The Dark Judges are recurring villains in the fictional Judge Dredd universe recounted in the UK comic 2000 AD. They are Judge Death, Judge Fire, Judge Fear and Judge Mortis. Later storylines added the "Sisters of Death" (Phobia and Nausea), to their ranks. Former Judge Kraken was also a Dark Judge for a brief time during the Necropolis story.
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The Dark Judges were originally a group of lawkeepers from a parallel dimension. They were led by Judge Death, who had determined that all crime was committed by the living. Thus, by his logic, all life was a crime. Originally mortal, the four Judges encountered Phobia and Nausea (the Sisters of Death) in a cave. The Sisters were death cultists and mass murderers with supernatural powers, and the four Dark Judges became undead beings, subsequently murdering the entire population of their world.
Dimension-travelling visitors chanced upon the now 'Deadworld' and found the Dark Judges. After 'judging' (i.e., killing) them and taking their dimension jumping warp devices, Judge Death travelled to Mega-City One, against the opinions of his colleagues, in order to 'dispense justice'. Death was eventually defeated by the combined efforts of Judges Dredd and Anderson, his body having been destroyed, and his spirit form held inside Judge Anderson, herself encased in the miracle plastic Boing on display in the Justice Department's Hall of Heroes.
Having sensed Death's peril, his comrades Fear, Fire and Mortis crossed the dimension warp to rescue him. Released from imprisonment and with a new body created, the four Dark Judges continued their 'judgement' upon Mega-City One claiming thousands of victims. Dredd and Anderson intervened, and pursued the Dark Judges back to Deadworld using a Dimension Jump Globe liberated from the Dark Judges. There, the spirits of the Dark Judges' millions of victims flowed through Anderson and seemingly extinguished their spirits forever.
However, the Dark Judges were not destroyed but merely weakened, and four years later, Judge Anderson was duped into returning to Deadworld, where she was forced to resurrect them. Armed with teleporter technologies, the four returned to Mega-City One, leaving Anderson for dead. Anderson survived, however, and used the dimension warp technology against the Dark Judges, consigning them to limbo, the void between dimensions. This is where they were to remain for the next few years.
Following Judge Dredd's resignation and his replacement by the ex-Judge Kraken (recounted in the Judge Dredd stories Tale of the Dead Man and Countdown to Necropolis respectively), the sisters of Death - Phobia and Nausea - used their powers to influence Kraken and rescue the Dark Judges from Limbo. With the Mega-City One judge force under their control, the Dark Judges created Necropolis - the city of the dead, killing 60 million citizens. Judges Dredd, Anderson and Chief Judge McGruder, together with a handful of cadet judges, returned via The Undercity to defeat them - returning the Sisters of Death to Deadworld, imprisoning Fear, Fire and Mortis within secure containment, and executing Kraken, who had become a fifth Dark Judge. Judge Death eluded capture by hiding in the burial pits of the Cursed Earth, but was eventually captured by Dredd with the aid of Batman (see Judgement on Gotham).
The Dark Judges escaped and were recaptured numerous times, until on his last attempt Death beat Anderson into a coma so she couldn't track him and escaped into the Cursed Earth. He then went on a killing spree, taking out Las Vegas, before seemingly being destroyed.
The Dark Judges are undead and, as such, cannot be conventionally killed. They are ghostly spirits that must first inhabit dead bodies in order to do physical harm. This involves obtaining recently deceased cadavers, which are subsequently processed by machinery that produces "dead fluids". These fluids bring the corpses to "full ripeness", prefatory to the spirits inhabiting and animating them. The incarnate Dark Judges are emaciated, zombie-like humanoids with sharp claws that frequently serve for them to stab their victims through the head or torso. All four speak with a hiss.
Once incarnated, the Dark Judges don uniforms, or "robes of office", which reflect their identities. The uniforms are variants of the traditional judge uniform, with specific modifications based upon the judges' personalities.
Judge Death appears in something close to a Judge's helmet, though its modified visor resembles a portcullis. His mouth is pulled into a rictus. On his right shoulder is a pterodactyl, as opposed to the Judges' eagles; his left shoulder pad and elbow pads are festooned with bones. His tunic is fastened with crude stitches rather than a zipper, and his badge and belt buckle are each shaped like a human skull with extended fangs, the latter with bat wings. Judge Death will most often kill his victims by reaching directly into their chests and squeezing their hearts until they burst.
Judge Fear is an imposing figure with a black, iron helm obscuring his face, which he will open before his victims to frighten them to death with whatever lies within, often saying "gaze into the face of Fear!" Judge Dredd, however, was able to resist long enough to punch Fear through the head, replying "gaze into the fist of Dredd!" The actual face under the helmet has only been seen once, as a mass of eyeballs - although no explanation was given whether it was his actual face, or a representation of Fear's manifestation of the person watching's greatest terror. Fear has an assortment of bear traps dangling from his belt, and is known to throw them at his enemies in order to immobilize them; it also holds an enormous padlock which he uses to secure his victims' potential exit routes. He wears a thick robe with ornamental bear traps on the shoulders. His belt buckle is a shrunken head. A side note, in Progs 421 and 423 Judge Fear can be seen exhibiting the same powers as Judge Death, stabbing his hands through citizens bodies, though whether this is an additional ability or simply the artist's mistake has never been addressed.
Judge Fire is immersed in flame, but otherwise his uniform resembles that of Death. He has a human skull for a head and wields a flame-spewing trident. As a human, he was an undercover Judge named Fuego who had infiltrated a resistance group, which he eventually led to the newly-created Judge Death to become his first kills. He earned the name Judge Fire when he was human, for burning a school down for breaking noise regulations at playtime.
Judge Mortis is in a perpetual state of disintegration, and his touch causes his victims to decay extremely rapidly. Like Fire and Fear, he spent his early years as a trainee Judge at Law School, Deadworld's equivalent to Mega-City One's Academy of Law, and graduated after Judge Death. He quickly developed an admiration for Sidney's methods and beliefs and became one of his three lieutenants, sharing his comrade's zeal for passing arbitrary death sentences. He is sometimes employed by Judge Death to prepare the Dark Judges' host bodies. Mortis's head is a sheep skull and he has a bony tail. His uniform's right shoulder is a bird skeleton, and his left shoulder is protected by a perforated mantle. His badge is a stylized sheep skull with his name emblazoned in wood.
The undead incarnations of Nausea and Phobia normally only appear as spirits, although they do appear in their mortal form in the Judge Death prequel story, Young Death: Boyhood of a Superfiend.
For a very brief time, DC comic's "The Joker" character was a Dark Judge, having helped free the original Dark Judges in exchange for immortality. He received his payment by having his spirit merged into a corpse (which was not quite the "immortality" he'd sought), creating "Dark Judge Joker". As a Dark Judge, the Joker could kill masses of people with his laugh which caused human heads to explode.
His tenure was a brief one, as he quickly became bored with slaughter simply for its own sake and did not share the original Dark Judge's fanatical zeal for their "sacred mission" of purging all life. The Joker was restored to his normal, mortal form upon returning to Gotham City via a defective dimensional jump device.
The Judges of Deadworld wore similar uniforms to those of Mega-City One judges, coloured black with red trim; and a pterodactyl device on the right shoulderpad. They were brutal and a law unto themselves: a recruitment poster exhorted candidates to join the Judges and offered such incentives as "Beat people up. Kill anyone you like (within reason). Good rates of pay. Plenty of graft. Vicious nature a plus. LUNCHEON VOUCHERS." (Young Death: Boyhood of a Superfiend, Judge Dredd Megazine issues 1-12). Unsurprisingly they easily attracted psychopaths like the future Dark Judges; and in their last days applied the death penalty for even the merest of misdemeanours. When the Dark Judges seized power, the Deadworld Judges were inspired to join them and assisted in the massacre of the entire population before being killed themselves.
The Deadworld, despite having a Judge system and having some degree of future tech, did not possess City Blocks or most of the features the Mega-Cities do, instead being very much like 20th Century Earth. Dreaming was considered abnormal and dangerous, and those who dreamt repeatedly were often Psis, who were rounded up by the Judges.