Slaine - TIME KILLER

[norton canes]

You are Pat Mills.

You've just seen 30 episodes of your latest project - the tale of Celtic warrior Slaine - published in 2000AD, to massive critical approval from the magazine's readers. They loved the painstakingly researched Celtic references, from the stories, inspired by genuine mythology, to the grittily authentic portrayal of life in prehistoric Britain. You've had one superb artist and one breathtakingly magnificent artist realise your vision, both capturing perfectly the characters, clothes and landscapes of the age.

You are on a roll, and it's time to script the next instalments.

So what do you do? You jettison practically all traces of Celtic authenticity and instead give the story all the trappings of a Cthulhu-esque pseudo-SF novel, with time-travelling aliens materialising from 'inner space', armed with skin-liquidising sonic weapons and 'leyser' beams. Any remaining sorcerous elements are given a sci-fi twist. Basically, you remove everything that made the earlier episodes of the series great.

Later you will put most of these elements back. So the question is – what were you thinking?

[I, Cosh]

I've no idea what Pat was thinking but I was eleven and I was thinking: "Holy shit! I wouldn't have believed it was possible for this series to get even more awesome than it already was if I wasn't holding it in my hands right now." and "Where has this Fabry guy come from? He's outrageously good at drawing."

[mejustnow]

What Cosh said.

[CalHab]

I doubt even Pat Mills knows what Pat Mills is thinking at any given moment.

He's maddeningly inconsistent but when he's on form he's the greatest.

[Steven Denton]

IIRC it was a sort of censorship issue. The axe and sword play was considered too bloody and violent so they moved to guns and monsters.

[SIP]

I loved Time Killer, easily my favourite direction for Slaine. Fabry's work is phenomenal and I'd never read anything like it in comics before.

[Frank]

I've no idea what Pat was thinking but I was eleven and I was thinking: "Holy shit! I wouldn't have believed it was possible for this series to get even more awesome than it already was if I wasn't holding it in my hands right now." and "Where has this Fabry guy come from? He's outrageously good at drawing."

Ditto. I'd add that Mills tailors his work to his artists' interests and that Sláine contained sci-fi elements from the first page.

We might just as well ask why Mills created his most commercially successful work ever - The Horned God - then immediately decided to kill the character and take him off on travels through time*, abandoning the supporting cast and storylines that made the Bisley book a hit.

Mills seems like the kind of writer who's enthused more by ideas than characters or dialogue, and whenever a new idea occurs to him he just wants to pursue that. Rather than creating a new strip, Mills turns the one he's working on into the one he wants to write**.



* Every Mills character ends up on desultory travels through time - I have a feeling that even Bill Savage (the least sci-fi character imaginable) is about to cross paths with the ABC Warriors and Torquemada in the time wastes.

** See Nemesis turning into an eighties student politics drama and Defoe morphing into Marshal Law last time out

[Bad City Blue]

I liked Time Killer. The last Slaine was poo

[Dandontdare]

The art was great but I still shudder to remember the Leyser guns. Not Mr Mills' finest hour

[Dark Jimbo]

The art was great but I still shudder to remember the Leyser guns. Not Mr Mills' finest hour

As mentioned above though, the Leyser guns were forced on him by editorial because they were worried about all the graphic slicing and chopping with swords and axes.

[sheridan]

* Every Mills character ends up on desultory travels through time - I have a feeling that even Bill Savage (the least sci-fi character imaginable) is about to cross paths with the ABC Warriors and Torquemada in the time wastes.

Explains the Thousand Year Stare (though it'll take more than a thousand years for the Savage Earth to turn in to Termight).

[WhizzBang]

For me, Time Killer was where Slaine took off and became a proper 2000ad classic.

[TordelBack]

I didn't care for Time Killer one bit at the time, Slaine being my favourite story, but I've grown to love it. As Frank says, the time travel shenanigans are right there on the first page of the Angie Kincaid-drawn first episode, and having Slaine interrupt his physical journey home to head off at right angles and place his story and entire era as one small element of a vast science-fictional cosmology was inspired.

Incidentally, talking about the Warrior's Dawn era being set in a prehistoric/mythical Britain is way off: aside from a few moments in flashbacks, Slaine doesn't set foot in continental Europe, never mind Britain, until Dragonheist. All the early stories are set on the floor of the Atlantic, and  most of the flashback stories, Slaine the King, and almost all of Horned God are set on the floor of the Irish Sea. Slaine has always been fantasy on a vastly more ambitious scale than its barbarian wanderer trappings suggested.

Still hate those bloody leyser guns though.

[Jim_Campbell]

Sadly unconnected to one of the few tracks I actually liked from the Goth/Dance crossover era... Timekiller. :-)

[maryanddavid]

I've no idea what Pat was thinking but I was eleven and I was thinking: "Holy shit! I wouldn't have believed it was possible for this series to get even more awesome than it already was if I wasn't holding it in my hands right now." and "Where has this Fabry guy come from? He's outrageously good at drawing."

Pretty much the same.