Evening all, I’m here to pay tribute to The Judge Dredd Megazine on its fifteenth birthday. Megazine. Did you ever hear such a daggy name? God only knows if the term ‘mega’ was ever actually hip. At one time it was as overused as ‘extreme’ is now (true to comics form, the 2000AD mob have arrived just as the world is sick of ‘extreme’ sports, hats, ice-creams and socks, with the Extreme Editions. I love the EEs but am distracted by the image of some noo-nah strapped to a mountain bike, jumping out of a plane shouting “cowabunga”).
‘Mega’ must have been a with-it term at one stage, I guess. I remember a metal head I worked with telling me that a gig was “mega’, and I remember thinking what a wally he was. Certainly by the time I encountered the Judge Dredd Megazine, the title was looking pretty lame. However, I didn’t care because I was reading anything Dredd-ish I could get my hands on. Possibly because of the movie, I had a choice of 2000 AD, Classic Judge Dredd, Best of 2000 AD and…the Megazine. Have a look at the cover of Megazine 3.15, lurid ‘we’ve heard of ecstasy’ background, Dredd scowling at us over his shoulder with a ‘kick me now’ sign on his back while a smiley badge beams at us. The image is dated already but is still fresh, still a bit interesting.
Since I was asked specially to write something about the Megazine for the birthday edition, I pulled out all the stops and did something I’ve never done before for this column – research. Specifically, I had a gander at the Megazine’s covers through the ages on the excellent 2000adonline.com site. For most of the time, the Meg’s covers are big, bold and striking. Dredd’s face is peeled, like the Escher drawing, he is putty in the arms of a machine. Judge Death leers at us with an apple in his mouth. For me there are two Megazines; pre and post fandom.
In my indiscriminate non-fan days, the Megazine came across as obviously trying hard to be adult with a capital ‘A’. To its credit, it managed this whilst still being fun and without the portentousness of Heavy Metal. I read Shimura, in which a silly story was saved by the emotion expressed in Simon Fraser’s art. I read ‘the Great Arsoli’. This is a little gem of a story. Dredd searches an Italian stage performer who has all sorts of things, including his beautiful assistant, hidden in his arse (didn’t you guess?). The interpreter is summoned and communicates by merely waving hands. The story just trails off “another day on customs duty in Mega city One….”. This is not the story for which Dredd or the Megazine will be remembered, but it was Genius. It was all style. So I had the image of the Megazine as a more adult version of 2000 AD, with a certain amount of disrespect for 2000AD and for clichés.
Phase two of my involvement with the Megazine started when I finally managed to get hold of the Megazine in Japan. My first issue had a cover by Siku. The story was “the bouncy brat heist”, on the face of it a fairly simple effort at cashing in on the “tellytubbies’ boom. I’m a die-hard Siku fan, there are few stories he doesn’t improve with humour or profundity. The Meg also bought me Preacher, something for which I will be eternally grateful. I marveled at both the story and the long complaining letters (I remember someone accusing Ennis of having tourettes of the typewriter).
For as long as I can remember, the Megazine has been fragile and proud of it. The editorials often refer to the miracle of the magazine’s survival. A constant of the letters page was complaints about the amount of reprints and replies about the high costs of new material. And now? For the last year or so, the Megazine has been better value than ever before Recently it has been a lot chunkier and the reprints seem to have improved. This will make me sound like a sucky corporate lackey for Rebellion, but it’s true. There is a lot of good new material, notably Simon Spurrier and Fraser Irving’s ‘Simping Detective’. The Dredd stories are always good, Alan Grant and Arthur Ransom’s Anderson story was overlong but stylish all the way. There’s a new confidence about the Meg. I didn’t care for ‘Family’ (the story of a super-powered Mafia clan) nor for The Bendatti Vendetta (a turgid, predictable crime/revenge tale) but both are well produced and in there with confidence.
Part of the new look has been an effort to make the Megazine into more of a magazine, in particular a ‘lad magazine’, with matey editorials, general articles about films, comics tv shows, chucklesome title pages. I hated this approach at first. ‘Lad’ Mags are really boring. Besides I already read a lot of general magazines. I buy the Meg for the comics. The most embarrassing foray into laddism was a ‘Playboy’ style interview with the cover model who they foolishly hired to impersonate the vampire character Durham Red. Leer, leer, lovely Anna Edwards really enjoys dressing up as a fictional vampire. My heart sank. How nice to have my pessimism proved wrong by the comics articles (usually interesting), the TV column (always funny) and the ‘British Icons’ series, which has dealt with Desperate Dan, Modesty Blaise, Sapphire and Steel, really interesting descriptions of the life and times of parts of British popular culture. These pieces are written with love and care and it shows. On the debit side is the film column, in which the otherwise brilliant Simon Spurrier rattles on like a slightly pissed film studies student and the various histories of 2000 AD and now Judge Dredd by former editor David Bishop. These are firmly aimed at the trainspotting side of comics reading, at the kind of people who really care how many links are in the chain attaching Dredd’s badge to his zipper. In ‘Dredd Files’, Bishop exults over petty inconsistencies in past stories, tells me things I already know (example; ‘Jimmy Carter was an American president’) and ranks stories from one to five stars. The historicizing belongs in a fan magazine, preferably one I don’t read. It’s good if you like that sort of thing.
However there is a lot of quality stuff in those 100 pages. I haven’t mentioned the reprints of Charley’s War, Pat Mills’ epic, passionate, well-researched story of World War 1. Nor have I enthused about the recent Devlin Waugh stories. If you haven’t encountered the Megazine before, it’s a superior anthology comic with magaziney moments, most of which are good. It’s also superb value for money, so buy the thing. As I said before, even the parts I don’t care for are produced with zest and energy, so I always look forward to the next issue. If you have bought it, raise your glasses and here’s to another fifteen years!
