2000 AD/Warlord Games Judge Dredd - Wally Squad Dirty Frank

New Youtube video. Dirty Frank is a fictional character created by Rob Williams for Low Life's 2000 AD comic strip. This figure was created by Warlord Games and is the first time Dirty Frank has had a miniature made of himself.

Biography

He is a character in the Judge Dredd universe, set in a city of the future where uniformed Judges are empowered to arrest, sentence, and execute criminals at the crime scene. To crackdown on crime in the city's worst areas, undercover agents are the only option and must blend in perfectly. He speaks of himself in the third person and often disregards grammatical errors. Due to his "caveman" like appearance, Dirty Frank is often described as "crude," and his sadistic tendencies and racist jokes only serve to bolster that opinion. "Henry Flint is a superb cartoonist, with such a wonderful idiosyncratic style that he is a tough act to follow. Apart from looking at his character designs, I deliberately tried not to study his take on the Lowlife too deeply, as I felt that I would become intimidated by the prospect of following what he had established."

History

Creator Rob Williams talks about the inspiration behind the character:

"Dirty Frank was visually drawn to be a dead ringer of Alan Moore, which was down to Henry – a genius' choice, that. Frank's tendency to speak in the third person self-aggrandizing manner came from watching Premiership footballers, particularly Tony Adams, being interviewed. It always seemed slightly mad to me."

The character first appeared in 2000 AD #1389 (May 12, 2004), and then in issue #1392, drawn by Henry Flint. Dirty Frank was first featured in "Rock and a Hard Place," illustrated by Simon Coleby. Coleby fleshed out the character and discussed his creative choices:

"We share a love of ludicrously overwrought, heavy metal too, which indeed surfaced in one of the stories we created. If I recall correctly, it was a chat about Rammstein that led to the decision that Dirty Frank, at his most frenzied moment of metal mayhem, would probably start screaming in German…

Frank is outwardly insane, but I always feel that there is a sternly controlled side of him, the analytical core of the character. ... During my work on Lowlife, I particularly enjoyed working with Frank as it's impossible to push the character too far. I found that I became comfortable drawing him very quickly. I think that his mannerisms and expressions developed and grew as I continued to draw him. I have no idea why it seemed right to add those "I am 2" children's birthday badges to his coat, for example, but that kind of thing just fell into place as his personality developed on the page."

Subsequently, Dirty Frank became the lead character in the Low Life series. After Simon Coleby left to work on The Authority, D'Israeli became the character's prominent artist. D'Israeli discussed the character:

"There's the question of Dirty Frank, of course in some ways he's a more complex character to interpret (he has more than one facial expression for a start), but after some playing around I decided to stick pretty closely to Simon Coleby's version. There were two good reasons for this; first, Simon really made the character his own, and I wanted the readership to be drawn straight into his Low Life creation without spending the first couple of episodes adjusting to a new version of the character. Second, all my attempts to change the look of Frank ended up looking like degenerate versions of Ian Culbard."

As always for reading and joining in my hobby!