Mindless Ones

Oh, Joy!

Those from the mid-eighties’ school of Bat-writing – people, in short, who are still obsessed by DKR and the terms ‘darkpain-sex’ and trenchcoat-rape’ – generally dislike the Penguin. His wacky rubber-duckmobiles and funny pear shaped gait don’t sit well with the mature reader, so he’s fallen out of favour recently. Sure, there’s the odd die hard Penguin fan out there, but his recent reinvention as a shady nightclub owner indicates that fandom in general has no interest in him as a real supervillain. And what do we say to that?

For shame!

More after the jump

I had no idea….

You really wouldn’t have thought that one of Batman’s most famous rogues would have such a tangled backstory, would you? After sifting through that Nine Lives of Catwoman book, Ed Brubaker’s run, that shitty old Year One rip off miniseries and the most convoluted wikipedia entry I’ve read for any supervillain so far, I found myself absolutely none the wiser when it came to figuring out who the buggering fuck Selina Kyle is (or was) and where she came from. Catwoman’s sported enough spandex all-in-ones to start her own fashion line and has been, variously, a glamorous, uncostumed jewellery thief, a reformed criminal, a rich, kept, but abused housewife, a cat-gadget toting, punning and quipping 60s supervillainess, an unstable murderer, a prostitute, definitely not a prostitute but posing as one, a dominitrix, a street savvy rube and finally, in her present incarnation, a begoggled, leather-clad burglar.

More after the jump

By God I’ve written some long winded posts. Everyone else has only managed to throw up one or two bigguns, but this here mindless poodle has at least five to his name and it’s time to give myself a break, in the name of my love-life, my free time and my sanity. So here it is, the first of a what will be an occassional, but altogether less masochistic, series of posts where I try to get to grips with what makes some of our fave baddies tick and why they have proven to be so popular. And maybe along the way unearth a few ideas that will serve as pointers, guiding today’s creative powerhouses towards a deeper understanding of their subject matter and, resultingly, a brighter, altogether more interesting future for the characters themselves.

Because everyone at DC gives a flying fuck what I think.

More after the jump

In the grand tradition of our Rogue’s Reviews and inspired by Zak Sabbath’s Alphabetical Monster thing, his attempt at reviewing each and every entry in the D&D Monster Manual, I’ve decided to take on all the Bat-villains, starting with…

Can you guess? He’s a bit shit!

You might have noticed that Mindless Ones has been a little bit quiet on the lengthy essay front of late, and given that the lengthy essays are what we’re known for you might be a bit worried.

So what’s going on?

Well, we have plans…

As adults we forget how strange things are. Take caves, for example.

On a recent holiday, my wife, son, and I found ourselves on a guided tour through a cave system. The group was large, and the cave as well lit as the intersection between health and safety and the management’s sense of theatricality would allow. The guide’s patter was honed and confident, glinting with comfortable jokes that didn’t require laughter, and just the right blend of folklore and history to keep us interested. The package offered no reason this side of phobia to feel unsafe, or uncertain. No-one was going to get lost, and no-one was going to get hurt, even boredom was unlikely to be much of a problem given that the tour was, quite sensibly, rather short.

But somewhere in the darkness beneath the spotlit consumer experience the real appeal rustled. Awe. It went unspoken of course only ever hinted at or skirted. The guide spoke of a gigantic network of which ours was but a fragment, of divers who had squeezed their way through small spaces in the deep and discovered gigantic caverns, one of which was thus far inexplicable to the geologists and engineers that had pored over the photographs, the mega-tonnage above the vast cave roof apparently unsupportable. The guide also spoke of deeper passages still, of underground lakes and streams, and of tunnels yawning forever into the earth. Even the history of the place hung like a heavy shadow. The caves had been sacred to the Celts, who offered up sacrifices to the dark. Later the Christians came and banished the old religion, a conflict hinted at in the local legend of a witch turned to stone by a priest. The guide showed us the rock where, if the light is right, the witch’s petrified profile can still be seen glaring into the blackness, and claimed, as a good tour guide should, that late at night her mordant laughter can be heard echoing in the depths.

Perhaps from sub-level 7, perhaps deeper

Down, down, down…

Just like our Rogue’s Reviews but with 100% more hero!

Ah, the Martian Manhunter. Don’t you feel like waxing lyrical on the Martian Manhunter? I know I do. But let’s get a few preliminaries out of the way first.

Read on, mindless reader. Read on!

“I thought this was, frankly, going to be so far up it’s arse it could taste itself.

It weren’t though.

Really enjoyed this…”

Our hopes and fears for this fan-fic extravaganza captured by our good friend Triplets in the comments thread for part one.

Give these a go, it’s not like Amy doesn’t rush off into fan-fic territory every time he writes one of those Rogue’s Reviews you all seem to love so much. In the opinion of this mindless, this is just as fun, if not more so.

-Zom

Like he said.

My only concern about this one is…. Well, you’ll probably understand what’s thorny about one of the themes about halfway through. I might need to add a bit more dialogue somewhere to prove I’m not a racist. There’s some dodgy ground.

Batman meets the candyfloss horizon after the jump

As our long term readers already know, I don’t read many superhero books. It’s not that I don’t like superheroes – I love them – it’s just, well, invariably I tend to find most titles pretty boring. I sat down with the first two Captain America trades the other day and I wanted to love that shit, only I really didn’t. The art, though pretty, was muddy and a chore to trawl through (in what’s supposed to be an action book!), the story likewise, and the thing just didn’t seem to regard itself as a comicbook. No…twas a big muddy storyboard, and a big muddy storyboard lacking in fun. Essentially the experience made me even more resolute in my Mozza-bats love. Morrison’s Batman is never, ever boring, and it knows all about the form it’s cowled in. Not great, great art, but totally what I want a monthly comic to be. Fast-paced, colourful and pulpy, with flashes of *depth*, funny, involving and, most importantly… How did Botswana Beast describe #682 in our last email correspondence? Ah yes – ‘typically berserk’.

I think that sums the run and the issue up nicely, don’t you?

JUMP!