FREE JUDGE DREDD: THE COMPLETE CASE FILES, VOLUME 11 PDF John Wagner,Alan Grant,Brett Ewins,Steve Dillon | 400 pages | 15 Mar 2016 | 2000 AD | 9781781084274 | English | United States AD Shop : Judge Dredd: Case Files 11 The Judge Dredd material reprinted in this collection was originally published in AD between summer and earlyshortly after the comic had celebrated its tenth anniversary, but it had hit a sticky patch. Old fashioned future sports stories sat uneasily alongside uninspired material from new creators, and of all the introduced material only Zenith really caught the imagination. As the standout feature, Dredd occupied the prized centrespread, meaning his strips always began in colour. It was better colour than AD had previously seen, but transforming those pages to black and white here results in mud on Volume 11 pages. And of necessity a lot of new artists were receiving the chance to draw Dredd, and the results are far from pleasing in some cases. For more Volume 11 see the review of the individual album, but despite some good ideas and fine moment it sprawls, and appears to be two different stories mashed together. Furthermore nine different artists over 26 chapters is never a good idea, even if they do include Brendan McCarthy. Dredd has always encompassed a broad artistic church, but some consistency would be nice. Volume 11 presents a neat problem and twist, and is compact. He appears Volume 11 a tale of murderous robotic bugs, and while the tone of the ending suggests Wagner and Grant had plans for his re- appearance, it was a long way off. Over a year in fact, and can be found in Complete Case Files Alternative editions:. Volume No. Release date: UPC: Contains adult content? Does this pass the Bechdel test? Positive minority portrayal? Categories: AdventureScience-Fiction. Related merchandise Judge Dredd blue logo t-shirt. Alan Grant. John Wagner. Various artists. Review by Frank Plowright The Judge Dredd material reprinted in this collection was originally published in AD between summer and earlyshortly after the comic had celebrated its tenth anniversary, but it had hit a sticky patch. Like this? Try these. Judge Dredd: The Complete Case Files Manhattan Projects 1. The Manhattan Projects 2. The Manhattan Projects 3. The Manhattan Projects 4. BARNEY -- reprint zone These are the Dredd stories that were running during the period when my older brother was collecting AD. I read them when he was finished with them, and I remember reading the Chopper saga all of eight years old and being bowled over. It didn't have quite the same intense emotional impact on me as Bad Company, but I think it holds up better on a reread; for all its virtues, Bad Company looks overwrought and heavy-handed in retrospect. But Chopper sitting on the beach and letting the baby turtles go free There was a tone of Judge Dredd: The Complete Case Files defiance to Chopper's story, which was unusual for AD. As with the democracy stories, there's a sense that this is a battle worth fighting, but a battle that cannot be won. But Chopper fights anyway, because in his heart he's a free man, and he doesn't have it in him to give in to authority. I remember the "family man" gambit to this day every time there's footage of riots or demonstrations on TV The Oz droid in the glasses wearing a purple jacket is Brendan McCarthy. IIRC, Oz was designed as an epic to take into account of the new format featuring the first two pages of each story being in painted colour, and the extra time that would have to be taken to produce this. Unfortunately, even this attempt to avoid the dreaded deadline doom failed, and the art seemed to be passed to whichever artist seemed available at the time, much to the stories detriment, in my opinion. I remember being stunned by those Dredd democracy stories. Very powerful stories and the vibrant painted work by John Higgins for the centerspreads was far and away the best use of colour we'd seen in AD at that point. It's a pity they've only been reproduced in black and white although they still look pretty good. The Judda storyline was suggested by ideas factory Brendan McCarthy, who had spent time Volume 11 around Australia while he was living and working there as a concept designer for animated film and television projects. He had accumulated a lot of visual reference material which he thought could be put to good use and suggested his lost tribe of judges idea to Wagner and Grant, who were apparently open to working from ideas suggested by artists, since they were always struggling for novel storylines and felt artists produced better work when they had some creative investment in the material and were drawing things which interested them. As far as I know, the hurried production of the strip did not involve a works outing to Sidney as described in the Steve Dillon? A Dillon self portrait? An elephant in the room: some enterprising person or group of fans decided, at some point, that they could do the Complete Case Files books better. For a lot of the earlier volumes, that's a minor improvement. For some, it's an actively bad idea--at least one bootleg I've seen gets a lot of its color pages from badly chopped-up and reformatted American reprints. But inAD 's production values were ramped up a bit, and as of a few episodes before Case Files 11 begins, the opening spread of the Judge Dredd feature was suddenly in painted color. The half-tone versions of the color Volume 11 in the printed Case Files 11 is decent--although it still gets muddy in a few places, like the beginning of "Return of Death Fist"--but it's distinctly not the way these stories were intended to look. And the bootleg files also include other Dredd-related pages from the original publications, the most interesting of which this time is this one, which was printed in the issue before Volume 11 started:. There are a lot of in-jokes going on here, most of which I don't get and bet I'm not supposed to get, but the implication is that seven members of the AD staff had gone to Australia to research "Oz. The bent-over droid at far right is "Burt," a. In any event, it seems as if Dredd stories had been Volume 11 in advance of "Oz," which was the first "epic"-length Dredd story that had been attempted since "City of the Damned" a few years earlier. The 22 episodes 11 storylines that precede it in this volume are drawn by ten different artists--only Liam McCormack-Sharp gets two stories, and they appear consecutively. And Tharg's stern note that the droids have one week to get "Oz" in order hints at how hurriedly it must have been put together: when the first three episodes of a part story are all drawn by different artists and nine different artists in all contributethere's clearly some frantic catching up going on. Jim Baikie seems to have been the speed demon of the lot--not only did he draw the final two episodes, he drew the three that followed them in the next volume. Remember that theory I had a few weeks ago about how the long serials usually address some aspect of the relationship between Dredd and the city? This one deals with either of them only during the Judda sequences; it's basically a Chopper story. Dredd is entirely absent for long stretches of it, which was awfully Volume 11 so's the thematic two-page splash that opens the first episode. The Judda business turns up out of nowhere in the seventh episode and when Chopper returns two weeks later, he picks up right where the sixth episode left off ; the Judda and Chopper only appear in the same installment a few times, and the two plots' resolutions have almost nothing to do with each other. Also, the Judda sequences are something of a distraction: Chopper's story is Volume 11 compelling that mysterious violent weirdos shouting slogans, interspersed Judge Dredd: The Complete Case Files chunks of exposition, get tiresome quickly. On the other hand, Brendan McCarthy's artwork here is a much better fit than it had been in Case Files you can see him Volume 11 to give the series a consistent look. Unfortunately, it's a look that all the other artists ignore; when Will Simpson takes over for the conclusion of the Judda business, the visual energy goes way down all of a sudden. It's interesting to imagine what "Oz," or in fact this era of Dredd, could have been like with a more consistent visual approach. There are very few artists who can handle a 6-topage weekly strip, but it's just possible that Brendan and Jim McCarthy and Brett Ewins might have been able to tackle it together, at least for a while. The latter two were mostly off drawing "Bad Company" during this era, though. I reread "Oz" after not having seen it in a long time, but a few months after rereading "Song of the Surfer"--which we'll be getting to in a few weeks. The "dangerous sports" aspect of this story goes over the top; there's a tragic thrill in the idea of a sport whose championship not everyone may survive, Judge Dredd: The Complete Case Files a sport whose championship routinely slaughters most of its competitors doesn't seem like it could attract a lot of top athletes, you know? Wagner addresses that a bit in "Song of the Surfer," but it passes Volume 11 comment here.