Mindless Ones

I certainly hope so: I plan on swearing a lot today, in order to emulate my newfound hero: Jamie McDonald, the Crossest Man in Scotland.

Here’s Jamie exemplifying really what, in substitute of wit, insight, that sort of thing we’ll pursue today, Toosday.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBW7dCvmMxI]

Spider-builder? Batbuilder?
I fucken love a swear. Ready, dickheads? Aye, let’s go then

A weekly strip by Fraser Geesin

PART THREE OF A FOUR PART MISSION INTO ENTERTAINMENT!

WHAT NOW?  FIND OUT IN NEXT WEEK’S THRILLING FINALE!

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

You might have noticed that Mindless Ones has been a little bit quiet on the lengthy essay front of late, and given that the lengthy essays are what we’re known for you might be a bit worried.

So what’s going on?

Well, we have plans…

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Criminal: Sinners #1

Icon

(Ed Brubaker & Sean Phillips)

Well, I didn’t think it’d be the case, but I’m glad Incognito is over. Something about that series didn’t quite click for me. Don’t get me wrong, Brube and Philips always produce quality work, but Incognito just felt a little…uninspired. It didn’t say anything about supervillians and heroes that the infinitely more sophisticated Sleeper did (God, that was such a good comic).

So seeing Criminal back in it’s place was a winner for this Beast. Criminal feels like it’s the comic Brubaker really wants to write, and there ain’t nothing like an A-grade writer bringing his A-game to the table to put a smile on the face of a discerning comics fan (that’s me by the way, you peasants). This issue takes up with tracy Lawless from the second arc. Still plugging away as a heavy hitter for sebastian Hyde, but he seems to have developed more of a conscience about what he’s doing. Add to the mix a hardnut CIA operative on the trail of Tracy (who’s a deserter), and some upstart vigilantes with an as-yet unspecified agenda, and you’ve gotthe usual ingredients for another hardboiled twisty tale. Part of the pleasure of Criminal is the way that Brubaker plays with absolutley familiar plots and characters, but invests them with the right amount of pep and originality to keep the comic ticking over. Whilst Sin City is a bezerko quasi-parody of noir tropes and themes, Criminal is content to carve out a more convincing, believable style. It’s still a world of permanent night, sleazy neon bars and dangerously horny brunettes (yes Ed, we know you have a type…), but we the reader can relate to Tracy, or Leo in a way we could never hope to with a gonzo caricature like Marv.

Sean Phillips does such sterling, exemplary work that you can take him for granted. But here’s the fact: he’s one of the very best artists workimg in comics and Criminal would be a tenth of the comic it is without his input. He and Brubaker have a powerful creative synergy that many comics would benefit from.

Add the fact that you’ve got a nice interview with Darwin Cooke about his Stark adaptation, an essay on a lesser known Peckinpah movie, and no ads, and there’s really no reason for you not o be buying Criminal. And if you’re buying Captain America and not buying Criminal – naughty!

Strange Tales #2

Marvel

(various)

Hot damn, it seems like every week is ‘indy creators take on established corporate property’ week don’t it? Let’s see what they’ve come up with…

Well, mostly lighthearted pastiches of Marvel characters! I’ll be danged! I’m a big fan of projects like these, but there’s always something a little…bollockless about them. I mean don’t get me wrong, seeing Tony Millionaire take on Iron Man in his usual drunken style is something I want to see (is it me or is that a perfect fit – big ol’ drunk creator writes big ol’ drunk superhero?) And the talent show on display in this issue and the last is pretty impressive – ‘Red Meat’s’ Max Cannon take on the Fantastic Four is something I genuinely didn’t think I’d see come to pass. But nontheless there’s always something a bit cutesy and tame aout this stuff. Bizarro Comics suffered from a similar slight lack of imagination.

Don’t get me wrong – I’m definitely just grousing here. I’d rather read a comic like Strange Tales than 90% of Marvel or DC’s current output, but I’d really like to see some creator’s go apeshit with their strip, rather than the nudge-nudge wink-wink stuff on display here. The recent Fin Fang Four stuff by Roger Langridge as waaay cuter than most of the stuff in Strange Tales. More often than not you’re left with a watered down version of both the character and the creator, which is a shame. That said I loved Brian Maruca and Jim Rugg’s Brother Voodoo strip, with it’s obvious nod to the duo’s own Afrodisiac character.

Astro City Special: Astra #1 (of 2)

Wildstorm

(Kurt Busiek & Brent Anderson)

Well thank Galactus the Dark Age is over. I dunno…I really dug the first mini in the most recent Astro City epic (in particular it’s evocation of the streetwise, edgy 70’s strain of Marvel superheroes), but boy did it fucking drag towards the end. For every great idea, like the Apollo 11, there was reams of tedious plot about Charles and Royal’s mission to uncover their parent’s killer. I think the truth is that Astro City functions better with the stand alone stories. Kurt Busiek can often pull tremendously affecting meditations on superheroes out of the bag, but just isn’t served that well by long running story arcs.

Which is why it was nice to pick up the recent special focussing on Astra, youngest daughter in the Furst family (AC’s loose Fantastic Four analogues). Busiek neatly positions her as a kind of Paris/Lindsay Lohan figure, only with super powers and a deeply cosmic social life. It’s a cute idea, played out nicely. It’s exactly the kind of thing this comic does so well. By playing around in a universe of his own creation, one that nonetheless seems ever-so familiar, Busiek can do things he simply can’t in either of the Big Two’s continuity constipated clog holes. At it’s best Astro City reminds you why you fell in love with superheroes and their colourful complicated shared universes. Brent Anderson’s comfortably timeless artwork is a constant throughout evoking Neal Adams or Gene Colan to great effect. His art’s been a bit wibbly of late, but he’s an intrinsic part of Astro City’s appeal – you can’t imagine the comic without it. Even Alex Ross’s overused, bland style seems re-invigorated with his AC covers. Good stuff all round.

King City #2

Image

(Brandon Graham)

2nd issue of Image’s lovely repackaging of Brandon Graham’s idiosyncratic and fresh King City. I love the expanded format – it gives Graham’s loose fluid artwork room to breathe and really emphasises his use of negative space and weird perspective. Truth be told not a great deal happens (part of the hindrance of chopping up Manga-style formats) but it’s all so charming and different that it’s hard to care. Much like Bryan Lee O’Malley or Taiyo Matsumoto Graham mashes together East and West in a gloriously uninhibited way, and the results are a blast. I could do with slightly less of the hipster angst – too bloody reminiscent of Brian Wood and Jim Mahfood – and more of the Cat, but really, no complaints. Do yourself a favour and pick this up. Gorgeous covers too – I’d dearly love to see some full colour BG stuff.

Batman & Robin #5

DC

(Donna Tartt & Ernest Borgnine)

Well I can’t really be fucked to talk too much about this. Not because I disliked it – quite the opposite, I’m enjoying the sordid trashy vibe that Morrison & Tan are bringing to the table, in particular the gleefully stupid new characters being introduced and dispatched with giddy abandon. No, I just simply don’t want to fill up any more blogspace with writing about it.

Starstruck #2

(Elaine Lee & MW Kaluta)

IDW’s sumtuous repackaging of this lost and loved sci-fi epic from the 80’s continues at it’s glacial pace – I didn’t bloody realise it was bi-monthly! Difficult to gage the story at this stage. Lee employs all sorts of narrative tricks and quirks to keep things oblique, much like Robert Altman did with film in the 70’s. Characters talk over each other and interrupt each other mid-way through sentences, not to mention talking about vast, complex socio-political alien situations. The scope for the series is certainly ambitious, and the attempt to create a convincingly futuristic world is admirable.

The real draw, obviously, is Kaluta’s beautiful, beautiful artwork. It really is fantastic – delicate, complex linework and a truly marvelous sense of design. The recolouring is sensitive and luxurious and the whole package reeks of quality. Plenty of backmatter as well, not to mention brand new Kaluta artwork in the shape of the curious ‘Galactic Girl Guides’ strip. Starstruck is well worth sampling if you’re after something different

A weekly strip by Fraser Geesin

PART TWO OF A FOUR PART NOVEL-SIZED ODYSSEY!

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WHATEVER COULD HAPPEN NEXT?  BE SURE TO CHECK OUT NEXT WEEK’S EXCITING JOURNEY INTO THE AMUSIVERSE!!

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

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A weekly strip by Fraser Geesin

PART ONE OF A FOUR PART EPIC AMAZEMENT!

TUNE IN NEXT WEEK TO SEE WHAT HAPPENS!

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

• Thanks to David Allison I stumbled across this article on Mullholland Drive, a veritable critical smorgasboard that opens up the prevailing critical approaches to the film and brings some fresh ideas to the discussion. Not only that! Some of it is really annoying! Is it just me or do readings of MH that position it strictly as a critique of Hollywood drive anyone else up the wall? The idea that David Lynch is cynical also pisses me off – the guy’s work suggests to me that he’s incapable of straightforward cynicism. It’s probably worth noting that the chap who puts forward the latter of these opinions (and who I find myself agreeing with very strongly later in the discussion) also suggests that Lynch “cultivates” an irrationalist persona in interviews, which kinda leaves me baffled. Am I supposed to buy the idea that his talk of “the eye of the duck”, his vocal support for Transcendental Meditation, and his constant emphasis on the feel of things is in some way a contrivance? I’m not sure I’m prepared to pigeon-hole Lynch as an irrationalist, but I certainly don’t see his irrational tendencies, in particular the fact that he often produces texts that cannot be entirely reduced (hey, that’s my assertion!), as anything approaching false. My next bugbear comes in the form of the idea that Lynch is a tricky trickster, a kind of narrative huckster who’s goal is to lure us into thinking we’ve found the correct reading only to undermine our noodlings at the last minute. To be fair, that position never comes roaring into view, but I spotted it lurking in the background more than once. I appreciate that this sort of reading has certain charm, but it strikes me as very simplistic and more than a little specious. But enough with griping, I can really get behind this:“Now, I’m always surprised at how people view Mulholland Drive primarily as an intellectual mystery to be solved, rather than as one of the saddest, most emotionally devastating movies ever made.”Oh yeah, and Abhay and David Fiore feature. You like them, don’t you?(As an added bonus, here’s some of what Amy had to say about the movie yarns ago on Barbelith:

  “I do think the film is ostensibly *about* a woman who arrives in Hollywood, falls in love and kills her lover, and I do think the 1st part is best described as “fantasy”. But all this “she is wanking/dreaming and then she wakes up” business…..

  The whole thing seems…haunted, somehow – all the heavily emotionally charged objects/spaces/beings/etc: the black bedroom, the box, Mulholland Drive…. The film…it seems as though someone’s trying to work through something, a mind reworking an old trauma, devouring itself. It’s all very “hungry ghost”.

  There is the sense of an absence; as though something is forced to play itself out, some violent, habitual process – a psychic scar that won’t heal – but we know where it leads: Death. The absence looms over everything, and occasionally makes itself visible, as the cracks begin to appear in the cute, comfortable love story the deluded spirit clothes itself in.”

  The rejection of the word “dream” for “haunting” equals a big yes in my book. It should be noted that Amy *isn’t* saying that anything straightforwardly supernatural is going on, his view is more abstract than that, and far less literal. Personally I think there’s something in the idea of a haunting that could potentially reconcile David Fiore and Charles Reece’s views, in that, to my mind, it lets you have your subject and eat it) (z)

• Whatever. Let’s have some real class.  Picture this – you’re a kid growing up in a small, relatively rural village in the South East of England. You’re bored, up late, and watching shitty TV. Then these opening credits appear  and you see a vision of ultimate shiny corporate splendour that seems a billion miles from the trees, grass and middle England cosiness of your immediate surroundings. Look at that hair! Those smiles! That Corbin Bernsen! That embarrassment of stereotypical cuddlytardness that is Larry Drake! Now I had something to aspire to. That vision of shimmering skyscrapers and power dressing has haunted me ever since. One day my life will have those opening credits. I just know it. (tbmd)

• While we’re at it, remember this? Has there ever been a more grown up man then Jack Killian? I wanted to be part of his little radio crew so bad.  Heck that crew rolled with the awesome little kung fu master from Big Trouble in Little China, sporting a totally boss uber-mullet. Saxophones, skyscrapers and silky tones. We be all about the smooth, sensual and serious 80’s here at Mindless HQ. (tbmd)

• Nearly five years ago now, K-Punk broadcast a kind of sound-collage thing on Resonance called londonunderlondon (parts 1, 2, 3, 4 – takes a bit of downloading if your kit’s anything like mine). It’s a deep topography thinkpiece, Stewart Home eets Eno if you like, on The Tube and the conceptual framework underneath London that it represents. I’m not sure it works entirely – the mixing is a bit frustrating in so far as you can’t hear the words over the music (deliberate probably, annoying definitely), and the thrilling radiophonic flourishes don’t sem to merge with the whole as well as they could. Ultimately, it sounds like music as made by a philospher, which is never going to be ideal. However, this bit of prose, something of a companion piece to the audio, focusing on Wells’ and Kneale’s interpretations of the problem of life and London is electrifying.

• Sorry if you’re outside the UK, you probably won’t be able to hear this, but Will Self on JG Ballard. Swearing on Radio 4! (b)