Durham Red

     In 2150 the Great War broke out.  Somehow the Earth survived but the
ecosystem had been heavily contaminated with Strontium 90 and mutation became
common.  Unlike the traditional mutants of comics the radiation didn't confer
superpowers, rather it resulted in millions of babies with physical
deformations and millions more miscarrages and stillbirths.  Only the
strongest mutants survived infancy.  Despised by the "norms" the mutants
became a downtrodden underclass hated and feared for their appearances.
     Barred from most employment and doomed to poverty striken lives in mutant
ghettos all dreamed of escape no matter what the cost.  For some that was a
life of crime but for others there was the opposite route.  Serving the law as
a bounty hunter for the Galactic Crime Commission.  The life of a
Search/Destroy agent meant travel offworld and could be very lucrative but it
was often very short.  To quote the official briefing for new recruits ...
     "Men, if I can call you that, the galaxy is full of criminals hiding
from justice.  Your job is to find them and, if necessary, destroy them!.  A
Search/Destroy Agent's work will be dangerous.  Many of you will die.  Looking
at you, perhaps that is a good thing." - Starlord 1 & 2000AD Prog 86
     Not too inviting which is why so few norms signed up but for the mutants
it could only be an improvment so almost everyone who wore the SD badge was a
mutant.  Which is why the norms twisted the initials and took to calling the
the bounty hunters Strontium Dogs.  A name the mutants adopted as their own
but only accepted if a fellow Strontium Dog used it.
     The greatest of the Strontium Dogs was Johnny Alpha, the lead character
of the "Strontium Dog" series.  Following the death of his partner Wulf
he took to working alone but he sometimes teamed up with other mutants.
Which was how Durham Red made her debut.
     While the majority of SD Agents were male there were some women among
them.  They also called themselves Strontium Dogs but Red preferred to be
known as the Strontium Bitch.  Red was unusual in another way.  Like
Johnny "Creepy Eyes" Alpha she had only one visible sign of mutation, a pair
of fangs.  They were more than decorative, they were functional.  Her mutant
metabolism required regularly ingesting human blood.  This vampirism made most
of the other Strontium Dogs shun her.  With the exception of Johnny Alpha who
avoided her for the sensible reason that she had had tried to doublecrossed
him and stunned him one one occasion so she could feed on one of his bounties.
On the latter occasion Red had pointed it that it was a Dead or Alive warrant
and she wasn't claiming the body so Johnny would get his money anyway but she
didn't apologise for shooting him.  Which wasn't to say there wasn't a mutual
attraction between them despite her sanguinary habits.
     At any rate Red was a bounty hunter for both blood money and blood and
very good at it.  She never let things got personal except once and it got her
into a real hot spot. 



     A fellow mutant Red referred to as her sister (though the flashbacks made
in the same story made it clear she was an only child so their exact
relationship remains unexplained) died from an overdose of the ultra addictive
drug Psyke-o.  Vowing revenge she went after The Gothlord, the source of
Earth's Psyke-o trade.  She underestimated the Gothlord and collapsed after
being exposed to a massive dose of Psyke-o.  Red survived the overdose and
the Gothlord decreed she should pay for her attack on him by helping boost his
trade.  Which lead to her being taken to a large biosphere containing a
desolate island surrounded by killer fish infested waters.  While she was
still unconscious the Gothlord's men took her to the island and made doubly
sure she wouldn't be going anywhere.



    Still tripping wildly Red awoke to see the island's population of madmen
and women as monsters.  Which since she was unarmed lead to a very sensible
urge to be elsewhere.



     Les turned out to be one of those childlike strongmen who have been
showing up in fiction since "Of Mice and Men" and thanks to him and his
marginally sane buddy Doc Red found herself with the allies she'd need to
escape.  But not before she discovered that the island's harsh conditions were
intended to break the wills of everyone confined upon it for a more important
reason than the Gothlord's sadism.  The crucial element of Psyke-o was
distilled from the trace chemicals released in the sweat of the insane which
was why an artificial sun was used to broil them regularly.  To sum up Red
escaped and made the Gothlord pay which lead to some problems with his
relatives a few years later.  But that's as another story.
    As is "The Scarlet Cantos", the next Durham Red serial of interest.  Sick
of the galaxy and the mess she had made of her life Red entered cryogenic
suspension but slept longer than she had intended to awaken over a thousand
years later.  Upon awakening she discovered had become a legend and was
revered as a saint by mutantkind.  Worse, that her revival had shattered the
fragile peace that existed between human (formerly "norm") and mutant and
precipitated a galaxywide war with the mutants lead by an imposter claiming
to be her out to commit genocide.  Red set out to unmask the imposter and
de-mystify herself but her attempt to infiltrate the imposter's headquarters
didn't quite work out as planned.


     Red discovered that the imposter was human and the slaughter of innocents
was intended to make all the mutant forces mass in a single place so that the
human fleet could destroy them.  The millions killed by the mutants to aid the
deception being acceptable losses in the minds of the human commanders.  Red
exposed the imposter, told the assembled mutants what she thought about being
turned into a saint and how sickened she was by the atrocities they had
committed before revealing the human's intentions.  The mutant forces
dispersed and Red and her companions headed off to build a new life for
themselves.  In the sequel "The Vermin Stars" she attempted to free the most
powerful mutant ever born and use its psychic powers to neutralise the battle
fleets of both sides only to discover it had been manipulating her all along
and had been sealed away by humanity because they couldn't kill it only
contain it.  During its centuries of imprisonment while its powers grew it had
planned vengeance and took it by sterilizing humankind so in a century only
the mutants would remain.  Betrayed, fatally wounded and with both the men she
loved killed in the struggle she lay down to die among the ruins and the story
ended.  Another Durham Red series has appeared but it runs in the Judge Dredd
Megazine which I don't get so I don't know if it continues the story or like
the revival of Strontium Dog is set before her death and treats the earlier
stories as distorted accounts written decades after the fact.







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