2000 AD

If you've ever wondered what the movie Dredd costume would be like if it was a little bit closer to the one that we see in the comics, here's your answer. Today, Pop Culture Shock unveiled a new line of 1/4 scale statues inspired by the movie, including an exclusive variant that gives Dredd a slightly more comic booky color scheme --- and a much frownier head.

What a week! I don’t know about you, but I’m ready to sit back and read some comics. The weekend is finally here, and the world can relax and rest once more — but the comics industry has been busy too, you know, and the last seven days have seen a flurry of comics-based news and announcements fly past at high speed. ComicsAlliance has got your back, though: when it comes to comics, we never slow down, so here’s a look back and just what’s been going on. New comics, new stories, new podcasts, new art being made — it’s all part of the ComicsAlliance Weekender!

"I'm about to kill an important 2000 AD character, but I don't normally do that anymore." If you were listening to this week's installment of 2000 AD's Thrill-Cast, then you heard John Wagner, the co-creator and still the primary architect of Judge Dredd, offer up that ominous sentence when he was asked about his plans for upcoming stories. The result was, of course, a cloud of... well, dread hanging over the fans of the future's toughest lawman.

Dystopian futures have been a fixture of the sci-fi genre for as long as there's been a genre to have fixtures; cautionary tales about the crushing of the individual or the dangers of unchecked technology. In the second issue of 2000 AD, a British comic anthology that promised readers a weekly dose of thrillpower from the far-off future of the 21st century, John Wagner and Carlos Ezquerra asked exactly the kind of question that great sci-fi is built around: What if there was a story about a dystopian future plagued by hyperviolent crime, ruled over by a totalitarian state, where things were so bad that even existing could drive a man insane from future shock... and the fascist cops were the good guys? The result was the stone-faced lawman who would become the UK's greatest comic book character: Judge Dredd, who made his first appearance on March 5th, 1977.

If you don't know what it is going in, Guy Adams and Jimmy Broxton's Goldtiger: The Poseidon Complex has one of the best hooks I've ever seen: "Hey, did you hear 2000 AD was putting out a collection of Goldtiger? Oh, you've never heard of it? That's not surprising, it was only ever popular in Malta back in the '60s, but it was this newspaper strip about two fashion photographers who were also secret agent mercenaries. You gotta read it, though - the story behind the strip is so intense that the artist, Antonio Baretti, wound up in a mental hospital." It is, to say the least, a pretty intriguing setup. If, however, you do know what it is going in, it somehow gets even better.

I'm not too proud to admit that I can occasionally be taken in pretty easily by a hoax, and that's exactly what happened last week. For whatever reason, an old April Fool's Day post about Netflix picking up a 13-episode series set in the world of 2012's Dredd, with Karl Urban returning as John Wagner and Carlos Ezquerra's stone-faced lawman of the future, started making the rounds again, and I bought it hook, line and sinker. In my defense, though, it was less because of the content of the fake announcement and more because it's something that I not only want to happen, but that seems like it very easily could happen. I mean, if Netflix can do Richie Rich, then surely to grud it can do Dredd, right? Well, it seems that I'm not the only one who feels that way. Today, the longstanding campaign to get a sequel to Dredd in film has been modified, calling instead for a more serialized version, and it's being promoted by 2000 AD.

With a creator as widely read, celebrated, and analyzed as Alan Moore, it's pretty easy to think that you could go out and get everything he's ever written. I mean, you can find the big stuff like Watchmen or V For Vendetta just wandering around airports, and even older, more obscure titles like Halo Jones or DR And Quinch aren't that hard to track down. Heck, you can even get CDs of that dude singing his poetry if that's what you're into, and I know that because I've bought them. But there's one title that has managed to elude all but the most die-hard completists for the past three decades: Monster, a horror comic by Moore and artist Heinzl that ran in the British comic Scream in the mid '80s. But now, 2000 AD is collecting the entire series in a 190-page paperback, set for release in July.

Soon Judge Dredd will find himself outnumbered by the Dark Judges... at least as far as ThreeA's 2000 AD figure line is concerned. Last year, the Ashley Wood-led company unveiled the first figures in the partnership with 2000 AD, including Judge Death, Judge Fish, Judge Dredd, Sam Slade and Gronk. 2016 will see even more of the classic British comic characters come to life, starting with the terrifying Judge Fear. Based on designs by Brian Bolland, the new Judge Fear figure will feature the imposingly-helmed Dark Judge with all the accouterments expected of the undead master of fright. Sure, he might be remembered best by more casual observers for that panel where Judge Dredd punches him square in the "face," and orders him to "Gaze into the fist of Dredd!" That doesn't mean the guy isn't deserving of his own highly-detailed and articulated figure. I mean, who doesn't want to a toy of a man so assured in his own abilities that he wears giant bear traps as pauldrons and has giant bat wings sprouting from his furnace-like helm?

I have read a lot of Christmas comics in my time, and while I usually love them all with the unconditional affection of someone who goes around humming "Good King Wenceslas" in the middle of August, I have to admit that they tend to get pretty repetitive after a while. Even I can get tired of the endless string of halfhearted Christmas Carol parodies, which is why my favorite stories are always the ones that get a little weird. You know, the "evil robot santa" stories, or the "Batman goes back in time and recreates the universe and becomes the subconscious source of all Christmas Elf imagery" kind of thing. Those are the ones I really like. So when I tell you that there's a story where Tharg, the mighty alien comic book editor who supplies 2000 AD with its weekly dose of Thrillpower, has to save Christmas after a bunch of readers wake up to bad presents on Christmas morning, rest assured that it is somehow even more amazingly bonkers than it sounds.

Assuming you're shopping in the UK or online, this week marks the release of 2000 AD prog 1961. It's this year's Christmas special, with a full hundred pages of not only the usual dose of thrillpower, but also... well, whatever the Christmas equivalent of that concept is, I suppose. Merrypower? Thrilljollies? Listen, I'm still pretty new to this whole thing. Point being, there's plenty of yuletide fun to be found in this week's issue, and as you might expect, absolutely none of that fun is being had by Judge Dredd, the stone-faced grinch of Mega City One's law enforcement, who is spending his Christmas doling out grim justice to snowmen who have come to life. No, really: It's Dredd vs. Frosty in this week's issue, and you can check out a preview below!