quote:
Originally posted by Papercut Fun:
I'm going to veer off topic for a minute (is that even possible on this thread anymore?) and ask a question that I think some of the Brits on the board may be able to answer.

About 8 years ago Judge Dredd made his move to North America via DC Comics when DC launched him in two series...one that was an ongoing (though I think they messed with his timeline) and one that was (also an ongoing) made up of rotating creative teams. Given his popularity I was wondering why the books didn't last. Did DC lose the licence on the character? Did they mess him up turning off his dedicated fans? Who owns Judge Dredd anyway?

Now I'll go drink some tea to get me back in the frame of mind that I should be in on this thread.



As someone who bought the first 9 issues of that book, I feel like I can at least comment...

I think poor sales killed the book, pretty much, IIRC, and hard core Dredd fans shunned it because it was too different, which didn't help. DC just seemed to want something out there to take advantage of the movie, and it showed.

If you look at the book now (which I did, recently, while digging through one of my comic boxes the other day) you'll raise an eyebrow at the talent that worked on DC's Dredd, including Powers' Mike Avon Oeming and Promethea's J.H. Williams III, both among the tops in the field now, but both starting out then and it showed. The other artists were an undistinguished, anonymous lot and have faded into obscurity, or into better paying jobs...

The main reason I bought the book back then was because it was the very next thing Andrew Helfer scripted after the abrupt cancellation of his brilliant Shadow book with Kyle Baker. I was hoping for more of the same, but sad to say Oeming (at that stage of his career) was no Baker and Helfer didn't distinguish himself either.

Script wise, JD was fair to good. Art-wise, poor to fair. Nothing about this book excited anybody, so I'm pretty sure DC let it die because of the resulting poor sales. The licensing rights might have expired about that time, too, I can't say...and I'm sure DC wouldn't have wanted to renew them anyway.

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