story teamed Judge Dredd with Johnny Alpha through the medium of time travel. John Smith and artist Paul Marshall created Firekind, a slow-paced story about dragons and alien societies, which was accidentally published with its episodes in the wrong order. The Strontium Dog world was eventually spun out to encompass a wider field, gaining the plural name Strontium Dogs – characters such as female vampire Durham Red, the albino Feral Jackson, and former Johnny Alpha sidekick The Gronk – the latter, normally a timid creature with weak "heartses", became a gung-ho action character upon learning of Alpha's death. However, in the 12-parter The Darkest Star, it transpires that the one to actually kill him was the Gronk himself; changed into a form designed by a cadre of Lyran necromancers to bring him endless agony, Alpha asked his friend to end his torment. The "Summer Offensive" was an eight-week experiment in 1993, when new editor Alan McKenzie gave free rein to writers Grant Morrison, Mark Millar and John Smith, to a mixed reception. Morrison wrote a Dredd story, "Inferno", and a drug-influenced comedy adventure, Really & Truly. Smith contributed Slaughterbowl, in which convicted criminals on dinosaurs are pitted against each other in a deadly sport, with the survivor being paroled for a year and granted wealth – but being forced to enter the Slaughterbowl again the next year. Millar wrote Maniac 5, an action-packed series about a remote controlled war-robot. During this run was a satire of British tabloid attitudes titled Big Dave, written by Morrison and Millar and drawn by Steve Parkhouse. John Tomlinson became editor in 1994, and a second crossover between 2000 AD and the Megazine, "Wilderlands", began. Written by Wagner and drawn by Ezquerra, Mick Austin and Trevor Hairsine, it followed on from "Mechanismo", a series of stories in the Megazine in which Justice Department, opposed by Dredd, tried to introduce robot judges. With Wagner writing, Judge Dredd was again the flagship strip. Former Megazine editor David Bishop became editor of the weekly in 1996 but sales continued to decline. Unsuccessful series were dropped, and a number of new series were tried out, some more successful than others. Writer Dan Abnett introduced Sinister Dexter in 1996, a strip about two hitmen influenced by the film Pulp Fiction, which became a regular feature. In 1997, writer Robbie Morrison and artist Simon Fraser, who had worked with Bishop on