Thrud the Barbarian #1
Written, illustrated, and published by Carl Critchlow.
reviewed by Robert Clark

Way back in the day, when White Dwarf was more than just a vehicle for selling miniatures, there featured a barbarian hero, tall of stature, muscled like a gorilla and endowed with the intellect of a goldfish. Thrud was his name, and from humble beginnings his cartoon strip quickly became one of the best loved pieces in the magazine - in fact it was voted 'most popular feature' for three consecutive years! Fair praise considering its basic premise as a bloody Conan parody.
Unfortunately, White Dwarf changed irrevocably circa issue 100, and it wasn't too long before all non-GW features - Thrud included - were dropped. Some twelve years later, the last thing most Thruddites expected was an all-new comic featuring the man himself, but that is exactly what we have.

What should first be commended is the fact that Carl Critchlow has managed to do all the work himself. The comic design is of a professional standard and certainly wouldn't look out of place racked up with the Marvel and DC stuff in your local comic shop. What is lacking are ads, and I doubt there will be many complaints in this regard. The paper quality is good, and the glossy cover is fine except it suffers from gathering fingerprints too easily. Nothing that doesn't hold true for most glossy covers though.

The cover art itself is excellent, a painting of Thrud standing on a pile of bodies, axe in hand. The art is in the style of Frazetta or Vallejo, essentially setting its stall out from the beginning. The internal art is considerably different from the old inked Thrud from WD. Instead we have full-colour line art, drawn in a sparse but attractive style. The colouring suggests use of Paintshop or a similar package, which is pretty much standard in the comic industry these days. Despite the lack of true colour blending, the colouring is used to good effect to convey lighting. The difference in colour saturation between the scenes is also quite clever and acts as an instant prompt for the eye. Choice of colours is never garish and actually acts to make the absurdity of the story more believable.
Whether long-time fans of Thrud will be happy with the change in art direction is mostly down to personal preference. My own opinion was quite positive, as the characterisation didn't strike me as incorrect and the new style seemed fitting to the story.

One of the main concerns with a full-length Thrud adventure is whether or not it would translate properly from the original one-page strips. The answer is a definite yes. If anything, the original strips were heavily limited by their brevity, not allowing a lengthier story to be developed without breaking up the strip over several months. Even then, a story had to be relatively self-contained within an individual page. A 24-page comic gives the writer plenty of space to play with.
There is always the opposite viewpoint though, that the Thrud strip was almost as one-dimensional as the lead character and a full-length comic would rapidly become boring. Thankfully this is not the case. While Thrud retains his belligerent yet terminally dense persona - usually terminal to those around him - it is the development of the enveloping story that keeps things interesting. Without giving too much away, a typically sub-fantasy world acts as the setting for a typically cheeky sub-fantasy pastiche. Use of informal language and parodied clichés are par for the course, as is the occasional in-joke; at one point Thrud utters, "By the sacred jockstrap of Robert E Howard you'll pay for this hellspawn!!" The casual observer might wonder whether this kind of needle is still necessary yet it seems that the fantasy genre is as stilted and hackneyed as ever, making Thrud's liberally aimed raspberry as deserved as it was in 1983.
Pretentious as the above may sound, Thrud was always more than an excuse for some ultra-violence, though this has been the mainstay of the strip and I am happy to report that Thrud circa 2002 is no different in this respect. It is the sheer scale of the carnage that makes Thrud funny without being purely adolescent; nobody could take it seriously without being a little suspect in the first place. Another serious point being made in a humorous comic strip? That's perhaps a pseudy comment too far…

My only real gripe with this issue is that it is a comic and therefore seems rather scant on material. However, this is more an observation on comics in general and probably just the reviewer missing the point entirely. In comparison to 'professional' comics, Thrud is more than generous enough with plot. Admittedly, the comic isn't going to be challenging Watchmen in the importance stakes, but it manages to meet its aims - humorous fantasy pastiche with a particularly British flavour - admirably.
Carl Critchlow should be congratulated for taking what could have all too easily been a nostalgic cash-in and making it a worthy read, whether you are a fan of the original strip or not. The current state of the British comic industry makes it all the more unlikely, and also makes it so much more important that we show our support when it is deserved. Whether or not Thrud will have enough legs to be an ongoing concern remains to be seen, as does whether it receives enough interest for a second issue to emerge. Let's hope so.

For more information about Thrud visit http://www.thrudthebarbarian.com/