Necropolis

"Something in the air tonight... ...A breath of evil passing over, touching each nerve and spine... In their blocks babes howl and children wake sobbing. On the streets felons pause in their villainous pursuits; citizens pull their wraps closer and ponder, inexplicably, their own mortality... Even hardened Judges feel a shiver of apprehension, of disquiet -- a chill presentment of what is to come..."

Necropolis is a Judge Dredd story which was published in 2000 AD progs 674 to 699 (although the build-up to it started in prog 669). It told the story of how the Sisters of Death manipulated the weak and conflicted Judge Kraken, who was masquerading as his clone-brother Dredd after Dredd had taken the Long Walk. Although outwardly highly competent, Kraken was torn between his loyalty to Morton Judd, the man who had cloned him, and his allegiance to Mega-City One. This deep divide in his personality formed a chink in his mental armour, allowing the Sisters of Death to control his actions.

Now their puppet, Kraken forced a scientist to teleport the Dark Judges into Mega-City One from Deadworld. Once the Dark Judges had arrived they set about killing everyone they could find for the 'crime' of being alive, in order to turn the city into the Sisters' masterwork: Necropolis, or 'city of the dead'. The city's Judges were brainwashed into acting as the Sisters' pawns, and Kraken himself was transformed into a fifth Dark Judge. The Dark Judges' nemesis Psi-Judge Anderson, who had tried to confront him, was last seen being run over by a tank.

All would have been lost had Dredd, wandering amnesiac in the Cursed Earth after an earlier encounter with the Sisters of Death, not been saved by a brave young boy called Yassa Povey in the course of the tale called The Dead Man. Dredd was reunited with the former Chief Judge Hilda McGruder, who had also taken the Long Walk, and the pair set off for the city together, haunted by chilling premonitions of disaster.

Meanwhile, Giant and a group of other cadet Judges had found Anderson lying grievously injured in the undercity. The tank which had seemed to crush her had in fact split the road open, allowing her to plummet into the city's dark bowels. Dredd followed Anderson's voice calling to him in his head (although he is double-zero rated for psychic sensitivity, he and Anderson are friends and she is the city's best psychic) and the pair were reunited. A barely conscious Anderson told Dredd how to defeat the Sisters of Death: kill Kit Agee, a Psi-Judge whom the Sisters were using as a psychic bridge through which they could access the city.

Through a mixture of cunning and force, Dredd, McGruder and Giant managed to blow up the building holding Agee. With her dead, the Sisters were sucked back into their own dimension, like water going down a plughole. Released from the Sisters' spell, the previously brainwashed Judges turned on the Dark Judges. They managed to overpower and imprison three of them, but Judge Death vanished.

With Chief Judge Silver, who had made the hideously ill-advised decision to replace Dredd with Kraken in the first place, missing and presumed dead, McGruder became the Chief Judge again. (Silver would later return as a zombie and be killed a second time.) During their final meeting, Dredd told Kraken that he didn't blame him for what he'd done because he himself knew how powerful the Sisters of Death were. Kraken thanked him, and Dredd killed him by shooting him through the heart — an outcome that he knew his clone-brother had wanted.

Although the forces of evil were eventually defeated, Necropolis cost the city sixty million lives. The dead citizens were buried outside the city walls, but were subsequently resurrected as zombies during the event known as Judgement Day.

Necropolis and the stories leading up to it form volume 5 of Judge Dredd: The Mega Collection (pictured).

"In his darkest dreams he'd never imagined this... The cold, bitter cold that chilled the marrow and sapped the nerve... The pervading sense of terror... The dead hand of evil reaching over the city, blighting everything... Benighted city. Home. Necropolis."