It’s strange. After Scotland’s injury time loss to Italy at the football some weeks ago, which means we won’t be going to next year’s European Championships in the land of cuckoo clocks and lederhosen, I found myself searching the web looking for comments on ‘Calhab Justice’. Calhab was a strip written by me featuring a future Scotland, which appeared in Judge Dredd Megazine, oh, about 15 years ago. It went on for a wee while with artists John Ridgway, Colin McNeil, Lol, and Kevin Cullen contributing their woolly socks off.

Future Scotland as in reflecting the Scottish political situation back when another term of Conservative government (yep, the Tories in power, told you it was science fiction) was at odds with Caledonian yearnings of self-government. You know in some ways it was pretty prescient if I say so myself. I type now in a land with a Scottish Parliament run by the Scottish Nationalists.

Needless to say the story evolved, and not to everyone’s taste. Hipsterdad sums it up on his blog in his occasional review of old Megazines: “The weak link is certainly Calhab Justice, which has devolved from a light-hearted story about frontier judges fighting addictions to radioactive whiskey into some mad thing about a psychic super-judge obsessed with having children and bringing about the next stage of evolution or something.”

As attempt of explanation I have admitted in the past to my head disappearing up my arse, but I’ll have to think up something different in the future. And it would appear that I’ll never be forgiven in some sectors for pitching the main Calhab Judge Ed MacBrayne as a cross between Judge Dredd and Billy Connolly. But one can only run naked through Sauchiehall Street so many times before coming to the decision that full recompense has been paid.

And y’know 15 or so years on it’s still good to see the strip garner so much comment. It hasn’t been forgotten unlike so many other fragments of pop fodder over the last one and a half decades. And hey some of you guys have even fessed up to liking it. And there are some comments out there that tickle me pink, like a blog entry from Alex F (no relation), which ties into the comic strip panel up above:

“And of course there's comedy. We don't see the main character's face in this one, but rather his hapless chief commissioner - an indication that the series is very likely to make a comeback. One which will involve more mismatched police shenanigans. It almost doesn't matter what the story is (Calhab Justice, by the way) - you just need a certain kind of protagonist and you could transpose this panel onto the end. Strangely, this doesn't bother me.”

Strangely it doesn’t bother me, either.