Mindless Ones

Comics creators, headsup!

For its fifth year, The Observer/Cape/Comica Graphic Short Story Prize has just been announced, inviting UK residents to submit a four-page comic on any theme, with the winner receiving £1,000 (the runner-up £250) and getting their story published in The Observer Review and on the Guardian and Vintage websites. This prize has really galvanised the creative comics scene in this country, stimulating more people to try their hand at sequential art to express themselves. It has also led to several fresh British voices having their debut graphic novels published by Jonathan Cape.

Regular jury members Observer literary critic Rachel Cooke, Random House Creative Director Suzanne Dean, Cape publisher Dan Franklin, and Paul Gravett, Comica Festival director, are joined this year by the pioneer of UK graphic novels Bryan Talbot, of Luther Arkwright, Alice In Sunderland and Grandville fame, and David Nicholls, acclaimed author of One Day and a writer for film, television and theatre.

For more information visit the Comica website

Danny Noble’s cartoon diary of abstinence. You can also read her Monday Morning strip here. Click on the images to enlarge.

Click here to see the rest of the week

The wonderful chaps over at Orbital Comics, “London’s Finest Comic Book Store”, have given us permission to link directly to their recent interview with Grant Morrison. Designed to compliment our very own sterling work, the Orbital crew chat with Morrison about all the interesting stuff that we didn’t think of and/or get to re Supergods, Batman, Action Comics, Multiversity, Zenith, magic and more.

Go listen, then check out their site. Their wide ranging comic podcasts alone are well worth a few hours of your time.

STARTS TODAY!

TO BE CONTINUED….

Starting this week, a brand new weekly Cindy & Biscuit strip, exclusive to Mindless Ones. Who are Cindy & Biscuit? Why don’t you find out for yourself?

And don’t just take my word for it. Look here and here for further proof!

And check back next week to find out what exactly they did with their weekend

Danny Noble’s cartoon diary of abstinence. You can also read her Monday Morning strip here.

Click here to see the rest of the week

There are many, many reasons why I might be considered an idiot, but if you were going to make a list – and believe me, I’ve made a few such lists in my time – then I’ve got a fair idea of what the top three should look like.

I’ll spare you numbers one and two for now, but number three is easy. You see, I must be an idiot, because I don’t think I understood mortality until I watched Transformers: The Movie for the first time. Yeah, Transformers, “robots in disguise” that turned into planes and cars and tanks, and had their own crappy TV show. That was where my first intimation of mortality came from. Told you I was an idiot.

The realisation that all of this would one day stop had never sunk in at Sunday School, where the focus was more on old stories than on the possible absence of narrative. It hadn’t made any impression on me when various distant relatives had died – they had seemed like minor characters in my story, and their deaths didn’t truly register with me at the time. It didn’t even really occur to me in the early parts of Transformers: The Movie, despite the fact that whole planets were being destroyed and beloved characters were being gunned down like so many extras (with all weapons having been switched from tickle to mangle between TV series and movie, naturally). But OPTIMUS FUCKING PRIME, my favourite toy and childhood hero, dying on-screen, in an astonishingly drawn out manner? Yeah, I felt that, and it scared the living shit out of me.

See, here? One day your sentence will be up. Full stop. Story over. The end.

Don’t worry, we’ll get to Simon Furman in a minute!