2. Judge Dredd
Judge Joe Dredd is an odd character he's a futuristic fascist lawman who dresses in fetish gear, but he's also been an icon of the British comics scene since his first appearance in 1977. Policing the dystopian future where most of the Earth has been irradiated and forced the remaining human populace into enormous Mega Cities, Dredd is an unstoppable, tireless, almost robot-like officer, the perfect lawman who is judge, jury and executioner, grimly intoning "I am the Law!" as he dishes out justice. Joining Dredd in his endless fight for justice is psychic character, PSI Judge Anderson. Equipped with a flying, armoured and weaponized Lawmaster motorbike and a Lawgiver gun that fires numerous kinds of bullets from rubber to armour piercing to incendiary, Dredd has gone up against foes as diverse as the Angel Gang (hillbilly gangsters with a psychopathic cybernetically altered son, "Mean Machine" Angel) to the ethereal like Judge Death and the Dark Judges. The awful Stallone movie in 1995 was thankfully surpassed by a lower-budgeted but far better movie in 2012's Dredd where Karl Urban played Dredd (and kept his helmet on the entire movie too!). Interestingly, Dredd and his world age in real time so when the series began in 1977 it was set in 2099, and today in 2014, Dredd's world is 2136 - the same 37 years difference. It underlines Dredd's mortality but also makes him all the more extraordinary a figure, given his numerous superheroic feats of survival against the odds.