Mindless Ones

What did Grant Morrison have to say about our Rogue’s Reviews?

“…brilliant articles and essays on characters I never thought I cared about until the Ones MADE me care. The pieces on Batman villains Bane and the Penguin are remarkable and I can‘t wait to see more along the same lines.”

Bane

The Riddler

Poison Ivy

The Penguin

Harley Quinn

Catwoman

The idea here is to find alternative, novel or better ways of making characters work, so even if you’re not interested in, say, Bane, I urge you to check out Poodle’s thoughts. Without wishing to blow our own trumpet, I think he’s done a truly amazing, often hilarious, job.

Who would have thought the Penguin could be my new favourite bat-villain? Weird.

More to come.

Addendum: I note that in the Newsarama link (thanks!) Tim states that I have detailed what I think would make a good Riddler story. While that’s true to an extent, I hope I have done a little more than that. Obviously these articles reflect our preferences, but more often than not they also serve to highlight the narrative and conceptual cul-de-sacs that so many characters are trapped within, so even if you don’t like or agree with the results of our considerations, I hope you take away with you a broader view of our reviewed rogues.

I don’t know how I could’ve missed it. They arrived in Spain, for God’s sake! I had visions of Indiana Jones style adventures in ancient spanish forts – I think there could’ve been nazis – but clearly I am t3h fule. Where else would our merry band of wreck heads end up on their european jaunt but Ibiza? I mean, where would they be without the distant thrumming bass, the all night bars and dingy alcoves just off the heaving, red lit dancefloor, sweat plop-plopping on their foreheads? It’s the young liar’s natural habitat, only just as hot outside the clubs and soundtracked not by Sonic Youth or the Pixies, but by Paul Oakenfold and Arsenal football club chants.

And, before I get into this issue’s tunes in detail, this is something I feel I have to address.

More after the jump

I can only apologise if the title offends; it’s not intended to, but it does seem a little risque and I’ve kind of realised I’m not so sharp as I had thought on racial politics this week. The implications for me, sexual orientalism and gender bias are pretty disconcerting therefore. (Secret origin: my username is actually derived from the country of my birth.)

The notion here has its genesis in Douglas Wolk’s initial SavCrit review of the latest installment of Batman, #678 – it’s true! Mindless Ones covers really all your Batman and Grant Morrison needs several times over. Tune in shortly for more BatMoz coverage than you can possibly handle. I then get irked in the comments and Marc ‘I am NOT the Beastmaster‘ Singer talks me back off the ledge of flipping out, saying some shit I don’t even believe and schools me, unabrasively, on how it be. I invite him here to extend the conversation and it’s a blogversation or some other hideous neology. A blogover. In the interests of making it a blogevent, here’s Jog’s review (which I’ve already invoked not once, but twice) and our own amypoodle‘s. Here’s Tucker Stone’s, just for fun.

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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.

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And I am that beholder.

Comics bought and read on Saturday the 5th of July 2008.

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Riddle me this: why are so many writers completely at a loss when it comes to E. Nigma?

Poodle has noted that the Batman TV show of the 60s has been something of a touchstone in his rogue’s review considerations, and you know what? I completely agree that it should be. Many of you will worry that the camp fun therein is at odds with the skein of grim ‘n’ gritty darkness that runs through Batman at his best, but I put it to you that your inner child experienced that show as deadly serious, and that’s what we’re trying to tap into here: the way it felt to you as a kid, which as far as I’m concerned is completely at odds with flooding the Batverse with all out silliness.

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I’m very definitely not the best choice for a weekly reviewer. I’m extremely narrow in terms of the number of comics I’ll pick up each week (prefering to buy trades and graphic novels as opposed to individual issues), and I really dislike most of what passes for superhero fiction, so I’ve opted out of sharing any responsibility for our regular (!?!) review section, but it doesn’t look like anything’s going to emerge this week unless I man up…

And here we are.

More after the jump