Mindless Ones

Women in comics just want to express themselves. All the time. With their bodies.

Here’s Donna Troy. She’s not gonna let that jacket get in the way of what she’s got to say

No sir

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Nemesis The Warlock Book 3 (progs 335 – 349)

Has there ever been a genuinely weirder hero to grace the pages of a weekly comic than Nemesis? Part horse, part Devil; a sword wielding, fire breathing, cross-dressing chaos worshipping alien revolutionary… No I don’t think so. 2000ad’s gallery of grotesque anti-heroes boasts some impressive members (Kano from Bad Co., DR & Quinch, Middenface McNulty), but none really touch Nemesis for unbridled…oddness.

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It’s one thing for Newsarama’s boards to host racist invective, but quite another for one of it’s journalists to spout the kind of nonsense quoted in this link. Jon, over at Funnybook Babylon, suggests that Kean should be sacked, a position I have some sympathy with, but what about the editors, what the bloody hell were they doing? Ah yes, covering the whole thing up, apparently.

Okay, I can understand their desire to get Kean’s comments removed sharpish, but wasn’t some kind of apology from the editorial staff necessary? Wasn’t attempting to excise the entire thing without publicly flagging their actions very bad practice indeed?

What could be more relevant to the pissed up youth of today’s binge Britain than an absurdly over produced reprint of ‘Demon In A Bottle, the story of one billionaire superhero’s descent into alcoholism, collectably timed to coincide with the release of Iron Man (reviewed below, with spoilers aplenty), the first of this summer’s movies to claim the title of blockbuster.

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I came to praise the Order and to bury them and now it seems neither action was mitigated.

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Over comics bought and read on Saturday the 3rd of May

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OR: 10 Reasons why Ambush Bug is the Most powerful Superhero in the DCU.

OR: How I learned to stop worrying and love the CRISIS.

OR: I knew I should have turned left at Albuquerque!

With the joyful return of Irwin Schwab later this year, and with the impending End Of The World ™, now seems a good time to reappraise the greatest character ever to appear in comics ever in the world. Ever.

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Crime comics, genre, anxieties about, that’s stuff you should leave at the door. I want to talk about a dead girl and a tragic young man.

Stray Bullets #1 is that rarest of beasts in the dark woods of serialized fiction, a first issue that’s on a par with the best of the run. David Lapham doesn’t need to find his stride, he hits the ground running, in fact his biggest problem as the series progresses is sustaining the quality, and perhaps the purity, of the early issues. I’d argue he’s largely succeeded, but that’s a topic for another post.

Here be spoilers…

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‘A Caper A Day Keeps the Batman at Bay’ – Batman 312, 1979

This is pretty much the first Batman story I remember reading. Back in the late 80’s, you could buy reprinted Batman stories in British editions, available in most newsagents. In the backwater village I grew up in, this was pretty much it for exposure to American comics (I remember getting hold of a battered Secret Wars comic from a jumble sale that seemed like the Holy Grail to a kid raised on Beano and Beezer). Obviously 2000ad was around but that would come a little later. But these reprints were mining Batman’s seventies heyday, so there were stories by Len Wein and Denny O’Neil, and glorious art by Neal Adams, Jim Aparo et al. We were firmly in hairy chested lovegod Bat-territory, so stories inevitably involved Talia, ski-slopes, underground lairs, and Batman in full player mode. Although there was a smattering of grit in the comically hardboiled narration, these stories were colourful, dynamic and swinging – a disco era Batman hanging in his Penthouse apartment, who was definitely getting laid more than in the barren Aids scare 80’s. Oh sure, he was still grieving over his dead parents, but he was also doing the Batusi down at Studio 54.

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