The Weekly 2000 AD Prog #2464: New Year, New Wagner Dredd — 2026 Starts Off Brilliantly

Taking a look inside the UK’s greatest sci-fi comic, the Galaxy’s Greatest, fast approaching 50 years of brilliance — it’s the Weekly 2000 AD.

So, we’re into 2026, time to kick the year off with the first 2000 AD of this new year, 2000 AD’s 49th year of giving us the best sci-fi anthology there is. So, what better way to start off the year than a brand-new John Wagner-written Judge Dredd? In addition, there’s the continuations of three strips that all started their runs in the Xmas Prog – Herne & Shuck, Azimuth, and The Discarded. Finally, another one-off Young Death tale that sees Kek-W and Mike Dowling dropping in on the world that would become Deadworld.

Seriously, why aren’t you reading this? I mean, it’s a new year, it’s another chance to get onboard with the one sci-fi anthology that has rarely let us down, and has been doing quite incredible things for so very long. There’s nothing better out there, and 2026 really is starting off with a bang.

It all begins under a Mike Perkins cover, an exercise in simplicity of design making a real big impact…

2000 AD Prog 2464 comes out in the UK on 7th January. If you’re in the Americas, things might be a little more difficult for you. In theory, you should be able to get four-Prog packs from your local comic shops. Head in there and ask them to order them for you. But, if you can’t do that, if they can’t get hold of them, well, there’s always the digital option. Head to the 2000 AD webshop and sign up. Now, Bruton Mansions is slowly resuming normal operations after a much-needed Christmas and New Year break. I’d love to say it was quiet and restful, but it was more peace and goodwill and hideous head colds all around here. We’re slowly getting there, but New Year’s was all about ibuprofen, liquids and, in my case, the tried and tested cold remedy of gin and tonic.

Okay then, enough tales of snot, snot, and more snot – time to head inside the latest Prog …

JUDGE DREDD: DEATH OF A JUDGE – PART 1 – BY JOHN WAGNER AND MIKE PERKINS, COLOURS BY CHRIS BLYTHE, LETTTERS BY ANNIE PARKHOUSE

Oh, this is a great start to 2026. John Wagner comes out of his semi-retirement for a Dredd, his first since ‘Machine Rule’ in 2024. Mike Perkins is here on art doing his very first interior Dredd artwork.

We have an inquiry into the events of ‘Machine Rule’, the 2024 Wagenr and Colin MacNeil tale of the Mechanismo robo-Judges achieving sentience and attempting a coup in the Justice Department. We have a major plot twist in Chief Judge Logan’s term. And then we have Dredd, invited for his always frank views on the Mechanismo units. As Logan rightly points out, Dredd’s views on the robo-Judges had been thawing somewhat, a grudging acknowledgement that they were doing the job. Or at least they were before, as Dredd so Dreddly puts it, ‘Then they fouled up big time.’

Well, at the end of ‘Machine Rule’, we had this, asking a very important question …

And in ‘Death of a Judge’, at least some of those questions will be answered.

There’s so much to absolutely love here in ‘Death of a Judge’. For starters, it’s got that tone that Wagner brings to things, always has, always will, a sense of importance in things, that sense that what you’re reading here will have implications. It gives everything you read that extra gravity, leaving us hanging off every (so well-constructed) word. Seriously, the lack of acknowledgement of Wagner as one of the greatest living writers of comics is an absolute crime.)

This six-parter opens strongly, six pages of great Dredd, the moment where Dredd’s brought up to speed on the increase in crimes since the Mechanismo units, and the consequent increase in the loss of street Judges, it’s played so well, as you’d expect. The switch to Dredd before the Council to Dredd responding to yet another Judge gunned down on the streets is just an exercise in doing it so right.

Perkins’s artwork is every bit as good on Dredd as everything you’ve seen on his Marvel and DC work. I mean, just take a look at this if you don’t believe me…

But there’s so much else besides the big moments. My favourite moment was a small one, yet one that, when you notice it, means so much. It comes as we drop back into the inquiry, with Dredd before the Council of Five once more, just after we’ve seen him lose yet another promising street Judge. He takes his hand off the tablet, and you see blood left there, blood from Dredd’s glove, blood that you suddenly realise has come from that last street job he was on, where he was the last man a dying Judge saw.

Damn, that’s so well done by both Wagner and Perkins.

One part in, so much covered already. So much more to come out in episodes to come. John Wagner’s semi-retirement is something that we, of course, wish him well with; heaven knows he’s due a rest after all these years of brilliance. Of course, semi-retirement also includes the new Rok of the Reds tale to be serialised in the Judge Dredd Megazine this month. But there’s still a real thrill of getting to read another Wagner Dredd here.

So, yes, having Wagner back writing Dredd, no matter how good (and they are) Rob Williams, Ken Niemand, and all the other modern Dredd writers are, well, that’s something special. And ‘Death of a Judge‘ promises a hell of a lot – promises that, so far, are being more than lived up to right now. One part down, five to go. Strap yourselves in, this one’s going to be very, very special indeed.

HERNE & SHUCK: POWER TRIP – PART 2 – BY DAVID BARNETT AND LEE MILMORE, COLOURS BY GARY CALDWELL, LETTERS BY ANNIE PARKHOUSE

Okay then, we had a major shift in the tale Barnett and Milmore are telling here in the last tale, with Herne no longer the grebo magician, a Levellers-loving John Constantine with a demonic dog for a bestie, looking after a very powerful young girl. Instead, he’s now the personification of Herne the Hunter (I mean, the clues were there right in the title of this one, after all). He’s the shaman, the forest spirit, the aspect of the God of the Hunt.

Except the Lady of the Woods has just turned up with a very specific mission for him. She’s stripped him of his newfound powers until he’s proved himself worthy, or, as Herne puts it:

“So, I have to persuade a bunch of Elves and Pixies and River Gods that I’m a good guy? And I get my abilities back? No problem. What’s the worst that could happen?”

Well, seems the worst that could happen is this…

Herne, pretty understandably, isn’t too impressed by all this. But his path is now fixed; he’s going to have to go visit the six gods of the isles and convince them he’s up to the job of being Herne the Hunter. Alone. No support from his little merry band at all.

Simple, eh? Like Herne says, ‘What could possibly go wrong?’ Well, as the final couple of pages show us… plenty.

Herne & Shuck has, from the off, been a great little exploration of all things Brit folk legend. Power Trip just keeps that keeping on, Barnett and Milmore giving us something wrapped in legend and myth, but also something modern and irreverent. It’s a great new addition to 2000 AD, very British, very now, very then, very good.

YOUNG DREDD: THE DEAL – BY KEK-W AND MIKE DOWLING, LETTERS BY SIMON BOWLAND

When we had the Young Death strip in the Christmas Prog, I figure it was just a one-off, Kek-W delving back into the past of Sidney De’ath, the Judge who would become Judge Death and would then lead into the inevitable fall of Deadworld, a prelude to what Kek-W and Dave Kendall have been building up to in The Fall of Deadworld that’s been running in the Progs for a fair few years now.

We know where it’s all going, we know that this alternative world will fall, know that the Dark Judges will leave this world barren and lifeless. But it’s in the how that The Fall of Deadworld really shines. And in these one-off tales, Kek-W is diving deeper, back into the time when Judge Death was young Sidney De’ath, street Judge, brutal, vicious, homicidal.

Here, the Judge serial killer meets his match, his equal, his rival, another serial killer on the loose in this Mega-City One. As the Mortician’s body count rises, young Sidney finds himself first jealous of his achievements, then filled with the understanding that he should embrace a fellow fiend.

So, we’ve had Judge Death. Now we have another of the Dark Judges. Next Prog we get another of these standalone Dark Judges tales that will lead us into the next Fall of Deadworld series by Kek-W and Kendall. It’s a clever little interlude series, one Prog, one Dark Judge, all of it building up the legend of what they’d become, how they’d combine to destroy a world.

AZIMUTH: CORNERED – PART 1 – BY DAN ABNETT AND TAZIO BETTIN, COLOURS BY MATT SOFFE, LETTERS BY ROB STEEN

First of all, a wish that Azimuth‘s usual letterer, Jim Campbell, gets better real soon. Or at least gets the rehab he needs to bring him back into the fold. Jim, you’re in our thoughts.

Now, back to Azimuth. In the Christmas Prog, we had the strange moment where Andi, who may or may not be this world’s version of Psi-Judge Anderson, it’s really not all that clear (part of the joy of Azimuth is the uncertainty in all things), lost her psi-powers in her attempt to ptoect her comrades, Ramone Dexter and Suzi Nine-Millimetre from death at the hands of Annica, the God of Azimuth. Or perhaps it’s the AI running Downlode behind it all, with Azimuth being the one last place the rogue AI that’s overwhelmed Downlode couldn’t control – up until now.

Because right now, we have the trio in someplace different, someplace, as the mysterious voiceover tells us, ‘is not Azimuth.’ And from this, we get five pages of rather brilliantly done creeping dread filling everything here, the trio included. Because they’re now in the labyrinth, and you know those usually come with something nasty.

It’s a really well-put-together exercise in fear, creeping fear, as we see whatever this labyrinth does get under everyone’s skin, feel the creep of that fear infect them all. And even as we know what’s lurking, what’s following them.

But as good as Abnett’s scripting and plotting is in setting the scene and giving us all the chills, it’s Bettin who carries it all off, with all the detailing of creating a reality-shifting labyrinth there in the background, so much work but so well done. Add to that the character work, letting us see the effect this strangeness is having, that really adds so much to the whole Azimuth experience. A great strip – absolutely weird, packed with so many unanswered questions, but one that just keeps pulling you in.

THE DISCARDED – PART 2 – BY PETER MILLIGAN AND KIERAN MCKEOWN, COLOURS BY JIM BOSWELL, LETTERS BY SIMON BOWLAND

Part 1 showed us Earth in the future, where Britain gets rid of all its garbage problems to an orbiting trash island known as Junkfall, one that also serves as a convenient way to get rid of all the country’s undesirables as well. Not just the criminals, but the dissidents, the ones who attempted to speak out against the oppressive, dictatorial government running the country now.

We were introduced to the latest batch of unwanteds, the discarded, dumped unceremoniously onto Junkfall last time, along with ‘the chip,’ something that was never meant to be on here, another (accidentally) discarded thing, that’s now made its home on Junkfall, and in the head of Aaxon Banksy, political dissident, dumped here by his own cop daughter…

Except now, in part 2, we go from that wider look at those who landed on Junkfall to just following Banksy and his ‘chip.’ It’s two months later now, and Banksy/chip have been busy, the ever more powerful chip feeding into Banksy’s revolutionary zeal and building a following amongst all those discarded here, creating a politically engaged revolutionary army, one that’s ready to make its move.

Now, against all this, we have Banksy’s daughter, the cop who sent him to Junkfall, headed into the fray with a mission to track down the rogue ‘chip’ and destroy it.

Everything’s lined up nicely, a very neat little old fashioned thing, the closed room thing set on an orbiting junkheap, piling on both the buzzy AI antagonist thing and plenty of political allegory of the Brit government dumping it’s discarded along the way.

Right now, The Discarded is coming off as some updated version of Harry 20 on the High Rock for me. That was an early ’80s thing from Gerry Finley-Day and a very early in his career Alan Davis, all about a man framed and sent to a brutal orbiting prison. And that’s a surprise, because The Discarded, this far at least, is a strangely linear thing, a very simple A into B, followed by C sort of tale. Not necessarily a criticism, just an observation that it’s unusual for a Miligan-written strip. Perhaps we’ll see things get more unusual in later episodes, perhaps not. As for now, let’s just enjoy it for the simple (yet well done) thing it is.