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    The 10 best Judge Dredd comics of all time, ranked

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    The 10 best Judge Dredd comics of all time, ranked

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    The 10 best Judge Dredd comics of all time, ranked

    2000 AD’s future lawman has been patrolling Mega-City One for almost 50 years, and here are the 10 best Judge Dredd stories ever published

    GuidesbyGraeme McMillan, Editor
    Published on Wed Aug 26 2026

    In the America of the 22nd century, only one thing is certain: Judge Dredd is the law. Since 1977, the future lawman of Mega-City One — a reimagined East Coast of the US — has maintained law and order in the pages of long-running weekly anthology comic 2000 AD and beyond. Created by John Wagner and Carlos Ezquerra, Dredd has become a vehicle for stories spanning almost every genre imaginable, becoming one of the high points of the British comic industry in the process.

    As the character prepares to celebrate his half-century anniversary, it’s time to look back at the long and varied career of Judge Joseph Dredd, and choose the best Judge Dredd comics of the past five decades. For those who have always wanted a chance to dive into the character’s acclaimed history, this is a guide for how to do so. Just make sure you behave while doing so, or else it’ll be five in the iso-cubes, creep.

    TLDR: Best Judge Dredd Comics, Ranked

    Rank Comic Why you should read it
    #1 The Apocalypse War The ideal jumping-on point for Judge Dredd newcomers, and one of the finest science fiction war comics ever made.
    #2 Day of Chaos The ultimate demonstration of long game planning, and the disaster that befell Mega-City One, changing everything about the Judge Dredd mythos in its aftermath.
    #3 A Better World A potent reminder of the ability of the Judge Dredd comic strip to talk about contemporary politics without seeming forced or preachy, with a killer climax that hits hard.
    #4  America A perfect standalone story that says everything necessary about Judge Dredd and the world he defends — and doesn’t pull any punches in the process.
    #5 The Dead Man/Necropolis Judge Dredd comes up against a seemingly unstoppable supernatural threat in a story that played with readers’ expectations in more ways than one.
    #6 Letter from a Democrat/Revolution  The stories that established just how dystopian Mega-City One and the Judges truly are, laying bare the political realities behind the strip.
    #7  The Cursed Earth A desperate race against time provides the backdrop to some of the silliest, more out-there Judge Dredd stories of the character’s early career.
    #8  The Small House Political intrigue is placed at the forefront of this paranoid thriller about corruption inside the Justice Department.
    #9  The Pit A surprising reinvention of Judge Dredd that owes debts to classic police drama Hill Street Blues.
    #10  The Art of Kenny Who?/Beyond Our Kenny/Who? Dares Wins A showcase for the comedy at the heart of Dredd and a cutting satire of the comic book industry decades ahead of its time.


    10. The Art of Kenny Who?/Beyond Our Kenny/Who? Dares Wins


    • Published:2000 AD Progs 477-479, Judge Dredd Magazine #1-3, #228-229 (1986, 1990, 2005)
    • Creators:John Wagner, Alan Grant, Cam Kennedy
    • Main Characters: Judge Dredd, Kenny Who?
    • Why you should read it:A showcase for the comedy at the heart of Dredd and a cutting satire of the comic book industry decades ahead of its time.

    One of the many things that Judge Dredd (the comic strip) is, is a comedy strip, and the Kenny Who? stories — which center around a Scottish comic book artist who tried to make it in Mega-City One — are some of the finest examples of Dredd-as-comedy. Simultaneously smart satire about comics and genuinely silly stories, the Kenny Who? trilogy demonstrates the versatility of Dredd as a vehicle for telling all kinds of tales about all kinds of people… all the while showcasing some genuinely beautiful art from Cam Kennedy. (His color work on ‘Beyond our Kenny’ is breathtaking.)

    9. The Pit

    • Published:2000 AD Progs 970-999 (1995-1996)
    • Creators:John Wagner, Carlos Ezquerra, Colin MacNeil, et al
    • Main Characters: Judge Dredd, Galen DeMarco, Guthrie, Judge Giant
    • Why you should read it:A surprising reinvention of Judge Dredd that owes debts to classic police drama Hill Street Blues.

    Almost two decades into its run, series creators John Wagner and Carlos Ezquerra repurposed the Dredd strip for six months into something few fans were anticipating, taking the character off his Mega-City One beat and placing him charge of a ‘Sector House’ (police precinct), transforming the series into a procedural with soap opera elements and a group cast. Surprisingly, it worked, introducing new supporting characters into the mix and giving Dredd new depth as he was placed in circumstances that he arguably was extremely ill-suited for. All this and a murder mystery element that ties into potential corruption at the heart of the entire Justice Department!

    8. The Small House

    • Published:2000 AD Progs 2100-2109 (2018)
    • Creators:Rob Williams, Henry Flint
    • Main Characters: Judge Dredd, Judge Sam, Chief Judge Hershey, Dirty Frank, Judge Smiley
    • Why you should read it:Political intrigue is placed at the forefront of this paranoid thriller about corruption inside the Justice Department.

    A tense, fast-moving thriller, ‘The Small House’ places Judge Dredd and a group of hand-picked associates in conflict with the very system they’ve dedicated their lives to uphold — and all because they’re convinced that someone is operating without any oversight to maintain the Justice Department’s (and, by extension, America’s) power and position in the world. Paranoid, political, and unafraid to make the subtext text — this is the source of the “We’re fascists” panel that has been shared around the internet in the years since — this is taut reminder that, 40+ years in, Dredd remains as potent as ever.

    7. The Cursed Earth

    • Published:2000 AD Progs 61-85 (1978)
    • Creators:John Wagner, Pat Mills, Mick McMahon, Brian Bolland, et al
    • Main Characters: Judge Dredd, Spikes Harvey Rotten, Tweak
    • Why you should read it:A desperate race against time provides the backdrop to some of the silliest, more out-there Judge Dredd stories of the character’s early career.

    The first ‘mega-epic’ in Judge Dredd history — a story so big that takes six months or so of a weekly comic strip to tell — ‘The Cursed Earth’ is a quest story that embraces (indeed, celebrates) the freedom that a science fiction setting offers. The set-up is simple: Dredd has to get from one side of America to another to deliver a cure to a deadly virus, with the complication that it’s almost all irradiated wasteland filled with mutants, dinosaurs, and other monsters. (Including parodies of certain fast food corporation mascots, which resulted in legal action and meant that certain episodes went unreprinted for decades.) What makes it work is the abandon with which everyone involved approached the execution, with one very straightforward ambition at heart: How best to entertain the kids who were reading this, week-in, week-out?

    6. Letter from a Democrat/Revolution

    • Published:2000 AD Progs 460, 531-533 (1986-1987)
    • Creators:John Wagner, Alan Grant, John Higgins
    • Main Characters: Judge Dredd, Chief Judge Silver, Hester Hyman, Gort Hyman, Blondel Dupré
    • Why you should read it:The stories that established just how dystopian Mega-City One and the Judges truly are, laying bare the political realities behind the strip.

    The first stories to explicitly deal with the political reality behind the series’ Mega-City One setting and the Justice Department’s totalitarian rule, ‘Letter from a Democrat’ and ‘Revolution’ broke with what, to that point, had been tradition to make it clear: Judge Dredd and the other Judges are, objectively, bad guys. The former story establishes how un-democratic Dredd’s world truly is, and ‘Revolution’ goes even further in underscoring the lengths to which the Judges will go in order to maintain control — and just how unwilling they are to respect the will of the people when it comes into conflict with their own plans. Daring (and complex) stuff for a strip that was, at this point, still aimed at a young audience.

    5. The Dead Man/Necropolis

    • Published:2000 AD Progs 650-662, 674-699 (1989-1990)
    • Creators:John Wagner, John Ridgeway, Carlos Ezquerra
    • Main Characters: Judge Dredd, Judge Death, Judge Anderson, Chief Judge Hershey, Chief Judge Silver
    • Why you should read it:Judge Dredd comes up against a seemingly unstoppable supernatural threat in a story that played with readers’ expectations in more ways than one.

    1990’s ‘Necropolis’ — a mega-epic in which the supernatural forces of Judge Death take over Mega-City One — had a sneaky start six months early in the pages of 2000 AD that took advantage of its anthology format: a new series called The Dead Man started in 2000 AD about a hero with amnesia. Turned out, it was Judge Dredd himself, as he found out towards the end of the story, with the series an unadvertised prequel set in the future of the chronology of the Dredd strip. By the time Judge Dredd (the strip) caught up, Dredd had been cast out of Mega-City One as it transformed into a hellscape, with Dredd — now with his memory regained — on his way back to save the day through sheer force of will.

    4. America

    • Published:Judge Dredd Magazine #1-7 (1990)
    • Creators:John Wagner, Colin MacNeil
    • Main Characters: Judge Dredd, America Jara, Bennett Benney
    • Why you should read it:A perfect standalone story that says everything necessary about Judge Dredd and the world he defends — and doesn’t pull any punches in the process.

    ‘America’ isn’t named for the country but for the femme fatale who isn’t what she seems at the heart of this story about what it means to grow up hopeful and dreaming of a brighter tomorrow in a totalitarian police state. There have been two attempts to bring Judge Dredd to the big screen, but this is the one single story that would make the perfect Dredd movie: at turns funny, heartbreaking and appropriately brutal. After all, remember: Judge Dredd isn’t the good guy in many of his stories.

    3. A Better World

    • Published:2000 AD Progs 2364-2372 (2024)
    • Creators:Rob Williams, Arthur Wyatt, Henry Flint
    • Main Characters: Judge Dredd, Judge Maitland, Chief Judge Logan, Judge Hernandez
    • Why you should read it:A potent reminder of the ability of the Judge Dredd comic strip to talk about contemporary politics without seeming forced or preachy, with a killer climax that hits hard.

    The culmination of a long-running plot thread that dared to ask if there was an alternative to the way the Judges maintained control, ‘A Better World’ was promoted as a “defund the police” storyline as one Judge pilots a program to funnel funding away from policing and into education and housing, despite significant pushback from the establishment. What happens when that program seems to be working, and how far will some Judges go to protect themselves and their power when it comes under threat from things taking a turn for the better? A complex political thriller, this is a story that is both timely and necessary.

    2. Day of Chaos

    • Published:2000 AD Progs 1743-1789 (2011-2012)
    • Creators:John Wagner, Henry Flint, Colin MacNeil, Ben Willsher, et al
    • Main Characters: Judge Dredd, Chief Judge Francisco, Orlok, PJ Maybe
    • Why you should read it:The ultimate demonstration of long game planning, and the disaster that befell Mega-City One, changing everything about the Judge Dredd mythos in its aftermath.

    One of the understated benefits of Judge Dredd as a comic strip is that it takes place in real time, and has never been rebooted — which means that you get stories like ‘Day of Chaos,’ in which an event from decades in the past can have entirely unanticipated repercussions that no-one saw coming. In this case, it turns out that when you’re responsible for genocidal acts, the survivors will make longterm plans for revenge… and then execute them perfectly. Other comic book stories pay lip service to the idea that one story can change everything; ‘Day of Chaos’ is that story for Judge Dredd.

    1. The Apocalypse War

    • Published:2000 AD Progs 236-270 (1981-1982)
    • Creators:John Wagner, Carlos Ezquerra, Mick McMahon et al
    • Main Characters: Judge Dredd, Judge Anderson, Judge Hershey, Chief Judge Griffin, War Marshal Kazan
    • Why you should read it:The ideal jumping-on point for Judge Dredd newcomers, and one of the finest science fiction war comics ever made.

    War may be hell, but it can make for an exciting read. Perhaps ground zero for the larger Judge Dredd story arc, this early mega-epic sees Dredd go to war with Russia after the former Soviet state attempts to destabilize Mega-City One by provoking widespread riots across the city. It’s played for thrills and spills throughout, but the climax is one that stands out especially against that setting and unwittingly sets up decades’ worth of future stories in the process. The perfect sci-fi war comic? Very possibly. The perfect storyline to read as a sampler for Judge Dredd? Definitely.

    Interested? Here’s where to find your closest local comic store, courtesy of Sweet, and here’s a guide to how (and where) to read comics online. If you’re looking for the best comics in recent memory, check out the Eisner Awards winners and the Harvey Awards nominees. And if you like free comics, here’s everything we know about Free Comic Book Day 2027.

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    Graeme McMillan: Popverse Editor Graeme McMillan (he/him) has been writing about comics, culture, and comics culture on the internet for close to two decades at this point, which is terrifying to admit. He completely understands if you have problems understanding his accent.

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