Mindless Ones

Just a couple of things before we dive in: keen minds have already pored over this issue, so I don’t intend to cover all the bases, instead I’ve decided to offer up a subjective and personal response (nothing new there, then), served up with some bat-thoughts you won’t have read anywhere else. Also, I haven’t included the ads as *pages*. Has anyone noticed DC was generous enough to grant us 24 pages of story this month? I don’t know if that means they’re getting stingier with the specials, or if they’re getting more generous with the regular books. Regardless, big boys, can we have our comics this fat all the time now please?

And now, without further ado….

‘To the Batmobile, let’s go!’

Annotatin’ action after the jump…

SUPERMAN SAYS “NO!” TO DRUGS

It was 2005 when I decided to paint my walls ASS pink and give up dope.

I was a smug bastard about it too.

I think the catalyst for it had something to do with a very nasty about of drug fuelled morbid self-analysis, which saw me pacing my then matchbox of a bedroom, backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards, for at least half an hour, in an attempt to disperse the soul-shredding anxiety and paranoia, through, if anyone should have really been spying on me via evil satellite link, embarrassing levels of exercise. Thankfully the munchies eventually kicked in, the clouds lifted and I decided enough was enough. It would be the last time I raided the fridge for Ryvita and sweetcorn relish (anything tastes good when your in the throws of, as my Mum’s friend put it, ‘the delicious eating’) at four in the morning, and it would be the last time I performed like a crazy monkey-man for the entertainment of the evil bastard demons plaguing my befuddled noggin.

After that everything shifted.

More after the jump…

So, yeah, that didn’t work out very well.

But you know what did?

This strip, entitled ‘Now Showing’, was the first peek at Nicholas Gurewitch’s wonderful The Perry Bible Fellowship that I ever had, and I wasn’t quite sure if I’d got it quite right.

More after the jump…

Let me get a few things clear: I don’t have a bloody clue who Talky Tawny is. I’ve never encountered an Atomik Knight before (either in the DCU or during a afternoon of live roleplay). Christ, I even know fuck all about the New Gods.

AND I DON’T CARE.

For those that do care, I say this: Why on Great Cthulhu’s soon to be trampled Earth do you give a monkeys?

More after the jump

Aww, who am I kidding? I always loved the jokercopter.

Especially in the first issue of Grant’s new run. Now I don’t know if it was included as a direction in the panel description, but there’s something so Outer Church about the blank, *eyeless* goggles the pilot wears. I couldn’t help wondering, ‘Who is that guy? Where did the Joker get him from?‘ But it wasn’t in some wanky, anally retentive comics fan kinda way, it was more, uh…*fearful* is probably the right word. The dude was just plain creepy and his anonymity made the whole thing that little bit more delicious. Ditto the copter itself. No backstory. No explanation. Just like in the old days. We’re expected to just take the thing at face value. It’s the Joker, he has special supervillain vehicles: nuff said. But this is the post-DKR age and everything needs a rationalisation, doesn’t it? Providing a mature readers-style take on this shit has become so important over the last decade or so and it’s got to the point where things have come full circle. In this reader’s estimation, mystery has, once again, become the most important ingredient in any good superbook. Modern comics readers/stories are so overburdened by the weight of our need to justify and apologise for all the sumptuous, childish conceits (spandex, superhorses, Robins, etc.) that flooded the superstories of yesteryear, that in the end the only antidote for this exhausted trend has to be ? cranked up to the power of n.

More after the jump

I don’t know how I could’ve missed it. They arrived in Spain, for God’s sake! I had visions of Indiana Jones style adventures in ancient spanish forts – I think there could’ve been nazis – but clearly I am t3h fule. Where else would our merry band of wreck heads end up on their european jaunt but Ibiza? I mean, where would they be without the distant thrumming bass, the all night bars and dingy alcoves just off the heaving, red lit dancefloor, sweat plop-plopping on their foreheads? It’s the young liar’s natural habitat, only just as hot outside the clubs and soundtracked not by Sonic Youth or the Pixies, but by Paul Oakenfold and Arsenal football club chants.

And, before I get into this issue’s tunes in detail, this is something I feel I have to address.

More after the jump

I’m very definitely not the best choice for a weekly reviewer. I’m extremely narrow in terms of the number of comics I’ll pick up each week (prefering to buy trades and graphic novels as opposed to individual issues), and I really dislike most of what passes for superhero fiction, so I’ve opted out of sharing any responsibility for our regular (!?!) review section, but it doesn’t look like anything’s going to emerge this week unless I man up…

And here we are.

More after the jump

In 2005, when I was 29, I underwent a second teenhood, and my flat at the time was more like a non-stop party than anything resembling a home. Seriously. You couldn’t get any sleep on a Friday night, and when you’re expected to go to work at 10 o clock the next day, that’s no fun at all. Having said that, I really enjoyed rolling in four hours afterwards and joining in with the drug-bleached bedlam. There’s no way, just three short years later, I could keep up with myself then, and that’s probably for the good, but it doesn’t change the fact that it was a great deal of fun while it lasted. Obviously we had very little money, and we were all boys, so the flat was always a fucking state and the decor and furnishings were sparse and basic to say the least. Inspite of this, however, I was always fairly house-proud – I just had to figure out how to spruce up the living room cum kitchen on a tight budget.

So I raided my comic book collection and 100% came to the rescue.

More after the jump

Oh, Joy!

Those from the mid-eighties’ school of Bat-writing – people, in short, who are still obsessed by DKR and the terms ‘darkpain-sex’ and trenchcoat-rape’ – generally dislike the Penguin. His wacky rubber-duckmobiles and funny pear shaped gait don’t sit well with the mature reader, so he’s fallen out of favour recently. Sure, there’s the odd die hard Penguin fan out there, but his recent reinvention as a shady nightclub owner indicates that fandom in general has no interest in him as a real supervillain. And what do we say to that?

For shame!

More after the jump