Slow Death #11 came out over a dozen years after the previous issue, but the content here displays no less passion about what the human race was doing to fuck up Mother Earth and its inhabitants. Most of the stories in this 1992 comic book are from the mid 1980s, so perhaps Ron Turner was waiting until he'd piled up enough good ones worthy of the title Slow Death. Whatever the reason for the delay, it was worth it, as the final issue of the series goes out with one of its strongest books (much like Skull did some 20 years earlier).

Tom Veitch leads the book off with a bit of a eulogy for Greg Irons, who got hit by a bus in Thailand and died in 1984. Veitch laments the passing of his friend and the lack of recognition of Irons' ouevre of amazing artwork. Later in the book, the last two completed stories by Irons are presented, and they are both rather autobiographical, giving us insights into the direction Irons was heading in his personal life.

Alan Moore contributes "Cold Snap," a crafty story about the dawn of the ice age, and it's nicely illustrated by Bryan Talbot. England's Graham Manley serves up "Panic in Year Zilch," which portrays a brilliant scientist who invents a solution to the energy crisis. Warren Greenwood delivers a chilling tale about the end game of the oil wars in the Midddle East in "Overture To Armageddon." Wallace Wood provides a 1977 comic about a twerpy but ambitious cartoonist with a split personality in "Super Cosmic Comic Creator Comix."

Some of the slightly weaker contributions lower the overall score of the 11th issue, but sometimes I wonder if I haven't undergraded all the issues in the Slow Death series by a full point. It seems like I'm still not giving it the accolades that I feel it deserves. But for now, I'll let the grades stand.

So over 12 years after its previous issue and 20 years after it was born, Slow Death finally suffers its own slow death. As I said in the series overview, Slow Death is too often forgotten for being one of the most important comic book anthologies of the 1970s, and its stories often resonate with perfect relevance to the problems we face in society today.



HISTORICAL FOOTNOTES:
It is currently unknown how many copies of this comic book were printed. It has not been reprinted.

COMIC CREATORS:
Ron Turner - editor
Greg Irons - 1, 2 (art), 3-4 (art), 13-16, 38-44
Mary Key Mitchell - 1 (color), 44 (color)
Tom Veitch - 3-4 (Greg Irons tribute)
Alan Moore - 5-8 (script)
Bryan Talbot - 5-8 (art)
Peter Sinclair - 9-12
Graham Manley - 17-20
Vince Ballard - 21
R. Waldmire - 22-23
John Edgar - 24-26
Warren Greenwood - 27-32
Wallace Wood - 33-37