Mindless Ones

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!

Annocommentations for issue 1 can be found here and here

Interview with Cameron Stewart can be found here

And so we go at it again, better, stronger and much, much, much later than you could ever have imagined.

Onwards with the annocommentations, which, if you’re visiting us for the first time, you should understand as not being much like conventional annotations…

Are you DEK EYE? Find out after the jump!

So I was reading Living Between Wednesday’s Justify Your Existence column and I just couldn’t help myself. Red rag to a bull.

This is the first installment of our Mindless response, an attempt to justify the existence of each and every one of those limbo bound characters: rogue’s reviews, on the crash cart!

CLEAR! ZAP! THUD!

Cameron Stewart before the commencement of the "breaking process"

Fact file: Cameron Stewart is the artist behind Jason Aaron’s Eisner Award nominated The Other Side; Grant Morrison’s Seaguy, and The Manhattan Guardian; he produced memorable work while collaborating with Ed Brubaker on his Catwoman run; and in 2008 joined forces with his friend Ray Fawkes to produce Apocalipstix for Oni Press.

Stewart also writes and draws the webcomic Sin Titulo.

Cameron has recently returned to Seaguy for the second volume, Slaves of Mickey Eye

We captured Cameron Stewart after many hours spent stalking him through the streets of Montréal, Canada. We then set about beating him with bamboo canes through the thin webbing of the net in which he was held. Cameron withstood the breaking process for 5 days, but ultimately, through clenched teeth, agreed to answer 13 exquisitely crafted questions. He swore he’d die before answering any more.

A braver man I have never met.

Read bitter words spat through blood after the jump

(Part 2 of these annocommentations can be found here)

Words that you might have seen used rather a lot elsewhere in relation to this comic:

Mad
Crazy
Insane
Weird

All fine words I grant you, but sadly they all too often help to close down critical discussion rather than open it up. Hopefully we can do a bit better than that.

When you laugh, when you cry, here comes Mickey Eye!

We’re going to take a look at some FUCK YEAH!* moments and see what makes them tick, and, you know, hopefully get all FUCK YEAH! about ’em all over again/for the first time. Needless to say, here be spoilers. Many, many, many spoilers. Sensitive children may wish to avert their gaze.

Now then, let’s have a look at the Morrison penned, Porter pencilled JLA #3, and a seriously bat [sic] dose of arse kicking

*Credit is due to Dave “Longbox/Society of Dave” Campbell for coming up with the concept

More? FUCK YEAH!

Part 1 here

Daydreaming and trains. A topic I keep coming back to.

Britain has long been in the throes of a difficult and passionate relationship with it’s vast, antique rail network. Delays and overcrowding ride by side in the popular imagination with adventure and freedom, the feeling that the final terminus can still be the Britain of myth, the nation as idyll and possibility. Growing up without a car, a viable and not entirely uncommon experience this side of the Atlantic, I spent more than my fair share of time staring out of train windows watching countryside blur into city blur into countryside. Perhaps the most familiar spectacle, one which has remained a constant over many years, is the view over the rooftops of central London as the South East of England’s railway lines flow together before and beyond Charing Cross.

Daredevil will arrive any minute, I promise

Well done to Daniel Kelly, the winner of our first ever mindless competition. We asked readers to come up with a very special, brand new variety of kryptonite, and Dan bravely rose to the challenge.

Dan, your Superman action figure is in the mail.

The rest of you, read on to discover a Superman who would be at home on the BBC’s Have Your Say pages

Sometime in the nineties the cry rang out: Marvel was gonna put the “character back into comics”.

This was news to me.

As far as I was concerned the Marvelverse, with the possible exception of the X-Men, was still firmly rooted in a pre-Watchmen era. It was only the energizing touch of the man Miller that rescued the company from my utter contempt. DC on the other hand, was, in my rather woolly analysis, the natural home of adjectives like mature, and visionary, the only company where character was likely to flourish. My case rested upon little more than DC’s willingness to publish The Dark Knight Returns, The Killing Joke, and Arkham Asylum, and the serious moonlight cast over the DCU by Watchmen, and the Vertigo imprint.

While I’m now well versed in the legacy of Marvel’s legendary creators, if I’m honest I remain skeptical about Marvel’s claims to the concept of character. I grant that Lee and Ditko’s willingness to subordinate super to man was likely revolutionary back in the late sixties, and that they quite possibly changed the landscape of comics, but the reality is that while character is certainly the focus of many Marvel titles the characters in question have seldom been allowed much more than superficial depth – the MU as a place of histrionics rather than history. That, even as its best, seldom produces character studies with more going for them than I’d expect to see in a well realized soap opera. Don’t get me wrong, I think good soaps have their own virtues, and, and this is important, I’m not sure that I want to see rigorous character studies in (many) superhero comics, but I think it’s worth pointing out that by treating the term character as a monolith, and not admitting to its multiple meanings – the different ways in which the centrality of the concept can be approached, from Dynasty to Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolfe – Marvel, and its die hard fans, are perhaps heaping undeserved glories on themselves. I mean, we’ve all read the Ultimates, right?

Guess what? I actually talk about Born Again after the jump