2000 AD: The Ultimate Collection #129. Originally serialised in Tornado #4-22 & 2000 AD Progs 127-161.

It’s April 1979. We’ve had a little bit of Starlord in The Ultimate Collection previously, and now it’s the turn of another of the 70s “hatch, match, and dispatch” publications – Tornado! It only lasted 22 issues before being absorbed back into 2000 AD, but it was enough to give us Black Hawk. Slave turned Roman officer turned space gladiator turned soulless warrior – how do the many iterations of this series come together?

I have to say, this one was a bit of a slog. Lots of this should be right up my street – black and white linework, 70s over-the-top nonsense, lots of dramatic cliffhangers. But unfortunately it starts to feel a bit tired and worn out quite quickly – even before Tharg snaps the series up and shoots it into space. I suspect some of the behind-the-scenes challenges of Tornado end up on the page, as it all feels very hastily put together (liked the doomed comic itself).

The premise has some possibilities for sure – ex-slave rises through the Roman ranks while trying to change the corrupt empire from the inside – but it’s hamstrung by a failure to really do anything with that premise, and with the inevitable challenges of it being written by a jobbing British writer in the late 70s who can’t really engage on any fundamental level with the story of an African slave. That’s not to say that there aren’t some positive parts to the depiction – Black Hawk is always depicted as more competent and dignified than literally everyone else in the strip. But some of the specifics are just never going to hold up in 2024 when Gerry Finley-Day was just trying to write a few pages of action-adventure in the 70s and cash a cheque. Although I will give Finley-Day some credit, despite being a bit clumsy, with a willngness to display the brutality of slavery in a few key early scenes.

Mostly that’s all just surface trappings over a standard action-adventure “let’s get out of this scrape this week” serial, which always has a place. But it falls into the challenge of a number of other similar series of really not being served well by being gathered up into a single collection and read through in one go. Finley-Day just about keeps things moving enough during the Roman section, but when Alan Grant takes over for the space-based science fiction adventure it really starts to drag. It is a very fun pivot, as the sci fi madness of 2000 AD literally kidnaps Black Hawk from Tornado, but despite some out-there work from artist Massimo Bellardinelli it feels like it’s limping from episode to episode.

There are a few odd writing choices from Grant that feel a bit like he’s making up for the somewhat generic plotting with some flourishes. We get a lot of second-person narration to open episodes (“your new world is a violent one, Blackhawk…”), and a rotating run of dramatic catchphrases for the titular character (“Spawn of the crocodile!”).

Alfonzo Azpiri (a new artist for me) covers the Tornado stories, and does a good job with black and white action. Belardinelli gets his usual alien wackiness to deal with, which means we lose Azpiri’s solidly consistent portrayal of Blackhawk himself. But even if the story goes off the rails fairly quickly, Belardinelli always provides something interesting to look at on the page.

Maybe this collection came up for me at the wrong time, but it isn’t one I’ll be returning to in a hurry. As ongoing episodic adventure it doesn’t really have enough going on under the surface to maintain interest, and the switch to 2000 AD and outer space doesn’t add anything to what was already there.

Next time: A pagan apocalypse in Finn: Volume Two!