User blog comment:Raidra/Batman versus the Ugly Horde/@comment-28266772-20160913153520/@comment-28266772-20160914111054

Yup - apparently that whole scene stemmed from a lack of communication with the artists who drew him with a generic face not realizing that Wagner didn't want it revealed. Rather than go through the ordeal of changing the panels he slapped a censored sticker on it and made it so his hideous face freaked everyone out. In contrast the Burned Man story was unique because no one knew it was Dredd. It was published under an alternative title and at the very end they revealed it was actually Judge Dredd under those bandages. The whole thing was a big 'event' storyline.

Dredd's face is an interesting thing though. For one he's a clone of Chief Fargo and they show his face happily. They also showed Dredd's twin brother but his face was mangled by surgery to adapt him for work on the vacuum of Titan (epic epic epic comic book). Dredd was also meant to be ethnically ambiguous but over time artists just made him white without thinking. Early strips though do show a man who could easily be African, Caucasian or Latino.

I guess with Dredd his reckless abandon towards human life suits the setting - he fines a guy for attempting suicide in one strip (you shouldn't litter!) and then puts him in prison, and in another strip he forces a journalist to get a lobotomy for finding out sensitive information. I do love those old school comics though. I'm not the biggest fan of their art style but the storytelling was so loose and imaginative that it's no wonder that the characters became so damned iconic.