Ba ba ba Barbarian

This third volume of Sláine collects the last run of the character’s black and white stories, before Simon Bisley’s painted Horned God artwork forever changed how people saw the grumpy Celtic warrior and his world.

Three decidedly different tales lurk within, and the first might be a jolt to newcomers, with it showing Sláine embroiled in defeating sinister Lovecraftian entities, aided by a ‘leyser’ sword and a motley crew of cannon fodder. With it directly following on from a story in the previous Sláine volume, it begins with a bang, but the tale is extremely episodic, at odds with much of Pat Mills’ more arc-based work on the character.

For me, the high point of the volume is undoubtedly the rarely collected Spoils of Annwn, which returns Sláine to his roots within Celtic mythology. Here, Sláine must prove himself a worthy leader by undertaking a number of bizarre trials, based around the Glastonbury Zodiac, a massive celestial construction carved into the very landscape. The combination of myth, action and sheer imagination makes this one of the best Sláine stories to date, although the artwork is hampered by inconsistent reproduction.

The final act in the book is The King, chronicling Sláine’s return to his tribe after years as a wanderer, only to find his people under the rule of tyrannical demons. At the time, the story was a revelation, with Glenn Fabry’s art rightly celebrated as some of the best to ever appear in British comics. Now, The King almost feels like a bridge between previous Sláine stories and The Horned God epic, as, to some extent, does this book as a whole. But while this collection isn’t a patch on The Horned God or Warrior’s Dawn, it’s still well above the ‘collector’s only’ quality Sláine dipped to during the 1990s.

Sláine: The King is available from all good bookstores (and, presumably, bad ones, too) for £11.99. For more information about 2000 AD graphic novels, check out the 2000 AD Books website.