By Pat Mills, Tony Skinner and Kevin Walker 

What to expect: a thorough treatise on exactly what Khaos is, and why it is a good thing. Oh, and some beautifully drawn robots shooting guns and killing people a lot.

Review by Alex Frith 

'Seven robots to tame a planet' - that was the tagline for the first outing of perennial favourites the ABC Warriors. Then they got mixed up with Nemesis the Warlock, leading to the 'Black Hole' storyline, which deviated from the original principle somewhat - although that turned out rather well. Now for this third outing, Mills went back to basics - with a twist. This time, the Mek-nificent Seven are here to untame a planet.

The basic plot of 'Khronicles of Khaos' sees our seven heroes: Deadlock, Hammerstein, Joe Pineapples, Blackblood, Mongrol, Mek-Quake and Ro-Jaws land on planet Hekate, with a mission to kill seven key targets by the time the three moons align. And along the way they recruit a new warrior - Morrigun - on the grounds that Ro-Jaws doesn't quite cut it as a fighter. All of which provided plenty of fun and mayhem for me when I read it first time around as a youngster. Each villainous corporate human is appropriately nasty, and is despatched in a fittingly gory manner, over two or three episodes each.

What I found out on this reading, however, is that Mills is also keen to impart a basic lesson in the joys of Khaos. It's not exactly a hidden agenda, but it's even more obvious than usual because Mills spells it out for us in a rather neat little introduction. It seems that Mills's co-writer Tony Skinner is in fact some kind of chaos guru. Mills was apparently so keen to get across the idea of chaos in this story that not content with the usual epic research job, he drafted in an actual expert to co-script. I'd say it works well here, and indeed the pair had a fruitful partnership for several years in the early 90s.

Anyway, back to the robots with guns! Deadlock takes charge this time around, with a mission not just to untame the planet Hekate and generally stick it to the evil human overlords, but also to sow the seeds of khaos within the ABC Warriors themselves. This last part is achieved by exposing the warriors to a huge variety of weirdness that exists on Hekate. Frankly, part of me found the second half of this mission annoying and not a little preachy - that is, until I decided to just accept that this was part of the story, and not necessarily a way for Mills to tell me how to live my life. Deadlock the mouthpiece is a complete tool. Deadlock the character 'programmed' to follow Khaos and generally be up himself - actually quite entertaining.

Of course, if you don't like Deadlock, this story is definitely not for you. He takes centre stage for most of it, not least in the wordy narrative caption boxes. These play out as letters between Deadlock and his Khaos disciple Steerkrook. I happen to enjoy this conceit - especially the way that the correspondence gradually breaks down into Bizarro-speak, where Deadlock and Steerkrook try desperately to make bad good, good bad, and generally turn things upside down - but I can see that others might find it irritating and smug. But then, this is in many ways seems to be what Khaos is all about - deliberately subverting every last little thing, until you learn not to be obsessed with rules as important, and then feeling rather self-satisfied that you've 'got it', while every other idiot is still busy worrying about the future and what not. Very Fight Club, and of course a decade earlier than that entertaining but ultra-smug work.

So, how do the warriors react to all this? Well, Hammerstein, of course, struggles to cope with the breakdown of order. His eventual embracing of Khaos I was actually rather impressed with. I'll try not to spoil it for the reader - suffice it to say that he certainly doesn't become a clone of Deadlock. In turn throughout the story, each of the Warriors get to have their moment in the spotlight - although I'd say Hammerstein gets the best of it again, with Ro-Jaws getting a few good quips in. Blackblood does some betraying and hissing. Joe Pineapples has a minor re-invention, and is the recipient of  one of my favourite 2000 Ad put-downs "The problem with Joe was that he wanted to be cool. Now a human acting like a machine is cool. But a machine acting like a human acting like a machine is ridiculous."

Mek-Quake provides some fun by trying to be Khaotic but being too stupid. Mongrol doesn't really do much plot or dialogue-wise - but he, along with all the warriors, is lavishly painted by Walker, who goes to great lengths to show the Seven in a variety of poses and mayhem-dealing. The weakest link, frankly, is new robot Morrigun. Unless I missed something, she's pointlessly flawless, and hence not very interesting. This is explained with the rather weak 'she's an honourary female, so she's naturally khaotic' gambit. It's all very well to say that women are better than men, but it's a bit poor if that ends up meaning that she's a less enjoyable character.

The thing with the ABC Warriors is, that once they've been introduced, they're pretty much characters with very set personalities - so there's not always a huge amount of story to tell with them. Hammerstein is better than the rest at this because he's somehow more human (well, that's my take anyway). Luckily for us in this story, Mills and Skinner unleash all manner of curious beasties, customs and villains to confound and challenge the perceptions of our heroes. I suppose I should once again issue a warning. Many of these beasties feature cheap wordplay, and many of the villains are ludicrously over-the-top in their inhumanity. First time around, I rolled my eyes. Second and third time around, I laughed. Take for example the little 'Froyds' who pop up all over the place on Hekate. The name is the clue - these are creatures who live out their dreams every night (while their brains sleep). And yes, their dreams are invariably nasty, violent and sexual (in an off-panel way, of course). If this sort of thing makes you groan, then you might want to think twice before diving in.

But then, perhaps you're more interested in Kevin Walker's art? He's a great choice for the Warriors, mostly because he's prepared to invest a lot of time and paint in providing a lot of great pin-up shots of the seven (eight) heroes. In fact in the back of the book he even provides seven actual pin-ups - originally drawn for a series of 2000 AD trading cards, if memory serves. Now, there's a lot of talk about the mud-brown 90s era of 2000 AD, which to my mind is greatly exaggerated, but in any case it's not in evidence here. The reproduction is top notch, and there's plenty of bright, shiny robotic coloury goodness to admire. That said, I'm not an enormous fan of this era of Walker's art - I'm more of a Balls Brothers / Mandroid style fan myself. He's almost a bit too realistic with the robot bodies, so that while their bodies 'work', they're not quite as weirdly cool as the McCarthy or Bisley versions. But what Walker does do beautifully in this painted style is delivery gory, gory death scenes. And some pretty good vomit if you're into that sort of thing.

To my mind this collection isn't quite as good as 'the Black Hole', but it is certainly essential Warriors reading - and certainly the best story until Henry Flint shows up for the Shadow Warriors.

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