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*****
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(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*****
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(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*****
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(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*****
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(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*****
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(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*****
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(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:
S-TIER (GOD TIER)
(1) MUTANTS (CURSED EARTH)
(2) ROBOTS (ROBOT WARS)
(3) ALIENS
(4) SPACE COLONIZATION
(5) TIME TRAVEL (ALTERNATE DIMENSIONS)
(6) APOCALYPSE
(7) WAR
A-TIER
(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
