This was another annual I ached to read at the time, but wouldn't get to until years later, and there was one major reason for this - it had the first meeting between Judge Dredd and the Strontium Dog.
They were always going to clash, because they were the two biggest names in the comic, and they were always going to fight as soon as they met. Even if Johnny Alpha is a legally mandated bounty hunter in the future, that mandate does not extend to the streets of MC-1. And despite being a veteran of a war against genocide and subject to ongoing and endless prejudice, Johnny is a bit more laid back than Dredd. He'll still gun down the scum who deserve it, but he also likes to have a beer and a game of poker with the lads.
So they immediately start pounding the crap out of each other, and it's all drawn by Colin McNeill at his most fuzzy painted phase. Alpha comes out slightly ahead, and Dredd promises they will meet in a rematch - they will soon bust heads in Judgement Day - but one thing is certain. Alpha and his old pal Wulf Sternhammer look supremely cool in sunglasses and dark suits, a few short years before Reservoir Dogs made that look groovy.
Johnny and Joe have met a few times since, and have come to some kind of arrangement, but will also never be fiends. That's all in the future, but there is also a strange story in this annual that harks back to the past and it is deeply weird to see a Jonathan Livingston Seagull piss-take in the 90s, even if it is with a dog vulture.
But there is something of the future on the cover - Jamie Hewlett only did a tiny amount of Dredd, but managed to capture the mania of Mega-City One citizens like few others, and his glorious anarchism will find a mass audience in the future with the Gorillaz. Those cartoon musical misfits are bigger than Dredd in the real world - they just are - but you can bet your butt that if they did clash, Joe Dredd would come out on top.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment