Hub - Issue 27 Read online

  Part adventure, part romance, this is almost certain to be the most fun you’ll have reading a book this year. More slipstream than straight fantasy, both Hood and its follow-up Scarlet are hugely entertaining, and one of our must-buys of the year!

  Strontium Dog-Search Destroy Agency Files Volume 3

  Written by Alan Grant and John Wagner

  Art by Carlos Ezquerra

  I’m a latecomer to Strontium Dog. I was just hitting the 2000AD age bracket for the last few parts of the legendary ‘Final Solution’, a story which brought the entire series to a seemingly apocalyptic head and was, as a result, there for the increasingly disappointing ‘Strontium Dogs’, a follow up anthology series that even Garth Ennis, the writer, has later admitted was flawed and weaker than the original.

  It’s a real pleasure then to find this incredibly weighty tome, collecting some of the S/D Agency’s most famous cases is not only very new reader friendly indeed but sees the strip at the absolute top of its game. Alan Grant and John Wagner turn in scripts here which consistently mix humour and savage violence with moments of tremendous emotional impact, none of which tread on the toes of the others. Quite an achievement for a story featuring heroes called Jonny Alpha and Wulf Sternhammer.

  So for those of you as yet uninitiated, the basic concept is this: Following the Atom Wars of the 22nd century, many of those who survived were dosed with Strontium 90, a product of the fallout. This caused long term genetic mutations which led their children to be regarded as a genetic underclass, their mutations ranging from minor to useful to hideous. The two level society this led to in turn caused outright civil war and finally to mutants being banned outside ghettos built specially for them. Many are recruited by the Search/Destroy Agency where they earn the nickname ‘Strontium Dogs’, hunting down bounties across the galaxy and gaining a fierce reputation as soldiers, lawmen and mercenaries as the situation requires. Our heroes are Jonny Alpha, a mutant with latent telepathy and Alpha-ray soaked eyes giving him enhanced vision and Wulf Sternhammer, a time displaced Viking and Jonny’s best friend.

  This volume starts quietly enough with Wulf, Jonny and the splendid Middenface Mcnulty participating in a mass round up of criminals. They get more successful, Jonny and Wulf buy some land and take some time off and then, all hell breaks loose. Strontium Dog was always amongst the darkest of 2000AD’s strips and the stories presented here bear that out. The events of ‘Rage’ are as horrific as they are shocking, changing the nature of the strip forever and sending Jonny into some very dark places. Over the course of the story he becomes a Clint Eastwood-esque figure, a restless seeker of vengeance unable to deal with anything other than hatred for the men who’ve damaged his life. In a particularly audacious piece of storytelling, we even get the story both of why Jonny and Wulf have been targeted and how they first met nested inside ‘Rage’. ‘Ragnarok’ is intensely over the top and sees Jonny dispatched to the past to stop Max Bubba, a militant mutant criminal from wiping out humanity and time. It’s incredibly energetic, almost to a deranged extent and the final scenes, with Jonny, Wulf, a boatload of Vikings and a Huey gunship fresh out of Vietnam versus Max Bubba’s troops is one of the series’ high points. The smaller strips here are equally impressive, especially the distinctly ‘Shane’-like overtones of the later ones but it’s the shadow of Max Bubba that falls across this volume and displays everything that made Strontium Dog great. Relentlessly dark, blackly humorous and crammed with both a uniquely English sensibility and some real narrative twists, this is an old classic that’s utterly deserving of the title. Highly recommended.

  If you have enjoyed this week’s issue, please consider making a small donation at www.hub-mag.co.uk. We pay our writers, and your support is appreciated.

  Coming soon… New Kids on the Block – The Re-Match…

 

 

  Kenneth B Chiacchia / Lee Harris / Alasdair Stuart, Hub - Issue 27

 

 

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