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Forum’s Fav Thrill - Slaine vs. Strontium Dog Rd 5 Heat 6

Started by Colin YNWA, 03 August, 2022, 06:16:21 AM

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Dark Jimbo

The peaks of both strips are about comparable, but Slaine has far more troughs than Strontium Dog.
@jamesfeistdraws

AlexF

I take it all back, the impossible ties are here in full force!

I've been trying to maths my way out of having to make an actual choice here. Strontium Dog and Sláine couldn't be more different in terms of actual story, but as 2000AD thrills they're super comparable. Both have had long runs, broken up into very clear chunks of story. Both have yielded some of the single best ever comics stories ever. Both foreground action and humour but also both have some profound things to say about the human condition (granted, Stront achieves this with rather more subtlety, even when it's not being at all subtle). Both are more or less felt to have been untouchably great for the early years, then hit a rough patch, then have intermittently great late-period stories (granted, lots of people hate post-Horned God Sláine but they're wrong; the only truly bad Sláines, I think, are the middle two 'Brutania Chronicles, and even they have plenty of merit)

I ran through Barney and totted up how many stories from both thrills I adore. Turns out it's about 17 apiece. Stories I actively dislike - about 2 apiece. I tried comparing time when both strips had stories running in the Prog at the same time. By that metric, Sláine comes out best, mostly because I don't rate Outlaw or Bitch too highly. But I also have impossible choices to face between e.g. The Killing and Sky Chariots, or Slavers of Drule and Time Killer. Not to mention Shaggy Dog Story vs Carnival, exmaples of both strips doing short, funny ones late on in their time!

Then there's the art - Stront gets massive bonus points for the sheer consistent brilliance of Carlos Ezquerra, while Sláine is deeply inconsistent. But when the art on Sláine hit, it literally redefined what comics art can be.

Reaching into more nebulous ideas, I have to give points to Sláine for being a history lesson as well as an action comic. Not to everyone's taste, I'm sure, but I love the way Mills and Co really flesh out what it might have felt like being a Celt, and their willingness to explore the less savoury aspects of different cultures. With this in mind, I think in the overall history of comics, Sláine is the better one, that will touch a wider audience and maybe stand the test of time more.

But then there's the old 'which would I rather read some of right now?' question. And, despite the fact that I'm in the middle of a big Sláine re-read, I think the answer to that is almost always going to be Strontium Dog.

It has more and better jokes, and it has Carlos delivering the most delightful mutant designs, and the best damn action choreography of any comics I've ever read.

So my head wants to vote Sláine, but my heart is winning and it votes Strontium Dog.


maryanddavid


Dash Decent

- By Appointment -
Hero to Michael Carroll

"... rank amateurism and bad jokes." - JohnW.

Proudhuff

As said above Sky Chariots was a prog highlight but my Grud! the waffle since:

Strontium Dog
DDT did a job on me

Funt Solo

It's *subjective*, IP! Nice rant, though. I suppose the really outlandish idea isn't whether someone would vote Slaine or Strontium Dog in this meeting, but rather that one would be forced to say which is better between these two titans of 2000 AD. Suggesting that all Slaine has to offer is Sky Chariots might be a bit like dismissing Strontium Dog as *just* The Schicklgruber Grab.

You could argue that Slaine is disjointed (or, perhaps, has more ideas in it), but then Strontium Dog only went and killed the main character and forced itself into flashback, then rebooted, then resurrected. Slaine did his Quantum Salmon Leap research-of-the-week shenanigans, but then Alpha had a weird spook living in his head for a while, and decided it made sense for goblins to live in Wulf's past. For every Secret Commonwealth there's a Tax Dodge.

---

If we switch to positives, there's so much to love about Strontium Dog. My first full series was The Schicklgruber Grab, and I found myself in a raft of great thrills: Mutie's Luck, The Doc Quince Case, The Bad Boys Bust and then Portrait! I'm not sure it's had a better run, if I'm honest, but I can't dismiss The Killing (maybe the most fun of all the stories), or the Portrait sequel Outlaw. Things start to coast a little with The Big Bust of '49 and Slavers of Drule, but then we're hit with the one-two punches of Ragnorak and Rage.

Post-Wulf is an odd place to live, though. We could argue that it's peaked already, and there are all sorts of opinions about Bitch, the No-Go Job and then the Final Solution - packaged poorly with 29 episodes split over two artists, five segments and three years. Plus, y'know, killing the main character. It's perhaps fair to say that the flashback era was welcome in that it was Wagner & Ezquerra, but always tainted by the future death. Life and Death sorts that out but also means we have to wave farewell to Wulf again. The Son seemed to be trying, in a way, to get us back to the original dynamic by introducing Wulf's son.

---

Slaine smashed the door down with his axe in the Time-Monster, and we were introduced not only to him and Ukko, but also to Tir Nan Og (via the map), and evidence of Pat's research work in an article in the next prog. This lavish sense of care and attention is something that accompanied Slaine but didn't seem evident in other thrills, making it stand out as something special. The opening sequence of adventures, with the Drunes as the enemy, and Slaine chopping everyone up with Brain-Biter, seems just flawless - with wraparound covers from Belardinelli and McMahon, and the excellent finishing thrills of Sky Chariots and Dragonheist.

Almost immediately, we get pushed sideways with Time Killer as the milieu expands to include the Cyth, the axe gets ditched for a beam-firing leyser-sword and hints of a time-traveling structure first make themselves felt. Fabry's work on Time Killer is astoundingly good, though - and followed up with the grand experiment of the Tomb of Terror comic and adventure game combo. Pat starts to leak in the artifacts that are needed to propel Slaine to Kingship, and there's a sense the tale is told from a couple of different angles that settle eventually into The Horned God (don't believe the hype), with the famous Bisley painted work. The idea that Slaine will be ritually killed at the end of his tenure seems to stamp a sell-by date on the adventures, but Pat has a way out of that in the form of his Time Charnel structure.

Viewing Slaine through the lens of various points in history and myth has its moments, but ultimately starts to seem repetitive, as we swing through Roman Britain, get down and dirty with Robin of the Greenwood, round the table with Arthur Pendragon, shout for freedom with William Wallace and play with gender roles during the Crusades. So, y'know, it's difficult to accuse this of being boring. This is followed with a move to bring Slaine back to his tribal lands but the long-form Secret Commonwealth fails to impress as the fans call foul.

Pat reacts by getting Clint Langley on board and launching a decade's worth of Books of Invasion - always beautiful, kind of moving things forward but still always circling around an endless battle with the Sea Demons. Slaine wanders off for a few years before using Simon Davis to kick the door back down with the Chronicles. A wonderfully aged Slaine gets all angsty, there's a fascinating examination of acute depression, then things start to go a big Pete Tong with an offscreen shouty god voice. Oddly, the series ends with what seems like a parodic mash-up of Slaine and Dinosty, beautifully rendered by Leonardo Michelangelo Manco.

---

My entirely subjective vote goes to Slaine.


++ A-Z ++  coma ++

moly


IndigoPrime

Quote from: Funt Solo on 03 August, 2022, 06:21:58 PMIt's *subjective*, IP!
Well, sure. I figure it's obvious that whatever I say here is opinion, not a set-in-stone fact. Like I said, if Sláine wins, I'd like to know why. So it's good to see people putting down their reasoning... some at length! ;)

Huey2

Strontium Dog.
I'm also going to go against received wisdom and say that I don't think that there was ever a bad Stront story.

Post Wulf, the format gets a shake-up and we get a wider variety of strips so we can have:
* Johnny being mean on his own ( Incident on Mayger Minor, most of the stories from the annuals and specials).
* Johnny and Middenface ( warzone, the Rammy)
* Johnny and Red ( The Bitch, Stone Killers)

It's a real shame we didn't get another couple of books worth of stories with the new set up and also to see where the Johnny and Red dynamic went.

JayzusB.Christ

Quote from: Dark Jimbo on 03 August, 2022, 11:33:09 AM
The peaks of both strips are about comparable, but Slaine has far more troughs than Strontium Dog.

While I agree with that, I'm going to treat Sláine like John Lydon and Morrissey, and forget about the flabby, annoying bore it became.  Stront is brilliant, of course, but everything up to and including The Horned God is some of the best comics has to offer. 
"Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest"

Magnetica

Quote from: Huey2 on 03 August, 2022, 09:27:44 PM
Strontium Dog.
I'm also going to go against received wisdom and say that I don't think that there was ever a bad Stront story.

Oh no, there definitely is one. I'm off on hols at the moment so can't look it up, but there was one from (I think) a Starlord annual that was reprinted in the Search and Destroy collection. It's uncredited to both writer and artist and Johnny is pretty much unrecognisable from the character that we know and love, acting completely out of character. It's so bad the writer and artist are probably glad they weren't credited.

Southstreeter

Strontium Dog. Apart from the very early stuff, and Life and Death (the execution not the concept) it's at least readable and often awesome.


norton canes

This is basically for the tournament win, isn't it?

Top-tier thrill that Slaine undoubtedly is (was?), for me the only time it really hit the spot was the run of McMahon stories (though Tomb of Terror was lot of fun). After that the epic storylines quickly started to meander. Whereas Strontium Dog was so sweetly written, the stories were a joy to read - from The Galaxy Killers right through to The Stone Killers, it was uniformly a prog highlight.

So, while recognising the awesome contributions made by the stellar art droids who worked on Slaine, my vote goes to Strontium Dog.

Colin YNWA

Quote from: norton canes on 04 August, 2022, 11:47:27 AM
This is basically for the tournament win, isn't it?

My guess was there are at least 2 other stories ahead of Slaine in the pecking order and a few others that would challenge it. I mean I have a long history of nort predicting these tourneys well BUT I reckon there are other thrills that will challenge Strontium Dog (hot favourite to win) more.