Comic Books I’ve been reading...

Over the last couple of weeks it’s all been about spending time with some of the denizens of the 2000AD comic. While I revisited one set of characters (so will probably only give them a brief mention here) the other set were a group that I was only meeting for the first time...

‘Robo Hunter: The Droid Files Vol 2’



I’ve had an on/off acquaintance with 2000AD over the years and because of this (along with the fact that I kept being chased away by shopkeepers who saw that I was reading the comic without ever buying it...) there are a number of characters that I’ve heard of but never read about. The bounty hunter Sam Slade was one such character; I say ‘was’ because I’ve just finished reading about Sam, his idiotic kit-built robot Hoagy and the robot cigar Stogie.

Going straight into volume 2 wasn’t too much of an issue. While I’d never met the characters before, the concept was simple to grasp and the writers weren’t afraid to drop in references (quite subtly done as well) to earlier stories that serve to flesh things out a bit. Like I said, I haven’t read volume 1 but by the time I’d finished volume 2 I felt like I had. At the same time, the stories themselves are self contained enough that you can get a lot out of them on their own. Not a bad reading experience in that respect, shame the same can’t be said about the opening couple of stories in the sequence...

‘Football Crazy’ sees Sam trying to get to the bottom of the mystery surrounding the ongoing sabotage of the robotic England football team’s world cup hopes. What promised to be quite a fun story ended up squashed under a relentless torrent of football references and puns. Quite apart from the fact that they were all based around English football in 1982, and the story shows it’s age as a result, the overemphasis forced the story itself into the shadows as far as I was concerned. I could also imagine certain readers (with not a lot of knowledge of football) missing out entirely as some of the funnier moments would go right over their heads...
‘Play it again Sam’ was another story where a potentially good idea (growing tensions between robots and humans in Brit-Cit) was spoiled by too much being made of one facet of the plot. This time round a law has been passed in Brit-Cit where everyone has to communicate via song (why, just... why?) It was passably funny for the first couple of pages but then it got old very, very quickly... I was glad when these two stories were over. Wagner and Grant didn’t do themselves any favours with these stories although Ian Gibson’s artwork was worth the price of entry. I’d forgotten how much I enjoyed Ian Gibson’s art, it was great in ‘The Ballad of Halo Jones’ and it was just as great in ‘Boba Fett: Enemy of the Empire’. It was a pleasure to get reacquainted :o)

The first two stories in this collection had me seriously wondering if I should carry on reading, not something I was interested in if the rest of the story was the same! I gave it a go though and was very glad that I did. It was almost like everyone knew that the first two stories weren’t up to scratch and decided to up their game...

‘Slaying of Slade’, ‘Slade’s Last Case’ and 'Farewell my Billions’ are three stories that form a larger arc where Slade begins by having to solves the mystery of his own death and ends up back where he started after Hoagy and Stogie spend the billions that he earned solving a particularly tricky case. Moore and Wagner give us a tale that is dark, action packed, humorous and strangely tragic all at the same time. You know where it’s all going (at times) but I still found myself having to travel that path to the end, just to find out what obstacles Wagner and Grant would throw in front of Slade. It was a lot of fun to read and I couldn’t help but feel sorry for Slade, Hoagy and Stogie by the end...

The rest of the book collects the ‘one off’ Robo Hunter stories that popped up in the years after the main arc came to an end. They’re a bit of a mixed bag if you ask me and they also suffer a little for not having Ian Gibson provide the artwork. Gibson’s style, for me, encapsulated the whole tone of the series and the move to different artists was a difficult one for me to take on board. There are some good stories here though; the standout ones for me were ‘Winnegan Fake’, ‘Metrobolis’ and ‘Fax and Deductions’ (all worth a read).

‘Robo Hunter vol 2’ might well be better suited for long term fans of Sam Slade but there is still fun to be had within the covers. Just skip the first couple of stories...

Eight out of Ten

‘Rogue Trooper: Tales of Nu Earth Vol 2’



Back in the days when this blog was still pretty young (it’s not exactly old now but you know what I mean...) I was sent a whole bunch of ‘Rogue Trooper’ comic books for review. This collection collects the latter part of the Rogue Trooper’s hunt for the traitor general and the events that lead him to commandeer a shuttle and make for the mysterious planet of Horst...
You can find all of these reviews on the blog and you probably don’t want to hear me repeating myself as my opinions on the story haven’t really changed. What I would say though is that it felt like a much smoother read having the whole lot in one big volume (which isn’t all that surprising I guess). While the rhythm of the stories can still be somewhat predictable, having them all collected together makes it easier to go from one to the next without this being too much of an issue. Could this be the best way to read ‘Rogue Trooper’? I think so...