Color-Coded for Your Convenience: The House of Makarov has purple as its Imperial colours, while the House of Romanov prefers red. In the 1960s, following his national service, Burns’ comic art and illustrations would appear more and more frequently in a multitude of comics and magazines including Eagle, Wham!, Diana, and TV Century 21 with strips including Wulf the Briton, Kelpie The Boy Wizard, Wrath of the Gods, Roving Reporter, Bids for Freedom, The Fists of Danny Pyke, Dolebuasters, and Dan Dare. Burns’s work on Kelpie The Boy Wizard (left) and Wrath Of The Gods (1964, right)

Brought Down to Normal: In "A Farewell to Arms", Nikolai's crest is destroyed, forcing him to fight as a mundane for the rest of the comic. The eponymous protagonist of the 2000 AD strip Nikolai Dante was born in the 27th century, when a resurgent Russia had once more carved out an empire. Nikolai Dante is the illegitimate offspring (born of rape) of the pirate queen Katarina Dante and the aristocratic Dmitri Romanov, chief rival to Tsar Vladimir the Conqueror of the House of Makarov. Hive Mind: The Kraken becomes this when Akita Sagawa uses his DNA to create an army of clone ninjas. Private Military Contractors: The Warlords are probably the most infamous mercenary outfit in the empire. Entry requires recruits to duel each other, though Eloise wonders if it would be just cheaper to actually train them rather than patch them up. Of course, her second in command has higher ambitions, though his ambitions are trumped by Valentine Romanov.

Another feature was the torture garden.The “trees” in this small forest were mineral in appearance, and presented numerous jagged edges and spikes.

Nikolai Dante: The Courtship of Jena Makarov (January 2006, ISBN 1-904265-44-8), republished as Nikolai Dante: Love and War (October 2014, ISBN 9781781082614): Early on, when Dmitri tells Nikolai the circumstances behind his birth, Nikolai's response is to attempt to kill him. There are two stories titled "Love And War"; One is the epilogue to "The Courtship Of Jena Makarov" that also serves as the prologue to "Tsar Wars" and the other is Book Two of "Tsar Wars" itself. They both end similarly with Jena walking away from Nikolai and a closeup of a jaded Nikolai, though the circumstances are different. In the former, they had sex. In the latter, they duelled. The civil war between House Makarov and House Romanov ends in victory for the Tsar, but the consequences of the war are felt for years afterwards with many regions of the empire falling into chaos and lawlessness, with many areas like Rudinshtein being declared as "Alienation Zones" that are effectively cut off from the outside world. Go-to Alias: Dante tends to use the name Quentin Durward when he needs to go undercover. It never seems to hold for long.

Other Universes Adaptation

Bounty Hunter: Since Nikolai ends up as the most wanted man in the empire on several occasions, there's always someone looking to claim the ridiculous bounty on his head. Most notable of these is Drago "The Decapitator" Krasny, who not only always decapitates his bounties, but is also not above killing other bounty hunters just to claim the bounties they are escorting as well. Big Bad Ensemble: The rivalry between Lord Dmitri Romanov and the Tsar Vladimir "the Conqueror" Makarov was the main driving force behind the series, along with other major antagonists such as Count Pyre, Konstantin Romanov, The Countessa de Wynter, Sir Richard Hawksmoore, Valentine Romanov, The Kraken and the White Army & their agents, while the Arbatov family were usually seen as a joke by Dante. Only three minor characters had deaths which made a lasting impact, emotional or otherwise, on the series; Eloise de Janissaire in "The Great Game", Julianna Makarov in "The Courtship of Jena Makarov", and Major Liberty in "Amerika"