[Meeting…] Judge Dredd

From Wild West comics to superhero comics, protagonists often represent the law in one sense or another. On this occasion I am going to talk about a character who represents the law directly, not only for his righteous principles (sometimes exaggerated) but for his work, since he is a judge, but not just any judge, but one of the futuristic city Mega City 1.

Judge Dredd was the most popular character in 2000 AD, a British publication from mid-1977. Curiously, the person in charge of drawing the character in his first stage was the Spanish Carlos Ezquerra, who obtained recognition there that he would hardly have achieved in his country.

Judge, jury and executioner

In the distantly futuristic (at that time) year 2099, cities have become much larger, their population barely works a couple of hours a day and has all kinds of comforts such as robots that help them in their chores and leisure alternatives such as rooms to recreate dreams.

Maintaining the peace of such a large city with so much idle population is a difficult task, not only because of the criminals, but also because of the existence of mutants that live in the dark areas and the possible malfunction of some robots. Furthermore, there are many things that may seem harmless to us, but are prohibited in the future (such as organ transplantation, the sale of comics or smoking in public) and someone has to ensure that the tranquility is not disturbed.

The safety of Mega City 1 is in the hands of the judges, law enforcement officers who patrol the immense city to ensure that everything remains in order. The judges play the role of a current police officer, but they can also judge and even execute if they see it necessary.

Despite the enormous number of judges there are, the citizens of Mega City 1 know that the most inflexible and serious of all is Judge Dredd, who has earned his fame hard, also proving to be incorruptible and tremendously intelligent and skilled when it comes to fighting and eliminating his enemies.

Dredd is a man who lives for his job and he does not usually have friends beyond his colleagues and his confidants. Despite this, he lives with a somewhat irritable Italian maid and a robot named Walter, who, after gaining his freedom by helping Dredd, became his follower and improvised companion. Curiously, this character hired his maid so as not to have a robot helper at home because he doesn't completely trust them. Finally he ended up living with both of them and they put an end to the tranquility of their home because they don't get along at all.

Dredd is so secretive that little is known about him. Even its appearance is a mystery, because he never takes off his helmet and his real appearance is unknown, although in one of his first stories it was suggested that he was horribly disfigured.

Law and Order

In his original stories, Dredd fought countless criminals (who with their actions did not show what was and was not legal in the city), but he also had to face mutants (inspired by the movie The Omega Man, which in turn was inspired by the book I Am Legend), a robot revolution started by Call Me Kenneth (one of the first important enemies of the series) and even fought against the robotic version of King Kong.

Despite everything, Dredd and his colleagues' nemeses are the Dark Judges, evil judges who come from an alternate dimension. Among these judges we find Judge Fear, Judge Fire, Judge Mortis and Judge Death. In addition to their sociopathy and evil, these judges possess special abilities that make judges like Dredd seem obsolete.

After its initial stage, Dredd had more incarnations in other companies, with the DC Comics version being the one that tried to give it more popularity in the American market (something it achieved to a certain extent).

Conclusion and Recommendations

Judge Dredd He is a cold, hermetic and hard character, but fair. He is so cold that he does not have an excessively deep personality, since he is still the standard tough guy that we have seen in a thousand stories. However, the world he tries to protect and the situations he lives in make him very interesting. Besides, Despite his blind faith in the law, he has verbally confronted his comrades and has even resigned when you have considered it necessary.

Anyone who wants to get into the life of this character would recommend that they start with the original Judge Dredd stories published in 2000 AD, which have been collected on more than one occasion. It is also worth taking a look at the DC Comics version and the comics published by IDW Publishing.

There are two Dredd movies, one from 1995 and another from 2012, and several video games about the character, Judge Dredd released in 1995 for Super Nintendo, Mega Drive/Genesis, Game Gear and Game Boy and Judge Dredd: Dredd vs Death released in 2003 for Windows, Playstation 2, Gamecube and Xbox.