2000 AD Winter Special #5
The 1993 2000 AD Winter Special — the fifth entry in Fleetway's annual winter anthology run — serves as a pivotal staging ground for one of the most talked-about creative turns in the comic's early-nineties era. It contains the debut solo outing of Psi Judge Janus in her own strip ('Janus: Psi-Division'), titled 'Will O' the Wisp,' marking the first time the rave-era psychic Judge stepped out of the main Judge Dredd strip and into a standalone feature. The issue also functioned as a proving ground for strip concepts born of Fleetway's ambitious but ultimately unrealised plan for a second 2000 AD anthology title, making it a tangible artefact of the publisher's expansionist ambitions in the early 1990s.
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We Buy Collections ▸History
The 2000 AD Winter Special ran annually under Fleetway from 1988 through 1990, then resumed from 1992 through 1995; the 1993 issue is the fifth in that combined run. It arrived in the same year as editor Alan McKenzie's contentious 'Summer Offensive,' a moment of aggressive creative renewal at the weekly prog, and the Winter Special clearly shared that spirit of experimentation. Two of its strips — 'Canned Heat' and 'Tracer' — were salvaged pilot episodes originally developed for a companion title that Fleetway never brought to publication, giving the special an unusually forward-looking, try-out-book character distinct from the reprint-heavy annuals of the era.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Fifth issue in the 2000 AD Winter Special series (Fleetway published the run annually from 1988–1990 and 1992–1995).
- Contains 'Will O' the Wisp,' the debut instalment of the solo strip Janus: Psi-Division — the first story in that series to run under its own title rather than within Judge Dredd.
- Psi Judge Judy Janus was created by Grant Morrison, Mark Millar, and artist Carlos Ezquerra, having first appeared in the main Judge Dredd strip in prog 842 (1993) in the 'Inferno' storyline.
- Janus is depicted as a precognitive and telepathic member of Mega-City One's Psi-Division; Grant Morrison has described her as a 'rave-era character' deliberately conceived as a contemporary alternative to the existing Judge Anderson.
- Includes pilot episodes of 'Canned Heat' and 'Tracer,' two strips originally developed for an unproduced 2000 AD companion title that was never published.
- Brigand Doom — a mysterious, apparently undead vigilante operating in a futuristic fascist city — appears in the issue; the character had debuted in prog 717 and was an ongoing presence in 2000 AD specials of this period.
- The Janus: Psi-Division strip subsequently ran in the weekly progs (serialised across progs 953, 980–984, and 1024–1027) and expanded to a Virgin Books novel (Wetworks, 1995) and a Big Finish audio drama (The Killing Zone).
- Chief Judge McGruder and Chief Psi Judge Shenker — both established supporting characters in the Judge Dredd mythology — appear in the issue; Shenker had first appeared in prog 457 (1986) and served as head of Psi-Division.