Judge Dredd - Publication History

Publication History

When Pat Mills was developing 2000 AD in 1976, he brought in his former writing partner, John Wagner, to develop characters. Wagner had written various Dirty Harry-style "tough cop" stories for other titles, and suggested a character who took that concept to its logical extreme, imagining an ultra-violent law-enforcement officer patrolling a future New York City with the power to administer instant justice. Mills had developed a horror strip called Judge Dread but abandoned the idea as unsuitable for the new comic; but the name, with the spelling modified to "Dredd" at the suggestion of sub-editor Kelvin Gosnell, was adopted by Wagner for his ultimate lawman.

The task of visualising the character was given to Carlos Ezquerra, a Spanish artist who had worked for Mills before on Battle Picture Weekly. Wagner gave Ezquerra an advertisement for the film Death Race 2000, showing the character Frankenstein (played by David Carradine) clad in black leather on a motorbike, as a suggestion for what the character should look like. Ezquerra elaborated on this greatly, adding body-armour, zips and chains, which Wagner initially thought to be over the top. Wagner's initial script was rewritten by Mills and drawn up by Ezquerra, but when the art came back a rethink was necessary. The hardware and cityscapes Ezquerra had drawn were far more futuristic than the near-future setting originally intended, but Mills decided to run with it and set the strip further in the future.

By this stage, Wagner had quit, disillusioned that a proposed buy-out of the new comic by another company (which would have given him and Mills a greater financial stake in the comic) had fallen through. Mills was reluctant to lose "Judge Dredd" and farmed the strip out to a variety of freelance writers, hoping to develop it further. Their scripts were given to a variety of artists as Mills tried to find a strip which would provide a good introduction to the character, all of which meant that "Judge Dredd" would not be ready for the first issue of 2000 AD, launched in February 1977.

The story chosen to introduce the character was submitted by Peter Harris, and extensively re-written by Mills. It was drawn by newcomer Mike McMahon. The strip debuted in "prog" (issue) No. 2, but Ezquerra, angry that another artist had drawn the first published strip, quit and returned to work for Battle. Wagner soon returned to the character, starting in prog 9. His "Robot Wars" storyline was drawn by a rotating team of artists (including Ezquerra), and marked the point where Dredd became the most popular character in the comic, a position he has rarely relinquished. The character has appeared in almost every issue since, the bulk of the stories written by Wagner (in collaboration with Alan Grant between 1980 and 1988).

Since 1990 Dredd has also headlined his own title, the Judge Dredd Megazine. With Wagner concentrating his energies there, the Dredd strip in 2000 AD was left to younger writers such as Garth Ennis, Mark Millar, Grant Morrison and John Smith. Their efforts were not popular with fans, and sales fell. Wagner returned to writing the character full-time in 1994.

Judge Dredd has also been published in a long-running comic strip (1981–1998) in the Daily Star, and briefly in Metro from January 2004–2005. These were usually created by the same teams writing and drawing the main strip and the Daily Star strips have been collected into a number of volumes.