JUDGE GALLOWS (Quentin Gallows)	BIOGRAPHY
Created by Dave Wood and Curt Swan

PERSONAL DATA

Real Name: Quentin Gallows
Gender: Male
Hair: White
First Appearance: Unexpected #113/3 (July 1969)
Creators: Dave Wood and Curt Swan

There is no higher court. This is the Court of Last Resort... and sentence here is final! - Judge Gallows Quote taken from Dreaming Special #1 (July 1998)

HISTORY

Little is known about the origin of the judge of the dreamworld. The first recorded whereabouts of Judge Gallows are from a few decades ago, when he appeared as a storyteller, telling hair-raising stories of law and order. However, there has been evidence of him existing much earlier than that. Fellow Dreaming inhabitants Abel and Matthew have referred to a time when Gallows was active as a judge, sentencing almost every defendant he encountered to death by hanging. Once he even prosecuted both Abel and the Three Witches collectively, for telling such ghastly horror stories.

At an unrecorded time in the past, Judge Gallows was imprisoned in the Dreaming's House of Mystery. By whom and for what reason has not been revealed, but nobody in the Dreaming seemed to miss him during his confinement.

Recently, Gallows was freed by Abel, caretaker of the Dreaming's House of Secrets. Abel wanted to prosecute his brother Cain, and force him to cease killing Abel, which Cain had done an infinite number of times since the dawn of mankind. Gallows was more than willing to take care of the trial, in exchange for the freedom Abel offered him. After all, Cain was the caretaker of the house which had served as Gallows' prison.

Facing a court of Dreaming inhabitants, a jury consisting of sleeping mortals, and a witness box made up from virtually every being Cain and Abel had ever encountered (including Timothy Hunter, Mad Hettie, and the Three Witches), Cain did not have much to say to his defense. He had murdered Abel repeatedly and there was not any way he could deny it. The jury found him "guilty as original sin". Since Cain has the mark of God that protects him from harm and draws tenfold vengeance upon anyone hurting him, Gallows could not sentence him to death. Instead, Cain was eternally banished from the Dreaming to the Waking World.

However, Abel soon came to miss his brother and even the killings that he had actually got used to during all this time. Furthermore, the Waking World seemed to become more violent for each day that the brothers were apart. Without Cain's and Abel's repeated scenario of the first killing, the dreamers had no subconscious catharsis of their collective rage, having to act it out in the Waking World instead, quickly bringing that world to the brink of its own destruction.

Abel decided that Cain had to be brought back. But an enraged Judge Gallows refused to have anything to do with that. Stubbornly, Abel brought his friend Matthew the Raven with him to the Waking World, more specifically New York City, looking for Cain.

Abel and Matthew found Cain, and Abel convinced him to return to the Dreaming. But Judge Gallows had been tracking them, and now appeared threatening to destroy them were they not to respect his judicial decision. When Cain provoked him, Gallows hit him violently with the back of a machine gun, in his rage not realizing that he exposed himself to the curse of the Mark of Cain. Seconds later, Judge Gallows was run over and killed by a taxi driver, enraged due to the mentioned abscence of catharsis.

Cain and Abel returned to the Dreaming, continuing with their eternal game of life and death. Judge Gallows is still dead, and it is not known whether he will ever return or be recreated by Dream, the Sandman.

POWERS AND WEAPONS

Judge Gallows is a dream creature, and thus have several abilities above those of mere mortals. His main skill is his abililty to carry out sentences on those judged in his court, with immediate results, whatever the sentence. Gallows manages the highest court in the Dreaming, answering only to Dream himself. Gallows' skull club is in fact a sentinent, talking dream creature named Bigmouth.

CHRONOLOGY

For a definitive list of appearances of Judge Gallows in chronological order click here