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Dante - The Great Game
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8th
August 05 |
Nikolai Dante -
The Great Game
By Robbie
Morrison, Simon Fraser, Henry Flint, Charlie Adlard, Chris Weston
Buy
this book from Amazon.co.uk
What to Expect:
The second collection of the adventures of everyone’s favourite Russian
love machine, Nikolai Dante. Too cool to kill, with stories too good to miss.
Review by Martin
Charlton
Okay, first things
first. I love Nikolai Dante. Can’t get enough of it, really. The problem
with this, until the release of the DC trades, was that I wasn’t reading
the prog during the era of his inception, which left me with gaps in my knowledge
to say the least. Having snapped up the first book pretty much as soon as it hit
the shelves, I waited eagerly for the second installment, as I’d already
been warned that the first book served as little more than an appetiser for the
main course that was the ‘Great Game’ story arc.
So here we are
than. Nikolai Dante, book 2: The Great Game. Having had this book for a while
now, I decided to go back and reread it before writing this review. I’m
glad I did, because like all great on going series, it gets better with every
excursion into its world. Perhaps more interestingly, it’s the first time
I’ve read any Dante since Robbie Morrison’s revelation in the Megazine
that the crest is actually female. I suppose it’s like seeing a film of
a book you love, and when you go back to it afterwards you find the voices in
your head sounding like the actors who played the part in the movie. I swear,
the film ruined High Fidelity for me…
Anyway, the book itself:
A number of gripes have been raised with the (then) DC range of 2000AD publications,
primarily the sometimes poor print quality and the lack of extras added to the
books. Well I can allay your fears on the first claim, as the print quality is
uniformly excellent throughout, but once again, no extras. You know, a new intro
from the author, artist, creator, commissioning editor or random celebrity who’s
read the book and enjoyed it would be nice. But no. No intro, no primary sketches
of character designs, no script to a single episode for posterity. Nothing. Nothing
that is, except some of the purest thrill power distilled into a DC book thus
far. I know the series has contained such classics as Verdus, Skizz and the early
Strontium Dog tales, but as a friend of mine who’s into comics but not 2000AD
specifically remarked upon reading Verdus for the first time recently, if it was
described in one word, it would be ‘gentle’. This is not necessarily
a useful word when selling 2000AD books to the Yanks, especially when aiming them,
at least partially, at the same audience who know of 2000AD through the writers
who prop up the Vertigo line. However, ‘Gentle’ is not a word I would
use to describe this book. Hell no.
The book picks
up shortly after Dante’s visit to the Gulag at the end of book one, with
a few light hearted stories in between the discussion of slavery and the sledgehammer
to the gut that is The Great Game. Whilst not as numerous as in a series such
as Sin/Dex, these interlude stories are welcome distractions from the main storyline,
usually linked in somewhere to previous/future events, in this case Dante’s
feud with the family Arbatov steps up a notch, and we’re introduced to Britain
in the time of the Tzar. The decision to put these stories at the beginning of
this volume cannot be underestimated. At the end of the first book they would
have seemed ineffectual, and anti-climax of sorts. Here they serve as a light
hearted prologue of sorts, a short scene before the opening credits to get the
crowd warmed up, like a good American sitcom.
However, after
those brief flings with fun, much like Dante himself we’re pulled into the
real reason we’re here, the main story arc itself. I don’t want to
give too much away here for those who haven’t read it, or haven’t
read it recently, but what we basically get is a heady brew of love, hate, family,
betrayal, insanity, duty, sex, explosions, destiny and general Romanov bastardy.
So that's everything we know and love about Dante and everything that makes the
series so great. The story really spins out over these ten parts, much as Morrison
suggested in the Megazine. It gives the series a more epic feel, and leaves Dante
wounded at the end, something which adds context to his later adventures, as he
never really recovered. So here we are, merely having scratched the surface of
Dante’s world, and he’s already unrecognisable from the young rogue
we met at the start of the first book.
After that we’re
treated to a series of six stories focusing on Dante’s relationships with
his Romanov siblings, some of which feature Dante primarily, and some of which
cast him as a backdrop to other events.
The Octobriana
Seduction is noteworthy for Andy Clarke’s debut on the series, producing
what I consider to be some lovely art, but far more traditional than his recent
Shimura stuff. Good, if unexceptional stuff, as is The Masque of Dante, which
I particularly enjoyed just for the bluff/double bluff/triple bluff of the final
scene. You’ll see what I mean. By contrast, The Movable Feast is absolutely
wonderful, featuring all the insanity we expect from a future world in 2000AD,
and any story in which Dante gets a chance to undergo a sexual Krypton Factor
of sorts is going to be awesome. Throughout these three stories we’ve seen
that while the Romanovs aren’t perfect, they’re not without their
character strengths, and they all seem to find some measure with Dante. However,
Tour of Duty finds Dante spending some time with Konstantin, a character without
any redeeming features, and perhaps the only clear cut human ‘baddie’
in the series to this point.
While the Cadre Infernal
is worth checking out for a cameo of sorts by Luther Arkwright and that notorious
opening splash page, Hunting Party, the final tale in this volume, sets up future
events with a hint of dissention in the Romanov camp. It also features hilarious
cameos from a seemingly heavily disguised Slaine parody, and a less subtle Sinister
Dexter style pairing of hit men, which allows Dante to spar against some of the
more straight laced 2000AD characters he was designed to be the antithesis of.
So that’s
the great game. Part of a series of Nikolai Dante books. Not a book I’d
recommend reading without having read the previous volume, but I challenge anyone
to read it without wanting to read the further adventures of the eponymous hero.
All I ask is that you read it. Some of the best material to come from not just
Robbie Morrison, but from 2000AD in general, and the only problem is the crippling
delay till the third book arrives. Nikolai Dante: The Great Game – You’ve
no excuses not to.
Buy
this book from Amazon.co.uk
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from the 2000AD Review shop
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