Mindless Ones

Dave Sim, who since the death of Will Eisner has been probably the greatest living all-round comics creator, is releasing his classic graphic novel High Society as a Kickstarter-funded digital version on October 10.

To promote this release, he is doing a virtual tour of comics sites, including Mindless Ones, on October 10, answering interview questions. However, he’s doing it with a twist — he wants us to post the questions we’re asking here *now*, in advance of the blog tour, and leave comments open for readers to ask questions, some of which he will also answer. Anyone whose question is chosen will receive a free autographed back-issue of Cerebus, with a personalised head sketch.

Questions, and explanation of who Sim is, under the cut

Long ago, far back in the primordial blog ooze, last month, we launched a competition.

Read all about it.

An ye winner be

Lots of competitions going on here at Mindless Ones Dot Com, the most profligate and undiscerning of all the comic blogs, fact,  so much generosity that some of it has started to fall off the front page. We thought it would be a good idea to do a quick recap.

Plus, good if completely arbitrary excuse to drop this picture, I mean just look at it – The Leopard from Lime Street , without doubt the spiffingest British Superhero of all time, as reimagined by the also-legendary Duncan Fegredo. Meow indeed!

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Orality Unbound! We may not be the cleverest, we may not be the funniest, we may not be the quickest, the most thorough, or the handsomest (well, probably the handsomest). But we can at least make sure that we are the most generous website in the comics blogiverse.

Yes, it’s another Mindless Ones Dot Com brilliant competition giveaway.

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An interesting aspect in the reading and long-term appreciation of superhero-comics, one of few nearly unique to the genre-medium, is the impact that a single image of a single character can have. Few sights are more potent and electric than the basic dramatis-persona mugshot of the steroidal spandexophile (popular in the early Image-era which took the dynamic far beyond the realms of mere absurdity), poised four square to the camera, and his name. Plot, narrative, dialogue even, can all to a greater or lesser degree be shed, and the key meaning of the superhero, the immortal appeal, remains undiminished. All that is required is a strong image and a strong name.

The enduring popularity of the A-Z Handbook of the X?X Universe books are a testament to this – the costume, the name, the paraphernalia, the ‘vital statistics’ (so porno), and the stripped-back plot recaps that the Handbook-style entries offer are the pure flavour, the total hot- drug effect, of the strongman funnybook. The superhero, a figure without a background, exists perfectly well, separate to the superfluous storytelling and other dimensions the comicbook medium affords. After all, if it’s all about wish fulfilment and fantasy-projection, the other stuff just gets in the way – just show me, in crazy colours and moody lighting, the bare (oo-er) image of the proud superthing, standing erect, and let me do the rest of the work myself (stop!) All that you need is a cool, tight image and a few terse syllables of context (of which the name, both descriptive and directive in its ideal form, is the concentrate). and you  can have that uncanny charge the trueborn superhero fanman is always chasing.

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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