Mega-City One


Mega-City One is a huge fictional post-nuclear megalopolis-size megacity city-state covering much of what is now the Eastern United States and some of Canada in the Judge Dredd comic book series and its spinoff series. The exact geography of the city depends on which writer and artist has done which story, but from its first appearance it has been associated with New York City's urban sprawl; originally it was presented as a future New York, which was retconned as the centre of a "Mega-City One" in the very next story.
The Architects' Journal placed it at No. 1 in their list of "comic book cities".

Development

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.
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. The back of prog 3 included an Ezquerra "Futuregraph" poster of Mega-City One, which said the city stretched from Montreal to Georgia and had 150 million citizens; it was part of the "United States of the West". 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 and abruptly bumped to 800 million later on. 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, 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. Over time, the strip would have the Judges as a feared police-state force with sole power; prog 118 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.

Description

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. 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, and spread west into Ohio and/or West Virginia. The megacity was built over the top of the old cities and the polluted Ohio River, creating the lawless Undercity, though a few buildings like the Empire State Building and Statue of Liberty were moved to Mega-City One for the tourists. Maps of the city 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, 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, 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 live in huge apartment blocks, though many citizens live a perpetually nomadic existence in vehicular mo-pads 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.
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 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" and "the Low Life". By the time of the comics setting English is no longer considered the official language of Mega-City One being replace by a local bastardisation call Meg Speak, with each sector or sometimes even blocks having its own dialect and accent.
Following the events of the 2011–12-story Day of Chaos, 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.
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.
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 CJ 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.

Inconsistencies

The internal geography of Mega-City One has often been ignored or changed, for the needs of any given story. Bob's Law in prog 355 set out a specific numbering system for sectors: the landlocked City Central, far from New York, was sectors 1 to 20, City East was sectors 21–108 "radiating in sequence" from Central, South and West followed a similar pattern, and North would do the same "on an east-west basis". This was then consistently ignored. For example, Sector 13 was given docks in The Simping Detective to better fit the noir style; Sector 1 generally seems to be in the former New York City, based on the Statue of Liberty being near the Grand Hall of Justice; and wherever a character enters the Undercity, they will almost always arrive in the ruins of Manhattan. Despite being built over other cities, "City Bottom" is level with the ground at the Cursed Earth and the sea. One of the more egregious clashes was in Inferno, where the Statue of Judgement is destroyed and falls through the western wall – which is many miles away from the eastern coast in every other story.

Other territories

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. 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 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. A proposed crackdown on civil rights in Britain led to a block being named David Blunkett Block in one story.

Government

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 Judge Logan. 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.
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.
In the early years of Judge Dredd, Mega-City One had not been established as a dictatorship – "The Purple People Breeder" mentioned "presidential candidate Howard Surb", while "Ryan's Revenge" 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, but this was dropped by prog 61.

List of mayors of Mega-City One


The identity of the current mayor is not known.
For a list of chief judges see here.

Civilian population

The citizens are shown to be a mixed bag. 98% are unemployed 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 seem to view them like a well-loved dim cat, stupid, greedy but with an unseen value that's worth protecting with everything they have. Although at times they've shown a huge lack of empathy towards them, such as when Chief Judge Francisco asked them if a large number that were on welfare could commit suicide in his Christmas message in order to help balance the budget for the following year. Some Judges openly view them 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.
The citizens occupy their time with many strange and outright bizarre hobbies, such as simping, bat gliding, sky surfing and peeping, 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, the 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, 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. 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 killed themselves since they had read how to do it in the book. At one point in some of the more dangerous blocks, the Judges took to putting sedative drugs into the air systems to help keep the citizens more docile and easier to control.
Some though do show huge promise, intelligence, and have extremely useful skills, many top scientists and engineers are not Judges. Most of the cities biggest advancements in areas such as food, new materials, non weapon or military technology, medicine and architecture and construction design came from ordinary citizens. All the major businesses and entertainment 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 legally.

Law

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. Judges impose immediate sentences on the spot, usually lengthy sentences of imprisonment. In extreme cases even the death penalty may be imposed, although relatively sparingly compared with the present day, reserved for mass murder or endangering the security of the city, but sometimes it is used simply to make an example or to intimidate the citizens. Nevertheless, many criminals are shot to death while resisting arrest, and resistors who survive Judge assault often receive a whole-life cube term.
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. When Judges do make a minor mistake such as wrongful arrest or search they do have to pay the citizen a compensation fee if there is 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 misdemeanours to charge to citizen with to get themselves off the hook.
Firearm possession is only legal with the proper permit firearms permit, which is very hard to obtain. The only real exception is for Citidef units, which may use heavy weapons. 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, for example when time is of the essence, due to the city being in severe danger. They used that reason to torture Total War cell leaders leading to the deaths of several of them. 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.

Military

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.
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. From "The Cursed Earth" onwards, the city's armed forces have usually been presented as a branch of the Judges : stories by Gordon Rennie introduced a Defence-Div, 1990s spin-off Maelstrom had heavily armed STAR 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. 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.
The main military force mentioned is the Space Corps, composed of marines and fleets, who fight against alien races that threaten the colonies. Another force are the Genetic Infantry: genetically engineered men, bred in a lab to be dedicated soldiers. The Citi-Defs are a reserve force composed of citizens. 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.
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 have been helping to keep order in Mega-City One. Tensions exists between them and the Judges. 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.

Crimes

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. 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. Weird fads include Block Wars, "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.

Pedestrian

As Judge Dredd stories are set 122 years into the future and progress forward in 'real time', 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. 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" of which one is Texas City in the next issue. The First Luna Olympics would introduce "the Sov-Cities". Mega-City Two on the West coast was introduced in the story The Cursed Earth. Since then, the exact number, location, nature, and even name of megacities fluctuates depending on the writer and strip.

In other media

Film

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, the boundaries of Mega-City One reach "from Boston to Washington D.C." 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. Technology is much less advanced and all non-Judge vehicles resemble early-21st-century models.

TV

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".