What’s better than sitting down with a Sláine story than sitting down with a story about Sláine.
For Sláine fans, 2021 was bittersweet. September saw the end of Dragontamer, the last original Sláine story.1 And November, the publication of Pat Mills’ eagerly awaited account of the Celtic warrior’s saga, Sláine! The Warped Warrior: The Secret History… Kiss My Axe! In a magical kind of way, the tale — spanning four decades — came full circle. Now that we have our ending, what better time to return to the story’s beginning, only this time armed with a backstage pass. And that’s exactly what Mills gifts us in his rich and remarkable memoir: a blow-by-blow account of the makings of not just a Celtic punk hero but his world and indeed his worldmakers.
Anyone with even a passing interest in British comics will have heard of Pat Mills, a veteran comics writer — fifty years and counting — who has created, or had a hand in creating, some of the most iconic titles and characters in British comics.2 To get an unmediated account of his creative process and politics, his artistic collaborations with many of the greatest comic book artists, and the inner workings of the British comics industry is rare, and a great boon.
The book has one heck of a brilliant cover and 47 sharply titled chapters, each edifying and absorbing, and I don’t think it too many.3 Behind-the-scenes details on the stories, the art and artists, editors and publishers, the vicissitudes of creative collaboration, and British comics fandom fill every page, enough to entertain and inform fans and scholars alike. And whilst Kiss My Axe will be of great interest to Sláine fans and to those concerned with the British comics industry and comics fandom — notably regarding creator and fan relations — one does not need to be a fan of Sláine to profit from Mills’ encyclopedic account of the making of a British comics icon. Those looking for insight into matters of worldmaking and storytelling or those looking to nurture their own creativity will also find much of value, exemplified, for example, in the didactic chapter entitled, “How a New Sláine Story is Created.” Whatever the reason for picking up Kiss My Axe, readers will undoubtedly find it hard to put down.
More than just a trip down memory lane, ‘Kiss My Axe’ offers an invaluable first-hand account of the world of British comics making.
Much like Sláine stories, Kiss My Axe works notions of real through fictional, historical through fantastical, personal through political, illustrating them as connected not separate realms. And make no mistake, mythmaking is work; on this, Mills is emphatic: birthing a hero is labor. It is also collaborative; on this, Mills is detailed and refreshingly generous. Indeed, this generosity of spirit is one of the book’s many highlights as Mills painstakingly recounts the story behind the stories, good, bad, and ugly.
The book’s opening chapters relate the high and low points of Sláine’s creation and first publication (1983). A character, a world, developed over two years by Mills and artist Angela Kincaid, Mills’ then wife; a wandering Celtic hero conjured from their imaginations and the world around them. An unjust world, let it be said — a theme central to Mills’ oeuvre. As Mills tells it, Sláine was most definitely, “her vision as well as mine.” It is a wonderful portrait of a collaborative, creative process: fun, exciting, magical, and rewarding. Just as we might imagine, or wish, the process of creating adventure comics to be. But like Dorian Gray, it has a grimmer side to it, one usually kept hidden from public view. Mills is not, however, afraid to pierce this particular veil, giving readers a valuable insight into the misogynistic ethos characterizing mainstream British comics culture then, and it seems now.4
Sláine fans will know that Kincaid “walked away” from the project after episode one; now they will know why she did, or had to do, so. Because of a sustained campaign of bullying — exclusion, passive-aggression, and gaslighting — by 2000AD editorial and artists alike. Because she was a woman entering a male-dominated world, an outsider threatening the tribe, threatening change. A change that would have transformed the Sláine story and perhaps the world of British comics, likely opening the door earlier and wider to other women creators and readers: “Don’t ever assume,” Mills tells us, “that the version of Sláine we have today is the best possible one.” Ditto the British comics world.
Though Kincaid left the “unpleasant” episode and the comics world behind her — becoming an acclaimed children’s illustrator — Mills’ choice to candidly tell their story, her story, further punctures the hush around on-going and deep-rooted sexism in the world of comics (creation). Drawing down the power of sharing stories, it helps us — readers, creators, producers — to better identify, understand, and address systemic chauvinism in the comics world. Those interested in truth-telling, alongside those concerned with sexism in comics/creative industries, will no doubt find Mills’ singular account enlightening and invaluable. As will those curious about how heroes and their worlds are made; the alchemy of mixing real and fantasy, writers and artists, words and images, art and money, creators and fans.
You, the readers should be the ultimate judges, not a vocal, elite minority… — Pat Mills
Another of the book’s great strengths is Mills’ willingness to talk about fans, specifically links and relations between fans and creators, intense and often fraught. Mills, for example, makes nuanced distinctions between Sláine (2000AD) fans — as mainstream readers (young and old, and across the gender spectrum) and older “purist fans” or “fanboys,” the latter comprising a small but very vocal and passionate coterie — and forthrightly discusses the struggle over Sláine’s audience and meaning: “The comic I began was aimed at and attracted a wide mainstream younger audience. But fans in the industry, who increasingly called the shots, wanted to ‘rise above them’ and appeal to those elusive, purist fans…”. Weaving throughout the book, it’s a fascinating thread to follow and, given the increasing centrality of fans in the modern mediascape, a valuable one too. A complex tale of creative tensions, economic forces, and the ability of industry-fans and fanboys to claim and (re)shape a beloved fan object; it is sure to be of interest to fans and fan scholars alike. And it is just the kind of story that Mills likes to tell, of underdogs and outsiders thwarting the controlling efforts of elites — here, mainstream readers/fans and allied creators opposing the editorial high hand of industry-fans and fanboys.
The best way to create a protagonist is always to base them on some aspect of yourself. — Pat Mills
Mills’ punk politics have shaped the stories he has chosen to tell. His work is perennially and admirably crammed with outsider, anti-establishment heroes resisting or vanquishing power elites, far too many to mention in this review. Amongst them, Sláine stands tall. Emerging from a desire to fathom his Irish roots, Mills affectingly describes how Sláine’s origin story weaves through his own, notably concerning his “quest for the father.” Without sentimentalism, we discover how real-life events inspired fantasy — his “three possible fathers” as the stimuli for Sláine’s father, Roth, for example — or, and paraphrasing Mills, how he turned lead into gold, shite into champagne, and misery into money.
Tying in matters of his personal quest, British colonialism, and media propaganda, Mills’ account of why he chose to draw from Celtic and Irish myths and legends, and not the more usual Greek myths, is equally compelling. The elision of Celtic stories in pop culture is not accidental, “It’s the result of a long-standing, subtle form of censorship and propaganda […] It’s deliberate and that’s why I see those who play a role in it as cultural enemies, because they are consciously eroding our heritage by ignoring it and promoting imperial alternatives.” And as an Irish citizen from the North of Ireland, I can get behind that.
In telling the story of a Celtic hero, Mills actively sought to redress a cultural imbalance. As he does when he decides to make his protagonists, his heroes, working-class people, and women, as with Eve (Third World War) or more recently, Dada Derda from Jurassic Punx.5 Or in his choice to write sci-fi and fantasy comics stories for “kids” and not “serious” political novels nor indeed “cult” comics. Always prizing writing for younger, mainstream readers — the silent majority — in comics pitched at affordable price points, Mills strongly resists industry supplications to older fans and fanboys — a vocal minority — who customarily prefer their graphic stories to come in expensive, exclusive “coffee table” editions, an issue certainly causing rifts between Mills and 2000AD editorial. Creative decisions such as these are not accidents; they are political, intended to expose, disrupt, and erode the status quo, on- and off- page.
Science fiction lends itself readily to imaginative subversion of any status quo. — Ursula K. Le Guin
For Mills, storytelling is a mode of social action, his preferred mode. As he recounts, his motivation for writing has always been “subversion,” to challenge the status quo. And it works. Just ask the fan who wrote thanking him “for all the subversive and subliminal plot lines and stories I’ve read over the years written by you! It worked!” The fan was a school CEO dedicating a section of the school library to comics and graphic fiction: “Creating a world-class education free for our children is the most subversive thing I believe I could do.” Mills too has done — and continues to do — the most subversive thing he could think to do: storytelling. And recommends readers do the same.
Kiss My Axe offers a rare glimpse into the world of British comics and one of its greatest and most prolific creators. It is the entwining story of legends: Sláine and his makers. A riotous, intimate, and illuminating tale. Mills understands the power of telling stories, of making his secret history public; in sharing his candid account of the making of the Sláine saga, he creates an invaluable record of the ebb and flow of a four-decade long creative process, but he does an awful lot more.
Sláine! The Warped Warrior: The Secret History… Kiss My Axe! by Pat Mills is published by Millsverse Books 2021. Further details available here.
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Originally serialized in 2000AD (2020-2021).
Alongside Sláine, for example: 2000AD, Crisis, Charley’s War, Judge Dredd, Nemesis the Warlock, ABC Warriors, Marshal Law, Misty, etc., etc., etc. And whilst perhaps not an icon of British comics, I do have to give special mention to Flesh and Hook Jaw (the heroic great white shark — yes, you read that right, and it’s as marvelous as it sounds) who will forever hold top spots on my roster of treasured comics stories.
Cover art by Alex Ronald and cover design by Lisa Mills.
Despite inclusive, “niche” gestures, women creators remain a novelty in 2000AD; Mills observes that during 45 years of publication only two women artists have drawn 2000AD covers, Kincaid in 1983 and Emily Zeinner in 2018.
A story featuring in Mills’ most recent anthology comic, Space Warp.