Mindless Ones

Part 6:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Who are Cindy & Biscuit? Why don’t you find out for yourself?

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

So, it kind of started like this between he and me, yr ever-lovin’ Botswana Beast, the O-rriginal Eyeball, and there’s more but I’m fuctifano how to get all these trackbacks on the twtr, so look for yourselves, if you really want. Joel (that’s his tumblr) is a pwopa Marxist on the speed-dial and who knows; maybe he can diagnose and cure comics’ endemic corporate thievery better than a ragtag bunch of libertarians? My inclination’s to think this eminently likely.

Dare you look ahent the curtain, at a world inverted?! Come then, brave traveller, beneath the cut!!

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

A reminder that Comics & Conflicts is going ahead at the Imperial War Museum, London, Friday August 19th and Saturday August 20th, and it’s jam packed with interesting stuff.

Guests include Garth Ennis, Pat Mills, David Collier, Mikkel Sommer, Sean Duffield, Dave Turbitt & Adrian Searle, Eileen and Francesca Cassavetti. Last-minute extras David Blandy and Inko, creators of the anime-collage autobio-documentary and manga-inspired comic CHILD OF THE ATOM

The event also features a full-day academic conference, talks and panels, a comics workshop, free film screenings from 4.30pm on the Saturday of the documentary Comics Go To War

Plus art exhibits of Joe Colquhoun’s originals from Charley’s War and more.

Alex Fitch is hosting a special Comics & Conflicts preview broadcast from 8-9pm Tuesday 16th on Resonance FM.

Full details and links to book are here

A feature article on the main guest creators is here

Part 5:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Who are Cindy & Biscuit? Why don’t you find out for yourself?

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

( Plus here’s a nice review from Caleb Mozzocco, one of my favourite comics bloggers:

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

Part 1, Part 2

Interview with Kevin O’Neill here

Amy: Forgot to mention that the monster in the picture to the left of Terner two pages previous is from Night of  the Demon, and, yes, it is indeed a demon. Night of the Demon, based on M.R. James’ short story Casting the Runes (it’s the entire short story), features yet another Crowleyalike and Haddo death hole/assumed identity, Dr Julian Karswell, a nasty wizard who sets demons on people who attempt to defame him. I probably don’t need to tell you that he meets a sticky end at the hands of one of his own summonings, but I just have, so there you are. It’s funny the way Terner has the picture framed like a family snapshot. Again, it suggests that he doesn’t take this occult business seriously enough. Then again, it probably serves the function of a gargoyle too.

Perhaps it was a gift from ‘Felton’. Maybe it’s signed.

Freak out!

• Welcome to England

Perhaps the most terrifying words ever read in a comic?

The Martian invaders, who Wells presents as being foul on a level deep enough to be both visceral and ontological, are upon facing a grinning English gentlemen made instantly sympathetic, as we realise we’ve been cheering for the wrong side all along.

This isn’t what the Martians are supposed to be. It’s one of Wells’ great tricks – they’re the bad guys that the reader is permitted on a planetary scale to Other and despise. It’s okay to revel in the violence of the conflict and the cruel irony of their demise. They’re not like us. They wouldn’t show you any mercy. They don’t belong here. It’s OK, you can hate them and enjoy their pain. It’s OK.

It’s not OK. From chapter 1 we’ve been presented with the Martians’ badness (they’re not even Martians! They’re not even from there! Not originally, not like the good Martians) as a simple, natural fact. So we cheer when they are chased off that planet. When these disgusting things arrive on ours, and treat those nice Wokingians exactly as generations of Englishmen have treated those they met as they set foot on shore, we are shocked and appalled and call righteously for vengeance upon them.

What if they just want somewhere safe to live?

It’s the final kick of the second book, hidden away in one small panel in the middle of the sequence that’s supposed to be giving us our final emotional catharsis. The scale of what Moore and O’Neill do in these panel isn’t to be underestimated – it’s something of a watershed moment in English literature – trumping Wells’ Woking, Larkin’s Slough and Morrissey’s seaside town they forgot to close down.  The repellent subject here withering under the poet’s red-hot glare is nothing less than England itself. The raw, fearful symbolism encoded in the imagery is unforgettable: the unleashed upper-crust, standing above England’s fetid carotid artery, physically devouring, digesting and delighting in the pain of this insect that thinks it knows about war and extinction, the gentleman so happy in their mutual immolation, their mingled ashes spread on the filthy red weed-choked water.

Come not to England ye monsters, ye Martians – there are plenty here already.

• I Can See You!

Bobsy and I were worried that we’d make this ‘Best Of’ a bit too Hyde-heavy, but it seems somewhat inevitable that this would the case, given the crowd pleasing nature of the big ugly bastard. If we can’t all love our Id what can we love…?

Way back in the first volume of the League there was a moment that you just knew was going to have some repercussions later on down the track. Caught midway through some brutal black ops with Edward Hyde, the Invisible Man gets a brief glimpse at his bleak, black future. In the sequence, we cut to an infra-red heat image of Griffin, seen through Hyde’s animal eyes. With the simple words “What? What are you looking at?” right there and then you just knew that Griffin’s invisible chips were cooked. By Christ, we didn’t know how horrible his comeuppance would be in Book 2, but with the look of feral glint in Hyde’s eyes in the next panel we at least get a hint. It’s the look of a cat about to commence the hunt with it’s mouse prey.

The simple but effective juxtaposition of Hyde’s ‘I’m not blind you know‘ with the realisation of quite how far from blind he actually is, is classic Moore. No-one does horror in comics quite as well Uncle Alan, and when pared with an artist as subtle and talented as O’Neill the effects are devastating.

More classic classics after the jump