SCANTASTIC! ‘Rare’ Judge Dredd strip from Sinclair User (August 1990)

One of the reasons behind this blog was as a place to share bits ‘n’ bobs relating to comics that I have accrued over the years, but which others may have missed.

What with the release of the new Dredd movie – which by all accounts appears to have successfully fumigated the collective memory of the Stallone apostasy – I thought it might be nice to post this six-page ‘Judge Dredd’ strip which featured ‘exclusively’* in Sinclair User magazine back in August 1990. It was a tie-in to Virgin’s 8-bit JD game for the ZX Spectrum, and whilst I wasn’t into computers or gaming in the least, when I saw SU on the news stand – complete with Ol’ Joe looming out from the cover, courtesy of Cliff Robinson – I just had to buy it!

The strip itself is a nice six-page introduction to Mega City One, Dredd and to the more humorous side of his world, written by John Wagner (under the TB Grover pseudonym) with art by Ian Gibson. There is also a pull-out poster with the magazine – I’ll scan and post that up here too, when I get the chance.

I scanned the pages at 300dpi, and tidied them up as best I can (the pages were somewhat discoloured) in Photoshop. Any art glitches are my fault, not the Twerkmeister’s. The full res versions I first converted to CMYK before assembly into a PDF for you to download (link below); there are also screen res RGB jpegs as well. Don’t say I never put in the effort!

Enjoy!

» Rare, ‘exclusive’ Judge Dredd strip – Sinclair User August 1990 (PDF)

* Reader Rodrigo Baeza notes in the comments that this story had actually been previously published in the Fleetway/Quality trade paperback Judge Dredd Crime Files Volume 1, which came out in 1989. If that wasn’t enough to torpedo the claims of exclusivity, it seems that that was a reprint from the 1987 Judge Dredd Annual! Oh lumme….

Edited 30 September 2012 to qualify ‘exclusive’ claims…