collects the good judges adventures chronologically from the first 60 issues (sorry, "progs") of 2000 A.D. Granted, many of those are "just" 4 or 5 page stories, especially the earliest ones...but that's still 300+ pages of classic Dredd for only $13.59 (at Amazon), and its finally easily available to us Yanks.Granted, this is a pretty bare bones book...the art hasn't really been cleaned up at all, and the black and white art can seem a little cluttered when shrunk down to "normal comic book size" from its original "big-ass British magazine size." And there's no introduction, or forward, or essay of any kind. Surely some simple text piece about the history of Dredd, the story of the character's birth, or his place in British comics history would have been easy to come up with (and greatly appreciated).
Still, you get an awful lot of Dredd here, at a pretty cheap price, with some early work by Brian Bolland and Ian Gibson, amongst others. And the second volume is already scheduled for December
.Of course, at this rate it will be 30-40 volumes before they catch up, sometime in the 2020s--so we're in it for the long haul.Now if only Dynamite would get their act together and finally start that all new Dredd series they made a big announcement about more than two years ago!! But somehow, at this late date i suspect it's not happening...
(Hey, and if you're planning to buy these books from Amazon, use the links here, so I can get a few pennies from the deal. By the end of the year this blog will actually be costing me $ ((because of Google's limit on free picture posting)), and while I can afford it, it would be nice to at least make enough to cover that cost. Of course, feel free to get the books from your local comics shoppe, if you prefer...)
I've been running my pictures through Photobucket for nearly three years across multiple blogs for nothing. Plus, Google makes my pics too small for my taste. I only use it for banners and sidebar icons.
ReplyDeleteFrank--
ReplyDeletePhotobucket only offers half the free storage of Google's Picasa--500 MB vs 1 GB--so I'd only be putting off paying for another year and a half or so. Plus, when it comes time to pay, Photobucket is far more expensive ($24.95/yr for unlimited vs $5/yr for 20 GB, a limit I won't hit for 60 years at my present rate). One way or another, I'll be paying in the not too distant future, and for my needs Picasa is the better and cheaper fit.
Snell - long awaited? Is this because they're not available in the States? I only ask because, coincidentally, I bought vol 14 on the weekend (and yes, I have all the others) and that's been out for a while.
ReplyDeleteOh, and check out the Strontium Dog Search/Destroy Agency Files as well if you haven't already - Wagner (and Grant) and Ezquerra at their best.
Gary--yeah, the Dredd collections have been out of print here for awhile. You can find them here and there with a little hunting, but it's pretty haphazard at best, and you have to settle for different formats, big gaps, and crazy prices (on Amazon US you can get a used vol 14 for $66!!). Strontium Dog is even worse, sad to say...
ReplyDelete