Sláine, ranked: start here!

 

Sláine's first Prog cover!
Art by Angie Kincaid

Sláine occupies something of a unique position in 2000AD history. It’s a LONG running series that, technically, tells a single ongoing saga, which has been collected in its entirety at least twice. But, unlike that other multi-part epic, Nikolai Dante, many if not most of the stories are designed to be readable on their own. And it’s DEFINITELY the only 2000AD story to have had a whole book written about its own making of, by the author…

Some sources (COUGH patmills COUGH) often claim that Sláine is 2000AD’s most successful comics export. Sure, Judge Dredd has those movies, a couple of games and its own ongoing comics series in America, several times over, and both Rogue Trooper and Strontium Dog have had multiple video game adaptations, too, and movies. But who cares about America? Or video games? Or even movies? When it comes to comics, Europe is where it’s at. And Sláine certainly has reached many European countries – apparently more than Judge Dredd (would that this info was easy to find and confirm).

As a sprawling epic, covering some 60 stories told over 38 years and now collected up in 19 volumes (or 14 if you’re going by Hachette collections), it’s a lot to catch up on. And would you even want to read ALL of it? There’s a large school of thought that recommends reading from the beginning and stopping at the most famous/successful story, the Horned God, and stopping there. But you’d be missing out on over 70% of Sláine stories if you did that. Equally, you don’t HAVE to have read all of Sláine’s wanderings from the beginning to enjoy the Horned God, or any other story. Mostly. I say, pick up any collection that catches your eye and you'll have a good time. Well, ALMOST any collection.

The most famous Sláine story. Will it top this ranking?
Find out soon!

What even IS Sláine, anyway? It’s often likened to Conan the Barbarian, perhaps because Sláine started out in 2000AD not long after the original 1982 Conan film hit. And it certainly fits the early 2000AD pattern of trying to render in comics form the violent excesses of an 18-rated action film. But, it's a superficial comparison at best. (Being honest, I’ve barely read enough Conan, in any medium, to judge that properly). Certainly Sláine is the tale of a wandering muscle-bound character, who is more heroic than not, wears fewer clothes than most, is not exactly a ‘goodie’, and after a bunch of adventures he ends up becoming a king. Is that what Conan does? I think it’s similar on that surface plot level?

 

Conan is NOT Sláine
(But Simon Bisley draws both well)

But Sláine (the Saga, not the character) is actually barely this at all. It’s much more about Pat Mills cherry-picking bits of Celtic/Irish/Welsh/European legend and myth and history, putting it into bite-size narrative chunks, exaggerating the weird and violent bits, and making it fun to read. (Don’t know about you, but I’ve tried reading translations of the Táin Bó Cúailnge - nominally the main source of inspiration for Sláine - and it’s HARD WORK. Give me the 2000AD version any day! It's probably telling that this is the one big Irish myth that Mills never bothered to convert into a Sláine story...)

The overall saga of Sláine is also - as I learned from reading Kiss My Axe, but not even slightly from the text of Sláine itself - kind of about Pat’s own search for identity. In particular, his exploration of his roots as English/Irish/Scottish, and, in later years, his identity as it relates to three men in his life who have been literal or figurative fathers. And of course, it is often drawing from his antagonism to the Catholic Church, most specifically the order of monks who ran his school - and who abused many pupils including Pat himself. 

In the world of Sláine, sometimes the bad guys are Christians - and with the knowledge of the previous paragraph by gosh you can understand WHY - but more often they are either demons or aliens or other-dimensional beings who represent the idea of Christianity as a religion based on ORDER, not chaos, and on being anti-Celtic/Pagan/Earth Goddess.

Baiting the Church? Who would DARE.
(Art by Duncan Fegredo)

But of course you can ignore all that if you like! There's fun enough to be had with the basic Sláine set up of 'guy wanders around pseudo-prehistoric Europe with his dwarf buddy getting into fights and other mischief.' 

There isn't really an archetypal Sláine story. Sometimes he gets into a fix with a monster or villain. Sometimes he's politicking and arguing with fellow Celts. Sometimes he's involved in HUGE battles. Sometimes he travelling. Sometimes he's questing for items, typically magical ones. Sometimes he's learning lessons about himself, or his Goddess, or his way of life. Sometimes he's fighting evil humans, or evil gods. Sometimes all of this is hidden under a veneer of a bit of real-world history. Mostly he gets out his axe and chops off a brainball or two (although, not as often as you might think...). Stories can be exciting, or funny, or scary, or philosophical. It's very much never just one thing.

Taken overall, it's the story of a young man who was exiled from his tribe, gradually makes his way home, learns the secret that his world (known as 'Tír na nÓg' or 'The Land of the Young') is being invaded (successfully) by evil aliens who want to make humans their slaves, but in a sort of metaphorical 'all Christians are slaves to their God way', becomes king of his tribe, then king of the whole region, then wins some battles, then is ritually put to death after 7 years (but not), then he time travels through the guise of various Celtic heroes to help win (or lose) various battles, returns to his own time to fight/win/lose more battles, sometimes against the same enemies as before, then he wanders around a bit more, and finally takeds a more and more hopeless stance against the forces of Trojan/Christian(ish) order against his beloved Celtic(ish) chaos.

I’m not here to write some grand essay on the meanings within the 2000AD series called Sláine. I'm not even here to tell you how to pronounce it!* (I've always just said it 'Slain', as in 'He was slain by a savage beast' - which is ironic, because our hero does all the slaying and is never, in fact, himself slain)

Sláine slaying
(Art by Paolo Parente)

I’m here to tell you how good all the Sláine stories are compared to each other! It’s the sort of exercise I imagine would annoy Pat Mills very much. But it doesn’t take much to rile ol’ Pat, so I’m not too bothered. Plus, I’m doing it out of love. Honestly, even the worst Sláine stories are good comics. Most are VERY good comics. And the best are simply ASTONISHING.

How am I breaking up the stories? Well, mostly** following good ol' Barney, but tinkering a bit with some tales that I think must be joined together, and separating out different parts of multi-part epics, because it's more fun that way. Literally all of Sláine has been collected an reprinted at this stage, often more than once. Sometimes, many times over. For each entry, I'll link to the edition most readily available from Rebellion (as opposed to, say, the Hachette collection). Because EVERYTHING mentioned here - except for Pat Mills' book Kiss My Axe - is copyright Rebellion. And I think the digital editions, at the very least, should be available to buy and read in perpetuity. Honestly, I don't recommend reading Sláine digitally - unless you have like a super-massive ipad, but I really, really do recommend reading Sláine. And it's pretty easy now to get hold of all of it, too.

How am I ranking them all? Well, mathematically, of course (but not really). I'll score the writing and art out of 10 for each story, and basically tally it all up from there. I'll also make a note of the major repercussions each story has for the ongoing saga, which may help break the odd tie. Oh, and for good measure, I’ll be keeping a Brainball count: how many men, women and monsters Sláine personally dispatches, because that sure is a feature of a lot of these tales.

So with that in mind, let’s get ranking!

*But, I am happy to tell you, if you are interested, that it's surprisingly easy to write the accent on a keyboard - you just press the 'Alt Gr' key at the same time as the 'a'. 

**Barney lists a tale called the Devil's Banquet in the 1986 Sci Fi Special. This is not a Sláine story - it's a page of (very lovely) art, with some magazine-style text about what it is.
Also Barney hasn't been updated in a while, so it missed off a couple of more recent Special stories, and of course the very last Sláine story, DragonTamer.