Strontium Dog - Bubo and the Bad Boys

Strap in. Today, fur will fly, deserts will burn, and somewhere in the radioactive sprawl of the future, a train is about to leave the tracks. We are deep diving the lore of Bubo and his Bad Boys, mounted on their snarling morks, . This will be frontier legend. This is blood in the sand.

Welcome to Alzir.

Alzir is not a gentle world. It is a frontier planet where settlements cling to survival like rust to scrap metal. Wind scrapes across the dunes with the patience of a butcher sharpening his blade. Out here, law travels slowly. Hunger travels fast.

And nothing on Alzir is hungrier than a howler.

The howlers are not merely beasts. They are predators who learned to stand upright, learned to aim blasters, learned to ride. They are furred, fanged, and frighteningly organized when someone strong enough takes the lead.

That someone was Bubo.

Bubo was not just another outlaw scraping by on theft and terror. He was the leader of the Bad Boys, a criminal gang composed entirely of howlers. A pack in the truest sense. Loyal to strength. Devoted to appetite. United by violence. They did not raid settlements for gold alone. They raided for meat.

Across Alzir’s frontier towns, stories spread in whispers. Entire homesteads stripped bare. Caravans reduced to scattered bones. Survivors spoke of shapes on the horizon, riding low and fast on long-limbed desert beasts. Of laughter that sounded like coughing engines. Of teeth in the dark.

The Bad Boys were not subtle. They were theatrical in their brutality. They wanted the fear. They cultivated it. Reputation is currency on the frontier, and Bubo spent it lavishly. Each raid made them bolder. Each kill made them infamous. The frontier began to understand a simple equation. Where there were mork tracks in the sand, there would be graves.

Eventually, their infamy became too large to ignore. Across the stars, bounties travel faster than rumor. And when the numbers climb high enough, they draw professionals. Enter the Strontium Dogs. Specifically, Strontium Dog, and its most infamous bounty hunter, Johnny Alpha, alongside his towering Viking partner, Wulf Sternhammer.

Johnny Alpha was no ordinary man. Mutated by radioactive fallout, marked by glowing eyes and telepathic sight, he hunted the galaxy’s worst for credits. Wulf Sternhammer was his opposite in temperament but equal in lethality. Massive. Blunt. Armed with a weapon called the Sternhammer that could turn enemies into ruin.

Where others saw monsters, they saw contracts. And Bubo’s name was written in large, expensive letters. The trail across Alzir was not difficult to follow. Burned settlements leave scars visible from orbit. The Bad Boys did not hide their path. They carved it. Johnny and Wulf tracked them across the desert, step by step, dune by dune. The howlers were masters of mork-back riding, experts at cutting through terrain that would stall lesser pursuers. But professionals are patient.

Eventually, the hunt led to steel tracks slicing through the wasteland. A train. The confrontation was inevitable. Gunfire cracked across metal carriages as the Strontium Dogs caught up with the Bad Boys. Blasters flashed. Howlers leapt between cars with feral grace. Morks shrieked as they tried to find footing on narrow platforms. Most of the Bad Boys were slain in that firefight. One by one, the pack was thinned. But Bubo was not most. In the chaos, with the wind screaming and steel groaning, Bubo made a choice worthy of legend. He derailed the train. Metal twisted. Sparks bloomed. The locomotive tore from its tracks and plunged from a cliffside, carrying Johnny Alpha inside. For a moment, the desert held its breath.

Bubo had not merely fought back. He had attempted to erase the hunter entirely. With Johnny believed dead or dying, Bubo and two remaining Bad Boys vanished into hiding. A wounded pack, but still dangerous. Wulf Sternhammer, however, does not abandon a hunt. He dragged Johnny from the wreckage and took him to the nearby town of Jobsville. Hospitals on frontier planets are rarely pristine. They are places of grit and necessity. Johnny survived. Mutants are resilient. But recovery takes time. Wulf did not wait. He went alone.

There is something almost mythic about that image. A lone bounty hunter walking back into the desert to finish what was started. No backup. No hesitation. Just purpose. Wulf tracked the remaining howlers with brutal efficiency. He found them. He killed two. The Bad Boys, once a roaring pack, were now reduced to their alpha. Bubo.

Bubo attempted one final play. Howlers are ambush predators by nature. They know patience. They know silence. Bubo tried to circle behind Wulf, to end the hunt with a single savage strike. But Johnny Alpha’s mutation was not only for show. Even from recovery, his telepathic ability reached out. He sensed the threat. He warned his partner. Wulf turned. And he shot Bubo. The leader of the Bad Boys fell, and with him the terror that had gripped Alzir’s frontier.

The pack was broken. The legend ended not with a roar, but with a gunshot. Wulf Sternhammer is not sentimental. After the hunt, he did what many frontier warriors might consider practical. He turned Bubo into a pelt. Bubo, once a terror on mork-back, became a trophy worn alongside Wulf’s existing fur, including that of a Gronk. There is a certain grim poetry in that. The predator reduced to garment. The hunter wearing the hunted. On the frontier, survival is often the only morality.

Bubo is not a hero. He is not misunderstood. He is appetite made law. He is the embodiment of frontier brutality, a reminder that in the radioactive future of Strontium Dog, civilization is a thin veneer stretched over something far older and far hungrier. Bubo and his Bad Boys are not subtle villains. They are loud, savage, and unforgettable.