Bad Company: Goodbye Krool World (2000AD #500-519, #548-557, #576-585) PART TWO

"I was dead inside and surrounded by darkness" - Danny Frank's Diary

So, here is part two of my look at this collection of the first (and best) three story arcs dealing with future humanity's war with a genocidal race of aliens called the Krool.  Bad Company were a team of misfits fighting on the planet Arrarat, led by a huge brute of a man called Kano who has had half his human brain removed and replaced with half a Krool's giving him a special hatred of them.  At the end of Bad Company, most of them were killed taking out the Krools main base on the planet Arrarat.  Kano's whereabouts is unknown while the most "normal" of Bad Company, Danny (our POV character), Mac and "Mad" Tommy also survived and escaped the dying Arrarat in a Krool spaceship.  Now it's two years later, both Earth and Arrarat have blown up and humanity is reduced to a few "ghetto" colony planets and the Krool remain a major danger for them.  It's decided that a new Bad Company will be formed with Danny, Mac and Tommy as the basis of this new team. The first arc - The Bewilderness - concentrates on the collecting of the new members and Kano's struggles with the Krool side of his brain periodically taking him over and driving him to commit heinous acts outside of his control.

The "mysterious" being.

Danny, Mac and Tommy arrive on the planet Flow My Tears where General Honda assigns them their first mission, which is to find and destroy a beast that has been travelling between planets, killing Krool and human alike.  We see the masked "beast" in action, it is obviously Kano, accompanied by a tiny, mute, flying fairy-like alien.  General Honda then shows them their first recruit, a Protoid.  He is a shape-shifting alien with a symbiotic ship, which will be able to sneak them past the Krool ships in space.  Honda then transforms into Protoid, who had been impersonating him and the real Honda appears.  Mac wonders what Protoid's motivation is.

Danny: "Maybe there's no such thing as motivation anymore. Maybe that only belongs in books and plays. Maybe real life is badly plotted. The story all wrong.  Just a meaningless string of meaningless unrelated incidents."

De Racine and Protoid

The four of them then go and find their next member, an Elite called De Racine.  He is hanging out at the Kano Kult Klub and when he is attacked by some members, fights them off via his battle upgraded body.  Poison darts in his tongue and lethal poison for blood.  He agrees to join, but states he will kill Protoid who he sees as an abomination, once their mission is over.  Protoid is not scared by this, but looks forward to fighting him.  The story keeps cutting back to Kano as he loses control time and again. He finally mutters to himself:

Kano: "The wilderness.  I must lose myself in the wilderness. It is the only safe place.  No more people.  No more Krool.  I must lose myself in the bewilderness."

Back with Bad Company, they collect their next member, Rackman.  He is a human survivor of a Krool torture camp, who says he learned to enjoy the pain they dished out on him and now chases that pain by always wading into where the fighting is hardest.  They then head out to get their final member, a woman called Sheeva.  She is a human woman with psychic powers, a "Boom Baby", one of a few created as an experiment and the only one left alive.  She is able to blow things apart by "making the atoms dance" but she also has empathic healing abilities as well.

Rackman.  Can you tell he loves pain?

Before they collect her, Bad Company have a battle with some Krool.  Protoid points out that they are looking strange, because the Krool Heart, which is the entity that links them all telepathically is old and corrupt.  A new Krool Heart will be growing in it's belly ready to bud off when the old Heart dies and the shared conciousness transmigrates to the new, fresh Heart. Protoid knows this because he shares all his ancestors memories and "six cell splits ago" one of them visited the Krool Heart and saw it happen.

As they leave to collect Sheeva, Mac queries the motives of their fellow companions:

Mac: "An alien who hates humans.  A human who hates humans. A man who loves pain, and a madman who's a total pain. Just what or who are this lot fighting for Danny?"

"Don't know, Don't care" is basically Danny response, he himself is fighting for revenge.  They find Sheeva caring for some sick aliens.  She demonstrates her explosive powers then as they leave Mac steps on a landmine.  When he comes to, he discovers he's lost an arm.  Sheeva comes to comfort him, saying his arm is part of the universe now, creation and destruction, the cosmic dance.   But as Mac bitterly notes:

Mac: "That still doesn't help a one armed man untie his boots at night does it?"

Sheeva

Kano is on the planet All Our Yesterdays killing Krool, while things are less than harmonious in Bad Company.  De Racine made a move on Sheeva and now she wants to kill him.  Danny orders her to stand down, but she tells him to move or she'll kill him too. But she can't and faints.  Danny says he thought she might have formed a psychic link to him that would prevent her killing him, similar to falling in love. "Better pray she doesn't go off you" snipes Mac.

Later, after getting a lead on where Kano is, Bad Company fly to All Our Yesterdays.  There Kano has been restrained by a gang of humans and is allowing them to hurt him, he's given up and wants to die.  But one of the humans kills the little fairy that had been Kano's companion and this sends Kano into a rage and he starts lashing out, then comes face to face with Danny.

So we meet again...

Danny puts Kano back in charge of Bad Company, then Sheeva does some healing and calming work on Kano's mind, while Danny looks wistfully on.  Later Sheeva comes up to Danny and says she loves him, they kiss then "Sheeva" turns into Protoid, who has done it for a laugh.  When Danny retaliates by attacking him, Protoid grabs him snarling he's been too long denied a human kill.  But Kano comes up behind and disables him:

Kano: "I know something about Protoids. There's one spot on the back.  Grab it hard and right and you're useless aren't you.. can't even change shape."

Later round a fire, Kano tells them about his losses of control.  Protoid calls them "neuroflips".  Kano's travelling to the Krool dungeon where half his mind is while the insane Krool half takes over Kano's body and lashes out indiscriminately.  So Kano, now resolute gets up and says:

Kano: "I'm going to a reunion party Danny.  I'm going to the Krool Heart."

He tells them that if he can learn to control the Krool he shares a brain with, he can do serious damage to the Krool Heart now it's at the end of it's cycle and weakened and corrupted. They decide to test it by tying Kano up in a restraining cage and letting him deliberately neuroflip.  Alas the cage is not strong enough and Kano bursts free and with the Krool in charge of his body he ends up killing Mad Tommy before he can regain control.  They commit Tommy's body to the stars and carry on towards the planet of the Krool Heart.  And so ends The Bewilderness arc.

So speaks Kano.

It's hard to assess The Bewilderness arc on it's own, so heavily tied to the next that it is.  It's mainly setting up the characters for pay-offs that happen in The Krool Heart arc.  Still, it's very good.  While the first Bad Company arc was Danny's story of losing his innocence and turning from fresh faced, naive soldier into the dead inside revenge seeker we now see him as here, with the other characters only lightly sketched around him.  Here we have a smaller number of more well defined characters with more complex motivations and it feels more like a team story than before. With the death of Mad Tommy showing us that the "anyone can die" nature of the series is still there, we're left wondering just how our gang of misfits can take down the Krool when the might of the military had failed.  And so onto the final arc in the book, The Krool Heart.

The Krool Heart arc differs from the others in that as well a excerpts from Danny's diary it is told in a manner that implies a flashback, from an omniscient narrator who's identity is revealed at the end.

Narrator: "I have no face.  But the route of this story will define it's contours and show me who I am."

They land on a planet near the Krool Heart one and find a huge torture camp.   Their pain is being distilled and collected in a pit of "universal suffering".  Danny decides to rescue everyone but during the battle Kano neuroflips and knocks Danny into the pit.  After the battle is won they pull him out and he tells them what it was like.  It was "wonderful".  He tries to describe it, that it hurt so much it became unbearable bliss instead.

The pit of pain.

Sheeva: "A religious experience Danny.  You have been behind the curtain."

Danny: "And now I know it's not pointless. There's something beyond all this suffering and pain.  All this means something."

The others are somewhat skeptical and they arrive at the Krool planet.  Restrained, Kano neuroflips into his Krool body and takes control of it and starts to cause mayhem in the Krool ranks. Kano's body starts to change much to Protoid's amusement, who expected this. Rackman, Sheeva and Danny head down to the planet surface.  Rackman's feet are trapped in some rapidly growing vines.  He falls forwards and a crevice opens up beneath him and his hands are secured on the other side.  The crevice starts to grow, stretching him painfullly.  Danny and Sheeva can't free him and realising he is going to die, he reveals his terrible secret - he wasn't tortured by the Krool, the Krool made him torure other humans as his punishment and he has been seeking redemption via pain ever since.  Sheeva puts him out of his misery and she and Danny move on.

Kano's Krool "brother".

Sheeva and Danny then get trapped by some stone walls that spring up around them.  Sheeva says she is close enough to the Krool Heart to enter it's mind and free them.  She and Danny kiss passionately then she starts to meditate.  An image of her appears to Krool!Kano and warns him about Protoid, then she manages to get into the heart and bring down the walls.  But the psychic backlash mutates her face horribly and maddens her.  She tries to kill Danny but the psychic link they have protects him and she self destructs.

Back on the ship, Protoid reveals his true colours and attacks the rest of Bad Company.  Mac blasts a hole in the side of the ship and gets himself and the caged Kano out.  De Racine is not so lucky and Protoid immobilises him before snipping his head off with his hand that had transformed into scissors.  Kano returns to his body and Danny reaches the heart.  Protoid appears and knocks him down saying he plans to replace the growing baby Heart and have all the power of the Krool birthed into him. But Kano and Mac appear and together the three of them kill Protoid.

Even Protoids have groins it appears.

Kano leaves to find the Krool he shares a mind with and kill him.  Before Danny and Mac can destroy the Krool Heart, Protoid's ship smashes it's way into the chamber.

Danny: "Protoid isn't a creature with a ship, but a ship with a creature!"

Kano is losing the battle with his "brother", but manages to take control of him long enough to steer him over the edge of a cliff.  The Krool dies, leaving Kano finally free. In a panic over Protoid gaining control of the Krool Heart, Danny runs towards it and hurls himself at it.

Danny The Krool Heart: "Danny hardly feels his legs beneath him.  Is barely concious of the heart before him.  It's as though he's been running to the heart all his life.  Something within the aging heart makes a decision.  It choses Danny.  It knows it will die.  It knows it's offspring will be killed and now I know who I am!"

Danny jumping into the Krool Heart.

Danny crashes into the heart and it absorbs and reforms around him. He becomes the Krool Heart, telepathically in control of their entire empire.  He immediately starts freeing the human prisoners and ends the war between human and Krool. It seems like a happy ending, but this is a 2000AD strip, so nothing is ever that clear cut and a note of caution is thus struck.

Danny The Krool Heart: "See how already I am letting the people breathe the air of liberty.  I can create whatever universe I please. Not with force but with persuasion. I can see some people will cause problems.  Some people won't understand.  I will make them understand."

Danny tells Mac and Kano to leave in case they try to hurt him.  They do so, with Kano saying that Danny fought Krool his whole life, now he's defeated them by taking over their empire. But all that power...well let's hope this time it does not corrupt.  The story ends with a full page of Danny The Krool Heart thinking to himself.

Danny The Krool Heart: "I will always remember who I am.  I am Danny Franks.  I am the Krool Heart".

What an ending!

And with that Bad Company II and the collected volume ends.  It's a fantastic ending for the series, I'm not sure why they had to bugger it up with a much later storyline freeing Danny from the Heart.  I love the nasty. perverse things this volume throws up like the line between pleasure and pain being explored and the horrific S&M death of Rackman.  I love how Danny doesn't do what he does in the end because it's the right thing to do, or because it's noble, or because he seeks redemption or any high falutin reasons.  He does it out of sheer, blind survival instinct, the whole story has been about survival and Danny achieves the ultimate form of survival thanks to his sacrifice.  Another strand to Bad Company has been about transformation, the change in Danny from fresh faced "raw" to battle hardened veteran to a virtual death seeker and finally he transforms into the enemy itself, but changes their nature and transforms them in return.  He who fights monsters indeed.  It goes without saying that I love this storyline, the ending is brilliant and thematically sound and it ties itself off nicely with it's final words.  This was one of the best examples of a strip running during 2000AD's mid-to-late eighties heyday and still stands up to this day.  It's grim, it's depressing and it's incredibly cynical, 2000AD then in a nutshell.  If you're interested at all in the best 2000AD has to offer, check it out, I hope you won't be disappointed.

Bad Company: Goodbye Krool World (2000AD #500-519, #548-557, #576-585) PART ONE

"No! I'll never be like you!" - Danny Franks

Looking back on the months this blog has been active I was suddenly struck by the fact I hadn't done any 2000AD stories yet.  I immediately had to recify that because, although I had casually read US comics my uncles bought when I was a young kid, it was 2000AD and the strip that ran in Doctor Who Magazine that really got me to notice different artists and their styles as well which writers did the stories I liked best.  They were the comics that turned me into a "fangirl".  2000AD probably needs no introduction, but very briefly, it's a sci-fi comic that debuted in 1977, running first weekly, then fortnightly then weekly again as of now, and is most famous for a) giving the world fascist lawman Judge Dredd and b) nurturing a whole generation of British artists and writers who then went over to the US industry and stuck a rocket up it's behind.  What was so different about 2000AD as well, was unlike the spangly heroics of the US superhero genre, 2000AD was dark, brutal, and to quote Lance Parkin in Magic Words his biography of Alan Moore - "virtually every strip rammed home the message that the world isn't fair, life is cheap and people are mean".


So what better strip to start with than one that first blew me away in 1986 and remains one of my favourite 2000AD stories ever, the grim future war story Bad Company, created by John Wagner and Alan Grant, written by Peter Milligan and drawn by Brett Ewins and Jim McCarthy.  This trade paperback collection contains the three black and white arcs - Bad Company, Bad Company II: The Bewilderness and Bad Company II: The Krool Heart - but not a much later sequel storyline that crapped all over the amazing end to The Krool Heart and which I have taken out of my own personal canon.  I've also split this review into two parts, this first part deals with the intial Bad Company arc, part two will cover the two arcs of Bad Company II.

Introducing Bad Company. Left to right: Shrike Thrax, Mad Tommy, Kano, Scummer, Dogbrain, Flytrap and Wallbanger at the back.  Not pictured, Malcolm and Gobber.

Before I go into more detail, I must just say how much I loved and still love the artwork.  The thick, heavy black lines are almost like medievel woodcuts at times and this is a brutal, brutal story pushing boundaries of showing violence and suffering that are amazing to see in a comic ostensibly aimed at older kids and teens like myself at the time.  Every character is rendered beautifully, making the whole "band of misfits" thing even more obvious and when they perish, you miss them because they felt so real and interesting.  It's a comic that needed to stay in black and white (which might be the other reason the post-Krool Heart series feels so wrong), even if the titular Bad Company have shades of grey themselves, the Krool are so utterly alien and evil they look good by comparison making it a black and white conflict.  So onto the first storyline then.

It's a simple enough tale.  During the battle against the Krool, a sadistic alien race with no redeeming features whatsoever, on a planet called Arrarat a squad of men are cut off behind enemy lines.  One of the is called Danny Franks, whose diary provides the narration for the ongoing story.  They are saved by Bad Company, a gang of mainly ugly, mutated soldiers led by a huge brutish "man" called Kano.  The rest of the story catalogues Danny's slow transformation form naive newbie into a battle hardened Bad Company member where only survival matters and compassion is a weakness that will get you killed.  The newbies join Bad Company because their commander takes some Krool prisoners, but the Krool kill him, and Kano unloads into them, shooting them over and over even when dead.  With little choice left the men join up, but only Danny, Mac and the shortlived Trucker are ever deemed important enough to name.

The Krool live up to their name.

The strucure of the first story is very much geared to the fortnightly nature of the comic, generally something awful happens and then there is a massive gunfight, and Bad Company move on.  Bad Company II, both parts has a more overarching storyline, but the first Bad COmpany is simply about who will survive to the very end.  The first named character to die is Scummer, who flips out after they cross the Golotha Plains that can induce madness via visions.  He grabs the black box that Kano carries with him at all times and starts to look inside it.  Kano guns him down, making it clear that the topic of the box is OFF LIMITS to Danny.

The Company bext attack a Krool camp and Kano and Danny find a Krool experimentation ward/torture chamber.  One horribly emaciated and scarred victim pathetically asks Kano if he is his dad come to take him home. Kano says he is and Danny realises he means he is going to blow the place up.

Kano: "I promised the boy I'll take him home.. and I will.  To the only home he can rest in peace."

The camp is blown up and afterwards Kano thanks Danny for keeping quiet about the experimentation ward, noting that he's "learning".

Danny: [thinks] "Yeah I'm learning.  How to blow up your own wounded, then eat your rations like nothing happened."

Danny's start of darkness

Time moves on and more raws die.  One day Kano asks them all why Earth doesn't just blow Arrarat out of the sky.  It's not because they care about the native Gobbers, they want Arrarat as a place to move too.  Earth is dying and the Elite want Arrarat for themselves.  They then go and attack a Krool convoy which turns out to be a trap and Gobber is killed.  Bad Company kill them all despite this loss.

Later Bad Company camp out underneath a "Blitz Bubble" which protects them from the Krool shelling.  Malcolm, the least crazy of the original Company chats with Danny, saying if they survive this war they can maybe stop the Elite taking over somehow.  Thrax gets pissed with one of the raws and kills him causing Danny to ask Malcolm how he can live like this?

Malcolm: "The main rule is 'don't get friendly'. You have to hate your comrades guts.  So when he is killed - no problem, it's just another soldier gone. I'm newer than most, but I learn quick - you can only bury so many friends without going crazy."

Then the Blitz Bubble is breached and they all scatter and Danny suddenly realises he doesn't have his diary and goes back for it.  Malcolm knocks him out of the way of some bullets and is killed.  Danny reflects that he "got too friendly to stay alive" and buries him.

Malcolm Ex..

The Company moves on.  Later Danny tells Trucker about his two older brothers who enrolled to fight but were killed when their transport shp exploded on the way to Arrarat.  Suddenly a zombie rises up from the ground in front of them.  Lots more zombies attack and Krool too.  Bad Company fight them all off, although Trucker is killed during the battle, leaving Danny and Mac as the only "raws" left.  Kano tortures a Krool they captured and finds out the Krool can create instant war zombies using gas and a special "beat".

The Krool are gearing up to attack Sector 8, the lynchpin of human defence on Arrarat.  Bad Company use a vehicle to get there quickly.  One the way they are atacked by a gang of humans gone native called the "Skull Posse".  They easily fight them off, but the leader swears they haven't seen the last of him.  They find themselves back where they were in the Blitz Bubble, but when Danny goes to check Malcolm's grave he finds it empty.

Danny's Diary: "I no longer see people.  I see blood and guts wrapped in soft skin.  And sooner or later that soft skin is burst, or scorched, or torn and the blood and guts just flow."

Arrrgh! Bring my brown pants!

They arrive in Sector 8 and Danny notes the troopers treat him with fear like the rest of Bad Company.  Wallbanger says that using the soldiers equipment he can block the zombie beat.  The beat starts up, reviving dead humans but the Skull Posse also attack and start fighting the zombies.  Then the Krool attack too, but are also attacked by the Skulls.  The Skulls put up a good fight, but are finally defeated.  Then Malcolm reappears as a zombie as they attack the camp.  Wallbanger shuts down the zombie beat although Danny thought he saw the old Malcolm come through at the last minute and stopped himself from killing Danny.  Danny buries Malcolm again after removing his head and Bad Company leave Sector 8.

After an interlude where they all get drunk off the processed mud they eat as rations, ominously, Flytrap's grafted on plant arm starts to succumb to disease. Wallbanger then drops the bombshell that this is indicative of the fact Arrarat is dying and has maybe days left before it explodes.  Kano then makes plans to hit the main Krool base.  This is too much for Thrax who leaves with his sycophantic partner Shrike in tow.  Flytrap asks to know what is in Kano's black box, but dies before Kano can tell him.

Kano's last stand?

They arrive at the main Krool encampment, and Thrax and Shrike reappear, with Thrax saying he came back to see the Krool kill Kano.  As the attack is depicted, Danny's diary narrates it but is being written by someone else who isn't Danny.  Bad Company is gunned down one after the other, but take out all the Krool in the process.  Danny and Mac are swallowed by a crevice that opened up and re-emerge after the battle is over.  They find Danny's diary and Mac notes it's been written by someone as pretentious as Danny.

Mad Tommy: "Sorry about the literary style Danny.  Pure mathematics is more my forte."

Danny and Mac are surprised, because all through the time they have known him Mad Tommy has been acting like he was fighting in World War 2, hence his "mad" monicker. Tommy explains that once upon a time he was part of Kano's unit.  Kano took some Krool as prisoners of war, which resulted in everyone in the unit bar Tommy getting killed and Kano taken to an experimentation camp.  Kano escaped but not before the Krool had taken half his brain away and replaced it with half a Krool's. 

The secret of the black box.

The human half became dominant, and with his enhanced strength, Kano fought his way out and was discovered by Tommy who took care of him for three months while Kano was delirious.  Kano made it clear he would kill anyone who knew his secret so Tommy started acting mad as a way of keeping himself safe from Kano.  He also gave Kano a black box with half a brain in it, saying it was Kano's and he had got it back from the Krool, although it was just some random dead soldier's brain.  Kano and he then formed Bad Company:

Tommy: "And Kano did the only thing left to him that had any meaning. He killed Krool."

As they have been talking, they have been coming across the dead bodies of the rest of Bad Company strewn across the battlefield.  They don't find Kano though.  Danny believes he has escaped and the three of them depart in a Krool spaceship, with Danny leaving his diary alongside Kano's black box saying they belong on Arrarat.  End of Bad Company's first arc.

...For Now

It really is heady stuff. There is no camaraderie amongst Bad Company, they hate each other, hate their leader, but hate Krool more which is all that binds them together. The various weird and wonderful characters of Bad Company were very popular, so killing everyone bar the "normal" human ones was a brave decision.  I assume plans were vaguely in place for a sequel and Kano's dual nature and brain transplant will become extremely important during the final Bad Company arc.  Even if there wasn't a sequel the story here comes to a satisfying conclusion with Danny irrevocably changed by his experiences, still clinging to humanity but with a grim fatalism ground into him by the events he's caught up in. The revelation about Tommy's "madness" is a superb twist, explictly showing us that the craziness of the war and their surroundings requires some surrendering to madness, he just took to extremes to survive.  There are questions left to be answered, with Arrarat gone and Earth doomed, how will humanity win the war with the Krool?  These questions are answered in Bad Company II, so stay tuned.