1350: Resolving That Cliffhanger!

It’s a relaunch prog again and three double sized stories start off in this prog. The Dredd story and strontium dog will be covered in future installments but today we are looking at the return of Slaine!

Previously on Slaine the evil demon moloch was given clemency by the council and then proceeds to backstab them by raping and killing Slaines wife Niamph. Slaine is understandably pissed and decides to dump the comedy sidekick ukko and go after the evil bastard on his own. They fight and the two end up spiraling off a cliff to a certain fiery doom…

So how does Slaine get out of this cliffhanger….he sticks his axe into the cliff the kicks the hell out of Moloch and feeds him to an elder god…

But not before getting plot from the demon and then he heads off into his new quest to stop a second invasion of the fomorians.

Proper Pat Mills mentalness in this story and while the out of the cliffhanger is a bit…lame the story itself is great and I look forward to experiencing this story again.

1326: VENGEANCE SHALL BE HIS!!!

Last issue the very silly sinister dexter story ended leaving space for the game changing double length finale of Slaine.

Last issue the demon moloch was granted his freedom in exchange for never bothering the celts again. He being an evil duplicitous bastard of course backstabbed them and returned to murder and rape slaines wife Niamh.

Now slaine abandons his dwarf ukko who has been the comedic relief to this point and goes after Moloch…and as the cover states VENGEANCE SHALL BE HIS!

He catches up to Moloch and the demon wants to run from the battle but slaine is having none of it he is almost suicidal in his determination in killing the bastard and they both plummet off a cliff apparently about to end up in fires below…

Yeah not a fan of Slaine but man I loved this story first time around and doubly enjoy it more rereading it for this slog.

1323: Moloch

Underneath a very creepy cover featuring chief asshole Molochs face the war against the fomorans heats in this progs episode of Slaine. Slaine faces off against balor a foe he has been in some way been fighting against since slaine the king and kills him. Yes actually kills one of his oldest foes and if that wasn’t shocking enough…ah but we will wait a few entries time before revealing that…

Meanwhile in today episode of doctor wh…err I mean caballistics inc. Brigadier Lethbridge stewart sends the slowly forming team into the London underground system to fight ye…demons.

Meanwhile Ravne begins to look even shiftier (no mean feat as we first saw him in a bath of blood) and Jenny is looking more useless by the page.

Yeah all the references in this series are damn blatant but my god do I love it for that. Cabs is one of my fave stories of this period and still holds a place in my heart

Meg 202: the serpent sword demands blood

This is the story of a madman.
A hard, cruel son of satan
who led us into the very pit
of hell -and laughed
About it. Then he began
To turn us into animals-
The most savage fighting
Force the japs had
Ever known…

This is the story of Darkies Mob and pretty much the entire premise of this wonderfully grim story is in that opening paragraph. A man named joe Darkie takes over a platoon of soldiers and leads them into enemy territory and we spend a long time getting used to the group and then they all start to die one by one. Brutal stuff but pretty good!

Meanwhile on the cover Pat Mills brings to life Finn with Indians (finndians?) …okay it is actually called Black siddah but replace all the hippy crap with mysticism and I can assure you you can barely tell the difference.

Its mad…I don’t know what else to say about the strip other than that…but it is truly insane!

Next slog…err pat mills brings the insane again…with slaine this time

1244: Dino might!

The nastiest tyrannosaur of Dredds world is back and stalking the deadliest game around. Pissed off creators!

Yes overshadowing the return of Satanus in Satanus unchained was a backstage battle. Each episode of the serial came with an American style tag stating that Satanus was created by Pat Mills and artist Mike McMahon, but that didn't seem to quell Mills' aggravation that the character was used without his permission.

Andy Diggle and Pat Mills failed to find any agreement on the subject, and Mills, who was already unhappy with the current ABC Warriors debacle (see 1240 for vague details or search online), declined to write for the comic again until after Diggle stepped down at the end of the year.

It’s a terrific story and Gordon Rennie got the pure joy of doing an almost affectionate parody of the style of writing done by Mills on the original flesh series.




Next Prog slog: The (very) long game begins in Sin/dex

1240: Meks and violence

1240

All aboard the disaster train woo woo!

So Andy Diggle current editor of the prog (and a really good writer on his own) wanted an old school ABC warrior’s storyline and that’s what Pat Mills gave him reluctantly. You see Mills didn’t like writing this story and Diggle hated editing it and Mills hated Diggle editing it and the vicious carousel just goes round and round…but more on that another day…

So ABC warriors return to mars (or the third element as later gns would call it) is a failure but at least it’s a nice looking failure. Even then most of the artists don’t exactly bring their A game to the strip. So by this point in the story Mick McMahon and his odd art style (at this point his art looks like a mesh of that horrible cubism phase and his great old school style) is drawing a confused story involving “Martians” from war of the worlds blowing up shit on mars. Oh and for some reason steel horn is no longer the mess and back in his old body and is dragon to the main villain…

Ugh all aboard the disaster train…

Next Prog slog: Underworld unleashed…wait wha?

1214: Chainsaw biker 11/10/00

Deadlock gets his own series in order for Pat “the overlord” Mills to tie up some final loose ends from the final series of Nemesis and also to set up the Grand wizard of Termights role in a future ABC warriors epic (well epic for the wrong reasons but that’s in the near future). Aiding Mills is Nemesis artist Henry Flint who draws this crazy future earth and the alien inhabitants on it with relish

Deadlock returns to Termight to fulfil the last wishes of his master Nemesis to plunge the planet into chaos and gets sucked into a story involving the new president of the planet Purity Brown and a mysterious killer called the accountant who may or may not have ties to the late Torquemada. Alongside this story is a snapshot into the true weirdness of this future which includes Aliens who eat your toes after sexual intercourse and alien fruit!




Meanwhile the ages old story of the “mutiny on the bounty” is played out on a spaceship in the future in a series called Vanguard. Written by Robbie Morrison and featuring stunning art by Colin MacNeil. Vanguard is about a cruel commander of a space battleship, obsessed with tracking down an enemy ship, He overworks and brutalizes his crew to mutiny. He's cautioned about the crew's growing unrest several times along the way by his new second-in-command, Lt. Elizabeth Vanguard, but ignores her until it is too late.

Watching the unfolding (although slightly unoriginal admittedly) drama is pretty fun and it is tragic that this story is among the elite few 2000ad stories which ends with a cliff-hanger and yet never returns to resolve it.

A shame as it was a nice series




And a bonus image from Nikolai Dante with the Family Romanov posing for what may very well be their final picture as a family...



Next prog slog: There's a new Dredd in the sector house and his name is Rico...