Sláine is a barbarian fantasy adventure series based on Celtic myths and stories that first appeared in 1983, written by Pat Mills and initially drawn by his then wife, Angela Kincaid.
He explores the Land of the Young (Irish: Tír na nÓg) with an unscrupulous dwarf called Ukko, fighting monsters and mercenaries.
The tribal council forces Sláine to let Moloch go, hoping he would fulfill his promise of keeping the Fomorians out of Ireland; instead, he returns to rape and murder Niamh.
In his absence, his son Kai leaves the tribe to search for his father (eventually becoming a performer in an Albion carnival) and Ireland faces a second invasion – "the dread of Europe", Atlanteans whose ancestors had lived in Ireland before the tribes of Danu, and who had been forcibly turned into hosts – Golamhs – for the symbiotic Sea Demons under Lord Odacon (an offshoot of the Fomorians).
Sláine suggests having the Tribe of Danu escape to the Otherworld that their Sky Chariots had been sent to in order to free them from the demons, and allow the Atlanteans to settle peacefully in Ireland.
The Tribe is cast into the Otherworld in the aftermath, and Sláine assists Gael in finally destroying Odacon and the parasitic spawn with which he had infested the outer-lying villages.
Sláine's most obvious sources are Robert E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian and Cú Chulainn, the hero of the Ulster Cycle of Irish mythology.
His barbed spear, the gae bolga, is also borrowed from Cú Chulainn, though his favourite weapon, the axe, is more usually associated with the Vikings or Anglo-Saxons than the Celts.
[2] Sláine's seduction of Niamh, the king's chosen bride who was brought up in seclusion until she was of age, is reminiscent of the Irish story of Deirdre.
Sláine's feat of crossing a raging river to visit her, weighed down by a heavy stone to prevent him from being swept away, is taken from an episode of the Táin.
Grimnismal, the name of the dark god Sláine and his companions defeat in "Tomb of Terror", is the title of a poem about Odin from the Norse Elder Edda.