Mindless Ones

The Mylestones – The Joker

There’s talc on the floor. A bag of ‘blues’ in your pocket, or so you like to think – dexys, mandys, but mainly ripoff caffeine pills. Door receipts are down – times are lean, leaner than the waists. Even the youngest acest faces are deep lined, adorned with feather cuts starting ever further up the head. The tribes have had to pull together and mingle even though the soul boy purists hate it, so for you, in those socks, it’s the basement mate – ska, rocksteady, and, of course, 2tone.

And take your porkpie hat with you, victim.

“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

* Bollocks, knew I wouldn’t get this done until Twsday morning.

Whatever. This is me giving up superhero comics.

You can jump 8 times further there.

Sometime in the nineties the cry rang out: Marvel was gonna put the “character back into comics”.

This was news to me.

As far as I was concerned the Marvelverse, with the possible exception of the X-Men, was still firmly rooted in a pre-Watchmen era. It was only the energizing touch of the man Miller that rescued the company from my utter contempt. DC on the other hand, was, in my rather woolly analysis, the natural home of adjectives like mature, and visionary, the only company where character was likely to flourish. My case rested upon little more than DC’s willingness to publish The Dark Knight Returns, The Killing Joke, and Arkham Asylum, and the serious moonlight cast over the DCU by Watchmen, and the Vertigo imprint.

While I’m now well versed in the legacy of Marvel’s legendary creators, if I’m honest I remain skeptical about Marvel’s claims to the concept of character. I grant that Lee and Ditko’s willingness to subordinate super to man was likely revolutionary back in the late sixties, and that they quite possibly changed the landscape of comics, but the reality is that while character is certainly the focus of many Marvel titles the characters in question have seldom been allowed much more than superficial depth – the MU as a place of histrionics rather than history. That, even as its best, seldom produces character studies with more going for them than I’d expect to see in a well realized soap opera. Don’t get me wrong, I think good soaps have their own virtues, and, and this is important, I’m not sure that I want to see rigorous character studies in (many) superhero comics, but I think it’s worth pointing out that by treating the term character as a monolith, and not admitting to its multiple meanings – the different ways in which the centrality of the concept can be approached, from Dynasty to Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolfe – Marvel, and its die hard fans, are perhaps heaping undeserved glories on themselves. I mean, we’ve all read the Ultimates, right?

Guess what? I actually talk about Born Again after the jump

A weekly strip by Fraser Geesin

The book Dream Date by Tim Leopard and Fraser Geesin is available from Running Water Press or from Amazon.

Get your love on!

This is what happens when boys get together and talk about romance.  It’s mostly guns  and gore though so don’t worry. It’s a long one so I’ve split it into two parts:

click to download part 1
[audio:http://mindlessones.files.wordpress.com/2009/02/movalentines11.mp3]

click to download part 2
[audio:http://mindlessones.files.wordpress.com/2009/02/movalentines2.mp3]

Amazing pictures below!…

I honestly never intended for any of you lot to read this guff.

However!

When Zom found out I’d been writing comic scripts in my lazy hours, he insisted I put them up here.

And then he said he thought it might make us look like a bunch of conceited wankers.

And then he decided I should do it anyway.

So, if anyone digs it – I’m not that sure how good any of it actually is  – then you can look forward to seeing more of the same over at our soon to be unleashed sister site for, err, em>creative work</em>. It’ll be called The Warehouse of Broken Dreams, or something. Anything to keep the lawyers away.

Just a few thoughts before we get into this, because I know you’d offer up the life of your sister to read this shit, and we’d better get moving…..

If anyone slogged through our mindless ramblings over on Pillock’s intensely wonderful A Trout in the Milk blog, then you may remember – HOW COULD YOU FORGET?!!?! – me banging on about how much fun it’d be to write a Damian 666 comic. An alternate Batman from the universe next door, but, more importantly, a next generation Batman, would allow for so much more wriggle room – in fact I’d argue he’d demand it! His writer would almost have a duty to extend all the wild bat-conceits, themes and tonalities far, far beyond anything that’d come before. The son of the batverse would necessarily incorporate and reiterate in a far more concentrated and conclusive fashion all the tatty, flailing elements that constitute the present day Batman’s superbody. You really could have it all. And nobody would give a shit, seeing as it could all be dismissed as a *possible future*.

Realistically I’m sure a great deal of fandom would hate the book, but, fuck it, they’d only go and buy it anyway. And weep.

I’m not sure how much to tell you about the strip before we get this show on the road – I don’t want to spoil anything (Oh, the vanity!) – but I figure there’re some things it’d be nice to know (not necessary, I hope you’ll note, but nice). To begin with I want to stress that my Damian, in an attempt to remain truthful to Morrison’s original vision for the character, is far less morally rigid and considerably more ethically and tactically improvisational than his Father. He inhabits the twilight world of a new century where all the old certainties have flown out the window. A shifting Gotham whose suburbs and superscrapers are bleeding into the netherworld (PLEASE DON’T UNDERSTAND ME TOO QUICKLY), and where heroism is a flickering, ephemeral concept in permanent revolution. This is Batman at dusk, metaphorically speaking. Or is it dawn? All the usual suspects will feature – there’s a Robin, a Batmobile, a Batcave and plenty of fighting (I count four fights in the first issue alone, all jammed into 23 pages), but, as Moore describes Miller’s reimagining for his introduction to Dark Knight, ‘it’s all completely different’ (you see! I’m comparing myself to Frank Miller now! My God….). This Batman has a different family set-up – in fact family is pretty much the theme underscoring the first story arc – and is much more at home with all the weird psychedelia and wacky magical shit than Bruce Wayne. There just isn’t the same air of denial surrounding Damian. He’s at home in the DCU, entrenched in ways his predecessor wasn’t, and maybe finds it all kinda fun.

Anyway. Expect to be confused. It all moves pretty fast.

Without further ado: