Posted on May 16, 2025

2000AD Progs 2101-2200

Tragic news greeted this batch of progs when one of the greatest artists in 2000AD history, Carlos Ezquerra, died on October 1, 2018. His work went all the way back to the very beginning as the designer of Judge Dredd. Once he started drawing regular strips, not a year went by without a major contribution from Carlos, including some of Dredd’s greatest (and longest) epics, the lion’s share of Strontium Dog stories, and much more. He worked all the way up to his last day, earning a legacy no other artist could match.

Within these pages, Mega-City 1 finally had to allow robot judges into service after one too many disasters thinned the ranks, forcing even Dredd himself to bend. The long running comedic paranormal detective strip Absalom came to an end. Next up was the comedic dark fantasy Feral & Foe, which scratched the same itch as Game of Thrones. The retired Judge Hershey got her own hard-bitten series that reminded everyone she was always a match for Joe Dredd. And a lush new SF traveler’s tale titled The Out played notes not heard since the days of Alan Moore’s beloved Halo Jones.

As the cover price went from £2.85 to £2.99, a new experiment was attempted called 2000AD Regened. Seeing the need to refresh the aging readership, prog 2130 was reformatted as an all-ages issue with a retro logo, younger versions of the main characters (such as “Cadet Dredd”) and a little less bloodletting than usual. It was self-contained and went over well enough to become a quarterly event. Many veteran readers dislike these issues since they interrupt continuity, but the tradeoff has been a surge in readership to help keep the Galaxy’s Greatest Comic on the road.

Finally, it should not escape notice that Covid-19 struck during this stretch, but neither 2000AD nor the Judge Dredd Megazine were knocked off schedule. It takes a lot more than a global pandemic to take down this behemoth.