Friday, March 31, 2017

No. 101 Arthur Wyatt


First Prog: 1376  
Latest Prog: 2010

First Meg: 286
Latest Meg: 377

Total appearances: 88

Creator credits:
Road Warrior
Samizdat Squad

Tension in the ranks of the Samizdat Squad
Art by Paul Marshall
Other writing credits:
The 86ers
Judge Dredd
Dredd
Orlok
Dan Francisco
A hefty selection of one-offs and 3rillers

Notable characteristics:
Dude seems to like Soviet stuff, what with his first strip being about Laika, his series Samizdat Squad, and his resurrection of Orlok the Assassin as a character with more stories to tell.

But in general he comes across as someone who is deeply interested in the 2000AD-ness of 2000AD. He doesn’t go gonzo crazy in the vein of Al Ewing, but he does have a knack for picking out some pretty weird sci-fi ideas 

I'm still said we never saw any more of the tale of self-creating highways
Art by Inaki Miranda
and putting them on the page to see what happens. And then mixing that up with the stoic word-light action beats of a John Wagner.

Who goes there?
Art by Paul Davidson
Oh, and hardly worth picking out for any given 2000AD writer, but he’s got that dry British humour thing going*.

 

On Arthur:
Another winner for Tharg, gleaned from the talent pool of fans-turned-pros. Wyatt co-founded FutureQuake, one of the best 2000AD-inspired comics (and he may have worked on fanzine Class of '79 before that?). He got his Prog break after winner one of the pitchfest competitions, leading to a Past Imperfect story. From there, more one offs showing a variety of genres, slowly but surely becoming one of those names you start to recognise in the credits boxes.

And from there, gamely picking up a series that creator Gordon Rennie had left dangling, the 86ers. Not sure if Wyatt approached Rennie, or if Tharg asked Rennie if he could hand the baton on to someone else, but whatever the route it all seems to have been amicable.

Tying up the plot threads
Art by PJ Holden
Little by little, Wyatt has taken his opportunities and grown with each one. Most recently, he seems to have become the lead writer on the continuing comics adventures of Dredd, from the movie. And it’s his most accomplished work to date, I’d say. But I am waiting for him to unleash a more personal creation that really lets him make his mark. Looking back over his career, all the ingredients are there…

I’m inclined to do less waffling this time and more showing a selection of panels from across the years of Wyatt’s tenure.

Working with sci-fi concepts (and dead bodies)
Art by David Roach

Art by Edmund Bagwell


Art by Duane Redhead

There's some classic comics storytelling in these kinds of one-offs. Wyatt sets up some kind of threat, then conjures up an in-story mechanic to defeat it, unafraid of both science and fiction.As often as not, in the 2000 vein, he's also only willing to put up with a certain amount of po-faced pontification from his characters...

Art by Vince Locke

There's even space for a little poignancy, as long as it's delivered with a bullet...

Art by Robin Smith

When working on multi-part stories, Wyatt likes to break up the intricate ideas with extended action sequences, and why not?

Art by Ben Willsher

Art by Paul Marshall
Wyatt's work with Dan Francisco was a lot of fun, developing Wagner's original concept of a Judge who doubles as a relaity-TV star, but now with the added layer of a) having been a somehwat disgraced Chief Judge and b) not being on TV any more. I'd liek to see more of the character, although with that character beat addressed, I can see how it'd be tough to tell Dan Francisco stories that weren't just Dredd stories with a different lead character. See also: Judge Hershey and her slew of well-menaing but never quite successful solo stories.

Wyatt's first original series proper, Samizdat Squad, is yet more 2000AD super-essence, with the slight filter of being Soviet-inflected, for whatever that's worth. Like the Inspectre before it, the strip is rooted in the aftermath of the Apocalypse War. Unlike the moodiness of the Inspectre, it plumps for hard action, with sardonic banter. Basically it's like a good late 80s Dolph Lundgren film series, that never actually exsited.

Setting up the Squad
Art by Paul Marshall


Knocking down the Squad
Art by PJ Holden

Staying Sov, Wyatt served up a handful of outings for Orlok the Assassin. It's kind of James Bond / MACH One-ish in its tone, and frankly the need for 'the adventures of young Orlok' is unclear. But, and this is the point, Wyatt used it as an opportunity to riff on some increasingly weird SF ideas, and if it took a spy-angle to do that then more power to him.

If your hero is called 'Orlok the Assassin', you kinda expect him to do plenty of assassinating.
Art by Jake Lynch


In the second series, Orlok takes on a mutant painter who can paint the future, cubistly.
More of that sort of thing, please!
Art by Jake Lynch


A trip into Orlok's own mind, channeling the spriit of Peter Milligan, perhaps.
Art by Jake Lynch
Lately, to my mind, Wyatt has taken a big leap in quality. His two most recent Dredds have been just excellent, following an unsual team of science research cannibals and Jimping ape. There's horror, action and emotion aplenty in both tales, and I hope it heralds more strips and more confident innovations to come.

What does THE MACHINE do? It must be pretty horrible, right?
Art by Jake Lynch

More on Arthur Wyatt:
His website  
An interview on Starburst
He's a guest on an episode of the War Rocket Ajax podcast

Yes, it is horrible.
Art by Jake Lynch


Personal favourites:
Judge Dredd: Inversion; The Call of K. Cattrall; The Cube Root of Evil; Monkey Business
Dredd: Dust
Samizdat Squad: Black Flowers
The Streets of Dan Francisco
Orlok: The Rasputin Caper

Terror Tales: Bad Blood; Pea Patch Podlings
Future Shocks: Yggdrassil; Scablands


*You’ve got to look pretty hard to find a 2000AD script that lacks this key ingredient.

Friday, March 24, 2017

No. 100 Nigel Dobbyn


First Prog: 588
Latest Prog: 971
-but, much, MUCH more recently he has cropped up in the 2016 Sci Fi Special, and Prog 2011 (no, not the Xmas prog from 2010, the Xmas prog from 2016).

Total appearances: 89
-not including 3 episodes of Judge Dredd: Legends of the Law

Dobbyn tosses off a host of alien weirdies like it's no big deal.
And yes, those are some mighty fmailiar faces in the top right...
Words by Garth Ennis


Creator credits:
Medivac 318*
Trash

Other art credits:
Strontium Dogs
Red Razors
Ace Trucking Co
Various one offs

Notable character creations:
Verity McKinnon
Trashman Trask

 

Notable characteristics:
Friendliness – I’ve not met the man, although I’m sure he’s perfectly friendly, but I mean his art comes across as friendly. Even when he’s drawing vicious mutants or psycho killers, it’s still friendly.

Also fluid, graceful and with well considered mise-en-scene, to use the cinematic term. It basically means choosing and arranging things (people, objects, scenery) into a frame in a pleasing way that tells the story and also communicates tone and atmosphere.

He’s also great at drawing people who are slightly miffed - and sometimes, extremely miffed.

Notice also the flipped PoV from one panel to the next. Something you're not 'allowed' to do in comics,
but professional artists can gt away with doing it from time to time to really add some drama.
Words by Hilary Robinson


On Nigel:
Poor Nigel Dobbyn. A consummate professional, and a Prog mainstay for quite a span of time (in fact, the exact span when I first got into the Prog in a big way). And yet he never really got to work on an all-time great series.

His first Future Shocks were solid, showing a facility with future worlds that are entirely believable, not too far-fetched. Uniforms, weapons, buildings etc.

Super detailed uniforms contrast with sparse backgrounds to really set the tone.
Words by Steve Dillon

It led pretty seamlessly into his first full series, Medivac 318, very much a realistic take on space opera, based around a ‘Medical Evacuation’ team. The future tech is not too outlandish, and the alien societies very much in the classic vein of metaphors for different factions of humans. Dobbyn brings it all to life and makes the whole thing very accessible – vital because there’s an awful lots going on in terms of characters and setting.

This is just great comics right here - the art tells the reader what's going on so clearly that the writer can use the dialogue to communicate all sorts of other ideas, and not have to explain what the pictures show. A true team effort.
Words by Hilary Robinson


More cracking character and set design
Context by Hilary Robinson

Robinson’s storytelling style, in this series anyway, involves quite a bit of banter. Dobbyn seems to have no problem with this, and adds huge amounts to the whole thing by fleshing out all sorts of background details in his panels.

Dobbyn's blacks suffered from late 80s printing methods.
But he throws in some miffed faces, so we don't mind.
Words by Hilary Robinson
You could argue that the banter, and the scene setting, gets in the way of the sort of gung-ho action beats that 2000AD readers are used to. And in fact, when the action does ramp up, it’s in a somewhat jarring real-world news style. There are bombs, chaos and punching. Within 2000AD, this actually works super well, what with most strips presenting the extreme end of comedy gore. Oh, and there's a rpetty fabulous design for insectoid alien beasties, too...

Giant inesects with ray guns!
That's 2000AD
Context by Hilary Robinson

Of course, in time Dobbyn would go on to work on two of the most OTT comedy-violence strips going. Frankly, I question the editorial decisions being made there but it may be that there wasn’t anything better suited to Dobbyn’s talents, and his talent surely demanded that he be given regular work!

I’m talking about the Ennis-scripted Strontium Dogs, and the Mark Millar scripted Red Razors.**

Words by Mark Millar


Backing up a little, there were a couple of curios. Dragon Tales, a very short-lived experiment in trying to write Future Shocks based around the theme of dragons, which really didn’t seem to come off. Although Dobbyn’s two-parter did yield an absolutely spectacular mass-transformation scene as everyone gets their dragon on.

He puts so much effort into making every character on panel distinct.
Words by Peter Hogan
 
And of course Trash, the series that time forgot. It’s one of the stories that I remember quite enjoying at the time, but never loving. When I think back on it I still remember the whole thing rather fondly, but on actually going back to re-read it just isn’t very good. And again, none of this is Dobbyn’s fault.

Trashman Trask isn't quite Judge Dredd
Words by Paul Kupperberg
 
For those who don’t know, the premise is a near-future world in which almost everything has been paved over, and police officer types, known as Trashmen, are employed to enforce eco-friendly laws. Only no one seems to care. The series stumbles by making the protagonist, Trashman Trask, be the sort of Judge Dredd / Canon Fodder equivalent of the Trashmen (who quits the force to go it alone, natch). But the series does have its charms, the really memorable bit for me being that this somewhat unhinged ‘hero’ uses everything at his disposal to save the life of a dandelion that has managed to force its way up through the concrete slabs. If it had pushed the Taxi Driver elements harder, it could've been a winner.

Scenes of this bully admiring said flower are genuinely poignant.

Dobbyn captures the essence of crazed but somehow well-meaning loner rather well
Words by Paul Kupperberg

But then it was onto guns and guts with the return of the Gronk. But let's be clear here, Dobbyn's verison of the Gronk is plani amazing - he suits that specific character super well.

 


Thje things Dobbyn does with Gronk's eyes and nose are quite beautfiul and very communicative.
Words by Garth Ennis

And Feral’s quest into Hell to find Johnny Alpha, for reasons that made sense to Garth Ennis at the time. And, for what it’s worth, it all gives Dobbyn a chance to show off his facility with expressions, as the Gronk gets angry, Feral feels fear, and copes with his own out of control mutation.

Dobbyn's style couldn't be more different from Simon Harrison and Steve Pugh.
Not quite as strong on the body depiction, but outstanding on the emotions.
Words by Garth Ennis


 

Much more confident with non-human characters
Words by Garth Ennis


The scenes actually in Hell do have a sinister undertone. As mentioned above, I find Dobbyn’s style to be a friendly one. Almost because of this, the bits where Feral slowly realises he is wading in a soup of human gore are almost more horrible than they might be under the pen of, say, John Hicklenton, because it’s a crazy mix of tones. But honestly, why was this series not being drawn by Hicklenton, or Chris Weston, or someone who has body horror written all over their work?

The ribcage + flesh/goo combination is proper horror.
Words by Garth Ennis

Ennis left the strip to be replaced by Peter Hogan, much more of a natural partner for Dobbyn. Unfortunately the strip ended up suffering from long gaps between instalments, and instalments in which, most of the time, not very much happened, slowly.

I’ll be honest and confess that I never really warmed to Dobbyn’s renditions of most of the human-looking characters. The costumes and poses are excellent, but the faces kind of lack that Ezquerra chunky charm.

Doing justice to Johnny Alpha
Words by Garth Ennis


 but he did absolutely cracking work with the Gronk, and with the skateboarding goblin crew,

Another Simon Harrison creation, but this time Dobbyn makes it his own
Words by Peter Hogan

and of course with the bizarre team of villains known as the Alphabet Men:

It's that attention to detail (a common feature among 2000Ad artists, it must be said) that makes it work so well.
Words by Peter Hogan

Which leaves us with Red Razors. And, once again, Dobbyn does a creditable job. The point of this series seems to be to showcase Red as a deranged psychopath with a vendetta, who uses every possible opportunity to unleash hot metal death. With a smile. And when you put it like that, you can see how and why it fits into 2000AD, and certainly into Mark Millar.

Why is everyone shooting everyone else? Why?
Words by Mark Millar

And, maybe, if it has been my first series when I was 8 I might have enjoyed those bits of the strip, and ignored the fact that there kind of was no plot, or any character motivation or any of that stuff. Dobbyn, of course, keeps it all grounded so one can at least follow the action. And he does a great line in expressions, shadows, and explosions.

Tasteful carnage
Words by Mark Millar

A coda for Red Razors many progs down the line, and that was it for Nigel Dobbyn…
(although in fact he had a healthy stint on Sonic the Comic, which is increasingly sounding like a comic I need to track down!)

…until last year, when, out of the blue, he became the latest artist to tackle long-lost, much-beloved series Ace Trucking Co. And by gosh, he did an excellent job, twice. It’s laced through with the fluidity of Belardinelli, and you can really feel the setting on board the Speedo Ghost. It’s funny and charming, and I want more!

By far the closest any artist has come to capturing Belardinelli's anarchy and verve
Words by Eddie Robson



Dobbyn brings the comedy in his drawings, a vital part of any funy strip.
I'm reminded of Alan Davis here, which is always a good thing.
Words by Eddie Robson



More on Nigel Dobbyn:
His website
There’s an archive of a 2010 interview here
that’s mostly a career retrospective.

One awaits an in-depth piece from Ennis, Dobbyn and Hogan in which they dissect what they were doing on Strontium Dogs. 

Personal favourites:
Medivac 318
Strontium Dogs: How the Gronk got his Heartses; The Alphabet Men
Ace Trucking: The Banned Brand Stand; The Festive Flip-Flop

 

*Medivac 318 was already a series in short story / novel form before it came to 2000AD, created by Hilary Robinson. Not sure at what point Dobbyn came on board (he may have provided some art for those stories? I’ve never managed to track them down!), but I’m willing to bet that even if he only came on board with the 2000AD strip version, he had a fair amount of creative input into the look of the people, the alien worlds, spaceship design and so on.

**The second series of which I am sad to say is a strong contender for worst thing ever written and published in 2000AD.

Thursday, March 16, 2017

No. 99 David Hine



First Prog: 651 (star scan on the back); 666 (on the cover); 723 (interior art)
Final Prog: 1022 (writer and artist)
-but before that he first appeared in Crisis 5
-and looooong before that he drew a Future Shock in the 1981 2000AD Annual, which I don’t have and haven’t seen, sadly.

Total appearances: 90
-including his work on Crisis, and with a double score for the stories he wrote as well as drew.

Tao de Moto is both Human and Dancer.
Creator credits:
Sticky Fingers (artist)
Tao de Moto (artist)
Mambo (writer and artist)



Other art/writing credits:
A single episode of Dredd,
New Statesmen
Maniac 5
The Spider (from the 2000AD Action Special curio)
and a handful one-offs

Notable character creations:
Tao de Moto
Rachel Verlaine (aka the Mambo)

Notable characteristics:
As an artist whose style was clearly in development during his time at 2000AD, it feels a little harsh to call out certain things, but I would say that early Hine is kind of flat. Later Hine gets much fuller, and is not unlike a British comics version of Manga – although again this may not be his style per say, but the rather a specific look he wanted on Mambo, which is 100% a British version of anime/manga. More on this later.

He’s definitely cartoonish rather than realistic across the board, and in that good way that makes it easy to read from one panel to the next. He’s interested in drawing up large casts of characters who are all more or less ‘normal’ looking, but in their own distinctive way. You could even say that he draws British-looking comics in a very classical way - gives everything simple, clean, clear outlines, inks them, so they can be coloured in without mucking about. (I think sometimes he coloured himself, but not always?)

Story and art by David Hine; colours I think by Gina Hart

In fact, even within the weird world of Mambo, it’s definitely a characteristic of Hine’s to show people going about their daily lives, something that must continue regardless of any extraordinary circumstances.

That’s all Hine the artist. Hine the writer is associated strongly with one big trend: body horror. Like, full-on John Smith / David Cronenberg / Shunya Tsukamoto body horror. And yes, as far as 2000AD goes it’s only really Mambo. But a glance at Strange Embraces and even his Marvel work on the X-Men world reveals it’s a general passion of his. I love me some body horror.

Haven't read this issue but I sure am intrigued.
 
On David:
After various odd jobs here and there, for example helping other artists out on new Statesmen, I feel Hine’s story begins with Sticky Fingers. I remember Tharg telling me it was the best thing ever. I didn’t get to read it at the time, but did in my early 20s – in theory the ideal time to pick up a story about impoverished 20-somethings bumming around in Camden.*

Life being sliced. And do note that Hine already has the linge claire look down pat.
Words by Myra Hancock


Not my thing, apparently. I appreciate that its comics telling an incredibly different kind of story from what I usually read in, say, 2000AD, but nothing quite stood out. Hine’s character design is neat, his storytelling through expressions and body but it’s not enough to sell a group of characters I didn’t gel with.

 

Topper was a memorable character design, if an annoying twat.
Words by Myra Hancock.
I can well believe it was pretty ground-breaking at the time it was originally published (before I’d read any American comics that trod similar-ish ground, e.g. Bob Fingerman, Adrian Tomine, Chester Brown etc), and evidently it struck enough of a chord with readers and editors alike to earn Hine and writer Myra Hancock** a slot on 2000AD, kind of doing the same sort of thing but now with a Sci-Fi twist.

More causal booking of flights to Venus, please, Tharg.
Words by Myra Hancock
And so we get Tao de Moto, an almost-never talked about 2000AD story that is all kinds of delightful, certainly way better than Sticky Fingers. When I say ‘delightful’, I don’t actually mean it’s an overlooked gem of a story as such, but it delighted me then and still that it ran at all, and that it was bringing me a storyline and characters that just hadn’t been seen before in the comic.



For a start, the lead characters are from, variously, Thailand, Japan, Hong Kong and Sweden (I think?). For a second, the story is about surrogacy, alien DNA, and personal responsibility. For a third, the story was told, mostly, in small 1-page chunks.

This had been done before with Sooner or Later, but where that strip was going for out and out weirdness (both in story and art), Tao de Moto was aiming for a newspaper strip style weekly hit of soap operatics. And achieved it pretty well. If there’s a problem, it’s that each episode was perhaps too self-contained, meaning that, like on many TV soaps, the motivations of each character made sense for that episode but then seemed to alter dramatically for the next.

Lola calls out Tao - quite rightly too. But does hse have an ulterior motive? Annoyingly we never found out!
Superb character work from Hine, too.
Words by Myra Hancock

On the other hand, one of the points of the strip was that we readers never really knew who to trust. We’re definitely meant to like Tao herself, but we’re not always meant to trust that what she says is true, or that she even really knows what she’s doing or why.
As for the scheming Sopalco and best friend Lola, who knows what they’re really looking for?

Those hairstyles are super bizarre. Love it.
Words by Myra Hancock

The other big problem with the strip, of course, is that it just kind of died. After a decent opening run in the Prog (which I guess too many readers didn’t like), it garnered a send-of episode in a Winter Special that resolved not nearly enough. So it goes.

A detour now in the story of David Hine to spotlight his first actual work in 2000AD: some arty covers. And when I say arty, I mean Andy Warhol:

 

 And Gilbert & George:

(an artistic pair I’d never have heard of except my Dad was excited to point it out
to me and my brother when that Prog arrived through the letterbox).
I wonder if this is the sort of ‘appealing to the right-on NME crowd stuff’ that Pat Mills and others objected to so much? Personally I think it’s all good fun.And let’s not forget this cover from Hine, which is just straight up action with one of my favourite film-linked puns.

Because Dredd's giant boot is the focus of the picture, but also they're on a boat
and 'Das Boot' was that awesome film about a U-boat in WW2.
Bonus points to Burton/McKenzie for that one.

Hine’s design sense also earned him the honour of being the droid who delivered the opening salvo of the 1993 Summer Offensive.

Dredd as brutal bully was sort of a theme of the Morrison/Millar efforts,
and boy does HIne make that come across.

He even got to introduce the world of one of the stars of that line-up, Maniac 5, in a special story that served as a prologue. With a touch of body horror, you’ll notice.

Best 'brain in a jar' scene since Prog 1!
Words by Mark Millar

And so on to Hine’s magnum opus, as both writer and artist on three books of Mambo – a story that Tharg actually did deign to let run it’s full course.

This is actually the final ever panel of Mambo. I like how it works as an intro, too.

Unlike Sticky Fingers and Tao de Moto, this one’s a full-on genre piece, being a mash-up of ‘alien world’ sci-fi and police procedural. It’s also an homage to the then-super popular ‘Manga’ video line.*** In case the setting, the art style and the tentacles didn’t give it away, he’s also careful to name drop Katsuhiro Otomo (he of Akira fame), and Masamune Shirow (of Ghost in the Shell / Appleseed fame).

But this is just him saying ‘I love this stuff, let me play in that vague milieu, Tharg, go on’. The story and characters are Hine’s own. At this point, Rachel Verlaine, police detective with a face mask was only Tharg’s fourth in a long, long line of hyper-competent red-haired action ladies,**** but actually her face mask design and the contrast of the blue jumpsuit with the pink hair made her instantly memorable (in a good way).

Bold pink, blue and flesh tones in the colours there - it's all very accessible.
 
The first story starts off as a fun police story with some delightfully Sci-Fi cliffhangers, before getting a little bogged down in a backstory that was not like but unfortunately reminiscent of the same era’s Firekind. The alien culture and evil mining corporation may be clichéd but are at least delivered well.

It’s also worth pointing out that the strip overall was unusually new/young-reader friendly. It wasn’t trying to score intellectual points a la Smith or Milligan (which I happen to like, and which in fact Hine has gone on to do more of in his own work, and well), nor was it trying to show off its bad boy attitude, a la Millar or Morrison (which I only like in moderation). Some of the dialogue wasn’t up to the very high standard of a John Wagner or a Dan Abnett, sure, but the body horror weirdness of the ideas and the art was pure 2000AD.

Never mind a brain in a jar, how about a whole head?
Dig those googly eyes, too.

But then in Mambo Books II and III Verlaine comes back to Earth and gets to do more detective stuff, know with the added fringe of this weird and creepy tentacle/psychic body growth thing happening.

"Sorry, I seem to have drilled a small hole in your forehead."
Police work, future style.

Plus, a super cool villain design, the oddly-monikered but amazingly creepy Skinhead, who came in several iterations, and was a very early riff on the ultra-contmeproary woes of online trolling, cyberbullying and such.

 

And some good ol' melodrama.

I can't help but be moved by this sequence, which shirts the edge of cliche so hard.
 
You’ll also notice there’s some experimental things going on artwise. Like Carlos Ezquerra at the time, Hine was tinkering with computer effects. It certainly fits the anime vibe, but also like Ezquerra it looks super dated now, even bad. I’m curious to know if it’ll actually look better again in around 10 years time, when this early CGI stuff starts to look charmingly old-fashioned (like a lot of 70s / 80s practical effects in film).

No offence to Hine, but this could be the single worst villain death scene in 2000AD history.

One of the last things Hine did for Tharg was a one-off Dredd that has the distinction, for me, of being one of the most clear homages to Mike McMahon I've seen - despiter Hine's natural style having almost nothing in common with the great one. Check out this Dredd - it's pure Mike McMahon, circa Prog 150.

You can still see Hine's own line work and colouring style, mind.
Words by John Wagner

I don’t know if there was ever a chance of Hine’s idiosyncratic comics such as Strange Embraces finding a home in 2000AD, but as it was he hasn’t been back in the Prog since mambo ended, but has done rather well for himself both in and out of the mainstream. He’s earned his place as a Hero in my book for the deft feat of straddling two worlds of 1990s 2000AD – being super hip, but also super-reader friendly.

 


More on David Hine:
His blog:
A very brief career overview on Wikiwand

 There are plenty of interviews about his more recent work, e.g. Bulletproof Coffin (recommended for fans of the weird!), but sadly nothing about his time on 2000AD.
 This interview on Broken Frontier is probably the best at giving some insight into his general worldview.


 


Personal favourites:
Tao de Moto:
Mambo: Fleshworld (it’s all one thing really, but I did like the middle episode especially)
Judge Dredd: Blowout



*At the time I was myself a 20something bumming around in Camden, in between temping jobs and stints at University. Although by contrast to the Sticky Fingers crowd, I was never flat broke or without a home, making it an entirely different experience. I am so on the wrong side of Pat Mills’s class war it’s not even funny. For what it's worth, I did enjoy Lux & Alby, by Martin Millar & Simon Fraser, which mines similiar territory but with a supernatural bit.

**Sadly not going to appear on the blog anytime soon, as she only ever got two story credits

***The super confusing name for the video company that released a bunch of Japanese anime on VHS in the early 90s. It’d be like me setting up a film distribution line in Japan that specialized in, I don’t know, Ken Loach films, and calling my company ‘Comics’.

**** Durham Red, Niamh, Karyn, Rose O’Rion, Judge DeMarco, Rowan Morrigan for those counting along at home. Lazy stereotyping, dudes!