It’s probably safe to say at this point that I’m something of a fan of Judge Dredd.

Sadly to lots of people that just brings back bad memories of the Sylvester Stallone movie. There’s a new Dredd project gearing up that will hopefully overwrite the last attempt, but you really need to go back to the source to appreciate the impact this guy had on a couple of generations.

So when I saw that @Termight was starting to fabricate actual helmets I was very interested. You may remember I already have some incredibly cool Termight merchandise so even though I’m not a big collector of this kind of thing (or fully understand the need to have a Harry Potter wand in a fucking display case) I knew the finished thing would have had a lot of work put into it. The attention to detail on the badge and buckle are exact so I new something on a larger scale was going to be special. Here’s what happened on Friday morning:

Showing the thing off on Twitter I was immediately christened ‘Old Man Mountain Dredd’ (cheers @stml), but the video and subsequent pics sent a little wave through the 2000AD demographic of my followers. Been a bit busy since then, but here are a few more photos for those of you that don’t think this kind of thing is nuts.

It’s a thing of beauty.

American comics circa 1979:

A generation using Robin as a role model. The horror.

2000AD the same year:

That’s how you grab a kid’s attention. I was seven years old when I started reading 2000AD.

And my favourite panels from The Judge Child Quest the following year:

The Joker was a fucking amateur.

I was in conversation the other day following completion of the Slingers sizzle shoot about why it was we care about the small details of geekery as much as we do. It seemed best summed up with this line:

“Some people visit, but we live in this world. You have Judge Dredd tattooed onto your arm for fuck’s sake…”

Which is a nice way of looking at it. I can’t oversell how big an influence 2000AD has been on me.

Talking to Sean Pertwee over lunch about our mutual love of the British sci fi comic back in the day was something to cherish. That he read the script and immediately recognised the character of GUN as a homage to Rogue Trooper is as key to me as his ‘getting’ the character of Colonel Hall. This stuff is important to me.

Subsequently I opened my iPhone in a bar the other night to find I’d been sent an exclusive peek at some new Judge Dredd and Rogue Trooper art work by current 2000AD artist Paul J Holden (thanks Paul!). This week I’ll be talking to Paul about having a bash at some Slingers artwork. It seems apt as back when the thing was called ‘Ratpackers’ it was very much a 2000AD inspired comic book project. And then on Saturday morning I heard this package crash into the hallway:

I’ve been aware of Termight Replicas for a couple of years at least (if memory serves I managed to talk about them on Londonist back in the day) so it was great to see @Termight in my twitter stream. Wakefield got in touch with me a little while ago and the conversation lead to Saturday’s package. The contents?

That’s a Judge Dredd replica belt buckle based I believe on the artwork of Cliff Robinson. Along side it was this:

Now I’ve had a Judge Dredd badge before. They gave one away with Prog 300 back in 1983 and I kept it in fairly good condition up until about five years ago. Not bad for a free gift made out of plastic and gold paint. But this… well this is a serious piece of comics merchandise.

Full disclaimer. I’m not a big collector of this stuff – half the time I’m just simply baffled by the array of comics related collectibles and the price tags attached to them. And nine times out of ten I’m amazed at how poor the attention to detail is. I’m happy for other people to be happy collecting that stuff, but I’m happier knowing that particular bug passed me by.

These two items though are in a different league. First thing you notice is the weight. These guys are not messing around. They even manage to kick the ass of non comic fans. The detail is brilliant and they’ve immediately both become prize possessions.

But if you have even a passing interest in 2000AD you are going to want something from Wakefield. Turns out he doesn’t do this for a living – he’s just a fan like you and me. I guess the easiest way to say it is that he lives in our world.

Go throw money at him – what you get in return is something you can’t buy anywhere else.

I had an interesting discussion this afternoon about gender in science fiction in relation to one of the new characters in Slingers. What it boiled down to was an issue of the male default role – it’s brought into sharp relief as soon as you start dealing with robots (of all things). The majority of them are perceived as male even if they are not conventionally named as such or even have obvious male anatomy.

For example, both C3PO and RTD2 are male. It seems obvious with 3PO, but R2’s sex is projected on him by those around him. It usually takes a female outfit, name or a set of metal breasts to provide the audience a cue that a robot should be perceived as anything but male. Of course, this is all nonsense because they should be genderless. And yet we live in a time were female robots are being designed and built. It’s lead to a lot of discussion in the last month. Interesting stuff which no doubt I’ll come back to.

Taking a break from writing this afternoon I dipped into some old issues of 2000AD from 1979 and stumbled across this suggestion from the editor:

Haven’t seen any subsequent reader response yet, but two progs along I did spot this letter:

Awesome. I take it that Judge Anderson was just about to leave the drawing board. I couldn’t resist the temptation to skip forward to 1984 and see my favourite Joe Dredd and Casandra Anderson story, City of The Damned, kick off:

There’s a good reason I have Steve Dillon’s work on my arm. To me it was here that 2000AD really grabbed my attention and never really let go.

I wouldn’t be writing a TV show if it wasn’t for this comic. In particular, Slingers came from a direct response to the decline of the 2000AD. The story was originally called Rat Packers and owed a lot more to Robo Hunter and Rogue Trooper in those early drafts than the concept it’s now evolved into.

I’m also glad to say it has a whole bunch of strong female characters and that show #2, De-Tech, has a female lead. I may well have to rename her Casandra…

There’s another issue here about the gender trap of course. Some of my favourite later 2000AD writers and artists started out as readers and went on to influence yet another generation of readers. None of them are women.

I do remember Jan Shepard getting a mention in David Bishop’s Thrill-Power Overload. She was one of the original art editors on the comic. Her assistant at the time, Kevin O’Neill, went on to co-create  Nemesis the Warlock, Marshall Law and The League of Extraordinary Gentleman.

What became of his boss  after she left for Starlord I have no idea…