The Orion Omnibus just arrived in the mail and it's fantastic. I know Walt put this on blast a month ago for not including the backups directly after their respective issue (the backups are included after the main story), and it does sour it a bit that he's not entirely happy, but the thing is gorgeous and PACKED with extras. Walt mentioned on facebook that DiDio would look into correcting this if it goes to paperback. If you're on the fence about this, I'd say without hesitation go for it. The oversized treatment, on white pages, makes the work look even better.



Extras include what I'm guessing is the Tales of the New Gods tpb, Walt's work on the New Gods vol 4/Jack Kirby's Fourth World series, numerous sketch/pencilled pages, and a cover Gallery of his New Gods vol 4/Fourth World stuff (he did all the covers for JKFW). All of the Orion covers are printed without dress and it makes them even better (though I do miss seeing "ORION RULES" on #8). The Tales of the New Gods backups have an unbelievable roster of talent on pencil: Walt, Frank Miller, Steve Ditko, Dave Gibbons, Jim Lee, Art Adams et. al. I'm not sure if it includes all of the backups, or simply reprints the Tales of the New Gods trade, but I don't believe anything's missing. It includes a Steve Ditko/Mark Millar backup I wasn't familiar with, but it didn't include Steve Lightle's unpublished backup. It does include Walt's New Gods Secret Files short story.



As for the main content, Orion #11 is my favorite single issue ever and the rest of the work is of that caliber (maybe the Wolfram arc suffers in comparison, I gotta re-read it). I flipped to my favorite moments from the series and it's absolutely wonderful seeing this in a larger format, in clean pages that aren't graying. Darkseid putting a gun to his head, the Death of Desaad (another instance where including the cover copy would wow new readers, as that was a huge bait and switch), the Sirius story, and the greatest sequence of pages I've ever seen in the tail end of issue #11. Everyone's probably seen the technicolor splash page but there are some monster pages that lead up to it. Simonson, Bob Wiacek, Sherilyn Van Valkenburgh, Tatjana Wood and John Workman all made one of the best looking books ever. Walt wrote one of the best comics ever.



One weird item: I was unable to find anywhere in the book the logo used for the Orion series. It wasn't a great logo or anything (not bad, though), just a little odd not seeing it. It was a classy move to put a huge reproduction of Walt's signature on the spine, maybe that's where the logo would've been otherwise.

John Wagner and Kev Walker's Judge Dredd 2

Kev Walker (aka the best Dredd artist ever) is on the thrill cast talking about his career with 2000ad, Mandroid, Stallone's Dredd film and his work with it ("sometimes things don't work no matter how much money you fill them with"), his Marvel work, coloring in comics, John Wagner being a master (I'm nodding my head), and the collaborative process that's comics. It's interesting that he cops to painting because of the success Biz was having, and that he moved to Mignola's style because he didn't want to do crazy detail anymore.

Gosh I LOVE Walker's Dredd. Walker's absurd chin that's bigger and wider than anyone else's, the aged look he gives Dreddy, the dour coloring and constant shading of the Judges and their constant, dire presence. His Justice dept seems to both discipline and infest the Meg.

John Wagner and Kev Walker's Judge Dredd 1

Have been obsessing over the following sequence by Kev Walker and John Wagner for a while.  Sums up everything about Dredd: looney perps (scramola!), Dredd's stoicism, his unflinching administration of justice, and how even those saved aren't unaffected (Kev Walker is breathtaking here).  Wagner has been on like a 30 year hot-streak, it's unbelievable.  Kev Walker draws old Dreddy perfectly, dented chin and efficiently brutal.  Love how Wagner and Walker give the sequence a real urgency, as Dredd has to scavenge a weapon after his ran out of ammo.

Favorite panel is Dredd rendered almost entirely in black (you see the helmet visor), wasting a perp, and the laconic narration.  Dredd's face is never shown in the comics - because "justice is blind" and all that, but Walker and Wagner take it a step further here, obscuring him almost entirely.  Identifiable only by the visor, maybe they imply, at least where Dredd is concerned, that the law is all-seeing too.  I may be too far in the weeds here.

Anyways, in America, it took Wagner pages and pages (not that I'm complaining, and that's a brilliant work) to do what he manages in a few panels here.  Wagner, like Dredd (they're one and the same!) are getting terser, more efficient with age.  Mindblowing.