Judge Dredd: The XXX Files

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 Dredd: The XXX Files (Rebellion / Simon & Schuster, 2014).


I wasn't completely sure I believed that a book like this would work, or read well. As part of their co-publishing strategy with Simon & Schuster, 2000 AD's publisher has assembled a really strange collection of Judge Dredd episodes. They basically identified either every story with a bare butt or breasts in it, along with a few others that deal with sex in the 22nd Century, and gave them this very fun and very neat presentation. It's a very nice and expansive 224 pages, and it doesn't drag in quite the way that I thought it might.

By that I mean, sure, there have been longer collections of Dredd before, but they're either linked by continuity, in which you get a long run of episodes from the same time period, or by artist, where you've still got a strong visual link. This book is just barely linked by anything. It has episodes from here and there across a quarter century stretch, with supporting players who were major points of interest for a few years making a single, somewhat strange appearance outside of their context.

The obvious example here is Judge Jura Edgar, the sinister head of Mega-City One's "Public Surveillance Unit," which turned out to be an ominous prediction of our own NSA. Edgar shows up in the triumphantly cool noir story "Sleaze," which was originally published during a curious time in 2000 AD's sister book Judge Dredd Megazine's life. Fleetway, then the publisher, was set to cancel that title for low sales in the wake of that boom that they expected in '95 and the movie with Sylvester Stallone that tanked. In a desperate move to cut costs and make it profitable, for a couple of years, there was only a single, 17-page Dredd episode in each issue, and reprints of "mature readers" comics, principally Vertigo's Preacher, bulking it up. So on the one hand, the creators - this one's written by John Wagner and painted by John Burns - had more freedom to explore darker and more mature stories, and on the other, there was a much greater public interest in government conspiracies at that time. Most of this book is silly, fun, and occasionally a little bawdy, but "Sleaze" is about the judges holding onto evidence of corruption and vice in order to keep the citizen councils under their thumbs. It really sticks out, and I really love that. It should remind readers that Judge Dredd is not a series that can be pigeonholed as an action strip or a comedy or a parody or a procedural. It evolves and changes all the time.

As for most of the book, it's very silly and fun. Most of it is written by Wagner, who has a ball dropping Dredd into situations where human lust and foolishness leads them to make bad decisions. The first three episodes are the three installments of "Love Story," drawn by Ian Gibson and published over a twenty-year stretch. Bella Bagley is an unfortunate, mentally ill woman who believes that Dredd is her boyfriend. Her desperation leads her into becoming increasingly unhinged and violent. I got the feeling that the brilliantly talented Gibson really loved working on these stories and gave them far more than his usual level of great detail, to the point that when Bella meets her inevitable end, he couldn't bear to draw the details of the bullet wounds.

Lots of other really terrific artists contribute to the book. Apart from Gibson and Burns, who does sterling work, Carlos Ezquerra, Greg Staples, Cliff Robinson, and Vince Locke are all here and they all have great stories. Ezquerra's "The Girlfriend" has always been a favorite, and Gibson gets to draw the blazes out of a hilarious story where Dredd is arresting people behind the scenes of a TV dating game. Lots of the stories here are really funny. Sex tends to be. That's the right attitude. I'd say recommended for everybody, but only if you're understanding that boys will be boys, and some of them are going to want to rush their new acquisition upstairs as soon as they get home. For older readers, then.

A PDF of this book was provided by the publisher for the purpose of review. If you'd like to see your books (typically comics or detective fiction) featured here, send me an email.

Banzai Battalion: Just Another Bug Hunt!

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 Banzai Battalion: Just Another Bug Hunt! (Rebellion / Simon & Schuster, 2014).


I haven't checked in with the world of 2000 AD in far too long a time. I'm glad to see that the venerable comic's association with American publisher Simon & Schuster is still going strong, and that they're releasing good collections aimed at this market. One of the most recent is the 160-page complete collection of John Wagner's Banzai Battalion. This reprints every one of the characters' appearances, along with a few somewhat similar Judge Dredd episodes - similar in that they also feature robots - by many of the same creators.

The cover of this collection, originally used for their second story in March of 2000, features a wonderfully old-fashioned composition by Cliff Robinson which evokes any number of 1980s IPC comics. The little gunmen are the action figure-sized heroes of Banzai Battalion, who had two run-ins with Judge Dredd. They are actually semi-sentient pest control droids who keep finding themselves thrown into situations where human criminals become the pests they need to stamp out

A strip like Dredd requires an astonishing number of new concepts and new scenarios thrown at it every week, and every so often the new supporting players take on a life of their own. Wagner and Henry Flint crafted the Battalion's first appearance in 1999, giving the little robots the over-the-top personalities of older war comic heroes. Captain Bug Stomper - "He's a legend in pest control!," people keep telling us - tries to do things by the book, until his men persuade him to charge into glory for the greater good.

A year later, they returned in another Dredd story, this time drawn by the amazing Cam Kennedy. Since their human owners died during one of the Dredd world's occasional catastrophes, and since they keep making themselves useful, the droids are sent by Dredd to join Justice Department in some capacity, but when they reappeared in their own series in 2001, they had to take the initiative to strike out on their own.

Now drawn, brilliantly, by Ian Gibson, the resulting story is a very silly, over-the-top homage to old war comics, with the blustery, true-blue Captain Bug Stomper leading his troops on an expedition through Mega-City One that leads them to a wonderful new garden in which to fight insects. The garden, introduced more than fifteen years previously in a memorable Dredd adventure, becomes the battleground for rival teams of robots and a cute parody of another old comic character, IPC's General Jumbo. As leads, Stomper and the team were kind of limited, and their appearances run to a total of only 19 episodes, but they're clever and hilarious. The artwork is consistently first-rate, and I love the masterful way that Wagner mixes both knowing parodies and old continuity. Neither is essential for following the adventures, but they are mind-blowing little Easter eggs for old fans.

There are many things to love about the Judge Dredd universe, and one of them is the way that the series can wear different hats and be an action strip one week, a grim drama the next, and detective fiction the next. For readers who enjoy the bonkers, oddball comedy of the future, then this is a terrific book, certain to leave you laughing aloud and very impressed with Wagner's skill at making this weird, wild world work. Highly recommended.

A PDF of this book was provided by the publisher for the purpose of review. If you'd like to see your books (typically comics or detective fiction) featured here, send me an email.

Star Wars Omnibus: Boba Fett

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 Star Wars Omnibus: Boba Fett (Dark Horse, 2010).


I don't envy anybody who's ever tried to collect Dark Horse's sixty-eleven different Star Wars titles. Even accepting that there's a fair stereotype that Star Wars fans are known for being very detail-oriented, the publisher has released such a bewildering array of different limited series, one-shots, special editions, and anthology / umbrella titles with so many creators that even the most ardent of the property's fans must find it daunting. I have only the mildest curiosity for Star Wars, but I really do like the work of four creators who have material in this Omnibus edition. The Dark Horse Omnibus line is a really great one. They're assembled with care, on good paper, slightly shrunk from the original comics, but 500 pages for $25 is a very good deal, especially since, unlike similar repackaging from Marvel and DC, these are in the original color.

It appears that since the editors of these zillion-odd comics never wanted to do a simple continuity, but rather commission writers and artists to tell various stories of the many characters of the Star Wars universe at random points in their lives, the only sensible way to collect them was to break them into Omnibus editions centered on specific characters. I saw this Boba Fett book on sale at Great Escape in Nashville, remembered reading that John Wagner and Cam Kennedy had worked on the character for Dark Horse, and flipped through it. What I found was a heck of a lot of Kennedy work, along with art by Ian Gibson and Carlos Ezquerra. Sold.

Even though these creators, combined, contributed only about half the pages in the book, it was still a steal because these are some tremendously good stories. The others were less important to me, but I enjoyed all of those but one. "The Yavin Vassilika" has a pretty fun "treasure hunt" story written by Mike Kennedy, but the artwork by Carlos Meglia was eyeball-punching. It's set before the first movie, and I'm not sure whether the "Young Kewl Anime Doodz" designs for Han, Lando and the bounty hunters just stank overall, or whether I was distracted by Young Han Solo's hairy chest drawn to look like it has spiky black bugs all over it, or whether the depiction of Young Greedo did me in. Greedo looks like a five year old kid in a Halloween costume.

So yes, a full fifth of the book is unpleasant to look at, but the rest is a joy, and I say that as someone with very little interest in this property. Cam Kennedy just draws the absolute hell out of his stories, with perfectly balanced fight choreography and brilliant design work for all the weird technology. I love his Fett, dominating every scene with his unspeakable badassery even in long shot. Ian Gibson, whom I've been said to admire even more than Kennedy generally, can't hold a candle to Kennedy in the Star Wars universe. Gibson certainly does get things off to a good start with "Enemy of the Empire" before abandoning it before the climax (not the last time he'd pull that stunt), but he's not a patch on Cam here.

Throughout, all the creators, including Ezquerra, who draws a great little Wagner-scripted tale about a salvage job that goes bad, and Andy Mangels, who writes a terrific piece illustrated by John Nadeau, contribute top-of-the-class stories, inventive and original. However, they are all left in the dust by Wagner and Kennedy's "Death, Lies & Treachery." This thing is a masterclass in how to structure an over-the-top spectacle of melodrama and chaos.

There is a whole lot that goes on in "Death, Lies & Treachery," which is the longest story in the book at an expansive 140 pages, and it doesn't sum up very well. In it, Boba Fett allows himself to get caught in the middle of two feuding Hutts, one of whom is blinded by love for the other's hideous daughter, because the money for this mess is consistently good. Fett is the only character in the sprawling insanity who keeps his composure. All around him, it's utter lunacy involving betrayal, bounty hunters, space pirates eating people, loudmouths, pipsqueaks, and an uproarious loss of dignity for entire planets' worth of weirdoes. Like the very best of Maverick, or Wagner's own remarkable Robo-Hunter, it's a situation that starts bad and just keeps getting worse. I laughed like a hyena all through the great and wonderful thing. If the rest of Star Wars was half this good, everybody, everywhere would love it unreservedly.

Honestly, I don't know much about Star Wars. I speak from familiarity, but not love of the property. I doubt that buying this book will prompt many people to attempt to navigate the chaotic mess of Star Wars Omnibi that Dark Horse have released, and will probably allow to quietly go out of print now that the license is returning to Marvel Comics in the next few years. What I can tell you is that the Boba Fett book is four-fifths a completely satisfying gem of a book and darn well worth the money. But it makes sense to buy it now before the license slips away and it goes out of print. Recommended despite the other fifth of the anthology.

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.

Mister Miracle # 1-5

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 Mister Miracle # 1-5 (DC, 1989).



I love the little box on the front cover of this comic. It reads "DC Comics Aren't Just For Kids!" The perception, among many funnybook readers at the time, was that other publishers were releasing more mature fare than DC, who insisted on turning out pablum for little kids. Ah, the late eighties. I guess that you kind of had to be there, and maybe kind of had to be a defensive adolescent.

Anyway, I believe that this was the second resurrection of Mister Miracle, a really fun character with an awesome costume who was created by Jack Kirby in the early seventies. This time out, the comic was written by J. M. DeMatteis, who was using the character in the lighthearted Justice League International, and drawn by Ian Gibson, one of my favorite comic artists. The premise is that Mr. Miracle, a superhero - slash - celebrity stage magician and escape artist, and his wife Barda are trying to live a normal life in a quiet New England town, but the alien menaces of their home worlds of New Genesis and Apokalips keep interfering with the peace and tranquility they were looking for. It's done with the same whimsical, never-very-heavy touch as JLI, and a similar lack of imagination. The first five issues tell one story arc, and the first three parts each end with the exact same cliffhanger. "Golly! The sudden surprise appearance of another character from Jack Kirby's original run of comics that introduced all these characters!"

I've got a lot of time for Kirby's "Fourth World" creations, and think that many of the follow-ups crafted by other writers and artists have been pretty good, if not essential. These, I really only tracked down for Gibson's artwork, and I didn't have trouble finding them for less than cover price. I like his layouts and the fun expressions and body language of his characters a lot, and he can certainly draw beautiful women, but I don't think anybody sent Gibson the memo that Barda should look at least a little bit like Lainie Kazan. When you go as far off-model as Gibson does here, you can't really celebrate the results.

The comic is inoffensive and bland, basically. It doesn't suffer quite as badly as JLI did with its forced humor and funny-because-we-insist-that-it-is tone. In fact, DeMatteis attempts a little character drama between Mr. Miracle and his estranged father that's almost touching, but Oberon's one-note grouchiness is boring, and the safe, predictable plot is not challenging. Worth a glance for Gibson's fans, but otherwise not recommended.

The Taxidermist

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 The Taxidermist (Rebellion, 2011).



Well, I am very happy to see this book finally out. There are so few comics available to star a protagonist as elderly as this one - in the first story of three collected here, taxidermist Jacob Sardini is in his seventies - and I am all for any feature that bucks the trend of dashing macho, he-man lead characters quite the way this one does. Sardini is an aging, overweight widower who figures that his glory days are all behind him, but sometimes events have a way of sweeping even the elderly up in their wake.

This is one of several collections that the publisher Rebellion has recently released that shows just how wonderful the world of Judge Dredd is for launching new characters and ideas. In the weird future of Mega-City One, human taxidermy is not only legal, but accepted enough that it's become an Olympic sport, along with some other downright ridiculous pastimes, as the stories reveal as they unfold. In the opening story, we meet Sardini, who had brought home the bronze for taxidermy twenty years previously, as he is contacted again by a mobster to whom he owns a favor. The mobster's son was killed in the first step of a new gang war, and he wants Sardini to stuff his boy, and the fellows that he brought down, without the law learning about it.

This story originally appeared in 1987, and it was six years before Sardini returned. This much longer tale is one of the finest stories that writer John Wagner and artist Ian Gibson have so far produced, a ridiculous and epic farce that sees Sardini representing his city in the Olympics again, with ugly politics shaping up behind the scenes. Wagner has always enjoyed mocking the world of sports - his and Gibson's brilliant takedown of the World Cup in a 1982 Robo-Hunter story is something that everybody should read - and everything about the Olympics, from the gaudy opening ceremonies to the competitions to the inane commentary by the television crews, is wonderfully and hilariously skewered. I think about this story quite frequently, as every single instance where I am consciously aware that I am blinking, I think of Agnes "Laser Gaze" Boulton, who features in just about the funniest thing I have ever seen on the printed page. Rebellion could probably charge the same price for a reprint of just her short subplot and I'd end up recommending it.

Rebellion's design team has done its by-now-expected excellent work. The book contains all of Sardini's appearances, along with a short cover gallery. Reproduction is just about flawless, on good, heavy paper. Overall, it's a very funny and occasionally touching story that goes off in unexpected directions and it's in a terrific package. What more could anybody want? Very highly recommended.

Judge Dredd: The Restricted Files 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 Dredd: The Restricted Files Volume 02 (Rebellion, 2010).



This is the second in a two-volume set that covers all of the various Judge Dredd episodes of the 1980s that did not originally appear in the weekly 2000 AD comic. The publishers, at the time IPC, used to release various annual hardbacks and special editions where additional adventures of the lawman of the future could be found, and these stories, long desired by fans to be collected alongside the weekly episodes, have finally found a home in these two books.

Honestly, there isn't anything in book two as wild and fantastic as the better moments in the first volume, but there isn't anything as dire as that book's first ninety-odd pages, either. As I mentioned in my review of that book, the first several annuals and specials for 2000 AD were compiled by various editorial staffers working anonymously, few of whom had a grasp on the still-developing character of Dredd and his growing world. Until John Wagner became interested and took control of those projects, they were patchy at best.

With Wagner, joined in 1983 by Alan Grant as co-writer, in charge and defining a clear world, and worldview, for Dredd, the one-shot episodes maintained a consistent tone. True, with only a handful of pages per story, they couldn't really dig into things with the detail afforded a multi-week serial in 2000 AD itself. In some cases, like a Mike Collins-illustrated episode about a heat wave, the plot is given over to fantasy. But with a consistent approach, a dry wit and a taciturn leading man, the stories are uniformly entertaining, with few or no fumbles across close to 400 pages.

As usual, there's a pile of really great art from many Dredd regulars. Cam Kennedy is well-represented with one of my favorites of his many times drawing Dredd, "I, Beast," and he's in good company with Carlos Ezquerra, Ian Gibson, Arthur Ranson and others. I think my favorite story in the book might be one of the longest, "Last of the Bad Guys," which was painted by John Higgins. Honestly, there's not a bad-looking page in this book, but I think that Higgins, one of the title's unsung heroes of the period, might have done the best work in the collection. Bryan Talbot illustrates a really funny story that shows what happens when Justice Department's undercover division can't rustle up enough female judges for a case, and Brendan McCarthy is psychedelic, wild and mind-blowing on a couple of very colorful episodes.

Again, nothing in these pages is as completely breathtaking as some of the Mike McMahon material in volume one, but that's not to say anything here is lacking. It's a really terrific reprint, full of clever, surprising plot twists and it's long overdue. It's presented on nice paper, chronologically, and very well designed. Darned if I can find a flaw in it at all, to be blunt. Highly recommended!

Robo-Hunter: The Droid 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 Robo-Hunter: The Droid Files Volume 02 (Rebellion, 2010).



Back in June, I mentioned that I reread a series called Robo-Hunter every couple of years. It ran in 2000 AD periodically from 1978 to 1986. Written by John Wagner and Alan Grant and drawn by Ian Gibson, it's the absolute best example in comics of what I was mentioning in my article about Chew the other day, how the type of plotting in fiction that appeals the most to me is the type that has to run all over the map of wild possibilities to get from points A to B. I like stories where the protagonist doesn't just have to overcome great obstacles, but mundane, ridiculous, unexpected, downright weird and lunatic ones as well. Throw a kitchen sink at our hero, literally, and I'm in heaven. There's a bit in the very first Robo-Hunter serial where our hero is held hostage in a sewer until he completes a rigged game of Monopoly. That's what I'm talking about.

Our hero in Robo-Hunter is a hard-boiled PI named Sam Slade who cannot catch anything like a break. Unfairly unable to thrive in a world where he might do well (as though 1940s Los Angeles would be much of an improvement for him), Slade works in a far-flung future where a lazy, indolent, soaps-and-sports-obsessed humanity has let lunatic robots take over their lives for them. The human population in Pixar's Wall-E, and the nutty personalities of its robot cast, is not that far removed from what Wagner, Grant and Gibson had come up with for this comic. It's a world where any human with a job is pretty odd; jobs are what people built robots for! They built them to be their prime ministers and their soccer stars, and now the population of future Britain is content to collect welfare checks, visit historical castles and watch the World Cup. From this premise, the creators come up with some of the funniest and most ridiculous comics ever made. It's an absolute gem.

The first of Rebellion's two phone book-sized omnibus editions reprinted a little more than half of these creators' original run. In the second, you get more tomfoolery with Jim Kidd, a character from the first series who had been de-aged to a baby and briefly starred as the hero of a TV series before his own poor fortunes see him setting up shop as a competing robo-hunter. Slade and Kidd are hired in one of the series' most infamous installments, "Football Crazy," which sees some wildly stereotyped comedy. Having already established that future Britain was nothing to be proud of, and giving their own culture both barrels, Wagner and Grant took a few unbelievable potshots at the Italians and the Japanese in this story, which is guaranteed to make the more politically correct members of a contemporary audience wince. I've always figured it's fair for a writer to mock other cultures, provided the writer isn't simultaneously claiming that his own culture is superior. That clearly doesn't happen here.

After that, Slade's story continued through a pair of much longer adventures before the creators completely surprised readers by giving Sam a happy ending. After all these episodes of Sam overcoming unbelievable and ridiculous odds and never getting his reward, he got it. In a just world, the epic "The Slaying of Slade" would have been Sam's deserved finale, but of course, Sam Slade's world isn't "just." The very next episode, set a few years later (most cruelly, it originally ran in the following issue), sees Sam's two idiot assistants ruining everything yet again and giving Sam new problems to fight. Ian Gibson's redesign for the character - he had to come up with two! - is just hilarious.

"Sam Slade's Last Case" and "Farewell, My Billions" are often overlooked by fans, but they're every bit as ridiculous and convoluted and beautifully drawn as the earlier, better-known stories. In fact, as much as I admire the brilliant plotting and sparkling dialogue of the epic "Day of the Droids" (reprinted in volume one), Gibson's artwork towards the end of the run is leagues superior. "Farewell, My Billions" was drawn between the second and third series of Halo Jones, Gibson's celebrated collaboration with Alan Moore, and his linework, design and inking were at a career high. The decayed, decrepit look of future Harlem is just completely lovely, and the hospital scenes with the strangely familiar Dr. Goyah have an absolutely perfect balance to them. I would love to own some of the original artwork from this story.

"Farewell, My Billions" proved to be a finale that Wagner and Grant didn't believe that they could top, and the series was retired. About six years later, however, there had been some editorial changes at 2000 AD and the strip was resurrected. It was given to Mark Millar, then a promising newcomer, and a rotating bank of artists. Enough has been written already about why these failed; no more needs to be said. Suffice it to say that Millar's lengthy run is not included in this collection, however, an episode by John Smith and Chris Weston, set in the same continuity and using Millar's take on the character, is, probably on the strength of the artwork.

The third iteration of Robo-Hunter followed right on the heels of Millar's. In fact, there was some actual overlap in 1994, with one Millar story drawn by Simon Jacob appearing in print after the first by the new team of Peter Hogan and Rian Hughes. I have also written at length about how wonderful the all-too-brief Hogan and Hughes run was, and encourage visitors unfamiliar with it to see what I have written previously at my currently dormant blogs Thrillpowered Thursday (June 2007) and Reprint This! (April 2009 and April 2010). If you'd rather not click, suffice it to say that these are extremely clever and witty and wonderful in every way. This volume, happily, reprints all of Peter Hogan's episodes. The reproduction is not quite ideal - most of them originally appeared in color, and the grayscale versions here don't do Rian Hughes' thick, solid primary colors justice - but just having them all in one place is a dream come true. Well, my dream, at least.

There has also been a fourth iteration of the series. From 2004-2007, Grant and Gibson reunited to tell the story of Slade's granddaughter Samantha, who followed her predecessor into the robo-hunting business and picked up his two idiot assistants. Criminally, these six stories were not as popular with the fan base as they were with me, and even I'll admit that the second story really does take a lot of defending. Sadly, the series was one where the writer was enjoying the experience more than the artist, and it seemed to end, behind the scenes, acrimoniously. Three or four of us are still hoping for a return and greater things. These episodes are also not included; they should appear, in color, in their own volume, shortly after Samantha makes her triumphant return to the comic. Any day now.

Summing up, across the two volumes, you get the entirety of the original Wagner-Grant-Gibson run, one episode by Smith and Weston, and the full Hogan-scripted apocrypha. They're completely terrific comics. Knock down traffic cones and drive across people's yards to get them. Highly recommended.

Robo-Hunter: The Droid Files Volume One

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 Robo-Hunter: The Droid Files Volume One (Rebellion, 2009)



Rereading Robo-Hunter, as I do every other year or so, is always one of my favorite pastimes. It's a pity that the character of Sam Slade remains so stubbornly unknown to audiences, particularly in this country, because it genuinely is one of the best and funniest comics ever made.

The series debuted in 1978 in the pages of 2000 AD, and for the first several weeks, appeared to be an off-kilter blend of a private eye series with a science fiction trapping. But slowly, pieces were added to the plot that showed that the world Sam Slade would be investigating was bent at very, very odd angles indeed. Before the saga of his introductory serial "Verdus" concluded, your old pal Sam would be pushed to his limit by a cast of nutball robots who twisted the plot in unexpected and bizarre directions. You remember that Tex Avery cartoon, "The Cat That Hated People," where the cat goes to the moon only to find it populated by sentient bicycle horns and pencil sharpeners? Stick somebody who wants to be a hard-boiled PI in the middle of that, and let the sparks fly.

There are certainly readers who believe that "Verdus" was as good as Robo-Hunter got, but I'm of the school that thinks when he returned to Earth, the strip got even wilder. John Wagner, who, after the second serial, took on Alan Grant as co-writer, crafted a remarkably fun ride where the stakes get higher and the whole shebang escalates into a teeter-totter catastrophe. Every story is just a masterclass in high comedy, beautifully illustrated by Ian Gibson.

Sam himself is a terrific character, a blue-collar joe who just cannot catch a break and is saddled with two fantastic sidekicks. Hoagy is this oddball frog-looking thing who reasons that he can't become a robo-hunter assistant without putting an ad in the paper for one, so he places an ad announcing that Sam has an opening, and then comes to fill it, and Sam can't get rid of him. Carlos Sanchez Robo-Stogie is a Cuban "ceegar" designed to wean people off smoking by reducing nicotine intake, gifted to Sam by Hoagy's "parents" because they don't want Hoagy picking up any bad influences.

Hoagy and Stogie are somewhere between Kramer from Seinfeld and those three dimwits from Newhart, with Sam the straight man trying desperately to keep events from spiraling any further out of control while trying to keep these good-natured incompetents from making matters worse. There's a beautiful bit in the fourth story where Sam sends Hoagy to infiltrate a robot cult, only to have Hoagy refuse to give him any information. After all, the religion is sworn to secrecy and Hoagy could never betray his brothers' trust.

Rebellion has packaged the first five Robo-Hunter storylines in a nice, phonebook-sized omnibus called The Droid Files, adding a later, one-off episode by Grant and Gibson that first appeared in a 2000 AD Annual. The reproduction is nice, the volume is very well designed, and you get a great big chunk of really excellent comics in one thick package. The second book is also out, though I'm not finished rereading it. I'll come back to it in a couple of months' time; until then, just consider this book very highly recommended and give your bookshelf the pleasure of its company.

The Chronicles of Genghis Grimtoad

Here's how this works. I read a book or two and tell you about them and try not to get too long-winded, and maybe you'd like to think about reading them as well. This time, a review of The Chronicles of Genghis Grimtoad (Marvel, 1990).



Well, this was an interesting little surprise. I have a few issues of Marvel UK's early '90s anthology Strip, and so had seen a handful of episodes of Genghis Grimtoad, a two-page sword-n-sorcery parody by John Wagner, Alan Grant and Ian Gibson, three of my favorite comic creators. However, my small collection left me with enough gaps in the story that I really couldn't follow it. On the other hand, Gibson's art is so darn great that I had actually pencilled the series in for a possible feature on Reprint This! one of these days. So yes, I was very surprised to find that the full series - a mere 48 pages - had already been collected; I found this early '90s Marvel Graphic Novel for $5 at Knoxville's remarkable Book Eddy.

Now that I can read the whole thing, however, well, the art sure is good. It's really less of a parody than I thought it was, and more of a straight action piece. It's simple, lighthearted and doesn't really do anything different with the genre's set pieces. You've got the heroes on the run from an evil warlord who has usurped the kingdom, and strange beasts in the hinterlands, and really everything that had been done to death in dozens of Conan cash-ins over the decades. The only oddball points are that all the magicians are big freakin' frogs, our hero is a little incompetent, and one of them speaks with a lisp.

If you like Ian Gibson's art, then rest assured that he draws the hell out of this comic and it looks completely terrific. On the other hand, the writers didn't bring their A-games this time around, and even if you like this Lord of the Rings/D&D stuff, you will certainly have read far better than this before. Recommended only for Gibson fans, really.

More British stuff

Here's how this works: I finish reading something, and I tell you about it, and I try not to bore you to death. This time, reviews, of sorts, of Charley's War: Blue's Story (Titan, 2007) and Judge Dredd: Complete Case Files Vol. 10 (Rebellion, 2008).



In the fourth of Titan's collections of the amazing Charley's War, the action shifts to the home front. On leave in London, Charley Bourne meets a deserter from the French Foreign Legion. As the military police pursue them, the man who calls himself Blue tells Charley the story of the battles at Verdun and Fort Vaux.

The detour from the principal Charley's War narrative into this look at the rest of the war originally ran for six months in the pages of Battle Picture Weekly and was notable for a number of innovative cover pages. Most memorable of these is a great image of the trapped, starving soldiers, their supplies cut, holding Fort Vaux and looking out helplessly while a German taunts them, pouring a canteen of precious water onto the muddy ground.

If you've been reading Charley's War, as of course you all should, then you already know that Pat Mills and Joe Colquhoun managed something genuinely amazing and moving in every installment. If you're new to the series, this is actually a fine place to start before you go back and pick up the first three books. The reproduction is a little dark and fuzzy in places, and greyscaling the color covers does not always work as well as we would like, but the presentation is great, with introductory material and lengthy afterword commentary by Mills. Highly recommended.

(Note that the fifth book of Charley's War is actually supposed to be in US shops today. Diamond was extraordinarily late shipping this book to my store of choice, hence the belated review.)



The tenth Case Files edition, featuring around 50 episodes originally published in 1986-87, is among the best in this series. Oddly, Judge Dredd is all the better for the lack of a consistent, regular artist, even the good ones like Ron Smith, who, I understand, had taken a sabbatical to do advertising work around this time. With so many great artists all vying for space, there are more opportunities for individual work to shine.

Brendan McCarthy makes a huge splash with the four-part "Atlantis," for instance. Kevin O'Neill gets three episodes in this book, and they really are something to see. "Varks," a story about aliens that reproduce by turning other lifeforms into creatures like them, would have been a creepy and gruesome story in anybody's hands, but O'Neill really turns it into a freakfest. Other artists with standout work include Steve Dillon, Ian Gibson, whose "Paid With Thanks," about a ghost who does not appreciate innovative accounting, is a riot, John Cooper and Cam Kennedy.

John Wagner and Alan Grant were reaching the end of their celebrated regular partnership around this time, but hindsight doesn't show any cracks or tension in these episodes. They are having a ball coming up with more and more goofball citizens and criminals, and letting Dredd reach the end of his patience with their quirks and foibles. Absolutely essential reading, and highly recommended for everybody from longtime fans to newcomers.



(Originally posted October 08, 2008 at hipsterdad's LJ.)

Peanuts 1965-1966 and Judge Dredd: The Complete Case Files 09

Here's how this works: I finish reading something, and I tell you about it, and I try not to bore you to death.



Among the treats in this eighth collection: the debut of Peppermint Patty, who's even more confident in her cluelessness than you remember, a never-before-reprinted sequence about Snoopy journeying off to be the keynote speaker at a Daisy Hill Puppy Farm convention and not arriving, and the first several sequences with the World War One flying ace. Probably recommended higher than any of these other super volumes, really.



Oh, there's a whole bunch of great stuff in this collection of 50 episodes from 1985-86, featuring really great art from all those names you see below in the tag. It starts with "Midnight Surfer," one of the all-time greats, and ends with the breathtaking "Riders on the Storm," Brendan McCarthy's first Dredd in the way-out style he's known for. Recommended!

(Originally posted February 21, 2008 at hipsterdad's LJ.)

Judge Dredd - The Complete Case Files vol. 8

Here's how this works: I finish reading a comic collection, and I tell you about it, and I try not to go on too long.



I've got a soft spot for this collection - it contains stories from the period when I first started reading 2000 AD, with stories including "Dredd Angel," "City of the Damned" and "The Hunter's Club." It also reprints the first three short stories where Dredd starts to have doubts about the justice system, stories which have ramifications in today's stories about mutant rights in the future. John Wagner and Alan Grant have settled into a very comfortable groove during this period, which includes excellent art from Steve Dillon, Ian Gibson and Ron Smith. These are the stories that sold me on the series, so I think any new reader will also enjoy them. Highly recommended!

(Originally posted September 17, 2007 at hipsterdad's LJ.)