John Wagner

As much as it might be the story of an unstoppable crime-fighter in a colorful costume who's occasionally called on to deal with world-shattering cosmic threats, I think it's fair to say that Judge Dredd isn't really a superhero comic. I'm not sure what the line is, but there's just something about him that separates Mega City One's most famous lawman from his more traditionally justice-minded cousins --- and never has that distinction been more evident than in the pages of Judge Dredd: The Cape & Cowl Crimes. Set for release on April 11, the new paperback collects 160 pages of classic stories of Dredd dealing with costumed vigilantes, and you can read the entire first chapter --- in which Dredd has an encounter with the moderately super, mildly bulletproof Fairlyhyperman --- below right now!

It's always a big deal when a comic hits a round number, but when that number is in the thousands --- and when it's also a number that's been a part of the comic's title since its debut in 1977 --- it feels a whole lot bigger. On September 28, 2000 AD is finally hitting its 2000th weekly issue, and it's celebrating with an all-star cast of creators to give readers a concentrated dose of thrillpower.

I'm pretty sure that everyone reading this already knows that Judge Dredd runs every week in the pages of 2000 AD, but apparently that was not often enough for British audiences in the '80s and '90s. From 1981 to 1998, a daily Dredd comic strip ran in the UK's Daily Star, giving readers bite-size chunks of Mega-City One's most ruthless lawman. And they got weird. Admittedly, it's not the weirdest I've ever seen from a comic strip --- that week-long "Alone" storyline in Garfield will forever hold that title --- but if you've been looking for the story about a beautiful woman who fell head over heels in love with the genocidal animated corpse that is Judge Death, here it is, reprinted at long last.

I don't want to come off as all "sterotypical American" or anything, but I have to admit that I don't really get the appeal of soccer. I realize that it's the sport of choice for the vast majority of the world --- and that I also don't get the appeal of most sports that don't involve steel cage matches and a zombie cowboy whose brother is a fire demon --- but something about it just continues to elude me. But maybe, just maybe, I could finally get into it if someone found a way to combine the Beautiful Game with, oh, I don't know, a secret alien invasion and scenes of planetary-scale destruction. Fortunately for me, legendary writers John Wagner and Alan Grant have teamed up with artist Dan Cornwell to do just that in Rok of the Reds, a new comic from Glasgow-based indie publisher BHP. Check out a preview!

If, like us, you've spent the past weekend binging on Netflix's second season of Daredevil and reveling in all the superhero exploits, ninja action and all-around punishment, you probably still haven't had your fill. While there are great Daredevil runs from the likes of Frank Miller and Mark Waid that you could read to get more of a hornhead fix, what are you supposed to do if you've read all of them too? We've got five of the best independent comics to try next if you can't get enough of the Man Without Fear.

What a week! I don’t know about you, but I’m ready to sit back and read some comics. The weekend is finally here, and the world can relax and rest once more — but the comics industry has been busy too, you know, and the last seven days have seen a flurry of comics-based news and announcements fly past at high speed. ComicsAlliance has got your back, though: when it comes to comics, we never slow down, so here’s a look back and just what’s been going on. New comics, new stories, new podcasts, new art being made — it’s all part of the ComicsAlliance Weekender!

"I'm about to kill an important 2000 AD character, but I don't normally do that anymore." If you were listening to this week's installment of 2000 AD's Thrill-Cast, then you heard John Wagner, the co-creator and still the primary architect of Judge Dredd, offer up that ominous sentence when he was asked about his plans for upcoming stories. The result was, of course, a cloud of... well, dread hanging over the fans of the future's toughest lawman.

Dystopian futures have been a fixture of the sci-fi genre for as long as there's been a genre to have fixtures; cautionary tales about the crushing of the individual or the dangers of unchecked technology. In the second issue of 2000 AD, a British comic anthology that promised readers a weekly dose of thrillpower from the far-off future of the 21st century, John Wagner and Carlos Ezquerra asked exactly the kind of question that great sci-fi is built around: What if there was a story about a dystopian future plagued by hyperviolent crime, ruled over by a totalitarian state, where things were so bad that even existing could drive a man insane from future shock... and the fascist cops were the good guys? The result was the stone-faced lawman who would become the UK's greatest comic book character: Judge Dredd, who made his first appearance on March 5th, 1977.

With a creator as widely read, celebrated, and analyzed as Alan Moore, it's pretty easy to think that you could go out and get everything he's ever written. I mean, you can find the big stuff like Watchmen or V For Vendetta just wandering around airports, and even older, more obscure titles like Halo Jones or DR And Quinch aren't that hard to track down. Heck, you can even get CDs of that dude singing his poetry if that's what you're into, and I know that because I've bought them. But there's one title that has managed to elude all but the most die-hard completists for the past three decades: Monster, a horror comic by Moore and artist Heinzl that ran in the British comic Scream in the mid '80s. But now, 2000 AD is collecting the entire series in a 190-page paperback, set for release in July.

Soon Judge Dredd will find himself outnumbered by the Dark Judges... at least as far as ThreeA's 2000 AD figure line is concerned. Last year, the Ashley Wood-led company unveiled the first figures in the partnership with 2000 AD, including Judge Death, Judge Fish, Judge Dredd, Sam Slade and Gronk. 2016 will see even more of the classic British comic characters come to life, starting with the terrifying Judge Fear. Based on designs by Brian Bolland, the new Judge Fear figure will feature the imposingly-helmed Dark Judge with all the accouterments expected of the undead master of fright. Sure, he might be remembered best by more casual observers for that panel where Judge Dredd punches him square in the "face," and orders him to "Gaze into the fist of Dredd!" That doesn't mean the guy isn't deserving of his own highly-detailed and articulated figure. I mean, who doesn't want to a toy of a man so assured in his own abilities that he wears giant bear traps as pauldrons and has giant bat wings sprouting from his furnace-like helm?