Why the Greatest Character in 2000 AD Is NOT Judge Dredd

She’s the psychic cop who has patrolled the dystopian streets of Mega-City One for over four decades, and she’s nobody’s sidekick

Art by Brett Ewins

I first met her in 1991 within the pages of the Judge Dredd/Batman crossover Judgement on Gotham. It was love at first sight. Her first scene had her answer the phone before it rang. What a perfect introduction to Mega-City One’s premier psychic. It was the promise of a bust-up between Dredd and the Dark Knight that got me to buy the book, but it was the supporting character of Judge Cassandra Anderson that got me hooked.

Written by her co-creator John Wagner and her long-time chronicler Alan Grant, she brought a goofball energy to every scene in which she appeared. Superstar artist Simon Bisley was perfectly tuned into Anderson's eccentric frequency and drew her more like a musclebound Tori Amos than the chic Debbie Harry lookalike she had been under Brian Bolland - who drew her first appearance 11 years before in issue #149 of legendary British sci-fi anthology 2000 AD.

​Smitten, I started tracking down the books and annuals that collected her previous adventures while discovering her more recent and harder-edged psychotropic epics, which were then running in the monthly Judge Dredd Megazine. Reading all these alongside Dredd’s regular adventures in 2000 AD, it was clear that Judge Anderson was a vital component of the Dredd saga. More open to introspection and enquiry, Anderson could open windows into the dystopian world of Mega-City One that remain forever closed to her stone-hearted colleague...

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