2000 AD is Britain's cult sci-fi comic, and has been at the cutting edge of contemporary pop culture since 1977. It's a multi-award winning cocktail of explosive sci-fi and fantasy, infused with a mean streak of irony and wry black humour. Imaginative, hard-hitting stories and eye-popping art have made 2000 AD essential reading for its legion of fiercely loyal fans for 25 years now.

2000 AD has been a proving ground for the finest young writers and artists of the generation, and many of the biggest names in comics today honed their skills within its pages. It has become synonymous with the very finest in comics art, and has won the Best British Comic award at the UK Comic Art Awards, National Comics Awards and Eagle Awards too many times to list.

Over a quarter of a century, 2000 AD has created literally hundreds of memorable comic book characters. Their lasting appeal has been proven not only in the ultra-competitive world of comics publishing, but also by numerous merchandise deals including movies, computer games, radio plays, action figures and merchandising.

When 2000 AD first appeared in 1977, the market for British comics had been in steady decline since the mid 1960’s. Beset by competition from sharper, more glamorous American imported titles, British publishers failed to recognise that the increased demands being made on the pocket money of its traditionally youthful readership was likely to go to products capable of matching the visceral appeal of film and television. Instead, they continued to churn out formularised genre stories, in over-familiar formats reflecting cheap production values.

Both the publishers D.C. Thompson and IPC/Fleetway, who dominated the British market, did so with a raft of titles created by a factory production-line style editorial system which had changed little since the war. 2000 AD (IPC/Fleetway,1977), although in most respects a typical product of that system, was crucially different in one significant way: in spirit, it was clearly of its time – not behind it.

Consciously designed to exploit an adolescent market weaned on the fad for Science Fiction films (the vogue for which had been steadily growing during that decade) its stories and characters recycled and re-mixed elements discernible in existing S.F. sources.

As such, it can now be seen somewhat as the natural successor to the The Eagle from the 1950’s and TV21 from the 1960’s – both of which had fed the appetite for S.F. action yarns in their respective generations. But whereas these predecessors had an essentially benign, utopian take on technological fantasies of the future - catching the optimistic mood of the Britain of their period - 2000 AD was an animal of an entirely different nature.