LSH 1994 reread, part ten

Covering Legion of Super-Heroes vol. 4 # 93-95 and Legionnaires# 49-52, 1997)

Major developments:

*In the 20th Century, Andrew Nolan's brother Douglas, incarcerated in a home for mutants that is run by a corrupt thug, dies trying to escape. The LSH offers Andrew, as Ferro, a place on their team.
*Brainiac 5 starts a fight with the Metal Men after he mistakenly assumes that they are robots and attempts to use their "responsometer" computers in his time travel experiments, but they are actually (in this continuity) human intelligences in robotic form.
*Cos and Imra announce their engagement.
*In the 30th Century, the United Planets forms a gigantic task force of superheroes to attack Mordru, who is hunting for the Emerald Eye. The Eye and Mordru battle, and the hero Atom'x of Xanthu thinks he can blast them both away and rescue Violet, but Mordru murders him and drains all of his energy. Violet and the Eye merge into one being, Veye, and proposes to become Mordru's consort.
*Mysa and Kinetix abduct the Eye and the heroes attack in force. Vi is freed from the Eye, which vanishes into space, Mordru goes dormant and is sealed away as he had been before, and Mysa is revealed to be his daughter, de-aged to her early twenties. Another of the allied heroes, Blast-Off, is killed, and the Legion's Magno loses his powers. Vi ends up with additional ones: the Eye quasi-granted one of her wishes while she was helplessly in its power, and she can now grow to giant size as Gim Allon could.
*Monstress from the planet Xanthu joins the team.
*The creative team is as before: Tom McCraw, Tom Peyer, and Roger Stern writing, Lee Moder and Jeffrey Moy as principal artists. Mike Collins pencils LSH # 93. Issue # 94 features a whole pile of substitute artists, each contributing one or two pages. Among the names that I recognize from their other work that I have enjoyed, Phil Jimenez, Walt Simonson, and Val Semekis


Let's get the worst out of the way: these Metal Men stink. In 1994, DC had upgraded and rebooted a lot of older series. Some, like Legion and the James Robinson-Tony Harris Starman, came out bright and shiny and wonderful. Then there was the Dan Jurgens Metal Men miniseries, which killed off Gold, put Doc Magnus in an armored suit, and revealed that they were amnesiac humans all along. I loved the 1970s Metal Men as a kid. They'd always show up as oddball guest stars in things like The Brave & The Bold, and those big Showcase omnibus editions show that their original 1960s-1970s appearances were incredibly fun comics. This revamp is awful, and the Legion's continued association with the 20th Century DC Universe is really, really getting old as dirt at this point.

Happily, despite the feeling of fatigue and malaise that the last seven issues prompted, this is a mostly better run of comics, thanks in part to the really remarkable battle with Mordru, which is staged brilliantly, and also the decision to slow the narrative down for two issues afterward to deal with the ramifications of what happens next. I'm not kidding about the brilliant staging of the battle in issue 50. It's a textbook example of how to build up to a big superhero fight and make it matter. The outcome is in doubt all the way through, and there's just no way to guess how it's going to finish. It is also drawn beautifully. This Jeffrey Moy - if you don't like his work on Legion, you've just got no hope in the world.

I was honestly reminded of the big, mean smackdown in issue # 50 of Levitz's big run, when four of the heroes make a suicide run against the Time Trapper. This one has consequences, and while this doesn't have its antecedent's apocalyptic shock - there are, after all, far more heroes this time out - there are fatalities and long-lasting (if not permanent) injuries and big changes to the normal run of things.

Okay, so admittedly, the fatalities are members of the C-list cast, and the most grievous injury is to somebody equally on the periphery, and the Legionnaire most injured - Magno is depowered - is one of the newest three, whose power set duplicates Cosmic Boy's, but this is a book that has clearly shown that nobody is safe, and that if even Gim Allon can die in battle, then anybody can.

Heck, they're already threatening to have Cos and Imra get married!!

LSH 1994 Reread, part eight

Covering Legion of Super-Heroes vol. 4 # 86-88 and Legionnaires# 42-45, 1996-97)

Major developments:

*The sorceress Mysa abducts Kinetix, her family, and the four Legionnaires traveling with her, furious that Kinetix failed to retrieve the Emerald Eye of Ekron. After a skirmish, Mysa agrees to restore Zoe's psychokinetic powers and to stop interfering in her life. On Earth, Garth agrees to RJ Brande's suggestion that he serve as interim acting leader. A few issues later, they have a proper election and Invisible Kid takes charge.
*The team takes on three new members to help with their comrades being lost in time. Dyrk Magz of Braal (Magno), Tasmia Mallor of Talok VIII (Umbra), and Princess Jeka Wynzorr of Orando (Sensor), who is a huge snake, are selected.
*A cave-in caused by some of the rejected applicants breaks open a tomb where the sorceror Mordru had been buried.
*Rond Vidar restores Lori to her correct age, and uses the chronal energy from the extraction to very briefly contact the team that is stranded in the past and confirm they are okay...
*In the 20th Century, the stranded Legionnaires (Cos, Saturn Girl, Spark, Brainy, Gates, Ultra Boy, and Apparition, with Shvaughn and Inferno) have been assisting the soon-to-be Justice League and other superheroes from "The Final Night," a very tedious crossover in which the Sun-Eater attacks the planet and it looks like a homeless kid who can turn to iron and is called Ferro is going to sacrifice himself to save the earth, but it actually ends up being Green Lantern Hal Jordan, in one of his funnybook deaths, who dies saving the day.
*Next, most of these heroes show up in a two-part story in the anthology book Showcase '96. While they're away, Jo and Apparition have a team-up with Deadman that ends with Apparition being restored to near-solidity, allowing her to be seen by everybody at last. They also have a team-up with Impulse and Max Mercury that ends with the team being evicted from their temporary headquarters in Metropolis.
*The creative team is as before: Tom McCraw, Tom Peyer, and Roger Stern writing, Lee Moder and Jeffrey Moy as principal artists. Guests Mike Collins and Paul Pelletier each pencil one-third of LSH # 87.

My biggest problem with the stuck-in-the-20th-Century Legion is simply that a huge chunk of their story is happening off-panel. It looks like the editors decided to really incorporate the hell out of the Legion and introduce them to all of DC's readers who had written off the LSH as too convoluted and confusing. So the team starts their exile right in the middle of the big 1996 DC crossover event and from there, they go everywhere. They guest star in everybody's book: Superman, Impulse, Sovereign Seven, you name it. Done right, these crossover appearances shouldn't be important to this book, but these aren't done right. Every issue of LSH either leads into one of these supporting titles, or it references the events from those titles. The only people who could possibly enjoy reading these books are Footnote Fetishists.

Actually, there's another small problem. At the time of the "Final Night" story, all of DC's biggest names were not actually in the Justice League. This was during one of DC's occasional periods where the JLA was staffed with C-listers. But the A-team - Superman, Green Lantern, Batman, the Flash - all show up here, working together, and drawn brilliantly by Lee Moder. About eight months later, Grant Morrison began writing the relaunched JLA starring all the big names. I started following that because I followed Morrison most places then. The stories were terrific, albeit needing a little editing and clarification and less influence from lesser titles, but the art was so bad. A guy named Howard Porter drew it and I loathed it. To see Lee Moder drawing these characters, who mainly just stand around and debate the next battle plan against the Sun-Eater, is to see what could have been. A Morrison-Moder JLA would have been a thing of beauty.

What's happening in the 30th Century is much more interesting, once this subplot of Mysa is finally wrapped. I am so glad that this pointlessly grouchy old lady has left the story and will be leaving Zoe alone. Now back to her original power set and, mostly, costume, she can impact the story and characters on her own, and not via some other person's manipulation.

Other than that - heck, we're down to just three issues - everything is terrific. I like the new take on Projectra a lot, though I remember some people just couldn't stand it. Sensor Girl was amazing in her day, but her day was the mid-1980s. I also like the new take on Shadow Lass, who's incredibly tough and cool even outside of her powers. Well, three out of seven isn't really terrible, but I hope this 20th Century story ends soon...

LSH 1994 Reread, part seven

Covering Legion of Super-Heroes vol. 4 # 82-85 and Legionnaires# 39-41, 1996)

Major developments:

*Shrinking Violet has been elected team leader.
*After months of speculation, Tinya is confirmed to be alive. She "hid" inside of Jo's body at the point of her own body's physical death and it has taken all this time to get the strength to leave. She can only be seen by or communicate with Jo or other Bgtzlians like her mother.
*Cos and Imra seem to have started dating. Ayla's secret admirer is outed as Chameleon. She's not pleased.
*The heroes chase down Dr. Regulus, who's escaped captivity. Very weird things start happening. Triad splits into her three bodies, but they're all quite radically different: one is a seven or eight year-old girl and one is a brazen sexpot.
*The weirdness escalates. Cos believes that he is dating Imra, but XS believes that she is dating Cos. Brainy is getting room to work. Gates is thrilled that people are listening to his political rants. Leviathan's heart's desire is to die a hero. He gets his wish, breathtakingly, stopping Regulus and dying of his injuries. We learn why: Violet has discovered the Emerald Eye of Ekron, which is warping her subconscious wishes into reality, and everybody is getting what they want. But even the Eye can't revive the dead...
*The Eye has completely taken over Vi and enslaves the rest of the heroes. Imra breaks free from its control first, and there's a massive explosion as the Eye shunts half the team a thousand years into the past. It still has control over poor Salu, and retreats into space.
*Leviathan is buried with full honors on Shanghalla. Wazzo tries to enlist his parents into her cause to disband the Legion, but she is immediately put in her place by Admiral and Mrs. Allon, who remind her that their son was a soldier, and who died doing what he loved.
*Cos, Saturn Girl, Spark, Brainy, Gates, Ultra Boy, and Apparition arrive in the 20th Century above Metropolis, along with Science Police officer Shvaughn Erin and the Work Force's Inferno, who were present when the Eye was being overwhelmed. The city's Special Crimes Unit tangles with the team until Superman, who met the previous Legion on one of his recent travels in time, arrives to clear up the confusion.
*The creative team is as before: Tom McCraw, Tom Peyer, and Roger Stern writing, Lee Moder and Jeffrey Moy as principal artists. Mike Collins pencilled several pages in LSH # 83.


Argh, every time they pull the Legion out of the 20th Century, somebody pulls them back in. The previous two defied expectations, but this one is setting off all my alarm bells, and with good reason. The nine characters are going to stay in the 20th Century to first join the DC Universe in fighting the Sun-Eater during a weekly crossover called "Final Night," and they'll stay in the contemporary day for at least the next twelve months of issues.

But before that, things are very fast-paced and wild. I really love the way the creators chose to introduce the slightly altered realities from each Legionnaire's P.O.V. as apparent art errors. It looks, for all the world, like Lee Moder just plain forgot who he should be drawing in certain panels, but it all comes together as Violet loses her grip on the "real" reality. This means there's an interesting beat - a pause where we have to question whether Leviathan is really dead. This was a simply huge surprise. Nobody saw this coming.

The whole of the story, as it plays out across several issues, is really entertaining. The writers do a great job in just keeping the action moving. Yes, it's about five issues, but it's not like a five-issue fight scene. So much is going on that it feels epic, and it doesn't feel like the heroes are right to want to help Violet. In time, I believe that she'll be rescued, but for the present, it feels like she is gone, completely absorbed by the Emerald Eye. Reader sympathy is torn between the conventions of the genre - and like of the character - and what we see on the page, which does not suggest that anything of Salu Digby is left. It also leaves me wondering whether the Eye will meet up with the Empress of Venegar anytime soon.

But, sadly, things come to an end, and this story, again, leaves the team scattered. Several heroes have been transported back to the contemporary DC Universe. As it happens, I kind of like this version of DC - it's right on the cusp of Grant Morrison's very entertaining takeover of JLA - but I'm simply not looking forward to seeing what will happen with them next. I'd rather my Legion stay in the future.

Doctor Who: The Crimson Hand

What I try to do with reviews at this Bookshelf blog is keep it simple and spoiler-free, and let you know whether I'd recommend you pick up a copy of what I just read. Seems to work okay. This time, a brief review of Doctor Who: The Crimson Hand (Panini, 2012).


Credit Where It's Due Dept: The last two Panini collections of Doctor Who comics got some pretty well-deserved raspberries from me, because the publisher solicited them at a price of about $24, and then when they showed up, they cost $32. Well, I no longer care to read advance solicitations for comics, but I do note that when The Crimson Hand finally showed up, as explained below, it came with a price printed on the back cover of the book itself of $31.95, covered up by a large sticker that corrected it to $24.99. Thank you, gentlemen, that's the way that it should be done.

Having said that, it's possible that when The Crimson Hand was originally solicited, it might have been so long ago that I actually was still paying attention to these things. The book was caught up in a sad and lengthy tug of war between various branches of the BBC's licensing and marketing departments. Apparently somebody started thinking about things too deeply and wondered whether Panini's license to print comics extends to giving them the right to collect these comics in a book form, and whether they might need a different license for that, because some other department has that license. And then there's the issue of the logo. Brands being all-important, it wouldn't do to have the David Tennant logo on new merchandise, because since Matt Smith became the star, there's a different logo... good grief, did anybody dare dream that when Doctor Who came back in '05 that things would get so silly?

The comic has always had a silly streak, but it's also played fairly within the rules of the continuity since the TV show returned. This left the comic's creators with a really great opportunity. They would have something like eighteen months between the end of series four and the debut of Matt Smith's Doctor to do whatever the heck they wanted. If the comic had become a little straitjacketed by the show continuity, this was a rare and happy opportunity to revisit the freewheeling anything goes decade of the Eighth Doctor, with long and involved subplots and lots of recurring characters.

Orchestrated by Dan McDaid, who wrote most of the resulting stories, the free-from-teevee-rules final run of the Tenth Doctor - you can slot this entire book in between the TV episodes "Planet of the Dead" and "The Waters of Mars" - sees the Doctor crossing paths with a ruthless green-skinned businesswoman called Majenta Pryce and, much to his surprise, traveling with her for a time. To his even bigger surprise, she has very mysterious origins of her own and is being pursued through time and space by four incredibly ruthless and powerful beings.

This collection is a great big satisfying chunk of story, realistically more than can be absorbed in a single sitting. Artwork is provided by the reliable Mike Collins, Martin Geraghty, and Paul Grist, and I really enjoyed Geraghty's Kirby-esque designs for the Crimson Hand. It's fun and surprising, and while the Doctor himself is probably not in any real danger, it's a book where everybody else is. Recommended.

LSH 1994 Reread, part three

(Covering Legion of Super-Heroes vol. 4 # 68-71, (but not Annual # 6), and Legionnaires # 25-28 (but not Annual #2), 1995)

Major developments:

*The Legionnaires defeat Tangleweb, who has been augmenting his intelligence by absorbing his victims' minds, but Andromeda's horrible attitude and phobias are not winning her any friends, even though she comes through in the end.
*A war criminal from Durla comes to Earth to hunt down Cham. He has the power to not just shape-shift, but to copy all the Legionnaires' powers. He calls himself the Composite Man. Shutting down the villain's brain is more than Imra can take; she is transferred to a psychiatric facility, catatonic.
*Kinetix, looking to increase her power or gain more through ancient artifacts, loses her abilities when she uncovers a star-shaped object that counteracts the effects of the first one that had originally given her superpowers.
*Jo and Tinya get to know each other a little better, and Jo's team, the Work Force, breaks up a criminal gang. These are revealed to be more members of the White Triangle, who resent the Work Force's owner, McCauley, selling arms to both themselves as well as to the people of other planets whom they detest.
*The White Triangle makes its move. Mostly racist Daxamites, they start murdering interspecies couples on Earth before destroying the stargates that allow interplanetary transport, and then wiping out the population of the planet Trom in a genocidal attack from space.
*Andromeda confesses that she's an unwitting White Triangle agent and, after Brainiac 5 gives her a new serum to make her immune to lead poisoning, she goes out for revenge on the Daxamite diplomats who maneuvered her into the Legion.
*The White Triangle attacks Earth, and I'm not sure how it ends because I didn't know that I needed Legionnaires Annual # 2 to finish the story. Blast.
*The basic creative team is as before: Mark Waid, Tom McCraw, and Tom Peyer writing, with Lee Moder and Jeffrey Moy the principal artists. Guest artists include Mike Collins and Joyce Chin.


Mark Waid finished out his co-writing and development of the Legion with this run of issues. They wrap up the first major subplots, culminating in a battle with the White Triangle. That will have big repercussions, which I'll look at in the next installment.

Beyond that... well, I apologize to anybody following along who's looking for any real insight from me into these issues, but I find analyzing them a little tough. They are rock-solid, very entertaining comics. As the team wrapped up their first year developing the new Legion, they could honestly say that they did even better than anybody reading would have guessed. The letters pages of both books were absent for several months, and when they returned, the editors had the right attitude and printed quite a few letters from older fans who were aggravated that DC Comics had closed the original Legion off and started fresh.

I would love to see a good reprint program for these comics, and not in any half-assed way, either. This book is every bit as good, if not better, than the wonderful Starman from the same period, and look at how beautifully DC spruced up those collections.

Well, I say that now, but looking ahead to the next batch of issues, I see that the very silly and badly dated '90s Superboy - you remember, the one with the really bad haircut and the Lennon spectacles - shows up for a three-issue guest star part. Gulp.

Anyway, my favorite moments involve the nascent formation of the Espionage Squad, with Invisible Kid, Apparition, Triad, Vi, and Chameleon basically doing their own thing regardless of what the leader-man tells them. It leads to the big cliffhanger about halfway through the run, when Vi comes back from Andromeda's room holding a White Triangle pendant. My least favorite moments were realizing that I needed two more issues to read the whole story. I don't own either of the 1995 Annuals. LSH Annual # 6 contains the story in which Kinetix loses her powers, and the whole shebang is wrapped up in Legionnaires Annual # 2. I ran by a couple of places in the 'burbs that still sell back issues and they didn't have copies of these issues. What an aggravation. Maybe I'll find them one day.

Doctor Who: A Cold Day in Hell!

Here's how this works. I read a book or two and tell you about them and try not to get too long-winded. This time, a review of Doctor Who: A Cold Day in Hell! (Panini, 2009)



We've reached the point in these collections of the Doctor Who strip where I originally stopped buying the magazine, so I was pretty interested in checking this book out. I'm kind of hazy as to why I quit reading, but I sort of recall that the price went up and they dropped eight pages back in 1987. I'm also pretty sure that I enjoyed Sylvester McCoy's Doctor more than anybody else that I knew at the time, but my enthusiasm had still ebbed after a couple of years of fandom. I also seem to recall one issue's cover with McCoy and Richard Briers making stupid faces at each other, and lit so they looked like a couple of ugly jack o'lanterns and deciding my money would be better spent on Siouxsie and the Banshees records.

Inside, the comic was going through some radical changes. In the seven pages of commentary in this collection, John Freeman interviews the comic's editor, Richard Starkings, who confirmed that the magazine was going through some belt-tightening at the time, and that artist John Ridgway, who had drawn the strip since the first Colin Baker episode, was passed over in favor of a rotating series of writers and artists.

The intent was apparently to follow the TV series' lead, as of course each serial had its own screenwriter and director. However, this simply doesn't work as well with an ongoing comic. Particularly in collected form, the inconsistent tone provided by having a new team for each story really jars.

As for the individual stories, some fail spectacularly, but some are pretty good. Freeman's two-part "Planet of the Dead" is a really fun romp, and I like the way the Doctor really seems completely lost, yet still in character, but it's undermined by Lee Sullivan's artwork. In time, Sullivan would grow into a favorite on Judge Dredd, but this early work is really rough and his storytelling is confusing, and the story's aliens, a shapeshifting bunch called the Gwanzulum, are just about the dumbest looking monsters in a series known for dumb-looking monsters. It ends up feeling like a rough draft for what should have been a memorable anniversary runaround, just a disappointment.

A lot of the book is like this, with novice artists just starting their comic career undermining a good story or two. Admittedly, neither Kev Hopgood nor Dougie Braithwaite were ever among my favorites when they started on 2000 AD a few years later, but their work here is just terrible. So is "Culture Shock!," a one-parter written by Grant Morrison and utterly ruined by a teenage Bryan Hitch, who would of course go on to far better things in the future, but who barely understands page composition here. It works the other way around in one case, though: veteran Alan Grant turns in a completely awful script called "Invaders from Gantac!" about an alien invasion of Earth totally at odds with anything else Doctor Who has ever presented, but somehow artists Martin Griffiths and Cam Smith make it look readable.

Elsewhere, among the 21 episodes in the collection, are two crossovers with other Marvel UK titles, putting this Doctor in the same continuity as Death's Head and the Sleeze Brothers. Apparently, these really aggravated readers when they originally appeared. Having never read Death's Head or the Sleeze Brothers myself, all I can say is that I am in no rush to go back and read any other Marvel UK series that I might have missed. These are just awful.

The best stories here are the first four episodes by Simon Furman and John Ridgway, before he moved on, a one-off by Furman and the wonderful John Higgins, and a creepy, clever two-parter by Dan Abnett and the returning Ridgway. Everything really meshes with these episodes, and I almost get a sense for what a regular team might have accomplished. While I honestly liked the artwork in this book by Griffiths and Higgins, the collection in some alternate universe where Ridgway got to draw the whole thing would certainly be a superior prospect. Recommended for fans only.

(Oh, one final bugbear about this book: while I realize that exchange rates often make it difficult to price things in advance, if you're out there, Panini, I really didn't appreciate ordering a book solicited in Diamond for $24.99 only to have it arrive costing $31.95. Seriously, are you going to do this with the supposedly $24.99 [see here] edition of "The Widow's Curse" when it shows up in November?)

Doctor Who: The Betrothal of Sontar

Here's how this works. I read a book or two and tell you about them and try not to get too long-winded. This time, a review of Doctor Who: The Betrothal of Sontar (Panini, 2008).



Panini has released a pair of 100-page magazine collections of the more recent episodes of their long-running Doctor Who strip since the series returned. In fact, Christopher Eccleston only played the Doctor long enough to make it to about 100 pages of comics, so that's all the compilation that he'll ever get, but "The Betrothal of Sontar" is the first time that one of their big, lovely graphic novels is devoted to the modern series. It contains all of the Tenth Doctor & Rose strips from Doctor Who Magazine #365-377 plus one from the 2007 Storybook, and wraps up with the first post-Rose story "The Warkeeper's Crown" from #378-380, which features the return of the Brigadier along with longtime Eighth Doctor artist Martin Geraghty.

From a creators' standpoint, it really is a mixed bag. One thing that has made the strip so enthralling over its thirty-year run have been the lengthy runs by a consistent team, whether the original Mills/Wagner/Gibbons lineup, or the Parkhouse run of the Fifth and Sixth Doctors, or the terrific Gray/Geraghty run for the Eighth Doctor. The strip was at its weakest in the early 90s when it was without a regular team. Since 2005, it's had rotating writers and artists, and sometimes there are eye-rolling duds like Tony Lee's "F.A.Q." but the approach does have advantages. By letting the TV show dictate the subplots and continuity, the strip can focus more on high-concept adventures that no TV show's budget could manage, like John Tomlinson's titular adventure and Mike Collins' reality-warping "The Futurists."

That might seem an odd distinction, but it results in a mix of stories simply too wild for any TV budget and more amusing episodes that play with the modern series' character dynamics. Best of all is a one-off written by Gareth Roberts and drawn by Mike Collins and David Roach in which the Doctor spends a TARDIS-free weekend on the Powell Estate waiting for Rose to arrive, making Mickey completely miserable. It's a really hilarious little gem. A similar story, bidding farewell to this set of supporting characters and drawn by the great Roger Langridge, is a wonderful recap of everything that both drove us nuts and made Rose, Jackie and Mickey so endearing. It's a perfect companion to the TV series, and is certainly recommended for all Doctor Who fans.

Slaine Vol. 3

Speaking of reprints, in other news, I finally tracked down a copy of the third Slaine collection a few months ago. This, The King, was one that Diamond never saw fit to deliver to my local comic shop, along with Mega-City Undercover, which was released the same week. Fortunately, I found a copy at The Great Escape in Nashville in November. This is a really spectacular shop, worth driving a hundred miles out of your way to visit. The book reprints close to forty episodes which originally saw print between 1985 and 1988.

Much as Pat Mills has a story to tell, the star of the book is Glenn Fabry, who illustrated about half the episodes. When these episodes originally ran, it felt like there was one delay after another pushing back new Slaine stories. Fabry drew just a handful of the pages in the "Tomb of Terror" storyline, a 15-part diversion from Mills' ongoing goal of reuniting the warrior with his tribe. The bulk of "Tomb" was illustrated by David Pugh, and was accompanied by a pencil-and-dice role-playing supplement with each new episode. The RPG pages, with artwork by Garry Leach, are included as a bonus feature in the back, making this one of the cutest little extras that Rebellion has presented.

After "Tomb," there was a break of about nine months before Mike Collins and Mark Farmer took on art chores for a seven week, Zodiac-related serial. Then Fabry got the reins for the twelve-part "Slaine the King," which originally ran in two chunks over five months. Ever behind on his deadlines, and probably deep in debt with his local Dick Blick for all the ink he was using, Fabry's amazing work was worth the wait at the time and just looks better on these pages. The definitive Slaine artist is probably McMahon to me, but Fabry's a very close second.

It was originally thought that Fabry would be illustrating the classic "Horned God," to appear in the standard black-and-white with a color centerspread, shortly after the completion of the Judge Dredd epic "Oz" wrapped up in 1988. As 2000 AD changed paper size and increased its color pages, it was eventually decided that Simon Bisley would paint the epic instead. A little more than a year after the conclusion of "Slaine the King," four last black and white Fabry episodes appeared as a teaser strip and a three-part miniseries. These served as a taster prelude for the forthcoming "Horned God."

Around the same time, Mills and Fabry collaborated on a color newspaper strip called Scatha which was truncated by The News on Sunday's imminent failure. You can read more about that and see some sample episodes over at Bear Alley. Fabry also contributed a color pin-up of Slaine's enemy Megrim as a taster for his unproduced color epic which ran on the back cover of prog 524. It might have been frustrating twenty years ago waiting for each new storyline to get going, but it really resulted in some great comics. Even if you don't like the character of Slaine, this book is certainly recommended for Fabry's glorious artwork. Hopefully Diamond will treat your store better than mine and get you a copy quickly!

(Excerpted from Thrillpowered Thursday, February 05, 2009.)