Lambeth Fantastical February 2024 (Part Two) - Judge Dredd and the Lambeth Connections
Judge
Dredd and the Lambeth Connections
On the 26th February 1977
Waterloo based IPC media launched what would go on to become their bestselling,
most culturally influential, and longest lived comic publication, 2000 AD.
Still to be found on newsagent’s shelves forty-seven years later, the idea was
first born from a conversation about an article in the Evening Standard featuring
the number of science fiction films, Star Wars, Close Encounters of the Third
Kind, Alien and others, about to be released in cinemas at that time.
Arising from this conversation Pat Mills
and Kelvin Gosnell submitted a proposal to the IPC comics divisions for there
to be a weekly scifi themed comic to capitalise on the trend. The project was
given the green light and office space was allocated at Kings Reach Tower on the Southbank, with
Mills as the editor and Gosnell as one of the core writers.
Amongst the characters appearing in issue
one (or prog one as it came to be known) was an updated version of Dan Dare,
who had first appeared in the Eagle comic way back in the early 1950s. But it
wasn’t until prog two that the comic’s most iconic and well-known character,
Judge Dredd, made his debut.
Dredd’s story is woven into the fabric
Lambeth’s history.
It starts with a burly, well-built
teenager from Snodland in Kent called Alexander Minto Hughes. In the late
sixties, with ambitions of becoming a professional wrestler, under the name The
Masked Executioner, he took up lodgings in a West Indian run boarding house in
Brixton. Here he was exposed for the first time to ska and reggae music and
developed a deep-rooted love for the genre.
Given his size and stature he often found
security work at music gigs, working for the Rolling Stones on a number of
occasions. This led to him taking up employment as a bouncer at Brixton’s famous
Ram Jam Club, and later as a debt collector for Trojan, the pioneering ska and
reggae record label. Here he met the artist, Prince Buster, who proved to be
huge influence on his life.
Hughes began working as a DJ, introducing
ska and reggae to a wider British audience, including the youngsters who would ultimately take
inspiration from Prince Buster and others as the foundation stones for Two-Tone
bands such as The Specials, Madness, and The Selector in the early 80s.
Hughes also had ambitions to become a
reggae artist himself. Adopting the stage name Judge Dread, taken from the
title of a Prince Buster ska song, he played a demo disc of his self-penned
‘Little Boy Blue’ to Trojan boss, Lee Gopthal. Gopthal liked what he heard but
suggested the song’s title be changed to ‘Big Six’ in tribute to ‘Big Five’ which,
at the time, was a huge underground hit for Prince Buster.
'Big Six' was banned by the BBC due to the overt sexual inuendo included in lyrics, which hijacked the words of popular nursery
rhymes. Despite the ban ‘Big Six’ reached number 11 in the charts and sold
300,000 copies. Several follow up singles were released, all of which charted
despite being banned by the BBC, allowing Judge Dread to hold the Guiness Book
of Records title for the artist most banned by the BBC (11 songs in total). His
other credits included having more chart success with reggae songs than Bob
Marley and being the only white artist to have a hit in the Jamaican Reggae
charts in the 70s.
Skip back now to 2000 AD and one of the
scripts being considered features a hanging judge who investigates crimes of a
supernatural nature, dishing out instant justice in the form of summary executions. The judge was based on a character who originally appeared in a story written by Lambeth
born Dennis Wheatley. The name chosen for the character was Judge Dread, after
Hughes’ reggae act who was notoriously well known in the mid-70s.
Ultimately the hanging judge story line
wasn’t considered to fit in with the comic’s core scifi theme. The idea was
however blended in with another proposal for a futuristic law enforcer who is
judge, jury and executioner in the dystopian police state that governs the
post-apocalyptic Megacity One. With a
spelling change to Dredd and the catch phrase ‘I am the law’ the draft script
was sent to Spanish graphic artist Carlos Ezquerra, then resident in Croydon, with
an image of David Carredine’s character from the movie ‘Death Race 2000’ as the
template on which Dredd was to be based.
Thus, the iconic persona of Judge Dredd, adorned in trade mark helmet, visor and body armour, was born. The image accompanying this blog is by Norfolk born, Cliff Robinson,
one of many graphic artists over the past forty-seven years who have drawn
Judge Dredd. It appeared as a middle page poster spread in 2000 AD - Prog 900 – 12th
August 1994.
As a character Judge Dredd proved so popular that he was
given his own spin off title in 1990. Like 2000 AD - Judge Dredd Megazine is
still in publication, with a dedicated fan base and readership. The gritty
anti-hero has also spawned two movies – Judge Dredd (1995) with Sylvester
Stallone in the lead role and Dredd (2012) in which Karl Urban dons the
lawman’s famous helmet. There are also a number of Judge Dredd computer games
developed by Rebellion Publishing, who also now publish the comics, having aquired the
rights from IPC.
This year another Lambeth connection is
about to come into play with David Bowie’s son, Duncan Jones, writing and
directing a big screen animation of another 2000 AD character, Rogue Trooper, who
first appeared in comic strip form in 1981.
Walk with me into 2000 AD
At midday on the 24th of February, to mark the upcoming 47th Anniversary of 2000 AD and Judge Dredd, I will be leading a guided walk I have curated examing these and other comics and characters created by IPC Media when they were based in Waterloo.
You can book here.
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