So. Mindless Ones is good name for a comic blog, isn’t it? (I didn’t come up with it.) Conjures the notion of a ravening* horde, slavering* devotion to Dormammu, the Dark One, battling NeilAlieN on some etheric plateau adrift in this noosphere. Perhaps that’s exactly what we are. Perhaps we really are just that.

*Having no mouths to eat, only hands to type, I’m not so very sure a Mindless One such as I really can raven“? I can surely slaver, though.

Anyway, enough bullshit. I came here today to talk about the entire history of superhero comics because, well, better to start big and THEN drift into meandering personal vendettas and general self-loathing with a little credit hopefully in the bag, you know? Oh, and the love. Of the thing. Because they’re important to me, no matter how – generally, if the internet is to be believed – repugnant the fandom (like, whenever there’s a fan ‘outcry’, I’m like, “good”; I love seeing these risible chuds bathing their innards in acid,) how venal the publishers, how dubious the sexual and racial politics… there’s a massive iconic energy these things harness, or can harness, thousands of cultural, thematic and generic worlds they (can) straddle in bright, tight trouserpants and they’re just. my. favourites.

More after the jump