Mega-City One
Chief city in the Judge Dredd universe From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Chief city in the Judge Dredd universe From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Mega-City One is a fictional city that features in the Judge Dredd comic book series and related media. A post-nuclear megalopolis covering much of what is now the Eastern United States and some of Canada, the city's exact geography depends on the writer and artist working the story. From its first appearance it has been associated with New York City's urban sprawl; originally presented as a future New York, it was retconned as the centre of a "Mega-City One" in the third issue.[1]
| Mega-City One | |
|---|---|
Mega-City One before the Apocalypse War | |
| In-universe information | |
| Type | City-state |
| Characters | Judge Dredd |
| Publisher | Rebellion Developments |
The Architects' Journal placed it at No. 1 in their list of "comic book cities".[2]
When the series Judge Dredd was being developed in 1976–77 it was originally planned that the story would be set in New York, in the near future. However, when artist Carlos Ezquerra drew his first story for the series, a skyscraper in the background of one panel looked so futuristic that editor Pat Mills instructed him to draw a full-page poster of the city. Ezquerra's vision of the city – with massive tower blocks and endless roads suspended vast distances above the ground with no visible means of support – was so futuristic that it prompted a rethink, and a whole new city was proposed. Art director Doug Church suggested that the city should extend along the entire Eastern Seaboard, and be called Mega-City One, and his idea was adopted.[3]
While the first Judge Dredd story is set in "New York 2099AD", prog 3 retconned that and said New York was just part of Mega-City One.[4] The back of prog 3 included an Ezquerra "Futuregraph" poster of Mega-City One (a page from an unused Dredd story), which said the city stretched from Montreal to Georgia and had 150 million citizens; it was part of the "United States of the West" (USW).[5] Prog 4 then established that Mega-City One was surrounded by wildernesses from the Atomic Wars. The 150 million population was later revised to 100 million in earlier strips[citation needed] and abruptly bumped to 800 million later on.[6] The United States of the West concept was dropped entirely; a "United Cities of North America" of three megacities was mentioned in prog 42 and then itself dropped in favour of Mega-City One being an independent entity.
In early strips, the Judges existed alongside a regular police force,[7] were popular with the citizens, and the people enjoyed robots doing the work, with the "Grand Judge" saying they would not consent to work more than ten hours a week.[8] Over time, the strip would have the Judges as a feared police-state force with sole power; prog 118 (written when unemployment was going up in Britain) established that citizens resented being unemployed and took up bizarre crazes to deal with the boredom, and this remained part of the strip from then on.
Mega-City One evolved out of a growing conurbation stretching from Boston to Washington DC, which took form in the 21st century to cope with the escalating population crisis in the United States and – as a solution chosen to deal with the high crime rate – led to the introduction of the Judge system.
Mega-City One was one of three major areas to survive the nuclear war in 2070, due to an experimental laser missile-defense system built not long before. The other two being Mega-City Two (encompassing California, Washington and Oregon) and Texas City. Apart from those megacities, the United States has been reduced to the Cursed Earth.
Eventually, Mega-City One extended to Miami, Florida, which became a holiday resort,[9] and spread west into Ohio and/or West Virginia.[10] The megacity was built over the top of the old cities and the polluted Ohio River, creating the lawless Undercity,[11] though a few buildings like the Empire State Building and Statue of Liberty were moved to Mega-City One for the tourists.[12] Maps of the city[13] show that in the early 22nd century, it stretched roughly from southern Maine down through Florida and to the north-east has absorbed the Quebec City-Windsor Corridor in Canada. 800 million citizens lived in the city at this point.
The population and city sprawl were halved by nuclear attack and Soviet invasion in 2104 (in the 1982 story "The Apocalypse War"), with the loss of the entire south in a saturation nuclear strike. The north-west and upper north were also lost, leaving the city stretching from roughly New Hampshire through North Carolina and losing the Canadian territory. A small part of the north west survived: the North West Hab Zone,[14] separated from the rest of the city by a stretch of radioactive wasteland called Nuke Alley and linked to the main city by a bridge. The population remained at around 400 million from 2104 until 2134.
Mega-City One has a far greater population density than any city in the present-day world. Most city dwellers (citizens) live in huge apartment blocks (50,000+), though many citizens live a perpetually nomadic existence in vehicular mo-pads (mobile homes) due to inadequate housing provisions. These citizens travel the city via the many public transport routes available, rarely stopping. Some mo-pads are quite luxurious, complete with swimming pools.
Most of the city's energy supply is covered by geothermal energy in the form of a controlled volcano called the Power Tower.[15]
For administrative purposes the city is divided into 305 sectors, most of them renamed to fit the new size of the city after the Apocalypse War, and clumped into Central, North, South, East, and West. Sectors 1 (the centre) to 300 constitute the main city. The North-West Hab Zone encompasses sectors 301-5. The Hab Zone was mostly ignored by the city and Sector 301 became disparagingly nicknamed "The Pit" due to its high crime rate, until Chief Judge Volt had it cleaned up in 2118. Other slum areas have been called "Angeltown" (Sector 13's slums) and "the Low Life".
Following the events of the 2011–12-story Day of Chaos (set in 2134), Mega-City One was left in ruins and almost 90% of its population was killed. After decades of being the main megacity and superpower on Earth, the city is now bankrupt and in severe decline with many judges considering the situation unsustainable.[16]
However over the following few years the city began to grow again due to immigration, taking in of refugees and the gradual return of millions of citizens who sat out the plague overseas and off world. By October 2137 the population stood at seventy two million and was growing rapidly reaching 100 million around 2139. However the destruction of the Academy of Law during Chaos Day has disrupted the supply of cadets, and it is all the remaining judges can do to cope with the expanding population as it will be years before replacement of losses is reliable again.[17]
In 2019 a story set in 2141 stated that the population had been revised upwards to 130 million, due to a number of reasons, including the overestimation of the number of deaths in Chaos Day, a declining death rate since then, and births and immigration. It also confirmed that many citizens fled either before or during the Chaos plague and have been slowly returning in the seven years since, and that the Chaos bug disproportionately killed the elderly ensuring a higher number of fertile age survivors to repopulate the city. By this point then Chief Judge Hershey believed the city could once again safely absorb such a vast increase in numbers, as many undamaged blocks remained available to be re-inhabited.[18]
Mega-City One has protectorates and colonies outside of the city walls:
Blocks are huge and can be considered to be a small town in themselves. Each one will typically possess a hospital, gymnasium, school, and shopping district. A citizen can quite literally live their whole lives without leaving their block.[22] Due to the high unemployment rate, boredom is rife among citizens – this, coupled with the high loyalty citizens develop to their blocks, along with a city-defence militia for most city blocks, leads to many "Block Wars", riots (more like small wars) between two or more blocks.
Blocks are named after famous or historical figures, often with current events in mind. A typical example – shortly after the Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise separation there was an episode with block war breaking out between the "Kidman" and "Cruise" Blocks.[volume & issue needed] A proposed crackdown on civil rights in Britain led to a block being named David Blunkett Block in one story.[volume & issue needed]
Since the abolition of democratic government in America in 2070, Mega-City One has been a dictatorship run by the Justice Department. It subsequently became an independent city-state following the break-up of the United States and had already been granted autonomy within the Union in 2052. Its ruler is the Chief Judge, in current stories (as of September 2023) Judge Logan.[23] He is accountable to a council of five senior judges. The citizens are permitted to have an elected city council and mayor, but with no significant power: the idea is that a facade of democracy will placate most people.[24]
In 2113 a referendum was held in which the people were allowed to decide whether to restore democratic government, but by this time the memory of democracy had become so distant that the majority of citizens did not bother to vote, and most of those who did opted to retain the status quo.[25]
In the early years of Judge Dredd, Mega-City One had not been established as a dictatorship – "The Purple People Breeder" (2000 AD Sci-Fi Special 1978) mentioned "presidential candidate Howard Surb", while "Ryan's Revenge" (Dan Dare Annual 1979) had the Mayor giving orders to Justice Department. The Luna-One story arc briefly mentioned the governing body "the Grand Council of Judges" and "the Triumvirate", part of a unified state called the United Cities of North America,[26] but this was dropped by prog 61.
(This is not a complete list of mayors, but only of those who appeared in the comic.)
The identity of the current mayor is not known (as of May 2024).
A story in 2000 AD #32 featured a cameo role by a character referred to as "City Father Washington," whose status and role in the city's history has not been elaborated on.[28]
Judges are the product of many (normally 15) years' of training and psychological conditioning. Training takes place in the Academy of Law and generally begins at age five.[29] The Judges recruit promising children, and also grow their own clones.
Their standard issue firearm is the Lawgiver handgun, which can fire six different kinds of ammunition. It has a handprint-reading sensor which only allows its owner to use it, and a self-destruct device to kill or maim unauthorised users. Judges ride Lawmaster bikes, which are heavily armed and have artificial intelligence.
The Judges themselves are not above the law – a violation that would earn a citizen a few months in an Iso[lation]-Cube may earn a Judge a twenty-year sentence of hard labour on Saturn's moon, Titan, after surgical modification to enable the convict to survive Titan's atmosphere.[30] They were also expected to live in celibacy, to avoid personal attachments that might bias them or make them vulnerable to manipulation and blackmail.
The Justice Department has its own domestic intelligence division (the Public Surveillance Unit),[31] and their own medical facilities. There are a number of specialist divisions within the Judges, notably Psi Division, which consists of psychic judges used to predict the future and read minds,[32] and Tek Division, made of forensic scientists and engineers. The SJS (Special Judicial Squad) monitors and polices the Judges internally.[33]
Block Judges (Judges assigned to a particular city block) also hear civil cases in each City Block, where they try civil claims.[34]
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When a street judge retires from service at the end of his career, he may choose to take the "Long Walk", leaving Mega-City One for exile outside its borders. He may do this either in the Cursed Earth, a radioactive desert outside the city walls, or in the Undercity, the ruins of New York that lie beneath the mega-city. The Long Walk begins with a brief ceremony at the city gates, wherein the retiring judge walks through an honour guard of judges as they discharge their firearms into the air, while another judge formally bids him farewell. Judges who take the Long Walk are expected never to return, but to die "bringing law to the lawless." Alternatively, retiring judges may instead be placed in administrative or teaching posts instead of taking the Long Walk.
The Judge System was created by Eustace Fargo, then special government prosecutor for street crime, between 2027 and 2031, to combat a rising tide of violent crime and to speed up the process of justice. While there was heavy protest in Congress over the idea of abandoning due process, the electorate was in favour and President Gurney (who supported Fargo's plan) was re-elected with a massive majority.[35] The original uniforms heavily resembled those of normal American police officers, albeit with helmets and heavy body armour, and rode Lawranger motorcycles. Following the Third World War of 2070 and discovering that President Booth had stolen the election, the Judges seized power.[36]
The citizens are shown to be a mixed bag. 98% are unemployed (due to advances in robotics) and range from lazy and sloth-like to highly rebellious violent criminals, bent on destroying and killing as much as they can for whatever reason they can think of at that time, if any. Most of the Judges show a lack of empathy towards them. For example, in his Christmas message, Chief Judge Francisco asked citizens if a large number that were on welfare could commit suicide in order to help balance the budget for the following year.[37] Some Judges openly view citizens as a nuisance to be removed, or like Judge Manners, as a sub-human race to be used and abused as the Judges see fit.[38]
The citizens occupy their time with many strange and outright bizarre hobbies, such as simping (recreational stupidity), bat gliding, sky surfing and peeping (spying on people at home and in public), which is illegal when done for voyeuristic purposes, but legal when done under the authority of a Judge. If any of these ever get out of hand and there is no legal justification for banning, Judges simply impose a heavy tax on them, restricting them to only the few very wealthy citizens.
Most are poorly educated and many can barely read or write, some sectors are said to be entirely illiterate,[39] but Judges aren't that concerned, as it makes it easier for them to control and they can weed out the more intelligent simply when major crimes occur.[40] Those that can read though are not much better, for example, when a book that detailed how to commit suicide was released, thousands of previously non-suicidal citizens (including the book's author) killed themselves since they had read how to do it in the book.[41] At one point in some of the more dangerous blocks, Judges put sedatives into the air systems to help keep the citizens docile and easier to control.[40]
Some show huge promise, intelligence, and have extremely useful skills, many top scientists and engineers are not Judges. Most of the city's biggest advancements in areas such as food, new materials, technology (unrelated to weaponry), medicine and architecture and construction design (including the Halls of Justice) came from ordinary citizens. All the major businesses and entertainment (apart from Justice Department propaganda channels) figures are citizens as are a lot of the city's diplomats, but they always report to a Judge before making any decisions. Not all valued skills are the same as the real world ones, examples of this are human taxidermy and professional gluttony. Most of the highly intelligent citizens end up in crime such as PJ Maybe, and Nero Narcos, as they are very limited in the wealth or power they can attain (the amount of real power a citizen can gain though is very limited) legally.
Mega-City One's laws are harsh, with many crimes not found in present-day law. Possession of sugar, for example, is illegal, as is the smoking of tobacco outside of licensed Smokatoriums, and coffee is banned as an illegal stimulant. The laws are enforced by the Judges, who are a combination of a judge and police officer. Ordinary laws are enforced more harshly than the present day, as a political choice to deal with the high crime rate. Most ordinary citizens are sent to the Iso-Cubes, tiny cells located within huge prisons. For example, one strip saw a citizen sentenced to a month in the iso-cubes for littering, while in another story a citizen was given 6 months for jaywalking. Judges impose immediate sentences on the spot, usually lengthy sentences of imprisonment (or "encubement"). In extreme cases, even the death penalty may be imposed, although relatively sparingly compared with the present day, and reserved for mass murder or the endangerment of the security of the city, but sometimes it is used simply to make an example or to intimidate the citizens.[42] Nevertheless, many criminals are shot to death while resisting arrest, and resistors who survive Judge assault often receive a whole-life cube term.[43]
The Judges themselves are not exempt from the law; in fact they are expected to obey it more strictly than any other. A violation that would earn a citizen a few months in an Iso-Cube would get a Judge a twenty-year sentence, served as hard labor on Saturn's moon, Titan, after surgical modification to enable the convict to survive outside without needing an expensive space suit. (Titan is a moon of Saturn in reality, but was located over Jupiter in an early Dredd strip.) When Judges do make a minor mistake (anything where the citizen is alive and not in an intensive care ward) such as wrongful arrest or search, they do have to pay the citizen a compensation fee if there are no crimes to be charged with. On that basis, if they can't find any evidence for the main charge, then they will look for any minor crime or misdemeanors to charge the citizen with to get themselves off the hook.[44]
Firearm possession is only legal with the proper firearms permit, which is very hard to obtain. The only real exception is for Citidef units, which may use heavy weapons. (Since Block Mania the security on these is extreme and they are only issued during wartime.) In spite of this, many firearms are in circulation; some are sold on the black market while others are left over from the various invasions that have occurred over the past thirty years. Some families still possess twentieth-century handguns that have been handed down through the years. These are sometimes found by crime blitzes and will usually earn culprits the same penalty as a lasblaster from their time period.
Torture is normally illegal, but in extreme circumstances and with orders from the Chief Judge they employ it (both physical and psychological), for example when time is of the essence due to the city being in severe danger (or the Justice Department's authority is). They used that reason to torture Total War cell leaders, leading to the deaths of several of them.[45] The Judges covered this up, "arresting" them by faking heart attacks, strokes or whatever was realistic or convenient at that time and then told their next of kin they had died, with this they could do whatever they wanted to them. They also used torture on the leading democrats before the democratic march, such as keeping an elderly democrat awake all night and then releasing him without charge, knowing he would have to march all day the following day and making severe threats to another involving his young children.[46]
The original United States Armed Forces no longer exists: the explanation in "Origins" was that Chief Judge Goodman had built up the Judges until they were a match for the United States Army, as a precaution against President Booth. When Booth was overthrown after the Atomic Wars, the remains of the US Army were routed and finally destroyed in 2071's Battle of Armageddon. (In the immediate aftermath of the war, military discipline broke down and the Judges had to kill or arrest soldiers that were preying on the citizens.)[47]
Mega-City One's military forces are inconsistently portrayed. During crises inside the city, regular Judges or Citi-Def are almost always shown doing the fighting instead and the military is usually mentioned in outer space – "Day of Chaos" eventually explained that they're unlicensed to act against the civilian population.[48] From "The Cursed Earth" onwards, the city's armed forces have usually been presented as a branch of the Judges ("Judge-Troopers"): stories by Gordon Rennie introduced a Defence-Div, 1990s spin-off Maelstrom had heavily armed STAR (Strategic Target Attack Retaliation) Judges to carry out targeted strikes, and the Insurrection serials give the Special Judicial Service its own space fleet and armed force to stamp out rebellions. In contrast, stories by John Wagner have presented the military as a separate group, with some members believing the Judges are too lenient.[49] Uniforms differ depending on the story. The STAR Judges were given an origin as founded in 2108 by Commander Brand, with Brand and his original squad secretly left to die after committing an act of genocide in 2111 (this was covered up as a legitimate act of war and the STARs turned into martyrs, allowing Mega-City One to still claim the devastated planet).[19]
The main military force mentioned is the Space Corps, composed of marines and fleets, who fight against alien races that threaten the colonies. (When originally introduced in The Corps spinoff, they were Judges from the Academy of Law but in later stories these are recruited citizens.) Another force are the Genetic Infantry: genetically engineered men, bred in a lab to be dedicated soldiers.[50] (The story Warzone had an ex-Genetic Infantry soldier who was a primitive version of the Genetic Infantry from Rogue Trooper.[51]) The Citi-Defs (Citizen Defence) are a reserve force composed of citizens.[52] Each city block contains a Citi-Def force in case of crises, though usually they turn up in Dredd as rogue factions waging block wars.
In very rare, desperate and often last stand scenarios the Justice Departments auxiliaries are issued weapons and fight alongside Judges, such as in the latter stages of both the Apocalypse War and Judgement Day.[53]
Mega-City One also runs spy networks and a Black Ops Division of Judges. Under Judge Bachmann, their agents were brainwashed to worship the city as a god.
Following "Day of Chaos", the regular military (particularly the Space Corps) have been helping to keep order in Mega-City One. Tensions exists between them and the Judges.[54] By 2136, following Chaos Day and a dual war with the Xhind/colonial insurgency, Mega-City One no longer had the military power to stop a rebellion on Titan.[55]
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Many crimes in Mega-City One are controlled by flamboyant mob bosses:
Most work in Mega-City One is carried out by robots; this has led to problems with boredom and unemployment.[56] Boredom has fostered many problems in the city, with citizens spending their leisure time rioting over jobs, experimenting on their neighbors, and running amok in the streets.[56] Weird fads include Block Wars (wars between neighboring apartment blocks, waged by each block's defense militia), "ugliness clinics", and odd fashions.
Leisure in Mega-City One consists of a number of weird and wonderful futuristic hobbies and attractions, including:
The high population density of Mega-City One requires a complex system of transport. This often serves as accommodation as well as a means of getting around the city.
As Judge Dredd stories are set 122 years into the future and progress forward in 'real time' (stories from 1977 are set in 2099, and stories from 2025 are set in 2147), they have an extensive fictional chronology.
Stories in earlier issues would link Dredd to the chronology of the Invasion!, Ro-Busters, and Harlem Heroes strips: Mega-City One's construction is mentioned in Ro-Busters once it had moved to 2000 AD, and in a story that follows from Invasion!, while Mega-City One appears in Harlem Heroes and its lead character Giant is the father of Judge Giant. The former two strips have since been retconned out of Dredd history.
The first mention of other megacities came in Robot Wars, with a Texas City Oil freighter.[115] In the later Luna 1, when Dredd was appointed Judge-Marshall of the Luna-1 colony, the narration states that the colony is run by "the 3 great cities of North America"[116] of which one is Texas City in the next issue. The First Luna Olympics would introduce "the Sov-Cities".[117] Mega-City Two on the West coast was introduced in the story The Cursed Earth (1978). Since then, the exact number, location, nature, and even name of megacities fluctuates depending on the writer and strip.
Mega-City One is the initial setting of the 1995 film, though the majority of the second act shifts to Cursed Earth and the outer walls. Nigel Phelps was the production designer that oversaw the design of the city, chosen because he previously designed the fantastical version of Gotham City for Tim Burton's Batman. Other illustrators that contributed designs for the city included Simon Murton and Matt Codd.
Mega-City One is the setting of the 2012 film Dredd, though it occupies a smaller area than described in the comics. According to Judge Dredd (Karl Urban), the boundaries of Mega-City One reach "from Boston to Washington D.C." (similar to the real-life concept of the Northeast megalopolis) and contains a population of 800 million. The city blocks are large, brutalist structures that tend to be slum areas; each block can seal itself off with blast shields and communications blackouts in case of war.[118] Technology is much less advanced (outside of Justice Department equipment) and all non-Judge vehicles resemble early-21st-century models.
Judge Dredd: Mega City One is a TV series that was announced as in development on 10 May 2017. The population of the city in the TV series is advertised as "four hundred million citizens".[119][120]
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