Tomorrow marks another writer anniversary for me, the first of a handful cropping up throughout 2025; this time it’s the twenty-year mark for Blood Relative, my original tie-in novel featuring the Genetic Infantryman Rogue Trooper, from the sci-fi war comic strip popularized in 2000AD.
This wasn’t my first tale from the Galaxy’s Greatest Comic – in the two years before Blood Relative‘s release, I’d written audio dramas and novels based on Rogue’s more famous 2000AD stable-mate Judge Dredd, but as cool as that was, getting to write Rogue was something I really coveted.
2000AD has always done a strong trade in stories of future conflict, marrying its sci-fi bona-fides with the British tradition of war comics, and Rogue Trooper is an iconic example of that (along with others like The VC’s, Bad Company and The ABC Warriors).
Created in 1981 by Gerry Finley-Day and Dave Gibbons, the Genetic Infantryman (G.I.) first appeared in 2000AD’s Prog #228 issue, setting up the battlefield legend of the “Rogue Trooper” on the poisoned, war-torn planet of Nu-Earth.
An endless battle rages between the forces of the Norts and the Southers, and the latter army’s generals try to tip the balance of power by introducing gene-engineered soldiers capable of enduring Nu-Earth’s toxic environment – but a traitor in the Souther ranks ensures the G.I.’s perish in a brutal ambush that only one – the titular Rogue – survives. With the digital “ghosts” of three of his dead comrades kept alive in his helmet, backpack and rifle, Rogue goes AWOL on a mission of revenge to hunt down the Traitor General, fighting through twisted, unreal and futuristic warzones as he goes.
Sole surviving member of his unit, the super-soldier known as the Rogue Trooper is cut off from Souther lines and hunted remorselessly by the enemy Nort forces – and by his own side, who consider him a deserter.
Rogue is hot on the trail of a man with no name, a figure they call the Traitor General – a Souther officer who sold out Rogue and his fellow G.I.s in a horrific ambush known as the Quartz Zone Massacre.
Three of Rogue’s buddies travel with him on this endless quest for revenge, dead soldiers whose personalities exist on bio-chips stored in his high-tech weaponry; like Rogue, Gunnar, Bagman and Helm long for vengeance and the day they can finally go home to be remade as whole men once more.
When his latest lead on the Traitor General takes him back to the stark glass wilderness of the Quartz Zone and the site of the massacre, Rogue gets much more than he bargained for at the hands of a unit of brutal bio-warriors and the brilliantly ruthless scientist who created them.
Set between the comic storylines “Assassination Run” and “The Marauders”, and after the multi-part “Dix-I Front”, Blood Relative was the second Rogue Trooper novel published by Black Flame in 2005, following Crucible by Gordon Rennie (Missionary Man, Caballistics, The 86ers). Black Flame were a splinter imprint of Games Workshop’s Black Library, publishing other 2000AD tie-ins and adaptations based on New Line Cinema properties in the early ‘00s. I was especially pleased to get a great cover from artist Dylan Teague (Judge Dredd, Batman, Jonah Hex), who autographed a print of it for me that has pride of place in my ‘ego wall’ collection.
Afterward, I pitched a couple of other ideas for future Rogue Trooper novels – ‘Havoc Hill’, a bunker-under-siege story partly based on the Battle of Khe Sahn during the Vietnam War, and ‘Rules of Engagement’, an “arena” tale where a mad artificial intelligence pits Rogue and the Traitor General against each other in a one-on-one duel – but the books didn’t find their footing… An issue that all the 2000AD tie-ins had from day one.
After Blood Relative was released in paperback, Black Flame held off publishing any more novels about Rogue until 2006, when Rebecca Levine (The Hollow Gods series) novelised the plot of the PlayStation 2/Xbox Rogue Trooper videogame as The Quartz Massacre; it would be the last outing for the G.I. in full-length prose, as Black Flame would shut down two years later and take its 2000AD tie-in line with it. The books went out of print (and these days an original paperback of Blood Relative will set you back £45 on Amazon!) but 2000AD’s publisher Rebellion revived them shortly afterward as digital editions, so you can get an eBook of Blood Relative right now over at this link.
Meanwhile, Rogue’s comicbook adventures continue, with current storylines in the ongoing weekly 2000AD series, and an animated movie version of his story directed by Duncan Jones (Moon, Mute, Warcraft) is nearing completion.
To read more about Blood Relative, including my author notes on continuity and ‘easter egg’ references, click here, or download a sample chapter of the novel at this link…and Synth Out!
