Previewing ‘2000 AD Annual’ 2025: The Return Of An Annual Tradition

Christmastime, mistletoe and wine, and the 2000 AD Annual – all the proper Christmas traditions this year!

I’ve talked of the thrill of the Christmas annual many times now. But as far as I know it’s a very British thing. Picture the scene. It’s Christmas morning in the ’80s and little Johnny is excitedly opening the prezzies. Having done this a few years now, little Johnny immediately knows what the big, thin hardback book-shaped pressie is, as he’s well used to getting at least one annual every year. Little Johnny’s secure in the knowledge that, once dad comes back from the pub and the traditions of Christmas are over with – Christmas dinner, mom getting tipsy on the sherry whilst washing up, dad snoring in the chair, and the Queen’s speech, he can settle down with a good bit of comics. Now, that might have been Beano, Dandy, Whizzer & Chips, Spider-Man, Star Wars, or a whole host of others. It may well have been the 2000 AD Annual, a fixture from 1978 to 1991, after which they turned into the nowhere near as satisfying softcover yearbooks from 1992 to 1995.

Yes, annuals, and the 2000 AD Annual were a big deal, and it’s been a source of disappointment for the ever older 2000 AD fans that they’ve missed out for the past 30 years.

But no longer. As this Christmas, three decades later, kids and big kids across the country get to have all the thrills again with the 2025 2000 AD Annual (yes, 2025, annuals are always dated for the year after).

It’s 112 pages of hardback thrill power, 10 stories, a mix of new (four stories) and reprints (six stories) of archive and lesser known stuff, picked to showcase a breadth of material and not too always go to the obvious, all the way through to some more recent tales, with plenty of big names.

I’ll run a full preview below, but to give you some idea of what to expect, let’s pick out a few highlights.

First off, the four new strips go heavy on the big names, with Judge Dredd, Strontium Dog, and Rogue Trooper, arguably the big three name characters of 2000 AD getting new strips here. And we also get a new Lawless prose story, another very nice callback to annuals of the past, that always seemed to have at least one great bit of heavily illustrated prose between those hardback covers.

The Dredd’s a great opener, very on point, dealing with elections in Mega-City, with one candidate going mental over vote rigging, and a riot overtaking the count – so, absolutely no relevance to anything in recent history then. Oh, and did I mention it’s all happening in Apetown, that very simian section of MC-1? Very on the nose, very politically relevant, Dredd being every bit the hard-hitting satire of the world we’re all living in. It’s a great opener, tight satire from writer Chris Condon and apes looking and moving like apes, really impressive from Fernando Blanco on art.

Next we get Johnny Alpha, THE Strontium Dog, the galaxy’s greatest bounty hunter and a character who challenged Dredd as a fan favourite.

One thing the annuals used to do is give us a very different look to classic characters and it’s a real pleasure to see this continues, as Hayden Sherman’s art is very different – and definitely different in a good way. There’s Carlos Ezquerra meets Moebius running through this one, a visual delight indeed.

It’s a standard Stront tale, Johnny on the trail of his quarry, this time a tech mogul who’s created a thing that digests both non-degradable pollutants and mutants alike. So, although it might pay, it’s also personal for Johnny, a tale of muties, money, and revenge, with a twist in this tale. But make no mistake, this one’s all the better for the great artwork, very different, very stylish, very much a name I want to see more of.

After that, we get new Rogue Trooper, with more excellent, albeit familiar, art as Jake Lynch, better known for Dredd, takes on the big blue GI, genetic infantryman, the last of his kind, betrayed by his own and waging his personal war on the poisoned wastelands of Nu-Earth.

There’s a good single-page summary of all you need to know about Rogue on the first page, after which we get a horrors of war thing, set right in the middle of Rogue hunting down the Traitor General, only to be captured by one of his own, understandably pissed off at what’s happened to him. It’s a neat little self-contained Rogue, written by Alex Paknadel, elevated by Lynch’s excellent art, all weird angles and interesting perspectives going on.

Finally, the last of the new strips, a prose Lawless by Dan Abnett, beautifully illustrated by Lawless artist Phil Winslade. As you’d you’d expect from this pairing, provided you know how damn great Lawless is, this is a delight. And if you’ve never had the pleasure of reading Lawless – first, what the hell, this is one of the best things 2000 AD has done in the last 10 years. Second, you’re in for a rare treat after this, as there’s five collections you’ll be wanting to catch up on.

As for the prose tale, it’s a damn good little Lawless one-off, Abnett telling a tale of Colonial Marshal Metta Lawson, the law in the frontier town of Badrock, a little town on a backwater planet well out of the way of the Justice Department of Dredd and Mega-City One. All you need to know is this is a future cowboy tale, with Lawson as sheriff and Badrock as your generic Western town and there’s a tourist party coming into town for their ‘Real & authentic, rootin’ tootin’ far west frontier experience’ (Badrock needs the extra income) at the same time as the outlaw Jemburton Family are headed into town – it’s all hands on deck for Lawson and Badrock.

It’s full of Abnett’s great writing, thrilling and funny, great dialogue, loads of action, a perfect intro to one of the Judge Dredd Megazine’s finest strips and a lovely nostalgic remembrance of prose tales of annuals past.

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Okay then, that’s the new stuff covered. Now for the reprints. And it’s a veritable grab bag of reprints, deliberately picking the more unusual examples of both recent and archive material.

As a perfect example, we get two strips by one of 2000 AD’s finest artists, Mick McMahon, but neither are what you’d expect. First there’s a Mean Machine tale from the 1994 Yearbook, with McMahon deep down into a really distinctive and devisive art style, a master doing magnificently different things, constantly shifting his style, with this just the epitome of how far he’d push things. Hated by some, beloved by more, this is just out there and perfectly so.

Then you get more familiar McMahon art, but on a strange little strip by John Wagner, Superbean. Literally a bloke who’s a superhero in a bean suit. (What, you think it’s any dumber than a bat outfit?) That’s it, that’s the whole thing, a one-off bit of weird from 1982. This is exactly the sort of strange little bit of 2000 AD that it’s damn good to highlight here in this annual.

And finally for this highlights reel of the reprints in this annual, we get the often forgotten Judge Dredd newspaper strip by Wagner, Grant, and Gibson, a really classic writing and artist team giving us adventures of Dredd running in The Daily Star in the late ’80s, three panels a day, five days to a page here in the annual. It’s a strange choice perhaps, but it’s also a bloody good Dredd tale with all that great Ian Gibson artwork.

There’s plenty more in here, all of it good. Personally, I’d have loved this first annual in three decades to be all-new, but sadly financial practicalities have to be faced in this day and age. As it is, the new strips we do get are perfect intros to the characters and the chosen reprints do a good job of highlighting the breadth of great stories from the recent and not so recent past of 2000 AD.

All in all, this is something that’s going to make a lot of old fans of 2000 AD really happy this Christmas, the return of a childhood joy, a Christmas highlight for so many of us brought back to make our Christmas Day a damn sight better. And who knows, once dad’s fallen asleep in front of the tele, maybe a new generation of bored out of their minds kids will pick this up and find a hell of a lot of enjoyment inside.

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2000 AD ANNUAL 2025 – published on 27 November by 2000 AD

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JUDGE DREDD: CHIMPSURRECTION – by Chris Condon and Fernando Blanco, colours by Edward Teach, letters by Jonathan Stevenson

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STRONTIUM DOG: POISON – by Simon Spurrier and Hayden Sherman, letters by David Agnew

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ROGUE TROOPER: RENEGADE – by Alex Paknadel and Jake Lynch, colours by Dylan Teague, letters by Jonathan Stevenson

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LAWLESS: A REAL & AUTHENTIC ROOTIN’ TOOTIN’ FAR WEST FRONTIER EXPERIENCE – by Dan Abnett and Phil Winslade

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ANDERSON – PSI DIVISION: SPA DAY – by Maura McHugh and Emma Vieceli, colours by Barbara Nosenzo, letters by Ellie de Ville (Originally Published in the 2000 AD Sci-fi Special 2018)

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TALES FROM THE BLACK MUSEUM: CULT STATUS – by Rory McConville and Staz Johnson, letters by Simon Bowland (Originally Published in Judge Dredd Megazine 381, 2017)

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MEAN MACHINE: JUDGEMENT ON GOSHAM – by John Wagner and Mick McMahon, letters by Gordon Robson (Originally Published in the Judge Dredd Yearbook 1994)

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ROGUE TROOPER – by Gerry Finley-Day and Dave Gibbons, colours by Charlie Kirchoff, letters by Dave Gibbons (Originally Published in 2000 AD Prog 228, 1981)

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SUPERBEAN – by John Wagner and Mick McMahon, letters by Steve Potter (Originally Published in 2000 AD Prog 245, 1982)

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JUDGE DREDD: HEARTBEAT – by John Wagner, Alan Grant, and Ian Gibson (Originally Published in the Daily Star, 1989)