Artist : Sean Philips
Real Name : Armitage, first name Unknown
Rank/Social Category: Detective Judge
Base of Operations : Brit-Cit
Time Period : 2114 AD, Earth
Group Affliations : Plainclothes Division. Justice Department
First Appearance : Brit-Cit
Index: "Armitage" Judge Dredd The Megazine vol.1 #9-14(May to Nov. 1991) by Stone & Phillips
Influential circles Vol II #10-18 ( story by Dave Stone, art by Charlie Adlard ),
Flashback Vol II #19-21 (Jan. to Feb. 1993)( art by Charlie Adlard )
Flashback II Vol II #31-33 ( art by Charlie Adlard. )
City of the Dead, 8 episodes and prologue, vol.2 #63-71 [by Stone & Charles Gillespie ]
Vol III
Writer : Dave Stone
Artist : Sean Philips
He has knowledge of the weapons used in the Brit-Cit Civil War of 2092-9. He considers himself a 'working judge', ( as opposed to senior judges, who buy their commissions) and suffers fools and incompetents badly. Armitage is physically strong and quick but prefers to use brain over brawn. Pathologist Mary Turner has said of Armitage: "He's arrogant and abrasive and everybody hates him - but he's also the best detective judge in the city." He has been working with rookie Detective Judge Treasure
A cold winters night. Multi-coloured constellations pinwheeling overhead. The roar
Detective Judge Armitage and Rookie Judge Treasure Steel leant against the rail of the
They had tracked one Cornelius Pennyfeather -perpetrator of the fiendish Brit-Cit
Such a debacle. Treasure reflected, could not leave anything other than a bad taste in
There had been nothing for it but to return to Brit-Cit by the most immediate available route - in this case, the Euro/Brit-Cit airship.
They had lived to regret it. Behind them. from the gandola proper came what was either the sound of a hot-poker being forcibly inserted into a macaw, or shrill shrieking laughter. They winced.
Airships were a mode of transport for the rich and he well-bred, and in the course of the journey Amitage and Steel had come to know and loathe very one of the other passengers.
"Parasites." Armitage spat into the cruel sea below.
"Chinless drokking wonders." said Treasure.
"Grud, need a drink," said Armitage
The walls of the airship's lounge crawled with gilt and velvet plush in a particularly bilious shade of maroon. If you listened hard enough through the Muzak, you could hear the bells pealing from the minarets of civilisations lost in the Axminister shag. Red filters over the lights gave those the light fell upon the aspect of having been filleted.
At the bar, Armitage drank the latest in a long line of beers and glowered blearily at the barman.
Across the bar. the slumped, ragged figure of Mr Roger Awl, method actor and dipsomaniac of no small renown, was regaling the world in general with the events of one evening in October, when he was from sober, and dragging home a load with manly pride. Treasure knew from bitter experience that a pig would come into it later.
Beyond him, Ms Lobelia Romp-Specimen. the medicated goitre heiress end radiant in a glazed bread mask (which she raised and lowered on a small silver hoist), was tucking into a plate of lethal canap�s and proffering bon mote to her tuxedo'd paramour, Rupert Glome-Rotring.
(Before sampling the cultural joys of Euro-Cit, Treasure had been under the impression that a bon mot was a sort of boiled sweet. She had been vaguely disappointed to find that it was in fact a small and rather slimy form of witless epigram.)
Beyond this pair, the Viscount Jeremy Temporal-Lobe was dancing stripped to the waist in the
company of several like-minded friends. with many happy whoops and the nascent tang of body oil. Beyond them....
Beyond them, at a candle-lit table, in the company of a gigolo who had fallen on hard times, taken the job out of desperation and was now counting the hours until he was paid off, the Dowager Duchess of Ghent dropped her glass and clutched at her throat.
She coughed. She retched. And then with a hiss of gas she began to inflate.
Without pause for thought Treasure finished off her gin and lemon, bought a packet of nuts, grabbed a semi-comatose Armitage by the lapel and dragged him under the nearest table.
The Dowager exploded with a bang - leaving no trace but for the visceral and digestive matter splattered over the entire lounge and its occupants, and several slightly scorched lace veils fluttering to the floor like dying bats.
After a time, or possibly two times. Armitage and Steel crawled from under the table. Still cradling his half-finished and miraculously unspilled beer. Armitage glared around at the shocked and slathered masses.
"Probably some sort of meso-electric element in the drink." he said. "It disrupted her internal cellular pressure and whamo! I think we should..."
Steel never knew exactly what Armitage thought because at that moment the door flew open and in burst a short, portly figure with a bald and glistening head, a perambulatory moustache and his mouth wrapped around a churchwarden. (That's a pipe.)
It was M. Andre Dupont no less, gourmand and world-famous Euro-Cit amateur sleuth par excellence!
"There has been a murder here!" he cried. "Murder most foul. The Dowager Duchess of Ghent lies dead and, since we are at this very moment over international waters. I will investigate!"
It was later. The lounge had been cleared by burly attendants, Dupont end the suspects had retired to the late Dowager's cabin to further the investigation The suspects were Mr Roger Awl. Ms
Lobelia Romp-Specimen. Mr Rupert Glome-Rotring.
the Viscount Jeremy Temporal-Lobe, Ron the gigolo, Treasure and Armitage.
"Why us?" Armitage said indignantly.
"Wasn't it lunchtime you were shouting how you'd see the lot of us dead and screaming in hell, if you could get away with it?" Lobelia asked sweetly
"She has a point," said Treasure.
Armitage muttered something to himself and amused himself by surreptitiously rifling through the late Dowager's drawers while Dupont questioned the suspects...
"I loved her."' sobbed Lobelia Romp-Specimen. "She was like a mother to me. Even the time she brutally dismembered my pet rad-hamster Crippen with a surgical bone-saw didn't matter, because I really, really..."
The Viscount seemed flustered. "I barely knew the woman. he said. "We moved in completely different circles. Whet possible reason could I have for
Armitage, meanwhile, had unearthed a large leather-bound dossier from the Dowager's steam trunk. With photos. He examined the contents, snorted, and passed them to Treasure.
Treasure raised en eyebrow at the Viscount, who was now turning a little green. "I like the bit about the electrodes, the Wellington boots and the genetically engineered livestock." she said. "It that physically possible?"
The interrogations wore on. It transpired that Rupert Glome-Rotring was also featured in the
shameful dossier. When the details were revealed, Lobelia Romp-Specimen clapped a hand to her mouth and ran from the cabin. She returned later pale, wan and covered in breadcrumbs. Even
Armitage had felt slightly queasy. Dupont made a note of several details for later.
Roger Awl then treated them to a song, detailing how he discovered his new bride to be a multiple amputee to the tune of Side by Side.
Ron the gigolo revealed that he had in fact been plotting to murder the Dowager by way of a stiletto and a butt of malmsey - but had never had the chance to put his plan into effect.
Dupont then turned his attention to Armitage and Steel, who revealed themselves as Brit-Cit Judges.
"Alors," he exclaimed at last, mopping his brow with a croissant. "I have to admit I am - how you say? -one stump short of a wicket."
"Hm," said Armitage. Thoughtfully.
There was something nagging at the back of his beer-soaked mind. something to do with the sequence of the murder. He pulled another can from those he had managed to save from the Dowager-bedecked bar, and downed it.
He climbed to his feet and wandered the cabin. counting off points on his fingers: "I think we can agree that the late Dowager exploded. A sound like that would suggest one of the gasbags blowing out rather than anything else...
"Furthermore. after she died, the Dowager was in state to be identified by a casual observer. There might be teeth and fingers and suchlike scattered around, but -"
think I got her glass eye." the Viscount said helpfully, reaching for his trouser pocket.
"Spare me." Armitage wandered over to the Dowager'a steam trunk and gazed down thoughtfully on the shameful dossier.
"There was one person." he mused, "who knew that a murder had been committed, knew who the victim was - but wasn't on the scene at the time!"
"I admit it." the great detective cried, prostrate before the startled suspects. "I admit it all! I would also like three thousand, seven hundred and fifty similar offences to be taken into account, including matricide, fratricide and cattle rustling.
"I have roamed the world for years, slaughtering wherever I go and palming it off on some innocent bystander. My greatest triumph was the decimation of three Brit-Cit hab-blocks and laying the blame on an itinerant electrified bicycle-pump salesman!
"But." he continued, leaping to his feet, "you'll never take me alive!"
With that Dupont streak for the door. The suspects tried to stop him but to no avail, for he had taken the precaution of purloining the Viscount's body oil and had liberally coated himself with it. He slipped through their grasp and vanished into the night.
Enraged, the suspects took off after him, leaving the cabin empty save for Armitage, Steel and the fading sounds of running feet.
Armitage opened another beer and pulled a fob watch from a pocket. He studied it in silence.
After a while Treasure became aware of distant voices approaching. She went to the cabin door and listened.
"All right," said a slightly desperate Dupont. "You can take me alive."
"What do you think?" asked a voice instantly recognisable at that of Rupert Glome-Rotring.
Several voices held a muted conference followed by a "Heave !" in unison. a descending end faint cry of "Merde!" and a splash.
Armitage put his watch away. "By my reckoning we're now in Brit-Cit airspace," he said.
"Let's go nick these drokkers for conspiracy to commit murder by drowning."
of the choppy. stroppy sea below. half-lost in the hum of Mauller-Fokker props. The
flutter of canvas and the creak of hawsers.
gondola catwalk, depressed.
Electrified Bicycle pump Murders - down in Euro-Cit, had cornered him.. .but the
whole sorry affair had ended with pennyfeather plunging from the mile-high extruded
polymer replica of the Eiffel Tower into a vat of steaming bouillabaisse.
the mouth. The resulting soup had been appalling. and tasted slightly of pork.
"Suit yourself." said Armitage.
THE END