Batman and Robin #8
February 15th, 2010
Let’s annocommentate!
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Amy: ‘What is it with these Crime Coven people and their obsession with stories for kids?’ What is it indeed? Perhaps it has something to do with the rogue logic of fairytales and nursery rhymes, their criminal physics? Alice in Wonderland as topology, a map of a world overturned, where reason and meaning begin their steady descent into the abyss, Cole’s ‘hole in everything’.
Fairytales also speak to our primal condition, a preverbal world of gods and nightmares. Maybe the Crime Covens see their work as an attempt to return mankind to a purer state, unrestrained by ego and superego, culture, law and society.
Shit, they sound pretty cool, don’t they?
Oh, whose side are we all on?
Batman & Robin #7: the annocommentations
February 2nd, 2010
Bob: This is not only the best issue of B&R yet, but the best single issue of Morrison’s batman run by some margin, and as dense and full a piece as he’s written since Seven Soldiers #1, with which it shares many links and referents, both deliberate, accidental and incidental.
Zom: Tan’s a nice chap, some of us around here were quite keen on his work, but if you ask me thank God for Cameron Stewart: Batman & Robin is back at long last. This isn’t my favourite issue and I’ll get into some of the reasons why later, but it’s a bloody good one.
Batman & Robin competition time: Call in the Lads
January 29th, 2010
An interesting aspect in the reading and long-term appreciation of superhero-comics, one of few nearly unique to the genre-medium, is the impact that a single image of a single character can have. Few sights are more potent and electric than the basic dramatis-persona mugshot of the steroidal spandexophile (popular in the early Image-era which took the dynamic far beyond the realms of mere absurdity), poised four square to the camera, and his name. Plot, narrative, dialogue even, can all to a greater or lesser degree be shed, and the key meaning of the superhero, the immortal appeal, remains undiminished. All that is required is a strong image and a strong name.
The enduring popularity of the A-Z Handbook of the X?X Universe books are a testament to this - the costume, the name, the paraphernalia, the ‘vital statistics’ (so porno), and the stripped-back plot recaps that the Handbook-style entries offer are the pure flavour, the total hot- drug effect, of the strongman funnybook. The superhero, a figure without a background, exists perfectly well, separate to the superfluous storytelling and other dimensions the comicbook medium affords. After all, if it’s all about wish fulfilment and fantasy-projection, the other stuff just gets in the way - just show me, in crazy colours and moody lighting, the bare (oo-er) image of the proud superthing, standing erect, and let me do the rest of the work myself (stop!) All that you need is a cool, tight image and a few terse syllables of context (of which the name, both descriptive and directive in its ideal form, is the concentrate). and you can have that uncanny charge the trueborn superhero fanman is always chasing.
The Beast’s 5 Horror comics for Halloween
October 31st, 2009
Seaguy - Slaves of Mickey Eye: the annocommentations (part 2)
April 13th, 2009
13 questions with Cameron Stewart
April 9th, 2009
Cameron Stewart before the commencement of the "breaking process"
Fact file: Cameron Stewart is the artist behind Jason Aaron’s Eisner Award nominated The Other Side; Grant Morrison’s Seaguy, and The Manhattan Guardian; he produced memorable work while collaborating with Ed Brubaker on his Catwoman run; and in 2008 joined forces with his friend Ray Fawkes to produce Apocalipstix for Oni Press.
Stewart also writes and draws the webcomic Sin Titulo.
Cameron has recently returned to Seaguy for the second volume, Slaves of Mickey Eye
We captured Cameron Stewart after many hours spent stalking him through the streets of Montréal, Canada. We then set about beating him with bamboo canes through the thin webbing of the net in which he was held. Cameron withstood the breaking process for 5 days, but ultimately, through clenched teeth, agreed to answer 13 exquisitely crafted questions. He swore he’d die before answering any more.
A braver man I have never met.
(Part 2 of these annocommentations can be found here)
Words that you might have seen used rather a lot elsewhere in relation to this comic:
Mad
Crazy
Insane
Weird
All fine words I grant you, but sadly they all too often help to close down critical discussion rather than open it up. Hopefully we can do a bit better than that.
