Sláine, ranked part 17: young and old

So we've reached the top 5, and at least one ranking here that's going to break people's hearts...

Rank 5/60: Sky Chariots
by Pat Mills and Mike McMahon

Once again, the villain takes centre stage...
Art by Cam Kennedy

Where to read it: Warrior’s Dawn (or, if you have all the money and don't mind reading only parts of the story, the McMahon Apex edition)

Original run: Progs 352-360 (In the Year 1984, this is story 7 in sequence)

The plot: Sláine agrees to become a bodyguard to a Drune Lord, who is on the run from Slough Feg, on the promise that he’ll get a lift north, the direction he’s headed anyway. The form of transport they’re using? A magical flying boat…

Flying ships are cool. Even moreso when powered by blood.
Art by Mick McMahon

Essential pre-reads: none. I mean, there’s some basic introduction of Drune Lords and the use of weird-stones before, but it’s all covered again here.

Analysis: Honestly, this story fits into the overall narrative pretty seamlessly, but apparently it’s one of the first long Sláine stories Pat Mills wrote, originally meant to run right after Beast in the Broch. It’s also the first story Mike McMahon drew, and by golly did he draw the heck out of it. And yes, I readily acknowledge that THIS is, for many, the ultimate best that Sláine ever got. It's an excellent comic!

The most gorgeous mammoth drawing you'll ever see.
Art by Mick McMahon

I don’t know the truth of it, but I can well imagine that once Mills got the basic idea for this story in his head he was just super excited to splurge it out onto the page. It’s brimming with ideas, which stem beautifully from a combination of the setting he’s come up with, and the characters he’s populated it with. Sláine is the hero – but he’s not an overtly moralistic one. Indeed, the story allows Mills to make points about how modern morality is not some universal constant; even murder (perhaps especially murder) is often defined by circumstance and situation. More to the point, the idea of ‘selling out’ is presented as something worth debating, but really it’s a question of ‘Well, what do I get out of it’, and in Sláine’s case, it’s enough that he gets a bit of money, some food, and a lift in the direction he wants to travel.

Also there is violence
Art by Mick McMahon

But I haven’t even mentioned the sheer cool of using stones to make ships fly, or hordes of Vikings pitted against rotting zombies, or the all-time awesome design of Slough Throt, the baddie who isn’t all bad. What I’m saying is, there’s a really very clever story structure meshed with monstrously good action scenes and mind-blowing ideas splashed with thematically appropriate philosophy.

If you want to quibble, you could suggest that it’s all over a bit too quickly. Certainly when read through in one go, you lose a bit of the sense of how much time is passing, and how Sláine is wrestling with who’s side he should be on, or the looming sense of dread that follows Slough Throt. It might be that I'm judging too harshly based on the fact that I first read this story VERY piecemeal, in back progs that covered just a few episodes, which made the whole thing feel insanely grand in a way that a is undermined by reading it all in one go. Frankly, the opposite experience of reading late-preiod Sláine, which is generally much better in the collections.

Repercussions: For such an epic story, really very few. Sláine and Ukko get away, and continue on with their journey. The ending, does, however, provide quite a neat sense of the end of one stage of the saga as it gives way to the next. As well as providing a rather explicit suggestion that this time period is also in transition, as the old order of Drune Lords and druids is about to be overtaken by… something else.

Love a good 'death by worms' panel.
Art by Mick McMahon

Writing: 9.5/10 – perhaps a little churlish to complain, but Mills throws so many ideas and set pieces into this story that the overall coherence of the thing gets a little lost. No big deal.

Art: 10/10 – but do note, it’s vital to find a printing that can reproduce the work properly in stark black ink to appreciate the full and furious effect. Frankly, I don't know if there IS a definitive printing of this whole story? The 2nd edition of 'Warriors Dawn' is better than the first, that's for sure.

Brainball count: At least 8 in an early brawl, but it’s tough to count the exact number; at least another 8 in the main battle; and 1 wild boar.

So, marginally better than this absolute masterpiece, in my reckoning, we run almost all the way to the end of Sláine's 45-year saga, with...

Rank 4/60: The Brutania Chronicles 1: A Simple Killing
by Pat Mills and Simon Davis

You just don't get grass-green an enough comics.
Art by Simon Davis

Where to read it: The Brutania Chronicles 1
Original run: Progs 1874-1886 (in the Year 2014, story 45.1 in sequence)

The plot: Sláine’s wanderings have taken him to Albion – the island of Great Britain. Specifically, he’s in southern Scotland and soon on the Isle of Man aka Monadh Island. He’s about to vent anger on a local chief who has stolen treasures meant for the Earth Goddess – only to agree instead to help rescue that chief’s daughter - Sinead - from the evil Sloughs of Monadh island.

Essential pre-reads: I think you’d need to read Sláine the King to get a sense of the context of how the evil Formorians have control over the people of Albion, and Bride of Crom to get some background on the idea of the Sloughs, skull swords and so on.

Analysis: Considered as a fresh new start by Pat Mills, and a breath of fresh air by readers, I think? It combines the ideas of Sláine more or less wandering around and stumbling into adventures, alongside the two big narratives of the whole saga. That’s a) The gradual take-over of Britain and Ireland by the evil Cyth / sloughs / Skull Swords and such – with quite a bit more detail than usual on how that whole dynamic works, and b) Mills doling out ancient British myths in his inimitable style.

In his intro to the collection – and indeed in Kiss My Axe – Mills explains that the Brutania Chronicles cycle is based around a rather forgotten piece of British ‘history’ in which Trojans – yes, the ones from that famous besieged city – ended up coming to England, founding ‘New Troy’ in London, and generally taking over. No one – not even Mills, I think? – reckons this actually happened, but it was a significant part of early ‘histories’ of Britain and as such deserves a fresh airing, much as King Arthur, say, has had enough time in the Sun.

That said, I remain none the wiser about who these Trojans actually are, or why they’ve ended up in Britain, but it’s cool seeing ancient Mediterranean warriors fighting Celts in the woods. As far as I can tell, they’re like upper-class lackeys to the Sloughs, who themselves are a corrupt variation on ancient Druids, who pursue Mills’s version of evil Christianity, which is in fact a religion based around obeisance to other-dimensional beings called Cythrons. Don't think about it too much!

What A Simple Killing brings to the table is the idea that there’s a central British Isles hangout for various top Sloughs, who are busy engaging in weird experiments to ‘improve’ humanity, although really what they’re doing is creating monsters. And that finally brings us to Sláine himself! I think one of the reasons I like this story so much is that it’s the first since Time Killer in which Sláine is more or less thrown into a crazy world of nightmares, where the madness and ideas flow thick and fast! Better even that that story, its just CRAZY how good Simon Davis is on his first attempt at Sláine (admittedly he has a leg up on e.g. Fabry and Bisley as he was already a seasoned comics pro with decades of 2000AD work behind him). 

Also Mills is getting excited to summon up new Sláine-ish wordplay, and it's so fun.
Art by Simon Davis

His Sloughs, skull-swords and ‘normal’ humans follow on immaculately from the templates set by Kincaid, McMahon and everyone else. But then he gets to deliver mermaids, Giants, ogres and of course Trojans as well. It's a total visual feast! And that’s not even mentioning the beautiful scenery around them, harking back to the Belardinelli days, where we get to enjoy Sláine sat atop some giant beast or other walking through greenery. And that’s not even to mention the new recurring characters we get here – especially Gort and Sinead. This story really is a goldmine of creative juices.

The bit where Sláine meets a giant!

The bit where Sinead starts turning into a mermaid!

Getting back to the ‘where we are at in the saga’ thing: Sláine’s people have left Tir na Nog and gone to live in ethereal bliss in another world – while all humans left behind (most of them) are slowly but surely falling under the evil of Cyth/Slough/Christian/Fomorian dominion. You get a real sense of Sláine’s sadness as the passing of his own culture, but also his determination to keep that culture alive, most especially the part about free thinking.

This is also a middle-aged Sláine, who has a bit more weariness about him. He’s up for a fight, sure, but maybe not always actively looking for one? And he has more of a reputation to trade on than ever before. Not just a respected King of a specific tribe, now a man known far and wide and in general a man to be feared. Best of all, he’s a man who’s not afraid to show his emotions, and boy do Mills and Davis put him through it on that front. There’s some amazing anguish on display here.

Now, a lot of that anguish related to Sláine’s concerns about his mother and father. It turns out, via ‘Kiss my Axe’, that this is in fact about Mills himself going through a similar experience. I have to say, before I knew that it felt a bit odd in Sláine. Something about the idea of being so concerned about who your father is, or whether or not you are a bastard, never quite seemed like something he was that bothered about before. Ultimately, the story is about Sláine not knowing which of three possible people is his ‘real’ father. And REALLY not liking it when people talk about that...

Now I really want to see late-period Nic Cage playing Sláine in a movie.
Art by Simon Davis

Given that this is in fact a stand-in for Mills’s own struggle, I can get behind the serious emotions on show.

I feel the need to try to sum this all up, but I can’t really. This is an immense story, in scope and ideas and just plain fun. It ends on a cliffhanger, of course, but is totally satisfying in itself.

Repercussions: Hard to judge, this. Obviously it sets things up for the whole ‘Brutania Chronicles’ saga, which is chiefly that we meet Slough Gododin, a new major villain, and his sidekicks Sloughs Foy, Thruc and ...the other one?, fun side-villains all. We also meet Sinead, who will be a major figure throughout, and Sláine’s buddy Gort who is a minor character in this story but will go on to be a MUCH bigger deal in the next two chapters. As part of Sláine’s overall story, for me the biggest revelation is the idea that the Sloughs, who are human by birth, are able to literally convert themselves into Cythrons.

Writing: 9/10 I'm falling shy of top marks because although Mills is really going to town on the dialogue in novel ways, arguably he's run through SO MANY ideas on Sláine to this point, there's not quite as much delight in the new as on older stories?
Art: 10/10 – not sure any artist has had quite the impact Davis had on his very first go with Sláine, except maybe Bisley. Everyone else needed a few goes to find their stride, but not this fella!

Brainball count: 5 humans, 2 monsters, 4 giants

Next time: So, what's the top of Sláine's pops? There's really only one answer...