So, a bigger than normal set of stories here, including some you might think I've ranked higher than they deserve. Mostly it's that I really rate the art, even if the stories are kind of annoying - but they are at least trying for something, which gets points in my book.
Rank 41/60: Demon Killer
by Pat Mills and Glenn Fabry and Dermot Power
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| Sums up the essence so well of the Celts vs Romans narrative. Art by Dermot Power |
Where to read it: Demon Killer
Original run: Progs 853-859 (in the Year 1993; this is story 22.1 in sequence)
The plot: After he is ritually put to death, the Goddess has more work for Sláine – to help Celtic heroes in Sláine’s future. First up, it’s Boudicca, who is fighting off Roman invaders who happen to be led by his old enemy Elfric.
Essential pre-reads: none.
Analysis: Sláine is never far from being a history lesson, but somehow when you get Romans and Boudicca involved, that quality seems even more in evidence than usual. Probably I feel it more simply because this is the one part of Sláine lore that I was ever actually taught about at school. And boy, does Mills have opinions on how much we glorify the Romans – even when we’re on Boudicca’s side!
Now, Sláine is primarily fantasy, and I have to keep reminding myself that Tír Nan Óg, the land where Sláine lives, only partly maps onto modern-day Ireland. It’s meant to cover a much bigger landmass, nowadays sunk beneath the Irish Sea and the English Channel. That said, in the cycle of Sláine stories where he is sent through time to battle various enemies, Mills is applying a dangerous game – a game in which he posits that there is a certain group of people who ‘belong’ to the land they live on, and any and all foreign invaders are BAD, bringing wicked ideas with them that diminish the One True way of Danu, the Earth Goddess. I got nothing against loving Danu, but I sure do got a thing against the idea that any part of Europe (or indeed the world) is anything other than a constant swirl of immigration. I’m aware this is a political stance on my part, but it colours my reactions to this era of Sláine, let me tell you.
Anyway, there’s these Romans, and they invaded England, and they subjugated most of the people and either persuaded them to embrace the Roman lifestyle or rape/murder/plunder them horribly. Not arguing with the historical truth of that! But given that this story isn’t about Sláine changing that history, and actually seeing off the invaders, I’m not quite sure what it is that Sláine (or Pat Mills) is doing here.
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| You know, apart from delivering some top-end thrilling scenes of Romans getting their hats handed to them. Art by Glenn Fabry |
I mean, I know what’s he literally doing here – he’s ‘being Sláine’, which means a combination of posturing and fighting and talking, but mostly learning about the world around him and being moved by anger to fight against anything that is at odds with the Earth Goddess. And while there’s a sense of ‘hey guys, this is Sláine’, you know?’ about the whole thing – kind of a greatest hits type album – the Sláine action we get here is good stuff, made great by Glenn Fabry doing ridiculous things with his paintbrushes and compositional brain.
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| Fun with Ukko! Art by Glenn Fabry |
I still resent certain angles of the history lesson Mills is telling. I get that he knows his stuff better than I do, and agree that the impulse to invade and conquer territory is wicked. So it’s not a struggle to see the Romans as the bad guys. But I still bristle at the whole idea of ‘the world would be better if everyone stayed in ‘their’ place’, as if everyone had a ‘natural’ place to belong to. I also am not convinced it’s true that the Romans put down any and all Gaia worship. From my understanding, part of the Romans’ great success in building an Empire was that they pointedly allowed locals to keep their own culture and beliefs – even adopted a lot of them for themselves. At least, until the Emperor embraced Christianity some centuries later. More on that in future Sláine stories, oh boy.
Repercussions: I mean, Demon Killer sets up everything that’s to come in part 2, Queen of Witches, but nothing longer term, really.
Writing: 8/10 Pat Mills is in history teacher mode,
but it’s Horrible Histories, so fun. And of course, desperately controversial
in its desire to show just how wicked the Romans were, and how un-nice Celts
were, even though we’re meant to be on their side. I will also say that,
despite Mills’s general view that us Brits are taught a skewed version of
history, the tale he tells of Boudicca here is pretty much identical to the one
I learned in primary school, right down to the raping and mass murder. Sometimes
the man conflates his own experience of schooling in the 50s/60s with what he
assumes is true of everybody else’s, for all time going forward. I’m really
sorry your teachers were AWFUL, Pat, but luckily your experience was not my
own. And I went to posh school!
Art: 7-10/10 Glenn Fabry on top, top form… sadly not for the
entire book, as he ran out of time/steam. Power’s early efforts to finish off
are in themselves very good, but not nearly as good as Fabry.
Brainball count: I count 17 on panel, but the text adds an additional 13.
Kind of a coda to the whole Sláine and Boudicca saga, here's...
Rank 40/60: Return of the High King
by Pat Mills and Dermot Power
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| Barney is a GREAT resource - but sometimes the scans they have are not. Art by Dermot Power |
Where to read it: Demon Killer
Original run: Sláine the Poster Prog 1 (In the Year 1993; story 23 in sequence. No, there weren't any other Sláine Poster Progs)
The plot: After his adventures in Roman Britain,
Sláine returns to Ireland, only he’s ended up in his own future, sometimes
around the 8th century maybe? Ireland is now almost entirely Christian,
and Sláine discovers to his dismay that there’s no place for him here. So it’s
back to more time-lost adventures, aka Pat Mills’s Horrible Histories of the
Celts.
Essential pre-reads: Demon Killer/Queen of Witches.
The story literally opens up right where that tale left off.
Analysis: now, I’m someone who found that Demon Killer / Queen of Witches had quite the downer ending, what with the Romans winning and all. And now there’s a double-downer for Sláine as he learns that, in his future, his own religion and way of life is going to be more or less entirely subsumed by Christians. It’s noteworthy that in this story, the Christian he meets is a monk/missionary, who is presented as a normal human, not some kind of raving madman or space-alien monster. He’s even quite nice to Sláine, and they have a decent theological discussion about the afterlife. Sláine makes a point about God/Jesus that I happen to agree with, and makes more excellent points about the nature of heaven. The Monk being a stand-in for Mills’s (well-earned) hatred of 20th century Monks does not have anything intelligent to say in return and just get cross with Sláine and damns him to Hell, which Sláine is content to just ignore. I suppose this is a pretty historically accurate representation but I’m always a bit sad when the Christians don’t get the chance to engage in meaningful debate. Of course I’m in the wrong comic for that. So all we’re left with is Sláine having a cry and vanishing back into time-hopping mode.
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| Real men DO cry, and Sláine proves it. Och! Och! Ochone! Art by Dermot Power |
It’s a deliberately slight story, but also a nice
breather. Mills knows a Poster Prog is an inessential item, but even here he
puts the effort in to deliver something that isn’t just fluff. I expect it has
a lot less hacking and slaying than readers may have been expecting, mind…
It's probably not better than Demon Killer, but it would be weird to write it up directly before that story! And I do think Power's art IS better than on Queen of Witches.
Repercussions: This is the story that explains why
Sláine is mucking about in time in upcoming adventures, but really all you
‘need’ to know about that has been covered in Demon Killer.
Writing: 7/10
Art: 7.5/10 Power on perfectly fine form, but apart from some lush
grassy backgrounds and a bit of emoting, there’s not much for him to chew on.
Brainball count: 0
Rank 39/60: The Shoggey Beast
by Pat Mills and Mike McMahon
Where to read it: Warrior’s Dawn
Original run: Progs 348-351 (In the year 1983-1984; story 6 in sequence)
The plot: Sláine and Ukko are now actively heading north, back to Sláine’s home. But before they get too far, they have a run-in with a monster, and must decide whether to fight it or let it be.
Essential pre-reads: none.
Analysis: Another side-quest for Sláine and Ukko, this time a little slower paced, allowing Mills to give us more of a flavour of the lifestyle and social norms of the time, relating to things like slave-owning and hospitality. That stuff’s all rather interesting. The bit where Sláine fights a monster is fun, too, although McMahon’s art at this point is starting to get pretty abstracted and that takes away from the fun a bit if you ask me.
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| Much of this story is fight choreography. Art by Mick McMahon |
errr - that's it. I suppose I could unpick something about werewolves and the idea of persecution and such, but neither Sláine nor Pat Mills seem especially interested so I will choose not to be, either. Perhaps it's Mills 'punishing' us readers for wanting stories with lots of fights rather than lots of philosophising? (And given that the philosophising becomes a MUCH larger part of Sláine it its later years, perhaps I should watch out what I wish for.)
I will say the the story plays out slow enough that you get some good bit of atmosphere, with rain on mud huts and maybe just a hint of 'Oh no! Someone's about to turn into a monster...' which would absolutely suit a horror film from 1983, but doesn't quite translate into comics. That said, I have to say this here is a really good comic story - just not, to my mind, firing on as many cylinders as most of Sláine. |
| You can really FEEL that rain, can't you? Fantastic stuff. Art by Mick McMahon |
Repercussions: none, except for a little more seeding of Sky Chariots. Shoggey (shoggy?) beasts will return in a MUCH later story, but as a concept, it’s not the same guy.
Writing: 8/10
Art: 7/10 – this is the final story McMahon drew, and while it’s right
to mourn that he left the strip, he kind of left on a low. Hard to get over my
memories of reading this as a youngster and not being able to follow the big
fight - who was doing what to whom, and how. Worse, I struggle with the way Sláine appears to look rather different from panel to
panel. That said, the dynamism is fantastic, and the emoting on the faces
during the talky bits are effective. Look, PLENTY of McMahon greatness to come, much later in the ranking :)
Brainball count: 1 human and 1 monster.
Rank 38/60: The Battle of Clontarf
by Pat Mills and Massimo Belardinelli
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| Apologies, not the greatest jpg ever! Art by Mike McMahon |
Where to read it: The Grail War
Original run: 2000AD
Annual 1985 (making this a story from 1984; story 9 in sequence - although it's barely in any sequence, really)
The plot: A retelling of the actual historical Battle of Clontarf, imagining that Sláine magically takes the place of the hero of that battle, Brian Boru.
Essential pre-reads: none.
Analysis: A curio, this one, which mostly functions as an excuse to get Belardinelli to deliver one last, epic battle sequence. It’s about a real-world Battle in the 11th century, when The High King of Ireland fought against Norse invaders. With a very high death toll. Sláine himself is in it more as a narrative device than anything else - he doesn’t develop anything from it, the point is more that Mills was so taken with an account of the battle that he read while doing research, that he wanted to recreate it for readers. He really is a history teacher at heart.
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| It's amazing, even with all this blood, it still feels like a children's comic. Art by Massimo Belardinelli |
This story is especially notable for often quoting passages wholesale from whichever translated account Mills had. And of course, leaning on Massimo to deliver the violent fun Mills rightly felt was missing from any actual history books aimed at kids. The reason it works at all as a Sláine story is that the character was destined to become High King of Ireland, so in this fantasy setting, that means he’s part of all future High Kings…
Repercussions: You’d think, none, but you’d be dead wrong! Although the scene (and indeed the whole battle) would be replayed in Time Killer, it’s this story that first sets up the idea of time travel as a part of Celtic lore, as much as dragons or druids or flying ships. Here’s the seed that begets that strand of stories in which Sláine is sent through time to either replace or inhabit various historical figures who fight evil invaders of various guises. Mills rather races through the ‘time travel’ concept so quickly and casually that the idea doesn’t quite stick, or doesn’t seem important enough, so maybe that’s why it’s often forgotten that it all started here?
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| That spiral on the wall - which reappears in several Sláine stories - is based on a genuine Celtic rock carving somewhere in Ireland. Neat. Art by Massimo Belardinelli |
Writing: 7/10 – points to Mills for letting the original text carry the weight of the story, but the old-fashioned grammatical patterns are a bit of a barrier to the fun, frankly.
- And it's a lesson Mills himself learned, so he retold the same story again, but much more organically, in Time Killer, with far fewer quotations.
Art: 8/10 – undeniably great, but honestly the colour lets it down compared to the heights of Bride of Crom or Dragonheist.
Brainball count: just a WHOLE lot of people, not really possible to begin to count which ones are shown, on-panel, as definitively dispatched by Sláine. But if you’re looking for gruesome war deaths, you won’t be disappointed.
Rank 37/60: The Brutania Chronicles part 4: Archon
by Pat Mills and Simon Davis
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| Sláine is indeed covered in blood for most of this story. Art by Simon Davis |
Where to read it: The Brutania Chronicles 4
Original run: Progs 2050-2060 (in the Year 2017; this is story 54.4 in sequence)
The plot: The Archon – a sort-of stand-in for God -
has woken up, and brings forth stone warriors from the ground to attack both
Sláine and the Celts, as well as the evil Slough Gododin and his skull swords. Sláine
and his buddy Sinead manage to survive and escape from Tory Island; his enemies do not.
You might also remember this story as the annoying all-caps shouty one.
Essential pre-reads: The rest of the Brutania Chronicles would help.
Analysis: OK, so in my head the WHOLE ‘Brutania Chronicles’ is now remembered as the one that started out well, and with gobsmackingly glorious art, before descending into shouty nonsense. But it’s really just this final book that is the shouty nonsense part. And that’s because of a decision that makes total sense, but is rather annoying to read: SPEECH BALLOONS IN LARGE ALL CAPS.
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| If you imagine this as a booming voice in a movie version, it makes total sense. Not great for the comics-reading experience. Art by Simon Davis |
It makes sense, because the balloons in questions represent the voice of the Archon, and of Danu the Earth Goddess. Both of them are never actually seen, because they’re intruding on the world more like metaphysical Gods, rather than personified Gods. The Archon is kind of like the Christian God (pointedly a separate entity to the Guledig or Crom Cruach or any other-dimensional being). In order to show how Danu is on the same level, Mills and Davis basically have to show her also not as a human figure (as she has been depicted in the past), but as a voice that emerges from the Earth.
So what you end up with is several episodes of these two shouting at each other while the rest of the characters run around fighting and whatnot. And it hurts the reading experience. These two Gods are having a debate, sometimes about the nature of the world and their roles in it, other times about Sláine. The details are interesting enough, the comics-ness of it all typically isn't. But, you know, respect to the idea of the whole Brutania Chronicles for basically setting up the idea that Sláine will have to a) defeat four different Sloughs, b) deal with human treachery, c) learn more secret truths about humanity, and d) literally fight GOD, and this book is the follow-through on that.
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| Told you Sláine was COVERED in blood for this story. Art by Simon Davis |
And, again, respect for not doing the Marvel Comics / Mark Millar thing of having Sláine not just magically be able to 'beat' God by hitting him harder and harder, or finding some useful gadget, but instead having God decide he's not worth the effort.
This does also mean there's a bit of weird ending to the saga here, where Sláine has technically succeeded in his quest to rescue Sinead and escape from Tory Island.
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| Some subtle history lesson/political opinions in this story... Art by Simon Davis |
He's even delivered a massive blow to the evil humans Sloughs, their wicked Cythron masters, and maybe to their wicked overlords the Christian other-dimensional God / Gods. But it's made very clear that this is not really going to stop them from taking over Ireland/Scotland/Britain in the long run, no matter how many of them Sláine kills.
Repercussions: Slough Gododin and Co. finally get their comeuppance – Sláine is now free to carry on with his latest general quest of preserving the Goddess-worshipping Celtic way of life, and aiming to kick out the invading Trojans and their King, Brutus.
Writing: 7/10 Look, this is where the scoring gets strange, because although the shouting is annoying, and the plot kind of unsatisfying, it's also delightfully ambitious.
Art: 8/10 One suspects Simon Davis had got a bit bored with the job at this point. He doesn't deliver a bad job here, by any means, but the wonder and delight of earlier outings isn't quite there. Or maybe it's just that, although his design for the stone warriors is pretty great, after a while it's a lot of brown.
by Pat Mills and Steve Tappin
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| Indeed, Sláine does fight a time-worm in this tale about Cathars in medieval France Art by Paolo Parente |
Original run: Progs 1090-1099 (in the Year 1998; story 30.2 in sequence)
The plot: Sláine must infiltrate the stronghold of
the Cathars, and confront a demon who has taken hold of / was always at the
heart of this Christian offshoot.
Essential pre-reads: The Grail War – this is a ‘some
time later…’ continuation to that story. It probably also helps a bit if you’ve read any stories
of Sláine and Niamh, perhaps especially Lord of Misrule, which sets up the
idea that a) Niamh reincarnates through time, and b) She and Sláine are some
sort of soul mates – which is not actually something baked into their earlier
encounters in e.g. Sláine the King.
Analysis: You might remember that this was just a straight up
‘more of the same’ from the Grail War, but you’d be wrong. It's a totally different story, albeit in the same time period. For a start, the
action takes place some years later. For a second, Simon De Montfort aka Niamh (yes, really, in this sequence Niamh was reincarnated as a Cathar-basher in chief, more on that later down the ranking) is dead and doesn’t figure in the plot so much. What this gloriously weird book
is all about is Sláine's - aka Pat Mills’s - attempt to put himself on the other side
of the war from Book 1. He’s not pro-Cathar, as such, but he IS being pro-Gnostic.
(Don’t worry, that concept is explained in the book itself, far more entertainingly
than in any of my Undergrad theology classes, too.)
Most of the action takes place inside the castle that was
under siege in the previous book, with Sláine exploring its weird and wonderful
(but mostly weird) secrets. You’ll be shocked to learn that other-dimensional
aliens and time-worms are involved.
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| You might ask what is happening. The story might not entirely tell you. Art by Steve Tappin |
Since the historical background to the 'Grail' sequence was about two rival groups of Christians fighting each other, Mills doesn't really have a 'side' to be on. So it's a fun exercise watching him explore motivations on both sides. Of course he DOES find a side to be on - the side of the working man, being exploited by some elite fopp who is on the surface pursuing a noble ideological agenda, but is also really just wanting power/money for themselves. Of course, these figures are part of the Cather groups as much as their enemies.
I don't know how well it would stick, but one could read the entire Sláine saga as a comics version of 'what if the conspiracy theory about lizard-people secretly running the Earth through the guise of powerful leaders was TRUE?' I mean, the series Finn was explicitly that, set in the modern day, but if you want more of that sort of thing, but in a fantasy/historical setting, this specific Sláine adventure is the one for you! The demon-presence in the real world gets nicely trippy, too. Of course, the problem is that , even if the 'lizard-people' ideas is true, so what? You're still left with nasty people in charge of the world, and them being lizards doesn't seem to make a huge difference, unless you wish to believe that mere humans are not capable of evil?
Repercussions: None. This was Sláine’s final ‘time travel’ adventure, but not for any in-story reason. He doesn't defeat the Cythrons for all-time and ever, or anything like that. They'll be back!
Writing: 6 out of 10 More fascinating ideas, wedded
to an impressively incoherent story. But the incoherence is almost part of the
point.
Art: ? out of 10 Look, in this book Steve Tappin is all over the place,
not so much in terms of ‘good/bad’, more in terms of what style he’s using.
Even on facing pages he seems to be channeling all manner of fantasy art
stuff. There are some truly outstanding, 10/10 pieces of work, alongside some
rather odd choices. While I remember this being a bit of struggle read week to
week, in the collected version it adds to the fun of this most bizarre Sláine
story.
And yes, I'm giving it a higher rank than perhaps it deserves on the merits of its craft, because it's SO delightfully off-the-wall.
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| Clive Barker would be proud to have this dream I think Art by Steve Tappin |
Brainball count: 4 humans, 1 dark phoenix, and maybe 1 time worm (not sure if it’s dead or just licking its wounds)
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