Euro Judge

It's just gone the Eurovision finals (well done Austria), so here’s a European Judge.

Yes, dey do do dem dere. Euro City is a long-time peripheral interest, having been mentioned in asides and in various guises throughout Judge Dredd’s history, but it’s in Gordon Rennie’s aforementioned Megazine strip Regime Change that we finally see one or two, taking the very obvious role of, well, European allies in a story that leans rather heavily on real-life parallels. Rennie’s story was published not too long after the invasion of Iraq – put Dredd in the very dodgy police state of Ciudad Baranquilla ostensibly chasing the flimsiest of criminal evidence (it’s being collated while the tanks are already lined up on the border) backed up by Brit-Cit and Euro judges, throw in former Euro Judge La Salle as an independent [cough*don’tsayUN*cough!] observer and the story pretty much writes itself.

We’ve yet to cover the Banana City judges, but that’s not too far away. In the mean-time, thanks to Inako Miranda, the Euros now have a recognisable uniform: not too far removed from a cross between the Sov Judge and the Brit Cit visor, it’s a tad obvious, but not entirely impractical. Miranda’s artwork in the strip is inconsistent, however, with gloves changing colour in the backgrounds, and elbow pads disappearing here and there (perhaps it’s a resourcing issue plaguing away missions, who knows?), and being strictly in a non-police role, La Salle’s outfit is probably not entirely in-canon – there’s not even a name badge to go on; so what results is a bit composite, a bit guesswork. Not even a gun – but there is a nifty looking bike at least.

And yet and yet and yet... everyone treats La Salle as though she's still a Euro Judge strictly by sight (the BC Judges, who may know her by repute, however...) and Dredd, who identifies her as a Euro Judge before she even opens her mouth. Clearly there has to be some semblance of a Euro Judge to her uniform? And so, I've incorporated her rather broad shoulder pads into my version. Hey, given that a European designer managed to glam Dredd's uniform all the ay to Narnia in the Stallone movie, consider this a return compliment.

Euro City is generally understood to be an amalgam of former German and French territories, but may well be bigger and more diverse – it’s not been comprehensively mapped, and maybe for that and its rather sketchy definition we could infer that future Europe is the dream of a unified, multicultural state actually realised. Wow – a non-dystopian megacity in Dredd’s world? Crazier things have been committed to strip, believe me.

In the mean-time, and coming up next: more funny racism!