Prog 2 - INVASION

To be completely honest...one of the main reasons I wanted to do this blog was to show off some fantastic artwork. And this splash page is fantastic artwork!

An interesting note about Invasion is that the fictional Volgans were in fact supposed to be Soviet Union troops but the higher ups got cold feet and wanted fictional baddies instead. A bit of a shame really but worked out quite well in the long run for the 2000ad Universe. Pat Mills would later revisit the Volgans with the ABC Warriors and a more modern take on Savage.

The story opens with scenes of more Volgan brutality. The Volgans are killing the survivors of their nuclear attack on a major city (the strip says a midland city!) and hanging politicians from the nearest lamposts...which is not necessarily and bad thing. :-)

A group of Volgans are celebrating in a pub, rubbing the locals faces in it, when up pops Savage.

Savage proceeds to blast them to pieces and in totally bizarre fashion...he runs out of ammo and leaves the room to reload! The volgans come to their senses and try and rush Savage. Which Savage kills them all...leaves the bar...blows up their tank outside and walks off into the sunset while a stranger watches for the shadows and says...

The dialogue by todays standards is pretty funny. I couldn't help but think that the 'Stranger' is a Friend of Dorothy.

But that's not the only piece of dialogue that made me chuckle. Check out the panel below for some Dirty Harry inspired spoken words...but not as cool as the original.

Overall, it's pretty standard fare. The artwork is pretty damn good except for one panel. The panel I've posted below...It looks like Savage is shooting clones and the soldier in the middle is either doing a bizarre dance or has a huge headache!
One more thing of note. The tank crew that Bill offs in this episode are the
soldiers responsible for murdering Bills wife and kids. How Bill knows this...we
aren't told.