It’s being reported that a live-action Judge Dredd TV series, titled Judge Dredd: Mega-City One, is being developed by IM Global Television and Rebellion.
Set in a future where severe overpopulation has led to a massive increase in crime, law enforcers known as Judges, who possess the ability to legally act as judge, jury, and executioner as they see fit, are tasked with trying to maintain order. The show is aiming to be an ensemble drama about a group of Judges dealing with the many challenges their job comes with.
You can read more on Judge Dredd: Mega-City One and see an early poster below.
Scottish comics artist Cam Kennedy, whose work has graced the pages of titles as diverse as Batman, Star Wars: Dark Empire, and Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., is once again the star attraction of IDW Publishing’s latest hardbound collection of the violent and satirical adventures of Mega-City One’s toughest lawman in Judge Dredd: The Complete Cam Kennedy, Vol. 2.
Coming nearly a year since the release of the first volume in the series spotlighting Kennedy’s artistic contribution to the iconic character, the stories (or “progs”) collected in The Complete Cam Kennedy, Vol. 2 feature such Dredd classics as “No Man’s Land,” “Big Deal at Drekk City,” “Beyond Our Kenny” (from Judge Dredd Megazine vol.1 # 1-3), and many more from Kennedy’s celebrated run in the pages of Britain’s famous comics anthology 2000 A.D.. Dredd co-writer Alan Grant provides an introduction for this volume.
Dredd star Karl Urban took a moment while at Emerald City Comic Con to urge fans to sign a petition and like the “Make a Dredd Sequel” Facebook page. Urban has not been ashamed to admit his love for the severely overlooked 2012 film in which he starred as the titular character. The film received mostly positive reviews from critics.
You can read more about the push for a sequel, find out where you can help, and watch the video of Urban urging fans below.
Judge Dredd #16 13 Badges, Part 3
Created by John Wagner and Carlos Ezquerra
Written by Duane Swierczynski
Art by Nelson Daniel
Letters by Shawn Lee
Covers by Brendan McCarthy, Inaki Miranda & Eva De La Cruz IDW Publishing
Release Date: February 26, 2014
Cover Price: $3.99
So earlier this week I was given a copy of Judge Dredd #16 to review. Being a fairly big fan of Dredd I was extremely excited to make this my first review and not fuck it up. The only problem is that I had already made arrangements to hang out with a friend of mine, Richard. Now, Richard is a fairly swell guy right up until you start talking about politics. Then he loses his proverbial shit”¦ And with Richard”¦ everything comes down to politics. Even comic books. Richard knocks on my door and walks right in as he always does, sits down on my couch, and starts blathering on about something he read on some forum only he and a few dozen of his Libertarian buddies apparently know about. While this is happening, I’m sitting in my cozy chair reading the issue and being fairly well happy about it.
Dredd #15 left us in a rather precarious place. Ol’ Joseph was being held in the Hall of Justice and was being interrogated by Cal’s men. And by interrogated, I mean he was having the living shit beat out of him like he was a uniformed piñata. So, I’m about 3 pages into the story and really enjoying Nelson Daniel‘s art (he has a superb usage of shadow vs. color to create depth in the panels that’s kind of rare these days) when Richard looks over, sees Dredd, and launches into a tirade about how this comic is a tool by the media conglomerates to desensitize us into accepting the police brutality and surveillance as it is today. If we all accept Dredd‘s future as inevitable then we won’t complain blah blah blah. I think he actually said “Sheeple” at one point. Richard could have gone on for an hour about this, and how it’s unfair that bitcoin isn’t more accepted, and I wouldn’t have given two shits because I was completely enthralled with this story and the fantastic panels on every page.
When Dredd hit movie screens back in 2012, it was a theatrical flop, despite being a stellar translation of the source material from the ongoing 2000 AD comic, Judge Dredd, and Karl Urban doing an awesome rendition of the scowling, helmet-clad law enforcer. The film did finally find its audience once it hit the home market via Blu-ray and various streaming services. That being said, with a movie that only recouped $35 million of its $50 million budget in the theater, we’re not likely to see a movie sequel any time soon, if ever.
However, the film has indeed received a direct sequel, just in comic book, and chronicles the criminal underworld moving in to fill the void left by the film’s antagonist, Ma-Ma, and her Slo-Mo drug. Originally released in serialized comic strip form in the UK via Judge Dredd Magazine, the series was collected as a one-shot titled Dredd: Underbelly and was set to be released in the United States in January 2014 via new publisher, Rebellion, which was created specifically to bring this book to the United States.
Students of the Unusual™ comic cover used with permission of 3BoysProductions
The Mercuri Bros.™ comic cover used with permission of Prodigal Son Press
