Sláine, ranked part 2: Noble failures

In case I have not made it abundantly clear, Sláine is pretty much always good comics. And, for all that there's a wide variety of what a Sláine sotry can be, there are times when Mills puhses his hero out of the forumal in ways that don't quite come off. So, a slection of stories that I'd totally recommend, but they're down among the least essential Sláine gets.

Starting with the most ambitious experiment of all - using your hero for a game that is also telling a story.

OK, so this isn't technically a Sláine cover, but it IS by Glenn Fabry,
and you sure could imagine these dudes in a Sláine story.
Also, Sláine IS on the cover, albeit in teeny-tiny dice form.

Ranks 55-57 / 60 Sláine: the Gaming series
Dragoncorpse, by Pat Mills and Nik Williams;
Cauldron of Blood, by Pat Mills and David Lloyd;
The Ring of Danu; by Pat Mills, Mike Collins and Mark Farmer

Where to read them: The Complete Dice Man is your best bet
if you want JUST the Sláine games, you might find a second-hand copy of the Sláine Gaming Book
otherwise the Demon Killer collection has Cauldron of Blood in it, but the other two aren't collected. In an ideal world, Ring of Danu at least should be in  either Tomb of Terror or Sláine the King.

Originally ran in: Diceman issues 1, 2 and 4 (In the year 1986; these are stories 12-14 in chronological order)
-Note, I'm not including Tomb of Terror here, which exists as both a straight comic and a game version that ran side by side in the Prog. We'll get to that one later!

Essential pre-reads: None. Although the gameplay mostly follows on from Tomb of Terror, and in fact if you’re taking it super seriously, you are encouraged to give yourself experience points if you survived that game, and in between games here, too.

Conveniently for the sake of disucssion, the three Sláine strips that ran in Diceman all fall in sequence in between Tomb of Terror and the Spoils of Annwyn, so it's kind of neat to lump them together. As games, they’re all a little different, and get better each time. As stories, they’re fun, too, although I’d rate Cauldron of Blood a touch above Dragoncorpse. And it's really as stories that I've ranked them here.

Basic plot: In Cauldron of Blood, Sláine (aka you!) must fight and hunt your way through a (small) tower to find a magic cauldron; in Dragoncorpse you’re in a (tight) cave network stalking a dragon and tussling with an old foe; in Ring of Danu you’re in an expansive, ethereal forest world that has a pub, on a mission to impress Danu, the three-in-one Earth goddess.

If you don't complete this game adventure, then the rest of the sláine saga is invalid...
Art by David Lloyd

Analysis: It’s notable that these three games ARE all designed to tell stories about Sláine (and Ukko, who joins in on all three), as well as being games, but the structure is so classic D&D / Fighting Fantasy that the game side of it comes out more. The first two games don't really have a stroy worth analysing much They're more interesting as experiments in game playing / story telling through comics. The fact that they work at all, and are enjyable to read and pretty easily playable is way more impressive than I think Pat Mills gets credit for. Gamebooks are hard enough, without figuring out how to fit comics panels into it all. That said, the first two stories are pretty much dungeon crawls where you have to hunt for stuff and fight things, ideally in the correct order.

Yes, that IS Ukko's wife, if you ever wondered about her.
Art by Nik Williams

Ring of Danu on the other hand is a game/story that relies on Sláine having a certain amount of introspection about his own character, learning how to be true to himself but also to work at being a better self. Which is itself a classic part of any Sláine story, too. Clever.

Before he became the Horned God, Sláine was... the Pig God! (Well, if you made wrong choices)
Art by Collins/Farmer

This last story, from Dice Man 4, is also much longer and more expansive – the gameplay is also structured differently, such that you’re forced into following a sequence, where the choices along the way have a major impact, whereas the first two adventures allow you to explore in any order, and indeed to double back on yourself. It's also a story/game where you really want to go back and re-do it a few times to see where each different path takes you, allowing you to get more insight into Sláine and his world. The tohers are more about classic 'winning', so repeated attempts are really just you vs a game.

Just to be tricksy, two of the three stories tie directly into the main Sláine continuity. You don’t need to read them/play them, by any means, to make sense of the overall Sláine narrative. But if you don’t, you’ll miss out on…

Repercussions:
1. Sláine collects the Cauldron of Blood in that story, a major feature of Sláine the King and the Horned God in particular.

2. Sláine meets Danu, the Triple Goddess - in her three-person - form for the first time in Ring of Danu, directly referenced in Spoils of Annwyn. Also here, following on from the events of Time Killer, Sláine encounters Elfric not once but twice, and it's here we learn how he didn’t die the first time – only for him to die for real in the end (depending on your dice rolls!). Elfric does, of course, return later, not so dead as all that. 

(Dragoncorpse, however, is utterly inconsequential. And is also the least good on every level of story/gameplay/art. But it's not bad!)

Writing: 5-8/10 (5 for the first two stories, 8 for the gameplay which really is rather well done)
Art: 4-6/10 The Collins/Farmer effort is far and away the best, but even this is limited next to other Sláine stories because the nature of all the tiny boxes and no doubt insane deadlines. There are a handful of cracking panels in each story, but no one gets the chance to shine with any storytelling skills.
Brainball count: variable, depending on how you play! It’s a quirk of the gameplay that there are clearly ‘correct’ options you can choose to navigate the game, which often involve avoiding fights. BUT you do actually need to get a bit of fighting in because it’s the only way to improve your ‘warp rating’ – and two of the stories end on a big fight where you need a hefty warp rating.

Cauldron of Blood, a maximum of 3 skeletons, 5 goblins, 2 monsters and 1 human villain
Dragoncorpse, a maximum of 1 goblin, 1 dragon and 1 wizard (more of a puzzle-solving game than a fighting game, this one)
Ring of Danu, a maximum of 2 wild beasts, 1 pig-man, 3 skeletons and 1 Elfric – although to win the game you kind of need to NOT fight all of them by yourself, and get some help instead.

(Needless to say, I, being a Durrington College-educated type, cheated my way through all the games and eschewed any dice-rolling combat shenanigans. It didn't stop me from dying in a shower of acid... twice!)

 

Plenty of fun ways to die in these three games :)
Art by Collins/Farmer

Right, let's get back to actual stories... 

Rank 54/60: The Bowels of Hell
by Pat Mills and Jim Murray

Where to read it: Lord of Misrule
Original run: Prog 1000 (In the Year 1996; it's just a single episode long, being story 25 in sequence)

Art by Jason Brashill, who is not Jim Murray, but I'm afraid I do mix their styles up sometimes.
(Did they both work on Spaced? Or am I dreaming that?)

The plot: An out-of-context adventure in which Sláine and Ukko enter the underworld, and discover some Christian types using it to perform a scam. Sláine does not take kindly to this.

Essential pre-reads: None

Analysis: This was a one-off story designed for Prog 1000, and as such was meant to be read by people who knew Sláine, and no doubt expected to see him in a milestone Prog, but weren’t necessarily following all his adventures. It’s kind of a classic-style tale, in the mould of e.g. The Beast in the Broch. The scam part of the story is neat enough; the violence dished out is more inevitable than fascinating, and really the interest in this story hangs on Jim Murray’s art. 

 

Dunno about you, but this kind of shiny, cartoony-but-adult art style immediately makes me think of 1996.
Art by Jim Murray

Which is a change of pace for Sláine, and I have to say is not to my taste. I get a kick out of the cartoonish three-headed Hound of Hell that he draws, and his shiny muscles are pretty, but there’s nothing here that lingers in the memory, or draws out a new side of Sláine.

Repercussions: None.

Writing: 6/10
Art: 6/10

Brainball count: Gonna say 3. All the murder is in one splash page panel. You could argue he’s killing three people on that page and there’s an implied pile of bodies? The text says he kills ‘all the priests’, but we don’t actually see him kill any of them. He also cuts off one of Cerberus’s heads, but doesn’t actually kill the famous guardian dog of (Pagan) Hell…

Rank 53/60 The Jealousy of Niamh
by Pat Mills, Greg Staples and Nick Percival

Where to read it: Demon Killer
Original run: Progs 850-851 (In the Year 1993; it's story 21 in sequence)

Art by Greg Staples

 

The plot: Some years into their marriage, Sláine and Niamh are arguing a lot. In the Celtic tradition, they are obliged to settle their dispute by being tied to a tree together to talk it out. A wood demon interrupts them.

Essential pre-reads: none. Although it helps to have some context for Sláine and Niamh’s relationship, so well worth reading Sláine the King and the Horned God.

Analysis: I love the idea behind the story; yet another history lessons about ‘how the Celts lived’, and this time a totally fascinating concept. That said, the actual content of the argument Niamh and Sláine have is more perfunctory than insightful. 

Nice angle there. Also weird choice from Niamh to focus on the idea of being 'the King's favourite',
which entailed being trapped in a tent and being married off to an older man with no consent involved.

 One gets the impression that for all Mills admires the idea of settling arguments by forcing people to talk, he has no actual idea how to solve this particular argument. He suggests Sláine is in the wrong for being a serial adulterer, and for not trying harder to rescue Niamh from her teenage trials. But he also feels the need to defend Sláine’s sex drive as a ‘natural part of being a human’. (And never mind how he might feel about niamh's sex drive, should she ever be allowed to voice her own desires) In fact, Mills doesn’t give much voice to Niamh about anything other than her (righteous) anger. 

So, positive points for allowing humanity to be messy, negative points for bringing morality into it without actually getting anyone to feel guilt or remorse, and more negative points for being nicer to the man than to the woman, even if he is the protagonist. At least the demon shows up before it gets too endlessly shouty.

Ooh that's a cleverly-placed finger isn't it.
Art by Staples 'n Percival

Repercussions: almost disappointingly, none. It’s a fun idea for a story but the fact is it ends by suggesting that Niamh and Sláine mostly got along, regardless of any Celtic therapy sessions.

Writing: 6/10 For all my criticism above, for a short story based around conversation, it’s a smooth read and Mills is TRYING, bless him.
Art: 6.5/10 Staples is very much in ‘doing a Bisley’ mode, and while some of his painting is, to my mind, technically ‘better’, he hasn’t yet learned the Bisley skill of finding those delightful angles and panel compositions. Percival, doing what I assume is a colour/painting assist rather than the layout stuff, brings a different, more earth-y sensibility which works real well. I do love the Woodewose design. But both would go on to do better Sláine.

Brainball count: 1 monster + a pile of bodies.

Next time: two stories that are technically pretty decent, but just don't quite connect for one reason or another...