In a cryptic announcement Tuesday, 2000AD announced a new Judge Dredd story called Death of a Judge, coming soon from artist Mike Perkins and the character’s co-creator, John Wagner.
But that’s really all the information that the U.K. publisher shared, other than it will appear in the pages of 2000 AD. We don’t, however, yet know when the story will begin.
A story dubbed Death of a Judge with Wagner attached as writer does feel like a big deal, though. Potentially. Judge Dredd ages more than your normal well-known comics character, and so it doesn’t feel like a major jump to presume this story might actually kill Judge Dredd. Unlikely? Perhaps! But who really knows.
Wagner is always liable to switch up the Judge Dredd status quo with a consequential story arc. Death of a Judge will mark his first new work with the character since last year’s Judge Dredd: Machine Rule (read Wagner talking about it here), which wrapped up in September. That arc had more consequences for (robot) characters around Dredd than for Dredd himself, so maybe this one is due.
I suppose we’ll find out soon enough. For now, we’ll leave you with the lone image from 2000AD accompanying this announcement…enjoy! And beware!