Mega-City Law – Judge Dredd Cities Uniform Rankings

Posted on September 14, 2024September 14, 2024 by Alex Stark

JUDGE DREDD CITIES JUDGE UNIFORM RANKING

I’ve ranked mega-cities and their Judges by their status as heroes or villains in the comic, and even by the more important criterion of quality of life for the average citizen, but now for the most important question of all – which city and their Judges have the best-looking uniforms?

They may or may not be tough on their mega-city’s streets – but which Judges would win on the catwalk?

So here are my rankings for mega-city by Judge uniform design, from best to worst (up to Case Files 19).

S-TIER (GOD-TIER)

(1) MEGA-CITY ONE

It was a tough choice among top tier rankings but in the end, I could only rank one as truly god-tier – the original and the best, the Mega-City One Judge uniform.

If for nothing else, then there’s at least the fact that it was the template for the design of the Judge uniforms for every other mega-city, certainly at a meta-narrative level for artists of the comic – and possibly even in-universe. After all other mega-cities seem to have almost universally adopted Mega-City One’s Judge system – why not also copy their Judge uniforms to boot?

Speaking of boots, what truly elevates the Mega-City One Judge uniform is that it fuses dystopian fascist jackboot chic with post-apocalyptic biker leather punk, adorned with enough Americana to make the Fourth of July blush.

No, seriously – as the headline of Guardian feature by Ian Dunt proclaimed, it’s “Fascist Spain meets British punk”, a creation of subversive genius. “It’s a mark of honour for the British comic book industry that its most instantly recognisable icon is also its most subversive”.

The fascist Spain part of course came from Carlos Ezquerra, the Spanish artist who played an instrumental role in creating the visual appearance of Judge Dredd

“The eagle motif and helmet were drawn from fascism, the permanently drawn truncheon from police on the picket line, the zips, chains and knee pads from punk” – as Ezquerra told an interviewer, “I was living in Franco’s Spain but also I was living in Mrs Thatcher’s England.”

The result? The Mega-City One Judge uniform is a thing of beauty, with every single detail deliriously over the top – like everything else about Judge Dredd’s Mega-City One in the twenty-second century. It’s why it had to be toned down for anything resembling a practical design in live action adaptation in the 2012 film – because it had been turned all the way up for the comic. Overblown? It’s meant to be!

As Ian Dunt wrote in that article – “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.”

Also – “F**king 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.

Chris Sims in his Comics Alliance blog also waxed lyrical about the sheer batsh*t exuberance of Judge Dredd’s uniform, ranking it in his top 5 comics costume designs of all time:

“The best costumes in comics tend to be simple and well-defined, getting across a lot of information with a very streamlined look. Generally speaking, the more unnecessary gimmicks you add to a suit, the more distracting it gets, and the less it says about the character, and I think that holds true across the board when it comes to superheroes. But then you get to Judge Dredd, and all those rules go flying straight into the Iso-Cubes, where they’re locked up and never, ever let out.”

“Seriously, look at that suit. It’s nothing but unnecessary gimmicks. There’s nothing streamlined about it at all — it’s bulky, and covered with details that you can’t really skip over because, again, the entire costume is all about those details. And yet, it’s top five costumes in comics history, easily. Seriously. I love Judge Dredd’s costume so much, and when you get right down to it, what it really comes down to is context.”

That context is of course the world in which Judge Dredd is set, particularly Judge Dredd’s home city of Mega-City One, in a future that is both over the top dystopian and post-apocalyptic – “a society where every single thing has become monstrously overwhelming.”

“The one thing you can get just by looking at that dude? He has a lot going on. The costume is blindingly ornate, almost overwhelming in just how much there is to it — you can’t really take it in all at once, and when you throw in the fact that he’s riding on a motorcycle with five headlights, four exhaust pipes, two machine guns and a Crash Bomber stuck to it, it’s ridiculous. There’s just too much. Which is, at a single glance, the perfect representation of Dredd and his world”.

As Sims observes, instead of an eagle patch on their shoulders, Dredd and other Mega-City Judges have a literal statue of an eagle on their shoulder – something the artists would adapt with similar animal motifs for Judge uniforms of other mega-cities. And because the shoulder eagle takes up so much room, the flag shoulder patch in contemporary American police or military uniforms has to migrate down to their belt buckle, which is of course in the form of another gigantic American eagle. And there’s a third eagle on the badge which blares the Judge’s name (and as iconography, “Dredd’s badge is right up there with the Bat-Signal and the Superman shield”).

USA! USA! USA!

And it keeps going. The belt so overstuffed with equipment that they don’t even have room for a gun – which they keep in their boots, along with their bootknife.

There’s the other enormous shoulder pad to rival the eagle, along with elbow and knee pads. The gloves – with built-in knuckle-dusters and pouches. The chain from the zipper to the badge. And the equally iconic helmet – also equipped with gadgets such as respirator – which famously Dredd never takes off (except when the artist substitutes something else, even just cutting away from the lower part of the face).

And it all rocks – every single part!

Don’t worry – aptly enough for my place entry Mega-City One uniform, this is my most overblown and over the top entry in these rankings. The other entries will be shorter, particularly as other Judge uniform entries are adapted from Dredd’s baseline.

“The other great thing about Dredd’s uniform is that, even with as complicated as it is, it’s the baseline. It’s the standard model, and Dredd’s world is full of modifications on that basic theme, whether it’s the Judges of other cities or just different specialists from his own Department of Justice. And those only work because they’re playing off of Dredd’s. It has, strangely enough, proven to be one of the most adaptable costumes in comics, even if the adaptation is just dropping an even more gigantic golden eagle on it for the Chief Judge”.

A-TIER (TOP TIER)

(2) EAST MEG ONE / EAST MEG TWO

It’s the cape.

And all those hammers and sickles.

Gruddamn I love the Sov Judges uniform. If it wasn’t for the Mega-City One Judge uniform setting the template and hence earning its god-tier first place, that’s where I would have ranked the Sov Judge uniform.

Dystopian communist jackboot chic with post-apocalyptic biker leather punk, adorned with enough Soviet paraphernalia to make a May Day parade blush.

Modelled here by Dredd in disguise as a Sov Judge (but wearing the Mega-City One boots and black leather jumpsuit)

Indeed, the Sovs go better with hammers and sickles than their American counterparts with eagles – with (at least) one on their helmet, one on their belt buckle and one on each kneepad. They also have a communist star on each glove.

(3) SINO-CIT TWO

A close runner-up to their American and Soviet counterparts, the Chinese Judges would have ranked higher if, you know, I’d seen their uniform in its full glory in more than one episode.

And also I believe they toned down the uniforms – which is frankly outrageous. If anything, they should have toned them up! This is Judge Dredd after all. But they’re perfect as they are. I note that there appears to be two regular Judge uniforms and one in a more senior or commanding position, although both uniform designs are in the red and yellow designs of the present Chinese flag.

As for the regular Judges, there’s the helmets styled in the traditional conical Asian design. The dragons as shoulder pad similar to the eagle for Mega-City One Judges. The Chinese characters which I presume to be their name, similar to the badges for Mega-City One Judges. The only issue I have is the shuriken belt buckles – which are a bit too much and also a potential source of injury.

The senior or commanding Judge has a similar coloring and design – but with some big boss shoulder pads going on and a dragon helmet. He also has skulls on his collar and badge, suggestive of perhaps a similar role to the SJS in Mega-City One, as well as a giant Chinese character on his chest.

They also have the yin-yang symbol on the back of their uniforms.

(4) HONDO CITY

Judge Dredd meets anime samurai chic in Japan’s Hondo City!

Hondo City’s Judge-Inspectors have a uniform to invoke the appearance of samurai. Also “unlike foreign Judges, they wear no badge with their name on; their names are printed on the rising sun symbol on their uniforms, viewable only through the visor on another judge’s helmet, with the intent that the citizens see justice as one entity rather than a group of individuals.”

B-TIER (HIGH TIER)

(5) BRIT-CIT

I mean, come on – they’re essentially Mega-City One Judges with lions instead of eagles (on shoulder pad and helmet), blue instead of green (pads, boots and gloves), and Union Jacks. That’s high-tier right there!

(6) TEXAS CITY

Again, come on – they’re essentially cowboy-themed Mega-City One Judges, with Stetsons and five stars. Hence – high-tier!

(7) EMERALD ISLE

They might be glorified security guards…but I like the “green machine” uniforms, green with white and orange trimmings based on the Irish flag. And I’m a fan of the trench coat – which stands out from the usual biker leather uniforms of Judges.

C-TIER (MID TIER)

(8) CIUDAD BARANQUILLA / BANANA CITY

Yeah – Latin America’s leading mega-city just doesn’t do too well in my rankings. This is probably their best of my rankings for them, but their Judge uniforms look too much like they’ve wandered in as bikers from a Pride parade.

D-TIER (LOW TIER)

(9) SYDNEY-MELBOURNE CONURB / OZ

Ah, Oz – you know I love you among my mega-cities as heroes in Judge Dredd and in my quality of life ranking as hands down the best place to live in his twenty-second century, but your uniforms are just low-tier. You’re the only Judges with shorts.

And yes – I know no one’s making it through the post-apocalyptic Australian summer in full biker leather. Well, apart from Mad Max of course, but even then you have Wes in The Road Warrior wearing assless chaps to keep cool.

F-TIER (FAIL TIER)

(10) VEGAS CITY & DELHI-CIT

These guys aren’t even trying.

If anything, I’d rank Delhi lower because at least Vegas City Judges have the excuse that they’re really just Mafia thugs doing the bare minimum to maintain the fiction of being Judges. That and the dollar sign as their uniform insignia is a good visual gag. The Delhi-Cit Judges just have a knock-off Mega-City One biker leather jumpsuit without any of the trimmings, except for orange shoulder pads with the Ashoka Chakra symbol to evoke the Indian flag

X-TIER (WILD TIER)

SPECIAL MENTION: DARK JUDGES

In fairness, the Dark Judge uniform design is arguably the best adaptation from the Mega-City One Judge uniform template – and individualized between them to boot.

Of course, you have to be, ah, undead to pull off the look

Mega-City Law – Judge Dredd Cities Quality of Life Rankings

Posted on September 11, 2024September 11, 2024 by Alex Stark

And now for the even more important question than how one ranks cities in Judge Dredd as heroes or villains – how one would rank them by where one would actually want or at least prefer to live, as an average citizen. In other words, ranking cities in Judge Dredd by the quality of life they provide for their citizens.

Yes, yes – this may seem surprising for a comic that is, after all, a dystopian SF satire. It’s a crapsack world – they all suck, don’t they?

Well, yes and no. You see, some places are more dystopian than others. And what’s even more surprising – the central dystopian setting we all know and love but are happy we aren’t living in, Dredd’s own Mega-City One, is far from the most dystopian. Mega-City One actually ranks midway through my rankings.

So here are my rankings of Judge Dredd cities by quality of life, from best to worst. Only cities still in existence get a main ranking – but some dead cities get special mention.

S-TIER (GOD TIER)

(1) OZ – SYDNEY-MELBOURNE CONURB

Hands down the best place to live in Dredd’s twenty-second century world – and it’s not even close for the next best. The Oz Judges are laidback as are its citizens. Like the former United States, Australia outside the coastal cities is a wasteland – known as the Radback – but that’s not too different from Australia at present, with its concentration of population in urban cities. (Although one presumes the Oz economy is driven by robot mining in the Radback). It looks like life for the average citizen could compare reasonably well to our present world.

A-TIER (TOP TIER)

(2) HONDO CITY

Look – it’s a close call between my entries from second to fourth place, but I’m going with Japan’s Hondo City in second place, with its high quality of life for its citizens a result of it being the most technologically advanced mega-city in the twenty-second century. Its Judges also appear to be among the most benevolent to its citizens, who in turn are among the most law-abiding. Sure, there’s exceptions to both – corruption among Judges and crime by the Yakuza – but that’s no different from any other mega-city and arguably better than most.

B-TIER (HIGH TIER)

(3) EMERALD ISLE

Yes – it may have been introduced as a biting satire of Irish stereotypes and essentially a glorified theme park under Brit Cit control…but ironically for all the satire, it looked like a pleasant place for the average citizen to live. A rural landscape of rustic villages as opposed to the urban hellholes of other mega-cities – or for that matter, the radioactive wastelands that had largely replaced natural or rural landscapes elsewhere. Not to mention citizens – and Judges for that matter – who just liked to take it easy and have a pint, suffering virtual culture shock when confronted with the casual brutality of Mega-City One’s Judges or criminals.

(4) BRIT CIT

Mega-City One lite.

No, seriously – a smaller mega-city with many of the same problems as Mega-City One but not as far advanced along the same dystopian path and therefore a somewhat more pleasant place to live, even if it is British.

C-TIER (MID-TIER)

(5) MEGA-CITY ONE

Yes – I am as surprised as you are. Mega-City One may rank behind four other mega-cities for quality of life but it ranks above the others. As dystopian as it is, it’s just not that bad and life for many of its citizens is decent.

(6) TEXAS CITY

Pretty much like Mega-City One only, you know, if Mega-City One was in Texas…so a little worse. No, seriously – the British writers liked to play up the Texan or Southern stereotypes so of course it’s depicted as a little worse than Mega-City One. The Judges are literal cowboy cops.

D-TIER (LOW TIER)

(7) EAST MEG TWO

I mean, come on – they’re the Sovs, albeit the better of the two East-Meg cities and not just because it hasn’t been nuked. From what little we see of life there, it does indeed appear to be more authoritarian and brutal than the American mega-cities, not to mention poorer and with less quality of life.

Yes, yes – there was something of a parallel drawn between the East-Meg One Diktatorat and Judge Dredd in their mutual indifference about informing their citizens of the outbreak of the Apocalypse War. No offense but as I said when looking at the Apocalypse War, that parallel just sounded like some drokking Sov-loving commie gobbledygook to me…

USA! USA! USA!

(8) SINO CIT TWO

The details of life in Sino Cit Two are vague but by all indications they would appear to be similar to the Sov mega-cities, only worse. It appears to be richer than its Sov counterparts but more efficient in its authoritarianism.

F-TIER (FAIL TIER)

(9) CIUDAD BARANQUILLA

And there you have it – hands down the worst place to live in Dredd’s twenty-second century. Unless you’re a Judge or one of its rich citizens – but even then things can go wrong. Essentially a corrupt racket or criminal gang disguised as a mega-city, alternating between brutalizing its citizens – inmates tend not to survive its prisons, at least in one piece – and extorting them.

X-TIER (WEIRD / WILD TIER)

SPECIAL MENTION (1) LUNA-1 (SPACE COLONIES)

Essentially the Wild West frontier of Mega-City One (as well as other mega-cities), with all the pros and cons of the frontier. Mega-city citizens go to the moon to seek a better life – and the same goes for other space colonies, only more so for those on Earth-like planets in “alien space” where you don’t have to answer to the Oxygen Board for your air.

So if anything I’d probably rank Luna-1 and other space colonies in general as somewhat above Mega-City One in quality of life.

SPECIAL MENTION (2) CURSED EARTH

Where Mega-City One is dystopian, the Cursed Earth is post-apocalyptic.

Yes, yes – the Cursed Earth isn’t a mega-city (and for that matter has wide variations within it)…but it is an important setting in Judge Dredd, second in frequency only to Mega-City One itself. And people – not just mutants – do live there. Indeed, it is surprisingly populated for a radioactive wasteland. So how does it compare for quality of life?

Well not good, obviously – it is the Cursed Earth, after all. There’s a reason that muties are constantly seeking to get into Mega-City One – and not just as an allegory for illegal immigration in our world. So if I were to rank it against actual mega-cities, I’d have to rank it below Mega-City One…but probably above Ciudad Baranquilla.

And surprisingly, it’s not all that bad either. Parts of it appear quite decent – otherwise you wouldn’t have that many human settlements in it. For that matter, Mega-City One has its own colonies or settlements in it, that often seem better than Mega-City One itself. Heck – just like the muties desperately trying to get into Mega-City One, there are often Mega-City One residents who seem equally as desperate to get out of Mega-City One to the Cursed Earth, whether to Mega-City One’s colonies or otherwise. That was the premise of the Helltrekkers story. Mind you, the whole point of that story was the hell part of the trek – but then there wouldn’t have been a story if it was uneventful.

And similarly to Mega-City One itself compared to other cities, the Cursed Earth ranks about midway when compared to the world’s other radioactive wastelands. The Radback would appear better – just as Australia has the best mega-city, it also has the best wasteland – but it would definitely rank above the Radlands of Ji.

SPECIAL MENTION (3) MEGA-CITY TWO

RIP Mega-City Two

It’s a pity, as I’d actually have ranked Mega-City Two above Mega-City One for quality of life, perhaps aptly enough for the latter’s West Coast counterpart. It had nicer beachfront – the relatively unpolluted Pacific compared to the Black Atlantic – and its Judges were more easy-going. Perhaps too easy-going, given that it’s not around any more.

SPECIAL MENTION (4) EAST MEG ONE

RIP East Meg One

Stronger than East Meg Two, but it loses marks for the authoritarian brutality and casual callousness towards casualties, even its own, in going to war against Mega-City One while East Meg Two preferred a more glasnost approach. And of course for not existing anymore, a not unrelated fact. While it was around, I probably would have ranked it just below East Meg Two.

You get the idea…

SPECIAL MENTION (5) SINO CIT ONE

RIP Sino Cit One

Essentially the same compared to Sino Cit Two as East Meg One compared to East Meg Two

SPECIAL MENTION (6) VEGAS CITY

RIP Vegas City

But not in the same feel-good way as Mega-City Two, where you had something generally to mourn. Vegas City was a literal mafia state which existed solely on gambling. While it was around, I’d have ranked it marginally above Ciudad Baranquilla, because at least it looked like it could be fun if you were lucky or could keep your winning run going. And I had a soft spot for the Lady Luck character who popped up in the Missionary Man story – it sure helps to be a psi to stay lucky in Vegas.

SPECIAL MENTION (7) DEADWORLD

Trick mention – there is no quality of life in Deadworld because everyone’s dead, except of course the Dark Judges who are undead. Quality of life? Ha! Life is a crime and the sentence is death.

Mind you, even before the Dark Judges took over, Deadworld would have ranked below Ciudad Baranquilla in corruption and callous brutality. How else do you think the Dark Judges were able to take over?

Although, it would have been interesting to see Ciudad Baranquilla square off with the Dark Judges. Or other mega-cities for that matter – why do the Dark Judges always target Mega-City One?

Mega-City Law: Top 10 Judge Dredd Heroes & Villains (Special Mention – Cities & Judges)

Posted on September 8, 2024September 8, 2024 by Alex Stark

Yes – I have my top ten Judge Dredd heroes and villains but as usual I also have my special mentions.

However, there’s a twist. As the world of Judge Dredd is one of distinctive mega-cities and their Judges, I’ve compiled special mentions exclusively in those categories – cities and Judges – as ‘heroes’ or ‘villains’.

Unlike my top ten Judge Dredd heroes and villains, these special mentions aren’t a countdown from tenth to first place. Instead, apart from the first entry for villains, they are simply counted out in chronological order as they were introduced in the comic.

There are some similarities to the top ten list. First and foremost, it’s also a running list – updated to each Judge Dredd Case Files volume as I review them in Mega-City Law, presently up to Case Files 19.

As for their rankings as ‘heroes’ and ‘villains’, that tends to be from the protagonist perspective of Judge Dredd and Mega-City One – which after all tends also to be shared by the writers and readers, at least this reader.

No prizes then for guessing the first special mention as ‘heroes’ goes to the Big Meg and its Judges. Sometimes I rank myself as a citizen of Mega-City One over my actual country. Grud – I love that fictional city!

On the other hand, I had to make an exception to chronological order for the first special mention as ‘villains’ because that entry was simply too distinctive to rank third as it would otherwise by chronological order.

However, even from that protagonist perspective of Dredd or MC-1, the rankings as ‘heroes’ are somewhat tenuous. It’s not just that, as in my top ten, the heroes might be described as anti-heroes at best (a description that also applies to Dredd himself as well as the Judges of Mega-City One). That does apply here as well but it’s also that while Mega-City One does have other cities and their Judges as ‘allies’, those alliances tend to be tenuous. Even the other two American mega-cities, while generally well-meaning towards Mega-City One as formal allies, are (or were in the case of one of them) pretty useless when it came to helping MC-1 out of a crisis.

Back to that reference to writers, there was a tendency for the other cities and their Judges to reflect the positive or negative pop culture stereotypes held by the writers at the time, which in turn is reflected by their ranking as ‘heroes’ and ‘villains” – that is, as ‘good’ cities or Judges allied with MC-1 or otherwise sympathetic, or as ‘bad’ cities as adversaries of MC-1 or otherwise unsympathetic.

So these are my special mentions for the cities and Judges of Dredd’s world as heroes or villains.

(1) HEROES: MEGA-CITY ONE

(CASE FILES 1 – JUDGE WHITEY: prog 2)

As I said in my introduction, no prizes for guessing the first special mention for cities and their Judges as ‘heroes’ goes to the Big Meg and its Judges. Sometimes I rank myself as a citizen of Mega-City One over my actual country. Grud – I love that fictional city!

It’s also my first special mention consistent with me counting them out in chronological order (with the exception of my first villainous special mention). No surprise there either – after all, we’re introduced to Mega-City One and its Judges from the very first episode of Judge Dredd, although that was the second episode of the 2000 AD anthology comic which published Judge Dredd (as it was not ready for the first episode).

Okay, okay – technically Mega-City One was introduced in the first Judge Dredd episode as New York City but that was soon retconned into Mega-City One. The Judges were introduced itself as such, although in these early episodes they were an elite force operating separately from the regular police – again, that was soon retconned into the Judges as the only substantive police and the Justice Department as only substantive government of Mega-City One.

Mega-City One needs little introduction other than to note it as one of three coastal American mega-cities that survived the Atomic Wars through their laser missile defense systems and effectively assumed the mantle of government of the former United States – separately from each other in their own respective territories.

As for that territory, Mega-City One was the super-urban agglomeration of the cities of the east coast or Atlantic seaboard, sprawling from Canada to Florida. To its west (from the Great Lakes on) was the Cursed Earth, the radioactive (and mutated) badlands to which the American heartland had been reduced by the Atomic Wars. To its east, the Black Atlantic – to which that ocean had been transformed by the Atomic Wars and other pollution. Its population was originally identified as 100 million (in The Day the Law Died) but that was retconned immediately after that epic to 800 million to match its simultaneously post-apocalyptic but dystopian nature as an overcrowded wretched hive of scum and villainy.

However, that has proved somewhat fluid in the comic to suit the writer’s tastes – most dramatically when the city was effectively halved by the Apocalypse War both in population (to 400 million) and in area from New Hampshire to North Carolina.

As for its Judges, particularly Dredd as its leading Judge, they need little introduction as well, except perhaps to note that he is the Law!

Judge Dredd, the Judges and Mega-City One are effectively our protagonists in the comic, so it’s not surprising that they’re my first and foremost hero entry – and it’s essentially from their perspective we see other cities and Judges as ‘heroes’ or ‘villains’.

(1) VILLAINS: DEADWORLD – DARK JUDGES

(CASE FILES 5 – JUDGE DEATH LIVES: prog 224)

The crime is life! The sentence is death!

Yes, yes – the Dark Judges are my top Judge Dredd villain, foremost among them of course Judge Death, but I also have to feature them as my first special mention for cities and Judges, albeit their ‘city’ is a world in a parallel dimension, Deadworld. As a complete inversion of Justice Department, encapsulated in their judicial condemnation of life itself as a crime, they are infinitely more villainous than even the most villainous mega-city or Judges on Earth. Much like Sabbat’s zombie apocalypse, all mega-cities are essentially allies against against death itself in the form of the Dark Judges – indeed, you root for the Sovs in Deadworld’s version of the Apocalypse War against the nascent Dark Judges.

You know who they are. The Dark Judges – Judges Death, Fire, Fear and Mortis – are essentially the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse in the Judge Dredd comic (except of course for the actual Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse that featured in End of Days).

(2) HEROES: MEGA-CITY TWO

(JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 2 – THE CURSED EARTH: prog 61)

(R.I.P. JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 17 – JUDGEMENT DAY Meg 2.04)

Alas Mega-City Two – we hardly knew ye!

Although probably for good reason – it was essentially a carbon copy of Mega-City One, just on the West Coast or Pacific seaboard, California’s mega-city (albeit it extended up the Pacific coastline north of California as well).

So obviously the writers decided it had to go – the Judge Dredd comic wasn’t big enough for two Mega-Cities that were basically indistinguishable.

Sure – Mega-City Two seemed a somewhat nicer place to live from what little we saw of it, if only because the Pacific is not as poisonously polluted as the Black Atlantic, so that Mega-City Two had open beachfront.

And sure – the Mega-City Two Judges appear somewhat laxer with enforcing their authoritarian police state, which usually translated to Mega-City One Judges seeing them as characteristically useless. No wonder Mega-City Two didn’t survive the zombie apocalypse of Judgement Day – and was nuked accordingly!

There’s not much more to say. I seem to recall Mega-City Two may have been mentioned even as early as the episodes compiled in Case File 1 – my recollection is there’s a reference to them as one of the triumvirate of American mega-cities for the colonies on the moon in Luna-1 – but the definitive introduction to it for me will always be The Cursed Earth, the storyline in which it had the most plot relevance. Even there they were pretty useless – to give more stakes to Dredd’s Cursed Earth mission to deliver a vaccine to them, without which they would have gone under even back then.

Mostly however, readers and writers of Judge Dredd tended to forget there even was a Mega-City Two on the West Coast, with only the occasional reminder popping up that they were there being useless, such as when they were being useless to help Mega-City One in the Apocalypse War. Indeed, so occasional that you could probably count the occasions on the fingers of two hands.

(2) VILLAINS: EAST MEG ONE & EAST MEG TWO – SOV JUDGES

(SOV JUDGES: CASE FILES 1 – THE FIRST LUNA OLYMPICS: prog 50)

Gruddamn I love the Sov Judges! The best Dredd antagonists, barring my first special mention of course – collectively and individually, with enough of the latter for their own top ten.

And yes – I said the same thing when I featured them as my second top Judge Dredd villains, but like the Dark Judges and Deadworld, I have to feature them in my special mentions for cities and Judges.

The Sov Judges were introduced early in the comic – indeed in the Luna arc compiled in Case Files 1 – as the most persistent recurring antagonists of Mega-City One, perhaps the obvious choice as such given their introduction and their main epic The Apocalypse War were 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, wiping out half the city in the Apocalypse War (albeit their own city East Meg One was wiped out, leaving East Meg Two) and almost the other half in the Day of Chaos.

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.

(3) HEROES: TEXAS CITY

(JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 4 – THE JUDGE CHILD QUEST: prog 160)

The third of the triumvirate of coastal mega-cites as successors to the former United States – and the other surviving American mega-city after Mega-City Two was destroyed in Judgement Day.

Yes, yes – Texas City was mentioned as early as the Luna-1 story arc in Case Files 1 but we don’t really get a good look at it until The Judge Child Quest.

The oldest ally of Mega-City One – although that accolade doesn’t seem to count for much, with Texas City doing very little to help Mega-City One in any of the latter’s crises and doing quite a bit to hurt after Chaos Day, attempting a coup in the latter. It didn’t take and Mega-City One was able to coup them right back, substituting its Psi-Judge Lewis as Chief Judge of Texas City (by perpetually mind-blanking those who encounter her to think she’s the Chief Judge).

Its Judges have uniforms that are essentially the same as those of Mega-City One but with the Wild West or cowboy iconography to match Texas City itself – Stetson hats instead of helmets and Lone Star belt buckles.

(3) VILLAINS: CIUDAD BARANQUILLA / BANANA CITY

(JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 13 – BANANA CITY: prog 623)

Notoriously the most corrupt and casually brutal mega-city in Judge Dredd’s world – hence its derogatory nickname of Banana City and their delight “whenever they get one over on El Norte” or Mega-City One, albeit the latter usually consists of taking in a ex-Judge or citizen, credits in hand of course.

Despite an actual city of that name in Colombia, perhaps reflecting the original intention for its location, it’s in Argentina corresponding to a conurbation from Buenos Aires, perhaps reflecting the revenge of Judge Dredd’s British writers for the Falklands War.

Its Judges are the face of the city’s corruption and casual brutality, barely maintaining the presence of law enforcement as they effectively auction off ‘justice’ for bribes or payments. Interestingly, like Mega-City One they use the eagle for visual icon – which their Judge Supremo Bastista took to extremes with his gold or gold-plated eagle suit.

Somehow they survived the zombie apocalypse of Judgement Day, surviving when two other South American mega-cities went under – perhaps a tribute to a streak of ruthlessness amidst their corruption and casual brutality.

Arguably the most flamboyant uniforms of any Judges, more akin to something for Carnivale or Mardi Gras.

(4) HEROES: BRIT CIT

(JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 10 – ATLANTIS: prog 485)

Yes of course the British writers (and artists) of the Judge Dredd comic were always going to have a British mega-city and its Judges – I mean, the name Brit-Cit just writes itself.

And of course they were always going to feature Brit-Cit and its Judges among the good guys as one of Mega-City One’s best and oldest allies – indeed, perhaps the only one to actually do anything to help during one of Mega-City One’s recurring crises. Well, as good as the good guys get in Judge Dredd, even if only by criteria of Mega-City One ally – as that alliance has been very tenuous at times.

The Brit-Cit Judges are similar to those of Mega-City One in design, except with the British lion on their helmets instead of the American eagle on their shoulders.

(4) VILLAINS: SINO-CIT

(JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 19 – WAR GAMES: prog 854)

Although Sino-Cit 1 and Sino-Cit 2 had previously been referenced, we had to wait for their first appearance – or at least I remember it as their first appearance, because it was so striking. I mean, really – what’s not to love about it, in the few panels we saw the Chinese or Sino-Cit Judges, with uniforms rendered in superb art by Paul Marshall. Of course, by then it was Sino-Cit 2 (the southern Chinese mega-city) as Sino-Cit 1 (the northern Chinese mega-city) had been overrun by zombies in Judgement Day and nuked.

I mean, just look at them! Those uniforms come very close to knocking off those of the Sov Judges and Mega-City One Judges from their pedestal as my favorite. But for the fact that we don’t see them again for many episodes (as I have difficulty recalling their reappearance in the regular episodes) and then only after changing their uniforms, they might well be my favorite Judge uniforms.

I believe that they toned down the uniforms – which is frankly outrageous. If anything, they should have toned them up! But they’re perfect as they are. I note that there appears to be two regular Judge uniforms and one in a more senior or commanding position, although both uniform designs are in the red and yellow designs of the present Chinese flag.

They also have the yin-yang symbol on the back of their uniforms.

As for their role as villains or antagonists within Judge Dredd, that matched the real world publication dates of the comic – with their first appearance to suggest that they might overtake the Sov Judges as Mega-City One’s antagonists in the 1990s, they gradually evolved into more subtle antagonists to rival the Sovs, matching the real world rivalry of the United States and China.

(5) HEROES: OZ – SYDNEY-MELBOURNE CONURB

(JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 11 – OZ: prog 545)

Hands down the best place to live in the twenty-second century, even more so than the twenty-first century.

No, seriously.

As usual, how other mega-cities were portrayed in Judge Dredd reflected the sensibilities of the British writers, particularly in pop culture – and British comics writers in general were enamored of 1980s and 1990s Australiana. It showed in Tank Girl. It showed in 2000 AD in general – Grant Morrison has Zenith quip about not wanting to miss Neighbours. And it showed here with how Oz is depicted in Judge Dredd, although it has the unfortunate side effect that twenty-second century Australia seems culturally frozen in the 1980s and 1990s.

The primary mega-city of Oz is the Sydney-Melbourne Conurb, not surprisingly given Australia’s present urban concentration between those two cities – although the map of Oz shows other cities among some strange geographical features. My personal favorite is the Radback, the Oz counterpart of the Cursed Earth.

As for the Oz Judges, they’re bloody legends! While casual and relaxed, they’re also competent and tough when the chips are down – without being over the top about it like the Mega-City One Judges. They are also the most reliable of Mega-City One’s allies.

In uniform design, they’re a cross between present Australian police uniforms – with caps instead of helmets – and biker leathers. So…not unlike Mad Max and his colleagues in the first film, but with shorts – aptly enough for Australia’s weather.

(6) HEROES: HONDO CITY

(JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 12 – OUR MAN IN HONDO: prog 608)

The 22nd century Japanese mega-city was perhaps almost as inevitable as Oz, Brit Cit, or even Mega-City One itself – given that it was written at the height of Japan’s economic and technological rise, when Japan looked to observers to potentially eclipse even the United States itself. It also coincided with Japan’s booming pop cultural influence, not least one suspects on the British writers of Judge Dredd, hence its positive depiction.

As for Hondo City’s Judge-Inspectors, they have a uniform – as well as mindset and culture – to invoke the appearance of samurai.

“Unlike foreign Judges, they wear no badge with their name on; their names are printed on the rising sun symbol on their uniforms, viewable only through the visor on another judge’s helmet, with the intent that the citizens see justice as one entity rather than a group of individuals.”

(7) HEROES: EMERALD ISLE – MURPHYVILLE

(JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 15 – EMERALD ISLE: prog 727)

Top o’ the morning to you!

Garth Ennis may have written 22nd century Ireland and its Judges such as Judge-Sergeant Charlie Joyce as literally the butt of an Irish joke – but I like them. They were subsequently written more seriously – well as serious as Judge Dredd gets for dystopian SF satire – with Charlies’ son Fintan Joyce emerging as a heroic character aiding Mega-City One and Dredd after Chaos Day.

As for their uniforms – they “are highly distinctive, with the top being a “trenchcoat” rather than the biker leathers of most forces. The green and white colouring (with orange bits) is based around the Irish flag”.

HONORABLE MENTION

My honorable mention roll call of mega-cities or their Judges that have been mentioned or referenced in the Judge Dredd comic (in chronological order) but without much more than that bare mention or reference – or at least without being featured in the same depth as my special mention entries.

(1) LAS VEGAS

(JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 2: THE CURSED EARTH – prog 79)

I came close to ranking this among my special mentions for villainous cities and judges, but it really doesn’t have much presence apart from its appearance in The Cursed Earth epic. The house always wins, except against Judge Dredd. And what presence it did have…it doesn’t have any more as it was subsequently nuked by Judge Death. The house doesn’t win against Judge Death either.

When introduced there, 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).

As for the Vegas Judges, they had uniforms of the same appearance as Mega-City Judges, but with dollar signs emblazoned on their chests, and with stereotypical Italian accents. When Dredd demands to see the Chief Judge – and his request is corrected by Vegas Judges to refer to the God-Judge. Sigh.

(2) PUERTO NOVA

(JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 8: JUVE’S EYES – prog 414)

The twenty-second century version of Puerto Rico – mentioned as the origin of immigrants to Mega-City One, although presumably that’s internal migration as I’d assume MC-1 still administers it as the successor to the United States (in the Atlantic at least).

(3) RUHR CONURB & EURO-CITY

(JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 9: MIDNIGHT SURFER – prog 425)

Apparently the former Germany is the site of four twenty-second century city states, with the Ruhr Conurb first mentioned as the city of origin for skysurfer Klaus Reich in Supersurf 7 held illegally in Mega-City One. The other three city states are Frankfurt, Munich and Berlin Conurb – the last (and possibly all other German city states) being subsequently retconned as part of Euro-City, a mega-city incorporating a number of city states from former West European nations (apparently including Paris and other cities in France as well as Belgium, Italy and Spain). We get a glimpse of Euro-City as where international hitman Jonni Kiss is hanging out in prog 830 compiled in Case Files 19.

(4) CAL HAB

(JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 10: THE ART OF KENNY WHO – prog 477)

A.k.a the Caledonian Habitation Zone or 22nd century Scotland, administered by Brit-Cit but sufficiently distinct to earn its own entry here – I first it recall it as the origin of artist Kenny Who, would-be migrant to Mega-City One.

(5) INDIA – CALCUTTA, DELHI, INDO-CITY & BHOPAL

(JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 11: OZ – prog 554)

Apparently the former India is the site of four twenty-second century city states, with Calcutta first mentioned as the city of origin for skysurfer Ghostman Patel in Supersurf 10 held in Sydney-Melbourne Conurb in the Oz epic. Bhopal is subsequently mentioned in the Song of the Surfer. We actually see a Judge from Delhi or Nu-Delhi – Psi-Judge Bhaji – on secondment to Mega-City One in the Inferno epic. The uniform is similar to the Mega-City One uniform, but with a shoulder pad design based on the Indian flag. Indo-City pops up subsequently.

(6) MEX CIT

(JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 13: IN THE BATH – prog 626)

Mex-Cit or at least its Judges may have been depicted as early as the Luna-1 story arc back in Case Files 1, where Judges Che and Chico were depicted in similar uniforms to Texas City Judges but with somberos. However, it wasn’t exactly clear until Mex-Cit was first mentioned in prog 626 – as the city of origin for migrants to Mega-City One who had the misfortune to pick Dredd’s apartment for a crime – and shown in prog 649 as a venue for medical tourism from Mega-City One – for a human brain transplant into a Rottweiller body.

(7) PAN-AFRICAN JUDGES

(JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 17: JUDGEMENT DAY)

The first glimpse we get of the various Pan-African polities is Swift Unuru, the Pan-African skysurfer in Supersurf 10, but the Pan-African Judges were introduced in the Judgement Day epic compiled in Case Files 17 – they attended the mega-city conference held in Hondo City but without anything to say who they were in comic’s narration. Which is fortunate as the comic retconned their uniforms subsequently.

(8) ANTARCTIC CITY

(JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 17: JUDGEMENT DAY)

Like the Pan-African Judges, they attended the Hondo City conference in Judgement Day – anonymously as far as the comic’s text was concerned. Again, their uniforms were subsequently retconned.

They and their city are dodgy as hell – Antarctic bank accounts are famed as the twenty-second equivalent of Swiss bank accounts for international criminals – but that only pops up later.

(9) BRASILIA, SOUTH-AM CITY & DJAKARTA

(JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 17: JUDGEMENT DAY)

RIP Brasilia, South-Am City & Djakarta – we barely knew you!

No, seriously – we didn’t know them at all until they were mentioned as three of the five cities (along with Sino-City 1 and Mega-City 2) that were overrun by zombies in Judgement Day and nuked.

South-Am City was apparently in Chile. How they were overrun and those bozos in the Pan-Andean Conurb survived is beyond me.

(10) BANGKOK & CASABLANCA

(JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 17: JUDGEMENT DAY)

Again barely mentioned in Judgement Day sending what seemed to be final broadcasts before all cities were overrun by zombies but Dredd saved the Day. “This is Bangkok – Sawah dee Kap” and “Casablanca – guess this is the end of a beautiful friendship!”

Sigh for the latter – yes, they were paraphrasing the film Casablanca, which I’m sure was foremost in the minds of its twenty-second century government.

Mega-City Law – Top 10 Judge Dredd Heroes & Villains

Posted on June 23, 2024June 23, 2024 by Alex Stark

Iconic 2000 AD poster art of Dredd vs Death by Greg Staples

As I do for comics in general, I have my top ten Judge Dredd heroes and villains – only more so, given my active fandom of Judge Dredd as the only comic I read each and every one of its weekly episodes (except for two weekly webcomics I also read), going right back to its very first episode (in 1977!) if you count reading earlier episodes as compiled in the Complete Case Files collections.

However, there are some key distinctions. First and foremost, it’s a running list – updated to each Judge Dredd Case Files volume as I review them in Mega-City Law.

As for my Top 10 Judge Dredd heroes, there’s no prizes for guessing the top spot – of course it has to go to Joe himself. And given the extent to which he overshadows other characters as main character – it is his comic with his name in the title after all – it was somewhat tricky to squeeze out a top ten heroes and my usual twenty special mentions that accompany each top ten. To be honest, for special mentions I often resorted to entries that might more accurately be described as protagonists or notable characters rather than heroes as such – although aptly enough as there’s not too many genuine heroes in Mega-City One or the wider crapsack world of Dredd.

Which perhaps prompts another distinction – that many or most of my heroes might be described more as anti-heroes at best, including Dredd himself. I obviously tended to have a focus on Judges – exclusively so for the top ten itself – but that description of anti-heroes at best applies even more so to Mega-City One’s Judges and Justice Department in general, if not the description of outright villains.

Indeed, the worst villains in the Judge Dredd comic tend to be other Judges – albeit usually rogue Mega-City One Judges and Judges from other mega-cities (or dimensions). However, even the majority of Mega-City One Judges that haven’t gone rogue are responsible for the enforcement of an authoritarian police state, so certainly would match the description as villains elsewhere, not least in our own world and even on occasion in their own. However, this is the world of Judge Dredd, which has always maintained a fundamental moral complexity for the Judges and Dredd as protagonist, so I’ll go with anti-heroes here – but my top ten heroes of Dredd might for the most part be more accurately my top ten anti-heroes.

Another distinction that where I look at my top ten heroes in comics in general (and occasionally elsewhere as in mythology or fantasy) in terms of superpower scale from Batman to Superman, I don’t do that for my heroes of Judge Dredd. That’s for the fundamental reason that the Judges in Judge Dredd are not superpowered – with the exception of those with psi powers – in the sense that they are not superhuman. In other words, to the extent that they are superheroes, they’re all Batman – that is, by dint of superior human ability achieved through training, experience, resources and technology, more so than Batman in many cases and certainly for Dredd himself who would out-Batman Batman. Although given the use of advanced cloning and medical technology for Dredd and some other Judges, you could argue that at least he and those particular Judges are effectively superhuman.

I will however retain my playful punching out Cthulhu and party rock rankings – the former if only for that iconic Judge Dredd panel where he punches out Judge Fear. “Gaze into the fist of Dredd!” indeed – you rarely get such a perfect visual representation of punching out Cthulhu.

On the other hand, the villains of Judge Dredd are more straightforward along the lines of villains in comics in general – once you are a cut above your average perp of the week of course, as the top ten and special mentions tend to be. By their nature, they tend to be particularly heinous as villains, such that a brutal police state comes off looking as the better option.

Interestingly, where genuine superpowers tend to pop up in Judge Dredd, it’s for the villains – such that my eldritch abomination and dark lord rankings still come in useful. Although perhaps more interestingly, the most effective villains have tended not to be superpowered – because weapons of mass destruction tend to trump superpowers in Judge Dredd.

(10) HERO: JUDGE-SERGEANT CHARLIE JOYCE (1991)

(CASE FILES 15: prog 727)

Top of the morning to ya, Dredd!

The lrish Judge introduced in the Emerald Isle story arc in Case Files 15, where he teams up with Dredd as the latter’s liaison in Emerald Isle and of course the laidback one in that odd couple. Pairing up Dredd with a laidback or unconventional counterpart is par for the course in Judge Dredd storylines.

I usually reserve the wildcard tenth place in my top tens to the most recent entry – usually an entry from the present or previous year, although for my Judge Dredd top tens that means the previous Case Files I reviewed in Mega-City Law.

However, that doesn’t always work for my Top 10 Judge Dredd Heroes & Villains, although technically I suppose Joyce was in the Innocents Abroad storyline in Case Files 18, even if my usual rule to go by the Case Files volume where he was introduced.

Even so, as a Joyce fan I consider that he needs to be elevated to the highest rank that is my top 10 Judge Dredd Heroes, at least until the next wildcard entry or I replace him with his son Fintan.

Yes – he and the Emerald Isle or Murphyville Judges in general were introduced as the butt of the joke by their Irish writer Garth Ennis having fun with the usual stereotypes, aptly enough as they were little more than glorified security officers in a theme park.

And sadly yes – Ennis once again returned him to being the butt of the joke along with the Irish renegades seeking to escape to Mega-City One in Innocents Abroad, even more so as Ennis had lifted him up to being made of tougher stuff as well as something of a Dredd fanboy in Judgement Day. It wasn’t his fault that Alpha stole his spot in the multi-city special force to take out Sabbat. He seems to hold his own on the frontlines of the zombie apocalypse well enough – and was after all handpicked by Dredd as the Emerald Isle Judge for that special force. Of course, he also happened to be at hand in the Emerald Isle delegation to Hondo City – which suggests he’s one of their best Judges. That might be a low bar but not as low as other mega-cities I could name cough Ciudad Baranquilla cough.

And I liked him even when he and his fellow Emerald Isle Judges or citizens were the butt of the joke. I mean, let’s face it – Dredd needs someone to tell him to calm the drokk down from time to time, even if another Judge from an equally laidback mega-city did it better.

And Joyce brought a more laidback and humane approach than smacking heads with a day-stick that is the signature style of Mega-City One Judges in general and Dredd in particular.

And over time the comic moved on from Ennis having the Irish Judges as the stereotypical butt of the joke to taking them more seriously – although sadly again not in time so much to redeem Judge Joyce as his son Fintan, who grew up to also be Judge Joyce and in Mega-City One to boot.

PUNCHING OUT CHTHULU & PARTY ROCK RANKING

Not many heroes in Judge Dredd (with the obvious exception) are up for punching out Cthulhu – and Joyce missed out on his chance in Judgement Day when Jonny Alpha stole his place on the mission to punch out Sabbat.

However, you just know Joyce is up there in party rock ranking – the most fun of my top ten heroes with which to share a pint or get friendly with the ladies in a Mega-City nightclub, with one possible exception.

RATING: 4 STARS****

X-TIER (WILD TIER)

(10) VILLAIN: SABBAT (1992)

(CASE FILES 17 – JUDGEMENT DAY: prog 786)

“Three billion people you’ve killed, you little drokker – three drokkin’ billion!”

As a literal necromancer behind a global zombie apocalypse and with one of the highest body counts of any Dredd villain – 3 billion and 5 mega-cities in the Judgement Day epic – you’d think I might have ranked him higher but…meh.

I mean, he’s lucky to get that wildcard tenth place which I usually reserve for the most recent entry of note – which for my Judge Dredd top ten reviews means the most recent Case Files I reviewed, or Case Files 18 at the time of this entry. Ironically that would usually exclude him as his storyline was in the Judgement Day epic in Case Files 17, although technically his severed head – still alive through magic but in vegetative state – did feature in Case Files 18. And let’s face it – Case Files had slim pickings for a villain to replace him in wildcard tenth place.

He talks the talk – if anything, he talks too much – but doesn’t really walk the walk. Oh sure – he has his magic and his zombie apocalypse, but even writer Garth Ennis lamented him as a “feeble villain” in characterization.

Don’t get me wrong – the sheer scale of his villainy and his central role in one of the biggest epics in the Judge Dredd comic will always earn him special mention even once he is eclipsed from my top ten…but he just doesn’t have the same iconic status, effect or impact of other villains in the top ten.

There are also three or four others that arguably outdo his body count. Hence I am pleased to announce that from here on I’ll be adding a section to each villain entry in this top ten – BODY COUNT BIGGER THAN JUDGEMENT DAY?

ELDRITCH ABOMINATION & DARK LORD RANKING

In fairness, he scores highly on my two rankings for villains.

Firstly, we find out that he is undead himself, sustained by black magic and only keeping his body around for sake of appearance – he’s effectively a lich or demi-lich. So yes – I’d say he is literally the (undead) embodiment of eldritch abomination.

Secondly, as the necromancer behind a global zombie apocalypse bent on killing the planet and conquering its corpses, with plans on galactic conquest – yeah, I’d say he ranks highly as a dark lord.

RATING: 4 STARS****

X-TIER (WILD-TIER)

(9) HERO: JUDGE-INSPECTOR TOTARU SADU (1988)

(CASE FILES 12 – OUR MAN IN HONDO: Prog 608)

“For Hondo!”

Unlike the Irish Judges and Judge Joyce introduced in The Emerald Isle in Case Files 15, the Japanese Judges are introduced as a force with which to be reckoned – and none more so that Judge Sadu, effectively the Judge Dredd of the Japanese mega-city Hondo City, albeit not as tough as Dredd himself.

That’s demonstrated in the Judgement Day epic, where Dredd manages to outfight both Sadu and Johnny Alpha tag-teaming him, which fortunately for the two of them was interrupted by the call for the mission to take out Sabbat – on which they were all going and which Dredd was commanding.

I prefer to forget that incident in placing Sadu in my Top 10 Judge Dredd Heroes – as it makes no sense from anyone’s perspective, including that of Sadu himself, who had been shown to be place the safety of Hondo City above all else, such as his initial antagonism towards Alpha. Not to mention that he had voted for Dredd to be in command of the mission on which he was serving.

Instead I prefer to invoke the service on that mission which sees him earn his entry in this top ten – above all his heroic self-sacrificial death which saved the world in the Judgement Day. But for that sacrifice, using his own evisceration by Sabbat as blood magic – or more precisely blood counter-magic – to hijack the literal lodestone of earth’s mystical energy Sabbat was using to power the zombie apocalypse, Dredd and Alpha would have remained helplessly trapped and unable to take down Sabbat. It may have only been brief, but Sadu used that moment to command the lodestone use magic to release Dredd and Alpha – having paid attention when Sabbat ran off his mouth monologuing that he used blood magic to harness the lodestone.

PUNCHING OUT CTHULHU AND PARTY ROCK RANKING

I have to rank Sadu high in my punching out Cthulhu ranking scale – he may not have punched out Sabbat himself but his literally gutsy sacrifice freed Dredd and Jonny Alpha to punch out Sabbat for him, and everyone else on the planet.

However, like most of the heroes in my top ten, Sadu does not even score a blip on my party rock ranking. Apart from Irish Judges and one other lot of Judges we’ll see in my next hero in eighth place, Judges are just buzzkills at parties – and Hondo City Judges more than most, perhaps even more than Mega-City One Judges.

RATING: 4 STARS****

B-TIER (HIGH TIER)

(9) VILLAIN: ANGEL GANG – MEAN MACHINE ANGEL (1980)

(CASE FILES 4 – JUDGE CHILD QUEST: prog 160)

“I’m going up to four on ya, Dredd!”

Everyone’s favorite violent cyborg – with four ‘settings’ of rage literally dialed into his head, from one as the lowest albeit still pretty ornery to four as the highest.

And the whole damn gang as well – the villainous and notoriously violent Angel Gang that is, a family of psychopaths that proved so iconic from their introduction as the antagonists in the Judge Child Quest that they had an enduring presence after that epic.

Part of their appeal was how gratuitously violent they were – and for the most part mindlessly as well, with the notable exception of the gang patriarch Pa (thankfully you never see the gang matriarch, at least as far as I’m aware), who is the brains of their operation.

Not that they have much of an operation – which is essentially akin to that of a Mafia family as warlords in the Cursed Earth badlands and relying entirely on abject terror from sheer violence to run their criminal territory. It’s Pa who has the cunning to see the Judge Child as their ticket to something bigger or at least to escape from Texas City and comes up with the plan to kidnap the Judge Child, prompting the Judge Child Quest into deep alien space in pursuit.

The other Angels include Pa’s favored son and heir Junior, Link, Fink and Mean Machine. Fink arguably rivals Pa in cunning, but was so reclusive that he effectively hid from the rest of the family as some sort of Cursed Earth desert rat – while befriending a literal Cursed Earth mutant rat which he called Ratty. It didn’t do much for his appearance – the radioactive environment changing him into the appearance of a ghoul. He was so isolated from the rest of the family that they left him behind for the events of the Judge Child epic – but retain enough Southern family loyalty that he came out of his subterranean lair all the way to Mega-City One to avenge them.

However, if I had to pick out one of the, it’s easily Mean Machine as the most enduring. Of course, it helps that he was literally resurrected from his death in the Judge Child epic by another entry in this top ten, so that he could return as a recurring villain.

Ironically and in a nice blackly comic touch, Mean Machine was originally the only member of the family that was not psychopathic. As a boy, he was good-natured and showed none of the family’s violent tendencies, liking to pick flowers and that sort of thing. Obviously Pa Angel decided that this pansy stuff simply would not do, and arranged radical…surgery to transform the boy into a murderous cyborg, with four ‘settings’ of rage dialed into his head – with his basic default setting merely as the lowest level of anger.

The Angel Gang was so iconic that they were even shoehorned into the 1995 Judge Dredd film – badly, like most other things in that terrible film. Some might wonder why they don’t rank higher in my top ten – and it’s because as iconic as they were, they weren’t terribly effective and hence wreaked less havoc than the top ten entries. Heck – Mean Machine even oscillated between the psychopathy forced on him and genuine rehabilitation reversing its effects.

ELDRITCH ABOMINATION & DARK LORD RANKING

Three of the gang don’t rank anywhere as eldritch abominations – Link even looks like he might be more at home in a biker gay bar. Two of them on the other hand – Fink resembles a ghoul from the devastation his radioactive haunt has inflicted on him while Mean Machine has his cyborg appearance.

And they don’t quite rank as potential dark lords either – local criminal warlords perhaps.

BODY COUNT HIGHER THAN JUDGEMENT DAY?

Sure, the Angel Gang has racked up an impressive body count for what is after all, only a gang of five family members, but nowhere near even a fraction of the three billion (and five mega-cities) killed by Sabbat.

RATING: 4 STARS****

A-TIER (TOP TIER)

(8) HERO: JUDGE BRUCE (1987)

(CASE FILES 11 – OZ: prog 554)

“Aww, g’day, Dredd! welcome to Oz!”

Judge Bruce – ya bloody legend! Oz – or the Sydney-Melbourne Conurb – is hands-down the best place to live in Dredd’s twenty-second century and Bruce is the best of their Judges, both Oz and Bruce being introduced in the Oz epic. That was when Dredd went to Australia, ostensibly to recapture the fugitive sky-surfer Chopper but with the real purpose of taking out the Mega-City One renegade Morton Judd and his cloned forces.

The Australian Judges and Judge Bruce resembled the subsequent Irish Judges and Judge Joyce, only better. As usual, Dredd played the straight man in an odd couple pairing with his counterpart or liaison in the other mega-city – and Joyce, characteristically for Oz and its Judges in general, brought a more laidback and humane approach than smacking heads with a daystick that is the signature style of Mega-City One Judges in general and Dredd in particular.

I mean, let’s face it – Dredd needs someone to tell him to calm the drokk down from time to time, and Bruce was the first and best Judge from a laidback mega-city to do it.

Sadly, Judge Bruce was handpicked by Dredd for the mission against Sabbat, and like everyone else but Dredd and Alpha, was killed on it. Still, he had the best last words ever – “Tell you what, Alpha…you not…not such a bad bloke…for a…Pom”.

During Judgement Day, we also learnt his first name was Lenny – a tribute to the American comedian Lenny Bruce. Of course his surname was Bruce – which seems to be a running British gag or stereotype that Australians are usually called Bruce.

PUNCHING OUT CTHULHU & PARTY ROCK RANKING

On my punching out Cthulhu scale, Judge Bruce would have to score higher than Judge Joyce – as he actually made it to the mission to take out Sabbat – but lower than Judge Sadu, as his heroic death on that mission did not have the same pivotal impact as that of Sadu.

Of course, you could argue that just like every Australian, he routinely punches out Cthulhu just by living in Australia and dealing with its native wildlife – and that’s before we take stock of whatever deadlier form into which the Radback has mutated them.

Oz in general outranks the Emerald Isle for party rock ranking so Judge Bruce is the only Judge I would rank higher than Joyce in the top ten.

RATING: 4 STARS****

B-TIER (HIGH TIER)

(8) VILLAIN: SATANUS (1978)

(CASE FILES 2 – THE CURSED EARTH: prog 73)

“Satanus, this is your last chance to surrender!”

I will never tire of this epic Cursed Earth cover by Brian Bolland featuring the tyrannosaur Satanus, even if Dredd’s line is added for comic effect (albeit Dredd does find himself in this predicament and only narrowly escapes).

A top ten place for Satanus – over the Angel Gang and Sabbat – might seem high but he’s just too damn iconic, particularly impressive for its endurance given he featured in only four episodes in the Cursed Earth epic, all the way back in progs 73-76 in Case Files 2.

What can I say? Everything’s cooler with dinosaurs and it doesn’t get much cooler than Satanus, the Cursed Earth black tyrannosaur.

In fairness, four episodes was a substantial arc for the Judge Dredd comic, even as part of an epic. Also in fairness, he was a callback to another 2000 AD comic, the time-travelling dinosaur safari known as Flesh, although he was effectively resurrected from the past by Judge Dredd doing Jurassic Park rather than time travel, albeit the effect was much the same. He also featured in another 2000 AD comic, Nemesis the Warlock, and this time (heh) time travel was involved in taking him to Earth’s galactic future.

He also did return in the Judge Dredd comic in Case Files 3, not in the flesh but in his blood – literally in The Blood of Satanus. It turns out that Satanus is so evil that his blood transforms people into were-tyrannosaurs – a concept that was revived decades later with two further storylines. You just can’t keep a good tyrannosaur down – and by good, I mean evil.

ELDRITCH ABOMINATION & DARK LORD RANKING

Satanus ranks surprisingly well on both my eldritch abomination and dark lord rankings, given that he is just a dinosaur. He may not be eldritch as such but he is arguably an abomination made by science in the same way Jurassic Park revived dinosaurs – made even more so by time travel and by blood that apparently has mutagenic properties. And he does rule the Cursed Earth town (and his pack) as a dark lord, even if his aspirations extend only to the town regularly serving up human sacrifices to him as dinner.

BODY COUNT HIGHER THAN JUDGEMENT DAY?

Satanus had a respectable body count too, perhaps rivalling the Angel Gang – courtesy of a taste for human flesh, indeed a preference for it and that’s not counting that he also killed for the sheer pleasure of it. However – clearly nowhere near even a fraction of the three billion (and five mega-cities) killed by Sabbat.

RANKING: 4 STARS****

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(7) HERO: JUDGE PRAGER (1983)

(CASE FILES 7 – CRY OF THE WEREWOLF: prog 328)

“Hey, Prager – how’s things down there anyway?”

“Grim.”

Judge Prager may have appeared in only one episode in Cry of the Werewolf, but that appearance was so legendary that it alone earned him this place in the top ten.

Firstly, he’s notable for being one of those Judges electing to take the Long Walk not into the Cursed Earth but the Under-City, a place nearly as dangerous and weird. Secondly, there’s that quoted exchange. And thirdly, he saved Dredd after the latter wolfed out – or is that wolfed up? – and returned Dredd to Mega-City One to be cured, the occasion of that quoted exchange.

Indeed, he was so legendary that they couldn’t resist bringing him back decades later to help Dredd against a new threat from the villainous Mr Bones – although this time it’s Prager who wolfs out – or up. And he likes it that way.

PUNCHING OUT CTHULHU & PARTY ROCK RANKING

Well it may not be quite up there with Cthulhu but taking on Dredd in werewolf form as well as Bones’ Under-City army in his own werewolf form has to rank up there.

Few Mega-City One Judges score high on party rock ranking but Prager would score one of the lowest. Some Judges lighten up and party down on their Long Walk – not Prager. He’s grim.

RATING: 4 STARS****

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(7) VILLAIN: PRESIDENT ROBERT “BAD BOB” BOOTH (1978)

(CASE FILES 2 – THE CURSED EARTH: prog 67)

The ur-villain of Judge Dredd – the man who made the hot post-apocalyptic dystopian mess of Judge Dredd’s world.

The last President of the United States – he started the Atomic Wars in 2070 that turned all but the mega-cities with their missile shields into nuclear wastelands or black oceans.

The Judges had been instituted prior to Booth but it was his actions that forced Justice Department to take control of the government in the surviving mega-cities, so you can blame him for that too.

The only reason his impact doesn’t rank him higher is that it features mostly as backstory, after he was introduced in the Cursed Earth epic (as serving a century of suspended animation to which he had been sentenced by the Judges).

ELDRITCH ABOMINATION & DARK LORD RANKING

No eldritch abomination ranking, which goes to show that the most destructive villains in Judge Dredd are plain old humans. Although I’d say his term in office counts for dark lord ranking. And yes – he blew up the world in only one term of office. One elected term of office that is – he was Vice-President when the President died in office. And I use elected loosely even then as he rigged the vote-counting machines.

BODY COUNT HIGHER THAN JUDGEMENT DAY?

And yes – Booth is one of three or four villains with a body count higher than Judgement Day, at least potentially thanks to the Atomic Wars he launched. I’ve never seen any reference to the casualties from the Atomic Wars, but I’m prepared to better that it would come close to, or exceed, the three billion killed by Sabbat’s zombie apocalypse.

RATING: 4 STARS****

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(6) HERO: JUDGE SOUSTER (1981)

(CASE FILES 5 – APOCALYPSE WAR: prog 257)

“For freedom, for justice, for Mega-City One!”

The hero of the Battle of Dan Tanna Junction – Judge Souster deserves to be memorialized by a top ten place, gruddamn it!

Souster sacrificed himself to bring down Dan Tanna Junction, the last remaining southbound transport artery from the Sov-occupied northern sectors of the city – plummeting to his death but using one of those superweapon stub guns in freefall to sever the roads improbably holding up the junction like some bizarre version of Jenga.

It’s enough to bring a tear to this Mega-City One patriot’s eye (I love that fictional city!), enough to make me forget that I don’t exactly associate Mega-City One with freedom (although it’s obviously better than the Soviet East Meg One), or that Souster’s heroic sacrifice bought the Mega-City One’s resistance a day or so at most. No, seriously – as we’ll see at a later point, the Apocalypse War is a matter of mere days.

Or for that matter that there remained one route southwards that could not be severed – city bottom or ground level.

But forget that – MC-1! MC-1! MC-1!

PUNCHING OUT CHTHULU & PARTY ROCK RANKING

Well it’s not really punching out Cthulhu but I’ll still rank him highly for taking out Dan Tanna Junction. And you know with a devil-may-care attitude like that he would have been one of the few Mega-City Judges who was fun at parties.

RATING: 4 STARS****

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(6) VILLAIN: RICO DREDD (1977)

(CASE FILES 1 – THE RETURN OF RICO: prog 30)

The ur-villain of Judge Dredd – Joe’s own corrupt clone-brother Rico.

Yes, yes – I know I described President Booth as the ur-villain of Judge Dredd in my previous entry. I stand by that but arguably Rico is even more the ur-villain of Judge Dredd.

For one thing, he appears earlier – in the comic that is as opposed to story chronology, indeed as early as prog 30 reflecting his importance in the Judge Dredd mythos. That importance also saw him as the antagonist in the 1995 Judge Dredd film – gruddamnit.

Long story short – Rico was Dredd’s clone-brother, who may well have been more proficient as a Judge then Dredd himself but became corrupt. 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 in prog 30 but outgunned by the latter, effectively seeing his story introduced and concluded in that episode.

However, Rico 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, and more fundamentally for his status as Dredd’s ur-villain, Judge 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.

Rico foreshadowed even darker inversions of Judge Dredd and the Law to come, culminating in Dredd’s ultimate adversary…

ELDRITCH ABOMINATION & DARK LORD RANKING

Surprisingly, he does notch up the abomination ranking with the usual surgery to adapt ex-Judges to Titan. He also arguable notches up a dark lord ranking as a corrupt Judge, albeit a petty dark lord. Perhaps if he had remained unchecked or risen higher in the hierarchy we could have seen his dark lord potential really let loose.

BODY COUNT BIGGER THAN JUDGEMENT DAY?

Unlike that other Judge Dredd ur-villain President Booth, Rico didn’t really rack up much of a body count – not more than the average Judge anyway.

RATING: 4 STARS****

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(5) HERO: JUDGE MORPHY (1984)

(CASE FILES 8 – A QUESTION OF JUDGEMENT: prog 387)

Although he was only introduced in prog 387, Judge Morphy’s impact on Judge Dredd goes back well before that – indeed back to when Dredd was a cadet or rookie and Murphy was the senior Judge who supervised Dredd’s Final Assessment to become a full Judge.

Thereafter, Morphy continued to mentor Dredd and was effectively a father figure to him. His most memorable advice to Dredd was to requisition boots a size too small to quell doubts about their role as Judges.

Sadly, Morphy – or Morph as he was more affectionately known, at least by Dredd – was taken away from us and Dredd when he was killed in action in the prelude to Necropolis, leading to Dredd’s own breakdown and crisis of faith, ultimately to Dredd resigning as Judge and taking the Long Walk (before coming back to save the city in Necropolis).

PUNCHING OUT CTHULHU & PARTY ROCK RANKING

Sorry, Morph, but wearing boots a size too smaller doesn’t really count as punching out Cthulhu. I’m prepared to give you credit though for mentoring Dredd to punch out Cthulhu.

Morph also strikes me as one of the more mellow Judges – and one of the few ones who would be fun at parties.

RATING: 4 STARS****

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(5) VILLAIN: PJ MAYBE (1987)

(CASE FILES 11: prog 534)

Yes – we’re getting to the big guns of Dredd villainy now.

Everyone’s favorite juvenile serial killer – who manages to grow up to be an adult serial killer and one of Dredd’s most formidable recurring adversaries, such that he may indeed be ranked among the big guns of Dredd villains. Being elected Mayor of Mega-City One helps, albeit under a stolen identity.

That’s quite the feat, particularly as he lacks the supernatural ability or mega-city state backing of the other big guns.

Indeed, all he has is his genius intelligence, albeit not reflected in his poor spelling – although the latter is something of a running gag, one of many that make Maybe so entertaining even as you want Dredd to apprehend him.

Although when you boil it down, Maybe owes his success as a villain to shuffling cards from a surprisingly small deck of tricks – apart of course from being incredibly lucky, until he isn’t from playing the odds too long or too often. It would be unfair to call him a one trick pony but he does seem to have three favorite tricks – robotics (such as the robot ‘bug’ with which he is introduced in his very first episode “Bug”), hypnotic drugs (SLD-88 and SLD-89), and face-changing machines. Four if you count his skill at lying and acting as other personas, including his own innocent juvenile persona.

ELDRITCH ABOMINATION & DARK LORD RANKING

As noted, PJ is one of Dredd’s most persistent antagonists without any supernatural ability – or other traits such as eldritch abomination. He does have a stint at dark lord as Mayor of Mega-City One, although surprisingly he was one of the best and most benevolent Mayors.

BODY COUNT BIGGER THAN JUDGEMENT DAY?

No – and by design, as PJ himself noted that one of the characteristics of a successful serial killer is a sense of self-control or restraint. In other words, not trying to kill too many people – “one at a time, that’s my motto”. Indeed, he disparages “people with body counts in the millions” – “just look wat hapens to people like that”.

RATING: 5 STARS*****

S-TIER (GOD-TIER – OR IS THAT DEVIL-TIER?)

(4) HERO: JUDGE MINTY (1980)

(CASE FILES 3 – JUDGE MINTY: prog 147)

For a Judge that appeared in only one episode, albeit one that had his name as its title, he had quite the impact – hence this place entry.

Part of that is he is the Judge through whom we are introduced to the Long Walk, with Minty himself taking it at the close of the episode.

Part of that is also his humane attitude as he has aged as an active Judge, taking a soft line towards the citizens – that it might be an idea for the Judges to treat them like people. Of course we can’t have any pansy stuff like that as a Judge, now can we? Dredd almost tells him as much – and it’s not only what got him wounded in the line of action, but what sees him retire as a Judge. And as this episode introduced, Judges don’t retire – they take the Long Walk (with some exceptions like the Academy of Law tutors).

Minty also had an impact on Dredd himself – such that Dredd recalls Minty when he is having his own crisis of faith in his role as Judge in the prelude to Necropolis, eleven Case File volumes later in Case Files 14, no doubt prompting him to his own decision to resign and take the Long Walk. Of course it didn’t help that he had lost his mentor Morphy – although it may well be argued that the two of them, Minty and Morphy, were twin influences guiding Dredd as Judge, given that Dredd thinks back to Minty years later with much the same doubts in the system as expressed by Minty.

Minty was such a fan favorite that fans even made a short film of him, featuring the episode and his subsequent Long Walk.

PUNCHING OUT CTHULHU & PARTY ROCK RANKING

Not that we see but the Long Walk is pretty much an invitation to go punching out Cthulhu, given the usual mutated high weirdness that inhabits the Cursed Earth.

And also given what we see of his attitude, Minty would be one of those few Mega-City One Judges who’d be fun at parties.

RATING: 4 STARS****

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(4) VILLAIN: OWEN KRYSLER – JUDGE CHILD / THE MUTANT (1980)

(CASE FILES 4 – JUDGE CHILD QUEST: prog 156)

“I see only…evil” You sure do, Judge Dredd, you sure do. Pure evil.

That of course was – spoiler alert for the Judge Child Quest – the big reveal of the Judge Child Quest epic.

The epic opened with its premise – one of the most important elements in Dredd lore, for which few things would loom larger or cast a longer shadow. That was 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 that prediction in 2102) by a “ghastly war” from which “foul creatures” would rise up to prey on the survivors unless Judge Dredd can find the Judge Child, Feyy’s fated savior of the city.

Turned out that Feyy was wrong and the Judge Child was evil – which Dredd of course could confirm just by looking in his eyes – so Dredd abandoned him on the planet of Xanadu in deep alien space, leaving Mega-City One to deal with whatever was coming in 2120 on its own. When the Judge Child tried to get his revenge, Dredd ordered the twenty-second equivalent of a drone strike to take him out.

But then it turned out that Feyy was right after all – as the Judge Child was inextricably linked with the city’s fate in 2120. Unfortunately, his 11.2% inaccuracy was – again spoiler alert for City of the Damned – that the Judge Child was the cause, not the cure. Once again Psi Division is useless as usual apart from Anderson – even when they get things right they also get them horribly wrong.

Wait – what? Didn’t I say Dredd killed him? Yes – I did but Owen Krysler was so evil, he came back from the dead to be even more evil, as the Mutant cloned from his cells by the robot king of Xanadu. So yes – Dredd had to kill him again.

ELDRITCH ABOMINATION & DARK LORD RANKING

As the Judge Child – not so much. As the Mutant – you bet! As both eldritch abomination and as dark lord.

BODY COUNT BIGGER THAN JUDGEMENT DAY?

And yes – Owen Krysler is one of my top ten Judge Dredd villains with a potential body count bigger than Sabbat’s three billion in Judgement Day.

Wait – what? As Judge Child, he’s distinctly lackluster in villainous body count, arguably killing no one – as we later see, he couldn’t even get killing Pa Angel right.

Worse for a budding Dredd villain, he’s even on the negative side of the ledger, as he resurrects Mean Machine Angel, setting his body count from 0 to -1. Sure, thereafter you could probably count him as party to Mean and Fink Angel’s roaring rampage of revenge as well as the casualties to it, but distinctly unimpressive as a Dredd villain body count.

But it’s as The Mutant, his clone in 2120, that he potentially racks up those Sabbat numbers. There’s Mega-City One for starters, so about 400 million. Yes – I know there are still survivors when Dredd and Anderson drop in…but I wouldn’t bet that he stuck to Mega-City One and left the rest of the world alone.

RATING: 5 STARS*****

(S-TIER: GOD TIER – OR IS THAT MUTANT-TIER?)

(3) HERO: JUDGE GIANT JR (1990)

(CASE FILES 13 – YOUNG GIANT: prog 651)

We all knew Judge Giant was too smooth not to be a ladies’ man – hence his son, filling his father’s boots as Judge and hitting the ground running in Necropolis (as well as Judgement Day).

Dredd assesses him as rookie – and we all knew young Giant was going to make it when he arrested the perp who killed his mother, rather than just gun him down as he was sorely tempted to do.

Thereafter he’s one of Dredd’s best and most loyal colleagues in Justice Department.

PUNCHING OUT CTHULHU & PARTY ROCK RANKING

Well when hitting the ground running in Necropolis includes facing down Judge Mortis, I think we can count that as punching out Cthulhu, even if facing down basically mean leading his fellow cadets to evade pursuit by Mortis.

Probably not as much fun as his father at parties though.

RATING: 4 STARS****

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(3) VILLAIN: CHIEF JUDGE CAL(1978)

(CASE FILES 2 – THE DAY THE LAW DIED: prog 86)

“You dare!”

The reason the Law died in The Day the Law Died – essentially Caligula as Chief Judge of MC-1.

Sentenced the whole city to death. Twice.

It’s striking that the most dangerous villains in the Judge Dredd comic…are Judges. Indeed, the top three of my Top 10 Judge Dredd Villains are all Judges. In fairness, the top two are not Judges of Mega-City One – or Judges of a very different type – but Cal was. As such, he represents perhaps the most insidious type of villain in the Judge Dredd comic – a Judge as villain, embodying the inherent brutality or corruption within Justice Department, and at its extreme the threat to Mega-City One from within Justice Department itself.

Cal earns his third place entry because it is a rare Mega-City One Judge that poses an existential threat to the city as he did. That threat came in the form of the insane Judge Cal’s rise to the position of Chief Judge, essentially by way of coup – although disturbingly he was able to rise to the position of Deputy Chief Judge first to launch that coup.

Cal wasn’t the last Mega-City One Judge as villain to rise to the position of Chief Judge or even perhaps to pose an existential threat to the city – but he was the first and arguably the most archetypal. Cal embodied 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 was with Cal. Ironically, the source of that corruption in Cal’s case was his position as head of the SJS or Special Judicial Squad, essentially 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.

Cal borrowed his storyline from a 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 introduced (and The Day the Law Died was 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 mirrored 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 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 sentencing the entire city to death twice also evoked the historical Caligula, who according to Suetonius wished that all the city of Rome had but one neck.

ELDRITCH ABOMINATION AND DARK LORD RANKING

Yeah, he’s just human so has one of the lowest rankings as eldritch abomination, matched only by the other humans in this top ten President Booth and PJ Maybe (as Mean Machine Angel and arguably Rico have been made into cyborgs, ranking somewhat higher as eldritch abominations). On the other hand, he scores highly as Dark Lord, albeit too mentally unstable for a long reign as Chief Judge.

BODY COUNT BIGGER THAN JUDGEMENT DAY?

Yeah, he talked the talk (sentencing the city to death twice) but did he walk the walk (scoring a body count to rival that of Sabbat in Judgement Day)? No.

RATING: 5 STARS*****

S-TIER (GOD TIER – OR IS THAT CAL-TIER?)

(2) HERO: JUDGE GIANT (1977)

(CASE FILES 1 – THE ACADEMY OF LAW: prog 27)

Dredd’s first cadet and arguably still the best, even all these years after dying in the line of duty. Yes – he was probably a little too mellow for an ideal Judge, hence Judge Giant Jr, but he saved Dredd in The Day the Law Died and was killed by Orlok at the height of Block Mania,

That was a heartbreaking moment for readers – arguably the only character death in the Judge Dredd comic to that time (and perhaps since) that could have the most impact short of killing off Dredd himself. Particularly with the panel of his death replicating Michelangelo’s Pieta, with Dredd cradling the dying or dead Giant – which of course also had its impact on Dredd. And damn – Dredd could have used him during the Apocalypse War…

His name would appear to originate from his father’s nickname – John “Giant” Clay, main character of the ‘aeroball’ sport team, Harlem Heroes (a story from the early days of the 2000 AD anthology comic, long since faded compared to 2000 AD’s flagship character Judge Dredd).

PUNCHING OUT CTHULHU & PARTY ROCK RANKING

No punching out Cthulhu moments for Giant but the highest party rock ranking of any of my top ten heroes. And let’s face it – as someone to hang out with, not to mention impressing the ladies, Giant was much cooler than Dredd.

RATING: 4 STARS****

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(2) VILLAIN: SOV JUDGES – WAR MARSHAL “MAD DOG” KAZAN (1977 / 1981)

(SOV JUDGES: CASE FILES 1 – THE FIRST LUNA OLYMPICS: prog 50)

(WAR MARSHAL KAZAN: CASE FILES 5 – APOCALYPSE WAR: prog 250)

Gruddamn I love the Sov Judges! The best Dredd antagonists, barring my first place entry of course – collectively and individually, with enough of the latter for their own top ten.

So in picking a top Sov for this spot, it would have to be War Marshal Kazan, the primary Sov antagonist of the Apocalypse War.

ELDRITCH ABOMINATION & DARK LORD RANKING

At least the Sovs are human so no eldritch abomination ranking for them (although from time to time they do seem to have some eldritch abominations up their sleeve or at least attempt to harness them).

The Sovs in general and War Marshal Kazan in particular would score high in dark lord ranking, particularly as Kazan’s military command style seemed to be a combination of “we have reserves” and “you have failed me”.

BODY COUNT BIGGER THAN JUDGEMENT DAY?

Yes – I’m calling it. Kazan and the Sovs actually beat Sabbat’s three billion body count. Them Sov Blockers is throwin’ down some heavy stuff!

But wait a minute – the Apocalypse War only racked up about 900 million, you say? 400 million in Mega-City One – or half the city – and 500 million in East Meg One – or all of that city?

Ah yes – but it’s easy to forget the Apocalypse Warp, where an entire earth in a parallel dimension was nuked to oblivion, presumably at least 2 billion or so. (And yes – technically that was MC-1 nukes aimed at East Meg One but I’m blaming the Sovs).

Not to mention the Chaos Day sequel to the Apocalypse War by renegade Sovs decades later – which almost wiped out MC-1 with 350 million or so (albeit the body count was revised downwards). And you can’t tell me the Chaos Bug would have been confined to MC-1…

RATING: 5 STARS*****

S-TIER (GOD TIER – OR IS THAT SOV-TIER?)

(1) HERO: JUDGE DREDD (1977)

(CASE FILES 1 – JUDGE WHITEY: prog 2. Yes – Judge Dredd only started in the second issue of 2000 AD)

I mean, yeah – who else was it going to be? He is the Law! Also the title character.

Also a futuristic Dirty Harry in a dystopian SF satire – and very much a post-apocalyptic one. You can probably keep adding those post- prefixes to that post-apocalyptic.

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.

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).

Dredd is also 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.

PUNCHING OUT CTHULHU & PARTY ROCK RANKING

Yeah, punching out Cthulhu is a regular thing for Dredd, such as the classic panel of him literally punching out Judge Fear while quipping “gaze into the fist of Dredd” (in reply to Fear’s catchphrase “gaze into the face of Fear”). He wouldn’t be much fun at parties though.

RATING: 5 STARS*****

S-TIER (GOD-TIER – OR IS THAT DREDD-TIER?)

(1) VDARK JUDGES – JUDGE DEATH (1980 / 1981)

(JUDGE DEATH: CASE FILES 3 – JUDGE DEATH: prog 149)

(DARK JUDGES: CASE FILES 5 – JUDGE DEATH LIVES: prog 224)

The crime is life! The sentence is death!

Yeah, who else was it going to be? The Dark Judges – Judges Death, Fire, Fear and Mortis – are essentially the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse in the Judge Dredd comic (except of course for the actual Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse that featured in End of Days).

But of course if you have to choose just one of them, it has to be Judge Death – the most iconic of the Dark Judges and who was introduced well ahead of his fellow supernatural extra-dimensional fiends.

Whereas Rico was Dredd’s potential corrupt shadow of himself, Judge Death was his absolute dark inversion – and ultimate adversary. Judge Death are utterly inhuman and zealous to their Law, in which the literally crime is life and the sentence is death. Or in other words, some serious troll logic, reasoning from the basis that only the living commit crimes. True to that logic and their Law, Judge Death and the Dark Judges have been supernaturally transformed into undead beings – somewhat similar to Sabbat, the equivalent of a lich in Dungeons and Dragons.

ELDRITCH ABOMINATION AND DARK LORD RANKING

The most eldritch abominations in my top ten – literally. Surprisingly, they don’t rank quite so well as dark lords, despite certain similiarities in appearance and nature, mainly because they don’t so much want subjects to rule as worlds to kill.

BODY COUNT BIGGER THAN JUDGEMENT DAY?

Yes of course the Dark Judges outdo Sabbat.

But hang on – isn’t their body count in Mega-City One surprisingly low? I mean didn’t the Sovs do better in the Apocalypse War than the Dark Judges in Necropolis?

After all, the Sovs did 400 million in a few days while the Dark Judges ónly managed 60 million controlling MC-1 for months. Of course, it helps that the Sovs used nukes while the Dark Judges insist upon doing their “justice” all individually by hand

In fairness, the Sovs are the all-time body count champion villains of Judge Dredd. And for that matter, while Sabbat racked up three billion globally, it’s not clear how many of those were in MC-1 – but I’d be prepared to bet a lot less than the 60 million of Necropolis

However, speaking of globally, lest we forget that while the Dark Judges have been limited in our dimension, they killed everyone in their own dimension – Deathworld, essentially a parallel counterpart of Dredd’s 22nd century world, so outrank Sabbat on that basis. They also prefer their dead to stay dead.

RATING: 5 STARS*****

S-TIER (GOD TIER – OR IS THAT DEATH-TIER?)

TOP 10 JUDGE DREDD HEROES (TIER LIST)

S-TIER (GOD TIER)

(1) JUDGE DREDD

A-TIER (TOP TIER)

(2) JUDGE GIANT

(3) JUDGE GIANT JR.

B-TIER (HIGH TIER)

(4) JUDGE MINTY

(5) JUDGE MORPHY

(6) JUDGE SOUSTER

(7) JUDGE PRAGER

(8) JUDGE BRUCE (SYDNEY-MELBOURNE CONURB)

(9) JUDGE SADU (HONDO CITY)

X-TIER (WILD TIER)

(10) JUDGE JOYCE (MURPHYVILLE)

TOP 10 JUDGE DREDD VILLAINS (TIER LIST)

S-TIER (GOD TIER)

(1) DARK JUDGES – JUDGE DEATH

(2) SOV JUDGES – WAR MARSHAL KAZAN

(3) CHIEF JUDGE CAL

(4) OWEN KRYSLER – JUDGE CHILD / THE MUTANT

(5) P.J. MAYBE

A-TIER (TOP TIER)

(6) RICO DREDD

(7) PRESIDENT BOOTH

(8) SATANUS

(9) ANGEL GANG – MEAN MACHINE ANGEL

X-TIER (WILD TIER)

(10) SABBAT

Mega-City Law – Top 10 Judge Dredd Girls

Posted on June 15, 2024June 15, 2024 by Alex Stark

Counting down my Top 10 Girls of Judge Dredd for the episodes compiled up to Case Files 19 – it’s a running list which I will update for each volume, with some of the best entries yet to come from future episodes…

Like my Top 10 Heroes, Judges tend to predominate the entries, with six of my Top 10 Girls of Judge Dredd as female Judges – and half of those are Psi-Judges, not surprisingly given the prevalence of female Psi-Judges in the comic. Of course, it helps that Psi-Judges don’t wear helmets, but I’d be willing to bet that Psi Division might have the highest proportion of female Judges, perhaps reflecting a higher proportion of females in the psi-active population.

(10) BABES IN ARMS – TIGER HUNTER NEE MARLOWE (1992)
(CASE FILES 17 – BABES IN ARMS: prog 776)

For my Judge Dredd top tens, I tend to draw my wildcard tenth place entry from the most current or previous Case File volume in my Mega-City Law reviews. However at present there are slim pickings from Case Files 18 or 19 so I’ve gone with the titular Babes in Arms of the four episode roaring rampage of revenge in progs 776-779 from Case Files 17.

“They say hell hath no fury like a woman scorned…Tonight, Mega-City One and Judge Dredd will feel that fury.”

Of course, there are four of the titular Babes in Arms, four ex-wives from Mega-City Two seeking out their former husbands in Mega-City One – who, let’s be honest, have it coming. A collective entry may do for a special mention but I have to pick one for a top ten entry. Fortunately, again that’s an easy choice – the first of the babes in arms we see, who also is the best, Tiger Hunter – or Tiger Marlowe prior to her marriage . Yes, that’s her actual name – and I must confess I fell a little in love with Tiger when I first saw her, striking quite the figure (somewhat reminiscent of this episode’s artist Greg Staples’ art of Niamh in Slaine), a blue-eyed wild redhead with a calm tone of voice but fire in her eyes as she confronts her cad of a husband. The other babes in arms didn’t quite do it for me but Tiger…

Sadly, the Babes’ roaring rampage of revenge can only end one way when it comes up against Judge Dredd. Even poor Tiger looks spooked to see Dredd is involved. Fortunately, she doesn’t end up dead but in an iso-cube, although unfortunately I don’t recall any subsequent appearance.

RATING: 4 STARS****
X-TIER (WILD TIER)

(9) PSI-JUDGE KARYN (1991)
(CASE FILES 16 – RAPTAUR: Megazine 1.14)

Introduced as a Psi-Judge hotshot in the Megazine Raptaur story.

I suppose that’s ex-Psi Judge Karyn now, as her hotshot career was cut short when she became host to the vampiric Shadow King

RATING: 4 STARS****
B-TIER (HIGH TIER)

( 8 ) PSI-JUDGE KIT AGEE (1990):
(CASE FILES 14 – NECROPOLIS: prog 676)

Poor empath Psi-Judge Kit Agee – served up by Kraken Dredd to be used as a conduit for the Sisters of Death and kick-start Necropolis

Bonus points for being gal pals with Anderson and nicknaming Dredd “His Majesty”.

RATING: 4 STARS****
B-TIER (HIGH TIER)

(7) WU WANG (1989)
(CASE FILES 13 – ON MEETING YOUR ENEMY: prog 622)

Wu Wang (or so she calls herself) was introduced all the way back in Case Files 13 prior to Necropolis, as a female disciple of Stan Lee’s dojo, bent on vengeance for Dredd’s defeat of Stan Lee, a.k.a Deathfist, “the best martial artist to ever come out of the radlands of Ji” who ended up in an iso-cube courtesy of Dredd.

In that episode, she was not named – although she should have been dubbed Lady Deathfist – and despite her obvious enthusiasm for her training in destroying a robot duplicate of Dredd, bided her time for three years until we saw her again.

In fairness, Dredd did unexpectedly take the long walk and then there was the whole Necropolis thing the next year.

Anyway, she returned for a four-episode story, Art of Geomancy, in progs 762-765 compiled in Case Files 16.

Funnily enough, he just happens to be doing airport border control duty when she arrives on her flight, presumably from Sino-Cit 1 or Sino-Cit 2. She could have got her vengeance there and then but to paraphrase one of my favorite lines from American Dad – sure she could have killed him immediately with her knowledge of pressure points, but she wanted to try something much more elaborate and unnecessary. In this case, that involves literally sticking a paper with her calling card on his back, the character for Deathfist and the character for rolling thunder…or wu wang. Apparently the character can also convey surprise or the unexpected – which is ironic as she’d now lost any element of that.

She also has a curious choice of ninja stealth outfit – a swimsuit design not unlike that of the Marvel comics character Psylocke, and worse, in white, but as terrible as it is for ninja stealth, it’s what gets her this entry in the top ten, albeit as something of a placeholder until the likes of Demarco or Oola Blint come along.

Anyway, she springs the trap and captures Dredd – sure, she could just kill him but she wants him to break him first, to have him apologize, for honor or ‘face’. Ironically, Dredd uses surprise or the unexpected – his back-up Judges arriving = to get the jump on her. No iso-cube for her either – he just kills her, snapping her neck, although to be fair his options were very limited from a single opportunity. Still, it seems like a double standard compared to what happened to Stan Lee.

RATING: 4 STARS****
B-TIER (HIGH TIER)

(6) VIENNA DREDD (1979)
(CASE FILE 3 – VIENNA: prog 116)

You must have seen this one coming. Or perhaps not since she vanished as a young girl from the comic for 23 years, returning as an adult. Yes – she gets in my top ten up to Case Files 17 on a technicality, as she appeared as a child in a single episode, but I’m taking it, with an eye ahead to her reappearance as an adult in future episodes.

That’s right – it’s Dredd’s niece, daughter of his corrupt clone-brother Rico.

She was introduced all the way back in prog 116, the first episode collected in Case Files 3 – the same episode that saw Dredd send her away for 23 years. It was worth it just to see “Uncle Joe” pushing Vienna on a swing – adorable!

The plot of the episode is driven by Vienna being kidnapped by someone seeking revenge against Dredd – a recurring plot point for Vienna when we see her again as an adult.

As a final venomous sting, her kidnapper tells her that Dredd killed Rico, something Dredd had kept secret from Vienna, for obvious reasons of the therapy THAT would involve. Yet Vienna forgives him for killing her father, because “Uncle Joe” must have had a good reason.

Seriously, I wiped away a tear at that. Even more so as Dredd tells her guardian, Mrs Pasternak, that he will see even less of Vienna – and hopes that Mrs Pasternak will help Vienna forget him. As he thinks to himself as he walks out of Vienna’s life, “I’m a judge. Someday I, too, will be killed. Vienna couldn’t take that again, not a second time. She’s suffered enough because of me. Let it end here”.

And indeed we did see less of her – nothing – until those 23 years later, when she was to return into Dredd’s life on a more enduring basis. After all, she was too good a character to let lie, as a reflection of Dredd’s humanity, with all the conflict that brings with the Law

RATING: 4 STARS****
B-TIER (HIGH TIER). At least for now until we reach those episodes where she reappears but I’m counting her from her first appearance.

(5) JUDGE DEKKER (1984)
(CASE FILES 7 – SUPERBOWL: prog 370)

A promising female Judge – whom Dredd thought to be his best rookie – blazing through a few episodes before fading out of sight, until being revived as a character (by writer Garth Ennis in the 1990s) only to be killed off (by Ennis in Judgement Day). Talk about women in refrigerators…that old trope in comics of female characters being routinely killed off (named for one such character stuffed into a refrigerator).

Dekker was introduced with somewhat more fanfare than the similar Judge Perrier – a rookie Judge assigned to Dredd for her final field evaluation to qualify as full Judge, and one whom Dredd muses to be his best rookie ever. She passes with flying colors – attributing her success to Dredd’s own text on comportment. Dredd you magnificent bastard, she read your book!

In appearance and role, she resembled the more enduring Judge Hershey, although Hershey was not formally Dredd’s rookie – probably because the writers hoped to reuse that character formula.

Unfortunately, she vanished from the comic until a decade or so later, as writer Garth Ennis was fanboy of the 1980s Dredd comics and revived her character, but even more unfortunately Dekker went out with a bang during the Judgement Day epic

RIP Judge Dekker

RATING: 4 STARS****
B-TIER (HIGH TIER)

(4) JUDGE PERRIER (1982)
(CASE FILES 5 – APOCALYPSE WAR: prog 255)

Yes, last entry was something of a spoiler for her in this entry but Judge Perrier deserves to be memorialized within the Judge Dredd comic as the unsung hero of the Apocalypse War. She was introduced as a tough as nails street Judge and member of the Mega-City One resistance force in the Apocalypse War. And as has been pointed out by Judge Anon’s A Short History of Female Judges, she singlehandedly turned the tide of an entire battle (and much of the fighting within Mega-City One) by turning over a powerful new weapon – the stub guns – to Judge Dredd and his guerilla force.

Sadly, she only featured in a few panels in that epic and dropped out of sight until writer Garth Ennis took a liking to the character and used her in the 1990s. (Judge Anon opines that was because Ennis was a huge Dredd fanboy and an even huger Apocalypse War fanboy). Even more sadly, Ennis killed her off in the Judgement Day epic, albeit in quite moving fashion

RIP Judge Perrier

RATING: 4 STARS****
B-TIER (HIGH TIER)

(3) LIANA (1989)
(CASE FILES 12 – THE FURTHER ADVENTURES OF PJ MAYBE, AGE 14: prog 599)

Yeah – I’d kill for her too, PJ.

Briefly the girlfriend of PJ Maybe, Liana earns her place in my Girls of Judge Dredd from this pose alone in prog 633, looking fine after her morning swim – although she was first introduced as his love interest back in prog 599. Like his parents, she was completely oblivious to his “psychopathic tendencies” as a juvenile serial killer.

In fairness he did actively try to avoid killing his targets when she was his girlfriend, although that was more to avoid suspicion – but that slipped up through sheer bad luck, ending up with him apprehended by Judge Dredd and detained in a psych cube.

Sadly, we only caught a few glimpses of Liana like this in these episodes – and while PJ was to return, we didn’t see Liana again. But she’ll always have a place in my heart (and probably PJ’s) from this pose alone.

RATING: 4 STARS****
B-TIER (HIGH TIER)

(2) (CHIEF) JUDGE BARBARA HERSHEY (1980)
(CASE FILES 4 – JUDGE CHILD QUEST: prog 161)

Judge Hershey was memorably introduced, not quite as Dredd’s rookie, but as a rising new Judge picked for Dredd’s deep-space planet-hopping Judge Child Quest – shortly after her graduation from the Academy of Law in 2102 at age eighteen. She so impressed Dredd that she returned in the Apocalypse War, where she was part of Dredd’s hand-picked elite squad to take down the Soviet mega-city East Meg One. For nearly two decades thereafter, she regularly appeared as Dredd’s junior colleague, before being promoted to become his superior.

Barbara Hershey – or Judge Hershey to you, punk – is one of the two primary female judges in the Judge Dredd comic, the other of course being Psi-Judge Cassandra Anderson. Dare I call her the brunette Judge Anderson?

In appearance, Hershey shares Anderson’s preference for not wearing helmets, characteristic of a Psi-Judge for the latter but unusual in a street Judge for the former, although Hershey’s sci-fi bob was drawn to resemble a Judge’s helmet. They also share their preference for the occasional high-heeled boots. Otherwise, Hershey was drawn for a sterner, more – ah- judicial appearance than Anderson’s characteristic softer appearance (originally modelled on singer Deborah Harry), as befitting the latter’s more empathic nature as a Psi-Judge. That isn’t to say that Hershey is not of similarly striking appearance – she even has her fans within the comic’s storyline, although that often overlaps with something of a fetish for female Chief Judges. Well, female Chief Judges that weren’t McGruder. Notably Hershey’s face is apparently a highly sought after model among dominatrix s€xbots. Yes, Chief Judge!

The strongest comparison is in their narrative importance within the comic, although Hershey would rank below Anderson in character focus (and lack of her own spinoff title, until recently). And of course, each had very different destinies. As Psi-Judge, Anderson has followed the road less travelled (although the stuff of Psi-Judges makes for more interesting stories, hence the spinoff title). Hershey was the street Judge par excellence – and as noted above, rose to THE top spot as Chief Judge, rising through the ranks to the Council of Five and appointments as acting Chief Judge and Deputy Chief Judge.

And one of the best features of Chief Judge Hershey is her sass – she doesn’t take crap from anyone, least of all Dredd himself. As Chief Judge, she continues to have a good relationship with Dredd, but let’s face it, Dredd has his issues from time to time (and from writer to writer).

RATING: 4 STARS****
A-TIER (TOP TIER)

(1) PSI-JUDGE JUDGE CASSANDRA ANDERSON (1980)
(CASE FILES 3 – JUDGE DEATH: prog 150)

Judge Dredd’s – and anthology publication 2000 AD’s – most iconic and enduring female character, something which may be related to her status as the comic’s primary pinup girl. A status that may also be in the actual narrative or ‘in-universe’ in the comic as well, depending on how seriously we take the advertisements with her as model for Yess Trousers, the contractor for those judicial leather uniforms.

She was introduced in 1980, along with the comic’s most iconic and enduring supervillain, in the Judge Death story arc, as the primary female character in Judge Dredd – in both senses of the first major female character and the most substantial one, even spinning off in storylines in her own name.

She also served as the introduction to Mega-City One Justice Department’s ‘psychic’ judges against such supernatural threats as Judge Death, although they use the characteristically science fiction nomenclature of ‘psi’ for the Psi-Division or Psi-Judges. Anderson is introduced as Psi Division’s leading telepath (and precognitive), with her appearance originally modelled on contemporary singer Debbie Harry.

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 (regarded by Dredd as flippant), 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 earned her the enduring trust of Dredd – and she remains one of the few people who regularly calls him by his first name Joe or that he trusts enough for his most important missions. It wasn’t just her ability that earned his trust, but her strength of character and courage, however hidden under her ‘flippant’ disposition – demonstrated in her introductory story arc by her heroic self-sacrifice to save the city, sealing herself and the villainous Judge Death within a protective encasement Mega-City One’s ‘miracle’ plastic boing.

Of course, both she and Judge Death were far too interesting and popular characters to remain wrapped in plastic…

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

S-TIER (GODDESS TIER)

(1) PSI-JUDGE CASSANDRA ANDERSON

A-TIER (TOP TIER)

(2) JUDGE BARBARA HERSHEY

B-TIER (HIGH TIER)

(3) LIANA

(4) JUDGE PERRIER

(5) JUDGE DEKKER

(6) VIENNA DREDD

(7) WU WANG

(8) PSI-JUDGE KIT AGEE

(9) PSI-JUDGE KARYN

X-TIER (WILD TIER)

(10) TIGER HUNTER NEE MARLOWE – BABES IN ARMS

Mega City Law – Judge Dredd Case Files 18

Posted on June 9, 2024June 9, 2024 by Alex Stark

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 18:

Progs 804-829 / Megazine 2.12-2.26

(1992-1993 / Mega-City One 2114-2115)

Case Files 18 continues the Dark Age of Dredd but without any epic stories like Judgement Day in Case Files 17.

On the bright side, that should make it quicker to get through, but there are some highlights despite the absence of an epic.

Mechanismo introduced a longer story arc which had its debut in the Megazine and continued in the episodes in subsequent volumes. It also provides the cover image for the Case Files 18 volume but doesn’t really grab me. More like Meh-chanismo, amirite?

It seemed too drawn out over too little, particularly from the perspective of current episodes where robot Judges are routine in MC-1, so it’s hard to see what all fuss was about for Justice Department attempting to introduce them here.

We see a return of Irish Judge-Sergeant Joyce as it’s his turn to visit MC-1 (as opposed to Dredd visiting Murphyville in the Emerald Isle storyline in Case Files 15). It’s an entertaining heist-type story – or rather post-heist shenanigans, as Joyce is there to retrieve some Irish perps seeking sanctuary with their gangster brother in the Big Meg. Sadly, after having boosted Joyce into a cooler character in Judgement Day, Garth Ennis brings his own creation back down to being the butt of the joke here.

We also see a return of the recurring epic storyline of PJ Maybe, as he resurfaces in PJ & The Mock Choc Factory. Yes – PJ does Willy Wonka, and as, ah, homicidally as you’d expect. Well, more so than the original Willy Wonka.

Otherwise there’s some entertaining or interesting episodes. Kinda Dead Men fleshes out – heh – the aftermath of Judgement Day. A, B or C Warrior is my favorite single episode in Case Files 18, with the usual absurdist black comedy I like and Dredd as deadpan snarker.

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 18:

INNOCENTS ABROAD (progs 804-807)

“Go to Mega-City One…bring back them O’Dilligan brother hallions”

That pretty much sums up the post-heist shenanigans of Innocents Abroad. That and “a couple of Emerald Isle scumbags are on the run in the Big Meg”.

Essentially the reverse of the Emerald Isle arc, except now it’s Judge Dredd escorting Irish Judge Joyce around Mega-City One to retrieve two Irish perps – the Sons of Erin they ain’t.

At least Case File 18 starts with a bang – my favorite longer arc (4 episodes) in this volume, although the competition is not particularly stiff for that accolade here. It’s a good romp – a bit of a Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels vibe to it before that film’s time – essentially involving three Emerald Isle elements on collision course.

The first of those elements is Judge Joyce, assigned the mission because of his previous involvement with Dredd back in the Emerald Isle arc in Case Files 15. Sadly, Joyce is not having the luck of the Irish – the running gag of this arc with Joyce as butt of the joke, and after all that work writer Garth Ennis put into boosting up Joyce, his own creation hailing from his homeland, into something more than a joke character in Judgement Day…only to return to Joyce as the punchline of his own Irish joke here.

Anyway, as one can see from the panels here, Joyce’s bike breaks down in the Black Atlantic tunnel, which sees him literally hitch a lift to Mega-City One, arriving three hours late for Dredd waiting for him at Customs.

Meanwhile, it doesn’t get much more Irish than O’Dilligan’s Nightclub – used by Mickah O’Dilligan as cover for his “shady little racket”. Also – add McSod’s Syndrome to the list of diseases you do NOT want to get in MC-1.

And McSod’s Syndrome is what Mickah O’Dilligan, second of the three Emerald Isle elements on collision course in this arc, is looking right down the barrel at in the test results from his doctor “Davy”.

“It’s non-contagious, but it accelerates and mutates your cell growth to a drastic degree and your body undergoes certain…er…changes”.

I love Mickah’s incredulous response at seeing those “changes” in some sort of medical text – where the subject’s torso is transformed into a monstrous lump partly swallowing up their awkwardly protruding limbs and head:

“Changes? You’re telling me!”

As, ah, Doctor Davy tells him though, there is a cure – and one that completely nullifies the virus. The only problem is it’s gold – not easy to come by in MC-1, and worse he only has a few hours to get it before his disease manifests itself.

On the bright side, Mickah does at least outlive his doctor – “Davey, this is terrible bad news…so I’m shootin’ the messenger” – but as for that gold, Mickah has the luck of the Irish. Enter the third of our three elements from Emerald Isle…

“Did…did you say gold?”

The luck of the Irish as Paddy and Francie O’Dilligan just happened to rob a bank of the gold their brother Mickah needs right now. And I mean right now – as in the next few hours.

Yes – it’s the third element from Emerald Isle on collision course in this arc, Mickah’s prodigal brothers on the lam from Emerald Isle in the Big Meg.

Mind you, Mickah is initially not pleased to see them, having just learnt that McSod’s Syndrome is about to turn him into “a lump of boke” – yes, I looked it up and apparently boke is a Scottish word for vomit – and now his prodigal brothers turn up out seeking sanctuary. It doesn’t help that they used to beat him up “when we were wee”.

What does help (after a brief segue to Judge Joyce getting the hang of a Mega-City One Lawmaster – or rather not getting it) is when they tell Mickah they didn’t just rob the bank, but they robbed of it of gold, just what the late doctor Davy ordered as cure for Mickah’s McSod Syndrome. And just in time too as Mickah only has a few hours before onset. Well that’s convenient – and conveniently timed. It really is the luck of the Irish for the O’Dilligans but it’s all downhill from here…

Yo Ennis! Why are you doing your boy Joyce dirty like this, turning him into the recurring butt of the joke here after boosting him in Judgement Day?

Ennis makes him a complete horn-dog here, including the obligatory cracking on to Hershey that every foreign Judge seems to do. Looking at you, Sov Judge Brylkreem.

Mind you, it only makes Joyce more legendary to me, particularly as he proves to be quite the ladies’ man. Not so much for Hershey of course – “are you for real?” – but certainly in the MC-1 club scene at O’Dilligans. It’s the accent, you see – “Where’d you get an accent like that, handsome?”

Dredd and Joyce are at O’Dilligans to hunt down the O’Dilligan brothers on the run from Emerald Isle, but that’s where the club owner Mickah steps in and hides them – not for any brotherly love, but for their promises of the gold they robbed from the bank and Mickah so desperately needs to cure his McSod’s Syndrome.

It doesn’t take a lie detector for both Dredd and Joyce to see that Mickah is lying to them about not seeing his brothers – not that Dredd uses one anyway but instead is waiting to catch all three brothers, Mickah included for the criminal racket he runs from the club.

That’s when Dredd spies a trivial infringement of the law – drinking from cans rather than plastene cups – and goes to town on a group of rowdy male patrons, while Joyce gets up to his shenanigans with the ladies. Sadly, Joyce is interrupted when Dredd shots one of the patrons for pulling a gun, blasting his headless body on to the table Joyce is sharing with the ladies.

Dredd’s almost as hard on Joyce as he is on the patrons when Joyce apologizes “Ah! Sorry, mate — just meetin’ folk, y’know?” – “Around here we call it dereliction of duty, Joyce. Lucky for you, you’re not on the force.”

Sheesh – lighten up, Dredd! Around here, we call that c*ckblocking!

Anyway, that sees Dredd and Joyce return to the Justice Department sector house, which is where Joyce cracks on to Hershey and Dredd plans his sting for the O’Dilligan brothers – just as they are going to pick up the gold…

One does not simply wade through Innocents Abroad without special mention for the Oxypool. I love these snippets of 22nd century life in MC-1 – a swimming center with water so oxygenated that human lungs still work in it.

Apart from yet another future fad in Judge Dredd, it’s also where the O’Dilligan brothers hid their gold from their bank robbery – although how they smuggled the gold through the notoriously draconian Justice Department Customs into Mega-City One, let alone into the Oxypool, is not answered. Although I can’t help but agree with their answer to Mickah’s question as to why – “Why not?”. The Oxypool is cool.

And here is where it all goes down for our boys from Emerald Isle – Dredd executes his sting to snare all the O’Dilligans, while Mickah O’Dilligan shoots open the locker where they stashed the gold but for which they had forgotten the combination. “Let’s try number forty-five , shall we?”

Mickah then pulls a fast one on his brothers to shaft them of their share of the gold, even though they’d already agreed to give him 80% for helping them escape. “What’s all this we business?”

Really, Mickah? Apart from shafting your brothers, you’ve already talked them down into giving almost all the gold anyway and you don’t have time for fight over the rest as your McSod’s is about to pop…

“It’s the Law, creep!”

I just can’t resist a good panel featuring Dredd using a variant of his catchphrase, featured here as he brings the sting on the O’Dilligans to its conclusion.

Paddy and Francie take the opportunity presented by the Judges descending on the Oxypool to get away from their brother Mickah with a good kick in the groin (from Paddy) – “pick the bones outta that one, Mickah!” – prompting Mickah’s McSod’s Syndrome to explode into full grotesque deforming bloom. What did I tell you Mickah about trying to screw over your brothers? You knew you only had a few hours and you wasted time with your shenanigans. Also…after shooting your doctor, did you actually know how to use the gold to cure your McSods? I mean, presumably you can’t just rub the ingots on you or ingest them in that form. Really, Mickah may mock his brothers for their stupidity but he didn’t seem to go about any of this the smart way. It’s like they’re all one big Irish joke…

“If they won’t leave quietly, they leave in a bag! Blow ’em away!” – Judges Dredd and Joyce finally corner the O’Dilligan brothers and their gang.

And it’s time for Innocents Abroad to wrap everything up in this fourth episode. Let’s just say it doesn’t end well, at least for everyone from the Emerald Isle, although Judge Joyce gets to go back home, if somewhat worse for wear.

Mickah O’Dilligan comes out the worst. Already transformed into a monstrosity by McSod’s Syndrome running rampant in full stage – “Holy dear blessed mother of Grud” as Judge Joyce exclaims, the good Catholic lad that he is, or “Oh…my…drokking…Grud!” as a female poolgoer recoils at the sight of him – Dredd takes him out with an incendiary round. Mickah throws himself into the oxypool – but the fire “positively thrives in the highly oxygenated water”.

Oh – and as the three O’Dilligan brothers are caught between two Judge units (the second headed by Hershey), not to mention each other, they fumble the gold into the Oxypool. It was probably a little late for that cure for McSod’s by then – although we never see what happens to the gold after that. One might hope the Judges retrieve it to return to the Irish bank Francie and Paddy O’Dilligan robbed it from but the odds are just as good for those Mega-City One citizen swimmers in the pool to have swiped it.

Speaking of Francie and Paddy O’Dilligan, Judge Joyce is hot on their tail as they flee the Oxypool, less one brother and all their gold – but they still have some fighting Irish spirit left as they jump him on his Lawmaster on loan from Mega-City One Justice Department. Joyce is very much a beginner on a Lawmaster and quickly loses control of it.

That sees the Tek Judges “still scraping bits of the O’Dilligans off the sked” – and while Joyce comes out of this whole Emerald Isle fiasco best, he’s still going home in plaster casts and a bad mood towards MC-1.

“As far as I’m concerned, you can stick your mega-city up your – ” and fortunately the last boarding call of the flight to Murphyville cuts him off.

“So much for friendly international relations” Dredd muses as they watch the flight depart from their Lawmasters – something of a recurring gag whenever Dredd is sent on a mission to or involved with another mega-city, which strangely enough often includes diplomatic missions given that Dredd is perhaps the last person Justice Department should choose for skill in diplomacy.

Hershey observes the obvious – “Yeah. Old Joyce didn’t exactly have the luck of the Irish”. To which Dredd characteristically replies – “Tough”. See what I mean about that diplomacy?

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 18:

THE KINDA DEAD MEN (prog 816)

The Magic Mellow Out (progs 808-809)

Raider (prog 810-814)

Christmas with Attitude (prog 815)

Surprisingly, the only episode to directly deal with the immediate aftermath of Judgement Day’s global zombie apocalypse. Also Happy New Year 2115 -” and so, the Meg begins a year in which the dearly departed may not have actually departed…and the workers at resyk find themselves issued with pump-action shotguns”.

In this case, we see Sabbat’s head still on the lodestone where Dredd stuck it – fortuitously “not much left of his mind” at this point – but “energies will inevitably leak from the stone and cause…um…unusual phenomena on a planetary scale” – “though this should only occur infrequently”.

This begs a few questions. Well, a few more than the question posed by the obvious reference for the MC-1 Justice Department’s Chief Tek’s name, Oppenheimer.

Although that prompts one of the questions – given Oppenheimer’s role in the Manhattan Project, one wonders why there isn’t something similar here? That is, why isn’t Mega-City One trying to harness – or weaponize – this mystical energy “on a planetary scale”? Of course, that might be what Oppenheimer’s preliminary report to Chief Judge McGruder is about here.

Also in fairness McGruder and Mega-City One are probably wary of screwing with something that caused the global zombie apocalypse that almost overwhelmed them and everyone else. Although it does beg another question of why the other mega-cities seem content to sit back and don’t want in on this, if not to monitor Mega-City One studying the stone then at least as some joint international (or rather inter-city) project to monitor the stone itself and its potentially dangerous energy, including the leaks that occur in this episode. Particularly as the lodestone is in the middle of the Radlands of Ji, essentially the Asian mystical badlands equivalent of the Cursed Earth beyond any mega-city – a neutral no-man’s land or no-city’s land.

One would have thought at least Hondo City – the nearest mega-city and the one most intimately involved in Judgement Day – would have been involved in a joint project with Mega-City One, if not also East-Meg-Two or Sino-City Two, the other major powers both wary of Mega-City One and also close to the Radlands of Ji. (There’s also teasing references to other minor cities in proximity – Kathmandu, Lhasa, Samarkand – and I think there may be some Mongolian polity).

Oppenheimer introduces his report by noting that “Sabbat is still secure”, which begs the question of why they just leave his head on the lodestone. Surely he’d be more secure elsewhere – or even better off dead without the mystical energy of the lodestone keeping his head alive – particularly as who’s to say his apparent mindlessness isn’t just some magical dormancy or trance on his part, waiting his opportunity to strike again? I mean his head shouldn’t be alive anyway but it is – I’d say you couldn’t be too careful with a galactic time-travelling necromancer turned demi-lich. It at least begs the question of how and why he is apparently mindless after what at most is a few months when he survived by magic without needing his body for years. Or at least why they don’t have some more security measures, such as a remote-activated bomb in his head like they do with the Suicide Squad.

For that matter, it begs the question of why Mega-City One hasn’t tried to flip the center of earth’s mystical power back from the lodestone to Mega-City One itself – which is where it was as few years back and where they could either study or secure it at more convenience to them. Remember that was the whole point of that Warlord storyline back in Case Files 9 (set about seven or so years previously), with the Warlord coming to Mega-City One for that reason – the center of earth’s mystical energy was in Mega-CIty One. Chief Judge McGruder at least should remember – it was why she resigned for the Long Walk in her first term of office.

Anyway, you guessed it – at least one of the effects of those energies leaking from the stone is to reanimate the dead, albeit on a more limited basis. You’d think that might have something to do with the necromancer’s head still on the stone so all the more reason to remove it. Perhaps they did, as I don’t recall it or these energy leaks in subsequent episodes.

So the storyline involves a citizen, who alternates between retaining something of his former consciousness and being a flesh-hungry mindless zombie, both as a result of those energy leaks as he should be neither, having had a fatal heart attack about two weeks back. He attends a New Year’s Eve party but fortunately Dredd is present to stop him chowing down on the guests – although Dredd is sadly too late to have stopped him chowing down on his wife and pet dog before going to the party.

Dredd solves the problem in his usual manner – with a bullet through the walking dead man’s brain, making him a fully inert dead man for resyk, hence the episode’s closing narration.

As for the episodes I skipped over:

The Magic Mellow Out (progs 808-809) – apparently a parody of a famous 1960s British children’s TV show The Magic Roundabout, Dredd be tripping when he has to secure the titular amusement park after its guests became violently deranged from a leak of hallucinogenic gas in much higher quantities than authorized. Eric Thompson, the creator and narrator of the TV series, is name-dropped for the block near the amusement park
Raider (progs 810-814) is a five-episode story arc featuring the titular ex-Judge (it’s his surname) and former Academy of Law classmate with Dredd (or more precisely the Dredds, Rico and Joe). Ex-Judge that is, as he left the force for a woman (and also as Dredd reminisces, he was “a bit of a dreamer”). Sadly, she died in his arms in the Apocalypse War. However, knowing his weakness, Dredd reintroduces undercover Judge Lola Palmtree to ensnare him. He proves a little too wary for that but by this time has become caught up in vigilante justice of his own against one of Mega-City One’s ganglords, a little like that Cadet turned rogue in The Executioner and ending in the same way, a lost gunfight with Dredd – although here Raider had previously equalled Dredd as a fellow cadet at the firing range but is outdrawn by Dredd in this gunfight. As Raider sadly says, probably expecting to be bested by Dredd with the latter’s forty years as a street Judge, “what else have I got?”
Christmas with Attitude (prog 815) replays Charles Dicken’s A Christmas Carol, but here the attempts of Eb Skrooj at redemption after a supernatural vision sees his goose cooked instead – or more precisely him cooked as the Christmas goose by the McKratchit family.

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 18:

SNOWSTORM (prog 819)

The Craftsman (prog 817)

Ex-Men (prog 818)

“Sweetex! Those spugging drokkers cut this with sweetex!”

Yeah – that’s my reaction to artificial sweeteners as well.

It’s more of a big deal in the Meg as sugar is, well, a big deal – a big criminal deal as analogy for cocaine.

I have a soft spot for these sugar as cocaine stories in Judge Dredd, although it begs the question of what happened to actual cocaine (or any other contemporary illicit drug). Sugar even shares one of the same nicknames as cocaine – snow, hence the titular snowstorm for a big shipment in “a city desperate for the sweet taste of a snowstorm”, with the suppliers known as snowman or snowmen. Consistent with the cocaine analogy, we get a reference to the Andean Conurb as the ultimate source of the snowstorm here. There’s been a reference to the Andean Conurb before – at least as the home city of Hector and Dave, the Flying Gonzo brothers in Supersurf 10 back in the Oz epic – but here we see it tied more closely into the illicit sugar trade. We’ll see a much closer and unfortunately stereotyped look at the Andean Conurb before the Dark Age of Dredd is over in The Sugar Beat – let’s just say Grud knows how it survived Judgement Day when other mega-cities did not.

Anyway, the story writes itself. Up and coming snowman Vinnie Touretto does a deal, tasting the product, interestingly in porridge, an “old trick” as the “only way to be sure” – “that’s primo drokkin’ cane, alright”. Unfortunately, his suppliers also did the old trick of giving him a good bag among the rest of their cut product – but Touretto took another old trick as precaution of putting a tracer in their cash payment. So he prepares to hunt them down but Judge Dredd gets him first and uses the tracer to get the Andeans too – but “there’s still a hell of a lot of snow to be shovelled off the streets”.

As for the stories I skipped over

The Craftsman (prog 817) is a somewhat ho-hum episode about yet another serial killer in Mega-City One. Seriously, I think the Meg has a disproportionate number of these serial killers popping up among its citizens, possibly just as a hobby from the sheer boredom and brutality of their everyday life. Although in this case the killer – Nigel Bland – does have some sort of gainful career or hobby as a “vidder”, host of “Hey – Let’s Make Things” for plasteen carving, which I can’t help but feel was some sort of British TV reference at the time, same for the name reference of Steve Atkinson for the block where Bland resides.
Ex-Men (prog 818) features not so much a pun on X-men but are essentially hitmen as suicide bombers, usually conscripted from citizens driven to desperation with nothing to lose (as here from terminal illness and a need to provide financially for their families). We saw exploding hitmen before in the Emerald Isle epic, but there it was to stop them being captured rather than the actual means of assassination as here.

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 18:

PJ & THE MOCK-CHOC FACTORY (progs 820-822)

PJ Maybe does Willy Wonka! Or rather – PJ Maybe kills Willy Wonka. And once again runs out of luck with Judge Dredd catching up with him – and punching him in the face now that he’s turned 18.

Yes – everyone’s favorite juvenile genius serial killer is back in this three-episode arc. One of Dredd’s most enduring and successful antagonists – particularly in terms of going undetected by Dredd or giving him the slip – PJ Maybe owes much of that success to his genius, even if that genius tends to be a three-trick pony of robotics, face-changing machines, and the hypnotic drugs SLD 88 or 89. But as engaging as he is as a character, you have to admit that he owes a lot of his success to being one lucky SOB. (Metaphorically that is, his parents were very nice people, totally oblivious to his evil nature – and it was sad to see them go in Necropolis, even the psychopathic Maybe felt their loss).

Even with his luck, PJ’s problem is like that of a gambling addict – he just doesn’t know when to walk away in a winning streak but instead keeps coming back to the table expecting to keep winning against the house. And in Mega-City One, the house is Justice Department – with Dredd as its chief enforcer.

PJ Maybe’s luck ran out with Dredd before when he killed one person too many – rival of his parent’s billion-dollar business (that they unknowingly inherited from him killing his mother’s family members), Alger Hoss, ironically by accident rather than design as he was attempting to frame Hoss for criminal business dealings using a robot double. Dredd caught up with him – having failed to detect him due to his youth and his playing dumb – and detained him in a psych-cube.

PJ bounced back with another lucky streak during Necropolis – managing to escape the psych detention facility as Justice Department collapsed into chaos and the Judges were controlled by the Sisters of Death. Just when that luck seemed to run out with his parents killing themselves from their despair of the Dark Judges, he had even more luck when their billionaire family friends, the Urchinsons, took him in. Naturally, PJ killed Junior Urchinson and Mrs Urchinson (the latter with some more luck given her suspicions of him) before assuming Junior’s identity courtesy of a face-change machine and Junior’s father being increasingly unhinged by grief. So PJ once again found himself the heir of a billion dollar company and fortune, having swapped out that of his parents for the Urchinsons – even managing to go undetected by Dredd.

However, that luck is again about to run out in this arc, with Dredd once again catching up to Maybe – Maybe having drawn the attention of Justice Department because he couldn’t stop killing people, ironically even as his opening narration states his first rule of killing as “don’t get careless”. In fairness, while he clarifies this rule to involve not “killing any more than I needed to”, he then goes on to say that he was “needing to quite a bit recently” – and for the most petty or trivial reasons, not that he expresses it with quite that insight.

For that matter, it’s not even clear why he bought the Wonker candy corp, involving as it did killing MC-1’s version of Willy Wonka, transparently named Willy Wonker. It’s not like he needed to, having inherited 60 billion after finally disposing of his new “adoptive” father to assume control of Urchinson Inc. Yes – he does seem to use the mock-choc factory to dispose of bodies (mixing them into the mock-choc – eww!) but surely he had other means at his disposal. It does make for the black comedy gold in the opening of the Wonker company exec Brad Gleem discovering a human nose in a candy bar, but it’s not like that plays a part in Maybe coming undone as Urchinson, except for now having to kill and dispose of Brad as well. Justice Department was already on his trail and sent Dredd after him for the preceding four suspicious deaths or disappearances surrounding him in a short timeframe.

Once again it’s all downhill for Maybe from there as Dredd joins the dots, despite the brief illusion of escape on a flight to, you guessed it, the conveniently corrupt Banana City where Maybe had squirrelled away 20 billion of his fortune in an account. Man – they’ll take in anyone if there’s enough money involved.

And having turned 18 on that very flight, Dredd is finally able to punch Maybe in the face – a curious line that Justice Department doesn’t cross despite its routine brutality against Mega-City One’s adult citizens that seems to be something of their only right (and rite of passage) dealing with Judges. And I have to admit that as much as I like PJ as a character – it was as satisfying to see as a reader as it was for Dredd.

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 18:

PJ & THE MOCK CHOC FACTORY (prog 820)

“It’s not like I was killing anymore than I needed to…it’s just that I was needing to quite a bit recently”.

That’s our PJ, with a rather elastic definition of need when it comes to killing people.

Indeed, it’s quite obvious that by needing or needed he means for the most petty and trivial reasons – something that would increasingly come into play as his ongoing storyline unfolds over the next quarter of a century or so. That’s obvious from his opening narration and the first person he refers to killing, his girlfriend Lili – I suppose that would be ex-girlfriend now – because she laughed at a pimple he had. Hmm – I was wondering why he never looked up Liana, his first girlfriend and still a heartthrob for me (as drawn by Liam Sharp), but now I’m glad he didn’t (assuming of course that she survived epic crises like Necropolis or Judgement Day, let alone the everyday brutality of life in MC-1).

I mean at least he started out targeting people who were unsympathetic, albeit of course not deserving their fate at his hands – people like his mother’s family who bullied his parents or himself, with the obvious exception of his two innocent neighbors he used as a test run or the innocent bystanders killed by his uncle’s crash that he engineered.

That sets up that black comedy of the opening reveal of the Wonker company exec Brad Gleem discovering a human nose in a candy bar while guiding a juvenile tour through the factory. Well, technically he doesn’t discover it – one of juveniles on the tour points it out to him but he’s quick on the draw to snatch it up to pass off as nothing in front of the juveniles. Compounding the black comedy, the juveniles become suspicious that he then doesn’t eat it, if Mock-Chox are indeed the “scrummiest mock-chox around” as he said in his tour guide spiel.

So you can guess where that goes – he has to eat the chocolate (including the nose) in front of them to keep up the masquerade that there was nothing wrong.

As he then tells PJ – who is of course still impersonating Urchinson Jr and running the Wonker company after Urchinson Inc bought it – “It was horrible, Master Urchinson. I was sick for an hour.”

Unfortunately for Brad, that’s the least of his health problems now that his discovery and cover-up of the nose in the candy bar has unknowingly placed himself at the top of PJ’s kill list – and PJ doesn’t waste any time about it either.

But first, Brad continues to explain the gravity of the situation – “I mean, Wonker’s is the top candy-corp in the Meg – that’s why you bought us! We’re launching the new Krunchblok tomorrow! But if this gets out, we’re sunk!”

Yes – I’d tend to agree that finding human body parts in your mock-chox would be a critical marketing and public relations problem.

However, PJ calmly offers Brad one of the Krunchbloks. Firstly, I’m surprised that Brad is not too traumatized to eat any mock chox, at least right now. Secondly, I’m surprised that he hasn’t tasted a sample before.

Anyway, PJ continues to calmly clarify Brad’s statement that the nose had a pin in it. “That’ll be Mr Grizz.”

Brad asks incredulously – “You know him?” – to which PJ replies “I killed him”.

PJ then launches into what seems an extraordinary spontaneous confession – confessing that he also killed Wonker because Wonker wouldn’t sell the factory to him, he killed Grizz because Grizz criticized his spelling (which in fairness is atrocious – despite his genius, PJ can’t spell), he killed his father to inherit the Urchinson billions, and that Urchinson wasn’t really his father as he had killed Junior Urchinson before changing his face to look like Junior.

He even confesses that he is PJ Maybe – and it says something of Maybe’s notoriety that Brad recognizes the name. “Drokking Jeez – you were on the news years back! P.J, Maybe – the psycho juve!”

But then, PJ does like to brag. And as you might have guessed, Brad is already a dead man walking, killed by the Krunchblok – “The hemorrhaging agent I put in it should kick in any second”. Which begs the question – did PJ have a Krunchblok already laced with a lethal hemorrhaging agent in case of just such an emergency? And what would have happened if Brad had declined?

Meanwhile, Dredd is assigned by Justice Department to clear up the Judgement Day backlog – “Go to Urchinson Inc. offices. Interview CEO J. Urchinson – four missing persons among associates / employees”.

And with that, the bell begins to toll for PJ Maybe’s lucky streak impersonating Junior Urchinson – or as PJ himself puts it, when you’re a psycho killer in Mega-City One, you can’t afford to be careless…

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 18:

PJ & THE MOCK CHOC FACTORY (prog 821)

“Me and old Dreddy had met before, when he arrested me for murder. I was getting to like him. He’s a pussycat…Okay, he’s not”.

Of course, that was when PJ Maybe had his original name and face – not that of Junior Urchinson. And of course, PJ is not being a reliable narrator here – he corrects himself that Dredd is in fact not a “pussycat” but I’m skeptical that he was “getting to like” Dredd. What PJ seems to like is playing cat-and-mouse games with Dredd.

Which is what he does here – after warmly reminding Judge Dredd that they’d “met” (“You pulled my Dad and I out of a nuke shelter after the big Nec”), he brazenly lies that he knows nothing about the four people he’s killed in the last six months. His “father”, his girlfriend Lili Solo, Wonker the former “chok boss” (not only transparently named for Willy Wonka but appears like him too in the flashback and statue we see in this episode), and his accountant Sam Grizz. Not to mention his fifth victim Brad Gleem just before Dredd arrived but that’s too soon to be reported missing.

You might be wondering about the standard issue lie detector or “birdie” that Judges use and that we see Dredd use here, but as PJ narrates – “if you’re going to lie into a judge’s lie detector, you can either get used to a broken jaw…or you can jam that sucker”.

What I was wondering about was whatever happened to that voiceprint identification which Dredd used to identify a perp way back when they introduced face-change machines way back in the second ever Judge Dredd episode – “The New You” in prog 3. That sure would’ve come in handy right about now.

Anyway, even without voiceprint identification, Maybe’s only slightly ahead of the curve as Dredd is suspicious from his instinct that something didn’t feel right against Maybe as Urchinson checking out completely on the birdie. So he requests Control scan all Urchinson’s associates and business contacts. Sure enough, that scan turns up “the only thing unusual” – the Maybe family as associates of the Urchinson family, which immediately triggers Dredd, with a “Drokk!” thrown in for good measure. Dredd requests Control call units to arrest Junior Urchinson. “You think he’s picked up some tricks from Maybe?” queries Control. “I think he IS Maybe!” Dredd replies.

Meanwhile, PJ has gone to the mock-choc factory to dispose of Brad’s body as the special ingredient in the latest batch of mock chocolate, treating us to some entertaining musings about having some standards as a serial killer. “All these people who won’t be satisfied with a poisoning here, a decap there – these people with body-counts in the millions…Call-Me-Kenneth…Ol’ Cal…Mad Dog Kazan…Judge Death…and that lunatic Sabbat! I mean the whole world! Just look what happens to people like that! One at a time, that’s my motto.” Well, I suppose that is the definition of a serial killer.

Unfortunately for PJ, Dredd arrives at the factory to apprehend him.

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 18:

PJ & THE MOCK CHOC FACTORY (prog 822)

Judge Dredd punches PJ Maybe in the face mid-flight to Banana City and has a confession of his own – “Gotta admit it…I’ve been wanting to do that for years”.

We’ve all been wanting you to do that, Judge Dredd, we all have – and I say that as a fan of PJ Maybe.

Although it’s a little concerning that the only line stopping Mega-City One Judges from gratuitously punching citizens in the face (or beating them with a daystick) when arresting them is that the citizen is of the age of eighteen years or over.

That is of course how the episode ends – with PJ Maybe under arrest again, albeit unconscious after Dredd punched him in the face.

How it started was with PJ absconding from the mock choc factory, setting a giant version of his robot bug he routinely used to kill people – including his very first victims, and Wonker himself as we saw in flashback in the second episode – on to Dredd. “I thought Dredd might appreciate using the bug on him, for old time’s sake. I’d been gone for a good five minutes by then, of course. I was off to Banana City, with twenty bil’ waiting in a numbered account”.

Dredd did not, in fact, appreciate it, but the giant robot bug gives him a good fight before he finally manages to defeat it. That’s enough time for Maybe to escape the city – “Little creep hopped a flight to Banana City – Customs boys got the APB a little too late!”

Not on Dredd’s watch, however, as he directs Control – “Then get me a fast h-wagon”.

And sure enough, as Maybe is musing happy thoughts mid-flight – “South of the border, down mekzone way – that’s where I was off to. There was bound to be a place for a smart kid with plenty of creds – and a talent for murder.” – Dredd’s h-wagon intercepts the flight, pulling it over so to speak. “Don’t worry sir, that’s just a Justice Depart h-wagon locking on to our hull”.

Dredd arrests Maybe, who smugly reminds Dredd that he’s a minor – only to be corrected by Dredd that it’s past midnight and he’s just turned eighteen. And you know how the rest goes.

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 18:

A,B,C WARRIOR (prog 824)

Last Night Out (prog 823)

“Well, citizen Colon. Can you guess what happens now? Is it a) we let you go? b) you get off with a five cred fine? or c) we lock you in the psycho cubes and throw away the key?”

A, B, C Warrior is easily my favorite single episode in Case Files 18 – involving yet another citizen gone mad in Mega-City One, or ‘futsie’ as Mega-City slang goes for people suffering from ‘future shock’, who have snapped from the pressure of just living in “a society where every single thing has become monstrously overwhelming” (quoting Chris Sims summing up the essence of Judge Dredd’s world).

In this episode, the futsie is a citizen with an unfortunate surname, Mori Colon – and the even more unfortunate madness from losing his job as a pollster. Although given the nearly universal automation of jobs in Mega-City One, I’m not sure how he ever had it in the first place since it would seem a job where a robot would be first in line.

Anyway, he’s adapted his former occupation as pollster to his new preoccupation as serial killer. As one Judge observes – “It’s incredible, Dredd. He’s killed over fifty people – all so he can ask them these insane questions!”.

That is of course after Colon is apprehended by Dredd. We’re introduced to him at the opening of the episode “polling” a resident of Frank Hovis block, as usual named for a character in a British television comedy series contemporary to the date of publication rather than someone you’d expect it to be used for a block in a twenty-second century American megalopolis. And by “polling”, I mean asking some of those inane questions – as multiple choice between options a, b, and c, hence the title – before shooting his victim. As in what will the victim do when confronted with a gun – a) try to jump me b) beg for mercy or c) run for it. (The answer in this case was b).

The sound of gunfire is reported by neighbors – which is how Dredd is called to the scene. Unfortunately, he doesn’t have much to go on for clues at the scene, particularly given the insane polling that is Colon’s modus operandi, but fortunately for Dredd’s detection skills, Colon decides further “research” is needed at a local club (where Colon laments that he should have thought of “polling” a crowd further). Research such as whether on learning of their impending deaths they will a) pray to Grud…b) pray to Satan…c)start to cry. (In fairness, Colon is researching whether religious belief is declining in Mega-City One because of the reactions of previous victims).

So as nearest Judge, Dredd is called to the club when Colon’s latest disturbance is reported and catches Colon in mid-massacre. Colon even polls Dredd which ammunition he will use. (Dredd choses an option that wasn’t on the poll, shooting through a table – and Colon’s arm – with an armor-piercing round). Although I do have to give Colon mad props for his justification to Dredd – “but I’m conducting an opinion poll!”

And that leads to us to the line I quote at the outset Dredd’s deadpan snark with his facetious “poll” to Colon after he recovers from med-bay treatment. And like the readers, Colon easily guesses the answer – “at a wild guess…c?”. Which if you recall was throwing him in the psycho-cube without a key – “You got it. Take him away.”

And yes – I skipped an episode, Last Night Out in prog 823, although perhaps I shouldn’t have because it’s a pretty decent example of an episode played (mostly) straight for tragic drama rather than the more usual absurdist or black comedy. Judge Cahill – “a forty year man” (ie with forty years on the streets) has six hours to live from a rad cancer he got in turn from a zombie bite during Judgement Day. So naturally he uses it to bust perps and kick heads with Dredd (at Dredd’s suggestion). Cahill gets in one last heroic shot and then – “I’m gone, Joe”.

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 18:

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, JUDGE DREDD! (prog 829)

Blind Mate (prog 825)

Unwelcome Guests (prog 826)

Barfur (prog 827)

A Man Called Greener (prog 828)

That’s right – it’s the big man’s birthday as the comic premise for this episode, although it’s not quite as fun or funny as you might think. Still, I can’t let it go past without celebrating – happy birthday, Joe!

That comic premise is Dredd being his usual hardcore self despite it being his birthday – probably even more so. Then again, when you’re getting on like Dredd is, birthdays aren’t much reason to celebrate – and that was thirty-odd years ago when I write this in 2024 with Dredd still going. Thank Grud for rejuvenation treatment!

Curiously, Dredd’s birthday seems to be a matter of widespread public knowledge, perhaps even city-wide. The episode opens with kids from the elementary school at Andy Crane block – named for a British television presenter, aptly enough best known for presenting Children’s BBC shortly before the episode’s publication date – singing happy birthday to Dredd. Needless to say, he’s not impressed as they sang eight points above the legal limit. Yes – Dredd pulled a sound meter on them.

He’s even less impressed with some tap-tax bandits – citizens who essentially pull a Robin Hood as resistance against paying for water. They too have heard of his birthday, and except for one foolhardy tap-tax bandit who gets an incendiary round for his trouble, they don’t want “to mess with the big man on his birthday”.

Then it’s off to the Grand Hall of Justice where Chief Judge McGruder has called him – for a surprise birthday party. It gets a “what the drokk” from Dredd – before the episode’s last gruff punchline with Dredd telling the Judges to give the gifts to charity. Although I am intrigued what anyone – let alone other Judges – would actually buy Dredd for a gift. Something suitably judicial, I hope.

I skipped some more middling episodes:

Blind Mate (prog 825) features a game show, which from its imported dotty Brit-Cit host I am presuming is based on a similar contemporary game show Blind Date but could not be bothered to look it up. Anyway, a perp – a member of the Chipperdull Gang of contract killers modelled on the Chippendale male strippers, down to their shirtless appearance which would seem a little conspicuous for contract killers – on the run from Dredd ends up in the studio as a contestant. The host is so impressed with Dredd after his shootout with the killer that she invites him on as a guest – and is of course arrested for improper suggestion
Unwelcome Guests (prog 826) features the SJS, the House Slytherin of Justice Department, up to their usual tricks – RPA or random physical abuse assessment – which does not go down to well with a jumpy street Judge with post-traumatic stress from a zombie tearing her shoulder off in Judgement Day. She shoots the two SJS judges – Dredd gets her a suspension for a year as opposed to a sentence on Titan and gives the SJS Judge a smackdown for his trouble.
Barfur (prog 827) features the titular alien bear-kangaroo or grizzly broo, who gets to snack down on some animal rights activists. Dredd is called to the disturbance – one animal rights activist survives and gets twenty years in the cubes
A Man Called Greener (prog 828). Yes – Mega-City One has underground spitting or gobbing contests. Yes – they’re as disgusting as they sound. Also dangerous, resulting in a traffic pile-up – which is where Dredd comes in and arrests them.

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 18:

MECHANISMO (Megazine 2.12 – 2.17 & 2.22 -2.26)

A Christmas Carol (Megazine 2.18)

Warhog (Megazine 2.19)

Resyk Man (Megazine 2.20)

Deathmask (Megazine 2.21)

“Trial by machine is here!”

It’s Judge Dredd vs Robo-cop! Or rather, since Dredd essentially is Robo-cop (as one of its influences), Judge Dredd vs the ED-209 from Robo-cop.

That’s essentially the plot in a nutshell of the Mechanismo storyline. With the number of Judges stretched thin after Judgement Day, McGruder is advocating robot Judges. Unfortunately, Dredd is adamantly opposed – not being too progressive when it comes to robots either as Judges or citizens in Mega-City One. He changed his mind when a much better model of Robot Judge was permanently introduced thirty or so years later – although it does make one wonder what this fuss is about here – but Dredd is right at this time, as the Mechanismo models were flawed in a similar way to the ED-209.

While Dredd was one of the influences for Robo-cop, this storyline of course comes after the latter – and acknowledges it with Peter Weller, Robo-cop’s actor, named-dropped for a block.

The story arc is also the source of the image used for the Case Files cover – a rare image not of Dredd himself – and my standing rule for Case File reviews is that I have to feature it as my drinking game equivalent of taking a shot on the title drop in a film.

There’s actually two parts to the storyline – Mechanismo in Megazine 2.12-2.17 in which the Mechanismo robot Judges are introduced but malfunction (and Dredd has to shoot it out with one of them) and Mechanismo Returns in Megazine 2.22-2.26, which sees one of the units reactivate to cause more trouble. It’s the number five unit – a play on the Short Circuit films – and it’s still out there in the sewers as the storyline ends…for now.

Of the other Megazine episodes:

A Christmas Carol (Megazine 2.18) is the most interesting – a Christmas episode as an obvious play on the titular story by Charles Dickens, with Dredd getting a case of concussion and the Ghost of Christmas Past in the form of Rico
Warhog (Megazine 2.19) features the titular war-bike – not exactly sure which war – that uses illegal biomechanics powered by a dead man’s brain and of course he wants revenge against his ex-gang
Resyk Man (Megazine 2.20) features a man whose consciousness survives his apparent death and Resyk, as he too is used for biomechanics, fortuitously as he is able to save his widow and their child from a mutant gang
Deathmask (Megazine 2.21) – Dredd does The Dead Zone (heh – the Dredd Zone) as a citizen becomes psychic and helps Dredd track down the titular serial killer

Mega-City Law – Judge Dredd Case Files 2 (Epilogue)

Posted on June 6, 2024June 6, 2024 by Alex Stark

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.

THE CURSED EARTH

THE DAY THE LAW DIED

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 2

PUNKS RULE (prog 110)

The Exo-Men (progs 111-112) / The DNA Man (progs 113-115)

“I’m a cheap punk!”

And here we are with those episodes at the conclusion of Case Files Volume 2 that are not part of either epic, although the first and best of these, Punks Rule, is effectively an epilogue to The Day the Law Died.

As the new Chief Judge Griffin explains in this episode, the war against Cal allowed street gangs to come back in force, with the worst of them – the Cosmic Punks, led by Gestapo Bob Harris – setting themselves up as ‘judges’ in Sector 41 and declaring it a no-go zone to the real judges. One judge proposes that they stamp it out by sending in a fifty man squad, but Dredd disagrees – “The street gangs have lost their fear of us. It’s time we gave it back to them…Let’s show them one judge is worth a hundred punks”. As I’ve said before, Dredd’s always doing this – going in as the ‘one judge’ to demonstrate the strength of the law against any number of potential antagonists. He did it in his very first episode and he’ll do it again – it’s kind of his shtick.

And so, Dredd heads into Sector 41 alone, with an automated garbage truck for prisoners. A nice symbolic touch – and sure enough, he fills it with the punks who are smart enough to surrender, gunning down those who prefer to take a shot at him. Ultimately, Dredd takes even Gestapo Bob prisoner – after making Bob declare himself a cheap punk.

It’s an episode with Brian Bolland art, always a delight to behold – and Bolland did the best Judge Dredd punks!

And yes – I skipped two storylines:

The Exo-Men (progs 111-112) featuring the titular gang that use demolition workers’ exo-skeleton powered suits for a bank robbery. However, the real fun in the story comes with two representatives of a citizen action group – the citizen’s committee for compassion to criminals (or CCCC) – who are monitoring Dredd as he pursues the exo-men. It was almost fun enough to feature in more detail, except that I think “Watchdogs” in Case Files 16 replays the same premise better.
The DNA Man (progs 113-115) replays Frankenstein but with the mad scientist character – literally named Frankenstein, Milton Frankenstein (with his first name perhaps a nod to Milton’s Paradise Lost featuring in the original book by Shelley) trying to recreate himself from one DNA molecule taken from his blood. It’s a little weird since the world of Judge Dredd has cloning – indeed, Dredd himself is a clone. Here, however, Frankenstein succeeds only in creating monstrous versions of himself – which he unleashes on Dredd as Dredd is on his trail for killing his lab assistant.

Mega-City Law – Judge Dredd Case Files 2: The Day The Law Died

Posted on June 5, 2024June 11, 2024 by Alex Stark

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 2:
THE DAY THE LAW DIED (progs 86-109)

No rest for the wicked – or those who judge them. Once again, the Law gets EPIC!

The second Judge Dredd epic, The Day the Law Died ran straight on or back-to-back from The Cursed Earth, when Judge Dredd returned to Mega-City One from Mega-City Two. As I said before for the Cursed Earth epic, I still consider the back-to-back storylines of The Cursed Earth and The Day the Law Died to be Dredd’s first true epics – and more fundamentally, where the Judge Dredd comic came of age. This is the origin of the classic Dredd I know, although my introduction to Judge Dredd was The Apocalypse War epic (and its Block Mania prelude), still my favorite (and arguably the best) Judge Dredd epic. 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, often exotic location, or confronting some threat, often 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. In this, 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, essentially 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.

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 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 Under-City, 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 – as 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.

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 2:

THE DAY THE LAW DIED (PROLOGUE)

Crime and Punishment / Judge Dredd Outlaw / Bring Me the Head of Judge Dredd (progs 86-88)

The Day the Law Died, in which the insane Judge Cal becomes Chief Judge of Mega-City One, effectively begins with a prologue of three episodes in which Judge Dredd is framed and arrested for murder (although technically The Day the Law Died commences with prog 89).

The elimination of Judge Dredd is an important part of Judge Cal’s plot for control of Mega-City. Dredd is the most iconic Judge of Mega-City One and a potential focus of resistance – even more so as Dredd’s absence on his Cursed Earth mission has meant that he has not been exposed to Cal’s method for mind control, as revealed subsequently in the epic.

Unfortunately, the prologue leaves something of a bad taste in my mouth, since its plot was adapted almost in entirety for the storyline of the abominable 1995 Judge Dredd film – except even worse, adding insult to injury, by adapting it to involve Dredd’s clone Rico (played by Armand Assante, looking most unclone-like to Stallone’s Dredd), Judge Griffin and the original Chief Judge Fargo in ways completely distorted from their original roles in the comics.

It opens dramatically enough (albeit attributing a population to Mega-City One of 100 million, later increased to 800 million – at least prior to the Apocalypse War), with Judge Dredd on trial for murder before the Council of Five, the governing body of Judges within the Justice Department. It then flashes back to Dredd’s hero’s parade from his Cursed Earth mission, accompanied by the transparently named Chief Judge Goodman, and Deputy Chief Judge Cal, head of the SJS or Special Judicial Squad – the equivalent of Justice Department’s Internal Affairs, or perhaps, given all the trouble it subsequently causes, Justice Department’s house of Slytherin. Judge Cal, true to his slimy and Judas-like character, whines about Dredd’s expense claims for the Cursed Earth mission. Dude – Dredd just saved Mega-City Two! So rightly, Chief Judge Goodman slaps Cal down for the petty bean-counting. Although Dredd collapses from exhaustion in his apartment after the parade, that very night he apparently enters the office of the Mega-Times, Mega-City One’s leading ‘daily-vid journal’ and guns down the editor for not giving his hero’s parade top billing. He has a point – I mean, how does “Film Star Weds Alien” rate the headline?

Dredd is promptly arrested by Cal’s SJS and Cal enthusiastically leads the prosecution before the Council of Five to a unanimous verdict of guilty, including a reluctant verdict (badgered by Cal) from Chief Judge Goodman. Dredd is sentenced to twenty years on the penal colony on Titan (adapted in the film to Aspen in Colorado – must…suppress…gag reflex from film), seen off by a jeering crowd of citizens at Kennedy spaceport. Those Mega-City One citizens sure are fickle!

Of course, you can’t keep a good Judge down – Dredd knows he’s been framed and escapes. Cal has taken over duties from Chief Judge Goodman (who has suffered near nervous breakdown after the verdict) and unveils his secret weapon to capture Dredd – the same thing that framed Dredd in the first place, a robot replica of Dredd or Dredd-bot.

It’s Dredd vs Dredd-bot! Dredd ultimately tracks down his robot replica and defeats outwits it in a robotics factory, pre-empting the Terminator film.

But first Judge Dredd is on the lam! While on the lam from the Law, he needs the help of his informant Max Normal – and I’m contractually obliged to remind a fellow Dredd fan with amnesia of the character whenever Max Normal pops up to help out Dredd. And he really helps Dredd out here – while Dredd has correctly surmised that the only way he could have been framed was to use a robot double, Max is the one who tracks it down for Dredd. Hence that Dredd vs robo-Dredd showdown.

Of course, the Dredd-bot proves Dredd’s innocence and Chief Judge Goodman joyously overturns the verdict. Or rather the robo-Dredd’s head does – Dredd taking it with him to Justice Central, although you have to give it to him as the robot head really does rest his case. The robot head was also the subject of Brian Bolland’s cover art for the Eagle Comics reprints (issue 9) – which I am also obliged to feature as Bolland’s cover art for the Eagle Comics reprints was consistently among my favorite cover art for Judge Dredd. However, as Dredd ominously intones, the robot could only have been programmed by someone with complete access to Justice Department files, so there is a “traitor among us” – “the question is who and why?”. Technically, I suppose those are two questions. Unfortunately, Cal soon provides the obvious answers – well, more obvious than his shifty expression during this exchange – in the form of a much more direct approach to solving his problems, by killing them outright.

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 2:

THE DAY THE LAW DIED 1-2

The Day the Law Died / The Tyrant’s Grip (progs 89-90)

Foiled in framing Judge Dredd for murder, Deputy Judge Cal decides to take a more direct approach to gaining the position of Chief Judge and control of Mega-City One – assassination.

In this, Judge Cal is somewhat more proactive than his historical model, Caligula, who awaited his succession to the throne upon the death of his predecessor (and uncle), Tiberius – although my favorite Roman gossip historian Suetonius did advance the rumor that Caligula, ah, sped up his inheritance by smothering Tiberius (amidst the depravity and paranoia of the latter’s old age in personal exile on the island of Capri).

Chief Judge Goodman’s death is not as sordid – he’s assassinated by Cal’s SJS goons. However, he survives long enough to give Judge Dredd, who arrives just in time at the scene, a clue to Cal’s involvement – an SJS insignia he managed to tear off one of the assassins. Unfortunately, Cal has already anticipated Dredd’s opposition or at least simultaneously plotted against Dredd – as Dredd is shot in the head by an SJS judge waiting outside Dredd’s apartment with a sniper rifle.

So Cal becomes Chief Judge. Unlike his historical predecessor Caligula, who at least was credited with initial good rule for six months or so, Chief Judge Cal decides to get a head start on the crazy. When his loyal SJS subordinate Judge Quincy returns, affirming his assassination of Dredd on Cal’s orders, Cal notices Quincy is missing a button and orders him to strip – “Not good enough, Quincy! My judges will dress like judges – or not at all. Take off your clothes!”

Of course, with the historical Caligula, that probably would have been the prelude to something much more depraved, but Cal simply decrees that Judge Quincy is now to carry out his duties in helmet, briefs and boots. Ominously, Cal addresses Quincy while looking at himself in a mirror, like your standard megalomaniac – “There are going to be some changes round here, and the sooner that you and all the people learn that, the better”.

And sure enough – whereas Caligula was reputed to have planned appointing his horse as consul of Rome, Chief Judge Cal exceeds his historical model by appointing his goldfish as Deputy Chief Judge Fish. (In fairness, that fish died a hero, as we’ll see).

Fortunately, the city’s only hope, Judge Dredd, is recovering in hospital from his seemingly fatal head wound, primarily due to the advanced medical technology (by robot surgeons) of the twenty-second century. Meh – this is something you get used to with Judge Dredd, indeed this epic alone has a number of near-death escapes. The number of times he’s been near death in the line of duty… hell, he’s even actually been dead at least once. (He got better). Unfortunately, his recovery is interrupted by his arrest by SJS judges, who bring him before Chief Judge Cal (with head heavily bandaged in lieu of helmet), just as Cal is announcing his appointment of Deputy Chief Judge Fish. Cal takes the opportunity of his new Deputy Chief Judge’s appointment to take the latter’s first verdict (interpreted by Cal from bubbles) – a death sentence for Dredd.

However, Judge Giant, formerly Judge Dredd’s rookie, intervenes and volunteers to execute Dredd. Cal is flattered into granting Giant’s request, blundering into the standard Bond villain mistake of not personally ensuring the death of his most dangerous opponent. And of course, it’s all a ruse by Giant, who then escapes with Dredd.

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 2:

THE DAY THE LAW DIED 3-6

The New Law / Mega-Riot / The City That Roared / The Kleggs are Coming! (progs 91-95)

So Judge Dredd escaped Chief Judge Cal with the help of his former rookie Judge Giant – and becomes the focus of the resistance to Cal, both within the Justice Department itself and in the perception of the Mega-City One citizenry. As usual in a Judge Dredd epic, he is joined by a small select team – in this case, the staff of the Academy of Law, chosen from judges wounded in action, and foremost among them is Judge Griffin, the principal of the Academy.

They are joined by the larger rebelliion of Mega-City citizens against Cal, prompted by insanity on par with his historical namesake Caligula. In fairness, Cal never loses his black sense of comedy (as does the epic itself). Citizens begging to shorten a sentence of 10 years imprisonment for littering prompt a characteristic joke – “I sentence you to death! Ha, ha! You can’t get much shorter than that, can you?”

With jokes like that, no wonder Mega-City One revolts. Just as the Dredd-led revolution is on ther verge of victory, the tide turns against it in the form of the ace up Cal’s sleeve – the alien Kleggs, akin to bipedal crocodiles with appetites to match, and a feature that would occasionally recur in the Judge Dredd storyline. Cal explains his new alien Praetorian Guard to his lieutenant SJS judge Slocum – “They’re called Kleggs, Slocum – a race of alien mercenaries. I’ve had their spaceship waiting in the stratosphere for just such an emergency. Neat, eh?”

To give Cal credit, he certainly shows more cunning and foresight than his historical predecessor Caligula. Although it is difficult to see how the Kleggs became a spacefaring alien species – and as is later revealed, empire – given their general brutish nature and lack of intelligence. Presumably, they were uplifted by other alien species to use as soldiers. They’re cheap to boot (heh, obscure historical Caligula pun) – “they fight for the joy of killing and take payment only in meat”. Of course, Cal thought to “let them eat the citizens”, but Slocum persuades him otherwise – “they might get a taste for human meat and then none of us would be safe”.

In any event, Cal has equally drastic plans for the citizens of Mega-City One, who after all have to be punished for their insubordination – he sentences the whole city to death. Twice – but this is the first time…

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 2:

THE DAY THE LAW DIED 7-8

Judgement Day / Exodus to Mutant Land (progs 96-97)

The insanity of Chief Judge Cal is such that he sentenced Mega-City One to death – twice.

The first occasion is prompted by Judge Dredd’s failed popular uprising against the Chief Judge. Of course, Cal is very orderly about it, starting in sector 1 of the city (with the intention of proceeding in numerical order through all the sectors) with its citizen population being queued in alphabetical order (from Aaron A. Aardvark through to Zachary Zzizz) to the execution stations. Although that would seem to have the obvious flaw of being slow, and moreover, allowing ample opportunity for the population of the next sector to flee in advance – or indeed the city in general to do so, as subsequently occurs.

Fortunately (albeit not for Aaron Aardvark), Judge Dredd and his resistance have their own perspective, as well as a plan to act on it – abducting Cal’s lieutenant SJS Judge Slocum as part of a greater plan to exploit Cal’s insanity to save the city with a fish. And within an hour, Slocum is at the place of execution – with the casualty of Dredd’s plan, Deputy Chief Judge Fish, in hand (as opposed of course to the unfortunate casualties of Cal in that first hour).

The plan works! Cal immediately cancels the executions for an equally historic event, the funeral of Judge Fish – complete with a grand procession from the Hall of Justice itself, led by Cal in pride of place behind the noble fish’s ashes in a golden bowl.

However Cal doesn’t take it too well when the streets are deserted – “You ungrateful scum! You dare! I spare all your lives and you dare to insult me this way!”

By the way, Brian Bolland did the best art of Cal ranting and I am here for it – including what might well be characterized as Cal’s catchphrase, “You dare!”(in sheer exclamation).

Meanwhile, the population is prepared to flee the city for the Cursed Earth. Judge Dredd barely survived the Cursed Earth in his last epic and now the people of Mega-City One find it preferable to Cal. And of course, Cal will be having none of it. His solution is the same as that of the Soviets in Berlin in 1961 (as well as more recent political platforms) – building a wall. “I want a wall around the city – a wall a mile high with searchlights and gun emplacements! I want it in three weeks!”.

The population of the city – human and robot – are conscripted into building the wall. Judge Dredd and his resistance launch guerilla attacks on sections of the wall under construction, but ultimately to no avail – the wall is constructed on schedule in three weeks. Ironically, this proved to be one of Chief Judge Cal’s only positive contributions to the city in the long-term, perhaps in parallel to his historical predecessor’s Roman construction projects. The city wall would prove to be invaluable in defending the city from subsequent threats.

In the short term, however, the wall was Cal’s final imprisonment of the city – “Now the whole city is one huge prison! There is no escape, citizens! I own you, body and soul!”

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 2:

THE DAY THE LAW DIED 9-13

The Hunt / Slicey, Slicey – Oncey Twicey / The Crash / Dredd Shock News / The Law & the Looney (progs 98-102)

The Day the Law Died settles into a pattern of Chief Judge Cal becoming progressively more insane, while Judge Dredd is on the run from one near-death escape to another as he and his resistance is hunted by Cal’s forces.

Cal’s alien Klegg mercenaries hunt down Dredd with their Klegg-hounds, essentially a cross between bloodhounds and the crocodilian Kleggs themselves. Dredd and his resistance escape the Kleggs in their ‘road-liner’, only for it to plummet 8000 feet to their apparent doom as Cal shoots the road out from under them. (They build their roads high in Mega-City One).

Dredd’s resistance goes underground – literally, as their escape vehicle plummets crashes to the so-called ‘City Bottom’ and then through it to the Under-City. As featured in earlier episodes, Mega-City One is a built-up (again, literally) conglomeration of residential blocks, buildings and roadways extending thousands of feet into the air – and in many cases, built or concreted OVER the former cities or features, now known as the Under-City, such as New York (at least in part), and in this case, the Ohio River, now nicknamed the Big Smelly from its pollution. Indeed “it got so polluted they had to concrete it over.

Cal declares “Judges, today is the third happiest day of my life”, which remains perhaps the biggest mystery of the epic for me as I have no idea as to the other two – presumably the first is his accession to Chief Judge, but the second? Anyway, Cal declares it is cause for city-wide celebration by way of the Purge.

Not a purge, but the Purge as in the films of that name – not by that name of course (although where’s the check, Purge films?), but still the same principle as a criminal Saturnalia. Cal decrees that for the next 24 hours, there will be no law – “Citizens are free to do as they wish, with no fear of arrest!” Hmmm, leave the city, perhaps? However, no one takes advantage of that obvious loophole, even though the threatened exodus of millions of citizens was the whole reason Cal built a wall only a few episodes back – or indeed, takes advantage of the Purge for any criminal activity, as the streets are deserted and the citizens hide in their blocks.

The stated reason is that “blinds are drawn and flags are at half-mast” for Dredd (come to think of it, what IS the Mega-City One flag?), although one might also speculate that other reasons may well be the citizens’ wary fear of Cal’s caprice (or each other for that matter). Cal is enraged and bans happiness, as in literally outlawing happiness – “Laughter is banned! Smiling is banned! Conversation is banned! Happiness is illegal!”. Now that’s totalitarian!

Meanwhile, once again Dredd’s death has been overstated – as Dredd’s plummeting road-liner was a new design, “fitted with a crash-proof command capsule”. And “at the moment of impact, airbags inflated inside the cabin, cushioning the occupants”. Airbags?! Yeah, I’m not buying it. I don’t think any airbags are going to save you after a fall of 8000 feet and crashing through the road into the Under-City. To paraphrase Jerry Seinfeld referring to parachute helmets, after a fall like that those airbags will be wearing Dredd and his fellow judges for protection, not the other way round. It’s like Iron Man’s suit – yes, it may protect you from blows actually penetrating it but not from impact or inertia, with your body bouncing around inside the suit, or your organs bouncing around inside your body.

Anyway, Judge Dredd now fortunately finds himself an unlikely ally in the Under-City in the form of Fergee. Sigh – once again, the bile rises from the 1995 Judge Dredd film’s mangled adaptation of plot elements of The Day the Law Died. It may not be quite so bad as Judge Griffin – one of the leading figures of Dredd’s resistance in the storyline from the comics – being effectively cast into the villainous role of Cal himself, but it’s close.

In the film, Fergee is played by Rob Schneider as everyday Mega-City One citizen and the wimpy comic sidekick to Stallone’s Dredd. True – the Fergee of the comic storyline is something of a comic relief character, as a somewhat child-like simpleton, but he’s anything but a wimp. Indeed, he’s a hulking musclebound brawler so tough he made himself King of the Big Smelly armed only with a baseball bat – and immediately proceeds to go toe-to-toe with Dredd himself in one-on-one combat. Besides, no one deserves to be played by Rob Schneider. Perhaps not even Rob Schneider.

Fergee will also prove to be a decisive ally to Dredd’s opposition to Cal – and savior of the city itself – after of course Dredd proves his worth by beating Fergee in that one-to-one combat, which Fergee takes in good humor, laughing it off and becoming best friends with Dredd. You have to give Fergee credit – no one can call him a bad loser!

In the meantime, once again channeling his historical model for insanity and vanity, Judge Cal is auditioning the cast for a televised drama to commemorate his victory over Dredd. You…don’t want to see the poor misshapen people he’s dredged up for the role of Dredd. For the role of himself, he of course has picked vid-star Conred Conn, “the handsomest man of the world”. Small problem – Conn has retired and doesn’t want the part but that’s nothing a casual threat of decapitation can’t change…

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 2

THE DAY THE LAW DIED 14-15

Fergee’s Place / Trapped! (progs 103-104)

The Day the Law Died continues to play out with the efforts of Judge Dredd’s resistance – with their new ally Fergee who accommodates them in his Under-City hideout, a former car mechanic “body shop” – to defeat Cal. Fergee gives them his unsurprising backstory – he’s the sort of hulking brute that normally would be in trouble with the Law, despite his apparent good humor, and indeed did so he hid out in the Under-City, where his size and strength make him the equivalent of some sort of feudal king.

More importantly, while at Fergee’s hideout Dredd and his resistance correctly surmise how they alone remain unaffected among Mega-City judges. Judge Cal prepared the subliminal daily crime briefings for the judge force and programmed them for hypnotic obedience to him. It all fits – the Academy of Law tutors didn’t attend the briefings, Dredd was in the Cursed Earth and Giant was on a “month’s leave”. Wait – Mega-City judges have leave?! What do they do with it? That…doesn’t really feature in other story-lines. Despite that story-line quibble, it certainly shows Cal to be a cut above his historical predecessor Caligula – and to demonstrate cunning or intelligence quite apart from his growing insanity.

Dredd hatches a plan for his resistance force – “Easy…we break into Justice H.Q. and use Cal’s own tapes against him. And we do it with the help of our new friend.”

Hmm – that plan doesn’t sound “easy”, Judge Dredd. And indeed it isn’t – as we shall see, it relies on Walter the Wobot once again saving Judge Dredd from one of Mega-City One’s crises (that makes two now with the previous one being the Robot Wars – a third will be added with the Apocalypse War).

Even more so, it ultimately succeeds through a series of incredibly lucky break, albeit one that arises that Cal’s own insanity, poetically enough.

Anyway, the first step in the plan is Fergee taking Judge Dredd back to the surface, where Mega-City One remains under nightly curfew – and which leads to my Mega-City Law equivalent of a title drop drinking game, taking a shot for Dredd’s image excerpted for the Case Files volume cover.

Here the image arises from Fergee being all too happy to throw down (“get heavy”) with the Judges that have sighted them – and Dredd wisely deciding discretion is the better part of valor, particularly when it comes to a Justice Department pat-wagon.

The duo flee but Dredd comes to a literal dead end (heh – Dredd’s dead end). Fortunately, Dredd improvises a plan to impersonate one of Cal’s Judges apprehending a curfew breaker, as a ruse to get the jump on the Judges in the pat wagon and take the wagon for themselves. Fergee of course takes the opportunity to “get heavy” – and Dredd deputizes him with one of the fallen Judges’ badges. Aww – they really do like each other.

That brings them to the second step of Dredd’s plan – using his robot servant Walter to do the actual role of infiltrating Justice Department to retrieve one of Cal’s briefing tapes. Finding Walter is easy enough – he’s in Dredd’s apartment. However, that apartment has unfortunately – and inexplicably given you’d think they have better things to do as Cal’s enforcers AND they think Dredd is dead – been taken over by Cal’s Klegg mercenaries…

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 2

THE DAY THE LAW DIED 16-17

Splat / Betwayal (progs 105-106)

There’s only one way to deal with Kleggs – “it’s clobbering time!”.

Or as Dredd’s ally Fergee puts it here, as he and Dredd start clobbering the Kleggs occupying Dredd’s apartment – “It gettin’ heavy time!”

Well, that and “easy the Ferg!” as he literally batters a Klegg with his trusty baseball bat.

After making quick work of the Kleggs, Dredd gets down to the second part of his plan – using Walter to infiltrate Justice Department to retrieve one of Cal’s hypnotic briefing tapes, with Walter using the pretext of betraying Dredd (or betwaying Dwedd as Walter’s defective speech unit puts it, hence the episode title).

One wonders why, given the almost limitless number of things that could go wrong with the plan – and indeed almost do, but for a series of incredibly lucky breaks. The obvious flaw in the plan is, as SJS Judge Slocum protests to Cal, “the whole city knows that robot is sickeningly loyal to Judge Dredd!”.

The first lucky break is that Dredd’s ploy plays right into Cal’s insanity vanity (yes I know that should be insane vanity but I couldn’t resist the rhyming play on words) – as Cal sees that as a feature not a bug, making Walter’s apparent betrayal of Dredd even more compelling as a propaganda tool. What’s worse – Cal is right as Mega-City One’s population once again shows itself to be incredibly fickle.

The second lucky break is that Slocum slips up in his protest by calling Cal crazy, which also plays into Cal’s insanity. Slocum tries to pass it off as worry on Cal’s behalf but his days are clearly numbered.

The third lucky break is that Walter is able to just stroll into the right room and retrieve one of Cal’s briefing tape, albeit a few days of propaganda pass before he can do so.

The fourth lucky break is that when Slocum catches Walter red-handed and brings Walter before Cal, that’s when Cal enacts his insane vengeance on Slocum for calling him crazy – paralyzing Slocum with some sort of anesthetic drug before Slocum can warn him about Walter, then literally pickling Slocum in one of his usual warped jokes about “curing” Slocum’s worry lines or wrinkles, playing off Slocum’s excuse for calling him crazy.

The fifth and final lucky break is that Slocum dropped the briefing tape that he had taken from Walter (to show Cal) – and Cal not only gives it (back) to Walter but also asks Walter to take it to the briefing room.

Whew – that’s quite the chain of lucky breaks for Dredd’s plan to work! One wonders if it might have been better for one of his own resistance force to simply infiltrate Justice Department headquarters instead, using the same secret passage they use later in this same epic. Yes – Walter apparently has to open it from the inside, but they drop that implausible detail in the Apocalypse War when Dredd uses it again without any such assistance.

Despite Cal’s monumental stupidity here, I can’t help but admire his “Cal is watching you” posters that are showcased in this episode.

However, despite all those lucky breaks for Dredd’s plan to work, there’s still a lot that can go wrong – and is about to…

“Let them hate me so long as they fear me”.

Chief Judge Cal channels his historical namesake and predecessor Caligula as he surveys his mastery of Mega-City One “on the hundredth day of his reign” – “The people are mine, Grampus, body and soul. And why…? Fear, Grampus. Fear wielded with the precision of the surgeon’s scalpel!”

Well, I wouldn’t say you wielded it like a scalpel, Cal – more like bludgeoned the city with it like a sledgehammer.

Also, holy crap! It’s only been a hundred days of Cal’s reign? !What with sentencing the city to death, building the city wall and so on – it’s seemed longer. Well, he certainly puts his namesake to shame – Caligula reigned for about six months of sanity and then somewhat over three years of insanity. I guess when you only have episodes of six pages, you have to condense things. Although, technically, shouldn’t it be The Hundred Days the Law Died…

Also note the city wall – to keep Mega-City in rather than anyone out – with that huge lettering “you are being watched” which seems somewhat superfluous with the wall itself and all those aircraft.

Of course, being Cal, he’s not happy with things being too good for him either, as the voices in his head taunt him that the only way to go from perfection is down.

Now that Walter has retrieved one of Cal’s hypnotic Judge briefing tapes and sent it to them (by post!), the efforts of Dredd’s resistance to undo the subliminal programming becomes a desperate race against time as Cal’s insanity comes to a head and he sentences the whole city to death. You know, for the second time. This time, it’s because he wants to preserve the “perfection” of his city for posterity – and what says perfection better than nerve gas?:

“We can go out, citizens! We can end our lives in a glorious moment of sacrifice – and preserve our perfect city forever in its finest hour! To this end, nerve gas containers have been placed in every district. At noon tomorrow, I will personally press the button to release it!”

JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 2

THE DAY THE LAW DIED 19-20

Dredd’s Army / The Final Prog? (progs 108-109)

The fall of Chief Judge Cal – figuratively and literally.

As the epic draws to its conclusion, Judge Dredd and his “band of rebels” race against time to substitute their briefing tape for the subliminal hypnotic tape Chief Judge Cal uses to control the Judges in Mega-City One. Racing against time, that is, as it is the dawn of Death Day – when Cal aims to preserve the perfection of ‘his’ city with nerve gas.

Their briefing tape succeeds in dispelling Cal’s hypnotic control over the Judges – with surprising ease given Dredd’s resistance only had a few days to work on it – but we’ll circle back to that. Even Cal’s Praetorian Guard of SJS judges and Klegg mercenaries abandon him, the latter attempting to surrender but Dredd is not inclined to take Klegg prisoners.

However, Cal flees to the iconic Statue of Judgement, where he holes up with the control device for the nerve gas canisters throughout the city, poised to exterminate Mega-City One.

And the epic draws to a close like a James Bond film, with the timer ticking down the doom of the city as Dredd and his colleagues race to Cal in the head of the Statue – “in five minutes, the nerve gas control becomes active!”

Unfortunately, while Dredd’s resistance has neutralized Cal’s hypnotic control of the Judges, in the actual presence of Cal it remains too powerful to resist – and presumably also because Dredd’s rebellion substituted one night’s tape as against months of Cal’s subliminal hypnotism. There – I told you we’d circle back to that. All seems lost as the other judges immobilize Dredd and his rebel judges with Cal’s finger at the button – when Fergee, gravely wounded but still alive after Cal shot him while charging at Cal, saves the day by grappling Cal and leaping over the railing, taking Cal (and the other judges who tried to intervene at Cal’s hypnotic command) with him. In his insanity, Cal proclaims that he can defy gravity by commanding it to stop, which works out for him (and everyone else falling with him) as well as you’d expect. Which is to say, not at all, as the tyrant falls to his well-deserved death.

And the last page wraps it all up with the aftermath of the end of Cal’s reign of terror – the last Kleggs are hunted down, memorial statues are erected to Fergee as savior of the city and a new Chief Judge is appointed. With respect to the last, the judges clamor for Dredd as Chief Judge but he characteristically refuses. Instead, he proposes the most senior judge amongst his rebel judges, Judge Griffin from the Academy of Law. Of course, Chief Judge tends to be an ill-fated position within Mega-City One, but Chief Judge Griffin doesn’t do too badly in the position in subsequent episodes. As for Judge Dredd, he returns to where he is needed the most – to the streets! Ah, you’re not fooling anyone, Dredd – we all know you just hate the paperwork and politics. And with that, the Day (or technically the Hundred Days) the Law Died is (are) over.

Mega-City Law: Top 10 Judge Dredd Epics & Episodes (Special Mention: Themes & Tropes)

Posted on May 27, 2024May 27, 2024 by Alex Stark

These are my thematic special mentions for the Judge Dredd comic – special mention not so much for individual epics or episodes of Judge Dredd but for the classic or other SF themes or tropes that recur in the comic.

(1) MUTANTS (CURSED EARTH & UNDER-CITY)

Mutants are a recurring classic theme or trope in SF in general, indeed up there with the top such themes or tropes, albeit not the very top – I’ll be featuring the top two such themes or tropes in my next two (second and third) special mentions.

However, mutants are an SF theme or trope that arguably looms the largest in Judge Dredd, indeed from the outset – with the mutant Brotherhood of Darkness featured as antagonists in the third episode of the comic. This is perhaps not surprising given the nature of Judge Dredd as post-apocalyptic SF – and not just any apocalypse but nuclear war, that most mutagenic of apocalypses.

When the Brotherhood of Darkness were introduced all the way back in the third episode of Judge Dredd, it was as a somewhat low key mutant incursion into Mega-City One, albeit a predecessor of one of my favorite recurring epic or episodic storylines of that type – an incursion into or invasion of Mega-City One from the Cursed Earth. Mind you, the Cursed Earth had a similarly low key introduction in this early episode, simply described as the “wilderness from the Atomic Wars”. However, that “wilderness” soon took its full shape as the Cursed Earth – if by wilderness of course you meant most of the former United States outside the coastal mega-cities (Mega-City One on the east coast, Mega-City Two on the west coast and Texas City on the Gulf coast), now dangerous and above all mutated badlands, the Weird West of Judge Dredd. The backstory is that the coastal mega-cities had their nuclear shields absent from the rest of the country. And so the Atomic Wars saw the United States replaced as a political entity by the three mega-cities, independent of but semi-allied to each other, and the United States government (that had launched the Atomic Wars) replaced by the Judges and Department of Justice in each Mega-City – a pattern apparently repeated almost everywhere else in the world as well.

Not surprisingly, the Cursed Earth took its full shape (and scope) in the epic named for it, in which the Brotherhood of Darkness recurred as more formidable antagonists. Similarly, that first true Judge Dredd epic storyline was the first in another of my favorite recurring epic or episodic storylines, like the previous one only in reverse – an incursion into the Cursed Earth from Mega-City One, usually by judges on a mission or so-called ‘hot dog’ run for training.

Back to our theme or trope for special mention, the Cursed Earth is essentially a mutated United States – not just in its mostly mutant human population, but also in virtually the entirety of its animal population, occasionally characters in their own right. Not to mention its flora, although more as backdrop than characters. Indeed, even the very geography often resembles some mutant abstraction.

Needless to say, Mega-City One and its inhabitants have mostly had an antagonistic relationship with the Cursed Earth and its mutant inhabitants, at least until recently. And by inhabitants of Mega-City One, that included the Judges or at least the Law – mutants were excluded from the city by law, whether mutants seeking to enter the city as illegal immigrants or even Mega-City citizens who were born with (or who manifested) a mutation. (Unless it was useful to the Judges, like a psi power).

However, that has changed recently, with Mega-City One and the Department of Justice evolving (heh) to a progressive policy – one that saw the Cursed Earth and its inhabitants as similarly part of the former United States, even territory or citizens to be reclaimed by the American mega-cities and their jurisdiction. Interestingly, Judge Dredd has always been one of the more progressive Judges when it comes to extending Mega-City One’s jurisdiction to mutants or the Cursed Earth – indeed, at his noblest and most heroic in his embodiment of duty extending the protection of the Law to any or all who call for its help, regardless of whether they are resident in Mega-City One or not, whether “mutie, alien, cyborg or human”. (Although he does seem to have blind spot when it comes to robots as potential citizens).

NOTABLE EPICS & EPISODES FEATURING MUTANTS (OR THE CURSED EARTH)

Too many to mention – essentially any time Judge Dredd leaves Mega-City One to the Cursed Earth, which is frequently after the epic of that name. Also when there are mutant incursions into the Cursed Earth, which is also frequently. Arguably includes the population of the Under-City as well – and Mega-City One has increasingly opened itself up to Cursed Earth migrants, who are, after all, also former Americans.

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

(2) ROBOTS (ROBOT WARS)

For the second of our thematic special mentions, it’s one of the top two recurring SF tropes in general and in Judge Dredd – robots, particularly Mega-City’s robot ‘population’. Robots loom large in Judge Dredd, even more so than mutants as their presence is ubiquitous throughout Mega-City One and the wider world of Judge Dredd. There are few episodes without some robot or other machine intelligence in it, at least in the background quietly performing some role. And indeed, robots were at the heart of the first Judge Dredd ‘epic’ in episodes 9-17, or more precisely mini-epic or longer story arc, albeit one that cemented the comic as an enduring series in 2000 AD – the Robot Wars.

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. Ultimately Judge Dredd and humans in general prevail in the robot war, with a little help from loyalist robots (including recurring character Walter the Wobot), but the Robot Wars continue to cast a long shadow in the comic between humans and robots. There are some discordant notes in the storyline – 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.

The relationship between robots and Mega-City’s human population in general – and its human Judges in particular – has been almost as problematic as Mega-City’s relationship with the mutant population of the former United States. And just as with mutants, Mega-City would seem to benefit from adopting a more nuanced or progressive 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.

As for Judge Dredd himself, he seems to have something of a blind spot to robots as potential citizens, even if he occasionally seems to be more sensitive to this issue than his fellow Judges on occasion, although not as charitably as he is towards mutants. And he was downright hostile in his opposition to robots as Judges – although he has warmed to them recently after robot Judges have been introduced despite his years of opposition to their use. So too have the Mega-City human population, again after some initial (and often openly hostile) opposition – with citizens now generally liking the robot Judges more than the human ones.

NOTABLE EPICS AND EPISODES FEATURING ROBOTS (OR ROBOT WARS)

Pretty much all of them, as robots are an ubiquitous feature of the twenty-second century

Robot Wars are somewhat less commonplace, most notably occurring in the story arc of that name (in progs 9-17 Case Files 1)

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

(3) ALIENS

And rounding out our top three thematic special mentions is that other top SF trope, up there with robots as the top two tropes of SF and probably exceeding robots to be the top trope – aliens. Interestingly, for such a predominant trope in SF, aliens don’t feature as much in Judge Dredd as their robot counterparts, or even mutants, who would otherwise rank a distinctly distant third to aliens (if that) when ranking general SF tropes by popularity or prevalence.

Yes – aliens are there in Judge Dredd. The highly intelligent and noble alien Tweak, who resembled a bipedal rock-eating aardvark, featured prominently in Judge Dredd’s first true epic, The Cursed Earth – although it’s not entirely clear how an alien would find itself in the titular setting, of all places. The far less intelligent and far less noble alien mercenaries, the Kleggs, who resembled bipedal crocodilians, featured prominently in Dredd’s second epic immediately after that, The Day the Law Died (and unlike Tweek, would pop up occasionally elsewhere). And a whole plethora of aliens and alien worlds as Judge Dredd ventured into space in the Judge Child Quest. And from then on – aliens have featured in Judge Dredd, as occasional visitors or migrants to Earth, or perhaps more so, when Judge Dredd leaves Earth to visit alien space, but neither occurred frequently.

And there’s a reason that aliens feature so infrequently or irregularly in Judge Dredd – it’s because, to borrow a phrase from recent political notoriety, Earth is a shthole. It doesn’t exactly beckon as a stellar destination, and more usually discourages alien visitors, either openly in the form of outright bans and restrictions, or in the form of just being terrible to them. It is a post-apocalyptic planet still mostly uninhabitable from nuclear war after all, with a disturbingly frequent tendency to pile up more apocalypses and add hyphenated post- prefixes to that post-apocalyptic description. And Mega-City One would rank up there by all those descriptors – shthole, terrible place and ever more post-apocalyptic – although by no means the worst place in the future world and depressingly perhaps one of the best. In fairness, to borrow another phrase from recent political notoriety, the aliens usually aren’t sending their best either.

So to paraphrase the War of the Worlds musical adaptation, the chances of aliens coming to Earth, while perhaps not a million to one, tend to be low – but still, they come. From time to time at least – although usually not pleasant for either us or them.

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

(4) SPACE COLONIZATION

American Judges on the moon!

Space – the final frontier. Also one of the definitive tropes of SF – I have a friend, whose running gag is to argue with me that only films set in space are science fiction, much to my frustration.

Now while obviously I dissent from that definition as far too narrow (don’t get me started), it is true that space and space colonization is one of the definitive tropes of science fiction, ranking almost up there with the duo of robots and aliens that feature in my second and third top thematic special mention entries.

And it is a trope that features prevalently in Judge Dredd almost from its outset. There’s the aforementioned American Judges on the moon, in the Luna-1 mini-epic in progs 42-58, where Judge Dredd is appointed Judge Marshall to the titular American lunar colony, first and largest of the lunar colonies, the administration of which was effectively shared between the three American mega-cities. Other mega-cities – notably the Sov-cities and Sino-cities – also had or have lunar colonies.

Even before that, however, Mega-City One’s most infamous space colony played an important background role – the penal space colony on Titan, to which Judges who break the law are sentenced, after being surgically altered with technology to survive un-suited in the colony. The result is not pretty, although I’m not entirely sure it would work either. Anyway, Titan featured in the background to the Return of Rico in prog 30, in which Judge Dredd’s clone brother returns to Mega-City One for vengeance against Dredd.

There’s also various orbital colonies or space ships which are effectively the same thing, just not bound to the surface of any moon or planet, albeit more for those elite enough to afford it, as in the film Elysium.

Mega-City One not only maintained its Justice Department space ship, styled as Justice-One in a similar fashion to the presidential Air Force One, but also maintains a space corps or space marines to “control a limited space empire”, including colonies or stations throughout the solar system, often in competition with space colonies of other mega-cities. There also seems to be regular space traffic to and from Mega-City One.

More far-flung human colonies, deep in alien space, seemingly independent of any mega-city on Earth, feature in the Judge Child Quest, including the planet Xanadu, where the human colony resembled the American West.

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

(5) TIME TRAVEL (ALTERNATE DIMENSIONS)

That archetypal SF theme or trope, time travel was introduced with Justice Department’s prototype Proteus time travel device in the City of the Damned epic – where of course it is the literal plot device to investigate Mega-City One’s destruction predicted by precognitive Psi-Judge Feyy for 2120, thirteen years in the future at that point in the storyline. It also is the literal plot device to resolve that epic as Judge Dredd simply fixes the future in the present. With extreme prejudice.

Once introduced, time travel became more regular in the comic. In the two years after Justice Department used their vast resources to build their prototype time machine, a citizen – albeit a mad scientist- just pops off and builds his own to snatch up Jack the Ripper from the past. We also saw a freak natural wormhole in time that did the same, plucking a German air patrol from the Second World War and throwing it into Mega-City One. Time travel was to recur in both forms, that is by occasional ‘natural’ occurrences, but more frequently by deliberate human invention, primarily by Justice Department itself. For the latter, Justice Department use of time travel technology was so prolific that it created a unit for it, the Future Crimes Unit – which challenges Psi Division for jurisdiction, with its predictive powers of actually going to the future to see it being touted over Psi Division’s precognitive talent. We don’t quite get to see all that prolific use in the comic itself however, but it does recur on occasion in narratives involving Judge Dredd.

And then there’s the dimensional travel between alternate dimensions or parallel worlds that was introduced even earlier – with Judge Death and the Dark Judges, as well as the Apocalypse Warp used by the Sovs.

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

(6) APOCALYPSE

If anything defines the world of Judge Dredd, it is that it is 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 (to which this entry and the following entry pay tribute by their titles).

Indeed, the world of Judge Dredd was definitively shaped by an apocalyptic event – the Atomic Wars of 2070, perhaps not surprisingly for the comic’s origins in the heightened Cold War tension of the 1970’s and 1980’s. And most of the world and its oceans still has the scars as radioactive wasteland – with the Cursed Earth, almost the entire interior of the former United States, and the Black Atlantic, as definitive parts of Judge Dredd’s world, the former from the second episode.

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 – literally in the Apocalypse War, where we get to see an entire alternate dimension earth shattered as an aside. As we’ve seen, the world of Judge Dredd originated in nuclear war with the Atomic Wars – and the Soviets had another red-hot go at it in the Apocalypse War, still Judge Dredd’s most apocalyptic epic, at least in terms of Mega-City One’s body count.

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. And so you have a world that ironically both a post-apocalyptic setting AND a claustrophobically crowded dystopian setting, with the world’s population crammed into mega-cities that are themselves socioeconomic dystopias within the larger global and environmental dystopia.

“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”.

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

(7) WAR

War, huh, yeah!
What is it good for?

Well in science fiction, quite a lot actually – often critically driving the plot or premise of SF works. And Judge Dredd is no exception – the fundamental premise on which the world of Judge Dredd built, is essentially World War Three, or the Atomic Wars of 2070.

You’d think that the world’s mega-cities might be wary of war, as the post-apocalyptic remnants – albeit populous – of the Atomic Wars. But no – they’re surprisingly keen to duke it out, and nuke it out, in wars. Particularly so for the long-running rivalry between the American Mega-City One and the Soviet East Meg One – which saw its ultimate escalation in the Apocalypse War, wiping out half of the former and all of the latter, with a body count of almost a billion people.

In fairness, international wars – or rather, their equivalent in Judge Dredd’s world, inter-city wars, since the mega-cities are effectively nations in size and purpose – are uncommon.

There’s even wars in space, although wars in the lunar colony are fought as some sort of bizarre sport, Rollerball style. There doesn’t seem to be quite the same restraint in the rest of space though, as demonstrated by Mega-City One’s Space Corps. (And there was that alien planet of nearly war, albeit again fought in a bizarre analogue of televised sport, which Dredd encountered in the Judge Child Quest).

But mostly the wars in Judge Dredd are smaller scale wars – with the majority arguably as civil wars, albeit somewhat one-sided, as with Dredd’s tiny resistance force in The Day the Law Died. More notable, and even more definitive of Mega-City One, are the ‘block wars’ fought between neighbouring residential blocks, usually by the Citi-Def forces of each block – which ironically are intended for civilian defence against external threats (or usurpation of Justice Department by another Chief Judge like Cal).

RATING: 5 STARS*****
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(8) CLONES

Send in the clones!

Clones may not have the same prevalence as aliens or robots in SF, but are a recurring trope – which looms large in Judge Dredd, not least because Dredd himself is a clone. Even the Stallone film got that right.

Dredd – Joseph Dredd – is a clone of the first Chief Judge, the Father of Justice, Eustace T Fargo. As was Rico Dredd, Joseph Dredd’s corrupt clone-brother, introduced as early as prog 30 in what is technically his last as well as his first appearance, since Dredd guns him down in a showdown. Technically that is, as Rico did appear in subsequent episodes (set before his death) and remains a fundamental element in the Dredd mythos – metaphorically Dredd will always carry his clone brother with him. 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 (as all Dredd’s best adversaries are dark shadows of himself and the Judges in general – including his ultimate adversary Judge Death and the Dark Judges).

Thereafter we are introduced to other Dredd clones – or more precisely Fargo clones. There’s the rogue Judda in the Oz epic, who sought to clone citizens for obedience and used a number of clone bloodlines including that of Fargo – particularly Judge Kraken, who is rehabilitated by Mega-City One’s Justice Department after the Judda are defeated, only for his fall as tragic figure in Necropolis.

However, despite Kraken, Justice Department has sought other Dredd clones, with a view to replacing Dredd himself when he ages beyond active duty or is killed in duty (essentially the same thing, as we know Dredd will take the Long Walk). Of these, Rico is the best and obvious successor to Dredd himself. That’s not the first Rico – the clone took Rico’s name for surname, feeling the name deserved a second and better chance. The other Dredd clones are more hit and miss, at least as replacement for Dredd himself.

RATING: 4 STARS****
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(9) PSI

Ah – psi! The greek letter adapted by science fiction and used for the full spectrum of psychic phenomena or mental abilities, such as telepathy or telekinesis, to make them sound more science-y. And hence also used in Judge Dredd, where psi not only ranks as one of our thematic special mentions, but also as a division within Justice Department, notably introduced with Psi-Judge Anderson in the first Judge Death storyline. Psi-Division deals in psychic and supernatural phenomena, particularly threats to Mega-City One, using Judges with psychic or psi abilities.

And so it’s apt that Psi-Division was introduced along with Judge Death, one of the more horror-themed storylines and adversaries in Judge Dredd, as psi and horror tend to be a matched pair within the Dreddverse – the psychic and supernatural phenomena or threats with which Psi-Division deals tend to resemble standard supernatural horror.

Interestingly, psi abilities predated the introduction of Psi-Division within the comics – indeed, introduced with a stray mutant youth in The Cursed Earth epic who brought down the mutant Brotherhood of Darkness with his powers.

RATING: 4 STARS****

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(10) HORROR

Horror is a genre that recurs surprisingly often in Judge Dredd. Well perhaps that’s not too surprising given my thematic special mentions feature recurring horror elements or antagonists – most demonstrably spiders (particularly the mutant spiders that occur on the scale they do in Judge Dredd) but also mutants, robots, aliens and dinosaurs to some degree or other, as well as vampires and werewolves. And that’s even before we get to antagonists such as the Dark Judges and Judge Death.

You could argue that daily life in Mega-City One is something of a horror story – at least in the survival horror genre. Or that there are muted elements of horror even in epics that are not otherwise horror – for example Block Mania resembles the rage virus you see in some horror films (such as 28 Days Later) and the Sovs use less humanoid robot terminators in the Apocalypse War.

Of course, I’m not sure that many epics or episodes would be horror in the purest sense – after all, our protagonist is probably a little too invulnerable and there’s too many other genres bouncing around for that. Yet many at least contain some horror elements – often playfully borrowed from the genre (usually to provide antagonists for Dredd) or ones that could readily be recast as horror.

RATING: 4 STARS****

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(11) APES

Apes are a surprisingly prevalent trope in SF – an evocation of evolution and echo of human nature. Apes had been used for the latter in literature long predating SF or evolutionary theory, but SF offered a new trope – ‘uplift’ apes. That is, apes ‘uplifted’ through human technological enhancement to a higher level of intelligence, even rivaling humanity. Perhaps the most famous example is the Planet of the Apes franchise.

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 in 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 stereotype. 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.

More regular or non-uplift apes have also popped up in the Judge Dredd comic. I wouldn’t anticipate many survived the Atomic Wars, even in Africa or Asia given the extent of global devastation, at least in non-mutated form. However, apes appear to be kept as pets – most famously including the orangutan Dave, who was voted in as Mayor of Mega-City One. Indeed, the most popular politician Mega-City One has ever had (not that either the office of mayor or city council count for much), although sadly it did not save him from assassination. It does beg the question of why an uplift ape hasn’t sought the office, hoping to recapture the popularity of Dave.

And also apes or at least ape-like creatures have popped up in the reverse to uplift – as devolved humans, in one of my favorite episodes of Judge Dredd, Monkey Business at Charles Darwin Block. Speaking of monkey business, I’ll expand this entry to include monkeys as well. We’re all primates here!

RATING: 4 STARS****
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(12) DINOSAURS

Or as I like to call this thematic special mention, Jurassic Dredd.

No, seriously – Judge Dredd did Jurassic Park before Jurassic Park. Yes, even the novel. The Cursed Earth epic introduced that there are dinosaurs roaming the Cursed Earth, because why the hell not? Essentially, it was the same premise as Jurassic Park – genetically re-engineered dinosaurs were created for the Dinosaur National Park in the continental United States, but survived and were let loose by the Atomic Wars.

For that matter, the 2000 AD anthology comic (which features Judge Dredd) has a special relationship with dinosaurs, owing mostly to writer Pat Mills. With his characteristic misanthropic style, Mills will essentially favor any antagonist – robot, alien, even great white sharks – over humans, particularly if that antagonist kills humans more violently than most. In fairness, the humans in his stories usually have it coming – indeed, it is the humans that are the antagonists. (With the exception of Judge Dredd – for whom Mills had a soft spot as co-creator and usually showcased human heroism).

And those misanthropic tendencies took shape with dinosaurs in 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. One can’t help but feel Mills wanted to shoehorn dinosaurs into his Cursed Earth epic from his Flesh series – which he did, not just figuratively in its use of dinosaurs, but literally in that his Cursed Earth tyrannosaur Satanus is some sort of genetic reincarnation of one of the offspring of the main tyrannosaur from Flesh. Somehow I don’t think genetic re-engineering works that way.

Anyway, dinosaurs have been roaming the Cursed Earth ever since, although not in great number and only rarely when writers remember or want to use them. Which is not as often as I would like – which is to say every episode of Judge Dredd, because everything’s better than dinosaurs. Or perhaps not as often as its special mention might suggest, but dinosaurs will always get special mention from me. And because it’s not like I don’t have the cover image of Satanus about to chow down on a bound Dredd – one of the most iconic images, if not the most iconic image, of the Cursed Earth epic – and will not use it any chance I get. 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.

RATING: 4 STARS****
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(13) SPIDERS

If dinosaurs earn thematic special mention in Judge Dredd Comics, then so too do spiders, particularly for this arachnophobe fan – Judge Dredd gets spider-iffic surprisingly often, and more often than he gets Jurassic. Although of course the spiders in Judge Dredd are essentially a subset of our special theme of mutants or mutation, courtesy of the Cursed Earth, that endless source of mutant weirdness.

After all, we’re not talking your humdrum household spiders here – we’re talking mutant spiders that are on an entirely different scale of horror. We’re talking mutant spiders on a vast numerical scale – the spider-invasion of Mega-City One by a mega-swarm of billions of insanely toxic Cursed Earth spiders in The Black Plague mini-epic. But in subsequent episodes, we’re also talking mutant spiders on a monstrous physical scale – the usual giant spiders that are stock of schlock horror, not least the titantic tarantula from one Judge Dredd annual special (in our feature image). And we’re even talking a rare disease that turns people into giant spiders, that occasionally pops up in Mega-City One

RATING: 4 STARS****
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(14) DISEASE

Yes – disease ranks a special thematic mention, aptly enough in these pandemic times. Disease is something that recurs surprisingly often in Judge Dredd – and at a surprisingly substantial level of narrative importance, indeed holding the fate of mega-cities in the balance. Disease is at the heart of the first true Judge Dredd epic, albeit mostly offstage – as an existential threat to Mega-City One’s West Coast counterpart, Mega-City Two, which prompts Dredd’s epic quest across the Cursed Earth to deliver the vaccine. Of course, they, ahem, borrowed the storyline from Roger Zelazny’s Damnation Alley, just in the opposite direction, as the storyline in Damnation Alley was that a former Hell’s Angel had to drive a vaccine from the West Coast to the East Coast in a post-apocalyptic United States after a nuclear war.

As for the disease itself, 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.

Nor is that the last existential threat to a mega-city from disease as a bioweapon, although in subsequent storylines that threat is to Mega-City One – most destructively in the recent Day of Chaos storyline, where the disease once again seems to have a rage virus effect. Also most poignantly, as the Judges fail to avert the disease overwhelming the city and instead must resort to desperate, heartbreaking city-wide triage as they evacuate a small uninfected remnant of the population to safe zones.

And then there are the less existentially threatening but more exotic diseases that occasionally bubble up to the surface of the Dreddverse – usually of a mutant or alien variety. Again – no boring flu or anything like that here. In fairness, one of these might have been existentially threatening if not contained – Grubb’s Disease, named for the ex-mayor who contracted it, although it is not so much a genuine disease caused by bacteria or virus, but an extremely virulent and ultimately fatal mutant fungus that grows on humans. Fortunately, while inescapably virulent (in that its growth cannot be stopped once on a human host), it is slow-acting and hence more readily able to be contained before it spreads by spores (upon death of its host).

And so we come to my personal favorite (and my featured image) from the Judge Child Quest – Jigsaw Disease! You do not want to catch Jigsaw Disease – a disease so alien it does not make any sense. If anything, it doesn’t seem to work on a biological level so much as an extra-dimensional one. Parts of the body vanish, literally like taking pieces out of a jigsaw – and although they are clearly not there as things pass (or fall) through the now vacant spaces, the remaining body parts stay in place and continue to function as if the missing body parts were there, even down to a disembodied eye or mouth. Uh…quantum entanglement? Of course, there’s no real explanation other than magic or fantasy. (Indeed, I’d love to see jigsaw disease or a variant of it in a fantasy setting).

As the patient himself exclaims to his doctor on an alien world (that itself, like Jigsaw Disease, resembles a surreal Magritte painting), “It just doesn’t make any sense! How do I say together? Why don’t I feel any pain? Where am I disappearing to?”. Worse, despite the painlessness of it, jigsaw disease is fatal. As the alien doctor informs his patient – “There is no cure for jigsaw disease. When a piece of you is lost, it’s lost forever! I’d give you forty days at most. You’ll go on wasting, until…you’re just not there!”

RATING: 4 STARS****

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(15) FADS

Of course, this is arguably the broadest of our thematic special mentions, since as a dystopian future satire Judge Dredd is comprised of one trend or another extrapolated to absurdly or blackly comic intensity – “a society in which every single thing has become monstrously overwhelming”.

This entry is for the recurring storyline idea of which I am particularly fond – Mega-City One’s innumerable consumer fads. Of course, in a mega-city where hundreds of millions of bored and unemployed citizens (from a 90% unemployment rate due to automation) pursue various hobbies, futuristic or otherwise, at best (or commit crimes at worse), even that more narrowly defined theme can be very broad.

My soft spot is for those ill-conceived and short-lived consumer fads that bubble to the surface of Mega-City One life – usually to unintended consequences that range from unpleasant to disastrous, with the latter involving the direct intervention of the Justice Department, usually by banning them. Weird and dangerous consumer fads are a recurring feature of Mega-City One – we have never seen Justice Department’s Consumer Protection Division, but it must surely be the most unsung and hardest working division within the Department.

A substantial proportion of consumer fads originate it with Otto Sump, introduced in Case Files Volume 3 – Mega-City One’s ugliest citizen handpicked by Judge Dredd himself as bait to root out criminals preying on the winners of the hit TV show, Sob Story. Sump then used the fortune he won – the highest ever on the show – to bankroll one dubious fad after another, much to the disdain of Dredd whom Sump persists in seeing as a friend, although at least the fads Sump promoted tended to be unsightly and more unpleasant than disastrous.

One of my favorite examples of such fads is also representative of their idiocy and that of Mega-City One’s citizens – the things marketed as couch potatoes depicted in my feature image. One wonders how such monstrosities – weird genetically engineered vegetative lifeforms, but of creepy humanoid appearance with some mobility and ability to “talk” – could ever catch on as household ‘companions’, notably in their titular role of sitting beside people as they watched television. And of course, as usual, there’s a catch with unintended consequences – the couch potatoes are designed with some rudimentary psychic ability to ‘read’ people’s thoughts, all the better for ‘conversation’ about television shows with their owners. Unfortunately, that ability also allows the couch potatoes to control thoughts as well – only of course, with people themselves of the most rudimentary intelligence, but as Dredd dryly observes, in other words two thirds of Mega-City One’s citizen population…

RATING: 4 STARS****

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(16) DRUGS

Drugs also rank a special thematic mention – although they aren’t as prolific as one might expect in storylines about crime in a dystopian future police state. In fairness, they probably do feature as often as other special thematic mentions – probably more so than apes, dinosaurs, and spiders or about as much as disease, but not quite looming as large as the latter’s narrative importance unless of course you count Oracle Spice or the chemical agent that induced Block Mania. And like disease, we’re not talking any boring contemporary drugs – not least because that might have been too much in the nature of adult content for the initial publication of the comic, which similarly had to edit sexual references and language (hence the use of drokk as an expletive) – but more exotic futuristic or even alien drugs.

As mentioned, one drug of substantial narrative importance was the alien Oracle Spice featured in the Judge Child Quest, indeed to the point that the Judge Child Quest might have been titled in part the Oracle Spice Quest. It was extremely psychoactive, so much so that it induced psychic ability – particularly as its name suggests, precognitive visions. However, those visions were about as cryptic as historical oracles and killed the single unfortunate Judge who used them – not to mention that its sole source, the giant alien toad Sagbelly, was killed by Judge Dredd, so there’s no more where that came from and hence it was limited to that storyline.

Another drug or chemical agent of fundamental narrative importance as the one planted in Mega-City One’s water supplies by the Soviets to induce city-wide Block Mania and cripple the mega-city prior to the Apocalypse War. As such, it was second only to the Chaos Bug bioweapon in its city-destroying potential, albeit indirectly as the real destruction came from the affected citizens to each other and the Soviet attack on the weakened mega-city.

Of course, some drugs are even used by the Judges, notably anti-aging drugs that seem to be part of a whole panoply of anti-aging technologies or treatments – which of course accounts for Judge Dredd in his eighties having the health and fitness of a man half his age.

As we mentioned, criminal ‘street’ drugs tend to be exotic futuristic or alien drugs. An example of the latter is another anti-aging drug, but which is illegal in this case – as it has to be lethally harvested from the glands of a sentient alien species known as Stookies. Otherwise, the usual named criminal street drug that recurs in Judge Dredd stories is the stimulant Zziz.

More interestingly – and thematically consistent with the dystopian future police state theme – are those substances that have been outlawed as drugs, allowing the writers to use them as analogous to contemporary drugs in storylines. The most notable of these is sugar, which is written as a direct parallel to cocaine, even in its point of origin in the corrupt Pan-Andean conurb. And it looks like Mega-City One criminals have a sweet tooth because another outlawed substance is the fictional Umpty candy, originally manufactured lawfully (presumably without sugar) but then outlawed as it was just so delicious it was addictive, even to machines (somehow).

Perhaps the most significant drug of all ironically did not originate in the comics, but in the 2012 Dredd film – the drug Slo-Mo, which pretty much is exactly what it says on the tin causing a ‘high’ of slow-motion perception, and is the basis for the antagonist Ma-Ma’s criminal empire.

RATING: 4 STARS****

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(17) MAGIC & GODS

That’s right. Magic.

Not psi. Magic.

Judge Dredd is a SF fantasy kitchen sink in which anything goes – including magic. Of course, usually the comic attempts an SF veneer of psi over what, to all intensive purposes and functional effect, is magic. Every so often however it defaults to pure fantasy magic – albeit usually for comic effect, with magic coming up second best against the Law.

The definitive classic story – and I believe the first – to this effect was The Genie in prog 514, which featured a cover in which Dredd substitutes three years in the cubes for the genie’s three wishes, and for the concluding punchline “Judge Dredd proves that magic is no defence from the law”. And also the magic premise of a literal genie of the lamp, three wishes and all. That’s right – we were dealing with outright magic here, without even any bare pretence at it being some sort of mutation or psi. Judge Dredd is predominantly SF, albeit very much on the softer side with all that psi and so on, but every so often it defaults to fantasy, including magic. Not too often of course, but enough to bubble up to the surface every now and then, as here, even if it is a little silly.

Although it wasn’t the first time we encountered magic in Judge Dredd, as Murd the Necromancer literally resurrected Dredd with it in The Judge Child Quest. Of course, back then, we weren’t sure it was magic, given that the quest was driven by psi, as well as all that weird galactic alien stuff and Oracle Spice. For that matter, the Dark Judges are clearly supernatural or magic in nature, but of course that just seemed part of their extradimensional schtick (and of course psi featured heavily with them as well).

We definitely see more magic for comic effect in the Judge Dredd comic subsequent to The Genie. And I’m totally going to include Toots Milloy, the witch in my feature image, in my Top 10 Girls of Judge Dredd when we reach her.

And then there are gods. That’s right – actual gods, ot at least their functional equivalent. They exist, but usually to the same comic effect as magic in Judge Dredd.

We’ll include God in this as well or at least His functional equivalent, although Hé’s usually called Grud in the Judge Dredd comic – not, I suspect, because it was a plausible evolution of language but to avoid any issues with publication. Later issues have tended to drop Grud for God.

RATING: 4 STARS****

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(18) WEREWOLVES & VAMPIRES

Werewolves and vampires, oh my!

As I noted in its thematic special mention entry, horror is a genre that recurs surprisingly often in Judge Dredd – and given that the world of Judge Dredd is a regular SF fantasy kitchen sink in which anything goes, sooner or later werewolves were going to appear. As they did in The Cry of the Werewolf epic (which got its title from a film) in Case Files 7.

Of course, the Judge Dredd comic tends to prefer SF rationales for its fantasy, even if that SF is extremely soft on the Moh scale of SF hardness. So not surprisingly, the introduction of werewolves into Mega-City One strove to give them an unconvincing scientific explanation, as unconvincing as the spider bite in Spider Man – a mutagenic or more precisely lycanthropic chemical that had bubbled up in the Undercity.

And where werewolves went, vampires were sure to follow – as they did with the vampire Judges in the City of the Damned epic. In that epic, the comic doesn’t even bother with a SF explanation, except in so far as ‘psi’ powers are a SF catch-all explanation for what is basically fantasy magic – all (future) Mega-City One Judges have been turned into vampires by the Mutant. Well, except for future Dredd. He’s a zombie.

That epic might readily have seen vampires become a one-off feature. After all, the vampires in that epic were the Judges from the future 2120 timeline transformed into vampires by the uniquely powerful psi ability of the mutated Owen Krysler or Judge Child. However, Volume 9 reintroduced vampires with its Noseferatu storyline, opening the floodgates for them becoming a recurring and surprisingly regular feature with its Nosferatu storyline. Not so much werewolves though, as it’s difficult to adapt the classic werewolf so that they are recognizable as such – whereas the basic themes or tropes of vampires can be readily adapted by any number of fantasy or SF rationales. One such was the Nosferatu storyline in Case Files 9 – the name was a dead giveaway of course, although the vampire tropes were adapted to a spider-like alien with similar abilities and appetite for blood.

RATING: 4 STARS****
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(19) DRAMA & TRAGEDY

Day of Chaos – gruddamn you, 2000 AD, you tore my heart out with that story!

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. Of course, it is not primarily science fiction or fantasy – it’s primarily a dystopian satire or black comedy in a science fiction setting. 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 of course drama, particularly police drama.

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 – the best post-apocalyptic fiction is absurdist at heart. Judge Dredd is a futuristic Dirty Harry in a post-apocalyptic dystopian SF satire. As such, its predominant tone is comedy, albeit generally absurdist or black comedy, “ranging from outright surrealism to mad social satire”.

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 and indeed to tragic. Every so often it varies, the writers recall that the Judges are essentially a police state, but that a police state necessarily involves police – with all the potential for drama or personal tragedy that police or crime stories can involve.

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 occasionally Judges or the whole city are overwhelmed by tragedy – apocalyptic crises for Mega-City tended to be somewhat absurdist, but not always so as they ventured beyond the absurdist or comic to tragic, as in the Day of Chaos epic. Such stories – particularly the heartbreaking individual ones – tend to stand out among other episodes of the Judge Dredd comic as a result, as well as among my personal favorites.

You could argue that drama and tragedy feature close to the very origin of Judge Dredd, with his brother Rico (“He ain’t heavy – he’s my brother!”), but also that its poignant high point was in the democracy storyline, starting with Letter from a Democrat in Case Files 9

RATING: 4 STARS****
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(20) DEMOCRACY & TERROR

A thematic special mention entry, which is alliterative to the preceding special mention entry for drama and tragedy – aptly so, as they overlap in Judge Dredd. One might say that the Judge Dredd comic is at its most dramatic – and tragic – in episodes revolving around Mega-City One’s democracy and terror movements. And of course, there’s an overlap between democracy and terror in Judge Dredd – firstly, as Justice Department tends to see even Mega-City One’s peaceful democracy movement as terrorists, and secondly, as that a large part of that movement devolved into or fed Mega-City One’s terror movements when doomed to Justice Department’s boot in its face forever (or Justice Department’s own state terror).

It is through the underground 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 has deepened over time to other Judges and the Justice Department in general, as those intended figures of authoritarian satire have earned their writers’ respect as potentially heroic characters.

Of course, that’s easier when the Judges face off against the violent crime or criminals that threaten to overwhelm Mega-City One – let alone the apocalyptic threats to the mega-city’s very existence. Although it might be noted that the most characteristic enemies or apocalyptic threats have essentially been dark inversions of the corruption or authoritarian violence of the Judges themselves – from Dredd’s rogue clone Rico at a smaller scale, to the insane Chief Judge Cal, or Judge Death and the Dark Judges at a larger scale, even arguably the Judge Child Owen Krysler or the Soviet Judges.

However, that’s dramatically reversed when the Judges are pitted against their own citizens, particularly those in the substantial democracy movement – for whom the Judges and Justice Department are definitely not the good guys. Indeed, from our perspective, it is difficult not to share their viewpoint of the democracy movement as the true heroes of Mega-City One, while the Judges and Justice Department as the true villains. Certainly, Justice Department and the Judges, included Dredd, are at their most villainous – or at least anti-heroic – when it comes to stamping down on the democracy movement, which they identify as terrorist.

And yet…

TV Tropes stated 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 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 much – 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.

RATING: 4 STARS****
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And here are all 20 of my thematic special mentions:

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(1) MUTANTS (CURSED EARTH)

(2) ROBOTS (ROBOT WARS)

(3) ALIENS

(4) SPACE COLONIZATION

(5) TIME TRAVEL (ALTERNATE DIMENSIONS)

(6) APOCALYPSE

(7) WAR

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(8) CLONES

(9) PSI

(10) HORROR

(11) APES

(12) DINOSAURS

(13) SPIDERS

(14) DISEASE

(15) FADS

(16) DRUGS

(17) GODS & MAGIC

(18) VAMPIRES & WEREWOLVES

(19) DRAMA & TRAGEDY

(20) DEMOCRACY & TERROR

Mega-City Law: Top 10 Judge Dredd Epics & Episodes: Episodes

Posted on May 23, 2024May 23, 2024 by Alex Stark

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).

I distinguish between epics and episodes – with epics as longer storylines over a five or more episodes. However, that still leaves a distinction for me with respect to episodes – episodes that encapsulate their storylines within the single episode (probably most of the comic) as opposed to those that have a longer story arc over 2-4 episodes (with four episodes being perhaps the most common standard for such mini-epics).

There is a real art in encapsulating a story within a single episode – and a mere six pages or so at that – akin to writing a short story, typically with a twist in the tale, as opposed to a novel. Some of the stories in the Judge Dredd comic which had the most impact on me or which defined the comic for me are stories of a single episode. These are my top ten episodes of Judge Dredd, standing on their own as single episodes.

(10) A, B OR C WARRIOR
(CASE FILES 18: prog 824)

“Well, citizen Colon. Can you guess what happens now? Is it a) we let you go? b) you get off with a five cred fine? or c) we lock you in the psycho cubes and throw away the key?”

That is of course after Colon is apprehended by Dredd. We’re introduced to him at the opening of the episode “polling” a resident of Frank Hovis block, as usual named for a character in a British television comedy series contemporary to the date of publication rather than someone you’d expect it to be named for in a twenty-second century American megalopolis. And by “polling”, I mean asking some of those inane questions – as multiple choice between options a, b, and c, hence the title – before shooting his victim. As in what will the victim do when Colon brandishes a gun – a) try to jump me b) beg for mercy or c) run for it. (The answer in this case was b).

The sound of gunfire is reported by neighbors – which is how Dredd is called to the scene. Unfortunately, he doesn’t have much to go on for clues at the scene, particularly given the insane polling that is Colon’s modus operandi, but fortunately Colon decides further “research” is needed at a local club (where Colon laments that he should have thought of “polling” a crowd further). Research such as whether on learning of their impending deaths they will a) pray to Grud…b) pray to Satan…c) start to cry. (In fairness, Colon is researching whether religious belief is declining in Mega-City One because of the reactions of previous victims).

RATING: 4 STARS****
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(9) FIRST OF THE MANY
(CASE FILES 16: prog 775)

An episode which revisits Dredd’s very first arrest or more precisely, in which it revisits him – “I’m Bert Dubinksi. I’m the first guy you ever arrested.”

This episode is worth revisiting in some detail, flashing back as it does to such a monumental moment in Dredd’s history – his first arrest, as a rookie under Judge Morphy – but also featuring the art of one of my favorite Dredd artists, Cliff Robinson (as did my other favorite episode from Case Files 16, Watch Dogs).

You have to love that introduction as Dredd signs off after having “been on the streets a hundred hours straight” – bonus points for the Rowdy Yates Block sign in the background, Dredd’s destination as his rostered block of ‘residence’ as block Judge (and as I’ve noted, a sly reference to his source of influence in Dirty Harry as the name of Clint Eastwood’s character in the TV Western series Rawhide).

Just as Dredd pulls up in what appears to be the parking bay for his Lawmaster (and is awaiting the security door as it opens), that’s when Dubinski approaches him with that declaration. Dubinski seems friendly enough but it bodes trouble that he just happens to be there when Dredd is coming off shift and in that suspiciously long coat as well.

The episode flashes back to the arrest, with Dredd as a hotshot rookie in his first street assessment by Judge Morphy. Father figure and mentor to Dredd. Oh – and it’s good to see you again, Morph, in your prime to boot (those tight boots – yes, it’s a plot point in Judge Dredd). He was killed in the line of duty in the countdown to Necropolis just a couple of Case File volumes back – an important factor in Dredd’s breakdown and decision to take the Long Walk. (Dredd got better…and came back).

Anyway, here he is with Rookie Dredd at the dawn of Dredd as the Judge we know and love. Prompted by the same gunman approaching him thirty-five years later, Dredd recalls his very first arrest, as a rookie Judge eighteen years of age. Which would of course make Dredd fifty-three years of age – as at the time of this episode in 1992 (or 2114 for Dredd in Mega-City One). Since each year passes at the same rate in the comic as in the real life – that would make him eighty-four years of age in 2023 (or 2145 for Dredd in Mega-City One). Lucky he has those rejuvenation treatments mandated by Justice Department.

Rookie Dredd coolly assesses the situation of a gunman having killed two people in a shop – “Don’t want to start a firefight in a crowded street if we can help it. I’ll try and take him quietly”.

And that’s exactly what he does. Of course, it helps that the gunman appears to be a ball of nerves, backing away from the scene of his offences, so all Dredd has to do is quietly come up behind him and hold a Lawgiver to his head. “Pays to look where you’re going, meathead! Drop it!”

And Dredd does the same thing here as Dubinski tries to gun him down, having foolishly turned away from Dredd before doing so – “Getting’ a sense of déjà vu, Dubinski?”

Dredd is quite the deadpan snarker arresting the first person he ever arrested…again.

In hindsight, perhaps they should have sentenced Dubinski to a psych cube thirty-five years ago – his motive in his original offence appears to be the two people in the shop weren’t “friendly” and that appears to be a motive here, as he becomes enraged at Dredd before pulling out the gun from his coat.

This time, however, Dubinski is not prepared to surrender quietly – not surprisingly as he doesn’t want another stretch in the cubes and he opts for suicide by cop. So Dredd calls in a meat-wagon for Dubinski, much to the bemusement of Control – “Wilco. Uh…would that be Dubinksi who was released from Iso-Block 10 this morning? One of your old perps?”

And Dredd has his own moment of hindsight, with his characteristic deadpan snark – “Yeah. Might have been better if I put a bullet in him first time round. Would have saved us both a lot of trouble.”

RATING: 4 STARS****
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(8) WATCHDOGS
(CASE FILES 16: prog 739)

“Attaboy Dreddy! Give ‘im the old judicial excess!”

The Citizens Watchdog Committee may regard Dredd’s use of force as shocking, disgusting, and disgraceful – but their audience loves it.

The Committee and their audience are watching Dredd as he performs his duties – we are introduced to them as Dredd apprehends muggers. And so is Dredd, asking Justice Department Control whether they have spy in the sky surveillance on him – “Somebody has. I count at least two of them. Check into it”.

No rest for the wicked – or those who judge them, as Control directs Dredd to the next incident, a brawl at the Dire Straits bar. Meanwhile, we see more of the Committee – three people watching Dredd on screen while sitting behind a desk with the banner Citizens Watchdog Committee, with another man sanctimoniously narrating Dredd’s use of force, all four of them in terms of utmost opprobium.

The narrator is heckled by the Committee’s wider audience of citizens, who are wildly enthusiatic for Dredd’s onscreen actions in a manner consistent with a crowd at a gladiatorial arena. Are they not entertained? Yes. Yes, they very much are – and loving it. The Citizens Watchdog Committee only have themselves to blame – we see the two large signs outside their venue, emblazoned in the style of a boxing match or wrestling show:

No wonder they got fans of “judicial excess”, cheering on Dredd’s every bone-crunching tooth-breaking act by their affectionate nickname for him – “Nice one, Dreddy!”. Although I’m not sure I’d want to be too casual with calling him that in person, albeit Dredd seems to brush it off in this episode.

Control did “check into it”, tracing the serial numbers from the spy in the sky camera drones – using their own counter spy in the sky – to the Citizens Watchdog Committee, who are conveniently just across the road from the Dire Straits bar where Dredd is mopping up the brawlers.

So of course Dredd attends the Committee in person, asking them “You jokers got a licence to operate this vid show?”

Meanwhile, the audience loves it – “Go get ’em, Dreddy!”, “Break some face!” and “You shoulda heard the things they were sayin’ about you!”

The Committee spokeperson – the one narrating the drone camera footage with such outrage and indignation – protests that they don’t need a licence as they’re “exercising our right to scrutinise the actions of our Judges”. Dredd smoothly counters – “But you do if you’re using the image of a Judge for the purposes of entertainment”. All the spokesperson can do is stammer “But it’s not entertainment!”

And the audience goes wild – “Oh-yes-it-is!”

Case closed – and Dredd arrests all four of the Committee. As he does, one of the audience asks “Hey Dreddy, any chance of you getting’ a regular slot prime time?”

If only, Mega-City One citzen, if only. Where’s the Judge Dredd TV show, Hollywood?

For that matter, where’s the sequel to the 2012 film?!

That wraps up the Watchdogs episode – and the Citizens Watchdog Committee. Iso-cubes all round, I bet.

Although if we were to think about it, perhaps we should identify with the Citizens Watchdog Committee rather than their audience or even Dredd himself. After all, they do have a point with that whole judicial excess thing. Indeed, it goes to the heart of the comic itself, although as we’ve seen, the authoritarian violence of the Judges in general and Dredd in particular is a lot more nuanced than that. Arguably, that nuance defines the comic, which essentially walks the line as to whether that authoritarian violence may be a necessary evil amidst the dystopian satire of it.

Aptly enough, it walks a similar line to that of the character that inspired Dredd, Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry – that as much we might admire the character’s personal code of honour in service of the law akin to an instinct for justice, perhaps we might not want our police (or judges) to actually be like Dirty Harry, let alone like the over the top authoritarian violence of Dredd and the Justice Department he serves.

RATING: 4 STARS****
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(7) THE LURKER
(CASE FILES 9: prog 440)

Another of my favorite single Judge Dredd episodes, with a blackly comic twist to the tale worthy of Roald Dahl.

The episode involves the titular lurker, essentially a nocturnal criminal scavenger equivalent to one of those bottom-feeding fish but in Mega-City One’s underworld, picking up the scraps left behind by more powerful predators such as muggers.

Tonight, however, is his big score – or so he thinks, as he picks over a mugging victim after the muggers made off with a briefcase and the victim manages to blurt out “my case…tell Judges – ten million”. Naturally, the lurker thinks the case contained ten million creds, the currency of Mega-City One. So the lurker follows after the muggers, hanging back as they attempt to open the case – and gets his break when they flee Judge Dredd, leaving the case behind. Equipped with a las-knife, he makes more progress on the case, which is too heavy for him to move.

Meanwhile, Dredd apprehends the muggers (well, one of them as he shoots the other) as an alert comes through from control – the victim was courier for Nukco and the case contains radioactive isotopes giving out, you guessed it, ten million rads. Just as the lurker pries open the case – and is instantly snap-fried by the radiation with a flash that even Dredd sees at his distance.

RATING: 4 STARS****

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(6) THE SQUADRON THAT TIME FORGOT
(CASE FILES 9: prog 446)

World War Two comes to Mega-City One!

Literally – in the form of an actual German air squadron displaced in time from Stalingrad.

Having introduced time travel in City of the Damned in Volume 8, the Judge Dredd comic continued it with enthusiasm. Of course, in City of the Damned, that was Justice Department’s own prototype time travel technology, but they continue to advance it for further use in subsequent episodes. In this storyline, the time travel is more of a natural displacement or rift in spacetime, in so far as such things are natural although of course I am referring to it not occurring through any human agency. The German air squadron just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time to find themselves mysteriously in the wrong place at the wrong time – Mega-City One in the twenty-second century as opposed to Stalingrad in 1942.

So naturally I’m a huge fan of this episode, ranking it in my Top 10 Judge Dredd episodes – at least for the first decade of Dredd. For one thing, I’m a fan of Second World War history, and for another, I’m a fan of time displacement or travel stories involving the Second World War, so this one’s a double delight. Although most time displacement or travel stories with which I’m familiar involve time travel in the opposite direction – from the present day to the Second World War, such as the 1980 film The Final Countdown, or John Birmingham’s Axis of Time trilogy

RATING: 4 STARS****
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(5) THE POWER OF THE GODS
(CASE FILES 12: prog 600)

Judge Dredd does Bruce Almighty (or more precisely has it done to him), but with small gods instead of God – or Grud, as they say in Mega-City One, presumably to avoid restrictions in British comics publishing at the time.

One of my favorite episodes from it and the Judge Dredd comic as a whole – and an example of the tongue-in-cheek absurdist or black comedy that tends to predominate in my favorite episodes. Of course, it’s a little silly and starts to fall apart when you take its premise – actual gods of Mega-City One – too seriously, so of course we’ll have a bit of fun doing that too. We’re talking actual magic here – a similar premise to that we saw in The Genie. But it is one of the most hilarious humorous episodes – and features some of the best art of Judge Dredd, when he is forced by the titular power of the gods, to be…nice. You can just feel his pain.

As for the gods themselves, they are introduced at the start of the episode – Comus, god of consumer spending and credit cards, and his sister, Venus Muncia, goddess of unemployment. Cosmus does not have a high opinion of Mega-City One’s citizens. Well – he’s got that right. They’re lovable idiots. Cosmus is complaining about their idiocy, while Venus Muncia argues for their lovable nature. And so they have a bet – Cosmus bets that if he bestows his power on an ordinary citizen for an hour, that citizen will have screwed things up within the hour.

Judge Dredd crosses paths with the divinely empowered citizen, who wishes the Judges would all be nice.

That does it – Dredd is transformed into being…nice (and apparently kinda…gay?)

There are the nice touches in transformation to his uniform as well – with his name badge replaced with a smiley face and the fierce eagle on his shoulder pad transmogrified into, well I’m not sure it’s an eagle but some sort of happy bird, with a flower in its beak. And then the citizen goes about wishing Mega-City One into paradise.

Of course that won’t do. It’s the Law vs the power of the gods. Dredd manages to outwit the citizen (not a high bar), firstly to wish Dredd back to normal and then to do the same to Mega-City One itself.

As for the gods, Judge Dredd is the Law, even to the very gods themselves – “Meddle in the affairs of this city again and you’ll answer to me!”

That would explain why we have never seen them since. Well that and we’re not meant to take the concept seriously – it’s one of those blackly comic one-off episodes that recur in Judge Dredd, with Judge Dredd facing off against characters from other fiction (or analogues of them), and even as here from outright fantasy or involving magic, typically with Dredd arresting or warning them off. As the punchline went when Dredd arrested a literal genie with magic wishes – “magic is no defence from the law”.

It’s usually best not to take them seriously, or at least regard them as non-canonical in terms of narrative continuity – because if you did, their implications tend to break the narrative world of Judge Dredd right open. (Usually I suspect it’s just the writers having fun playing around with fantasy fights for Dredd).

But I think we can still make this work even if we do take it seriously – well, part seriously and part joking, for fun. These gods – Cosmus, the god of consumer spending and credit cards, and Venus Muncia, the goddess of unemployment – seem more like Terry Pratchett’s small gods. They’re certainly not big gods in the sense of God – or Grud as he is called in Mega-City One, and indeed Dredd references as such in this very episode (“my Grud!”)

So like Pratchett’s small gods, they are coalesced from belief – or rather the omnipresent force of the phenomena they represent. In other words, they came into being from the omnipresent consumerism and unemployment in the minds of Mega-City One citizens.

And on that basis, when he’s not ambushed by their divine power, Judge Dredd can go toe to toe with them as the literal embodiment of justice in the minds of Mega-City One’s citizens – as the one figure or even name citizens identify above all others as representing the Judges, Justice Department and the Law.

So quite literally, Judge Dredd is legend – for the Law.

RATING: 4 STARS****
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(4) THE SAGE
(CASE FILES 12: prog 577)

Judge Dredd does Lao Tzu, with the latter not faring so well for it.

One of my favorite episodes from Case Files 12 and the Judge Dredd comic as a whole – as an example of the tongue-in-cheek absurdist or black comedy that tends to predominate in my favorite episodes.

The Sage picks up right where the legend of Lao Tzu left off, riding a magical water buffalo into the sunset – give or take almost three millennia and another continent or so. The titular sage is not quite presented as Lao Tzu himself, but the resemblance is uncanny, down to riding a buffalo from the Cursed Earth in search of perfect enlightenment and the name of Yu Tzu. He also apparently has a disciple narrating his story to followers in an unknown location (but seemingly not Mega-City One itself), which is the framing device for the episode. How and why he ended up at the gates of Mega-City One is not clear – his disciple narrates that he had “seen the greatest cities of the world – yea, even the fabled summer city of psi-lords of Ji” – and even less clear is why he thought that Mega-City One, of all places, had anything to teach him about enlightenment. Judge Dredd – of all people, as luck would have it, doing duty on the city walls – tells the sage as much: “Enlightenment, huh? You’ve come to the wrong place, pal! Beat it!”

Mega-City One tends not to be hospitable or receptive, particularly to visitors from the Cursed Earth. And things continue to get worse for the sage, which belies his wisdom in seeking enlightenment in Mega-City One, as Mega-City One and Judge Dredd dish out to indignities to sages seeking enlightenment within their walls.

Firstly, Dredd requisitions the buffalo for meat – and showing more wisdom than the sage, it magically makes its exit. As for the sage himself, he is decontaminated, interrogated, shaved (a particular indignity as he’d vowed not to do so as a symbol of his quest) and interrogated again, this time with electrical torture. Dredd finally accepts the sage’s account of himself as true – but then ejects him from the city anyway. This is the final straw for the sage – “And finally I have learned that even a wise man – a man whose whole life has been dedicated to understanding and non-violence – has a limit to his tolerance, and I, my friend, have reached that limit!”

As the zen koan goes, if you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him – and if you meet Judge Dredd in Mega-City One, punch him.

He punches Dredd – and in that moment achieved enlightenment. “For as you know, enlightenment is the gift from heaven. And for Yu-Tsu, the moment when his fist struck face was that time. Buffalo – city – judge – self…all merged into no-thing. Yu-Tsu was finally enlightened. And he laughed long and hard at the cosmic joke. It is only unfortunate that he had to spend the next ten years in a Mega-City kook cube!”

RATING: 4 STARS****
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(3) A CHILD’S TALE
(CASE FILES 13: prog 631)

One of the most genuinely heartbreaking episodes in the Judge Dredd comic – an individual tragedy born from the casual brutality of Mega-City One, recorded by Justice Department as the accidental death of a citizen.

“Sweet Grud! Didn’t you hear me? What’s the matter? Are you…”

She was deaf, Dredd.

Judge Dredd hits – and kills – a female bystander with his Lawmaster motorcyle while in pursuit of perps and despite his shouted warning to clear the way. He stops to try to assist – an event that is drawn by the child himself, who records Dredd’s exclamation before turning his head and simply stating “Oh” as he sees the Deaf Club from which she and her son had just left.

And the effect on her son is devastating – as she was all he had in the world…

We see the heartbreaking effect on the orphaned son of his mother’s accidental death caused by Judge Dredd, in the poignant form of the child’s own words and drawings (which Dredd reads).

The boy writes “It was an accident. It couldn’t be helped. They put my mom in a meat-wagon. And it couldn’t be helped. Now I’m upset all the time. Sometimes I feel mad. Sometimes I feel like being very bad. But mostly I feel sad…I just want my mom back”.

It’s even more poignant as you can see its effect on Dredd himself. He’s been regularly visiting the welfare unit treating the boy for three months since the incident and offers to try to talk to the boy, but that’s rejected by the treating medical practitioner as too destructive for the boy’s psyche. There’s really nothing Dredd can do to make it right. Dredd may seem unshakeable in his demeanour as Judge, but you do see the effects such as these – even more poignantly as they originate from his own actions, unintended or unavoidable as they might be – and they accumulate as cracks in his demeanour or faith in the Law. And soon, those cracks start to fall apart.

RATING: 5 STARS*****
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(2) THE THIRTEENTH ASSESSMENT
(CASE FILES 8: prog 421)

And now we come to one of my favorite single episode storylines in the Judge Dredd comic – and one that I intend to make into a Mother’s Day card.

It involves the titular assessment of a Judge Cadet at the Academy of Law, consisting of an on-street investigation – essentially through a drone or “spy in the sky” camera – in which the cadet directs the actions of a street Judge. In this case, the cadet is Brisco and the street judge is of course Judge Dredd.

Brisco directs Dredd through an investigation into three juve gang slayings, which as luck would have it, ultimately leads to Brisco’s own mother, as part of an eldster gang trying to spark off a juve gang war. That’s life in Mega-City One for you – almost everyone’s in some gang or other.

“Do you wish to discontinue the assessment?” Dredd asks Brisco. Brisco declines “No sir, I’ll carry on” – to which Dredd replies approvingly “Good”.

Dredd then arrests Brisco’s mother for conspiracy to commit murder. When she (falsely) protests her innocence, it is cadet Brisco himself who admonishes her through the drone. She pleads with him – “You don’t understand, Harald! You don’t live on the streets. You don’t know what it’s like having to walk in fear all the time! Those wicked juve gangs, always beating us and mugging us – and the older we are, the harder they hit us!”

Cadet Brisco remains stern with her – “There’s never a time to break the law, mother. I want you to give Judge Dredd the names and addresses of all those involved”. She is shocked at the idea of informing on her co-conspirators and refuses. Cadet Brisco reprimands her – “It hurts me to do this, mother, but I must be strict with you. Withholding evidence is a crime. So I’m going to start counting! Every number I count is another year added to your sentence.” He counts to three before she stops pleading with him as his mother and cracks, confessing the name of twelve other residents. Dredd asks Brisco’s direction for sentencing – for which Brisco directs Dredd fifteen years for each of them, except for his mother who receives eighteen years.

With that the assessment is over, Dredd advising Brisco through the drone “you’ll be informed of your grading in due course”. The Judge Tutors ask Dredd his grade, but is there any doubt about Dredd’s assessment? “Pass. With distinction” of course – “any cadet that can put his mother away for eighteen years has got the makings of a damn fine Judge!”

There’s my Mother’s Day card right there!

RATING: 5 STARS*****
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(1) LAWMASTER ON THE LOOSE
(CASE FILES 4: prog 202)

My favorite single episode, perhaps because it encapsulates so much of the character of Judge Dredd and the dystopian satire of Mega-City One in its few pages. As the title suggests, it deals with a rogue Lawmaster. It’s always been an amusing part of Judge Dredd’s dystopian satire that Mega-City One Judges ride the streets on their Lawmaster motorcycles armed with their Lawgiver guns. Both are as over the top as the Judges’ uniforms.

As one comics commentator (Chris Sims of Comics Alliance) marvelled at Dredd’s uniform and motorcycle:

“The one thing you can get just by looking at that dude? He has a lot going on. The costume is blindingly ornate, almost overwhelming in just how much there is to it — you can’t really take it in all at once, and when you throw in the fact that he’s riding on a motorcycle with five headlights, four exhaust pipes, two machine guns and a Crash Bomber stuck to it, it’s ridiculous. There’s just too much. Which is, at a single glance, the perfect representation of Dredd and his world”.

So of course when a Lawmaster goes rogue (from damage to its computer), it is deliciously over the top. We get to see one of the finest uses of Dredd’s catchphrase (“I am the Law!”) and some black humor at the collateral damage the Judges do in keeping Mega-City One ‘safe’ (from their own equipment).

The Lawmaster is introduced with a spiel that with its “Synitron GK13 Audio Computer, Notron 4000CC engine and Cyclops Phylon TX laser cannon”, it is one of the most deadly fighting bikes ever devised. Although there’s not exactly a large pool of candidates for that title, as a motorcycle lacks that primary advantage of other vehicles, fighting or otherwise, for its operator – cover.

As the episode opens, we see a Judge Gorman shot and injured by munce raiders – munce being the main synthetic meat product of Mega-City One, although I wouldn’t have thought there was enough of a black market in it for raiders. Worse, his Lawmaster’s computer is damaged – by a lucky hit as Gorman calls it, or an unlucky one for everyone involved, as it first goes out of control mowing down the perps and then turns on Gorman:

“Bleeding on the public highway is an offence against the Litter Act! The sentence is six months!”

Of course, by six months, it means gunning Gorman down, or rather, dead. After all, its law enforcement options are limited to its bike cannons. It’s as limited in its design as the ED-209 law enforcement droid in Robocop, which doesn’t have any options other than the two cannons for ‘arms’. Or for that matter, the Jedi with their lightsabers in Star Wars – whose minimum response is limited to lopping off a limb or two.

Dredd responds to the alert call – he has to as we’re told that a rogue Lawmaster is automatic priority one rating and all judges in the area must respond. And no wonder given the sheer danger a rogue Lawmaster is to Mega-City One citizenry: “Loitering with possible intent! Sentence – three months probation!”

Of course, it makes no difference what sentence the Lawmaster pronounces – it’s all the same sentence as it guns everyone down.

The responding Judges attempt to bring it down, but that’s not easy. “Lawmasters bear extensive 12mm armor plating. Firelock all-weather tyres are bullet-proof. Only an accurate shot – or a lucky one – can damage them”. (So there you have it – every Judge is the equivalent of Batman with the Batmobile).

“Conspiracy to damage Justice Department property! 2 years penal servitude!”

The Lawmaster continues to evade the efforts of the responding Judges (although Dredd remains in pursuit) – all the while continuing with its garbled pronouncements of crimes (with sentence of death by gunfire, regardless of what it says):

“Lawbreakers in force! Taking avoiding action! I’m letting you off with a warning this time, citizens!

“Walking on a public walkover! Remanded for psychiatric reports!”

Dredd tries to intercept it, but not before it gets on a monorail and pronounces sentence on the passengers with virtual glee:

“What have we here? More lawbreakers by the look of you!…All must be punished!”

Dredd successfully boards the monorail, but unfortunately not before the Lawmaster’s shooting spree of the passengers. The two of them face off in a futuristic gunfight. The Lawmaster pronounces “Interfering with a Lawmaster in the execution of its duty is a serious offence. Sentence – 20 years”

And perhaps the primary reason why this is my favorite one-off episode of Judge Dredd – the classic example of his catchphrase, in reply to the rogue Lawmaster:

“I AM THE LAW!”

And of course there’s the conclusion to the episode. As the episode pointedly repeats, “only an accurate shot – or a lucky one – can disable a Lawmaster”. Dredd’s shot is accurate – piercing the fuel tank with a high explosive round, which takes out what little was left of the monorail train. Although the lone survivor does thank him, with a nice touch of black humor.

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

MEGA-CITY LAW – TOP 10 JUDGE DREDD EPICS & EPISODES:

EPISODES (TIER LIST)

This is my running tier list of Top 10 Judge Dredd Episodes up to and including Complete Case Files Volume 18 – classifying episodes as those consisting of a single episode rather than a longer story arc over multiple episodes

S-TIER (GOD TIER)

(1) LAW MASTER ON THE LOOSE

(2) THE THIRTEENTH ASSESSMENT

(3) A CHILD’S TALE

A-TIER (TOP TIER)

(4) THE SAGE

(5) THE POWER OF THE GODS

B-TIER (HIGH TIER)

(6) THE SQUADRON THAT TIME FORGOT

(7) THE LURKER

(8) WATCHDOGS

(9) FIRST OF THE MANY

X-TIER (WILD TIER)

(10) A, B OR C WARRIOR

Stark After Dark

Category Archives: Mega-City Law

Mega-City Law – Judge Dredd Cities Uniform Rankings

Mega-City Law – Judge Dredd Cities Quality of Life Rankings

Mega-City Law: Top 10 Judge Dredd Heroes & Villains (Special Mention – Cities & Judges)

Mega-City Law – Top 10 Judge Dredd Heroes & Villains

Mega-City Law – Top 10 Judge Dredd Girls

Mega City Law – Judge Dredd Case Files 18

Mega-City Law – Judge Dredd Case Files 2 (Epilogue)

Mega-City Law – Judge Dredd Case Files 2: The Day The Law Died

Mega-City Law: Top 10 Judge Dredd Epics & Episodes (Special Mention: Themes & Tropes)

Mega-City Law: Top 10 Judge Dredd Epics & Episodes: Episodes

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