This weeks Strontium Dog

[Leigh S]

Regardless of the intent, Final Solution is a pretty great story.

Had Alpha not been killed off he could have easily gone the way of Robo Hunter, Slaine or the original Rouge Trooper - The Big Flying Thing is a key part of growing Alpha's legend, and quite possibly the only bit of obscure 2000ad continuity ever to be broadcast in a massively popular TV show.

Alan Grant did the best bits of Johnny, it's only right he got to kill him.

Regardless  of intent, I find Final Solution a pretty mediocre story, tied up in strange continuity...(where exactly did they get Malak Brood's bones from anyway, when last we saw him he had melted into a puddle? - Maybe they reconstituted back from the puddle - heck, maybe so did Alpha... look at that, unlikely rewriting of what we saw in the strip was there going all the way back to the Final Solution!)

At worst, this is a two wrongs making a right scenario for me. Wagner has jumped through the odd hoop, but only to disentangle himself from a situation not of his own making.

As for Alan Grant being responsible for the best there was about Stront.  I'd beleive that if:

a:  I didnt know that all those Alan Grant stories (bar the last ones) were co-written with Wagner - Alan Grant got the credit purely cos he was manning the typewriter as they wrote them!  

b: I hadnt read (almost) all of his subsequent Dredd strisp, and a lot of his other strips, which to me pale in comparison to what Wagner has achieved solo in the same period.

Finally, I do view Stront as a ruined character in the same style as Robohunter, Rogue etc;  just because the main character is dead, doesnt mean you cant go on and ruin the universe he exists in.

[jamesedwards]

Most of the political/emotional stuff comes into play once Grant takes over - don't get me wrong, Alan Grant has written some appalling stuff and I loathe his Anderson stories - but I'm not sure we'd have had Portrait of a Mutant or the Wulf/Rage storyline without Grant.

I'm extrapolating a lot of this, so it might be bullshit - but I think if you take the qualities of the Wagner-only stuff vs the qualities of the Grant-only stuff it gets easier to guess their individual angles. Subjectively.

[Leigh S]

Most of the political/emotional stuff comes into play once Grant takes over - don't get me wrong, Alan Grant has written some appalling stuff and I loathe his Anderson stories - but I'm not sure we'd have had Portrait of a Mutant or the Wulf/Rage storyline without Grant.

I'm extrapolating a lot of this, so it might be bullshit - but I think if you take the qualities of the Wagner-only stuff vs the qualities of the Grant-only stuff it gets easier to guess their individual angles. Subjectively.

For me, Wagners emotional and political themes are that much more developed and subtle than Grant, just looking at solo stuff - America, the whole Tour of Duty stuff.  Apparently, Portrait of a Mutant was pretty much Wagners "idea", in the sense that he had this stuff worked out about Alpha's past before Grant came on board as co-writer; but how much Grant then guided those ideas is probably lost to the mists of time! Grant only really "takes over" with Final Solution.  Everything from Deaths Head to Stone Killers (though i ve always felt possibly not Stone Killers - it just has a vibe like the FS stuff) is co-written, so who is responsible for what is tricky to tease out.  All we know for sure is that Alan Grant was the one hitting the keys on the type writer

[Robin Low]

Regardless  of intent, I find Final Solution a pretty mediocre story, tied up in strange continuity...(where exactly did they get Malak Brood's bones from anyway, when last we saw him he had melted into a puddle? - Maybe they reconstituted back from the puddle

If you look more closely, we see both Malak Brood and his burden of sins melting. When we get a close up at Alpha's feet we see a single small puddle and Alpha refers to Brood's sins - this puddle is likely to be Brood's burden, rather than the remains of Brood himself. It is quite possible that the remains of Brood is out of frame, and these could easily include some bony remnants.

Regards

Robin

[TordelBack]

Don't ever change, Robin!

[Trout]

This is why Robin got that name-check in the prog.

His powers are mighty! (As are Bolt's.)

[James Stacey]

Don't ever change, Robin!

Won't he get whiffy ?

[Leigh S]

Regardless  of intent, I find Final Solution a pretty mediocre story, tied up in strange continuity...(where exactly did they get Malak Brood's bones from anyway, when last we saw him he had melted into a puddle? - Maybe they reconstituted back from the puddle

If you look more closely, we see both Malak Brood and his burden of sins melting. When we get a close up at Alpha's feet we see a single small puddle and Alpha refers to Brood's sins - this puddle is likely to be Brood's burden, rather than the remains of Brood himself. It is quite possible that the remains of Brood is out of frame, and these could easily include some bony remnants.

Regards

Robin

Heh - true enough Robin, though we do see him melting away into a fairly blobbly mass, with no sign of bones sticking around before that. Alpha explicitly states "He's gone." when theres just that tiny puddle left, so i reckon thats pretty much stating in both art and script that he has been dissolved away entirely, rather than 'just' killed.  He doesnt say "He's dead!" - "He's gone!" feels more specific to my mind in saying he has left no trace.


Alpha actually says "No man could kill him - but the weight of his own sins could", but thats not to say that he is identifying that puddle as purely his sins as he says that.