Review by Frank Plowright

Tasked with creating a story about war in the future for 2000AD in 1981, Gerry Finley-Day introduced Rogue Trooper, genetically engineered to withstand elements of warfare fatal to ordinary humans. As a loner by definition, a solo character requires someone to talk with, so Finely-Day came up with the idea of Rogue’s former comrades having their personalities stored on computer chips until they can be supplied with new bodies. They’re fitted to his backpack, gun and helmet. Throw in a simple yet effective design from Dave Gibbons, and here was a future that rapidly rose in popularity until second only to Judge Dredd in the comic’s popularity rankings.

The effort Gibbons applies beyond the designs can be seen on the atmospheric page opening the collection (sample art). Gibbons sets the scene exquisitely with Rogue himself mysterious and as yet unknown seen in the distance, while a group of soldiers in cumbersome space armour are set to rise from a trench as if fighting World War I.

Colin Wilson draws the twelve pages in which Rogue confronts a group of generals with the news that one of them is a traitor, and his pages don’t quite match those supplied by Gibbons. He’s more inclined to fussy detail, and that can obscure the essentials of a panel, but it’s also very good art.

However, there the desirability ends. For all the effort Gibbons puts in, one doesn’t have to read too long to pick up on the methods Finley-Day applies and his lack of feeling for dialogue. The first four episodes provide the backstory of Rogue’s creation and past, but from there it’s formularised. To be fair to Finley-Day, he never anticipated collections, and his brief was to keep young teenage boys entertained with four page battle sequences on land, at sea or in space. Each introduces a threat, deals with it, and has Rogue reflective at the end. A slim thread of continuity is Rogue searching for the general who sold out his own troops to the enemy.

Finley-Day’s best story is just before this collection ends, one that works through being timeless rather than hinging on the location. Two very different soldiers are shipped to Nu-Earth and have to adapt quickly to conditions their training hasn’t prepared them for. One follows orders unthinkingly while the other wants to know why something’s required. Gibbons conveys the threat, emotional turmoil and eventual shock ending impeccably.

In his autobiographical recollections Confabulation Gibbons reveals he never greatly enjoyed the scripts he was given for Rogue Trooper, and ultimately had enough, which is why he’s restricted to eight pages in Book Two.

This content is available in slightly smaller format in the 2005 collection The Future of War, and then the bulkier Tales of Nu-Earth 01 or The Complete Collection 1.