Sláine is a comic hero that was first published in British magazine 2000 AD. Sláine is a barbarian fantasy adventure series based on Celtic myths and stories that 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 Massimo Belardinelli and Mike McMahon. Other notable artists to have worked on the character include Glenn Fabry, Simon Bisley, Clint Langley and Simon Davis. 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, monstrously powerful figure. He is a devotee of the earth goddess Danu.

Plot

Sláine is a wanderer who is banished from his tribe, the Sessair. He explores the Land of the Young (Irish: Tír na nÓg) with an unscrupulous dwarf called Ukko, fighting monsters and mercenaries. In one early adventure he rescues a maiden, 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, becomes the series' main villain. Sláine encounters sky chariots (flying longships), dragons and prehistoric alien gods. Sláine returns to his tribe and becomes king, leading them against the Fomorians, a race of sea demons who were oppressing them. In The Horned God, Sláine unites the tribes of the earth goddess against Slough Feg and his allies, while his personal devotion to the goddess leads 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. In subsequent stories, Sláine is sent through time by Danu to fight alongside other heroes and heroines such as Boudica (with whom he fought against the Romans, Elfric, and William Wallace), and returns to Ireland to defend his people against new enemies alongside his wife Niamh. These new enemies turn out to be a full Fomorian invasion led by Balor and Moloch, murdering, raping, and eating their way through Sláine's tribe until he is able to defeat Balor. The tribal council forces Sláine to let Moloch go, hoping he would fulfill his promise of keeping the Fomorians out of Ireland; instead, he returns to rape and murder Niamh. Wanting vengeance, Sláine abdicates the throne, and goes to Albion, killing Moloch. In his absence, his son Kai leaves the tribe to search for his father (eventually becoming a performer in an Albion carnival) and Ireland faces 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). When Sláine returns, he finds the new High King Sethor, former member of the council who had granted Moloch freedom, was willing to surrender half of Ireland to Odacon in return for the gifts of science and civilisation. Sláine convinces the tribal council that the demons could be killed and war is once more declared on the invaders, but it was clear that Ireland would be constantly attacked by wave after wave of Fomorian invasion. Sláine suggests having the Tribe of Danu escape to the Otherworld that their Sky Chariots had been sent to in order to free them from the demons, and allow the Atlanteans to settle peacefully in Ireland. Both armies unite against Odacon and his Sea Demons. Sláine is able to free the Atlantean leader Gael from being Odacon's Golamh by handing over Sethor to take Gael's place, and they lead their armies to bolster the city of Tara. While the tribes fight a defensive battle, Sláine is sent to the Otherworld to secure Danu's blessings for the Tribes of the Earth Goddess to settle there. He returns with her power behind him and leads a charge that decimates Odacon's forces. The Tribe is cast into the Otherworld in the aftermath, and Sláine assists 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, Sláine leaves to track down his son. He finds Kai at a travelling funfair, and later embarks on a quest to track down Crom Dubh.

Sources and influences

Sláine's most obvious sources are Robert E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian and Cú Chulainn, the hero of the Ulster Cycle of Irish mythology. Mills derived much of the series' background from Celtic mythology and European prehistory (as did Howard: the name Conan is Irish and is borne by a number of mythological figures). Sláine himself is named after Sláine mac Dela, the first High King of Ireland, and his "warp-spasm" or body-distorting battle frenzy is derived from the ríastrad of Cúchulainn; "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 Cú Chulainn, though 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, who was 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. 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. 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. 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, though the worship of a universal mother goddess of the earth is not Celtic, and comes from speculations about prehistoric European culture and religion by people like 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. 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, whose 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. 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. 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 appeased 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 with a Babylonian deity named Oannes, and is considered closely related to Dagon. Musarus, one of the same species as 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.

Publication

The stories have been collected in a number of volumes but recent trade collections include:

Characters

Main characters

Supporting characters

Villains

Historical and mythical characters

Celts

Others

In other media

** Tabletop miniature wargames **

Video games

Role-playing games

2000 AD RPG appearances: Solo RPG appearances:

Novels

The first Sláine novel was released at the end of 2006:

Music