Not a figure painting at all but a piece of world-building: a hand-painted fantasy map labeled Land of the Young in Sláine's Time, rendered in bruised purples, rust reds and ochres like a scorched parchment. Regions are labeled in a mix of real and invented Celtic-mythological names, Eriu, Albion, Midgard, the Tribes of the Earth Goddess, the Tribes of the Drune Lords, with smaller notations for Berserkers, Sea Devils, and a Cave of Beasts tucked in the corner. A compass rose sits beside a circular inset naming the whole territory, and the coastline is marked as having changed after a flood, a detail straight out of the series' own mythic history. Maps like this rarely get attention next to the character paintings, but they're part of what made Sláine feel like a fully built world rather than a string of one-off fight scenes. Pat Mills constructed the strip's setting out of real Celtic and Irish mythology, Earth Mother worship, druids, tribal warfare, filtered through a pulpy fantasy lens, and Simon Bisley's painted illustration work extended that mythology onto the page in a way that matched the tone of the writing. Bisley joined 2000 AD in the late 1980s and quickly became the artist most associated with Sláine's visual identity, but supporting material like this map shows the series operating as a genuine fantasy setting with its own geography and factions, not just a vehicle for the next brawl. The scorched, sprayed texture of the paint job also fits Bisley's usual approach: even a reference map gets treated less like a diagram and more like an artifact that could have been pulled out of the world itself.
Land of the Young in Slaine’’s Time
