The Angel Gang

From Wacklepedia - The Free Encyclopedia

The Angel Gang is a group of villains in the Judge Dredd comic books, published in 2000 A.D magazine in the UK. They are portrayed as a futuristic version of rural criminals from the American Deep South, at least as such people are imagined by British writers.

They consist of the father of the Angel family, Elmer "Pa" Angel, and his sons:

• Link Angel, who wears a sort of biker costume and a ring through his nose.
• "Junior" Angel, youngest and smartest of the boys, who wears a derby hat. He is the closest of them all to their sociopathic father.
• "Mean Machine" Angel, a cyborg. Originally, "Machine" was nothing like his deeply antisocial family, so "Pa" forced a Texas City surgeon to come out to their hideout in the Cursed Earth and surgically modify him. He now has a mechanical arm, and his skull is covered with a metal dome with a dial. The dial's settings range from 1, where he's surly and mean and nasty, on up to 4, where he's fully berserk.

"Fink" Angel is the eldest of Pa's boys, and does not normally live with the rest of the family, preferring to live in holes he digs or finds. He has a skeletal face, and is the family specialist in poisons; he has poisons which can temporarily paralyze a victim, as well as ones that can kill quickly.

In the "Judge Child" storyline, the Angels (except for Fink) have escaped from detention in Texas City, and are anxious to get off-planet. Hearing of the Judge Child's precognitive abilities, they obtain him from a carnival worker who's using him in a fake fortune-telling racket and take him along. During the story, they are all killed by Judge Dredd. Later, Fink comes to Mega-City One to avenge his kinsfolk, only to be imprisoned, and "Mean Machine" is resurrected by the Judge Child to be sent back for revenge on Dredd. There have also been some stand-alone stories featuring the Angel Gang, notably one where they were travelling in time after Mean Machine hijacked a time machine from a university and, not knowing what to do, decided to go back in time and find his Pa, who was always able to come up with a clever plan.