Sláine (comics)

Superherobox


caption=Sláine graphic novel cover by Mike McMahon 1986; Sláine copyright Rebellion A/S 2005.
comic_color=background:#c0c0c0
character_name=Sláine
real_name=Sláine mac Roth
publisher=IPC Media
debut="2000 AD" #330 (1983)
creators=Pat Mills Angela Kincaid
alliance_color=background:#ffc0c0
status=active
alliances=Tribes of the Earth Goddess
previous_alliances=
aliases=
relatives=Niamh (wife); Kai (son); Roth (father); Macha (mother)
powers=Warp-spasm|

:"For other characters with the same name, see Sláine."

Sláine (IPA2|ˈslɑːnʲə) is a comic book hero from the pages of "2000 AD" - one of Britain's most popular comic books.

Sláine is a barbarian fantasy adventure series based on Celtic myths and stories which first appeared in 1983, written by Pat Mills and initially drawn by his then wife, Angela Kincaid. Most of the early stories were drawn by Mike McMahon and Massimo Belardinelli. Other notable artists to have worked on the character include Glenn Fabry and Simon Bisley. The current artist is Clint Langley, whose artwork combines painting, photography and digital art.

Sláine's favourite weapon is an axe called "Brainbiter". He has the power of the "warp spasm", based on the "ríastrad" or body-distorting battle frenzy of the Irish hero Cú Chulainn, in which earth power "warps" through his body, turning him into a terrifying, monstrous figure who knows neither friend nor foe. He is a devotee of the earth goddess Danu.

Plot

At the start of the series Sláine was a wanderer, banished from his tribe, the Sessair. He explored the Land of the Young (Irish "Tír na nÓg") in the company of an unscrupulous dwarf called Ukko, fighting monsters and mercenaries in the fantasy tradition. In one early adventure he rescued a maiden, Medb (named after the Irish mythological queen Medb) from being sacrificed in a Wicker Man, only to earn her enmity - she was a devotee of Crom Cruach, the god to whom she was to be sacrificed, and was looking forward to the experience. Her master and mentor, the ancient, rotting and insane Lord Weird Slough Feg, became the series' main villain.

Following stories featured sky chariots (flying longships), dragons and prehistoric alien gods.

As the series progressed, Sláine returned to his tribe and became king (as had been foretold in the narrative of his first appearance), leading them against the Fomorians, a race of sea demons who were oppressing them. Then, in the landmark storyline "The Horned God", Sláine united the tribes of the earth goddess against Slough Feg and his allies, while his personal devotion to the goddess led to him becoming a new incarnation of the Horned God Carnun (based on the Gaulish deity Cernunnos). By the end of the story the Land of the Young is no more, and Sláine is the first High King of Ireland.

Subsequent stories saw Sláine sent through time by the earth goddess to fight alongside Celtic, and other, heroes and heroines such as Boudica (with whom he fought against the Romans (and Elfric), and William Wallace, and more recently return to Ireland to defend his people against new enemies alongside his wife Niamh.

These new enemies turned out to be a full Fomorian invasion led by Balor and the sadistic Moloch, murdering, raping and eating their way through Slaine's tribe until, wracked with warp-spasm, Slaine was able to take out Balor. The tribal council forced Slaine to let Moloch go, hoping he'd fulfill his promise of keeping the Fomorians out of Ireland; instead, he deliberately returned to rape and murder Niamh. Wanting vengeance, Slaine abdicated the throne in order to go to Albion and kill Moloch, which he succeeded in doing. In his absence, his son Kai left the tribe to search for his father (eventually becoming a performer in an Albion carnival) and Ireland faced a second invasion - "the dread of Europe", Atlanteans whose ancestors had lived in Ireland before the tribes of Danu and who had been forcibly turned into hosts - "Golamhs" - for the symbiotic Sea Demons under Lord Odacon (an offshoot of the Fomorians), who easily threw the tribes' Sky Chariots into the Otherworld. Upon Slaine's return, he found the new High King Sethor, former member of the council who'd granted Moloch freedom, was willing to surrender half of Ireland to Odacon in return for the gifts of science and civilization.

Slaine was able to convince the tribal council that the demons could be killed and war was once more declared on the invaders, but it was clear that Ireland would be constantly attacked by wave after wave of Fomorian invasion. Slaine hit on the idea of having the Tribe of Danu escape to the Otherworld that their Sky Chariots had been sent to, thus freeing them from the demons and allowing the Atlanteans to settle peacefully in Ireland; both armies united against Odacon and his Sea Demons. Slaine was able to free the Atlantean leader Gael from being Odacon's Golamh by handing over Sethor to take Gael's place; and they led their armies to bolster the city of Tara. While the tribes fought a defensive battle, Slaine was sent to the Otherworld to secure the blessings of Danu for the Tribes of the Earth Goddess to settle there; this done, he returned with her power behind him and led a charge that decimated Odacon's forces. The Tribe was cast to the Otherworld in the aftermath, and Slaine assisted Gael in finally destroying Odacon and the parasitic spawn with which he had infested the outer-lying villages.

With Gael as High King of Ireland and founder of the eventual Gaelic race, Slaine left to track down his son. He found Kai at a traveling carnival, and later embarked on a quest to track down Crom Dubh.

ources and influences

Sláine's most obvious source is Robert E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian, but Mills derived much of the background to the series from Celtic mythology and European prehistory (as in part did Howard: the name Conan is Irish and is borne by a number of mythological figures). [ [http://www.robert-e-howard.org/Louinet/dwelling3Part1.htm "Irish, Norman & Danish strains"] , [http://www.rehtwogunraconteur.com/Articles2.html "The Legendary Celts"] : articles exploring Howard's use of Nordic and Celtic material; ] Sláine himself is named after Sláine mac Dela, the legendary first High King of Ireland, and his "warp-spasm" or body-distorting battle frenzy is derived from the "ríastrad" of Cúchulainn, the hero of the Ulster Cycle of Irish mythology. "Warp-spasm" is the term Thomas Kinsella used for "ríastrad" in his translation of The "Táin". His barbed spear, the "gae bolga", is also borrowed from Cúchulainn, although his favourite weapon, the axe, is more usually associated with the Vikings or Anglo-Saxons than the Celts.

His patronymic, Mac Roth, is the name of the steward of Ailill and Medb, king and queen of Connacht, in the same cycle. The death of Sláine's mother, Macha, while forced to run on foot in a chariot race because of her husband's boasting, is taken from the story of an Irish goddess called Macha, who was forced to run against the king's chariot while heavily pregnant for the same reason. [ [http://www.maryjones.us/ctexts/debility.html "The Debility of the Ulstermen"] ]

Sláine's seduction of Niamh, the king's chosen bride who was brought up in seclusion until she was of age, is reminiscent of the Irish story of Deirdre. [ [http://www.maryjones.us/ctexts/usnech.html "The Exile of the Sons of Usnech"] ] Cathbad, the druid who foretells the evil consequences of Deirdre's birth and appears in several other tales of the Ulster Cycle, gives his name to Sláine's chief druid. Sláine's feat of crossing a raging river to visit her, weighed down by a heavy stone to prevent him from being swept away, is taken from an episode of the "Táin". ["On the morrow a valiant hero called Úalu went and took a great flagstone on his back to go across the water. But the river turned him over and he lay with his stone on his belly. His grave and his headstone are on the road beside the stream. Lia Úalann is its name." (from [http://www.ucc.ie/celt/online/T301012/text001.html Táin Bó Cúailnge" Recension 1] , ed. & trans. Cecile O'Rahilly, p. 153] Niamh is a popular Irish girl's name, and is also the name of a fairy queen from the Fenian Cycle. Her otherworld homeland, "Tír na nÓg" (the Land of the Young), provides the name of the series' setting.

Sláine's goddess, Danu, and her tribes, the Tuatha Dé Danann, come from the Irish Mythological Cycle, although the worship of a universal mother goddess of the earth is not Celtic and comes from speculations about prehistoric European culture and religion by the likes of Marija Gimbutas and Robert Graves. The Horned God, Carnun, is adapted from the Gaulish antlered deity Cernunnos. Some of the religious ideas in the series are taken from "Barddas", a possibly fraudulent compilation of "bardo-druidic" beliefs by the 18th century Welsh antiquarian Iolo Morganwg. ["Gwynfyd cannot be obtained without seeing and knowing everything, but it is not possible to see or to know everything without suffering everything." From Iolo Morganwg, "Barddas", quoted in T. W. Rolleston, "Myths and Legends of the Celtic Race" [http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/celt/mlcr/mlcr08.htm Chapter 8] . Compare with the quote of Cathbad in Horned God, vol 1, page 18: "That's all very well sire but we must look beyond this life to the higher realms... and they cannot be obtained without seing and knowing everything and, unfortunately,it's not possible to see and know everything without suffering everything". The origin of the name Cythrawl, given to the dimension of the "Dark Gods of Cythrawl", Sláine's enemies, can be found in the same passage of "Barddas".] Mills divides the priests of Tir na nÓg into two factions: the good Druids, the well known priestly class of Celtic Europe, and the evil Drunes, which name derives from the Galatian place-name Drunemeton ("oak-sanctuary"), used in the story "The Bride of Crom" as the name of the Drunes' capital. [Strabo, "Geography" [http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?lookup=Strab.+12.5.1 12.5.1] ] Their leader, Slough Feg, is partly based on Cernunnos and partly on the paleolithic cave painting known as the Sorcerer in the "Trois-Frères" cave in Ariège, southern France. ["...the famous 'Sorcerer of Trois Freres' is Slough Feg." Pat Mills, "Sláine: the Origins" (introduction), "The Collected Sláine", Titan Books, 1993.] His acolyte, Medb, is named after the legendary queen of Connacht from the Ulster Cycle. The Drunes' god, Crom Cruach, is an Irish deity who was reputedly propitiated with human sacrifices. The practice of mass human sacrifice by burning in a Wicker Man is mentioned as a practice of the Celts of Gaul by Strabo and Julius Caesar.

The enemies of the Tribes of the Earth Goddess, the Fomorians, and their leader Balor, are from the Irish mythological cycle.

Other elements of the series are derived from non-Celtic mythological sources. Sláine's dwarf companion is named Ukko, after the Finnish storm god.Odacon is identified in Theosophist circles [http://www.theosophical.ca/IranianOannesNDK.html "In a letter [Theosophist, Vol -2-, page 214] written by a learned Fellow of the Theosophical Society [F.T.S.] , from the monastery of Soorb Ovaness (Armenia), the writer says that the Armenians, who, until the 4th and even the 7th centuries of the Christian era, were Parsees in religion, called themselves Haiks or descendants of King Haig. In the forgotten traditions of these people, we find that they claimed to have remained true to the teachings of Zoroaster. These they had accepted ever since Musarus Oannes or Annedotus — the Heaven or Sun-sent (the first Odacon And Daphos, the man-fish) — arising daily from the sea at sunrise to plunge back into it at sunset — taught them the good doctrine, their arts and civilisation. That was during the reign of Ammenon the Chaldean, 68 Sari or 244,800 years before the deluge"] with a Babylonian deity named Oannes and is considered closely related to Dagon.Musarus, one of same species of Odacon, shares this origin. Grimnismal, the name of the dark god Sláine and his companions defeat in "Tomb of Terror", is the title of a poem about Odin from the Norse Elder Edda. The term Ragnarok, for the end of the world, is also borrowed from Norse mythology.

Publications

Comics

They have been collected in a number of volumes but recently Rebellion has started a new series of trade paperbacks:

*"Sláine" (written by Pat Mills unless stated):
** "Warrior's Dawn" (2005, ISBN 1904265332):
*** "The Time Monster" (with Angela Kincaid, in "2000 AD" #330, 1983)
*** "The Beast in the Broch" (with Massimo Belardinelli, in "2000 AD" #331-334, 1983)
*** "Warrior's Dawn" (with Mike McMahon, in "2000 AD" #335, 1983)
*** "The Beltain Giant" (with Mike McMahon, in "2000 AD" #336, 1983).
*** "The Bride of Crom" (with Massimo Belardinelli, in "2000 AD" #337-342, 1983).
*** "The Creeping Death" (with Massimo Belardinelli, in "2000 AD" #343, 1983).
*** "The Bull Dance" (with Massimo Belardinelli, in "2000 AD" #344, 1983).
*** "Heroes' Blood" (with Mike McMahon, in "2000 AD" #345-347, 1983)
*** "The Shoggey Beast" (with Mike McMahon, in "2000 AD" #348-351, 1983-1984)
*** "Sky Chariots" (with Mike McMahon, in "2000 AD" #352-360, 1984)
*** "The Origins" (two page text article, "2000 AD" #352, 1984)
** "Time Killer" (2007, ISBN 1905437218):
*** "Dragonheist" (with Massimo Belardinelli, in "2000 AD" #361-367, 1984)
*** "The Time Killer" (with Glenn Fabry, David Pugh and Bryan Talbot, in "2000 AD" #411-428 and 431-434, 1985)
** "The King" (2008, ISBN 1905437665):
*** "The Tomb of Terror" (with Glenn Fabry and David Pugh, in "2000 AD" #447-461)
*** "Spoils of Annwn" (with Mike Collins and Mark Farmer, in "2000 AD" #493-499)
*** "Sláine the King" (with Glenn Fabry, in "2000 AD" #500-508 and #517-519)
*** "The Killing Field" (written by Angela Kincaid, with Glenn Fabry, in "2000 AD" #582)
*** "Slaine the Mini-Series" (with Glenn Fabry, in "2000 AD" #589-591)
** "The Horned God" (2008, ISBN 1905437733):
*** "The Horned God, Book I" (with Simon Bisley, in "2000 AD" #626-635)
*** "The Horned God, Book II" (with Simon Bisley, in "2000 AD" #650-656 and #662-664)
*** "The Horned God, Book III" (with Simon Bisley, in "2000 AD" #688-698)
** Uncollected:
*** "Jealousy of Niamh" (with Greg Staples, in "2000 AD" #850-851)
*** "Demon Killer" (with Glenn Fabry and Dermot Power, in "2000 AD" #852-859)
*** "Queen of Witches" (with Dermot Power, in "2000 AD" #889-896)
*** "Name of the Sword" (with Greg Staples, in "2000 AD" #950-956)
*** "Lord of Misrule, Part I" (with Clint Langley, in "2000 AD" #958-963)
*** "Lord of Misrule, Part II" (with Clint Langley, in "2000 AD" #995-998)
*** "Bowels of Hell" (with Jim Murray, in "2000 AD" #1000)
*** "Treasures of Britain, Part I" (with Dermot Power, in "2000 AD" #1001-1010)
*** "Ukko's Tale" (with Steve Tappin, in "2000 AD" #1011-1012)
*** "Treasures of Britain, Part II" (with Dermot Power, in "2000 AD" #1024-1031)
*** "The Demon Hitchhiker" (with Steve Tappin, in "2000 AD" #1032)
*** "King of Hearts" (with Nick Percival, in "2000 AD" #1033-1039)
*** "The Grail War" (with Steve Tappin, in "2000 AD" #1040-1049)
*** "Secret of the Grail" (with Steve Tappin, in "2000 AD" #1090-1099)
*** "Lord of the Beasts" (with Rafael Garres, in "2000 AD" #1100)
*** "Kai" (with Paul Staples, in "2000 AD" #1104-1107)
*** "The Banishing" (with Wayne Reynolds, in "2000 AD" #1108-1109)
*** "The Triple Death" (with Wayne Reynolds, in "2000 AD" #1111)
*** "The Swan Children" (with Siku, in "2000 AD" #1112-1114)
*** "Macha" (with Paul Staples, in "2000 AD" #1115-1118)
*** "The Secret Commonwealth" (with David Bircham, in "2000 AD" #1183-1199)
*** "Beyond" (with Greg Staples, in "2000 AD" prog 2000, 1999)
** "The Books of Invasions: Moloch and Golamh" (with Clint Langley, 2006, ISBN 1904265820):
*** "The Books of Invasions I: Moloch" (in "2000 AD" #1322-1326 and prog 2003)
*** "The Books of Invasions II: Golamh" (in "2000 AD" #1350-1355)
** "The Books of Invasions: Scota and Tara" (with Clint Langley, 2006, ISBN 1904265928):
*** "The Books of Invasions III: Scota" (in "2000 AD" #1371-1376)
*** "The Books of Invasions IV: Tara" (in "2000 AD" #1420-1425 and prog 2005)
** "The Books of Invasions: Odacon" (with Clint Langley, July 2007, ISBN 1904265928):
*** "The Books of Invasions V: Odacon" (200AD #1436-1442)
*** "Carnival" (with Clint Langley, in "2000 AD" #1469-1475 and prog 2006)

Appearances in special issues:
* "The Battle of Clontarf" (with Massimo Belardinelli, in "2000 AD Annual", 1985)
* "The Arrow of God" (with Steve Parkhouse, in "2000 AD Annual", 1989)
* "The High King" (with Glenn Fabry, in "2000 AD Yearbook", 1992)
* "The Devil's Banquet" (with Glenn Fabry, in "2000 AD Sci-Fi Special", 1986)
* "The Return of the High King" (by Dermot Power, "Poster Prog Slaine" 1)

Video games

*"Sláine, The Celtic Barbarian" (by "Creative Reality", CPC graphic adventure) [http://www.mobygames.com/game/zx-spectrum/sline-the-celtic-barbarian/]

RPGs

Solo RPG appearances:
* "Cauldron of Blood" ("Dice Man" #1, illustrated by David Lloyd).
* "Dragoncorpse" ("Dice Man" #2, illustrated by Nik Williams).
* "The Ring of Danu" ("Dice Man" #4, illustrated by Mike Collins & Mark Farmer).
* "The Invulnerable King" (by Ian Sturrock, Mongoose Publishing) [http://www.2000adonline.com/?zone=prog&page=specials&choice=d20slaine3]
* "Slaine - the Roleplaying Game" (by Aaron Dembski-Bowden, Mongoose Publishing) [http://www.mongoosepublishing.com/home/detail.php?qsID=1426&qsSeries=%2039]

Novels

The first Sláine novel was released at the end of 2006:
* "Sláine: Sláine the Exile" (Steven Savile, Black Flame, December 2006, ISBN 1844163873)

In popular culture

Sláine has influenced popular culture:

*The Lord Weird Slough Feg, an American folky power metal band who derive their name from Sláine's foe. [ [http://www.enslavedbymetal.com/interview.html?interviewid=20&amp;resc=OK&amp;resc=OK&amp;resc=OK< Interview with The Lord Weird Slough Feg] ]

*Battle Angel Alita, the Scrapyard arena champion bears a strong resemblance to Sláine.

*Internode Systems, one of the high regarded administrators goes by the alias "Slaine".

References

External links

* [http://www.2000adonline.com/?zone=thrill&page=profiles&choice=SLAINE 2000 AD Profile]
* [http://www.2000adonline.com/?zone=thrill&page=thrillviewer&choice=time Sláine - "The Time Monster"] (requires registration)
* [http://www.sffworld.com/interview/226p0.html Interview Steven Saville]
* [http://www.2000adreview.co.uk/reviews/extra/2006/books/slaine/exile.shtml Review of Slaine The Exile]
* [http://www.sffworld.com/brevoff/355.html another review] of the novel made by Saville
* [http://www.celticgrounds.com/chapters/encyclopedia/indices/encycintro.html Encyclopedia of the Celts]