Review: Strontium Dog: The Final Solution

"The Final Solution" follows up directly from "The no go job" where it was revealed that obtaining the relics was but the first stage of an elaborate plan. Now, Key figures of the New Church stage a coup and overthrowing the government, they install themselves as its leaders. By the use of blood sacrifice and dark magic they will try to get rid of the mutant population of Britain.
Meanwhile, Alpha and Mcnulty, having completed their jobs and having received their payment, go back to Smiley's world for a memorial service. Where some shocking events force them to go in pursuit of their erstwhile employer and into direct conflict with the new brittish government.
This is an epic where, when it's all over, both Johnny Alpha and his world won't be the same.

Awesome but fucking bizarre.

The illustrations are done by two different artists, In Part 1 Simon Harrison's still incredibly detailed and macabre art fits very much with the gothic New Church storyline and I found alot here to like.

I thought the grafiti was a particularily nice touch. In Milton Keynes, where before there were mostly just rocks and dirt and someone's easy idea of depicting squalor, here we have an actually lived-in look.
On the other hand, though bad-ass, the faces still look odd; and they get a way more monstrous look at times, sometimes literally (in Feral's case) and don't even get me started on everyone's wavy hair.
As much as I've come to like his incredible art (Yes, even the faces), Harrison wasn't the right artist for Strontium Dog from the start. The facial expressions necessary for introspection and to elicit an emotional response just aren't there. He is amazing at action scenes as his bodies have a constant sense of motion but his faces have only extremes and not much subtlety. It's been a complaint of mine since the beginning of his run and it's what makes me want say that somebody did make a good call to eventually switch artists. But it was way too late though.

Gothic Chique.

And maybe the response from fans wouldn't have been so negative if Harrison had actually completed the art for the whole of "The Final Solution" but at a pretty crucial point in the storyline, Colin Macneil takes over.

A little too radical, but you know, at least Mcnulty looks normal.

In Part 2, after 31 issues of Simon harrison's art, in both the "No go Job" and a huge part of "The Final Solution", with maybe 5 issues left to go and some huge cliffhangers under our belt, the art changes radically yet again. And this time it's definitely too big of a difference to be comfortable. From black and white to colour and from eldritch detail to basic functionality. Don't get me wrong, it's not bad by any standard. But the change is too jarring and we don't really get much chance to actually connect with it. Before you know it, it's all over. Though issue 27 hits pretty hard and elicits a real emotional response.

That one made me wonder how it would have been if Macneil had done the entire two storylines from the beginning. But alas. that's not what happened.

There's a few more stand alones and I quite liked "Incident at the birth of the universe", though the psychedelic visuals made it at times hard to make out what was actually happening.
Another is "The town that died of Shame"  which was a nice quick western-style story with a typical Johnny Alpha showdown. Pretty standard Strontium Dog with some nice moments of melancholy.

But the most notable is of course the "Top Dogs" three parter. wherein Johnny and Wulf arrive in mega city one hunting a bounty and have to elude and eventually face off against Judge Dredd himself. At the time when it came out it was a throw away story and Grant or wagner (I don't really remember who) has always said the Judge Dredd and the Strontium Dog universes don't really overlap. But other writers have run with it since, most notably Garth Ennis in "Judgment Day", and I've also seen some really recent information that suggests that these universes will start to overlap more and more.

Der Dredd against der Johnny.

In the end, when it's all done I find I actually enjoyed the collection, with a few reservations.

I have a few more things to say here. I've been tiptoeing around it in both the review of Agency files 4 and here and I'm pretty sure that now,  more than 20 years after the facts I shouldn't even be concerned about spoiling things but hey, I wanted to see if I could do it. So the rest of this review will contain major spoilers for both the Final Solution and folluw up series, Strontium Dogs.

Warning SPOILERS, bias and reduced professionality after the jump;



If the ominous title didn't give it away, the cover art probably should have; I mean have you even looked at it? Main character Johnny Alpha doesn't have his eyes and there's blood coming from his sockets, and you know, when the main thing that makes your hero stand out is his x-ray-vision eyes, it seems safe to assume he might be going all the way.

Johnny Alpha dies in this story.

A little painful too look at.

John Wagner has stated that killing off Johnny Alpha in the Final Solution turned out to be one of the biggest regrets of his career. He has since done his best to retcon Johnny Alpha's death as much as possible and you know what? Personally, that sort of thing just gives it all a bad after-taste.

So anyway, "The No-Go Job" is the beginning of the end. And it's immediately apparent, the art is darker and eldritch, the story is grim and the deaths feel personal and mean-spirited.
"The final Solution" Carries all those elements through, but what is problematic is that the art style switches near the end and that in itself is inexcusably jarring. Yes issue 27 gives it al an emotional resonance, purely through nuanced facial expressions that Simon Harrison simply couldn't have hoped to pull off. in that way the change in artist is completely justified.

Emotions.

But what is up with that art then, why was Simon Harrison even illustrating this?
What happened is that, apparently the long time Strontium Dog writer Alan Grant had had an idea for the story that ended with Alpha's death.
Long time collaborating Illustrator Carlos Ezquerra didn't like that and refused to draw the story.

In comes Simon Harrison who will draw the ire for thousands of fanboys present and future. Why Simon Harrison? I can't seem to find straight answers. But most people seem to say that the comic was given a more deliberately dark, edgy and adult look.
Some people love his art and some don't. But most will agree that he wasn't the right person for Strontium Dog.

I personally love the art, but yes, even I have to say that it doesn't quite work for Strontium Dog.
And specifically the Final Solution storyline, where alot hinges on the emotional attachment from the audience. Harrison's art is great to look at but it's hard at summoning up much outside admiration for the art itself and conversely, frustration because of how everything is so hard to make out.

Something that is pretty representative of this is the character of Feral, who was, and this is immediately apparent in the story, brought in as a new future protagonist.
Harrison's art style is what makes that character so energetic and crazy and when Macneil takes over for part 2, he can't possibly match the bizarre energy of Harrision and he ends up just making him look like a violently pink Elric or some such sad-looking bollocks.
Even Garth ennis who took over writing chores for the supposed-to-be-successor comic Strontium Dogs said he thought Feral as lead wasn't as interesting as Johnny and that he didn't like writing him.
Feral might have been a case of style over substance.

Violently pink Elric. Nuff said.

I haven't read anything of Strontium Dogs and, as I'm really quite miffed with the whole retconning crap, I'm not really going to. I looked up a bit of information and the feeling of being miffed increased a little.
Especially since, as of 2010's The Life and Death of Johnny Alpha, both the ending to The Final Solution and the sequel series Strontium Dogs got definitively and kind of maliciously reworked. The main character Feral, who was originally introduced here in the Final Solution gets such a horrible and dishonorable, shitty little death that it really rubbed alot of people the wrong way.

Oddly though, the retcon doesn't seem to do away with Harrison's part of the storyline but rather only impacts the last issue of Macneil's.

After all that. I have to reiterate that I did actually quite like the story on its own.
Might not seem that way but it definitely feels better now I have got that rant out of my system.

A last little thought:
Like Tales of the Dead man should have been put in Complete Case Files 14, I really feel "The No-Go Job" belongs with "The Final Solution" trade paperback.
I hope that when Rebellion eventually gives Johnny and his mates the hardcover treatment they'll put it where it should've been all along.
Glancing at the wikipedia page gives me the impression that splicing together a complete chronological Strontium Dog collection would be an editing nightmare though.