Looking forward to the July release of the collected Zenith?We are!

If you feel you need a bit of a Zenith fix before then why not head over to The Beat for an interview with co-creator and series artist Steve Yeowell?Find out how he feels about the distinctive character 25 years on;

I loved the character, the setting and the back story and I also loved the structure of that first series in particular, which steadily built the tension over successive episodes to a satisfying conclusion. It was a  great piece of tight plotting—perhaps all the more effective for being in that five page episodic format.

Read the full interview here.

megatrip:

Scanned from the cover of David Anthony Kraft’s Comics Interview #19 - January, 1985.

topherlum:

Interviewer: “Do you think Sly Stallone would approve of the new version?”

Karl Urban: “I don’t give a damn what he thinks.”

Hahahaha. So bad ass. Oh and I’ve already seen the movie (in the Lionsgate screening room). It’s AMAZING! Dredd 3D!

Another of the advanced viewers giving it the thumbs up.

horror-junkies:

Writer Alex Garland (Sunshine, 28 Days Later) and director Pete Travis (Endgame) have brought Dredd back to the silver screen. The film was screened and the San Diego Comic-Con this year, and people were shocked by how much they liked it and how brutal it was.

Read More

karlurbaninternational:

Karl Urban Talks DREDD and the Experience of Filming the STAR TREK Sequel in IMAX at Comic-Con

http://collider.com/karl-urban-dredd-star-trek-2-sequel-interview/181966/

comicimpact:

A lot of times we talk to creators about their upcoming projects but it’s not often that we get to talk to a creator that one of us looks up to however for Simon that would soon change. We were lucky enough to get the chance to talk to JOCK. that’s right the one name artist whose work is most recognizable on such books as Detective Comics, 2000 AD,Hellblazer,The Losers and more.


They discuss the production design of the upcoming Dredd 3D film and what it
was like doing a special limited-edition Batman The Dark Knight Rises
poster for Comic Con.

Simon also talks about what was supposed to have been the 2014 version
of Dune. All this and find out a little bit about Jock’s graphic design style and
what Marvel project you can see him on very soon as our coverage continues of San Diego Comic Con 2012

“I didn’t want to play this character as a bellowing, posturing Dredd,” he smiles in a none-too-subtle reference of that other movie, “For me it’s far more interesting for the character to contain the rage.”

ivoryfirefly:

9 glorious pages of nothing but Dredd - well, except the inconveniently placed Barcardi ad in the middle.  But, 9 pages of photos & details, and a small interview with Lena Headey (Ma-Ma in the upcoming reboot).  2000AD editor Matt Smith also selects his ten all-time favourite Judge Dredd storylines.

It’s worth the £3.99 just for the Dredd content, but there’s also plenty on The Hobbit, a little look at the new Riddick, a talk with Oliver Stone, and a review of The Dark Knight Rises.  Plus more!

From their issue guide:

Dredd
It’s the biggest British indie movie ever made, and it’s looking as bloody, violent and uncompromising as one could wish from a Judge Dredd film. We got the skinny from all the filmmakers about what went on, those editing-nightmare rumours and why we can soon expect Three Colours Dredd.

karlurbaninternational:

“And I felt my blood begin to boil.”

The great thing is that Karl Urban really understands Judge Dredd, which will feed through into his performance:

Question: Did you want to make sure to steer clear of the other movie even though Dredd 3D is not really related to it at all or not a continuation of that story?

Karl Urban: Well, here’s the thing- when I read the script, it became obvious to me that what we were endeavoring to do was completely different. Tonally, you couldn’t get more different. I think that our film is a lot more…well, I don’t really know how to describe it really, but I will say this- going into this movie, I watched the Stallone version to see what worked and what didn’t work.

The way I wanted to approach this character was not to have him be a posturing, bellowing character that was ground in ego; to me, that wasn’t the Dredd I knew. I thought it was far more interesting to have a character with this inner rage who was struggling to contain it rather than letting it all explode. That’s the direction I was going in. I decided that what I wanted to do was to find the humanity within Dredd because he is just a man; he’s not a superhero, he has no superhero power. He’s just a man, and it’s his heroism that makes him so iconic. It’s his heroism that defines him; he’s the guy always walking into the building when everyone else is running out. He does the things most people wouldn’t dare to do in real life, and that was the challenge for me.

It was a huge challenge especially for me to convey all of this without the use of my eyes; the character oscillates from being a protector to being incredibly violent to having this wry, sardonic humor to displaying compassion at times- there are a lot of aspects to this character. The challenge for me then was to make all of that happen from behind the helmet. There’s a weariness to him as well, which I thought was really important.

…

Question: Did you go back and look at the source material at all to help inform your performance as Dredd?

Karl Urban: Oh yes. That was certainly part of my whole process when I came on board this and entered this world. First of all, I spent like 13 weeks in the gym lifting heavy things and eating seven or eight times a day to train so I could be where I needed to be physically for this character. Then there was the part of the process that I enjoy the most, which is the investigative part, and that was getting my hands on every graphic novel I could.

The real wonderful thing was that I discovered a whole lot of new stories with Dredd that I wasn’t aware of initially when I used to read Dredd back when I was a teenager. Origin stories, the dead man’s walk into America, those sorts of things; and they were all really great stories to find. There’s also a wonderful maturity that happens with Wagner’s writing as the stories go on where this seed of doubt is implanted in the character, which I thought was just fascinating.

Dredd’s story starts off where he’s just this guy who is doing his job, but then after 20 years later, he begins to question things, and I thought that was a wonderful complexity to build into this character. That’s what I wanted to try and plant the seeds for in this movie, too, that weariness.

I am unsure we could have found a better man for the job.