2000 AD in Stages

Harlem Heroes

Basketball meets Rollerball (minus motorbikes, plus jetpacks). Despite having no other obvious narrative link, this story does take place in the Dreddverse, as the team captain (John 'Giant' Clay) is the father of Judge Giant (senior): a compatriot of Dredds who was murdered by Orlok during the Block Mania crisis. Before his murder, he had fathered a son, who is the Judge Giant (junior) currently featuring in many Dredd stories. The sequel (Inferno) simply adds back in the motorbikes, realizing its earlier mistake.

The 1990's soft reboot (set slightly in the future from the original but with no shared characters) throws up a gang of easily identifiable (but attractive) misfits (leader, vixen, driver, tough & hacker) that are forced into service as mercenaries by a shadowy government organization, and then betrayed. Also, they have jetpacks (which very rarely get used in a sport setting). Nobody ever changes their clothes, so if this was presented in smell-o-vision, you wouldn't like it.

The stories starting in 2022 feel like a hard reboot designed to appeal to a younger audience (just like Scrappy Doo), but say they're set in a Dredd-contemporary Mega-City One.

Harlem Heroes
(1977-1978)
The Harlem Heroes
(1990-1995)
Harlem Heroes [reboot]
(2022-2023)

Art by Dave Gibbons, then Kevin Walker

Story Title Parts Pages
w indicates a
wraparound cover
Covers
Year(s) Issues Writer Artist Colourist Letterer
[Mayhem League] 1 6 0 2022 2KRC3 Ramzee Korinna Mei Veropoulou <-- Petitecreme
[Ultra League] 1 6 0 2022 2KRC4 Ramzee Korinna Mei Veropoulou <-- Petitecreme
The Crucible 1 6 0 2023 FCBD12 Ramzee Korinna Mei Veropoulou <-- James Taylor
vs. The Venetian Vipers 1
+ 1 credit pages10
0 2023 MMM1 Ramzee Korinna Mei Veropoulou <-- Simon Bowland
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