Carlos Ezquerra (1947–2018)

A bumper collection featuring twelve stories about the pretty young Psi Judge from 2000AD. The stories vary in length and come in the episodic style of British comics. This is a good thing as having to fill twenty pages, say, can lead to padding. Here each story is only as long as it needs to be.

The British origins also mean a blessed lack of soap opera themes. Instead there is black humour as in ‘Four Dark Judges’ when Judge Death is slaughtering the residents of the Ronald Reagan show more Block for the aged and infirm. ‘Dodder for it!’ cries an alarmed oldster. Alan Grant scripted most of these stories but John Wagner co-wrote the first three. Whoever’s responsible it’s a great line. The Dark Judges are from an alternate dimension and decided long ago that since only living people committed crime eradicating all life was the best policy. Logically they should have committed suicide once that was done. Instead they came to our dimension. They were defeated and this is their return. The second tale ‘The Possessed’ features demonic possession, which I find odd in a science-fiction setting but it was well done.

There are thirteen stories and to go through them all one by one would involve a tedious repetition of superlatives. Suffice to say they are all good and several are excellent. A short tale about Judge Corey and a whale entitled ‘Leviathan’s Farewell’ is probably the best in the book and also the best story of any kind I’ve read for a while. It should have won awards. ‘Engram’ is a longer story which gives us and Anderson revelations about her childhood. Very moving stuff for a ‘comic’.

Alan Grant does have fun too. ‘Triad’ features a murderous skeleton and the Block Ness monster so Anderson has to consult the Department of Fortean Events. ‘The Random Man’ has a chap who throws dice to decide what he will do next. Unfortunately the dice keep telling him to kill people. Anderson catches up with him in Luke Reinhart alley, for where Grant riffs and spoofs on other writers work he does acknowledge it.

‘Prepare to die, fleshy one!’ shouts killer ‘robot’ Bill as he attacks the Judge. This is unkind and untrue for she is slim and lovely. Bill, a.k.a. ‘The Prophet’ believes he is the chosen one, preparing the way for those who will come after by killing all the fleshy ones. Bill is bonkers but the story is fun.

The art is at least 80% of the graphic novel form, I think, and a great story won’t get transmitted without pleasing pictures. Happily Wagner and Grant are well served by the numerous talents gathered here. Brett Ewins deserves honourable mention for the first two tales and David Roach does a bang up job on several others. The honourable exception to my enjoyment was Carlos Ezquerra, though he only drew ’The Random Man’ so there wasn’t much of him. He’s honoured because he co-created Judge Dredd and the whole look of Mega-City one but I personally don’t much like his style.

2000AD has made a huge contribution to the genre over the last few decades and these bumper collections offer an excellent chance to grab the best of it at bargain rates. They are an Essential Showcase (geddit?) for the best of British and this one in particular is a really good read.

Eamonn Murphy
This review first appeared at https://www.sfcrowsnest.info/ show less

Holy crap! The Saint's story was even better than I imagined!

I mean, we're getting into some great ghost story stuff, but add a mountain of steroids and a man that both the Angel of Death and Satan, himself, is scared shitless of, and we've got Keyser Söze, or um, I mean, the Saint of Slaughter. :) Hell of a good story.

Someone in Supernatural has been cribbing from this comic. :)

And now that I know so much more about this guy, I can't believe that everyone got off so light, before. :)

I tracked this down because I've spent the past 35 years haunted by the image of Rico Dredd's surgically altered face to enable him to serve out his 20-year sentence on Titan. The reveal is still shocking, but I had forgotten that it all leads to a terrible joke where an exhausted Judge Dredd carries Rico's body claiming, "He ain't heavy..."

Where this short strip terrified me years ago, this time around it made my cry and laugh within a few panels.

It'll be another few hundred issues before show more the level of storytelling improves and I may dip in and out of this series until I get to the Dead Man and Necropolis, but I'm also keen to catch up on the Judge Child, Chopper and other stuff I missed.

The clarity of the reprint in these editions isn't always ideal, but they look great on the shelf and it's better than having to track down thousands of weekly back issues. show less

Most of this collection is The Apocalypse War saga, which is, dare i say it, pretty boring. Whilst both sides are cartoonish the satire isn't really laid on, which means that its kind of white propoganda when it could have been an absolute cracker of a takedown of both Bolshevism and western imperialist values. Instead it's an overlong war epic where megadeaths and deliberate targeting of civilians are tossed out by both sides without any commentary at all.