The future FUCK YEAH files #1: McCarthyism
November 3rd, 2009
We here at the Mindless Tower may not agree on everything, but one thing we’re very sure about. Brendan McCarthy is a sexy man-God, and this is going to be the most shit-hot book of next year. Bring it the fuck on.
Unearthed by Archaeologist of Tomorrow, the Bad Librarian.
Bunyan would have blushed
August 11th, 2009
or Crisis? What Crisis? (part one)
This one:
Think of him as 2000AD’s awkward cousin. He and Tharg used to get on great for a bit, but while The Mighty One went into his teens still drunk on the heady surge of Thrill Power, Crisis was always a bit serious. Self consciously so, you could say. You know the routine: went veggie. CND badge. Amnesty membership. Morrissey lyrics sung at high volume to that face in the bedroom mirror. Didn’t make friends that easily, and sometimes seemed to try hard not to be noticed at all, but on rare occasions he’d come out with something that would really be worth paying attention to.
Toymageddon
January 23rd, 2009
Interblog circle jerk: the Andrew Hickey interview
October 1st, 2008
Hello, Mindless reader - today we begin what will hopefully be a series of interviews with our peers in what some like to call ‘the comics blogosphere’. We begin with the excellent one-time Countdown blogger (said focus didn’t last long, fear not) Andrew Hickey, who now posts his everything at the plenarily, and accurately, entitled Thoughts on music, science, politics and comics. Mostly comics. You should read it, he write good. Onward, then!
Always and forever: A quick, gushing rant over an ASS. And there’s nothing wrong with that
September 26th, 2008
SUPERMAN SAYS “NO!” TO DRUGS
It was 2005 when I decided to paint my walls ASS pink and give up dope.
I was a smug bastard about it too.
I think the catalyst for it had something to do with a very nasty bout of cannabis fuelled morbid self-analysis, which saw me pacing my then matchbox of a bedroom, backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards, for at least half an hour, in an attempt to disperse the soul-shredding anxiety and paranoia, through, if anyone should have really been spying on me via evil satellite link, embarrassing levels of exercise. Thankfully the munchies eventually kicked in, the clouds lifted and I decided enough was enough. It would be the last time I raided the fridge for Ryvita and sweetcorn relish (anything tastes good when your in the throws of, as my Mum’s friend put it, ‘the delicious eating’) at four in the morning, and it would be the last time I performed like a crazy monkey-man for the entertainment of the evil bastard demons plaguing my befuddled noggin.
After that everything shifted.
To hunt a cape killer
September 22nd, 2008
I got my black shirt on.
I got my Black Gloves on.
I got my ski mask on.
This shit’s been too long.
…
Cape killer, better you than me.
Cape killer, fuck superhero brutality!
Cape killer, I know your whole league’s grievin’
(Fuck ‘em.)
Cape killer, but tonight we get even.
- Cape Killer, by Ice-2 (the Ice-T of Earth-2)
A thought caught me, late last night, and it won’t let go. So let’s kick it around a bit, and see what we get out.
Unreal Estate - Superman Beyond, the Book of Sand and the Harlequin
September 1st, 2008
Woah, new comics, new (importantly, much as I was surprised/appalled to find myself thoroughly enjoying Legion of Three Worlds last week. Oh, Geoff Johns, I’ve hated you for so very long and now… I don’t even know any more) Grant Morrison Final Crisis tie-in. It is the excite. I have no money.
(Which cover did you buy, Dimensioneers? Story cover is best, I find. Iconic pose cover is dull.)
A hall of mirrors II: the Prismatic Age
August 3rd, 2008
“How long would you say Heroic Ages last, Wally?”
- Jay Garrick, the Flash (I)
“Twenty years, according to Jones and Jacobs. The Golden Age lasted until 1955, the Silver Age until 1975, but the Dark Age just ended in ‘95. That’s why it’s still too early to say what this new age is going to be called yet.“
- Wally West, the Flash (III)
Flash #134, cover-date Feb 98, script by Mark Millar & Grant Morrison
It always comes back to the Flash, in the end: from a purely DC pantheon angle, it’s easy to see how the missing middle mantle above, Barry Allen, and his death (“outracing the tachyon at the heart of the Anti-Monitor’s anti-matter cannon…[he] became one with the other side of light.” - so impossibly romantic, that) resonate with the term “Dark Age”, certainly as used pejoratively.
It seems like an awfully long time since we found ourselves under the Ultimate Man’s protection. Think back. Waaaay back to the mid-90’s. The comics industry was beginning to drag itself out of a self-inflicted slump of pointless speculation and multiple foil variant covers. Chains and guns were beginning to lose their appeal and the world was rotating towards a newer, shinier vision of superheroes. Pop, rather than Metal was going to be the order of the day in the lead up to the Millenium it would seem. Superheroes were going to be fun again. No more torturing paedophiles or deacpitating rapists. At the forefront of this movement we have Waid’s hyper-fun Flash and Impulse comics; Busiek’s Astro City with it’s progressive nostalgic vision of meta-comics; Robinson’s Starman that sought to build an engrossing and believable mythos for his pet character, whilst never forgetting that being a superhero is first and foremost fucking skill. Moore was shaking off the dust of self-publishing and gearing up his ABC assault. Miller’s DK2 lurked on the horizon ready to introduce his bezerko psychedelic bigfoot parable on the world. And somewhere lurking at the sidelines was Morrison and Millar’s AZTEK.
Superpowers are real: Goran Parlov
May 1st, 2008
In another post Sean Phillips was described as having a telepathic drawing style. Not telepathic in the Zener card sense or even the psychic ninja-knife sense, but telepathic in the very simple sense that the reader can read the thoughts of the figures he draws. By this is not meant that Phillips has a particularly good grasp of how to draw realistic or communicative anatomy or body-language, but literally that something strange happens to his pictures where they somehow become imbued with a quality as yet unknown to science that transmits the thoughts of imaginary beings into the minds of any non-imaginary viewer. To demonstrate - the reader knows exactly what Miss Misery is thinking here:
Don’t you?
