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Mega-City Law – Judge Dredd Case Files 2: The Cursed Earth (progs 61-85)

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And here we are in Judge Dredd’s first true epic, The Cursed Earth – for which some of my favorite images come not from the original print in 2000 AD, but the Eagle Comics reprints with their cover art by Brian Bolland.

You may recall the Cursed Earth all the way back from progs 3-4, although it had yet to be christened the Cursed Earth and was simply described as the “wilderness from the Atomic Wars” – if by wilderness, of course, you mean most of the former United States (outside the mega-cities on East and West Coasts and in Texas), now dangerous and mutated badlands (with a running theme of dark, mutated versions of the United States). The Cursed Earth is downright drokking dangerous – mutants, aliens, ratnadoes, the last President of the United States, Las Vegas, war droids…and freaking dinosaurs!

The Cursed Earth combines the essential Judge Dredd epic plotlines – Dredd confronting some threat, often existential, to Mega-City One, and Dredd venturing to some other, often exotic, location, or a combination of the two, Dredd venturing to some other, often exotic, location TO confront some threat, often existential, to Mega-City One. The Cursed Earth epic is just that – except the existential threat is not to Mega-City One, but its West Coast counterpart of Mega-City Two. In this case, it is a deadly virus that turns people into murderous, cannibalistic psychopaths (not unlike Rage virus in the 28 Days Later film(s), or for that matter, the Chaos Bug that almost wiped out Mega-City One in subsequent issues).

And it doesn’t get more exotic, or downright weird, than the Cursed Earth – except perhaps for alien space (both of which we’ll get to visit in The Judge Child Quest epic).

As for the storyline, it is simple and straightforward, much like that in Mad Max Fury Road (which come to think of it, would make for an excellent Cursed Earth storyline – Judge Dredd and Mad Max are even owned by the same studios, hint hint) – all the better to let the SF future satire and absurdist black comedy play it out. Dredd has to drive through the Cursed Earth to take a vaccine to Mega-City Two. Of course, they, ahem, borrowed the storyline from Roger Zelazny’s Damnation Alley. I know it, you know it and they know it. Who cares? It was an SF classic – a former Hell’s Angel has to drive a vaccine from the West Coast to the East Coast in a post-apocalyptic United States after a nuclear war. Judge Dredd just goes in the opposite direction. He even takes his own former Hell’s Angel-style biker with him (by the name of Spikes Rotten).

In Damnation Alley, flight was simply not possible due to the freakish atmospheric conditions as a result of the nuclear war. In the world of Dredd, with its regular aircraft (and space flights!), this excuse doesn’t really seem to wash, although there is a passing reference to the Death Belt of floating (and radioactive) atmospheric debris – which doesn’t seem to recur after this epic. Hell – Mega-City One supersurfer Chopper later crosses the Cursed Earth on a hoverboard! The Cursed Earth storyline offers the flimsy excuse that the plague infectees have taken over the Mega-City Two airport(s?). Surely Mega-City One aircraft could simply land as near the city as possible? Or Mega-City could use drones or similar craft to land anywhere else within the city other than the airports? But again, who cares? Who wants to see Judge Dredd fly over the Cursed Earth? Of course, we want to see Dredd ride across it (in his special Killdozer vehicle) and fight dinosaurs. So strap yourself in for the ride…

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 2:
THE CURSED EARTH 1-2 –
FORBIDDEN FRUIT / INTO THE DARKNESS
(progs 61-62)

You gotta love that title spread!

Forbidden Fruit in prog 61 opens The Cursed Earth epic, setting up its premise. Mega-City Two – Mega-City One’s Californian counterpart on the Pacific coastline – has been stricken with plague. What exactly is this plague (as Red’s co-pilot asks him)? No boring flu or anything like that for Judge Dredd’s first epic – it’s akin to the Rage virus in the 28 Days Later film franchise, although its victims are marginally more intelligent and articulate, not quite the de facto zombies of that franchise. Apparently, “it’s a disease left over from the Great Germ War… you know, the one that came after the Atomic War”. Judge Dredd’s world tends to be post-post-apocalyptic. It’s a wonder that ANYONE is alive in the twenty-second century, let alone the hundreds of millions of people in Mega-City One.

Anyway, plague-infected citizens have taken over the airports of Mega-City Two, conveniently isolating it by air for the plot, and have been transformed them into bestial, crazed cannibals. The plague is virus strain “2T(FRU)T” – adopted by the plague-infected into the strange battle cry – “tooty fruity”. Fortunately, Mega-City One has a vaccine. Unfortunately, the only way to get it to Mega-City Two is by land across the Cursed Earth.

Into the Darkness in prog 62 sees Judge Dredd equipped with his vehicle for the mission – the Landraider / Killdozer. (It’s a dual vehicle). Three other judges and some war droids are to accompany him – but Dredd handpicks Spikes Rotten for the mission, a criminal invoking the Hell’s Angel biker protagonist from Damnation Alley, because of Spikes’ previous experience as a gun-runner in the Cursed Earth.

 

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 2:
THE CURSED EARTH 3-4 –
THE DEVIL’S LAPDOGS / KING RAT
(progs 63-64)

Ratnado!

That’s right, Sharknado – Judge Dredd did it first in The Cursed Earth.

And in progs 63-64, we get to our ‘ratnado’, a tornado of rats known as The Devil’s Lapdogs. After the Atomic Wars, “great winds swept the land” hurling the postwar flotsam and jetsam high into the sky, where it became the Death Belt, a vast belt of flying garbage where nothing could survive, except of course the rats. The mutated rats learnt to glide on the air currents, swooping down with the winds like locusts, particularly upon the poor Cursed Earth town of Deliverance.

Dredd beats the ratnado (by playing Pied Piper with his bike siren).

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 2:
THE CURSED EARTH 5-6 –
THE MUTIE MOUNTAINS / DARK AUTUMN (progs 65-66)

One of my favorite images (colorized from the original black and white art by Brian Bolland) from The Cursed Earth epic – mutant Mount Rushmore! The mutant head I can understand, but Jimmy Carter?! Naturally, 2000 AD couldn’t resist the joke at the expense of the American president at the time.

Judge Dredd hasn’t made it all the way to South Dakota – apparently the Mount Rushmore sculpture was moved to just outside Mega-City One, although I’m not sure for what purpose, as it’s still in The Cursed Earth.

Dredd tries to avoid “mutie country” but the mutant leader, Brother Morgar of the Brotherhood of Darkness – it’s his head in the mutated Mount Rushmore – has other plans. He sets off after Dredd, in a procession of vehicles salvaged together – not unlike Immortan Joe and his war boys in Mad Max: Fury Road. Indeed, Immortan Joe and his mutated warlord state would fit right in the Cursed Earth (and a cinematic crossover between Mad Max and Judge Dredd is entirely possible albeit unlikely, not to mention totally AWESOME, as they are owned by the same studio) – or for that matter, it would only take a few cosmetic changes to reimagine Brother Morgar and his followers as Immortan Joe and his war boys (or vice versa).

Needless to say, it does not turn out well for Brother Morgar and his followers. Dredd initially has a mutant standoff in prog 65, by threatening to destroy Morgar’s mutant statue. Obviously he has a big head in more way than one and lets Dredd’s team go. Of course, the Brotherhood pursues Dredd’s party in prog 66 – but the latter are helped by a mutant youth named Novar with powerful psi abilities. He seems to be an all-round psi, at least with telepathy or some similar ability to divine Dredd’s mission of mercy (hence why he aids them) but also telekinesis which he uses to destroy the Brotherhood of Darkness. The episode concludes with a hint that Novar may have more of a role to play with respect to Judge Dredd…but we never see him again, as subsequent writers obviously just shelved or forgot about him.

 

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 2:
THE CURSED EARTH 7 –
NIGHT OF THE VAMPIRE (prog 67)

Dredd vs Dracula!

Well, not quite, although that would be AWESOME! As we will see in subsequent episodes, there are vampires in the Dreddverse, but they tend to be of alien or mutant origin. Here it’s something much more murderous – the last President of the United States, Robert Booth.

Well, technically the actual ‘vampire’ are a trio of malfunctioning medic robots maintaining him in suspended animation and draining the local Cursed Earth villagers of blood to do it.

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 2:
THE CURSED EARTH 8 –
THE SLEEPER AWAKES (prog 68)

And so we are introduced to President Booth (or “Bad Bob” Booth), a small but important part of the Dreddverse mythology. Some of you may have wondered how Mega-City One came to be governed by the Judges, given that its predecessor United States is not governed by Judges – unless the Judges of the Supreme Court were to start riding around on motorcycles dispensing justice with guns, which admittedly also sounds AWESOME! The answer lies with President Booth. Sorry to say it, but the Atomic Wars started with an American first strike – when President Booth pushed the button:

“My Fellow Americans – we stand on the brink of eternity! Foreign elements are at work in every corner of the globe, conspiring to do us down an’ to undermine our position as the richest, greediest nation on Earth. I have issued an ultimatum to world leaders – get off our backs an’ start playin’ ball or face annihilation, that ultimatum has now expired”.

Booth had deluded himself into believing that the American missile shields would protect the nation. Instead, they DID protect the coastal mega-cities, but the rest of the United States became, well, the Cursed Earth. In response (and in accordance with the surviving outraged public), the Judges – which had been created as the elite police force in the growing mega-cities – assumed control with their Declaration of Judgement, which is what we see in this episode (the backstory of the Atomic Wars was in subsequent episodes).

“Here is the Declaration of Judgement…for crimes against the American people, your presidency is at an end!”

President Booth was tried by a Grand Council of Judges and found guilty of war crimes – but the Judges hesitated to execute the last President of the United States. Instead, they sentenced him to a hundred years of suspended animation in Fort Knox – with three medic robots programmed to routinely check and change his blood.

Which of course brings us to the vampire robots – which Dredd has re-programmed to help work for the local farmers. As for Booth himself, Dredd commutes the sentence to life imprisonment, working alongside the robots to help the farmers bring life back to the Cursed Earth – “Every day, you’ll see the mess you made of America!”

The Declaration of Judgement was also captured in this Brian Bolland cover art for the Eagle comics of the second part of the Cursed Earth epic – flashing back to the Judges sentencing the last President of the United States.

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 2:
THE CURSED EARTH 9 –
THE SLAY RIDERS (Prog 69)

It’s about time we had Judge Dredd’s “I am the Law” – and more classic Brian Bolland art.

This episode sees a return to Brian Bolland’s fantastic art, but also the writer Pat Mills’ misanthropy – a characteristic theme in his writing in which he seems to prefer aliens, dinosaurs, robots and basically anything else to people. Mind you, the people in his stories generally have it coming.

And so we are introduced to one of the most noble characters in any Judge Dredd storyline, who is of course an alien – Tweak. Ironically, for an episode positively dripping in Mills’ misanthropy, it also portrays Judge Dredd at his noblest and most heroic, although Dredd was always something of an exception for Mill’s usual depiction of humanity.

The episode starts as Dredd’s party cross the Mississippi – “the once mighty river is still ablaze with petrol, foul-smelling pollutants, and nuclear wastes from the Great Atomic War…a torrent of fiery death”. To cross it, they take a ferry – drawn by alien slave labor. Aliens? In the Cursed Earth? The ferry operator explains that they were “specimens brought back by the starships…used to be kept on an alien nature reserve around here” – until the war. Hmm, sounds a little…contrived. Among them is Tweak, who resembles a bipedal rock-eating aardvark – and he senses in Dredd an exception to the rule that humanity has proved to him so far.

With regret that he must postpone action against the alien slave trade for his mission to Mega-City Two (but vowing to return to deal with it), Dredd and company continue on their mission.

However, the next day, they see Tweak, having eaten his way out of his cage last night, fleeing as a fugitive from a pack of ‘slay-riders’ – who are admittedly riding some pretty cool mutant, ah, horse-things. The slay-riders run down and net Tweak, who obviously calls out for help, even in his alien language. And Dredd of course responds to the call – “When someone calls on the Law for help, be he mutie, alien, cyborg or human, the Law cannot turn a blind eye! AND I AM THE LAW!”

As I said, the Cursed Earth epic portrays Judge Dredd at his noblest and most heroic. It is a pity that his catchphrase is not often shown at its more expansive, as it is here. Typically, Judge Dredd is cast as an authoritarian figure, often satirically so, with his catchphrase as a reinforcement of that. He certainly is an authoritarian figure, but much more nuanced than the simple satire of a police state – and, as here, his catchphrase is more than a statement of his authority, it is the embodiment of duty.

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 2:
THE CURSED EARTH 10 –
REQUIEM FOR AN ALIEN (Prog 70)

Dredd first rides out to rescue Tweak and confront the slay-riders, led by their Alien Catcher General – a figure with distinctive echoes not only of Confederate hunters of fugitive slaves, but also the Witchfinder Generals of witch hunts. Although ironically the Alien Catcher-General has either a mutation or a mask of the head of a goat – ironically, that is, because he resembles nothing so much as the demonic (or devilish) Sabbat Goat of witches’ sabbaths, the opposite of what you might expect for witchfinder generals or witch hunts. Given the slay-riders’ attitudes to aliens and the general human prejudice against mutants, I’d suspect a mask rather than a mutation. Although they don’t seem to have an issue with mutant steeds, here gloriously depicted by Brian Bolland.

Unfortunately, although Dredd and company defeat the slay riders (losing their second Judge, having lost the first to the Brotherhood of Darkness), Tweak has lost his family – his mate and two young children already killed by the slavers. Dredd and company follow him to their grave in a neighboring plantation. It moves Dredd to one of his rare demonstrations of emotion – “Tweak, ain’t much I can do to make amends, buddy…but you’re welcome to come with us – and I’m sorry”.

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 2:
THE CURSED EARTH 11-12 –
BURGER WARS (progs 71-72)

Burger Wars – Ronald McDonald vs Burger King!

Now we reach the point in Judge Dredd’s Cursed Earth epic where my Mega-City Law has a treat for you – the first of the episodes that were originally censored as a result of lawsuit against 2000 AD. I thought Judge Dredd was the Law?

Anyway, that changed in 2014 with a European directive on copyright law allowing the use of copyright protected characters for parody and 2000 AD’s publisher Rebellion Developments republished the suppressed episodes in a new edition of The Cursed Earth in 2016.

Anyway, Judge Dredd and biker companion Spikes scout out the land and find the oddly named town of In-Between, but they soon find out that the town is in between the two warring hamburger chains (or burger barons) – McDonalds to the north and Burger King to the south. Of course, they find this out when Spikes makes the nearly fatal faux pas of ordering a hamburger, offending the town’s neutral sensibilities as the last “free town” left and raising the suspicion that the outsiders are spies. However, this standoff is diverted when the two warring sides, led by figures costumed as their trademarks, descend upon the town (in pick-up trucks and vans), each claiming the town as their “customers”. Hmmm, one can see how this might have been controversial, although arguably also something of a backhanded compliment to the burger chains’ powers of endurance in a post-apocalyptic world.

Dredd and Spikes are captured by the overwhelming numbers of McDonalds’ men, while Ronald McDonald himself personally dispatches the Burger King – prompting the Burger King forces to retreat.

Ronald McDonald announces his vision of the future to the cheering crowds of McDonalds City – a dream in which he sees “every square inch of this fair land covered by one big McDonalds burger bar…everything that’s decent and American HAS BEEN WIPED OUT and in its place will stand McDonalds – one huge onion-spangled McDonalds, from sea to shining sea”. That ends his “speechifying” – he then pronounces the “burgers and shakes are on me!”

However, there’s a momentary blot on this vision as the crowds (and prisoners) gather in the burger bar, Ronald queries a staff member why a table hasn’t been wiped. When the staff member stammers he’ll attend to it now, Ronald guns him down – “We’ve got standards of cleanliness to maintain”. Hmm – I must admit I’m with Ronald on this one. I bet that would improve service standards considerably – and there’s nothing worse than an unwiped table.

Dredd remonstrates with Ronald McDonald about the purposelessness of burning the town – “You’ve won this ridiculous war! You killed the Burger King!”. However, Ronald McDonald counters that “they’ll just choose another one”, revealing that he and the Burger King are just titled positions – he inherited his own as his father ran “McDonalds in these parts” before the Atomic Wars, and he’s just carrying on the “family tradition”. Although in this case, the family tradition has turned into violent empire-building. Unfortunately for Dredd and Spikes, Ronald McDonald pronounces they’ll just have to remain McDonalds’ “customers” until the war is won – and that might take a while. After all, “this is big country – burger country!”

Dredd and Spikes soon manage to escape (and free other prisoners) by overwhelming their somewhat perfunctory two guards – “both fat and slow from too many takeaways”. They steal one of the McDonalds vehicles, but run into a herd of giant mutated cattle the size of elephants – hence all that beef for burgers. Their truck is overturned when a Burger King ambush drives a stampede of cattle directly at them. They are about to be lynched (as sentenced by a Burger King judge, strangely wearing an English judge’s wig), but are saved in the nick of time by the Land-Raider, guns blazing and commanded by Judge Jack. With that, they leave the Burger Wars behind them (never to be seen or heard from again in the comic) and resume their mission to save Mega-City Two.

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 2:
THE CURSED EARTH 13-16 –
SATANUS (progs 73-76)

Now for the main attraction of the Cursed Earth epic – Judge Dredd vs a tyrannosaurus rex!

And to celebrate, I couldn’t resist using the image of Satanus about to chow down on the bound Dredd from the Eagle reprint comics – which rivals that other Brian Bolland cover’s mutants as THE iconic image of the Cursed Earth epic. Indeed, it was my introduction to the epic, as I saw it as a ‘flashback’ poster in 2000 AD comics well before I read the epic itself, so I was left in suspense for years as to how Dredd escaped those gaping jaws.

So why are there dinosaurs roaming the Cursed Earth? Why the hell not? Everything’s better with dinosaurs! But seriously, Judge Dredd does Jurassic Park – or more precisely, since Judge Dredd did genetically engineered dinosaurs before Jurassic Park, Jurassic Park did Judge Dredd. Where’s the check, Jurassic Park?

Of course, another reason might be that Judge Dredd writer Pat Mills just wanted to shoehorn dinosaurs into the Cursed Earth epic from his beloved Flesh series – a series that started in the opening line-up in the very first issue of 2000 AD (preceding Judge Dredd itself, which only started in the second issue, albeit due to scheduling difficulties). That series had an intriguing premise – that the extinction of dinosaurs occurred because they were herded or hunted to extinction by time cowboys from the future, seeking to feed the meat-starved twenty-third century. Of course, being his usual misanthropic self, Mills tended to prefer the dinosaurs to people, with the occasional exception of characters who effectively went ‘dinosaur’ in any event.

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 2:
THE CURSED EARTH 13-14
THE COMING OF SATANUS / FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS (progs 73-74)

As for what dinosaurs are doing in the Cursed Earth, they are dinosaurs “from Dinosaur National Park, brought back to life by genetic engineering”, but “when the atomic war came, the dinosaurs must have been left free to roam”.

And eat sacrificial offerings from the Cursed Earth township of Repentance, which is how Dredd (and his companion Spikes) find themselves drugged and then bound to be eaten by the tyrannosaurus rex Satanus.

There – I’ve pretty much summed up those two episodes.

I mean, that’s almost literally Spike’s question to Dredd and Dredd’s reply as the Land-Raider gets caught up in a dinosaur stampede in The Coming of Satanus (prog 73)

The rest of the episode deals with the backstory of the re-gened dinosaurs in general and Satanus in particular, but you’ve seen Jurassic Park, haven’t you? It’s pretty much that…although Mills seems to write it almost as reincarnation, with memories of their former lives, particularly for Satanus, as one of the offspring of his tyrannosaur matriarch Old One Eye in the Flesh comic (and was killed by her when he challenged her for leadership of the herd of something). I’m…not sure DNA works that way.

Satanus is the first dinosaur created by the Jurassic Park re-gening process – and yes, they called him that, which seemed to be begging for trouble. And sure enough, he is vicious, with a particular taste for human flesh, even escaping into the mountains of the park where he remained at large – until I guess the Atomic Wars set all the dinosaurs free.

Anyway, the Land-Raider incurs damage to a track so Judge Dredd and his team seek assistance at the nearby town of Repentance. Interestingly, there’s a recurring folk horror vibe to the Cursed Earth, not just in this epic but in subsequent episodes – where towns lure passers-by in with an apparently wholesome friendly welcome, often dressed up in Americana, only for the sacrificial purpose of their dark secret. Indeed, this is the second time that folk horror vibe has played out in the epic – with Deliverance and the ratnado now essentially being replayed as Repentance and the tyrannosaur Satanus.

As Dredd said to Spikes at the end of episode The Coming of Satanus, “they’re too friendly”. And of course his “uneasy feeling” is right. Never ask for whom the bell tolls in the next episode of that title – it tolls for thee, Dredd! Well, more precisely, it tolls for Satanus as his dinner bell to come and eat Dredd, but you get the point.

 

 

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 2:
THE CURSED EARTH 15-16
PICNIC AT BLACK ROCK / BLACK SABBATH (progs 75-76)

Fortunately Dredd manages to use one of Satanus’ own teeth lodged in the rock from a previous sacrifice to saw through his bonds and escape. Satanus then rampages through the town of Repentance.

There – I’ve summarized the two episodes.

It’s a little more involved than that. Dredd has to do a little more than saw through his bonds, as Spikes is also bound as a sacrifice – and Satanus is leading a pack of tyrannosaurs to the feed. After escaping, he then cuts Spikes loose but is picked up by one of the tyrannosaurs. Spikes lobs a grenade (which he was wearing as earring) and a tyrannosaur snaps it up – killing that tyrannosaur and injuring Satanus with the shrapnel. The pack descends in a feeding frenzy on the headless tyrannosaur – which is when Dredd and Spikes are able to get away, making their way back to Repentance.

When they get there, the townspeople of course attack them – before the cavalry arrives in the form of Tweak driving the Land-Raider. In the meantime, Satanus is in a bad mood and decided that all deals are off with the township, attacking the jailhouse and everyone in it in a feeding frenzy, picking up the other surviving Judge on the mission, Judge Jack, in his claws.

Dredd is in his own bad mood, intending to use the Land-Raider to burn Satanus and the town to the ground – “Attention, people of Repentance! This is Judge Dredd! I am going to punish you for your crimes! You have five minutes to evacuate the town, before I raze Repentance to the ground!”

And you have to love that opening panel of prog 76, Black Sabbath – “The Devil Beast Triumphs!”.

But not for long – Dredd manages to save Judge Jack and also use the Land-Raider to raze both Repentance and Satanus – although unknown to Dredd, Satanus escaped death by falling through to the basement of the church in Repentance, emerging in an epilogue to the episode. As the epilogue intones, the world had not seen the last of Satanus. Well, Judge Dredd and Mega-City One had – except for his blood, as we’ll see – but Satanus was to cross over (by time travel) into another 2000 AD story…

 

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 2:
THE CURSED EARTH 19-20 –
LOSER’S LEAP / THE GOD JUDGE (progs 79-80)

(17-18 GIANTS AREN’T GENTLEMEN / SOUL FOOD progs 77-78)

Judge Dredd in Vegas!

After escaping the Cursed Earth tyrannosaur Satanus, Judge Dredd’s Cursed Earth epic finds itself back on track in Las Vegas. Well, Satanus and the Utah Dustbowl silliness in the following two episodes in progs 77-78 (Giants Aren’t Gentlemen & Soul Food). The latter were censored from the the original run because of its reference to Colonel Sanders and other trademark characters – but you’re not missing much, as they were a weird diversion without adding to the epic (and arguably detracting from it).

Anyway, when introduced in the Cursed Earth epic (in Loser’s Leap in prog 79), post-apocalyptic Las Vegas has metastasized into a city entirely based on gambling ruled by the Mafia. So…pretty much the same as PRE-apocalyptic Las Vegas, amirite? (Although I’m not sure how it works in the absence of any national or international tourism).

Judge Dredd and his crew are met with a “welcoming committee” in the form of old-style tanks attacking them. Dredd’s twenty-second century Land-Raider easily destroys the twentieth century tanks, but the numbered flag on each tank was a dead giveaway of their real purpose – they, like everything else in Las Vegas, were all part of a gambling game, much to the enthusiasm of the punters who bet on the “strangers”.

Dredd gets progressively more outraged as he explores the city, noting that Las Vegas has a judge-system and querying why it hasn’t intervened to halt the runaway gambling. (Although it makes me wonder more why the mega-cities, with their judge-systems, have had no contact with the judge-system in Las Vegas – particularly Mega-City Two on the West Coast, of which Vegas should effectively be part). As Dredd looks for the Vegas Judges, his outrage is complete when he happens on the Vegas Hall of Justice, housed in a casino, and sets upon it like Jesus Christ after the moneylenders in the Temple. There he finds the Vegas Judges – in uniforms of the same appearance as Mega-City Judges, but with dollar signs emblazoned on their chests, and with stereotypical Italian accents – operating the tables. Dredd demands to see the Chief Judge – and his request is corrected by Vegas Judges to refer to the God-Judge. Sigh.

Dredd assails the God-Judge as unfit for office but is overpowered by the Vegas Judge Fingers (obviously a mutant because of his giant size and extra fingers). And so Dredd finds himself poised over the precipice at Loser’s Leap because in post-apocalyptic Vegas, even death needs to have side-bets – a literal leap off one of the towering high-storied buildings, with target zones painted on the ground for onlooker bets as to the leapers’, ah, final destination.

After that literal cliffhanger, Dredd is fortunately saved in the next episode (The God-Judge in prog 80) by the intervention of Spikes with a (para)chute and they land a safe distance away from the target. (I hope the bookies offered odds on landing outside the target). More fortunately, they are rescued by the Vegas quasi-religious underground resistance, the League Against Gambling. Dredd is hailed by the League as their Savior, according to their book of prophecy (penned by their former leader) – “And lo – out of the east will come a man in black, his steed will be of iron and his anger will be like the roaring of demons. He will smite the chief evil-doer in his temple”. As Spikes jokes, “that’s you all over, Dreddy!”

And although he disclaims the prophecy, Dredd proceeds to fulfil it in his usual style and hands over the position of God-Judge to the leader of the League before resuming his mission to Mega-City Two. The League leader exclaims that Dredd’s memory will – “No one will forget the day Judge Dredd came to Vegas – and won!”

The house always wins, except against Judge Dredd.

Las Vegas was to recur on occasion in subsequent episodes or other stories set in the Dreddverse, when the action ventured far enough afield to it. Just don’t get too attached to the League, as the Mafia reclaim Vegas – or for that matter, just don’t get too attached to Vegas itself, as the writers presumably grew tired of its one-dimensional schtick. Being Vegas, it does go out in style – nuked by Judge Death. Yeah, the house doesn’t win against Judge Death either.

 

 

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 2:
THE CURSED EARTH 21-
TWEAK’S STORY (prog 81)

You have to love the opening panel of this episode, featuring the beleaguered Mega-City Two. I revisited this image during the Coronavirus pandemic in 2020, featuring as it does a welcome return of the art of Brian Bolland, 2000 AD’s best artist, and indeed one of my favorite opening spreads of the epic – “In plague-torn Mega-City Two, para-medic storm troopers fight a losing battle against the crazed victims of the disease”.

Paramedic storm troopers – now there’s a phrase you don’t hear every day. Or would want to. However, they certainly need it – and them – in Mega-City Two for those homicidal cannibalistic plague victims. At least, Coronavirus doesn’t turn people into crazed homicidal cannibals…yet. Pandemics have certainly played a major role in Judge Dredd’s history, not least the Chaos Bug that all but destroyed the city in the Day of Chaos epic. Mind you, it’s not the worst disease we’ll encounter in Judge Dredd – at least there’s a cure or vaccine, as opposed to Jigsaw Disease or Grubb’s Disease, although neither of those escalated into full-blown pandemic (in the case of Jigsaw Disease, because it is simply too alien and surreal). For that matter, this opening spread evokes some of the same frenetic violence by Mega-City citizenry as in Block Mania, the prelude to my favorite Judge Dredd epic of all time – The Apocalypse War.

I also love the bleak fatalism of the paramedic storm trooper team, as they are reduced to desperately firing off tranquilizer rounds (presumably gas) to hold the line – although their sergeant’s epithet for Mega-City One as “them yankees” doesn’t ring true. After all, this is West Coast Mega-City Two, not Texas City.

Sadly, we leave this intriguing opening spread behind as we continue with an interlude in The Curse Earth epic – but fortunately it’s the backstory of Dredd’s alien companion, Tweak, revealed to be highly intelligent and precognitive, as to how he ended up enslaved in the Cursed Earth. Long story short (and representative of writer Pat Mills’ characteristic misanthropy) – he’s a little like an alien space Jesus and humans are bastards.

 

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 2:
THE CURSED EARTH 22
TWEAK’S STORY (prog 82)

Just in case the whole Tweak as alien space Jesus wasn’t clear, his ‘crucifixion’ in Brian Bolland’s art in the opening panel should hammer it home – that and the tagline for the episode of alien messiah.

Essentially, Tweak has to play dumb to hide the intelligence of his species and avoid their exploitation by humans (as his species harvest gold and diamonds for food). Except of course HE continues to be exploited, first by the laboratory examination seen here, and then by his enslavement in the Cursed Earth, along with his mate and children (who were captured first, hence his heroic self-sacrifice to be with them in captivity).

One exception is Judge Dredd, who queries Tweak – “You sacrificed yourself and your family to save your planet – but what makes you think I won’t report the underground mineral farms on your planet – and a fleet of mining ships be sent out to tear your home apart?”

Tweak replies simply “I trust you, Judge Dredd”. Damn straight, Tweak, damn straight!

 

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 2:
THE CURSED EARTH 23-
LEGION OF THE DAMNED (progs 83)

Well, this is it – Judge Dredd’s Cursed Earth mission is in Death Valley and they can see the lights from Mega-City Two, just a few hours away. Dredd and his companions have survived mutants, slavers and even tyrannosaurs – surely there’s nothing between them and Mega-City Two now, right? Nothing, that is, except for a robot zombie apocalypse…

Or at least the robot equivalent of a zombie apocalypse – the remnants of war droids, mostly buried and dormant in the desert sand, but still functional and capable of being (re)activated.

War droids from what? The episodes expand upon the history of the Dreddverse and introduces the so-called Battle of Armageddon, in the form of Dredd paying his respects to the war memorial statue that honors the fallen Judges from the battle. Although…it seems to defeat the point of a war memorial statue. Mostly because no one would ever see it, given that Death Valley is in the Cursed Earth (and an unpopulated part at that), but also because the war is still going on around it, given that there are still functioning war droids in the location. As Dredd makes clear, the robot army was the only remaining military force loyal to President Booth. Remember him? The “vampire” back in Kentucky – the last President of the United States, who started the Atomic Wars, and from whom the Judges took control, with the Declaration of Judgement? Although it’s not clear why or to what purpose the battle was fought in Death Valley. Anyway, the Battle of Armageddon, was the Judges’ victory over Booth’s robot troopers (“the Judges had to crush them here in Death Valley”) – but one would have thought that victory involved, you know, not leaving active war robots behind on the battlefield. I mean, someone should have done something about that…

Judge Dredd intones that “it was the most savage battle of modern times…worse even than El Alamein, Iwo Jima and Stalingrad” – which seems to be a bit of hyperbole on his part, particularly as he adds that “one hundred thousand Judges and mega-troopers” (presumably a reference to Mega-City troopers fighting for the Judges) “lost their lives fighting for justice”. Sorry, Judge Dredd – it may have been worse than El Alamein or Iwo Jima, but Stalingrad was fought for over five months by over two million men with close to a million lives lost on both sides (not including wounded or captured). And there are other battles, not least in the world wars, that had over one hundred thousand lives lost – although perhaps not so many robots.

Even as Dredd is paying his respects, a robot trooper general – essentially a robot General Patton in the literal form of a tank (and similarly nicknamed with a robot pun twist “General Blood-and-Nuts”) exhorts the remaining robot troopers to resume the battle against the incoming Mega-City Judges. And despite some insubordinate protests that they’re “cosy in the dirt” and “the war’s over”, the robot troopers rise to the occasion – literally, like any good zombie apocalypse, rising from the ground.

The reactivated robot troopers attack Dredd’s party. The only other surviving Judge, Judge Jack – obviously traumatized by almost being eaten by Satanus – cracks and deserts, detaching the Kill-dozer from the vaccine car of the Land-Raider and attempting to surrender. Of course, the robots simply gun him down. Fortunately, the three remaining members of the mission – Dredd, Spikes and Tweak – manage to retreat to an old Spanish fort, where they are besieged by the robots.

 

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 2:
THE CURSED EARTH 24 –
JUDGE DREDD’S LAST STAND (prog 84)

Besieged by the army of the robot zombie apocalypse, Judge Dredd’s Cursed Earth mission comes right down to the wire, before an incoming sandstorm and a heroic sacrifice by a mortally wounded Spikes (equivalent to that of the Hells Angel protagonist in Damnation Alley) allows Dredd and alien Tweak to escape – barely. Each sets off with a pack of vaccine to travel on foot “sixty miles across the Mojave Desert to Mega-City Two”.

Indeed, you could say Spikes made two heroic self-sacrifices, in the last moments of his life and also in death – as Dredd dresses up the deceased Spikes in a Judge’s uniform and places him on the Lawmaster as a decoy to fool the robots into thinking he’s dead. For good measure, Dredd also programs the bike – and the accompanying vaccine car, having extracted two packs of vaccine for himself and Tweak to carry – to detonate. The robots are fooled into believing Dredd dead – and Dredd gives a eulogy for Spikes. “So long, Spikes, you were more than just a punk…you were…the greatest punk of all time!”.

Brian Bolland cover art for one of the issues of the Eagle comics reprint of The Cursed Earth epic depicted the charge of the Spikes brigade in all its glory.

 

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 2:
THE CURSED EARTH 25 –
THE BIG KISS-OFF (prog 85)

This is it – the finale of Judge Dredd’s Cursed Earth epic, with its iconic cover from the original comic (included in the collected edition) and its raw image of Dredd, close to breaking but yet unbroken, shouting his defiance to the Cursed Earth. Even if his eagle shoulder pad is so mangled that it looks like a dead chicken.

And so the Cursed Earth epic is akin to the Odyssey of Judge Dredd (whereas the Apocalypse War – or perhaps The Day the Law Died – would be his Iliad). Like Odysseus, Dredd embarks on a picaresque journey, albeit for a higher mission than Odysseus’ royal homecoming, and ends up in similar circumstances at the end of that journey – Odysseus was stripped of his ships, his men and even his clothes as he was washed up naked on the shore. The Cursed Earth epic doesn’t quite go that far – but Dredd otherwise ends up alone in the Californian desert (having been separated from Tweak in the sandstorm), his uniform in tatters, walking and ultimately crawling his way to Mega-City Two, pursued by some more revived robot troopers, also crawling from lack of power (and maintenance).

Finally, he crawls to an access point in Mega-City Two, itself a city on the verge of death – “Mega-City Two, where the neon lights had gone out…a city waiting to die. Luckily, that access point happens to be in one of the parts still safe from the plague – and they escort him inside.

Eight hours later, he’s recovered (while the city has feverishly processed the vaccine to save itself) and learns that Tweak also made it through – with the other vaccine pack. You see what I mean about Tweak as one of the noblest characters in any Judge Dredd storyline? All to save a city in a world whose inhabitants have brought him nothing but pain and sorrow (not to mention menaced his home planet) – even if his motives were mixed between alien altruism and loyalty to Judge Dredd. Dredd is reunited with Tweak some weeks later (Mega-City Two has assumed Tweak was Dredd’s “pet”) – Dredd offers for the world to know of Tweak’s heroism, but Tweak wants his people to remain secret and only to return home. And so Dredd sees Tweak off at the re-opened Los Angeles space port – before himself departing for Mega-City One, hoping for “a little peace and quiet”. After all, nothing could be worse than the Cursed Earth?

Yeah, good luck with that – as Dredd heads straight back into his next epic, The Day the Law Died…

Mega-City Law – Judge Dredd Case Files 2

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JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 2
Mega-City One 2100-2101
(1978-1979: progs 61-115)

Judge Dredd gets epic!

Judge Dredd: Complete Case Files Volume 2 essentially consists of the back-to-back Dredd epics, The Cursed Earth (progs 61-85) and The Day the Law Died (progs 86-108).

I consider these two epics to be Dredd’s first true epics – and more fundamentally, where the Judge Dredd comic came of age. This is classic Dredd.

Of course, the two epics had their precursors in the two longer story arcs (or mini-epics) of Volume 1 – The Cursed Earth in Luna-1 and The Day the Law Died in Robot Wars. Each of the epics (and their precursors) respectively set up the essential Judge Dredd epic plotlines – Dredd confronting some threat, usually existential, to Mega-City One (Robot Wars, The Day the Law Died), and Dredd venturing to some other, usually exotic, location (Luna-1, The Cursed Earth), or a combination of the two, Dredd venturing to some other, usually exotic, location TO confront some threat, usually existential, to Mega-City One (arguably The Cursed Earth, although it involved an existential threat to Mega-City Two, at least in the immediate sense).

Yes – there’s a few episodes at the end of Case Files 2 which serve as something of an epilogue to the epics, particularly Punks Rule as an epilogue to The Day the Law Died. It also effectively replays the very first episode with Dredd taking on the punk street gang that has arisen as a law unto themselves – with Dredd’s characteristic schtick of taking them on alone, to restore the authority of Justice Department that had lapsed in The Day the Law Died.

Otherwise, Case Files 2 is almost entirely the two epics – each of which deserve its own consideration in depth.

Mega-City Law – Judge Dredd Case Files 1

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JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 1
Mega-City One 2099-2100
(1977-1978 progs 2-60)

In the beginning was the Law, and the Law was with Dredd, and the Law was Dredd.

This is where we go back to the beginning, the very first episodes of Judge Dredd. For these and indeed all subsequent episodes, I’ll be referring to the collected editions of Judge Dredd in the Complete Case Files. Of course, in this case, I’ll be referring to Volume 1, which collected 2000AD ‘progs’ 2-60, or the year 2099-2100 in Judge Dredd’s storyline. (Remember in Judge Dredd that each year in real time equates to a year in story time, which is something of a rarity in comics).

And while Judge Dredd was the Law from the outset, it took some time for Dredd as well as his setting (Mega-City One) and his story to find their more definitive forms subsequent fans would recognize, with some story elements – particularly the setting of Mega-City One – taking until Volume 3 to do so.

Volume 1, as the first year of publication – reflected the usual concerns for longevity of a series in an anthology comic. However, Judge Dredd proved an enduring hit with fans from the outset, such that his story-line could feature its first extended story arc or ‘mini-epic’, The Robot Wars, from its ninth episode (or ‘prog’ in 2000 AD’s lingo) and finish its inaugural year of publication with its second extended story arc or mini-epic, Luna.

However, despite its exploratory nature, a surprising number of iconic elements were introduced in and endured from the episodes in Volume 1.

For one thing, there’s those two story arcs or mini-epics, The Robot Wars and Luna, which not only had narrative elements recurring in later storylines, but also laid the foundations for the first genuine and archetypal Dredd epics in Volume 2, The Day the Law Died and The Cursed Earth.

For another – there’s major narrative elements such as the Cursed Earth (although not christened as such until the epic of that name) and its mutant population, the Statue of Justice (towering over the Statue of Liberty), the unseen face of Dredd beneath his helmet, Walter the Wobot, the yet unnamed Lawgiver guns the Judges use, the yet unnamed Lawmaster motorbikes the Judges use, Max Normal, Judge Giant, the Department of Justice (with its Hall of Justice and Academy of Law), Rico Dredd, the Undercity, the apes of Mega-City One, American lunar colonies, and the Soviet or Sov Judges.

As well as more minor ones like face-changing machines, the precursor of the invariably disastrous consumer fads that sweep Mega-City One and riot foam (one of my personal favorites).

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 1:
WHITEY (prog 2)

This is where it all began…

The very first episode of Judge Dredd – which was ironically in the second episode or so-called ‘prog’ of 2000 AD, because they couldn’t get their act together sooner.

It’s a solid introduction to Dredd and his world, not dazzling or thrilling perhaps, but solid enough to lay the groundwork for an enduring series. As a necessity for a strip of 5 pages (2000 AD is an anthology comic, typically of 5 stories or so), the plot is pared right down – to the classic storyline of Dredd rooting out criminals or perps from a building. Of course, a pared down plot works to its advantage, particularly for an introductory story. One might note that this was essentially the plot to the 2012 Dredd movie, a primary reason why it captured the essence of the comic much more effectively than the 1995 Judge Dredd movie with its convoluted storyline unsuccessfully trying to insert too many elements from the comic for its own good.

Of course, that plot is ultimately the essence of any Dredd story and indeed his character – apprehending perps. It’s his job after all. The introductory episode also has the essence of the Dredd mythos – a futuristic Dirty Harry in a dystopian satire, although the emphasis in this episode is on the former rather than the latter. Indeed, there are some missteps here – Dredd’s setting is introduced as New York 2099 AD! As corrected by the next story, New York is effectively part of Mega-City One, as it and other cities have been absorbed into the latter as it sprawled along the American eastern seaboard. In this episode, it is not yet clearly post-apocalyptic or even particularly dystopian – “huge star-scrapers soar miles high into the air”, literally overshadowing buildings like the Empire State Building, which have become part of a literal and metaphorical underworld, fallen into ruin and used as hideouts by “vicious criminals”.

The first Judge we see is not THE Judge, Dredd himself, but the short-lived Judge Alvin, in the distinctive uniform (resembling motorcycle leathers) on the equally distinctive motorcycle (not yet named Lawmasters, but recognizably so).

Anyway, the leader of the Empire State Building criminals, ‘Whitey’, kills the patrolling Judge Alvin with his “laser cannon”. Interestingly enough, the Judges themselves don’t use lasers but guns (named Lawgivers of course) and bullets, albeit more advanced guns and bullets (with the latter more as miniature missiles). Whitey scavenges the helmet from the fallen Judge’s uniform, mockingly declaring himself as Judge Whitey – although he and his gang are disappointed that it isn’t THE Judge, Judge Dredd, who is apparently already notorious as the embodiment of the Law and the “toughest of the judges”.

Whitey taunts the Judges – sending the motorcycle with Judge Alvin’s body chained to it and a note “WHO YOU GONNA SEND AGAINST ME NOW PUNKS, JUDGE WHITEY”. Well, we all know the answer to that question. The Chief Judge initially wants the “air squad” to raze the building to the ground, but Judge Dredd suggests that they should send a solitary Judge to apprehend the Empire State Building gang, to reinforce respect for the Law – as later episodes will disclose, this is a recurring thing for Dredd and he does it again and again. Of course, when that one Judge is Judge Dredd, it’s all over but the shooting – using his automated bike as a distraction, Dredd successfully surprises and outshoots the gang, with the “lightning reflexes” from his training.

And here we have our dose of future satire, as Judge Dredd sentences the captured Whitey to life imprisonment as a Judge killer – on Devil’s Island, which spooks even Whitey into begging for mercy. Devil’s Island turns out to be a traffic island at the center of a highway network, cut off by the automated trucks that drive by it non-stop at 200 miles per hour, and prisoners are ‘marooned’ on it. J.G. Ballard had a similar story of people marooned on a traffic island in his story The Concrete Island. A satirical touch, but one that doesn’t seem to be practically effective – for one thing, it seems that prisoners might escape by throwing something (weaker prisoners for example) to cause some sort of pileup or awaiting breakdown. As it turns out, it isn’t secure as Whitey subsequently escapes – and future storylines abandon it for dependable iso-cubes and penal colonies, most notoriously the space penal colony on Jupiter’s moon Titan for Judges gone bad.

And yes – my feature image is actually Brian Bolland’s cover art for the first issue of the Eagle reprint comics.

Also yes – it did not actually reprint the first issues from the original 2000 AD episodes. Fortunately, it does reprint Punks Rule, that epilogue to The Day the Law Died and the basis for the cover art – which is also not dissimilar in its plot device of Dredd’s recurring schtick to suggest for a solitary Judge, himself of course, to take out dangerous gangs to reinforce respect for the Law.

However, this cover art is such an iconic image of Dredd that I have to feature it upfront with Case Files 1.

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 1:
KRONG (prog 5)
The New You / The Brotherhood of Darkness (progs 3-4)

Funnily enough the next Brian Bolland cover art for the Eagle Comics reprint in order of the original episodes was issue 34, which flashed back to the fifth episode, featuring a robotic King Kong knockoff known as Krong in an episode of that name. The episode is…not as exciting as it sounds and sadly did not feature Dredd arresting Krong as in the cover art. Instead Krong was used as the instrument of crime (to destroy a building) by a museum curator of special effects.

And there were some iconic features of Mega-City One introduced even as early as progs 3 and 4. Face-changing machines – seemingly a common and easy form of cosmetic surgery – were introduced in episode 3, The New You. Mutants and “the wilderness from the Atomic Wars” – yet to be named the Cursed Earth – were introduced in prog 4 The Brotherhood of Darkness. They would subsequently reprise their role as antagonists to Dredd in The Cursed Earth epic in Case File 2.

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 1:
THE STATUE OF JUDGEMENT (prog 7)
Frankenstein 2 / Antique Car Heist (progs 6 & 8 )

Possibly the most iconic feature of Mega-City One – this landmark feature of Mega-City One introduced in prog 7 named for it, the newly constructed Statue of Judgement – the gigantic statue of a Judge that towers over the neighboring Statue of Liberty.

Prog 6 “Frankenstein 2” sadly does not quite recreate the story of Frankenstein but involves the theft of bodies for illegal transplant surgery.

Prog 8 “Antique Car Theft” involved the not so interesting premise of 20th century petrol-fuelled cars being valuable antiques. The more interesting premise was almost a throwaway gag – the rare occasion of Dredd taking off his helmet (at gunpoint). We don’t see his face but the perps do and it’s apparently so horrifying that it shocks them enough Dredd has time to pull his Lawgiver out to shoot them. Although we have never seen Dredd’s face – ever – in the comic (well, except unrecognizably as the Dead Man), they did seem to abandon his hideousness as a plot point and it became more a matter of his mystique. And while we haven’t seen his face, we have seen that of his clone-father Fargo which didn’t have any such issue.

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 1:
ROBOT WARS (progs 9-17)

The Robot Wars was the first Judge Dredd ‘epic’ – or more precisely longer story arc, since 10 episodes hardly seems to count as an epic, although Dredd’s first longer story arc saw it come of age as an enduring series.

And yet…meh, it’s okay. Of course, it is at a disadvantage as I was introduced to Judge Dredd by the Apocalypse War epic (and its Block Mania prelude), still my personal favorite Dredd epic. For that matter, I still consider Dredd’s first true epics and coming of age to be the back-to-back storylines of The Cursed Earth and The Day the Law Died – which feature in (and essentially comprise) Volume 2 of the Complete Case Files.

So The Robot Wars pales in comparison. It seems a little…contrived or even heavy-handed at times. Of course I can hear you exclaim – O Stark After Dark, isn’t being heavy-handed one of the fundamental characteristics of Judge Dredd? True – but that heavy-handedness is usually leavened by or indeed part of its absurdist humor, black comedy or satire. The Robot Wars still has some of those qualities, but the balance of them just doesn’t seem (or hasn’t had time to develop to be) as effective as in subsequent epics or episodes.

The Robot Wars also covers the familiar SF territory of, well, a robot war – although perhaps not as familiar at the time of its publication prior to the Terminator and Matrix films. In this case, the robot war is led by messianic carpenter robot (oho!) Call-Me-Kenneth, although ‘he’ turns out to be closer to robo-Hitler. Indeed, he announces himself to be a fan of Adolf Hitler, which begs the question – who programmed that into him?! There are some discordant notes – the robots are likened to slaves for the Mega-City populace to live lives of ease. However, subsequent storylines show quite the opposite, that automation and robots have resulted in unemployment variously stated but at least 90% – with the overwhelming majority of the Mega-City population living lives of crime, drudgery and welfare dependency.

Of course, having previously been introduced to mutants, The Robot Wars introduces us to another of the most recurring SF tropes and equally problematic themes for Judge Dredd, Mega-City’s robot ‘population’. (Mutants, robots and aliens are the big three SF tropes – and themes – for Judge Dredd). The relationship between robots and Mega-City’s human population in general – and its human Judges in particular – will be almost as problematic as Mega-City’s relationship with the mutant population of the former United States. And just as with mutants, Mega-City should seem to adopt a more nuanced approach to its robot population. If its robots do have genuine artificial intelligence (as they often seem to do), shouldn’t they be afforded citizenship status – or at least some legal status or protection? Indeed, its robot population generally seem to be more law-abiding and more observant of others, human or robot, than its human population. Once again, Judge Dredd seems to be more sensitive to this issue than his fellow Judges, although not quite as charitably as he is towards mutants.

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 1:
ROBOT WARS (prog 9-17)

The Robot Wars story arc also introduced recurring character Walter the Wobot, so-called because he lisped his R’s as W’s – a loyalist robot crucial to Dredd’s victory over the robot rebellion and rewarded with full citizenship as a result (as seen in the final episode here), although he chose to become Dredd’s robot servant (and fanboy).

I also include this image as part of a running theme equivalent to a drinking game for a title drop in a film – spotting the image used for Dredd on the Case Files cover and he was certainly striking a pose here.

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 1:
BRAINBLOOMS (prog 18)

Brainblooms in prog 18 might seem a strange episode to single out for attention, but for one thing – the introduction of one of my favorite features of Mega-City One commonly used by the Judges against its unruly citizens, riot foam!

A sprayed foam that hardens like concrete almost instantaneously, encasing those rioting citizens within it. Hopefully it’s porous so people can breathe – or the Judges have damn good aim. I seem to recall that Justice Department has a solvent for it – either that or they just chip away at it the good old-fashioned way to extract those rioters.

Here they use it for the titular brainblooms, some sort of illegal alien or mutant plant that their owner uses to hypnotize Dredd. It doesn’t take – and he’s back with the riot foam to use on the plants. The brainblooms may also count as a proto-fad – a theme we’ll see a lot more of with the bizarre future fads among Mega-City citizens.

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 1:
THE COMIC PUSHER (prog 20)
Mugger’s Moon (prog 19)

Literally introducing Max Normal – “It’s Max Normal, the pinstripe freak. One of my informers…”

The “pinstripe freak” – so-called because he wears pinstripe suits and sports twentieth-century fashion or style as part of the ‘normals’ fad which he led, as opposed to the usual punk biker or skater chic of the majority of Mega-City One, including the Judges with their uniforms.

“Stomm! It make me sick just to look at you, Max. Why don’t you grow your hair and get some decent wild clothes like everyone else? Why have you young people always gotta be different?”

Not that we learn it here but in subsequent episodes we learn Max is one of the 1% – the wealthy of Mega-City One. Not mega-corporation billionaire wealthy or anything like that, but at least millionaire wealthy – through his normals fad but probably more through being a champion player of shuggy, Mega-City One’s weird variant of pool.

Also an interesting sight into Justice Department resembling the East German Stasi, with its cohort of civilian informers. In this episode, what Max informs on to Dredd is the titular illegal comic pusher – and of course the comic that is being pushed is 2000 AD, a nice little plug for the Dredd’s own comic – “2000 AD – the famous comic from the twentieth century. Brilliant!” and “Fantastic stuff! No wonder those lawbreakers were charging a fortune for it!”. Although it’s not entirely clear why the comic is illegal in-universe…

Oh – and Mugger’s Moon in the preceding prog 19 is a somewhat bland episode featuring muggers. It also features Mega-City One apparently having no air pollution (from a combination of Clean Air Acts and technology) – I can’t recall that popping up again, although I do recall radiation warnings from time to time. Also Mega-City One apparently has no Good Samaritan-type laws, so Dredd has to deal with a callous motorist who failed to render assistance to a mugging victim on a technicality. That does surprise me – later episodes would certainly feature criminal penalties for failing to inform the Judges about a crime, even as a bystander, which would seem to have applied in this episode so Dredd need not have relied on that technicality.

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 1:
THE ACADEMY OF LAW 1 (prog 27)
The Solar Sniper (prog 21)
Mr Buzzz (prog 22)
Smoker’s Crime (prog 23)
The Wreath Murders (prog 24)
You Bet Your Life (prog 25)
Dream Palace (prog 26)

Introducing the Academy of Law – where all Mega-City One Judges receive their training as cadets or rookies (from early childhood) – here we see Dredd checking out his honor roll class of 2079 (twenty years earlier than 2099, the year of this episode in-universe).

Other episodes I skipped over to get here
• The Solar Sniper (prog 21). Pretty much what it says on the tin – a hitman using a solar-powered super-rifle to take out Judges. Introducing Mega-City One’s Weather Control (which Dredd uses for clouds to beat the sniper) – in a distressingly landbound building (and called Weather Congress), not the aerial station we see in subsequent episodes
• Mr Buzzz (prog 22) – a mutant perp that uses bat-like sonar
• Smoker’s Crime (prog 23) – introduces smokatoriums as smoking is illegal on streets. Later episodes would outlaw tobacco altogether (presumably leaving a synthetic tobacco as legal)
• The Wreath Murders (prog 24) – Dredd apprehends a street murder gang that uses wreaths as their calling card
• You Bet Your Life (prog 25) – Dredd apprehends a deadly underground game show. It’s rigged of course
• Dream Palace (prog 26) – features dream machines as a popular leisure activity in Mega-City One, sadly never to be featured again. There goes my Total Recall Judge Dredd crossover…

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 1:
THE ACADEMY OF LAW 2 (prog 28)

Introducing Judge Giant – one of coolest characters in the Judge Dredd universe and one of the most popular recurring judges, other than Dredd himself.

Yes – he was introduced in the previous episode, but as a cadet rather than as a Judge (graduating from rookie in my featured image).

And although he was to be killed five years on, he effectively came back in new and improved form through his son (from an extra-Judicial liaison).

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 1:
THE RETURN OF RICO (Prog 30)
The Neon Knights (prog 29)

“He ain’t heavy – he’s my brother!”

Introducing (and concluding) Dredd’s corrupt clone-brother, Rico Dredd (prog 30). Caught by (Joe) Dredd himself and sentenced to Titan, where Mega-City One sends its worst criminals – Judges gone bad. It’s not as secure as you’d expect for a prison in space – as there’s frequent escapes, including Rico – returning for vengeance on his brother, but outgunned by the latter. However, he remains a fundamental element in the Dredd mythos thereafter – to an extent, Dredd will always carry his clone brother with him.

For one thing, as subsequent episodes reveal, Rico had a daughter, Vienna Dredd, who grows up as Dredd’s niece – and given that Rico was his clone, Vienna is virtually his own daughter. She of course symbolizes Rico’s original corruption – as, like Jedi, Judges are forbidden from sexual relationships (although this is relaxed much later in the series, while still frowned upon by the Justice Department). Dredd distances himself from her, but subsequently assumes a closer paternal role to her – as she in turn grows into one of the strong female characters of the storyline.

For another, Dredd – and his story – remains haunted by this taint in the (clone) bloodline – with Rico as his shadow, the potential corrupt version of himself, and on a larger scale, the Department of Justice. Indeed, Dredd’s best adversaries are dark shadows of himself (and the Judges in general), as symbolized by Rico – although Rico remains as more a symbol of Dredd’s own potential for inner conflict. However, Rico foreshadowed even darker inversions of Judge Dredd and the Law to come, culminating in Dredd’s ultimate adversary – Judge Death and the Dark Judges. Whereas Rico was the corrupt shadow of Dredd, Judge Death is his absolute dark inversion. Rico at least was tempered by his own humanity and corruption. Judge Death and the Dark Judges are utterly inhuman and zealous to their Law, in which the crime is life and the sentence is death.

The previous episode, The Neon Knights, in prog 29 essentially involved the titular Ku Klux Klan analogy – even referred to as one of a number of secret vigilante klans – targeting robots in the wake of the Robot Wars. There’s a twist in the tale as their leader is revealed as a secret cyborg.

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 1:
DEVIL’S ISLAND (prog 31)

And we return not only to Whitey, the first perp we ever saw Dredd apprehend – and show us how dangerous he really was – but also to Devil’s Island, that weird traffic island prison they phased out for proper iso-cubes.

As I said back for prog 3, nice satire a la J. G. Ballard’s The Concrete Island, but one that didn’t seem to be practically effective, as an escape simply relied on disrupting traffic. Which Whitey does here by enlisting another prisoner to jury-rig a device to hack into Mega-City One’s weather control for a snowstorm – although that just raises more questions.

Fortunately Dredd’s in the vicinity at the time and just apprehends him again, returning him to Devil’s Island. Which again raises more questions, given how Whitey just orchestrated an escape from there – within the same year he was apprehended. No wonder they phased it out for iso-cubes.

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 1:
THE TROGGIES (prog 36-37)
Komputel (prog 32)
Walter’s Secret Job (prog 33)
Mutie the Pig (progs 34-35)

Introducing the Under-City, a setting (and inhabitants) almost as full of weirdness as the Cursed Earth – indeed, essentially the Cursed Earth under Mega-City One – albeit not quite as we know it.

It wasn’t quite introduced in the same subterranean form it evolved into in subsequent episodes. Here it is simply referred to as the underworld, consisting of an old network of subway stations – and Dredd appears to be surprised by it (whereas in much more recent episodes we’ve seen him and Rico venture into it as cadets).

Here the inhabitants – the titular troggies – seem to copy twentieth century clothing and slang, the latter to a cloying extent. Again, this was dropped as the Under-City dwellers evolved more into weird or semi-mutated inhabitants similar to those in the Cursed Earth – although the Under-City itself often contained relics of the twentieth century cities. Like New New York in Futurama, Mega-City One often did not simply grow out of the existing cities on the eastern US seaboard but over them.

As for the other episodes, we skipped:
• Komputel (prog 32) – Judge Dredd deals with an automated hotel that has become murderous. Have they learnt nothing from the Robot Wars?! Also hotels seem somewhat anomalous to the dystopian setting MC-1 we know
• Walter’s Secret Job (prog 33) – more early instalment weirdness as Walter the Wobot moonlights (from being Dredd’s robot servant) as a taxi driver. The weirdness is Dredd referring to Walter taking the job from human drivers – where in the Mega-City One we know, automation or robots have taken virtually all jobs. Also, why don’t they just automate the cab rather than have a robot driver?
• Mutie the Pig (progs 34-35). More moonlighting, but this time a crooked Judge – a classmate of Dredd, no less, named for the artist Ian Gibson – moonlights as a perp with a mutant mask.

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 1:
THE APE GANG (Prog 39)
Billy Jones (prog 38)

City of the Apes!

My disappointment is immeasurable that the Judge Dredd comic didn’t go with that title. I would also have taken the Apes of Wrath.

Apes are a surprisingly prevalent trope in SF and the Judge Dredd comic is no exception – so much so that it is one of the thematic special mentions to my top ten Judge Dredd episodes and epics. Apes have been used to echo human nature in literature long predating SF, but SF offered a new spin – ‘uplift’ apes. That is, apes ‘uplifted’ through human technological enhancement to a higher level of intelligence, even rivaling humanity.

The world of Judge Dredd is no planet of apes – nor is Mega-City One a city of apes – but there are uplift apes, introduced here in one of the earliest episodes of Judge Dredd no less. Unfortunately, they were introduced as living in a ghetto dubbed the Jungle, which smacks of, ah, apist stereotypes. Perhaps even more unfortunately, they were also introduced through the so-called Ape Gang, an ape criminal gang that styled itself on equally stereotypical Italian-American 1930’s mobsters (headed by Don Uggie Apelino with his lieutenants Fast Eeek and Joe Bananas).

Of course, the Ape Gang did not prosper when it went head-to-head with Dredd – and for that matter the Jungle was destroyed during the Apocalypse War. However, uplift apes did survive in Mega-City One, occasionally popping up when the writers remember them – and fortunately as more engaging characters to rival their human citizen counterparts.

As for the episode we jumped over:
• Billy Jones in prog 38 featured the premise of a Mega-City trillionaire, transparently named Hugh Howards, and his criminal plot to substitute duplicate robot spies for the children of owners of rival companies…as industrial espionage? Ah – as a trillionaire, does he really need to resort to such shenanigans, and even if he did, surely there is a more legitimate and profitable way to spend his money achieving it, not to mention a more practical means of industrial espionage ? I do like the way the episode features Mega-City One using Dredd as a boogeyman to scare their kids into being good…

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 1:
THE MEGA-CITY 5000 (progs 40-41)

Judge Dredd does Death Race!

Largely unexceptional (and little odd in Mega-City One itself – more Mad Max than Judge Dredd) but for two things.

It was the first appearance of Brian Bolland’s art in the Judge Dredd comic – and it introduced “Spikes” Harvey Rotten, albeit very different in appearance than we saw him next in The Cursed Earth (although I understand that might have been due to an accidental art mix-up between him and another character in the Mega-City 5000).

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 1:
LUNA 1 (progs 42-58)

“By order of the Triumvirate, you are hereby appointed to the office of Judge-Marshall of Luna1, the United Cities of North America Colony on the Moon. You are instructed to seek immediate passage on the first available lunar shuttle”.

And so begins Luna-1, another Judge Dredd ‘mini-epic’ or longer story arc – the second after The Robot Wars and just prior to the first true (and classic) Dredd epics, The Cursed Earth and The Day the Law Died. Longer than the Robot Wars (at 17 episodes), but like The Robot Wars before it, it was formative of subsequent Dredd epics. Indeed, the two of them respectively set up the essential Judge Dredd epic plotlines – Dredd confronting some threat, usually existential, to Mega-City One, and Dredd venturing to some other, usually exotic, location (or a combination of the two). However, it is more episodic than The Robot Wars – essentially Dredd in his judicial duties on the moon. I also like it more than The Robot Wars – it has more of the feel of the subsequent epics and introduces some important elements in Dredd’s world, namely the other two American mega-cities (Mega-City 2 on the West Coast and Tex-City in Texas) as well as the jointly administered American lunar colony, the latter essentially recast as a space Western setting.

The highlight for me was the introduction of the Soviet or Sov Judges, the most persistent recurring antagonists of Mega-City One. The introduction of the Sov Judges – and their main epic The Apocalypse War – was written prior to the fall of the Soviet Union. Subsequent storylines seem to redress this as some sort of neo-Soviet revival, perhaps as part or a result of the Atomic Wars

The Sov Judges are also the most effective recurring adversaries of Mega-City One (and that’s in a universe with such omnicidal maniacs as Judge Death and the Dark Judges), as they wiped out half the city in the Apocalypse War and almost the other half in the Day of Chaos. All that comes later (much later for the Day of Chaos) – for now, we are just introduced to the Sov Judges. And what an introduction – with classic art by Brian Bolland, one of my favorite Judge Dredd artists, particularly in this classic image.

I always loved the look of the Sov Judges, with all their Soviet paraphernalia of which Stalin himself would be proud – they just look so damn cool! Indeed, there are times when I think they look cooler than their American Mega-City One counterparts.

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 1:
THE FIRST LUNA OLYMPICS / LUNA-1 WAR (progs 50-51)
Luna-1 (prog 42)
Showdown on Luna-1 (prog 43)
Red Christmas (prog 44)
22nd Century Futsie (prog 45)
Meet Mr Moonie (prog 46)
Land Race (prog 47)
The Oxygen Desert (prog 48-49)

I will never tire of this image – so here it is again in color as Brian Bolland’s cover art for the Eagle comics Judge Dredd reprint issue 2.

As I said, the Sov Judges were introduced in the Luna-1 mini-epic – specifically in the two episodes The First Luna Olympics and Luna-1 War in progs 50-51. It is not surprising that the Sov Judges were introduced as the antagonists of the American Judges, reflecting their contemporary Cold War antagonism at the time of the episodes in 1978. And it’s also not surprising that we were introduced to the conflict between the Sov Judges and the American Judges in the arena of the Olympic Games, again reflecting one of their arenas of Cold War rivalry. Of course, in the twenty-second century, the big difference in their Cold War rivalry – apart from there already have been the global Atomic Wars – is that the Olympics are on the moon.

Although in fairness, as the title says, it’s the first lunar Olympics. What hasn’t changed is the American-Soviet rivalry and mutual protests of cheating, although it’s interesting that competitors are allowed up to 20% bionic components (but no more – hence the protests). Of course, given the low-gravity, terrestrial records are easily broken – but one could only assume they’ll be keeping separate record books from now on.

Anyway, the cheating culminates in the assassination (by an assassin in the stands) of the Soviet star sprinter (worse in the deciding event to break the medal count tie between the Americans and the Soviets). Sov Judge Kolb goes to execute the assassin and Dredd intervenes because apparently Mega-City One’s Justice Department rejects the death penalty (which would become more of a loose guideline in subsequent episodes), killing Kolb. And as the other Sov Judge – Sov-Judge Cosmovich – tells Dredd, this means war!

Except not really – or not as we know it. In their introduction here, war was somewhat more ritualized between the American and Soviet mega-cities, at least in their lunar colonies – effectively as a death-sport, somewhat like Roller-ball. Back on earth in subsequent episodes, however, the Sovs proved to be recurring adversaries of Mega-City One – and looming as a threat of actual war. Guess those were just moon rules?

Anyway, Dredd wins of course, so the Americans don’t have to give up any lunar territory – which were the “stakes”.

As for the other episodes:
• Luna-1 in prog 42 gave Dredd his marching orders – or spaceflight orders – apponting him as Judge-Marshall of Luna-1 and of course Walter stowed away in his luggage. The position of Judge-Marshall proves to be a hot seat – as Dredd is targeted by repeated assassination attempts, which brings us to…
• Showdown on Luna in prog 43, where Dredd has the classic Western showdown with a gunslinging robot, showcasing Luna-1 as a space Western setting, with the lunar frontier essentially the new Wild West for the American mega-cities
• Red Christmas in prog 44 sees Dredd celebrate Christmas 2099 on the moon – the red is yet another assassination attempt by means of holding Walter hostage
• 22nd Century Futsie in prog 45 not only sees in the titular 22nd century on New Year – but also introduced ‘futsies’, an occasional recurring feature in Mega-City One in which citizens run amok or go crazy from ‘future shock’, a term (and book title) coined by Alvin Toffler
• Meet Mr Moonie in prog 46 sees Dredd go after the source of assassination attempts on him – the reclusive billionaire (trillionaire?) owner of the moon
• Land Race in prog 47 sees the titular race for staking claims to lunar land

The Oxygen Desert in progs 48-49 sees Dredd stranded in the titular desert – i.e the lunar surface outside the pressurized atmosphere domes – but survives, only to feign resignation to lure in the outlaw stranding him there

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 1:
THE FACE CHANGE CRIMES (prog 52)

We’ve already seen face-changing machines in the earliest episodes, as well as Brian Bolland’s art in this epic (in Land Race and The First Luna Olympics / Luna-1 War), but here they come together – showcasing Bolland’s skill in portraiture.

In particular – Stan / Stanley Laurel and Ollie / Oliver Hardy, along with Charlie Chaplin. And that pretty much tells you the premise – a criminal gang uses face changes to disguise themselves for a heist (a good old-fashioned bank hold up with guns). To be honest, I admire their creativity – and the commitment to the bit, since they call each other by the names to their faces. Of course, one drawback is that those faces are distinctive, although perhaps less so in the twenty-second century – triggering Dredd’s recognition of their faces as “twentieth century comedians”. That might have been an asset – since they change their faces again to escape under the guise of hostages…except they change their faces to the Marx Brothers. (Well, three of them anyway, but the most famous of the three). However, that does allow us to see more portraiture in Bolland’s art…

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 1
THE FACE CHANGE CRIMES (prog 52)

I just couldn’t resist some more of Brian Bolland’s portraiture – this time of the face-change gang as the Marx Brothers, specifically Groucho, Harpo and Chico (let’s face it, the big three – no one remembers Zeppo or Gummo).

Although, is there any reason they are quoting the title of A Night at the Opera, or “Harpo” is so committed to the bit that he’s honking a horn rather than speaking (part of the real Harpo’s signature act)- while no one is around?! Unless you count the two ambulance officers they took captive upon hijacking the ambulance for their getaway, even if they don’t look like they’re in a position to observe it? Certainly not the guy on the floor. (I hope they released them later unharmed).

But wait – there’s more! There’s quite the surprising depth to an episode which basically looks designed for the simple gimmick of a criminal gang using face change machines to impersonate twentieth century comedians for their heists, a gimmick tailor-made for Brian Bolland’s art. Dredd does the easy thing – tracking down the purchase of face change machines through the only company on Luna-1 that sold them. What’s not so easy is all he has the law enforcement technique of profiling the usual suspects – in this case, the Tooley brothers – without any further evidence. “The trouble is…proving they robbed the bank!”

I think this is the first time that we are confronted with the apparent anomaly of an authoritarian or even fascist police state abiding by the niceties of legality. I mean, isn’t Dredd a fascist? Why doesn’t he just arrest the Tooley brothers, evidence or no evidence? This may be the first time this anomaly comes up in the comic but it won’t be the last – it’s a recurring feature, which arguably goes to the very heart of the comic and character of Judge Dredd.

Setting aside that fascism can be lawless and it can be lawful, I’m not sure there’s any clear or easy answers to the question of whether Judge Dredd or Justice Department is fascist (or whether Mega-City One is a fascist state) – or perhaps questions, since while they overlap, they seem to me somewhat separate considerations.

Both Judge Dredd and Justice Department are undoubtedly authoritarian – and I think it would also be inarguable that they have fascist elements, indeed from the outset in their design. An interesting opinion piece featured this as its theme in its very title – “Fascist Spain meets British punk: The subversive genius of Judge Dredd”. That piece attributed the “design emphasis on fascist chic” to Spanish artist Carlos Ezquerra, as something of a tribute to the artist who has passed away.

Quick side bar – I particularly liked how the piece echoed Chris Sims on how Judge Dredd’s ‘costume’ is ridiculously over the top – “Dredd looks like no other comic character before or since. His design makes no practical sense. It has no symmetry or logic to it. No one at the time thought it would work. “F*cking hell,” his co-creator John Wagner said when he first saw the designs. “He looks like a Spanish pirate.” But somehow, for reasons no one can quite articulate, it is perfect”.

Back to the point, I think part of the (probably irreconcilable) tension of whether Judge Dredd is fascist or not derives from the two competing strands that I see have been combined in the core concept of Dredd – a futuristic Dirty Harry in a dystopian post-apocalyptic SF satire. On the one hand, you have the dramatic tension of a Dirty Harry obstructed in his instinct for justice by what he perceives to be the loopholes, red tape or technicalities of due process or the legal system. On the other, you have that dystopian SF satire of an authoritarian state, the whole point of which is that it has purportedly dispensed with all those obstructions for a system of instant summary law enforcement. In short, as the agent of a police state, Judge Dredd should not have the hassles of a Dirty Harry with due process – but he does because that’s part of his core concept as a character.

Here the pesky need for evidence is compounded by the gang having a defence lawyer – and being able to call off their interrogation until they see him. However, Dredd was able to use their own game against them – using the lunar Justice Central face change machine, he impersonates their lawyer and records them while they freely confess to the crime (although that presumably must have involved detaining their lawyer without charge so that Dredd could substitute for them – and I’m not sure how their confessions would hold up as evidence, at least in contemporary law, when it was recorded by subterfuge of impersonating their lawyer).

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 1:
THE OXYGEN BOARD (prog 57)
The Killer Car (prog 53-56)

“A smart man can beat the law, but, baby, only a fool bucks the oxygen board!”

That’s pretty much the twist in the tale for this episode – as the criminals of the biggest heist (and disaster) in Luna history forgot to pay their oxygen bill and get their just desserts (by suffocation)

Bonus irony as the gang essentially used the same means of oxygen delivery to the lunar colony – the pipelines from the astro-tankers pumping it in – as the means for their colony-wide heist, adding tranquilizer gas to ‘roofie’ the whole colony. Disappointingly, the writers forfeited the opportunity to call them the tranq gang, going with the tranq gas raiders instead.

It’s not exactly like the colony taking a nap either – there are thousands of casualties, the effects of vehicle and other machine accidents that result from the entire colony being unconscious at the same time. Well, not the entire colony – the Judges have their respirators. And all the robots are still running – with the Judges activating their emergency protocols for assistance. Still – the death toll is stated to be 53,000, and over half a million injured…which might mean more if I actually knew what the population of the lunar colony was. (Looking it up, the Judge Dredd role-playing game apparently had the lunar colony with a population of 25 million in the middle of the twenty-first century…which is a little hard to imagine as at 2023).

And they would have got away with it too if it wasn’t for that meddling Oxygen Board, apparently a government monopoly with an extreme form of robodebt recovery – robots cutting off the oxygen of (and indeed vacuuming it from) customers with overdue bills, suffocating them. Despite having robots and video calls for the debt recovery, there appears to be no remote means of payment (instead requiring personal attendance at an oxygen board showroom) or electronic door key lock (as the gang dropped their key in their loot and can’t find it before suffocating).

As for The Killer Car in progs 53-56, essentially it replays rogue robot Call-Me-Kenneth from the Robot Wars on the moon but with a robotic car (called Elvis).

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 1:
RETURN TO MEGA-CITY ONE (Prog 59)
Full Earth Crimes (prog 58)
Firebug (prog 60)

Classic Judge Dredd – poster boy for the Lawful Neutral alignment.

Prog 59 sees Dredd return to Mega-City One from Luna, in one of the best characteristic (and comic) illustrations of the Judge himself – just how legalistic he can be towards the Law, the perfect embodiment of the Lawful Neutral alignment. It opens beautifully with Mega-City One citizens looking on in amazement and bemusement as Dredd nonchalantly strolls past a robbery in progress, stopping only to cheerfully admonish the robbers – “Good morning, citizens. I would remind you that armed robbery is illegal in Mega-City 1”. But then, he just continues strolling – doing none of head-kicking things we’ve come to expect in his approach to law enforcement. What is going on? The robbers themselves thank their good luck and continue with the robbery, speculating that Dredd must have gone “moon crazy”. He walks past yet another crime – until a rookie Judge arrives with Dredd’s reinstatement papers, allowing him to be sworn back in as a Judge of Mega-City. He immediately takes the rookie Judge’s bike to go back to the scenes of the crimes to kick some heads for the Law – “Look out, you lawbreaking scum! Judge Dredd’s back in town!”.

Of course, the answer to his previous inactivity lies in that he wasn’t officially sworn (back) in as a Judge – “it’s illegal for an ordinary citizen to take the law into his own hands”.

Before returning to Mega-City One, we had Dredd’s final episode on the moon – Full Earth Crimes in prog 58, transferring the gimmick (and myth) of increased criminal activity and insanity with a full moon to the effect of a ‘full earth’ on Luna-1.

And after his return, we have the last regular Judge Dredd episode in Case Files 1, Firebug, in prog 60, featuring a serial arsonist of city blocks.

 

 

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 1
BONUS MATERIAL – UNPUBLISHED JUDGE DREDD PILOT EPISODE
Walter the Wobot (progs 50-58)

“I am the Law and you better believe it!”

As much as I like the final panel of this unpublished first episode, I’m glad they tided up his catchphrase!

But wait – there’s more!

Well, not much more, but still there’s some bonus material in Case Files 1 beyond the regular Judge Dredd episodes.

Walter the Wobot got his own spinoff strips, Walter the Wobot Fwiend of Dwedd. Yeah, they really leant into his robotic lisp in that title. The strips themselves were light-hearted comedy, because you can’t take Walter seriously (even though he saved Dredd multiple times in the comic – notably in the Robot Wars which introduced him, in The Day the Law Died, and in the Apocalypse War). The strips were okay, I guess – and some of them were illustrated by Brian Bolland so there’s that.

The other bonus material was the previously unseen first episode of Dredd, drawn by Carlos Ezquerra, as much an influence in the creation of Dredd as writers Pat Mills and John Wagner. I anticipate it was drawn for the first issue of 2000 AD but simply wasn’t written in time (or revised) so another episode featured as Dredd’s first episode in the second issue of 2000 AD. (You following along? You may recall that although Judge Dredd was 2000 AD’s flagship character, he didn’t actually make it into their first issue and only started in their second issue).

According to the editorial in Case Files 1, the story was printed in it to showcase the original art – distinctively featuring Dredd as judge, jury, AND executioner, which was somewhat different to how he was introduced. As we see later, Mega-City One Judges usually don’t sentence people to execution, although there are exceptions (and they often kill people who resist arrest or attempt to escape).

This unpublished pilot episode did showcase some of the different types of ammunition used by the Judges (ricochet and heat-seeking), as well as Dredd’s Lawmaster – although it also featured regular police units separate from the Judges, something that occasionally popped up elsewhere in the early episodes until it was quietly dropped. It is amusing to think of the Judges as some sort of special elite force that also announces and executes (literally) their sentences at the same time. (Keen eyes might notice the “police cam” in this panel).

 

 

 

 

 

Mega-City Law: Top 10 Judge Dredd Epics

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Counting down my Top 10 Judge Dredd epics and episodes – essentially as a running list updated as I finish each volume of the collected Judge Dredd Complete Case Files in my ongoing Mega-City Law reviews (presently up to Case Files 16).

Note that I distinguish between epics and episodes – on the basis of epics as longer storylines over a number of episodes. At present, I classify epics as storylines of five or more episodes. As such, this includes what I would normally regard as ‘mini-epics’ or just longer story-arcs, with the ‘true’ epics usually exceeding 20 episodes – but these are obviously special events within the Judge Dredd comic. As of Case Files 16, there’s only been 6 ‘true’ epics of more than 20 episodes – the first two such epics in Case Files 2, the third in Case Files 4, the fourth in Case Files 5, the fifth in Case Files 11 and the sixth in Case File 14.

 

 

 

 

(10) THE DEVIL YOU KNOW & TWILIGHT’S LAST GLEAMING
(CASE FILES 16: prog 750-756 – 7 episodes)

 

“Mega-City One…eight hundred million people and everyone of them a potential criminal. The most evil, violent city on earth…but God help me, I love it” – Judge Dredd, 2100.

The centerpiece and highlight of Case Files 16 – which is also the culmination of the ongoing epic Democracy storyline, the referendum whether to retain the Judges after Necropolis, instigated and pushed by Dredd himself.

After this, the Democracy movement in Mega-City One faded away, albeit bubbling to the surface from time to time, but largely transformed into or was replaced by terror movements. Of course, there was always an overlap between democracy and terror in the Judge Dredd comic, at least in the eyes of Justice Department but from this point onwards also in the remnants of the Democracy movement itself or other political opponents of the Justice Department.

And once again it is through the Democracy movement that we see Justice Department and the Judges at their darkest, but ironically also the comic at its most morally ambiguous or complex.

From the outset, Judge Dredd and his fellow Judges were intended as a dystopian satire of the worst excesses of police and government authority fused together into a post-apocalyptic police state. And yet, also from the outset, Dredd co-creator Pat Mills, best known for his anti-authoritarian themes, wrote Dredd – the ultimate authority figure – as a heroic character. As I’ve said before, Judge Dredd is essentially Dirty Harry in a dystopian SF satire, reflecting both the heroic and anti-heroic nature of that character as his predecessor.

That’s heightened here with Judge Dredd – having recently saved the city from the Sisters of Death and the Dark Judges in Necropolis – supporting the referendum and indeed the prime mover behind there being any referendum at all, although of course he is confident that the people will vote for the Judges. (Spoiler alert – he’s right). That support seems him targeted for assassination by a conspiracy of Judges within Justice Department, led by Judge Grice. The moral ambiguity with respect to Dredd’s dedication to the city and support of the referendum is not lost on the leader of the Democracy movement, Blondel Dupree.

And if nothing else, it did lead to Judge Dredd’s poster moment with the quote in my feature image – quoted twice in these episodes, including at their conclusion, and repeated since.

Of course, one might quibble with that quote. Mega-City One’s population of 800 million was accurate enough as at 2100 – although not ironically not when Dredd was meant to have been quoted here upon his return from Luna, as there was that early episode weirdness with it being quoted at 100 million in The Day the Law Died before the writers settled on 800 million in the episodes in Case Files 3. It was halved by Block Mania and the Apocalypse War – and was referred to as 350 million (after Necropolis) shortly before these episodes. There’s also that reference to God rather than Grudd.

And comparatively, Mega-City One is better than a number of other mega-cities one could name. Of course, the Australian mega-city of the Sydney-Melbourne conurb (nicknamed Oz) is hands-down the best place to live in the twenty-second century. Of the cities we’ve seen, you could argue that Brit-Cit, Hondo City, and Murphville are better than Mega-City One – perhaps even Mega-City Two is better. But…there’s a long line of cities that appear to be worse. East-Meg One (before it was nuked) and East-Meg Two. Ciudad Banquarilla or Banana City. Even Texas City looks worse. And we’ve yet to see them but spoiler alert – Luxor, the Pan-Andean Conurb and Vatican-Cit all look worse.

Still, the quote does seem to accurately reflect the essence and heart of Judge Dredd as a character and as a comic.

 

RATING: 4 STARS****

X-TIER (WILD TIER)

 

 

(9) NECROPOLIS
(CASE FILES 14: progs 662-699 – 38 episodes, including the various prelude or countdown episodes)

 

When the Dark Judges reigned supreme over Mega-City One as the titular Necropolis according to their mantra – “The crime is life. The sentence is death!”

And they racked up perhaps the second highest body count of any Mega-City One crisis after the Apocalypse War or Day of Chaos – with estimates of over 60 million (out of a population of 400 million). Yes – Judgement Day had a higher body count (2 billion!!), but that was more global (to other mega-cities) rather than Mega-City One itself. Of course, the Dark Judges might have racked up a higher body count if they didn’t insist on dispensing their “justice” personally (and usually literally) by hand like chumps, as opposed to using weapons of mass destruction like the Sovs – but then, it’s a labor of love for them and they have all the time in their world or any other for it.

Of course, Necropolis is effectively part of the ongoing Dark Judges storyline, but I prefer to consider the Necropolis epic separately (at least for now).

Necropolis falls into one of the two essential Judge Dredd epic plotlines established by the first two Judge Dredd epics, The Cursed Earth, and The Day the Law Died (as well as arguably their precursors Luna, and the Robot Wars) – Dredd confronting some threat, usually existential, to Mega-City One, and Dredd venturing to some other, usually exotic, location, (or a combination of the two, Dredd venturing to some other, usually exotic, location TO confront some threat, usually existential, to Mega-City One).

Necropolis falls into the category of Dredd confronting an existential threat of Mega-City One (although he does start the epic in the Cursed Earth) – and it doesn’t get more of an existential threat than the omnicidal Dark Judges.

It also continues that element introduced back in The Day the Law Died and demonstrated par excellence in The Apocalypse War, that Dredd becomes the focus of resistance to the existential threat to Mega-City One, leading a small ragtag underground force to defeat it. In this case, as in The Day the Law Died, literally underground – in the Undercity. It still works effectively here, although it was to become something of a recurring cliché in future epic storylines.

Like The Apocalypse War, you feel genuine and very real tension for the continued existence or survival of Mega-City One. It has a similar prelude with the countdown to Necropolis that the Apocalypse War had with Block Mania – a slow burn or creeping doom, starting small but building to a force overwhelming Mega-City One. And like The Apocalypse War, Necropolis starts as that force overwhelming the city – and from there it is a taut and tensely told story of grim, gritty desperation of the mega-city on a knife’s edge from extinction, fighting for its very survival against the overwhelming odds of a relentless invader, in this case the extra-dimensional invasion of the Dark Judges and Sisters of Death as opposed to the Soviets. Arguably there is even more tension in Necropolis – at least the Soviets wanted to preserve the population of Mega-City One for conquest, while the Dark Judges have no such concern, indeed quite the opposite.

To that Necropolis adds some genuine elements of horror – always in the background with the Dark Judges, although it is often swamped out with their black comedy or high camp. Certainly, they and the Sisters of Death are also campy in Necropolis, but there is their horror as well – as with Judge Mortis pursuing the Judge cadets through the Undercity, clamoring to them as “children”.

So why does it fall short of the Apocalypse War?

Well, firstly there is the element of personal preference or nostalgia – the Apocalypse War was my introduction to Judge Dredd (through the reprint comics lent to me by a friend) and remains the classic Judge Dredd epic for me, my once and future king epic of all time. However, my second and third reasons are more objective.

Secondly, there is the simplicity of the Block Mania and Apocalypse War epic – in that I believe a first-time reader of Judge Dredd could pick it up, read it and enjoy it without too much difficulty. Block Mania is a reasonable introduction to the character of Judge Dredd and the claustrophobic dystopian nature of Mega-City One, “a society where every single thing has become monstrously overwhelming”. And the Apocalypse War is straightforward enough from history or even contemporary geopolitics – Americans vs the Soviets or Russians. There is little in the way of necessary backstory

That is not the case in Necropolis. It is arguably one of its strengths – tying together a number of longstanding themes or threads – but that will also leave new readers at a loss for those themes or threads. Probably the most important is the background of Judge Kraken, a clone of Judge Dredd by the renegade Judda, in the Oz epic – but there’s also the Democracy storyline and the Dark Judges themselves.

This is compounded by the true prelude to the epic, The Dead Man, running as a separate story from the regular Judge Dredd comic altogether (albeit partly not to spoil its central twist). The countdown to Necropolis does do a reasonable job of recapping it, but might still leave a new reader at a loss that Dredd has been disfigured or scarred from acid burns as a result of psychic attacks from the Sisters of Death – and that their attacks are themselves a sign of the doom that has already fallen on Mega-City One.

Thirdly, on the subject of the Sisters of Death, they are my third reason for ranking Necropolis below The Apocalypse War as their powers seem both ridiculously overpowered and vaguely defined for plot contrivance, the latter leaving some substantial holes. They are the means by which the Dark Judges take over the city – through their mind control of the Mega-City One Judges, although it is unclear how two entities control thousands of Judges across the city and which begs the question of why the Dark Judges didn’t use them earlier. It also begs the question of what exactly is stopping the Sisters of Death from similar psychic infiltration of the city afterwards.

 

RATING: 4 STARS****
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(8) P.J. MAYBE
CASE FILES 11: prog 534 “Bug”
CASE FILES 12: progs 592-594 “PJ Maybe, Age 13”
CASE FILES 12: prog 599 “The Further Misadventures of PJ Maybe”
CASE FILES 13: progs 632-634 “The Confeshuns of PJ Maybe”
CASE FILES 14: progs 707-709 “Wot I Did During Necropolis”
(11 episodes)

 

One of my favorite recurring characters and storylines – the ongoing misadventures of juvenile genius and psychopathic serial killer P.J. Maybe. With his complete amorality and high intelligence, albeit combined to comic effect with an apparent exception when it comes to written English (where he continues to write like a juvenile), P. J. Maybe is a recurring antagonist to Judge Dredd and one of the few perps wily enough to consistently escape detection or custody.

Of course, as the comic universe time passes at about the same rate as in real life, at least year for year, P.J. Maybe doesn’t stay a juvenile. We’re introduced to him in “Bug” at 12 years of age – in 1987 in our world and 2109 in Mega-City One – but we continue to follow him at regular intervals as he grows into adulthood, ultimately rising under an assumed identity to Mayor of Mega-City One, ironically one of its best as he successfully compartmentalized his public office from his private life (until slipping up). And of course, Judge Dredd is his ultimate as well as ongoing nemesis, although almost thirty years after he was introduced, in 2138 at 41 years of age. Arguably, he was at his best – or at least his “cutest” – as a juvenile.

Of course, most of his story was ahead of his first teaser episode, even his background as the only child of the Maybe family, relatives through his mother of the wealthy Yess clothing manufacturers, specifically of trousers (with a lucrative contract for Justice Department uniforms), or that his initials stand for Philip Janet (with his middle name as a result of his parents wanting a girl. His parents – decent law-abiding citizens completely oblivious, as most people were, of their juvenile son’s extra-curricular activities of murder – end up inheriting the Yess fortune. Not that his background really comes into play, particularly after the Judges catch up with him, as his parents die (by suicide during Necropolis) and he routinely changes identity – face-changing machines being one of his favorite tools of choice, along with his skill in robotics and chemistry, particularly the mind-altering drugs SLD-88 and SLD-89.

 

RATING: 4 STARS****
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(7) CITY OF THE DAMNED
(CASE FILES 8: progs 393-406 – 14 episodes)

 

Vampire Hershey – and zombie Dredd! What more could you want? (Well, other than the writers not to have tired of it and finished it less abruptly)

Of course, it leans heavily on the preceding epic in The Judge Child Quest (collected back in Case Files 4). Indeed, it goes back to the very origin of that Quest – the deathbed precognitive vision of Psi Judge Feyy that Mega-City One would be overwhelmed and destroyed by some mysterious disaster in 2120:

“I saw a war more ghastly than any we have known. I saw our city destroyed – and from the destruction, foul creatures rose to prey on the survivors”.

Unless of course the Judges found the Judge-Child also seen by Judge Feyy as prophesied savior – “he is fated to rule Mega-City One in its gravest hour” – but as we know, that didn’t turn out well in The Judge Child Quest. Judge Dredd found him alright, but then simply abandoned him to his fate because the Judge Child – Owen Krysler – was evil. Ultimately the Judge Child’s fate was death, killed by the Mega-City One equivalent of an interstellar drone strike when he sought revenge on Dredd for abandoning him.

And of course, at the same time, Dredd abandoned Mega-City One to its prophesied fate, essentially shrugging it off that they’ll have to face whatever comes on their own.

However, Mega-City One and the Judges are not quite done with the Judge Child Quest or the Judge Child, particularly given that Judge Feyy’s precognitive visions were 88.8% accurate (a figure only slightly less than Mega-City One’s unemployment rate). And the Judge Child Quest was back in 2102 – now it is 2107, with 2120 only thirteen years in the future.

Of course, it’s still in the future and hence unknown – until now, with the introduction of time travel to the Judge Dredd comic, indeed in the very introduction of this comic with the first successful time machine prototype, Proteus. By the way, that seems have been a popular name for time machines at that time (heh), since I’ve also read the SF novel The Proteus Operation with its titular time travel.

Anyway, the Judge Dredd comic had already introduced dimensional travel between alternate dimensions with the Dark Judges, albeit by those antagonists rather than Justice Department – but now both dimensional and time travel will be a recurring feature in the comic, albeit still somewhat rare. In its introduction, the prototype time travel still seems somewhat risky despite short-range tests – but the importance of its destination, the prophesied disaster of 2120, overrides any risk. So Chief Judge McGruder sends the duo of Judge Dredd and Psi-Judge Anderson on a time travel mission to 2120.

As I’ve said before, there are two essential Judge Dredd epic plotlines which were set up by The Day the Law Died and The Cursed Earth respectively – Dredd confronting some threat, often existential, to Mega-City One and Dredd venturing to some other exotic location. The two tend to be combined in the latter, with Dredd venturing to some other exotic location TO confront some existential threat to Mega-City One itself – as here in City of the Damned, albeit where that exotic location is Mega-City One in the future.

And 2120 turns out to be grim indeed – also introducing vampires among the “foul creatures” preying upon the survivors. Those vampires turn out to be shockingly familiar to Dredd, as is the overwhelming psychic force that destroyed Mega-City One and the Judges. The epic also involved some drastic and enduring developments for Dredd himself.

Sadly, the epic itself did not endure for its anticipated length of at least twenty episodes, as is characteristic of Judge Dredd epics, but instead ended after only fourteen episodes – apparently because writers John Wagner and Alan Grant got bored of it (as they did not like time travel stories). However, it did include some of the late great Steve Dillon’s finest Dredd epic art.

 

RATING: 4 STARS****
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(6) THE JUDGE CHILD QUEST
(CASE FILES 4: progs 156-181 – 26 episodes)

 

As I’ve said before, there are two essential Judge Dredd epic plotlines which were set up by The Day the Law Died and The Cursed Earth respectively – Dredd confronting some threat, usually existential, to Mega-City One and Dredd venturing to some other exotic location. The two tend to be combined in the latter, with Dredd venturing to some other exotic location TO confront some existential threat to Mega-City One itself (which is why I tend to classify the former as Dredd confronting the threat to Mega-City One within the city itself, with the city typically embattled against some invading force). The Cursed Earth was an example – except that the existential threat was not to Mega-City One but its West Coast counterpart of Mega-City Two – and The Judge Child Quest is in the same vein, only even more so.

For one thing, it doesn’t get more exotic or downright weird than the Cursed Earth, except for alien space – so The Judge Child Quest ups the ante by starting in the Cursed Earth and then going into alien space (via our first distinctively different mega-city setting, Texas City). For another, this time the existential threat is to Mega-City One itself. This is one of the important elements introduced in this epic, that would loom large and cast a long shadow in Dredd’s world – the deathbed prediction of Psi Division’s foremost pre-cog, Judge Feyy, with his track record of 88.8% accuracy in predicting the future, that Mega-City One would be destroyed in 2120 (so 18 years in the future in the comic’s timeline of 2102) by a “ghastly war” from which “foul creatures” would rise up to prey on the survivors UNLESS Judge Dredd could find the Judge Child, Feyy’s fated savior of the city.

And so the epic introduced another important element that would persist along with Feyy’s prophecy, the Judge Child himself, Owen Krysler, the boy “born of this city” and bearing the Mark of the Beast – I mean Eagle of Justice on his forehead – which makes for a convenient identifying feature in order to find him (as well as his appearance like that of a Buddhist monk in training).

Unfortunately, the stage is set as Owen Krysler was taken by his parents to a Cursed Earth settlement four years previously and from there abducted by mutant slavers. And of course, since finding him in the Cursed Earth would be too easy, he is abducted twice more, with the second taking him into alien space. So Dredd has to go into space on an episodic adventure rivalling that of The Cursed Earth epic, where he encounters weirdness beyond that even of the Cursed Earth – aliens of course, but also living planets, necromancers, Oracle Spice, robot kingdoms and my personal favorite, Jigsaw Disease.

Enter two more important recurring elements of Dredd’s world that would persist long after the Quest itself. The first is the villainous and notoriously violent Angel Gang, particularly fan favorite cyborg and quintessential weird Judge Dredd villain, Mean Machine Angel. As a boy, he was good-natured and showed none of the family’s violent tendencies. Obviously, the Angel Gang patriarch, Pa Angel, decided that this would simply not do, and arranged radical…surgery to transform him into a murderous cyborg, with four ‘settings’ of rage literally dialled into his head – with his basic default setting merely as the lowest level of anger. (“I’m going up to 4 on you, Dredd!”)

The second is Judge Hershey, a female character to rival Psi-Judge Anderson – whose telepathic abilities would have come in very useful to locate the Judge Child, except that she was presently in a boing bubble containing another apocalypse within her – and one who would subsequently rise high among the ranks of Judges to the ultimate position of Chief Judge.

Sadly, both those elements were mashed into the 1995 Judge Dredd film in its usual mangled manner – nothing was too sacred in Judge Dredd’s lore for that film not to desecrate in the pursuit of fan favorites. And so, we saw a version of Mean Machine Angel in the Cursed Earth, as well as Judge Hershey – played well enough by Diane Lane, but as Dredd’s love interest?! Whom he kisses, after having taken off his helmet for most of the movie. Oh the humanity!

 

RATING: 4 STARS****
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(5) THE DAY THE LAW DIED
(CASE FILES 2: progs 86-108 – 23 episodes, including the 3 episode prelude where Dredd is framed)

 

The Day The Law Died will always rank highly among Judge Dredd epics. It was the second true Judge Dredd epic, running straight on back-to-back from the first epic The Cursed Earth, when Judge Dredd returned to Mega-City One from Mega-City Two. More fundamentally, the duo of The Cursed Earth and The Day the Law Died saw the Judge Dredd comic come of age. This duo is the origin of the classic Dredd I know, although Mega-City One wouldn’t quite find its shape until just afterwards – not least in population, jumping from 100 million as referenced in The Day The Law Died to 800 million. Each of the epics (and their precursors in Luna and the Robot Wars) respectively set up the quintessential Judge Dredd epic plotlines – Dredd venturing to some other, usually exotic location, or confronting some threat, usually existential, to Mega-City One.

We saw the former in the Cursed Earth, now we see the latter in The Day The Law Died. In this case, the existential threat to Mega-City One came from the Justice Department itself, in the form of the insane Judge Cal’s rise to the position of Chief Judge, essentially by way of coup. As such, The Day The Law Died effectively introduced a recurring theme in Judge Dredd – the dangers of corruption, and especially the corruption of power, within the Justice Department, albeit rarely at the level of existential threat to the city as it is in this epic. Ironically, the source of that corruption in this epic is Judge Cal’s position as head of the SJS or Special Judicial Squad, the Justice Department’s equivalent of Internal Affairs or the body of Judges who judge other Judges. Nominally, the Special Judicial Squad is meant to guard against corruption within the Justice Department, but in practice in this and subsequent storylines they tend to have a somewhat antagonistic role to the rest of the Department (and Dredd in particular) at best and be a source of power unto themselves at worst – the House Slytherin in Justice Department.

In fairness to Judge Cal, most of the existential threats posed to Mega-City One come from Judges, just not usually Judges of Mega-City One. The extra-dimensional Dark Judges, led by Judge Death, are perhaps the most recurring danger to the city and became an existential threat to it in the Necropolis epic, with their warped philosophy that all crime is committed by the living so the elimination of crime involves the elimination of all life – “The crime is life. The sentence is death!” However, when it comes to the most effective existential threat to Mega-City One, the Dark Judges are amateurs compared to the Soviet or Sov Judges, mainly because the Dark Judges typically insist on meting out their dark justice by hand, whereas the Sov Judges typically employed weapons of mass destruction – in the Apocalypse War and subsequently in the Day of Chaos.

As for the storyline, like The Cursed Earth, it is simple and straightforward – all the better to let the SF future satire and absurdist black comedy play out. Indeed, just as The Cursed Earth essentially just, ahem, borrowed its storyline wholesale from Roger Zelazny’s Damnation Alley, The Day The Law Died also borrowed its storyline, but from a more classical source – the ill-fated reign of Roman Emperor Caligula, straight from the pages of Suetonius’ The Twelve Caesars, or more so as it was closer in time to this epic, the BBC TV adaptation of Robert Graves’ I Claudius. Indeed, Judge Cal was named for Caligula (with his appearance modelled on John Hurt’s portrayal in the BBC TV series), and he is even named AS Judge Caligula when the series was introduced (and subsequently collected under that title). Of course, if that was his actual name, it would seem to have been begging for trouble. I mean, what next? Judge Hitler?

Anyway, his insanity mirrors that of Caligula, albeit (somewhat disappointingly) without the depravity – not surprisingly in the more ascetic Justice Department of Mega-City One, or even more so, in the publishing restrictions for 2000 AD. And so, just as Caligula appointed his horse as a senator of Rome, Judge Cal appoints a goldfish as Deputy Chief Judge Fish, ironically remembered fondly by the Mega-City One citizenry for a death that saved the city. Speaking of which, the insanity of Judge Cal was such that he sentenced the entire city to death – twice. Which again evokes the historical Caligula, who according to Suetonius, wished that all the city of Rome had but one neck.

However, Judge Cal is made more dangerous in his insanity – and hence earns his place among the top tier of Judge Dredd’s villains – in that, unlike his historical predecessor, he at least has the cunning and presence of mind for a technique of mind control to ensure the loyalty of his equivalent of the imperial Praetorian Guard. And as a failsafe, when Mega-City Judges proved too unreliable, to import a new Praetorian Guard – in the form of alien Klegg mercenaries. The Kleggs and their Klegg Empire – aliens resembling giant bipedal crocodiles with appetites to match – would prove to be an occasionally recurring element in Judge Dredd (and Dredd’s recurring hatred), although the reach of their Empire is obviously limited by their temperament and lack of intelligence.

The Day The Law Died also introduced an element that would prove to be something of a recurring cliché in subsequent Dredd epics (until it was dramatically subverted in the Day of Chaos storyline) – that Judge Dredd becomes the focus of resistance to the existential threat to Mega-City One, leading a small ragtag underground force to defeat it. In this case, literally underground – in the Undercity, which became more fleshed out in this epic from its previous introduction, and contributed a critical ally to Dredd’s resistance, in the form of the dim-witted but hulking brute Fergee. Of course, Dredd didn’t have much choice in this, as he was an important target of Cal’s plans to assume the position of Chief Justice and control of Mega-City One – and he had not been subject to Cal’s mind control technique due to his absence from the city on his mission in the Cursed Earth. Cal’s initial plan is to frame Dredd – and when that fails, to assassinate him along with the incumbent Chief Judge. Sadly, these elements have something of a bad aftertaste as they were adapted into the abominable Stallone Judge Dredd film – including where the character of Fergee was transformed beyond recognition in all but name to comic relief played by Rob Schneider. Sigh.

 

RATING: 4 STARS****
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(4) THE CURSED EARTH
(CASE FILES 2: progs 61-85 – 25 episodes)

 

And here we are in Judge Dredd’s first true epic The Cursed Earth – for which some of my favorite images come not from the original episodes in 2000 AD, but the Eagle Comics reprints with their cover art by Brian Bolland.

The location of the Cursed Earth featured all the way back in progs 3-4, although it had yet to be christened the Cursed Earth and was simply described as the “wilderness from the Atomic Wars” – if by wilderness, of course, you mean most of the former United States (outside the mega-cities on East and West Coasts and in Texas), now dangerous and mutated badlands (with a running theme of dark, mutated versions of the United States). The Cursed Earth is downright drokking dangerous – mutants, aliens, ratnadoes, the last President of the United States, Las Vegas, war droids…and freaking dinosaurs!

The Cursed Earth combines the essential Judge Dredd epic plotlines – Dredd confronting some threat, usually existential, to Mega-City One, and Dredd venturing to some other, usally exotic, location, or a combination of the two, Dredd venturing to some other, usually exotic, location TO confront some threat, usually existential, to Mega-City One. The Cursed Earth epic is just that – except the existential threat is not to Mega-City One, but its West Coast counterpart of Mega-City Two. In this case, it is a deadly virus that turns people into murderous, cannibalistic psychopaths (not unlike Rage virus in the 28 Days Later film(s).

And it doesn’t get more exotic, or downright weird, than the Cursed Earth – except perhaps for alien space.

As for the storyline, it is simple and straightforward, much like that in Mad Max Fury Road (which come to think of it, would make for an excellent Cursed Earth storyline – Judge Dredd and Mad Max are even owned by the same studios, hint hint) – all the better to let the SF future satire and absurdist black comedy play it out. Dredd must drive through the Cursed Earth to take a vaccine to Mega-City Two. Of course they, ahem, borrowed the storyline from Roger Zelazny’s Damnation Alley. I know it, you know it and the writers know it. Who cares? It was an SF classic – a former Hell’s Angel must drive a vaccine from the West Coast to the East Coast in a post-apocalyptic United States after a nuclear war. Judge Dredd just goes in the opposite direction. He even takes his own former Hell’s Angel-style biker with him (by the name of Spikes Rotten). In Damnation Alley, flight was simply not possible due to the freakish atmospheric conditions because of the nuclear war. In the world of Dredd, with its regular aircraft (and space flights!), this excuse doesn’t really seem to wash, although there is a passing reference to the Death Belt of floating (and radioactive) atmospheric debris – which doesn’t seem to recur much after this epic. Hell – Mega-City One supersurfer Chopper later crosses the Cursed Earth on a hoverboard! The Cursed Earth storyline offers the flimsy excuse that the plague infectees have taken over the Mega-City Two airport(s?). Surely Mega-City One aircraft could simply land as near the city as possible? Or Mega-City One could use drones or similar craft to land anywhere else within the city other than the airports? But again, who cares? Who wants to see Judge Dredd fly over the Cursed Earth? Of course, we want to see Dredd ride across it (in his special Killdozer vehicle) and fight dinosaurs. So strap yourself in for the ride.

 

 

RATING: 4 STARS****
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(3) THE GRAVEYARD SHIFT
(CASE FILES 7: progs 335-341 – 7 episodes)

 

Here we have it – the miniature but boutique epic of seven episodes, The Graveyard Shift, that remains for me the single best ‘snapshot’ introduction to Judge Dredd and Mega-City One as a futuristic Dirty Harry in an absurdist dystopian post-apocalyptic SF satire.

Its strength is its premise – unlike the longer epics that usually involve some awareness of backstory or mythos, this shorter storyline is just another normal night of Judge Dredd and his fellow Judges policing Mega-City One, the titular graveyard shift from 9 pm to 5 am.

Well, normal night might be an understatement, as the events of this storyline do seem to exceed the usual nocturnal criminal activity of Mega-City One, even if only by a question of degree or level of intensity. I mean – it seems to involve all the usual things we see on a night in Mega-City One, just somewhat worse for some of them. And let’s face it, the criminal activity of Mega-City One is insanely intense or deliciously over the top to start with – it’s why they have the Judges in the first place.

The Graveyard Shift has it all. All the usual crimes and features of Mega-City One life – suicide ‘leapers’, Judges killed on duty, gang violence, mutant incursions from the Cursed Earth as illegal immigrants, illegal underground sporting competitions (in this case bite fighting matches) and the random searches of citizens’ apartments known as crime blitzes or crime swoops.

There’s also a block war – block wars are of course also a regular feature of Mega-City One, but this one’s a doozy, even by Mega-City One standards short of the city-wide Block Mania. Serial killers are also a recurring feature of Mega-City One, albeit perhaps not on a nightly basis – but the one we see here is out to break a record. Literally.

And we get random flashes of events unusual even by Mega-City One graveyard shift standards, including one of my favorite images for the storyline – an escaped alien devouring citizens. The story concedes that “even by graveyard shift standards, it is a busy night” – particularly at the business end of it all, the city’s body recycling plant or resyk, where a dozen Justice Department autopsy units are set up to keep those recycling conveyor belts moving.

We also get to see the more heroic self-sacrificial side to Judge Dredd along with his usual straight-shooting wisecracking police officer in the style of Dirty Harry – as he risks his life to save an infant trapped in a collapsing building. As he admonishes his fellow Judge who declare him too valuable to risk – “When a Judge gets too valuable to risk, he’s no longer a Judge!”

And Judges Hershey and Psi-Judge Anderson make appearances as well.

And of course there’s the classic scene in my feature image – classic Dredd in the style Dirty Harry. “What’s the body count, Dredd?” – “I’ll let you know.”

 

RATING: 5 STARS*****
S-TIER (GOD TIER)

 

 

(2) THE DARK JUDGES
CASE FILES 3: progs 149-151 “Judge Death”
CASE FILES 5: progs 224-228 “Judge Death Lives”
(8 episodes)

 

Judge Death. The Dark Judges.

Need I say more?

Well, yes. The first Judge Death story arc, while not epic in length, proved epic in enduring impact – introducing not just one but two of Judge Dredd’s (and for that matter its anthology publication 2000 AD’s) most iconic and enduring characters, eclipsed only by Dredd himself.

Firstly, the titular villain – who is THE most iconic and enduring antagonist for Dredd, the Chaos to Dredd’s Law or the Joker to Dredd’s Batman.

Secondly, Psi-Judge (Cassandra) Anderson – the primary female character in both Judge Dredd and 2000 AD, in both senses of the first major female character (well, apart from Dredd’s niece Vienna, but she effectively vanishes for two decades or so before resurfacing as an adult in the Dredd storyline) and the most substantial major female character.

Clearly the writers of Judge Dredd identified a problem in that Dredd lacked antagonists of substance, but particularly recurring antagonists of substance. After all, Dredd’s antagonists were typically criminals or perps, who by their nature tended to be less formidable than Dredd himself, and in any event tended to be incarcerated or killed by Dredd in their storylines. Ironically, Dredd’s most substantial antagonists have been other Judges, generally as an inversion or dark version of Dredd himself.

And the greatest of these is the extra-dimensional Judge Death – although he was human in origin, he is a supernatural adversary, effectively an undead corpse in a dark fantasy inversion of a Mega-City One Judge’s uniform. Indeed, Judge Death is a dark fantasy insertion into what is predominantly science fiction, although the Judge Dredd comic is something of a fantasy kitchen sink, throwing in everything from science fiction through fantasy to horror. For me, however, Judge Death seems somewhat less jarring than other fantasy elements in the comic, perhaps because he seems to straddle fantasy and science fiction as an extradimensional being (or an “alien super fiend” as he is sometime styled), not unlike the Cthulhu Mythos – indeed, in some ways Judge Death is akin to Cthulhu in a uniform. And because he’s just too damn cool. Anyway, his supernatural or extradimensional nature means that he is much more hardy than Dredd’s human antagonists – as he himself says, “you cannot kill what does not live”. His ‘body’ can be destroyed with enough firepower, but he then ‘ghosts’ out to jump to another suitable corpse or possess suitable minds while in transit between bodies. (He also typically kills his victims by ‘ghosting’ or phasing his hand into their body to grip their heart).

And while he is second to none in villainous scope – quite simply, he is an omnicidal maniac, with his goal as the destruction of all life, due to the insane troll logic that all crime is committed by the living so that life itself is a crime. Hence his catchphrase – “The crime is life. The sentence is death”. Although that would seem to be directed more at all human life, he carried out that sentence on his world of origin and it does seem to be devoid of all life. Of course, setting aside the insanity of the logic, that premise would still seem to be flawed, as his ‘unlife’ seems equally capable of committing crimes. (He also does make exceptions, usually for temporary expediency towards his ultimate goal, but has identified at least one notable exception to his otherwise universal death sentence, the elderly Mrs Gunderson). Consistent with the insane troll logic of his catchphrase, Judge Death tends to be played for black comedy, but always has a touch of horror about him and quite often is played for genuine horror effect. Part of his appeal (and effect) as Dredd’s most iconic adversary was that he is the ultimate dark inversion of Dredd (and the Law).

This story arc also introduced Justice Department’s ‘psychic’ judges against such supernatural threats, although they use the characteristically science fiction nomenclature of ‘psi’ (or psi powers) for the Psi-Division or Psi-Judges. Psi Division was introduced in the person of Psi-Judge Anderson, Psi Division’s leading telepath, originally modelled on blonde 1980s singer Debbie Harry (and enduring as Judge Dredd’s or 2000 AD’s recurring pin-up girl). She was also introduced as something of a foil to Dredd, albeit not in the same villainous way as Judge Death – as opposed to Dredd’s laconic and taciturn expression, she has a cheery disposition which lends itself to cracking jokes, often at Dredd’s expense. Then again, this is part of her nature as a Psi-Judge, as they all tend towards eccentric personalities by Justice Department standards (and tolerated as part of their useful abilities). In Anderson’s case, her ability and reliability has earned her the enduring trust of Dredd – and she remains one of the few people who regularly calls him by his first name Joe.

The second story arc expanded the mythos to include the other Dark Judges, effectively rounding out an apocalyptic foursome to match the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse – Death himself, Fire, Fear and Mortis. Although isn’t Judge Mortis – he’s the one with the cattle skull head (and badge) – doubling up on death judges? Mind you, the original Horsemen of the Apocalypse did much the same thing with Conquest and War as the first two Horsemen (followed by Famine and Death).

It also introduced their origin in the dimension now known as Deadworld. “Now they were assembled…Fear – Death – Mortis – Fire…the four Dark Judges. They had found their world guilty and destroyed it. Now they brought their law of death to Mega-City One”.

Well, I suppose Judge Fire is an easy guess from his appearance, given he appears as a skeleton engulfed in flame (and a flaming badge to boot). Judge Fear is a little trickier, with his full portcullis bat-winged helmet. Judge Fear of course gave Dredd the opportunity for the immortal Judge Dredd quote – “Gaze into the fist of Dredd!”

Did…did you just punch out Cthulhu, Dredd (as the trope goes)? Why yes – yes he did.

 

 

RATING: 5 STARS*****
S-TIER (GOD TIER)

 

 

(1) BLOCK MANIA & APOCALYPSE WAR
(CASE FILES 5: progs 236-270 – 35 episodes)

 

This is it – this is the big one! The Apocalypse War – and its prelude of Block Mania – remains my favorite Judge Dredd epic of all time, partly because it was my introduction to Judge Dredd (in the subsequent reprint comics).

Block Mania was destructive enough, engulfing Mega-City One in city-wide block wars between its 800 million citizens (with deaths at least in the thousands and possibly in the millions). It was hard to see how it could get worse, and then it did, in its final pages no less – it was all a prelude by the Soviet mega-city of East Meg One to their Operation Apocalypse, their war against and invasion of Mega-City One. Out of the dystopian frying pan into the apocalyptic fire…

The Judge Dredd comic had been teasing war with the Soviet mega-city – the Sovs or Sov-Judges – since their introduction as the most persistent recurring adversaries of Mega-City One in the Luna storyline, way back in progs 50-51 in Case Files 1. Of course, the Sov-Judges were much more topical when they were introduced in 1977-1978, as indeed was war with the Soviet Union (or its surviving mega-cities) back when The Apocalypse War was published in 1981-1982, a late peak in the Cold War which turned out to be its last gasp, albeit not without its nuclear scares. The historical Soviet Union collapsed a decade later – the Sovs remained in the Judge Dredd comic universe but episodes subsequent to that collapse hinted at a neo-Soviet revival. In their introduction, war was somewhat more ritualized between the American and Soviet mega-cities, at least in their lunar colonies – effectively as a death-sport, somewhat like Rollerball. Back on earth, however, the Sovs had been gradually looming as a threat of actual war.

And here it was – war with the Sovs – and how! As I’ve said before, there are two essential Judge Dredd epic plotlines which were set up by The Day the Law Died and The Cursed Earth respectively (with precursors in The Robot Wars and Luna respectively before that) – Dredd confronting some threat, typically existential, to Mega-City One and Dredd venturing to some other exotic location. The latter tends to include the former, with Dredd venturing to the exotic location to confront some threat to Mega-City One – which is why I tend to classify the former as Dredd confronting the threat to Mega-City One within the city itself, with the city typically embattled against some invading force. And you don’t get a more classic example of the city embattled against an invading force – or a more existential threat to Mega-City One – than the Apocalypse War.

In addition to being the most persistent recurring adversaries to Mega-City One, the Sov-Judges have also proved to be its most effective recurring adversaries, in terms of sheer destruction – and that’s in a universe with such omnicidal maniacs as Judge Death and the Dark Judges. Of course, the Dark Judges like the personal touch of doing things by supernatural hand, while the Sovs used nukes or other weapons of mass destruction. When you come down to it, the most damage done to Mega-City One is by Judges – predominantly by the Sov Judges, with the Dark Judges running a distant second.

Prior to the Sov Judges in The Apocalypse War, the most existential threat (and damage done) to Mega-City One had been from its own Judges – in the form of the insane Chief Judge Cal in The Day The Law Died. In that epic, the mega-city was somewhat smaller, with a population of 100 million. After that epic, the writers abruptly but discreetly bumped it up to a population of 800 million and an area sprawling along the entire Atlantic seaboard of the United States (and part of Canada). Ironically, having quietly ret-conned the city into such a giant, the writers then decided that it was just too big and messy, so they dramatically cut it down to size in The Apocalypse War – halving it, in both population (down to 400 million) and size (losing everything south of North Carolina).

Of course, it was hard to take the soap operatic satire of The Day The Law Died seriously, particularly as Chief Judge Cal’s ridiculous persona and antics were modelled on Roman Emperor Caligula. The Apocalypse War was different, at least being more grounded in the contemporary reality of the Cold War. Don’t get me wrong – it’s still over the top and tongue in cheek as all hell. Get ready for those nukes flying! They didn’t do things by halves in The Apocalypse War, or rather they literally did if you’re talking about Mega-City One itself, and there’ll be a billion people or so dead by the end of it. There is, however, a grim, gritty desperation of a city fighting for its very survival against the overwhelming force of a relentless invader. It was just as well the Apocalypse War was my introduction to Judge Dredd, as the epic makes you feel for Mega-City One and the palpable threat to its very existence in a way that The Day the Law Died did not. Indeed, perhaps a little too much – I mean, you know Mega-City One and Judge Dredd will win out in the end, but I’m not sure real wars turn so quickly on such an abrupt reversal of fortune from the plight in which Mega-City One finds itself.

Which leads to me to the story formula codified in The Apocalypse War, although it had been introduced in The Day The Law Died – of Mega-City One all but overwhelmed by the threat to its very existence, until that existential threat is abruptly reversed or negated at the eleventh hour by a small team or squad led by Dredd fighting back against it. It proved such a, dare I say it, winning formula, that it was recycled to the point of cliché or joke in virtually every subsequent epic of existential threat to Mega-City One – until outright subverted in the Day of Chaos epic, and you know, they didn’t, as Dredd and the other Judges failed to save the city and could only look only helplessly as it died.

Which leads me to the long echoes of The Apocalypse War in the Judge Dredd comic. Although other storylines also had enduring repercussions – notably the previous epic of The Judge Child Quest, which would haunt Mega-City One for eighteen years or so – it was The Apocalypse War that would have the most enduring and profound impact particularly between the American and Soviet mega-cities. Not so much the East Meg One of the Apocalypse War – I wouldn’t get too attached to that mega-city. Just saying…

But there was the other Soviet mega-city of East Meg Two, and more dangerously yet, the renegade emigres or ex-Judges of East Meg One, who would continue to exchange blows with Mega-City One until they finally wreaked their revenge in The Day of Chaos – decades later.

The Apocalypse War also introduced Carlos Ezquerra, the standard artist for 2000 AD’s Strontium Dog strip, as the standard artist for Judge Dredd epics in the following decades. I tended to prefer the cleaner lines of other artists, but Ezquerra’s art in Judge Dredd was admittedly iconic and he sadly passed away recently.

And finally, some more personal reflection on it. It remains my favorite Judge Dredd epic of all time for many reasons.

I particularly like the contrast between Block Mania and the Apocalypse War. Block Mania was a slow burn – or creeping doom, starting small but building to a force overwhelming Mega-City One. The Apocalypse War starts off as a force overwhelming the city. And from there it is a taut and tensely told story of grim, gritty desperation of a city fighting for its very survival against the overwhelming odds of a relentless invader – and eking out whatever victories it can just to hold an ever-retreating line (until, of course, the last victory).

And I can think of barely any actual wars during which I’ve cheered for victories in my lifetime, and very few in history – perhaps rightly so, as one should go to war with a heavy heart, let alone cheer its victories. But I did cheer Mega-City One’s victories in the Apocalypse War, not that there’s that much (or many) to cheer through the storyline – as small, limited and few as they are. Of course, that’s fictional wars for you – Star Wars, the War of the Ring, and so on. It also helps that the Apocalypse War epic makes you feel for Mega-City One and the palpable threat to its very existence, balanced on knife’s edge as it is from being completely overwhelmed and going under forever. And it also helps that I have been a patriot of Mega-City One ever since, sometimes to the extent that I identify with it as my actual country.

 

 

RATING: 5 STARS*****
S-TIER (GOD-TIER)

 

 

TOP 10 JUDGE DREDD EPICS (TIER LIST)

This is my running (tier) list up to and including Judge Dredd Case Files 16, in which I’ve defined epics to include storylines of five or more episodes, usually in continuous format but also including two recurring storylines.

 

S-TIER (GOD TIER)

(1) BLOCK MANIA / APOCALYPSE WAR

(2) JUDGE DEATH / DARK JUDGES (recurring storyline)

(3) THE GRAVEYARD SHIFT

The Apocalypse War (and its prequel Block Mania) is both my Old and New Testament of Judge Dredd (particularly my Book of Apocalypse) – still my favorite Judge Dredd epic and one that still has an ongoing impact, both as the foundation of my enduring love of the character and in the narrative of the comic itself.

Of course, Judge Death and the Dark Judges also make a fine Book of Apocalypse for Judge Dredd, what with the Dark Judges as Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and all.

The Graveyard Shift may only be seven episodes but is still the best single storyline or ‘snapshot’ introduction to Mega-City One and Judge Dredd.

 

A-TIER (TOP TIER)

(4) THE CURSED EARTH

(5) THE DAY THE LAW DIED

(6) THE JUDGE CHILD QUEST

(7) CITY OF THE DAMNED

(8) P.J. MAYBE (recurring storyline)

(9) NECROPOLIS

 

X-TIER (WILD TIER) – for the newest entry as at Case Files 16

(10) THE DEVIL YOU KNOW / TWILIGHT’S LAST GLEAMING

 

 

 

 

 

Mega-City Law: 10 Reasons Why Judge Dredd is the Galaxy’s Greatest Comic

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My first and true love in comics is not one of the ruling duopoly of DC and Marvel Comics, nor strictly speaking a superhero comic – although its main character is arguably as much of a ‘superhero’ as Batman – nor even an American comic, although it is set there, albeit drastically transformed in the twenty-second century.

It is Judge Dredd, the most iconic character from the British weekly SF anthology comic, 2000 AD, ongoing since it was launched in 1977 – although ironically from its second issue, as the opening Dredd story was not ready for the first issue. Time has passed in the Dredd strip essentially in real time ever since, so a year passes in the comic for each year in real life – the first Dredd story in 1977 was set in 2099 and the present stories in 2023 are set in 2145 (an interesting feature as distinct from the more elastic timelines of many American comic franchises).

Unfortunately, American audiences remain somewhat unfamiliar with or unresponsive to Judge Dredd, despite his American setting and despite that he is effectively a quintessential American hero in the same vein as Batman – relying on superior discipline, training, experience, equipment and resources, except as a governmental law officer rather than a vigilante billionaire. They even both effectively remain masked in their public identities, as Dredd never removes his helmet. This is despite his iconic status, particularly in Britain, and despite American audiences being familiar with many of the alumni of 2000 AD, as virtually every British writer and artist of note working in American comics started there and indeed often with the Judge Dredd storyline itself.

Even more unfortunately, the most substantial introduction of American audiences to Judge Dredd was the 1995 film, although fortunately that particular horror is fading with time. This Hollywood travesty was particularly inexcusable, because the essence of Judge Dredd is ultimately very simple – Judge Dredd is a futuristic Dirty Harry in a dystopian (and post-apocalyptic) SF satire. How hard is that, Hollywood?! On second thoughts, that was probably too much to handle – when they couldn’t even have Dredd keep his helmet on throughout the film.

The more recent 2012 film was much more effective in capturing the elements of the original comic (not least in keeping Dredd’s helmet on throughout the film), but not as effective in capturing an audience. In its own way, this is as unfortunate as the first film, particularly at a time when comic book movies were in such vogue (and dystopian or post-apocalyptic movies have always been popular) – because if ever a comic deserved its own cinematic or screen adaptation, it’s Dredd, especially when you consider the dreck that does get adaptations. Perhaps a television adaptation would have been better, as it suits the more episodic nature as well as longer arcs of the storyline. Whatever the case, here are my ten reasons why Judge Dredd is the galaxy’s greatest comic – and why it deserves its own cinematic or screen universe.

 

 

 

 

(1) APOCALYPSE WOW!

Judge Dredd is a futuristic Dirty Harry in a dystopian and post-apocalyptic SF satire

And I do mean post-apocalyptic – although the world of Judge Dredd is more accurately post-post-apocalyptic (and so on, with additional prefixes) because recurring apocalypses are a feature of that world. After all, it’s hard to get more apocalyptic than an event called the Apocalypse War…

However, Judge Dredd is more than just dystopian or post-apocalyptic, it is dystopian or post-apocalyptic satire – in that it plays with virtually every dystopian or post-apocalyptic trope, mostly with tongue in cheek for black comedy.

Of course, there are the standard earth-shattering tropes. The apocalyptic event that definitively shaped the world of Judge Dredd was the so-called Atomic Wars of 2070, perhaps not surprisingly for the comic’s origins in the heightened Cold War tension of the 1970s and 1980s. Interestingly, reflecting more recent times, the apocalyptic weapons of choice moved from nuclear war to biological terrorism – what the Apocalypse War started, the Chaos Bug all but finished.

However, at least at the outset, the world of Judge Dredd was curiously one of the most populous post-apocalyptic settings, due to the huge conurbations or mega-cities with populations in the tens or hundreds of millions that survived the Atomic Wars because of their missile defense systems. Of course, most of the world outside those cities was laid waste, although some hardy (and mostly mutant) inhabitants live even in these radioactive badlands. The United States essentially separated into its three surviving mega-cities, on each of its coasts around the former heartland of the country, now the Cursed Earth. Judge Dredd’s home city is Mega-City 1 on the coastline of the toxic Black Atlantic, a megalopolis seemingly based on a New York that merged with other cities and swallowed up the Atlantic seaboard from Canada to Florida. It was matched by Mega-City 2 on the West Coast and Texas City on the Gulf.

And so you have a world that is both post-apocalyptic and overcrowded, with the world’s population crammed into mega-cities that are themselves socioeconomic dystopias within the larger global and environmental dystopia. In its glory days, Mega-City One consisted of 800 million people, housed in city blocks that resemble vertical towns of 50,000 people or more. This overcrowded city would be dystopian enough in the best economic climate, but Mega-City 1 has an unemployment rate that is variously cited but is at least 90% due to automation and robots.

The overwhelming majority of the population of Mega-City 1 therefore live in welfare dependency, prone to crime and violence out of sheer boredom and breakdown – crime and violence which is further compounded by the capabilities of future technology. In short, few things are more dangerous to the citizens of Mega-City 1 than themselves.

All this has resulted in political dystopia – the authoritarian police state of the Judges, a system of government that has almost universally spread across the world (at least to the extent that we can see it). In Mega-City 1, the Department of Justice combines all branches of government, as well as the police and judiciary or in that popular phrase – judge, jury and executioner (although Mega-City justice generally does not involve the death penalty). Summary justice? Try instant justice – as they deliver their sentences at the time of arrest. The perfect symbol of this political dystopia was the Statue of Justice towering over the Statue of Liberty.

However, the most important part of all this dystopian satire is the satire or black comedy.

“What do Judge Dredd, Mad Max and Adventure Time all have in common? They’re three of the best post-apocalyptic narratives we’ve ever seen. And they’re all slightly ludicrous, ranging from outright surrealism to mad social satire. In fact, the best post-apocalyptic storytelling is usually kind of ridiculous”.

So whatever your apocalypse or dystopia, Judge Dredd has it for you – and in just the right flavor of black comedy and satire.

 

 

 

 

(2) SCI-FI FANTASY KITCHEN SINK

 

At its core, Judge Dredd may be dystopian or post-apocalyptic satire, but it is even more so a playground of science fiction tropes and everything associated with them – playing with virtually every signature trope (as well as a substantial number of works) of science fiction. If it’s a trope of science fiction, Judge Dredd either has played or can play with it, particularly given the storyline’s episodic nature and anthology of writers (and artists).

Aliens – that definitive trope (or collection of tropes) of SF ever since they invaded Earth from Mars in H.G. Well’s War of the Worlds? They are regular through routine space travel in Judge Dredd and even ghetto (or zoo) residents in Mega-City or elsewhere. Some of them are hostile and dangerous to humans, while others are more friendly to humans (even where humans are hostile and dangerous to them).

Of course, there’s also robots, the reason for 90% unemployment in Mega-City One (and quite frankly, better potential citizens than the human residents, although robots are not legally citizens).

Clones? Judge Dredd IS a clone (along with some other Judges).

Mutants? A substantial part of the world’s population (and probably the majority of its animal population) is mutated from the radioactive wastelands.

Time travel? Both to the future and past, although not too regularly for either as it has only recently been engineered and the Judges are wary of temporal effects or paradox. Interdimensional travel on the other hand is more common.

And there’s still more exotic tropes. Apes genetically engineered for greater intelligence? They’re resident in the appropriately named Apetown ghetto within Mega-City. Dinosaurs recreated through genetic engineering? They roam the Cursed Earth after the Atomic Wars let them loose from Dinosaur National Park – well before Jurassic Park!

Indeed, Judge Dredd goes well beyond SF tropes into fantasy kitchen sink territory. Although it remains predominantly science fiction and tends to rationalize its fantasy, it does venture into many fantasy and magic tropes, because why not? It’s fun and it keeps its fantasy tongue firmly in its science fiction cheek (or is that the other way round?). A major source of its fantasy tropes are its Psi-Judges, albeit with psi short for the characteristic ‘scientific’ terminology of psionics (not psychic – that’s just for New Age hippies!), but Judge Dredd has quite happily featured actual magic, demons, vampires, werewolves and zombies in outright fantasy terms or at most a bare veneer of SF. So for all those who enjoy their fantasy or SF tropes, the world of Judge Dredd has something in it for everyone…

 

 

 

 

(3) REAL WORLD SATIRE

(OR HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE SEX OLYMPICS)

Despite being futuristic and post-apocalyptic, the satire in Judge Dredd is firmly grounded in the trends of our present world.

Firstly, it originated (and to a large extent still continues) as a British satire of American culture and society, or in the words of Adi Shankar, a satire by “an anti-establishment British comic about post-apocalyptic America”. After all, 2000 AD has its American tongue firmly in its British cheek when it depicted the American Judges in uniforms resembling fetishist motorcycle leathers (inspired by Death Race 2000 – and uncannily similar to the post-apocalyptic fashion of Mad Max). They are also emblazoned with American iconography, notably the American flag and eagle, that is distinctly over the top – not least their eagle shoulder-pads, which while visually awesome are functionally impractical.

There’s more tongue in cheek as Mega-City Judges ride computerized and heavily armed motorcycles, naturally enough designated as Lawmasters, and dispense justice with their multiple-choice ammunition guns termed Lawgivers. (Although eerily life imitated art in 1980’s Reaganesque America, with a nuclear missile design named Peacekeepers).

However, Judge Dredd extends to far more general satire – in a society “where every single thing has become monstrously overwhelming”, not least in the bizarre fashions and fads of Mega-City citizens. Those occasionally bubble up into destructive consumer fads, for what must be the overworked consumer protection division of Justice Department.

Of course, Mega-City citizens have a lot of time on their hands with their 90% unemployment rate – which leads to bizarre job vacancies as human mannequins or ‘furniture’ for the rich elite and job riots prompted by the advertisement of those few vacancies. Although a lot of that time must be spent in grappling with the law, either in direct criminal activity (one of the few sources of gainful employment or at least occupation) or in just coping with the sheer volume of draconian laws in Mega-City. For example, sugar is prohibited as illegal addictive substances – with dealing in sugar as an obvious comics-friendly substitute for cocaine. Got some of that sweet stuff?

Obesity? In Judge Dredd, the so-called ‘Fatties’ take it to extremes of belly-wheels, competitive eating and literal tonnage. Speaking of strange competitive sports, the twenty-second Olympic Games are full of them, not least with actual sex as competitive event. Of course, that’s not just your average sex, that’s Olympic sex – highly trained and skilled performance akin to figure-skating. And frankly, I’m a proponent for sex Olympics in the present…

 

 

 

(4) FUTURISTIC DIRTY HARRY

(OR DO YOU FEEL LUCKY, PUNK?)

Judge Dredd is a futuristic Dirty Harry. What’s not to love about that?

Dystopian, post-apocalyptic SF satire might be the foundation of (and set much of the tone for) the storyline of Judge Dredd, but Dredd himself as futuristic Dirty Harry is the core of the story, and certainly for the action in it.

The origins of the character as Dirty Harry ‘tough cop’ are not too surprising, given that it coincided with the period of the Dirty Harry movies from 1971 to 1988 (the comic itself starting between the third and fourth movies, The Enforcer and Sudden Impact) – Dirty Harry of course being San Francisco Police Department detective Harry Callahan played by Clint Eastwood.

Dredd himself is stylistically and visually reminiscent of Clint Eastwood as Dirty Harry – the height (and the lanky frame, particularly in the original art – although other artists have added the characteristic musculature of heroes in comics), the stoic expression (with the helmet visor substituting for Eastwood’s squint), the laconic wit and the whispered menace (at least as far as one can tell from his minimalist mouth movements). Anyone who doubts the dominant influence of Dirty Harry need look no further than the name of the city block where Dredd resided (that is, slept between street patrols) as ‘block judge’. The names of the city blocks are generally derived from the twentieth century and typically have some humorous, narrative or thematic significance, subtle or otherwise – Dredd’s block is Rowdy Yates, the name of Clint Eastwood’s character in the TV western series Rawhide.

Even Dirty Harry’s catchphrase term for criminals, punk (as in “Do you feel lucky, punk? Well, do you?) is adapted by Dredd. Judge Dredd typically calls perps (or perpetrators) “creep”. For that matter, the visual style of the Mega-City population, and particularly its criminal underclass, tends towards punk – or in the term of TV Tropes, the apunkalypse. Above all, Dredd shares the predominant character theme of Dirty Harry as driven by duty and an instinct for justice. For Dirty Harry, that instinct for justice tends to come up against those pesky legal rights and technicalities (“I have a right to a lawyer!” his adversary Scorpio smarmily declares in the first movie), whereas for Dredd, it is embodied by the Law and himself as agent of the Law, hence his catchphrase identification with it. (Of course, there’s arguments against operating on an ‘instinct’ for justice, not least that while such an instinct may be readily vindicated in a fictional narrative, it is less so in real life).

However, it’s not just Judge Dredd who is a futuristic Dirty Harry, but also Justice Department itself and all the Judges. They all operate as police, judge, jury and executioner, passing sentence when arresting (“assaulting a Judge – two years”) – although the death sentence is exceptional in Mega-City and the sentence is usually a term in the cubes (isolation cubes or iso-cubes). Of course, very few of them are as competent as Dredd – and quite a few are downright incompetent or ineffectual. Even worse, some of them are corrupt (Dredd’s own clone-twin Rico for one) or operate more like the Magnum Force in the second Dirty Harry movie of that name, renegade cops outside the law.

Whatever the case, Judge Dredd has the potential not only for black comedy and satire, but also shares the same scope as Dirty Harry for action, drama and morality play.

 

 

 

 

(5) MORAL COMPLEXITY

(OR JUDGE DREDD DIED FOR YOUR SINS)

Okay, so it might be something of an overstatement that Judge Dredd died for your sins. For one thing, it would be your crimes, as Dredd is quite happy to leave your sins as something between you and Grud (the publishing-friendly term for God in Mega-City). For another, Dredd hasn’t died – yet. He is in his eighties or so, although with an extended lifespan from advanced rejuvenation technology, that is roughly equivalent to a present-day male in their forties. (For Judge Dredd, eighty is the new forty!). However, he is getting on, although fortunately Mega-City has at least one younger clone replacement in waiting.

Ironically however, for a series in which Dredd and his fellow Judges were intended as a dystopian satire of the worst excesses of police and governmental authority fused together into a post-apocalyptic police state, it is notable for its moral complexity (not unlike its thematic predecessor, the Dirty Harry film series).

TV Tropes states it best:

“By his very nature and purpose, anti-hero Dredd is firmly committed to his organization’s authoritarian, brutal, and ruthless methods of law enforcement, but it’s established that Mega City One would collapse without him and his fellow Judges, and more than once has. Though Dredd is impeccably honest and honorable, despises corruption, does not discriminate, goes out of his way to save innocents…and has been given cause to question his purpose more than once, he is an unapologetic authoritarian. In this setting, democracy within his society has been shown to be simply unworkable”.

This thread of moral complexity was present from the very outset. Compounding the irony, Dredd co-creator Pat Mills, perhaps best known for his anti-authoritarian themes, wrote Dredd – the ultimate authority figure – as an unambiguously heroic character. This thread of moral complexity has deepened over time, as these intended figures of authoritarian satire have earned their writers’ respect as potentially heroic characters. This thread was most evident in the recurring Democracy storyline, as Judge Dredd acceded to democracy activists and put the Judges to the vote of the populace in a referendum whether to retain the Judges as the government of Mega-City. Characteristically, most of the population couldn’t be bothered voting, but of those that did, the majority voted to retain the Judges.

This moral complexity is also apparent in the heroic self-sacrifice of the ideal Judges, such as Dredd, sworn to uphold the law and protect Mega-City. Dredd himself has consistently accepted the potential sacrifice of his own life to protect the citizens or even a citizen of Mega-City One (and even the residents of the Cursed Earth or anyone looking to the protection of the Law). The life of a Mega-City Judge is somewhat monastic, even deliberately Spartan. After years of training, their duty is entirely to uphold the Law, enduring constant danger of death, typically without personal relationships, certainly without personal riches or reward or even retirement – as the practice of Judges is to retire from active duty with the Long Walk, a quintessentially American Western image of leaving Mega-City and roaming the Cursed Earth, to bring law to the lawless.

Often Dredd is characterized as a fascist, with some – dare I say it? – justice (and indeed dangerous tendencies in that direction), but ultimately I would argue that he is not a fascist (and Mega-City One is not totalitarian) in the strictest sense. Dredd and his Mega-City One are undeniably authoritarian – part of a police state that is almost casually brutal and draconian in its enforcement of law – but Dredd would seem to be a little too legalistic to be a true fascist and lacking the definitive characteristics of historical fascism.

 

 

 

 

(6) The GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY – AND THE WEIRD!

One of my favorite parts (and arguably the definitive part) of fantasy or SF is the world-building, particularly if it is our world, radically transformed. Judge Dredd’s world of the twenty-second century certainly whets one’s world-building appetite in just the right way- teasing details and visual depictions of it as the story unfolds. For the most part, the storyline of Judge Dredd is predominantly set in Mega-City One itself, which at its height was an extensive setting indeed, a megalopolis of 800 million people sprawling along the Atlantic coast from Canada to Florida – although the storyline would often extend to the former territory of the United States beyond Mega-City One, typically picaresque adventures in the badlands of the Cursed Earth. Every so often however, the Judge Dredd storyline (usually in the person of Judge Dredd himself) would visit (or be visited by) other parts of the world.

Of course, the writers would use these forays as an opportunity for visual showcases of the Judges of the other mega-cities – as all the major mega-cities seen are governed or policed by a Judge system, which resembles that of Mega-City One, even down to the design of the uniform. Unfortunately, the depiction of foreign judges has been criticized for relying too much on cliché or stereotype – and there is substance to this criticism, as the writers tended to display the characteristic cultural sensibilities of the 1970s to 1990s – but I think it is missing the point in two respects. Firstly, it ignores how much the American Mega-City judges themselves are stereotypes, down to their uniforms as virtually walking American eagles and flags. Secondly, if one is to be a stereotype, one could hardly do better than the glorious stereotypes of the judges of other mega-cities, who tend to be visually awesome and often more striking (or indeed better characters) than the American Judges.

And so here is a gallery of the world of Judge Dredd, which can be divided up into the good, the bad, the ugly and the weird.

THE GOOD

The good are those mega-cities that typically have the affinities or sympathies of the writers and hence tend to be the ‘good guys’ of the comic, or indeed, among the more livable cities of the post-apocalyptic world to our present sensibilities.

Obviously, given their position in the narrative, the American mega-cities are the primary ‘good guys’, particularly the city of our protagonist Judge Dredd, Mega-City One. And although it is an authoritarian police state under the Judges, one has to admit that in comparison to other mega-cities, it allows more freedom, security and lifestyle for its citizens and would seem one of the better cities to live in the post-apocalyptic world – but for the recurring apocalypses the writers inflict upon it (which saw it literally halved in The Apocalypse War and decimated in Chaos Day).

Mega-City Two was the West Coast counterpart of Mega-City One and otherwise indistinguishable from Mega-City One, which was probably why the writers decided it had to go – with the entire city destroyed in the Judgement Day storyline, although at least it went out with a bang in a worldwide zombie apocalypse.

Texas City on the Gulf Coast seems to be sufficiently distinguished from Mega-City One to have survived the wrath of the writers – particularly by its overblown stereotypical Wild West iconography for the city and its Judges. The uniform of Texas-City Judges resembles the uniform of Mega-City One Judges, but with substituted cowboy imagery – hats (and Sheriff stars) instead of helmets and the Lone Star instead of the American flag.

Of course, the British writers of Judge Dredd depict their own Brit-Cit amongst the good mega-cities – indeed, the closest ally and associate of Mega-City One. Brit-Cit Judges resemble the Mega-City One Judges, but with the lion and Union Jack instead of the eagle and American flag.

Interestingly, the writers also tend to depict the Japanese Judges of Hondo City favorably – which I attribute to the influence of Japanese popular culture on British comics writers and Japan’s economic predominance in the 1970s and 1980s.

And of course, the British writers can’t deny their love of Australia. Postwar Australia or Oz, dominated by the Sydney-Melbourne Conurb (bordering the central Radback) would seem to be by far and away the most free, laidback and pleasant place to live in the twenty-second century. The Oz judges have uniforms which seem to combine the Mega-City Judges uniforms with attributes of the present Australian police uniform – but with shorts for those Oz summers…

Speaking of laidback, there are also the Irish Judges, which at least has the excuse for its stereotypical nature in that it is actually one gigantic Brit-Cit corporate Irish theme park.

Interestingly, Africa seems to lack any major mega-city outside Egypt (which is ironic as Africa is increasingly set to have most of the world’s mega-cities by the actual twenty-second century), but the continent-roving Pan-African Judges are pretty impressive.

THE BAD

The Big Bad of Judge Dredd’s world are the Sovs, not surprisingly for comics originating in the last peak of the Cold War in the 1970s and 1980s. The two major Sov cities were East-Meg One and East-Meg Two – East-Meg One launched the Apocalypse War against Mega-City One (and was obliterated as a result), while East Meg-Two attempted to pursue more friendly relations with the American cities – but unfortunately renegade Sovs from East-Meg One unleashed the Chaos Bug in revenge for the Apocalypse War.

As much as one has to hate those Sov Judges, one has to admit that they make communism look cool with their uniforms.

The Chinese Sino-Cit Judges would seem to be somewhat similar to the Sov Judges, but have been somewhat elusive in the comic – although when we have seen them, they looked awesome, with dragon emblems in the place of the American eagles…

THE UGLY

And then you have the mega-cities that, although unpleasant, are too stereotypically corrupt or ineffectual to be villainous.

The Latin American mega-cities are probably the worst victims of cliché and stereotype – they and their Judges are typically cruel, corrupt and repressive, but lazy and incompetent to boot. Ciudad Banquarilla – or as it is more commonly known, Banana City – is typical in this respect and presumably resulted from the Brits not forgiving Argentina for the Falklands War. At least, the Judges look simply fabulous in their uniforms.

The Pan-Andean Conurb is arguably even worse. Although their Judges have a snazzy condor instead of the American eagle on their uniforms, the one time we saw them their reigning Chief Judge was a puppet of the illegal sugar cartels and Judge Dredd ended up arresting him and most of their judiciary.

Although the Egyptian mega-city of Luxor is equally a stereotype, seemingly a fusion of Islamic law and a revival of pharaonic Egypt, at least its Judges looked awesome, even if they were harsh. As their leading Judge retorts after blasting off the hand of a thief – “Be thankful sinner that I only took a hand!”

Interestingly, Vatican City is also a mega-city of some substance in Judge Dredd’s world, although its Judges – or Inquisitors – are distinctly unpleasant.

THE WEIRD

Finally, there is the outright weird in Dredd’s world – the mutated Weird West of the Cursed Earth, the various space colonies on the Moon as well as other planets in our solar system and the high weirdness of alien worlds in deep space…

 

 

 

 

(7) THERE ARE 800 MILLION STORIES IN THE MEGA-CITY

And then there is the diversity of characters, both in Mega-City One and outside it.

Of course, the comic is predominated by the title character, Judge Joseph “Joe” Dredd, but it’s striking how often he can be a background figure in his own comic and other characters feature more prominently, particularly in shorter story episodes. It is reminiscent of the tagline for the TV series The Naked City – “There are 8 million stories in the Naked City. This has been one of them”. Except of course, that there were initially 800 million stories in the Mega-City.

The focus tends to be on Dredd and his colleagues, the Judges of Mega-City One (although it might be noted that Dredd has family – his niece Vienna Dredd – with whom he has a strained but at times surprisingly touching relationship). It’s somewhat unsettling that I can remember the names of Mega-City Chief Judges better than I can for say, actual people – Fargo, Solomon, Goodman, Cal (Grud help us all), Griffin, McGruder, Silver, McGruder (again), Volt, Hershey, Francisco, Sinfeld, Hershey (again), Logan…

Mind you, the track record of Chief Judges is distinctly mixed at best.

Yet there are also memorable citizen characters – Supersurf champion Marlon Shakespeare or “Chopper”, Otto Sump (probably the largest single source of Mega-City’s most ill-advised consumer fads), Max Normal, Mrs Gunderson…

 

 

(8) A ROGUES GALLERY TO DIE FOR

Of course, a superhero is nothing without his supervillains – his nemeses, ideally a whole rogue’s gallery of them. Batman might be cool (because how is a billionaire vigilante who dresses up as a bat not cool?), but he wouldn’t quite be as cool without his rogue’s gallery of villains, as striking and theatrical as him.

Judge Dredd certainly fits this superhero rule, with a rogue’s gallery of villains to rival – or even surpass – that of Batman. Judge Dredd started off reasonably small (not unlike Batman), with the common criminals or ‘perps’ (for perpetrators) of Mega-City One, although his very first perp (in his debut episode in 2000 AD) ‘Whitey’ was a little more exceptional than most as a Judge-killer. To a large extent, as an (or THE) officer of law enforcement in Mega-City One, his primary antagonists continue to be common perps – and indeed Dredd has mused that it will be a lucky hit from one of these perps that will see him off.

But then in a world including aliens, mutants, robots, cyborgs and psi powers, Dredd’s antagonists can be highly dangerous or formidable – even the ‘common’ perps, with the future technology or bizarre social fashions of Mega-City, can be a handful, and terrorist organizations like Total War are downright terrifying . My favorite Dredd antagonists tend to be any alien or mutant incursion, particularly from the Cursed Earth – Satanus the Cursed Earth Tyrannosaurus Rex, the Gila Munja, the Black Plague, Father Earth…

Of course, most of Judge Dredd’s antagonists tend not to be recurring, as Dredd either kills them or sends them to the iso-cubes – unlike Batman, who just sends his antagonists to Arkham Asylum, where they stay until they feel like escaping. However, some of Dredd’s more popular (and my own favorite) villains are recurring. One is P.J. Maybe, Mega-City’s most successful psychopath and serial killer (although perhaps most of Mega-City’s population is psychopathic or sociopathic to some degree). The other is the notoriously violent Angel Gang, particularly in its surviving member of Mean Machine Angel. As a boy, he was good-natured and showed none of the family’s violent tendencies. Obviously the Angel Gang patriarch, Pa Angel, decided that this would simply not do, and arranged surgery to transform him into a murderous cyborg, with four ‘settings’ of rage literally dialled into his head – with his basic default setting merely as the lowest level of anger.

Ultimately however, the most dangerous adversaries in Judge Dredd are other Judges. The first epic adversary in Judge Dredd (and city-level threat) was Judge Cal, who succeeded to the position of Chief Judge in “The Day the Law Died”, essentially as a replay of Caligula in Mega-City One. Dredd’s most iconic recurring adversary – the Joker to his Batman (and similarly his evil counterpart) – is essentially an omnicidal figure of dark fantasy and supernatural power, Judge Death. He and his fellow Dark Judges (Mortis, Fear and Fire) – essentially Judge Dredd’s Four Horseman of the Apocalypse – come from a world in another dimension in which they killed the entire population – their reasoning being that since crime is only committed by the living, that life itself is the crime.

Although when you come right down to it, despite their supernatural power, the Dark Judges are simply not as effective villains as human Judges from our own world – the Sov Judges, who between the Apocalypse War and the Chaos Bug, almost wiped out Mega-City One. Of course, that’s what happens when, like the Dark Judges, you insist on killing everyone by hand – but then, justice is personal for the Dark Judges…

 

 

 

(9) DIVERSITY OF GENRE AND TONE

(OR HOW CHAOS DAY TORE MY HEART OUT)

As a sci-fi fantasy kitchen sink, Judge Dredd extends to a diverse range of genres, albeit obviously not pure or high fantasy – and admittedly not particularly hard SF either. Indeed it’s pretty soft on the Mohs scale of SF hardness, what with psi powers and outright fantasy elements – arguably it ranks near the lowest part of the scale, along with other typically comedic or comic greats such as Futurama, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the DC and Marvel Universes, Star Wars and Warhammer 40,000. Of course, it is not primarily science fiction or fantasy – it’s primarily a dystopian satire or black comedy in a science fiction setting.

That said, Judge Dredd does dip into a diverse range of genres, predominantly within science fiction but also within fantasy. As highlighted in this list, Judge Dredd predominantly falls within a post-apocalyptic or dystopian SF setting – but also at times has elements of cyberpunk (as well as other ‘punk’ subgenres), military science fiction, space opera (notably in its forays into deep space, such as the Judge Child Quest) and time travel or alternative history fiction amongst others. It remains too embedded in its future world setting to venture too far into fantasy, but even so at times has had elements of dark fantasy or horror (particularly in more ‘psi’ episodes and especially those involving the Dark Judges), urban fantasy (what else given its predominantly urban setting?) and Weird West (typically in the Cursed Earth). For that matter, it has shared elements of genres beyond science fiction or fantasy, albeit in the usual suspects for its central premise – crime or heist fiction, espionage or war fiction, and police drama.

True to its roots in black comedy and satire, Judge Dredd frequently plays with other works of science fiction (or fantasy), generally to the detriment of the latter as they encounter the full force of Mega-City Law. It also has had more substantial crossovers, particularly with other 2000 AD stories (although not always to the benefit of consistent continuity), but also with other publishers – sometimes played for laughs (Mars Attacks Judge Dredd?!), but others played more seriously (Judge Dredd vs Aliens works surprisingly well with the scenario of a xenomorph infestation as a terrorist attack on Mega-City). And there was Judge Dredd vs Batman – the ultimate lawman vs the ultimate vigilante. Double the awesome!

And then there is the diversity of tone. Predominantly its tone is that of tongue-in-cheek black comedy or satire. Primarily, Judge Dredd is funny or comic, in contrast to what might otherwise be an unbearably tragic post-apocalyptic setting. As noted before in this list, the best post-apocalyptic fiction is absurdist at heart. Yet even here it can vary, particularly as Mega-City, its Judges and its citizens have engaged more depth of emotional reaction – from comic to dramatic (even with a sense of suspense or horror) and indeed to tragic.

The tragic stories could be heartbreaking or heartrending – they typically involved stories of individuals crushed by life in Mega-City One, often not so much by deliberate cruelty but by the vast impersonal carelessness of the city, and some so that even Dredd was moved by their tragedy. And then the whole city was overwhelmed by tragedy in the recent Day of Chaos storyline. Previous apocalyptic crises for Mega-City had tended to be somewhat absurdist, but there was little absurdist or comic about the Day of Chaos. Even in the Apocalypse War, when half the city was destroyed, it was a little hard to take seriously, perhaps it was on such an unbelievably large scale and we don’t really see it. The Apocalypse War (and for that matter The Day the Law Died before it, equally or even more absurdist as Caligula replayed in the twenty-second century) also set the pattern of future crises, in which Judge Dredd would typically lead a small force to turn the tide and save the city. So that’s what we anticipate in the recent Day of Chaos storyline, waiting expectantly as the Judge battle to save the city from a terrorist biological weapon. Except…they fail.

The Chaos Bug spreads through the city beyond any hope of containment, infecting all it touches with fatal rabid madness. As Yeats wrote – “things fall apart, the center cannot hold”. And so the Judges enact their desperate, heartbreaking last resort – city-wide triage, evacuating a small uninfected remnant (only 50 million out of a population of 400 million) to safe blocks, poignantly symbolized by Dredd escorting his niece Vienna to a safe block as the city dies around them. Gruddamn you, 2000 AD – you tore my heart out with that story!

Perhaps most poignantly in the tragedy is the sense amongst the Judges, not least Dredd himself, that they reaped the harvest that they had sown, in their destruction of Sov city East-Meg One and the distrust of their own population. The city has bounced back, its population rising to about 180 million or so through the Chaos Bug being not quite as fatal as planned, return of expatriates, immigration, the acceptance of refugees and most ironically, the formerly second-class citizens of its mutant townships. Yet it remained a shadow of its former superpower self – depopulated and mostly in dangerous ruins, in dire economic straits and with uncertain future, embattled for its very survival…

 

 

 

(10) THE ZEN OF DREDD

(OR HOW JUDGE DREDD IS PLATO’S REPUBLIC AND HOBBES’ LEVIATHAN)

And for my final reason, it’s time to get philosophical. Not too philosophical of course – Judge Dredd is primarily driven by its nature (and the action of its narrative) as a futuristic Dirty Harry in a dystopian or post-apocalyptic SF satire.

However, like most (if not all) substantial works of fiction, Judge Dredd does have its philosophical underpinnings – the Zen of Dredd as it were, which not surprisingly tends towards political philosophy, Plato’s Republic and Hobbes’ Leviathan. I’m not saying that Judge Dredd is deliberately modelled or directly influenced by Plato’s Republic, but Plato and his Republic are hugely influential in Western culture and politics. Since Plato’s Republic has its central premise as the meaning of justice (and hence the just or ideal society), it is all too apt that Judge Dredd has a distinct flavor of Plato’s Republic about it. Indeed, just as Star Wars was essentially Plato’s Republic in space, with the Jedi as its philosopher-kings or guardians and the Force as the Platonic Forms of the true spiritual reality (superior to the material reality of our untrained perception or senses), then so too Mega-City One is essentially Plato’s Republic in twenty-second century America, with the Judges as its philosopher-kings or guardians and the Law as its Forms. (Or as Judge Dredd likes to proclaim – “I am the Law!”). Indeed, the Judges are strikingly similar to the guardian class of Plato’s Republic – male and female (Plato’s Republic was at least progressive on that point), trained from childhood to govern in the interests of the polity (by physical regimen and the four virtues of wisdom, justice, courage and temperance) and bound by stricter rules (such as the absence of family or relationships and personal wealth) than the rest of the populace.

It has been argued that Plato’s Republic was indeed, like Judge Dredd, a dystopian satire rather than a utopian ideal, but it is difficult not to see it intended as the latter – or worse, Plato’s distaste for his own democratic Athens (which after all, executed his beloved teacher and philosophical mouthpiece Socrates) and idealization of a philosophical version of Athens rival, Sparta. And so we are still fighting the Peloponnesian War against Plato’s totalitarian Spartanism as it has recurred throughout Western political ideology – the General Will of Rousseau, the dictatorship of the proletariat and its revolutionary vanguard in Marxism or communism, the fuhrerprinzip of fascism or Nazism.

And yet for all my general opposition to Plato’s Republic in all its forms, Judge Dredd’s Mega-City One is one of the few forms of Plato’s Republic I can believe in, or at least see a nuanced appeal. This is perhaps because it also echoes another descendant of Plato’s Republic, one that is more blunt and therefore persuasive than most – Hobbes’ Leviathan. Just as Dredd’s Mega-City One is Plato’s Republic in the twenty-second century, so too is its Department of Justice Hobbes’ Leviathan made flesh. (Judge Dredd is prominently among the entries for the trope Hobbes was Right in TV Tropes). Hobbes’ Leviathan is essentially his proposal of necessary political sovereign power, born of “social contract” to avoid the state of (human) nature, with its constant war of all against all – in which life is, as famously quoted, “poor, nasty, brutish and short”. And to be honest, that does seem to sum up life in the twenty-second century – indeed, it is potentially a lot more nasty, brutish and short in a world of aliens, mutants, robots and weapons of mass destruction.