Dredd is looking over a video from a multiple homicide. The killer is almost completely featureless in a bodysuit and a helmet with a red visor. He’s a former lawman who has just returned from Titan all cold and deadly in a new story by writer Ken Niemand and artist Tom Foster for 2000 A.D. #2341. The best feature in the weekly anthology continues to be writer Dan Abnett and artist Tazio Bettin. The appealingly deadly and bravely heroic cadavatar Suzi Nine Milimetre faces the Wicked Glitch of the West in another deeply enjoyable chapter of the cyberpunk action drama. 

Suzi has been sliding and slicing her way around some pretty devastating authorities that could easily delete her. She narrowly made it out of her run-in with Marie Antoinaut, the Mistress of Reversailles. Had to give away the only precious data she had to get out of THAT mess. Now, she’s at odds with a greater power. Suzi Nine knows something about the unrest that grows in the domains. Unrest grows in the Snow Zones and the Hypothoseas. Even the Glitch is restless. Could that work to her advantage? Also in the issue are further exploits of the Void Runners, the second chapter of “Portals and Black Goo,” and the beginning of another book of Hershey. 

Niemand has fun introducing a new threat for Dredd. Dredd’s analysis of surveillance camera footage could have been a bit more dazzling with complex deductions and weird details, but Niemand is wise to keep it concise and contained on the way into a new series. Abnett is constructing a poetically dense world for Suzi Nine that weaves together a LOT of different elements from literature and pop fiction. It may have the overall structure of a hardboiled detective story, but it definitely feels like Abnett is putting together something altogether more postmodern than simple pop fiction with Azimuth.

Foster’s art on the Dredd story flits back and forth from surveillance camera footage to flashback images of the actual mass murder. This would normally be a bit confusing, but Foster brings it across with striking clarity. Bettin is doing some very cool things with the visuals on Azimuth. Suzi Nine continues to look incredibly sharp and magnetic while the world around her feels like a beautifully immersive collision of different elements. The tension of the moment bleeds over into the momentum of the impending conflict on the horizon for next week. 

The new Dredd serial and the ongoing Azimuth serve as really solid anchors for the next few issues of the anthology. The rest of the features feel a bit hit-or-miss. The Void Runners serial is gorgeous, but it feels like the type of thing that will work better later on in collected format. The brevity of an ongoing feature in 2000 A.D. works better for dense little stories like Azimuth that cram a whole lot of detail into just a few tight pages. Azimuth and the new Dredd are well worth the expense of this week’s issue.  

Grade: A