Bah! Can’t be arsed to figure out the quote function on this thing and I wanna go watch Walking Dead. Anyway, re: “Where’s Durham Red during all this...?”
Following the publication of The Final Solution (1988-90), Durham Red appeared in two solo stories, both by Grant and Ezquerra: her debut solo outing Island of the Damned (1991-92) and The Golden Mile (1993). Both of these would appear to be set prior to Johnny’s death. Several other solo stories that appeared decades later, including Grant and Ezquerra’s The ‘Nobody Wants This Job’ Job (2012), Running Out of Patients by Leah Moore, John Reppion, Jan Duursema and Dylan Teague (2014), and The Calling by Robert Murphy, Duane Redhead, and Kirsty Swan (also 2014), also appear to be set while Johnny’s still alive and Red is off happily doing her own thing.
Following Johnny’s kicking of the bucket within by the Strontiverse timeline, Durham appeared among the ensemble cast of the spin-off series Strontium Dogs (note the plural), as Johnny’s former comrades drift off through the galaxy looking (and mostly failing) to find something interesting to do. In Crossroads (1994) by Peter Hogan and Nigel Dobbyn, she gatecrashed a bounty sought after by fellow mutants the Gronk, Bullmoose Saxon, and Feral Jackson, before running into a blind witch known as ‘the Walking Lady’.
In Mirrors – a Hogan/Harrison solo story that followed later that year – Durham has a good long think in her underwear, almost gets burned at the stake, then summons a vampire army and takes over the world. Fortunately, it was all just a dream-vision brought on by the Walking Lady, and its back to Strontium Dogs with High Moon (1995). This one opens with Red undergoing one of those trippy dream quests in the desert that were always popular in the ‘90s, before she settles into helping Bullmoose and the Gronk search for a cure for the helplessly polymorphic Feral.
Stopping off at the Doghouse, she learns that she can no longer be given commissions due to a whopping great bounty placed on her head by the Goth-King (whose relative Durham murdered back in Island of the Damned). Grounded until further notice, Durham quits being a Stront, says her goodbyes and sets off to seek her fortune among the stars alongside Johnny’s old pal Frinton Fuzz. This leaves Bullmoose and the Gronk to get back on with curing Feral... High Moon is notable for Red’s costume change, from the Ezquerra’s bandolier-and-chainmail-loincloth ensemble to Harrison’s ‘manga space babe’ look. Hogan and Harrison’s Deals followed later in 1995, for which my notes appear to have vanished...
By 1996 it was decided Strontium Dogs had had its day. In the Durham solo series Night of the Hunters (disowned by Hogan and curtailed and rewritten by editor David Bishop), Durham offers out the Goth King in a Hunger Games-style televised deathmatch full of freaks and killers. (Poor Frinton cops a sniper’s bullet meant Durham.)
Dan Abnett was then charged with tying up the loose ends by writing the solo one-shot Epicedium (Abnett’s first work on the character). Here Durham mourns Frinton’s passing with a week-long bender that takes over an entire city. She makes her peace with the Goth-King, who cancels his bounty, allowing Durham to walk off into the starset with an assassin-priest named Toroni (with whom she hooked up in Night of the Hunters). All of which paved the way for Durham to wake from cryo-sleep a thousand years in the future in Abnett and Harrison’s milestone three-book series that began with The Scarlet Cantos in 1998.
Durham also appeared in the terrific little series called The Scarlet Apocrypha (scripted by Abnett), which ran in the Meg throughout 2002 and posited Durham as a kind of Moorcockian Eternal Champion, popping up in various timelines (feudal Japan, 60s Italy on the set of an exploitation movie, and so on).
Hope this helps.
