The 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 and the film rights have been optioned.
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.
Robert Maxwell died in late 1991, and Fleetway was merged with London Editions, a Danish-owned company which 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 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 granted his freedom. 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.
Read more about this topic: 2000 AD (comics), History