Tom Judge: The Rapture is a comic book limited series published by Top Cow Productions. It consists of Universe issues 1-8 and the one-shot Tom Judge: End of Days.
Tom was once a well revered and faithful Catholic priest. However, one day, a man came to Tom and asked him what he should do if someone offends him. Tom answered for the man to simply "look into your heart and know what to do". The man went home and killed his wife, stabbing her 97 times and then he fried himself and his two children in a bath tub. Tom blamed himself for the man's actions, lost his faith and turned to liquor and women in an attempt to drown his guilt.
Ending his birthday night quite ordinarily, with a bottle of booze and two hookers, Tom has trouble with sleeping and accidentally discovers a strange parcel, hidden behind a loose brick. Inside the package, Tom discovers an old notebook and a strange amulet shaped like a flanged double cross. The strange and arcane amulet reaches out to Tom and bonds with him. The amulet, known as The Rapture, has the ability to confer Hope. It is this power that is at the center of the struggle to control Hell.
Tom Judge: The Rapture provides examples of:
- Affably Evil: Nick is always polite and cordial towards Tom and Tilly, despite being completely remorseless about the countless souls he's tortured for millions of years.
- Afterlife Express: The Hell Train, whose tracks run through the entire geometry of Hell, transports the souls it carries onboard to the mysterious 7th Circle of Hell. The souls reside in cabins, each one a personal state of Limbo, created by the soul being transported. The mysteries held in the 7th level are whispered of and feared by all the souls in Hell. It's rumored to hold the most horrible tortures of all those found in the Abyss.
- Crossover: Tom is sent to Hell by Nick in order to find the doomed Jackie Estacado. When Tom finds him, the Rapture brings hope to Jackie, freeing him and returning him to the earthly plane.
- Evil Stole My Faith: Tom lost his faith after indirectly and unwittingly advising a man into violently killing his wife, children and himself.
- The Ferryman: Charon, of course. Instead of wearing a hooded robe and rowing a boat, he's instead a taxi driver with a New York accent who drives souls across the River Styx over a demonic version of the Manhattan Bridge. Charon explains that his new appearance is a result of Hell modernizing itself due to being a reflection of the living world. He also explains that there are actually multiple Charons who all perform this task.
- God Is Flawed: According to Nick, God is incapable of understanding morality in terms other than black and white. As such, he was incapable of deciding who would become the new ruler of Hell at the End of Days, instead placing the responsibility in the hands of the bearer of the Rapture.
- God Is Inept: Nick believes that God had inadvertently created "the most flawed universe imaginable" and ultimately left once he realized his mistake.
- Have You Seen My God?: God has been missing for an unknown period of time, which Nick attributes to him having realized that the universe he had created was a mistake. However, it is hinted that God might be The Conductor.
- Hope Bringer: The Rapture has the ability to confer hope to those who have none.
- Hope Crusher: The Rapture also has the opposite ability to take people's hope away.
- Only One Afterlife: All humans, whether they were good or evil in life, go to Hell when they die as "a natural part of evolution". However, it is possible for souls to transcend Hell by experiencing hope, causing them to disappear and move on to somewhere unknown.
- Our Demons Are Different: Demons are not fallen angels and instead came into being in Hell roughly a few millennia before man "split from the monkeys". Particularly evil humans also become Demons after they die.
- Playing with Fire: Tom is radiant with craters of fire while in his brimstone form.
- Prescience by Analysis: Tilly Grimes is a numeromancer, meaning that she can read numbers and equations like a language. This ability allows her to know things and make associations that are not always clear and basically allows her to predict the future. The ability is not limited to pure numbers as she is able to translate the language of Hell as it was number-like even though it takes a while and is difficult. Her great-grandfather, Horace Grimes, also had this ability.
- Satan: He now calls himself "Nick". Contrary to religious belief, Nick has never met God and there was no war in heaven. Nick capitalized on his insight into the universe and started hoarding human souls to increase his power. Subsequently, he became the most powerful demon and, by infernal law, the king of both hell and demonkind.
- To Hell and Back: The Rapture grants Tom the ability to enter and exit the world of the afterlife at will.
- To Hell with This Infernal Job: Nick got fed up with Hell and decided to live on Earth as a mortal.
- Transformation Trinket: The Rapture allows Tom to transform into a powerful brimstone warrior.
- Unfeeling Heavens: Angels, and by extension Heaven, are presented as this, with Angels being shown as apathetic and indifferent to suffering and insults and only concerned with enforcing decrees from Heaven. They are also fiercely militaristic and cynical of demons and humans alike.
