Mindless Ones

Esther McManus – Windows (See You at the Potluck, 2018)

This one comes from what my partner calls the “They Saw You Coming” side of the comic/zine world.  Every time I visit a comics festival or zine fair I come back home with at least 2-3 books full of pictures of buildings, or parts of buildings, or spaces where buildings used to be.  I rarely regret it.

Esther McManus’ Windows is an excellent example of the form, a series of portals that have been removed from any supporting context in a way that serves as startling prompt to the imagination:

The work demanded by this zine doesn’t just come in the form of having to reconstruct the urban environment – that’s the most immediately striking element, of course, a natural by-product of the composition of the piece, but it’s the start of a process rather than its final conclusion.

In its gradual blurring of the distinction between windows and the shapes that frame them, its removal of the human from the urban environment, and its finding of new ways to recombine familiar shapes, Windows is ultimately more Ballardian in its effects than it may initially appear.

Moving beyond brutalist cliches, this is a work that re-imagines the city as something that is no longer for us – a space that exists on the other side of the portal, where there is nothing to be reflected except windows looking on windows looking on windows all the way down.

It is March 2020.  I suspect that this scene is more familiar to many of us now than it would have been at any previous point in my lifetime.

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ALL HAS BEEN FORGOTTEN AND THE PLASTIC TURNS TO ROTTEN
RAYS AND SMELLS

Look, long story short, I had this dog that fed on anger. I got into an argument with a mate and it was too much for the dog and it exploded a red mist which covered the city, making everyone furious. The more angry everyone got, the more the red mist grew. Eventually the world burned, everything collapsed, billions died and now I’ve got a cat that eats guilt. So that’s why I didn’t write a blurb.

<ITEM> Welcome to our special foil-embossed anniversary issue! To celebrate we have more interruptions that any SILENCE! ever!

<ITEM> There’s some prime preambling here with talk of Marvel Comics The Untold Story and Steve Gerber. There’s some great Ash Wednesday chat and we say absolutely nothing new about Dan Didio. Oh, and we go on about whether there’s any point in comics continuity.

<ITEM> We enter The Reviewniverse where The End Of The Century Club, Sandman, Elektra Lives Again, Silver Surfer: Black, Deadline and Protector are all covered alongside the usual digressions.

<ITEM> Some of the most spectacular backmin chat you’ve ever heard!

@frasergeesin
@thebeastmustdie

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AND THEY’RE WONDERING WHY WE CAN’T CONNECT WITH THE RITUAL OF THE TRASHED GUITAR

You can earn money from home! Blurb writers urgently required to fill space at top of podcast post. Competitive rates. No real talent or wit required! Hurry hurry hurry!

<ITEM> S…S…S…SILENCE! (turn and face the strange). Gary Lactus & The Beast Must Die bringing you another hot shot pod rocket from out of their undercrackers and into your earholes.

<ITEM> Look, there’s probably some rambling nonsense and sponsorship and admin at the start. I can’t remember though. You have a listen and tell me about it in the comments.

<ITEM> The Beast Unboxes his latest treat-bundle for your listening pleasure

<ITEM> Into the glacial embrace of the Reviewniverse with the gasbags gasbagging about House of the Black Spot, Jamie Delano’s Animal Man, Baby by Philippa Rice, Lone Wolf & Cub, The Man Who F#@cked up Time, Chosen: the New Messiah, Eightball #23 (Death Ray) and probably more, maybe less??

<ITEM> I have a hangover. Go away.

@frasergeesin
@thebeastmustdie

[email protected]

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