A Treat For Mangamax...

More from Judge Dredd: Time's Squared; this time from a panel featuring the Robot Wars and the original small-chinned, skull-helmetted Judge Dredd.

I've always said that I love drawing Dredd so much because he's the only character I've worked on that I also read as a child; a double thrill then, to draw the exact Dredd I remember from that time (the first copy of 2000AD I ever read was number 11, containing the second episode of Robot Wars, albeit drawn by Ron Turner and not Mike McMahon, who I'm pastiching here).

This job has also been an excellent excuse to spend time reading old Dredd stories under the excuse of "reference." I was a tad hampered by the fact that I was in Edinburgh and my books were still in Nottingham, so many thanks to Graeme Neil Reid of this parish for helping me out with reference for the early Dredd stories.

I don't usually get advance notification of when a story will see print, but I'll keep an eye on my subscription copies and post as soon as it comes through.

Summer Is I-Comin' In

Love that sun, even if I do block it out when I'm working

That's a bit premature, you might think, but allow me to explain...

I've had a pretty good idea of what I wanted to do with my life since the age of eleven, and one of the things I looked forward to about freelance adult life was the ability to set my own hours. "It'll be wonderful," I thought to myself in a piping Adrian Mole sort of way, "of course, I'll have to do enough hours each day to get the work done, but even so, I can start late and work late if I have to. Why, even being really practical, I'll never have to get up earlier than, oh, say, eight o'clock again..."

I reckoned without the perversity of existence.

Though my natural sleep cycle would lead me to get up about 10 and go to bed around 2am, I find that if I get up much later than 7am I just can't make myself get down to work. Even more perversely, I get more efficient the earlier I start, meaning I average a 6am start during busy periods, creeping back to 5am if I'm really pushed. Getting up early makes my feel like sh*t, plus, given that I've lived most of my life without central heating, the winter starts could be less than comfortable. Still, the system has its advantages; for example, when I finally reach full consciousness (usually about 7.30am), I already have a load of work done.

So where does summer come into this? Well, in my unscientific way, I divide the year into D'Israeli Summer Time (DST) and D'Israeli Winter Time (DWT). Unlike the official measure, there's no change of clocks or anything; DST starts on the first day I wake up for work* in daylight, and the first dread day that starts in darkness marks the entrance to the long, dark tunnel that is DWT.

And - you guessed it - I woke up on Monday to weak, watery sunlight - though given that I've been allowing myself a lie in till 6.30am the last month or so, I suppose I might be cheating a bit. Still, aside from the prospect of daylight and warmer days to come, I got to spend this morning building model spaceships and getting to call it work.

Bliss.

*not necessarily the first day it actually is light that early, just the first day I get to experience it.