Strontium Dog - Question

[JaHawkDroid]

Already ordered Agency Files 2.

If I'm planning to get all the Agency Files, and the Strontium trades after Final Solution, are their other trades I need to get characters like Durham Red/Middenface/etc?
(I did try Googling, but got a bit lost on it)

Glad you discovered Strontium Dog - along with Dredd it is my favorite 2000AD series. Here is what you will want to read (in order) for the essential S/D collection:

   Search/Destroy Agency Files #1
   Search/Destroy Agency Files #2
   Search/Destroy Agency Files #3
   Search/Destroy Agency Files #4
   Final Solution
   Kreeler Conspiracy
   Traitor to His Kind
   Blood Moon
   Life and Death of Johnny Alpha: The Project
   Life and Death of Johnny Alpha: Dogs of War

I have enjoyed everything SD I have read so far. All of the S/D Files are fantastic, I would rate them as follows: S/D #1: 8.5/10, S/D #2: 10/10, S/D #3: 10/10, S/D #4: 9/10, S/D #5 (Final solution): 8/10.

Thank you for that. Saved for reference going forward!

[IndigoPrime]

a magical beast

That never really bothered me about Final Solution and the arc before it. Strontium Dog had dabbled in the mystical throughout the series, notably with Malak Brood, so this wasn't particularly jarring.

As for Feral, I broadly agree that he feels very much of his day – and that largely goes for the Strontium Dogs incarnation too – which has been retconned out of existence by Wagner's subsequent Strontium Dog work. (The Durham Red solo series must also sit on wobbly ground now, given its links to Strontium Dogs, although that was so far removed from base Strontium Dog that it feels like an alt-future strip anyway.)

[Frank]

... really hated the character Feral - he embodies the extreme flavor of the 90's and it felt like they were pushing him as a replacement ...

My two main questions:
1) What was the political situation in London as a result of the fallout of Final Solution? (Do things get any better for mutants (unlikely I know), what happens to the royal line/parliament/governing body, and what of the S/D agency?) I would like to think his death added up to something more than[spoiler] just opening a portal. [/spoiler]

2) What happens to Feral?

Peter Hogan turned him into a butterfly.

Garth Ennis tried to pick up where Alan Grant left off, filling in some of the detail you ask about. Ennis wrote Feral as a sort of werewolf, subject to a curse that meant he had lots of overwritten nightmares about the beast into which he was destined to become*.

Ennis got bored and reinvented the Gronk as The Terminator, and the lead character of the strip. Hogan couldn't be bothered with Feral and put him in a cocoon for the length of his run, only emerging in Hogan's final episode - as a different character, called Firefall.

Maybe Firefall would have been fantastic, but we'll never know. Hogan lost his job, and no more was seen of either the Strontium Dogs strip or Feral/Firefall. I felt the same as you about Feral at the time, resenting him for the way editorial were pushing him as Alpha 2.


* I actually sort of enjoyed Ennis's first story, Monsters, even if it did take place on Parnell's World and feature British Paras occupying a town run by a guerilla army with a name comprised of three intials, who are actually gangsters, running a protection racket. Write what you know, eh?

[Smith]

Like I said before,It was fun to see Gronk kick some ass.But thats really it.If you saw Ennis take on IRA once(and if you read any comic by him,you did)you know what to expect.
I guess that,in theory,I could see Feral and Gronk as a B team that shows up sometimes;but they really couldnt fill Johnnys shoes.

[marko10174]

Has anyone read the Strontium/Dredd cross over story "top dogs"? that was phenomenal! also, which graphic novel would I find that story in? I read JD case file V14 online (a bit naughty I know, but I have purchased about 6 case files in the last two months) and Top dogs appeared in that case file, but so did an Anderson file storyline. I was thinking maybe the online link I read had maybe accidently thrown in some extra stories that don't belong to that case file, or maybe they do?

[Frank]

I read JD case file V14 online (a bit naughty I know, but I have purchased about 6 case files in the last two months)

You'll go blind:  http://dreddreviews.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/restricted-files-03.html

[Dark Jimbo]

Top Dogs appears in both Dredd Restricted Files 3 and in Strontium Dog: The Final Solution. The Dredd/Alpha sequel is the mega-epic Judgement Day, which appears in Case Files 17. And a third meet ran recently in prog 2000.

[Frank]

... really hated the character Feral - he embodies the extreme flavor of the 90's and it felt like they were pushing him as a replacement ...

 

[Smith]

Should I mention that the X-men titles of the day also had a Mutant Liberation Front and a Feral?Coincidence?

[Leigh S]

... really hated the character Feral - he embodies the extreme flavor of the 90's and it felt like they were pushing him as a replacement ...

 

[Rogue Judge]

... really hated the character Feral - he embodies the extreme flavor of the 90's and it felt like they were pushing him as a replacement ...

My two main questions:
1) What was the political situation in London as a result of the fallout of Final Solution? (Do things get any better for mutants (unlikely I know), what happens to the royal line/parliament/governing body, and what of the S/D agency?) I would like to think his death added up to something more than[spoiler] just opening a portal. [/spoiler]

2) What happens to Feral?

Peter Hogan turned him into a butterfly.

Garth Ennis tried to pick up where Alan Grant left off, filling in some of the detail you ask about. Ennis wrote Feral as a sort of werewolf, subject to a curse that meant he had lots of overwritten nightmares about the beast into which he was destined to become*.

Ennis got bored and reinvented the Gronk as The Terminator, and the lead character of the strip. Hogan couldn't be bothered with Feral and put him in a cocoon for the length of his run, only emerging in Hogan's final episode - as a different character, called Firefall.

Maybe Firefall would have been fantastic, but we'll never know. Hogan lost his job, and no more was seen of either the Strontium Dogs strip or Feral/Firefall. I felt the same as you about Feral at the time, resenting him for the way editorial were pushing him as Alpha 2.


* I actually sort of enjoyed Ennis's first story, Monsters, even if it did take place on Parnell's World and feature British Paras occupying a town run by a guerilla army with a name comprised of three intials, who are actually gangsters, running a protection racket. Write what you know, eh?

Wow...that was really unexpected. I though he might be dead, but a butterfly...possibly a fate worse than death.

Thanks for the info and images too; some decent art there but Gronk looking tough and dawning the SD badge seems (fun but) out of character as he would likely die - his poor heartsies couldn't handle the fear of violence/death (unless that is addressed - how he went from passing out every time Wulf sneezed to turning into the Gronkinator...maybe he is a Gronk mutant with a healing factor heart or something...). Still, too bad Hogan never had a chance to tie up his Strontium Dogs run, dangling plot threads are always annoying.

At the time Final Solution was running, did readers know that it was leading up to the death of Johnny? (like how now days Marvel/DC advertises any major deaths months in advance) If not, this would have been a pretty shocking finale.

[Rogue Judge]

... really hated the character Feral - he embodies the extreme flavor of the 90's and it felt like they were pushing him as a replacement ...

 

Based on that image it appears Feral transformed once more, this time physically into a Strontium Dog.

Has anyone read the Strontium/Dredd cross over story "top dogs"? that was phenomenal! also, which graphic novel would I find that story in?

As mentioned, this is collected in the back of the Final Solution, the MacNeil artwork ties in together nicely. It was a really smart story (escape) and I can now see why Dredd was upset with Alpha during Judgement Day (a crossover I thoroughly enjoyed) which ends with this.

[Smith]

Note: Feral died on the way back to his home planet. :D

[Dash Decent]

(a crossover I thoroughly enjoyed) which ends with this.

Which in turn begat this.

[AlexF]

I'm pretty sure Tharg had been teasing since around Prog 600 that a major character was going to die soon. Of course there was a delicious red herring with The Dead Man mystery (a character who isn't actually dead). I'm guessing Tharg was talking about Alpha, who may have originally been scheduled to die in-Prog before 650 (when 'the Dead Man' started, thus making it even harder to guess his identity). At the time, the wait between chunks of 'The Final Solution' felt interminable.

SPOILER warning for an interesting side note: ALL of these major characters 'died' between Progs 600-700...





[spoiler]Johnny Alpha, obvs.

Dredd, in the sense that he takes the long walk, gets burned up by the Sisrters of Death, and becomes the Dead Man.

Slaine, who dies at the end of his 7-year reign, at the beginning/end of The Horned God (and maybe in the middle as well, when he goes into the cauldron? Can't remember off hand), which was kind of billed as the ending of the whole saga.

The original Rogue Trooper didn't physically die at this point (although he comes bloody close in Cinnabar!), but the character was consigned to the dustbin to make way for Friday.

About 60% of the cast of Zenith Book III, inlcuding at one point Zenith's counterpart Vertex, who at the time of his death was pretending to be Zenith, at least from the readers' point of view (Maybe? I still can't get my head around Book III).

Nemesis and Deadlock kill each other in Prog 700 (although they immediately resurrect through magic).

See also Kraken, who sort-of commits suicide in order to become the new Judge Dredd. On the cover, no less!
And Chief Judge Silver, although he later comes back as a zombie.

Oh, and Trips from Harlem Heroes. Dude had his own Star Scan on the back of a Prog, that's how big a deal he was! And he got a farwell cover from Steve Dillon.[/spoiler]