Pan-African Judge

What, another Judge so soon? You ain't seen nothin' yet. Last week was the tenth anniversary of the founding of the Pan-African Parliament (the 18th of March), so...

Here's the Pan-African Judge, anyway, based on the highly stylised work of artist Ajibayo 'Siku' Akinsiku. The story of the Pan-African Judges is a little more complicated than things seem. It's late on a Sunday night - let's go to Wikipedia:

The concept of a Pan-African Judge first turned up in a poster for the 1988 Judge Dredd Mega-Special drawn by Brendan McCarthy: the text said they had the hardest job of any Judge, "policing a society that mixes centuries' old tribal law and customs with high 22nd century technology. Applicants chosen for linguistic and diplomatic skills." The design would make a brief cameo at an international summit in the Judgement Day storyline but after that it would be replaced by a Siku design, starting with 1993's first Pan African Judges. In an article in Judge Dredd Megazine #238, Siku said he got the job after criticising the McCarthy design as too stereotyped: "I asked, why do people think all Africans run around in animal prints? [Editor] Dave Bishop challenged me to come up with something better."
In the same article, Siku referred to Paul Cornell's first Pan African script as being well researched but flawed in its approach - "imperialism, jungle safaris, that's the way Westerners see Africa". (The second Pan African strip was written by Siku alone and had Yoruba gods attacking the continent.) He did enjoy having a "token white guy" Judge. Cornell himself referred to his work as "a trudge", feeling it had too many competing ideas in one story and that his dialogue was "overblown"; he was happy, however, with his decision to deliberately show Islam and a Muslim Judge, as he felt the Judge Dredd universe was "a little too disconnected from the real world" by turning all the world's religions into the worship of Grud

[Your blogger would like to mention that the issue of Grud being a near universal deity is also addressed in another African-based judge system, of which more at a later date]

That's pretty much the basics of what you need to know. Two main PAJ stories, plus some supporting cast in John Smith's Devlin Waugh/Dredd team-up story Fetish, also illustrated by Siku and typically ker-razy high concept stream-of-consciousness stuff from Smith. But I fear that in having such iconic characters as Dredd and the musclebound Terry Thomas/Noel Coward/Freddie Mercury occupying centre stage we're treated once again to future Africa in a pretty colonial viewpoint, so it's hardly progressive. As far as I can see this is something still to be addressed satisfactorily, although Siku's involvement was promising, though it seems to have been a one-off. For myself I only have single episodes of all three stories - so I sort of get the gist of it, but none make a great amount of sense, even though Cornell's is the most straight-forward narratively speaking.

Hey look, I'm waffling on and did I mention it's late on a Sunday? Here's the illustration. 

And what does a Pan-African Judge look like? Well, green, gold and white, which is a nice, neutral scheme, and Siku's design is assuredly better than McCarthy's very Eighties neon Africa go. I'm not sure on the rhino horns on the shoulder pad, or the warthog tusks on the belt - hopefully they're bendy or something otherwise ouch every time you fall over, frankly. It's is worth noting that the suggestion remains that in different surviving African states, including some Islamic-based territories, the uniform changes, with turban-styled headdress, for example. 

If you've read down this far then thanks, but I also owe everyone including Siku an apology. Like a lot of my judge drawings this illustration was done years ago in short form - maybe ten years for this effort. It was only in Googling the chaps for colour references that I discovered that my composition here is based almost directly off a portrait by Siku.: oh, it's superior in every way, and I am officially embarrassed.  Mea culpa. 

Who's made an Exhibition of himself?

Whups - this was supposed to synch with Jamas' post, but nevertomind...

In our on-going adventure into local exhibitions Jamas and I checked out an add-on to last month's Symphonic Spectacular, a temporary exhibition of Doctor Who at Capital E. Now, we very nearly walked right past this on the day due to Capital E having been temporarily relocated post-tremors last year for earthquake re-rstrengthening (alarmingly, Al and I still use the Land Sea bridge which roofs the original site on a regular basis for our walks). The nwe site is in the TSB Arena, next to the main doors, local folks, and you should check it out. It's free for one, and it'll take five to ten minutes of your time.

Handles!

What's there? A smattering of props and replicas from nearly every era of televised Who. Naturally the TV Movie Doctor played by Paul McGann has no props to speak of*, having been auctioned off or junked years ago, or are otherwise in A-Merkin hands, but just go with it. I did.

You'll see a Dalek (classic series), a Cyberman (new series), a TARDIS (new series, 90% scale but still noisy and lovely to stand next to), and a couple of masks, replica props and costumes. I believe my cultural companion was amusingly faked out by thinking he'd encountered a Matt Smith ensemble on display, but wouldn't you know it - it was the Dream Lord all along. Still, the mood seemed right for him to indulge in this particular show of horseplay, and punters being as low as they are, nobody seemed inclined to kick us out, despite CLEAR NOTICES SAYING DO NOT TOUCH BEING BREACHED IN THE ACT.

Like a lot of Who stuff for public consumption in this enlightened Eccleston Tennant Smith Capaldi era, there's more than a hint of exposition about the display, with monitors looping key scenes from each Doctor - even the Eighth (but pity the poor Capital E staff trapped there with nothing but the same footage in their ear all day!), and a chronological wall chart which maps the series and more key moments over the past fifty years. Fifty years is a lot to chart in a room as small as this one, but it's well organised and mostly harmless. In all, a fine little diversion.

 *okay, maybe some Eighth Doctor stuff in that there's some knitting.

Vegas Judge

Yesterday marked the anniversary of the creation of the Nevada territories, so why not mark it with a picture of a Vegas Judge?

Yes, they have judges in Vegas, and yes, Vegas exists in Dredd’s world. Or rather, both did. We can thank Pat Mills for both via his epic The Cursed Earth, which is a lot more anarchic and disjointed than its reputation might otherwise suggest. Like The Judge Child Quest it’s essentially a line of small adventures for Dredd and cohorts en route to a greater destination – in The Cursed Earth that destination is Mega City Two, and Vegas is, as you might expect, pretty much right on its doorstep, the penultimate obstacle to the completion of Dredd’s mission of mercy. It even shares the MC-2 skyline of floating debris.

Like a lot of the places in the story, Vegas in Dredd’s world is none too subtle. The implication is that this is a smaller city that had a judge system modeled on its neighbours, but organised crime being the very bedrock of the place, the mobs take over the justice system itself, turning the whole place into a parody justice, where the condemned take part in life or death games to clear their name, and citizen and Judge onlookers alike place bets on the outcome. It sort of fits the wonky and black satire of the Dredd strip, but as I say, it’s laid on pretty thick with its ‘God-Judge’, gangster machine guns and vintage cars, cod Mafioso accents and characters like ‘Judge Fingers’. Mick McMahon brings it to life in his early, sketchier Cursed Earth style, but it’s a short life, and the location and its judges once put right by Dredd don’t bother the main strip (nor indeed the Dredd World map) for nearly thirty years. Even Garth Ennis forgets to nuke it in Judgement Day.

The Vegas Judges eventually returned in the climax to John Wagner’s My Name is Death and its follow-up The Wilderness Days, itself a rehabilitation story in bringing back seminal undead baddie Judge Death for some genuinely despicable exploits during his wanderings in the Cursed Earth. Fraser Irving is on art duties here, and it’s rather spectacular; grim and ghoulishly funny in places. Once Death makes it to Vegas Wagner overturns the rather pat (sorry) decision of Mills to have had Dredd effect a change to Sin City’s moral heart, and the Mob have reasserted itself. Of course, with Death now there and his own living nemesis (not Dredd) in pursuit you can’t expect a happy ending. And so Vegas gets the nuke that Garth forgot to drop, and is officially no more.

My Vegas Judge uniform is an amalgam of McMahon’s original with Irving’s curvier modifications. You never actually see their helmets – perhaps they’re a rare judge system in not having one, but I’ve taken inspiration here from a jackpot machine in McMahon’s strip that looks like an existing helmet may have been put to less law-abiding function. So there you go. I didn’t intend to be covering the Vegas Judge, but I had this pencilled from the days of Irving’s story being serialised, so it’s finally done.

'Fez', the Music

Doctor Who Symphonic Spectacular
Saturday 23 February 2014, TSB Arena Wellington

[This post has been synched! Check out Jamas' impressions of the day, and Al's premiere review]

It's long been an ambition of mine to see a film with performers providing the soundtrack live. Chances have arisen in the past - most recently the Goethe Institute brought the NZSO and Metropolis together in a sold-out event last year, and the original members of Goblin performed the soundtrack to Suspiria for the Auckland Festival. Both well out of my abilities to attend, alas, so when Jamas offered me a seat accompanying him for a matinee performance of a reworked Proms performance for Antipodean audiences (and using their own talent), I was very keen indeed.

Not that I went in with any expectations of a synchronised screening and symphony, but that's the deal with the BBC Proms' version of Who, and at times I, too, had to pinch myself an remember that I wasn't there to just watch a very large TV playing dialogue-free stories, but that up on stage there was an entire ensemble of highly talented players, choristers, a renowned conductor and soprano to boot. And seriously, with the audio-visual and lighting displays, not to mention the live wandering monsters in the theatre, you'd be forgiven for forgetting the actual orchestra on stage at any time.

Highlighting the work of the series' composer Murray Gold from the show since its 2005 return, and emceed by Fifth Doctor Peter Davison this was in all, a very slick, very assured production, and easily the best live Who experience I've had. It was, to be honest, a little long. But you couldn't complain at being short-changed by a two-hour performance with or without a twenty minute interval, and the audience were clearly up for it. My top five moment are:

1. Companion Suite
Highlighting four of the Doctor's most recent companions and comprising Gold's love letter to Billie Piper/Rose,  Martha's Theme, the more off-beat Donna's Theme and for The Girl Who Waited, Amy's Theme. Clara?, described by Davison as "light as a souflle" and his own favourite came later, and it's a good 'un indeed - I'd never noticed it until now, although of them all Martha's is still my favourite

2. Classic music suite
Classic Series composer Mark Ayres selected a quartet of music from the previous Doctors' eras, ticking off a wishlist I compiled as Jamas and I entered the venue - and they were all great choices. Martin Slavin's wonderful timpanic 'Space Adventures' 60s Cybermen theme from Tomb of the Cybermen, Malcolm Clark's putting-the-'mental'-into-experimental score for The Sea Devils, Paddy Kingsland's Fourth Doctor regeneration music from Logopolis and Ayres' own composition from The Curse of Fenric. Alas, nothing of John Debney's soundtrack for the Paul McGann movie - perhaps rights were an issue, but that will have to remain an undiscovered gem.

3. A Message from the DoctorWell, two, actually. Proms attendees back in the UK of course have had live skits featuring the current Doctor, but we got Tom Baker breaking character in two addresses to his fans, thanking them for the happiest seven years of his life, and later for the response to his unheralded appearance in Day of the Doctor. Typical Tom - a little batty, but full of warmth and for me more than a little moving as the various tics and space fillers of the Fourth Doctor now seem irremovable from Baker's own speech patterns. Or is it a stage affectation? he'll never let us know, will he - uh? Mm?

4. Silver Stalker
Due to dodgy ticketing information my companion and I got separated ended up being shifted to another pair of seats - and they were closer to the action! Best of all, they put us in direct eyeline with our wandering monsters - a Judoon, a Silurian, a seriously large Paradigm Dalek, and the new model Cyberman which, I swear, trained its shark-like lifeless eyes on me as it went through the most robotic of marching poses. And then it reached out to grab me. I was four rows back from it, but the child within me was looking for the exit signs.

5. Wandering Monsters
Yes, them again, but something for the day as a young father and his boy making their way in the half-light back to their seats laughed nervously as they encountered a silver giant in their aisle, and after dodging it, realised they were then trapped between two Cybermen and a Silurian, forcing a very hasty shuffle into their row. Again, all before my eyes - you can't beat a floor show.

Very cool in that all of this was provided (Davison, Gold's music and arch-conductor Ben Foster excluded) by the NZSO, Wellington's Orpheus Choir and local soloists; again, I had to occasionally remind myself that I wasn't simply listening to a familiar soundtrack. Closing off proceedings was the valedictory Vale Decem (with mezzo soprano, rather than counter tenor) and last of all, Gold's reworking of 'the feem toon' as Denis Waterman would put it. A fitting end much prepared for, and well worth the sting of my parking ticket later on. 

Thanks again, Jamas (and Jamas' parents!) for the opportunity to see this :)

Texas City Judge

Today is the 168th anniversary of the installation of the State government of Texas. You’re most welcome.

Texas, or more correctly, Texas City, or less formally and correctly Mega City 3 is an interesting place in the Dredd universe. Big, of course, taking in the original state plus Louisiana, Alabama and other parts besides, it has a long-standing rivalry with the still-unseen and even less-spoken of Mex City, and seems forever on the verge of actually splitting from the ‘union’ of Mega City One and its late lamented West Coast sibling. Plus ca change.

I quite like Texas City though, and still get a quiet thrill whenever it appears in the parent strip. It’s one of a few cases where an outside megacity has been created on points of difference as well as similarity to Dredd’s hometown, and perhaps there’s no better place to see this than the relatively obscure Megazine two-parter Texas City Sting, by John Wagner and Yan Shimony. In this, Dredd and his colleague, the Hershey-clone Colovito head to the southern megacity in pursuit of outstanding warrants on absconded perps from MC-1, but run afoul of Texas City’s belligerent Deputy Chief Judge who refuses them jurisdiction in his town. Undeterred, Dredd and Colovito turn Texas’ more liberal laws more creatively and become legally armed debt collectors, nearly scoring a hundred per cent catch (and gleefully being cheered on by their Texan shadowers.) Rather silly and wonderful, it might have been a classic in the early days of the strip in 2000AD, so it seems a shame this was relegated to the Meg, and the choice of Shimony as artist is perhaps another fumble. It’s not bad artwork – a little cartoonish and quite dynamic, but it lacks the style that a wittier artist like Ian Gibson or Mick McMahon would have given it.

Ah, McMahon again. The creator of the Texas City look. True, Brian Bolland may have given us the first true Texan judges in Che, Tex and Mex all stationed on the moon city of Luna-1, but the city itself and its resident judges get a proper role on the later strip, The Judge Child Quest (which also gave the world Texas City’s most notorious villains the Angel Gang) The judge here is simply an adapted Mega City uniform, fitted with a Stetson or ten-gallon hat and with the Texan star superimposed over the badge of justice. It’s a simple conversion, and says enough, really. We’re really blessed, though, with McMahon’s Texas City, a character in itself; all mutant reservations, theme parks, big, bold and utterly wild western ideas transported into the future.

McMahon's Texas City is a wonder to behold - goofy, solid, and filled with lots of little details, the tops of the buildings becoming stetsons, saloon doors, saddles... you name it. I love it.

Lead Time Lords: The Ninth Doctor

Hah! Bet you thought I was going to be painting the Sixth Doctor. Well, no. Later. I have plans there, you see, and things to talk about in detail. Oh, detail… So here’s the ‘Ninth’ Doctor (I’m sticking to the pre-Day of the Doctor numbering for the sake of my sanity) as portrayed by Christopher Eccleston.

I really liked Eccleston’s Doctor, but I was disappointed at the same time that his tenure was so short and so defined by a single ‘amazing ™’ companion and character arc. That Eccleston turned down the chance to return to the role for the Anniversary special is also a shame, because I think we lost the opportunity to see him outside the Bad Wolf trappings as well. As it is, he’s something of an interregnum Doctor to me.

 Like his TV counterpart, there’s not a lot to say about this model – there’s very little in the way of alternatives out there – none which are readily available AND of equal quality sculpt-wise anyway. Heresy’s ‘Malcolm Ecclescake’ is pretty much what you’d want from a ninth Doctor figure; yes, the pose is not entirely him, but after version after version of Harlequin’s cross-armed posed old Doctors, the last thing you need is a self-hugging Eccleston figure mimicking his occasional onscreen posture. And maybe he’s a bit more ‘grim oop north’ in his expression than you might like, but otherwise he’s great. Fantastic, even. The jacket is high on detail, the face is suitably angular, there’s dynamism there, and they even got his ears right. Heresy’s model comes in two parts, his ‘sonic’ arm being needed to be glued on, but otherwise required little clean-up.

Colour-wise the limitations of Eccleston’s wardrobe show – black moleskins, battered black navvy’s jacket, and an assortment of toned-down shades of vest, from an olive drab to burgundy to grape. My purple option was decided on just to liven the figure up a bit, and I’ve weathered the jacket and given the trouser legs a bit of a liquorice green-black just to break up the overall darkness there, Initially I wanted a smooth, white marble and gold base to mimic the floors of Cardiff’s Temple of Peace aka Platform One, but once again my limited skill with that sort of thing showed all too clearly (an uneven and distinctly bumpy mess), and so a reddish colour scheme is on my base, once again to prevent the figure from being such a buzz-kill colour-wise.

"I'm No Longer the Centre of the Universe"

Manic Street Preachers: 'Rewind the Film' (2013)

“How I hate middle age - In between acceptance and rage”
-Builder of Routines


Over ten years ago while we were in our precocious early thirties, a friend David and I used to grimly joke about what we were supposed to be writing about 'at our age', penning songs of frustrated gardening, perhaps, or, like John Upstart, Smith and Jones' Slightly Irritated Young Man playwright, the broken demister on the Volvo. Joking apart, once the threshold has been passed, what is there left to say? 

Having dallied with its approach in recent albums, this is the Manics grasping the midlife nettle fully, exposing the disappointment and frustration of maturity, when simple championing and sloganeering will no longer do – much less the star jumps Nicky Wire once could afford to attempt on stage. Twenty years after the ravaged original, this is Wire, Bradfield and Moore’s own Holy Bible, muted and sullen, but more resigned to the reality of age, given the aural space of This is My Truth. There's very little electric guitar on the album, using more acoustic than any album before it, and harking back to traditional song structures - the opening This Sullen Welsh Heart and As Holy as the Soil (that Covers Your Skin) could be spirituals.

This is an important album for the Manic, and may be their best and most cohesive since This Is My Truth. The years colour and condemn, and a group "laminated" against its rigours look back on youth and simplicity. You could argue that previous albums have also visited this ground, particularly Postcard from a Young Man, but Rewind the Film willfully resists its predecessor's attempt at "mass communication" and is pointedly introverted, referencing the moribund likes of Morrisey (for whom 3 Ways to See Despair was written), Vidal, Lowry, Lennon and Lenin, as much as the band's own history, both happy (I Miss the Tokyo Skyline) and regretful. Wire's As Holy as the Soil calls his departed friend to "please come home, it's been so long but I can't let go."

Wire sings more here, and the band employing duets (which worked well for them in the past) but I wonder whether there's another tactic in distancing themselves from harder songs - the title track is shared by Pulp's Richard Hawley with Bradfield coming in on the choruses; Cate Le Bon provides all the vocals for 4 Lonely Roads, and Lucy Rose backs Sullen Welsh Heart. It, like Rewind the Film, covering the heavy confessions. I'm reminded of Nicky Wire opting to sing the closing song (bar one hidden track) of Journal to spare his bandmate the raw emotion of singing what has been taken by many to be a suicide note rehearsal.

Journal for Plague Lovers returns in sound with Running Out of Fantasy, a world-weary look in the mirror with some elegant phrasing and some of Wire's most economic writing:

The dying fall of my sentences / the magic of lost consequences
The seduction of a fading power / in a hotel room in the middle of nowhere

I love this album, I think, and I'm glad I discovered it a little late, away from press reviews and magazine articles (which have been largely highly complimentary.) in two months the companion album, the threatened 'Krautrock' influences Futurism will be released, its likely sound hinted at in this album's angry closer 30-Year War, Rewind's most overtly political song, driven by an intriguing array of keyboard washes, reverberating William Orbit-like percussive stabs and Wire playing the closest to a Peter Hook bass riff as he possibly can. It sounds an intriguing mix, and indicates a lot of life left in this band yet.

Cover Story: Railings on the Severn Bridge, that potent image of the band’s true crisis point, taken from a moving vehicle. This is a moving on from a past point of identity - not yet erased nor rendered ineffective, but able to be passed. A place of memory and temporary reflection.

Videos: The past returns in a Seventies-bleached slice of life in a Welsh community hall (the director apparently didn't need to put too much effort into dressing the location to period). Show me the Wonder is atypical of the album in general, being an up piece, but the past can be a happy, even wonderful place, too.

This is no threat, just an invitation
A sense of belonging, a sense of inspiration