He does this never full-black deal where he fills in full blacks with this scratchy technique that I feel like makes pages look to chaotic and hard to read with all the white gaps and stray lines. The main artist becomes McMahon which I was little saddened by as I find his art a bit hard to read. It is absolutely fucking gorgeous! There are three artists Angie Kincaid (the author's wife who only draws for the first issue/prog), Belardinelli (who is my favorite artist of the three), and McMahon (who becomes the main artist after some tug-of-war of him and Belardinelli). But it's the start and its trying to get its footing so that's a bit to be expected.īut the art more than makes up for it. Some of these one-off stories aren't bad such as the Giant Fair one but they make the story feel awkward since it feels a little directionless. The author does a good job of having each issue/prog advance the story or add character depth but some stories just feel like interludes or extended one-off adventures (like the Shoggey Beast). That being said I did have some gripes with the stories as they were a bit too episodic for my taste. This made the stories a fun read into a world and genre I've never gone in before. I enjoyed how strongly it wears its inspiration on its sleeve with its mostly Celtic-inspired story (Slaine himself is heavily reminiscent of Cu Chullain) with some Anglo-Saxon-y elements like kennings (which is always a plus to me since I like reading kennings). As such, I cannot comment on this stacks up to others in its genre but I can say as a gateway for this sorta stuff it does vey well. I have no real past with reading anything Hyperborean / barbarian / Conan-ish so this book was defo the first of its kind I have read. I recently bought a 2000AD humblebundle and this waas the first one that really caught my eye. Recommended to all fans of epic sword and sorcery tales set in times long forgotten.

If you can get over this issue rest is truly interesting Conan-barbarian-like story.

Some pages are so blurry that magnificent details are lost and that is a shame. Only thing why I took half a star (and consequently full star) is because of the reproduction of the original comics. Each artist gave personal touch to Slaine visual presentation and his world in general. In my opinion all three artists are great. Characters are all weird (one story is about Slaine becoming a partner in prison-business :) because prisoners need to give money to get out) but in total it is funny and interesting.Īrt is also different from issue to issue - as author Pat Mills says himself. When it comes to story I knew what to expect considering that Slaine is 2000AD comic - these are short episodic stories that have action and lots of humor. This one is more 3.5 but opted for 3 since half star is not available option.įirst collected volume of Slaine is little bit of a mixed bag.

Sláine by Pat Mills