We’ve got some cracking stories this year, with Judge Dredd having its longest story arc yet, and a ton of Rogue Trooper. 

The issues covered here are: 2000 AD issues 245-296, 2000 AD Sci-Fi Special 1982, 2000 AD Annual 1983, Judge Dredd Annual 1983

JUDGE DREDD

Issues Covered: 2000 AD 2000 AD 245-296, 2000 AD Sci-Fi Special 1982, 2000 AD Annual 1983, Judge Dredd Annual 1983

The Apocalypse War had a bit of a warm-up with Block Mania, and kicks off when East-Meg One nukes, invades and just keeps pummelling Mega City One. The Judges still have people suffering from Block Mania to deal with as well. The Sov leadership manage to find time to backstab each other while it’s all going down, and supposedly kill Dredd. The public dance “The Apocalypto” as everything collapses around them, and radiation floods the streets. Things seem relentlessly terrible, but in a typically bonkers Mega-City One way, but the Judges manage to push through, even after their chief is brainwashed. 

The collapse of the city continues to be a part of the series all the way through the rest of the year, starting with a rising of masterless robots. Meka City sees the brilliantly-named Precious Leglock create his own robot city themed around wrestling. 

The League of Fatties has the Fatties working together to steal rationed food and Fungus sees an infection break out from a wanderer whose mind broke during the Apocalypse War.

In Destiny’s Angels, the Judge Child is still scheming against Dredd. He uses his powers to break Fink Angel out of prison and resurrect Mean Machine, who was too much fun to leave dead. The pair close in on Dredd leaving chaos in their wake and kidnapping his landlord, assuming she’s his wife. Eventually the Judge Child is killed by automated missiles which is fine, but I hope he’ll come back. He’s too much of a shit to die this easily.

The Executioner is a Dredd-light story, with Blanche Kominsky avenging her husband. She’s a good character, sympathetic and of course given this world, doomed. 

Collected in: Judge Dredd: Case Files 05, Judge Dredd: Case Files 06

ROBO-HUNTER

Issues Covered: 259-272, 275-281, 283-288, 292-296 (parts 1-5 of 16)

The Beast of Blackheart Manor kicks off Sam’s time in the UK, where apparently barely any of us are working as it’s all been outsourced to robots. Unlike the present where automation’s probably going to just quietly and politely lead to poverty and death, in Brit-Cit, everyone’s pretty much permanently on holiday.

The Beast of Blackheart Manor is a murder mystery, while The Filby Case sees Sam warned away from a case repeatedly before he’s even taken it. In trying to rescue a robot from a cult, Hoagy is pretty much instantly indoctrinated by it.

The Killing of Kidd brings back Sam’s old colleague who was turned into a baby. He’s an actor in a sitcom and has been getting death threats. Given his terrible personality, it’s a tricky task as everyone wants him dead. Sam joins the cast as Kidd’s grandmother and gradually realises that everyone does actually want him dead and they’re working together to do it. Worse, when the cast are all arrested, Kidd decides to set up a rival detective agency.

I’ve little to say about Football Crazy, although if I was into football maybe some of it would have landed for me. There are some moments of racism both against the audience and the footballers, and Kidd pops up again to get in the way. 

Play it Again, Sam starts in 1982 and will continue into next year. It’s… grating. I’m up and down on Robo-Hunter, but this is a definite ‘down’. Iron Aggie, a robot Thatcher, has decided that everyone has to sing in public or be arrested. This leads to a lot of musical sequences, which never works well in comics. There are narrative captions showing which songs the characters are ripping off, and Sam’s got to sing as well as trying to infiltrate The Human League. Not the band, but an anti-robot group.

Collected in: Robo-Hunter The Droid Files: Volume 1, Robo-Hunter The Droid Files: Volume 2

RO-BUSTERS

Issues Covered: 2000 AD Annual 1983

There’s a short story of Hammer-Stein having flashbacks to his time as an ABC Warrior and rampaging. As we’ve seen him in that era, Alan Moore’s able to call on those moments and that cast. There’s even a pleasant return in trying to get him to calm down.

Collected in: Ro-Busters Vol 2

STRONTIUM DOG

Issues Covered: 2000 AD Annual 1983

Incident at the Back o’ Beyond is a fairly simple story where Johnny and Wulf both enter a Wild West town under the thumb of crooks, take them down and move on.

Collected in: Strontium Dog: Search and Destroy 4

BLACKHAWK

Issues Covered: 2000 AD Sci-Fi Special 1982

Set before Black Hawk ended up in a black hole, this takes him back to his alien gladiator times. Similar to Strontium Dog, it’s nothing special, but it’s nice to see Black Hawk back.

Collected in: Blackhawk the Intergalactic Gladiator

NEMESIS: THE WARLOCK – BOOK TWO “THE ALIEN ALLIANCE”

Issues Covered: 2000 AD 246-257, 2000 AD Annual 1983

You didn’t think he’d be back, but sure enough, that bastard Torquemada has returned! Just as it looks like Nemesis and the various freaky aliens are working together, Torquemada manages to infest humans in a sympathetic community, mess them up and then move from them to a giant spider. I love that in the world of Nemesis, the giant spiders are normally friendly. He’s eager to cause all out war, so of course Nemesis has to put this scheme to an end.

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

MEAN ARENA

Issues Covered: 2000 AD 245-255, 258-259, 261-286

The story of Mean Arena ends, but not without some new teams to fight and a bit more of a look at some of Slater’s Slayers. Some trainees are brought in, just in time to fight the Oxford Invaders, who have been made to look like aliens.

After that, we get a bit more of a look at Brazen, who seems suspicious at first, but she’s the girlfriend of Matt Tallon’s dead brother, so she’s after vengeance as well! The Slayers fare badly against the Allerton Ants and Tallon takes some grief from the manager.

The vengeance story gets back on track when the Slayers fight a team made up of people dressed as vampires led by a blind woman called Mother Vlad. It turns out she’s faking and actually one of the three remaining members of the Hexa-Gang Tallon and Brazen are hunting.

Eventually, the team are fighting “The Rest of Europe” in a fake video game, only for Tallon to trap the final member of the gang in an actual video game. The reveal of who they were was good, but not as important as the games themselves or the challenges to Tallon in the story. I liked that other characters like Brazen, Wolf Rawker and Crazy Lil got a bit more panel time.

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

ROGUE TROOPER

Issues Covered: 246-258, 260-262, 265-296, 2000 AD Sci-Fi Special 1982, 2000 AD Annual 1983

Nu-Earth continues to be inhospitable with a deadly forest, hallucinatory gas and the Norts being dicks again. Rogue infiltrates a prison in order to break folks out  and there’s even some engineered ape-men causing mischief. 

Bagman gets a bit of depth in the Bagman Blues, where he gets shot and starts losing it. He’s still helpful, but there’s a level of uncertainty about what he can do.

A longer story is All Hell on the Dix-I Front, where an attempt to reel in Southern defectors turns into a bloodbath as the Norts attack it. Rogue makes a friend in Sister Sledge who his mates are instantly suspicious of. This was the same time as Brazen in Mean Arena, so I was wary of two suspicious women popping up. Unlike Brazen, Sledge is actually a traitor, a “Filth Columnist” who’s been poisoning people throughout the story. She gets her comeuppance and Rogue once again doesn’t trust anyone.

The Marauders has Rogue finally meeting The Traitor General, the Souther leader who caused the Quartz Zone Massacre. His face is all messed up and he’s leading some mercenaries, presenting some new problems. There’s even a bit where Rogue’s enemies have Helm, Bagman and Gunnar and are using them to hunt him. It’s fun seeing how and if they can react to help him.

The final arc of the year is the first seven parts of Fort Neuro, a border fort for the Southers which has themed itself around historical wars, starting with “The Napoleonic Complex”. These LARPers are armed, but feel like they might be doomed.

Collected in: Rogue Trooper: The Complete Collection – Book 1

ACE TRUCKING CO

Issues Covered: 245-285, 288-293

Oh god, more Ace. The group get the Speedo Ghost stolen in The Lugjack and have to recover it.

The Great Mush Rush is a race for a choice delivery route. This feels like the right kind of arc for Ace Trucking Co, as you’ve got a colourful cast of weirdos all competing with each other. Joobaloo! continues this trend as the group go to a gathering of truckers, only to find Feek the Freak’s terrible wife and a wrestling match, around the same time as Dredd was wrestling Precious Leglock.

Too Many Bams feels like an overuse of introducing wacky characters, as the cast have to help the Bams, who look like seaside caricatures come to life. They replicate by dancing and they keep doing it, leading to introduction after introduction of giant-faced weirdos. 

The last arcs have Ace mistaken for a deity, which successfully happened in Abelard Snazz last year, and then trying to help Gator Magee, a crook Ace meets in prison. Breaking Magee out is more trouble than it’s worth, and then he betrays them anyway.

Collected in: The Complete Ace Trucking: Volume 1

ABELARD SNAZZ

Issues Covered: 245, 254

We get a couple more short Abelard Snazz stories, with him trapped on the way to paradise, socialising with gods as that’s what he was sacrificed as. He causes the gods to rebel and have a violent resurgence. He’s punished by having to solve a giant Rubix Cube. After that he’s rescued from the cube and messes up a peaceful society with some tennis robots.

Collected in: The Complete Future Shocks Volume Two

JOE BLACK

Issues Covered: 248, 252, 256

Joe Black of PEST is back, albeit mostly in Future Shocks. He finds a ‘Horn of Plenty’, able to replicate things. Then in The Hume Factor, he finds a society of giants and narrowly escapes a marriage to a giantess. 

Collected in: The Complete Future Shocks Volume Two

AGENT RAT

Issues Covered: 273-274

Originally created by Steve Moore & Mike White

Rattus R. Rattus is a detective who’s also a humanoid rat, getting into scrapes and while he’s smaller than most folks, isn’t literal rat-size at least. Like Joe Black, he doesn’t feel too far from previous 2000 AD outings, so I can see why he’s only had two appearances this year. While he’s sent to find a murderer, there are some twists in the tale, like any good noir.

Collected in: Judge Dredd Megazine 351 contains Trouble on Tree-World.

RPG Ideas: This feels like something which could be done with the Gumshoe system, perhaps even one of their one player, one GM games.

HARRY TWENTY ON THE HIGH ROCK

Issues Covered: 287-296 (1-10 of 21)

Originally created by Gerry Finley-Day and Alan Davis

I love Alan Davis’ artwork. One of the earliest X-Men spinoffs I read was Excalibur and I’ve adored his art ever since. In this series, he’s beginning to become the artist we’ll know him as.

Harry Thompson’s sent to a space prison for twenty years, his surname replaced with his sentence as a way of helping dehumanise prisoners. His crime was trying to get food to islanders. He fights and then befriends Genghis 18 and Old Ben 90. The High Rock is a terrible prison few people ever leave unless they join the ‘Heavenly Bodies’, a ring of corpses orbiting the prison in space.

Harry 20 makes an enemy of Big Red 1, an evil Santa-looking guy with some scars who causes Harry to get knocked into space at one point. He finds a way back in, but takes some flak. Finally for this half of the series, a pair of prisoners execute a cunning plan to escape, but are detected and burn up on re-entry. Next year we’ll get the back half of the story.

Collected in: Harry 20: On the High Rock

RPG Ideas: There’s a game called Durance by Bully Pulpit Games, where you play the prisoners and wardens of a secluded prison. It’s based loosely on the early days of Australia, but works well in its own right. You could probably do something in a secluded space rock like this.

THE GREAT DETECTIVE CAPER

Issues Covered: 289-290

Originally created by Chris Lowder & John Higgins

Another tiny story, Ernie Grice aka Hemlock Bones is an actor with an uncanny resemblance to Sherlock Holmes. He’s abducted by aliens who are very disappointed that he’s the wrong person. It feels very Galaxy Quest, despite being made long before it.

Collected in: The Complete Future Shocks Volume Two

RPG Ideas: This feels like one where it’s not really worth doing this for, but this feels like a very Fiasco type situation. 

CONCLUSION

There are a few surprisingly short runs in this year, with Agent Rat and The Great Detective Caper joining Abelard Snazz as stories which are just slightly too long for Future Shocks. Some series like Strontium Dog and Ro-Busters barely get a look in, but Judge Dredd and Rogue Trooper have some nicely chunky runs to read. 

It feels like the comic’s allowing slightly more female characters into the comic with Blanche (briefly) in Judge Dredd, Sister Sledge and Brazen. They get the same kind of treatment as most 2000 AD characters (dead, traitor and dead, actually alive), too. Next year we’ll get our first female-led series with Snazz.