Celebrating 30 years of Slaine in 2000AD Prog 1848

I am rapidly eating in to my 2000AD backlog and it is now down to 4 issues from 16. That's a real benefit from not having to work away from home for several days each week which I have had to do for the last two years.

The Slaine story is based on Celtic myth and features all sorts of gods and monsters, as well as a troublesome dwarf and an axe called Brainbiter.

I started reading 2000AD with Prog 86 (October '78), when it merged with Star Lord, and I remember when Slaine first appeared in Prog 330 (August '83). The stories have never been complex but they have had a cute mix of myth, gore and humour.

The Slaine celebration was a series of four single-issue stories all written by creator Pat Mills with each drawn by one of Slaine's major artists, these were Mike McMahon, Glenn Fabry, Simon Bisley and Clint Langley. I like all of them but have a special fondness for McMahon so it is his cover of Prog 1848 that I have chosen.
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Nemesis the Warlock, Volume 1

The reprints of strips from 2000AD continues to provide me with much pleasure.

The latest one to bubble to the top of my reading pile is Nemesis the Warlock, Volume 1, which reprints the first four stories of the epic saga that started in 1980, appeared frequently until 1989 and finally finished in 1999.

The author is Pat Mills who is a 2000AD stalwart for all the right reasons, i.e. he writes a lot of very different strips very well. I've previously mentioned his recent excellent work on ABC Warriors and on Slaine and I've had the extreme pleasure of meeting him a couple of times.

Pat Mills is a genuine star of comics and Nemesis the Warlock is just another example of why this is true.

But comics require artists too and Nemesis the Warlock has been blessed here too.

Kevin O'Neill started the ball rolling with his distinctive sharp angular style.



O'Neil's style defined the look of the strip but, not surprisingly, the detail in his artwork meant that his speed of drawing was too slow for a regular weekly comic and he had to be replaced.

Several other artists were used, including Jesus Redondo, but it's Bryan Talbot (again) who had the most impact for me.

And I'm ashamed to say that I had forgotten that he had even drawn it. My bad.

Bryan is supreme on the fourth story, The Gothic Empire. This plays nicely into Bryan's love of steampunk that he has returned to in Grandville.

The Gothic Empire uses the idea of an alien civilisation that has been listening earnestly to Earth's earliest radio communications to learn about and copy our largest civilisation of the day, the British Empire.

This gives a world that combines Victorian culture with modern technology. Perfect.

Bryan throws himself into the task with glee giving us panels rich in detail and imagery.

I love the way that this train looks like the Palm House at Kew.

It's thirty years since I first read Nemesis the Warlock, and I do remember when it first appeared.

Sometimes returning to an old story is a disappointment as the memory fails and what seemed like a classic through the mists of time is revealed to be merely average, or even worse.

In this case the opposite is true, Nemesis the Warlock is even better than I remember it. And I've got Volumes 2 and 3 still to look forward to.

SFX Weekender: Beyond the US - The wider world of comics

The final session I saw at SFX Weekender looked beyond superhero comics at how the medium can be much more than that and took examples from beyond the UK and USA to show that.

Bryan Talbot was on the panel again (no problem with that) where we was joined by Pat Mills (not pictured) and two others who's names I did not catch as I had rushed upstairs to but Heart of Empire for Bryan to sign (which he did!).

All of the panellists told stories of how comics flourish in other countries which was both encouraging as it showed that the is some really good stuff out there but also dispiriting in that it can be hard to find even if you start looking for it in a comic shop.

Indeed comic shops came in for a fair deal of criticism for sticking unintelligently to the USA format and not learning about and promoting other material.

There are some exceptions and nice things were said about Page 45 in Nottingham, OK Comics in Leeds and Gosh in London.

We were also given some tips on where to start our own comics adventures and I'll be trying out Persepolis, Blacksad, Maus, Phonogram, Laika and Mouse Guard before too long.

Interestingly most of these are anthropomorphic (ok, so Laika was a real dog) but it was not just Bryan that was recommending them.

Another interesting panel discussion and this time one with real value as were given tantalising glimpses of the rich world of comics and shown the first steps to take to get there.

2000AD Prog 1670

For reasons that I find hard to understand, not everybody reads 2000AD every week, despite the consistently excellent stories and art, so there is still some work to do to educate you all.

The easy way to do this is to show you the front cover of the latest issue, Prog 1670, which is drawn by the unbelievably good Clint Langley who has featured here more than once before.

This is exactly what an evil robot should look like.

What you cannot see here (because it's not on the 2000AD website) is the equally good back cover which shows Volkhan's compatriots, including Mek Quake and Blackblood. They are pretty evil too!

Pat Mills deserves an honourably mention as well as he invented the ABC Warriors longer ago that both of us probably like to admit to, he's still writing cracking stories about them and he was immensely approachable, nice and stimulating when I met him at the recent Comica event.

2000AD is still the galaxy's best comic.

Another great talk on comics

While the main Comica event is held at the ICA each Autumn a number of other Comica events are held throughout the year and the latest was held at the london print studio with the engaging title How a Comic is Made. On the panel were Andrzej Klimowski and Danusia Schejbal (Master & Margarita), Nana Li (Twelfth Night), Pat Mills (Nemesis, Slaine, Requiem) and Woodrow Phoenix (Rumble Strip).

The event was chaired by the enthusiastic and ebullient Paul Gravett (pictured here in full flow) who gets to do these things because he is an expert on all things comics and he runs Comica.

The only panellist that I knew beforehand was Pat Mills who, with John Wagner, has been the voice of 2000AD for the last thirty years.

The evening got off to an unexpectedly good start when I bumped in to Paul Gravett at Kings Cross Station, he and a colleague had just been to Kings Place (where I work) to see a gallery space there for an exhibition later this year on Argentinian comics - something else to look forward to.

The talk was a tremendous success for me with a lot of learning during the long discussion session and then a chance to speak to all of the creators afterwards.

It was interesting to learn that all the creators approached their art in different ways.

Some were completely chaotic just jumping in to the story with no real plan and working on individual pictures, rather than the whole page, so that they then had to be resized and cropped to fit.

The manga Shakespeare adaptations are presented to the artists as 193 pages of dialogue, leaving the artist free to do what they like around this simple constraint.

One had produced an unusual book, Rumble Strip, that deliberately does not have any people in it, not even a narrator, as the success of a story depends on your ability to connect with the characters so having no characters takes this problem away.

Pat Mills (the only writer not artist on the panel) explained the art of planning each page so that they all end with some sort of compelling incident that make you want to turn the page.

The discussion covered much more than this and was illuminating, entertaining and informal. Of particular interest was the work-in-progress samples that all of the creators brought along to show how they approach a character, a scene, a page or a script and how this then developed in to the final product.

But the proof of the pudding is in the shopping and after the talk I bought four books, including Rumble Strip, Twelfth Night and Requiem and had more delightful conversations with the creators while they were signed.

I am really grateful to Comica for organising such great events and, through these, for introducing me to books that I would otherwise have read.

The ABC Warriors are back!!

I was going to write about some other comics but then this week's 2000AD arrived and the plot changed.

Prog 1666 see the start of the latest saga of the ABC Warriors, which started waaaay back in 1979, is Book IV of The Volgan War.

It's a year since Book III (how did that happen?) and the warriors have been greatly missed, because Pat Mills writes scorching scripts and Clint Langley is just an insanely good artist.

So good is the art that I was compelled to take a photo of a double page spread last time that I wrote about it and I've done it again today.

This is why 2000AD continues to be the first comic that I read every week.

Slaine returns to 2000AD

Most of the stories in 2000AD fit firmly into the "science fiction" but there are some exceptions, such as the marvellously bloodthirsty Slaine.

In many ways this is familiar territory and a mythical pre-history world where savage gods and magic still hold sway has proved to be fertile ground and has spawned many fantastical stories with familiar characters like Conan the Barbarian and Merlin.

Slaine is a worth addition to that canon and has been enlivening the pages of 2000AD since 1983.

Pat Mills writes the stories and he writes much that is very good in 2000AD so you know that this is going to be good too.

Several artists have worked on Slaine over the years, all to good effect, including fan favourites Mike McMahon, Massimo Belardinelli, Glenn Fabry and Simon Bisley.

The latest story, The Gong Beater, is drawn by Clint Langley who I said nice things about recently regarding his work on ABC Warriors (also written by Pat Mills) and his work here is also excellent.

The bloody axe tells you all that you need to know about the character and the story!

2000AD remains my favourite comic simply because of the diversity and the quality of the stories that it delivers week after week. Slaine is just another example that proves the rule.