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Anderson: Psi-Division is a spinoff comic series of the main Judge Dredd comics focusing on Mega-City One's prominent psychic Judge Cassandra Anderson.

Like its parent series, there are several continuities. This page mostly covers the 2000 AD one, not the IDW run.


This comic series provides examples of:

  • Alternate Continuity: The IDW Anderson: PSI series is set in a different continuity from the 2000 AD Anderson: PSI series.
  • And I Must Scream:
    • The traitorous Judge Fauster unleashes the Half-Life virus on Mega-City One so he can get access to immortality. After he's arrested for causing over a million deaths, he gloats that he'll still be there when the city has crumbled into dust. As punishment Chief Hershey orders him locked up for eternity and his mind placed in a computer-induced nightmare.
    • Some poor sap is used this way by the Sisters of Death to create a bridge to Mega City One. His body is already dead (skeletal, in fact) but thanks to a nearby psychic amplifier his mind is still active, trapped inside it as he's tied to a cross with barb wire.
  • Baldness Means Sickness: Cas is bald after she goes into a virus-induced coma, though she regrows her hair after she's woken up again and returns to duty.
  • Deadline News: In "Half-Life", the human Judge Death executes a flamboyantly gay talk show host on live television for mocking the Justice Department by making a pass at him. He turns to the audience to warn them about respecting the law.
  • Did You Just Scam Cthulhu?: Cassandra Anderson manages to make Satan blow himself up by forcing himself into a Douglas Adams-style self-contradiction.
  • Dream Apocalypse: When Anderson investigates the death of a person who was killed inside a virtual reality simulation, some of the projections beg Anderson to save them from ceasing to exist.
  • Dream Walker: Both the Sisters of Death and Judge Death have invaded Judge Anderson's dreams on separate occasions.
  • Dream Weaver: Anderson has learned how to employ lucid dreaming to shape her dreams to her own liking, even using it to kick Judge Death out of her mind for good.
  • Dude, She's Like in a Coma: While Anderson is inside a virtual rituality program, the Psi-Judge rookie she's been assessing who has a crush on her places an Indirect Kiss on her lips with his fingers. She returns it after he dies saving her.
  • Dying Declaration of Love: A rookie Judge with a crush on Cas proclaims his love for her as he performs a Heroic Sacrifice.
  • Eco-Terrorist: One storyline has an eco-terrorist who tries to unleash a form of Mutagenic Goo which makes plants attack people.
  • Freudian Excuse Denial: Judge Anderson once visited the memories of Judge Death during her Adventures in Comaland. She felt pity to see him being beaten up by a bunch of school bullies, but he simply told her that it helped "build character" and made him more convinced of his "mission". He later rigged a bunch of electrical equipment during a pop concert to murder them.
  • Gaia's Vengeance: Mega-City One is plagued by bio-terrorists known as biophiliac, who think humans should be wiped out to protect the planet. Anderson tracks down a biophile who heads over to a plant shopping center to mutate all the flora.
  • Genius Loci: In the old town of Salem there's an apparent haunting or demonic possession going on in an Old, Dark House. It turns out that the house itself has become alive as a result of all the negative psychic energy accumulating in the area.
  • Grand Theft Me: When the minds of Vernan D'Argue and Anderson both end up inside the body of a gorilla by accident, D'Arque (having lost both his original body and his intended clone-body) tries to absorb the gorilla's mind into himself and steal Anderson's body.
  • Heroic Second Wind: When Anderson goes inside the mind of a living demon statue, it overpowers her and looks like it's about to kill her. Anderson eventually regains her resolve and states that she's faced far worse evils.
  • Here We Go Again!: One story involved an eco-terrorist dumping some Mutagenic Goo on plants so that they'll grow in size and attack people. She's apprehended, but the last panel shows some of the goo leaking into a crevasse full of cockroaches.
  • Hidden Disdain Reveal: In "Satan", Dredd says to Anderson that they were never friends and that he only "tolerated" her after she resigns as a judge. He later recants when she's injured.
  • I'm a Humanitarian: During one of the cadet prequel stories, Anderson and her classmates investigate a high end restaurant that serves up human flesh as a delicacy.
  • Immortality Seeker: Judge Elan Fauster, leader of the occult department within Psi-Division, desires immortality. He retrieves the Half-Life psychic virus from Judge Anderson's mind so he can use its power to acquire the secret to eternal life. This causes a plague within Mega-City One that kills more than a million people. Fauster succeeds in his goal, but is then thrown inside a virtual reality prison on the Chief Judge's orders where he'll spend the rest of his days in constant torment.
  • It's All My Fault: Anderson blames herself for being unable to prevent a nuclear bombing that costs the lives of 500,000 people after receiving a psychic vision.
  • Journey to the Center of the Mind: Probably half the stories involve Anderson fighting various villains in mental dreamscapes.
  • Killer Gorilla: After a mind-transfer goes wrong, Judge Anderson and Vernan D'Arque both end up trapped in the subconsciousness of an intelligent gorilla. D'Arque uses the gorilla's body to go on a killing spree to recover his fortune.
  • Lotus-Eater Machine: Hyven is a virtual reality system in Mega City One that millions of people use on a regular basis, some of them permanently logged in (or at least until their credits run out). It’s actually controlled by the Justice Department to cut down on crime in the city.
  • Man-Eating Plant: A whole bunch of plants start eating people when an eco-terrorist dumps a bunch of Mutagenic Goo in a plant store.
  • Medicate the Medium: On what would later become Deadworld, having dreams was derided, because to become an adult one must learn to crush their dreams. Children with psi-abilities were locked up and sedated.
  • The Mole: In "Half-Life", there's a resistance movement against the increasingly murderous rule of old Deadworld's judges. It includes a man named Fuego, who lures them into an ambush before revealing himself to be an undercover Judge working for De'ath. It turns out that this is the human who became Judge Fire.
  • Ms. Fanservice: For the most part, Anderson in Judge Dredd doesn't provide much fanservice other than being hot in general. Her own spinoff, however, is a different story. In the first collected volume alone, she spends half a story naked in a coma (she is mostly covered by a sheet, but still), has another judge walk in on her in a shower, and goes clubbing in a low-cut, tight minidress.
  • Nightmare Sequence: The Psi-Judges often witness horriffic visions of death and destruction on dangerous psychic missions in someone's mind; sometimes they're literal nightmares.
  • Off with His Head!: Anderson has run into an Artifact of Doom that had been used by a headhunting cult. It drove anyone who went near it completely insane and made them cut off people's heads while shouting "Blood for the Blood God!".
  • Omnicidal Maniac: Aside from Cass' run-ins with the Dark Judges, she's also faced with a demonic Cosmic Entity that believes it is Satan and travels from world to world to wipe them clean of life.
  • Plaguemaster: The Sisters of Death have a few cousins who proceed to spread death and destruction around the Mega City. A particularly nasty one involves a blistering plague that turns people into melting bags of puss.
  • Prophet Eyes: Psi-Judge Shakta's eyes turn a monochromatic white after being blinded. It really emphasizes her seer visage.
  • Recursive Canon: There's a story where a citizen in Mega City One visits a virtual reality program that features the Mighty Tharg, the alien editor of 2000 AD.
  • Satan: Judge Anderson once faced off with an nigh-omnipotent space-travelling entity which identified itself as Satan. After revealing its omnicidal harvests across the galaxy and its intent to destroy all life on Earth, it offered Anderson to join him as his herald. Satan was in fact borderline insane and lonely, and self-destructed when Anderson planted the seeds of doubt in him.
  • Sealed Evil in Another World: In "Revenge", Anderson inadvertently revives the Dark Judges, who proceed to use teleporters to go on a rampage in Mega-City One. Ultimately, they are dealt with by using their own dimensional technology to send them to an "empty" universe, where they remain trapped until "Necropolis".
  • Scenery Porn: Many psychic journeys are often filled with lavish mental dreams and fantastical imagery.
  • Schrödinger's Butterfly: In "Half Life", Judge Anderson, stuck in a coma after Judge Death tried to kill her in My Name is Death, finds herself living out the life of a girl named Sandra on what later became Deadworld before Death destroyed it. At one point she starts to wonder whether she's really Cassandra Anderson imagining that she's a teenage girl in another life, or Sandra imagining that she's a Psi-Judge from another dimension.
  • Set Right What Once Went Wrong: When Anderson finds herself in a young woman's body on Deadworld before its destruction, she tries to prevent the rise of the Dark Judges by stopping Judge Death's transformation into an undead monster. She fails completely after Death is tipped off by a mole within the resistance.
  • The Stoic: Averted momentarily in the Judge Anderson storyline "The Possessed" in which Anderson, despite being a cold-blooded executioner when required by her job, sheds tears when she makes the decision to shoot a young boy dead in order to prevent an invasion from another dimension.
  • "Take That!" Kiss: After Anderson finds herself living out another person's life but fails to stop Judge Death's ascension to unstoppable killing machine, he kisses her with his rotting lips before she dies.
  • Thoughtcrime: Played for dark laughs when Anderson is driving her Lawmaster before suddenly stopping to beat up several confused perps who only looked in her direction. She tells control to pick them up for "insulting a Judge and resisting arrest".
  • Torso with a View: In "Half-Life", Sandra/Cassandra Anderson does this to Judge Death by blasting a hole in his rib cage after the witches Phobia and Nausea completed their ritual on him. As he's already achieved immortality by that point, he reminds her of his Catchphrase: You cannot kill what doesss not live...
  • Uplifted Animal: Vernan D'Arque has created a legion of servant gorillas by tampering with their genes. They can talk and have just enough sapience to be unthinking slaves.
  • We Can Rule Together: In "Satan", the Satan entity offers Anderson to become his herald on his rampage through the galaxy in exchange for not destroying the Earth. She refuses, but Arthur Ranson had apparently pitched a non-canon Elseworld series where she took up the offer.
  • What If?: 2000 AD did a gag comic imagining what Cassandra Anderson would be doing if she had failed her Judge exams at the Academy of Law. She's married with a family and lives a dreary life in a City Block, unable to use her psychic powers for much of anything lest the Judges arrest her and fry her brain.
  • Your Mind Makes It Real: Varies from situation to situation. Sometimes entering another person's mind is quite harmless, but there are many occasions when a Journey to the Center of the Mind can result in death for the psychic who travelled inside.

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