MAXIMUM MEGAGE

Peeps the Butler Droid here - All hail Tharg’s secondary organ as its festive issue turns the small press spotlight on non other than Zarjaz. I do appreciate a mighty plug and am very pleased with the added exposure. Special kudos to art droids Nick Dyer and Indio who each get a special mention, although strangely no reference to the shiny droid who pulls it all together! Perhaps Tharg is onto my plan to usurp him!

THE ‘JAZ HITS BRUM

Zarjaz was in Birmingham last weekend for the first International Comics Show at the Custard Factory. The space was pretty well laid out for a comic convention, allowing plenty of circulation between the talks, the bar and the two dealer rooms. It was certainly a packed weekend and the organisers are to be congratulated for putting on a show with a lot of variety and a strong indy comics focus.

Hopefully this show will continue next year and be able to build its audience as we could certainly use a second ongoing annual convention.

Behind the Page 1

We asked writer Nathan Adler to talk about some of the creative decisions behind his strip Judge Dredd: Floor War from Zarjaz #3.

The idea for this strip was really simple, instead of a Block War you just have two different floors of one block fighting each other and Dredd walks in and sorts it out. I think in the end the strip came off fantastically but a lot of that is to do with Nick Dyer being such a damn fine artist.

On the original version of this page that Nick drew Dredd had three other judges in tow behind him. Looking at the pencilled page I asked him why this was, since they weren't in the script.

Nick said they had to be there since Dredd was conversing with someone in the captions over the first three panels. In my stupidity I hadn't mentioned in the script that Dredd was on his bike comm talking to the control centre.

Nick re-drew and was able to do this much stronger central image of Dredd.



On the second page the very first panel was added in by Nick, he felt that there was too much dead space in stretching the second panel over the whole page. I wasn't sure about adding the extra 'beat' to the start of the page but it gives an interesting pause as Dredd waits for the lift.

I think its cool that if the lift was out Dredd would just climb the shaft. Why didn't he just use the stairs? I don't know. Maybe just because hes a hard ass.

This is the first of two occasions where people just give up to Dredd without a fight. He is such a powerful presence in Mega City 1 that everyday perps like these just arn't going to argue with him.

Issue 3 - in the clear

Fantastic news for Squaxx everywhere - our printing problems are over and Zarjaz 3 is now on its way to stores across the UK.

Of course many still choose to get their thrills direct by mail order from as far away as the US, Finland and most recently Greece!

Now if only NASA would agree to help deliver our intergalactic orders!