Rico Dredd

[close] Rico Dredd is a fictional character in the Judge Dredd comic strip in 2000 AD magazine. He is the brother of Judge Joe Dredd, the strip's eponymous lead character.

Rico first appeared in "The Return of Rico" in 2000 AD #30 (1977), written by Pat Mills and drawn by Mike McMahon. This story was retold in 1995, when Mills was asked to write an extended three-episode version of it to coincide with the release of the 1995 film, in which Rico appeared.

Rico Dredd (2066–2099) was the "clone brother" of Joseph Dredd, which is to say that they were both cloned from the same genetic source, in their case Chief Judge Fargo. Their growth in the cloning tanks was artificially accelerated, so that within 16 months they emerged with the physical development of children aged five years. They also had their brains electronically induced with knowledge and training which greatly surpassed their apparent physical age, so that they could immediately begin training in law enforcement. Rico was removed from the cloning tanks twelve minutes before Joe, and so he habitually referred to Joe as his little brother (or "Little Joe").

At the Academy of Law Rico consistently demonstrated higher levels of skill than Joe, and he graduated at the top of their class in 2079, with Joe coming second.However, following an injury during a training mission in the Cursed Earth, Rico began to become more aggressive, underhanded, and determined to prove himself better than Joe. After graduation, Rico began engaging in criminal activities, including extortion, assault and racketeering. Joe suspected that this was the result of exposure to radiation when Rico was injured on a training mission in the Cursed Earth.

Eventually Rico allowed his brother to find out about his crimes (except for Kenner's murder). When Joe witnessed Rico murder an innocent cafe owner who had refused to pay him protection money, Joe arrested him. Rico resisted arrest by opening fire, but the shots went wide. Given Rico's skill with a firearm, Joe would later posit the theory that Rico was trying to commit suicide by cop out of a deep disgust at what he had become, rather than trying to kill him. Rico received the mandatory sentence for corrupt judges – twenty years hard labour on the prison colony of Titan, where he grew to hate his brother.

After serving his time on Titan, Rico returned to Mega-City One seeking revenge on Joe. Confronting him at his home, Rico challenged him to a duel to settle their differences, knowing that with his superior skills he could always outdraw his brother. However he had grown used to the weaker gravity of Titan after his twenty years there. This slowed him down by a split second and allowed Joe to shoot him dead.

Rico appears as the main villain in the 1995 Judge Dredd movie, in which Joe was played by Sylvester Stallone and Rico by Armand Assante. In this version, although they were cloned from identical DNA, they did not look the same. Rico was portrayed as a straightforward psychopath, having reached a point where he killed the innocent on the grounds that the division between guilt and innocence was merely a matter of timing and everyone would commit a crime in time. His deviant behavior was attributed to something going wrong in his creation which made him the perfect criminal. They were both friends in school (Joe was unaware of their true kinship, but it is unclear when Rico learned about their connection), but when he became a murderer, Joe judged him and sentenced him to life imprisonment, and his death was faked to reassure the public and prevent the truth of the clone program coming to light.