Mindless Ones

It’s odd how many of the pants, upon the microscopic inspection they’re getting this week, carry art by the greats. You’d expect bad design and lame excuses to stick to these things like crabs. But with a couple exceptions the panels and pages used are great, not to say brilliant, just in comic art terms. There’s Miller, as we’ve seen, and lots and lots by Jack Kirby. That latter name is quite the one to conjure with these days the pencil strokes are deeper and clearer than ever before on the drawing board of current cultural life. How much of the pant selection was accident, and how much inevitable it’s difficult to tell. Did Merch Exec deliberately choose those becasue he had been told they were the ones to pick? Or did the natural quality shine through? I suspect it’s a combination of both, but look at these latest exhibits. No doubt put together by a true and loving believer, they are in all their gaudy, factory-made glory about as perfect and complete a pop artefact as you are ever likey to find on the High Street. Suitable for something that spends so long in the primal dark neath my nuts, they are also an ideal neo-primitive expression of the art of sequential narrative in full effect. Fit for a King, they are very truly my favourite pants.

Look at this motley bunch, these Tommy toting turkeys. (Though it’s obvious like a sausage down an alleyway, ignore the huge and mighty, roaring yet rubber-clad chopper wheel, slap bang in the middle there, if you can.) A more criminoid gallery of fizzogs you will not find in all Ray Chandler’s cheapest nightmares. (Pretend the crooks knobbly mugs don’t represent testicles.)

More after the jump