8FIGURES
4MAKERS
1995EARLIEST
2026LATEST
THE LEGEND
Joseph Dredd is a Judge of Mega-City One, the vast city sprawled down the east coast of what was once North America, walled in against the radioactive wasteland called the Cursed Earth. Judges are police, jury and executioner in one, and they pass sentence on the street. Dredd is the hardest of them: a clone grown from the stock of Chief Judge Fargo, the founder of the system, trained from childhood, his face almost never seen beneath the helmet.
His tools are a Lawgiver pistol keyed to his palm print, so that it fires for him alone, and a Lawmaster motorcycle. He sent his own clone brother, Rico, to prison for corruption, and killed him when Rico came back for revenge. He has faced Judge Death, the undead Judge who decided that since all crime is committed by the living, life itself must be the crime. He came through the Apocalypse War that left much of his city dead. The helmet stays on. The face behind it belongs to the law.
OFF THE PAGE
Judge Dredd was created by writer John Wagner and artist Carlos Ezquerra, with Pat Mills as editor, and first appeared in 2000 AD prog 2, dated 5 March 1977. Wagner took the Dirty Harry style of tough cop and pushed it to the extreme, and Ezquerra started his design from an advert for Death Race 2000 showing a biker in black leather. The strip has always been satire, aimed at authoritarianism and police brutality, and Wagner kept the face hidden because, in his words, it sums up the facelessness of justice. Time in the strip runs alongside real time, so Dredd ages with his readers.
He has reached cinemas twice. Sylvester Stallone played him in Judge Dredd (1995), directed by Danny Cannon, in a blue-and-gold costume and with the helmet coming off; reviews were poor. Karl Urban took the part in Dredd (2012), directed by Pete Travis from a script by Alex Garland, a lean, violent film that critics liked and that never lets the helmet come off.
IN SIXTH SCALE
The 2012 film has had the most attention at one-sixth. Art Figures released Karl Urban's Dredd without a licence as the Heavy Armoured Special Cop in 2014, with a likeness head, the helmet and its eyeglass, and the leather combat jacket. A Blue Style edition recoloured the costume in the earlier film's blue and gold, a reworked 2.0 followed in 2016, the helmet was sold on its own as a spare, and Art Figures has since returned to the figure with a remaster sold as Heavy SWAT. VTS Toys covered Stallone's version under the coded name Justice Judge, with the shoulder eagle and chest emblem of the 1995 costume.
The comic Dredd got a licensed figure in 2016, when ThreeA worked with 2000 AD and Rebellion on a 1/6 Judge drawn from Brian Bolland's art, with a scowl and a gritted-teeth face, Lawgiver Mk1 and Mk2, a Lawrod and a daystick.
Since the face is mostly hidden, Dredd collectors care about the uniform and gear: the shoulder pads, the eagle, the badge and the boots have to be right for the version you want, and the Lawgiver has to look heavy. More on the Judge Dredd shelf.
RELEASES BY YEAR
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19952026
BY MANUFACTURER
Art Figures
5
VTS Toys
1
ThreeA
1
Medicom Toy
1
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