, Metropolis, and Chaplin's The Great Dictator.

I love the early works of Alan Moore. His stories in Warrior and Swamp Thing were what got me back into comics. And Kevin O'Neill is one of the greatest artists from the golden age of 2000AD. The original concept of the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen was brilliant, the stories were engaging and I cared about the plight of Mina Murray and Alan Quatermain, or at least I did to begin with. Plus there was that fun game of trying to spot the plethora of cultural references scattered through the books. The stuff that Jess Nevins and his band of Divers' Hands annotate at length.

Well that's all the praise done, now for the nitty-gritty. Let's start with the first page being entirely in German with no translation, and there are several more pages of German to come. Now I could type them into google translate, or I could wait until Jess Nevins and crew put up the annotations, but come on. We know that Moore is a literate man, he doesn't have to prove it to us by writing in German.

As I have said the plot itself is fairly negligible. I bought it in Gosh comics in London and finished it on the train ride back. It's just one lengthy pitched battle in which Janni and Jack kill ridiculous numbers of bad guys who all seem to be as useless as the storm troopers from Star Wars. I'm sure there are references to other fictions apart from the ones already mentioned, but I can't be bothered to go back and look for them.

In his infamous "last interview" Moore has made it fairly clear that he has a low opinion of all of us masturbators on the internet. And before I start any more trouble let me state that there is no depiction of rape in this book, although Janni and Jack fear that is what is happening to their captured daughter. There is a fairly typical amount of female nudity which Moore and O'Neill presumably regard as showing a healthy regard for human sexuality, but just seems more and more like the fantasies of two middle aged men.

I suspect many readers will have already jumped off the League books once the story reached the twentieth century. I have stuck with it so far but really feel as if it is disappearing up its own fundament now. There are lots of dead bodies in this book, there is even some flogging, but I couldn't spot the dead horse that this concept has become. Alan Moore has a huge brain, he likes to demonstrate that in his writings, plus he's a wizard and can probably vaporise me for not getting all his cultural references, but I'm done with this series. Spend your tenner more wisely, and preferably on some 2000AD instead.

Sci-Fi Thrillers

Here’s another eclectic collection from 2000AD that bundles up some stories from the Prog and the Megazine that aren't likely to be reprinted anywhere else. Pick of the book has to be the complete first 6 episodes of Pat Mills’ The Visible Man with art by Carlos Trigo and Montero. It’s another terrific twisted take on the super-hero origin by Mills, with lots of gruesome anatomical detail that must have had the artists scurrying to find medical textbooks back in those pre internet days. Quite why the title character doesn't put more clothes on is a bit of a mystery but that’s comic books for you, and there is one bit of the Visible Man that is clearly not visible. There’s even a strategically placed bit of red dress on the cover of this book. Pat Mills has recently teamed up with Henry Flint to bring back the Visible Man so this is a good place to catch up with his origins.

Apart from that we get a variation on the Bill Savage theme with another hard nosed Brit fighting off alien invaders in Colony Earth, the plot of which is so much like Independence Day that I’m surprised 2000AD didn't kick up a fuss when the movie came out. Then there’s a few one off Future Shock tales with lovely artwork from Belardinelli, Ian Gibson, Steve Dillon and John Ridgeway.

The middle of the book is taken up with some longer stories: Universal Soldier, Tribal Memories and Family, all of which could have remained buried in the archives as far as I am concerned. There is the Megazine story XTNCT with the highly detailed black and white art we can expect from D’Israeli and a script by Paul Cornell. A strip with the last remnants of humanity fighting a bunch of talking dinosaurs should be hilarious, and I usually love anything by D’Israeli and normally quite like Cornell’s writing but this was a real dud for me.

The book finishes with Superbean, a 6 page comedy strip by John Wagner and Mike McMahon which is funnier and more charming than anything else in the collection. That story and the Visible Man are about the only things worth the price of admission. Overall this is nowhere near the high standard of the Mutants in Mega-City One trade I reviewed recently and I would give it a pass unless you are an absolute completist.

In like Flint

I had a bit of a day out at the new Forbidden Planet store in Cambridge and came away with a copy of the Judge Dredd: Henry Flint collection. Seven self contained stories from the Prog and the Megazine spanning the decade from 1997-2007. 

One of the Megazine stories: Street Fighting Man was written by Robbie Morrison, the rest are written by John Wagner. Likewise Cam Kennedy gets a partial art credit on the Turkey Shoot story. Henry Flint is my favourite of the current Dredd artists. I have an original page from his first ever Dredd story framed on the wall above me here as I write this and it's interesting to see his progression as he develops his portrayal of Dredd's world. His figures were much neater in the early days, still exaggerated but with a cleaner line and a more organised look to Mega-City One. His work reminds me of Frank Miller's Ronin as the sinister buildings sprawl and spread out in an almost organic fashion. Fortunately Flint's work has just got better and better and he hasn't descended to the appalling cartoon work that Miller produced in books like the Dark Knight Strikes Back and Holy Terror.

John Wagner's writing is as good as ever, particularly when we get to the last and best of the stories, The Gingerbread Man which reintroduced the serial killer P.J.Maybe into Dredd's rogues gallery. Wagner and Flint are the perfect partnership on this tale which sets up many of the events of the Tour of Duty storyline, and also prove that being Dredd's partner on the streets is a fairly dangerous position for a Judge.

So it's a fun collection of stories with lovely art, and even though it's 6 years old now it succeeded in getting my money off me. But would it kill Rebellion to put a bit of extra material into these collections? I know they are not a huge publisher and that the margins on the comics and reprints are always fairly tight, but couldn't we have an introduction and maybe a few sketches from Mr Flint in the back of the book? There are plenty of well qualified people on this website or the forums who would be happy to write an introduction for nowt. Pete Wells Block or Senior Street Judge Burdis could do an excellent job I'm sure.

The only book they have out recently with an introduction was the Halo Jones reprint which began with a few words from the science fiction writer Lauren Beukes. That was pretty disappointing stuff to be honest. Come on, Tharg. Let's have a bit more back and front matter in these collections please.

The Batman versus That Man

Here we have all of Dredd's encounters with the Dark Knight, and another crossover with the DC comics character Lobo. Fictional crossovers are a long established trope in books, films and comics. We seem endlessly fascinated by the idea of our favourite characters meeting up, and the endless debates about whether Superman could defeat Dr Manhattan and so on. Most of the time this stuff leaves me cold, I'd rather read good stories in the character's own universe than wonder if Johnny Alpha could beat up the Punisher. Still Batman versus Dredd has to at least raise an eyebrow of interest doesn't it?

There are some parallels between the two characters' histories. Both had their early, somewhat silly stories with clownish opponents, wacky machines and giant dinosaurs. And both have evolved into their current grim and gritty story lines. I still find Dredd's world much more interesting, particularly because the man himself has been allowed to age, and has started to question his own obsessive dedication to the law. Meanwhile Batman stays pretty much the same throughout everything.

The cover by Mike Mignola may be my favourite thing about the whole collection, shame there is none of his art inside. However we do have art by Simon Bisley, Glenn Fabry, Carl Critchlow, and Cam Kenmedy. Bisley and Fabry both seem too brash and nineties for me, but they are fan favourites and the lovely reproduction here is sure to satisfy many. My own preference would be Carl Critchlow and Dermot Power on The Ultimate Riddle story, and Cam Kennedy's work in Vendetta in Gotham.

It's all written by John Wagner and Alan Grant who produce solid stuff but I wouldn't regard this as their greatest work by some way. The Ultimate Riddle story may be the most fun even if if does just retread the classic trope of having warriors from different times and places plucked away to take part in a gladiatorial contest. More crossover nonsense, still at least Captain Kirk and the Gorn don't show up.

It is a very pretty collection and if you're looking for your Dredd versus Batman fix then this will do the job nicely. Personally I'm still hoping for something which has the same impact as Mutants in Mega-City One.

A Quarter to Fear

A Quarter to Fear is a neat collection of four supernatural short stories from classic writers who are better known for their more mainstream fictional works. It is compiled, edited and annotated by Mr Jim Moon, the host of the excellent Hypnobobs podcast.

Mr Moon has an encyclopaedic knowledge of all matters macabre. Like the Shadow he knows what fear lurks within the hearts of men, and is an expert on the fictional worlds of spooky stories from films, television, and, of course, books. This collection is a follow up to his previous septet of stories published last year, the Seven of Spectres. The difference this time is that he has chosen four interesting tales by unusual authors. They are The Superstitious Man's Story by Thomas Hardy, The Horror of the Heights by Arthur Conan Doyle, The Sea Raiders by H.G.Wells, and The Head by E.Nesbit

Each tale is introduced and annotated by Jim and presented with a suitable spooky illustration. They are are creepy and interesting stories but the pick of the bunch for me is Nesbit's tale of a gruesome obsession and revenge. Jim Moon's comments and notes are fascinatingly helpful and all in all this is a splendid collection which is currently available for less than the price of a Sunday newspaper. Highly recommended, Five stars and please, Mr Moon, may we have some more?