Forthcoming Thrills!

[Judge Brian]

Any idea if Slaine The Secret Commonwealth will be reprinted anytime soon?

[glassstanley]

It's not due until after The Lost Years has been reprinted. Rebellion tend to publish one GN a year,,around Easter time. Depends whether Lost Years fits into 1 or 2 volumes, but I'd expect Secret Commonwealth in 2015.

[Judge Brian]

What are the Lost Years?

[TordelBack]

With 5 page stories for children it's ok to write like that, but 2000AD is now for adults & adults require more logic in their stories.

You must introduce me to these logic-averse children of which you speak.  All the ones I know hound me relentlessly for a chain of causation devoid of adult hand-waving about 'making for a good story'. 

Mills gets to write what he wants.  Sometimes it's awful.  Far more often it's pure gold. The aggregate is called 2000AD.

[Professor Bear]

Children are bastards for wanting stuff explained to them, it's adults that are much more forgiving and willing to let stuff slide.

[glassstanley]

What are the Lost Years?

The run of Slaine stories between the last Graphic Novel and the Secret Commonwealth

They are called the Lost Years as they are set during Slaine's time as High King (just after The Horned God). They are a sort of 'back to basics' for Slaine after his time travelling adventures for the Goddess.

[vark]

What are the Lost Years?

The run of Slaine stories between the last Graphic Novel and the Secret Commonwealth

They are called the Lost Years as they are set during Slaine's time as High King (just after The Horned God). They are a sort of 'back to basics' for Slaine after his time travelling adventures for the Goddess.

The grail war reprints circa 30 strips. Between The Grail war and the Secret Commonwealth if I am not mistaken there are 16 strips and the Secret Commonwealth run for 17 strips so 2014 it is  !

[Judge Brian]

Thanks guys.

[credo]

Just to continue with the gap filling trades questions ...

... any idea when the paperback version of volgan wars 4 will emerge? Also, is ABC Warriors: Return to Earth really hardcover? Amazon has it listed as such so I'm in two minds as to whether to ignore this as usual, or believe it because it's a Mills/Langley book. Any ideas?

Finally, Savage Vol. 3 trade?

[ThryllSeekyr]

It's not due until after The Lost Years has been reprinted. Rebellion tend to publish one GN a year,,around Easter time. Depends whether Lost Years fits into 1 or 2 volumes, but I'd expect Secret Commonwealth in 2015.

I think that may be another two to three graphic novels, myself!

[O Lucky Stevie!]

Also, is ABC Warriors: Return to Earth really hardcover? Amazon has it listed as such so I'm in two minds as to whether to ignore this as usual, or believe it because it's a Mills/Langley book. Any ideas?

You've answered that one yourself Credo.

[TordelBack]

Barney plus some dodgy mental arithmetic suggests Lord of Beasts (the all-Slaine Prog 1100) plus Lost Tales weighs in at 112 pages.  Say 120 with covers, titles etc.  That's a slim but viable, and very desirable, GN.  (Treasures of Britain is only 128 pages)

Secret Commonwealth is a mercifully brief 102 pages.  Throw in a host of extras like the Dermot Power Poster Prog, the missing Arrow of God story from the '89 Annual and maybe some more Diceman stuff (there is more, isn't there?) and you'd have another, quite horrid, thin volume. 

You certainly could get all the core story into one chunky 220-page volume, and I wouldn't think it too many, and it's definitely the approach that'd dilute the disappointment of Secret Commonwealth most effectively, but then would we ever see the remaining 'extras' appear in the current GN line? 

The thickest of the existing Slaine GNs is Slaine The King at 256 pages, so you clearly could get all the remaining stuff under one cover - 214 pages of story, with 40-odd pages of extras.  That'd be my preferred option, and would make for an amazing collection, but would it be in Rebellion's interests?  On the other hand, is anyone, other than Thryllseekyr, going to buy Secret Commonwealth for a dozen bonus pages of Dermot Power and Steve Parkhouse art?

[sheldipez]

Surely a Slaine: barbarian files is due?  As a recent 2000 AD noobie it can be hard to tell where to start with some of these things, others are well out of print (e.g. first lot of Nikolai Dante collections).

[credo]

Here, here!!!

I hope it's a single chunky volume. I've personally found Grail War to be difficult enough* and, having only seen a handful of pages from Secret Commonwealth, I've been anticipating it with a mixture of dread and perverse, self-loathing delight.

* I loathe King of Hearts and its Braveheart bandwagoneering guff, and can't read the Grail Wars stories without thinking about how an earlier Mills would have been more likely to have Simon De Montefort as an incarnation of Torquemada. He really was scraping the Slaine-across-time barrel by this point.

[TordelBack]

Surely a Slaine: barbarian files is due?

I agree, but preferably not before the rest of us get the last remaining 214 pages of story in the current fully in-print spinetastic series!

As to Credo's thoughts on the Grail War... De Montfort as yet another archetypal Mills Torque-baddie would have been horrendously predictable, but as it was the twist Mills delivered in that story was pretty darn clever.  Especially the tender-slash-awkward campfire scene.  The story is probably my personal highlight of mid-period Slaine. 

The less said about King of Hearts the better.  Its only virtues are that it's short, and there's the (very) occasional nice Percival panel.