2000 AD #270

Jun 1982 · IPC · 0.16 GBP

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“The Filby Case, Part 5”

About this Issue

Prog 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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writer Alan Grant · artist, inker Ian Gibson · artist, inker Dominic Regan · letterer Steve Potter · cover Massimo Belardinelli

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History

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.