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by Dave Scrimgeour & Kevin McCluskey 
SynopsisEarth, 8163. Not a good place to life. But a good place…..to die. Perhaps, if you're Slaughterhouse. It all comes down to this. A choice. With entire cities left devastated by the rampage of Slaughterhouse's legion of Evil Dead and two murdered Claws members, Dragon finds himself faced with a decision, pull the trigger and end the mayhem, along with the defenceless Slaughterhouse's life, or let him live and once again play by the rules of 'The Game.' (K) Kev Do you have any thoughts on the series, as a whole, now that we've been through each issue individually? Dave It's been good to revisit this series, going back in time to something that was short lived, but also a cult classic. 'Dragon's Claws,' if anything, is a cleverly written mini-series that has stood the test of time. As we have previously discussed, this is a multi-layered story, full of a variety of different themes. It's much more than just a slam, bang action series. Kev Yeh, the socio-political elements of it are much more prominent than I remember. Even as a 10/11 year old I remember being aware of them, but it's definitely a bigger part of the series than I initially thought it was. That's probably been my biggest take away from doing this retrospective. Dave It's a take on society /politics /corporate business and the power of reality TV which, back then in 1988, was non-existent. Who could have known, that 29 years later, reality TV has pretty much taken over the public consciousness. Kev Indeed. And that we have what is essentially a reality TV star currently serving as "the most powerful man in the world" and "leader of the free world." The environmental concerns within Dragon's Claws are also scarily relevant to our world in 2017 too. Climate change, flood warnings, droughts, extreme weather conditions. It's almost like we're living in 8162. Earth, 2017. Not a nice place to live. Or a good place to die, really. I think Dragon's Claws is some of Furman's best writing, and I say that as someone who has great fondness for his 'Transformers' work. It was his 'Transformers' work that not only got me reading comics, but as a result, got me reading in general.  Twice a day and floss. Dave I think, now, I have learned to appreciate how talented a writer Simon Furman is. That's one thing that I did not look upon as a 12 year old kid. It's a winning combo really, the writing skills of Furman and the drawing skills of Geoff Senior, a man with a real creative imagination. Plus, it’s full of energetic colours and images. Kev Definitely. If you were to ask me, to this very day, who some of my all-time favourite creative teams in comics were, Furman and Senior would be on that list. I've loved them since Transformers UK #86. Steve White deserves a lot of credit too though. As you rightly said, those colours are so vibrant. They just leap off the page. Dave There were certainly so many different sub-plots going on throughout the series that could have really been fleshed out further, had Claws been given a longer run. Kev Oh, without a doubt. I would've loved to have known just how things were going to pan out had the series ran longer. Speaking of which, the 'Just One Page' strip offers us something in the regard of a continuation/conclusion to the series. Written by Simon Furman, but not drawn by Geoff Senior, drawn by Paul Ridgon and coloured by Jason Cardy, not Steve White. Big shoes to fill, but both of them acquit themselves quite nicely, I think. What's your take on it? Dave It would make a great first page to a new series of 'Dragon's Claws.' This would be the first page, then the next page takes us back to the start, where all the events lead to this point. What do you think of it? Kev Ah, that'd be a good narrative device to use here. I like that and I like the page itself. It's odd to see 'Dragon's Claws' drawn by anyone other than Senior though. Even when Bryan Hitch drew them in 'Death's Head' #2, it felt weird. His artwork is synonymous with those characters, so it's always going to be a little jarring seeing them represented by anyone else. It is just one page though, so obviously there's not a great deal of story in it. Here's a question, do you think Dragon pulls the trigger and kills Slaughterhouse?  "Beautiful friend, the end." Dave I really don't know if he would on that one. I think with his sense of morality, it's a real 50/50 chance on that one. Do you think he would? Kev No. I don't think he would. Despite everything, despite the "whole cities aflame", I don't think Dragon could bring himself to pull that trigger. I actually got in touch with Simon Furman about an issue with my 'To The Death' subscription and he was kind enough to indulge me in answering a couple of questions, one of which was whether or not he intended for Dragon to pull the trigger here and he said he hadn't really decided either way. But it got me thinking, what if he did? What if he pulled the trigger and the clip was empty? That'd be a big win for Slaughterhouse, right there. Dave It would be interesting to see the storyline involving Slaughterhouse's legion, if he became a more powerful political figure. Kev That's a great idea, man. What if he'd gone from being a leader of a band of misfit serial killers to a leader of an army of disenfranchised revolutionaries? Dave What about the two dead team members? That's a tricky one as well. I’m thinking Digit and Scavenger, or Digit and Mercy. Or even worse for Dragon, his two closest members, Steel and Mercy. Maybe then he would pull the trigger on Slaughterhouse. Kev I think it's Steel and Mercy, yeh. Purely for what you've said, in that the drama of the story would be greatest if it were those two because of his seemingly closer relationship with them. Do you think that would be enough to send him over the edge and pull the trigger, yeh? Dave Possibly. I think if he lost Steel and Mercy it could trigger him (no pun intended) to pull the trigger Kev Ha, ha! That was the other question I asked Simon Furman and he said he never fully decided which two members of the team it was that had bit the bullet. It's interesting that there's a mob cheering him on to pull the trigger and the guy in front is wearing some sweet Dragon's Claws merch. That's a nice t-shirt. It looks like an officially licensed product. Dave Yeah, the Claw's franchise has begun. Kev Slaughterhouse is right. They have sold out. I wonder what has supposed to have happened to Tanya in the year between the series ending and the Just One Page story?  Get your official Dragon's Claws logo t-shirt at www.dragonsclaws.com Dave Again, its a layered one-page. Furman has opened so many different possible outcomes by giving us snippets of information and allowing our imaginations to fill in the blanks. What a clever writer he is. Kev Yeh. You're right. Maybe we're better off not knowing. Maybe the fun is in the not knowing. Dave Well, either way there’s a number of possible scenarios to draw from this. Kev Yep. It's the very ambiguity of it that's allowing our imagination to run riot and speculate here, even after all this time. Perhaps it truly is better this way. Okay, moving on, I pulled together our final cast list. Dragon- Tom Hardy Steel- Dwayne Johnson Mercy- Jennifer Lawrence Digit- Hugh Dancy Scavenger- Barkhad Abdi Deller-Ben McKenzie Slaughterhouse- Joel Kinnaman Death Nell- Cobi Smulders Hack- John Cena Rend- Timothy Olyphant Slash- Paul Giamatti Tanya- Maggie Siff Tanya’s Dad- Richard Dreyfuss Saul- Michael Rappaport Raymond Golding- Kenny Johnson Legris- Karl Urban Ostleur- Vincent Perez Mr. Hone- Brent Spiner Milos Judden- Sam Rockwell Chandler- Jonah Hill The Jester- Cameron Monaghan Stenson- Christopher Ecclesson Matron- Kathy Bates Kurran- Richard Armitage Strength- Colin “Big Cass” Cassidy Industry- Idris Elba Clarity- Kylie Jenner Death’s Head- Roger Guenveur Smith (voice) Scourge- Nathalie Emmanuel  And you thought Deller's shoulder was in bad shape. Dave Haha. That's an expensive looking cast, right there. Kev It sure is. You mentioned trying to establish some sort of timeframe for where we were in our lives at the time the series was being released, any memories of that time come to you? Dave Summer of 1988, what else were we reading at that time that stood out comic wise? Kev I was huge into Spider-Man at the time. It was right in the middle of the McFarlane era of Spider-Man, who was my favourite superhero back then. Dave Yeah, Todd McFarlane exploded on the scene with his iconic new Spider-Man look around that time. I remember ‘Amazing Spider-Man’ issue 300. That was May 1988 too. Kev I remember my brother buying #299. He was an issue too late to get McFarlane's debut on the title. Had I known, I would've bought two copies for myself, kept one mint, sold it the height of McFarlane's popularity and made a small fortune off it. Dave I really liked ‘The Spectacular Spider-Man’ storyline with Tombstone too. That was also one of my favourites back then. That was around 1988 as well. Kev If I remember correctly, I was buying 'Amazing,' you were buying 'Spectacular' and Mike was buying 'Web.' I recall those long walks to the newsagents to get them and either reading them on the walk home, risking being ran over might I add, or reading them in one of our closies and swapping them over. Good times, sir. Good times. Dave Yeah, I remember it was always a Saturday morning walk to get them. Kev Yep. We walked all the way from Menzieshill to Lochee. And even if just the one of us couldn't get his title, we'd then walk to the Hilltown and even down into the city centre and back if needed be. That's at least a five mile round trip. You just wouldn't let your 10 and 11 year old kids do that these days, man. It's just occurred to me that any young person reading this now would probably think this was like 'Stand By Me' stuff. Ha, ha! Actually, come to think of it, we probably did some of that walking trying to track down certain issues of Dragon's Claws. Most likely for issue three, which I could never get at the time. I think I got most of mine from the R.S. McColl in Menzieshill. I don't think I had started my paper round for them quite yet at this point though. Dave Yeah, I think a lot were bought from there. Kev You any other memories from the period the series was being released? Dave Actually, I'm kind-of struggling to think of any other memories. Have you?  "C'mon! Do it now!" Kev Nothing too specific, to be honest. They're all a bit vague. I suppose it is nearly 3/4 of our lives ago at this point. I remember bits of that summer. Playing football in the "field" at the back of the block of flats I lived in back then. I think I was doing karate at that time as well. I was a lot fitter back then. I also remember having one of those little coin holders that had the string for putting it round your neck. I think my Gran and Grandad might have bought it for me to keep my holiday spending money in one year. I put a 'This belongs to Kevin' sticker on it. I used to keep the change from my pocket money in it and saved it up to buy my copies of 'Dragon's Claws' and 'Death's Head.' I've already confessed in our ‘Prologue’ to this series of reviews about some of the less moral means by which I came by these funds. I kept those ill-gotten gains safe by hiding it in the corner of my wardrobe. Hoarding it like a common criminal. Like a bank robber hiding his score in his mattress. Dave Yeah, we were always being active. There were no mobile phones, or any of that stuff that makes us hibernate indoors for long periods of time now. Can you remember how much, per week, you spent on comics? Kev Per week? Somewhere between 35p for ‘Transformers’ and a pound, give or take a few pence, if ‘Dragon's Claws,’ ‘Death's Head’ or ‘Amazing Spider-Man’ was out that particular week too. I didn't really spend my pocket money on anything else other than comics. Considering you're £3.00- £4.50 per issue today, it was good value back then. Dave Well, yeah. It makes us sound old, eh? 55p compared to £4.50. Kev Definitely. For some historical context, during Dragon's Claws' run, the Piper Alpha disaster occurred, the Lockerbie bombing took place, Salman Rushdie had a fatwa placed on him and Margaret Thatcher began using Scotland as the Guinea pig for the Poll Tax, making herself persona non grata forever in our homeland in the process. Glen Medeiros- ‘Nothing’s Gonna Change My Love For You,’ Yazz and the Plastic Population- ‘The Only Way Is Up,’ Cliff Richard- ‘Mistletoe and Wine' and Kylie Minogue & Jason Donovan- ‘Especially For You’ were all No.1 singles over those ten months. Now THAT'S an inspiring list. ‘Die Hard,' ‘Young Guns,’ ‘They Live,' ‘American Ninja 3- Blood Hunt’ and 'Cyborg' were all released in the cinema. In the U.S. at least. Classics, all. What a time to be alive. I remember when we saw the trailer for 'Cyborg' we thought it looked similar to 'Dargon's Claws' in some ways. Dave I wonder how much of Thatcher, Simon Furman used for writing Matron. The ‘Iron Lady’ of Dragon’s Claws. Kev Ah, that's a really interesting point, actually. Yeh, I wonder. Dave And we only had 4 channels on TV and AM/FM radio. No worldwide web like now. Yet at the risk of sounding old again, we never missed what we didn’t have. Kev Interestingly enough, what was to become the world wide web was established in 1988, apparently. I don't feel like we missed a thing. I loved my childhood, and ‘Dragon’s Claws is certainly one of the more memorable comics of that time in my life, which was probably the best time in my life. It's pretty much all been downhill from there. Ha, ha! (D) & (K)  Choose life. Choose 'The Game.' Choose working for N.U.R.S.E. Choose the Claws. Choose fucking FastFax. Choose farms, choose the 'Pig,' black daggers and 'Excavators.' The end.
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