Mindless Ones

To be, or not to be. That is the question. These comics I hold… Are they a record of what will be, or only of what may? For if the future is indeed immutably foretold in these short reviews… then my demise is but moments from that confirmation.

Worms: Book The First – Erika Price

Last time I talked about Erika’s work on here I just about got the sense of it over – “It’ll get under your skin. You’ll want it there.”

What this doesn’t quite capture is how her work feels once it’s worked its way past your psychic barriers. A line from this issue presents itself: “That night rippled through the whole city.” I knew this comic was the real stuff, the best stuff, by the third page, when the backdrop to a confession seemed to writhe and twist in front of my eyes across three rancid panels.

Erika’s comics have always been warped formal marvels, with carefully worried lines stacked on top of each other in patterns both intricate and suggestive of some sort of deeper unravelling, but there’s a mounting sense of dread to Worms that might just surpass anything she’s done before. Topical stuff, really – a conclave and its aftermath. Dark intimations about the new leader. Stuttering guilt, barked theories, recrimination. Writing to match the art, check the sequence where an internal monologue is put through the shredder while Eulogiuseley sits in front of knife and fork, lost in lost thoughts, feast not yet in front of him: “Have you ever woken up one morning to find your whole world, nay, your whole reality, is rotting away beneath your feet?”

Ripples within ripples within ripples. The whole city. The night. “Have you ever woken up one morning to find your whole world, nay, your whole reality, is rotting away beneath your feet?” There’s a mounting sense of dread to Worms that might just surpass anything Erika’s done before. Did I say that already, before the feast?

Detective Comics Annual 2025 – John McCrea (art), Stefano Raffaele (art), Fico Ossio (art), Al Ewing (script), Lee Loughridge (colours), Triona Farrell (colours), Ulises Arreola (colours), Tom Napolitano (letters)

We famously love a gonzo Bat-epic around here, but do you know what’s a wee bit undervalued in the post four dimensional Bat-squid era? A nice done-in-one mystery with Batman in it. “Detective Comics” they’re calling it, over on whatever cursed platform they’re using to propagate new sales pitches these days.

This annual is a perfect example of the form. Starts with a locked room murder and works its way to a big face-off with the perpetrator by way of a scenic trip to York. Vivid scene setting across its locales, from the hermetic rich man’s world where we begin to the very English churchyard where things get weird. Three artists for three sections so the “art jam” aspect of it doesn’t get too grating. John McCrae’s chapter is the clear stand-out, his work a welcome break from the impacted gothic house style. McCrae’s pages are full of bright pink light and well kent cop faces, all characters drawn with a bit of spring in their limbs, all backdrops rendered like unusually convincing film sets.

The panel above gives the trick away: even when writing a functional Bat-mystery, Al Ewing finds away to bring the uncanny into the story. The Bat’s solid but flexible, y’see – it can solve a crime, beat a magician at his own game, and incorporate Ewing’s current thematic occupation with unfathomable tech fuckery along the way. That’s why it’s the McCrae sequence that really sings. For a few pages in the middle there, the art is clearly every bit as adaptable as the guy with the big cape and the bulging toolkit.

As for computers, “Sophisticated idiots–they do only as they’re told.”

The Return & other short comics – K.Briggs

Already reviewed in a recent issue of the Mindless Ones newsletter – subscribe today if you haven’t already – and now available to order! To borrow some words that aren’t my own:

Briggs doesn’t really make comics like anyone else I know, I think there’s probably a “high Vertigo” ‘95ish influence but it’s not… they are never really narrative driven, I think they are ponderous if you can imagine that not being used pejoratively; a synonym of meditative but that has implications that I find sort of annoying, there’s a strong fine art sensibility that I only know enough about to vaguely recognise and can’t perform any disquisition on really, but I always find the work moving and connecting in ways that are… essentially I think what is done here with colour and collage drawing the eye across simple, diaristic blank verse – everything is everything remember & this is closer to ee cummings than it is to 95%(?) of comics – is what we have always been trying to write about, the art of life, these intercuts and disjunctions are essentially omnipresent in my own experience but to read a story – per my earlier post-Gaiman misgivings about “story” – or even biographical account, it’s incredibly rare to find something that matches the abstruse mind(/less) in action; M John Harrison’s writing about writing anti-biography Wish I Was Here is probably the closest to authentically being inside someone’s head I have chosen to be…

The comic in part is about having things in your head that other people have put there, I awoke with the dreamlike phrase “You have disconnected yourself from your real self” the other day – about my latest sexual frustration probably – it is a feeling or sensation I know and see mirrored here… all the stupid presets folk wanted to put on you, well they were wrong because how the fuck would they know better; the process of building the right life is long, hard, onerous and you will have to be so strong, and the haters and losers can waylay you… here is a pathfinder, though

I’m feeling too close to the page to add much to that right now. What I will say is that the fine art element is in full effect here, as it always has been with Briggs comics, but that The Return is their most immediate experiment in autobiography so far. The tactile aspect that’s always been there in their use of collage matched here by the immediacy of the line, the shape making more urgent than ever; reading all of these strips in one go, it’s possible to feel like the art is streaming directly into your brain.

Weapon X-Men #4 – ChrisCross (pencils), Joe Casey (script), Mark Morales (inks), Yen Nitro (colours), Clayton Cowles (letters)

Last time out: “Blockbuster Comics!” This time: “Nostalgia Comics!” This issue – not read #5 yet cos life is hectic – is apparently built around an old Avengers story I’ve never read. Thankfully Joe Casey and ChrisCross tell the story well enough that a total lack of familiarity with the source material didn’t hold me back. Old school comics crafts’ is back baby. It’s good again. Awoouu (wolf Howl).

One of Casey’s enduring talents as a writer is his knack for centring the things he actually cares about in a corporate comics job. In this issue, it’s the need for purpose itself, a theme that drives the dialogue between Cable and Chamber in this issue. It finds further expression in the motivation of the story’s villain, but – much as it pains me to say it in this, the Aeon of Deadpool – the book’s sharpest idea involves Deadpool failing to arrive at the scene of the action until it’s over. Lack of purpose, you see. The reference to the taxi scenes in the movie is ultimately just lilly-gilding – the fact that the annoyingly irreverent one’s dark bazinga had been thwarted is all that matters.

For all Casey’s tongue-in-cheek talk of showing filmmakers and gamesmiths how it’s done, none of the running about or explosions did much to turn my head this time out. Instead, ChrisCross’ finest moments are all close-ups of our heroes. Lads with weird heids talking to each other… listen, it might not be what I live for but it’s an American art form and in my house we show it the respect it deserves.

BONUS ROUND: I’ve linked to Casey’s newsletter a couple of times already here, might as well throw in a third one to highlight his post on Alan Moore’s Judgement Night, OJ Simpson Parallels, and Sentinel. “No one talked about how bizarre it was to arbitrarily turn the stalwart, respected Black hero into a cold-blooded murderer… and how deliberate a move it was on Moore’s part. Which I still find a little strange.”

Of course, this being the comics biz, this is all by way of build-up to an upcoming story, but it’s still worth a read!

Godzilla vs. Spider-Man #1 – Nick Bradshaw (art), Joe Kelly (script), Rachelle Rosenberg (colours), Joe Caramanga (letters)

A paraphrase of Mister Attack’s response to the trailer for Godzilla vs. Kong (2021): Nae chance the big ape’s holding his own in this one. I wasn’t convinced until I watched the thing and found myself wondering who’d paid Godzilla to pull his punches.

There are many Marvel characters I’d put in the same bracket as Kong, but not Spider-Man, no. That wee guy’s not going to knock the lizard out, but he’s definitely fit to survive an encounter, maybe rescue a few loved ones along the way. Joe Kelly and Nick Bradshaw seem to have a similar idea, and this 1984 flashback does a decent job of alternating between familiar character beats – Peter Parker: shagger! – and the headline novelty of sticking Godzilla in the Venom suit. A properly daft idea, drawn just about straight enough to get over, I reckon. That might just be a childhood memory of Zoids talking though.

Thanks to the many tedious derangements of commerce, superfiction is an area where the ridiculous and the sublime need to work endlessly to find new ways to articulate themselves. Still, it took me a minute to sort out my mixed reaction to this concept. Was I being some sort of Godzilla purist? Did I have either the desire or credentials to back that up if so? Thankfully, yer Chad Nevett managed to explain my twitchy response in a post about a whole other Godzilla crossover book, Godzilla vs. Thor by Jason Aaron and Aaron Kuder:

“[Jason Aaron] is one of those lingering writers from what I’ve long dubbed The Age of Awesome in mainstream superhero comicbooks. The hallmarks of that period are still with us, sometimes for good, often for ill. The overreliance on the multiverse is one such trait; the inclusion of dinosaurs whether it makes sense or not is another; the odd obsession with Groot and MODOK and Deadpool… Thor as fucking Iron Fist… You know it when you see it and, after a period, I grew weary.”

It used to be easier to take joy in these childlike Lego games – “What if a pirate hijacked this spaceship?” – but in an age where this is being presented as a stand-in for human potential, I find myself crying out for entertainment that doesn’t expect me to be quite so delighted to be an easy mark.

Shame the creative team lay on the editorial asides a bit thick in this issue too. Kills the momentum, makes the winks a little too winky, robs you of the opportunity to enjoy these mild pleasures on their own terms. See Weapon X-Men #4 for an example of how to get the balance right on that one lads!

Metamorpho: The Element Man #6 – Steve Lieber (art), Al Ewing (script), Lee Loughridge (colours), Ferran Delgado (letters)

Ever done Fiona Apple’s ‘Extraordinary Machine‘ doon the karaoke? Phenomenal song, needs the most attention to cadence of anything this side of a rap song, middle eight’s too high for me but I’m convinced it’s noble to try.

Anyway, I was thinking of ‘Extraordinary Machine’ when reading the final issue of Ewing/Lieber’s Metamorpho. There’s a collected edition on the way, apparently, but I’m not oblivious to the imagery, from the choice of Solaris as a villain to the placement of our hero in the sun. I want another six issues so the whole thing can be bound together in a bricklike Absolute edition and stacked beside my Absolute All Star Superman. Two different fables about the swift and changeable worlds we live in: “I’m good at being uncomfortable so can’t stop changing all the time.”

Think about it. You know it makes (non)sense.

Before this issue I’d have said that Metamorpho was less certain than Superman but also more pliable. Another way of phrasing it: every issue of Ewing and Lieber’s Metamorpho has been charged up with Jimmy Olsen potential, where only one issue of All Star Superman resonated on that particular frequency. This all sounds groovy, but remember, “pliable” can mean a lot of things over time.

Kudos to Steve Lieber for that immaculate Fletcher Hanks pastiche, and for being the extraordinary machine at heart of this book from day one! It’s been a trip, boyce.

Ultimate X-Men #16 – Peach Momoko

A gorgeous comic, this. Hard to keep its shape in my mind though. I start every issue as though it was my first, with little recollection of what came before.

There’s a bit of chalk graffiti goes up round my way. It never lasts long but I enjoy the way its soft bright light flickers in and out of my usual routines. I like how it’s gone when the rain falls too, the feeling that it’s marked those period where we were out of it for a minute, that at some point a separate pattern might reveal itself through these dots and dashes. Never expected to see this mirrored in an X-Men comic, of all things, but here we are.

Green Snake chapters 1 – 3 – Claire Napier

As a critic, editor and artist, Claire Napier has an eye for the sort of details that your brain will want to spend time worrying away at. As you might expect, then, her Patreon introduction for this comic includes one perfect bit of scene setting – “I couldn’t think of how to tell it without being a Kurosawa weeb.” The first three chapters make good on this, telling a story that’s contained in a very limited space where everything that’s introduced is deeply suggestive.

Sometimes literally. For example:

I was hooked as soon as the net torso covering and crotch bulge got this showcase here, the way the outfit creates a sense of promise that is both enticing and off-putting at the same time. Chapter three has introduced discord and weaponry, which… if we’re talking about the essentials of craft: perfect stuff for the introductory stages of a story, eh? Highly rekkymended, can’t wait to see where all of these signs are pointing.

Sleep #2 – Zander Cannon

An interesting comparison, in terms of how narrative signposting can work, this. Sleep is a small town horror story, black and white art with red details being the only things to pop in colour. Mostly, so far, this means blood, paint, glasses – all things pointing towards a horror element we have so far only witnessed the aftermath of.

This is carefully calibrated stuff, and Canon is an exemplary cartoonist and decent dialogue writer. Two issues deep, though, these clear pointers have become largely aggravating to me. I think the issue is that they are so insistent and yet not resonant with anything beyond their own significance. When there’s almost literally a red arrow pointing at the carnage, the mystery can start to feel like the teasing of a bothersome sibling.

Perhaps all of this will pay off spectacularly in issue #3. For now, all I know is I’m tired of seeing red.

Stramash #1 – James Corcoran with Colin Bell

Revisited this one after backing Stramash ’63 on Kickstarter the other month. I enjoyed it a lot when it came out – 2021, a wee break from the near-contemporaneity of the rest of these mini-reviews, allow it – but I remember mostly thinking about in terms of classic (classic) comics. The gangland grotesquery of Dick Tracy, hard men with faces like half-chewed steak. The bone hard noir of Sin City, all trained machismo and hard contrasts. Mebbe a little bit of Eisner in the compositions, that inescapable sense of theatre on every page.

All good stuff, obviously.

This time round it was the lack of narrative certainty that kept me going. Whipping out the shades like it’s CSI: Yer Maw’s House, we can trace this back to Corcoran’s working method, “drawn in my sketchbook in an attempt to be more spontaneous each day sitting down to see where the next page would take me.” This may tie back into the classicism – if you’re improvising it helps to pick some well kent themes to improvise on – but also points a way beyond it. This path leads through localised wide boy patter and into something a bit more unsettling. There’s violence, and what it does to faces, and then there’s the suggestion of something less easily bantered away sitting just there on the surface.

Absolute Martian Manhunter #4 – Javier Rodriguez (art), Deniz Camp (script), Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou (letters)

Say it Destiny’s Child style: Question! Do I give a fuck about the plot of Absolute Martian Manhunter?

And another: Does it matter one way or the other?

Four issues deep, I’m answering “Yes!” and “Yes!” If you clock any uncertainty in my voice, try to remember that I studied English Literature and have never truly recovered. When I read the debut issue of this book, I wasn’t sure about the first question but I was pretty sure it wouldn’t matter, not with art this relentlessly expressive, and certainly not with Camp and Rodriguez working so hard to make those resonances feel like they matter. It’s heady stuff, a careful collaboration between artist and writer that makes every moment feel like an existential breakthrough(/crisis). Let’s bring in another voice here, from friend of the blog Walt of The Black Casebook:

“The beatific, transcendent Martian—a metaphor for John Jones’ existential nausea, perhaps, a way of processing the glimpse of ego death etched permanently onto the surface of his eyes—has awakened the manhunter to the possibility that he might be one node of a universal organism…

“From being unstuck in time, John becomes unstuck in identity, floating through the ideas, feelings, and memories of the people breathing the same air as him. Instead of a voluntary act, like Professor X’s telepathy, John’s psychic abilities manifest like antennae, cluing him into all manner of secrets, like his stressed-out doctor struggling to make it through another shift.”

A lyrical miracle, then, but does any of that mean we have to give a fuck about about plot? A few chapters deep, it seems to me that Absolute Martian Manhunter might just give a fuck whether you give a fuck. There’s a finely tuned tension here between those poetic ambitions and the demands of pulp storytelling that reminds me – high compliment, brace yourself! – of Peter Milligan. The way blocks of colour are integrated into the narrative calls out for a comparison to Shade the Changing Man, but the books this most reminds me of are… Skreemer and Human Target, maybe? Crime stories, mysteries, genre forms that demand motion and discovery, complicated and enhanced by these actions taking place across multiple planes all at once.

So, in this issue, it’s not just that conflicts are given an extra layer of empathetic resonance, it’s that the conflicts have resonances on the science fiction plane as well as the social one. Of course, this aproach comes with its own risks. Having a Martian in your head tuning you into other voices can feel like a plausible metaphor for being so caught up in art, work, and the world that you’re not at home with the people closest to you. All of this becomes somewhat trickier whenever that idea gets literal.

Right now, Absolute Martian Manhunter is working on all of those levels. It’s a pleasure to care about, and I can’t wait to talk about the next issue with myself and others – some verified, some broadcasting into my mind from elsewhere – when the time comes.