Preview: ‘Judge Death 2025 Mega-Special’ — The Alien Superfiend And Pals Return

‘You cannot kill what does not live…’ So says the alien superfiend Judge Death. He and his fellow Dark Judges have been causing havoc wherever they rear their ugly heads, for the last 45 years.

Created by John Wagner and Brian Bolland, Judge Death first unleashed his particular brand of terror on the streets of Mega-City One in 1980’s Prog 149. Coming from the parallel dimension known as Deadworld, he’d gone from disturbed youngster to brutal Judge whose methods of killing perps rather than sentencing them, but it was his meeting with the Sisters of Death that transformed the psychopathic Judge into the undead embodiment of evil… Judge Death.

Joined by his lieutenants, Judges Fear, Fire, and Mortis, the Dark Judges set about bringing their mantra of ‘The crime is life… the sentence is death’ to their planet, swiftly making Deadworld a planet of the dead, with Death sat atop it all on a throne of bones.

But Death’s ambition still lived, and, knowing there were other worlds where those guilty of the crime of life lived. And so it was that Death popped up in Mega-City One, his first incursion only stopped by Judge Anderson’s greatest sacrifice. Since then, he and his fellow Dark Judges have continued their quest to turn this Earth into another Deadworld, always failing at the last, often thanks to Judge Dredd and Judge Anderson, but more often than not, the victories coming with huge loss.

So, there you go. A potted history of the greatest villains of Dreddworld. Over the years, they’ve featured in many, many tales. Sometimes the dark deathbringers, truly evil, absolutely terrifying. Sometimes played for grim laughs. But here, we have a whole Mega Special celebrating the many decades of the Dark Judges and, most special of them all, Judge Death.

ENDGAME 01 – BY KEK-W AND STEWART K MOORE, LETTERS BY ANNIE PARKHOUSE

A two-part tale, bookending the Special, as Judge Death sits down with the last human being to play chess. Granted, said last human is slightly off his game. Being tortured by Fire, Fear, and Sister Despair for weeks, and only being alive is thanks to Death wanting someone to talk to will do that to you, I suppose.

Cue Death talking, leading us into all the tales that follow. Yes, it’s an obvious thing, the bookend introducing an anthology of tales, but it works wonderfully well.

Kek-W, as writer of The Fall of Deadworld, has an obvious in to all things Dark Judges, and he writes the whole thing with a foot in both Death writing camps, the horrors and the ridiculousness playing off each other so well here.

As for the art, well, Stewart K Moore is a great, great artist, and he gives us some wonderful moments in a style more fluid and loose than we’re perhaps used to, but nonetheless, it’s quite brilliant to see how he’s given us all the grotesque on the page.

Thing is, I was chatting to Stewart about this one, and I’m sure he’d be the first to admit that he never really wanted this job. Because this job was meant to be done by Dave Taylor, who we lost to prostate cancer in August. Stewart stepped in to do the art when Dave couldn’t manage it. Like I say, Stewart, and all of us, would have given anything to have Dave alive and doing this one. But no, cancer robs us of yet another great. If you get the chance, go get the new Megazine to see Dave’s last work, the second series of Megatropolis, and you’ll immediately see just what a loss his passing was. And, while we’re at it, if you’re male, aged 40+, or you’ve been having any of the symptoms listed on the NHS site here, go and get yourself checked out. Dave told us all to do it in some of his last social media posts, pointing out that, for the sake of heading to your docs and getting a quick finger in the ass, you could avoid all the pain and suffering. So, fuck cancer, go donate to your cancer charity, go get tested.

JUDGE DEATH: CRUEL MERCY – BY DALE HALVORSEN AND TAZIO BETTIN, COLOURS BY MATT SOFFE, LETTERS BY JIM CAMPBELL

So, into the tales of Judge Death, this one featuring the man himself, haunting the dreams of Judge Anderson, freed from her Boing prison yet still living with the spectre of Death every day, tormented by his thoughts inside her head.

It’s a psychological play, most of it taking place in Anderson’s head, battling the sense of guilt and shame she feels thanks to the presence of Death in her head. Yet, in just a few pages, Halvorsen, a relatively new name in comics, gets inside the character of Anderson so well, giving us a look into her head in the times following her first skirmish with Judge Death. Having read this one, I’d truly like to see more of his stories of Anderson in the future.

As for the art, Tazio Bettin, whose work on Azimuth I do love, has so much to do here, giving reality to the nightmares inside Anderson’s head. And oh boy, does he do it so well.

JUDGE FEAR: THE JUDGEMENT OF ANNI CRIPP – BY ALEC WORLEY AND LEIGH GALLAGHER, LETTERS BY SIMON BOWLAND

Next up, Judge Fear, the Dark Judge with the power to reach into your head and bring forth the thing that will paralyse you, a nightmarish fear that will kill you.

Great to see Leigh Gallagher back in the pages of something 2000 AD, all in tonal black and white, perfect for a terror tale featuring Judge Fear.

This one’s a slow creeper of a thing, following one poor cit as she makes her way home through her strangely empty block. Isolated, lonely, reeking of desperation and breakdown, Judge Fear works his evil at a distance, as we watch things unfold. It’s a slow-burning, nightmarish, small-scale look at just how quickly things can go so very wrong when you’re dealing with this Dark Judge. It’s a nasty little tale, possibly the best of the strips in here, avoiding dealing with the Dark Judge head on, instead playing out the nightmares of the fears he creates in a psychological horror that gets inside your head and festers.

JUDGE MORTIS: FADE TO GREY – BY ANTHONY JOHNSTON AND LEE CARTER, LETTERS BY ROB STEEN

Another slow burn of a tale, playing into the slow nature of the decay that Judge Mortis brings. Looking at 15 years of the life of one family in Mega-City One, where daddy dearest’s obsession with death and the inevitable slow putrefaction of all living things leads him to do some unspeakable things.

And on another world, Judge Mortis struggles with his reality, getting weaker, the Judge of decay and slow decomposition himself getting weaker. As he casts about for answers and salvation, he’s drawn to the family drama playing out on Dredd’s world, where he can find the answers to his plight.

Across both threads, Anthony Johnston takes it slow, letting us make the connections, illustrated really well by Lee Carter, as we watch an increasingly desperate Mortis question what’s happening to him, as we watch the events play out in MC-1, the serial killer and the Dark Judge linked. It’s good, playing with a sense of melancholy and dread, of the inevitability of entropy. But it could also have done with a few more pages to play these themes out in the slow nature they needed.

JUDGE FIRE: EMBERS – BY ALEX DE CAMPI AND MARK SEXTON, COLOURS BY DYLAN TEAGUE, LETTERS BY ROB STEEN

A Judge immolates himself in front of the Justice Department. Murder? Suicide following an SJS investigation? Or something more? After all, this isn’t the solitary self-immolation; there have been hundreds recently. Actually, 205, just one off the number of bones in the human body. Interesting that.

Anderson and Giant are on the case, in a city that, as Anderson points out, has its Cits unsettled, as if they’re just waiting for a spark.

So, it’s off to Resyk, Anderson and Giant looking for the body of the dead Judge, only to find that familiar nightmare of the return of one of the Dark Judges….

Against all the other tales here, ones that deal with the horrors of the Dark Judges rather in the abstract, this one stands differently, a plain old investigation, find the creep, kill the creep sort of thing. It’s good, again, perhaps too short, but good. But it does rather stick out like a sore thumb compared to all that’s gone before. Mark Sexton‘s art is damn good, classically Dredd stuff, perfect for this one.

ENDGAME 02 – BY KEK-W AND STEWART K MOORE, LETTERS BY ANNIE PARKHOUSE

And we end as we began, with Death playing chess, his tales all told, Endgame part 2 as the coda, wrapping things up neatly, the chess game at an end, Death’s final victim on the world he’s devastated, meeting his inevitable end. Just three pages long, but it does what it was intended to do: it brings a satisfying end to this rather good collection of tales of these horrors.

Yes, a rather perfect end to a series of rather good tales of the Dark Judges. Not all of them perfect, but overall, they lean into the dark nature of these fundamental villains that continue to haunt MC-1 with their presence. And they do it rather well.

Judeg Death 2025 Mega Special is out now from Rebellion