Writer: Pat Mills
Artist: Simon Bisley and SMS
Price: £11.99
Collecting stories first printed in 2000AD progs 555-566 and 573-581.
Publisher: Titan Books
ISBN: 1840235292

James Cameron's ALIENS is one of my favourite films, for quite a few reasons - the eminently quotable dialogue, the hardware sported by the Colonial Marines, and the eponymous Aliens themselves. I keep coming back to the film because of the suspenseful, pressure-cooker mis en scene Cameron creates in the movie. As a viewer, I get wholly sucked into the tense and claustrophobic milieu, to the extent that I grip the sides of the chair, white-knuckled.

While such suspension of disbelief is not as total in THE BLACK HOLE, the suffocating atmosphere is present and parallel to its Hollywood counterpart. Following on from events in Pat Mills' other futuristic strip, NEMESIS THE WARLOCK, the robotic Warriors - leader Hammerstein, assassin Joe Pineapples, Blackblood the torturer, strongdroid Mongrol, killdozer Mek-Quake, meknomancer Deadlock, and comedy relief Ro-Jaws - are dispatched into the Time Wastes of Termight (alias Earth in the far future).

Their mission is to shut down the nominal Black Hole at the heart of the Time Wastes. Should said Black Hole remain unchecked, then Bad Things (zombies, anarchy, the end of the universe) will happen. Complicating matters is the Monad, an amalgam of future humanity's darker impulses, which seeks to topple the balance between Khaos and Order.

The real enemy, though, is the Warriors' mutual distrust for each other...

For what is - at its heart - a straightforward sci-fi shoot 'em up, Mills' plot is dense and multi-layered. While continuing to develop the themes of prejudice and intolerance that have informed certain of Mills' work (JUDGE DREDD: THE CURSED EARTH, RO-BUSTERS, the Warriors' earlier incarnation and, most evidently, NEMESIS), this was a bleak and brutal strip indeed, even by the standards of 2000AD's anti-establishment roots. In fact, THE BLACK HOLE is a watershed 2000AD story in many respects.

From the outset, it moves beyond the more straightforward action/adventure storytelling employed by Mills and his previous collaborators, edging closer to psychodrama. APOCALYPSE NOW appears to be the touchstone here, insofar as during the course of the story, the effects of warfare (both physical and psychological) are examined as a recurrent theme. The various Warriors live for battle and conflict, except for Ro-Jaws (the sewer droid with the mouth to match), who plays the (relative) conscience of the group; a metallic Cockney Jiminy Cricket to the rest of the group's unruly Pinocchio.

Mills' relating of the story is episodic, as befits a serial, but this doesn't hinder the storytelling - he takes his time, giving it and his cast room to breathe. His script is razor-sharp, and his characterisation is similarly cutting.

Cases in point include the misguided Terri, a human who believes herself to be a robot; and Major Savard, commander of the Eternal Soldiers of Agartha, who detests robots with a passion - but not so much as she hates herself. Much of what makes THE BLACK HOLE work is the character interaction - as outlandish as the various plot threads become, Mills (via his protagonists and antagonists) grounds them in an identifiable emotional reality. No mean feat, considering our 'heroes' are robots.

A good deal of THE BLACK HOLE's notoriety stems from it being the first pro comics work of Simon Bisley - and it is such an assured debut, it's small wonder he became the artistic superstar he did (if only briefly) in the early 90's. While Bisley owes an obvious debt to WARRIORS co-creator (and frequent Mills partner-in-crime) Kevin O'Neill, Bisley has taken his predecessor's love of detail and wed it to Bill Sienkiewicz's pyrotechnic stylistics, resulting in a fresh and visually arresting hybrid that gives a new definition to 'heavy metal'.

The acronymic SMS does as well with his portions of the story, blending Robert Crumb and Barry Windsor-Smith into an ornate and Romanesque vision of the future. (Special note must be made of his architectural accuracy, complemented by a good eye for perspective and distance.) While Bisley excels at the ultra-violence, SMS softens the edges, lending the Warriors' travails a neo-romantic aspect.

The long-standing tagline attached to THE ABC WARRIORS was that they were 'programmed to kill ... destined to die'. During the course of THE BLACK HOLE, by exceeding the limitations of their programming, the Warriors take command of their destiny. Hammerstein initiates a doomed romance with Terri; Deadlock's absolute faith in Khaos is shaken; Mongrol is faced with hard truths regrading the (after) life of a mek-man.

In a nutshell, THE BLACK HOLE - a celestial body that is the very epitome of entropy - is about growth and change. As old beliefs die, new ones are born; self-destruction becomes self-realisation. Fairly deep subject matter, and unexpected as well, considering that - on the surface - it's a straightforward sci-fi shoot 'em up.

But then again, so was ALIENS...

Brent Keane is a regular contributor to Ninth Art and PopImage and has also written for Opi8, Sequential Tart and Nerdbait.

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