Comics Week and FCBD 2019

This will probably be a bit of a rambling post, so apologies in advance. This week is a shorter working week due to the bank holiday for Easter, so there will be fewer entries. Friday just gone was a bank holiday too, so last week was also a shorter week, but it passed me by due to not being in work and hence why I made a blog entry every day. I am hoping to blog every week day whilst I am not working to give me something to do as a break from looking for work and therefore keeping my sanity a bit longer. It sure beats watching day time TV (which I don't do anyway) or just staring at the same four walls (or procrastinating for hours on end). That said, I do keep myself busy by doing the household chores, going to the gym, running and prepping minatures for painting in between the hours I spend trawling the net for a new role.

So, now that all of my Lord of the Rings figures are prepped in readiness for undercoating and a bit of putty work (I still need to source some decent, easily workable stuff) I have time to re-order my comics collection some more whilst awaiting some good spraying weather - that said, I did manage to get a few miniatures undercoated on bank holiday Monday as a tester for how long they will take to do (it turns out I can do around 9 minis per 15 minutes, or 36 an hour provided all goes well).

As mentioned in previous posts I avidly collect 2000AD and Judge Dredd comics, but I also like the various Robert E. Howard characters that have made it into pictorial print (Conan, Red Sonja, Kull and Solomon Kane to name just the main ones). There are other IPs I dip into occasionally too, but these are the main ones.

As Star Wars day this year (May the Fourth) is also Free Comic Book Day, I wanted to sort out what I am going to be reading over the coming months and what I want to pick up at the three comic shops I usually visit on this year's FCBD. Also, this year, at GOSH Comics in London, they are running a children's art workshop which I am hoping to take my youngest son to.

On FCBD I usually visit three London shops (Forbidden Planet, GOSH and Orbital comics) to collect as many comics as I can, grab a few beers and a burger, and then head off to a pub to see out the rest of the evening. This year will be a little different if my youngest is with me as the beers will be replaced by soft drinks and the evening will end a lot earlier. I am sure he will want to grab a few bags full of goodies as well as working with comics artists to find out where his talents lie.

Anyway, onto what I am hoping to achieve this week. I am aiming to sort out and catalogue all of the REH character comics I have collected over the last decade but not read yet. I have been receiving a couple of small parcels of comics every month/week (American comics and Judge Dredd Megazine every month, and 2000AD every week) but they have all just been stored in a variety of boxes until I could get around to reading them. As mentioned a few times elsewhere (and therefore apologies if I am repeating myself too often), I have (re-)read 2000AD and Judge Dredd up to the end of 2014 (only 4 and a bit years to go now!), read Red Sonja and now need to sort out Kull, Solomon Kane and Conan.

I have started reading The Chronicles of Kull, so these will be the first set of comics to be featured and catalogued, followed by Solomon Kane, then Conan, and after that, I am not sure yet. I will decide as the days go by and the boxes are sorted.

Anderson : The Deep End

Rebellion's Dredd movie comics

In 2012 the second Dredd movie was released. This was released despite the box office failure by the Stallone version in 1995. The Stallone version tanked at the box office in the US, but world viewings and video sales meant it took enough to actually became a success. The 2012 version ignored all that had gone before in the 1995 version and started with a new vision of dredd and Mega City One.

Since the release of the 2012 film, Rebellion have been hard at work filling in the background and subsequent adventures of the main characters; Dredd, Anderson and Ma-Ma. These stories were all featured in the Judge Dredd Megazine but have subsequently been reprinted in collected works.

The first collected comic (originally printed in Meg #328), titled the Dredd Movie Prequel (only available as a download now I believe), contains the story "Top of the World, Ma-Ma", which describes the rise to power of Madeline "Ma-Ma" Madrigal.

 

Next up came the one-shot Underbelly (originally in Megs #340-342 - 2013). "In the wake of Ma-Ma’s death, other criminal gangs in Mega-City One are moving into the power vacuum, trying to fill the gap in the market left by the Slo-Mo drug. When a corpse dump is discovered in a rad-pit, the bodies are all revealed to be mutants. Could the dead be connected with an outfit smuggling illegal refugees into the city from the Cursed Earth? Judge Dredd once again teams up with Psi-Judge Anderson as they scour the underworld for the perps responsible, and bring them to justice!"

The third story from the movie universe, Uprise (Megs #350-354 - 2014), "In the neglected sector of Mega-City One known as The Spit, tensions are reaching boiling point amongst the citizens as the shiny new mega-block Oemling Tower is being constructed for those that can afford to live in it. As the Judges face running battles with rioters, the underground movement known as Uprise stokes the flames of dissent..."

The last story, to date, for Judge Dredd is Dust (Megs #367-371 - 2015-16). "When Judges Dredd and Conti are called to a ruthless gang slaying, it seems a vigilante is at work – but the residues of dust left behind and the particular way in which one member was slowly murdered indicate that this is no ordinary perp. The trail leads beyond the walls of Mega-City One and into the Cursed Earth, where the answers may lie within the irradiated wasteland..."

Now to get onto why I have decided to write this little treatise on the Dredd Movie universe...

Rebellion, not happy to rest on their laurels, have branched out this month to cover Judge Anderson in her very own story. Actually, there are two stories in this comic which I picked up on Saturday this week at a comic book signing at Forbidden Planet in London.

There are two variant covers, both of which I picked up and got signed by the author Alec Worley. The first cover above is an exclusive one available only for those who attended the comic signing (and I daresay anyone able to pick up copies of those that are immediately available on EBay).

This comic, Anderson: The Deep End has the story "Following the traumatic events of Peach Trees block, rookie psychic Judge Cassandra Anderson is still coming to terms with life on the mean streets of Mega-City One. When a strange of case of seemingly demonic possession requires her attention, it will play on her doubts and fears…"

I have experienced a big resurgence of interest recently in all things 2000AD and Judge Dredd. I started a few years back by re-reading my collection from Prog 1. I initially collected and read all issues up to and around prog 750 before cancelling my subscription and subsequently selling them all to pay my mortgage arrears one month (a sad day indeed!). I carried on with my subscription again a few years later, but as I didn't own or hadn't read the intervening progs I decided to wait until I had collected them before embarking on this latest odyssey of back prog reading. I was able to get round to this a few years ago and have read all progs, Megazines, Starlords, Tornadoes, Crisis, Revolvers and various specials, annuals and spin-offs up to 2006 - Only about 12 or so years to go!


This column also links into my visits to The Crobar that are featured on my other blog The Taplow Horn. The Crobar is one of the few surviving rock pubs left in London. This is the main reason for visiting this institution; being able to listen to some loud rock music. Secondly, they have a great selection of bottled beers from around the world. Thirdly, the place is decorated with pages from 2000AD and the Megazine all over its walls.