Synopsis: The vicious Warlord Skulka is conquering yet another world, but is becoming bored of his ongoing conquests. His latest attack is interrupted by Shakara who infiltrates Skulka's fleet and transports it to a black hole. As the fleet is destroyed, Skulka decides to take on Shakara himself, finally finding the fight interesting again. However, this is short-lived as Shakara defeats him and escapes, leaving Skulka to be torn apart by the black hole...
Stan Bastion: What has Tharg been giving the Flint droid? He must be churning out the pages for this to follow so quickly after Zombo. And if they stay as gorgeous as these, I don’t think anyone will be complaining. His design is absolutely spot on – every crazy alien that appears in this series is complete and distinct from every other crazy alien species. I also look forward to the formalist experiments he tries on this character.
Morrison’s scripts for Shakara have always been spot-on, even when the dialogue just consisted of the lead character’s name! This is no different, Shak takes down a warlord in ten pages, and again – the mark of a good double episode is when you don’t notice that it’s double length until you get to the end of the prog and think you’ve missed a story.
Floyd Kermode: Shouldn't work. Does work, brilliantly. That's all there is to Shakara Destroyer (I like the way he's subtitled Destroyer as though he hasn't spent practically all of his fictional existence so far destroying things. It's like doing a tv special on Clive James: the narcissistic years).
I should have just written out the Shakara plot as an experiment in my psychic powers: hideous and/or very evil baddie discourses on their nastiness just prior to being extra-nasty on some completely innocent quirky aliens, but is interrupted by Shakara who beats the stripes out of him/it whilst occasionally saying 'Shakara!'. I can't set up this amusingish scenario because I completely forgot I was supposed to be reviewing the comic when it arrived and just devoured the story. Even if my prog had arrived with a warning 'you will be reviewing this! Try the Shakara prediction trick!' sticker on the front, I don't think I could have done it because Shakara is so bloody good. Space action has never been so much fun.
Fun grotesquerie has been something Henry Flint has really let lose on in Shakara and Destroyer is no exception . I love the grotesque baddy who seems to have three evil faces opening up on each other, not to mention a giant snarling mouth on his crotch and 'spineless frucker' will henceforth be my epithet of choice (although I will say it in the privacy of my car at other drivers, cause I don't have a big axe. Thank goodness there's an ad for the completely lacklustre Ampney Crucis Investigates right at the end of Shakara to calm me down after all this fun.
