2000 A.D. #2338 // Review
Suzi Nine has been given a vial of flawless data from the Cray Cray Twins. It’s to be used as a bargaining chip. They don’t give her much else to work with. This job will be the deaths of her, but it’s all another day for Suzi in 2000 A.D. #2338. The long-running weekly British sci-fi anthology returns with the second deliciously poetic part of writer Dan Abnett’s “Azimuth” series featuring Suzi Nine. Artist Tazio Bettin renders the strangely idiosyncratic sci-fi city to the page in an issue also featuring a beautifully brutal conclusion to writer Alec Worley’s Durham Red series drawn by Ben Willsher and more. Judge Dredd and Rogue Trooper can be found opening and closing the issue.
Suzi Nine Milimetre has been tracked down by a pack of modded rebooters. They want what she’s got, but it’s not hers to give...not to them at least. She’s going to defend herself. Then she’s going off on her journey. It’s a journey that will find her in an alley behind a burlesque. It’s a shortcut. A snow zone. The mystery deepens for Suzi Nine. Elsewhere, Durham Red is dealing with someone who is about to die. There’s information that she wants from him. She’s going to get it, but is she going to keep her humanity in the process?
Azimuth continues to be the freshest, most interesting story in the entire anthology for a second week in a row. Abnett’s prose is a trippy collage of different references and weird techno-puns. As little is known about Suzi, she grabs the reader's attention and stalks with it from panel to panel through a really fun visual mishmash of different imagery. Durham Red’s little encounter is decidedly less elegant, but the gore and brutality on the page carry their own kind of appeal in a wrap-up by Worley that succinctly expresses a kind of aggression that so many bigger names have failed to bring to the comics page over the years.
Bettin’s mishmash of different cultural elements collide beautifully on the page in a big multi-cultural city. The snow zone is a cleverly-rendered look at the semi-existent. The Holobscene Parolors and deca-dance halls are fun visually. Suzi herself comes across gorgeously in the center of it all as a powerfully swift force in an action sequence. She spends much of her time walking around in a strangely familiar fantasy dreamscape of a future city. Durham Red isn’t given such gorgeousness to walk around in. Willsher splashes the page with blood and tangles with Durham Red’s aggression in the midst of the final showdown in Worley’s story.
Suzi Nine is fun in a second round in 2000 A.D. Writer Dan Abnett has like...three different things going on with three different indie publishers that are all DRASTICALLY different. Azimuth is strikingly different from Abnett’s Vampirella for Dynamite, which is completely different from the Wild’s End he’s doing for BOOM! Studios. As for 2000 A.D.--this week, it’s another mix of action and weirdness that leans a little too heavily into familiar territory with a couple of notable exceptions. “Azimuth” alone is well worth picking up this week’s issue.
