Mindless Ones

Special “Repeat after me fuck queen and country!” edition – UPDATED WITH A RIGHT ROYAL REWARD FOR ALL OUR LOYAL READERS!

It’s been a while since the Mindless did some linkblogging, but it’s a sunny Friday morning and I’ve been working away like a good little republican (Best not mention the fact that you’re taking a day off in lieu eh? – Ed), so here we go!

Every time you click this link a hero dies!

free telly horror special

• Oh I know he doesn’ t need any more praise but Bryan Lee O’malley’s Scott Pilgrim site rocks as hard as  do all things SP related. You’ve gotta admire the fact that he’s turned himself into a one man franchise without sacrificing any ofthe comics inherent yumminess. If you haven’t read SP yet I presume you have no eyes, in which case you can’t read this which means you can’t see me sticking my fingers up at you. (tbmd)

• I’ve really been enjoying Hip Hop Isn’t Dead recently. Max’s dedication to slogging through the entire Wu-related back catalogue is particularly rewarding (see: U-God and Cappadonna aka The Cab Driver). I don’t agree with him a lot of the time, but it’s a good site from a man with generally excellent taste in Hip Hop.  (tbmd)

• Bit of a 2000AD flavour to my online reading this week – starting with Garth Ennis’ first contribution to Rich Johnson’s Bleeding Cool, When 2000AD was the Future. It’s an unabashedly nostalgic birthday tribute to the Galaxy’s Greatest, and although it feels a bit hacked-out, if you don’t get a lump in the throat or pants upon reading his list of standout moments, then, brother, you must have no pants. It’s also interesting for several other reasons – Bleeding Cool has been a bit of lame replacement for the much-missed Lying in the Gutters, having somehow managed to bring out a heretofore unimagined boring streak in Warren Ellis’ online columns, so if it’s giving us regular bulletins from Ennis now (the first time he’ll have done this kind of regular editorialising since, what, the Preacher letters page?) then all to the good. Secondly, funny to note the unfortunate truism ‘2000AD was better when I were a lad’ can be heard coming from even the most level headed industry professionals. Thirdly,  the revealing detail that Ennis does not count 2000AD as a significant influence on his career-best Punisher MAX run, although he does with nearly all of his other, far less essential US work. And finally, the general public acknowledgement of the debt he owes to Tharg, which will seem ironic to anyone who read Wagner’s Dredd story last week and noticed how much Jay Doubleyou appears to have been reciprocally influenced by Ennis in recent years. Five pages of unbelievable tension and gravitas balanced effortlessly across three simultaneous scenes, no action but lots of quiet political violence, in an episode of sheer comics storytelling perfection that displays the kind of tough yet elegant narrative engineering that Ennis has lately made his own.

• This has been up for ages but I’ve only just stumbled across it: Cradlegrave, John Smith and Edmund Bagwell’s recently-concluded tale of alien body-horror and kitchen-sink drama on a Northern housing estate is being hailed by some Squaxx as the best story The Mighty One has put out since Halo Jones. A full Mindless report to follow soon, but in a rare move the excellent 2000AD Review site has put Smith’s script for an entire episode up for your perusal. Bloody brilliant.

• Further happy proof that the world you live in is becoming more like Judge Joseph Dredd’s every day! (b)

• Look, 5 posts for the price of one! Andrew Hickey’s hyperpost continues apace. The topics, which he’s attacking from multiple and diverse angles, are canon and continuity and other stuff that concerns those of us of a fannish bent. So far Andrew’s posts have focussed on Morrison’s concept of Hypertime, Cerebus via Oscar Wilde (or should that be the other way round?), and an ‘imaginary’ (in the Alan Moore sense) Dr Who audio story which doesn’t feature too much Dr Who but does feature a dying man. This kind of multi-pronged oblique criticism is exactly the kind of thing we try to do round here, and exactly what Andrew Rilstone did so fantastically in his recent fanzine Who Sent the Sentinels?. Looking forward to seeing what else Andrew can come up with.

• Ah, its been ages since we’ve given some love to the boys at Funnybook Babylon. If you don’t listen to their podcasts you really should as they’re some of best pop-critics out there, and really don’t get the credit they deserve nearly often enough. The standout moment in the latest edition has to be Chris Ekert’s disembowelling of Ultimatum – to call it criticism would be to give Loeb’s writing too much credit, but it sure is funny as shit.

• Still thoroughly brain-blown by last week’s viewing of Adam Curtis’ latest film, ”It Felt Like a Kiss’, I’ve gone a bit doolally and found links for a whole Curtisathon. Old hat, good hat:

• First, two recent bites from Charlie Brooker’s Screenwipe/Newswipe shows. This one covers the abasement of  TV journalism as a career path for people who like to bear the sight of their own reflections; and this one on the geldoffisation of event politics. When people say Live Aid killed Rock ‘n’Roll, previously the world’s last best hope of cultural salvation, this is what they mean, and why it matters. (b)

• And going back a bit further, The Living Dead from 1995 (Parts One, Two, Three), a haunting three-hour tale of WWII necromancy and voodoo propaganda, a political Zombie fest of the lowest order. (b)

All that and some links to comic related stuff too!

• Sean Witzke recently wrote a piece on this, a Dr Strange screenplay written by the odd couple paring of Stan Lee and Alex Cox. For those of you who don’t know, Cox is about as idiosyncratic a creator as cinema has ever seen, known for dirty, profoundly unconventional films like Repo Man, and Walker (director), and his screenplay for Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and as such is about the unlikeliest candidate for this gig that I can imagine, and yet somehow someone somewhere thought that it might just work. Personally I would love to see what Cox could have done with this material – at worst his weird-ass synthetic approach to storytelling would have produced something very interesting indeed, and at best, well, who knows? What’s for certain is that it wouldn’t look much like the deeply conventional blockbuster pap that we’re served up today. (z)

Linkblogging continues after the jump

A new, regular linkpost. Check it every Thursday

Look! Links, look.

So we thought we’d try linkblogging… I have no idea how Graeme McMillan or Dirk Deppey did and do do this on a daily; this is about a week or so’s worth of what I remembered to put in here, seemed interesting at the time…

More after the jump