Mutants (Judge Dredd Storyline) - Background

Background

Mutants are de novo mutations created by radiation or radioactive contamination following the Atomic Wars in 2070. Their genetic mutations (which are inherited by their children) cause them to exhibit bizarre physical deformities.

Mutants first appeared in 2000 AD prog 4 (1977), described as raiders from outside the city, in the "wilderness from the Atomic Wars." Another early issue would have Dredd reveal mutants have been banned from the city, on grounds that " hate ordinary people because they themselves are warped". A chapter in "The Cursed Earth" (1978) expanded on this by showing that mutants were themselves the victims of irrational prejudice by normal people - "norms" - and Dredd is honestly surprised to meet a benign mutant, remarking "I guess all mutants aren't crazy or evil". The issue before, he'd considered mutants as a whole to be sick and crazy, and in need of pity. Later stories would state that some justify the apartheid by the alleged threat to the genepool; but Dredd remarks that is just an excuse, and the science does not support it.

Due to the ban on citizenship, mutants are forced to live in the radioactive wasteland outside the city, the inhospitable and lawless Cursed Earth. Mutants were prohibited from entering the city, and those who attempted to enter by scaling the city walls would be arrested and expelled, or killed resisting arrest. They would usually feature in stories simply as hostile criminals for Dredd to fight, but some stories set in the Cursed Earth would also show them in a more sympathetic light, as victims of unjust oppression by future society (or sometimes more directly as victims of crime). Initially mutants were mainly used in fight sequences in action stories, but as the years went by, and the tone of Judge Dredd stories matured to appeal to a wider audience, stories featuring mutants increasingly emphasized the injustice of their plight, and the harsh, uncompromising enforcement of the anti-mutant laws by Judge Dredd and the Mega-City Justice Department (for example "The Gipper's Big Night," (1991)).

The other mega-cities of Earth are assumed to treat mutants in the same way, though they are rarely mentioned. In the first appearance of Texas City, however, the city was shown enacting "mutant clearances," indicating that mutants had been allowed to be citizens until 2102. A Texan judge said the reason for this was simply "Texas City will walk tall again without them uglies!" Unlike Mega-City One, they were specifically sent to "new homelands across Lake Lousiana"; however, the mutants shown were being threatened by armed judges to keep them marching. However, mutants could have permits to work in legal "danger parks" where they were exploited for the purposes of entertainment.

Judge Dredd himself was prepared to treat mutants decently when he met them in the Cursed Earth, so long as they behaved themselves: even before meeting his first benign mutant, Dredd took a detour around mutant territory as "I wish those crazy devils no harm". However, any who entered his city were automatically criminals, and had to be dealt with accordingly and without compassion. Any mutants who challenged Mega-City One's interests or killed judges would be treated harshly - in 2126, Dredd led a brutal crackdown on the New Mutant Army after the death of Cursed Earth Auxiliary Rangers, massacring the NMA and sending any mutant suspected of sympathising to detention camps. In a story set in early 2099, Monkey on my Back (Megazine #203-5), Chief Judge Goodman was forced by the parasitical Monkey to allow mutants back into the city. The young, pre-Cursed Earth Dredd took an extremely hardline view on this, believing the mutants would be too bitter to reintegrate and the very idea was idiotic. (Many mutants did run riot, though the Monkey had forced the judges to let every mutant in without screening them for hostiles)

Under Mega-City law, any norm who harboured a mutant was himself guilty of a crime and liable to strict penalties. Since a normal woman could still give birth to a mutant child, the parents of mutated offspring would sometimes go to great lengths to conceal the birth (or, at least, its abnormality) and raise their child in secret. Detection of a mutant foetus in a routine pregnancy scan would result in mandatory abortion; detection of a mutant birth would result in the parents being forced to choose between exile to the Cursed Earth, the "euthanasia" of the child, or the mutant being deported to Cursed Earth farming camps.

In 2006, early episodes of the story "Origins" (2006–07) introduced Randy Fargo and his family, mutants who are distant cousins of Judge Dredd. Dredd was unaware of their existence until he met them in the Cursed Earth in 2129. After the Fargos helped Dredd in his mission, they parted on amicable terms. However they would soon return to the Judge Dredd strip in 2007. "Origins" heralded a turning-point in the treatment of mutants by writer John Wagner, and indeed by the character Dredd as well. Instead of making brief appearances in the strip to emphasize the science-fictional setting, mutants became the focus of a new storyline which explored Dredd's shifting attitude towards the issue of mutant rights, which began in 2007 with "Mutants in Mega-City One."