Comics

23rd November 2023

Prog 2359 brings the saga of Chief Judge Barbara Hershey to a close with the finale of Judge Dredd: Poison, where Rob Williams and PJ Holden give us a resolution to the murder mystery that’s been playing out. So, whodunnit? And why?

Judge Hershey’s life and legacy stretches back some 40+ years in the annals of 2000 AD. We’ve seen her introduction and her rise to the rank of Chief Judge – not once but twice. And we’ve seen both triumph and failure in equal measure throughout her life. And now, with the conclusion of Judge Dredd: Poison, her saga comes to its end as Dredd wraps up the investigation into her death.

A few years ago, she died for the first time, poisoned by an alien virus, only to secretly cheat death to do one last act – undo her great wrong of letting Judge Smiley get away with too much. In the recent Hershey series by Rob Williams and Simon Fraser, we saw a still dying Hershey struggle to hold off the effects of the virus until she’d purged her world of Enceladus and she could finally die knowing she’d righted those wrongs.

And that death came to Hershey in 2000 AD Prog 2349, cold and sharp, brutal even. However, there were still questions to be answered in the aftermath… exactly who was it who infected her and why did they want her dead? Which is just what Dredd’s been finding out through the eight parts of Poison that began in Prog 2351 and ended this week with Prog 2359. It was a Dredd murder mystery, MC-1’s finest determined to get to the truth.

So – whodunnit? And why? Well, the best people to ask would be writer Rob Williams and artist PJ Holden… so we did. But fear not – for those of you waiting to read the whole tale we’ve kept this one spoiler-free for you!

Judge Dredd: Poison came to its conclusion in Prog 2359 with Dredd finally uncovering just who’s responsible for the death of Hershey.

Across the eight parts, you played out an old-fashioned murder mystery, a whodunnit even, with elements of a classic quest sort of story, taking Dredd across multiple locations. But, for those who maybe haven’t read it yet and are waiting till it’s ending, can you explain to everyone just what Poison is all about?

ROB WILLIAMS: Somebody poisoned and eventually murdered ex-Chief Judge Hershey. Poison is Judge Dredd attempting to hunt down the killer.

And why the decision to go this murder mystery route? What was the attraction for you in doing a proper detective tale with all that entails?

RW: I’ve done a bunch of more ‘action’ focussed Dredd stories. I thought it’d be fun to do a Detective tale. After all, he’s a Cop. Also, I bloody-mindedly thought it’d be interesting to tell a long-form Dredd tale where he doesn’t shoot anybody for a change.

Yes, there’s that moment in Episode 4 where Domino gets to deliver that great line to Dredd…

How did the story come together in the end and what was the seed to this one? How long have you had it in mind?

RW: Well, writing Hershey’s slow-protracted death over four series’ due to the effects of the Alien Pathogen she contracted – that was obviously the seed for Poison.

But I think it was Matt Smith who said to me ‘you know, we’ve never told the story of who poisoned Hershey.’ As John Wagner wrote Hershey being poisoned off-world I just assumed that John would tell that tale at some point, but Matt spoke to John and came back saying he was happy for me to tell it.

There’s certainly plenty of threads in here that I assume you took great delight in planting – all the different suspects in Hershey’s murder, all the red herrings along the way?

RW: It’s a murder-mystery. You have to have a few suspects and a few red herrings. I knew I wanted it to be a road movie for Dredd across different parts of the Dreddworld.

Hershey contracted the virus off world so start there. Plus there was a resonance to that as Dredd first encountered Hershey on the Judge Child mission. Then onto East-Meg 2. Back to Mega-City One. Into The Cursed Earth and then finally… you come home. Most murders are domestic ones…

Okay, so why and how did you decide on the eventual villain of the piece, the man who killed Hershey?

[Okay, here we really have to edit Rob heavily as he’s giving the game away over and over again…]

RW: A number of reasons. But really. what █████████ had suffered was so traumatic. First being ██████████████, then █████████ and the appalling suffering there, then being tortured and ████████████ there. He was always a character driven by vanity. Hershey and Dredd ████████████ where you can’t even imagine what he went through. He’s immensely bitter. Wants someone to blame…

This was something we hadn’t seen for the longest time in Dredd, a good old-fashioned murder mystery, Agatha Christie done through the lens of Mega-City and Dredd – a proper whodunnit.

But there’s also a Hitchcock vibe in here as well, with the sense of constant motion, the constantly changing locales, the sheer speed of it all. It’s almost North by Northwest with a sci-fi twist in many ways, wouldn’t you say?

RW: It’s got a Hitchcock vibe to it, I guess. But without those big classic set pieces. I guess there was a longer version where we could have done that. Eight episodes is quite a lot for a Dredd story but this all became somewhat tight. Hopefully, that means there’s no fat on the bones.

Each week we were drawn further into the web of conspiracies and mystery. Each week seemed to throw up another potential suspect – and plenty of red herrings along the way of course, just as any good whodunnit should have.

As a writer, was there something of a delight in laying the trail, giving the reader the clues, planting the false paths, that sort of thing?

RW: I quite enjoyed stirring the pot with PJ Maybe being a possibility and what that did to Dredd’s trust in his own judgement. He loses that and he’s nothing. Maybe has come back from the dead before so why not this time? And I figured long-time readers would have a reaction to the possibility that PJ Maybe was behind it, either good or bad. That’s fine, I knew what I was doing there.

You can say it was a cynical bit of writing. It probably was. But I knew it was an effective mid-point beat for the story. It raised the stakes, I felt. But the actual murderer being PJ Maybe wasn’t something that ever interested me. It was always a misdirect.

Along with the whodunnit aspect of it, it was also a return to a good old Dredd quest, that almost road movie feel of Judge Child et al, with Dredd taking the grande tour and revisiting a few of his and Hershey’s old haunts along the way. Was this more a function of the storytelling or a way to pay homage to all the great quest Dredd tales of the past?

RW: It was Dredd following Hershey’s life as well as the case. She was in space with him on the Judge Child quest, she was part of the crew that ended the Apocalypse War, part of the Mutie Rights furore they encountered in settlements in The Cursed Earth. He sees trails of her everywhere.

Hershey was probably the closest thing to a friend that Dredd has ever had – you can argue for Anderson, Giant(s) I guess. Hershey’s dead. This is, in his own glacial way, Dredd dealing with grief. Seeing her footsteps everywhere he goes on this case.

One thing that always comes through in your work is an ability to seemingly get inside Dredd’s head. Here we saw a really driven Dredd but also one trying and, at times, failing to cope with the self-doubts that came midway through his investigation when he just couldn’t seem to give up the PJ Maybe connection.

It was fascinating to see Dredd’s fixation and the loss of his control, watching the self-doubt creep in. For a man who’s so often gone with his gut, to suddenly find that gut reaction might be wrong is shown to be a major thing for Dredd. The way that doubt creeps in and takes hold – it’s another less obvious aspect of the title if I’m right?

RW: Yeah, there’s a line in there somewhere about doubt spreading like Poison. Pretty much all Dredd has to tether him (and his rage) is The Law and his Gut (capital letter on purpose where Joe is concerned). His own Judgement.

In terms of being a Judge, he’s kind of a savant. But if he can’t trust his Gut anymore, he’s lost… That’s what has kept him alive and thriving all these years. And if PJ Maybe can be still alive and behind all this… when he saw Maybe explode in front of him… And if Dredd goes, you feel Mega-City One and the Judges will fall behind him. He’s the totem that keeps this creaking house of totalitarian cards upright. It’s a double meaning in the title.

Now obviously Dredd is Dredd and any unsolved murder will eat at him. But this had a more personal air right from the start.

What’s your take on the relationship of Dredd and Hershey, seeing as you’ve been heavily involved with Hershey for quite a while now?

RW: Dredd doesn’t really do ‘friends’ but there’s those he trusts, those he’s been through the battles with. Hershey was there for a very long time. They butted heads a lot when she was Chief Judge, and he ultimately took her down and humiliated her in doing so.

That was a brutal defenestration and in writing the Hershey series, she spent a lot of her final years feeling angry and bitter towards him for that. It’s like a lot of family relationships. You can love someone and feel anger and resentment towards them at the same time.

I think Hershey’s one of the few Judges who Dredd saw as an equal. She died. The murder of any Chief Judge would fill Dredd with a burning desire for justice. It’s a cliched movie tag line but “this one is personal.”

Any future ramifications for Dredd in this one – it was his final act of friendship or duty towards Hershey after all? Will the emotions resonate through future tales or is this absolutely, finally, the end now? Have you neatly tied a bow around Hershey’s tale?

RW: Oh, I think so. This is the end of the Hershey tale, and Hershey shut down the ramifications of Smiley’s actions abroad and the Enceladus Energy. I’ll be leaving those threads alone from now on.

Hershey was one of the most beloved of Judge Hershey of Dredd characters and you certainly played a huge role in all that. You’ve really guided her tale in the three Hershey volumes and capped it all off here in Poison. What were your thoughts on her character – did she get under your skin at all?

RW: Any character you write for so long gets under your skin. One of the main points with the Hershey tale was to ask the question she was feeling herself – OK, I was a Judge, I was possibly the best Judge in the City. That’s over now. I have a limited amount of time left. Who the fuck am I if I’m no longer a Judge?

She, quite naturally I think, went through periods of great pain, anger, resentment. She came very, very close to tipping over into being a criminal in her quest for Justice. In fact, at the end of Book Two of Hershey, I think she does step over that line, which Frank calls her on. It’s revenge. But she pulls back from that point on. And eventually comes back to a place of structure in life that she can find something close to peace in. She has her last moment with Dredd where she gets to tell him that he was a dick to her (in better dialogue than that). She gets to see the City she loves one last time. And then, in her final days, she chooses to try and help the citizens in Antarctic City. And in Frank, Joe the Dog, and Juninho, she gets a little family. I liked Barbara Hershey. She tried to be a good person.

What was it about her as a character that called out to you to give her this ending – why did you need to tell her tale?

RW: I don’t know I needed to tell her tale. But I felt I’d been rather cruel to her at the end of The Small House and I felt for a character who was always in the wake of Dredd’s actions. As all the background characters will be. The strip’s called Judge Dredd…

So I wanted to write a story that gave her some agency of her own. It could’ve been just a kickass Long Walk tale with Hershey as some sub-Black Widow figure, I guess, but it ended up being about ‘how does a person deal with their own death and their race being run. I turned 50 at some point when writing it, my mum and a good friend died, so have fun with your subtext readings.

The Hershey series was very different for 2000 AD in that it was all about seeing an older character’s redemptive arc. It strikes me that you put a lot of your feelings towards Hershey into that? And now, with Poison, it feels like you’ve come to it with the idea of doing right by her.

RW:I think trying to do right by her was always the intention of the series. But with the final book of Hershey: The Cold In The Bones, especially. I didn’t want her to go out raging and bitter. I wanted to allow her some closure. I’m very proud of the final episode especially, I think Simon Fraser and I did some very strong work there. It’s a fitting ending for the character, I think.

Going from Poison to Dredd and Dreddworld more generally – how do you navigate around the continuity inherent in something like Poison whilst still keeping it easy for a new reader to jump into and get the story without knowing all the history behind it?

RW: You do your research and some back-reading, but you ultimately trust that The Mighty Tharg is going to call you if you stray from continuity too far. I worried a bit that digging back into the ████████, Dan Francisco, PJ Maybe history would just lose any newer readers, but I try and gracefully exposition our way through a few of those threads as we progress.

You can’t really tell a story with a whodunnit based on a character’s life without going back into that character’s life. 

We’re now at the stage where Dredd is a group effort with plenty of great writers all playing their parts in creating the lore. And of course, John Wagner’s still heavily involved. He may not be writing too many Dredds nowadays, but everything plays back into Wagner’s storytelling.

How do you all coordinate things? Is it now a case of getting together and putting down your flags into parts of Dredd’s world, claiming that territory?

RW: It’s all very organic with us all telling the stories we want to tell, but it all goes through Matt Smith. Matt’s the nexus. If something big is coming Matt tells us, if a story point treads on the toes of another story by a different writer, Matt tells us.

We don’t do a big Dredd’s Writers’ Room. Although I think that might be a useful exercise once a year or something. But yeah, all Dredd roads flow through Matt.

[At this point, we were joined by PJ Holden, as he’d pleased Tharg by getting all his pages for that hour in and was due a moment’s break.]

As for Dredd and Dreddworld, what keeps it all fresh and new for you every time you come back to it?

PJ HOLDEN: Well, for me it’s the prospect that this time I might get it right! I’ve always felt every Dredd job could be my last and if I’m lucky enough to get another go at Dredd especially, I’ll see if I can figure out how to do it better.

I feel like I’ve got Dredd the character where I want him about 90% of the time, and now there’s the rest of Dredd’s world to get exactly how I want to draw it. And I think I’m about 1% there, so lots of ways to go.

RW: For me I think it’s a mix of my having loved Dredd as a 12-13 year old, so there’s that nostalgia kick. I still sometimes catch myself and think “holy shit, writing Judge Dredd for 2000 AD.” But that wouldn’t be enough if it wasn’t an enjoyable experience, and it nearly always is.

Matt Smith allows us a lot of creative freedom, to tell the type of stories in the way we want to tell them. We’re not micro-managed in a way that DC and Marvel editors work. And I, for the most part, get to work with artists I very much want to work with. PJ on Poison, Henry Flint on a bunch of my Dredd stories, Chris Weston on the Judge Pin and Sensitive-Klegg stories. It’s a treat working with these artists, genuinely. All that keeps me excited to write Dredd.

One great thing about Dredd that’s always been there is the visual variety that we see from artist to artist. It strikes me that we’re in another golden age of Dredd artist, many of whom you have the pleasure to work with.

Rob, always interesting to hear the writer’s views on what the artists have done with their story. So, having seen PJ’s work and the work of Peter Doherty on colours, what’s your take?

Feel free to lavish praise on PJ – he won’t take it, won’t like it, but he’ll just have to accept it!

PJH: Rob knows, that, while I will, in print say hush and nonsense to anything he writes about me, secretly this is inflating my ego to unbearable extents and I will bring it up anytime we talk in the future, and there’s a good chance when my kids ask me what’s for dinner I might bellow “DON’T YOU KNOW WHO I AM?” (very real danger they’ll think old age has kicked in)

RW: PJ’s a rather brilliant storyteller, I think, first and foremost. He has an open, energetic style that’s so attractive and easy to read.

He’s a friend so there is a lot of back-and-forth conversation on a story like this, which makes it all a fun experience. He’ll send me breakdowns and I’ll offer thoughts. There’ll be an odd panel where I’ll suggest a different approach.

Mostly I have to tie him down and curtail his urge to draw giant monsters. In the plot there was a fight scene at The Alchemist’s lair where Dredd had to dispatch a juvenile T-Rex but when I came to script there wasn’t room and I dropped it. I think PJ was a bit disappointed so he snuck a couple of Baby T-Rex fighting in the background of one panel. 

And for both of you, while we’re talking about artwork, we have to mention the colour work of Peter Doherty here. What would you both like to say about what he’s brought to Poison?

RW: This was very much a noir-ish grounded Dredd, so I wanted a colourist who could deliver that and thought of Pete. He’s a terrific colourist and artist in his own right, is Pete. I think he did a great job here.

We talked a bit about the cinematography and tone of the story before starting out, which was useful I think. Mostly on comics the art comes back and it’s coloured and the writer has no say. But this one… theme, tone, a couple of little flourishes – the recurring motif of pure white (for the truth) in some panels. We talked all this stuff through going in.

PJH: Well, first let me say I’m a huge fan of Pete’s work, it’s always a little weird when an artist you consider iconic ends up colouring your work. So I think Pete has added a sheen of realism to what my normally slightly excessive cartoony is, and it’s exactly what’s needed in a strip like this.

Oh, absolutely – So let’s take a moment to appreciate the work of Peter Doherty on colours for Poison – whether it’s the relatively bright yet desolate scenes from East-Meg Two or the perfectly ‘downbeat pallet’, as Pete described it, for Mega-City One, he’s brought so much to Poison…

PJ, when you come to Dredd, what’s your approach?

PJH: Read the script, figure out what I might need to draw, do a bit of research if required and then start drawing. Constant forward momentum, otherwise I end up questioning myself over and over.

But I knew the tone Rob was going for so I tried to match that, trying to make it an interesting visual journey over all of these different locations. I really want to make Dredd’s world feel bigger and more alien than we sometimes see it, at the same time that’s counterbalanced by this, in many ways being an intimate tale – it’s not big alien invasions, it’s a hunter going over a cold trail.

And was there a particular difference in doing Poison to previous Dredd stories you’ve done?

PJH: I try and treat every single Dredd as I feel it needs to be treated, so I’m not deliberately thinking “Oh this should look nothing to this last thing” – it really comes down to the script and figuring out what the mood of it is, and whether I can get away with silly stuff or does it need hard shadows/moody tone. Really it’s what I love about Dredd is each story sets its own mood.

How would you describe your own style, both generally and in terms of this latest Dredd for you?

PJH: I think… rock solid storytelling with characters made from granite and a tendency to go inappropriately cartoony? I think that would be a description I’d be happy enough with, flaws and all.

I’ve always been fascinated about where that line between too cartoony and realism is, realism seems to fall down to how a thing is rendered – so as goofy as my Dredd would be in real life his rendering is fairly real? chunky? rock like? But it all takes a back seat to making sure the storytelling is done well (or as well as I’m able to do so at the time).

I suspect my interests in the cartoony/realism debate stem from Dredd, Steve Dillon’s cartoony, light rendering over naturalistic art, Bolland’s hyper extreme realistic rendering over somewhat cartoony faces, McMahon’s full bore cartooning with incredible handling of black/white for weight. All of those things feed in. (I am prepared to be corrected on all of those descriptions, this stuff is all very fluid)

One very noticeable and very nice artistic touch, particularly in those first few episodes was the near full page first pages that you included in many of the episodes.

For example, the very opening shot is one of Hershey standing tall over the Hall of Justice, and then there’s that simply beautiful opening shot of Poison episode 2 of Dredd just standing there looking up at the stars, a contemplative Dredd…

… and then Rob pricks that particular bubble and brings us right back down to earth…

RW: That page was a guilty pleasure. It’s effectively a gag. A splash page setup and then a payoff. But I thought it was funny, so it stayed.

Or there’s episode 3 with Domino in front of the East-Meg 2 buildings, immediately and perfectly setting the tone of it all. The buildings look completely different, the light is different, we’ve gone from the darkness of episodes 1 and 2 into bright, snow-covered Sov territory.

Can you talk us through a few of the artistic and stylistic decisions that went into Poison?

PJH: Well, first, those are all largely “as per script” so entirely Rob’s doing. With the Hershey, I wanted stereotypical Meg inhabitants with all their normal over-the-top silliness, to act as a counter to what Dredd was doing and thinking.

Man, I redrew that Hershey statue a few times – I just couldn’t hit the “action-packed but also a statue” note that I wanted, until my friend sent me a photo he’d taken of his partner in Hershey cosplay that was perfect, and I stole the pose – it’s cool, they know!)

PJH: Dredd with his back, another problematic pose until I ended up taking a photo of the back of my McMahon Judge Dredd statuette and using that for reference.

And on East Meg 2 – well, it’s hard because you want a reader to instantly understand where you are on a page like that but at the same time you’re trying not to rely too much on stereotypes, in the end the stereotypes win because clarity in storytelling is the important point.

One problem (or maybe a bonus for you) is that it’s a tale with at least five different settings – MC-1, off-world colony, East-Meg 2, back to MC-1, Cursed Earth, and then ending down underground – was it a problem or a bonus – and how did you approach all the changes in locale in your art?

PJH: I took it as a great opportunity to draw a whole bunch of different places! You never dwell long enough in one spot for the continuity to get in the way (“Oh wait, last issue we had two solar panels on this roof!”) and you got to invent whole new locations.

I was going through a little phase of trying to make some of these locations feel grand – and like they’d belong on different sci-fi book covers. Rob had wanted something more majestic for the location markers, but in the end the page count/panel count made that much harder to be effective so we sort of scrapped it.

PJ, can you give us a breakdown of how you’re working now?

PJH: It’s all digital now, so get ready for some boring computer talk!

Pretty simple, read the script (paying attention more to dialogue than anything), set up a new clip studio Ex multi page document at print size x1.4 (because that’s the size I used to draw it on paper) create a document with a few extra pages at the end, use those to create the layouts for the strip.

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PJH: I have a little auto action that just creates a simple grid I can use to draw my layouts over. Then I’ll reread the script (now the focus is on the panel descriptions and who gets to talk first), this time making notes on the layout pages (I say notes, I mean I’m drawing the page but at “thumbnail size” – really about 2.5inchs x 1inch, but it’s not terribly detailed) and then once I’ve done that, the work starts proper.

I’ll drop the thumbnail layout of the page on to the page itself and then enlarge it, run an action that basically sets the page up for me to work on (it renames layers, and does some other things I find useful) then sit with the script again and draw it, this read I’m paying attention to the panel description first, I’ll sort of sculpt out the page on one layer, making sure I know where everyone and everything is, simplifying some things.

Then I’ll drop a new layer for proper pencils, and draw much tighter pencils here. Once done, I’ll create an inking layer, turn my clean pencils to a light blue and start inking.

Inking at the moment involves using a clip studio pen that has a slightly gnarly feel of a dip pen, and I’ll draw pretty much everything in that, maybe going back to add some textures of thumbprint or splatter (so much cleaner doing that digitally than with ink).

Check it, make sure it reads ok, then move on to the next page. Every few pages I’ll send to Rob to make sure I haven’t wandered too far off script, and once done I’ll send it on to the Mighty One.

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PJH: That all said, I think I drew the first two episodes in pen and ink on paper, and a few other pages scattered throughout (Dredd staring at the stars for one). Partly because I miss the feel of paper and drawing something you like on paper is hands down 100 times better than doing exactly the same drawing digitally and partly because, well, let’s be honest, I’m sure I can sell some of those pages!

(I crawl back to digital because my eyesight isn’t great and digital drawing is much, much easier to do and faster…)

>>>>>>>>>>

Finally, what do we have to look forward from you, both in 2000 AD and elsewhere?

PJH: I’m currently doing some Devlin Waugh for Alěs Kot and the Megazine, I’ve finished a one off and working on a six parter (I think it’s six anyway). Deadline is some way off though, so no idea when you’ll see it.

I’ve a weekly webcomic, Null Space, written by a who’s-who of sci-fi and genre fiction writers and it’s at www.pauljholden.com/series/null-space/

I’ve also been writing a monthly sci-fi/fantasy zine called A4 – a single sheet of paper you can print out and fold into a little stand with a cover and seven pieces of nano-fiction, and it’s at www.pauljholden.com/series/a4

Oh yes, Null Space is a fine, fine thing. Great writers, excellent artwork, incredible tales, really pushing the idea of what short comic fiction can do into all the right places. Highly recommended to you. And A4 is absolutely fascinating stuff as well. Yep, he’s a fine talent is that PJ.

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PJH: And readers of the Megazine will probably already know I’ve two graphic novels out at the moment, Bad Magic, a Skulduggery Pleasant graphic novel with Derek Landy, and Fantastic Folklore collecting the folklore comics I did with John Reppion on Twitter, massively expanded with essays for each story – a perfect stocking filler!

That’s right, you can find double the Holden this month in the pages of Megazine issue 462, where there’s articles and interviews with PJ on his absolutely essential Fascinating Folklore, with John Reppion and his work adapting Skullduggary Pleasant. Both of them are perfect presents to anyone you may know, including yourself. Now, if only there was a big present giving holiday around the corner, eh?  

As for Rob and what’s coming next, well by this stage he’d been dragged back to the script droid pens by one of Tharg’s productivity encouragement mechs. Something about having at least two huge new series to write before he’d be allowed the extremely generous 30-minute Christmas break this year. But fear not, we’ll tell you all about them in a moment!

And as for Dredd in the future, there is that one particular strand of Poison that’s still to be explored… there’s this from episode 4, Prog 2353. There’s a deal that Domino made, a deal with a dangerous man. Anyone want to take bets that Rob won’t be imagining just what he can do with that particular little threat that’s been left dangling, just waiting to be pulled?

Thank you so much to both Rob and PJ for taking the time and trouble of chatting. Judge Dredd: Poison really is rather brilliant Dredd that you should all be reading. You can get hold of it in Progs 2351-2355 and 2357-2359. Catch that final episode in 2000 AD Prog 2359 this week from everywhere that thrill-power is sold, including the 2000 AD web shop!

As far as more from both Rob and PJ here at 2000AD.com, can we point you in the direction of a few interviews and Covers Uncovered pieces?

From Rob – a hell of a lot of Dredd interviews! – The Small House (2017, with Henry Flint), Unearthed (2019, with Chris Weston and Patrick Goddard), The Hard Way (2021, with Arthur Wyatt and Jake Lynch), JD The Musical (2021, with Chris Weston), The Pitch (2022, with Arthur Wyatt and Boo Cook), Special Relationship (2022, with Patrick Goddard), and Buratino Must Die (2022, with Henry Flint).

We talked all things Hershey with Rob and Simon Fraser in an interview here and a Thrill-Cast here. He talks Roy of the Rovers graphic novels here and the Rocky of the Rovers strip inside the Tammy & Jinty Special here.

As for PJ, he talks Noam Chimpsky’s A Terrifically Disturbing Adventure! here (2021) and we’ve interviewed him twice on his Department K series – here and here. For more of his art, he’s featured several times on our Covers Uncovered feature – Prog 2178, Prog 2221, Prog 2234, Prog 2301, Prog 2308, . Megazine 420.

And as far as what to look forward to from Dredd and Rob Williams in 2024 is concerned, we had a couple of very exciting bits of news coming out of Thought Bubble…

Rob’s teaming up with Arthur Wyatt and Henry Flint for Judge Dredd: A Better World, continuing Judge Maitland’s interest in funding education and social reform. Would it actually improve Mega-City One if the Judge Department were de-funded as a result?

And then, a second bit of Williams Dredd announced – Judge Dredd: Rend & Tear with Tooth & Claw with the art of RM Guera (Scalped) and Giulia Brusco (The Goddamned) will be a multi-part survivor horror story where things go badly wrong for Dredd in the snowy wilderness of the territory which once was called Alaska.

And finally, those process pieces from PJ, printed full size and in all their glory!

Poison episode 1, Prog 2351, layouts for the whole episode, then page 1 pencils, inks…

Now episode 2, Prog 2352, layouts for the episode and then page 1 pencils and inks… including all that ‘toothbrush splatter and gnarly old brushes’…

And finally, episode 3, page 1, Prog 2353 – pencils and inks…