Yes – I have my top ten Judge Dredd heroes and villains but as usual I also have my special mentions.
However, there’s a twist. As the world of Judge Dredd is one of distinctive mega-cities and their Judges, I’ve compiled special mentions exclusively in those categories – cities and Judges – as ‘heroes’ or ‘villains’.
Unlike my top ten Judge Dredd heroes and villains, these special mentions aren’t a countdown from tenth to first place. Instead, apart from the first entry for villains, they are simply counted out in chronological order as they were introduced in the comic.
There are some similarities to the top ten list. First and foremost, it’s also a running list – updated to each Judge Dredd Case Files volume as I review them in Mega-City Law, presently up to Case Files 19.
As for their rankings as ‘heroes’ and ‘villains’, that tends to be from the protagonist perspective of Judge Dredd and Mega-City One – which after all tends also to be shared by the writers and readers, at least this reader.
No prizes then for guessing the first special mention as ‘heroes’ goes to the Big Meg and its Judges. Sometimes I rank myself as a citizen of Mega-City One over my actual country. Grud – I love that fictional city!
On the other hand, I had to make an exception to chronological order for the first special mention as ‘villains’ because that entry was simply too distinctive to rank third as it would otherwise by chronological order.
However, even from that protagonist perspective of Dredd or MC-1, the rankings as ‘heroes’ are somewhat tenuous. It’s not just that, as in my top ten, the heroes might be described as anti-heroes at best (a description that also applies to Dredd himself as well as the Judges of Mega-City One). That does apply here as well but it’s also that while Mega-City One does have other cities and their Judges as ‘allies’, those alliances tend to be tenuous. Even the other two American mega-cities, while generally well-meaning towards Mega-City One as formal allies, are (or were in the case of one of them) pretty useless when it came to helping MC-1 out of a crisis.
Back to that reference to writers, there was a tendency for the other cities and their Judges to reflect the positive or negative pop culture stereotypes held by the writers at the time, which in turn is reflected by their ranking as ‘heroes’ and ‘villains” – that is, as ‘good’ cities or Judges allied with MC-1 or otherwise sympathetic, or as ‘bad’ cities as adversaries of MC-1 or otherwise unsympathetic.
So these are my special mentions for the cities and Judges of Dredd’s world as heroes or villains.
(1) HEROES: MEGA-CITY ONE
(CASE FILES 1 – JUDGE WHITEY: prog 2)
As I said in my introduction, no prizes for guessing the first special mention for cities and their Judges as ‘heroes’ goes to the Big Meg and its Judges. Sometimes I rank myself as a citizen of Mega-City One over my actual country. Grud – I love that fictional city!
It’s also my first special mention consistent with me counting them out in chronological order (with the exception of my first villainous special mention). No surprise there either – after all, we’re introduced to Mega-City One and its Judges from the very first episode of Judge Dredd, although that was the second episode of the 2000 AD anthology comic which published Judge Dredd (as it was not ready for the first episode).
Okay, okay – technically Mega-City One was introduced in the first Judge Dredd episode as New York City but that was soon retconned into Mega-City One. The Judges were introduced itself as such, although in these early episodes they were an elite force operating separately from the regular police – again, that was soon retconned into the Judges as the only substantive police and the Justice Department as only substantive government of Mega-City One.
Mega-City One needs little introduction other than to note it as one of three coastal American mega-cities that survived the Atomic Wars through their laser missile defense systems and effectively assumed the mantle of government of the former United States – separately from each other in their own respective territories.
As for that territory, Mega-City One was the super-urban agglomeration of the cities of the east coast or Atlantic seaboard, sprawling from Canada to Florida. To its west (from the Great Lakes on) was the Cursed Earth, the radioactive (and mutated) badlands to which the American heartland had been reduced by the Atomic Wars. To its east, the Black Atlantic – to which that ocean had been transformed by the Atomic Wars and other pollution. Its population was originally identified as 100 million (in The Day the Law Died) but that was retconned immediately after that epic to 800 million to match its simultaneously post-apocalyptic but dystopian nature as an overcrowded wretched hive of scum and villainy.
However, that has proved somewhat fluid in the comic to suit the writer’s tastes – most dramatically when the city was effectively halved by the Apocalypse War both in population (to 400 million) and in area from New Hampshire to North Carolina.
As for its Judges, particularly Dredd as its leading Judge, they need little introduction as well, except perhaps to note that he is the Law!
Judge Dredd, the Judges and Mega-City One are effectively our protagonists in the comic, so it’s not surprising that they’re my first and foremost hero entry – and it’s essentially from their perspective we see other cities and Judges as ‘heroes’ or ‘villains’.
(1) VILLAINS: DEADWORLD – DARK JUDGES
(CASE FILES 5 – JUDGE DEATH LIVES: prog 224)
The crime is life! The sentence is death!
Yes, yes – the Dark Judges are my top Judge Dredd villain, foremost among them of course Judge Death, but I also have to feature them as my first special mention for cities and Judges, albeit their ‘city’ is a world in a parallel dimension, Deadworld. As a complete inversion of Justice Department, encapsulated in their judicial condemnation of life itself as a crime, they are infinitely more villainous than even the most villainous mega-city or Judges on Earth. Much like Sabbat’s zombie apocalypse, all mega-cities are essentially allies against against death itself in the form of the Dark Judges – indeed, you root for the Sovs in Deadworld’s version of the Apocalypse War against the nascent Dark Judges.
You know who they are. The Dark Judges – Judges Death, Fire, Fear and Mortis – are essentially the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse in the Judge Dredd comic (except of course for the actual Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse that featured in End of Days).
(2) HEROES: MEGA-CITY TWO
(JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 2 – THE CURSED EARTH: prog 61)
(R.I.P. JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 17 – JUDGEMENT DAY Meg 2.04)
Alas Mega-City Two – we hardly knew ye!
Although probably for good reason – it was essentially a carbon copy of Mega-City One, just on the West Coast or Pacific seaboard, California’s mega-city (albeit it extended up the Pacific coastline north of California as well).
So obviously the writers decided it had to go – the Judge Dredd comic wasn’t big enough for two Mega-Cities that were basically indistinguishable.
Sure – Mega-City Two seemed a somewhat nicer place to live from what little we saw of it, if only because the Pacific is not as poisonously polluted as the Black Atlantic, so that Mega-City Two had open beachfront.
And sure – the Mega-City Two Judges appear somewhat laxer with enforcing their authoritarian police state, which usually translated to Mega-City One Judges seeing them as characteristically useless. No wonder Mega-City Two didn’t survive the zombie apocalypse of Judgement Day – and was nuked accordingly!
There’s not much more to say. I seem to recall Mega-City Two may have been mentioned even as early as the episodes compiled in Case File 1 – my recollection is there’s a reference to them as one of the triumvirate of American mega-cities for the colonies on the moon in Luna-1 – but the definitive introduction to it for me will always be The Cursed Earth, the storyline in which it had the most plot relevance. Even there they were pretty useless – to give more stakes to Dredd’s Cursed Earth mission to deliver a vaccine to them, without which they would have gone under even back then.
Mostly however, readers and writers of Judge Dredd tended to forget there even was a Mega-City Two on the West Coast, with only the occasional reminder popping up that they were there being useless, such as when they were being useless to help Mega-City One in the Apocalypse War. Indeed, so occasional that you could probably count the occasions on the fingers of two hands.
(2) VILLAINS: EAST MEG ONE & EAST MEG TWO – SOV JUDGES
(SOV JUDGES: CASE FILES 1 – THE FIRST LUNA OLYMPICS: prog 50)
Gruddamn I love the Sov Judges! The best Dredd antagonists, barring my first special mention of course – collectively and individually, with enough of the latter for their own top ten.
And yes – I said the same thing when I featured them as my second top Judge Dredd villains, but like the Dark Judges and Deadworld, I have to feature them in my special mentions for cities and Judges.
The Sov Judges were introduced early in the comic – indeed in the Luna arc compiled in Case Files 1 – as the most persistent recurring antagonists of Mega-City One, perhaps the obvious choice as such given their introduction and their main epic The Apocalypse War were written prior to the fall of the Soviet Union. Subsequent storylines seem to redress this as some sort of neo-Soviet revival, perhaps as part or a result of the Atomic Wars.
The Sov Judges are also the most effective recurring adversaries of Mega-City One, wiping out half the city in the Apocalypse War (albeit their own city East Meg One was wiped out, leaving East Meg Two) and almost the other half in the Day of Chaos.
I always loved the look of the Sov Judges, with all their Soviet paraphernalia of which Stalin himself would be proud – they just look so damn cool! Indeed, there are times when I think they look cooler than their American Mega-City One counterparts.
(3) HEROES: TEXAS CITY
(JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 4 – THE JUDGE CHILD QUEST: prog 160)
The third of the triumvirate of coastal mega-cites as successors to the former United States – and the other surviving American mega-city after Mega-City Two was destroyed in Judgement Day.
Yes, yes – Texas City was mentioned as early as the Luna-1 story arc in Case Files 1 but we don’t really get a good look at it until The Judge Child Quest.
The oldest ally of Mega-City One – although that accolade doesn’t seem to count for much, with Texas City doing very little to help Mega-City One in any of the latter’s crises and doing quite a bit to hurt after Chaos Day, attempting a coup in the latter. It didn’t take and Mega-City One was able to coup them right back, substituting its Psi-Judge Lewis as Chief Judge of Texas City (by perpetually mind-blanking those who encounter her to think she’s the Chief Judge).
Its Judges have uniforms that are essentially the same as those of Mega-City One but with the Wild West or cowboy iconography to match Texas City itself – Stetson hats instead of helmets and Lone Star belt buckles.
(4) HEROES: BRIT CIT
(JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 10 – ATLANTIS: prog 485)
Yes of course the British writers (and artists) of the Judge Dredd comic were always going to have a British mega-city and its Judges – I mean, the name Brit-Cit just writes itself.
And of course they were always going to feature Brit-Cit and its Judges among the good guys as one of Mega-City One’s best and oldest allies – indeed, perhaps the only one to actually do anything to help during one of Mega-City One’s recurring crises. Well, as good as the good guys get in Judge Dredd, even if only by criteria of Mega-City One ally – as that alliance has been very tenuous at times.
The Brit-Cit Judges are similar to those of Mega-City One in design, except with the British lion on their helmets instead of the American eagle on their shoulders.
(5) HEROES: OZ – SYDNEY-MELBOURNE CONURB
(JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 11 – OZ: prog 545)
Hands down the best place to live in the twenty-second century, even more so than the twenty-first century.
No, seriously.
As usual, how other mega-cities were portrayed in Judge Dredd reflected the sensibilities of the British writers, particularly in pop culture – and British comics writers in general were enamored of 1980s and 1990s Australiana. It showed in Tank Girl. It showed in 2000 AD in general – Grant Morrison has Zenith quip about not wanting to miss Neighbours. And it showed here with how Oz is depicted in Judge Dredd, although it has the unfortunate side effect that twenty-second century Australia seems culturally frozen in the 1980s and 1990s.
The primary mega-city of Oz is the Sydney-Melbourne Conurb, not surprisingly given Australia’s present urban concentration between those two cities – although the map of Oz shows other cities among some strange geographical features. My personal favorite is the Radback, the Oz counterpart of the Cursed Earth.
As for the Oz Judges, they’re bloody legends! While casual and relaxed, they’re also competent and tough when the chips are down – without being over the top about it like the Mega-City One Judges. They are also the most reliable of Mega-City One’s allies.
In uniform design, they’re a cross between present Australian police uniforms – with caps instead of helmets – and biker leathers. So…not unlike Mad Max and his colleagues in the first film, but with shorts – aptly enough for Australia’s weather.
(6) HEROES: HONDO CITY
(JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 12 – OUR MAN IN HONDO: prog 608)
The 22nd century Japanese mega-city was perhaps almost as inevitable as Oz, Brit Cit, or even Mega-City One itself – given that it was written at the height of Japan’s economic and technological rise, when Japan looked to observers to potentially eclipse even the United States itself. It also coincided with Japan’s booming pop cultural influence, not least one suspects on the British writers of Judge Dredd, hence its positive depiction.
As for Hondo City’s Judge-Inspectors, they have a uniform – as well as mindset and culture – to invoke the appearance of samurai.
“Unlike foreign Judges, they wear no badge with their name on; their names are printed on the rising sun symbol on their uniforms, viewable only through the visor on another judge’s helmet, with the intent that the citizens see justice as one entity rather than a group of individuals.”
(7) HEROES: EMERALD ISLE – MURPHYVILLE
(JUDGE DREDD CASE FILES 15 – EMERALD ISLE: prog 727)
Top o’ the morning to you!
Garth Ennis may have written 22nd century Ireland and its Judges such as Judge-Sergeant Charlie Joyce as literally the butt of an Irish joke – but I like them. They were subsequently written more seriously – well as serious as Judge Dredd gets for dystopian SF satire – with Charlies’ son Fintan Joyce emerging as a heroic character aiding Mega-City One and Dredd after Chaos Day.
As for their uniforms – they “are highly distinctive, with the top being a “trenchcoat” rather than the biker leathers of most forces. The green and white colouring (with orange bits) is based around the Irish flag”.