A tightly cropped, high-contrast panel set against acid green, showing two hulking, orc-like warriors locked in close combat, their weapons fused into or replacing their hands entirely, one wielding a long curved blade like a claw, the other bristling with hooked, horn-like blades at the wrist. A severed, helmeted head floats disembodied in the upper right corner of the frame, blood spattered across the metal, a grim trophy or casualty from the fight already underway. The two combatants are rendered with heavy cross-hatching and thick outlines that give them a carved, almost woodcut density, their tusked, snarling faces pressed close together as they grapple, weapon-hands raised and crossed in a frozen instant of maximum tension. The unnatural green background flattens the scene into graphic silhouette, making the sharp diagonal lines of the blades and horns the dominant visual rhythm of the piece, slicing across the frame in every direction. This kind of brutal, monster-on-monster combat, populated by grotesque tribal warriors rather than conventionally heroic figures, is typical of the Fomorian and orc-like threats that populated Pat Mills's Slaine mythology, the misshapen enemies of the Earth Goddess's tribes that Bisley rendered with such relish throughout his run on the strip after joining 2000 AD in 1987.
The man with swords as hands
