Bad Company II: The Krool Heart, Ep 10, p1, 2000AD #585

He is Danny Franks. He is the Krool Heart. It all ends and begins here with the greatest apotheosis in comics, as Danny completes the journey he’s been on ever since the start of Bad Company: literally, metaphorically, and teratologically! First he was a raw recruit, an innocent very far abroad, facing the horror of war. Next he was a Bad Company-man, a kind of mirror image to dead Malcolm, a soldier all too aware of his slide into darkness. After Ararat, he replaced Kano as leader of Bad Company, became Kano, in a sense, something he had long dreaded and yet anticipated. And now, finally, he becomes the enemy, the Krool Heart at the core of creation, omnipathic lord and ruler of the Danny Franks Empire. Witnessing Danny’s ascent to godhood are the true Protoid (the starship-beast in whose belly Bad Company have long been travelling, and whose belly Danny now exchanges for that of the Krool Heart) and, of course, the ever-dauntless Mac, perpetual straight-man adrift on seas of madness.

Or to put it another way: what a page! The Ewins / McCarthy team at possibly the peak of their powers, channelling Pete Milligan at the peak of his. Many thanks to Dave Meaden for selling me this and several other Bad Co. pages.