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| Judge Sniper design for Judge Dredd: Master Moves (Megazine 216, April 2004, design produced November 2003) Judge Dredd © 2010 Rebellion Developments/ 2000AD Judge Dredd created by John Wagner and Carlos Ezquerra |
One thing I always admired about certain Dredd artists was the consistency of their world-building; Ron Smith, for example, was pretty good at working out fixed designs for things like H-Wagons and then sticking to them.
So when I saw a sniper team mentioned in the script for Lowlife: Creation part 6, I thought it would be great excuse to dig out the Judge-Sniper design I came up with for my first ever Dredd story (Judge Dredd: Master Moves, Megazine 217, April 2004). Unfortunately for me, I did that design in a fever of enthusiasm at getting to work on Dredd, as an answer to something that had always bothered me as a reader of 2000AD: if Judge Dredd's uniform is covered in eagles, and his bike has a dirty great eagle on it, why then do all the ancilliary Judges (teks, med-teks, forensic guys etc) always have plainer uniforms without eagles on them?
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| Judge Sniper from page 9 of Judge Dredd: Master Moves (Megazine 216, April 2004) Judge Dredd © 2010 Rebellion Developments/ 2000AD Judge Dredd created by John Wagner and Carlos Ezquerra |
Blindingly Obvious Answer: drawing the eagles is a pain in the arse. Any sane artist will never draw more eagles than he has to.
And that's fine except... when it came to it, I really did want to do something special for my first Dredd, so I ended up with a design the had eagles on both shoulders (I also did a Sector House Chief with double eagles in the same episode). And given that I only had to draw the sniper a couple of times, that was fine.
So six years later, I dig the old design out, and somehow I can't make myself let go of the whole double-eagle thing, even though this time round I've got crowds of the buggers to draw. I must be mad.
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| Massed Judge Snipers from Lowlife: Hostile Takeover part 6 Lowlife © 2010 Rebellion Developments/ 2000AD Lowlife created by Rob Williams and Henry Flint |
