transforming Mega-City One into Necropolis. All life was outlawed, and the Dark Judges sentenced the entire population to death. Under their rule at least ten thousand citizens were rounded up and killed by the Dark Judges each day, with Kraken forced to take part in the slaughter; many others committed suicide, were shot by judges for breaking curfew, or fell to disease and starvation. This reign of misrule continued for months, with few managing to escape. Judge Dredd and former Chief Judge McGruder, returning from exile to fight back, encountered a column of refugees that had fled into the Cursed Earth, while four Cadet Judges (Giant, Ekerson, Santando and Monk) had evaded pursuit from Judge Mortis and escaped into the Undercity, where they encountered the injured Psi-Judge Anderson. They soon met and joined forces with Dredd and McGruder and formed a plan of action. Following Judge Anderson's advice, Dredd decided to kill Kit Agee and thus break the Sisters' link with Earth. The Judges returned to the surface, hijacked an H-Wagon and used its weapons to destroy Dunc Renaldo block, where Kit Agee was imprisoned. With Agee dead, the psychic bridge was destroyed and the Sisters of Death were banished to Deadworld. The Judges regained control of themselves, and quickly regrouped under McGruder's command, redoubling their efforts to put a stop to the slaughter. The Judges managed to recapture three of the Dark Judges: Fear was imprisoned in the miracle plastic Boing; Judge Fire was drawn out of his body by a powerful vacuum; while Anderson uses her psi-powers to trap Judge Mortis. Judge Death, when confronted, leapt from a city block window down to City Bottom, where he vanished, masking his presence with his own psychic talents. In this fashion he was able to escape and hide himself among the dead, and was soon buried with them in one of the many mass graves excavated to contain the sixty million citizens who died during this period. Kraken, free of Death's influence at last and overcome with guilt, welcomed his execution at Dredd's hands. Significance Besides its epic length and the cataclysmic events depicted in the story, "Necropolis" was a major turning point in the long-running Democracy story arc that had begun four years earlier, and which now continued in a new direction. The story reintroduced the character Judge McGruder, absent from the strip for four years, now with obvious