“I bring you to release from the wayss of wickedness!”, is one of the favorite statements of a strong being who takes on the form of a skeletal monstrosity with the goal of eradicating human life. Isn’t it terrifying?
Judge Mortis is one of the four Dark Judges, along with Death, Fear, and Fire. He was a Judge in the parallel dimension of Deadworld before the two Sisters of Death transformed him into his horrific form. His talents force everything he comes into contact with to soon decay and decrease in quality.
He is one of the Judges who decreed all life to be a sin and, with the help of the other Judges of Death, began slaughtering everyone in their world. They began attacking other dimensions and obliterating life everywhere they could once they were finished. The Judges of Death have achieved this with their enormous power. Judge Dredd’s arch-enemies, the Dark Judges, first appeared in 2000 AD and the Magazine.
The weekly science fiction comic 2000 AD is published in the United Kingdom. IPC Magazines originally released it in 1977, with the first issue dated February 26. It is a comics anthology with stories serialized in each issue. Since 2000, Rebellion Developments has been publishing it.
The Judge Dredd adventures, which were provided by a number of internationally recognized artists and writers, including Alan Moore, Dave Gibbons, and Grant Morrison, among others, are the most well-known aspects of 2000 AD. Judge Dredd is law enforcement and judicial figure in Mega-City One, a dystopian future city that stretches the length of the east coast of North America. He is a “street judge,” with the authority to arrest, convict, sentence, and execute criminals on the spot, and one of his main opponents is Judge Mortis.
We will look at the scary Judge Mortis in today’s video.
Judge Mortis Origin
With the aim to explain to all of you how Judge Mortis became the terrifying entity as he appears today, we have to delve right back into the setting and history of the Judge Dredd series.
The Dark Judges are “alien super-fiends,” or simply put, four zombie judges that killed the populace of a parallel Earth named Deadworld. This Earth was similar to Judge Dredd’s, but with less sophisticated technology and a lower concern about damage and death. Judges in this society were often corrupt, and they administered aggressive medication to their subjects, making them more violent and securing their leaders’ devotion.
At some point, a young Judge named Sydney De’Ath came to the conclusion that because all crime is the product of sentient life and having free will, life is impure and must be deemed a crime.
He came to be known as “Judge Death” because he often condemned individuals to death, even for minor infractions. Later, he recruited three younger Judges who shared his viewpoints. Judge Fire, Judge Fear, and Judge Mortis were the names given to them over time. The scary part is, Death, they believe, is the finest method to restore order and remove chaos.
Let us now take a look into who Judge Mortis was before he was recruited by Judge Death. Judge Mortis was formerly a person who resided on the parallel realm known as ‘Deadworld,’ where he slowly, over time became a fetid, unwholesome monster.
He loved visiting cemeteries as a boy and believed the dead to be his buddies. He then worked as a Judge in his world’s fascist police force as an adult before being converted into his current zombie form by the Sisters of Death’s black sorcery. As a result, he, along with Judge Fire and Judge Fear, became one of Judge Death’s Dark Judges.
Mortis resembled a human in the early phases of his transition before transforming into a rotten, decaying animal. Then he embarked on a voyage into orbit, where he was exposed to space’s vacuum and had his flesh ripped from his head, leaving him with nothing but a bestial skull.
Thus, when Judge Death met the Sisters of Death, Phobia and Nausea, two wicked witches who seem to share similar ideas about death’s purity, they take on their terrifying forms. The Sisters are monstrous entities from another dimension that acquire power by supporting genocide through agents and avatars, something Sydney was unaware of at the time. The Sisters then proposed killing Judge Death and his three minions and further treating their remains with alchemical “Dead Fluids,” which would turn them into powerful undead monsters. They complied, and the undead Dark Judges were born.
The Dark Judges have repeatedly attacked Mega-City One, with their most notable victory being the Necropolis incident, in which they conquered the city and exterminated a large portion of its population, an estimated 60 million people, while also temporarily inducting Judge Kraken, Dredd’s clone brother.
However, they have always been defeated in the end, typically by Judge Dredd or his sidekick, the psychic Judge Anderson. There were previously many more Dark Judges, according to the series The Fall of Deadworld, but Death and his three main lieutenants appear to be the only ones left currently.
Judge Dredd is not one without his own peculiarities. Mortis, who appears to be a bit of a science geek, acquired control of his country’s environmental management during the collapse of Deadworld, utilizing it to infuse corpse fluids into food and water supplies, as well as to generate disastrous weather events. He also created a ‘dead matter bomb’ by distilling dead fluids into an unstable, super-heavy solid, which he used to demolish Megagrad, the Sov Federation’s capital.
Mortis was supposed to be the most deranged of the four in Deadworld, amused himself with horrific experiments with the dead and corpse manipulation. He is usually all business during missions and he also has no qualms about killing children. Mortis is also largely unconcerned about eternal life and is continually looking for ways to pass the time, including inhuman experimentation.
He has appeared to be a friendly creature in the past in order to gain others’ trust in order to lure them into traps or persuade them to lure others. If he can, he enjoys extending his kills as much as possible. He cultivated a ‘corpse garden’ and worked on a variety of projects, including creating “wine” from ground-up remains, being proof of his bizarre nature. In fact, when the aliens arrived, Mortis tried to gain their trust by telling them about other worlds he could destroy; he ended up slaying them joyously and now waits for his chance to leave off-world when more aliens arrived.
As far as physical appearance goes, Judge Mortis is a walking corpse, to put it bluntly. He is one of the Living Dead after all. His skull has been replaced with that of a cow or steer, giving him an especially gruesome appearance. This does not appear to be affecting him in any way. The skeleton has reduced the little flesh left on his figure, which is greenish in color. Mortis was a tall man among regular people and he also had long and twisted fingers, as well as a short tail.
He was also dressed in a ragged Judges uniform with a skeletal bat creature in place of an eagle above his left shoulder and a rack of bones on the right shoulder. His emblem was a flying human skull, and his belt buckle was a horse skull. Only Mortis and Fire are without their own helmets among the dark judges.
His Abilities – Power of Decay
Next, we come to the various powers and abilities he possesses that make him truly terrifying. Because “you cannot kill what does not live,” the four Dark Judges frequently declare that they cannot be stopped. These zombie villains aren’t invincible, but they do have supernatural abilities, such as superhuman strength and harm resistance.
They have the ability to manipulate and occupy people’s thoughts psychically. A Dark Judge’s spirit is discharged as a gaseous form when a host body is destroyed, and it can infect and occupy a new host body. The Dark Judge’s full power returns once the new host body is destroyed and turned undead. Telepathically or in the astral world, it is possible to fight and hurt the Dark Judges’ spirits.
It’s also feasible to contain a Dark Judge’s spirit before it infects a new host body, for example, in special iso-cube cells or a “glasseen crystal” that can only be split with liquid nitrogen. Judge Death, the most renowned of the four Dark Judges, speaks with a distinctive hiss. Their signature phrase is often quoted with their trademark hiss, ” “Life is the crime! The sentence is death”
Coming to Judge Mortis specifically, Mortis resembles a cloud of greenish fog in his most basic form. He is invincible to most attacks in this form. He can also travel through minor gaps like keyholes, but not through completely flawless obstacles.
He can momentarily possess living victims in this form. He won’t be able to use his other abilities until he has control of a properly prepared corpse. Mortis is far more lethal while inhabiting a corpse as his touch is corrosive which is his hallmark power as he is the only one who possesses the ability to do it. Other skills, including, long-distance mental Control, have been demonstrated by Mortis and his fellow dark Judges on occasion.
However, he is not without his own weaknesses as it turns out that Judge Mortis can be temporarily incapacitated by a hi-ex bullet as demonstrated by then-cadet Giant in 2000 AD prog 689 and he is unable to disperse and escape when he is in a host body except for defense and move through smaller spaces.
Having said this, he continues to be quite the fearsome adversary since his morals are beyond basic human logic and he is indifferent to most things, which is what makes him truly dangerous.