Honourable Mention: Judge Dredd: the Complete Case Files 08

Of all the inventions of the comic 2000AD, I think that Judge Dredd was the most pervasive. Judge, Jury and Executioner, the Judges were the law in the post-apocalyptic Mega Cities and Joe Dredd was the epitome of the Judges.

Of course, we have seen a vampire aspect to the Dredd universe as he crossed over into the Devlin Waugh: Swimming in Blood volume. This, however, is the 8th volume of all the Dredd stories and contains the serial City of the Damned, which ran over late 1984 and early 1985. The writing team were John Wagner and Alan Grant, the artists involved were Steve Dillon, Ian Gibson, Ron Smith and Kim Raymond.

In 2107, amid terrible premonitions about 2120 from the Psi Judges, the first time machine, Proteus, is created. Judges Dredd and Anderson are sent as a two person crew into the future to see if the premonitions hold any water (one detail is already wrong as Owen Krysler, the Judge Child, is no more and he was meant to be the saviour of the city). They travel into the future and find a devastated city… so vampires…

Having first seen a citizen panic at the sight of them and kill himself in an acid pool the two Judges head for Hill Street, now known as Hell Street, and a Judge Sector House there. The Judges have all been transformed into vampires and prey on law breakers but will get anyone if their blood supplies are running low. Dredd and Anderson have to sneak into the Sector House to access the computers and discover what happened, but an old friend Judge Hershey is a vampire and wants them turned… or dead…

The vampires form the start of the story and appear towards the end. We also get a zombie or revenant version of Dredd (in this future he was killed by the story’s antagonist). But I don’t want to spoil too much. However the relatively small role they play and the fact that the story is just one in the volume means that the volume gets an Honourable Mention.