Mindless Ones

As previously mentioned, the Mindless dream team of The Beast Must Die, Illogical Volume and Andrew “Mandrew” Hickey made it down to Leeds for this year’s Thought Bubble comics convention. These are their recollections of the event, as distorted by the passing of time, sleep-deprivation, alcohol consumption, and the brain-scrambling dazzle of a white lounge suit:

Enter the Mindless (23 Chambers)

If you don’t know who Marc Singer is then you’ve been doing something wrong. An academic by trade and one of the most rigorous and interesting critical voices to come out of the comics blogosphere, Marc’s writing is often mentioned in the same breath as Joe McCulloch’s (Jog) and Douglas Wolk’s, and has long been a Mindless touchstone.

To the dismay of many Marc took a step back from his blog, I Am NOT the Beast Master, a couple of years ago, but during that time re-focussed his energies into a book length critical overview of Grant Morrison’s work. We’re happy to say that we got an early look at the finished product, Grant Morrison: Combining the Worlds of Contemporary Comics, and that it’s honestly the best sustained piece of writing on Morrison’s work that you’re likely to find anywhere for some time to come. It’ll be published by University Press of Mississippi in paper back and hardback on the 6th of December just in time for your Christmas stocking.

In the meantime, as a little teaser, here’s Marc being interrogated on the subject of his book by the Faceless Mindless Collective. Don’t pity him too much: He can control animals ‘n’ shit.

Click here to read the rest of this face scorching entry, and to find out who ends up in the Shark Tank!

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

First of all, a confession: I’m not very good at computer games, in the same way that I’m not very good at telly, or at keeping up with my friend Jessica (whose collected editions of Uzumaki I eventually had to get The Boy Fae the Heed to return, due to my shameless ineptitude).

I don’t know why, but in my flailing attempts at adulthood, some things have ended up getting pushed to the side and properly playing computer games has been one of those things.  For perspective: I don’t think I’ve properly lost myself to a full-length computer game since the original Half-Life, or maybe Deus Ex.  I still play the damned things, of course, but it’s more of a social occasion or a light distraction – a little bit of Death Tank on the weekends with my pals, a wee bit of Arkham Asylum when I need to feel like Batman and eating Mulligatawny soup just won’t cut it.

So sure, I can admire the way Jason Rohrer tries to make the simplest game mechanics into little tests of your capacity for guilt and sentimentality, just as I can giggle when people take pot-shots at his work, but put something like Bioshock down in front of me and I’ll have to admit that I just don’t have the time for it.

I am a grown man, after all, and like all grown men, I’ve got comics to read!

So why is it that when I started to think about horror, about what I could possibly contribute to Notes From the Borderland, that I couldn’t escape from a pair of zombie computer games that I play for laughs with my friends?

Ah, well, maybe it’s the friends that are problem here.

What’s worse, after all – to stumble out into the borderlands on your own, or to do so with your friends, knowing that you’re going to betray them, or be betrayed by them, or that you’re at least going to let each other down when the real nastiness shit starts?
Click here 4 a little taste of that Borderland madness!

Yesterday was, as many of you will be aware, the forty-eighth anniversary of the first episode of Doctor Who. This means that next year, 2012, is the fiftieth year of Who’s existence.

Over the next year or so, on a roughly-weekly basis, I’ll look at one story from each of those fifty years, from 1963 to 2012. To start with, let’s travel back to that time just after the end of the Chatterley ban and the Beatles’ first LP.

“If you could touch the alien sand and hear the cry of strange birds and watch them wheel in another sky”

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

Night. A boy lies slumped on the pavement.

A car pulls up, the door opens and a red woman calls him over.

He gets in.

Uno Moralez’s pixel art has an infernal heat.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Mindless Ones will be exhibiting their tawdry wares at this weekend’s Thought Bubble Comics Convention in Leeds.

Mindlessers Andrew Hickey, Dan White (The Beast Must Die), and Illogical Volume will be there for the full two days, so come by table 40 at Royal Armouries Hall and say hello. And buy things.

TBMD:

I shall be selling copies of all my comics

Terminus vols 1-3

Zip City Comics 1

Cindy and Biscuit 1

and the first print copies of Cindy & Biscuit: What We Did At the Weekend, as featured right here.

Illogical Volume: Since I’m a lazy, easily distracted bastard, I don’t have any books or comics for you to buy, and contrary to what some people have suggested, I probably won’t be selling sexual favours either. Probably.

What I will be doing is talking pish, touching heads, and possibly acting out bits of Gary Lactus’ epic Amusing Brothers story, Knights of the Realm, depending on how many “adult beverages” I’ve had.

I will also be helping Dan and Andrew (aka the man-mashed master criminal Dandrew) sell copies of their excellent books and comics, because they are excellent, and you should buy them, because did I mention that they are excellent?

Hnh. There is a reason I never became a salesman.

Anyway, if you’re going, please stop by so we can indulge in some mutual headtouching!

Mmmm… headtouching!

Andrew Hickey: And I, meanwhile, will be selling copies of my books Sci-Ence! Justice Leak! (about Darkseid, Doctor Who, Mister Miracle, the Liberal Democrats and fanfiction, amongst other things) and An Incomprehensible Condition, about Seven Soldiers.

(I’ll also have a small number of copies of my other books on hand, in case anyone has mistaken the comic convention for a 60s pop convention).

My books aren’t as good as Dan’s, because they don’t have many pictures in (and I didn’t even draw the pictures that are in them myself). But on the upside, they are more expensive.

I will also be available for head-touching, although you’re really better off not doing. I’m contagious.

There’s also other stuff to do there, if you don’t fancy spending two days just hanging around three comics bloggers and touching parts of their anatomy. You could, for example, stalk Bryan Talbot, as I did in 2009, or you could go and watch Mel Gibson talk about being a woman in comics. Or get Cameron Stewart or Paul Cornell to scribble their names on things. The possibilities are limitless.

The point is, Thought Bubble is great, and we’re great, so this is a winning combination, and you should come along and give us money.

PREPARING REACTIONS TO THE NEWLY REDESIGNED DARKSEID DOT DOT DOT

Darkseid Is… An inaction figure/A “21st Century big bad”/A redesign of a redesign of a real design/A quaint plastic monster farting out an unclean sun.

Darkseid Is… Straining for relevance/A big Depeche Mode fan/Dangerously indebted to the robust sartorial choices of a certain Lex Luthor.

Darkseid Is… A dullard’s idea of raw spectacle/Actually quite ripped underneath that hard shell/Pretending to be a pint man now, probably.

Darkseid Is… Representative of nothing/Reflective of nothing/Currently unable to smuggle meaning under his dainty little skirt.

Darkseid Is… Singing the Arkham City blues/A capitalist realist’s dream/Safe now for renewed consumption.

Darkseid Is… Honestly, pretty fucking dull in this incarnation.