Reprint This! The Daily Star Judge Dredd strip

Reprint This! is a periodic feature where I talk about some out-of-print comic book gems that are not available in collected form for readers to enjoy. This is hoping to let rights owners know that, yes, readers are out here, and we'd like to buy the things we can't get at this time!

Despite such an enormous variety of books available these days, and genuine efforts to present the material in reasonably-priced, archival volumes, there are still countless fabulous series from the US, Britain and Japan which are overdue for new editions. I've selected several titles which should be on bookshelves, but at this time are not.

One missing gem is the JUDGE DREDD newspaper strip which originally appeared in the pages of The Daily Star. Various teams worked on the series, initially John Wagner, Alan Grant and Ron Smith, and later Ian Gibson. Three samples from the Wagner-Grant-Gibson team are included here. The strip ran for about sixteen years under various teams, concluding in the late 1990s, but it's the first few years of material which is most crying out for a reprint.



Judge Dredd was, of course, created by Wagner and Carlos Ezquerra in 1977 for the pages of Britain's new sci-fi comic anthology 2000 AD, debutting in the second issue. He's a gruff, impartial, impatient policeman-plus who patrols the mean streets of the lunatic future megalopolis of Mega-City One, located on what's today the eastern half of the US. Thirty-one years and 1600 issues later, Dredd is still going strong, with a very nice reprint program going to keep his regular weekly adventures in print. But Dredd has appeared in several other outlets over the years. In 1981, the Daily Star commissioned a weekly episode of the strip. These were produced by Wagner, Grant and Smith and many, but not all of them, were collected in an annual series of five slim Judge Dredd Collections published by Fleetway, and many of these were then recompiled into a hardcover Judge Dredd Mega-Collection in 1990.

After a few years, Dredd was transitioned into a regular Monday-Friday continuity slot, typically telling tales across nine to fifteen weeks. Gibson began alternating with Mike Collins in 1988 before Collins became the regular artist. In time, the strip lost its regular team and a large number of different writers and artists contributed - Andy Diggle, Gordon Rennie, Mark Millar and Carlos Pino all put in time telling stories of Dredd and his world.



The weekly Star Dredd was pretty entertaining, but the daily version is the real treat. Admittedly I'm incredibly biased - even moreso than usual - because it combines two of my favorite things about comics: reading daily strip sequences and Ian Gibson's artwork. Readers never got the idea that Wagner and Grant were just hacking this out while saving their best ideas for 2000 AD. There's a great one that deals with the stupid Mean Machine Angel trying to convince some criminals who have built robot replicas of his dead criminal family that no, really, there never was any lost Angel Gang loot; they really did spend it all. Another features the talking horse from the classic "Black Plague" story getting Dredd's help to deal with some Cursed Earth slavers, and it's all done with that classic tongue-in-cheek and over-the-top mix of black comedy and violent melodrama that nobody does better than John Wagner.

Rebellion has been doing some really wonderful collected editions of 2000 AD series, but the slightly smaller dimensions of these books wouldn't flatter the material as well as something a little larger. Titan Books has, of course, been earning praise for their large-format collections of classic British newspaper strips like James Bond, Jeff Hawke and Modesty Blaise. I suggest that something in that format, with supplemental interviews and background material, as well as a complete "stripography" in the back, would be exactly what the daily Dredd needs. With a decent page count, Rebellion could conceivably reprint all the Wagner and Grant episodes in two books before evaluating whether to continue with the other material. I'm enough of a completist that I'm all in favor of seeing everything, but two's a good starting point. How about it, Rebellion?

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Before I leave you this week, I do have a couple of other notes about some reprints my readers might find interesting.

I first heard of Mort Walker and Jerry Dumas's 1960s feature Sam's Strip - a comic strip about comic strips - in Walker's book Backstage at the Strips, a great book which I obtained and read years ago and did not realize was missing from my shelves until a couple of weeks ago when I went looking for it. Anyway, Fantagraphics will have a complete collection of this oddball and charming strip, which ran for less than two years, on your shelves in December. Read more about Sam, and the current fad of prestige reprints, over at Westfield Comics.

Also, had a pretty good suggestion at his Let's Anime blog: the long-running 1970s-80s crazy future ESPer action of Chojin Locke. I'd like to see more of that, too!

And, I probably didn't do Richard Bruton justice when I mentioned The Uncollecteds a couple of months back, but if you enjoy people talking about rare old comics that need new editions, you'll really like this series over at Forbidden Planet's blog, so check that out!

(Originally posted October 21, 2008, 05:43 at hipsterdad's livejournal.)

Reprint This! Black Orchid

Reprint This! is a periodic feature where I talk about some out-of-print comic book gems that are not available in collected form for readers to enjoy. This is hoping to let rights owners know that, yes, readers are out here, and we'd like to buy the things we can't get at this time!

Despite such an enormous variety of books available these days, and genuine efforts to present the material in reasonably-priced, archival volumes, there are still countless fabulous series from the US, Britain and Japan which are overdue for new editions. I've selected several titles which should be on bookshelves, but at this time are not.

One missing gem is BLACK ORCHID by Sheldon Mayer and artists including Tony DeZuniga and Nestor Redondo. The superhero character appeared in DC's anthology titles and as a backup feature from 1973-1976 before lapsing into obscurity, but collectors who've kept an eye out for her eleven episodes have been rewarded with a very unusual and very clever strip.



Black Orchid was a very novel idea for a series in its day. The character's background and even her real name were kept from the reader. The series dispensed with a standard cast and location, and even a "secret identity" like pretty much all superheroes of the time maintained. Each episode's focus was on whatever new criminal organization or scheme that Black Orchid, with her powers of flight and superhuman strength, had decided to bring down. This was very much a concept ahead of its time, and its stories are told with energy and often very clever plotting.

Whoever she was behind the mask, Black Orchid was one of the last characters created by Sheldon Mayer. By 1973, he had already been with DC Comics or one of its antecedents for over thirty years, and had a hand in editing or writing many of its Golden Age classics. In 1956, of course, he created Sugar & Spike, a title that ran (off and on and not always domestically) for better than thirty years, and one certainly due its own Reprint This! entry as well. He was also the editor of DC's venerable horror anthology House of Mystery for about two decades. Black Orchid was one of his last regular adventure titles, and even though it really didn't find favor with the audience of its day, it has many fans who fondly remember her brief appearances in comics.

It is probably worth noting that Neil Gaiman resurrected the character as part of DC's long-running strategy of keeping corporate trademarks active by letting new talent pitch new ideas with them. His three-part Black Orchid miniseries, with art by Dave McKean, created a new iteration of the character who later got her own series at the Vertigo imprint in the early 90s, but, frankly, all that mess was good for was letting a new audience know that Sheldon Mayer's good stuff was available in back issue departments.



Black Orchid first appeared as the lead feature in three issues of Adventure Comics (# 428-430) before taking a recurring place as a backup feature in The Phantom Stranger. Mayer apparently wrote only a few of these backup episodes, with the rest penned by writers who included Michael Fleisher. These used to be in pretty good supply, and priced low in better comic shops, but I've seen those prices rise as I've tried to fill the gaps in my set.

A Black Orchid collection is long overdue, and wouldn't be that difficult for DC to compile. Her eleven episodes (if I've counted right) could be printed in a 120-page paperback. It might not be quite the license to print money that an Angel and the Ape book would be, but it's a wonderful title which deserves to be seen again, and a fine sampling of DC's more unusual fare from the era. You're long overdue in bringing Mayer back into print, so how about it, DC?

(Originally posted October 03, 2008, 05:00 at hipsterdad's livejournal.)