The Apocalypse War: The First TRUE Judge Dredd Epic

The very earliest Judge Dredd stories were short, funny one shots told over four or five pages. They could be violent and chaotic, but they were still funny pages in a comic for kids. The Dredd of the 1970s was very different to the dark, gritty Dredd we see in 2000 AD today.

The story I’m talking about today isn’t the first multi-part Dredd story. And it’s not the first Judge Dredd story to be grim or violent. But 1982’s The Apocalypse War is truly the first epic, epic story with long-reaching consequences for Judge Dredd’s World and for us, the readers.

The Apocalypse Looms

The late 1970s was mired in both political turmoil and financial uncertainty. The decade would be defined by many as the fight for fair wages, equality and representation against a rising new right. This climate was no doubt responsible for the booming interest in science fiction. But the genre faced censorship and suppression for subverting “traditional moral values”. Conservative lobbyist Mary Whitehouse had successfully managed to curtailed sex, violence, permissiveness (read: gay) in TV, film and print including comics.

This is the world 2000 AD was born into. A weekly anthology comic in the same vein as The Beano or Eagle, 2000 AD was presented as stories from the future sent back in time by editor Tharg the Mighty. Each issue was referred to as a “program”. As in computer program. Personal computers were very cutting edge in the 1970s. The Apple II, Commodore PET and TRS-80 all released in 1977. This was a very cool way to ride that wave.

Each prog would feature five or six different stories. Judge Dredd debuted in Prog 2. 

Judge Dredd didn’t start out as this grim, post-apocalyptic satire about giant megacities ruled over by a police-industrial complex. I mean, it was about that. And it was clearly inspired by its contemporaries. But it was played for laughs. Mega City One was a decadent society, where everything is taken care of. Crime exists as a result of boredom, not poverty. Most of the early Dredd stories are about silly, made-up future crimes being solved by silly made-up future cops. The Judges.

As Judge Dredd’s writers got more confident and more defiant, Dredd’s world started to become this ludicrous parody of the real-world. The writers and artists used the comic as a vehicle to satirise consumerism, critique police brutality and to rail against the boundaries imposed on them as creators. Through the 1980s, the Cold War began to loom large and affected the stories in Judge Dredd. The comic grew darker and more gruesome, but it never lost the madcap humour that had been part of the strip from the beginning.

The seeds of the Apocalypse War are sown in Prog 236. A mass hysteria of unprecedented scale spreads across the entire city. Citizens are struck with a bloodthirsty passion to fight to the death for the blocks they live in. These aren’t the hab-blocks shown in the Dredd film, which are named after key 2000 AD artists like Kevin O’Neill or Carlos Ezquerra. No, these are named after random seventies celebrities. So we have people killing in the name of Betty Crocker, Ricardo Montalban and Frank Zappa.

Block Mania, written by Alan Grant and drawn by Mike McMahon, Ron Smith and Steve Dillon with covers by Brian Bolland is told over nine progs. The Judges try every crowd pacification method they have. Sonic cannons, big jets of expanding foam, tranquiliser gas. Bullets. Nothing works. Block Mania just keeps growing, wearing the judges’ resources thinner and thinner. And then the judges themselves start abandoning their posts to join in! By the time Dredd figures out that block mania is a soviet ploy to undermine Mega City One’s security, the nukes are already in the air. It all changes.

The Apocalypse War Begins

The Apocalypse War begins in Prog 245 and spans 25 progs. Or six months of a weekly comic. It was written by John Wagner and Alan Grant and drawn entirely by Carlos Ezquerra. Ezqeurra had co-created Dredd and hadn’t drawn the book for five years. Returning to draw Dredd for the full 25 prog run was a touch. I love his European pen style. His granular markmarking gives the artwork this grittiness that a cleaner line style wouldn’t achieve. And he’s a Judge Dredd OG, so you know if you’re seeing his art you’re reading a real Judge Dredd gem.

As hundreds of nukes rain down on Mega City One, the personnel responsible for manning the defences have been exhausted by block mania. The city’s fortifications put up a decent effort, but it’s a numbers game. All it takes is a fraction of a percentage to get through. And they do. Ezquerra’s detailed pen work doesn’t shy away from showing us the carnage. The chaos and death in his scenes are dreadful.

And then he hits us with a one two punch. Citizens infected with block mania actually start cheering as 150 million of their neighbours go up in smoke. It feels cartoony to have a death count so high, but this isn’t a bit. The punchline is millions of people burnt to ash. There are jokes in here, but they don’t take the edge off.

Dredd’s retaliation is equally ludicrous. Enough nukes to level East Meg One fifty times over. Unimaginable destructive power and also a major fucking overstepping of police jurisdiction! Mutually-assured destruction had always kept nuclear war at bay, so the sovs had to have something up their sleeves. In true 2000 AD fashion, the sovs have a forcefield which transports the nukes to a parallel dimension!

Invasion!

Dredd survives but is stranded in a decimated, defenceless Mega City One. Any survivors who aren’t dying of fallout exposure have been driven mad with block mania. The apocalypse war enters the next stage as sov forces storm what’s left of Mega City One. 

Soviet sentenoids, rad sweepers and strato-vs waltz unopposed over the city, raining total destruction on everything before them. Any hope of resistance is dashed by the fact that the survivors continue to fight each other, even as the sov forces roll over them. I don’t think you’d see death and destruction like this in any other comic book. 

Dredd is broken. He knows the city is lost. He’s not trying to win. He’s making the sovs pay in blood for every inch they take. Toppling bridges. Plunging city blocks into raging ten thousand degree fires. Men melting inside their tanks, their screams emblazoned on the page. Rounding up sov collaborators. Executing them in muddy ditches. Absolutely fucking brutal. This book used to be funny.

Judge Dredd had been violent before, it had been dark. But this was a significant turn in the tone of the book. Like the city, there’s no going back to the way things were. The Apocalypse War’s second act shows how far this broken Dredd has fallen. Ezquerra draws his skin like bark, like those trees in those old nuke test films. 

Hatching a plan not to save his people, just to kill theirs, Dredd assembles a squad of who’s left. Nine judges to ride out. A final suicide mission to East Meg One.

The Apocalypse War Turns

This sequence here. I’ve been saying how The Apocalypse War was a turning point for how Judge Dredd stories were told. Four hundred million people killed in a nuclear holocaust doesn’t illustrate my point. It’s too big. It’s a statistic. 

But there’s one page of Dredd’s squad stealing a Sov Strato V. The slashing rain, a ruthlessly implied upward stabbing. An intimate murder. This is how far this comic has come. The man who fought monkey gangsters and stopped comic book smuggling, now executing people in cold blood right there on the page.

Skipping to the finalé, Dredd and co. make it to the East Meg One command bunker. They kill, maim or torture anyone who gets in the way of them launching East Meg’s remaining nukes against itself. We see one of the last Sov men left alive in the bunker begging Dredd not to do it. There are half a billion people living in East Meg One. Most of them civilians. Please don’t genocide my people. 

Dredd doesn’t hesitate. This isn’t Justice. It isn’t even revenge. It’s mass murder on an unthinkable scale. East Meg One disappears from the face of the earth. And Dredd doesn’t even blink.

How are you supposed to feel, looking at this? A whole enemy nation just gone. Dredd returns to a “victorious” Mega City One. Half of it is rendered uninhabitable. Half its population are dead. Millions more left homeless, bereft. It’s hard to see Dredd as a hero in that context.

His image of a wacky future cop is forever changed. This might not be the original Dredd as he was intended. But this is the Dredd we all know today. A copper who will go to any length for “justice”. Whos authority knows no bounds and who follows no code except might is right. This is the book that birthed that Dredd.

Where to Buy The Apocalypse War Comics

If you want to read The Apocalypse War yourself, you’ve got tons of options. The original progs were in black and white, I wouldn’t recommend you hunt those down. There have been plenty of trades over the years, I’ve got an old Titan trade here. Titan reprinted these in the 2000s. Hatchette’s Judge Dredd Mega Collection hardbacks book three. Complete Case Files volume five is perfect and is my recco. Physical and digital.

John Burns added colours when Eagle reprinted Judge Dredd for the US market. If you want to read US  singles, this is your only option. IDW released The Apocalypse War in their Judge Dredd Classics series, with digital colours by Charlie Kirchoff. The IDW artwork is also used in Rebellion’s own Essential Judge Dredd range. Also available physically and digitally. All the collected editions include Block Mania.

I hope you enjoyed that. If you wanted to start reading Judge Dredd and didn’t know where to begin, picking up The Complete Case Files volume five and reading The Apocalypse War is a great place to begin.