Design and Criticism of Pan African Judges
The concept of a Pan-African Judge first turned up in a poster for the 1988 Judge Dredd Mega-Special drawn by Brendan McCarthy. The design would make a brief cameo at an international summit in the Judgement Day storyline but after that it would be replaced by a Siku design, starting with 1993's first Pan African Judges. In an article in Judge Dredd Megazine #238, Siku said he got the job after criticising the McCarthy design as too stereotyped: "I asked, why do people think all Africans run around in animal prints? Dave Bishop challenged me to come up with something better."
In the same article, Siku referred to Paul Cornell's first Pan African script as being well researched but flawed in its approach - "imperialism, jungle safaris, that's the way Westerners see Africa". (The second Pan African strip was written by Siku alone and had Yoruba gods attacking the continent.) He did enjoy having a "token white guy" Judge. Cornell himself referred to his work as "a trudge", feeling it had too many competing ideas in one story and that his dialogue was "overblown"; he was happy, however, with his decision to deliberately show Islam and a Muslim Judge, as he felt the Judge Dredd universe was "a little too disconnected from the real world" by turning all the world's religions into the worship of Grud.
Read more about this topic: Pan-Africa (comics)
Famous quotes containing the words design, criticism and/or african:
“We find that Good and Evil happen alike to all Men on this Side of the Grave; and as the principle Design of Tragedy is to raise Commiseration and Terror in the Minds of the Audience, we shall defeat this great End, if we always make Virtue and Innocence happy and successful.”
—Joseph Addison (1672–1719)
“A tailor can adapt to any medium, be it poetry, be it criticism. As a poet, he can mend, and with the scissors of criticism he can divide.”
—Franz Grillparzer (1791–1872)
“The sacrifice to Legba was completed; the Master of the Crossroads had taken the loas’ mysterious routes back to his native Guinea.
Meanwhile, the feast continued. The peasants were forgetting their misery: dance and alcohol numbed them, carrying away their shipwrecked conscience in the unreal and shady regions where the savage madness of the African gods lay waiting.”
—Jacques Roumain (1907–1945)