Today I am DELIGHTED to UNLEASH upon the world the NEXT PHASE of my mighty research into the world of comics. For LO! After banging on endlessly about Doctor Doom for years and, to a lesser extent, extolling the virtues of The Beano, I am now turning my terrifying gaze upon JUDGE DREDD!
The plan is to use my METHODOLOGY to look at how Judge Dredd has changed and developed over the years since he first appeared in 1977, looking at an example story from 2000AD from every year since then. I'm sticking with 2000AD and not The Megazine or any other places for the sake of SIMPLICITY, and also not doing newspaper strips or games or films or whatnot for similar reasons (and also so I don't have to watch the Sylvestor Stallone movie again). The idea is to look at this one version of the character to see how he WORKS as a character who actually AGES in real-time, how social attitudes change around him, and how he works as an instrument of SATIRE across several decades. I would very much like to do this as an Actual Book at some point - if possible one that costs a NORMAL PRICE rather than mad Academic Publishing prices - but for now this is being done as Something Interesting that I will hope to bang on about at conferences and stuff.
Before I can do any of that, however, I need some DATA and, as anyone who has read my Doctor Doom book will know, the first stage in doing THAT is to ask OTHER PEOPLE who THEY think Judge Dredd is. THUSLY I have set up an online survey to do just that!
SO, if you have a) any awareness of Judge Dredd as a character and b) about twenty minutes spare to spend thinking about him, I would be EXTREMELY GRATEFUL if you could go and have a go at the survey please. It's ANONYMOUS (although you do have the option to give your email address if you'd like to be given updates) and shouldn't take too long, but will be HUGELY helpful for me and my Important Research. Also, if you know anybody else who might like to take it, I would be similar grateful if you could pass it on to them too!
The survey is open until Friday 19 July so you've got a while to do it, and I will be going on about it for the next few weeks on The Socials too. Once that's done it'll be DATA CLEANING time for me, and then hopefully some proper analysis. In the meantime, thanks for listening to this PLEA, and prepare yourself for a couple of years of me saying DROKK and STOMM at any opportunity!
