Hewligan's Haircut (2000AD #700-708)

"You don't just think the world's playing hard to get?" - Hewligan

The late 1980's and early 1990's.  For UK comics it was the best of times and the worst of times.  The best because there was a large number of UK comics in print, such as CRISIS, Revolver, The Judge Dredd Megazine and blazing a trail before all of these was Deadline,  which blended youth culture commentary with comic strips such as proto-Riot Grrl Tank Girl by Peter Milligan and Jamie Hewlett.  It was also the worst of times as the US comic industry was hoovering up artistic and writerly talent as quickly as UK comics could bring people to their attention.  By around 1991-2 the best of the best was gone from the UK industry and we were left with the likes of the appalling Toxic comic which pretty much summed up the state of the industry at the time, and soon only 2000AD and the relaunched Megazine were still going (and are with us to this day).  But before that happened 2000AD, in the spirit of the times, was more willing to take risks on oddball concepts and art and so in 1990 we got Peter Milligan and Jamie Hewlett's Hewligan's Haircut.  A fantastical mish-mash of cubism, pop art and collage alongside Hewlett's very recognisable art style, which tells the tale of a young man's reality warping haircut and his quest to restore sanity to the world...

We start with Hewligan "languishing in the Five Seasons Mental Hospital".  Nurse Hatter gives him some plastic scissors so he can trim his nails and look smart for his meeting with "Doctor Proctor" who is going to assess him for possible release.  The comic at this point is in black and white.

Nurse Hatter: "Remember, it doesn't matter if you're sane or insane.  The important thing is to act sane. To pretend you're sane".

After she has gone, Hewligan says to himself that he doesn't pretend hard enough, he bets other people keep quiet about the "big ugly faces" they see.

Hewligan sans Haircut.

Nurse Hatter scolds him for talking to himself, then tells him to do something about his mop of long hair.  He snips it with the plastic scissors and ends up with a giant pompadour with a hole in it that looks exactly the same from whichever angle you view it from.  Deciding it's not the sanest of hairstyles he slicks it down saying it should "tranquilise the maniac" and goes to meet Doctor Proctor.

He shakes Doctor Proctor's hand and his hairdo springs back up, he thinks to himself "pretend your hair doesn't exist Hewligan.  Pretend you're sane."  Doctor Proctor confirms that Hewligan hears voices and sees big stony faces, all the while his ears are wandering across his face.  Hewligan desperately pretends their is nothing wrong and when asked if he still hears voices and sees the faces he lies and says "no, I don't".

Hewligan steps out into a mad world

"Then I've cured you!" says Doctor Proctor and pronounces Hewligan free to leave the hospital.  Nurse Hatter is sad to see him go.  Hewligan hopes once he's amongst normal people all the weirdness he feels will go away.  But as he opens the door to freedom he is met by a full colour scene of madness:

Hewligan: "Oh dear, I thought.  Perhaps I wasn't pretending to be sane hard enough.  Or maybe the world of normal people had changed a little since I had been inside the mental hospital."

He wanders through the surreal landscape thinking that this was the most confusing day of his life but "how could I pass judgement on the world when my own hair seemed to defy gravity?"  He approachs a policeman, who produces a rabbit from his helmet and asks Hewligan to pick a card.

He walks off and thinks that he's never been mad like this before, just the voice and stone heads, "quite ordinary madness".  He sees a chicken crossing the road and follows it, as the road tells him to watch where he is stepping.

The world is out to get him.

He dines at an Indian restaurant where the food literally disagrees with him, then goes to the Underground where things seem perfectly normal, but for some reason it's raining just on Hewligan.  Shop doors move when he tries to open them and the Born Again Christian tells him to "drop dead."

Later he chances upon a bank robbery, "my day was nothing if not eventful".   The robber runs past him and drops the gun by Hewligan who picks it up. Everyone starts accusing him of being the thief.  He drops it and runs, being chased by twelce policemen on one bicycle.  He runs into a blind alley and the wall speaks to him saying "psst.. in here.. quick!"

He walks through the wall and is confronted by a blonde woman riding a rocking horse who tells him to climb aboard.  The horse is called Dada and isn't much use for evading the singing policemen chasing Hewligan so they pick it up and flee.  After baffling another wall with an ontological paradox they slip through and into the woman's hideaway.

She says you need hideaways when you're a lawbreaker.  Hewligan asks what laws she breaks and she responds, "why the laws of nature of course!  They're the best laws of all to break!"  She floats and when she holds things she never quite touches them as the is slightly out of sync with the world.  Like Hewligan "I'm just plain out of tune".

Scarlet O'Gasmeter.

She introduces herself as Scarlet, Hewligan says it's a "heavenly name.  What an island of radiant bliss in this ugly sea of madness."  He asks for her full name and she says "it's Scarlet O'Gasmeter".  She then tells him about the world and how some people aren't tuned into the right frequency for it.

Things can go out of tune as well, like socks.  Always disappearing into other dimensions. Same as umbrellas and doorkeys. 

Scarlet: "UFOs are really alien footwear that've have slipped out of tune with their world and tuned into ours. At this very moment an alien astronomer is getting all excited at a Woolworth's cotton sock oscillating above his planet."

Hewligan then sleeps for a while and when he wakes up Scarlet says his pursuers seem to want him.  And there are masses of soldiers after him, he doesn't understand why, he's a "nobody!".  He says it's mad, she says of course it's mad, the whole world is mad, where's he been?  He says in a madhouse, she responds "figures."

Hewligan: "It was a mad mad mad mad world.  And getting madder. Don't just take my word for it, ask anyone. Ask that giant polka-dot hamster that keeps following you around.  He'll tell you."

He and Scarlet escape on a flying pig who used to be a cricketter called Mike Gatting.  Not to be confused by the other cricketter called Mike Gatting.   It was a karma exchange, cricketter Mike used to be a pig in a previous life.

The world steps up its assault on Hewligan.

They float down to earth and Scarlet says she know some "imaginary alleyways" they can lose their pursuers in. But there are child soldiers waiting, so the run off to get disguises from a fancy dress shop.  They get the costumes of their "exact doubles" so they end up looking the same.

Then things turn cubist, a wavelength from one of the "art dimensions".  The army are still chasing them because "cubism is an intellectualised and conceptual realism.  Rather than an optical and instinctive realism".  As Hewligan says "I thought as much" it wears off...

...only to change to an attack from the Warhol dimension.   As we get a full page of the same repeated images and a discussion on the power of boredom, it wears off "probably looking for some suckers who take it seriously".  They are left in a white space, so Scarlet draws a door and they go through and Scarlet asks if he has ever had a girlfriend as they make it back to the mad world, "not unless I had one without knowing" says Hewligan.

A tedious dimension invades.

They arrive of the stage of a smash hit musical about a sex gladiator called Andrew Lloyd Webber.  Hewligan asks just how more untuned the world can get and a rocket comes up through the stage.   This literally brings down the house and as Hewligan and Scarlet escape she says he has to face facts that the world hates him for some reason.

But she likes him and they share a kiss. Then they go back on the run as the world starts picking up broadcasts from enigmatic sixties TV shows.  In this case "The Prisoner".  They try to escape, but a huge beach ball chases them down the beach, they leap on it and get sucked inside.

Time stops for a kiss.

As they bounce around inside, Hewligan confesses he is still bothered by the Big Faces that appeared to him in his dreams in the mental hospital. Scarlet says she's met a few untuned people who have dreamt of "big and stony faces with large foreheads". He says those were exactly what he dreams of and voices too.  Scarlet says becuase he is untuned he picks up wavelengths from other frequences.  "You're not a madperson Haircut" she tells him.

They get out of the balloon and find themselves in Stevenage.  The airforce is still chasing them. Scarlet says if they find what's making the world out of tune they can find out why it hates Hewligan.  They walks into a travel agent and Hewligan sees a advert on the wall, it shows a huge stone head.  It's for Easter Island.  "There they are!" he says excitedly.

Hewligan spots the Giant Heads.

"I think I'm having a mystical experience" he goes on to say. "Can't you just be happy instead?" retorts Scarlet.  They book a holiday to go and see the heads. When Hewligan wonders how they'll get there, Scarlet reminds him the world is somewhat messy right now and they hail a bus which is going the whole way.

It travels across the ocean, and Hewligan asks if this is an irrational persecution complex or guilt trip?  "No, I really think it's your fault. Somehow or other your to blame for all this" says Scarlet.   The navy and airforce are catching up and the skeleton driving won't speed up, so Scarlet takes over driving.

The bus ends up getting sunk, so they swim the rest of the way. They reach Easter Island but all the giant heads are fast asleep.  Then it starts raining missiles, but they turn into mushrooms as they hit the ground.  Then one of the stone heads wakes up and tells them to step in its mouth. And then:

Hewligan: "...I saw it. Glowing softly in the centre of his forehead.  Unmistakeable.  Unforgetable.  Born of a pair of plastic N.H.S scissors. My haircut. Hewligan's Haircut!"

Scarlet voices what we're all thinking... how does the shape of the most absurb haircut ever also be a symbol on an Easter Island statue?

The Haircut is the Key.

A strange while hole appears in the air and Scarlet says the world is starting to disappear.  The picture starts to fade so Hewligan drags her into the statue's mouth despite her reluctance and they snog while falling deep inside.

They find themselves in a place solely populated by giant stone heads.  They are between dimensions now  "You are in the blue limbo of the zonal frequency modulations" says the head that brought them there.  Their job is to keep worlds they are assigned to in tune and Hewligan's haircut is to blame for what happened:

Giant Stone Head: "You see your haircut is the shutdown signal to turn off the zonal freqency modulators.   If the shape of that symbol appears in a dimension all frequency modulators in that dimension go to sleep."

All that madness caused by one haircut. Hewligan is to return via the head and undo the damage, but Scarlet won't be coming with him.

She says all her life she has been out of tune, "all my life I've felt I don't belong".  She's going to use the giant heads to travel to different dimensions so one day she'll find a world she'll feel at home in.  Hewligan says he'll come with her, but the stone head says "absolutely not".  He has to come back and undo the damage his haircut did.

The Giant head explains all.

If he doesn't that world will become so undone it'll be little more than a "rumour".  Scarlet says their world doesn't deserve that and hugs a tearful Hewligan.  He cuts his hair and climbs back into the stone heads mouth.  He waves goodbye to Scarlet and thinks "I had no idea where on Earth I was going to arrive.  Right then, I didn't care."

As he falls through the world of colour and tries not to think of Scarlet, he decides to become a monk as he's "had it with women.  I'd had it with life".  He comes out of the head and the world is back to normal and in black and white again.  It's in the middle if Trafalgar Square that they land.  Hewligan tells the stone head he'll stand out there.

Giant Stone Head: "Frequency modulators are never out of place. Reality is always slightly altered to accomodate us.   Ask anyone and they'll tell you there was always a giant head in Trafalgar Square. Now you better go and stop speaking to me.  People will think you're mad."

So Hewligan mooches off, he's hungry, thirsty, wet, miserable and penniless.  Then suddenly he sees a man with "my haircut!  Hewligan's haircut!"  He runs over to tell the man how dangerous it is and gets told to get lost.

So he starts ripping the man's hair out until the police drag him off.  And he ends up in a straitjacket, in a mental hospital in a padded cell.  He tells the doctors the full story of why he ripped the man's hair out expecting to be believed and let go, but he gets booted back into the cell.

Back in the loony bin again.

Angrily he tells himself he shouldn't have come back and starts plotting to grow his hair and create the haircut again, he'll turn the world into a rumour and go looking for Scarlet.  Then suddenly the wall bulges with colour and a giant face appears with Scarlet standing in it.  She decided she wanted a travelling companion and so came back for Hewligan.

Hewligan: "Scarlet, is this really happening? I mean is this just my madness?  Is the world still out of tune?

Scarlet:  Stop worrying Hewligan.  What does it matter?"

But after all Scarlet returns for him.

And it ends with a kiss.  If I could be serious for a moment, despite the humour, this strip gets a lot right about some types of mental illness.  Speaking as someone who has struggled with some quite serious "breaks" in reality in the past (and who is basically a medicated psychotic) that feeling of being "out of tune" with the world is a perfect description of how it feels to wake up one day and find everything feels wrong about the world and only you are unaffected by it.  Perhaps my worst one was believing everyone in the world had been replaced by sentient robots and only I knew what had happened. Fortunately I was able to ride that out and back to sanity again without hurting anyone or myself but it was a terrifying experience which involved amazing amounts of paranoia as if the whole world is really out to get you.  Which is why I relate to this strip quite heavily.  The ending is also interesting, did he really get rescued by Scarlet?  Or did he finally escape into permanent fantasy via his mind like the end of the Terry Gilliam film Brazil?  Even the choice of putting the "sane" parts in black and white are meaningful.  When you are taking various types of meds for mental illness (especially antipsychotics) you can feel like the world is flat and colourless in comparison to the vividness of a hallucination or other altered state of conciousness.  It's all clever stuff, definitely one of the more sympathetic treatments of severe mental illness I have ever seen (and let's face it, the likes of me are usually being roughed up by Batman rather than riding a bus to Easter Island when it comes to comics sadly).  And the story is good fun, and actually holds together well for what initially feels like a set of random circumstances. The art is wonderful, and if you're reading this and thinking the art looks like The Gorillaz, well Jamie Hewlett is the artist behind both.  Hewligan's Haircut is one of those wonderful oddities 2000AD throws up from time to time.  It's also avaliable as a trade paperback so if you're at all interested it's well worth checking out.

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.