10 Comic Book Characters Who Have NEVER Had Their Identities Exposed
3. Judge Dredd
Judge Dredd is a little different from the other characters on this list because his identity isn't exactly unknown, but there's a twist! If you only saw the Sylvester Stallone film from the '90s, you don't know Judge Dredd — check out the Karl Urban movie Dredd instead, as it's much closer to the comics.
In the books, Judge Dredd is a law enforcement judicial officer in Mega-City One, where he patrols the eastern coast of North America as a Street Judge. Dredd's real name is Joseph Dredd, but despite the fact that this isn't exactly a secret, he is only known to the world in a single way: as the eponymous Judge.
The interesting thing about Dredd that the '90s film got wrong is that he never reveals his face. His mask never comes off, and if it does, his face is hidden or obstructed from the reader's perspective. The reason for this has to do with what the character represents.
He is the face of justice, and his creators, John Wagner and Carlos Ezquerra, decided, in the beginning, to keep his face hidden. In a way, he doesn't have a separate identity, ensuring there is nothing to expose, but the key here isn't that his identity is/was exposed to the public in the 2000 AD universe, it's that his identity was never truly exposed to us, the readers.