It could be argued that if you agree with Judge Dredds application of the law, you could almost be a fascist, well, I aint a fascist...but I reckon handing out 6 months in the cubes to some of the dross strolling around now seems like a good idea...ANYWAY...thats as political I'm getting
Picture this if you will...mid 1980, and I was on a pommy comic binge, Beano, Bunty, Roy of the Rovers, etc etc so and so forth...then I stumbled over a mega comic of Judge Joseph Dredd, the first time I see a comic of him and i get the whole dreddstory first time out, how cool was that....I was happy as a dunce in munce
To say I'm a bit of a Dredd mark...is an understatement, the whole concept of him is just fabbo...Judge, jury and executioner all in one, mega city's, a drok load of weird villian's and to top it off..KNEEPADS, marvelous stuff indeed
Now, the attempts at making a cartoon or film of the guy, while not total failures, to me anyway, well, to say the guys making them just didnt get it could be construed as polite....I saw a dredd motion comic and well, it did nothing for me, THEN , Sly Stallone had a crack, his was much better, although Dredd-o-philes megacity wide called for his locking in the cubes for murder of a iconic image, , The Angel gang, Rico dredd, blok wars, the long walk AND he took Dredds helmet off !!! 5 years of stories, all in one flick, but Sly tried hard...
The new flick is a marked improvement...or so they say, I liked Sly's attempt... I tend to take most super hero adaptions on each of their merits, I liked both Dredd's, same I liked Daredevil and all the Toby Parker Spiderman's, Fanboys/girls went smeg up birko about how shit these flicks were, Iike I said I just took each one as they came and DONT compare them....and how bad a perp was Ma-Ma..awesome baddie
Seems to me that the whole world created in Dreddstory was absolutley beuatifully done by the writers and inkers...they should all be given awards and keys to Mega City..although why you would to want to live there elude's me
TO A SMEGLOAD OF FAVE CHARACTERS
DREDDS CO-JUDGES( that I enjoyed)
CHIEF JUDGE- MARSHAL TEX - the law on Lunar 1, and a top fella till that laser cooked his heart
SOV JUDGE KONTARSKY - Helped Dredd on the Luna One task force
CHEIF JUDGE HERSHEY - Dredd has known Chief Judge Hershey since 2102; like all chief judges since Goodman, he has easy access to her, but they also have a personal relationship based on mutual respect for each other. Dredd believes her to be "the best chief judge we've ever had."
JUDGE GIANT - a giant among law officers...literally
THE SJS...the judge judges...every police force needs 'em, although Chief Judge Keppler of the Luna 1 SJS was a jerkoff
JUDGE ANDERSON: For years Dredd had a close but uneasy friendship with Cassandra Anderson of Psi Division. This friendship came to an end when Anderson abandoned the law for a short time. Later Dredd denied his friendship with her and claimed that he had merely tolerated her. After battling an alien who claimed to be Satan, Anderson was badly injured. At this point Dredd confirmed to her that they had, indeed, been friends.
GALEN DEMARCO was a judge who developed an infatuation with Dredd. While Dredd respected her as a judge, he did not reciprocate her feelings, since romantic attachment is prohibited to judges. Her breach of regulations led to her downfall and resignation from the force. Dredd maintained contact with her and tried to help her adjust to civilian life, but when he continued to reject her advances she eventually severed contact.
JUDGE BEENY is a teenage judge who Dredd has taken under his wing as his protégée
JUDGE MORPHY was Dredd's mentor at the beginning of his career, until he was killed in the line of duty.
DREDD'S LEAST FAVOURITE "PERPS" (and some of my favourite's)
JUDGE DEATH
lets start with one of the most awesome super villians (who actually wasn't, he was just doing his job) Judge Death, a Judge from an alternate timeline were living was now a crime punishable by execution, and I must say he loved his work
MEAN MACHINE & THE ANGEL FAMILY
The toughest and stupidest villain Dredd knows, Mean would have been useless if it wasn't for his bad-bad temper and his uncanny talent with headbutting....Mean used to be a nice kid of the Angel family, nice until Pa (his dad) took him and 'adjusted' him to fit with the Cursed Earth area.
RICO DREDD
Dredd's insane clone bro...Soon after becoming a judge, Dredd's brother Rico became corrupt and began breaking the law, forcing Dredd to turn him in. Twenty years later Rico returned from jail, seeking revenge, and Dredd was forced to kill him in self-defence.
JUDGE RICO: One such clone, who adopted Rico's name (but as a surname), is often mistaken for Dredd. Judge Rico eventually inherited Dredd's apartment at Rowdy Yates Block
and now for the newest perp on the blok...MA-MA...how good was she in the recent flick
MEGA-CIT'S ...CITZ
MAX NORMAL
Max Normal, the pinstripe freak, is Dredd's informant, although I've never seen him do any REAL informing. He wears a pinstripe suit and makes all his money off legal gambling. Max has a habit of talking in rhymes and is one of the few in MC-1 living the good life.
THE FATTIES
Someone came up with the idea of breaking their meaningless MC-1 lives by overeating. This bloomed into a cult-like hobby where citizens (Grud knows where they get the food) overeat and compete in weight contest's. These people, nicknamed The Fatties, even caused a Fatties Olympics, where fat people go around doing Olympic stuff. There also is a weighing contest, where greats like Two Ton Tony Tubbs showed up. Fatties are usually noticed by the wheel that carries their bulk of a stomach.
Two Ton Tony Tubbs was the first man to weigh two tons. After being held by the judges, along with other fatties, due to a food shortage, Tony managed to get up to 1.5 tons together. A bit more tucker and , now he's Two! He entered the weighing competition and after a little dispute won the contest and took his family out of poverty forever. But like any Dredd story, it had arrests and dead people. Luckily Tony wasn't arrested.
WALTER THE WOBOT: Dredd used to share his flat with a domestic robot called Walter the Wobot, who performed all his domestic chores. Walter was intensely loyal to Dredd, but Dredd mostly treated him with open disdain.
THE FARGO CLAN: There is a whole town occupied by the mutated descendants of Ephram Fargo, the twin brother of Chief Judge Eustace Fargo. These mutants, who share the common mutation of an overly large, exaggerated chin, are thus genetic relatives of Judge Dredd himself, and consider him a "cousin." This led to Dredd campaigning to have Mega-City One's mutant segregation laws repealed.
AND NOW TO THEIR HAPPY , HAPPY HOME.....(drokk no)
MEGA CITY ONE
Mega City one was constructed to keep pace with the fast growing human population. Other cities include Brit-Cit (Britain), Texas City (Texas), Uranium City (Canada/Alaska) and Mega City 2 (West Coast of the USA). MC-1 is located on near the entire east coast of the USA. The city is on top of the old New York, which is now a haven for some very strange things.
MC-1 has got 900 Million souls in it, and with a robot workforce taking over every day tedium, a huge 90% unemployment is the result. This has caused people to take up weird hobbies like overeating (the fatties), killing people for the hell of it (The hunter's Club), bat gliding, occultic stuff, ect. Crime has taken a leap. the youth were finally taking by the poverty madness and gangs, who seem to be as fearless and nasty as the judges
MegaCity One consists of Blocks, that hold thousands of Citz. These blocks have near everything people need, stores, hospitals, banks, entertainment etc etc, but you still find people outside as well.
Block wars are a real problem, with people attacking the block next to them. The blocks, which are named after famous celebs, are connected to each other with various tunnels, lifts and roads
.There are over 1000 million miles of roadway in constant use. All of these are above the other and it's not quite possible to see the city floor from the upper areas. Electronic ads cover the pathways and floating restaurants and take-away shops cover the air, apart from the usual traffic and H-Wagons. The small kiosks along the paths are still there
A huge floating site called Weather Control floats above the city and controls the weather. Since the wars killed any natural weather activity except the sun, Weather control was built to make the world more human-friendly. The city is surrounded by perimeter walls, which are crowded on the outside by mutants. The mutants from the cursed earth, try to enter the city haven, but by law, no being that is contaminated can be allowed in. But occasionally mutant babies that show no defects are tested for entrance. A couple of Euthanasium centres are around town where you sign a permission slip and then get killed, otherwise it's murder. Alientown houses all the aliens in MC-1.The Statue of Justice, a huge replica of a judge, is 160m high and towers above the Statue of Liberty
OTHER DROKKIN POPULATION CENTRES:
There are four other major population centre's in Dredd's Northern America.
TEXAS CITY, stretching across several of the southern former United States and with a different culture to its northern cousin, South of the Tex-city is MEX-CITY
Far north is URANIUM CITY.
Canada remains a nation, now called CANADIA, with scattered communities.
Until 2114 Mega-City Two also existed on the West Coast, but was destroyed during the world war known as Judgement Day.
Nuclear deserts and destruction elsewhere in the world are also extensive. Much of the north Atlantic is severely polluted, and is now known as the "Black Atlantic."
An underwater settlement known as Atlantis exists in the Atlantic, half-way along a tunnel from Mega-City One to BRIT-CIT (England).....A nuclear desert also stretches across western Europe.
The British Isles are BRIT-CIT, CAL-HAB, and MURPHYVILLE in Ireland, which has become a country-sized theme park re-creating a stereotypical view of traditional Irish life.
The continent has EURO-CIT (eastern France and part of Germany), CIUDAD ESPANA(eastern Spain), the RUHR and BERLIN CONURBS in Germany, VATICAN-CITY, and a scattering of other mega-cities and city-states.
EAST MEG ONE was destroyed by Dredd in a massive nuclear strike at the climax of the Apocalypse War in 2104.....Further east is East-Meg Two which has other territories under the "Sov Block" banner. Mongolia, lacking a Mega-City or Judge system, has called itself the Mongolian Free State and criminals have flocked there for a safe haven; East-Meg Two performed vicious clearances there in 2125.
In Asia, separated from East-Meg Two by an extensive nuclear desert, are SINO-CITY ONE(destroyed during Judgement Day) and SINO-CITY TWO in eastern China, with HONG TONG built in the remains of Hong Kong and partitioned between Sino-Cit and Brit-Cit control.....HONDO CITY lies on the remains of the islands of Japan. NU-DELHI (previously Indo-Cit and Delhi-City) is in southern India. Between Hondo and Sino-City lie the Radlands of Ji, a nuclear desert full of chaos magic and many violent outlaw gangs and martial arts schools....
Into the Blue Pacific cities survive in south-east Australia or OZ (the Sydney-Melbourne Conurbation), SOLOMON CITY (the Solomon Islands) FREINDLY CITY (Tonga), and the New PACIFIC CITY; New Zealand is said to exist as well. All of Indonesia's islands are now linked by a network of mutant coral called "The Web;" this network of islands is a lawless hotbed of crime.
The Middle East is without major cities, being either nuclear or natural deserts, and only the mega-city of Luxor, Egypt has survived; the Mediterranean coast is heavily damaged by poisonous mutagenics
. In Africa much of the south is a nuclear desert and the Great African Dustbowl has formed in the north-west, but a large number of nation states have survived in one form or another; SIMBA CITY (Gabon), NEW JERUSALUM (Ethiopia), ZAMBIAN METROPOLITAN, and DAR AS SALAAM are the largest cities.
Nuclear fallout and pollution appear to have missed Antarctica and the Arctic, causing one mega-city ANTARTIC CITY to have been constructed there.
SO....There you go....
DREDDS PREFERRED TOOLS , GIZMOS AND WORK TOOLS
The Lawmaster is a street Judge's motorcycle. It has the ability to drive itself to any location on "automatic" as well as having automatic signal indicators and voice recognition (as long as the voice circuits are on). The Lawmaster also carries significant weapons including twin machine guns, lasers and grenades. The front of the Lawmaster carries a large Golden Eagle of Justice.
Lawgiver is the standard issue semi-automatic or fully automatic sidearm for a Judge. It has numerous settings, carrying different types of ammunition including heat seeking, high explosive, ricochet, armour piercing, incideary and stun grenades.
The Lawgiver is also able to recognise the palm print of a judge. If a person uses the Lawgiver that does not match the palm print of the judge, the gun will backfire, immobilizing the perpetrator.
The types of ammo regularly used by Dredd with his Lawgiver are:
Incendiary: Rounds which ignite on impact
Ricochet: Rubber coated titanium rounds which bounce off hard surfaces
DumDum: Maximum kill power and only used in emergencies
Explosive: Explodes on impact
Heat Seeker (Hot Shot): Follows the heat of a target so aiming is not needed
Standard: Standard rounds
Armour Piercing: For use with heavily armoured lawbreakers such as machines
Vehicles
H-Wagon
H-wagon is not one particular vehicle but a generic term used by the judges for any Justice Department vehicle that flies.
Manta Prowl Tank
The Manta is a vehicle used by the Judges to deal with serious disturbances such as riots. It can also be used in wartime. It has antigravity and a powerful armament. It is not the Justice Department's biggest tank, however, which is the more powerful Heavy, which runs on caterpillar tracks and is reserved for military use, as opposed to normal law enforcement.
Pat-Wagon
The pat-wagon or patrol wagon (or sometimes catch wagon) is a standard Justice Department vehicle usually driven by auxiliaries rather than full judges. It can be used to collect prisoners from the streets and take them to holding pens.
WEAPONS
Boot knife
Every street judge carries a knife in a scabbard attached to his boot.
Daystick
The Judges' version of the nightstick with a titanium core.
Exorcist bullet
The exorcist bullet is a recent addition to the judges' inventory. They are designed for use against supernatural foes. They contain a mixture of silver nitrate, wolfsbane, salt, garlic, holy water, pieces of religious relics, and anything else which might have an effect against ghosts, werewolves and the like. It can be fired from the Lawgiver pistol.
Lawrod
The law rod rifle was the standard rifle carried by all street judges in a holster on the side of their lawmaster bikes.
Riot foam
Riot foam is used by the judges to quell riots. It is sprayed as a liquid over groups of rioters, and then immediately solidifies on contact with air, to form a rock-hard substance which immobilises those trapped within, bringing violence to a speedy end. Special cutting equipment is then used to release the prisoners, who are then arrested.
Stub gun
A stub gun is an extremely potent two-handed laser rifle able to slice through almost any substance in an instant. However while this weapon is very powerful, sustained use may lead to it overheating and exploding, killing the user and any others nearby. It was used to considerable effect during the Apocalypse War, when it was used to slice through aerial roads during the East Meg One invasion to delay the attackers, and also against East Meg vehicles.
Stumm gas
Stun gas used by street judges in riots. On average it kills one person in every 250, and its use is normally banned in open areas.
T.A.D.
The total annihilation device is a nuclear warhead of massive power, capable of obliterating an entire mega-city in a single cataclysmic explosion. Six mega-cities have been destroyed in this way in the Dreddstory
Widowmaker
The Widowmaker 2000 is a fully automatic shotgun used by street judges. It was introduced in 2114 to replace the obsolete lawrod rifle.
AND...if the Judges survive to old age...they get a Rad-cloak, a lawrod, a pat on the back and kick up the arse outside the Mega City gates...good luck, thanks for everything
AND on a slightly more me bit, given my eons of head bangery...here is the song about Judge Dredd by yank metal band ANTHRAX from the 80's...the boys from Anthrax were onto Dredd in a big way...be warned its a bit thrashy
SO...there you go, my dredd blog, think i'll go read some Dredd comics...Peace Out Citizens
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