drew in Battle, as well as Cursed Earth Koburn, a Dredd-universe reworking of the Major Eazy character, who first appeared in 2003. Gerry Finley-Day contributed The V.C.s, a future war story inspired by the Vietnam War, drawn by McMahon, Cam Kennedy, Garry Leach and John Richardson. A feature of the early years of 2000 AD was the opportunities it gave to young British comic artists: by the time the title celebrated its 100th issue Brian Bolland, Dave Gibbons, Ian Gibson, Mike McMahon and Kevin O'Neil were all established as regulars. 1980s In 1980 Judge Dredd gained a new enemy. Writer John Wagner realised that Dredd's habit of shooting just about everybody he came up against meant that it was difficult to create a recurring villain. The solution was Judge Death, an undead judge from another dimension where, since all crime was committed by the living, life itself was outlawed. The law had been thoroughly enforced on his own world, and now he had come to Mega-City One to continue his work. Judge Death first appeared in an atmospheric three-parter drawn by Brian Bolland which also introduced Judge Anderson and Psi Division, a squad of judges with psychic powers. Dredd soon began another epic journey in "The Judge Child". A dying Psi Division Judge had predicted disaster for Mega-City One unless it was ruled by a boy with a birthmark shaped like an eagle, so Dredd set off into the Cursed Earth, to Texas City, and into deep space in search of the boy, Owen Krysler, and his kidnappers, the Angel Gang. All of them were killed during the course of the story, however the Mean Machine, was later resurrected by Krysler during "Destiny's Angels". "The Judge Child" was drawn by Bolland, Ron Smith and Mike McMahon in rotation, and the later episodes marked the beginning of Wagner's long-running writing partnership with Alan Grant. The pair would go on to write Strontium Dog, Robo-Hunter and many other stories for 2000 AD, as well as for Roy of the Rovers, Battle and the relaunched Eagle in the United Kingdom, and a number of comics in America. With prog 178 all current stories, with the exception of Judge Dredd, were wound up, and a new set of stories was launched simultaneously, consisting of Mean Arena, set around a violent high-tech street football game, Meltdown Man, whose hero was transported to a genetically engineered