When things get strange for Judge Dredd (and a dole bludger)

In the serious world of 2000ad, there was always a fascination with the absurd. There was always a degree of silliness in Judge Dredd in between the gunfire, but sometimes it could be taken to the kind of literal degrees seen in the Airplane movies, with weird alien and future worlds where the laws of physics were malleable. Where anything could happen

There was one when Dredd was in his prime, with Brian Bolland getting his freak on in Judge Child Quest side-mission on a world full of floating bicycles, escalators to nowhere and impossible architecture, hunting down a man who is literally  falling to pieces

The straight face of Bolland's art means it never really gets too weird and messy, but does cast the strangeness in a bright light.

Later on, 2000ad got right on with Sooner or Later, a series that saw a dole bludger named Mickey kicked into a future world where nothing makes sense, but political allegory is unavoidable.

It was, for most of its short run, relegated to a single page on the back, but you got Peter Milligan writing t its most out there, and some full colour Brendan McCarthy, so it was definitely too weird and messy (although, to be honest, Swifty's Return, the second series with Jamie Hewlett art, was more fun.)

As a kid, these doses of surreal were so enticing, and when combined with the discovery of psychedelic music, created a hunger for these kinds of fantasy worlds, where nothing made sense in the most beautiful ways. I've chased after these impossible places ever since, through a potent use of my own fiction and copious drugs, and never come as close to these worlds as I did in old 2000ads on decaying newsprint.