2000 AD was initially published by IPC Magazines. IPC then shifted the title to its
Fleetway comics subsidiary, which was sold to
Robert Maxwell in 1987 and then to
Egmont UK in 1991. Fleetway continued to produce the title until 2000, when it was bought by
Rebellion Developments.
1970s Pre-publication In December 1975,
Kelvin Gosnell, a sub-editor at
IPC Magazines, read an article in the
London Evening Standard about a wave of forthcoming science fiction films, and suggested that the company might get on the bandwagon by launching a science fiction comic. IPC publisher John Sanders asked
Pat Mills, a
freelance writer and
editor who had created
Battle Picture Weekly and
Action, to develop it. Mills brought fellow freelancer
John Wagner on board as script adviser and the pair began to develop characters. The then-futuristic name
2000 AD was chosen by John Sanders, as no-one involved expected the comic to last that long. The original logo and overall look of the comic were designed by art assistant Doug Church. Meanwhile, Mills had developed a
horror strip, inspired by the novels of
Dennis Wheatley, about a
hanging judge, called
Judge Dread (after the
reggae and
ska artist of the
same name). The idea was abandoned as unsuitable for the new comic, but the name, with a little modification, was adopted by Wagner for his ultimate lawman. The task of visualising the newly named
Judge Dredd was given to
Carlos Ezquerra, a Spanish artist who had previously worked with Mills on
Battle, on a strip called
Major Eazy. Wagner gave Ezquerra an advertisement for the film
Death Race 2000, showing the character Frankenstein clad in black leather, as a suggestion for what the character should look like. Ezquerra elaborated on this greatly, adding body-armour, zips and chains, which Wagner originally thought over the top. Wagner's initial script was rewritten by Mills and drawn up by Ezquerra, but when the art came back a rethink was necessary. The hardware and cityscapes Ezquerra had drawn were far more futuristic than the near-future setting originally intended, and Mills decided to run with it and set the strip further into the future. By this stage, however, Wagner and Ezquerra had both quit. Mills was reluctant to lose
Judge Dredd, and farmed the strip out to a variety of freelance writers, hoping to develop it further. Their scripts were given to a variety of artists as Mills tried to find a strip which would make a good introduction to the character, all of which meant that
Dredd would not be ready for the first issue. The story chosen was one written by freelancer Peter Harris, extensively rewritten by Mills and including an idea suggested by Kelvin Gosnell, Dredd's city, which now covered most of the east coast of North America, became known as
Mega-City One. Dredd had also been unmasked in issue 8 in a story drawn by Massimo Belardinelli, but the decision was made to make out that Dredd's face had been scarred and the panel had a "censored" banner slapped on it. After this, there were no further attempts to show Dredd's face again. A new story format was introduced in prog 25 – ''
Tharg's Future Shocks, one-off twist-in-the-tale stories devised by writer Steve Moore. 2000 AD'' still uses this format as filler and to try out new talent. Wagner introduced a new character,
Robo-Hunter, in 1978. The hero, Sam Slade, was a
private detective-type character specialising in
robot-related cases. José Ferrer was the original artist, but the editorial team were not happy with his work and quickly replaced him with Ian Gibson, who redrew parts of Ferrer's episodes before taking over himself. Gibson's imaginative, cartoony art helped drive the series' style from hard-boiled detective to surreal comedy. As the series continued Sam was joined by an idiot kit-built robot assistant, Hoagy, and after a crack-down on smoking in IPC comics, a
Cuban robot
cigar, Stogie, designed to help him cut down on
nicotine. Other ongoing strips included
The Visible Man, detailing the misfortunes of Frank Hart, a man whose skin had been made transparent due to exposure to nuclear waste, and
Shako, (which followed the same formula as
Hook Jaw from
Action but with less success) the story of a
polar bear pursued by the Army because it had swallowed a secret capsule.
M.A.C.H. 1 was killed off in 1978 but a spin-off,
M.A.C.H. Zero, continued into the 1980s.
Flesh had a sequel in 1978, set on the prehistoric oceans, and Bill Savage appeared again in a prequel,
Disaster 1990, in which a nuclear explosion at the north pole had melted the polar ice-cap and flooded Britain. In 1977
2000 AD launched the annual 48-page Summer Special, including a full-length
M.A.C.H. Zero story drawn by O'Neill. The yearly hardcover annual also started in 1977 (cover dated 1978) and would continue till 1990 (dated 1991). Pat Mills took over writing
Dredd for a six-month "epic" called "
The Cursed Earth", inspired by
Roger Zelazny's
Damnation Alley, which took the future lawman out of the city on a humanitarian trek across the radioactive wasteland between the Mega-Cities. McMahon drew the bulk of the stories, with occasional episodes drawn by
Brian Bolland. The story saw Dredd moved to the colour centre pages for the first time while
Dan Dare was given the front page.
Steve MacManus took over from Gosnell as editor in 1978, starting with prog 86, dated 14 October. In that issue
2000 AD merged with
Starlord, a second science fiction comic which had been launched by IPC earlier that year. As Gosnell was editor of
Starlord and
2000 AD at the same time,
2000 AD sub-editor
Nick Landau largely edited the latter comic himself during this time.
Starlord was cancelled after only 22 issues and merged into
2000 AD from prog 86. Two
Starlord strips strengthened
2000 ADs line-up:
Strontium Dog, a
mutant bounty hunter created by Wagner and Ezquerra, and
Ro-Busters, a robot disaster squad created by Mills.
Ro-Busters gave O'Neill the chance to spread his artistic wings and led to the popular spin-off
ABC Warriors.
Strontium Dog and
ABC Warriors continued to feature in
2000 AD for the next 40 years. (A third
Starlord series,
Timequake, only lasted for four episodes and was not renewed.)
Dan Dare was suspended while "The Cursed Earth" was finished in time for the merger. Wagner returned to
Dredd following the merger to write "The Day the Law Died", another six-month epic in which Mega-City One was taken over by the insane
Chief Judge Cal, based on the Roman emperor
Caligula. Another cancelled title,
Tornado, was merged with
2000 AD a few months later from prog 127, dated 25th August, 1979.
Tornado contributed three stories to
2000 AD:
Blackhawk, an historical adventure series about a Nubian slave in the Roman Empire which took a science-fictional turn in
2000 AD with him becoming a gladiator in an alien world;
The Mind of Wolfie Smith, a coming of age/psychic story of a runaway teenager, and
Captain Klep, a single-page superhero parody. These stories, unlike ''Starlord's
, did not continue for very long. The last issue titled 2000 AD and Tornado'' was prog 177, dated 13 September 1980.
2000 AD featured an adaptation of
Harry Harrison's novel
The Stainless Steel Rat, written by Gosnell and drawn by Ezquerra, beginning in November 1979. Adaptations of two of Harrison's sequels,
The Stainless Steel Rat Saves the World and
The Stainless Steel Rat for President, would follow later. The appearance of the main character, galactic thief "Slippery" Jim DiGriz, was based on
James Coburn, evidently a favourite of Ezquerra's; Coburn was also the inspiration for
Major Eazy, which Ezquerra drew in
Battle, as well as
Cursed Earth Koburn, a Dredd-universe reworking of the Major Eazy character, who first appeared in 2003.
Gerry Finley-Day contributed
The V.C.s, a future war story inspired by the
Vietnam War, drawn by McMahon,
Cam Kennedy,
Garry Leach and
John Richardson. A feature of the early years of
2000 AD was the opportunities it gave to young British comic artists: by the time the title celebrated its 100th issue Brian Bolland, Dave Gibbons, Ian Gibson, Mike McMahon and Kevin O'Neil were all established as regulars.
1980s In 1980
Judge Dredd gained a new enemy. Writer
John Wagner realised that Dredd's habit of shooting just about everybody he came up against meant that it was difficult to create a recurring villain. The solution was
Judge Death, an undead judge from another dimension where, since all crime was committed by the living, life itself was outlawed. The law had been thoroughly enforced on his own world, and now he had come to Mega-City One to continue his work. Judge Death first appeared in an atmospheric three-parter drawn by
Brian Bolland which also introduced
Judge Anderson and
Psi Division, a squad of judges with psychic powers. Dredd soon began another epic journey in "
The Judge Child". A dying Psi Division Judge had predicted disaster for Mega-City One unless it was ruled by a boy with a birthmark shaped like an eagle, so Dredd set off into the Cursed Earth, to
Texas City, and into deep space in search of the boy, Owen Krysler, and his kidnappers, the Angel Gang. All of them were killed during the course of the story, however the
Mean Machine was later resurrected by Krysler during "Destiny's Angels". "The Judge Child" was drawn by Bolland,
Ron Smith and
Mike McMahon in rotation, and the later episodes marked the beginning of Wagner's long-running writing partnership with
Alan Grant. The pair would go on to write
Strontium Dog,
Robo-Hunter and many other stories for
2000 AD, as well as for
Roy of the Rovers,
Battle and the relaunched
Eagle in the United Kingdom, and a number of comics in America. With prog 178 all current stories, with the exception of
Judge Dredd, were wound up, and a new set of stories was launched simultaneously, consisting of
Mean Arena, set around a violent high-tech street football game,
Meltdown Man, whose hero was transported to a genetically engineered far future by a nuclear explosion, the return of
Strontium Dog and
Dash Decent, a
Flash Gordon parody.
Pat Mills introduced
Comic Rock, which was meant to be a format for short stories inspired by popular music. The first story, inspired by
The Jam's
Going Underground, was drawn by Kevin O'Neill and featured a complicated underground travel network on a planet called "Termight", in which a freedom fighter called
Nemesis battles the despotic
Torquemada, chief of the Tube Police. All that was seen of Nemesis was the outside of his vehicle, the Blitzspear. The story was a reaction to an earlier tube chase sequence Mills and O'Neill had done in
Ro-Busters, which management objected to. The only other
Comic Rock story was a follow-up called "Killer Watt", in which Nemesis and Torquemada fought on a
teleport system. This led to a series,
Nemesis the Warlock, in which it was revealed that Termight was Earth in the far future. Torquemada was changed from the Chief of Traffic Police to a despotic demagogue leading a campaign of genocide against all aliens, and Nemesis was the leader of the alien resistance. Mills and O'Neill were on a roll and produced a stream of bizarre and imaginative ideas, but ultimately O'Neill was unable to continue the level of work he was putting into it on
2000 AD pay. He left to work for
DC Comics in America, and was replaced on
Nemesis by first
Jesus Redondo and then
Bryan Talbot.
2000 AD would occasionally take a gamble on non-science fiction material. For example,
Fiends of the Eastern Front was a World War II
vampire story by
Gerry Finley-Day and
Carlos Ezquerra which was probably originally intended for
Battle. Its hero was a German soldier who discovered that some of his
Romanian allies were vampires. Later in the war, when Romania changed sides, he was the only one who knew their secret. A readers' poll revealed that future war was a popular topic, so Gerry Finley-Day was asked to come up with a new war story. He, editor
Steve MacManus and artist Dave Gibbons devised
Rogue Trooper, a "Genetic Infantryman" engineered to be immune to chemical warfare hunting down the traitor general who had betrayed his regiment, who debuted in 1981. He was supported by bio-chips of the personalities of three dead comrades, which, slotted into his equipment, could talk to him. Gibbons left the strip early on and was replaced by
Colin Wilson,
Brett Ewins and
Cam Kennedy.
Rogue Trooper replaced
Meltdown Man, which had recently ended its run. Another new strip in 1981, inspired by the brief
CB radio craze, was
Ace Trucking Co., a comedy about pointy-headed alien space trucker Ace Garp and his crew by Wagner, Grant and Belardinelli. In the
Judge Dredd series, Mega-City One had grown too large and unwieldy: therefore authors Wagner and Grant they planned to cut it down to size. "
Block Mania", in which wars broke out between rival city-blocks, turned out to be a plot orchestrated by the Russian city East-Meg One, and led directly to "
The Apocalypse War", another six-month epic and a hard-hitting satire on the concept of
mutually assured destruction. East-Meg One, protected by a warp-shield, softened up Mega-City One with nuclear warheads before invading. Dredd spearheaded the resistance, leading a small team to East-Meg territory, hijacking their nuclear bunkers and blowing East-Meg One off the face of the earth. "The Apocalypse War" was drawn in its entirety by Carlos Ezquerra, making a return to the character he created. A new writer,
Alan Moore, had started contributing
Future Shocks in 1980. He wrote more than fifty one-off strips over the next three years, while also contributing to various
Marvel UK titles and the independent magazine
Warrior. In 1982 he gained his first series,
Skizz, a less sentimental take on the same basic plot used in
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, set in
Birmingham and influenced by
Alan Bleasdale's
Boys from the Blackstuff. The series was drawn by
Jim Baikie. Moore wrote another series,
D.R. and Quinch, spun off from a one-off
Time Twister. Drawn by
Alan Davis, the strip featured a pair of alien juvenile delinquents with a penchant for mindless thermonuclear destruction. He went on to create
The Ballad of Halo Jones with artist
Ian Gibson. Halo was an everywoman in the far future, born into mass unemployment on a floating housing estate, who escaped the earth and became involved in a terrible galactic war. Three books were published, and more were planned, but Moore's demands for creator's rights and his increasing commitments to American publishers meant they never materialised. A new character,
Sláine, debuted in 1983, but had been in development since 1981. Created by
Pat Mills and his then wife
Angela Kincaid,
Sláine was a barbarian
fantasy strip based on
Celtic mythology. Kincaid was a children's book illustrator who had never worked in comics before, and her opening episode was drawn and redrawn several times before the editors were satisfied. Other stories were written for artists Massimo Belardinelli and Mike McMahon, but these could not see print until Kincaid's episode was ready. In 1985, after appearing as a supporting character in
Judge Dredd,
Judge Anderson finally appeared in her own series, written by Wagner and Grant and initially drawn by Brett Ewins. New artist
Glenn Fabry debuted on
Sláine, but, due to his slowness, he was rotated with
David Pugh. In the
Judge Dredd story "Letter from a Democrat", Wagner and Grant introduced a pro-democracy movement in Mega-City One, which is after all a
police state. This would provide plotlines for years to come. In 1986 the comic reached its 500th issue. A new
Sláine story,
Sláine the King, began, entirely drawn by Fabry.
Peter Milligan, a writer who had been contributing
Future Shocks, began two series, the bleak future war story
Bad Company and a strange,
psychedelic series called
The Dead. In 1986,
2000 AD was selling 150,000 copies a week. In 1987 IPC's comics division was hived off and sold to publishing magnate
Robert Maxwell as Fleetway.
2000 AD was revamped, with a larger page size and full process colour on the covers and centre pages.
Richard Burton became editor. Kevin O'Neill returned for a short
Nemesis series called "Torquemada the God". Not long after came the debut of
Zenith,
2000 AD's first serious superhero strip, by new writer
Grant Morrison and artist
Steve Yeowell. The title character was a shallow pop singer with superhuman powers, caught up in the intrigues of a 1960s generation of superhumans and the machinations of some
Lovecraftian elder gods. Wagner and Grant began a new
Dredd Epic, "
Oz", featuring
Chopper, a popular supporting character. Chopper was a skysurfer who had been imprisoned for competing in an illegal surfing competition a few years previously. A legal "Supersurf" race was being held in Oz, the future Australia, and Chopper escaped to compete. Dredd also went to Oz, partly to deal with Chopper, but mostly to investigate the
Judda, a clone army created by Mega-City One's former chief genetic engineer. The Judda were defeated, and Chopper narrowly lost the race to Jug McKenzie. Dredd was waiting at the finish line, but McKenzie distracted him and allowed Chopper to escape into the outback. This ending was apparently the cause of some dispute between Wagner and Grant, and was a contributing factor (it was
The Last American, a mini series for
Epic Comics which would mark the end) in ending their regular writing partnership. Wagner kept
Dredd, while Grant continued
Strontium Dog and
Judge Anderson. However the pair would still come together for occasional collaborations. The "Oz" storyline had some lasting implications.
Kraken, a Judda cloned from the same genetic material as Dredd, was captured by Justice Department, who had plans for him. Chopper also spun off into his own series, written by Wagner and drawn by
Colin MacNeil. The
ABC Warriors finally had their own series again in 1987 as a spin-off from
Nemesis. This was written, as ever, by Pat Mills, and drawn by two artists in rotation, newcomer
Simon Bisley and science fiction artist
S.M.S. In 1988 Grant and artist Simon Harrison began a new
Strontium Dog story, "The Final Solution". It took nearly two years to complete, and ended with the death of Johnny Alpha, who sacrificed his life to save mutants from extermination. Original artist Carlos Ezquerra did not agree with the decision to kill the character off, and refused to draw it. The number of colour pages was increased, allowing for one complete strip per issue to be painted. Initially the colour pages were reserved for
Judge Dredd, but were later given over to a new
Sláine story, "The Horned God", fully painted by Simon Bisley. The series was collected as a series of three graphic novels, then as a single volume, and has remained in print ever since. In 1989 the colour pages were increased again, allowing for three colour stories and two black and white in every issue. One of the colour series was
Rogue Trooper: the War Machine, written by Dave Gibbons and painted by
Will Simpson. The original
Rogue Trooper series had run out of steam after the Traitor General had been dealt with, though continued with Rogue's adventures on Horst and the "Hit" series, so Gibbons revamped the concept, creating a different genetic infantryman,
Friday, in a different war, albeit in the same universe. One of the black and white stories, "
The Dead Man", was a low-key beginning for a major event. In the Cursed Earth, villagers come across a man, burnt from head to toe, with no memory of who he is or what happened to him. As he tries to piece his memories back together, he is being hunted by the evil beings who left him in that state. A creepy, atmospheric horror-western, it was drawn by
John Ridgway and written by "Keef Ripley", a pseudonym for John Wagner. By the end of the series the Dead Man had discovered his identity: he was Judge Dredd.
1990s As "The Dead Man" ended, a new
Judge Dredd story, "
Tale of the Dead Man", explained how Dredd had ended up in that position. Dredd was getting older and the democratic movement was causing him to doubt his role, so Justice Department had groomed
Kraken, the former Judda cloned from his bloodline, to replace him. Kraken was now ready for his final assessment, and Dredd himself was chosen to assess him. Although Kraken performed faultlessly, Dredd thought he perceived a hint of his former allegiance to the Judda in him, and failed him. He then resigned as a judge and took the '
Long Walk' into the Cursed Earth. There he met the Sisters of Death, and only barely survived the encounter. This could mean only one thing: Judge Death was back. This set up the latest six-month epic, "
Necropolis". After Dredd had left, Justice Department had put Kraken through one final test, and given him Dredd's badge. But the Sisters of Death, spirit beings from Judge Death's dimension, were able to use Kraken's inner conflict to take control of him and use him to bring Judge Death and the other Dark Judges back from the limbo dimension Dredd had exiled them to. The Sisters possessed all the city's judges and began to enforce Death's twisted law. Out in the Cursed Earth, Dredd had recovered his memory and returned to defeat the Dark Judges. He then tried to lance the democratic boil by holding a referendum on whether the Judges should continue to govern the city. The judges won, by a small margin on a desultory turnout, and Dredd was satisfied.
2000 AD gained an influx of talent from other comics.
Garth Ennis and
John Smith had come to prominence writing for
Crisis, a
2000 AD spin-off for older readers, while artists
Jamie Hewlett and
Philip Bond were the stars of
Deadline, an independent comics and popular culture magazine founded by
Steve Dillon and
Brett Ewins. Smith created
Indigo Prime, a multi-dimensional organisation that polices reality, whose most memorable story was "Killing Time", a
time travel story featuring
Jack the Ripper. Garth Ennis and Philip Bond contributed
Time Flies, a time-travel comedy, and Hewlett was paired with writer
Peter Milligan for the surreal ''
Hewligan's Haircut. Writer John Tomlinson and artist Simon Jacob created Armoured Gideon'', an action-comedy series about a giant killer robot charged with keeping demons from invading earth. The
Judge Dredd Megazine, a monthly title set in the world of Dredd, was launched in October 1990. With John Wagner focusing his attentions there, Garth Ennis became the regular writer of Dredd in the weekly. American writer
Michael Fleisher, who had written
The Spectre and
Jonah Hex in the 1970s, was recruited to write the continuing adventures of the new
Rogue Trooper, along with several other strips, none of which went down very well. Another new writer who failed to set
2000 AD on fire was
Mark Millar, whose revival of
Robo-Hunter was particularly unpopular. Millar has since gone on to become a successful writer of American
superhero comics such as
The Authority and
The Ultimates.
2000 AD went all-colour about this time (prog 723, dated 23 March 1991), in response to a short-lived new colour weekly,
Toxic!, launched by Pat Mills and many of the core
2000 AD team of creators.
Toxic! only lasted 31 issues but many of the creators who had worked on the comic eventually found their way to work for
2000 AD.
Button Man, a contemporary thriller by John Wagner and
Arthur Ranson, was originally intended for
Toxic! but ended up in
2000 AD. A new
ABC Warriors series, written by Mills and Tony Skinner and painted by
Kev Walker, began in 1991, in which Deadlock took over the warriors with his "Khaos" philosophy. The old IPC strip ''
Kelly's Eye'' was revived, by the new creative team of
Alan McKenzie, Brett Ewins, and
Zac Sandler, in 1993, when the publishers realized they no longer had the rights to the character.
Robert Maxwell died in late 1991, and Fleetway was merged with London Editions, a Danish-owned company that owned rights to
Disney characters, to become Fleetway Editions. In 1992,
2000 AD and the
Judge Dredd Megazine ran their first crossover story, "
Judgement Day", in which
zombies overran Mega-City One. Written by Garth Ennis and drawn by Carlos Ezquerra,
Peter Doherty,
Dean Ormston and
Chris Halls, the story teamed Judge Dredd with Johnny Alpha through the medium of time travel. John Smith and artist
Paul Marshall created
Firekind, a slow-paced story about dragons and alien societies, which was accidentally published with its episodes in the wrong order. The
Strontium Dog world was eventually spun out to encompass a wider field, gaining the plural name
Strontium Dogs – characters such as female vampire
Durham Red, the albino Feral Jackson, and former Johnny Alpha sidekick The Gronk – the latter, normally a timid creature with weak "heartses", became a gung-ho action character upon learning of Alpha's death. However, in the 12-parter
The Darkest Star, it transpires that the one to
actually kill him was the Gronk himself; changed into a form designed by a cadre of Lyran necromancers to bring him endless agony, Alpha asked his friend to end his torment. The "Summer Offensive" was an eight-week experiment in 1993, when new editor
Alan McKenzie gave free rein to writers
Grant Morrison,
Mark Millar and John Smith, to a mixed reception. Morrison wrote a Dredd story, "Inferno", and a drug-influenced comedy adventure,
Really & Truly. Smith contributed
Slaughterbowl, in which convicted criminals on dinosaurs are pitted against each other in a deadly sport, with the survivor being paroled for a year and granted wealth – but being forced to enter the Slaughterbowl again the next year. Millar wrote
Maniac 5, an action-packed series about a remote controlled war-robot. During this run was a satire of British
tabloid attitudes titled
Big Dave, written by Morrison and Millar and drawn by
Steve Parkhouse.
John Tomlinson became editor in 1994, and a second crossover between
2000 AD and the
Megazine, "
Wilderlands", began. Written by Wagner and drawn by Ezquerra,
Mick Austin and
Trevor Hairsine, it followed on from "Mechanismo", a series of stories in the
Megazine in which Justice Department, opposed by Dredd, tried to introduce robot judges. With Wagner writing,
Judge Dredd was again the flagship strip. Former
Megazine editor
David Bishop became editor of the weekly in 1996 but sales continued to decline. Unsuccessful series were dropped, and a number of new series were tried out, some more successful than others. Writer
Dan Abnett introduced
Sinister Dexter in 1996, a strip about two hitmen influenced by the film
Pulp Fiction, which became a regular feature. In 1997, writer
Robbie Morrison and artist
Simon Fraser, who had worked with Bishop on the
Megazine, created
Nikolai Dante, a swashbuckling series set in future Russia starring a thief and ladies' man who discovers he's the illegitimate scion of an aristocratic dynasty. There were also gimmicks, like the "sex issue", sold in a clear plastic wrapper,
The Spacegirls, a series attempting to cash in on the popularity of the
Spice Girls,
B.L.A.I.R. 1, a parody of
Tony Blair based on
M.A.C.H. 1, and an adaptation of the
Danny Boyle film
A Life Less Ordinary. A new
Dredd epic, "Doomsday", appeared in 1999 and again ran in both
2000 AD and the
Megazine. Wagner had been laying the foundations for this story for several years, introducing the main villain, semi-robotic gang lord Nero Narcos, and supporting characters like
Judge Edgar of the Public Surveillance Unit, and
Galen DeMarco, a former judge who had quit after falling in love with Dredd and become a private eye. 1999 also saw the return of another character,
Nemesis the Warlock. After a break of ten years, writer Pat Mills decided to bring the story to an end with "The Final Conflict". The series was drawn by
Henry Flint in a style that recalled Kevin O'Neill's early work on the series, as well as Simon Bisley's
ABC Warriors work. The decade ended with a special 100-page issue called "Prog 2000". Behind a cover by Brian Bolland,
Nemesis wrapped up for good in a final episode drawn by Kevin O'Neill. War broke out in
Nikolai Dante, and writer
Gordon Rennie and artist
Mark Harrison introduced future war story
Glimmer Rats. Another old favourite,
Strontium Dog, was revived by Wagner and Ezquerra, telling new stories of Johnny Alpha set before his death, with the conceit that previous stories had been "folklore" and the new stories were "what really happened", allowing Wagner to revise continuity.
2000s The publisher has been owned by
Rebellion Developments since 2000, with editors
Andy Diggle and (since 2002)
Matt Smith at the helm. Rebellion continues to develop stories (and computer games) based on classic characters such as
Rogue Trooper and
Judge Dredd, and has also introduced a roster of new series including
Shakara,
The Red Seas and
Caballistics, Inc.. It has also published a tie-in to the film
Shaun of the Dead in a story written by
Simon Pegg and
Edgar Wright. The comic continues to uncover new British talents, including
Boo Cook,
Dom Reardon and
Al Ewing. It has also benefited from an improved dollar-pound
exchange rate that has meant the comic can now afford to re-employ some of the talent thought lost to America. A number of shorter self-contained stories, partly created by the new wave of talent, have run including
London Falling,
Stone Island and
Zombo. Other developments include a revamping of the
Judge Dredd Megazine which has included a section acting as a showcase for
British small press comics. Starting in program 1500 was the Judge Dredd story "The Connection", a "prelude" to a 23-part Judge Dredd epic "
Origins" which filled in a lot of the details about Dredd's past. In prog 1526, dated 28 February 2007,
2000 AD celebrated their 30th anniversary. The issue saw the start of two new storylines:
Nikolai Dante (by
Robbie Morrison and
Simon Fraser) and
Savage (by
Pat Mills and
Charlie Adlard), along with a one-off episode of
Flesh (by Pat Mills and
Ramon Sola). The run-up to this saw the first arcs of new series
Stickleback and
Kingdom.
2000 AD was also made available online through
Clickwheel, another
Rebellion Developments-owned firm. Starting in December 2007, the latest issue was made available to download as a
PDF. In early 2008 it was announced that an archive of the 2007 issues would be added to the service. The Clickwheel Comics Reader was launched in July 2008 which would allow the digital versions of the comics to be downloaded and read on the
iPhone and
iPod Touch.
2010s On 19 March 2012 the
Royal Mail launched a special stamp collection to celebrate Britain's rich comic book history, which included
2000 AD. In 2015 a documentary about the history of the comic was made, called
Future Shock! The Story of 2000AD. On 1 October 2016, signings were held at comic shops in the UK, Ireland, Australia and the US to mark the publication of the 2000th prog. In the same week a 40th birthday convention was announced, which was held in
Hammersmith,
London in February 2017. At the convention itself, it was announced by the Kingsley brothers that Rebellion would be willing to speak to outside software developers on developing
2000 AD's intellectual property. In the same year, former editor Steve MacManus published his memoirs,
The Mighty One: My Life Inside The Nerve Centre. In 2017, founding editor Pat Mills published his memoirs,
Be Pure! Be Vigilant! Behave! 2000 AD and Judge Dredd: The Secret History. Later in that year,
Hachette Partworks began publishing
2000 AD: The Ultimate Collection, initially an 80-volume fortnightly series of hardback books featuring classic stories from the first 40 years of the comic. Now the Collection has been extended to 180 volumes. This followed the success of
Judge Dredd: The Mega Collection, which had started in 2015 and later been extended to 90 volumes. In June 2018 (July in the United States) a special issue was published, the
2000 AD Sci-Fi Special 2018, which contained stories written and illustrated entirely by women. Starting in May 2019,
2000 AD began publishing periodic "all ages" issues every quarter, marketed as
2000 AD Regened, and targeted at younger readers. In these sixteen issues,
Judge Dredd was replaced by
Cadet Dredd stories. This lasted until November 2023. == Lists of stories ==