A tense, orange-lit comic panel catching a confrontation mid-argument rather than mid-battle. Sláine, bare-chested with his crest of dark hair and a heavy metal collar or gorget at his throat, faces two other warriors crowding in from the right, one gripping a large stone-headed axe and baring his teeth, the other, weathered and scarred, jabbing a finger while shouting. Overlapping speech balloons read this alliance was a trick to allay my suspicions, I should have known the Sessair would never change, and bitter your words Gann, but theyre not true, I swear it, naming Gann, one of the strips recurring rival kings, and the Sessair, one of its tribal factions, as the parties to the dispute. The scene captures the political side of the Sláine strip that runs alongside its battles, tribal alliances forming and breaking, accusations of betrayal flying between rival kings, all part of the pseudo-historical Celtic power structure that writer Pat Mills built the series around. Bisleys hot orange-and-yellow palette keeps the confrontation visually charged even without a single blow being thrown on panel, the color itself doing the work of anger and suspicion that the dialogue lays out explicitly. Panels like this are a useful counterweight to the archives more spectacular battle paintings, showing that a large part of what made the Sláine strip work as ongoing serialized fiction was this kind of grounded interpersonal friction, oaths, grievances and shifting loyalties among the tribes, rather than combat alone, and Bisley proves just as capable of staging a shouting match with real tension as he is a full-scale melee.
Slaine talks
