Web FInds: Someone Old, Some New

Art by Cliff Robinson

(with thanks to Matt Badham): Many British comic characters may not be getting the exposure these days - who wouldn't want to see new adventures of Steel Claw or Adam Eterno? - but thanks to the web, comic creators can keep these icons alive. Case in point is Someone Old, Someone New - a blog where artists feature old and new British comic characters in one frame of 'What If?' style fun.

The creation of 'MangaMax', who also runs the AIEEE blog on British comic characters, the  brief is simple: ask an artist to depict a chosen classic, long out of print British comic character meeting a modern, in print one. Whether they get along and what they're doing is entirely up to the artist - part of the fun of it seeing just what they'll come up with. The only stipulation anyone is given is that it must be black and white, the natural enviroment of the 70's, apart from that its all down to them.

Robot Archie and Judge Anderson
Art by Dave Taylor

Many artists have already stepped up to the plate, including Cliff Robinson (above, who helped kick the project off), Glenn Fabry, Dave Taylor, Paul Grist and many others.

The blog is also  a showcase for a slowly growing collection of commissions of Black Max, MangaMax's favourite ever British comic character - and convention sketches of those classic 60/70's strips he love so much.

So well worth checking out at: http://someoneoldsomeonenew.blogspot.com

- The Spider, Janus Stark and Robot Archie © IPC
- Judge Dredd and Judge Anderson © Rebellion

- Adam Eterno and Black Max © Egmont UK

WebFinds: Cliff Robinson's Captain Britain

Regular readers of downthetubes will remember artist Cliff Robinson - one of many great creators on 2000AD down the years. He began his own blog some time ago, and has been posting some fantastic art, including this brilliant 'faux' Captain Britain Weekly cover - inspired by CB's first run in with Captain America back in the 1970s - and a fun 'Robot Archie' illustration.

His blog features the preliminary drawings for the Robot Archie, Judge Anderson and
Modesty Blaise art. "Looking afresh at these drawings and the finished art, I'm beginning to wonder whether I've drawn Modesty's waist just a tad too thin," he notes.

• Check out his blog at: cliffrobinsoncomicart.blogspot.com

Judge Dredd's Crime Chronicles Released

Top audio adventure company Big Finish, perhaps best known for their Doctor Who productions, has just made a long-awaited return to the 2000AD universe with a brand new series of adventures in crime and space.

Judge Dredd: Crime Chronicles finds the iconic lawman of Mega City One starring in four new stories where he faces off against foes old and new and, for the final story, partners up with a fellow Judge played by Doctor Who’s Louise Jameson, who played companion Leela in the 1970s.

Officially licensed by Rebellion, each story is a dramatic reading, with full sound design and a specially drawn cover by 2000 AD artist Cliff Robinson, and features Toby Longworth as Judge Dredd.

The series begins with Stranger Than Truth, written by former 2000AD editor David Bishop and told by Brit-Cit academic, Eliza Blunt (Helen Kay). Captured and imprisoned by Judge Dredd, author Truman Kaput has spent years in the Mega City One iso-cubes, his work banned. His crime: writing lurid detective novels in which the ficticious Slick Dickens repeatedly outwits the cowardly bully, Judge Dredd. Now a new Truman Kaput novel is being serialised, and each chapter predicts an imminent murder with chilling accuracy. Has Slick Dickens escaped the page to commit real crimes in Mega-City One? Is a serial killer using the chapters as templates for their crime?

Where does fiction end and the truth start? And, perhaps most importantly: can Dredd stop the plot before his nemesis fulfils the finale of Slick Dickens: I Killed Judge Dredd?

In Blood Will Tell by James Swallow, due for relese in November, a frenzied mutant attack on Mega-City One's shield wall is revealed to be the cover for a group of infiltrators. Judge Dredd tells the story of how he was forced to face a deadly opponent from his past: Garris Hale, a man whose life he destroyed. Back from exile in the radioactive wilderness of the Cursed Earth, Hale has possession of a dark secret – a secret so explosive that it could plunge the entire city into anarchy and chaos! With his judgement in question and the future of his city in the balance, Dredd must face a lethal enemy intent on revenge at any cost...

The third tale, to be released in December, The Devil’s Playground by Jonathan Clements, is narrated by Wendy Plainfolk (Gemma Wardle) and finds Judge Dredd hunting a killer on the loose, his only lead a girl who's never seen the sky or the streets. Raised in a religious commune, locked in a closed farming habitat in the heart of the city, Wendy Plainfolk knows nothing of the temptations and dangers of Dredd's world. But she is the only link to a double homicide in a place she calls the Devil's Playground: Mega-City One.

January 2010 see Louise Jameson narrate James Swallow’s Double Zero in the guise of Judge Anderson. On the Mills-Wagner scale of psychic potentiality, the Double Zero rating is ranked as the lowest possible level of human telepathic receptability and/or psionic ability.

When a strange premonition draws Psi-Judge Cassandra Anderson to her fellow law officer, Joe Dredd, what begins as an inkling of something sinister soon becomes a matter of life and death. With telepathic secret agents from a dozen city-states infiltrating the Big Meg in search of a psychic weapon called 'the pariah', Anderson and Dredd find themselves in a race against time to save the life of an innocent child – with the power to start a war...

• The Judge Dredd: Crime Chronicles are priced £9.99 per CD and £7.99 for an MP3 download. Subscritions are also available from www.bigfinish.com/Judge-Dredd:-Crime-Chronicles

Tube Surfing: 17 February 2009

• Veteran 2000AD artist Cliff Robinson just posted this specatcular Judge Death illustration on his blog...

• Talking of 2000AD, on Saturday 21st March between 1 and 2.30pm, the Forbidden Planet Mega Store in London is having its 30th Anniversary Signing. Artists and writers lined up include Dan Abnett, David Bishop, Simon Davis, Rufus Dayglo, Al Ewing, Brett Ewins, Henry Flint, Robbie Morrison, Tony Lee, Matt Smith and Simon Spurrier. "It'll be a cracker!" says Rufus. Indeed - and you should be able to pick up the paperback edition of David Bishop's Thrill-Powered Overload, too. Click here for the latest info from the Forbidden Planet web site

• Had enough of the Watchmen movie yet? No? Well, you'll be pleased to hear (via Geek Syndicate) that the World Premiere date has been set and it will be in London's Leicester Square on 26th February. No info as yet as to who’s going to be attending in terms of cast and crew but if a very large man sporting a very large beard with firey eyes turns up, we advise anyone in the crowd to run away very quickly...

• We haven't mentioned Steve Holland's brilliant Bear Alley blog in a while, so with a Gerry Anderson feature proving one of the highlights of the latest Comics International, it's somewhat fortuitous that he's come across a behind the scenes article from 1965 reporting from the set of early Supermarionation series, Stingray.

• Another British comics archivist has been quiet, too, Lew Stringer pretty busy with all sorts of projects. But he's sprung back with a terrific post profiling the early career of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen artist "With the publication of the next League volume, Century:1910 due in a few months, I thought it might be appropriate to take a rare glimpse into the early days of this extraordinary artist," says Lew.

• (via Forbidden Planet International): And finally, Paul Gravett has posted up his choice of ten (living) British comics creators who have been most innovative and influential in the comics medium both here and worldwide. "Not an easy job given how many British writers and artists have achieved a great international reputation," notes FPI's Joe Gordon. "I’m sure some some will wonder why their favoured creators aren’t in the list, but as with any such shortlist it’s open to debate and these are Paul’s personal choices, I’m quite sure he’d be more than happy to hear other names suggested... but the problem is its hard to think who from Paul’s list I would cut to make room for some I was considering... I’m sure it will get some debate - what do you think?"