Dark Judges

The Dark Judges are recurring villains in the Judge Dredd science fiction comic strip in the UK comic 2000 AD. They also appear in the 2003 computer game Judge Dredd: Dredd Vs. Death. They are Judge Death, Judge Fire, Judge Fear and Judge Mortis. Later storylines added the "Sisters of Death" (Phobia and Nausea), to their ranks. Former Judge Kraken was also a Dark Judge for a brief time during the Necropolis story.

History

The Dark Judges were originally a group of four lawkeepers from a parallel dimension. They were led by Judge Death, who had determined that all crime was committed by the living - thus, by his logic, all life was a crime. The other three were slavishly devoted to him and his philosophy, and the four went around killing people on whatever justification they could find (Judge Fire sentenced a whole school to death for noise pollution). The society of the parallel universe they inhabited placed very little value on human life and many inhabitants were sadistic and violent, but even by the standards of their people the Dark Judges were vicious.