Trivia / 2000 AD

• Awesome, Dear Boy: Although it catalyzed Rebellion's transformation from simple video game company to the juggernaut of publishing it is today, interviews at the time confirmed a major reason that the company bought 2000 AD was that the people in charge loved the comic and didn't want to see it cease publication (a real risk at that time). No one can deny that the deal worked out great for everybody involved.
• Follow the Leader:
  • Vector 13, which started out as a strip, then took over as a Hostile Show Takeover, followed paranormal stories not too dissimilar to The X-Files.
  • According to several creators interviewed for the documentary Future Shock: The Story of 2000AD, several strips during The '90s were guilty of this thanks to Executive Meddling. Fleetway didn't really know what direction to move the comic in, resulting in this scenario. It wasn't just individual strips either. An infamous sex issue was created as an attempt to cash in on the lads' mag market.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: Back issues can be ordered from the official shop, but only as far back as Prog 1200. Anything prior to that will need to be searched for elsewhere. Older out of print stories are being reprinted in the form of graphic novels and even some of the more obscure tales are being reprinted as packaged extras with the Megazine, but some tales will probably never see the light of day again.
• Milestone Celebration: They've done a few:
  • For the 10th anniversary, a badge reading '10 years of Thrills' was inserted somewhere in each strip. The Judge Dredd storyline featured Whitey, the villain from the very first Dredd strip making a Back for the Dead appearance.
  • For the 30th anniversary, which was also the 30th anniversary of the first Judge Dredd strip, they began the "Origins" story, which explains how the world of Judge Dredd came to be. John Wagner had been planning on writing that story for a while, but figured that the 30th anniversary was the right time to publish it.
  • The 10th anniversary of 2000 AD's sister title, Judge Dredd Megazine, ran Judge Death's Origin Story.
  • The 15th anniversary issue had only two stories, a Judge Dredd story that was a homage to Ocean's Eleven and The Simping Detective had a story titled "Fifteen", which had an in story celebration for the Boss, having taken over the sector's crime syndicate fifteen years prior.
  • In 2010, the Meg's 300th issue and 20th anniversary occurred within two issues of each other, and so issues 300, 301, and 302 were all double-length (and the price was raised by a pound; issue 303 was still 50p more than 299, grumble grumble). Across all three were run two special features:a three-part in-depth interview with Carlos Ezquerra, and past writers and artists reminiscing about their favourite parts of the Meg. Issue 302's Judge Dredd strip was full of all sorts of continuity nods and the final panel, while making perfect sense in the context of the story, was clearly a happy birthday message to the Meg.
  • In 2016, 2000 AD made it to 2000 progs, the mag's run by that point totalling about 60,000 pages of comics. Tharg discussed the magazine's history with cameo appearances from almost every major or minor character. The anniversary edition also included the return of many writers and artists such as Pat Mills, John Wagner, Brian Bolland, and Carlos Ezquerra, and featured stories from Judge Dredd and Strontium Dog, Rogue Trooper, Nemesis the Warlock, Anderson: Psi-Division, Sinister Dexter, and one new one named Counterfeit Girl.
• Missing Episode:
  • A played-for-laughs "meta example"; One time when the droids went on strike, Tharg purportedly wrote and drew an entire issue by himself, but when he ran it through the quality-control "Thrill-Meter," the machine melted down from Thrill Power Overload and had to be locked in a lead-lined vault by blindfolded security guards so as to prevent any danger of people accidentally reading it.
  • The Judge Dredd Cursed Earth saga has two two-prog mini-stories that can't be officially reposted, even in official collected issue books, due to copyright infringements. Parts 11 and 12 involved warring descendants of burger franchises McDonald's and Burger King, whilst the second troublesome duology, parts 17-18, involved parodies of assorted food company mascots, including Kentucky Fried Chicken and Jolly Green Giant. Fortunately, both are no real loss to the story, since they are fundamentally silly satire-focused mini-issues. This will be soon subverted with the release of the Director's Cut of "The Cursed Earth".
• Promoted Fanboy:
  • Simon Pegg is a noted fan of the comic. In Spaced, several copies of the comic are kept both in the flat and at Fantasy Bazaar and the death of Johnny Alpha is a key event in Tim's life. Pegg would later voice Johnny in the Big Finish audio plays and co-authored a tie in comic strip for Shaun of the Dead that was published in the comic.
  • And, of course, Karl Urban has been an avid fan since his teens getting to play Old Stoney Face himself.
  • Garth Ennis was a big fan of the comic growing up and would go on to write several strips, including working on many Judge Dredd stories.
• Schedule Slip: The comic is distributed in America by Diamond in a monthly pack. Unfortunately for American readers, the issues in the pack tend to be out of order, and any given pack often has issues originally published before some of those in a previous pack.