sauchieboy
Posts: 303
Joined: 31/7/2011
From: The City Of Sauchie
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quote:
But the comics are funny. Where's the funny?
I wouldn't say there wasn't anything funny about Scott's script excerpt, but Rgirvan does have a point concerning the fundamental importance of humour to the Dredd strip. He's not alone either, Alan Grant has gone as far as stating he has "no interest in writing anything serious at all. If I can't have a laugh with it, it's really boring." (i); and when Wagner rimes off his formative comic strip influences, it's the work of Dudley D Watkins and the countless, nameless humour comics howkers who toiled in the tattie fields of DC Thomson's vast Fourth Estate that he cites.
Most of the stories from the Dredd strip's Eighties heydey are funny. Words like satire and the unnecessary qualification in the term black humour, when applied to the work of Wagner and Grant, are emolliants to insecure fans (ii) and the post-Watchmen comic-reading cognoscenti. Both writers are masters of tailoring their stories to their audience, peppering their 2000ad work with enough badassery and political resonance (which I enjoy), to assuage the anxieties of those still afraid they'll be laughed at for reading juvenile material, that what they're reading is serious and for adults: but the dominant mode of their work is almost always comedy. The answer to Grant's despairing rhetorical question, "What do these people dislike about humour?"(iii), lies in that first time one of your teenage pals found you reading a comic and ripped the pish out of you for being a baby.
More practical reasons are probably behind Dredd (2012)'s grim posturing, though. Comedy's a very subjective thing; unlike narrative modes such as action or pornography, which can be evaluated with reference to objective technical criteria (even if they don't work for you), if a joke falls flat with its intended audience, there's no disputing its failure. I can see why Alex Garland might not want to try his hand at something he's so (professionally) unfamiliar as comedy, where the distinction between success or failure is so absolute.
Both Wagner and Grant maintain that the reason they "can write humour properly together ... (but) can't generally speaking write drama or tragedy" (iv), is that "(h)umorous writing is a synergy, greater than the sum of its parts, whereas emotional or dramatic writing (with 2) is always a compromise' (v); so maybe it isn't surprising Garland's solo script is 'not really going for the comedy'(vi). But, even following the demise of Wagner and Grant's creative partnership, when the prevailing theme of their work had become death (vii), both men's work is still pish your pants funny (viii). We'll have to wait until September to see how well a Dredd film that dispenses with the comedy, to affirm its credentials as a serious film for adults, can work.
(i) Blast #4, September 1991
(ii) If you want to understand the difference between Wagner/Grant-style wry self-deprecation and goonish mugging (in the context of film), watch the first two Terminator sequels. The co-option of Blues authenticity, biker-chic, and the cultural resonance of the Rayban brand in Sequel Number Two's scene where Arnie leaves the roadhouse in stolen leathers; is a knowing acknowledgement of the homo-erotic, geeky-kid dream of being cool that the story represents for director James Cameron. The corresponding, self-referential scene in that film's successor- like its leading man- is tired, camp, desperate and ridiculous.
(iii) 2000ad Review
(iv) Blast #4, September 1991
(v) 2000ad Review
(vi) Empire, September 2011
(vii) Chopper, Alpha, The Mean Team; and Judges Corey, Morphy, Kraken, Silver and (figuratively, at least) Dredd himself would fall into The Big Sleep in the three or four years it took Wagner and Grant to leave their 2000ad home, while trying to prevent their younger siblings from being able to play with all their old toys. Some hope: Ennis and the frighteningly untalented Alan Mackenzie skull-fu*ked the corpse of Marlon Shakespeare in some deeply average post-Song Of The Surfer stories; Hilary Robinson decided that the cuddly pootycat had survived the Mean Team's WildBunch-ing; Mark Millar was only the first chancer to make it clear to readers why Robohunter didn't work without the core creative team; and only the classic, final-page Carlos Ezquerra image of Dredd and Alpha swaggering nonchalantly into the Radlands of Ji, made Ennis's dis-interring of Nelson Bunker Kreelman's dirty little secret in Judgement Day anything more than a pointless piece of fanboy necrophilia.
(viii) From The Confessions Of PJ Maybe, part two. Prog 633
quote:
Chester Hoss Remember when you were eighteen and you started wetting your bed again? I have to be honest, it was me.
Alger Hoss What are you talking about?
Chester Hoss I used to sneak in and do it after you went to sleep. Splish-Slash, all over you ... Little Algy wet pants we used to call you. It got so you were frightened to go to sleep ... but in the end you'd always drop off, then in I'd sneak! Ha-Ha.
< Message edited by sauchieboy -- 27/12/2011 8:13:45 PM >
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RE: JUDGE DREDD - 
And I think he would have wowed sceptical Dredd fans too. That clip is short but it shows what huge potential he has as Judge Dredd. 
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