"Trifecta" is a Judge Dredd story arc published in British comic 2000 AD in late 2012, following on from the earlier strip Day of Chaos. The story was an unannounced crossover between Judge Dredd and its spinoff strips The Simping Detective and Low Life.

Judge Dredd started the arc with a prologue in "prog" (or issue) 1803, "Bullet to King Four", while the new Simping Detective strip started in prog 1804, and Low Life in prog 1805, with seemingly unrelated stories. In prog 1806 a new Judge Dredd story, "The Cold Deck", began.2000 AD Online: "Do You Know What A Cold Deck Is? The title refers to a cold deck in card games, where a deck of cards is swapped with a stacked deck during play.

All three strips were revealed to be part of the same story in prog 1807, when a cliffhanger at the end of that week's episode of "The Cold Deck" became the opening of The Simping Detective, which then carried on into Low Life. One of the writers, Simon Spurrier, has said that the story came about because the writers "Got Drunk And Thought It Would Be Funny. The[n] we sobered up and realised how much hard work it'd be, and the funniness went away. So we got drunk again."2000 AD Forums: Prog 1807 Al Ewing described the process as "like doing a jigsaw where all three of us have slightly different sets, and we’re trying to make a coherent picture with them. The fact that we made something that’s as coherent as it is, is testament to Si and Rob’s skill as writers and my extreme flukiness".SFX: Judge Dredd Writer Al Ewing on 2000AD’s Surprising Crossover Because "Trifecta" was planned before John Wagner's story "Day of Chaos" was published (only a few weeks before "Trifecta" was due to begin its run), at first the writers were caught out by the changes Wagner's story introduced to Judge Dredd'''s continuity. However they soon realised that their story actually benefited. Al Ewing later said "It turned out that that was the best thing that could have happened.""Best Laid Plans" (feature by Michael Molcher), in Judge Dredd Megazine #333 (March 2013)

All three series ended on cliffhangers in prog 1811, and concluded in a story called "Trifecta", which merged all three series into a single 28-page story occupying the whole of prog 1812.

The names of the villains of the piece, Judge Bachmann, the head of the Church of Simpology, Turner, and the company Overdrive Inc appear to be a joke based on the name of the rock group Bachman-Turner Overdrive.

Background

In previous strips by Gordon Rennie, Dredd had fought a Sov Block strategist named Anatoli Kazan – clone of War Marshal Kazan – and his niece Vienna Dredd had been a target in a Kazan plot. However, Kazan had then defected to Mega-City One and, much to Dredd’s discomfort, given a job as a strategic advisor because of his knowledge of Sov plans.2000 AD #1466

Spurrier had created a Black Ops Division in his Dredd strips: a morally dubious outfit who were raised to worship the city as the “God-City” and carry out their work unthinkingly. Dredd had run afoul of their operative Domino Blank-One.2000 AD prog 1482 and Judge Dredd Megazine #245 Al Ewing would bring back Black Ops for a two-part story, The Family Man,Judge Dredd Megazine #312-3 where corrupt Black Ops figure Judge Bachmann assassinated civilian dissidents and a liberal judge in Township Three; Dredd was unable to prove her involvement. Over in Spurrier’s The Simping Detective, undercover (or "Wally Squad") judge Jack Point had encountered a criminal operative called Miss Anne Thrope, part of a group of former judges run by an unknown figure. Point also had to deal with his Sector Chief, a corrupt judge named Daveez, and had an ally in Galen DeMarco, an ex-judge turned private investigator.

The previous year, Low Life had concluded a story arc where Dirty Frank, a borderline insane Wally Squad judge, had been revealed to require the tether of the law to remain ‘sane’ and one of the only honest judges in the “Low Life” Squad. Frank had gone on a suicide mission to Hondo City to bring down a yakuza clan and arrest a corrupt former colleague, in order to remain on the force.2000 AD progs 1750 to 1761: "Low Life: The Deal" (Rob Williams, the Low Life writer, had also written a story named Breathing Space in 2005, involving the collapse of oxygen companies on Luna-1.) An earlier Low Life tale had shown that Frank had once been a uniformed judge, but he went insane after a mission went badly wrong, leaving him stranded for days in a frozen wasteland.

In July 2012 the story Day of Chaos had ended, in which survivors of East-Meg One, destroyed by Dredd in the Apocalypse War, had released a weaponised virus in Mega-City One. Using a horde of sleeper agents within Justice Department (one close to Chief Judge Francisco himself) and allied terrorist groups, they undermined any judicial efforts to stop the infection. By the end of “Chaos Day”, 350 million citizens were dead (out of 400 million living at the beginning of the storyline), Francisco had resigned, and Judge Hershey had become chief judge (for the second time) and appointed an interim Council of Five.

In Hershey’s first tenure as chief judge, Dredd had often used his position and their old relationship to pressure her into doing what he wanted. He had also used the threat of resigning to blackmail her into ending the mutant apartheid laws, which had led to the end of her first administration after the other judges voted her out of office. Upon being pressured by him in a similar manner during her second term in office, she snapped at him (in prog #1803), saying, "If you want to be Chief Judge, the chair is yours... But if you don't want the responsibility – if you don't even want the burdens of Council membership – if you'd rather just barge into my office at regular intervals to blackmail me with a badge you'll never hand in, over issues whose complexity you refuse to engage with – then the door is that way."

Plot

Chief Judge Hershey has proposed a massive reorganisation of Justice Department – part of it will merge Wally Squad, Special Judicial Squad, Black Ops, and PSU into a larger Undercover Operations Division, which will be run by the corrupt Judge Bachmann. Dredd is unable to convince Hershey that this is a dangerous idea because he has challenged her authority too often in the past, and she cuts him down in front of the rest of the interim Council. His old ally Judge Buell, head of SJS, is also on the way out, after he failed to undercover the Sov sleepers. One particular critic of Buell is acting-Wally Squad head Folger, put in charge after Judge Hollister had her cover blown and was put into a coma.

Dredd goes on to meet with Anatoli Kazan, to see if the strategist should be executed – Dredd believes that he knew more about the Chaos Day plot than he let on and deliberately let it happen – but Kazan turns out to know about Bachmann and taunts Dredd with the idea that she and Hershey are on the same side. After Dredd storms out, he is contacted by an unknown figure (shown to the reader dunking a biscuit into his tea) who he has met before and who he believes he is needed to deal with the current crisis.2000 AD prog 1803: "Bullet to King Four." A flashback in prog 1809 reveals him to be Judge Smiley: the man who sent Dirty Frank on his fateful mission years ago and who arranged for Frank to join Wally Squad, where he could "use someone."

After this, Frank and Wally Squad judge Jack Point separately wake up with headaches, loss of memory, and recurring flashbacks of a tea-drinking male judge. Both have surveillance devices implanted on them, Point in a tooth and Frank on his head, disguised as toothache and a bump and therefore overlooked by them. Point is in his office at the Sector 13 slum Angeltown, believing he is just hung over and receiving orders to meet an informant. Frank wakes up to find he is on the moon city of Luna-1 and is the new board member at Overdrive Inc, and has no idea what is going on or what he is meant to be doing. All he can figure out is that the psychotic CEO Enormo Overdrive, who spliced his DNA with that of a great white shark, is bringing illegal workers en masse to the moon.

Point's informant turns out to be a fatty who recognises him – it is later revealed to be Folger with “deep tissue body alteration” – and rants about how she is meant to be met by a “badgepriest”. When she attacks him, he calls in his pet Raptaur, Larf, to save him, but the Raptaur’s neurotoxins return Folger to sanity: she has been brainwashed by Bachmann. As she dies she hands Point a jester doll.2000 AD prog 1804: "Jokers to the Right." Realising she was a judge, Point panics and disposes of her body. Her sub-dermal transponder sends out an alert and her body is discovered, with Buell investigating the matter.

Sector Chief Daveez soon contacts Point, demanding he return the doll and threatening to murder a captive Galen DeMarco; to emphasise his point, he kills Galen’s partner Travis. While Point is able to rescue Demarco and murder Daveez, he soon finds himself targeted by Black Ops camoteams. He escapes to find his Personnel Record has been altered and lists him as rogue (he is ecstatic to learn he does not have to be a judge anymore), and he turns to Miss Anne Thrope for aid. Her unseen boss, whose voice Point recognises, refuses to grant any, but Anne points him to someone who will buy the doll. Unknown to Point, she has swapped it for a replica – the "cold deck" of the Judge Dredd story.

An increasingly weary Dredd, who sees no end in sight to the mess the city is in, is contacted by Buell, who has discovered that Folger accessed an unknown "Gold Clearance" file, secret information that removes itself from judicial systems after being accessed (as a security measure). Buell wants Dredd to find it before he has to inform Bachmann, as he knows she’ll use this as an excuse for a power grab – he doesn’t know that Bachmann is already aware and is monitoring them with a psi-judge.2000 AD prog 1806: "The Cold Deck." Dredd drafts PSU’s Roffman, who realises Folger’s killer used the robot body disposal trucks to transport her corpse; as Point spoke while on a truck, Roffman can use the audio memory of every robot in the sector to find where he is now. Meanwhile, on the moon, Dirty Frank contacts Mega-City One and learns that they think he is still in the Low Life. Another board member turns out to be a fellow Wally Squad judge but Overdrive is already aware and kills him, in order to see if Frank is willing to "accept murder as a business practice." He boasts to Frank that his “business partner” is a high-ranking judge and informs him of Wally Squad infiltrators, but he too doesn't know of Frank's identity. Frank’s over-the-top praise of “The Project” convinces Overdrive that Frank is willing to accept murder as a business practice. He then reveals his project: a second, secret lunar megacity, hidden in a crater and designed for profit.