3 out of 5

The proper intro to this would use the words “like” and “wholly,” because those are the phrases by which Psi-Division’s Judge Janus is known.  I’m trying to avoid the obvious by pointing a finger at it, but, yeah, that’s still being pretty obvious.

So at some point in their 2000 AD careers, Morrison added Ms. Janus to the JD world – a valley-girl speakin’ Psi-judge who’s top of the pops in the Psis, and known for handling hellish scenarios with gum-snappin’ cheek.  With her shaved head and punk rock ear-piercings, she rings true of Morrison’s aggressive femmes in a lot of his quirkier creator-owned books, and the twist to have her talk dumb but act smart makes her a fun inclusion to Dredd.  The Megazine has awesomely been bundled with these extra add-in mags, sized like 70s mag-sized books and collecting some 2000 AD / Meg odds and ends that, I guess, aren’t collected elsewhere.  I doubt this is every Janus tale (there’s no intro story here), but we get a one-off from Morrison and Knight where she “proves her worth” as a Psi in a dream land – full of wonderful Morrison nonsense – that sort of leaves us hangin’ with Janus finding out the “truth” about the Psis and proclaiming “If the judges knew about THIS, they’d put us all in the cubes and throw away the key.”  Could totally be a red herring joke from Grant, but if you’re like me and this is your only exposure to Janus, it makes you wonder.  Next up is a five-parter from Millar that sorta’ foreshadows his weaker writing chops – assumptive jumps in logic because he won’t take the time to fill them in – but functions as an entertaining horror story where a once-dead Judge comes back to off some Psis that did ’em wrong.  And my snipping at his writing is a bit unfair in this instance: 2000 AD is meant to work in fits, and Millar’s succeeds.  And there’s no hiccup between his take on Janus’ voice and Morrison’s, so the story is a seamless inclusion.  The focus of the books is the 8-part ‘Faustus,’ by Morrison and Millar, in which the unkillable titular character holds some Judges hostage in a ship below the sea.  It’s well paced and effective, with a worthwhile cosmic twist wrapping things up.   Paul Johnson handles the painted art throughout, and while it seems like it might be too ‘serious’ for the light-hearted Janus, that she seems to be blended into rather horrific tales makes it a good mash-up.

There’s some unfortunate filler in the last half of volume 2 – a long, stupid, black and white Psi-Judge Karyn tale from John Freeman.  Black and white art is a skill, and Adrian Salmon is still learning it, making for confusing panels and poorly chosen lighting contrasts.  The story about an organism that takes the appearance of its victims hardly makes sense and feels not very thought out beyond its core concept.  It’s the kind of serial that works in the week-to-week mag because it’s only a few pages long, but when strung together – it drags.  However, the books have ‘JANUS’ nice and big on the covers, they were free, and all of the Janus material was entertaining, so we’ll sidle past the Karyn bit.