Preview: ‘The Essential Judge Death: My Name Is Death’ — Say Hello To The Superfiend Haunting Mega-City One

by Richard Bruton

The latest edition to 2000 AD’s Essential series turns the spotlight onto the biggest villain ever to face Dredd in all his time as the Law in Mega-City One, this is the Essential Judge Death.

We’ve had volumes of Essential Judge Dredd and Essential Judge Anderson and Essential Rogue Trooper, so now it’s time to take a look at the key episodes of the legendary superfiend who became a Dark Judge with the intent of eliminating all life from his planet – ‘the crime is life, the sentence is death.’

His Earth became Deadworld, leading Judge Death to turn his attention to other worlds, determined to wipe out all life on Dredd’s Earth as well. Over the years, we’ve seen Death try and fail so many times to bring his vision of Deadworld to Mega-City One, with Judge Death becoming one of the most iconic, terrifying, and thoroughly entertaining of villains.

Judge Death: My Name Is Death – Art by Frazer Irving

Created by John Wagner and Brian Bolland, Death has now been doing his thing for some 45 years. But we’ve already seen plenty of Judge Death and The Dark Judges in both the Essential Dredd and Essential Anderson volumes, so this volume of Essential Judge Death goes another route and gives us four perfect Judge Death tales, including the psycopath’s origin tale in Boyhood of a Superfiend, before followed by three classic Death tales – all four written, of course, by the master of all things Dredd and Death, the great John Wagner.

Art for this volume comes from Peter Doherty on Boyhood of a Superfiend, Dean Ormston on the wonderfully bizarre Tea with Mrs Gunderson, and Frazer Irving on the twin tales, My Name Is Death and The Wilderness Days, three very different looks into Death’s life, but all of them working so well here, tied together by the always phenomenal writing talents of Wagner, giving us a real glimpse into the mind of evil.

Boyhood of a Superfiend – Art by Peter Doherty

Boyhood of a Superfiend takes up the lion’s share of the volume, as Judge Death decides to tell his tale. He’s renting a room with the terribly short-sighted Mrs Gunderson and has a washed-up hack to talk to, going through his childhood as Sidney De’Ath on the planet that would become Deaworld, where his psychotic tendancies came out with torturing animals, even his own poor dog, Wolfie. His dentist father, himself something of a sadistic evil man, takes young Sidney under his wing for a time, before the boy decides dentistry isn’t for him and decides to become a Judge, but not before turning his dear old dad into the Judges, who see such potential in young Sidney they even let him flip the switch on the electric chair that executes daddy.

From here, his rise to notoriety continues, the power of a Judge in the hands of a madman means he runs riot, getting the nickname Judge Death from fellow cadets, probably something to do with his habit for sentencing every perp, whether its for loitering or divorce, to death, executed by his own psychotic hands.

The rest you possibly know, Judge Death stumbles on the Sisters of Death, Phobia and Nausea, and takes a dose of the dead fluids, creating Judge Death and the Dark Judges as we know them. From there, it’s murder and mayhem, Judge Death taking over this world’s Justice Department and declaring all life a crime, something he and his pals swiftly go about punishing, with Death ruling over Deadworld, all life extinguished. And of course, from there, he gets the idea to travel to other worlds, all teeming with that horrible life, and spread the good word of Death – well, until he happens upon MC-1 and falls foul, again and again, of Dredd and Anderson.

It’s a simply cracking long tale, full of Wagner playing with us, all the dark comedy we’ve come to expect really coming through so perfectly, the horrors of what Death does blunted by the ridiculousness of the situation and the telling of the tale. Give this sort of story to any other writer and they’d play to the horror, go dark and oh so serious. But not Wagner, oh no. In his hands, it’s a dark comedy biography like no other.

Following this, we get the one-off short, Tea with Mrs Gunderson, as his landlady in Boyhood of a Superfiend gets the chance to visit Death in his max security cell, those in charge trying to work out just why he left her, of all people, alive.

Super silly, wonderfully strange, it’s eight pages of brilliance, watching Death and Mrs Gunderson have a little chat and getting literally inside Death’s head.

Tea With Mrs Gunderson – Art by Dean Ormston

And finally, a pair of tales both illustrated by Frazer Irving, My Name Is Death and The Wilderness Days, where Wagner takes a different tone, a perfect contrast to the comedic ridiculousness of what has gone before. Here we see Death as the evil, psychotic killer that he is, as Wagner takes us through his latest killing spree after his latest escape in My Name Is Death, all wrapped up in one of Wagner’s tense procedurals, something he’s the absolute master of.

And the darkness carries on into The Wilderness Days, with Death stepping out, travelling under the name Jay De’ath, the name Mrs Gunderson gave him, and taking time to ponder his mission. As we watch a strange melancholy come over him, he comes to the realisation that he simply can’t win by doing things the way he’s been doing them, too many people to kill one by one, all of which brings him to the inevitable, horrific conclusion that he needs to think bigger… all of which ends up, in a chilling but inevitable escalation…

The Wilderness Days – Art by Frazer Irving

So, there you go. Four tales of Judge Death, all written by the master of these things, the shockingly unrecognised genius that is John Wagner, illustrated by three fine, fine artists in widely differing styles, but all of it coming together so well to give us all the facets of the strange, psychotic mind of Judge Death. Truly, the Essential volume to get your head around the perfect alien superfiend.

ESSENTIAL JUDGE DEATH: MY NAME IS DEATH

WRITTEN BY JOHN WAGNER, ART BY FRAZER IRVING, PETER DOHERTY, AND DEAN ORMSTON. LETTERS BY TOM FRAME, GORDON ROBSON, ELLIE DE VILLE, AND STEVE POTTER

PUBLISHED BY 2000 AD ON 18 JUNE

CONTAINS THE STORIES:

YOUNG DEATH: BOYHOOD OF A SUPERFIEND – BY JOHN WAGNER AND PETER DOHERTY, LETTERS BY GORDON ROBSON, ELLIE DE VILLE, & STEVE POTTER (JUDGE DREDD MEGAZINE 1.01-1.12)