Mindless Ones

And so ends part one of our batbook. I hope you like it. I can’t tell you how fun it is writing this stuff, and in my not so humble opinion, it’s a million times better than most superhero comics out there. But then, like all fan-fic people, I’m writing it because it’s what I want to see. This one over-runs by a few pages, but hopefully the book’ll be so popular by the time we get to the fourth installment DC editorial won’t mind! I know I should’ve reigned this monster in, but I want you to be able to read the uncut version. And I wasn’t ripping off Grant – I wrote it before…. YOU KNOW ALL THIS……

There’s lots of fighting this time. Some secrets are revealed. Others will have to wait. There is an overall arc to this stuff.

I’ll get back to some real criticism next week

Hello again.

We start with more apologies (sorry Pillock).

Okay, to begin with, I reiterate: I finished scribbling down this and the next ish at least a couple of days BEFORE I read Final Crisis #7, so any similarities in theme and/or imagery are ACCIDENTAL.

I do not give a fuck for ripping off other writers. Morrison just seems to be ransacking my head at the moment.

OUT, DEMON !

Also: sure, I admit that this one’s pretty continuity heavy, but Damian does emerge from another continuity and I promise this’ll be the last time I bog the story down with it – there’s too much good shit going on in Nu-Gotham to bother with fusty old Brucey for more than a couple of issues. And, yeah, it is all a bit confusing, but this is the penultimate episode of the first arc and things are always supposed to get a little strange at this juncture. I’ll explain everything away next time I promise.

Well….. maybe.

So what have we got this time: bat-zombies, magic spells, more TNT and flying masonry than you can shake a stick it, Supermen Sans Frontieres, the Sensei’s winter retreat and zero fighting.

Something we’ll rectify with #4

Don’t worry – I haven’t gone all Brian Michael Bendis on your ass

“I thought this was, frankly, going to be so far up it’s arse it could taste itself.

It weren’t though.

Really enjoyed this…”

Our hopes and fears for this fan-fic extravaganza captured by our good friend Triplets in the comments thread for part one.

Give these a go, it’s not like Amy doesn’t rush off into fan-fic territory every time he writes one of those Rogue’s Reviews you all seem to love so much. In the opinion of this mindless, this is just as fun, if not more so.

-Zom

Like he said.

My only concern about this one is…. Well, you’ll probably understand what’s thorny about one of the themes about halfway through. I might need to add a bit more dialogue somewhere to prove I’m not a racist. There’s some dodgy ground.

Batman meets the candyfloss horizon after the jump

I honestly never intended for any of you lot to read this guff.

However!

When Zom found out I’d been writing comic scripts in my lazy hours, he insisted I put them up here.

And then he said he thought it might make us look like a bunch of conceited wankers.

And then he decided I should do it anyway.

So, if anyone digs it – I’m not that sure how good any of it actually is  – then you can look forward to seeing more of the same over at our soon to be unleashed sister site for, err, em>creative work</em>. It’ll be called The Warehouse of Broken Dreams, or something. Anything to keep the lawyers away.

Just a few thoughts before we get into this, because I know you’d offer up the life of your sister to read this shit, and we’d better get moving…..

If anyone slogged through our mindless ramblings over on Pillock’s intensely wonderful A Trout in the Milk blog, then you may remember – HOW COULD YOU FORGET?!!?! – me banging on about how much fun it’d be to write a Damian 666 comic. An alternate Batman from the universe next door, but, more importantly, a next generation Batman, would allow for so much more wriggle room – in fact I’d argue he’d demand it! His writer would almost have a duty to extend all the wild bat-conceits, themes and tonalities far, far beyond anything that’d come before. The son of the batverse would necessarily incorporate and reiterate in a far more concentrated and conclusive fashion all the tatty, flailing elements that constitute the present day Batman’s superbody. You really could have it all. And nobody would give a shit, seeing as it could all be dismissed as a *possible future*.

Realistically I’m sure a great deal of fandom would hate the book, but, fuck it, they’d only go and buy it anyway. And weep.

I’m not sure how much to tell you about the strip before we get this show on the road – I don’t want to spoil anything (Oh, the vanity!) – but I figure there’re some things it’d be nice to know (not necessary, I hope you’ll note, but nice). To begin with I want to stress that my Damian, in an attempt to remain truthful to Morrison’s original vision for the character, is far less morally rigid and considerably more ethically and tactically improvisational than his Father. He inhabits the twilight world of a new century where all the old certainties have flown out the window. A shifting Gotham whose suburbs and superscrapers are bleeding into the netherworld (PLEASE DON’T UNDERSTAND ME TOO QUICKLY), and where heroism is a flickering, ephemeral concept in permanent revolution. This is Batman at dusk, metaphorically speaking. Or is it dawn? All the usual suspects will feature – there’s a Robin, a Batmobile, a Batcave and plenty of fighting (I count four fights in the first issue alone, all jammed into 23 pages), but, as Moore describes Miller’s reimagining for his introduction to Dark Knight, ‘it’s all completely different’ (you see! I’m comparing myself to Frank Miller now! My God….). This Batman has a different family set-up – in fact family is pretty much the theme underscoring the first story arc – and is much more at home with all the weird psychedelia and wacky magical shit than Bruce Wayne. There just isn’t the same air of denial surrounding Damian. He’s at home in the DCU, entrenched in ways his predecessor wasn’t, and maybe finds it all kinda fun.

Anyway. Expect to be confused. It all moves pretty fast.

Without further ado:

In which I throw up some random, barely organised/edited thoughts about a couple of comics I think you might’ve read.

A quick preambulatory moan:

Oh the art, the art was as ever a big problem. I’ll let the lovely chaps over at Comics Alliance fill you in on the specifics, all you really need to know is that the central aspects of the issue’s locked room mystery – when the Prof was killed and who did the killing – were obscured by an art error that should have been spotted by the editorial team, or, you know, someone. It’s just not okay that something like that was allowed to slip through, and it makes me wonder exactly what sort of relationship Morrison has with the editorial staff, let alone his artists. Maybe they were just in a big rush, although it’s hard to imagine why given the lead in to this issue.

That aside, I enjoyed 700 in a bitty way, but wasn’t too keen on the book as a whole. The segmented structure helped to legitimise the former response in my mind however, and consequently I feel no shame in taking the annocomment approach. Seems appropriate.

More from me after the jump

Prepare for crisis times five Batman & Robin reviews, as the Mindless Ones take turns to talk jive about the comic that’s shaking the racks! Five reviews over 5 days, starting TOMORROW NIGHT! Could we be more badass?

Prepare for Seaguy Slave of Mickey Eye #3 annocommentations!

Prepare for Captain Britain hyped!

Prepare for Batman 666 #10!

Be prepared!

Prepare!

Now!

It’s four years after the events of Batman 666, and Batman, aided and abetted by a new Robin (a re-wired Dollatron: Damian Wayne’s best pal, supertank and portable batcomputer rolled into one), Ace the Batmobile (half bat-themed Godzilla, half mobile fortress with a detachable head that doubles up as a car) and the kind of technology one would more commonly find in an Ian M Banks novel find themselves battling a new breed of villain in a city teetering on the edge of madness.

The Gotham of tomorrow is a fusion of all its previous incarnations: the playground, the gothic wonderland and the hardboiled urban sprawl. Half its population have floated away into it’s virtual reality suburb, Toytown, and a sizeable percentage of the DCU’s magical community have relocated to its outer fringes. Then there’s the influx of other even weirder immigrants from as near as the Plateau of Leng and as far away as 3,000000,00000,000000000 BC. Throw in the increased degeneration of the natural environment globally, just for good measure, and the city’s beginning to feel like a pressure cooker, where all the lunacy confined to Arkham in bygone years is spilling out. Gotham’s certainly at the centre of something, it’s just that, as yet, nobody seems to have any idea what that might mean.

In the first story arc, Snake Charmer, the Sensei unleashed a reality virus programmed to destroy Toytown and cripple the city by plunging its users/inhabitants into an apocalyptic virtual world in which the new Batman never existed. This virtual assault threatened to fry the brains of Gotham’s online citizenry, until Batman and Robin managed to rewrite the virus’s programming from inside the virtual hell, turning it against its makers and preventing the Sensei and his wife, Agrat Bat Malhat, from detonating a nuke in the city’s docklands. Why did the Sensei decide to show his hand after all this time? Nobody knows, but it’s clear he had a hidden agenda. The word on the street is: ‘apocalypse’.

A BIT MORE PREAMBLE AFTER THE JUMP

This week, instead of the usual preamble, I thought we might go for a straight up ‘story so far’ blurb. Afterall, most of our regular readers will have made up their minds about this strip by now and nothing I can say or do will convince the skeptics, the haterz, or the just plain old don’t-give-a-shitters among you that they should read it. But there’s always newbies flooding into Mindless Ones who deserve a little context, even if they can’t be bothered to read what came before. Do bear in mind though, guys, that there’s an awful lot of stuff you won’t have a clear idea of, a lot of context you WILL miss, and a huge amount of panel description that might not make any sense if you opt to drop in at the top.

THE STORY SO FAR….