Judge Anderson: The Psi Files Vol. 3

What I try to do with reviews at this Bookshelf blog is keep it simple and spoiler-free, and let you know whether I'd recommend you pick up a copy of what I just read. Seems to work okay. This time, a brief review of Judge Anderson: The Psi Files Vol. 3 (Rebellion, 2012).


The complete reprinting of Anderson: Psi Division, the longest-running of all the sixty-thousand spinoffs from Judge Dredd, enters its difficult middle period with this volume. It's still very good, and has moments of sheer brilliance, but it raises a lot of awkward and huge questions about Dredd's world that have not really been addressed.

This edition, a big, beautiful 300 pages long, collects twelve stories from 2000 AD, the Judge Dredd Megazine and their related special and annual editions, almost all of it scripted by Alan Grant. The bulk of the stories are from the 1995-98 period and reflect a troubled time for the comics. "Something Wicked," a story in which a cult leader dooms his followers onto an exodus from the city, was originally published toward the end of the Megazine's second volume. At the time, the first feature film about Judge Dredd was nearing release, and the publishers, then Fleetway, did that silly thing that magazine publishers do and did a big relaunch and renumbering for its third volume to accompany the major, and well-remembered story, "Satan." But sales of the Meg tanked after the movie's failure, leading Judge Anderson's stories to be rested for a year and a half before resurfacing in 2000 AD itself. During that troubled time, space in the thinner, cut-to-monthly Megazine was needed for reprints.

Starting from "Something Wicked," much of the artwork for Anderson during this period was provided by Steve Sampson, a really interesting painter who has not worked much in the medium, and who occasionally attracted discussion about his modeling. Occasionally, his photo referencing is a little too obvious, and the star of our story is quite clearly Madonna. I really like his very bright colors and composition, however, and, tasked with the amazing job of setting a story around an exodus of children fifteen million strong, he somehow comes up with some amazing imagery.

So... about those children. "Crusade" is one of the most remarkable and controversial stories from its day, and it still attracts discussion today. The conventional wisdom tends to be negative, but I think it's worth looking at a little more closely. This is a story where some force - an eternally-young psychic child whom Anderson had met in a previous adventure might be either its conduit or its architect - persuades the children of Mega-City One to leave, like a future Pied Piper luring kids onto a Children's Crusade. The judges eventually decide that taking out the leaders of this exodus, to a strange and secret city deep underground in the Cursed Earth, is the best solution. (They do not, firmly, "nuke" them, as horrified critics often repeat - that is a misreading of the situation completely contradicted by the actual incident, where several dozen people are shown to be killed by a missile from a shoulder-mounted launcher, with millions of survivors left to kill the judges in the strike force and enter the city, never to be seen again.)

Pause for a second. That's not just a loss, it's a resounding loss. And in one of the weirdest turnarounds in all of Dredd and Anderson's continuity, it is never referred to again. The story even sees the death of a longtime supporting character, and neither she nor her twin sister are ever again mentioned in the series. The loss of fifteen million children - an astonishing number by even Mega-City One's standards, ranking this among the city's most horrifying disasters - has gone unmentioned in the last sixteen years of stories. What happened to them? Their city is the third-largest in North America, and the judges just let it happen?

I think that the story is really fascinating, and I love Sampson's decisions and use of color, but it really is an amazing missed opportunity. It's also very surprising, since many newer Dreddworld writers like Al Ewing and Si Spurrier have found such success in finding old, throwaway concepts in earlier stories and making them into something wild and new, that nobody has touched on that underground city of 15,000,000 teens, tweens, and toddlers, all now sixteen years older, or the impact on all those poor parents whose kids abandoned them.

Elsewhere in the book, there's the frequently-reprinted "Satan," with lovely art by Arthur Ranson. He's often mentioned as the best of Anderson's artists, but this book covers a period where he didn't work on the series very much; "Satan" is his only story. This story looks so completely amazing that you'll not only overlook the nebulous and slightly confusing climax, but you'll be gritting your teeth in anticipation of a fourth book in this series, which should reprint Ranson's epic two-year "Half-Life / Lucid" arc - 208 pages from 2004-06. Get that on the calendar, Tharg!

Pulling things in my head together, then, this is an uneven collection. At its best, it looks remarkable and reads extremely well, and at its worst, it's still better than most rivals, even with the huge questions that some of the stories leave unanswered. I really enjoy the interaction between Anderson and Dredd, who's a major guest star in the first couple of stories, and the quiet words that they share in the aftermath of "Satan" make for a truly amazing and human moment amid all the supernatural and sci-fi events. The collection also contains a couple of bonus stories with artwork by greats like Mick Austin and Ian Gibson. So it's uneven, but still recommended. You could do a lot worse.

Judge Anderson: The Psi-Files Volume 02

What I try to do with reviews at this Bookshelf blog is keep it simple and spoiler-free, and let you know whether I'd recommend you pick up a copy of what I just read. Seems to work okay. This time, a brief review of Judge Anderson: The Psi-Files Volume 02 (Rebellion, 2012).


There was an unfortunate and unavoidable problem with the first of Rebellion's Psi-Files collections. Tracking the solo, spin-off adventures of Judge Cassandra Anderson, a regular supporting player in Judge Dredd's stories, the book presented many stories that had been reprinted countless times already. While a definitive edition was very welcome, overfamiliarity in my case bred enough contempt that just about the only thing left to do when rereading "Four Dark Judges" or "The Possession" was to note just how amazingly often artist Brett Ewins conspired to place his camera behind Cass so that he could draw her perfectly rounded, cute little rear.

The second book features stories that originally appeared from 1990 to 1995, many of which have never been reprinted before. It begins with the terrific "Shamballa." This was the second Anderson: Psi Division serial drawn by Arthur Ranson, for many, the series' definitive artist, and the first of his to appear in color. Not long after this story appeared, the feature left the pages of 2000 AD to become a semi-regular in the companion Judge Dredd Megazine. There, Alan Grant began a long storyline that weaved its way through several adventures. Anderson became disillusioned with the judge force, was ordered to provide Justice Department oversight to a scientific expedition on Mars, met up with her old foe Orlok in a major story painted by Kevin Walker during his "palette of mud" period, and quit the judges to go out on a tour of alien worlds.

"Postcards from the Edge" is the central story - and I use that term loosely - in this arc. A collection of short, episodic adventures, each of these tales are illustrated by different artists, with wildly different approaches. If Ranson had set the tone with his grounded and fidgety, detail-packed artwork, all of these guys just throw the model, and caution, to the wind. Someone called Xuasus delights in murky green and purple paintings of hefty, muscular tough guys and broads, and Charlie Gillespie strides a curious and uncomfortable line between American superhero styles with Kevin O'Neill designs. Tony Luke contributes some utterly bizarre and strangely charming collages, and Steve Sampson, who would spend much of the nineties alternating with Ranson, is engaging but downright strange. He takes photoreferencing to a really weird place - his Anderson is, literally, the musician Madonna - combining meticulous facial detail with giant, solid colors. In his hands, Anderson's hair looks like a floppy, canary yellow jester's hat. Unfortunately, all of these wildly disparate artistic elements overwhelm the stories, to the point that they are much more memorable for how they appear than what they have to say.

I got the sense that Grant had much more that he wanted to do with Anderson in space before he had to bring her home to participate in the big "Die Laughing" crossover with Batman. This is referenced in the text by way of trademark-avoiding foreshadowing, psychic flashes of an eagle (Dredd), a vulture (Judge Death) and a bat (you know). The Sampson-painted "Postcard to Myself" epilogue ends the stories here on a very promising note, with Anderson and Dredd teaming again to re-evaluate her for street duty.

As bonus material, the book wraps up with some short stories that appeared outside the ongoing continuity in various 2000 AD annuals and specials. There's one drawn by Modesty Blaise artist Enrique Romero that I adore, but the real draw here is the fantastic "Mind of Edward Bottlebum," which was drawn by Ian Gibson at the height of his talents. With terrific little character designs, very fun layouts, and an uncharacteristically solid line by an artist well known for dropping his inks, this is more than just a tremendously good one-off. Reprinted in the 1980s Eagle line of American-sized reprints, this was the story that stopped me from thinking that Judge Dredd was merely a very fun comic (two months previously) and made me a fan for life. So I have a soft spot for it. You understand, right? Recommended.

Judge Anderson: The Psi-Files Volume 1

What I try to do with reviews at this Bookshelf blog is keep it simple and spoiler-free, and let you know whether I'd recommend you pick up a copy of what I just read. Seems to work okay. This time, a brief review of Judge Anderson: The Psi-Files Volume 1 (Rebellion, 2009)



Take three, I think the expression goes.

When Rebellion and DC teamed up to release a couple of dozen 2000 AD collections in 2004-05, one was a splendid little set of 35 Anderson: Psi Division episodes. Some time later, Rebellion issued a set called Shamballa, which contained almost all of the various stories illustrated, beautifully, by Arthur Ranson. Neither of these found a follow-up volume. Now, finding success in their "phonebook" line of great big 400-or-so-page collections, they've gone back to basics and released an omnibus edition called The Psi Files which reprints the DC book in its entirety, along with another forty-plus episodes, including (among them) Ranson's first serial "Triad," which had already been seen in the Shamballa book. Confused yet?

Judge Cassandra Anderson, a supporting character in Joe Dredd's world, graduated to her own occasionally-scheduled series in 1984, following several memorable guest appearances in the main series. She has never had a consistent, lengthy run, nor a regular artist, so quite a few different people have illustrated Alan Grant's scripts. Across these installments, you've got work by Ranson as well as Brett Ewins, Cliff Robinson, Robin Smith, Barry Kitson, David Roach, Carlos Ezquerra and several others.

So visually it's a real mixed bag, but the quality of Grant's storytelling is consistent throughout. Ewins seems more fascinated by Anderson's posterior than anything else on his pages, and I'm completely in love with Roach's inking, but his Mega-City One's oddball fashions and empty streets have more in common with a photoshoot by a New Romantic band from the early '80s than any other artist's take on the city. Happily, Alan Grant ties it all together with some superb stories, the first three co-written with John Wagner, all of which start with a wild premise that requires the input of Justice Department's division of psychic agents and stampedes into who-knows-where.

The book is more hit than miss. The only really sour note is a twelve-parter called "Engram," which I detested at the time and still smacks today of a flirtation with that early nineties' trend of relevancy and giving heroes unnecessarily human weaknesses and tragic backstories. Other than that, everything here has aged very well and proves that Grant does a better job than most in the business at raising tension across a set episode count, with each chunk of every serial a solid building block of classic thrillpower. Plus it's got a great bit where a demonic door calls our heroine an "interfering bitch." Who could resist? Recommended.

Anderson Psi Division: Shamballa

In other news, I decided to take a break from the What I Just Read feature/tag in my LiveJournal, mainly because I've grown tired of finding new things to say about my reading pile. But I did want to continue spotlighting the 2000 AD books, because many occasional readers miss the announcements elsewhere, and they are, as ever, very poorly promoted in the comic news-blog-world.

Back in '05, DC released a collection of Anderson: Psi Division which compiled the three 12-part adventures that originally appeared in 1985-87. Rebellion did not follow up on this book until recently, and they've made the curious decision to make this book an artist-focussed trade. Shamballa is a nicely satisfying chunk of a book, and it contains something like forty episodes, originally published throughout the nineties, all featuring fantastic color artwork by Arthur Ranson. It is not a complete Ranson collection; his first story, the black and white "Triad" serial, is not here, and neither is some of the more recent material from the Megazine, the stuff with the strange demon Half-Life, and Psi-Judge Shakta and Juliet November. But what is here makes for some pretty good reading. Ranson is a wonderful artist and some of these stories are very good. Well, apart from the brow-furrowing, disappointing damp squib of an ending to "Satan," a story which was very promising for many pages before petering out.

However, I can't completely get behind this book because while an incomplete Ranson collection is understandable, an incomplete Anderson collection is completely baffling. Alan Grant navigated the character through a fascinating series of stories, with character growth you certainly do not see with Judge Dredd, and there are, as a natural effect of the character-based continuity storytelling, several maddening references to the things skipped by this reprint. For example, between the incidents of "The Jesus Syndrome" and "Satan," there were three lengthy Anderson stories in the Megazine, all of which are missed in this collection but are nevertheless referenced in the stories that Ranson illustrated. The result is very piecemeal and felt very frustrating to me. Honestly, it's less of a spotlight for Ranson than it is a missed opportunity, regardless of how gorgeous the artwork is.

(Excerpted from Thrillpowered Thursday December 04, 2008.)