Judge Dredd (comics)/Headscratchers

For a society that is suppose to be all about following the letter of the law, the Judges(including Dredd) seems to have no problem with breaking the rules if it serves them. For example, it has been repeatedly stated that Mega-City One doesn't have the death penalty, but in the 'Judge Dredd in America' story, Dredd ordered the Judges to open fire on the Total War terrorist even though they have clearly surrendered and should have been arrested instead. Also, in the Judge Anderson story 'Satan', the Judges secretly killed a Christian minister for challenging the Judges system, even though they themselves admit that he he didn't break any laws in giving public speeches, he didn't even resist when Anderson arrested him. And even if he did somehow break the law, they cannot legally kill him, and can only at most give him life in prison. Sometimes it feel like that instead of Lawful Neutral taken to the extreme, the Judges feels more like your average Neutral Evil dictatorship that will break its own laws just to stay in power.
- The death penalty seems to exist depending on the writer. Generally, though, killing a judge will likely earn it. Also, it seems that there's plenty of Hypocritical Humor afoot. The judges took power, as democracy proved to be not ideal. The judge system itself, relies on judges being completely by the book. Dredd is probably the only one who is ever consistent in this (and even he slips up at times). In fact, there are plenty of corrupt judges (One Simping Detective story states that Jack Point is the only honest judge in Sector 13. This being the chain-smoking alcoholic womaniser who literally dresses like a clown). One story even uses the phrase "Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely", lending credence to the theory that the judges are nowhere near as ideal as they'd like. There's a good reason for the SJS.
How does the economy of Mega-City One functions? If most of the city's population is unemployed as result of jobs being replaced by robots, then there should be not enough consumers to support the economy since large parts of the population isn't getting paid for work.
- Must be like in Star Trek, but much, much worse.
- The black market in Mega-City One is many, many times the size of the legitimate economy. It's not difficult to get a job pushing sugar or trafficking weapons if you need a few creds.
- The companies that use all those robots pay high taxes, when then goes to support the city and pay out welfare checks to the unemployed citizens, and has enough of a trade surplus to avoid diminishing returns.
- (The OP) If the second idea about the black market is correct, then this is perhaps a really well done example of Fridge Brilliance. A society that is based on the idea of having zero tolerance towards crime is in fact totally dependent on crime in order for it to have a functional economy. It is kind of like 1984, in which the society is forced to fight a never ending war against in that the act of crime itself has become the glue that is keeping society from falling apart.
The Mega-Cities are giant conurbations of billions of people, the land beyond is nuclear/ice/sand deserts, the sea is polluted (it's presumably not called the "Black Atlantic" for nothing.) Food is seen being imported into Mega-City One, but where's it coming from?
- It's stated that a sort of stinky jelly is produced and processed for the food industry. But if you ask what is used to produce the jelly, my guess is "people". Come on, the mortality rate is so high, that you can easily feed corpse to the living.
- Tofu. LOTS of Tofu.
- Also, Spam.
  - This has been gone into quite a bit over the years. Synthetic chemicals, fungus, artificial protein, very large farms of genetically engineered crops in the less polluted areas of Cursed Earth, nutrients reclaimed for waste and, yes, bodies (the recyc plats are very prominent in the comic), block top gardens and (for a while, poor Otto Slump) all manner of insects and such have all been used.
    - In one comic the Judges start to farm a strain of giant mutant rat because it is leaner and more nutricious than the rats they farm allready.
- The cursed Earth isn't as bad as people think, there's still a lot of land that can be used for farmer and a number of Mutent towns Import food to Mega-City one for Protection.
- Don't forget those "Munce" plants that can apparently grow anywhere, but look like human heads.
- Also, the Mega-Cities have interplanetary colonies.
- Treemeat plantations have been shown. That is, meat that grows on trees.
Can't there be a happy Dredd story? Dredd saves the day and all the innocent civillains come out alive and not shot to death. Of course, being Dredd, he'd probably have half the civillains sent to the cube...
- That's kind of the point. Hard to have a dystopian future with a happy ending.
  - It's possible. Dredd saves the day, the civillains in danger go back to their crapsack lives. The madcap death and mayhem inherent in many Dredd stories I've read verges on Violence Porn.
  - There can be and there are "Happy Dredd" stories - they tend to be the short episodes rather than the great dramatic mega-epics (for obvious reasons - it's hard to spin out The Case Of The Missing Shoe for thirty chapters), but there are plenty of tales with nary a fatality in them. Try "Everything In The Garden", "Block Court", and "Fat Fathers" for a quick sampling.
    - They could do that, except it would undermine the point of Dredd as a satire of how "Zero Tolerance" policing would work - which is to say, it wouldn't and would be very damaging to society.
- They used to do that a lot: the entire world is threatened, and Dredd defeats the Big Bad and saves the day. Stories like Necropolis and Judgement Day. They stopped doing it so much when readers began pointing out they all had exactly the same plot.
Dredd versus aliens stories. Just never sits right. Mega City One has contact with untold life forms and their society is still so crapsack?
- What, aliens are going to travel untold lightyears just to fix our problems? Chances are they're exploring to escape their own crapsack planets and have more then enough to worry about...
- Yeah, most alien species seem to be even worse off than humans...
  - Really just read the Judge Child which is all about how crappy the other planets are.
    - Or the Judge Anderson story Childhood's End which is about how the aliens are assholes anyway.
      - Not really, in the Judge Anderson story "Contact", it was shown that there are some nice and peaceful aliens out there.

Why does Judge Fear wear a mask? If he truly wants to kill all the living, you'd think he would walk around with his face in full view so as to kill anybody who happens to glance his way.
- Maybe he saves the whole "Gaze into the face of fear" thing for those people he really wants to kill, or it only works on one person at the same time (think Boggart), so if he tried to use it on more than one person it would just not work.
- And Judge Fear's attack doesn't always work. Dredd, for one, managed to not only over come his fears, but punched Judge Fear in the face.
- The mask, the whole process of opening it up to terrify people and saying "Gaze into the face of Fear!" while he does it adds a wee bit more Nightmare Fuel to the process because there's so much tension.

I know aliens have been a part of Dredd continuity since the beginning. But the stories where they don't show up are always so much more -fun-. And then the next issue bam, it's Star Trek with lots more head explodings. Granted, fun in itself but nowhere near the 'level' of human-only Dredd stories.
- I think it is because that Judge Dredd is in many ways a story about human nature and flaws in political systems. The occasional aliens or monster stories are just to give us a reason why thinks are bad in the world despite how technologically advance it is.

The existence of the incendiary round on the Lawgiver, even prior to the Dark Judges. It's difficult to see how even a law enforcement agency such as the Judges would come across situations that require things to be set on fire a lot. In fact, in the Apocalypse War arc, Dredd nearly gets himself killed trying to escape from East Meg judges due to only having incendiaries left.
- The Judges have to fight mutants as well. And from the "Judge Dredd verse Aliens" comics, it seems that it is standard procedure to burn mutated pest.
- It basically doubles as a hi-ex round when fired near flammable sources (gas tanks, for instance).