First Prog: 1566
Latest Prog: 1990
First Meg: 298
Latest Meg: 374
Total appearances: 115 and counting
(especially this Summer! – his total will probably exceed 150 by the end of the year at the rate he’s going on both Prog and Meg)
(especially this Summer! – his total will probably exceed 150 by the end of the year at the rate he’s going on both Prog and Meg)
-but not including his brief
tenure as fan-turned commentator in the Megazine’s ‘top twenty’ list.
Writing credits:
Judge Dredd
DeMarco, PI
A handful of one offs. But really, he’s a Dredd (and Dreddworld) man through and through.
A handful of one offs. But really, he’s a Dredd (and Dreddworld) man through and through.
Notable character creations:
Judge Joyce (Junior)
Thorn
-I might’ve added Texas City chief Judge Oswin, but she’s not likely to show up again…
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| Oswin - latest in a line of lady Dredd villains whose chief weapons are politics and bureaucracy (see also Edgar and Bachmann) Art by Colin MacNeil |
Notable characteristics:
Consistent goodness at
writing Dredd tales. Combining an encyclopaedic knowledge of the strip’s past
with a willingness to push new ideas and characters into the mix. Deft comic
touches. Bringing out the context of the wider world in Judge Dredd, not just
Mega-City 1.
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| Carroll isn't shy of blasting holes into JD. Art by Mark Sexton |
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| Fun with wordplay, in the best John Wagner tradition Art by David Roach |
On Michael:
I had, wrongly,
remembered Carroll as a writer who went straight onto Judge Dredd, and never strayed any further outside of that world
than the two recent-ish series of DeMarco.
In fact, like pretty much everyone else, his first published works were of
course on a variety of one-off twisty tales.*
There’s a formula to
these things that means it’s not really fair to single out anything in them as
Carrollian tricks or tics, but I would say that if there’s something that comes
across, it’s extreme 2000AD competence. It’s almost as if he’s got access to
some secret playbook that says ‘this is how you do it’. As it is, not every
twist ending was mind blowing, but the premise is the thing. So, we get a Time
travel story about Hitler (groan) – but this time it’f rom Hitler’s point of
view (oooh, fun!).
 |
| Giving Hitler a helping hand Art by Gary Erskine |
A Logan’s Run riff that opens with a lovely bit
of 2000AD cynicism.
 |
| Feeding the hungry? What kind of idiot would try to do that?! Art by John Cooper |
And a fun slice of impossible future tech:
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| You can almsot see it, can't you? Art by Nick Dyer |
But really, when it
comes to Michael Carroll, it’s Judge Dredd all the way. Form the off, reading
a Carroll Dredd was a bit like someone coming home. He’s just got it so right,
so consistently, and with very little of the feet-finding that has dogged
pretty much all Dredd writers not named Wagner and Grant.**
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| Getting Dredd right without even having the man himself in the story Art by Nick Dyer |
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| Dredd done right when he's on panel, too. Art by Jake Lynch |
It’s not that his
streets ahead of his contemporaries or anything like that, it’s just he’s such
a good fit. His recently-concluded epic (does it have an overall name yet?)
provides a great example.
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| Meet Thorn - who turned out to be a mew pawn of the real villain, but an impressive beast nonetheless! Art by Colin McNeil |
I mean, no one really
thinks anyone but John Wagner will write a (the?) story in which Joe Dredd dies
– but for a few weeks there, we kinda sorta believed that Carroll had been
given the blessing to do the unthinkable.
All that said, beyond
the same most recent hyper-memorable storyline, I can’t actually call to mind many
specific plots and adventures that he has put Dredd through. I remember Blood
of Emeralds, but only to the extent that Dredd and Joyce went to Ireland and
had a run in with some evil Brit-Cit Judges, and it sorts of relates to the
long real-world history of the English being bastards to the Irish, but I don’t
remember the actual specifics.
Which might come
across as faint praise, but to be honest I can’t remember much specifically
from even John Wagner’s work on Judge
Dredd over the last 15 years. I know it’s all been great, but epics aside,
I don’t have the recall powers that I do for the stories I read again and again
(and again and again) as a young squaxx with a limited set of Progs.
The most obvious point
of discussion is Carroll’s willingness to pick up and run with elements of
Dredd’s world. I guess you could say he’s following in Gordon Rennie’s
footsteps. As if he’s picked up the baton of ‘natural successor to Wagner’ from
the same man (obviously this is silly, as Wagner himself is still the driving
force, and the likes of Ewing and Williams have been pretty drokking great on
Dredd, too).
Anyway, Carroll has taken
us around the world, from rebuilding Mega City 2, including a simmering
Sov-based subplot there,
to Emerald Isle and Brit-Cit, to a whole new construct on the much-ignored Pacific Ocean, the Gyre.
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| What has Dredd ever done for MC2? Art by Ben Willsher |
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| DeMarco's story takes her to the heart of a rebuilt Mega City 2 Art by Steve Yeowell |
to Emerald Isle and Brit-Cit, to a whole new construct on the much-ignored Pacific Ocean, the Gyre.
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| The Gyre: a floating city made up of years 21st century refuse Art by Nick Percival |
 |
Art by PJ Holden |
Sideways of Dredd he’s
tackled DeMarco and, most recently, brought in Armitage.
Most delightfully,
there’s the all new Fintan Joyce, because why shouldn’t Ennis’s 2-year run on Dredd get some love as well? And because
young Joyce turns out to be both funny and serious in equal measure.
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| Joyce as fanboy Art by Paul Davidson |
 |
| Joyce as put-upon mama's boy Art by Colin MacNeil |
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| Joyce as badass Art by PJ Holden |
To an extent, a lot of
Carroll’s work has come together on his recent mega-epic, but one gets the
strong impression that he’s building up to another big ol’ conflict soon
enough…
More on Michael Carroll:
As anyone who’s heard
him will know, the man gives good podcast.
He has his own
website:
Before he turned pro,
he wrote a series of fun fan articles for the 2000AD Review website, under the
name Sprout. That site may be gone, but the Sprout Files live on!
-I recommend this
column from 2003 in particular, in which he suggests 8 ways to bring JohnnyAlpha back to life – and, in a way, Wagner actually did end up using one of
them…
Personal favourites:
Tales from the Black Museum:
Invisible bullets
Judge Dredd: hell, I’ll just go ahead and say all of it. When Carroll’s name is in
the credit box of a Dredd, you know it’ll be a cracker.
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| Art by Paul Davidson |
*And not forgetting
that he’d been writing Sci-Fi/adventure stories for a while at this point, too.
**Or of course
co-creator Pat Mills, who has ever trod his own path with this particular
character.
Thorn isn't any more likely to show up again than Oswin, for the same reason ... and at least Oswin had her own brain/personality.
ReplyDeleteYou make a fantastic point about the stickiness (or lack thereof) of stories you read as an adult then put away on a shelf beside thousands of other books and comics - because you have to do the dishes - versus being able to remember the story turns and character names of the same few dozen episodes you read again and again over long Summer holidays with nothing else to do.
ReplyDeleteI can remember the smell of the garden wafting through the open door and the feel of the sun falling on me and the comic pages sprawled across my green checked duvet every time I pick up an issue from the 520-536 period. I read those stories like the Gospels.
Great blog, Alex, and thanks for the link to Carroll's musings on the undeath of Johnny Alpha.
Given the way Thorn was created, I hold out hope that a copycat version could be made at some point in the future! Basically I'm a sucker for giant slabs of beef in hockey masks.
ReplyDeleteMy gospel period (definitely stealing that phrase!) covers not so much the Progs as the Best Of 2000 AD Monthly Nos 6-32, with a handful missing in between. Good times!