The Forbidden Planet International Blog Log

News from Wizard World Chicago: Judge Dredd is heading back for America publication for the first time since the abortive DC Comics series of ’94/’95.

The new series is going to be coming out from Dynamite Comics in 2009. It’s going to be a completely new series with all new stories. Dynamite does have access to other Rebellion / 2000AD properties but at the moment there are no plans to exploit that. The plan is to concentrate on Dredd, first with the new series and then possibly a repackaging of the classic Dredd stories. (although I don’t see how they’ll be able to better the excellent series of Judge Dredd & 2000AD reprint collections currently being produced by Rebellion.)

Of course, the big problem with previous US Dredd tales was that the Dredd of those stories was about as close to our Dredd as the movie version was. Not that either were all that bad, just different. (I, for one, didn’t think Dredd the movie was as bad as everyone else thought it was). I believe it was John Wagner who always said that the Americans just didn’t get the character of Dredd, didn’t understand that he was essentially the bad guy, just a comedy villain and just didn’t get the satire involved.

Obviously Dynamite think differently. And after all, since we’re now used to the idea that Americans can do great drama, great sci-fi, great comedy and great comics – why couldn’t it work this time? A big plus for Dynamite is that they’re taking about having Garth Ennis and most importantly John Wagner as series creators & overseers.

According to Nick Barrucci, President of Dynamite Entertainment the deal to bring Dredd back to the states is something he’s wanted for a long time:

“I had stopped by Garth Ennis’ apartment one day to talk about some of his other work, and Rebellion came up,” Barrucci says. “I told him that I had wanted to publish Judge Dredd in the United States for a while and had not had any luck in reaching the right person at Rebellion. Garth told me that he was in touch with one of the editors over there, Matt Smith, on a somewhat regular basis, and offered to reach out to him. Garth made the introduction, smoothed the way for us a bit, and from there, we started working with Rebellion’s business affairs, and we started the ball rolling. We’ve been working on this for the last four months, at this point”

“What we’re hoping for, and I’m putting the cart before the horse here a little, is to approach John Wagner, who is the voice of Judge Dredd, to write it, and in a perfect world, have Garth serve as a consultant, much like Quentin Tarantino on Crimson Tide. It will be all John, but Garth, having lived in America for the last few years, will be there to help make it work for an American audience”.

“Don’t get me wrong – that’s something that’s always been tricky – making Judge Dredd work for an American audience, while being consistent and true to the character. We want to create an audience for Judge Dredd – by creating a great monthly .. when we move forward with the trade paperbacks and collections of the evergreen material, we can reach a larger audience.”

I imagine we’ll all be adopting a wait and see attitude with this one. Hopefully they’ll get it right and the whole thing will be a huge success. But Dredd will still be where he’s always been week after week, whatever happens over the pond.

(Hat tip to Matthew Badham for the link)