Rogue’s review: Nick O’Teen
September 28th, 2009
While flicking through the pages of Batman Year One in an effort to research my Batcave essay I paused, as I am want to do, on the pages where Bruce Wayne ventures into Gotham’s red light district. I feel now, as I have long felt, that I know those city streets: The neon gloom, the amphetamine air, the gaze of eyes it’s better not to catch. Coincidentally I’d recently listened to a show on Radio 4, presented by Suggs, on the history of London’s Soho and had been taken back to the early 80s and my visits to my Mother’s office, a television production company that specialised in music videos, that nestled on the edge of London’s red light district. I dreaded the inevitable few minutes spent under the glare of an arcade or sex shop waiting for a taxi or one of my Mum’s friends while the shadows of an adult world fell around me. Even behind the office walls I didn’t feel safe. Sometimes I overheard secretaries whispering about their sex lives thinking they were out of earshot or that the kid wouldn’t understand (I didn’t, but not in the way they thought). Then there were the alien artifacts that littered the rooms and staircases, the posters of rock concerts and the modern artworks that throbbed with a strange potential energy. But worst of all were the giggling men, who once or twice or perhaps more I can’t remember, offered me cocaine and cigarettes.
Rogue’s review: Mindless hordes
July 27th, 2009
“(The) army thronged like locusts or like ants,
and hid dale, plain, and mountain.
As the dust rose from that countless host
the cheeks of our worthies turned pale.
As for me, I raised the mace that kills with a single blow,
and felled that host upon the spot.
I uttered a roar from my saddle, saying, ‘The Earth
has become a millstone upon them.’”
Ferdowsi, The Shahnameh
Read the latest from our occasional guest, the very wonderful Mighty Satrap
Rogue’s Reviews: the also-rans
May 4th, 2009
So I was reading Living Between Wednesday’s Justify Your Existence column and I just couldn’t help myself. Red rag to a bull.
This is the first installment of our Mindless response, an attempt to justify the existence of each and every one of those limbo bound characters: rogue’s reviews, on the crash cart!
Rogues Review #8: Scarecrow
January 11th, 2009
It appears that the door to the Dark Dimension was left open, and something crept in.
The signs that marked its passing: wet footprints on the stairs, and a small scrap of moist paper, on which was written, in tiny, vicious handwriting, this, the very first post from a very doubtful guest…
Somebody must have mentioned it at the time. I’m sure I missed it. I mean, how could that little image in the right hand of the panel go unnoticed?
Spiderogue’s review #4: The Vulture
November 28th, 2008
The Vulture was the first rogue Zom and I ever discussed giving the once over, long, long before Mindless Ones was even a glint in his eye - years ago in fact - so it seems a bit weird that we’re only just now getting around to Mr. Toomes. I think of all the Rogues he’s the one crying out for a bit of understanding - perhaps even a teensy makeover - and it feels really good to get stuck into him now. Because the Vulture is spooky as fuck really, and it’s a crime nobody’s really noticed or taken advantage of just how unpleasant this guy actually is.
I suppose Peter Parker’s (like Clark Kent’s) life can be reduced to two distinct stages: High School Spidey and Big City Reporter Spidey. Whenever we think of Spiderman the eternal teenager is always present, simply because the 60’s spider-mythos is so strong. Essentially, the character has never managed to shake off all that angsty moaning and groaning, inspite of landing a fantastic job, marrying one of his childhood sweethearts and finally achieving sexytime. As Zom’s pointed out, like a teenager, he kind of enjoys playing the victim. The S&M dynamic is very strong between Spiderman and his enemies, but why do they lust after him so violently? What makes them want to play the dom, the aggressor? Is it simply because he’s asking for it - which I’m sure it sort of is - or is something else at play here? Do they covet that youthful physique, just crying out to distorted, rent, violated? Is Parker the ultimate clean and proper surface - the supreme canvas - for Kraven’s tusk-knives, the lizard’s lashing tongue and Electro’s scorching, cracking, death-heat? It’s hard to put your finger on, however there’s something of the brutalising abusive adult about the spider-villains. It’s like they want to carve their petty hatreds, their insecurities and uglinesses into Spideman’s flesh. His soul. They want to see him ravaged as they have been.
Especially the Vulture.
Why?
I always say this, but take a look at him.
Spiderogue’s review #3: Kraven the Hunter
November 22nd, 2008
I don’t know if it’s a memory or if it’s a wholly original invention (something I seriously doubt), but whenever I think of Kraven this scene plays out in my mind:
PANEL 1
HIGH ANGLE. A GLOOMY BUT LAVISH AND HUGE, WOODEN PANELLED CORRRIDOR, ITS WALLS ADORNED WITH STUFFED AND MOUNTED HEADS OF ANIMALS - BOARS, LIONS, TIGERS, CROCODILES, ETC EXTENDING INTO THE DISTANCE. AN ENORMOUS DISTORTED SHADOW DRAPES ITSELF ACROSS THE FLOOR AND THE SNARLING, PETRIFIED BEAKS, MUZZLES AND MAWS. WE CAN’T GET A CLEAR HANDLE ON WHO’S CASTING IT, BUT IT’S EMERGING FROM OUTSIDE THE PANEL
PANEL 2
POV.CLOSER IN ON THE SEVERED HEADS AS WE MOVE THROUGH THE CORRIDOR. ANIMALS GET STRANGER, MORE ALIEN. NOTHING WE RECOGNISE. MYTHOLOGICAL. MONSTERS. IS THAT A GORGON? IS THAT A VAMPIRE? FROZEN, LIFELESS EYES - RED, GREEN AND YELLOW - TWINKLE LIKE MARBLES IN THE DARKNESS.
PANEL 3
ANGUISHED HEADS OF MEN AND WOMEN CAUGHT IN THEIR DEATH GRIMACES.
PANEL 4
AND NOW B LIST SUPERHEROES AND SUPER-VILLAINS. THIS IS WHERE THEY GO WHEN THEY DISAPPEAR OFF THE MAP. ONE’S POWER, EVEN IN DEATH, IS STILL TURNED ON: HIS EYE-SOCKETS AND MOUTH BLAZE WITH ENERGY, HIS FACE CONTORTED IN A FIERY BLUE SCREAM. EMPTY MOUNT COMING INTO VIEW ON EDGE OF FRAME.
PANEL 5
STILL POV. CAMERA RESTS ON EMPTY GOLDEN MOUNT ENGULFED IN THE SHADOW OF A MAN WHOSE SHOULDERS ARE DRAPED IN A DISTINCTIVE, PLUMED, MANE OF FUR. IF WE PEER INTO THE DARKNESS WE CAN JUST MAKE OUT THE WORD ENGRAVED UPON IT: ‘SPIDERMAN’.
Sergei Kravanoff is one mean sonovabitch.
Spiderogue’s review #2: the Green Goblin
November 12th, 2008
“Green Goblin in the trees”
We were on a steam train, dashing past some woodlands when my son said those words. The sentence struck me as an example of the kind of winsome utterance one might expect from a small child obsessed by Spiderman. But at bedtime, as we were making our way through Each Peach Pear Plum, and I found myself attempting to explain to an anxious boy that the Wicked Witch hidden beneath the bramble bush should be thought of as a nice witch for the duration of the story, I started to reconsider. Later, as I went to turn off the light, T gestured fearfully towards the shadowy corner of the room and whispered “Green Goblin in the brambles!”. A small shiver ran down my spine and I realised that Mysterio would have to wait, I wanted to write about Norman Osborn’s monster.
Spiderogue’s review #1: the Spider-Slayer (or why the Marvel Universe is secretly demented part 1)
October 24th, 2008
Sadistic torture really isn’t very nice. It’s everything that society tries to force under the carpet (unless the situation calls for real men like Jack Bauer). It represents total freedom, action unrestricted by boundaries (read: bodies), total control, total transgression, captured alongside the omega of abjection and suffering. The idealised torture chamber is a space where these limits - which are so very dangerous and threatening and repulsive - can be fully explored, and there will always be people who see the allure in that. It’s the blood red abyss beyond the brink of the acceptable, but like all good acrophobics we can’t help but look down, perhaps we’ll see something we like.
You’ve all seen Hostel, right?
Rogue’s Review #6: Poison Ivy
August 11th, 2008
Yes, that’s not the poster - I’m not sure British television in the 80s did posters. Especially not for a series as outright miserable and cheap as Day of the Triffids. Instead what we got were real suburban streets, sets hungover from the seventies, and parochial British accents. The show was so bloody scary because the world it inhabited looked and sounded so depressingly like our own. The triffids were like some vile full stop on the end of contemporary British life - we were defined by the moment of our extinction and we turned out to be parochial, small, insignificant and suffering. The fact that mankind was to meet its fate blind (after a freak meteorological event) just served to underline the point that the universe is merciless, uncaring, uncompromising, and alien to all human feeling. What better monster to take on the role of apocalyptic deathbringer than one which has no anthropomorphic qualities: that skitters along on it’s roots, and feeds on blood, that, as a consequence of its inhuman nature, negates the value of culture, thought and emotion?
Fuck yeah, triffids are nasty.
