Since I mentioned Lawdog last Tuesday, and I happened to find the rest of my issues (and I'm running late since I was working on BOTU strips) here's a quick scan from the last issue, Lawdog #10, "Breakdown Lane" Written by Chuck Dixon, pencils by Flint Henry, and inks by John Stangeland.
Lawdog and his sidekick/companion Lina (who, over the course of the last few issues, has gone from punker mouthy girl to pretty tough woman) have found a world almost identical to the one Lawdog originally came from: a seeming utopia, that had the misfortune of opening a dimensional doorway to another world that promptly invaded the hell out of it. This time, the doorway to the next door dimension opened and this strolled in:
(Above scan from Lawdog #9, "All Things Considered" Still Dixon, Henry, and Stangeland.)
Leaving Lina behind, where she gets arrested and thrown into a political correctness-asylum with that world's version of Lawdog (pre-war); Lawdog backtracks to the Nazi-run dimension, and hijacks a giant walking panzer thing to spank the giant monster. Eventually, he does, and then...I'm going to put this after the break, since it's a pretty big spoiler. Remember how I said Lawdog was the American Doctor Who? Well, try to imagine the Doctor pulling this on his last episode...
Lawdog shoots the alternate version of himself on sight, and it's all downhill for Lina from there. While Lawdog brushes it off ("I know what a pain in the ass I can be...") the effect is not unlike John Wayne casually committing cold-blooded murder in the last reel of the film. Lina is shocked and appalled, but when the citizens try to use words to disarm Lawdog, he's just getting started, and guns down a batch of them:
There are a couple hints in the previous issue, the pre-war alt-Lawdog being incarcerated for charges like "unprogressive thought, insensitivity, eco racism (?), sexual bias." He had been out of place in his own world, since he was a tough-guy, take-no-crap, brute; and those were exactly the qualities that helped him survive. And now he's back, with the chance to do it all again...with an assload of guns. This time, Lawdog's running the show, and it'll all be different.
Lawdog gives Lina his car; roughly the equivalent to the Doctor giving his last companion the TARDIS. And actually, couldn't you see that happening? The Doctor getting another chance at Gallifrey, at not having to live with being the last of the Time Lords, with a chance to make things right by any means necessary? (You might not think the Doctor would do the wrong thing, even for the right reasons; I think you're underestimating how much the Doctor would not want to be the last of his kind again.)
For her part, Lina drives off, not so much into the sunset, but just across dimensions; not really trying to get home, but not really going anywhere in particular. Of course, that's probably because this was the last issue; and that in all likelihood is why Lawdog goes all dickery here too. Oddly, even though the cancellation order had to be in at some point before this issue was published, there's still four pages of subplot with bad guys from earlier in the series being gathered up for another run at Lawdog. If Peter David had written this thing, the baddies would've arrived in time to be stepped on by the monster...
1 comment:
It's nine years past your post, but I was always enormously impressed by this series.
I also got the distinct impression the writers were hoping for a longer run, with the Hell's Belles arc--all this setup, and presumably they were going to meet, and maybe have to fight off the hideous cyborg thing that had been set loose after them, but... nah. This ending felt tacked-on, like an improvisation, like the sort of stuff we got when Marvel pulled the plug on Larry Hama's Nth-Man, which offended him badly that there's at least one big splash panel near the end of Hama's in-comic stand-in giving somebody, I assume Marvel's editorial board, the stink-eye. Or all the Marvel "New Universe" stuff from the late 80s.
I suppose there was a lot of that going around in the early 90s, what with the recession and all.
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