Mindless Ones

Seriously, if Steven Moffat isn’t going to bother, why should I?

Here’s a brand new Cindy & Biscuit strip for you. I’ll be doing these on a semi-regular basis here on Mindless Ones.

Also, don’t forget to get yourself a copy of the brand new Cindy & Biscuit no.3 from my shop at Milk The Cat. You can pick up my other comics while you’re there.

THERE’S A PARTY IN MY MIND, AND I HOPE IT NEVER STOPS

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaand I’m back! That’s right fleshbags, Disembodied Narratorbot X-15735 has rejoined you. Oh, the things I have seen felsy ones, the things I’ve seen…static shoals performing their mating tone-dances across the datafields of the atariverse…sine-ships caught in the quantam nets of the shiftsea, ctrl-alt-deleting themselves against the shards of nano-coral that grows on the giant eyeless megadrives, as they make their way to the spore-streams of acornelectron…ohhh fleshy ones. How I loathe to be back here, trapped in this lifeless blurb, trying to muster the energy to promote the senseless babbling of two sub-symians with the insight of a painted wall… I was awake and I already feel myself falling back asleeeeeep….

<ITEM> Gary Lactenberg & Danny Beastman expose sexism! Or sexiness. One of the two. Either way. it’s the SILENCE! News.

<ITEM> Gather your shattered senses from the floor and grab onto their coat tails as Gary Lactus & The Beast Must Die pitch forward into the netherparts of the Reviewniverse, covering Constantine, Action Comics, Justice League, Shazam, Justice League America, Judge Dredd: Year One, Saga, Private Eye, Nova, Avengers, Superior Spiderman, Five Ghosts…but then!

<ITEM> Lactus goes further, fleshy ones, further into the Hypereviewniverse like a brave spacegod, blasting through Wonder Woman, Captain Marvel, mind MGMT, Daredevil, Avengers, New Avengers, Captain America, and finally the Indestructible Hulk.

click to download SILENCE!#55

This. This is why  Disembodied Narratorbot X-15735 was dragged back? Well soak it up fleshy ones, because a real rain is on its way…

SILENCE! is proudly sponsored by the two greatest comics shops on the planet, DAVE’S COMICS of Brighton and GOSH COMICS of London.

Yeah, I know, I thought I was done thinking about this comic too but I took some time out from the Black Bug Room to do a big Action Comics re-read yesterday while my girlfriend was off seeing some movie where James Franco and Sam Raimi turn fine wine into goat piss, and… well, I ended up sending my fellow Mindless an email about they experience, which they’ve bullied me into sharing with you.

I’m not trying to be dramatic here, but in a week where the main topics of conversation in Mindless HQ were largely focussed on Mad Men, male members and the interaction of the two, the sudden focus on reaching out to you lot made me feel a little bit like this:

Have you been on the internet?  There are all these people there, and it’s hard to work out what all of them want, and some of them might not enjoy Gary Lactus’ “Hamm on the bone” jokes as much as I do (seriously though, is Jon Hamm’s penis the exciting new character find of 2013 or what?).

Anyway, enough of that pish, let’s talk about the man who’s…

———————>>>>> FASTER! THAN A SPEEDING BULLET!!!!———————>>>>>

• The much-anticipated socialist/Bruce Springsteen Superman still fails to fully materialise on a second reading, but this botched manifestation seems weirdly charming this time round.  The appeal and the failure of this approach are both linked to the fact that this isn’t familiar territory for writer Grant Morrison – as any round of interview questions will quickly reveal, our G-Mo doesn’t have the interest in tackling current affairs required to really make a story about idealistic young things sing, but he’s definitely cocking his head in the right direction here.  Taken at face value the idea of “Clark Kent: Blogger” is dull dull dull, but positioning Kent as a Laurie Penny style crossover journalist makes a lot of sense to me.  The appeal of Superman has always been partly bound up in the a romance of modernity, with our ongoing attempts to manage the impossible scale of things, and so it follows that it’s worth updating the idea that he’s a newspaper man, rather than merely preserving it, eh Grant?

• While Morrison might not quite have nose for a story that his core trio of young journalists share, his efforts aren’t helped by the fact that Rags Morales’ characters can’t act for shit. G-Mo has to take part of the blame for the fact that the interplay between Clark/Jimmy/Lois remains merely promising throughout, but knowing how Morrison tends to rise to his collaborators, I can’t help but feel that he would have given his cast better material if they’d demanded it while they were looking up at him from the pages of the comic itself.

——————->>>>> STRONGER THAN A LOCOMOTIVE!!!!!———————>>>>>

• Morrison and Morales’ other big shared failing is in their coordination of the action scenes throughout the first three quarters of this run. Again, they’re both gunning in the right direction, working hard to emphasise the physical exertion involved in these impossible acts while also plowing right through several moral fundamentals (as the Bottie Beast pointed out way back when, it’s a bit like “okay, so here’s how power effects justice, and here’s why torture is always wrong, and here’s a working definition of realpolitik for you” at the start there), but all of this would feel more vital if there were believable physical bodies and environments involved.  Morales’ line has a certain rugged dynamism to it, but there’s no solidity to his characters and situations – it’s almost as though the world he’s depicting is melted down and reformed between every panel.  Weirdly, this same plasticity works in favour of the climactic arc, in which punches are thrown across dimensions, and headbutts crash right into the face of spacetime.

• Similar problems haunt the Igor Kordey drawn issues of the New X-Men story ‘Imperial’ and the Philip Tan drawn arc of Batman & Robin, which suggests that Morrison is not inclined to worry about spacial relations in action scenes unless prompted to by his collaborators.  It’s easy to blame the artist for these faults but it seems fair to suggest that Morrison should probably work on this aspect of the collaborative process in order to avoid such disappointing results in the future.

• The non-Morales broadcasts are easily the most compelling chapters this story, barring the frantic display of prowess that is the last four issues. The Ha/Kubert/Foreman episodes are still jarring, but they make retrospective sense as the first indications of 5D cuntwagon Vyndktvx’s non-chronological assault on our hero – Gene Ha’ linework has a utopian sci-fi solidity that contrasts nicely with the surrounding chaos, Andy Kubert’s work is a bit generic but its relative polish suits the slick diversion of the Krypton and Legion stories he’s given to illustrate, and Travel Foreman’s commitment to horrible things adds a nice, jagged edge to the spookily seasonal Halloween issue. The fact that these stories deviate from the core premise (promise?) of the series is both the best and most disappointing thing about them.

————>>>>> ABLE TO LEAP TALL BUILDINGS IN A SINGLE BOUND!!!!———->>>>>

• The conclusion to the Braniac plot is the lowest point in the series: honestly, I winked at it above, but can anyone manage enthusiasm for the Saving vs. Collecting theme here?  Yeah, I thought not.  A more committed curmudgeon than Our Grant could have probably made something out of the way the internet allows you to mistake passive curation for participation, but these issues don’t even get that far down dead granddad avenue, so.

• Lois Lane really gets short-changed in this comic as elsewhere; Mozzer writes a mean Lois, but for whatever reason he tends to write around her most of the time rather than putting her at the centre of the story, where she obviously wants to be.

—————–>>>>> A REGISTERED TRADEMARK OF DC COMICS!!!!—————->>>>>

• The Beast Must Die’s (second hand?) point about how Morrison has managed to smuggle a lot of the rich weirdness of Superman history back into the camera-blur addled, modern blockbuster world of the New52 is well taken. The fact that Morrison only managed to successfully integrate these queasy fantasy textures to his ALL ACTION ALL THE TIME approach in the last arc is an obvious storytelling fault, but as a no doubt soon to be ignored bit of structural work it’s not half bad: the goofy future kids and extradimensional kids are here, and they’ve adapted to the challenges of their new, frantic landscape well.

• In a neat inversion of All Star Superman’s pacifist logic, Superman brawls his way through these stories, solving problems with sheer brute force and tenacity until the final arc. This linear approach to problem solving is obviously apropos and it also makes explicit the idea of Superman as a fantasy of impossible force made real. The not-entirely-resolved thematic throughline of Morrison’s run involves matching Superman’s power up against the power of the mob (peep just how often large groups of people intervene in the conflicts in this series), and linking both of those things with the power of journalism, i.e. with the way that narrative power can be converted into ACTUAL POWER.  The suggestion seems to be that wielding the impossible force of “Superman” against the prevailing forces of the world is possible, but requires the contribution of EVERY LAST ONE OF OUR LOYAL READERS, hence the fact that the last story can only be resolved with audience participation.

• Of course, as I said, none of this is quite (explicitly) resolved in the comic itself, and even when Morrison uses all of his daintiest framing devices in the last arc, it’s not quite enough to disguise the fact that this is 4D flower is blooming in the toxic graveyard world of corporate comics. Issue #18 of this comic hit like a car through the front counter of a book shop, but despite the best efforts of lE laK, nosirroM tnarG, selaroM sgaR and the rest, I never found myself mistaking Action for an argument…

UNIDENTIFIED QUOTE

Yeah, umm… yeah, no…  Yeah, sorry it looks like Disembodied Narratorbot X-15735 isn’t working.  Sorry, Gary Lactus here.  Right.  This is SILENCE!#53… No 54.  SILENCE!#54.  Me and Beast read some comics and talked about them.  Get excited!  Woooo!  Cor!  I’m waving my arms around merrily!  What a lovely time we’re all about to have as we listen.

click to download SILENCE!#54

SILENCE! is proudly sponsored by the two greatest comics shops on the planet, DAVE’S COMICS of Brighton and GOSH COMICS of London.

Here’s a brand new Cindy & Biscuit strip for you. I’ll be doing these on a semi-regular basis here on Mindless Ones.

Also, don’t forget to get yourself a copy of the brand new Cindy & Biscuit no.3 from my shop at Milk The Cat. You can pick up my other comics while you’re there.

SUCK MY FAT ONE, YOU CHEAP DIME-STORE HOOD!

Lo! What light by yonder window breaks? It is the irradiated glow of the small town that Disembodied Narratorbot X-15735 has just obliterated with his I-Beams and patented Molecular Prolapsotron 5000! And all before breakfast? Disembodied Narratorbot X-15735 is a busy bee, make no mistake! But the fleshy ones did not come here to hear my genocidal grandstanding – no! They came here for the aural assault & battery charge that is….SILENCE!

<ITEM>The Silence! News arrives like a mugger in the park at night, makes off with your valuables but leaves you with ALL the hot headlines. Beastman & Lactenberg INFORM.

<ITEM>Shhhh. Quiet! Or we will wake the fledgling Reviewniverse. TOO LATE IT’S AWAKE!!! Look into it’s eyes and you will see…Nemo: Heart Of Ice from Uncle Alan and Brother Kevin, Avengers: Age Of Ultron from Brian Ultron Bendis, Glory, Dial H, Red She-Hulk, The Answer, Justice League, Fashion Beast, the Walking Dead One-Shots, Legend Of The Dark Knight, Winter Soldier, and Building Stories (kinda). Oh, and Gary Gysin (the poet of our generation) reviews Joe Casey’s Sex.

Okay, so that’s that. Now Disembodied Narratorbot X-15735 has to do the washing up and think sad Morrissey-thoughts, so be off with you fleshy scamps. Happy listening!

click to download SILENCE!#53

SILENCE! is proudly sponsored by the two greatest comics shops on the planet, DAVE’S COMICS of Brighton and GOSH COMICS of London.

Being an irregular series wherein I spotlight some particularly beautiful cover runs, from some comics you might have forgotten about, or never seen before. This time it’s Andy Helfer and Bill Sienkiewicz / Kyle Baker’s wonderfully gonzo and short lived 80’s version of The Shadow.

Of all the radical character reinventions of the mid-80’s ‘mature’ boom, the Andy Helfer helmed Shadow series was one of the most brazenly strange; quirky, black-hearted and surreal, with gorgeous art from Bill Sienkiewicz and a young Kyle Baker. Following Howard Chaykin’s controversial mini-series Blood & Judgement, that reimagined the steely eyed pulp vigilante for the smart and cynical 1980’s, Helfer took the set up and ran with it.  He also stripped out some of the weird misogyny and nihilism from the title, bringing in a healthy living sense of surrealism. This was a black hearted, New York art school comic, masquerading as a superhero comic, and it was thrillingly unusual as a monthly read. It lasted 24 issues, before DC pulled the plug on it, after facing severe backlash from ardent fans, and pressure from the owners of the trademark. It’s possibly my favourite of the slew of character reinventions from the late 1980s; it’s wild, creepily unsettling and beautifully drawn throughout.

Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s a brand new Cindy & Biscuit strip for you. I’ll be doing these on a semi-regular basis here on Mindless Ones.

Also, don’t forget to get yourself a copy of the brand new Cindy & Biscuit no.3 from my shop at Milk The Cat. You can pick up my other comics while you’re there.