"Dredger" is a British comic action story published in the weekly anthologies Action and Battle Action from 14 February 1976 to 7 October 1978 by IPC Magazines. The strip focused on the eponymous, uncompromising secret agent and his partner Breed, featuring self-contained stories that featured Dredger getting out of lethal situations with an innovative and violent approach.
Creation
Left with a short time to create an all-new comic for IPC Magazines and a shortage of suitable writers, Pat Mills and Geoff Kemp soon hit on a formula of repurposing elements of popular films. The character of Harry Callahan from the Dirty Harry film series - which had recently released a third successful instalment, The Enforcer was the inspiration for Dredger, who was then transplanted into the spy genre. Part of the comic's tough image was the cachet from basing the stories on movies that themselves were largely unavailable to readers due to their certification. DI Jack Regan from The Sweeney - hugely popular with boys of Action's demographic, despite its' post-watershed timeslot - and Mills would later admit the design of the strip's logo was based on that of the TV series. Much of the strip's development was undertaken by Gerry Finley-Day, who came up with the name, though it was Mills' idea to pair the maverick agent with old Etonian sidekick Breed. He chose this relationship to "reverse the stereotypes and have working-class heroes", an ethos he attempt to instil in the rest of Action. He would later deny that Dredger's name was the inspiration for the name of Judge Dredd, who was instead named after the ska musician. Finley-Day also listed Starsky & Hutch as an influence. Veteran artist Geoff Campion worked on the character's design.
Mills also insisted on making "Dredger" consist of standalone stories in response to what he perceived as comics stories that "were taking the piss out of readers with these endless spun-out cliffhangers". The strip was laid out by Action's art director Doug Church
Publishing history
The demanding nature of the all-in-one work required for "Dredger" saw it quickly burn through writers, with initial scribe Kelvin Gosnell soon making way for contributions from the likes of Steve MacManus, Chris Lowder and Stewart Wales taking turns, along with Mills and Kemp themselves. Mills would recall "It was bloody hard work, and I must have been mad to do it as it was like coming up with a complete novella in three pages!".
Like much of Action, "Dredger" soon gathered mainstream press disapproval for its' violent and nihilistic content. Lowder would later admit "some of the Dredgers I did were mainly shock-for-shock's sake", noting that one of his contributions was created around the image of Dredger shooting a priest; another, where Dredger bit out the throat of a guard dog, was rejected by editor John Smith. Church meanwhile worked on another episode with Mills that revolved around Dredger decapitating an opponent during a train-top fight. As a result of such outrageous, twist-filled storytelling "Dredger" was second only to "Hook Jaw" as the most popular story in Action's early line-up. An episode by Gosnell which featured a character being dissolved with acid pumped through a shower attracted criticism from tabloid newspaper The Sun, which was at the time moving towards becoming the country's best-selling newspaper due to an editorial decision to start printing topless pictures of young models, many of whom were under 18.