2000AD owners Rebellion put out a call for help over the summer, which we were more than happy to repeat hear on downthetubes. They were looking for anyone out there who might have cuttings or originals of the “Judge Dredd” strips that ran in Britain’s Daily Star newspaper, as they were having trouble tracking down good quality copies of some of the strips.
I, like many others had copies of some of the strips they were after and gave them to Rebellion, and today I got in the post the result of the search.
It’s a 350plus hardback book, collecting all the weekly Saturday strips from 1981 – 1986: just a little over 280 standalone single page stories, written by John Wagner and Alan Grant, with art for the most part by Ron Smith, with Ian Gibson on board for a dozen or so towards the end, and then Steve Dillon, Brett Ewins and John Higgins handling a handful.
The rest of the book reprints the first two daily strips, again by John Wagner, Alan Grant and Ron Smith, which run to 33 pages per story and each page has about six panels. The art is about twice the size in some of the episodes to how they appeared originally in the Star, which gives Smith’s art a real chance to shine.
This is a beautifully produced book, hardback, with excellent reproduction on the artwork, and includes introductions by Keith Richardson, Rebellion’s Graphic Novels Editor and Richard Burton, one time 2000AD Editor and the original editor of these strips.
The stories themselves come highly recommended: this is classic era Dredd by the dream team of Wagner Grant and Smith. The daily strips, in particular,stood out for me.
A lot of the content of this book will be new to readers so in effect this is like a brand new Dredd book. It will be available in November and can be pre ordered here from the 2000adonline shop
– David MacDonald
David MacDonald is the publisher of Hibernia Comics, the company behind the collections of classic British strips such as Doomlord and The Tower King
One of many guest posts for downthetubes.
Categories: 2000AD, British Comics, British Comics - Current British Publishers, British Comics - Newspaper Strips, downthetubes Comics News