This seems like as good a day as any for some Rogue Trooper, and we've randomly picked a winner! From 1989,
Rogue Trooper #21/22, written by Gerry Finley-Day, art by Jose Ortiz.
While the war between the Norts and Southers continued, by the point in the series Rogue's primary mission had shifted to "regening" his dead friends Helm, Bagman, and Gunnar; getting them out of their biochips and into new bodies. To that effect, they had left Nu Earth for the planet Horst, in search of a needed antigen for the procedure, only to discover the Norts and Southers were fighting there as well, through alien proxies: both sides had sent military "advisors" to train the natives to fight each other. (It's not dwelled upon or delved into, but it's entirely possible the alien species didn't like each other beforehand, I suppose.) A Souther advisor explains they picked the wrong aliens, and had been largely outclassed, to the point that the Southers had abandoned the planet. Still, the advisor tells Rogue where he can find the antigen information...or does he?
Rogue and the guys fight their way to another zone of the planet in their search, a "crater sea" full of beached ships and corpses. Finding a small craft, they're making good time, until they come across what could be mines. No such luck! The "Nort Navy" is crablike monsters...that strongly resemble Giger's
Alien, but armed! Cornered on a small atoll, they manage to set up a "firing square." While Rogue fights them off with a shovel, and Bagman rolls grenades at them, Gunnar covers two sides, by bouncing bullets off of Helm! It's not all going swimmingly, though; as Bagman has noticed the tide is rising, and they would all be underwater shortly...
I don't know if
Rogue Trooper ran constantly in
2000 AD, because it seems to run cliffhanger after cliffhanger after cliffhanger. This one almost literally so!
2 comments:
It basically did, up until around this story. There was one more storyline, then it took a break and they tried changing things up with a couple of new writers and different kinds of missions for Rogue. Long story short- it didn't work and they rebooted him around 1990. It gets complicated after that.
If you want to find out more about 2000 AD stuff, there's an unofficial but still well regarded site that catalogs all the issues and various specials. Their records on the American reprints are a bit spotty but it's a good resource otherwise. It's http://www.2000ad.org/ .
Huh. So basically the writers decided to turn this story arc into part of the Aliens movie about halfway through, Nice.
How did they NOT get sued for copyright infringement. At least Claremont's versions didn't exactly the same.
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