QAA Podcast - Premium Episode 214: Judge Dredd, Justice Warrior feat Matt Bors & Ben Clarkson (Sample)

Episode Date: May 25, 2023

We are the law. And we are targeting Judge Dredd (1995) and more specifically Rob Schneider, who is extremely redpilled. Our guests are cartoonists and artists Matt Bors and Ben Clarkson. We also discuss their excellent new comic book series / graphic novel: Justice Warriors. Subscribe for $5 a month to get an extra episode of QAA every week + access to ongoing series like 'Manclan' and 'Trickle Down': http://www.patreon.com/QAnonAnonymous Get Justice Warriors: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Justice-Warriors/Matt-Bors/9781952090226 Matt Bors: https://twitter.com/MattBors Ben Clarkson: https://twitter.com/benclarkson Music by Pontus Berghe. Editing by Corey Klotz. http://qanonanonymous.com

What's up QAA listeners? The fun games have begun. I found a way to connect to the internet. I'm sorry, boy. Welcome listener to Premium Chapter 214 of the Q&ONANANANANANANIS podcast, the Judge Dread, Justice Warrior episode. As always, we are your host, Jake Rakatansky. And Julian Fields.

And this week, we've got some very special guests. Matt Boers and Ben Clarkson. They recently released a collected edition of their comic book series, Justice Warriors, which is pretty hard to describe. I recently consumed it, and I found it to be amazing, really like vicious and very dark humor,

absolutely unhinged in the greatest way. It's a dystopian tale set in kind of a cyberpunk future. There's mutants, including a sentient piece of shit. There's astrology, a lot of astrology, which is cool, ultra-violent police force, and super cool social media platforms that everyone enjoys using. And like I really do, I recommend people pick up a copy because it is a piece of art and it is brilliantly demented.

So I'll include a link in the episode description. Matt, Ben, welcome to the show. Hey, thanks for having us on. This is great. It's a pleasure to be here. Actually, I do have to say this podcast was hugely influential in my part of the writing of the series. So it's hugely pleasurable to be here.

Oh, you got to be kidding me. That's like a huge honor. Thank you. Well, as you can see in the, you know, the story of justice warriors, conspiracy and online hysteria really kind of drives a lot of the social movement and the plot. Yeah, it's kind of like unexpected. I mean, when people recommend me a comic book that's like kind of a comedy, I'm always a little bit dubious. I'm always like, oh, is this, you know, is this going to be funny, you know?

But this is, it is funny, obviously. There's moments of, like, fun and laughter. But it always feels bad in an incredible way. Good. It is perfect. It's like kind of, it carries the poison of our era deep into the future. And yeah, so we're going to be talking about, you know, as well, 1995 Sylvester Stallone vehicle, Judge Dread, which was the original movie adaptation of Judge Dread.

And so it's a bit of a movie night, I guess. And that comic book series ranges back to the 70s. So it's like really, it's been going for a long time. And I wanted to ask, like, before we kind of get into Justice Warriors, could you kind of explain why you have every single Dread comic behind you on the wall? And then also, like, would you say it was a source of inspiration for Justice Warriors? So, yeah, I'm a Judge Dread freak. I don't even have all the volumes because there's so many.

But I'll probably read them all eventually. So for people who can't see behind me, I mean, I got my bookshelf and the entire top two rows are just Judge Dread case files and related stuff. Just tomes and tomes of dread. Yeah, you know, I haven't actually been into the comic book since I was a kid, but I did watch Judge Dread as a kid, and that was influential on me, along with a ton of other futuristic dystopia, cyberpunk type things. I've always loved that stuff. And I don't know when it was, but definitely a couple years ago, I just started getting into dread and reading it a ton. And it is influential on Justice Warriors. It's like the thing that it gets compared to a lot.

But I wouldn't say that it was foundational to it because Ben really developed this world independently and then came to me. So all the main characters in the conceit of Bubble City and the surrounding uninhabited zone slum where all the mutants live is Ben. And Ben is less. I don't think Ben read any Dredd comics before we got together. I had never read Dread, but I had seen the movie in like 1995. And I remember thinking as an adult, wouldn't it be? be great if that movie was a satire? Yeah, that's it. I mean, it is, I mean, we'll get into it, but it is as if Verhoven didn't understand, like, didn't want to make satire or something,

the movie at least. Yeah. Like, Matt, do you think that in the comic, they were aware, like, at any point in the run, or maybe the whole run, that it was like a deeper satire, so they weren't just casting dread as a superhero or hero? No, 100%. The comic is intended as a satire. It starts out as kind of based on, you know, it's the late 70s, and it's based on the lawman of the future concept. Basically, it's like, what of Dirty Harry was a super cop in the future. The first few episodes, or whatever you want to call them, issues are kind of off from what it becomes. And then it quickly becomes the Judge Dread you know. And John Wagner was the co-creator. He's the head writer on it, him and Alan Grant. And they wrote, I don't know, a decade or two of Dread just by themselves every week.

And, you know, it's just funny stuff about what if a cop was so devoted to the concept of the law that it led to like all this sort of wacky stuff. It's not just like executing criminals all the time, like kind of in the movie. It's a lot more funny and self-aware. It does get serious at times and they deal like more explicitly with fascism as time goes on. Like Wagner does a little like a couple more serious arcs. The most famous one is America and that's where like Dread is explicitly portrayed as a fascist. But then he also saves the city from destruction, you know, number of times. And it's a genre comic, right?

There's like adventure stories, there's procedurals, there's serial killers, there's cataclysmic events that threaten to destroy the city and all that. There's a recurring dinosaur character. Yeah. Okay, sure. Really? What kind of dinosaur? Like a T.

What's the T-Rex name? There we go. What's his name again? Oh, yeah. I should. Just grab a random book. Flip to a page, man. and tell us what you see.

This will work. Okay, we got, Dred is on a, I just opened to a random page in Case Files 4. Dred is on a spaceship, and he's searching for Judge Child, of course, and he's, looks like he's en route for Zanadu, and they're interrupted by a sinister intergalactic salesman. It's like, I mean, that's why I love Dread

and have all the books on my shelf, because it rules. It's, is this intergalactic. salesman trying to pitch him audacity. The podcast recording equipment of choice here. Very easy to download, very easy to record. Yeah. But that makes sense, you know, that over like a couple of decades, you'd have obviously all the kind of comic book stuff where they're resetting or they're doing, you know,

like expanding the world. But at its core, I mean, there's an element of Starship Troopers where you can still support the main cast. Like you can still like want them to win. against the bugs and understand that what you're watching is, is like a demented parody of fascism, essentially. Yeah, I think that's exactly it. That is interesting because, yeah, you know, I think that that is something that carries

over into justice warriors is that feeling of like, you're kind of, I mean, actually, this strains that, right? I think you guys are more willing to make your main characters absolute degenerates in a way where it's not possible to think of them as heroes, but it also still somehow works where you do kind of, you understand, like, what they're going through because they're obviously, like, pawns in this much larger, insane and terrible system. But they truly are disgusting and are committing, like, hyperviolence all the time. And, I mean, there was this line, like, very early on where the rookie sentient shit cop called officer shit, but spelled with, you know, a bit more German, where he goes, I like that, and I would do that again, like, after killing someone. He ventilates someone and just looks and goes, I am willing to do that again.

yeah the the vibes that i got when i was reading through through the first issue is that same like coziness that i had playing like a lucas arts like demented point and click like sam and max or like something like that like from like the early 90s like it has that really kind of like irreverent sort of tone which which is also you know i think supposed to be what dread was going and we'll once we get into the movie like we'll see that there there is a major conflict and you can kind of tell in the movie between what the director, Danny Cannon, wanted to portray as a huge fan of the original Dread comic series, and what Sylvester Stallone thought it was about having never read the comics.

He's awesome. That is so awesome that they're like, please, please, Sylvester, can you just crack it open? It's a comic book. It's got lots of drawings. And he's like, no, I am the movie. He was so perfect for the part, too. Oh, he's so good. He's so good.

He has the presence for that part. you know, just to, because Dredd is a character who sort of belts these one-liners out, and, you know, like, I am the law, of course, but, you know, like, there'll be some absurd thing in the comic, and especially in, like, the 70s and 80s, and, like, the kicker is always, like, the last panel, and he's hauling him off to jail and he'll make some kind of, you know, courts adjourned punk, or whatever, and it'll be, like, a destitute family or whatever, who cross, who jay walked, and he's like, that's 20 years, and, you know, like, here, here, here, here, do this. the long walk to prison. It's stuff like that. And then you're like, okay, Stallone can deliver. Well, and they actually, funny enough, they, they capture that better, I think, in the reboot, the 2012. Yes, they do. Yeah, Carl Urban does a great job. That's why we decided to only cover the bad one. Oh, of course. Yeah, we don't want to give you anything good. No, we don't like to have fun. First, you don't deserve it. Second of all, it's not as funny, but there's like a great, there's that great scene where they're walking into the apartment complex and he sees like, you know,

a homeless guy sitting and he's like he's like that's five years you better be gone when I get back and like he comes back out and like the homeless guy's still there and he's like I told you man all right that's five years right there like you get a little bit more of that that I think you do in the Stallone version there's not a ton of satire in it except maybe we're not jumping into the movie yet my brother I don't know why you're fine you're trending that way very quickly I must punish you immediately it's all I know listen Jake I am the podcast I am the podcast. You have been listening to a sample of a premium episode of QAnon Anonymous.

We don't run any advertising on the show, and we'd like to keep it that way. For five bucks a month, you'll get access to this episode, a new one each week, and our entire library of premium episodes. So head on over to patreon.com slash QAnonanonymous, and subscribe. Thank you. Thanks. I love you. Jake loves you. I don't know.