Mindless Ones

A weekly strip by Fraser Geesin

Andrew and Steven in

KNIGHTS OF THE REALM

Part 15

In which I throw up some random, barely organised/edited thoughts about a couple of comics I think you might’ve read.

That’s right! It’s Zom’s pick now and he’s chosen Prison Pit Book 2 by Johnny Ryan!!
LET’S ROCK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[audio:https://mindlessones.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/mo10-3prisonpit2.mp3]
click to download

For this next bit of our 2010 get-together, Bobsy brought along Clint and Dodgem Logic for The Beast Must Die, Zom, Gary Lactus and Amy Poodle to talk about. This is what it sounded like:
[audio:https://mindlessones.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/mo10-2dodgemclint.mp3]
Click to download

A weekly strip by Fraser Geesin

Andrew and Steven in

KNIGHTS OF THE REALM

Part 14

Marineman #1 by Ian Churchill (Image)
Splash

Zom: From a cave in Nanda Parbat to an old haunted house on the road out of town, and onwards to a better Batmobile. Let’s go!

Amy: Some quick preamble before we get into this. I admit to being as worried as anyone about the release dates, but that was before when the DC site made them looked really fucked up, when Batman: The Return looked like it was coming out the same week as Batman and Robin 16 or whatever it was not, and certainly never because Return of Bruce Wayne 6 was scheduled to arrive after Bruce had returned in that book. It was always obvious to me that ROBW 6 would cap Grant’s mega-story, if only because it was in that book that the real meat of the thing would have to be cleared up, dealing as the series does with Batman the myth, the eternal Batman outside of time and the linear flow of the batrob books. It was there that the spell would reach completion.

Moments before I tucked into the final issue, I discovered an old Grant Morrison JLA story in a Secret Files comic that as far as I’m aware no one I know has ever read before – the comic had been in my possession for years, but this was the first time I’d cracked it open. These kinds of weird coincidences always kick in when the deep magic is flowing.

Click to read the rest of the bat-magic!

OR: Alec – How to be an Artist, and why some stories are just too fucking massive not to be told

Another thing I remembered, and I don’t think I ever mentioned it to Alan, but I always felt a certain resentment that Billy the Sink got Big Numbers and blew it while i was stuck drawing Jack the bloody Ripper for ten years (I once described it as a penny dreadful that costs thirty five bucks). I stand by my opinion that Big Numbers was the superior idea and would have been Alan’s masterpiece. Of course it is also true that Sienkiewicz is a world class illustrator and there’s no way I could have done a job that complicated in 1992. I could have taken a crack at it later (post-Birth Caul/Snakes and Ladders), and offered, but Alan wasn’t up for that. I love the ease with which Bill shifts from photographic mode to outright loony tunes. The separated Gathercoles remembering their courtship and early marriage is a masterstroke (pages 19-21). That’s an odd note at the bottom of page 29 where he slips back into his Moon Knight style.

(Eddie Campbell on Alan Moore and Bill Sinkiewicz’s Big Numbers)

The first time you read Eddie Campbell’s Alec – How to be an Artist, you might find yourself wondering why Campbell spends so much time on the story of how Alan Moore and Bill Sinkiewicz’s proposed masterpiece, Big Numbers, never added up to much in the end.

I mean sure, it’s a good story – the fact that a project so well conceived with so much talent behind it could not come together for more than three issues (only two of which were published!) is just plain baffling.  More than that, it’s good gossip!

More on Alec – How to be an Artist/more fun with fractals after the cut!

A weekly strip by Fraser Geesin

Andrew and Steven in

KNIGHTS OF THE REALM

Part 13