AGXStarseed
Well-Known Member
(Not written by me. This article originally came out in 2015 but I thought it might be interesting to share. Please see the link at the bottom to read the entire article).
Whilst fan demand for a Dredd sequel continues unabated, there seems little in the way of actual forward momentum to put the iconic lawman of Mega a City One back onto the big screen. Maybe it’s understandable that studios are nervous. In his two cinematic outings, one ended a pantomime, the other deemed a financial failure. But we live in an age of kickstarters and crowdfunders, so has this fan frenzy got the potential to be harnessed and converted into action? Surely enough money for a Dredd animated film could be produced. How much would you donate to a project to explore the Dredd universe again?
Well if the powers that be are still unwilling to take a gamble on any future Dredd projects, then they could do worse than delve deeper into the pages of the comic that created him, 2000AD. This anarchic British publication has spent it’s 38 year run both celebrating and satirizing popular culture, free from the rules and controls of the more mainstream comic companies.
So here are 20 other 2000AD series you should look into if you are a fan of Dredd. All contain strong thematic material, which has the potential to be converted into a brilliant TV pilot, the style of which Amazon and Netflix are now trialing.
20. DR and Quinch - The scattershot adventures of a pair of psychotic high-school aliens, who ricochet around the cosmos, destroying the Earth, joining the army, and bizarrely becoming film directors.
19. Vector 13 - Enjoying a 3 year run, and seizing on the then-success of the X-Files, this series of stand-alone tales, all related by the shady Men In Black, detailed supernatural and sci-fi stories from within their casefiles. Highlights included Nazis adapting UFO tech. A prehistoric tribe hidden in the English countryside who are responsible for big cat sightings, and a ghost-hunting reporter turning into his own story courtesy of a time slip.
18. Robo Hunter - The adventures of Sam Slade and his assortment of oddball assistants were a regular feature over the years. As with most robots appearing in sci-fi, the series raised many issues about the relationship between creator and creation, humanising Slade’s opponents, but usually resulting in him ultimately blowing them to pieces, whilst smoking a big cigar.
17. Zenith - The eponymous adventures of the powered son of1960’s British superheroes, who elects to use his powers to further a career as a Popstar, whilst also fighting inter-dimensional menaces, and occasionally highlighting flaws in the UK political system.
16. Button Man - The rich elite of society employ assassins to battle each other, and gamble on the result. One of these Button Men, Harry Exton, tires of the game, and when it becomes clear to him he won’t be allowed to leave, he resolves to destroy the system as his only means of freedom. Given the current growing gap between rich and poor, it’s a concept that remains very relevant to a modern audience.
15. Harlem Heroes - The adventures of a 21st century Aeroball team (essentially basketball with killer jet packs…), lead by the disembodied brain of a deceased team member, the series followed the squad through a set of ultraviolent confrontations to the grand finals of the competition, with later versions morphing into a street gang with the same name.
14. Ace Trucking - The adventures of CB radio talking Ace Garp (occasionally joined by himself from a parallel universe) and his small band of lunatic crew members. Consisted mostly of them transporting/smuggling various contraband items across the galaxy, evading rivals and pirates alike.
13. The Ballad of Halo Jones - The chronicle of a futuristic teenager, neither superpowered or gifted, who tires of her humdrum existence, and ends up propelled on a galaxy-wide adventure, which eventually sees her enlisting in the army.
12. Finn - Cursed by its similarity to the comic’s more well known character, Slaine (more of him later), Finn never managed to garner the spotlight it deserved. The series told the story of a man chosen and seduced by Pagan forces to fight against big corporations destroying the planet and environment. And those big corporations are in fact run by extraterrestrial invaders. So essentially, Forest Spirits Vs Aliens. With big machine-guns. Which I appreciate sounds like a mobile phone game app.
11. Sinister Dexter - Set in the sprawling European futurescape of Downlode, this series followed the adventures of two gun-toting hitmen as they negotiated the complex layers of the city’s criminal underworld. Although one of the two was unhinged, and the other chose to beam TV directly into their brain, the series was rich with a supporting cast of eccentric personalities.
10. Flesh - Time travelling humans return to the time of the dinosaurs to capture and exploit the beasts for their own purposes, time and again being taught a lesson by nature that in this timeline, they are not the natural rulers of the earth.
9. Slaine - Wielding a gigantic axe dubbed ‘Brainbiter’, and having the ability to warp into a monstrous berserker beast, the Barbarian King Slaine has been hacking and slashing his way through his enemies since 1983.
8. Durham Red - A former member of the Strontium Dogs, and lover of Johnny Alpha, this super-sexy Vampress wakes a thousand years in the future to find half the galaxy believe her to be the messiah, and the other half want her eradicated. Accruing a small band of misfit allies, she travels this new timeline, encountering enemies old and new. None more dangerous than her own future-self, driven mad by immortality and the consequences of its indulgences…
7. Stainless Steel Rat - Intergalactic con artist Slippery Jim takes things one heist too far, and finds himself forced to join the authorities, and use his skills and techniques to catch his fellow criminals, falling into all manner of marital, political and time travelling shenanigans along the way.
6. Nikolai Dante - Trying to scrape a living in the shady backstreets of a future galaxy ruled by the Russian empire, our eponymous hero discovers he is the illegitimate offspring of a Tsar, when he accidentally bonds with a genetically-coded weapons system… Well, it could happen. With his new-found abilities, he struggles to adjust to his new regal position, fighting the enemies of the monarchy, whilst trying to surviving the threats from within it.
5. STRONTIUM DOGS - When nuclear war splits the world’s population into norms and muties, Johnny Alpha and his colleagues become the aforementioned Strontium Dogs. All mutated by Strontium radiation, they use their skills to track and eliminate/retrieve criminals from various dimensions and time streams, continually harassed and oppressed by the norm government.
4. Bad Company - After his platoon is wiped out battling the villainous alien Krool; soldier Danny Franks falls in with Bad Company. A twisted gang of Frankenstein hybrids and murderous humans, committed to destroying the alien attackers by any means necessary.
3. Nemesis - Demonic freedom fighter and Warlock, Nemesis battles to protect the rights of aliens in a future tyrannised by Tomas De Torquemada, and his oppressive police state. An unholy hybrid between the Spanish inquisition and the KKK.
2. Rogue Trooper - In a (yet-another) world decimated by nuclear holocaust, a crude re-imagining of the American Civil War has split the populace into the Norts and the Southers. The only surviving member of a massacre of super-soldiers cloned to win the war, Rogue is hunted by his creators as a deserter, as well as by the opposition. Apart from other outsiders he encounters on his travels, his only companions are the electronic personalities of three of his dead brothers, incorporated into his equipment and weaponry.
1. ABC Warriors - Much as in the last list we went from Strontium Dog, to Durham Red, here we segue from Nemesis, straight into his sometime allies, the ABC Warriors. What introduction is necessary? Hammerstein. Deadlock. Joe Pineapples. Mongrel, Blackblood, Mek-Quake. Names etched in comic-book lore. Like a mechanical A-Team, this motley crew of robot killers fight their way across the galaxy, to hell and back, doing the dirty work humanity can’t, and won’t do.
Source: 20 Characters From 2000 AD That Deserve A Pilot - ScreenGeek
Whilst fan demand for a Dredd sequel continues unabated, there seems little in the way of actual forward momentum to put the iconic lawman of Mega a City One back onto the big screen. Maybe it’s understandable that studios are nervous. In his two cinematic outings, one ended a pantomime, the other deemed a financial failure. But we live in an age of kickstarters and crowdfunders, so has this fan frenzy got the potential to be harnessed and converted into action? Surely enough money for a Dredd animated film could be produced. How much would you donate to a project to explore the Dredd universe again?
Well if the powers that be are still unwilling to take a gamble on any future Dredd projects, then they could do worse than delve deeper into the pages of the comic that created him, 2000AD. This anarchic British publication has spent it’s 38 year run both celebrating and satirizing popular culture, free from the rules and controls of the more mainstream comic companies.
So here are 20 other 2000AD series you should look into if you are a fan of Dredd. All contain strong thematic material, which has the potential to be converted into a brilliant TV pilot, the style of which Amazon and Netflix are now trialing.
20. DR and Quinch - The scattershot adventures of a pair of psychotic high-school aliens, who ricochet around the cosmos, destroying the Earth, joining the army, and bizarrely becoming film directors.
19. Vector 13 - Enjoying a 3 year run, and seizing on the then-success of the X-Files, this series of stand-alone tales, all related by the shady Men In Black, detailed supernatural and sci-fi stories from within their casefiles. Highlights included Nazis adapting UFO tech. A prehistoric tribe hidden in the English countryside who are responsible for big cat sightings, and a ghost-hunting reporter turning into his own story courtesy of a time slip.
18. Robo Hunter - The adventures of Sam Slade and his assortment of oddball assistants were a regular feature over the years. As with most robots appearing in sci-fi, the series raised many issues about the relationship between creator and creation, humanising Slade’s opponents, but usually resulting in him ultimately blowing them to pieces, whilst smoking a big cigar.
17. Zenith - The eponymous adventures of the powered son of1960’s British superheroes, who elects to use his powers to further a career as a Popstar, whilst also fighting inter-dimensional menaces, and occasionally highlighting flaws in the UK political system.
16. Button Man - The rich elite of society employ assassins to battle each other, and gamble on the result. One of these Button Men, Harry Exton, tires of the game, and when it becomes clear to him he won’t be allowed to leave, he resolves to destroy the system as his only means of freedom. Given the current growing gap between rich and poor, it’s a concept that remains very relevant to a modern audience.
15. Harlem Heroes - The adventures of a 21st century Aeroball team (essentially basketball with killer jet packs…), lead by the disembodied brain of a deceased team member, the series followed the squad through a set of ultraviolent confrontations to the grand finals of the competition, with later versions morphing into a street gang with the same name.
14. Ace Trucking - The adventures of CB radio talking Ace Garp (occasionally joined by himself from a parallel universe) and his small band of lunatic crew members. Consisted mostly of them transporting/smuggling various contraband items across the galaxy, evading rivals and pirates alike.
13. The Ballad of Halo Jones - The chronicle of a futuristic teenager, neither superpowered or gifted, who tires of her humdrum existence, and ends up propelled on a galaxy-wide adventure, which eventually sees her enlisting in the army.
12. Finn - Cursed by its similarity to the comic’s more well known character, Slaine (more of him later), Finn never managed to garner the spotlight it deserved. The series told the story of a man chosen and seduced by Pagan forces to fight against big corporations destroying the planet and environment. And those big corporations are in fact run by extraterrestrial invaders. So essentially, Forest Spirits Vs Aliens. With big machine-guns. Which I appreciate sounds like a mobile phone game app.
11. Sinister Dexter - Set in the sprawling European futurescape of Downlode, this series followed the adventures of two gun-toting hitmen as they negotiated the complex layers of the city’s criminal underworld. Although one of the two was unhinged, and the other chose to beam TV directly into their brain, the series was rich with a supporting cast of eccentric personalities.
10. Flesh - Time travelling humans return to the time of the dinosaurs to capture and exploit the beasts for their own purposes, time and again being taught a lesson by nature that in this timeline, they are not the natural rulers of the earth.
9. Slaine - Wielding a gigantic axe dubbed ‘Brainbiter’, and having the ability to warp into a monstrous berserker beast, the Barbarian King Slaine has been hacking and slashing his way through his enemies since 1983.
8. Durham Red - A former member of the Strontium Dogs, and lover of Johnny Alpha, this super-sexy Vampress wakes a thousand years in the future to find half the galaxy believe her to be the messiah, and the other half want her eradicated. Accruing a small band of misfit allies, she travels this new timeline, encountering enemies old and new. None more dangerous than her own future-self, driven mad by immortality and the consequences of its indulgences…
7. Stainless Steel Rat - Intergalactic con artist Slippery Jim takes things one heist too far, and finds himself forced to join the authorities, and use his skills and techniques to catch his fellow criminals, falling into all manner of marital, political and time travelling shenanigans along the way.
6. Nikolai Dante - Trying to scrape a living in the shady backstreets of a future galaxy ruled by the Russian empire, our eponymous hero discovers he is the illegitimate offspring of a Tsar, when he accidentally bonds with a genetically-coded weapons system… Well, it could happen. With his new-found abilities, he struggles to adjust to his new regal position, fighting the enemies of the monarchy, whilst trying to surviving the threats from within it.
5. STRONTIUM DOGS - When nuclear war splits the world’s population into norms and muties, Johnny Alpha and his colleagues become the aforementioned Strontium Dogs. All mutated by Strontium radiation, they use their skills to track and eliminate/retrieve criminals from various dimensions and time streams, continually harassed and oppressed by the norm government.
4. Bad Company - After his platoon is wiped out battling the villainous alien Krool; soldier Danny Franks falls in with Bad Company. A twisted gang of Frankenstein hybrids and murderous humans, committed to destroying the alien attackers by any means necessary.
3. Nemesis - Demonic freedom fighter and Warlock, Nemesis battles to protect the rights of aliens in a future tyrannised by Tomas De Torquemada, and his oppressive police state. An unholy hybrid between the Spanish inquisition and the KKK.
2. Rogue Trooper - In a (yet-another) world decimated by nuclear holocaust, a crude re-imagining of the American Civil War has split the populace into the Norts and the Southers. The only surviving member of a massacre of super-soldiers cloned to win the war, Rogue is hunted by his creators as a deserter, as well as by the opposition. Apart from other outsiders he encounters on his travels, his only companions are the electronic personalities of three of his dead brothers, incorporated into his equipment and weaponry.
1. ABC Warriors - Much as in the last list we went from Strontium Dog, to Durham Red, here we segue from Nemesis, straight into his sometime allies, the ABC Warriors. What introduction is necessary? Hammerstein. Deadlock. Joe Pineapples. Mongrel, Blackblood, Mek-Quake. Names etched in comic-book lore. Like a mechanical A-Team, this motley crew of robot killers fight their way across the galaxy, to hell and back, doing the dirty work humanity can’t, and won’t do.
Source: 20 Characters From 2000 AD That Deserve A Pilot - ScreenGeek
