How to Pass Through a Portal
April 16th, 2016
Here, the map is the territory.
This is about to get seriously earnest, adjust your sets… I’ve read Grant Morrison comics from the age of 7, on and off (I was too much of a wimp for 2000AD as a teen and Batman: Gothic shat me right up), starting with this one and pretty much consistently every one for the last near twenty years (I didn’t get Final Crisis: Secret Files, a decision which haunts me still, and haven’t been keeping up with 18 Days, which is just barely a Grant Morrison comic), since semi-rediscovering him through The Invisibles.
“Yeah. I guess the fighting never ends, does it? It never ends.”
That’s a mid-1986 copy of Spider-Man and Zoids, no. 18 to be precise – as an aside, the time is completely ripe for a boutique Zoids comic, in the style of yer Copra or Scioli Transformers/GI Joe, get Farel Dalrymple and the Study Group lads to do it or something. Anyway, the point is this: it’s impossible, or nearly impossible, to have that kind of relationship – thirty years(!!) – with an author outside of comics; maybe I could have had with Alexander McCall Smith or something, he writes kids’ books, he writes gentle mysteries in Botswana and Scotland – could maybe have worked, seems a bit mimsy to me. Accept the premise, move on.
Multiversity is a culmination of the writer’s motifs and core interests from 1986
Fight Club 2: A Rebuttal
June 4th, 2015
This comic is a machine, but that’s okay because this is a machine age. Fighting is useless. Fight Club is useless.
I Am Not a Comics Critic #1: Shanzhai
February 16th, 2015
SARAH HORROCKS – BRUISE (self-published, 2014)
From the cool blue risotone colour to the grey static hiss of the prose, Bruise is heavy on the cyberpunk stylings:
The comic itself follows up on that initial promise, coming on almost like a young William Gibson who’s got too lost in the poetry of his own thoughts to ever force them to fit a form as traditionally satisfying as a “novel”. Actually, scrap that “almost” and focus on the real novelty here, achieved through jagged collage of familiar tropes. Include the squinting cool of the front cover and the miraculous map of the back (as you must) in the run time and you’ve got one hell of a joyride here:
Nae Bad for a Corridor Wee Corridor Stuffed With Toys: A Sample Dialogue
November 20th, 2014
“Have you guys got The Best of Milligan and McCarthy in?”
“…”
“You know, the big hardback collection of Peter Milligan and Brendan McCarthy comics?”
“…”
“Peter Milligan? Guy who wrote Enigma and X-Statix and who totally didn’t touch winkies with Grant Morrison back in the 90s? Properly does that po-mo literary thing of trying to live on both sides of the limit of an idea, except when he’s writing rubbish X-Men stories. And he made loads of comics Brendan McCarthy, as in Solo #12, Zaucer of Zilk, that Dark Horse thing… Ditko figurework, tells the whole story with colours, he gave those Coneheads their cone heads – you know who I’m talking about, right?”
“…”
“I mean it’s a bit lazy to ask, sure, but I’ve had a look on the shelves but I’m just asking in case I’d overlooked it somehow.”
“…”
“You’re staring at me like the words I’m saying don’t make any sense right now.”
“Yeah, we don’t have it.”
“Okay. Cool. So could you order it then?”
“No.”
“Could you maybe check for me at least?”
“It must have been a Forbidden Planet London exclusive.”
“Nah man, it was a proper release – you had it in this time last year, I remember seeing it on the shelves.”
“Nope. Must have been a Forbidden Planet London exclusive.”
“Look, I’m not trying to be a dick but it seriously wasn’t. You can get it in [REDACTED], or from Amazon, and… you’re really not even going to search for it on your system?”
“…”
“…”
“I can’t search for it because I don’t have a title.”
“The Best of Milligan and McCarthy.”
“That’s not a title.”
“The title of the comics is “The Best of Milligan and McCarthy” – look it up and you’ll see!”
“Can’t. It must have been a Forbidden Planet London exclusive.”
“…”
“…”
“…”
“Yeah, but like… I had it on order from [REDACTED] because my girlfriend worked there at the time, and then she got caught up in this big, stupid disciplinary with the company because they thought they had the right to read her dreams or whatever, so I never picked it up, then Brendan McCarthy said some stupid shit about race on the internet and I wrote a piece about it and then he pretended like people had taken the huff with his Spider-Man for like no reason whatsoever so I never bothered ordering it elsewhere but then I remembered that I actually really fucking want this collection because it’s got some of my favourite comics ever in it and I’m already weak and compromised, certainly feeble enough to read Brendan McCarthy comics again, I mean it’s not like this phone isn’t practically oozing blood and global sadness out into my hand right now, so… “
“…”
“…”
“We don’t have it and I can’t search for it without a real title.”
“Okay, so I guess I’ll just have to get it from Amazon?”
“…”
“Okay.”
The Multiversity #1
September 15th, 2014
There’s always a danger in reviewing the first [issue] of anything, of course, said the wise man. Yeah but fuck it mate seriously who cares? There’s your fair warning so. What follows may get silly.
OMAC, What Is Best In Life?
August 28th, 2014
Do you think that he’d even know? I’m not sure. He’s always so busy, isn’t he? The character and the book he starred in are a perfect match that way.
I’ve been spending a lot of time round at Kirby’s recently, and my favourite Kirby is the chatty, energetic old guy who’s perpetually setting up a big picture with the intention of hinting at an even bigger one. I’m talking about the Kirby who’s always happy to sit you down, offer you a drink and ask how you’re doing before the trip so nighttown begins. You’ll find this Kirby in The Eternals, of course, as well as in his Fourth World stories, and it’s hard not to love the guy.
The Jack Kirby you meet in OMAC is every bit as sharp as that other Jack, but he’s forever on the move. You head round to his place only to find him halfway out the door. This situation poses no problem for Kirby: ‘Of course you can come along!’ he barks. ‘I’m about to grab a taxi down to the “Brother” Eye if you’re willing to take a detour?’
Before you even have a chance to say yes you’re jumping out of the taxi and into the “Brother” Eye, a dingy old man’s pub untouched by the smoking ban, the sort of place that’s packed full of cigar smoke and shifty characters. And talking about characters, did Kirby really just tell you that that girl over there is a robot? And what’s that he’s saying about a man so rich he can afford to rent out whole cities for his private parties? You’re sure that he just said that the most recent party had a more sinister purpose, but somehow Kirby’s over at the other side of the bar now, stopping a nasty brawl before it can properly get going. One minute he’s holding a man ten years his junior by the throat, the next they’re heading towards you, talking quite intently with each other about the “Sickies”.
Kirby slaps you on the arm, buys you a drink and introduces you to his new friend Bucky… no, wait, it’s Buck, sorry. Kirby starts to settle down; he stretches his back out, and it looks like he’s about to chat to you when he suddenly decides to throw a nearby chair through the closest window. You’re about to tell the old guy to chill the fuck out, but then he leaps clean through the window and chases a mugger off down the street.
A brief ‘Good to see ya kid!’ and a hastily written check to the bar owner later and Kirby’s off into the night, shouting ‘OMAC lives so that man may live!!’ as he goes. Shit, that was exhausting, you think. But hell, when was the last time you had that much fun with a comic book superhero?
Does OMAC know what’s best in life? I’m not sure, but the man who created him certainly did! Happy birthday, then, to Jack Kirby – still missed, still the only king I will ever bow to.
The Multiversity 1
August 22nd, 2014
10:22 PM, I get an email. “New Arrival! BoJack Horseman is now on Netflix”
10:24 PM, I open the comic. The first page on the inside is an advert for BoJack Horseman. It has today’s date on it.
GAH-dians More Like (Geddit?)
July 31st, 2014
I’m going to become quite unpopular among my friends, I suspect, when I say that I didn’t like Guardians of the Galaxy very much at all.
I didn’t *hate* it — it had an excellent cast, the effects work was as good as you’d expect, and there were a few good lines of dialogue (I was the only one in the cinema who laughed at the John Stamos line, as the only people who know about him in Britain are Beach Boys fans — and indeed there has just been a massive amount of drama about Stamos among Beach Boys fandom, which made me laugh a little harder than I otherwise would). Sometimes it’s a bit too knowing about the pop culture tropes it makes fun of (this is definitely a post-TV Tropes script), but it occasionally does interesting things (there’s one neat little twist when a very, very, obvious third act reveal straight from Screenwriting 101 *doesn’t* turn out to be true).
It also actually had some scenes with colours that aren’t orange or bluish-grey — not many, but a few. This is increasingly rare in the cinema these days, and is to be applauded. I’m sure I even saw a glimpse of yellow at one point.
But one of the reasons Marvel’s films have been so successful is that they have been *superhero* films. This one isn’t
The Weegie Board presents – C.R.E.A.M. part 2
March 16th, 2014
You can read part 1 of this story here, or if a lifetime spent watching TV shows from other countries has given you a taste for watching seasonal specials months after their initial airing, you could always read our Christmas strip.
