MYTHCOMICS" THE MAD COMPUTER" (2000 A.D. #144, 1979)

There’s a special kind of irony that the most mythic Xmas-comic I’ve found thus far doesn’t actually take place in the holiday season.

From the near-totalitarian philosophical stance of ultimate lawman Judge Dredd, holidays are just one more potential wrench in the gears of a smooth-running Mega-City: one more sybaritic excuse for citizens to misbehave and thus incur judicial wrath. This week’s mythcomic, spawned by John Wagner and Mike McMahon, shows that such “libelous displays” (to quote from Lerner and Loewe) are so infectious that they can even spread their cheery poison to days that are not holy, and to beings that are not human, like the titular “Mad Computer.”

“Everyone loved Barney, and Barney loved everyone—until the day that Barney went haywire, and Christmas came a little early to the Des O’Connor Block!” It would be interesting to know why Wagner chose the name of “Barney” for Mega-City’s master computer. The famed Purple Dinosaur, the “Barney” best known for cloying affection, did not come into being until 1992, and earlier Barneys from THE FLINTSTONES and ANDY GRIFFITH don’t seem like probable inspirations. Computer-Barney, a vital instrument in the running of the city, is given a human face by his creators—two tape-reels that look like eyes and a big red-lipped, toothy grin pasted on the machine’s front. The story, being only six pages long, doesn’t state outright that Barney has gone “haywire” because humans make the mistake of humanizing a mechanical intelligence, but the “everyone loved Barney” line implies that this is the proximate origin of the chaos.

One day, Barney decides that the Christmas spirit shouldn’t be confined to one day of Mega-City’s year. The inhabitants of “Des O’Connor Block” are the only residents who get expensive gifts from the computer, possibly because these are the people the computer most often sees day-to-day. Further, the local school is damaged by Barney so that all of the kids will be out of school, and the computer sends special announcements to some residents, which notes give unto them false “good news,” like a widow being told that her husband is still alive. Barney tells all of the residents, “I want you to be happy, folks—an’ I’ve got the power to do it! Before long, I’m gonna make it Christmas in every cityblock! Christmas every day of the year!”

The Bard memorably wrote, “If all the year were playing holidays, to sport would be as tedious as to work.” Judge Dredd isn’t worried so much about tedium as the insupportability of eternal good cheer. Since he can’t immediately attack the computer, which threatens to cripple all of Mega-City, Dredd tries to reason with the runamuck mechanism. When Barney proclaims his gospel-- “The law’s no good if it don’t make folks happy”-- Dredd responds with the Voice of Experience:

It’s false happiness, Barney! You don’t understand people! Pretty soon the bubble is going to burst—then the Judges will have to clean up the mess!

And Dredd’s gospel is borne out. Given a false god who promises that all one’s wishes can be fulfilled, the residents of Des O’Connor Block begin to fight amongst themselves, and even to commit murder, despite Barney’s confused, futile protests: “You should be happy!” Finally the Judges charge in to restore order, and by then, Barney’s circuits have become scrambled by seeing the results of his irresponsible largesse. Faced with a mother whose little girl was trampled by crazed residents, Barney commits suicide by switching himself off, making it possible for the Judges to control the city once more. The story’s final dialogue conveys the ironical gospel of Dredd, which counters that of the Pale Galilean by stating that essentially “man WAS made for the Sabbath:”

JUDGE TELFER: We can’t give people happiness. The best we can do is good old law and order.

JUDGE DREDD: As far as I’m concerned, Telfer, happiness IS law and order.