So these four short stories are all totally fine, quite fun, decent art... and generally undemanding.
Rank 35/60: The Triple Death
by Pat Mills and Wayne Reynolds
Where to read it: Lord of the Beasts
Original run: Prog 1111 (In the Year 1998; story 34 in sequence - it's only in one Prog but is a double-length episode)
The plot: Sláine has to kill a village that has been
infected by evil, ultimately by taking down their King.
Essential pre-reads: None.
Analysis: This is basically a Sláine homage to the
Evil Dead franchise, if you ask me. Which Pat Mills may or may not have been
thinking of, but I have to believe artist Wayne Reynolds had been watching
‘Army of Darkness’ before/during the time he was illustrating! The story opens
with a humorous zombie king and his hordes fighting Sláine, and the
skeleton-hacking action rarely lets up. There’s just time for Ukko to fill in
some back-story, and for Mills to give us another dose of Celtic mythology
about the need for High Kings to be killed properly to grant them and
their people any sort of peace.
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| If that top image is not in some part inspired by Evil Ash I'll eat my hat Art by Wayne Reynolds |
But mostly this is just good, clean, violent fun. And actually a bit of a change of pace for Sláine. One thinks of him as an axe-wielding guy who loves to fight. But honestly, most Sláine stories are much more talk-y than fight-y, so it's kind of fun to have and all-fighting tale every now and then. Wouldn't be so great if this were the norm.
Repercussions: None.
Writing: 7 out of 10
Art: 8 out of 10. If this was the first Sláine comic I’d read, I might
well rate this more highly. As it is, it’s extremely good art but not on the
level of beauty and imagination as some that has come before. It’s a tough gig,
drawing Sláine!
Brainball count: 7 zombies, including one that Sláine
has to kill three times, as per the title of the story.
Rank 34/60: The Cloak of Fear (aka Ukko's Tale)
by Pat Mills and Steve Tappin
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| Ukko as jester: an idea that makes so much sense you wonder it took this long. Art by Jim Murray |
Where to read it: Treasures of Britain
Original run: Progs 1011-1012 (in the Year 1996; story 27 in sequence)
The plot: Ukko tells the tale of a time Sláine
encountered a fear demon. But it’s more about the telling than the tale itself,
this story.
Essential pre-reads: None, although it helps if
you’ve read Time Killer to establish the idea that Ukko ends up in the fortress
of the ever-living ones to write Sláine’s saga, along with people such as Nest,
Murdach and More Ronn (the Dung collector).
Analysis: So this story is more or less entirely told
in rhyme. Which is the sort of thing 2000AD strips do every now and then, mostly
one suspects to keep the writers amused and the readers in a weird mix of being
impressed and irritated in equal measure. But in this specific case, you could
also argue that Mills is trying to capture something of the spirit of how
stories were told in ye oldene days. With as much emphasis as he can muster on
the rude bits.
As far as Sláine the character, and the wider saga, goes this is slight stuff. There's a monster, and we see Sláine killing the monster with barely the slightest touch of soul-searching. But then, this is billed as Ukko’s story, not Sláine’s, and he certainly gets a lot of decent panel time.
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| Art by Steve Tappin |
Not sure we get to learn much about Ukko's story that we didn’t already know, but the story gives time to explore some of the inner lives of Ukko, Nest and Murdach, which is interesting. And on the art side, Steve Tappin plays up the comedy to decent effect. Mostly he seems interested in pulling out all his painting skill on the fear demon, a truly grotesque sight to behold! (although it’s distracting to me how much he looks like part of Mutant Liberation Front from Rob Liefeld-era New Mutants).
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| I mean, it's a fear demon, so it's right that it looks so frightening! Art by Steve Tappin |
Repercussions: None – unless you count the idea that Mills liked the image of Ukko as a Jester and goes on to put him in that role in the very next story, ‘Treasures of Britain Part II’.
Writing: 8/10 – Writing a script in rhyme is HARD. Mills
makes a good fist of it, but perhaps at the expense of constructing a tale that
is especially memorable.
Art: 7 out of 10 – the best bits are a 10, but some of the less good bits are
merely OK rather than amazing.
Brainball count: 1 fear demon
Rank 33/60: The Banishing
by Pat Mills and Wayne Reynolds
Where to read it: Lord of the Beasts
Original run: Progs 1108-1109 (in the Year 1998; story 33 in sequence)
The plot: Sláine and Niamh are summoned to Durrington College, where their wayward son Kai is about to be expelled for getting up to extreme magical mischief.
Essential pre-reads: None.
Analysis: This is purely a bit of fun, it’s Sláine in sitcom mode, where the point is not so much to advance any bit of plot or character building, or really to relate any major bit of Celtic lore. In some ways, it’s a throwback to the comics Mills honed his craft on, the misadventures of naughty boys over at DC Thompson. Sure, the stakes are a bit higher and the art a bit gorier, but basically you’ve got a mischievous kid and his long-suffering teachers, Sláine having to be a good Dad, and a sort-of clever magical solution to a demon-based problem. It’s not the most memorable Sláine story but I rather wish there had been more of this sort of thing.
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| There's something very 90s about this comic... Art by Wayne Reynolds |
Repercussions: None, although there’s something of an emotional moment for Sláine when he realises that he actually DOES think it’s a good idea for his son to get a College education, and not just be a drunken brawler like his Dad. Don’t know that this bit of personal growth is ever explicitly followed up but you could argue that in future stories Sláine loses some of his arrogance and belief that he is living his best life?
Writing: 7/10
Art: 8/10
Brainball count: none – there’s a battle with a monster but it’s defeated more by exorcism than beheading.
Rank 32/60: The Lord Weird Slough Feg
by Pat Mills and Kyle Hotz
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| Slough Feg is the second rotting corpse on the left. Art by Greg Staples |
Where to read it: DragonTamer
Original run: 2000AD Villains take-over Special (In the Year 2019; story 48 in sequence - the penultimate Sláine story!) (Still on sale, too! It's a really solid Special, go on, treat yourself)
The plot: In a pre-Horned God time, Slough Feg tries
to eat some children in a cave; Sláine comes to the rescue.
Essential pre-reads: None, but it wouldn’t hurt to
have read Bride of Crom and maybe Horned God Book 1 to get some Slough Feg
context.
Analysis: Another story written to order, this time for a Sci-Fi special that wanted to focus on villains. So, we get a story told from Slough Feg’s point of view, I guess set around the time of Time Killer? I do love the motif that Mills returns to of that weird cave painting in France, the one that inspired the original Feg design.
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| Original cave art found in Cave of the Trois-Frères, Ariège, France, made around 13,000 BCE. |
I guess the idea is that he can use it as a way to escape from - and back into - the ‘real world’, which is what accounts for him existing somewhat outside of normal time. Anyway, he’s in the cave to greet a new batch of excited kids who want to join his Horned God cult – until they realise he’s actually a cannibal paedo who just wants their young flesh. Cue Sláine, to defend them kids. (It seems that, for Mills - and for totally understandable reasons - bad guys always have a thing for kids. Brrr!)
From Mills’ perspective, it’s all about having a play with the classic Feg speech patterns. Always fun in isolation, inevitably repetitive when you’re doing a big re-read of the whole saga. You can only read that one speech about "piles of sundered heads..." so many times...
Artist Kyle Hotz – a rare US
comics artist tackling Sláine – is a breath of fresh air by comparison. But,
for all that his visions of our rotting villain are beautifully horrible, his
caves and kids and Sláine are merely good.
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| Some artists just have the knack for drawing weird/horrible skin-peeling off type imagery. Kyle Hotz is one of them! |
Repercussions: none
Writing: 7/10
Art: 8/10
Brainball count: 0
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