Flesh - Badlanders

[Super Mario]

Without a doubt, this Flesh story has been the most divisive thing that has appeared in 2000AD since I started reading. Reading it every week through progs 1850-1861 without any knowledge of the backstory made the whole thing seem confusing, disjointed and downright messy. The huge inconsistency in the quality of the artwork, coupled with it appearing alongside another relatively confusing and disjointed strip (Damnation Station) made the entire run of 11 progs pretty unsatisfying.

So last week I decided to dig out the back issues and read through the whole story in one go and what a difference this makes. I loved the entire thing and couldn't put it down. The constant jumping between different groups of characters with their different agendas is much less confusing when taken as a whole. Once you have a sense of who each of the characters are and what their goals are then things that were baffling previously suddenly make sense. And in general the whole story of going through the preparation, the execution of a large scale terrorist attack/assassination, and the resulting fallout just comes together in a really entertaining way.

I know Pat Mill's gets criticised for putting his leftist politics front and centre in these stories. But there's no way I can dislike a story a story that is as gleefully anti-corporate as this. The potential of a story riffing off the battle between environmentalism vs big business and democracy vs plutocracy is so obviously pertinent that I'm not surprised Mill's brought this old series back.

The only big criticism that remains for me is the artwork becomes very scrappy towards the end. Which is a real shame, since the first half of the story looks great.