Judge Dredd: The Complete Case Files 16

What I try to do with reviews at this Bookshelf blog is keep it simple and spoiler-free, and let you know whether I'd recommend you pick up a copy of what I just read. Seems to work okay. This time, a brief review of Judge Dredd: The Complete Case Files Volume 16 (Rebellion, 2010).



The last time that I reviewed a Judge Dredd Case File, I said that we were rapidly approaching the point where recommending these comics isn't just a given anymore. These days, Judge Dredd is terrific, even better than it was in its celebrated mid-80s heyday. The recently-completed "Tour of Duty" storyline makes a strong case for being the best Dredd serial ever, and a highlight of any comic serial over the last decade. But in 1991-92, Dredd was a surly teenager of a comic, all mouth and no soul.

Writer Garth Ennis, responsible for the bulk of the stories here, ran out of ideas very quickly during his tenure on the title. The book is incredibly tedious, with overlong chapters of tough-guy nonsense going nowhere fast. Sadly, a lot of the fault is down to artist Simon Coleby, who we must agree has developed amazingly and has, over the last few years, contributed several great-looking pages to the various series that run in the weekly 2000 AD anthology. In 1991-92, however, his work was awkward, blocky, stilted and he was assigned to all of Ennis's worst stories. "The Flabfighters," "A Clockwork Pineapple," "School Bully" and the risible "Koole Killers," a dull one-parter bloated to an agonizing three, would have been awful stories in anybody's hands, but giving them to Coleby was a facepalm of a mistake.

"Justice One" is the longest Ennis story in the book. Painted in various shades of brown mud by Peter Doherty, another talent who has improved tremendously over the years, this murder-in-space mini-epic promises on the opening page that what will happen onboard Justice Department's flagship starliner will be unimaginable. It isn't. After a promising first episode, this story reveals itself as just another "judges in love and trying to flee" mess, the sort of thing John Wagner was doing in his sleep six years previously, albeit with a laughably absurd getaway plan.

It's not all this awful, but enough of it is. Ennis did contribute a couple of amusing one-offs before mediocrity completely overwhelmed him. There's a clever Twin Peaks parody, and a Cliff Robinson-illustrated story about the first guy that Dredd ever arrested making an unwelcome comeback to say hello closes his portion of the book. You can occasionally see Ennis's love of the character shine through, but weekly deadlines on this strip just weren't for him. But at least he liked Dredd. What's coming up when we hit the 1993-95 run really will be tough to get through.

While Ennis was the main writer on the weekly comic, Alan Grant took over writing duties on the strip in the monthly Judge Dredd Megazine. This book collects another clutch of ten installments. Some of these episodes are pretty good, but it really looks like somebody was saving money by just letting anybody draw it. "Raptaur" is a long epic that could have been a good read - there's actually a funny little bit about an eloping couple on gliders - but the artwork by Dean Ormston is just horrible. Same with a one-off drawn by Charlie Adlard - another who'd improve massively over time - and one drawn by American artist Sam Kieth in, apparently, twenty minutes. The policy of putting untried artists on Dredd really was one of the editorial team's worst blunders. Occasionally, some good pages by Robinson, Colin MacNeil or John Burns make it through, but for the most part this is an ugly, ugly book.

Well, that's not completely true. The interiors are mostly garish and undercooked, but the book itself is another example of Rebellion's very classy work with reprints, which puts damn near everybody else in the field to shame. In all, it collects fifty episodes in color on nice paper. The reproduction is very good and if you must have ten months' worth of Dredd from this period, it might as well be in a package that looks as good as this. Recommended for completists, but not with any real enthusiasm.

Judge Dredd: Mechanismo

What I try to do with reviews at this Bookshelf blog is keep it simple and spoiler-free, and let you know whether I'd recommend you pick up a copy of what I just read. Seems to work okay. This time, a brief review of Judge Dredd: Mechanismo (Rebellion, 2009)



It's been a couple of years now, but I was talking once in my Thrillpowered Thursday blog about how Rebellion really needs to bring the sprawling Mechanismo epic back into print. This was a mammoth story full of subplots and subterfuge, detailing the deterioration of Chief Judge MacGruder as she orders the development of robot judges. It seemed like a good idea at the time; with the judges' numbers seriously depleted after the high bodycounts of the "Necropolis" and "Judgement Day" epics, something needed to be done. Turns out, this wasn't it. The stories wormed their way through the pages of the weekly and the then-biweekly Judge Dredd Megazine from 1992-94, before coming to a storming conclusion in the aftermath of a 16-part story called "Wilderlands."

Back in May of '07, I suggested how Rebellion could repackage the story for bookshelves and they have done something quite similar, and very satisfactory. The new "Mechanismo" book, released in October, contains the first three serials from the storyline and deal with one robot, Number Five. These originally appeared from October 1992 to December 1993 and feature art by Colin MacNeil, Peter Doherty and Manuel Benet, with scripts by John Wagner. Although there is a great deal more of the story to come, this book ends on as satisfactory a point as is possible, and hopefully we will see MacGruder's next series of moves in a second volume in 2010.

Wagner does a terrific job in telling the story from multiple viewpoints. The focus shifts from Dredd to various robots to a hapless security clerk, and he uses his frequent Mega-City One trope of having dingbat teevee news announcers comment on the action, which is both effective and very funny. MacNeil and Doherty certainly bring their usual A-games to the party, and Manuel Benet does a laudable job for what I believe was his only assignment for the House of Tharg. It was certainly odd to see a new name dropped in the deep end for what was a critically important story, but Benet's work is pretty good, if perhaps not completely suited to Mega-City weirdness. Production of the book is mostly up to Rebellion's very high standards, but an unfortunate production error left a few erroneous credits on the spine and front cover for artists whose work does not actually appear in the book. Overall, though, a fine collection of a very good sequence of stories, and highly recommended. More, please!

(Excerpted from Thrillpowered Thursday.)

Hideous Beasts Edition with Judge Death and Hot Stuff

Here's how this works: I finish reading something, and I tell you about it, and I try not to bore you to death. This time, reviews of Judge Death: Boyhood of a Superfiend (Rebellion, 2008) and Harvey Comics Classics: Hot Stuff (Dark Horse, 2008).

Each of these books should be praised for one thing: they look fantastic and are reproduced well. They are each fine additions to any bookshelf. The Judge Death book has the nice matte cover and glossy paper that fans of the Rebellion line have come to expect, while the Hot Stuff book is astonishingly good value for money. Taking a leaf from the Essentials/Showcase playbook, this is about 400 pages of comics, but - and here's an important distinction from the big Marvel/DC books - with a mix of color and monochrome, and reproduced on wonderful paper with introductions and background material.



"Boyhood of a Superfiend" was one of the inaugural series in the Judge Dredd Megazine and it is set after the events of the "Necropolis" epic. In it, Death, licking his wounds, hides out as a lodger with a nearly-blind pensioner and tells his life's story to a journalist. Taken on its own, there isn't anything wrong with the story at all - it's full of grisly, black humor and the artwork by Pete Doherty is very good indeed - but it all seems completely superfluous. Indeed, giving Death all the page time he was getting in the early 90s was detrimental to the character and robbed him of his impact. To be honest, as amusing as this story is, I'm not sure it is a story that ever needed to be told. There's a bonus strip by Si Spencer and John McRea included, but the publisher really missed a trick by not adding "Tea With Mrs. Gunderson," an eight-page story by John Wagner and Dean Ormston that served as an epilogue to this adventure. Recommended for completists.



I normally defer to our friends at Mr. Kitty in all things Harvey, and last year they gave the Hipster Daughter the big bookshelf edition of Richie Rich that Dark Horse compiled. While I haven't read it all yet, I was impressed enough with the package to give Hot Stuff a try. Honestly, I'd never read any Hot Stuff before. I know of the character, but I never, ever saw these comics as a kid.

And you know... I don't think I was missing much. It's always difficult to tell whether you're being too critical in judging material for kids when you're not approaching it from that mindset - clearly your old pal the Hipster Dad is kinder to certain Sid & Marty Krofft shows than they objectively deserve, because he loved them as a child - but this is a downright repetitive, boring book. One main problem is that, unlike Richie Rich or Little Dot and the others, Hot Stuff doesn't have a consistent universe and regular characters to bounce off. He's interacting with medieval villagers in one episode and 1950s stage magicians in the next, then Neptune, then monkeys on some island. And he melts all the snow on top of a mountain forty times and his trident gets snatched thirty times and a volcano erupts twenty times... it's like a lifeless early 60s Hanna-Barbera TV cartoon. The only recurring-ish character in the first chunk is Stumbo the Giant, and he's the most boring character I've ever seen, although there are apparently some "Devil Kids" to be encountered in pages to come.

That said, the Hipster Daughter thinks it's a riot, and I think her opinion trumps mine. About the best I can say is that it's interesting to consider how Hot Stuff is the spiritual ancestor of both Calvin and Bart Simpson, but she'll tell you it's funny and that's all that matters. So if you've got elementary school-age kids, it comes with her seal of approval. Recommended for under-tens; I'll wait for the forthcoming Harvey Girls collection.

(Originally posted July 23, 2008 at hipsterdad's LJ.)