1985: JUDGE DREDD US MONTHLY UK House Ad (IPC)

From January 1985: An IPC House Ad for the fifteenth issue of the imported JUDGE DREDD US monthly which, by this point, was distributed through newsagents and branches of WH Smith.  

The publisher, Eagle Comics, was a joint-venture between IPC and Titan Books. 

1985: STRONTIUM DOG Issue 1 (Eagle Comics)

From December 1985: the launch issue of Eagle Comics' four-part 'Mutie Series' reformated reprints of STRONTIUM DOG: Portrait of a Mutant, originally published in 2000AD back in 1981. 

1983: JUDGE DREDD Issue 1 (Eagle Comics)

I've posted the ads to promote this, the official North American debut of the Lawman of the Future, before but I don't think I ever got around to publishing the full Bolland cover in all its' glory.  

There had been some previous experiments with getting 2000AD into US stores but the format and frequency had made retailers, distributors and buyers reluctant to take the plunge.  The early Titan Books collections must also have, presumably, been shipped across in small quantities. The fanzine BEM (by this point published in the States)had also devoted pretty much an entire issue to the various characters and strips from the weekly but the first issue (November 1983) of Eagle Comics' (a joint venture between Titan Books and IPC) JUDGE DREDD monthly was his biggest splash stateside to date. 

1984: JUDGE DREDD: THE JUDGE CHILD QUEST Issue 1 (Eagle Comics)

From August 1984, Brian Bolland's memorable cover for the first (of five) issue of Eagle Comics JUDGE DREDD: THE JUDGE CHILD QUEST rerun.

This split the storyline out of the regular monthly book and packaged it up in a deluxe Baxter format (posh, weighty, paper!) monthly.  

The recoloured pages were latterly collected into a trade paperback by Fleetway.  

1986: 2000AD MONTHLY (Volume 2) Issue 1 (Eagle Comics)

Another stunning Brian Bolland cover adorned the first issue of Eagle Comic's April 1986 revival (following the previous year's successful limited series) of the US version of 2000AD MONTHLY.

This time, the all-reprint (albeit resized, coloured and reworked to remove unnecessary chapter breaks) was Judge Anderson, D.R. & Quinch and Skizz (Alan Moore overload!).

This version survived only four issues under the Eagle Comics banner before, now in the care of Quality Comics, it was rebooted (although with the same numbering) as 2000AD PRESENTS from issue 5.

The page count was expanded to 52 pages from the 7th issue, adding space (ahem) for reprints of the 2000AD incarnation of Dan Dare.

Various changes in publisher and format followed.  The name changed again, to 2000AD SHOWCASE, from the 25th issue and shuttered after 54 editions in 1990.  

1985: 2000AD MONTHLY (US) Issue 1 (Eagle Comics)

This stunning Brian Bolland cover launched the US edition of 2000AD MONTHLY (not to be confused with the, also reprint-diven, UK BEST OF 2000AD MONTHLY which allowed IPC to plunder its own vaults), a 'spin-off' from Eagle Comics' successful Judge Dredd title.

Unsurprisingly, a serialised reprint of JD's Cursed Earth encounter with The Black Plague topped the bill to attract readers to what was otherwise something of an unknown quantity.  Previous attempts to ship copies of the original weekly across the Atlantic hadn't met with much success although they do seem to have piqued the interest of US publishers who promptly snapped-up the services of the Art and Script Droids.  

The remaining two strips, all published in colour and reformatted to remove the tell-tale UK chapter breaks, were DR and Quinch Go Straight and Strontium Dog in Death's Head (no relation).

This was the first of a six issue run, cover-dated April 1985.  The title returned as an ongoing series, once again under Eagle Comics' auspices, the following year and survived, albeit retooled, the transfer to Quality Comics.

1986: JUDGE DREDD: THE EARLY CASES Issue 1 (Eagle Comics)

The first issue (of a six issue "mega series" spin-off from EAGLE COMICS' main JUDGE DREDD US-format colour monthly) of JUDGE DREDD: THE EARLY CASES from February 1986.

This was a vehicle for some of the earlier still-finding-its-feet JD strips that Eagle (a joint-venture between IPC and Titan Books) had skipped, in favour of more confident and commercial fare, when they launched the regular book.

Behind the stunning new Bolland cover (how did he get away with that?) is a colorised/ reformatted reprint of The Heavy Metal Wars from, of course, 2000AD.

1987: STRONTIUM DOG ONE-SHOT (Quality Comics)

This STRONTIUM DOG one-shot emerged from Dez Skinn's short-lived tenure as overseer of the 2000AD reprints pitched at North America but also sold in British comic shops and - in some cases - British newsagents.

Dez and his QUALITY COMICS operation (which also consisted of two London comic stores) picked-up the license when Titan Books and IPC decided that the EAGLE COMICS operation was much too much like hard work (especially chasing all the unpaid bills from US distributors) and IPC decided it would be a lot less effort to simply license the material to a third-party than bankroll it themselves.

Eagle Comics had previously published a four issue Stronty limited series and Dez used this one-shot to test reader (and retailer) appetite for more.

Other offerings in the EAGLE arsenal (which, ironically, never published anything from the EAGLE COMIC back catalogue) included their best-selling JUDGE DREDD ongoing book (and several spin-offs offered in various formats and price points) and shorter runs devoted to ROBO-HUNTER, NEMESIS THE WARLOCK and 2000AD itself (a US format anthology).

All the US books did their best to disguise the episodic origins of the strips by removing the natural breaks between instalments and reworking the artwork to remove surplus logos and recaps.  The bizarre dimensions of IPC's weeklies (fat and squat) further complicated matters as the pages had to be reworked to fit the new dimensions.  Later, post-Dez, publishers found that much too much like hard work and just ran the art in the wrong aspect ratio.

The US reprints ran until around 1994 before being discontinued in favour of the new licensing dead with DC Comics which saw the publisher launch two new ongoing JUDGE DREDD books which managed to - somehow - only have tenuous links to both the 2000AD and movie versions of the character.  The movie flopped and DC didn't renew the arrangement.

The STRONTIUM DOG one-shot was dated January 1987 and probably went on sale in the latter part of the previous year.

1983: JUDGE DREDD ISSUE 1 LAUNCH AD (Eagle Comics)

JUDGE DREDD: Welcome to the United States!

This ad, from June 1983, was quite possibly the first sighting of ol' JD for most US comic buyers.  The advert, which appeared in COMICS INTERVIEW (and, no-doubt, elsewhere too), announced the launch of the US JUDGE DREDD monthly which, behind an impressive run of new Brian Bolland covers, reprinted the 2000AD strips.

The original UK pages were reworked to fit the different dimensions of US books (taller and narrower*), altered so that multi-part stories appeared to flow as one continuous story (albeit with tell-tale cliffhangers every few pages) and - most impressively - colour for the first time.

Eagle Comics was a joint-venture between IPC and Titan Books (who'd been publishing the 2000AD reprint albums since the beginning of the decade) intended to crack the US market.  The all-reprint line expanded fast to include more Dredd titles, Robo Hunter, a US edition of 2000AD and others.  However, they struggled to make the economics work and eventually allowed the license to pass to Dez Skinn's (him again!) Quality Comics.  Although, in typical Skinn style, that tie-up proved short-lived.

The company name was, of course, inspired by the classic (and just revived) British weekly although they never reprinted anything from either incarnation.

Considering the amount of 2000AD back catalogue that was coloured for Eagle/ Quality, I'm always a bit surprised that more of it hasn't resurfaced since.  It's not as if Tharg is adverse to reissuing the same material in countless different formats.

* Typical IPC, the format and dimensions of the British comics didn't make the strips easy to export.

1983: JUDGE DREDD: THE US COMIC (Eagle Comics)

DREDD 3D opens in the UK this weekend (I'm going Saturday night... and I can't wait) so, to mark the occasion (albeit in the smallest of small ways), here's the launch advert for the JUDGE DREDD issue 1, published by Eagle Comics in the summer of 1983.

These colour, US-format reprints from Eagle Comics (a collaboration between IPC and Titan Books, borrowing the company name from the original incarnation of the British weekly) were the first time that most Americans had encountered ol' JD.

Eagle Comics took the original UK material, adjusted the page size (to make them taller, slimmer and  - of course - smaller overall) to fit the standard US format, removed the obvious recaps and chapter breaks inherent in the serialised British material and added colour for the first time.  Opinions vary about quite how well they achieved any of it.  

The Eagle Comics were distributed, via Titan Distributors (another part of the Titan empire), to British comic stores (and, I'm pretty sure, newsagents like WH Smith as well).  Titan Books were already issuing selected 200AD back catalogue material (in their original black & white) in album format but these could be pretty hard to find (not to mention pricy) outside of larger towns and cities.  

Eagle Comics expanded to add further titles assembled from Tharg's library: several JD limited series were released in different formats at different price points (THE EARLY CASES, CRIME FILE and THE JUDGE CHILD QUEST), as were limited series reprinting STRONTIUM DOG, ROBO-HUNTER, THE STAINLESS STEEL RAT, NEMESIS THE WARLOCK and a 2000AD anthology.

IPC's traditional business model purchased all rights to the original work, allowing them to syndicate, reprint and merchandise it to their hearts content without any additional payment to the original creators.  Uncomfortable with this arrangement, Titan's Nick Landau (also responsible for the FORBIDDEN PLANET retail chain - phew!) made additional payments direct to the original creative teams.

Faced with the problems of a UK-based company trying to do business - at a distance - in the United States, Eagle Comics shuttered after publishing 33 monthly issues of Judge Dredd.  The license transferred to Dez Skinn's Quality Comics who, in the pages of Speakeasy and other fanzines, announced ambitious plans for recycling the IPC vaults as well as adding new material.  Those plans petered-out pretty quick when Skinn quit the endeavour, ironically in a dispute over the quality of the finished product.

These shouldn't be confused with the two regular US JD titles, published under license, that DC Comics issued between 1994 and 1996.  JUDGE DREDD clocked-up 18 issues, JUDGE DREDD: LEGENDS OF THE LAW mustered 13.  Frustratingly, neither runs have - to date - been reprinted.