Mindless Ones

I come to you, a lapsed Squaxx.

I stopped reading the Galaxy’s Greatest in any sort of regularity a long time ago. More than 15 years ago I reckon. That wasn’t always the way though. For a long time 2000AD was the most important comic in my life. I don’t really need to list the reasons – you’ve heard it all before no doubt. English comics fans proudly informing their bored US counterparts that they don’t know shit son, cos they weren’t there. But fucking hell man sometimes it was hard not to gloat – Millligan & Ewins on on the scorching psychedlic war strip Bad Company; Morrison & Yeowell on Zenith;  Mills & O’Neill on the utterly original and frankly just plain crazy Nemesis; Mills & Bisley on the heavy metal nihilism of ABC Warriors; the incredible John Wagner (whose contribution alone to absolute fucking rock solid thrill power for the last 35 years means that, really, we should have a National holiday celebrating the man…); Brendan McCarthy; Mike Fucking McMahon; Bolland, Gibbons; Cam Kennedy’s incredible shattered war torn planetscapes that still absolutely kill it; Brendan McCarthy again; Halo Jones (Alan Moore’s best work, and it is so fuck off and it’s a proper tragedy but also kind of beautiful that it’ll never be finished); John Hicklenton (RIP); DR & Quinch; Big Dave;Dredd’s boots….JOHN MOTHERFUCKING SMITH….

Fuck, I did it anyway. Sorry…

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We know it doesn’t matter,
Cause what you came to see
Is what we’d love to give you,
And give it one, two, three!

But there may come three, two, one, two
Or jump from nine to five,
And when you see the end in sight
The beginning may arrive!

For those who look for meaning,
And form as they do facts,
We might tell you one thing
But we’d only take it back

Not back like in a box back
Not back like in a race,
Not back so we can keep it,

But back in time and space!

Danny Noble’s cartoon diary of abstinence. You can also read her new Monday Morning strip, updated pretty much daily here. Older work can be found here.
Click on the images to enlarge.

Click here to see the rest of the week

Part 10:

Parts 1 – 9

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!

And look, even Tom Spurgeon told youto read it, and he’s like royalty.

I’m taking part in an exhibition at London’s best comic shop, Orbital Comics. Here’s some info:

It is always interesting to see how artists portray themselves, so we asked a bunch of our favourite cartoonists to do just that!

The results will be on display at the orbital gallery this September/ October, with self-portraits by:

Adam Cadwell, Dan Berry, Dan White, David Hine, David O’Connel, Edward Ross, Ellen Lindner, Gareth Brookes, Garry Leach, Gary Erskine, Joe Decie, Josceline Fenton, Julia Homersham, Kristyna Baczynski, Luke Pearson, Mark Stafford, Paul Rainey, Philippa Rice, Richard Cowdry, Rufus Dayglo, Sammy Borras, Shaky Kane, Thorsten Sideboard, Timothy Winchester and Tom Humberstone.

This Sunday 18th September, the Orbital Gallery will host a private view to celebrate the opening of our latest exhibition: the Orbital Self-Portrait Show.

Including contributions from such incredible cartoonists as Shaky Kane, Garry Leach, David Hine, Rufus Dayglo and many more, this show is not to be missed, and you can be the first to see it by coming down to the launch party, where you’ll have the opportunity to meet many of the artists involved.

Doors open at 6pm.

If you’re in London on Sunday and fancy popping down, I’ll be there from 6 onwards. Come and say hello.

Otherewise the exhibition runs from Sepember 19 – October 15th.

Hooray! It’s the 80s! Reaganomics forever unshackles money from concrete notions of labour and production! Credit and finance win forever! But wait: the American psyche becomes suspicious – it can smell something is not right. How can wealth no longer be attached to the creation of tangible value? What about the vast and mighty powerhouses of industry and agriculture (and forcible ‘freeing up’ of overseas markets – but forget about that for today) that American prosperity was built on? Are these going to rot? Is money just going to be a run of digits now, moved from place to place, percentages creamed-off for the great and the good to grow very fat on while the working man is left to suffer and starve? It is? Well that’s just unAmerican dammit! That’s dishonest, effeminate even – positively European in its emasculate, corrupted chicanery.

Si Si Je Suis Une Baddie

Being the third of three posts on Carla Speed McNeil’s “aboriginal science fiction” comic Finder…

‘Well, enjoy yourself Lise,’ says the voice on the telephone. Send me a card.

‘Oh, of course,’ Lise says, and when she has hung up she laughs heartily. She does not stop. She goes to the wash-basin and fills a glass of water, which she drinks, gurgling, then another. She has stopped laughing, and now breathing heavily says to the put telephone, ‘Of course. Oh, of course.’

(Muriel Spark, The Driver’s Seat)

I’ve never made a secret of the fact that I hate bildungsromans, but I’m not sure if I hate them because they suggest that life can follow a neatly conclusive trajectory and mine’s hasn’t, or if my life hasn’t followed a neat trajectory because I hate bildungsromans.  Either way, I found myself sizing up Finder: Voice and feeling even more cynical than I did when I first encountered the front piece to Finder: Talisman.

Thankfully, from the cover on in, Voice is a little bit more complicated than that:

Click here to get truly and deeply lost in one of the best comics of the year!

Mark Gatis has, in the past, been the most infuriating of writers for new Doctor Who. While most of the ‘name’ writers on the series have done precisely what one would expect of them, with Neil Gaiman writing a Neil Gaiman story and Richard Curtis writing a Richard Curtis one, there’s always been the sense that Gatiss could do far better.

His first story for the new series, The Unquiet Dead, was, apart from a few dud lines, one of the better ones from the 2005 series, (though as Lawrence Miles pointed out, it had an entirely unintentional anti-immigration subtext that leaves a nasty aftertaste), but after that, every episode with any involvement from Gatiss either as writer or actor has been nearly universally regarded as the weakest of the year.

It’s very odd, because on paper, Gatiss is the perfect writer for the show. He’s clearly an imaginative, witty writer, as both his work for the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and his novels have shown. He’s also a longtime fan of the show (his first professional filmed work was a direct-to-video series called P.R.O.B.E. which is required viewing for anyone who ever wondered what it would be like if The X-Files were made in Britain for a fiver, and had a middle-aged pipe-smoking woman who used to be The Doctor’s companion instead of Mulder and Scully), and seems hugely enthusiastic to be working on it. Yet a Gatiss episode is now always the one everyone knows to avoid.

This time though, he has done the best work of the series so far.

More after the evil disembodied eye stops looking at you…

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