1988: BAD COMPANY Issue 1 (Quality Comics)

From 1988: the first issue of Quality Comics' US-format reprints of 2000AD's BAD COMPANY.  

This ran for a total of 19 issues through to 1990.

1986: SPELLBINDERS Issue 1 (Quality Comics)

From 1986: the first issue of Quality's SPELLBINDERS, an anthology of IPC and Fleetway reprints.  

Slaine and Nemesis the Warlock require little introduction (although I'm not sure I would describe either as "chilling", maybe I just don't know the material well enough) but if you're perplexed as to the identity of the mysterious Amadeus Wolf... that's a spot of Dez Skinn sleight of hand.

Wolf was hitherto known as Curistor Doom, a strip that appeared in SMASH between March 1969 and the following February.  All the strips in Spellbinders appeared in colour.  

Spellbinders ran for twelve issues.  The thirteenth was badged as SPELLBINDERS FEATURING SCAVENGERS.

1987: SLAINE THE BERSERKER Issue 1 (Quality Comics)

From July 1987: the first issue of QUALITY COMICS' ongoing SLAINE THE BERSERKER book, reprinting strips from 2000AD.

This ultimately ran for 28 issues.  The first twenty appeared under the original title, the final eight rebadged as SLAINE THE KING.  The run ended in the summer of 1989.  

1986: ROGUE TROOPER Issue 1 (Quality Comics)

From 1986: The launch issue of Quality Comics' ongoing ROGUE TROOPER colour monthly.  Featuring A.B.C Warriors (also from 2000AD) as the supporting feature. 

The ongoing title survived the trials and tribulations of the (not always) Quality operation to clock-up a respectable run of 49 issues. 

1986: MIDNIGHT SURFER One-shot (Quality Comics)

Another Quality Comics one-shot: MIDNIGHT SURFER, collecting the early Judge Dredd/ Chopper strips from the pages of 2000AD and published (with what, I believe, is a new cover... correct me if I'm wrong) in 1986.  

The almost complete absence of JUDGE DREDD branding and images on the cover seems a little daft... the badge is lost in the artwork and runs the risk of being entirely obscured depending on how the issue was racked. 

1986: THE STEEL CLAW Issue 1 (Quality Comics)

 

THE STEEL CLAW was another reprint title from Dez Skinn's Quality Comics but, unlike the vast majority of the line, it wasn't compiled from old 2000AD material.

Dez dug a little deeper into the IPC archives for this four-issue series, launched in late 1986, which reprinted strips from sixties title VALIANT.  Not only did this ship the strips to the United States for the first time but it also gave a new generation of British readers their first chance to see the strips.

The reprints were reworked to fit the US format and page dimensions, coloured and linked by a new framing sequence created by Garry Leach.  

1986: JUDGE DREDD Issue 1 (Quality Comics)

Credit to Dez Skinn for selecting a stonking JD tale to kick off the Quality Comics run of JUDGE DREDD reprints.  QC had already spent a couple of months packaging-up the last of the 35-issue EAGLE COMICS incarnation before rebooting with this new first issue (cover-dated October 1986).

It's a shame that Dez dispensed with the iconic services of Brian Bolland (who, presumably, found no shortage of alternative job offers) but, overall, the early Quality issues were - indeed - pretty good quality.  

It didn't last long however... the printing and production standards started to deteriorate and the end results looked murky and slapdash.  At which point, Dez parted company with the business and - sure enough - the quality fell through into the Undercity. 

1986: SAM SLADE ROBO HUNTER Issue 1 (Quality Comics)

This is the first issue of SAM SLADE ROBO HUNTER, another of the early Quality Comics vehicles repackaging old 2000AD strips for the US market.

Cover-dated October 1986, this formed part of the initial phalanx of QC launches which debuted a couple of months after Dez Skinn's company took over the franchise from Eagle Comics.  The IPC/ Titan partnership had previously piloted a Robo Hunter title with a five-issue series in 1984.

Slade's debut adventure this time out was a coloured reprint of The Beast of Blackheart Manor (a fun riff on Sherlock Holmes, Sweeney Todd and numerous country house killings) originally seen in progs 259 - 265 of the weekly.

The back-up strip was, as the cover suggests, Ro-Busters, a strip Tharg inherited from the departing STARLORD.  

This eventually notched-up a 31 issue run, ending in 1989.  

1987: BEYOND 2000AD: TIME TWISTERS Issue 1 (Quality Comics)

Here's another of the numerous 2000AD spin-offs published by Quality Comics in the late 1980s.

As the name suggests, it was an anthology compilation of the numerous short stories from the UK weekly, unfortunately crudely distorted to fit the different US page dimensions… and poorly coloured and printed (Quality was not - ahem - a byword for quality).

It ran for 21 issues.  

1988: BEYOND 2000AD: THE LAW OF DREDD Issue 1 (Quality Comics)

This is one of the many US reprints of 2000AD fare churned-out in the 1980s and early 1990s (before DC Comics licensed JD and nixed the existing titles as part of the deal) from the oh-so-inappropriately named Quality Comics (several years after Dez Skinn had parted ways with the company).

THE LAW OF DREDD, like the other Quality books of the time, depended on reprints from 2000AD and slapped-on new covers which, other than featuring the character, often had naff-all to do with the contents inside.  

From the 8th issue, this started to appear under the Fleetway Quality masthead after the British publisher started to take a more hands-on interest in the reprints.  It eventually clocked-up 33 issues.  

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: 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.

1987: SPEAKEASY FANZINE: MARVEL SOLD and SKINN QUITS QUALITY

Here is the Breaking News, albeit from January 1987!  New World Pictures have snaffled up Spidey and the rest of the Marvel Comics Group.

This was the lead story from British fanzine SPEAKEASY issue 70, cover-dated January 1987.

The prediction that the sale would have no effect on Marvel's staffers turned out to be wide-of-the-mark, Marvel's new owners didn't waste too much time in dispensing with the services of Editor-in-Chief Jim Shooter.  But we'll get to that.

I've covered the post-Corman rise and fall of New World Pictures/ Entertainment in a previous post but, to cut a long story short: their core business of movies and television production lost shedloads of money, Marvel was sold-off to keep the wolf from the door and NWE eventually reinvented itself as a TV station group (with some production, including the GENERATION X tele-flick) before being absorbed by News Corporation (who wanted to add New World's local stations to their existing Fox station group) and ceasing to exist in any meaningful sense.

Marvel after New World had a turbulent 1990s, spent the first part of the noughies redefining itself and is now, of course, a lucrative part of the Disney empire.

The other front page story that issue was Dez Skinn's hasty departure from Quality Comics over - ironically - quality issues.  QC, and Skinn, had been making a splash in '86 having acquired the rights to repackage and reprint the 2000AD back catalogue (as well as other IPC archive strips) from Eagle Comics (the joint-venture between IPC and Titan Books).  Skinn had planned to use these low-cost (creators, notoriously, didn't receive extra payments for reprints or reuse of their work) reprints as the basis to grow the Quality line.

After his departure, Quality became notorious for poor production standards and sloppy reprints.  Numerous titles were released under the Quality/ Fleetway banner and, one day, I'll get around to featuring some of them here.

SPEAKEASY was a well-established British fanzine which, by this point, had positioned itself as the main "newspaper" for British comics fandom.  Taking this to it's logical conclusion, it had adopted a newsprint tabloid format, folded to A4 size for display and sale (which explains that nasty brown line through the news stories, that's where the fold is!).