Necropolis (Judge Dredd Story) - Significance

Significance

Besides its epic length and the cataclysmic events depicted in the story, "Necropolis" was a major turning point in the long-running Democracy story arc which had begun four years earlier, and which now continued in a new direction. The story also reintroduced the character Judge McGruder, absent from the strip for four years, now with obvious mental problems as a result of her prolonged exile in the radioactive Cursed Earth desert. McGruder's mental illness became an important aspect of the "Mechanismo" story four years later.

The story also reintroduced Judge Death and his fellow Dark Judges as a serious presence in the series, having not appeared since being exiled to another dimension in the first "Anderson Psi Division" story several years earlier. The story also introduced the "Sisters of Death," and saw the deaths of Judge Kraken, Judge Odell, and Chief Judge Silver.

Stories would be spun out of Necropolis for over a year after it ended: "Nightmares", "Fixing Daddy", and "The Apartment" showed the devastation, diseases, and trauma that had been caused; "Death Aid", Garth Ennis's first Judge Dredd story, had the villains motivated by raising money for Necropolis orphans; "Return of the King" featured an undead Silver trying to retake his position and being executed by Dredd for dereliction of duty; "Wot I Did During Necropolis" had PJ Maybe escaping from the psycho-cubes thanks to the crisis; and "Judge Death – Boyhood Of A Superfiend" had Death morose at the failure of his grand work. The death toll was used to raise the stakes in "Judgement Day" – all sixty million victims became zombies – and both of those mega-epics were used to start off the Mechanismo storyline, due to the damage done to the judge force. Years later, Necropolis would still be mentioned or used in Dredd stories.

This story arc would also lead to a new phase in Dredd's doubts about the Justice System and in the ongoing democracy storyline. In "Nightmares", Dredd was back to believing in the system because of the devastation of Necropolis: only the judges, he felt, could keep the city together after such an attack. However, the lack of clear public approval for the system left him troubled. Meanwhile, the public failure of the judges meant that pro-democracy sentiment was on the rise. Dredd proposed a referendum: the people would either vote for a return to democracy or vote to retain the judges, with Dredd believing they would vote for the status quo. (Dredd also felt that he should have tried to work within the system to change it: when Dredd's doubts resurfaced in a major way after "Origins", this was the tactic he used.)