Review by Frank Plowright
At the time Future War was issued Rogue Trooper’s earliest adventures had been out of print for many years, although this collection was rapidly superseded by Tales of Nu Earth 1, which combines this with following volume Fort Neuro. Everything has since been gathered again in The Complete Collection 1.
When looking back, it seems astounding that Rogue Trooper ever became such a popular character, as the actual early stories produced by Gerry Finley-Day are formulaic and unimaginative. However, where Finley-Day hit the target was with a rock solid concept. Tasked with creating a feature about war in the future for weekly SF anthology 2000AD he came up with the genetic infantryman, a soldier engineered to withstand hostile conditions and chemical hazards that would kill ordinary humans. He was placed in the middle of a war on Nu Earth between the evil Norts, yet also distrusted by the Southers as framed by a traitor general. The masterstroke, though, was the ability for the personality of a genetic infantryman to be stored on a computer chip, so Rogue talks to his comrades Bagman, Gunnar and Helm. They exist as chips fixed to his backpack, helmet and rifle.
Also working strongly for Rogue is the strong artwork. Rogue’s world was designed by Dave Gibbons, who also draws the majority of the material here, maximising the excitement from often very ordinary scripts. Gibbons didn’t greatly enjoy drawing the feature, but that isn’t apparent from the pages, which positively sparkle. Most of the material not illustrated by Gibbons is also notable for featuring the delicate linework and technical precision of Colin Wilson, who’d progress to a long career drawing European albums. Not adapting as well is Mike Dorey, an old school artist who’s technically good, but whose pages lack vitality.
It’s only toward the end of the collection that Finley-Day begins extending the stories beyond one or two chapters. He’s not a writer who ever imagined his stories would be collected, and doing so reveals formula, not least so many ending with Rogue offering a wistful statement on the futility of his experience. There’s little here to stick in the memory, and Finley-Day’s most memorable stories are when Rogue is a secondary character, such as when he’s accompanying two rookie soldiers with very different personalities or the introduction of looters Brand and Brass. That’s also the introduction of Cam Kennedy as a series artist, and Kennedy would go on to define the feature.
As the art is the primary attraction throughout, why not seek out the 1980s Titan Books collections? They’re printed at album size on crisp white paper, and these stories span Book One, Book Two and Book Three. Alternatively, only a couple of stories difference separate this from the 2005 2000AD/DC collection The Future of War.
