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Released by: 2000 A.D.
Released on: March 10th, 2016.
Written by: Pat Mills, Alan Hebden
Illustrated by: Horacio Lalio
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The Bermuda Triangle..mysterious...dangerous...unknowable...li ttle do you know it leads to...the Planet of the Damned!!!!
Well into the future, a spaceship full of colonists is traveling the spaceways on a collision course with the Death Planet!!!
This two-fer collection from 2000 A.D. features two stories from the short-lived companion magazine Starlord with a story from the great Pat Mills and a story from Alan Hebden featuring hostile alien worlds and the dangerous flora and fauna on them.
First up in Pat Mills' Planet of the Damned, a commercial airliner finds itself sucked through a portal into an alien dimension populated by the most motley assortment of creatures in the universe. Acid spitting Ab-humans, cannibalistic WWII soldiers, a u-boat full of Nazis, melting rain, face eating creatures and the only thing standing between them and certain doom is a savage named Flint. Flint is the classic John Carter archetype who has adapted to the alien planet and needs only a loincloth and a sword to master the savage land, in the hands of a lesser writer then Flint would be a typical pulp character in a by the numbers story; Pat Mills is one of the Deans of British comics so he elevates the story through the strength of his writing and Horacio Lalio's art. You never feel comfortable in the story because even the promised sanctuary might not be all it's cracked up to be
Death Planet by Alan Hebden wraps the collection up. A spaceship full of colonists is forced to crash land on a bizarre alien planet that seems like a strange cross between Mars and Australia where they must contend with the hostile landscape and bizarre creatures (okay, probably Australia) as well as the tension between the starship commander and the leader of the colonists. Just as they've made themselves a safe village, they suddenly and tragically realize they aren't the only humans on the planet...there are space pirates and pterodactyls and crazy ass space crystals with magic powers and thank God there's no love story AND some kids die. I don't mind saying I have a noted distaste for forced love stories and very well-known love for stories where anyone and everyone can die, life is awful and death can come for any of us at any moment and most works of fiction shy away from that for fear of offending delicate sensibilities.
This is a pretty sure collection, running 96 pages so I wish I could go more in-depth but due to the brevity of the stories it's a bit of a sticky wicket giving a thorough review without giving anything away. I will say that this is another 2000 A.D. home run in my book, I have all the respect in the world for 2000 A.D./Rebellion for putting out collections of all these different collections. In the states the big two have a tendency to stick with collections of their biggest most popular characters and 2000 A.D. keeps putting out these beautiful collections of pretty much everything! Respect!
