Space Corps (comics)

The Space Corps of 2000 AD's Judge Dredd strip are professional armies which deal with conflicts and peacekeeping away from Earth.

Mega-City One's Space Corps are the main group shown and have appeared in several stories, most notably Judge Dredd: Mandroid and its sequel,Warzone, spinoff The Corps, and Debris. They are unlicensed to act against citizens in Mega-City One (Chaos Day riots being the rare exception) and the strategic interests of the city come above the interests of individual colonies, who may be abandoned to alien attack.

Foreign Space Corps have been mentioned and shown: Sino-Cit in "The Corps" (who have an alliance and co-administered forts with the Klegg Empire) and Latin American and "Asian Union conscripts" in Warzone, the latter involving an international coalition.

The idea of offworld soldiers had been mentioned in 1980s strips but the concept was first named and fleshed out by Garth Ennis in 1994, as "the Corps", "the military arm of Mega-City 1's Justice Dept". This was written at the request of editor Alan McKenzie, who wanted a war story featuring space Judges; Ennis lost interest after the strip was partially rewritten by an uncredited figure. As The Corps has the characters trying to undermine the Sino-Cit/Klegg alliance, it may have been part of McKenzie's push for a storyline (later dropped) where Mega-City One and Sino-Cit would go to war. Coincidentally, The Corps came out at the same time as a long-delayed, similar strip called Maelstrom, which featured another team of similarly-armoured soldiers called "STAR Judges" and also had art by Colin MacNeil. Both strips had their military forces established as Judges - the Corps' Special Squads were pulled out of the Academy of Law at ages 3–6 after showing abnormal levels of violence, and trained solely to kill.

Space Corps

Space Corps, may refer to:

Judge (2000 AD)

Judge (or street judge) is a title held by several significant characters in Judge Dredd and other series which appear in the British comics 2000 AD and Judge Dredd Megazine. In the fictional future history of the series, the role of "Judge" combines those of judge and police officer, thus avoiding long legal wrangles by allowing for criminals to be tried and sentenced on the spot. Since they overthrew the U.S. Constitution in 2070, Judges have also held supreme political power in Mega-City One. Collectively they are known as the Justice Department.

Overview

In the comic strip, Judges are the product of many years' training and psychological conditioning. Training, which takes place in the Academy of Law, generally begins at age five. The Judges recruit promising children, and grow their own clones. Judge Dredd is himself a clone of the Judges' founder, Chief Judge Fargo.

The Judges themselves are not above the law – a violation that would earn a citizen a few months in an Iso[lation]-Cube earns a Judge a twenty-year sentence of hard labor on Saturn's moon, Titan, after surgical modification to enable the convict to survive Titan's atmosphere.