Mega-City Two

Mega-City Two
Mega-City Two
In story information
Type City-state

Mega-City Two is a huge fictional city covering five thousand square miles of the Californian West Coast in the Judge Dredd comic book series.

The city became America's second city after the Atomic Wars of 2070. Although allied with Mega-City One and Texas City, it was independently governed by its own Justice Department. Although Mega-City Two owed its very survival to a mission of mercy carried out by the Judges of Mega-City One when it was afflicted with the deadly Virus Strain 2T(FRU)T in 2100, Mega-City Two refused to intervene in the Apocalypse War between its sister city and East-Meg One. This was because they could not attack East Meg One when it was protected by its force field, and they would be destroyed by a counter strike.

The late 80s and early 90s used Mega-City Two in two stories, Chopper: Song of the Surfer (progs 654-665) and Judge Dredd: Babes in Arms (progs 776-9). The city was shown to be a brighter, more colourful place than Mega-City One, with an unpolluted ocean along its coastline and a less oppressive atmosphere. Under the Death Game Amendment of 2104, violent televised "death games" were legal and hugely popular; Supersurf 11 was brought to the city and deliberately made so violent by the organiser that most of the contestants were slaughtered. The citizens resembled contemporary parodies of California.

In 2114 Mega-City Two was completely overrun by zombies unleashed by the evil Necromagus Sabbat. With the city beyond hope of rescue, the place was nuked out of existence on the orders of a council of Judges from all over the world at the suggestion of Judge Dredd.

A second incarnation of Mega City Two was later built by the Hondo City Judges, although little to nothing has been shown of life there besides a Supersurf contest. The editors later explained that this related to a planned storyline which was then discontinued, and no mention of the reconstructed city has been made for many years since. The story "California Babylon" in progs 1731-4 instead showed the city to be in ruins, dominated by mutant gangs that had moved in. When a reader question the continuity clash in 1738, the editor (as Tharg the Mighty) said he'd made "an emerald executive decision" that the Hondo story didn't count, because nobody had paid any attention to it since; in 1741 he'd say he'd "rather forget the idea was ever mooted", viewing it a mistake.

The city made its first appearance in Prog 42 of the comic book 2000 AD and was destroyed in Judge Dredd Megazine Volume 2: issue 7.