Written by Peter Milligan
Art by Brett Ewins and Jim McCarthy [and Steve Dillon]
Cover by Jock
DC Solicitation: Danny Franks knew signing up for the war against the Krool would be hard, but he had no idea the real horrors would be on his side! Now he's a reluctant member of Bad Company, an elite force of vicious killers blazing a trail of carnage wherever they go!
On sale Jan 5 [2005] o 7.375" x 10.1875" o 256 pg, B&W, $17.95 US
postponed to Jan. 19
This volume reprints:
Bad Company, 20 episodes, progs 500-519 (Dec. 1986 to Apr. 1987). Story by Peter Milligan, art by Brett Ewins & Jim McCarthy.
Simply, prog 601 (Nov. 1988). Story by Milligan, art by Ewins & Steve Dillon.
The Bewilderness, 10 episodes, progs 548-557 (Nov. 1987 to Jan. 1988). Story by Milligan, art by Ewins & McCarthy.
The Krool Heart, 10 episodes, progs 576-585 (May to July 1988). Story by Milligan, art by Ewins & McCarthy.
Commentary: Bad Company started life as a Wagner / Grant / Ezquerra series proposal which would update the format of the 1970s war comic Darkie's Mob, in which raw recruits from a decimated platoon were rescued and pressed into service by a powerful rogue fighting a guerilla war against the Japanese, and marry the resulting series into the Judge Dredd continuity. While this did not progress beyond its pilot, the format was passed to Peter Milligan, who had been scripting one-off Future Shocks for about two years. Milligan, who also used the film Apocalypse Now as inspiration, succeeded with one of the classic 2000 AD characters in Kano, a cruel Kurtz-like commander waging his own war against alien forces with the assistance of a backstabbing crew of psychos and misfits. The story is told through the eyes of Danny Franks, one of the new recruits, whose humanity is threatened as he continues to work alongside Kano...
While many of the older 2000 AD series were still quite readable, with several excellent episodes, there was nevertheless a feeling of treading water in 1987. Robo-Hunter, Halo Jones and Ace Trucking Company had all finished and no successful new series had been launched since Psi-Judge Anderson got her own spinoff in the spring of 1985. Bad Company felt like the shock of the new at the time, and was the first of several series to be written by Peter Milligan. In the autumn, Grant Morrison and Alan McKenzie would also have popular, new material in the weekly, invigorating the comic as it passed its tenth anniversary. 2000 AD was so strong at the time that Milligan and Morrison were able to parlay their success into work at DC Comics, following Alan Moore's successful jump to the American mainstream with Swamp Thing.
This edition contains all the essential episodes of the series, the forty episodes which follow Danny Franks' tale to its natural conclusion, and an apocryphal episode by Milligan, Ewins and several guest inkers done in a day at a comic convention for charity. Kano returned twice more to 2000 AD, in 1994 and 2002, but neither of those stories contained either the humanity or inhumanity of the original run, and would detract from Danny Franks' terrible story.