Kilt in Action - Calhab Justice

Happy St Andrew's Day everybody! There - did it properly, this time.

To mark the Scottish Independence Referendum earlier this year, the Judge Dredd Megazine devoted its front page (illustrated by Glenn Fabry) and supplemental ‘floppy’ reprint magazine to all things judicial and Scottish – to whit: some of Jim Alexander's Calhab Justice, upon what I have already rit here.

This is only the second reprint of a CalHab strip, the first being the one-off Annual story ‘Hogmanay’ for another Meg floppy devoted to yuletide Dreddverse stories. It’s a lovely wee slice of life in GlasCal, and properly should fit in as the second story in this new collection, but doesn’t. A shame, as it would have been nice to have it with its mates for the first time.

The floppy itself is, therefore, incomplete, and takes in roughly the first third of the CalHab stories, introducing its Big Yin central character Judge Ed MacBrayne, and his sometime fellow judges Buchan, Schiehallion, and the ill-fated Murdo, not to mention their boss, the un-named C.I. Ridgeways’ art does the early chores, setting the look and feel of CalHab’s capital, and the quirky faces of its mob-like Whisky Clans. If I could make one early observation about CalHab Justice, it’s that it was eccentrically-served by artists, but the safety-first approach Ridgeway offers his illustrating in all his work actually helps CalHab by not scaring the horses too soon. The artists seems to have fun with the plukes and podge of Clan big-wig Abercromby, and his version of the C.I is the most recognisably human and world-weary. He’d have been fine, if not necessarily that exciting, kept in the artist’s saddle. But we move on…

After 'Hogmanay''s omission we're into the Lol stories, illustrated by the artist of that moniker, whose career with the seems to have been contained within the Meg and a one-off 2000AD gig. Lol's work seems heavily influenced by that of Simon Bisley - as were many artists at the time, although the black and white work he renders here references Bisley's turn on ABC Warriors, also monochrome. It is, as at least one reader said recently, 'of its time', and might have been better in colour, becuse in its dark-saturated monochrome the storytelling suffers. And that matters, because once Lol arrives on the scene, Alexander's B-plot takes up the A spot, with its trio of judges emroiled (or in the case of MacBrayne, virtually sidelined) by a story of psychics, civil war and a bloody greta big explosion at the end, courtesy of the srip's fourth artist, Kevin Cullen.

I'm still none the wiser, what with my patchy collection of Megs, but this floppy pesudo-trade has done a good job in putting the more consistent, MacBrayne-heavy strips together, even if it's not complete. I think that gathered they present a more coherent collection, and would welcome a second volume (although it could really go to three volumes.) The strip's relegation to reprint-limbo as a 'floppy' freebie and not a full trade paperback would suggest that my hopes have been dashed, and the Meg's floppies do contain more than one half-told series , so a first installemtn s no guarantee of a follow-up. I sense a crusade pproaching, to collect the disparate pieces and do the job myself. In th emena-time, this is a good start, and a reasonable template.

And finally, because the comments on a cosplay board likened the CalHab uniform to a real-life 'bampot' whose video below I saw too many years ago on either Radio With Pictures or Max Headroom, but could not thereafter be unseen (though I could never remember any other detail of it including the artist or the song), let's end with a cheery, mad slice of Eighties Caledonian pop-funk. You see? That's the problem with the kids these days - too much Jessie J and not enough Jesse Rae.

Exorcist Judges

Yesterday, in case you didn't know, was the birthday of Father Damien Karras. You did know that, of course, but I'm just saying.

I toyed with the idea of putting this up around the time of Harold Ramis' unfortunate passing, but thankfully my good taste circuits kicked in, and so here we are, now, with the Exorcist Judges of Mega City One.

 

In fact, outside of Psi Judges (of which the Exorcists are a division) who are an almost global phenomenon, the Exorcists are one of the few types of judge which have an overseas equivalent, as there is a form of Exorcist specialist in the East Meg judge system. But here we are in Dredd's home, and his compatriots are a scattered and odd lot. Adopters of religious symbolism and ritual, they're nevertheless not that religious by behaviour. The Exorcists made their debut in a Judge Anderson story, Alan Grant and Brett Ewins' The Possessed. Unfortunately, the two enlisted in The Possessed do an early bunk to set our heroine up for the big task, and that pretty much sets the Exorcists up for future appearances as second fiddle to the main Psi Judge of the day, whether it's Anderson or more recently her pretender Karyn (art duties imaginatively handled by Adrian Salmon), but as the years have passed things have got a little more interesting for this division. Firstly, the Megazine has featured the Exorcists more than the parent comic, and in its pages they have proved to be a small but fanatical unit, rubbing shoulders grudgingly with their Psi Division masters, and secondly, we finally have a female Exorcist to look upon and admire in the spectral form of Judge Lamia, so that's pretty cool.

 

My Exorcists, above aren't based on anyone in particular - although you might recognise a nod or two to one of my all-time favourites. And if you think that's all there is to see about living judges facing off againt the unquiet dead this week, then you ain't seen nothin' yet...

Jose Ortiz

On 23rd of December 2013 the world of graphic novels lost Jose Ortiz Moya.

Hombre

 Ortiz was one of the old school of European artists working in Fleetway’s stable in the 70s and through to the 80s, although he did far more than those familiar comics, and even worked with some bigger names, in particular Vampirella and the celebrated post-Apocalyptic series Hombre. A talent for portraying the macabre and desolated landscapes would serve him well, however, with what Fleetway had in mind for him.

Tower King

My introduction to Ortiz’ work was through Eagle and the- yes, post-Apocalyptic Tower King. Set in a modern London after the entire planet has had its electrical power ripped away by a rogue satellite, The Tower King nodded its way to Mad Max and his predecessors, but unlike, say, Damnation Alley or A Boy and his Dog stayed entirely within the city, sensibly taking up the opportunities its slow decay could offer visually – Ortiz’ sketchy style seems perfect for reducing such landmarks as Big Ben’s tower and, of course the Tower of London itself to dusty, matchstick ruin. I love the look of it, and Ortiz renders his hero Mick Tempest like his other leading men - weathered and drawn, sketchy and leathery, toughened by the challenging landscape around them.  Similarly, his turn on companion strip The House of Daemon drew on Ortiz’ skill with horror to produce a truly phantasmagorical strip that, in black and white simple ink, held its own impressively among the comic’s louder photo strips. I relished both Tower King and Daemon, and stuck with them until their equally satisfying conclusions (reliably, scripted by John Wagner and Alan Grant), but as I’ve described earlier on this blog, I didn’t linger with Eagle; my loss, in a way, because it meant that I missed out on the comic’s devouring of ill-fated horror mag Scream and the much-celebrated Thirteenth Floor series, a horror based around a sentient elevator which reunited Ortiz with Grant and Wagner.

House of Daemon

I’d moved to 2000AD, as the story goes, but Ortiz moved with me, providing the initial episode of a Dredd world strip I still harbour a soft spot for, Helltrekkers (Wagner and Grant again, testing the waters early for the Judge Dredd Megazine) and more ambitiously, a stint on Rogue Trooper, which moved the blue-skinned genetic infantryman from Nu Earth to the even more alien world of Horst. Ortiz’s turn (and the larger Horst storyline) isn’t recalled fondly, following as it does such a strong run by the likes of Cam Kennedy and an at-his-peak Brett Ewins, yet Horst’s weird, bestial soldiers based around the forms of bats, lizards and (to a suspiciously Gigeresque end) horseshoe crabs came out the better for being rendered by Jose, I think.

Rogue Trooper

So Ortiz, for an old-school artist, proved an effective bridging artist between my Eagle days and my 2000AD future. His work didn’t have the immediate crazy thrill of a Mick McMahon, Kev O’Neill or Ian Gibson piece (alongside whom he’d feature), nor the clean lines of Brian Bolland and his detractors, but instead alongside other Euro artists like Ezquerra, Massimo Belardinelli and Jesus Redondo, he’d bring in a fluid style that for a while complemented 2000AD’s woozy, weird and ravaged worlds.

It's a style which I miss already.