Review by Frank Plowright

Unlike all previous books in these editions, Rogue Trooper Book Five is one twenty chapter story titled ‘Fort Neuro’. It’s bonkers, the content not hinted at by Walter Simonson’s impressive, but generic cover.

Until this point Gerry Finley-Day’s taken inspiration from real battles, modifying them to accommodate Rogue Trooper and advanced technology, but when Rogue reaches the long under siege Fort Neuropa he discovers a bizarre society. It’s as if imagined fragments of Earth’s past have been stitched together, and Rogue’s first meeting is with a garrison modelled on Napoleonic times.

This is a departure for Finley-Day, whose attempts at satire have always been obvious, and there’s never been a hint of absurdity to Rogue Trooper before. Here, though, it’s as if he’s attempting to draw from the same well as John Wagner and Alan Grant’s very popular Judge Dredd of the early to mid-1980s complete with eccentric robots.

Brett Ewins puts considerable effort into setting the scene (sample art left), and his art overall improves on earlier work on Rogue, although some of those full figures look familiar. The remainder is drawn by Cam Kennedy, not as individual as he’d later become, but with some polish, noting this material was published before Kennedy’s work in Book Four.

Finley-Day trying something different is welcome, but the oddities of ‘Fort Neuro’ never convince. Unlike Grant and Wagner, he’s not a natural satirist, and when the ‘funny’ elements aren’t coming across as a Carry On… homage they’re awkward and misplaced. Additionally, in the 1980s they were of their time, but the stereotypical jokes about foreigners now transmit as mildly offensive. Underlying these intrusions is a viable plot about Rogue being targetted by an enemy agent, but it’s secondary to the unconvincing madness.

In bulkier collections the content is now found in Fort Neuro, Tales of Nu-Earth 01 and The Complete Collection 1. Instead of picking up the continuity with further work by Finley-Day and Kennedy, Book Six jumps forward to Steve Dillon drawing the series with Finley-Day’s subsequent material found in Rogue Trooper’s Future Wars, then Eye of the Traitor.