Like, these comics were for 10 year olds. Lucky, lucky 10-year olds!
Rank 7/60: The Bride of Crom
by Pat Mills and Massio Belardinelli and Mike McMahon
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| Anyone still wondering why 2000AD is so often described as 'punk', this cover says it all. I mean, this is exactly what teens in Camden were wearing in 1983 (in my head, at any rate...) Art by Massimo Belardinelli |
Where to read it: Warrior’s Dawn
Original run: Progs 336-343 (In the Year 1983. And yes, I'm mashing together what Barney lists as three separate stories, but to my mind they are prologue and epilogue to the main event, so whatever. Story 4, this is)
The plot: Ukko and Sláine are recruited by a wealthy
man to rescue his daughter, Medb, who is due to be sacrificed to the worm god
Crom. The pair indeed find Medb, but in the process are captured and themselves
offered up for sacrifice in a Wicker Man…
Essential pre-reads: none.
Analysis: OK, so I’m sort of cheating here, but I think it’s right to mash these three stories into one because it would be weird to read Beltain Giant or the Creeping Death in isolation. Beltain Giant does have time to do a bit of its own thing - give an example of Sláine prostituting his warpspasm abilities, in a metaphor for the (working) lives of itinerant young men that definitely sailed over my head until, like, just as I was typing these words.
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| Sláine endures indignities. Also this is as good a place as any to celebrate Steve Potters' delightfully not-round speech balloons, that really add an old-world flavour to the early Sláine tales. I miss them. Art by Mike McMahon |
It also gives a neat flavour of Celtic celebrations and festival gathering that feels at once ancient and very modern – but the bulk of the story is simply setting up Bride of Crom. Creeping Death, on the other hand, is rather slight as anything other than a direct continuation of the action of Bride of Crom. It’s sort of about the idea of catching plague, but because it’s a zombie-bite induced plague it kind of doesn’t count. But still a good excuse for Mills to make the point that the world has always had undesirables who are left on the edge of society.
The main event, though, is the 6-part Bride of Crom, an
absolute tour-de-force from Massimo Belardinelli. He gets to design a cast of
punk/fearsome/sexy-as-hell witches, deliver a villain design of a human who has
literally shed his own skin (and also likes to Walk Like an Egyptian), and then
show a band of villains trapped inside a gigantic Wicker Man. Oh, and for good
measure Sláine warps out and takes on a zombie hoard. HOOOO-ah!
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| Sundered heads... piles of rotting carcasses... these are pleasing pictures to me. Art by Massimo Belardinelli |
AND we get to meet Sláine’s father (a bit out of the blue for such an early episode, perhaps?), as well as hearing the sad story of how his mother died (based directly on an old Irish legend).
Plus of course there’s the basic plot, in which our hero
goes to rescue a damsel in distress, only for her to turn out to be in no kind
of distress, and in fact she becomes one of the series’ longer-running
villains. (This, too, is partly inspired by legend)
But outside of all this, I can’t help but note my main
lingering memory, on my first read, is that this is one of those stories where
I could’ve sworn I saw more gorey details than I actually did. There’s this bit
where the Badb (the punk-ass witches) are torturing Sláine by giving him a
‘blood eagle’. It’s described in plain language, and not even slightly shown
(except for a few cut marks on Sláine’s back, later on). But I have a memory of
seeing the remains of an old victim who’d had this procedure done, and of
seeing the blade cutting into Sláine’s back so that the ‘eagle’ was literally
on the point of ‘flying’ before the Badb are interrupted. Such is the power of
imagination, when enhanced by the drugs of Mills and Belardinelli.
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| Lots to look at here, but I was ever drawn to those mysterious words "Fly the Blood Eagle"... Art by Massimo Belardinelli |
Yes, it's surely true that if I read this story for the first time now, as an adult, I might see the trappings of an early 1980s 'boy's adventure comic' and not find it all quite so enthralling. But objectively, the story is fun, the ideas are outlandish, and the artistic execution is stellar.
Repercussions: Sets up Slough Feg and Medb as major
characters; fleshes out Sláine’s backstory in ways that inform his character
and will occasionally crop up, especially much later in the saga.
Writing: 9.5/10
Art: 9-10 /10 There are panels and sequences here that are all-time
great. But I have to admit there are also panels of people just standing
around chatting that are only OK. I can’t not mention some proper Lucio
Fulci-esque horror as some drune minions hallucinate spiders coming out of
their mouths, and warped-warriors faces stretching out! Belardinelli sure was
tuned in to the grungier end of the early 80s…
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| I've seen 'The Beyond' too. It's dead good! Art by Massimo Belardinelli |
Brainball count:
Beltain Giant: 1 human
Bride of Crom: 9 humans that we see; the text claims a total of 20 in
one fight; 7 zombies on-panel, although a ‘slaystack’ beneath Sláine suggests
he killed a lot more!
The Creeping Death: none! Sláine was having a sick day.
Rank 6/60: Sláine The King
by Pat Mills and Glenn Fabry
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| This is just an outrageously weird cover for a kid's Sci-Fi adventure comic. Art by Glenn Fabry |
Where to read it: The King
Original run: Progs 500-508; 516-519 (In the Year 1987; this is story 16 in sequence)
The plot: Sláine returns to his home town, only to find a heap of troubles there: Formorian sea-demons have enough control to demand outrageous tribute payments; the weak king is under the thrall of a witch; the only person who seems willing to stand up for the tribe is Niamh, Sláine’s old girlfriend, and she has decided to leave.
Essential pre-reads: none. Honestly, it’s amazing how
well this functions as if it could be the first story you read.
Analysis: the painted art in the Horned God saga gets
all the credit, but there’s a strong case to be made that THIS story is the one
where 2000AD really started leaning into the idea of courting a grown-up
audience. Sure, there’s still fighting and comedy going on, but this is a
political drama / soap opera before it’s an adventure story. And the way it’s
illustrated, my gosh!
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| Sláine gets bored when he's not fighting... Art by Glenn Fabry |
As such, I remember being both a bit lost and a bit bored by it as a child. I appreciate it now rather a lot more, but the joy is there in the facial expressions and dialogue exchanges more than in the fighting. There’s a good bit with a disgusting monster at the end, though.
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| Possibly the best-drawn rotting monster in the entire Sláine canon -and that's saying something! Art by Glenn Fabry |
It’s fascinating how much the story, from the title on down, just lays down the assumption that OF COURSE Sláine will become king of this tribe. Sure, he’s a disgraced ex-warrior who got banished, but he’s the best man for the job. One rather has to admire Pat Mills’s restraint that at no point here does he talk about weak, entitled elites vs ignored but worthy working class heroes. (Which he HAD brought up way back in an earlier story about young Sláine first joining the Red Branch). He just shows that the current King is a) weak in the face of the Formorians and b) under the spell of a wicked witch. Indeed the whole tribe seems rather deflated, except Niamh, and yet she’s not the one to inspire rebellion, only a returning (male) vagabond can do that, it appears…
Anyway, putting petty macho-political gripes aside, this story
is amazing. And frankly it’s a lot down to the art. Fabry works wonders to
establish character and setting and mood, taking us through a variety of
locations that puts Game of Thrones to shame. Mills, meanwhile, gets to share
some more history, whether it’s the horrors of the nose tax, or the bizarre
coronation-equivalent ceremony that ends this cycle of stories. If the point of
Sláine is to show us what life for ancient Irish Celts was like – in feeling,
if not in stark/bland accuracy - mission well and truly accomplished. If it’s
to tell an adventure story about humans fighting a combination of sea demons
and interdimensional hell gods, it’s more set up than delivery but no less fun
for that. If the point is to relay the violent wanderings of a barbarian, you might be a little
disappointed…
Repercussions: Well, this is the pivot point for
Sláine, really. It’s where he transitions from a lone wanderer to a man trying
to inspire his whole tribe (and later country). It’s where he totally embraces
various traditions and shows how much of a devotee he is to his religion. Not
that he’d said or done anything against this in earlier stories, but it didn’t
really come up. We also get a pivotal sequence where Sláine meets Niamh, and we all get to meet his son Kai for the first time (and not the last).
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| Apologies for the blurry photo, although you can pretend you're reading these panels through a veil of tears, such is the emotion this sequence conveys! Art by Glenn Fabry |
Writing: 9/10 There’s no denying that it makes a difference to have a story which is mostly politics and soap opera and intrigue, with only a little bit of high fantasy and fighting. It’s a great read, to be sure, but as experiments go you can tell Mills thought he’d see how it went and then decided to go in for a bit more hacking and slashing next time. There’s also the minor problem that the story is basically unfinished – probably not by design, it ends up being more of a long prologue to the Horned God. The idea that this one story builds up to Sláine being anointed king just doesn’t feel very Millsian.
Art: 10/10 Fabry’s finest hour, not least because it’s all him, all the
time, with no compromises to his vision. Or at least, any such compromises are
invisible! (except, perhaps, for an alternative version of page 1 of this saga,
apparently written and drawn before Time Killer, and printed in the 1986 Sci-Fi
Special as ‘The Devil’s Banquet’ if you’re curious)
Brainball count: 1 monster, 2 humans. We didn’t think
it enough…
by Pat Mills and Glenn Fabry
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| You don't want Sláine standing behind you in the group photo, not with the giant wild boar head he wears as a codpiece. Art by Sean Phillips |
Where to read it: Demon Killer
Original run: 2000AD Yearbook 1992 (in the Year 1991; this is story 20 in sequence)
The plot: A snapshot from the seven-year reign of Sláine,
in which we learn that he is bored of not being allowed to fight any more – but
also learn that the goddess is not done with him and will send him off for lots
more fighting times soon.
Essential pre-reads: none, but this is totally a
bridging story between The Horned God and the whole ‘warrior in time’ set of
stories that came next.
Analysis: Presented one year after the Horned God, this
epilogue tale was, I imagine, widely assumed to be the end of Sláine’s saga – although
Mills says very much not so, he always intended to send Sláine travelling
through time, following on from the Battle of Clontarf sequence. The long gap,
presumably, had more to do with Glenn Fabry’s necessary lead time on art…
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| Ukko at his most Ukko-est! Art by Glenn Fabry |
Anyway, this story sees Mills using some classic misdirection – we assume we’re seeing Sláine’s ritual execution at the end of his 7-year reign, but it’s actually another king (a repeat of the trick played in the epilogue to the Horned God!), and poor, bored Sláine is jealous. Things liven up when this other king comes back, briefly, guts hanging out in full zombie-fashion. A fun prelude, but also, really, a farewell to the days of Slaine stories being set in, and about, Sláine’s own time. For a story in which nothing much happens, it’s amazing how fun it is to read. But let’s be honest that’s because Fabry is doing MAYBE his best-ever Sláine work here.
Repercussions: nothing and everything. We get no more
info on what happened in Sláine’s reign, or to his fellow tribesfolk – but this
is where Mills explains that Sláine is going to be a mission-based hero from
now on.
Writing: 9/10
Art: 10.5/10 More Fabry perfection, frankly his ability to paint in
greyscale might be even more impressive than the full-colour work to come. The
‘Vanilla Ice with Judge Dredd shoulder-pads’ cameo is pretty weird, though.
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| Early 1990s 2000AD was really down on popstars. Art by Glenn Fabry |
Brainball count: None. Sláine does get a vision of the future where he attacks several Roman soldiers, but he doesn’t kill any on-panel.
*Yes, yes, I must've messed up my counting somewhere; also this isn't better than 'the King', I just thought it made more sense to read about it afterwards.
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