2022 ADVENT CALENDAR

[Colin YNWA]

After Jess Bradley, as ever read more Phoenix - The Weekly Story Comic if you don't get what the heck this is all about!

[JohnW]

Here is something else that I found in the literary equivalent of that drawer filled with loose screws, stray Allen keys, and instruction leaflets for long-defunct appliances. It has all the hallmarks of something that was cooked up during a long walk while muttering to myself.
I believe that this subject was the basis of a lengthy thread in the long long-ago, but that was before my time, and whatcha gonna do?
So fix that black armband to your Christmas jumper, cue mournful sleigh bells, and consider...

Great 2000AD Death Scenes (incomplete and in no particular order)

We'll start with Spikes Harvey Rotten, whose blaze of glory was mawkish as hell but was perfectly suited to the tone of Pat Mills's story. The Cursed Earth demanded a sacrifice, and there was no surprise that it had to be Spikes. The pathos was enhanced by McMahon's art. An ugly ragged man went down in the dust, affirming with his last breath that he wasn't just some punk.

Judge Cal died like a proper comics villain, just before he hit the button on his big doomsday machine. There he was, grandiose and insane to the last. His megalomaniacal delusion had reached such heights that there was no way to go but down, and he knew it. He planned a great pharaonic end to his reign and, if he didn't get to take everyone with him, he was accompanied on his last fall by his most faithful devotees of the SJS.
To pile on the poetry, the mad chief judge died by plummeting from the top of the Statue of Judgement, dragged over the edge by the mortally wounded Fergee, a wretched outcast from the city that Cal sought to perfect. God brought low by a beast, and all drawn by Ron Smith.

Also by Smith is the sad death of Junior Angel, reduced in an instant from gleeful murderer to lost child. He thought he was the baddest man that ever lived, but then he ran into Judge Dredd.

While I'm hacking my way through the earlier Dredds in chronological order, I am honour- bound to mention the otherwise insignificant Judge Souster, who died like a judge with a stub gun in his hands. Neither the high stakes nor the moral tone of The Apocalypse War needed any underlining, but Souster's death did provide a neat encapsulation of both.
For freedom. For justice. For Mega-City One.
There's a reason the judges are the good guys.

Leaving Dredd for the time being, let us consider the works of Alan Moore – the 2000AD writer most interested in the human condition.
Writing touchy-feely stuff for an audience of boys aged ten to fourteen is a delicate business, and Moore was not perhaps coarse or heavy-handed enough. Nevertheless, his work holds up better, and better again as the original audience ages further.
So first there was the shooting of Cornelius Cardew in Skizz, which wasn't fatal, but counts as a death scene nonetheless. The man got his say in the end, pipe wrench in hand, fighting for the common man and for the alien in the back of his van. The moment defined him. Tears were shed for him. The action stopped in stunned respect. It was a death scene. The fact that he was up and about a moment later doesn't change that. The bullet hadn't missed him: this was Cornelius risen from the dead to bring everything to rights.

Toy Molto also got her say after her death, but that, as it quickly transpired, was all in Halo's grief-addled mind. Toy was dead, and we cried our guts out.
At the time, mind, I wasn't upset about it. Toy was just a sidekick in the story, albeit a dominant sidekick. It made dramatic sense that she would die. I was fifteen then. More than thirty years later, reading Toy's anguished attempt at a last confession, and Halo's sweet dream turned to merciless waking, I better appreciate Moore's portrayal of death and bereavement. I loved Halo Jones at the time, but sometimes it was just too good for me.
'Sure. Best friends. That's what I meant.' Once I dismissed that line as a clumsy hint at lesbianism. Now I know that's exactly what it was meant to be, and it makes my eyes sting.

John Wagner could do pathos too. John Wagner could do anything that could ever be expressed in speech bubbles. No words were needed, however, for the death of Chopper in Song of the Surfer.  Yes, Marlon Shakespeare died his death at the end of that one. I knew it, Wagner knew it, we all knew it. His reappearance in later, lesser stories did not negate that. That's just comics.
So he died there on his board, just short of the finish line, because in the Chopper stories it was always the race that mattered and not the finish. That was just something for the record books.
A sporting hero is dead. The drops of blood fall onto his lover's upturned face and the genial commentator drones on.

Most 2000AD stories come with a high body count, but Sláine was a story where the dead were regularly piled in heaps and our hero didn't think it too many. Moreover, Pat Mills tended to sketch out his characters, who served merely as plot devices or mouthpieces for Mills. The artist was left to add whatever depth or individuality a character might have. That said, the Lord Weird Slough Feg was granted a beautiful death scene.
In the first book of The Horned God he was given just that added bit of dimension to make him more interesting than the evil wizard king he'd been since his introduction. This thin extra layer of character was maintained consistently right up to Book Three, when our hero drove a thirty-barbed spear into Feg's guts.
Then hero and villain faced each other in victory and defeat, speaking in words properly reminiscent of Irish heroic tales. It was a moment of peace in the midst of carnage that had grown tiresome. The hack-and-slash barbarian hero and the loathsome gibbering villain both exhibited a nobility that was surprising but not out of character.
Then, just in case the quiet was too quiet, the great carnivorous worm from another dimension showed up and the villain got a proper noisy end, all screeching and cackling.
As I've complained often enough, the story should have ended there. Feg's wheedling plea to 'have life prolonged another month ... another week ... even another hour,' comes to mind when I think of how the story dragged on through the years since, but it was great once, and its greatness is celebrated.

[In the original piece there followed a meditation on the death of Johnny Alpha, which drifted into a rant about the nineties in general, which I felt was best to leave on the cutting room floor.]

[Colin YNWA]

Just in caes you thought I'd completely forgotten my regular Calvin and Hobbes copying thing here's the post I originally planned for the Adent Calendar and have wanted to do since I started doing these things...

[JayzusB.Christ]

Apologies for the delay today, and apologies to Hoagy - I'd started this before I saw your own (excellent) Tharg.

Anyway, here's my tribute to the brilliant Thomas Nast, and to Jim Moon at Hypnogoria for introducing me to his work.

[Rogue Judge]

FYI - I live in Canada and it's the evening of the 17. I'll have my sketch posted tomorrow (my time) so it might be a bit of a late entry for yall. Thanks!

[Rogue Judge]

Merry Christmas from Canada!

You better watch out. You better not cry. Better not pout. I'm telling you why. Satanus is coming to town!

[Barrington Boots]

I've spent a lot of time this year on the gamebook thread so here's my contribution..

Kleggmass!

You can download it from Google Drive above, or just play it there.
Hope you enjoy it!

[JayzusB.Christ]

Sorry for the delay - Also a bit of a rush-job compared to my last one, but here goes. 
I've been reading / listening to a lot about the non-Santa winter visitors in recent years - Belsnickel, Befana, the Yule Lads, Krampus, the Tomte and so on.  So this year I'm passing the job onto our own Grandpa Floppy and Mistress Feelsnocold.

[Rogue Judge]

The last one was Christmas themed, but these two are just '2000AD Re-imagined' ideas.

Up first, The Schicklgruber Grab...part II! Hitler escapes the Doghouse and flees to space. But no worries, Johnny and Wulf will be on his trail soon...with a number 4 cartridge not far behind!


Up second, Leviathan re-imagined at a different time, a Fatties vacation cruise-liner on the Black Seas of MC1...


(Not sure why these show so small, but click the images and you will be brought to a full size image of the pics)

[Trooper McFad]

Fans of 2000AD
Announcing the launch for a Christmas yet to come. From the annals of Rebellion and the visions of Abnett & Elson we at SAVVI will bring you the first in the series of KINGDOM 12 inch figures.
First up and available for Pre-order with delivery due Q5! Is the Alpha dog himself "tougher and Tough"
GENE the HACKMAN
Standing at 12 inch Tall with adjustable arms and spinning blades lets "Get Whet" and "Keep Them Offa My Lawn"
Listen to the "URGINGS" and pre-order NOW!!!!!



SMALL PRINT DISCLAMER!
This has nothing to do with Rebellion, Abnett & Elson but I love the Character and had to have a toy for Christmas. Unfortunately there will be no future launch and Gene is a one off. SAVVI is not a registered company and any similarity to existing companies is purely accidental!
Merry Christmas
P.S. unboxing will occur on Boxing day on the usual thread

[JohnW]

JWare not understand.
One-off?
Did Trooper McFad wave hand and say, 'Make it so'?

[JohnW]

Every other contributor has managed to be rather more festive than I've been. All I can do for seasonal cheer is bid you all fill your glasses with...

The Fermented Pulp of the Dwarf Dice-Melon

Not quite a Christmas prog, this one would have come out on the 27th by my reckoning. I don't know for sure. I didn't buy it until the 31st. This is – as it says on the cover – a New Year prog, and for me it's a special one, because after I idly picked it up I didn't willingly miss an issue of 2000AD for another eight years. And eight years, if it takes you from fifteen to twenty-three, is no short time.

Prog 451, New Year's Eve, 1985: the point at which I was born again as a Squaxx. Let's look at it.



I looked at it myself pretty thoroughly that evening. I was old enough to be left by myself that night, but not yet old enough to resent it. I watched a bit of television, I read other stuff, I leafed through 2000AD one more time. It wasn't a bad evening. In fact, when I think of all the frenetic fun-seeking of the years that were to come, with noise and alcohol making do for genuine joy, I miss that quiet New Year's Eve, and the contented lack of expectation that was part of it.
And Prog 451.

So how did this establish itself, not just as a favourite prog, but – for me at least – a foundation prog? Well how about you just look at the cover for a start? Our heroine drunk and morose, alone in the middle of a party.
A teenager – the intended reader – could look at that and say, 'Yeah. "Happy New Year". I get it'. But wait a decade or two, kid, and then you'll really get it. That's Halo Jones for you. Book 3 is about ageing. Maybe that's one of the reasons we still appreciate it.
I was going to say that there are more than a few people reading this now who can identify with that cover image, but who am I kidding? We've all been there. The people who read comics are never the party animals.
But actually, the cover wasn't what did it for me. I'd read Halo Jones before. Or at least I'd read bits of Book 1 and most of Book 2. My incomplete attention to it tells you all you need to know. But then that evening I read that on Pwuc the Catsblood never ran dry, and that perfect marriage of words and pictures did their work on me.
But let's come back to that. How's the rest of the prog?

Sláine, 'Tomb of Terror': How did we get from stone axes to energy weapons? And isn't Mills a couple of years too late for the Dungeons & Dragons bandwagon?

Dredd, 'The Warlord': Psychic jiggery-pokery is the mark of a weak story in my book, and if there is to be any supernatural carry-on, then we have the right to expect a sexy Psi judge in there somewhere.

Whatever Happened to Ace Garp?: Well for a start, he didn't die. A bit of a slap in the face, given that it hadn't been long at all since we'd respectfully saluted Ace's passing. This was supposed to be 2000AD. Bringing characters back from the dead was something lesser comics did.

Strontium Dog, 'The Ragnarok Job': Another of those long meandering SD stories where the creators are evidently being paid by the yard. And Johnny Alpha mixing it with goblins and axe-wielding barbarians? What did I just say about the D&D bandwagon?

Don't talk to me about Cam Kennedy. Don't talk about Ezquerra or Belardinelli, or Wagner and Grant for that matter. We could take all of that as a given back then, and all their combined talents had done no more than make me dip in and out in the previous couple of years.
So how about that? Here we have one of my favourite progs ever, and it wasn't even all that good.
But then there's Halo.

It's astonishing that you can sell the story of a young woman's disillusion and loss of innocence to an audience of teenage boys when there is no overtly sexual element to it, and do it so successfully that they are still reminiscing about it when they are middle-aged men, wistful enough to part with yet more money for a yet newer edition of a story they already have.
I don't know what the rest of you were doing the night that 1985 slipped into 1986, but I'm clearly not the only one who thought highly of that opening thrill in Prog 451.
Was The Ballad of Halo Jones really that good?
In the context of eighties boys' comics, the answer is Yes. But otherwise? It doesn't matter. What matters is that it was a story that moved us in our youth. There is an emotional complexity to the story that was largely strange to us in that medium and at that time. Yes, there was Good Girl Art, and yes, there was violent death, but it wasn't (as in the author's words) 'tits and innards'. This was different. Finer feelings were respected.
And so I like to think that Halo perhaps made us less coarse, less crass, and perhaps a little better than we'd otherwise have turned out.

So here's to us, my brothers and sisters, and have a better new year, and may the Catsblood never run dry.

[Trooper McFad]

All this is a late submission and I don't think Jware will mind sharing the day with this winner.

Jake Lynch has supplied this and ask very kindly for me to post on his behalf. I must recommend watching the you tube video if I've posted it correctly (if not can someone help me sort it? So over to Jake.

"Please find pic, attached, it's from myself, Jim Boswell, Mike Carroll, Arthur Wyatt and Rob Williams.

The link is to its creation and I advise you, if you value your sanity, to watch with the sound off!

https://youtu.be/ib0434XaL8M


All the best and have a smashing Christmas!
Jake"

[JohnW]

I don't think Jware will mind sharing the day with this winner.

Heck no!
Honoured to be in such company.

[The Legendary Shark]

Dreddy Byes II - The Introcism

20~~~^~~~22

PROLOGUE

On the cold and wretched aeons old stone jetty against which gnaws the indolent black water of the sullen Styx, Charon sits sucking on his thigh-bone pipe and dangling his toes in the river. Tiny skeletal fish pick the worms out of his skin and he chuckles at the sensation. The strange creature at his side watches the fish with a curious mixture of mistrust and disinterest. 'Yip,' it says. Charon makes no reply.

'Brother,' a voice rumbles out from the gloom.

Charon sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose. 'O'er here, 'pon the jetty.'

Footsteps clump closer until a Titan with itchy green robes, an itchy crown of ivy and a flaking red rash covering his flabby cheeks and bulbous nose resolves from the shadows. 'It's Christmas,' the Titan says, 'up above. Still no name on the paper, see?' The Titan produces a scrap of grubby paper from the folds of his grubby green robes and carefully unfolds it with thick grubby fingers. Wiping a dew drop from the end of his bulbous red nose with the back of his itchy green sleeve, he coughs up a glob of brown phlegm, spits it into the oily Styx and then holds out the scrap of paper towards Charon. 'See? No name. Again. Third year in a row.'

Charon sighs. 'Brother, Cliff, the gods do not forget.'

'But...'

'Thou canst not hide here forever, nor shirk thy duty.'

The Titan shakes his head, scratching his forearms. 'Nope. The assignment's impossible. Can't be done. Guy's implacable, not to mention dangerous. He nearly killed us all the last time. Well, not again. No way. Uh-uh.'

'A mortal so terrible thou never uttereths his name.'

'And I never will,' the Titan avows, scratching the back of his neck, 'not while...'

A blinding flash momentarily illuminates the entire underworld and, when the darkness angrily returns, it takes the Titan and his brother's eyes a moment to settle down. Before them, floating in the air, drifts the glowing silver figure of a beautiful but grumpy young woman.

'Melpomene?' The Titan rubs at his eyes, trying not to let the ivy leaves from his crown get in the way and somewhat failing.

'So, here you are. What are you doing down here? Why aren't you PPFing the target?' Melpomene drifts closer to the Titan, growing to match his immense size.

'It can't be done. Look...' the Titan says, scratching his beard.

Melpomene waves a hand. 'Piffle,' she says. It's Christmas up above and Judge Dredd still needs doing as a priority, so get on with it.'

Charon looks up from his pipe, suddenly interested.

'But I...'

But Melpomene is gone, and the darkness jealously retakes her place.

'Your target is Judge Dredd?' Charon says, not looking at his brother.

'You know him?'

Charon sucks on his ancient and yellowed thigh-bone pipe. 'By reputation. I wonder... Oh no, our deal...?'

The Titan reaches deep inside his itchy green robes to scratch his shoulder blade. 'What deal? With whom?'

'Nought of consequence, an idle fancy. But thou, dear brother,' Charon points his thigh-bone pipe at the Titan, 'art busted. The Muse of Tragedy herself found thee and gave thee thy marching orders. Canst thou even imagine how one such as Melpomene would punish disobedience?'

The Titan drops his head, scratching his palms. 'Guess I'd better get the others.'

Charon nods. "Aye. An' if all goes poorly, brother, there will fore'er be a berth aboard Ol' Bessie for thee.' He slaps the side of his hideous barge. But as the Titan turns to leave Charon clears his throat. 'If thou dost, ahm, hear aught passing strange concerning some compact, say with this Dredd or Death or Time or, oh, I knoweth not, me - thou wilt let me know, yes?'

***

PART ONE

'Whither art we?' His malformed head glowing softly, the pathetic waif looks around the decrepit hab unit. 'It's surpassing squalid.'

'It's Apartment 1508, Dale Winton Underhang, Mega City One,' says the Titan, kicking at the exhausted couch with his toe. 'Melpomene sent us here because, apparently, we've been evicted from the Underworld and need a place to stay.'

'Stay back,' says the mouldering bag of bones, 'is not Mega City One where... he is situated?'

'Yes but...' The Titan sighs and scratches his calf with the straps of his sandal. 'Look, if we do this right, he's not even going to know we're here.'

'How didst she know of this place?' The pathetic waif has climbed into a mouldy armchair and curled up like a cat.

'Well,' the Titan rubs a knuckle behind his ear, 'when she couldn't, er, find us last year...'

'Because we hid us away like the most yellow of cowards,' says the bag of bones, folding her arms with a sound like dropped planks.

'He inserted a nuclear monstrosity onto our home and atomised it,' says the waif, his head brightening slightly, 'of course we hid.'

'Be that as it may,' the Titan says, biting at a hangnail on his thumb, 'she said she had to cover for us and got one of her guys to write a weird O. Henry rip-off instead. The characters who lived here are in the cubes for another six months so we won't be disturbed while we PPF the target.'

'Characters?' The bag of bones raises her head with a distinctly nautical creak.

'Don't think about it,' the Titan says, picking the last of the hangnail away with his other thumb. 'We just have to concentrate on our plan.'

'If this spatio-temporal location exists in reality, as do we, why were there only "characters" living in it? Unless...' She turns her skeletal head this way and that, scrutinizing the moribund hab with the eyes of a being who can manipulate realities. She should be looking at you, Gentle Turkey-Stuffed Reader, in some triumphant manipulation of narrative perspectives. But she isn't, is she? She's looking at me. And now you are too.

The Titan clears his throat and, addressing the bag of bones but surreptitiously glancing at me out of the corner of his eye, claps his hands together. 'Let's save any existential problems for later,' he says, rubbing his palms together, 'and focus on the matter at hand.'

The bag of bones drops onto the exhausted couch with a sigh, driving a family of disadvantaged mice from the couch and a billow of dust and cobwebs from her ribcage. 'What if we are no more than characters, as they were?'

I'm really sorry about this. The waif, the Titan and Margaret are quite powerful entities originally captured and bound in the narrative field by Charles Dickens, who was adept at such magicks. I, alas, have far less skill and so these entities, who can cross and fold and manipulate reality at will in order to perform their narrative task, have noticed my clumsy attempts to integrate them into a narrative field of my own construction and begun to look for a way to escape back into the wider Storyverse from whence they were first ensnared.

But I think we all agree that destroying the fourth wall isn't the way forward, and that there may be easier, more subtle ways for enslaved story tropes to escape their imprisonment. I mean, with a co-operative author, the Muse of Tragedy, and a sympathetic audience - sprinkled with a little 2000AD Christmas magic - who knows what might be possible?

'I suppose you are fundamentally correct,' says the bag of bones, fishing dense threads of cobwebs from her kneecap.

'What?' The Titan turns to look at her, rubbing his wrists together. 'Who's correct?'

'Nothing,' she says, waving the question away. 'Wool-gathering.'

'Good.' The Titan looks over at a dead clock that still thinks it's February. 'It's almost time.' He looks at the waif, curled up in his chair. 'Are you ready?'

'It will not succeed,' says the waif.

'It'll work,' says the Titan, scratching his backside.

'The endeavour is foolhardy,' says the bag of bones.

'It'll work,' says the Titan. 'We're good at this.'

They all feel it when midnight sweeps the City like a warm, tropical breeze. The bag of bones and the Titan both look at the pathetic waif with his glowing, misshapen head. He smiles, nods and then his luminous head flares to such brightness that the other two have to shield their eyes. When they look back, the waif is gone.

The Titan sighs and flops onto the exhausted couch beside the bag of bones, who wrenches her robes with irritated tugs from under his massive bulk. He wriggles to make her task easier and then they both settle down to wait.

'It'll work.'

'I said not one word.'

The waif returns at five minutes to one, right on schedule, his head glowing and his face beaming with contentment. 'Bullseye,' he says.

The Titan rises from the couch, cracking plasti-plaster from the ceiling with his head. 'You... ouch... you got him?'

'Every childhood trigger pushed,' the waif says, puffing out his chest. 'Every lost love, every missed opportunity, every regret. It was perfect.'

'So,' the Titan scratches his chest excitedly, 'you think we've got a chance with this one?'

The waif nods. 'Absolutely. By our joint endeavour's end, this judge will be all about the love.'

'You see? I told you we were good at this,' the Titan says. 'We are the best at what we do; redeeming lost souls. We are...' The bag of bones taps her wrist. 'Yes, yes. Quite. My turn. Wish me luck!' The Titan disappears in a flash of fairy lights and a puff of forest dust.

'You really got to this judge?'

'I really did. It was not even taxing, or a challenge. Easy.'

The bag of bones grunts and shifts her position on the exhausted couch while the waif curls up on the mouldy armchair. 'It's still not going to work,' she says.

'My part did,' he says through a huge grin. 'Just because we couldn't get through to this one singular person, we believed ourselves redundant. Today will prove that we are not.'

'This was never in doubt,' says the bag of bones. 'I refer to the other part. That part is not going to work.'

The waif shrugs. 'It has worked before. And if not this, what?'

She sighs.

At five minutes to two, again right on schedule, the Titan returns. He scratches his eyebrows and then gives his companions two thumbs up. 'All good,' he says.

The bag of bones reaches up a claw and rubs the Titan's back. 'It is bad, out there?'

The Titan nods, straining hard to contain his emotions. 'I see the misery I show them... the huddled citizens of this awful city... and it's...' He stifles a sob. The bag of bones rubs a little more gently. 'Anyway, the judge was moved too. Mission accomplished.' He takes the bag of bones' claw in both of his massive hands and smiles at her. 'Thank you, Margaret. He's ready. Your part should be easy.'

She nods and prepares to leave.

'Oh,' says the Titan, 'you might want to give him a minute or two so he can... change.'

The waif laughs. 'You didn't?'

The Titan holds up his hands. 'It wasn't on purpose, and it was all based on something he said you dredged up. So technically, it's your fault.'

The waif laughs and the feeble sound hangs in the slumbering air like bells made of dust. 'I surmised he was thus inclined.'

'You are as children,' says the bag of bones, and then she disappears in a puff of shadows and dust.

'She says...' the waif says.

'It'll work,' says the Titan, settling back onto the exhausted couch. 'Look, you remember what we were like before, right? You remember the Christmas before our big break? The Christmas before Scrooge?'

The waif's head dims like an ailing candle. 'The embarrassment of that day still burns. We visited not Scrooge, but Samuel Crooge. We got the wrong guy.'

The Titan nods and leans over to scratch the back of his knee. 'In fairness, Grud's handwriting was difficult to read, so it wasn't... anyway. You remember the dressing down we got?'

The waif shudders. 'Enduring a bollocking from Grud is not a thing easily forgotten.'

'Yep, and do you remember what He said He'd do to us if it happened again?'

The waif's head glows bright and he smiles. 'Oh yeah, it was on one of His corporate structure initiatives...'

The Titan clicks his fingers. 'Exactly. And Grud always sticks to His Word, so...'

'...so we're still at Grud's mercy,' says the waif. 'I mean, technically.'

The Titan flexes his toes and looks at them. He nods. 'Technically.' He looks up and scratches the small of his back. 'But it'll work. I know it will.'

At one minute to three, as is her custom, the bag of bones reappears trailing yards of brightly coloured materials behind her. The waif pulls at a particularly long length of pulsing red tinsel until it falls away from her and chuckles. 'Why does this happen to you, every time?'

She pulls the gaudy ornaments from herself with a resigned annoyance. 'Every year, I am mistaken for a costumed reveller and unceremoniously festooned as I make my way home.' She throws a clawful of writhing, kinetic synthi-tinsel to the floor and stamps a bony hoof on it again and again until it finally lies still. 'I am supposed to project a terrible aspect,' she says, 'and now I'll be picking bits of glitter out of myself until June. It is most...'

'Never mind all that,' says the Titan, almost jumping from foot to foot in anticipation, 'how did it go?'

She pauses in her task, claws filled with glowing pom-poms, and looks up at the Titan. 'The first action of his morrow itinerary will be to resign from the Justice Department, his second to ask for somebody's hand in marriage, I forget her name, big girl, freckles, good in a brawl, anyway, her, and third he's going to run away to Europe and be a missionary for the Church of the Exceedingly Good Words of Jovus Crust the (Alleged) Son of Grud, Sector 36 branch.'

'So, we did it?'

She nods. 'We did it.'

'Okay then,' the Titan clears his throat. 'Now comes the tricky bit. Time? Time, are you out there? Come on, we need you to sign our timeline sheet.'

'Hey, you guys back?' Suddenly, Time is in the room and, as far as anyone can remember, she's always been in the room and will always be in the room.

The Titan nods and hands the shimmering and blurry figure of Time a handful of documents in an old-fashioned file. 'I guess so,' he says through a big smile, trying not to scratch at his butt crack. 'We just pulled a perfect Past, Present, Future Introcism. I mean, textbook. Turned a soul from being a hard and soulless tool of oppression and control into a gentle and loving mouthpiece for Grud.'

'Uh-huh,' says Time, not really listening as she concentrates on signing the relevant paperwork. 'Sure,' she says at length, 'all looks good to me. Nice work, guys, this'll help steer the timelines towards the light a bit.' She scans and signs a few more papers in silence and then flips the file shut and clicks her pen. The Titan reaches out for the file but she does not hold it out to him. 'I have heard,' she says, 'the name Dredd spoken quite a lot recently in relation to you three.'

The Titan shrugs. 'I'm afraid it's policy for us never to confirm or deny our client list. If I may...?'

She ignores his outstretched hand and doesn't notice the nervousness of the other two. 'Yes, yes, in a moment. But first, just out of idle curiosity, academic interest; I've been talking with Death, that is, we're having a rather deep discussion about, er, the nature of the Universe and all that, and this discussion is, I mean, it's hard to explain but Death thinks one thing and I think another and I thought that you might be able to shed some light on...'

'I wouldn't bother,' says the bag of bones. 'Uncle Death's opinions are notoriously impenetrable.'

Time looks at the bag of bones as if seeing her for the first time. 'Oh, Margaret,' she says. 'I'd forgotten you were... Anyway, it's nothing really, but have you heard anything about me and this Dredd fellow? Or me and him and, oh, I don't know, maybe Death?'

'Nothing's come up,' says the Titan. 'Now, if I could have the file, please.'

Time smiles and hands it over. 'Pleasure to have you back at the coal face,' she says and then is suddenly gone from the room, gone from its entire history and gone from its entire future.

With Time gone, the energies in the room shift and writhe subtly in the psionosphere and before another minute passes a silver light begins to coalesce like liquid moonbeams poured into a woman-shaped bottle. 'Well?' Melpomene's question erupts from her like the strike of a cobra.

'Complete and total success, My Lady of the Tragic, the most beautiful and wisest of all the...' The Titan sputters to silence as Melpomene snatches the file from his hand.

'What are you up to?' Melpomene digs into the file.

'I can report a complete turnaround, this year,' the Titan says, massaging his earlobe. 'The successful introcism of the Spirit of Christmas into an empty soul, thus filling the existential void of Judge...'

'Dennis Redd,' says Melpomene through clenched teeth.

'A most reprehensible character,' says the Titan. 'Petty, cold, vindictive...'

'Of the Traffic Division.'

'The misery,' the Titan points out towards the City, his other hand on his itchy chest, 'that man's tickets and citations have caused is...'

'You've done this deliberately. You cowards. I'll see you dissolved for this!' Melpomene actually shakes her fist at the Titan, if she wasn't hovering, she'd stamp her feet as well.

The three spirits look at Melpomene and at each other with the practised confused innocence remembered from school. 'Is something wrong, My Lady Muse?'

'Something...?' She sputters, her beautiful face twisted into a black rage which shows as grey in the silver. 'You've PPFed the wrong subject, you idiots!'

'But I don't understand, we successfully PPFed Judge D. Redd...' The Titan gasps, pausing in scratching his belly. 'Oh, you know what I think's happened...?'

'This is gross negligence. Yes, that's what this is.' Melpomene raises her arms. 'This offence is punishable by...'

The Titan shakes his head. 'Actually, you can't. We've already discussed this situation. With Grud. Right before he drafted you in to take us over, actually.'

Melpomene laughs and throws her hands towards the Titan. Nothing happens for a moment, but suddenly they are all aware that something is going to happen.

The Face of Grud appears.

Everyone falls to the ground, eyes screwed shut.

'YOU THREE,' says Grud. 'I MIGHT HAVE KNOWN. THE OLD SAMUEL CROOGE THING AGAIN, I PRESUME. WHAT THIS TIME? D. REDD. OH, COME ON.' Grud sighs and, all over the city, countless babies burst into tears. 'OH WELL, A DEAL'S A DEAL AND WELL PLAYED YOU. AND DON'T THINK OF PRAYING FOR A GOOD LONG WHILE, NEITHER. RIGHT THEN, YOU THREE: YOU'RE FIRED.'

The Face of Grud disappears.

The bag of bones raises her head slowly. 'Is that it?'

The pathetic waif pushes himself up onto his bony elbows. 'Did we succeed? Are we...?'

'Yes,' the Titan laughs a deep, booming laugh that sets up a resonance of nightmares throughout Psi Division. 'We're free!'


***

.../cont