2000 AD #270
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeProg 270 (26 June 1982) is the thunderous finale to 'The Apocalypse War', one of the most consequential storylines in Judge Dredd's forty-plus-year history: it ends with Dredd personally executing War Marshal Kazan, the unconditional surrender of the Sov forces, and — crucially — the swearing-in of McGruder as Chief Judge, making her the first female head of Mega-City One's Justice Department, a status-quo shift that reverberated through the strip for decades. The issue also carries an instalment of Rogue Trooper, a strip that had debuted just over a year earlier and was already redefining what a British war comic could look like, and a chapter of Sam Slade Robo-Hunter, putting three of 2000 AD's most important serials under one cover on what was arguably the weekly's most eventful single publication date of 1982.
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The Apocalypse War — written by John Wagner and Alan Grant under their shared pseudonym T. B. Grover and drawn throughout by Carlos Ezquerra — ran across 25 episodes in progs 245–267 and 269–270; prog 268 was skipped for the story, making 270 the true endpoint. Ezquerra's return to the Dredd strip after a five-year absence was itself a notable editorial event, and Wagner and Grant are on record as having deliberately engineered the destruction of half of Mega-City One because they felt the fictional city had grown unwieldy — a radical act of in-universe urban planning. The scripts were produced during a period of real Cold War tension in Britain, and the Sov-bloc invasion premise drew directly on the nuclear anxieties of the early 1980s that Wagner and Grant routinely filtered through the satirical lens of the Dredd universe.
Trivia · 7 facts
- Published by Fleetway (IPC) on 26 June 1982 as prog 270 of 2000 AD.
- Contains 'Judge Dredd: The Apocalypse War Part 25' — the concluding episode of the 25-part saga (progs 245–267, 269–270), written by John Wagner and Alan Grant (under the pseudonym T. B. Grover) and drawn by Carlos Ezquerra.
- In this final episode, Judge Dredd kills War Marshal Kazan ('Mad Dog' Kazan) after being freed from Sov captivity by East-Meg officer Judge Izaaks; the Sov forces surrender unconditionally and East-Meg One lies in ruins.
- McGruder is sworn in as Chief Judge in this prog — her first appearance in that role — becoming the first female Chief Judge of Mega-City One, a position she held from 2104 to 2108 in the strip's internal chronology.
- The issue also carries a Rogue Trooper episode (the strip had debuted in prog 228 in 1981, created by Gerry Finley-Day and Dave Gibbons) and a Sam Slade Robo-Hunter episode set in Brit-Cit, featuring the robo-spy subplot involving agents 004 and 006.
- The Apocalypse War has been reprinted multiple times, including Titan Books' two-volume Judge Dredd Epics edition, Rebellion's Complete Case Files Vol. 5, and the 2021 Essential Judge Dredd: The Apocalypse War paperback.
- Wagner and Grant wrote the Apocalypse War pseudonymously as 'T. B. Grover', a shared pen name they used for their early Dredd collaborations published in 2000 AD.
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Reprints
Reprinted in Judge Dredd #24 (1985), Sam Slade, Robo-Hunter #4 (1987), The Best of 2000 AD Monthly #74 (1991), The Best of 2000 AD Monthly #75 (1991), Rogue Trooper #2 (2005), The Complete Alan Moore Future Shocks #[nn] (2006), Judge Dredd: The Complete Case Files #5 (2006), Judge Dredd: The Mega Collection #36 (2015), The Complete Future Shocks #2 (2019), Juiz Dredd Essencial #1 (2021)
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