My first and true love in comics is not one of the ruling duopoly of DC and Marvel Comics, nor strictly speaking a superhero comic – although its main character is arguably as much of a ‘superhero’ as Batman – nor even an American comic, although it is set there, albeit drastically transformed in the twenty-second century.
It is Judge Dredd, the most iconic character from the British weekly SF anthology comic, 2000 AD, ongoing since it was launched in 1977 – although ironically from its second issue, as the opening Dredd story was not ready for the first issue. Time has passed in the Dredd strip essentially in real time ever since, so a year passes in the comic for each year in real life – the first Dredd story in 1977 was set in 2099 and the present stories in 2023 are set in 2145 (an interesting feature as distinct from the more elastic timelines of many American comic franchises).
Unfortunately, American audiences remain somewhat unfamiliar with or unresponsive to Judge Dredd, despite his American setting and despite that he is effectively a quintessential American hero in the same vein as Batman – relying on superior discipline, training, experience, equipment and resources, except as a governmental law officer rather than a vigilante billionaire. They even both effectively remain masked in their public identities, as Dredd never removes his helmet. This is despite his iconic status, particularly in Britain, and despite American audiences being familiar with many of the alumni of 2000 AD, as virtually every British writer and artist of note working in American comics started there and indeed often with the Judge Dredd storyline itself.
Even more unfortunately, the most substantial introduction of American audiences to Judge Dredd was the 1995 film, although fortunately that particular horror is fading with time. This Hollywood travesty was particularly inexcusable, because the essence of Judge Dredd is ultimately very simple – Judge Dredd is a futuristic Dirty Harry in a dystopian (and post-apocalyptic) SF satire. How hard is that, Hollywood?! On second thoughts, that was probably too much to handle – when they couldn’t even have Dredd keep his helmet on throughout the film.
The more recent 2012 film was much more effective in capturing the elements of the original comic (not least in keeping Dredd’s helmet on throughout the film), but not as effective in capturing an audience. In its own way, this is as unfortunate as the first film, particularly at a time when comic book movies were in such vogue (and dystopian or post-apocalyptic movies have always been popular) – because if ever a comic deserved its own cinematic or screen adaptation, it’s Dredd, especially when you consider the dreck that does get adaptations. Perhaps a television adaptation would have been better, as it suits the more episodic nature as well as longer arcs of the storyline. Whatever the case, here are my ten reasons why Judge Dredd is the galaxy’s greatest comic – and why it deserves its own cinematic or screen universe.
(1) APOCALYPSE WOW!
Judge Dredd is a futuristic Dirty Harry in a dystopian and post-apocalyptic SF satire
And I do mean post-apocalyptic – although the world of Judge Dredd is more accurately post-post-apocalyptic (and so on, with additional prefixes) because recurring apocalypses are a feature of that world. After all, it’s hard to get more apocalyptic than an event called the Apocalypse War…
However, Judge Dredd is more than just dystopian or post-apocalyptic, it is dystopian or post-apocalyptic satire – in that it plays with virtually every dystopian or post-apocalyptic trope, mostly with tongue in cheek for black comedy.
Of course, there are the standard earth-shattering tropes. The apocalyptic event that definitively shaped the world of Judge Dredd was the so-called Atomic Wars of 2070, perhaps not surprisingly for the comic’s origins in the heightened Cold War tension of the 1970s and 1980s. Interestingly, reflecting more recent times, the apocalyptic weapons of choice moved from nuclear war to biological terrorism – what the Apocalypse War started, the Chaos Bug all but finished.
However, at least at the outset, the world of Judge Dredd was curiously one of the most populous post-apocalyptic settings, due to the huge conurbations or mega-cities with populations in the tens or hundreds of millions that survived the Atomic Wars because of their missile defense systems. Of course, most of the world outside those cities was laid waste, although some hardy (and mostly mutant) inhabitants live even in these radioactive badlands. The United States essentially separated into its three surviving mega-cities, on each of its coasts around the former heartland of the country, now the Cursed Earth. Judge Dredd’s home city is Mega-City 1 on the coastline of the toxic Black Atlantic, a megalopolis seemingly based on a New York that merged with other cities and swallowed up the Atlantic seaboard from Canada to Florida. It was matched by Mega-City 2 on the West Coast and Texas City on the Gulf.
And so you have a world that is both post-apocalyptic and overcrowded, with the world’s population crammed into mega-cities that are themselves socioeconomic dystopias within the larger global and environmental dystopia. In its glory days, Mega-City One consisted of 800 million people, housed in city blocks that resemble vertical towns of 50,000 people or more. This overcrowded city would be dystopian enough in the best economic climate, but Mega-City 1 has an unemployment rate that is variously cited but is at least 90% due to automation and robots.
The overwhelming majority of the population of Mega-City 1 therefore live in welfare dependency, prone to crime and violence out of sheer boredom and breakdown – crime and violence which is further compounded by the capabilities of future technology. In short, few things are more dangerous to the citizens of Mega-City 1 than themselves.
All this has resulted in political dystopia – the authoritarian police state of the Judges, a system of government that has almost universally spread across the world (at least to the extent that we can see it). In Mega-City 1, the Department of Justice combines all branches of government, as well as the police and judiciary or in that popular phrase – judge, jury and executioner (although Mega-City justice generally does not involve the death penalty). Summary justice? Try instant justice – as they deliver their sentences at the time of arrest. The perfect symbol of this political dystopia was the Statue of Justice towering over the Statue of Liberty.
However, the most important part of all this dystopian satire is the satire or black comedy.
“What do Judge Dredd, Mad Max and Adventure Time all have in common? They’re three of the best post-apocalyptic narratives we’ve ever seen. And they’re all slightly ludicrous, ranging from outright surrealism to mad social satire. In fact, the best post-apocalyptic storytelling is usually kind of ridiculous”.
So whatever your apocalypse or dystopia, Judge Dredd has it for you – and in just the right flavor of black comedy and satire.
(2) SCI-FI FANTASY KITCHEN SINK
At its core, Judge Dredd may be dystopian or post-apocalyptic satire, but it is even more so a playground of science fiction tropes and everything associated with them – playing with virtually every signature trope (as well as a substantial number of works) of science fiction. If it’s a trope of science fiction, Judge Dredd either has played or can play with it, particularly given the storyline’s episodic nature and anthology of writers (and artists).
Aliens – that definitive trope (or collection of tropes) of SF ever since they invaded Earth from Mars in H.G. Well’s War of the Worlds? They are regular through routine space travel in Judge Dredd and even ghetto (or zoo) residents in Mega-City or elsewhere. Some of them are hostile and dangerous to humans, while others are more friendly to humans (even where humans are hostile and dangerous to them).
Of course, there’s also robots, the reason for 90% unemployment in Mega-City One (and quite frankly, better potential citizens than the human residents, although robots are not legally citizens).
Clones? Judge Dredd IS a clone (along with some other Judges).
Mutants? A substantial part of the world’s population (and probably the majority of its animal population) is mutated from the radioactive wastelands.
Time travel? Both to the future and past, although not too regularly for either as it has only recently been engineered and the Judges are wary of temporal effects or paradox. Interdimensional travel on the other hand is more common.
And there’s still more exotic tropes. Apes genetically engineered for greater intelligence? They’re resident in the appropriately named Apetown ghetto within Mega-City. Dinosaurs recreated through genetic engineering? They roam the Cursed Earth after the Atomic Wars let them loose from Dinosaur National Park – well before Jurassic Park!
Indeed, Judge Dredd goes well beyond SF tropes into fantasy kitchen sink territory. Although it remains predominantly science fiction and tends to rationalize its fantasy, it does venture into many fantasy and magic tropes, because why not? It’s fun and it keeps its fantasy tongue firmly in its science fiction cheek (or is that the other way round?). A major source of its fantasy tropes are its Psi-Judges, albeit with psi short for the characteristic ‘scientific’ terminology of psionics (not psychic – that’s just for New Age hippies!), but Judge Dredd has quite happily featured actual magic, demons, vampires, werewolves and zombies in outright fantasy terms or at most a bare veneer of SF. So for all those who enjoy their fantasy or SF tropes, the world of Judge Dredd has something in it for everyone…
(3) REAL WORLD SATIRE
(OR HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE SEX OLYMPICS)
Despite being futuristic and post-apocalyptic, the satire in Judge Dredd is firmly grounded in the trends of our present world.
Firstly, it originated (and to a large extent still continues) as a British satire of American culture and society, or in the words of Adi Shankar, a satire by “an anti-establishment British comic about post-apocalyptic America”. After all, 2000 AD has its American tongue firmly in its British cheek when it depicted the American Judges in uniforms resembling fetishist motorcycle leathers (inspired by Death Race 2000 – and uncannily similar to the post-apocalyptic fashion of Mad Max). They are also emblazoned with American iconography, notably the American flag and eagle, that is distinctly over the top – not least their eagle shoulder-pads, which while visually awesome are functionally impractical.
There’s more tongue in cheek as Mega-City Judges ride computerized and heavily armed motorcycles, naturally enough designated as Lawmasters, and dispense justice with their multiple-choice ammunition guns termed Lawgivers. (Although eerily life imitated art in 1980’s Reaganesque America, with a nuclear missile design named Peacekeepers).
However, Judge Dredd extends to far more general satire – in a society “where every single thing has become monstrously overwhelming”, not least in the bizarre fashions and fads of Mega-City citizens. Those occasionally bubble up into destructive consumer fads, for what must be the overworked consumer protection division of Justice Department.
Of course, Mega-City citizens have a lot of time on their hands with their 90% unemployment rate – which leads to bizarre job vacancies as human mannequins or ‘furniture’ for the rich elite and job riots prompted by the advertisement of those few vacancies. Although a lot of that time must be spent in grappling with the law, either in direct criminal activity (one of the few sources of gainful employment or at least occupation) or in just coping with the sheer volume of draconian laws in Mega-City. For example, sugar is prohibited as illegal addictive substances – with dealing in sugar as an obvious comics-friendly substitute for cocaine. Got some of that sweet stuff?
Obesity? In Judge Dredd, the so-called ‘Fatties’ take it to extremes of belly-wheels, competitive eating and literal tonnage. Speaking of strange competitive sports, the twenty-second Olympic Games are full of them, not least with actual sex as competitive event. Of course, that’s not just your average sex, that’s Olympic sex – highly trained and skilled performance akin to figure-skating. And frankly, I’m a proponent for sex Olympics in the present…
(4) FUTURISTIC DIRTY HARRY
(OR DO YOU FEEL LUCKY, PUNK?)
Judge Dredd is a futuristic Dirty Harry. What’s not to love about that?
Dystopian, post-apocalyptic SF satire might be the foundation of (and set much of the tone for) the storyline of Judge Dredd, but Dredd himself as futuristic Dirty Harry is the core of the story, and certainly for the action in it.
The origins of the character as Dirty Harry ‘tough cop’ are not too surprising, given that it coincided with the period of the Dirty Harry movies from 1971 to 1988 (the comic itself starting between the third and fourth movies, The Enforcer and Sudden Impact) – Dirty Harry of course being San Francisco Police Department detective Harry Callahan played by Clint Eastwood.
Dredd himself is stylistically and visually reminiscent of Clint Eastwood as Dirty Harry – the height (and the lanky frame, particularly in the original art – although other artists have added the characteristic musculature of heroes in comics), the stoic expression (with the helmet visor substituting for Eastwood’s squint), the laconic wit and the whispered menace (at least as far as one can tell from his minimalist mouth movements). Anyone who doubts the dominant influence of Dirty Harry need look no further than the name of the city block where Dredd resided (that is, slept between street patrols) as ‘block judge’. The names of the city blocks are generally derived from the twentieth century and typically have some humorous, narrative or thematic significance, subtle or otherwise – Dredd’s block is Rowdy Yates, the name of Clint Eastwood’s character in the TV western series Rawhide.
Even Dirty Harry’s catchphrase term for criminals, punk (as in “Do you feel lucky, punk? Well, do you?) is adapted by Dredd. Judge Dredd typically calls perps (or perpetrators) “creep”. For that matter, the visual style of the Mega-City population, and particularly its criminal underclass, tends towards punk – or in the term of TV Tropes, the apunkalypse. Above all, Dredd shares the predominant character theme of Dirty Harry as driven by duty and an instinct for justice. For Dirty Harry, that instinct for justice tends to come up against those pesky legal rights and technicalities (“I have a right to a lawyer!” his adversary Scorpio smarmily declares in the first movie), whereas for Dredd, it is embodied by the Law and himself as agent of the Law, hence his catchphrase identification with it. (Of course, there’s arguments against operating on an ‘instinct’ for justice, not least that while such an instinct may be readily vindicated in a fictional narrative, it is less so in real life).
However, it’s not just Judge Dredd who is a futuristic Dirty Harry, but also Justice Department itself and all the Judges. They all operate as police, judge, jury and executioner, passing sentence when arresting (“assaulting a Judge – two years”) – although the death sentence is exceptional in Mega-City and the sentence is usually a term in the cubes (isolation cubes or iso-cubes). Of course, very few of them are as competent as Dredd – and quite a few are downright incompetent or ineffectual. Even worse, some of them are corrupt (Dredd’s own clone-twin Rico for one) or operate more like the Magnum Force in the second Dirty Harry movie of that name, renegade cops outside the law.
Whatever the case, Judge Dredd has the potential not only for black comedy and satire, but also shares the same scope as Dirty Harry for action, drama and morality play.
(5) MORAL COMPLEXITY
(OR JUDGE DREDD DIED FOR YOUR SINS)
Okay, so it might be something of an overstatement that Judge Dredd died for your sins. For one thing, it would be your crimes, as Dredd is quite happy to leave your sins as something between you and Grud (the publishing-friendly term for God in Mega-City). For another, Dredd hasn’t died – yet. He is in his eighties or so, although with an extended lifespan from advanced rejuvenation technology, that is roughly equivalent to a present-day male in their forties. (For Judge Dredd, eighty is the new forty!). However, he is getting on, although fortunately Mega-City has at least one younger clone replacement in waiting.
Ironically however, for a series in which Dredd and his fellow Judges were intended as a dystopian satire of the worst excesses of police and governmental authority fused together into a post-apocalyptic police state, it is notable for its moral complexity (not unlike its thematic predecessor, the Dirty Harry film series).
TV Tropes states it best:
“By his very nature and purpose, anti-hero Dredd is firmly committed to his organization’s authoritarian, brutal, and ruthless methods of law enforcement, but it’s established that Mega City One would collapse without him and his fellow Judges, and more than once has. Though Dredd is impeccably honest and honorable, despises corruption, does not discriminate, goes out of his way to save innocents…and has been given cause to question his purpose more than once, he is an unapologetic authoritarian. In this setting, democracy within his society has been shown to be simply unworkable”.
This thread of moral complexity was present from the very outset. Compounding the irony, Dredd co-creator Pat Mills, perhaps best known for his anti-authoritarian themes, wrote Dredd – the ultimate authority figure – as an unambiguously heroic character. This thread of moral complexity has deepened over time, as these intended figures of authoritarian satire have earned their writers’ respect as potentially heroic characters. This thread was most evident in the recurring Democracy storyline, as Judge Dredd acceded to democracy activists and put the Judges to the vote of the populace in a referendum whether to retain the Judges as the government of Mega-City. Characteristically, most of the population couldn’t be bothered voting, but of those that did, the majority voted to retain the Judges.
This moral complexity is also apparent in the heroic self-sacrifice of the ideal Judges, such as Dredd, sworn to uphold the law and protect Mega-City. Dredd himself has consistently accepted the potential sacrifice of his own life to protect the citizens or even a citizen of Mega-City One (and even the residents of the Cursed Earth or anyone looking to the protection of the Law). The life of a Mega-City Judge is somewhat monastic, even deliberately Spartan. After years of training, their duty is entirely to uphold the Law, enduring constant danger of death, typically without personal relationships, certainly without personal riches or reward or even retirement – as the practice of Judges is to retire from active duty with the Long Walk, a quintessentially American Western image of leaving Mega-City and roaming the Cursed Earth, to bring law to the lawless.
Often Dredd is characterized as a fascist, with some – dare I say it? – justice (and indeed dangerous tendencies in that direction), but ultimately I would argue that he is not a fascist (and Mega-City One is not totalitarian) in the strictest sense. Dredd and his Mega-City One are undeniably authoritarian – part of a police state that is almost casually brutal and draconian in its enforcement of law – but Dredd would seem to be a little too legalistic to be a true fascist and lacking the definitive characteristics of historical fascism.
(6) The GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY – AND THE WEIRD!
One of my favorite parts (and arguably the definitive part) of fantasy or SF is the world-building, particularly if it is our world, radically transformed. Judge Dredd’s world of the twenty-second century certainly whets one’s world-building appetite in just the right way- teasing details and visual depictions of it as the story unfolds. For the most part, the storyline of Judge Dredd is predominantly set in Mega-City One itself, which at its height was an extensive setting indeed, a megalopolis of 800 million people sprawling along the Atlantic coast from Canada to Florida – although the storyline would often extend to the former territory of the United States beyond Mega-City One, typically picaresque adventures in the badlands of the Cursed Earth. Every so often however, the Judge Dredd storyline (usually in the person of Judge Dredd himself) would visit (or be visited by) other parts of the world.
Of course, the writers would use these forays as an opportunity for visual showcases of the Judges of the other mega-cities – as all the major mega-cities seen are governed or policed by a Judge system, which resembles that of Mega-City One, even down to the design of the uniform. Unfortunately, the depiction of foreign judges has been criticized for relying too much on cliché or stereotype – and there is substance to this criticism, as the writers tended to display the characteristic cultural sensibilities of the 1970s to 1990s – but I think it is missing the point in two respects. Firstly, it ignores how much the American Mega-City judges themselves are stereotypes, down to their uniforms as virtually walking American eagles and flags. Secondly, if one is to be a stereotype, one could hardly do better than the glorious stereotypes of the judges of other mega-cities, who tend to be visually awesome and often more striking (or indeed better characters) than the American Judges.
And so here is a gallery of the world of Judge Dredd, which can be divided up into the good, the bad, the ugly and the weird.
THE GOOD
The good are those mega-cities that typically have the affinities or sympathies of the writers and hence tend to be the ‘good guys’ of the comic, or indeed, among the more livable cities of the post-apocalyptic world to our present sensibilities.
Obviously, given their position in the narrative, the American mega-cities are the primary ‘good guys’, particularly the city of our protagonist Judge Dredd, Mega-City One. And although it is an authoritarian police state under the Judges, one has to admit that in comparison to other mega-cities, it allows more freedom, security and lifestyle for its citizens and would seem one of the better cities to live in the post-apocalyptic world – but for the recurring apocalypses the writers inflict upon it (which saw it literally halved in The Apocalypse War and decimated in Chaos Day).
Mega-City Two was the West Coast counterpart of Mega-City One and otherwise indistinguishable from Mega-City One, which was probably why the writers decided it had to go – with the entire city destroyed in the Judgement Day storyline, although at least it went out with a bang in a worldwide zombie apocalypse.
Texas City on the Gulf Coast seems to be sufficiently distinguished from Mega-City One to have survived the wrath of the writers – particularly by its overblown stereotypical Wild West iconography for the city and its Judges. The uniform of Texas-City Judges resembles the uniform of Mega-City One Judges, but with substituted cowboy imagery – hats (and Sheriff stars) instead of helmets and the Lone Star instead of the American flag.
Of course, the British writers of Judge Dredd depict their own Brit-Cit amongst the good mega-cities – indeed, the closest ally and associate of Mega-City One. Brit-Cit Judges resemble the Mega-City One Judges, but with the lion and Union Jack instead of the eagle and American flag.
Interestingly, the writers also tend to depict the Japanese Judges of Hondo City favorably – which I attribute to the influence of Japanese popular culture on British comics writers and Japan’s economic predominance in the 1970s and 1980s.
And of course, the British writers can’t deny their love of Australia. Postwar Australia or Oz, dominated by the Sydney-Melbourne Conurb (bordering the central Radback) would seem to be by far and away the most free, laidback and pleasant place to live in the twenty-second century. The Oz judges have uniforms which seem to combine the Mega-City Judges uniforms with attributes of the present Australian police uniform – but with shorts for those Oz summers…
Speaking of laidback, there are also the Irish Judges, which at least has the excuse for its stereotypical nature in that it is actually one gigantic Brit-Cit corporate Irish theme park.
Interestingly, Africa seems to lack any major mega-city outside Egypt (which is ironic as Africa is increasingly set to have most of the world’s mega-cities by the actual twenty-second century), but the continent-roving Pan-African Judges are pretty impressive.
THE BAD
The Big Bad of Judge Dredd’s world are the Sovs, not surprisingly for comics originating in the last peak of the Cold War in the 1970s and 1980s. The two major Sov cities were East-Meg One and East-Meg Two – East-Meg One launched the Apocalypse War against Mega-City One (and was obliterated as a result), while East Meg-Two attempted to pursue more friendly relations with the American cities – but unfortunately renegade Sovs from East-Meg One unleashed the Chaos Bug in revenge for the Apocalypse War.
As much as one has to hate those Sov Judges, one has to admit that they make communism look cool with their uniforms.
The Chinese Sino-Cit Judges would seem to be somewhat similar to the Sov Judges, but have been somewhat elusive in the comic – although when we have seen them, they looked awesome, with dragon emblems in the place of the American eagles…
THE UGLY
And then you have the mega-cities that, although unpleasant, are too stereotypically corrupt or ineffectual to be villainous.
The Latin American mega-cities are probably the worst victims of cliché and stereotype – they and their Judges are typically cruel, corrupt and repressive, but lazy and incompetent to boot. Ciudad Banquarilla – or as it is more commonly known, Banana City – is typical in this respect and presumably resulted from the Brits not forgiving Argentina for the Falklands War. At least, the Judges look simply fabulous in their uniforms.
The Pan-Andean Conurb is arguably even worse. Although their Judges have a snazzy condor instead of the American eagle on their uniforms, the one time we saw them their reigning Chief Judge was a puppet of the illegal sugar cartels and Judge Dredd ended up arresting him and most of their judiciary.
Although the Egyptian mega-city of Luxor is equally a stereotype, seemingly a fusion of Islamic law and a revival of pharaonic Egypt, at least its Judges looked awesome, even if they were harsh. As their leading Judge retorts after blasting off the hand of a thief – “Be thankful sinner that I only took a hand!”
Interestingly, Vatican City is also a mega-city of some substance in Judge Dredd’s world, although its Judges – or Inquisitors – are distinctly unpleasant.
THE WEIRD
Finally, there is the outright weird in Dredd’s world – the mutated Weird West of the Cursed Earth, the various space colonies on the Moon as well as other planets in our solar system and the high weirdness of alien worlds in deep space…
(7) THERE ARE 800 MILLION STORIES IN THE MEGA-CITY
And then there is the diversity of characters, both in Mega-City One and outside it.
Of course, the comic is predominated by the title character, Judge Joseph “Joe” Dredd, but it’s striking how often he can be a background figure in his own comic and other characters feature more prominently, particularly in shorter story episodes. It is reminiscent of the tagline for the TV series The Naked City – “There are 8 million stories in the Naked City. This has been one of them”. Except of course, that there were initially 800 million stories in the Mega-City.
The focus tends to be on Dredd and his colleagues, the Judges of Mega-City One (although it might be noted that Dredd has family – his niece Vienna Dredd – with whom he has a strained but at times surprisingly touching relationship). It’s somewhat unsettling that I can remember the names of Mega-City Chief Judges better than I can for say, actual people – Fargo, Solomon, Goodman, Cal (Grud help us all), Griffin, McGruder, Silver, McGruder (again), Volt, Hershey, Francisco, Sinfeld, Hershey (again), Logan…
Mind you, the track record of Chief Judges is distinctly mixed at best.
Yet there are also memorable citizen characters – Supersurf champion Marlon Shakespeare or “Chopper”, Otto Sump (probably the largest single source of Mega-City’s most ill-advised consumer fads), Max Normal, Mrs Gunderson…
(8) A ROGUES GALLERY TO DIE FOR
Of course, a superhero is nothing without his supervillains – his nemeses, ideally a whole rogue’s gallery of them. Batman might be cool (because how is a billionaire vigilante who dresses up as a bat not cool?), but he wouldn’t quite be as cool without his rogue’s gallery of villains, as striking and theatrical as him.
Judge Dredd certainly fits this superhero rule, with a rogue’s gallery of villains to rival – or even surpass – that of Batman. Judge Dredd started off reasonably small (not unlike Batman), with the common criminals or ‘perps’ (for perpetrators) of Mega-City One, although his very first perp (in his debut episode in 2000 AD) ‘Whitey’ was a little more exceptional than most as a Judge-killer. To a large extent, as an (or THE) officer of law enforcement in Mega-City One, his primary antagonists continue to be common perps – and indeed Dredd has mused that it will be a lucky hit from one of these perps that will see him off.
But then in a world including aliens, mutants, robots, cyborgs and psi powers, Dredd’s antagonists can be highly dangerous or formidable – even the ‘common’ perps, with the future technology or bizarre social fashions of Mega-City, can be a handful, and terrorist organizations like Total War are downright terrifying . My favorite Dredd antagonists tend to be any alien or mutant incursion, particularly from the Cursed Earth – Satanus the Cursed Earth Tyrannosaurus Rex, the Gila Munja, the Black Plague, Father Earth…
Of course, most of Judge Dredd’s antagonists tend not to be recurring, as Dredd either kills them or sends them to the iso-cubes – unlike Batman, who just sends his antagonists to Arkham Asylum, where they stay until they feel like escaping. However, some of Dredd’s more popular (and my own favorite) villains are recurring. One is P.J. Maybe, Mega-City’s most successful psychopath and serial killer (although perhaps most of Mega-City’s population is psychopathic or sociopathic to some degree). The other is the notoriously violent Angel Gang, particularly in its surviving member of Mean Machine Angel. As a boy, he was good-natured and showed none of the family’s violent tendencies. Obviously the Angel Gang patriarch, Pa Angel, decided that this would simply not do, and arranged surgery to transform him into a murderous cyborg, with four ‘settings’ of rage literally dialled into his head – with his basic default setting merely as the lowest level of anger.
Ultimately however, the most dangerous adversaries in Judge Dredd are other Judges. The first epic adversary in Judge Dredd (and city-level threat) was Judge Cal, who succeeded to the position of Chief Judge in “The Day the Law Died”, essentially as a replay of Caligula in Mega-City One. Dredd’s most iconic recurring adversary – the Joker to his Batman (and similarly his evil counterpart) – is essentially an omnicidal figure of dark fantasy and supernatural power, Judge Death. He and his fellow Dark Judges (Mortis, Fear and Fire) – essentially Judge Dredd’s Four Horseman of the Apocalypse – come from a world in another dimension in which they killed the entire population – their reasoning being that since crime is only committed by the living, that life itself is the crime.
Although when you come right down to it, despite their supernatural power, the Dark Judges are simply not as effective villains as human Judges from our own world – the Sov Judges, who between the Apocalypse War and the Chaos Bug, almost wiped out Mega-City One. Of course, that’s what happens when, like the Dark Judges, you insist on killing everyone by hand – but then, justice is personal for the Dark Judges…
(9) DIVERSITY OF GENRE AND TONE
(OR HOW CHAOS DAY TORE MY HEART OUT)
As a sci-fi fantasy kitchen sink, Judge Dredd extends to a diverse range of genres, albeit obviously not pure or high fantasy – and admittedly not particularly hard SF either. Indeed it’s pretty soft on the Mohs scale of SF hardness, what with psi powers and outright fantasy elements – arguably it ranks near the lowest part of the scale, along with other typically comedic or comic greats such as Futurama, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the DC and Marvel Universes, Star Wars and Warhammer 40,000. Of course, it is not primarily science fiction or fantasy – it’s primarily a dystopian satire or black comedy in a science fiction setting.
That said, Judge Dredd does dip into a diverse range of genres, predominantly within science fiction but also within fantasy. As highlighted in this list, Judge Dredd predominantly falls within a post-apocalyptic or dystopian SF setting – but also at times has elements of cyberpunk (as well as other ‘punk’ subgenres), military science fiction, space opera (notably in its forays into deep space, such as the Judge Child Quest) and time travel or alternative history fiction amongst others. It remains too embedded in its future world setting to venture too far into fantasy, but even so at times has had elements of dark fantasy or horror (particularly in more ‘psi’ episodes and especially those involving the Dark Judges), urban fantasy (what else given its predominantly urban setting?) and Weird West (typically in the Cursed Earth). For that matter, it has shared elements of genres beyond science fiction or fantasy, albeit in the usual suspects for its central premise – crime or heist fiction, espionage or war fiction, and police drama.
True to its roots in black comedy and satire, Judge Dredd frequently plays with other works of science fiction (or fantasy), generally to the detriment of the latter as they encounter the full force of Mega-City Law. It also has had more substantial crossovers, particularly with other 2000 AD stories (although not always to the benefit of consistent continuity), but also with other publishers – sometimes played for laughs (Mars Attacks Judge Dredd?!), but others played more seriously (Judge Dredd vs Aliens works surprisingly well with the scenario of a xenomorph infestation as a terrorist attack on Mega-City). And there was Judge Dredd vs Batman – the ultimate lawman vs the ultimate vigilante. Double the awesome!
And then there is the diversity of tone. Predominantly its tone is that of tongue-in-cheek black comedy or satire. Primarily, Judge Dredd is funny or comic, in contrast to what might otherwise be an unbearably tragic post-apocalyptic setting. As noted before in this list, the best post-apocalyptic fiction is absurdist at heart. Yet even here it can vary, particularly as Mega-City, its Judges and its citizens have engaged more depth of emotional reaction – from comic to dramatic (even with a sense of suspense or horror) and indeed to tragic.
The tragic stories could be heartbreaking or heartrending – they typically involved stories of individuals crushed by life in Mega-City One, often not so much by deliberate cruelty but by the vast impersonal carelessness of the city, and some so that even Dredd was moved by their tragedy. And then the whole city was overwhelmed by tragedy in the recent Day of Chaos storyline. Previous apocalyptic crises for Mega-City had tended to be somewhat absurdist, but there was little absurdist or comic about the Day of Chaos. Even in the Apocalypse War, when half the city was destroyed, it was a little hard to take seriously, perhaps it was on such an unbelievably large scale and we don’t really see it. The Apocalypse War (and for that matter The Day the Law Died before it, equally or even more absurdist as Caligula replayed in the twenty-second century) also set the pattern of future crises, in which Judge Dredd would typically lead a small force to turn the tide and save the city. So that’s what we anticipate in the recent Day of Chaos storyline, waiting expectantly as the Judge battle to save the city from a terrorist biological weapon. Except…they fail.
The Chaos Bug spreads through the city beyond any hope of containment, infecting all it touches with fatal rabid madness. As Yeats wrote – “things fall apart, the center cannot hold”. And so the Judges enact their desperate, heartbreaking last resort – city-wide triage, evacuating a small uninfected remnant (only 50 million out of a population of 400 million) to safe blocks, poignantly symbolized by Dredd escorting his niece Vienna to a safe block as the city dies around them. Gruddamn you, 2000 AD – you tore my heart out with that story!
Perhaps most poignantly in the tragedy is the sense amongst the Judges, not least Dredd himself, that they reaped the harvest that they had sown, in their destruction of Sov city East-Meg One and the distrust of their own population. The city has bounced back, its population rising to about 180 million or so through the Chaos Bug being not quite as fatal as planned, return of expatriates, immigration, the acceptance of refugees and most ironically, the formerly second-class citizens of its mutant townships. Yet it remained a shadow of its former superpower self – depopulated and mostly in dangerous ruins, in dire economic straits and with uncertain future, embattled for its very survival…
(10) THE ZEN OF DREDD
(OR HOW JUDGE DREDD IS PLATO’S REPUBLIC AND HOBBES’ LEVIATHAN)
And for my final reason, it’s time to get philosophical. Not too philosophical of course – Judge Dredd is primarily driven by its nature (and the action of its narrative) as a futuristic Dirty Harry in a dystopian or post-apocalyptic SF satire.
However, like most (if not all) substantial works of fiction, Judge Dredd does have its philosophical underpinnings – the Zen of Dredd as it were, which not surprisingly tends towards political philosophy, Plato’s Republic and Hobbes’ Leviathan. I’m not saying that Judge Dredd is deliberately modelled or directly influenced by Plato’s Republic, but Plato and his Republic are hugely influential in Western culture and politics. Since Plato’s Republic has its central premise as the meaning of justice (and hence the just or ideal society), it is all too apt that Judge Dredd has a distinct flavor of Plato’s Republic about it. Indeed, just as Star Wars was essentially Plato’s Republic in space, with the Jedi as its philosopher-kings or guardians and the Force as the Platonic Forms of the true spiritual reality (superior to the material reality of our untrained perception or senses), then so too Mega-City One is essentially Plato’s Republic in twenty-second century America, with the Judges as its philosopher-kings or guardians and the Law as its Forms. (Or as Judge Dredd likes to proclaim – “I am the Law!”). Indeed, the Judges are strikingly similar to the guardian class of Plato’s Republic – male and female (Plato’s Republic was at least progressive on that point), trained from childhood to govern in the interests of the polity (by physical regimen and the four virtues of wisdom, justice, courage and temperance) and bound by stricter rules (such as the absence of family or relationships and personal wealth) than the rest of the populace.
It has been argued that Plato’s Republic was indeed, like Judge Dredd, a dystopian satire rather than a utopian ideal, but it is difficult not to see it intended as the latter – or worse, Plato’s distaste for his own democratic Athens (which after all, executed his beloved teacher and philosophical mouthpiece Socrates) and idealization of a philosophical version of Athens rival, Sparta. And so we are still fighting the Peloponnesian War against Plato’s totalitarian Spartanism as it has recurred throughout Western political ideology – the General Will of Rousseau, the dictatorship of the proletariat and its revolutionary vanguard in Marxism or communism, the fuhrerprinzip of fascism or Nazism.
And yet for all my general opposition to Plato’s Republic in all its forms, Judge Dredd’s Mega-City One is one of the few forms of Plato’s Republic I can believe in, or at least see a nuanced appeal. This is perhaps because it also echoes another descendant of Plato’s Republic, one that is more blunt and therefore persuasive than most – Hobbes’ Leviathan. Just as Dredd’s Mega-City One is Plato’s Republic in the twenty-second century, so too is its Department of Justice Hobbes’ Leviathan made flesh. (Judge Dredd is prominently among the entries for the trope Hobbes was Right in TV Tropes). Hobbes’ Leviathan is essentially his proposal of necessary political sovereign power, born of “social contract” to avoid the state of (human) nature, with its constant war of all against all – in which life is, as famously quoted, “poor, nasty, brutish and short”. And to be honest, that does seem to sum up life in the twenty-second century – indeed, it is potentially a lot more nasty, brutish and short in a world of aliens, mutants, robots and weapons of mass destruction.