Too Cool to Kill (Nikolai Dante (2000 AD))

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During the war, Dante is given command of a regiment raised in his own fiefdom, Rudinshtein. Initially made up of regular soldiers, the regiment is eventually supplemented by troops drawn from penal military units.

As Nikolai points out, while His Royal Highness is pants-on-his-head mad, he has nothing on real maniacs like the Tsar and Dmitri Romanov. Character Development: The entire saga sees Nikolai go from devil may care wandering thief to jaded leader of an eventually successful revolution. Two major events shape his character during this time: The death of his wife, Eloise de Jannisaire, makes him more introspective and mourning and the war between the Romanov and Makarov dynasties turns him into a hardened killer. In February 2017 a one-off new story was published (set during the series early years) in the comic's 40th-anniversary special issue: Several titles were considered for the series: Thieves' World, Darkstar, Evil Empire, Red Darkness and Tsar Wars.Bad Liar: As he's dying, Andreas Romanov asks Elena Kurakin if the people he's tried to save made it. She tells that they did, but Andreas knows she's lying. He tells her that she's a bad liar and that he would have loved her for that. I first came across the artwork of John M Burns – though I didn’t know it at the time – in the 1960s, in assorted British nursery and educational comics. His work is an indelible part of my formative inner landscape along with Frank Bellamy, Don Lawrence and Frank Hampson. It forms one of the pillars of my own creative self; though he doesn’t realise it, John helped make me who I am. It’s a debt I can never fully repay. Enemy Mine: During "The Great Game", the houses of Romanov and Makarov join together when Valentine threatens to destroy Earth with the Dark Star. Dmitri even tells Vladimir that even though The Great Game is at an end, at least they had played with style. Taste me drink my soul — Regeneration 5 + Diehard (Both have source: human blood), Benefit 1 (Unaging as long as she drinks Deathless blood with some regularity). Dating Catwoman: Akita Sagawa is essentially the Big Bad for the Hell And High Water arc. Doesn't stop Nikolai from sleeping with her.

Paper-Thin Disguise: The Lord Protector's identity as Konstantin Romanov is fairly easy to deduce, since the Lord Protector's use of fusion powers and his physical size are dead giveaways. The story doesn't keep up the pretence from the reader for all that long, as he removes his helmet to reveal himself to Jocasta in the same story in which he is introduced. Lampshaded by Dmitri/Arkady when he unmasks himself on the battlefield, who notes that it was hardly difficult to deduce. Femme Fatale: Lulu Romanov seduces people and does horrible things to them either for personal gain or for her own amusement. Following a hard-won victory, Dante was on the point of marrying Jena Makarov and becoming Tsar of all the Russias when a final confrontation with Vladimir (who ultimately shot himself) resulted in him missing his own wedding. Whether Dante and Jena eventually married or if he returned to his life as an adventurer instead is unknown. The 2000 AD 40th Anniversary Special contained a Nikolai Dante story set in the early days of Dante's career, after he acquired the Weapons Crest but before the war between the Makarov and Romanov houses started. Awesome, but Impractical: When Major Liberty was first created by the American government in the 21st century, he was genetically enhanced to become a Super-Soldier. However, the sheer cost of the gene therapy meant that they couldn't actually risk him getting killed in combat, so he was used for propaganda purposes instead.Valentine, as the eldest Romanov sibling, was the first to bear the Romanov Weapons Crest. Unfortunately, his was a Flawed Prototype that gave him the abilities of a Crest user without the Healing Factor. The process drove him insane and caused him to become an Omnicidal Maniac.