The ranking begins! And there's a pretty solid consensus around the the worst Sláine story. It's a shame, as there's a LOT of really interesting stuff in here. But, in between a sadly mis-cast artist and a story that starts strong before resting on old glories, it's the correct call. The worst of Sláine is...
Rank 59/59: The Secret Commonwealth
by Pat Mills and David Bircham
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| I can verify that some people do indeed live and/or die in this story. Art by Mark Harrison (oh, and not that it's relevant to anything Sláine, but the 2000AD logo does change with Prog 1200, so the axeing is not for nothing) |
Where to read it: Lord of the Beasts
Original run: Progs 1183-1199 (in the year 2000. In sequence this is story 38)
The plot: Now that Sláine is back from his wanderings through time, he’s keen to see how things are at home with his tribe. But instead of a warm welcome, Sláine discovers rot and murder and general bad feelings. Villainy is exposed, as the work of the titular ‘secret commonwealth’ (It’s fairies. Cool, evil fairies though). Sláine ends up fighting against perhaps his most dangerous foe yet – a doppelganger.
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| The trouble with doppelgangers is that you have to draw the same thign twice... Art by David Bircham |
Essential pre-reads: The Horned God - this tale calls back to that one a lot; you could even, if you wanted, skip from the end of that story straight to this one, imagining that Sláine's adventures in between were just never told.
Analysis: Widely hated, it’s worth saying that there ARE some great bits in this story. The first 2/3 is pretty decent, designed as a pseudo-sequel to ‘The Horned God’, with plenty of interesting ideas and weird bits. The final 1/3 is something of a ‘greatest hits epic battle’, which fits thematically in the story but is just not executed with nearly enough aplomb, and without any novel ideas in it. There are sky chariots, dragon fights, use of the three magical weapons, and a drawn out fight to the death with a major villain – but Mills and Bircham don’t really add any new tricks to the pot. Barring a bit where Sláine has to jump from a ground vehicle onto a flying vehicle in a manner that would befit Tom Cruise in a Mission: Impossible movie but does not bring the same excitement to the comics page. It’s a page-turner for the wrong reasons – you just want it to be over.
But let’s focus on the good bits! The start of the story involves Sláine coming back to his homeland, where nobody recognises him – because he’s supposed to be dead – and even when he finally is welcomed back various problems beset our heroes. There are ideas here that are genuinely unsettling and creepy, and maybe with a different artist they’d have come to life and stuck in readers’s imaginations. Things are going wrong in the village, crops failing, people disappearing or dying or acting odd. The druids can only help so much.
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| Objectively, this is a cool picture of Sláine fighitng a bunch of monsters. But also objectively, it's just not very Sláine, is it? Pity Dave Bircham, maybe trying too hard NOT to be like the other Sláine artists? |
The cause of all this is, naturally, the ‘Secret Commonwealth’ of the title. It refers to a host of netherworld beings – fairies, goblins, shapeshifting weirdies and such. They’re a great fit for Sláine’s world, and it’s shame this is the only time Mills got to play with them. In various background materials, Mills complains that he wanted to focus on some of the curious traditions around these creatures, which often involve making our heroes look fey and foolish. Editors overruled him leaning into this too far, and they were wrong! The best bits of Sláine are where our manly hero more-or-less willingly adopts unmanly ways to win fights. But there are still hints of that here.
Bircham DOES, in fact, bring the goods here and there – especially with the subplot about Robym the evil dwarf being a serial killer. And the centrepiece of this story revolves around Sláine facing off against a doppelganger, who is more of less played as the ‘head monster’ of the commonwealth. Precisely because Bircham is not so interested in adding fine details e.g. to characters’ faces, you can tell exactly why characters are confused about who is Sláine and who isn’t. And, in the many pages where they fight, the reader never gets lost about who’s who, which is not always easy to pull off, artwise.
But yes, the art is the main problem here. Bircham is using a mix of computer colours and a breezy cartoon style that was, in the year 2000, a little ahead of its time – but when it became more mainstream it was in comics for tweens rather than Euro comics for adults, and for me that’s where it fails as Sláine-appropriate, at least in this era. He can do wraithlike monsters, and he can pose his hero well enough – but when readers have been primed for decades to expect either super-detailed line work, showing off every wrinkle of skin, or crease of clothing, or else lush painted work that brings an operatic tone, Bircham’s efforts just read as slapdash.
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| Again, objectively fun art and clear to read, but it sorts of feel clumsy? Too much shine, not enough grit, perhaps? |
I’m all for artistic experiments but a 17-part epic that’s also a sequel to the Horned God was maybe not the place for it…
Repercussions: So, this is the story that brings Sláine back from his time wanderings to his original time and place, and that’s where he’ll remain. It’s also where he finally deals with Robym – a miscreant left over from ‘the King’ era, and more importantly it’s his final showdown with Medb.
Writing: 6/10 The story of the ‘secret commonwealth’
is pretty interesting. The lack of effort in various battle scenes is not.
Art: 4/10 – this is by far the consensus for ‘worst drawn Sláine story’,
and it’s hard to argue. Mills himself explains that he rates Bircham as a
comics artist, he just doesn’t suit Sláine. Frankly, for every decent bit of
composition Bircham tries, and plenty of well-drawn emoting, he lets himself
down with an extreme lack of detail or over-reliance on characters looming out
of the frame.
Brainball count: 7 sea-demons, 1 doppelganger (although it’s not clear if it’s totally dead or has just retreated), and 1 arch-enemy. Plenty of fighting in this story, but it’s light on killing – although that’s because most of the enemies here are netherworld beings that can’t really die.
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| This is more like it! Super fun idea with the hall of insulting heads, all well-realised. Ukko is oddly green, mind. He's a dwarf, not a goblin! |
-Onto two more tales that are far shorter and less interesting than the Secret Commonwealth, but technically 'better'.
Rank 59/60 Macha
by Pat Mills and Paul Staples
Where to read it: Lord of the Beasts
Original run: Progs 1115-1118 (In the year 1998. In sequence, this is story 36)
The plot: Sláine, in his time as King, is at a festival. Alongside various weddings and fights and feasts, there’s also a bull-race – an event which reminds Sláine of the story of how his mother, Macha, died.
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| Don't try to outrace a horse-drawn chariot. Long distance, you will win. Short distance, you will get trampled. Art by Paul Staples (yep, him off Finn) |
Essential pre-reads: None, but part of this covers a tale told once already in The Bride of Crom, not a bad idea that have read that one before, because this story specifically draws on and adds much detail to that flashback.
Analysis: Often, the ‘Sláine hangs around doing not
very much’ stories are secretly very fun. And while this one is indeed fun, it
commits a couple of sins that rub me up the wrong way. The first is retelling a
story that had already been told once – the story of Sláine’s mother. Now, to
be fair, it’s given more breathing room this time and in the spirit of Celtic
times it’s kind of totally fine to have a second crack at telling a story in a
slightly different way – although for me, Staples is no Belardinelli, so that’s
a knock. The bigger sin is relaying on a cheap sex joke to keep the 'A' plot
moving. Nothing wrong with getting some sex into a Sláine comic, but in this
case it’s all about the VERY dated, and frankly just plain mean routine of ‘Sláine thinks he’s gonna get it
on with a virginal hottie but then ends up spending the night with a voracious fat girl
instead.’ Shame on you for leaning on cheap stereotypes, Mr Mills. You, and
Sláine, are better than this. Frankly it strikes me as a weird choice for Sláine's character that he would value / judge women based on body types anyway. In general, he is anti-shame, I would say!
Having complained about this, there’s space to say that in fact there IS a strand of well-executed humour in the 'A' plot. It’s that Sláine, as High King, is meant to be shielded from danger at all time, lest he die before his 7-year stint is up. This, of course, annoys Sláine plenty. Especially as the event he’s at involves lots of sports which are exactly the sort of things that look fun and you expect you probably wouldn’t get injured, but can’t take a chance. Comedy ensues, mostly well-earned.
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| Nice to see Sláine getting a dressing-down from Ukko for a change. |
Repercussions: None
Writing: 6/10
Art: 5/10 As ever, the main reason for the low score is not that Staples does a
bad job, just that there are others who have done such amazing work – including
Staples himself, on an earlier story in this same 'The Lost Years' cycle…
Brainball count: 1 wolf. An especially large and violent wolf, but still, not much murder for a Sláine story.
The last of the 'not very good' stories is...
Rank 58/60: The Demon Hitchhiker
by Pat Mills and Steve Tappin
Where to read it: The Grail War
Original Progs: 1032 (In the year 1997. In sequence this is story 28, and it's just a single episode)
The plot: Sláine is waylaid by a literal demon, that is also a metaphorical demon.
Essential pre-reads: Everything and nothing that has
come before…
I'm not sure this story makes ANY sense if read in isolation, and yet there's no one bit of backstory you can pinpoint as the precursor.
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| Sláine art can be super homo-erotic, in a delightful way. Would that the stories and words leaned into this more, rather than occasionally poking at it and running away, giggling nervously. Art by Steve Tappin |
Analysis: Look, I can see what Mills is trying to do with this simple story - I think. It’s one of those classic tales where a hero fights a monster that turns out to be a manifestation of various internalised woes. Typically that means things like self-doubt, but Mills is never (or rarely) typical. So, in this case, it’s more about Sláine fighting against notions of ‘being a manly hero’. Except what you or I might think of as the bad parts of being a hero are not listed here as bad, IF they conflict with what Mills suggest were virtues of Celts.
So, the ideas here are, to my mind, both ambitious and worthwhile. Sadly, what we get is a confusing story that appears to say that the way Sláine had acted in
previous adventures was a lie, based on modern hero-myths getting in the way of
true Celtic ideals. Or I think that's what it's saying? Maybe? Or is it in fact just saying that the way Sláine, to
this point, had been thinking about himself, was getting occluded by his own ideas about how a man should behave? It's definitely trying to say that 'Sláine going forward is gonna be different from the saga as it was before'. Frankly the idea that his status
quo was something that needed upending confuses me. And indeed, reading future tales does nothing to suggest any real change has happened, or that we can/should disregard past tales as false. Heigh ho. At least the demon designs are cool, and there's a neat visual gag where we get to see Ukko's disgusting demons.
Repercussions: So, as stated in the pages of the story, this sequence apparently sets up a whole new starting point for Sláine. I don’t quite know if it means that everything that has gone before can be treated as made-up, or irrelevant or if it’s just saying that the character of Sláine to this point was more mythical, while anything coming in the future should be taken as more serious, somehow? I'm going to vote NO.
Writing: I don’t know, maybe 6 out of 10? It’s an
interesting idea, but needed more seeding in previous tales I think, to have
any hope of working.
Art: 5 out of 10. Tappin draws a great Ukko and some lovely demons, but
his Sláine is not quite there yet. Objectively ‘good’ art, it pales next to the
pantheon of greats who have tackled Sláine before. and, more to the point, it's not quite as good as Tappin's own art on two upcoming, delightfully weird Sláine stories.
Brainball count: 2 demons
Next time, a set of efforts I'll call Noble Failures