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[judgeanon]

is anderson a mutant? i thought that was a thing in the 2012 dredd movie because i know origins had the psy devision being built before ww3 happened

Psis are not considered mutants in comic Dredd. Mutants are exclusively created from the radiation left by the nuclear war, while Psis are just naturally like that from birth.

Now, there are several mutants who are psis, but not all psis are mutants.

[judgeanon]

So just finished a better world.

What are the chances that Hernandez and Glenn will get whats coming to them?

I'd say very good. Sinfield got his (and then some). Bachmann got hers. As a comic, Dredd isn't in the habit of lettings its villains get away with it. Especially when they've only had one appearance.

[judgeanon]

When I say Shiva had respect for other peoples personal codes I mean she appreciated anything that she found interesting, including people who did not share her philosophy and world views (because there was NOBODY who shared her philosophy and world views, nobody who was remotely like her).

I always got the sense that she approved greatly of others going through their own personal journeys in order to reach their full potential, and this was doubly true when the end result of them reaching their full potential was having somebody else in the world worth fighting. (See Cass or even Dinah) Then, in the case of Dragon or Vic (on top of that), you kind of get the sense that she’s fond of them. They’re both unconventional enough to be entertaining, and they’re always in dangererous situations (she loves that especially). They’re also both very disciplined, and Richard cares as much as she does about the art of combat. That’s why she likes them, that’s why she hangs around them sometimes. That’s why they’re the closest thing she has to friends.

But she would never want them or anyone to become evil due to her manipulations (though I will stress again, the manipulative part of her personality came from Dixon alone) or due to trauma inflicted by her, because that would be predictable and boring. She doesn’t care for people who are predictable and boring.

Anyways… Most important comic book page for understanding Shiva (to me):

[judgeanon]

This week I did a couple of pieces homaging Cassandra Cain sketches by Marcio Takara.

I depicted Maria Zhang as Cass, and Yvonne Chapman as Lady Shiva.

I took the chance to play with their designs a little. 

My first time ever drawing Lady Shiva !! 

I may or may not do a 3rd one at some point. If I do, I'll add it to this post.

[judgeanon]

Done!

[judgeanon]

Lady Shiva wearing flip flops in the dead of winter in heavy snow, about to kick somebody’s ass so badly he goes from a self-righteous prick to an existential humble little freak for the rest of his days, absolutely insane.

[judgeanon]

I'm late asking this but what was the best and worst of the Progs and Meg in 2023?

I'm late replying but here we go!

For Dredd in the progs, I really enjoyed the short stories. THE NIGHT SHIFTER, SHRINE, FLUSHER and DISCIPLES OF DEATH were all favorites, although I admit that last one was mostly because of the cute Scottish goth girl.

Other than Dredd, I liked THE OUT, THE ORDER, DURHAM RED, the BATTLE ACTION crossover thing, FERAL AND FOE, DEADWORLD and BLADERS. I especially liked ROGUE TROOPER (I'm a sucker for Ennis), VOID RUNNERS (Boo Cook keeps getting weirder and I love it) and AZIMUTH (gorgeous art, intriguing story, and one of those classic 2000AD "You thought it was a new series but NOOOO!" twists that I really dig).

I didn't really like ENEMY EARTH, I think the art just doesn't fit the premise. And JOE PINEAPPLES should've been by all accounts a cool fun heavy metal last goodbye, but it turned into a weird meandering bunch of nonsense (with some cowardly anti-vax shit thrown in for good measure). LOWBORN HIGH and PORTALS AND BLACK GOO both had the same problem for me: strong, very British premises that don't go as far with the Britishness as I'd like them to. And DEVIL'S RAILROAD, I really wanted to like it but it just kinda lost steam very early on.

The big mehhhh of the year was the end of HERSHEY, though. I tried my best to meet it halfway and to its credit it did deliver some cool panels and nice pages, but in my eyes, it really squandered the last chance for Hershey as a character to present her side of her relationship with Dredd, to leave him with any kind of nugget of character development. It didn't do nearly enough with what I think is years and years of truly compelling relationship work and all the great Simon Fraser art in the world can't fix that.

I still bought a print of that one cover tho'.

For the MEG, I liked almost everything. STORM WARNING, SURFER, DREADNOUGHTS, LAWLESS (fan-fucking-tastic last chapters), MEGA CITY 2099, all good stuff. I also enjoyed the shorter Dredds in the second half of the year, like RATINGS WAR and FITTING THE DESCRIPTION, but ONE-EYED JACKS... I dunno, neat premise but it went on a bit too long and wasn't super exciting either. Didn't really grab me. Same with Dark Judges.

That said, the most important 2000AD thing in 2023 for me was not in the prog or in the meg. It was here:

Molcher's I AM THE LAW is a monumental book, one of the most thorough if not THE most thorough look at Dredd in its context. It's also heavy as all drokk, a real gutwrencher of a book, the kind of shit you can't read more than one and a half chapter without getting utterly depressed, ravenously angry, or both. It's a bleak, tough book but also a necessary one. That it's an official Rebellion product, to me, serves as a line in the sand, a very explicit statement about how they perceive Dredd. In a time where companies are running over themselves to claim their works are "not political" and "only want to entertain", Rebellion publishing Molcher's titanic work and advertising it next to their Case Files collections is something worthy of respect.

(Also, I may be a little biased on account of being in the Special Thanks for the book...)

[judgeanon]

It’s me and my irrational hatred for Robin vol 1 against the world.

[judgeanon]

turned proto-avril into avril-avril

[judgeanon]

One sec I need to talk about Shiva.

Lady Shiva was introduced in Richard Dragon: Kung Fu Fighter in the 70s. She was a traveling martial artist hellbent on getting revenge for her sister, who she believed had been killed by Richard Dragon. She lured Dragon into a trap, revealed herself as Carolyn's sister, and tried to fight him to the death. Once she realized that Dragon had nothing to do with it, that Cravat and The Swiss (unimportant villain characters, they killed Carolyn) had been the ones to kill her sister, she helped Dragon defeat the villain (by giving him her shiny belt so he could redirect the beam of a deadly laser that was being pointed at them while they were fighting, don’t even ask) and Richard Dragon and Lady Shiva became allies, friends even. Dragon convinced her it would be a waste to kill Cravat and told her that he had killed the Swiss himself. She accepted this. They shook hands. This all took place over the course of one issue of Richard Dragon: Kung Fu Fighter. It took ONE issue for Shiva to go from antagonist to ally. She then tagged along with Richard because she liked the adventures he got up to, the danger, the challenge, and the thrill of it. Richard even called her later on when he needed help on a different adventure. What I’m saying is she didn’t start out as evil.

Okay, so what do we know about Shiva so far? She’s a thrill-seeking peripatetic martial artist of great capacity and skill. She cared about her sister. She’s willing to kill. She’s an adventurer and a valuable ally. Great. Moving on.

The Question 1987 features THE Lady Shiva. A character capable of both ruthlessness and mercy, cruelty and tenderness. A curious, thrill-seeking, teasing character. She was vicious and nonpartisan and she was working as a mercenary for hire. But she was an ally, even when she was beating the shit out of Vic. She loved the O Sensei. You can tell she even cared about Vic in her way. I’m not saying she had a heart of gold, or that there weren’t tropes she fell into. She wasn’t and there were. But she was a fairly well-rounded, morally gray character that played a key role wherever she showed up. She was closer to a non-traditional anti-hero than anything else. Idfk, just go read The Question.

I read a tvtropes article describing Lady Shiva as “an archetypical Dragon Lady, complete with sinister motivations and exotic sex appeal,” which… she isn’t. She subverted this trope in several ways actually. She never had “sinister motivations” until Chuck Dixon got his grubby little hands on her. Her motivations were pretty neutral. She had her own set of principles, she was very morally gray. She wanted to travel and fight worthy opponents on her adventures for the thrill of it. She seemed to operate mostly on personal whims, and on the basis of building worthy rivals, out of love for the art of combat. And she didn’t use her sex appeal for shit (until the Richard Dragon reboot comic kms), she didn’t tolerate sexual advances or objectification. She just WAS NOT a conniving temptress, I don't understand where this misperception came from (but I do blame Dixon, I’ll get to that in a sec).

This same article states that she began as the arch-nemesis of Richard Dragon? Unless you’re accepting the version of the two of them from the very short lived Richard Dragon 2004 series as their canonical relationship then NO she didn’t. But I digress.

There was a marked change in the way Lady Shiva was written by the time Robin (1991) came out, this is where her character starts to lean towards the Dragon Lady trope imo. She also weirdly, and maybe arguably, leans more into traditional femininity while at the same time being written as more wild and uncontrollable. Chuck Dixon seemed to fundamentally misunderstand Lady Shiva as a character. He turned her (sometimes ironic) disdain for brutes who wouldn’t last a second in a fight with her into typical womanly haughtiness. He turned her capacity for ruthlessness into bloodlust. And he made her into a conniving, somewhat deranged, villainous woman, tempting our young hero towards evil (oh my!). Listen, I’m not saying she ever had a heart of gold, but Dixon changed core character traits (namely her respect for other people's personal code) to turn her into a villain.

“Kill him, little bird. Kill him and become a predator…Aren’t you my weapon? My instrument of death? Say you are mine.” Like?? She would not fucking say that, respectfully.

That isn’t even to mention Richard Dragon (2004) where Dixon turned Shiva’s relationship with Dragon into a resentful, sexually charged dick-measuring contest.

Even so, I don’t entirely hate Shiva as a villain, especially in Batgirl (2000). Pucketts Shiva is a bit less egregious imo. So she’s a passively suicidal evil mentor-figure who wants Cass to be a killer like her. Whatever, I can get on board with that I guess. I can enjoy it because I love Cass and this is a great comic run. But the retcon that–Listen, THE RETCON THAT IS SHIVA’S SISTER BEING KILLED BY DAVID CAIN, SHIVA DESCRIBING THIS AS FREEING, SAYING SHE’S GRATEFUL, THEN AGREEING TO GET PREGNANT WITH HIS CHILD IN RETURN?? This boils my blood. Shiva, who was introduced as somebody who cared about getting revenge for her dead sister. Shiva, for whom freedom and autonomy were core character traits. That Shiva?? That Shiva is relieved her sister is dead and is willing to carry her sister's killer's child to term?? What the fuck?

I hate it. I don’t understand it. Why would you take a complex character who makes it difficult to tell who she really cares about, and flatten them into somebody incapable of love?

Okay I’m done, this is getting too long and I don’t even want to get started on New 52 era Shiva. I don’t have a conclusion, I’m just annoyed. Thanks for reading. The Question (1987) is NOT a perfect comic but if you’re interested in Shiva please please please check it out, it’s very moody and philosophical, noir-esque. Also Chuck Dixon suck my dick.

[judgeanon]

Hi, I was wondering (mainly since I'm still semi new to 2000 AD stuff) do you have a quick summary of the lore around Judge Raul? I picked up a prog a few months ago with him in it where Dredd'N'Friends are visiting a mega city in Africa but I didn't get much context on the Hulking Crime Robot walking around

I'm drawing a blank on Raul specifically, but one of Chief Judge Hershey's last major acts before her death was the launch of the Mechanismo Mark 3 program, to beef up judge numbers after Day of Chaos and other ensuing catastrophes. While Dredd and others expected the project to fail like the last two, the Mark 3's turned out to be a roaring success, and are still being used regularly alongside human judges.

Anyway, you can read all about the origins of the new Mechanismos in the Judge Dredd: Harvey story arc!

[judgeanon]

Modded the little man into AC7. The lieutenant is literally my gateway to skin modding wth. Also is there a columbo discord?

[judgeanon]

[judgeanon]

Know your place... which is enjoying our webcomic!

[judgeanon]

Thoughts on the Rogue Trooper movie? In particular the decision to make it CG rather than live action?

I'm excited! Sure, live action would be great, but I'd rather have a cool CG movie than no movie at all, and since they're using Unreal and stuff, I get the feeling those were the options available. Plus, there's that tweet from the main actor fella that implied that it was more than voice acting, so there may have been some mocap going on in there as well.

Anyway, it's cool. I hope it's great and I hope it leads to more 2000AD movies in future!

[judgeanon]

have you ever heard of heavy metal geomatrix or any hm game?

I've heard of that one and FAKK 2 but I haven't played either yet. It's... a little crazy that they exist at all, and from what I've seen they're not terribly good, but Geomatrix in particular is interesting in how it tries to translate Bisley's designs to 3D.

[judgeanon]

Thumbnail sketches for some upcoming private commissions.