Among the Wagner-Grant collaborations has been 'The Apocalypse War' (25 episodes, 1982), as by T B Grover. From this fertile source flowed a rich succession of original ideas that served to establish Judge Dredd as one of the most popular comic-strip characters ever created. The story-lines, mostly by John Wagner and Alan Grant (variously credited to them under their own names and a number of their pseudonyms), quickly established a high standard of plotting and characterization, with a significant thread of grittily humorous social Satire.

Early stories featured an occasional sidekick, Walter the Wobot, a Robot valet with a speech defect.

Dressed in black leather with massively chunky insignia and exaggerated elbow-, knee- and shoulder-pads, riding heftily armoured motorcycles with ultra-wide wheels, these law officers have the power to dole out on-the-spot sentences ranging from multi-credit fines to life sentences in far-flung penal colonies (see Crime and Punishment). In a world after the atomic Holocaust, the millions of survivors are crowded into vastly overpopulated Post-Holocaust Mega- Cities whose soaring crime rate is dealt with by the Judges, a breed of genetically selected men and (rarely) women. It first appeared in 2000 AD #2 (5 March 1977), drawn by Mike McMahon, and more than 1,700 issues later continued to dominate that Comic. The strip of which he is the Hero (or maybe Antihero) was created by Pat Mills, John Wagner and Carlos Ezquerra (artist). In Comics, Judge (Joe) Dredd is an ultra-tough, mean, ruthless, granite-jawed lawman of the future Mega-City One.

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