Or alternatively, this is what happens when a friendly chat with a pal gets way out of hand.

About a month ago a swedish friend and I were discussing Judge Dredd and for some reason that I can’t even begin to fathom, the conversation turned to female judges. Eventually the question of who was the first female judge to appear in the strip popped out, and what followed was a two-pronged archeology labor through Case Files and Progs that yielded some interesting results. For clarity’s sake I’m only gonna be referring to the main progs here, no annuals or yearbooks included, but I’ll be happy to make a separate post for them if the need arises. So without further ado, let’s take a trip to the late 1970s and talk about ladies in leather for a while, shall we?

Women judges are first mentioned in 2000AD prog 98, dated February 1979, but curiously enough not on the actual Judge Dredd strip. Or in any other comic strips. No, the first mention of a female judge happens in the Nerve Centre letters page, courtesy of one earthlet J.W. Richardson:

Now, 2000AD was originally very much a Boys’ Comic, and that isn’t a euphemism. IPC Magazines, the prog’s original publisher, was very staunchly divided between Girls and Boys mags, each with their own separate offices and such. But while 2000AD was by design aimed at the lads, it didn’t stop them from garnering a certain amount of female readers. It did, however, stop them from featuring any actual female characters, save for a precious few exceptions.

“Invasion!” was the first, with a burly circus wrestler helping Bill Savage and his rag-tag resistance fight an equally burly Volg officer, and “Death Planet” not only had a female heroine and villainess, but also had the first female-centric cover, though the actual story still left a lot to be desired in that front. And while Judge Dredd itself had featured a female villain in the very memorable prog 18 and had a constant (if caricaturesque) female presence in Maria, Dredd’s nagging italian landlady, the pickings were still slim. However, the seeds had been sown, and it wouldn’t take long enough for them to bloom.

But before we get to the real nitty gritty, let’s take a short walk back through some unconfirmed territory: dated September 1977, prog 30’s unforgettable story, “The Return of Rico”, by Pat Mills and Mick McMahon, was and still is a tremendously pivotal moment in the early years of the strip, introducing not just Dredd’s brother Rico, but also the very concept of Dredd being a clone. It also introduces the Titan Penal Colony and a few other elements, but what interests this particular essay are these few panels from the story’s second page, here repainted for a later Eagle Comics’ reprint:

On one hand, the woman on the other side of the view phone is wearing the eagle crest of the judges, and she is working in the Hall of Justice, then called Mega-City Justice HQ. But on the other, this was exceedingly early in the strip’s history, when regular policemen still existed and the judges were just a corps of specialized cops with instant justice powers. Not to mention the possibility of her just being a civilian assistant. So the chances of this being the first female judge are debatable.

A stronger case could be made for the next female head in a view phone we get to see. Prog 113 (May 1979) features the first episode of “The DNA Man”, by John Wagner, Alan Grant and Brett Ewins (RIP). In it, Dredd sends a cigarette case for print identification and gets a call back from a blonde woman who gives him some exposition on the owner of the prints. However, she isn’t seen to wear either the eagle crest or any uniform at all, so once more we enter debatable territory. Luckily, the next sighting is a lot clearer… even if it happens in the fog.

Now, unless I’ve overlooked anything, “Night of the Fog” (prog 127, August 1979), written by Wagner and Grant, is the first appearance of an actual, confirmed female judge in full uniform. Of note is that Judge Kelly here is drawn by Brian Bolland, a name that we will be repeating a lot a few paragraphs later, and that her role in the story proves Earthlet Richardson to be half-prophetic, since she appears to take care of a female witness, a fairly understandable if reductive role. So the cat was finally out of the bag for good. Yes, Mega-City One, there are female judges. Even if Bolland did apparently forget to draw this one’s badge. (EDIT: dunkelzahn pointed out that Judge Kelly does seem to have her badge on, only on the right side of her uniform rather than the left for reasons)

It’s probably worth mentioning that this wasn’t presented as something new within the strip’s universe, and future Dredd stories would show in flashbacks that there were female judges all the way back to the birth of the whole judicial system, so the implication here is that there were always female judges. We just, y'know, didn’t see them ‘till now. You could certainly use this as evidence of the woman in prog 30 being an actual judge, but let’s press forward.

Our next stop is October 1979, Prog 133’s story, “The Great Muldoon”, by Wagner, Grant, and Barry Mitchell. As you can see, sightings are starting to come in faster. Judge Sweeney here is notable for being the first uniformed female judge (though Mitchell does seem to have forgotten the badge as well) to have actual lines. And while they may be purely expositionary and reactive, it’s still a step forward. The next one, however, would prove to have a lot more meat in its bones.

EDIT: Well, this is certainly an honor. Douglas Wolk, of Dredd Reckoning and Mega-City 2 fame, wrote in on Twitter to mention these two female judges from Prog 134’s “The Invisible Man”, drawn by Ron Smith. Much appreciated!

(As a slight aside, I would also like to direct some attention to Judge Parker, from prog 136’s “Palais de Boing”, by the same creative team as Muldoon. When talking about it with my friend, we both agreed s/he does appear to have a fairly feminine figure, but s/he’s never confirmed to be a woman in the dialogue and the art isn’t entirely clear, so we both flagged this one down as debatable. Here are the panels:

You be the judge!)

Now we move onto Prog 137, November 1979, written again by Wagner/Grant and drawn by Ron Smith, which in a way spawned this entire post. For the longest time I thought Judge Harkness, featured here, was the first female judge in the strip. She’s certainly the most fleshed out of the bunch so far: she appears in full uniform, has actual spoken lines and we even get to see her without her helmet. She also happens to get shot and killed literally two pages into the story.

Yeah, there’s a reason this one’s called “Death of a Judge.” For those who haven’t read it, Judge Bryce over there goes berzerk for the next few pages, chasing down the Hellfire Club, melting their vehicle’s wheels with incendiaries, and then holding the one responsible for Harkness’ death at gunpoint, even though he has surrendered, with the intention of gunning him down. Dredd arrives shortly to try to stop Bryce, who confesses that he loved Harkness, and Dredd is forced to shoot him before he can execute the perp. And while Dredd shows some regret, his final grim remark is that “There can be only one love in a judge’s life… the Law.”

At first sight, this can be seen as a clear example of women in refrigerators syndrome, since Harkness is killed only to give Bryce a mountain of angst and catapult him towards the manly exaction of retribution, but it’s worth noting that Bryce doesn’t survive the end of this story. If Harkness dies to show that any judge can die in a matter of instants, like the narration says, then Bryce dies to show that judges are not allowed love and the great lengths that they’ll go to become law-dispensing machines. And consciously or not, it does also help underline the idea that no judge is safe in the streets, even female ones. There is no special dispensation at work here. At least, not for street judges…

(Applause)

Even at first read, it’s easy to see why “Judge Death”, from Progs 149-151 (January 1980), is the single, most reprinted story in the history of Judge Dredd. Brought to us by the Wagner/Grant/Bolland team, it remains one of the greatest examples of compressed storytelling that comics have to offer. It introduces two major characters, the entire concept of Psi-Division, and parallel alternate dimensions, all in just 15 pages, without ever feeling overly dense or rushed. It’s several milestones wrapped into one, and while arguably the most important one is the debut of Psi-Judge Cassandra Anderson, the most successful of Dredd’s secondary characters, it is somewhat worth noting that she’s not the only female judge in the story. The first and second episodes feature a Judge McKay as one of the first-responders to Judge Death’s initial rampage, who also has the honor of being the first female judge to actually discharge her firearm on panel, even if just as part of a crowd scene. And for those of you keeping score at home, that’s three female judges drawn by Bolland so far.

As for Anderson herself, she’s kind of an odd one in this debut story. While every other appearance of female judges so far has made a point of giving them no special treatment, Anderson is very much treated as a unique, special snowflake from day one. She’s a looker by design (Wagner and Grant wanted her to be very beautiful, and Bolland famously based her off Debbie Harry), a flippant jokester and quite frankly, a bit of a goofy bimbo. And while Dredd’s side characters were no strangers to glibness (My favorite being Judge Giant constantly calling Dredd “Baby!”) Anderson did feel extremely different. Which was most certainly the point. She was built to be different, not just to the few female judges we’d seen so far but to judges in general. And despite her seeming unprofessionalism, in the end it’s her ingenuity and self-sacrifice that win the day and save the city. It would still take a while for her to return, but when she finally did, she’d find herself in some very good company…

~Siiiiigh~ so dreamy… Oh, uh, right, right. Eh… April of 1980′s Prog 162 was slightly less of a landmark than Judge Death, but it was still a fairly important issue nonetheless. Kicking off the second act of “The Judge Child Quest”, it saw the first appearance of the starship Justice-One and the start of Dredd’s first on-screen trip to Outer Space (The Luna-One colony doesn’t count, that’s inner space), accompanied by three other judges: Larter, Lopez and the inimitable, the unforgettable, the magnificent Judge Barbara Hershey. This is yet another Wagner/Grant/Bolland joint, so you’d be forgiven for thinking Bolland by now has become the go-to guy to draw new female judges. And while Anderson was created to be beautiful, Hershey was clearly a concerned effort to draw a sterner, more imposing kind of woman. I wouldn’t be surprised if instead of Debbie Harry, Bolland had used for inspiration a particularly nasty math teacher from his school days.

Writing-wise she’s another interesting borderline case. She’s fairly easygoing at first and is later driven to tears by the death of (spoilers) Lopez , but within the story it’s all chalked up to her youth and inexperience. Wagner and Grant are always very careful to frame these moments of what a judge like Dredd would consider frailty within the contexts of the characters expressing them, without ever resorting to “It’s because she’s a woman.” To Dredd, Hershey crying or Anderson being possessed by Death has nothing to do with their gender and everything to do with their personalities, with the former being a rookie who’s never seen a comrade die before and the latter a psi-judge who’s highly receptive to whispering spirits. Furthermore, right from her very first appearance Hershey is portrayed as very much an equal to Dredd, matching his actions literally shot to shot.

This action beat is actually repeated once more a few episodes later in a totally different situation, drilling in the point that Hershey is the closest we’ve seen yet to a female version of Dredd, which was confirmed by the creative team to have been very much the original intent. In her own way though, Hershey is the final evolution of the idea of a female judge as a supporting character. She has the uniform, she has lines, she has a face, and she’s not a throwaway character created to make a point, provide exposition or fill in a squad scene. And unlike Anderson, she’s not unique or special. She’s as much of a street judge as Dredd or Giant or any other judge we’ve seen so far. She’s the full package. And even her hair is shaped like a helmet.

Of course, anyone that’s known me for more than a day is well aware of how capable I am of talking about Hershey from here 'till entropy claims us all, so for now I’m gonna give it a rest and move on to the other very important female character that first showed up in the Judge Child Quest, although this one actually appeared in its (spoilerrific) epilogue:

Prog 182’s story, “Block War” (October 1980), introduces us to Judge Hilda McGruder, then head of the Special Judicial Squad, the judges’ internal affairs division. And yes, she was also drawn by Brian Bolland. And in a sense, she’s the most unique of all the female judges introduced so far. Not just because she’s the first to be shown in a position of power (while Anderson was introduced as Psi-Division’s top operator, she’s always been far from the throne, at least in our timeline) but because she’s the first to be introduced as a staunch critic not just of Dredd’s methods and decisions but of Dredd himself. She’s presented as an antagonist, and while she won’t get any chances to really fulfill that role just yet, it’s definitely a strong chance of pace from all the females we’ve seen so far.

After the Judge Child Quest things do seem to settle down into a steady rhythm. Prog 192′s “Loonie’s Moon” has a new crowd-filling female judge, and Hershey returns for Progs 193-196′s “Fink Angel” (January 1983), with art by Mick McMahon, who’d already drawn her in a few episodes of Quest. It’s not the best of returns, since Hershey does get paralyzed, tied upside down and then dropped in a Resyk conveyor belt while still alive, but to the story’s credit she’s shown overpowering the titular Fink during their fight, and is only captured because of the timely intervention of Fink’s Cursed Earth rat friend. Plus, I’ll never stop finding her internal monologue while on her way to a horrifying death incredibly funny in a pitch-black way.



I’m just saying, of all the words I could use to describe a death like that, “crazy” wouldn’t be too far up on the list.

McGruder would appear in a handful of very small roles, including a one-panel appearance in Prog 195 where she actually arrests a rogue judge (”Knock on the Door”, with art by Ian Gibson), but otherwise she’d be mostly filling up scenes with the Council of Five (Progs 197 and 201). And last but not least, Anderson would make her triumphant return in Progs 224-228 (August 1981) in “Judge Death Lives”, which boasts what might be the single, most famous panel in all of Judge Dredd. And if you don’t know what I’m talking about, I won’t tell you. It’ll be better this way. Trust me.

In regards to Anderson, this time around she’s a lot more of a take-charge figure, being even more essential in bringing Death and his new pals to heel than in her debut. She helps Dredd get close enough to fight them and follows him into Deadworld, where what I think is the most important moment of her evolution as a character occurs. When Anderson channels the burning, raging hatred of an entire planet’s worth of souls and uses it to destroy the very essence of the Dark Judges, she’s also destroying the shackles of being a throwaway character. She’s making herself unique in the most dramatic of ways, doing something that no other character we’ve met so far, male or female, could’ve done. Sure, we’d met one psi-judge in the time between both stories, but Anderson’s act carries a strong sense of personal effort and empathy, feeling all those spiritual emotions and allowing them to use her power as a conduit to carry out their revenge. It’s an incredibly powerful moment, and Bolland renders it beautifully all the way through.

So yeah, she does have a fairly better second appearance than Hershey, all things considered. Our second to last stop of the post are Progs 233-235 (October 1981), which feature a story called “The Hotdog Run.” Another neat bit of world-building, this one introduces the titular Hotdog Run, a trip through the Cursed Earth that’s part of any cadet judge’s training. In it, Dredd and Giant take a squad of cadets out into the atomic wastes to hunt down a band of marauders that have been kicking up a fuss. Written by Wagner and Grant (maybe I should stop crediting them, since literally every Dredd story of this period is by them) and drawn by Ron Smith, this is another strip of firsts: We see our first female cadet and our first black female judge, Judge Quaide. And she even survives the run! Still ends up having to take it again though.

Finally, let’s round up this post with a bang. An atomic bang, that is. After an eight episode prologue, Prog 245 (January 1982) kicked off what would quickly become one of the all-time finest Judge Dredd epics, the “Apocalypse War”, with art by Carlos Ezquerra. And in terms of female judges, this one has it all. You have Hershey being hand-picked by Dredd to help him put an end to the War, you have Anderson tagging along and using her powers to save the day, you have McGruder ultimately becoming Chief Judge of Mega-City One, and before all of that even happens you have a new female judge single-handedly turning the tide of an entire battle by delivering a powerful weapon to Dredd and his guerrilla force. I’m talking, of course, about Judge Perrier, hero of the Apocalypse War.

Ezquerra even manages to fit a few random female judges in more crowd scenes and background bits, so pretty much every kind of female judge is present here, the faceless and the helmetless, the street and the psi and the med, all of them, from the inconsequential to the pivotal. And the story ends with one of them as leader of all of Mega-City One, or at least what’s left of it. It’s hard to imagine a more direct way of solidifying the presence of female judges within the comic, although putting them in the cover of the collected edition certainly helps:

I’m gonna cut it here for this post, but I do have a few questions that popped up as I was researching all these stories. Mostly, I’d just like to know where the push to make female judges came from. Pat Mills and John Wagner are my main suspects, since both of them came from writing girls’ mags before 2000AD so they both knew the importance of attracting the female audience. And Mills has always been a feminist, so it’s easy to imagine him vying for more ladies. But I’m also interested in who made the decision of adding more woman judges in crowd scenes, because I’m positive the script called for Kelly and Harkness and the likes to be female, but judges like Sweeney and McKay are less clear-cut. How much was writer input and how much artist? And how funny is it that Bolland ended up creating not one, not two, but three of the most memorable female judges ever? Perhaps we will never know.



For now, I do hope you’ve enjoyed this little chronicle, and if there’s anything I’ve overlooked, I’ll be more than happy to add it in. Thank you for your reading, and remember: read Judge Dredd! Or else…