Mega-City Two

Mega-City Two is a huge fictional city in the Judge Dredd comic book series. It was first described^[1] as covering "five thousand square miles of the Californian West Coast" and a later map^[2] showed Mega-City Two stretching up the entire West Coast, covering California, Oregon, and Washington. Like its sister city of Mega-City One, it's a dictatorship run by the Judges.

The city formed out of a growing urban sprawl and became partially self-governing under the Autonomy Act of 2052, with its own Chief Judge.^[3] It later became America's second city (nicknamed "the Second Meg") after the Atomic Wars of 2070, which killed Chief Judge Gabe Suarez, and closely allied itself with Mega-City One and Texas City. 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 organisers StigCo had been bribing the Judges, as their plans hadn't quite matched the law; heads rolled in Justice Department when the news broke)^[4] 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 would made "an emerald executive decision" that the Hondo story did not count, because nobody had paid any attention to it since; in 1741 he had say he would "rather forget the idea was ever mooted", viewing it a mistake.

In 2135, Mega-City One deported its Sov-immigrant citizens to the Mega-City Two ruins, as an alternative to sending them to East-Meg Two or keeping them in the city.^[5] An area was reclaimed and named "Sovsec", policed by an understaffed Judge garrison.^[6] (In the former story, artist Andrew Currie mistakenly drew it as East-Meg Two with Sov-controlled city;^[7] this was explained away later as the Sov Judges being there to help transfer the citizens.) The reclaimed area was under constant mutant attack, supplies were rationed, and construction of housing was slow (homes were given by lottery), with the Judges undermanned; a visiting Galen DeMarco viewed it as "a stop-gap solution that's only going to blow up in everyone's faces".^[8]

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