This era of 2000 AD closes off just a couple of stories and adds a few more to its roster, some of which will simply end and others will keep going for some time. There are also some noteworthy additions to Dredd canon. 

The issues covered here are: 2000 AD issues 146-192, 2000 AD Sci-Fi Special 1980, Judge Dredd Annual 1981, 2000 AD Annual 1981.

JUDGE DREDD

Issues Covered: 146-192

Early in this era we get Judge Cassandra Anderson and Judge Death both appearing for the first time in a surprisingly short story. A monster looking like a Judge is murdering people and seems unbeatable until a Psi-Judge is called in and sacrifices herself to contain him. Anderson and Death both feel fully realised already, with the story feeling like it’s over before it’s begun. Luckily they’ll both be back.

The Blood of Satanus is a fun story about a science nerd who experiments with the blood of Satanus, Old-One Eye’s descendant. It transforms people into weird dinosaur-like monsters and of course leads to tragedy.

The long story of the year is The Judge Child, which feels a lot less coordinated than Cursed Earth or The Day the Law Died. Dredd’s hunting for a precognitive child with a Judge eagle logo as a birthmark on his forehead. 

The search goes to the Cursed Earth and some Mad Max style shenanigans, then to space on Justice One, where it turns out the worlds are bizarre. In one moment Dredd and his judges are righting a rig-turned-serial killer, then they’re shrunk down, eaten by a planet and so on. The story also adds Judge Hershey who assists Dredd the most out of his crew, and The Angel Gang, who are bizarre freaks trying to escape with The Judge Child.

The Angels, like Judge Death before them, die surprisingly quickly. Like him, fortunately they’ll be back.

Once Dredd’s home, he deals with a block turned into monkeys and a craze for ugliness. You know, the normal Mega City One shenanigans. 

Collected in: Judge Dredd Complete Case Files 03 & Judge Dredd Complete Case Files 04.

M.A.C.H. ZERO

Issues Covered: 162-165

“The Final Days” brings back M.A.C.H. Zero for one last story. He’s working as a porter and trying to keep things subtle when an unseen prime minister (but obviously Thatcher) demands him a menace and calls down the law on him. Of course she would do that.

M.A.C.H. Zero’s got worries of his own as he thinks he’s seen his son and starts looking for him. The kid, Tommy, doesn’t believe they’re related until he hears the authorities talking about it. He chases after M.A.C.H. Zero who’s busy fending off attackers, gets shot and a berserk M.A.C.H. Zero goes berserk, eventually dying.

It feels a bit late for this short story, but it closes off the M.A.C.H. stories.

Collected in: M.A.C.H. 1: Book 02 “Close Encounters”

ROBO-HUNTER

Issues Covered: 152-174

This year brings The Day of the Droids as the main arc, introducing Slade’s assistants Hoagy and Stogie. There’s a robot rebellion on the horizon, led by The God-Droid.

This all starts with a councillor who has realised he’s been replaced by a robot and needs Slade’s help to find his original self. The mission sees Slade coming up against an army of tiny Pac Mans, robot dinosaurs and more people who have been replaced.

The robot rebellion is stopped thanks to Slade, his assistants and a union run by a robotic Molotov Cocktail. By the end, even the goon-bots are rebelling against the God-Droid. The story ends with them off to Brit-Cit. Given the name, I don’t know if this is the same as Dredd’s Brit-Cit, but I guess we’ll see.

Collected in: Robo-Hunter The Droid Files Volume 1

STRONTIUM DOG

Issues Covered: 2000 AD Annual 1981, 178-192

Johnny Alpha’s marked for death in the first story, thanks to a grim prediction. His prey, Willy Blanko, looks like he might be the end of him, but luckily Johnny manages to turn it round. Also Blanko ends up being a weird skin thing, then a skeleton, then a maggot?

The main arc from this year is The Schicklgruber Grab, where Johnny and Wulf are hired to go back in time and abduct Hitler so that he can suffer appropriately for everything he did. It’s handy, as he’s looking to escape and use a subordinate faking his death as cover. 

Adolf ‘Schicklgruber’ gets all the bullying and belittling necessary to him and even when he tries to escape in the present of the series, things go badly for him. Good.

The final arc of the year doesn’t conclude here, but sees Johnny and Wulf hunting Doc Quince. Johnny quickly turns around from, “I’m just doing my job” to “I’m done with this bullshit” and I like this kind of thing with Johnny. He’ll take a job, but if it’s rubbish, he’ll be fine wrecking it.

Collected in: Strontium Dog Search and Destroy 2

TIME QUAKE

Issues Covered: 148-151

Time Quake’s back! I didn’t expect that.

The story’s only three issues, but it looks like people are trying to do some time travel tourism, leading Blocker and Suzi Cho to take it down. 

Collected in: Not currently active, but Hibernia have done collections of TimeQuake.

THE MIND OF WOLFIE SMITH

Issues Covered: 162-175, 177

That Wolfie’s up to trouble again. He starts off pestering a woman and trying a bit of theft before he’s taken in by a Mr Rumbelo, who sets him up with a monstrous gangster called “The Bogeyman”.

The Bogeyman has higher aspirations than just simple crimes though, fitting Wolfie up with a bomb collar and sending him off to get Britain’s nuclear codes. He stumbles upon something equally bad and a lot more immediately deadly, then tries to figure out a way to leave The Bogeyman’s control.

Then Wolfie wins at the bingo and gets chased by rats. It’s a mixed life for Wolfie Smith.

Collected in: Ultimate 2000 AD 179 contains The Mind of Wolfie Smith.

BLACKHAWK

Issues Covered: 146-161 (parts 19-34 of 34)

We’re in the back half of Black Hawk’s story, he’s no longer a gladiator and has a couple of alien friends: Ursa and Zog. Black Hawk’s feeling the hand of death getting closer, and wants to get his soul back before he goes.

Black Hawk fights a horrific giant dragon thing and eventually meets the Soul Sucker who has one last trick: it can control Black Hawk! Luckily he’s dedicated to his quest, gets his soul back and then is sucked into a black hole. Oh. That felt like an abrupt end, but at least he got his soul back.

Collected in: Ultimate 2000 AD 136 contains Black Hawk.

CAPTAIN KLEP

Issues Covered: 146-147, 149-153, 155-157, 159

There are some smart dinosaurs in this run, and some more Superman-themed hijinks. He’s not making more meta-jokes about having been taken over by 2000 AD, although he will pop up briefly in his replacement, Dash Decent.

Collected in: Cosmic Comics is occasionally in print in Hibernia, collecting Captain Klep and more.

STAINLESS STEEL RAT

Issues Covered: 146-151, 166-177

We get two helpings of Stainless Steel here, starting with the titular Stainless Steel Rat.

Slippery Jim tries to infiltrate Angelina’s posse and is found out almost immediately. Apparently she’s an unrepentant murderer as she used to be ugly before getting a lot of work done. Eventually, she gets a bit of brain surgery to be a bit less wantonly murderous, but she’s still a bit into the murder. She and Jim get married.

Next up is Stainless Steel Rat Saves the World, where people are vanishing from history thanks to some time travel phenomena going on. There’s a guy called He who’s messing around with time and by messing around, I’ve seen time travel stories and this time it’s a real mess. He’s brought so many things back and forward through time in order to make his own empire.

Luckily he’s eventually put in a time loop and Jim returns, only to find his and Angelina’s kids have aged up a bit.

Collected in: The Stainless Steel Rat Colour Omnibus

THE V.C.’s

Issues Covered: 146-164, 171-175 (parts 6-31 of 31)

The bulk of The V.C.’s is in this year, with Steve Smith still getting given shit by his colleagues. That said, they manage to stop a surprise attack at Phobos Harbour when peace talks go awry.

Jupe gets blinded and the gang are sent on a suicide mission to infiltrate the Geeks and end up going undercover only to find out that’s what the Geeks are planning on doing! With most of the cast dead, injured or mad (and then dead), Smith quickly incapacitates the Geek version of himself and manages to wreck things from the inside. 

It’s all pretty brutal and one day I won’t be surprised when 2000 AD has a story which kills most of its cast. I think they’ll be back, even if it’s just Smith and a blinded Jupe that remain at the end. At the very least, they cameo in the 2024 summer event crossover.

Collected in: The VC’s: Hell in the Heavens

FIENDS OF THE EASTERN FRONT

Issues Covered: 151-161

Originally created by Gerry Finley-Day and Carlos Ezquerra 

This was an odd one, perspective-wise. In the present, Colonel Grant and Inspector Brandt are exhuming an old basement cell with the body of a Hans Schmitt inside. He was a German soldier in World War II, whose forces were ‘aided’ by some suspicious Rumanian soldiers who all look at least a little like Draculas. Sure enough, they’re vampires, led by Captain Costanza. It’s hard to see them feeding on Nazis as a bad thing, and Schmitt ends up fleeing from them, leading to a fun twisty ending in the present. It’s an Ezquerra joint, so he draws some great freaks and Costanza is suitably sinister during the whole thing.

Collected in: Fiends of the Eastern Front

RPG Ideas: If you want to have an RPG of people who are drawn in and/or trying to escape from a monster then there’s Annalise. Alternatively, Paint the Town Red could have you playing the messy vampires having their fun in history.

COMIC ROCK (NEMESIS)

Issues Covered: 178-179

Originally created by Pat Mills & Kevin O’Neill

Comic Rock was an attempt at telling science fiction stories based on music, specifically “Going Underground” by The Jam and “Killer Watts” which I think was a compilation.

Terror Tube shows us Termight for the first time, but mainly a swarm of traffic policed by Torquemada. For a science fiction world, there’s also a bit of the mystic and comedic to it. Nemesis vexes Torquemada from his Blitzspear and is never actually seen. 

Killer Watts continues the story and shows attempts to electrocute Nemesis in his Blitzspear going awry, leading to Torquemada being destroyed as he’s stuck on hold trying to transport down a phone line. His ghost assures us he’ll be back and oh boy, will he!

There’s not much here, especially not enough to know what’s coming with Nemesis.

Collected in: Nemesis the Warlock – The Definitive Edition, Volume 1

RPG Ideas: I don’t know, maybe Car Wars or Torq, but with a religious science fiction angle. I’ll cover Nemesis on its own at a future point.

DASH DECENT

Issues Covered: 178-192

Originally created by Kevin O’Neill & Dave Angus

This is a series of one-page stories in the spirit of Captain Klep, but with a Flash Gordon type character, including Dale Ardent, Doctor Dellamy and Pong the Perilous from planet Pongo.

The first strip even has Captain Klep relegated to the background and weirdly enough, pretty early in the strip Dash loses all his skin after being attacked by piranhas. That said, even that doesn’t stop him. I still have little time for this.

Collected in: Like Captain Klep, these are found in Cosmic Comics when it’s in print.

MEAN ARENA

Issues Covered: 178-187, 191-193, 197-202

Originally created by Tom Tully & John Richardson

We’re going back to the well of sports comics, but in another weird science fiction way. Unlike Inferno, it’s a more modern setting, in the ruins of 2021. A self-proclaimed mash-up of rugby, American football and non-American football, all in arenas made from abandoned parts of British towns. You’ve got teams with garish uniforms and weird gimmicks, and also Slater’s Slayers.

The Slayers are the protagonist team, with a new arrival in the American Matt Tallon. Matt’s “The Shadow of St Louis” who steps in when a team member dies, then we get a lengthy flashback sequence to how Matt’s here to avenge his kid brother. Also to play Mean Arena.

A highlight here are the Southampton Sharks, combining my beloved sharks with a fairly local town in real life. I wish they had a shark-themed Mean Arena team in real life.

Collected in: Mean Arena Vol 1 – All to Slay For

RPG Ideas: If this was a board game recommendation, I’d say Blood Bowl. Unfortunately it isn’t, so I’m probably going to end up saying to hack Fight With Spirit again. You have the on and off pitch drama, rivalries in the team and with your opponents. Both the game and this comic have shark-themed teams.

MELTDOWN MAN

Issues Covered: 178-192 (parts 1-15 of 50)

Originally created by Alan Hebden and Massimo Belardinelli

This is basically Kamandi but with some very 2000 AD twists. Our protagonist Nick Stone is caught in a nuclear blast in the first page and ends up in a weird future filled with animal people called Yujees (short for Eugenic Bioforms), like Gruff and Liana. Liana’s a cat person who has links to Kinata, some kind of rebel. After Stone meets the humans who are elitist dickheads, he tries to get Liana to help him.

There are some grim things like ‘The Vats’, where Yujees are sent pretty pragmatically to their deaths to become slop for others, and a snake called King Seth who’s a real piece of shit. He’s going to be more of a factor later.

Collected in: Meltdown Man

RPG Ideas: This is a bit trad, but Gamma World would work very well for this. When I last ran it, the whole group all decided to be animal-people, all apart from one player who made a human called, “Bob: The Man That Is”, which isn’t a million miles away from this setup.

RETURN TO ARMAGEDDON

Issues Covered: 187-192 (1-6 of 32)

Originally created by Malcolm Shaw & Jesús Redondo

Man, this story’s such a mess. Not necessarily in a bad way, it’s fascinating. The Prairie Drifter is a spaceship who find a kind of hell planet and what looks like a suspended devil. Of course they bring it on board for a scientist to examine and things get weird from there.

The scientist manages to create a couple of babies, but also suddenly there are zombies and the ship’s populace is killed, all while the dark-haired baby has a real shit-eating grin. Some pirates show up, looking for easy pickings, only to get torn apart by zombies too. One of them’s been given a prediction about the babies, so he escapes with them, all while the zombies move aside. Nothing suspicious here. It’s going to take some weirder turns as the series goes on.

Collected in: Return to Armageddon

RPG Ideas: Just from these stories, probably Our Last Best Hope to play as the crew trying to stop a zombie invasion, or Dread. As this game goes on, possibly a hack of Lady Blackbird, but I might get into that a little more next time.

CONCLUSION

There are some short but noteworthy runs here, with The VC’s and Fiends from the Eastern Front. The comics still very much like to kill off their protagonists. The Tornado strips, The Mind of Wolfie Smith, Black Hawk and Captain Klep all close out this year, too. 

Meltdown Man and Return to Armageddon start differently but have a slight tonal similarity at times in the next year, but they’re still entertaining.

I think my favourite strips were Strontium Dog, Fiends from the Eastern Front and The VCs. It was difficult finding a favourite as there wasn’t anything I was hooting and hollering for like Flesh, but some fairly solid stories.

Next time, Nemesis!