Mind Wars

The year is 1978 and a very young Big D is on the coach taking us from the swimming lesson back to school. Some kind soul has left a pile of comics on the back seat, including the very issue on the left.
  I pick it up and read through it avidly, particularly enjoying the "Mind Wars" strip.
 But then I hit the last two pages... No that's not right. The last two pages hit me.
 I put the comic down and sit there for a while thinking "Did she really just do that?"


 "Starlord" was a short-lived weekly boys comic, clearly intended as a companion/fallback option to 2000AD. At one point it was actually outselling it's in-house rival and the abrupt cancellation after 22 issues still causes arguments to this day.
 These days Starlord is remembered  for being the place where 2000AD's wildly popular   "Strontium Dog" strip got its start.

Me, on the other hand...I remembered it for a young lady called Ardeni Lakam.
Let me take a moment of your time to tell you about the girl who became a terrible weapon.

  The story opens in 3000AD. Humanity and their allies in the Stellar Federation  are locked in a struggle with the deeply unpleasant Jugla Empire and thus far neither side has been able to deliver the knockout punch. The Jugla can't get past the fleets of the Federal Interstellar Strike Corps, FISC don't even know where the Jugla homeworld is.
  But the Jugla have a plan to win the war. By exposing two young humans to Primary Neural Irradiation they will turn them into mind-controlled puppets with incredible Psionic powers and Earth will be defenceless against them.
  On the farmworld of Vulcrugon teenagers Ardeni and Arlen Lakam suddenly find their lives shattered by a Jugla attack. Their home is destroyed, their parents slain and when the Jugla ship blasts them with a strange shaft of light the young brother and sister find themselves with incredible new powers. With their neighbours now assuming they are Jugla spies the Lakams are forced to flee for their lives.

  The first part of the story is built around the Jugla steering Arlen and Ardeni ever closer towards Earth while the forces of the Stellar Federation  desperately try to stop them.
  Naturally the youngsters are horrified at the things they find themselves doing but it's only at the last minute  that Ardeni manages to break free from the grip of the Jugla and that leads to the moment that astonished me so much the first time around.

   British comics have always been keen on death and mayhem, but until about the late 70s the casualties were nameless Germans or established villains.  Having a teenage girl forced to kill her own brother?  That's grim.

    After saving the Earth and burying her beloved brother, a coldly furious Ardeni sets off to find the Jugla homeworld and  - in her own words - "turn it into the biggest cloud of interstellar dust you ever imagined"

 For one reason or another I never found out how this strip ended so I was absolutely delighted when I found several nice people had put scans online. Clearly I wasn't the only fan.

 The ending itself comes across as more than a little rushed, mainly because Starlord was merged with 2000Ad after #22 and you have to wonder where the storyline would have gone if it had been the other way around. Oh well.

  Personally I feel that "Mind Wars" deserves a wee bit more love. For starters, even when I was a kid one thing guaranteed to get my attention was a female character who could take care of herself and Ardeni Lakam is certainly that. She's also easy to like, odd terrifying moment notwithstanding.   

 Oh, and as far as I know, Ms. Lakam is quite possibly the first girl ever to become a lead character in a British Boys comic.

 The story is fairly mature considering the era: The Jugla are a fairly repellent bunch but FISC are not averse to doing ugly things if it will stop the Lakams getting to Earth.  Dan Dare this is not. 

 The most interesting character remains our teenage heroine but there's a few memorable creations met along the way - faithful sidekick Yosay Tilman and the frankly murderous Jugla Cosmol  springing to mind.

 

 The head Jugla feeds another underperforming underling to his pet Pteradactyl.

Clearly not a nice person.

 There you have it. "Mind Wars" may not be everybody's idea of a classic but I remain a fan.

If you want to check it out for yourself it may be found here: 

Yellowed Pages Blogspot - Mind wars

and here: 

http://www.starlordcomic.com/index.html

 I'll leave you with the other reason this comic stayed with me for 30+ years. 

  Seriously. How badass is that?

  

 EDIT: If you want to know more about writer Brian Hebden the blog Heroes Of 2000AD has a great profile on his work here: http://heroesof2000ad.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/no-55-alan-hebden.html