Mindless Ones

Issue six of our weekly newsletter went out early this morning, ft: Andor; The Blob; The Black Casebook; Andrew & Steven; Suede; PAAI; and Ray Vaughn.

This edition was put together by The Beast Must Die, Bobsy, Botswana Beast, Dan Cox, Gary Lactus, Illogical Volume and others. Previous issues have also featured work by Ad, Andrew Hickey and Paul Jon Milne. As Tegan O’Neil said, “Y’all need to pay attention whenever the Mindless Ones speak…“

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Best Batpod or bestest Batpod? You can support Walt on Patreon, or by getting your own rubber Batsuit made up and joining him as he patrols the city at night. 

You bring a lot of different theoretical approaches to comics in your show. Can you remember the first comic book that got your brain fizzing like that?

I first got into comics when I was in middle school thanks to an online friend with an FTP, so like any teenaged boy in the Aughts I gravitated toward comics with “Hell” in the name. It would be years before I understood the nuances of Mignola’s inking or why the Brits hated Maggie Thatcher so much, but the blend of folklore, pulp, history, and the occult in both Hellboy and Hellblazer instantly enchanted me.

(I’ll never forget reading the Newcastle issue of Hellblazer around the same time that I was first assigned Hamlet in school, seeing the demon say “Get thee to a nunnery,” and realizing that there was no inherent divide between fine literature and disreputable comic books.)

Was The Black Casebook always conceived of as a podcast?

Yep! It was inspired directly by my college buddy Nat Yonce’s show Collective Action Comics and Connor Goldsmith’s X-Men podcast CEREBRO, both of which I was listening to obsessively in 2021. Quietly fuming whenever Nat (playfully) slandered Batman had already given me the idea to do my own Batman podcast to correct the record, and when Nat reached out to have me do a guest episode about the politics of Batman—including fronting me the cash to buy a decent mic—my path was set. I finished recording my first episode directly after that interview. Blame him!

You’ve crossed over with Collective Action Comics, but do you feel part of much of a scene with other people talking about the form? 

I do, thankfully. Nat immediately welcomed me into his circle of lefty comics fans; Cole, Stu, and Nicole of the Marvelous! Or: The Death of Cinema podcast welcomed me into their MCU opposition movement; and more established writers like you Mindless Ones and Travis Hedge Coke welcomed me into the ranks of comics critics who like to do more than summarize new issues. I don’t know if it constitutes a scene, exactly, but I’ve been fortunate to join the somehow-not-insignificant quorum of Marxist comics fans on the internet. (Deniz Camp is actually a tulpa we summoned into existence a few years back—that was a fun afternoon.)

I’d like to get to know more folks in the industry itself, but I also don’t want to pull any punches for the sake of preserving connections or advancing my own career, such as it is. I never want to be in a situation where I have to tiptoe around, say, Tom King’s feelings in order to maintain access to writers and artists I admire.

Top 5 Bat artists? 

(Honorable mentions: Matt Wagner, Marshall Rogers, Paul Pope, Frank Miller)

5. Norm Breyfogle

4. Greg Capullo

3. Tim Sale

2. Darwyn Cooke

1. David Mazzucchelli

Top 5 Bat writers?

(Honorable mentions: Steve Englehart, Archie Goodwin, Alan Grant, Paul Dini) 

5. Peter Milligan

4. Scott Snyder

3. Darwyn Cooke

2. Frank Miller

1. Grant Morrison

What’s next for The Black Casebook?

More episodes, God willing. 2024 was my Rick Wakeman iridescent cape era of unsustainably long, self-indulgent episodes, so I’ve been trying to figure out ways to get the show back down to a manageable length (and more satisfying release schedule). I’ve learned by now not to promise too much, but I do hope to incorporate more interviews and guest episodes so as not to deprive my beloved listeners. I’m also working on some creative projects where I can, but those are, to quote my friend Sid Hudgens, off the record, on the QT, and *very* hush-hush.

Finally, if you had to fight any Batman villain who would it be?

The Riddler. I’m not sure I could take him, but I’d love the opportunity to find out.

***

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Guitar/not guitar: Life Without Buildings, Whin, Guisers, Even Sisters. His latest solo album, The Vallum, is released 20th June 2025.

What have you learned about making music since Life Without Buildings finished?

There’s a few different ways I could answer that. I was talking to a friend who’s a visual artist a while ago. He had stopped making art for a while, and I’d stopped making music for quite a long time, and we both found that when we stopped making things we went a bit mad. And so he was sort of forced back into making stuff, and in a way that helped with things like impostor syndrome, because he had the excuse that he had to make stuff or his mental health went down the pan. And it was a bit the same for me, I discovered I was actually just a lot more healthy when I was making music. I’d filled the hole with other stuff but it wasn’t really working.

In more practical terms, over the years I’d tried various times to get music theory to stick. I’m a typical guitarist, completely self-taught and I only had the most basic theory necessary to communicate to other self-taught musicians – you know, ‘play E here’ or whatever. So the Lwb stuff comes out of that post-punk tradition, which I think is a very rich thing where musicians really invented their own ways of playing.

But at certain times I’d found that to be a bit limiting – you tend to sort of plateau and start boring yourself. And I’d started to listen to a lot of jazz, and to want to understand more about it. I particularly wanted to understand how harmony works – how chord progressions are built, that sort of thing – so I started reading a bit about jazz harmony for the guitar. And quite quickly I came across these things called shell chords, which are sort of cut-down chords with just what you need to play rhythm over a band, like two or three notes. And the shapes were really really similar to a lot of the stuff I’d been playing in Lwb (although I used open strings to make sort of ringing drones alongside the notes that created the harmonic movement). So that was a route into understanding a bit of music theory, and from there I was able to build on that and develop a more confident understanding of what I was doing, what approaches I could take, how to teach myself stuff when I got bored. That’s been the major change I think, that’s most affected how I play and approach music.

A few years down the line, how do you feel about Lwb’s ‘The Leanover’ having its TikTok moment? 

Well in part it helped to buy the equipment I used to make the more recent records, so I’m grateful for that! But it was nice, it coincided with the 20th anniversary of the record, so there was a bit of press and stuff. I think the nicest thing was what Sue said about it: at the time Lwb were active, the music press and really the whole scene was very male-dominated. Sue got a fair bit of stick, and we got bored to death with people comparing her to Björk and Clare Grogan, as if the salient feature of what she did was that she had a high voice, you know. But for Sue, who has a teenage daughter, to see young women taking control of a piece of work she’d made and using it as a tool for self-expression was I think really nice for her, maybe even changed how she’d thought about the whole experience.

What’s been the most surprising thing about your more recent collaborations in Whin, Guisers and Even Sisters?

Really just that collaboration can be such an enormous joy. I remember when we were doing the Whin track ‘Kris‘, very early on, we thought it needed something else and I asked my friend Fritz Welch, who is a percussionist and improviser, to contribute something and he sent us this absolutely incredible percussion track. I was literally jumping about the room with joy when I heard it. That’s happened a lot with Whin – we’ve used other musicians a lot, especially a guy called Craig Mulholland I know who’s a visual artist but as obsessed with music as we are. He’s contributed a lot of amazing synth parts; he’s always quite nervous about it because he has no musical training at all, but they’re always amazing. He also produced the Guisers version of Patti Smith Group’s ‘Easter’, which I absolutely love.

The core of Guisers is me and Isobel McKenna, who’s also my bandmate in Even Sisters, which is a very purely collaborative thing and can be really exhilarating when it takes off.

This is maybe a bit tangential, but there was a sort of ‘aha’ moment in Whin when we played the track ‘Morning‘ together. I’d never considered myself a good enough musician to improvise with other players, but I’d sort of realised that even if I didn’t have a lot of control over melody, harmony etc, I could control things like touch, pacing, timbre. And that opened up the more directly collaborative stuff, like Even Sisters (even though I don’t play guitar in that project). 

You’ve talked before about playing music as meditation – can you say more about the sort of space you’re trying to create?

I should say I’ve never done any sort of ‘formal’ meditation, so I don’t want to be presumptuous. I mean meditation in a couple of senses: one in that particular pieces quite often start as sort of meditations on something, a chord structure or a little melody; and two that the experience of music both as a listener and a musician has always been about that feeling of being ‘inside’ it, for me. So that’s what I’m chasing, really – can I disappear into what I’m playing, be emotionally moved by it, be carried along. So I suppose that’s the kind of landscape I’m trying to create for listeners – something immersive, deep, involving. 

It’s harder to talk about, but there is a sort of devotional, sacramental aspect to it as well. There’s a moment at the beginning of Mark Hollis’s solo record that I’ve spoken about before – about 20 seconds of silence where he’s just … preparing, I guess. And that feels really important to me, that you would be mentally, spiritually preparing yourself to engage in a sacramental act. I think that came out in at least a couple of tracks on The Vallum –  a devotional aspect, if that doesn’t sound too pretentious.

I don’t always want that though, of course! Once I’d finished mastering the new record I’d pretty much had as much Serious Music as I could take and I just wanted to listen to really lightweight, fun stuff for a while.

How does your new album, The Vallum, develop your approach? 

There are technical developments, in that I’ve got more confident in my playing, and that I have a beautiful amp that my Whin bandmate Martin Henry built for me (in the chassis of the Fender Concert that I used in Lwb). So I think there’s a bit more power and assertiveness in the sounds and the playing. There are also overdubs on almost every track – there’s only one ‘solo’ guitar track. I got a Hohner Pianet and a Yamaha YC20 combo organ and they’re used a lot on the record, rather than the VST instruments that I used for the overdubs on The Rain Room; there’s something really attractive about playing and recording real, old instruments. I also got a 1962 Dynachord tape echo, so that’s on there a fair bit as well.

Other than that I think it shakes out quite similarly in terms of the shape and content, but it’s sort of taken further in each direction: there are quite highly-worked things and then things which are very pure performance on The Rain Room, but on The Vallum that equates to something like the track ‘Spiral’, which is very long, very worked-out, lots of overdubs, and then something like ‘Witch’, which is about as pure a performance piece as you can get, almost a Fluxus thing really.

***

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Writer/art-witch, Macbeth (2023), Sycamore (2024), Triskelion (2018). Their New Chapter Tarot is spectacular – creators are struggling to get money from Liminal 11, but you can find readings and more on Briggs’ Patreon!

What power do you find in old stories and archetypes?

Mystery. The power of possibility and unknowability. I find comfort in old stories that were written before things like capitalism took hold of culture. There’s something about an archetype that came about in a world I have no context for, but somehow still speaks to me as a human having a human experience. And thru the process of retelling old stories, the teller leaves a mark; they are shored up by thousands of mends and alterations.

How do you determine what shape your work should take?

Prepare for the most Art School answer possible. I’m making art in collaboration with the materials themselves. This is why I prefer analog methods; absolutely no shade to digital art, it’s just not my cup of tea. The found collage materials, shitty quality markers, bits of detritus I found on my desk all contribute something I can’t control to the work. Which I love. The other thing I think about is “what is this piece really about?” There’s what is said or intellectualized, and then what is felt. The form of the work is trying to express what is felt.

You’ve talked about how you cast yourself in the “best part” for your adaptation of Macbeth. What was the most enjoyable part of that performance, and was there any aspect of it that was daunting?

Honestly, the Self-Indulgent Time was great. When I started adapting Macbeth I didn’t have a publisher and there was no guarantee I’d land one. So why not be Lady Macbeth and fulfill a teenage daydream? Why not pack the pages full of references to my favorite medieval art?

And then the most daunting challenge: the Self-Indulgent Time. A comic creator, self inserting into their comic; groundbreaking. I’d oscillate between “I’m having so much fun!” and “I’m so cringe!”. With some distance, I can accept both as true.

Can you see yourself adding more autobiographical stories to Sycamore in the future?

Yes! I’m doing it now, actually. After a long period of creative burnout I’m making short auto-bio comics again.

What helps keep you going in a world that won’t stop piling EVENTS on EVENTS?

SO MANY EVENTS. After the last US election I decided to focus on building community, and I’m so glad I did. Making meaningful connections with folks in my local community has kept the horrors at bay and given me concrete actions to take. There’s a dash of “fuck you, I’m surviving this” in the mix, as well.

Finally, and most importantly, what’s the best thing about cats?

Their WHIMS. You know a cat trusts you when they start making weird little demands of you. My cat Malkina needs ice in the water fountain, to be praised for being excellent at business while walking all over my partner’s desk, and is inconsolable when I can’t make the squirrels appear outside her favorite window. I love how you can see them crunching the numbers in their little walnuts about how to communicate to me, a sub-par cat, their latest whim.

Keen as we are to take what comfort we can in these dark hours, the Mindless Ones will be at Thought Bubble 2024 in Harrogate this weekend. We’ll be at tables B3-4 in DSTLRY Hall on Saturday 16th and Sunday 17th November, providing maps to places that may or may not exist to weary travellers.

Here’s one:

A bloom of ungodly beauty in a world of holy tragedy, Leckie / Bone Chanter will be with us this weekend. Keepers of sweet secrets and keen-eyed sailors already know about Wraithlands, “a dark fantasy tabletop roleplaying game set on the cursed celtic island of Nullona, a mist-sodden conquered land of giant beasts, desperate villages, haunted bogs and daemonic landowners.” It’s a gorgeous premise, play-tested by legends from near and far, and brought to life by the gnarly whin of Leckie’s prose and art Paul Jon Milne (remember him?) that hints at ragged wounds and muck-damp landscapes yet to be uncovered.

The version of Wraithlands on sale this weekend is 161 page paperback.

As you can see, it’s a handsome volume. Perhaps even more handsome than the horde of Mindless Men who will be behind the table flogging it this weekend.

Because we are nothing if not enthusiasts for ritual, the Mindless Ones will be at Thought Bubble 2024 in Harrogate this weekend. We’ll be at tables B3-4 in DSTLRY Hall on Saturday 16th and Sunday 17th November, trading gnomic wisdom for earthy security.

A living totem of a masculinity untroubled by hate, Dan Cox has been a fixture of the Mindless Ones table for many years now. His stimulating musk and warm embrace have kept us going through some brutal hangovers over the years, and his comics might just get you through the dark of the year if you’re lucky.

We’ve interviewed Dan alongside his Hitsville UK collaborator John Riordan at least twice previously, and I’ve written at length about Hitsville at length here. If that last sentence seems familiar, that’s probably because I used a version of it while hyping up John’s work yesterday.

But enough of the past! What will Dan have with him this year?

As the author of two (excellent) Pocket Chillers it pains me to admit that “Jeff” is the best in the series, but who could argue with “Jeff” after meeting it in the street? A collaboration with the mighty Fraser Geesin, “Jeff” agitates the reader’s imagination by carefully controlling what they see, prompting them to ask why the fuck everyone else in the story is reacting like that. Geesin’s mastery of character acting makes sure that Cox’s ingenious concept feels plausible, like something that might just keep going in your own room when you put the comic down – trust me, once you read the thing, there will be no thought more horrible.

Described by Cox as “an experimental zine,” Weird Kids Like McCoy doesn’t have a lot in common with “Jeff” on first glance. “‘You’re trapped in a horrible house, a terrible relationship, an awful job. Maybe remembering the comics you liked as a kid will help” – this prompt calls to mind comics in the vein of Enigma and Flex Mentallo, and the Weird Kids itself makes good on that promise, but this is no retread of past metafictions. A close reading of the book will reveal a layer of formal play subtly in line with the techniques of “Jeff”, further marking out Cox as one of the most exciting and experimental comics makers around at the moment.

Rounding out Cox’s offerings will be some classy tote bags, and free material from “Pagans Against AI“.

On a table full of such aggrieved, conversational and idiosyncratic works, I can’t think of anything more fitting.

As you might have gathered if you’ve been looking at the site over the past couple of days, the Mindless Ones will be at Thought Bubble 2024 in Harrogate this weekend. We’ll be at tables B3-4 in DSTLRY Hall on Saturday 16th and Sunday 17th November, trading our handmade dreams for the purest product of the imagination we know of – your money.

Dan White won’t be with us at tables B3-4 this year. You see, the artist formerly known as The Beast Must Die is a real boy now. Oni press published Cindy and Biscuit last year, and since then he’s been a true fancy man, with his own fancy pants, and trousers too. If he takes a break from swigging Dom Pérignon at all this weekend, our good friend will be sitting… all the way over at table B2, DSTLRY Hall.

Despite the fact that he’s sitting one table away from us, and is therefore our mortal enemy, Dan is one of the best cartoonists around. Cindy and Biscuit: We Love Trouble showcases the range of skills Dan has built up over the years. As an action cartoonist, his compositions are genuinely propulsive. As a horror artist, his comics have reliably made me feel unexpectedly vulnerable in my own home. And as a storyteller, Dan can make you laugh just by the way he draws Biscuit’s cute dog face, or make you feel a world of unseen hurt with a couple of stray lines.

In addition to his Cindy and Biscuit wares, Dan will also be selling his new collection of Freaky Deakies, which showcases his lovingly coloured late night doodles, a real testament to both his raw visual imagination and his carefully honed craft.

Rounding out Dan’s offerings way up there in the giddy heights of table B2 is a collection of his single page Insomnia comics.

Like Terminus, Insomnia first ran on Mindless Ones dot com way back in the day. Like that comic, it’s a real masterclass in precision, but where Terminus was drawn in the playful, unsettling style that Dan would fully develop in Cindy and Biscuit, Insomnia made use of a series of painterly effects to get across is haunted absurdity. I can’t wait to see how this print edition looks, and if you’ve never read these strips before, I fully recommend that you give them a try.

In a heartwarming display of brotherhood, Dan will be putting his bucket of fizz down and putting his The Beast Must Die mask back on for the SILENCE! to Astonish panel at 2pm on Saturday 16th November in Panel Room 2.

The Beast will be joined in this endeavour by his trusty co-hosts, Gary Lactus and “Affronted” Al Kennedy, and by special guests Chrissy Williams, Ram V, David Brothers and Stephanie Phillips. Expect odd questions, inexplicable challenges, and totally unexpected and double plus special guests in this, the ninth occurrence of comicdom’s most pointless and shambolic panel show.

Thanks to our inability to arrange a piss-up in a brewery somewhere smack bang in the middle of the nation, the Mindless Ones will be at Thought Bubble 2024 in Harrogate this weekend. We’ll be at tables B3-4 in DSTLRY Hall on Saturday 16th and Sunday 17th November, trading our dazzling wares for coins, card transactions and wry smiles.

An angel in a pack of foul wretches, John Riordan will be with us once again this year. Why, he’s even made his own map to show where he’ll be sitting! It’s better formatted than the one we’ve used in our other posts, but we won’t hold that against him. Unloved creatures that we are, we can all still appreciate a little taste of the light.

We’ve interviewed John alongside his Hitsville UK collaborator Dan Cox at least twice previously, and I’ve written at length about Hitsville here. John’s a charming lad, as you can tell from his efforts to elevate the discourse that follows…

1. Who are you and why are you lying to us?

I am the Spectre of John Riordan, comic artist, catastrophist and William Blake nut. You may know him from his cult collaboration with Dan Cox, Hitsville UK and his solo work ‘Oh God what is happening and is it somehow my fault?’ I am lying because that’s what Spectres do.

2. What’s the best thing you’ll be selling at Thought Bubble 2024?

In a radical break with recent tradition I have a new comic. I’ll be selling LOS, the first instalment of my long gestated, labour-of-love comic based on the life of William Blake. It’s a 32-page, full-colour combination of pencil, ink, watercolour and digital trickery, and incorporates some Blake-style prints that I did on a replica 18th century printing press. As you do.

3. What are you looking forward to picking up at the convention?

I’m looking forward to picking up new stuff from my fellow Mindless Ones Fraser Geesin, Paul Jon Milne and that weird David Allison guy (do I get to call myself an honorary Mindless One these days? Surely I’ve put in the hours). Other than that, not sure really. One of the things that I really like about Thought Bubble is that I’ll inevitably discover wonderful new comics that I had no idea existed and filly my suitcase with them. Although I expect what I’m most likely to pick up is Covid. Ah well…

[EDITOR’S NOTE: Initiation into the Mindless involves an unplugged fridge, a draft of human piss, and a shroud of uncut darkness. Whether John has committed to this ritual is knowledge only our fellow adepts may share.]

4. …

I notice there is no question 4.

‘what Demon

Hath form’d this abominable void

This soul-shudd’ring vacuum? —Some said

“It is Urizen”’

Others said it was Illogical Volume. Next!

5. What sweetens your dreams?

Music, friendship, art, weird humans unable to resist following their own fascinations and making strange new things as a result.

6. What sours your nightmares?

Climate catastrophe, fascism, financialised capitalism, narcissism masquerading as power, power masquerading as religion, peanut butter.

7. Who will star in the inevitable Disney adaptation of your work and why will it be Gary Barlow’s giant son? 

How tall is Gary Barlow’s son? I’ve not looked. Presumably all that tax avoidance went into buying him protein shakes? If you put Mark Owen on Barlow Jr’s shoulders would they be the height of two average men? Blake was relatively short, but he had a bit of a thing about giants, so Toby Jones to play Blake and Gary Barlow’s son can play ’The Giant Albion’, and erm, Dexter Fletcher to play John’s Spectre. Er, that is, me. Lies lies lies.