From the cross-sell ad on the back, I know I was reading
Judge Dredd and the earlier reprint title
the Law of Dredd at the time; but this was a series I didn't read until much, much later: from 1989,
Bad Company #9, featuring stories from 1987's
2000 AD #519 and
#548. Written by Peter Milligan, pencils by Brett Ewins, inks by Jim McCarthy.
These two stories were the end of the first main story arc, and the beginning of another; and the main viewpoint characters of the book (Mac, Danny, and "Mad" Tommy) find out the secret of the black box their missing commander, Kano, had left behind; which contained half of Kano's brain. Tommy knew most of this: in the war against the alien Krool--who were about as bad as they sound--they had captured and experimented on Kano; in an attempt to get past their "evolutionary limits." Kano had, in a complicated and painful series of operations, been given half a Krool brain, which explained why he looked like Cable with a Frankenstein square-head. Kano eventually escaped, but wasn't quite himself, or human: Tommy pretended to be insane, largely to keep Kano from murdering him to keep his secrets buried; although he was probably more than a bit insane by then as well. Tommy had actually given Kano the black box, telling him it was the human half of his brain: it totally wasn't; it was just some dead soldier's; but Kano needed to hear that so he could manage to go on. As they leave the planet, Danny leaves his diary behind; telling Mac if Kano didn't need the box, he could leave the diary as well.
What was left of humanity was scattered throughout the "ghetto" planets, at the start of the next storyline; with Danny the de facto leader of Bad Company. They're given a new member--an alien Protoid, who had his own secrets and motives, but a nicer ship--and a new mission: find and stop a mysterious killer, that had been slaughtering humans and Krools alike. (It's Kano; I don't think it's intended to be a surprise.) I was surprised to realize Milligan had written this: it feels a lot like a classic British war strip; just with sci-fi elements and the nihilism turned up to 11.
Also this issue: the start of short-lived strip "
Project Overkill," which featured a passenger pilot sucked into a conspiracy and on the run,
Fugitive-style. Ian Gibson art, though! And another chapter of "
Mean Arena; which was partly about the violent future sport of "street football" but also a quest for revenge. That one's slightly more remembered, and had a brief relaunch in 1993.
Yeah, Bad Company’s not one of my favorites. There was a revival about 10 years ago that I liked but the original run doesn’t do anything for me. There’s a bit of a story why this isn’t as Peter Milligan as you’d expect- it was originally going to be a Judge Dredd spinoff (set on another planet obviously) but John Wagner and Alan Grant couldn’t find an angle, so they gave it to Milligan to rework as its own thing.
ReplyDeleteDon’t know how much of the rest of this one you have but- while the Kano reveal probably wasn’t meant as a surprise, the reveal with the Protoid later on definitely was.
Oh, that dude was shifty. I know they would lose one of the three here shortly, as they picked up more members; who would also die relatively shortly.
ReplyDeleteYou don’t know how right (and at the same time wrong) you are, goo.
DeleteI like how despite the futuristic setting, Kano’s chrome dome look is primitive as hell. Maybe the aliens simply didn’t want to waste good, aesthetically pleasing tech on a human.
ReplyDeleteNo, those dudes are just crazy- I think one of the big things about the Krool is how sick and twisted they are, some of the ‘experiments’ they did.
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