Mindless Ones

In this third awe-inducing installment, the Beast risks life and limb to broadcast live from a Mega City 1 Iso-cube, while a tired and slightly hungover Lactus lounges on his inter-galactic sofa high above the statosphere!

In a dodgy English accents spectacular, discussion ranges from Azzarello’s Xena, warri…sorry Wonder Woman, Batman (Owls!), Daredevil, Byrne’s FF, James Sturm’s Unstable Molecules and we have a long chat about John ‘Blimey Guv’ Constantine and Hellbla..sorry HECKblazer. More importantly The Beast unveils his theme tune to a proposed Hellblazer TV show!

Can you stand it? Do you dare listen??

[audio:https://mindlessones.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/silence003.mp3]

Click to download

And so we get the start of a new show, which for some reason has the same title as that old programme Doctor Who.

In the second scintillating episode, The Beast broadcasts live from Alan Moore’s beard, while Lactus continues his lonely (yet chatty) vigil orbiting above the South Coast of England in his galactic treehouse… Topics include the many Jason Aaron’s (or at least the ones who write Wolverine and The X-Men and PunisherMaxExtremeZero), Prophet (in which Lactus does a very horrid alien vagina impression) Casey & Fox’s lurid Haunt, superhero comics ‘ending’, Adventure Time, and the possibility of forcing children to review comics. And it all gets very romantic at the end, in this pulse-pounding Valentines episode…

[audio:https://mindlessones.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/silence002.mp3]

Click to download

SPECIAL “LOVE UND ROMANCE” EDITION

As you’ve probably noticed, it’s Valentines Day, and since we’ve already established that FEELINGS ABOUT COMICS ARE THE ONLY TRUE FEELINGS, I thought that it might be a good time to get a bit soppy about some of the comics I’ve read recently…

It’s been hard to think loving thoughts about comics in the past week or so (because: WA2CHMEN, Gary Friedrich), but I’m a trooper, and I’ve got my good buddy Mister Attack (aka The Boy Fae the Heed, aka The Beast o’the Bar-G) to keep me company, so here it goes!

Winter Solider #1, by Ed Brubker, Butch Guice and Bettie Breitweiser

Fatale #2, by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips

It’s a bit awkward to read these two comics back-to-back, and to find yourself preferring the one that’s built on the soiled dreams of Jack Kirby, but it’s also hard to pretend that clean hands make for good art when you’re not a teenage boy.  The first two issues of Brubaker and Phillips’ latest collaboration have proceeded exactly as expected – this is the sort of work (solid, well-crafted, “ugly things in the darkness/worse things in store”) that makes it easy to under-appreciate one of corporate comics’ best partnerships.

It’s perfect pulp, in other words, but at their best these guys can suggest a whole city’s worth of stories in one panel…

…and there’s been nothing in the first couple of issues of Fatale that’s hinted at that sort of imaginative depth. Winter Soldier #1 meanwhile, is absolutely full of potent images. Despite having a truly ugly, gurning cover – despite looking like a superhero book, basically – it’s a sneakily great wee comic, all slick superspy action and unexpected quietness. This panel has caught the attention of a few other commentators…

…and rightly so.  Butch Guice’s art here has a softness too it (and not just in the sense that it contains – ugh! – kissing) that couldn’t stand out more in context if it radiated ethical integrity (ooh, burn – take that, comics!). If I was looking to get all thematic on your ass I’d point you in the direction of Clive Barker’s comment that comics aren’t good at making room for love, but I’m not feeling particularly clever today, so instead I’ll  just note that while most individual images will yield lots of strange, abstract patterns if you crop them artfully enough, this image gives itself more readily to this treatment than most:

Look, I don’t want to make too much of a prat of myself this early in the post, but there’s something beautiful about the way that the boundaries between the two characters in this panel seem to have been gently and willingly collapsed, isn’t there?

Yeah… there definitely is. Click here to watch me search for love in all the wrong places, like a character in a story with a blunt moral!

Full disclosure: I was asked to review this book by the author’s husband, Kip Manley, a lovely man, author of City of Roses, which is a smashing book I’d recommend to fans of Jonathan Carroll or that mid-1990s Vertigo vintage, so take that as you will. I’m sort of flailing with my critical armoire (contents: glibness, cruelty) and my comics readership, which includes basically no webcomics (which Dicebox originated as), bar Achewood, and certainly very little like this.

read on for an ambulatory reading, spoilers: the subtitle is certainly an accurate summation

It was the end…but the moment had been prepared for.

Far more than The Tenth Planet, The War Games was the end not just of a Doctor, but of Doctor Who itself as it had been known up to that point.

Being an irregular series wherein I spotlight some particularly beautiful cover runs, from some comics you might have forgotten about, or never seen before. Up this time, the forgotten classic Martian Manhunter: American Secrets mini series from 1992 by Gerard Jones and the sadly missed Eduardo Barreto.

Read the rest of this entry »

BRAND NEW!!!!!!

It’s the great new Skype chat show where The Beast Must Die and Gary Lactus talk to each other! About comics no less.

In this episode:

Whilst Lactus floats in his spaceship above the Earth (specifically above Brighton, East Sussex), the Beast is holed up in his brand new luxury swank pad inside a Sentinel’s head. The two Mighty Mindless’ conversation soon turns to comics, and they discuss Steve Ditko’s DC work, Pete Milligan and Brett Ewin’s Bad Company, Fatale, The Twelve, WA2CHMEN (totally psyched!!), and Action Comics amongst others, and in a truly interactive moment The Beast watches the Avengers trailer…LIVE!

Strap yourself in for two bite-size chunks of Mindless Poddery, and then join us back here next week for more. Or throw your headset down in disgust and punch your computer. THE CHOICE IS YOURS!

Try SILENCE! #1 part 1
[audio:https://mindlessones.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/silence001a.mp3]
Click to download SILENCE! # 1 part 1

Not enough for you? Here’s part 2
[audio:https://mindlessones.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/silence001b.mp3]
Click to download SILENCE! # 1 part 2

January’s Cartoon County meeting was lucky enough to play host to Chris Weston, artist for The Filth, 2000AD, The Twelve and lots more. Listen now as Chris talks of his apprenticeship with Trigan Empire’s Don Lawrence to working on films such as Akira and The Book Of Eli and his shamanic meeting with Bizarro.

[audio:https://mindlessones.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/chris-weston.mp3]
Click to download

Cartoon County is an association of over 100 cartoonists and comic artists in the Sussex area. Our regular meetings are usually on the last Monday of every month at The Cricketers, Black Lion St, Brighton, from 6 til late. If you’re a cartoonist or a comic artist, or use those particular styles of drawing in your work as an illustrator, animator or storyboard artist, you are very welcome to join us.