Vienna Dredd
| Vienna | |
|---|---|
| Publication information | |
| Publisher | IPC Media/Rebellion |
| First appearance | 2000 AD #116 (June 1979) |
| Created by |
John Wagner Ian Gibson |
Vienna Dredd or Vienna Pasternak is a fictional character from the Judge Dredd comic strip, first appearing in prog 116 of the British comic 2000 AD (published in 1979).
Vienna is Judge Dredd's niece, the daughter of his corrupt brother Rico, and was orphaned when Dredd was forced to kill her father. She loved her uncle enormously, but was unaware of her father's fate until in 2101 she was kidnapped by the electronics genius Harry Carmen. Carmen had held a grudge against Dredd after he had incarcerated him for six years for a computer fraud, and he chose to seek his revenge through the child.[1]
Dredd managed to rescue Vienna, but not before Carmen revealed that the Judge had killed her father. Vienna forgave him, but Dredd, to ensure her future safety, vowed to see her less often in the future and asked her guardian, Mrs. Pasternak, to ensure that the girl would forget him rather than risk the heartbreak of her hearing about his death on the streets of Mega-City One, or be taken hostage again.[2] She did not appear in the comic again for 23 years.
Vienna returned to the comic in prog 1300 (published in 2002). After growing up in Brit-Cit, Vienna re-entered Dredd's life as an adult in 2124. The following year she was abducted by a Brit-Cit Satanist cabal in order to bring Dredd to her rescue and then trap him; guilty over the whole affair, he took her back to Mega-City One so he could help her better.[3]
It has been shown that Vienna is the only thing in the world Dredd cares about besides the law. As the daughter of his clone-brother, genetically speaking she could have been Dredd's daughter, and he has lately had to come to terms with his quasi-paternal instinct. When she was caught in the Total War bombing of Sector 2, Dredd acted to save her first instead of being impartial. He attempted to resign from the force at the end of this debacle but Chief Judge Hershey pointed out that it does him good to be human once in a while.[4]
Soon afterwards, Vienna fell out with Dredd and was seduced by an East Meg assassin who planned to use her against her uncle. Dredd managed to save her and in the process she demonstrated that she had inherited her father's fighting talent, ruthlessly dispatching a soldier guarding her while handcuffed.[5]
Vienna and Dredd are back on good terms though Dredd remains fairly distant (though he does visit her at Christmas).
Vienna is also acquainted with Dredd's clones, Judge Rico and Dolman, who regularly keep in contact with her as she sees herself as a big sister figure to them.
During Day of Chaos, Dredd evacuated her from her block to a judicial safezone; she initially refused to go but was forced into it when a mob (seeing Dredd) set fire to her apartment. To Dredd's surprise, she was not only calm and collected during the chaos, but used a gun to defend him from a criminal he had not spotted. Vienna had earlier revealed that Judge Rico had provided her with the gun and some added defenses for her apartment sometime before.[6]