Judge Dredd: The Small House – Scripts

The Graphic Novel collection of Judge Dredd: The Small House was released the other week. I did a signing at Forbidden Planet, London, and there was the ‘Day of Dredd’ promotional day, with signings all over the place on Sept 7th. The GN seems set to be a pretty decent seller. That’s good, as skint writers don’t exist in a vacuum, or something like that. If a graphic novel is released and falls in a forest and no one hears it etc etc

The collection contains the full ten parts of The Small House, plus the three-part build-up story – Act of Grud – and the one-off epilogue, Pets. All of these are drawn by Henry Flint, which makes it one of those rare Dredd GNs inasmuch as one artist throughout. The bulk of the Dredd books you’ll read have multiple artists. But a) uniform helps (Judges think so anyway, shiny leather ones) and b) Henry’s amazing. So – a good thing.

All sorts of people wrote kind things about Small House upon its running in 2000AD. “One of the best runs ever. This is special” – Mark Millar. “The character, and the strip, at its very best,” – Hollywood Reporter. “Soon to be a classic,” – Bryan Hitch.

So, if you believe them, you can buy the GN here:

https://shop.2000ad.com/catalogue/XB669

A few people have asked about seeing some of the scripts for The Small House. So, here’s a few (below). You can see what a genius Henry is if you study these and compare them to the finished art.

A fair bit of attention came to the series from the panel where Smiley says to Dredd “We’re fascists.” Henry delievered it brilliantly. Dredd stood there, front on, so matter of fact. The script for ep. 2 here – which I’d not read for a while – says:

PANEL ONE

Largest panel on page, Dredd, front on. Let’s give this a BIG panel here. These words kind of stun Dredd. He’s forgotten this. In a way these words matter nothing. There’s just the Law. The fight. But these are the details that are lost in the cases, the adventures, the crimes. But this is Dredd – labelled. HENRY – this is a big panel, I think. If we do this right it should have an effect. It’s meant to.

SMILEY (o/s): We are fascists.

And from that Henry gives us:

It’s one of those rare moment where the writer knows the intent of a panel and the effect it should have, tells the artist this, the artist delivers it, and that effect actually occurs. If only all writing was that deliberate and the desired reaction so accommodating. We’d be richer men.

If you want to read more about my thoughts and intentions about The Small House, I did a big, detailed interview with The Beat website which can be found here: