Mindless Ones

A weekly strip by Fraser Geesin

Andrew and Steven in

KNIGHTS OF THE REALM

Part 9

As Sir Tom Jones makes his last stand, let’s remind ourselves of what we’re all losing.  Have fun seeing if you can listen long enough to hear Tom rapping!

[audio:https://mindlessones.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/13-if-i-only-knew.mp3]

Paul Cornell and Jimmy Broxton

As a British fan of Morrison’s bat-run I was always going to pick this up, and on the whole I’m glad I did. Much has been made of the over-abundance of British cultural references and idiomatic turns of phrase by my American chums, which comes as no surprise given that Cornell’s attempts to paint DC-UK as exotic even forced me to stop and think about some of the dialogue, and that’s despite the glossary at the back of the book. To some extent I feel for those who struggled, this self-evidently isn’t a comic for everyone. If you’re not an anglophile or a Brit who’s prepared to weather what could reasonably described as Cornell’s heavy handed approach to British cultural representation then this isn’t the comic for you. This first issue also isn’t a book for those who want a lot in the way of plot, and what little there is it at least as concerned with servicing Cornell’s primary aim, introducing a milieu, as it is with moving the Knight and Squire’s story forward.

With the above caveats in mind, it’s as an exercise in world building that the book worked for me. I liked the pub where Britain’s super-community meet, as a concept I think it has the scope to stretch out beyond its soapy roots (the British pub sits at the heart of the UK’s two favourite soaps, EastEnders and Coronation Street), and in this issue it served both as an efficient means of condensing the DC-UK fictional landscape and setting the light-hearted tone. I enjoyed the humorous character introductions even if I thought they lacked the creative electricity that a Moore or a Morrison would have imbued them with. Captain Cornwall made me chuckle (the very idea), and I particularly liked the Milk Man, who as a concept managed to straddle the line between being silly, cosily familiar and a bit weird in a satisfyingly pythonesque way (an adjective which could start to wear thin if we’re still trotting it out in two issues time, I grant you). I was also happy to see that Cornell, like Moore before him, is capable of using the more trainspottery elements to bolster his efforts. To have Jarvis Poker ‘the [Great] British Joker’ speak briefly in Polari brought the character to life in one panel thanks to the strong association between comedy, that opaque language of 50s gay culture and the shade of Kenneth Williams.

Broxton’s art, while failing to clearly communicate the mayhem and action towards the end of the book was articulate enough to convey everything that Cornell needed to get across, and managed to be just cartoony enough to reinforce the book’s general feeling of warmth. It’s tricky to do a bar-room brawl and it’s tricky to design and draw a comic that’s heaving at the gutters with new characters. If that sounds like I’m damning him with faint praise that because to some extent I am, but I’m also prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt at this very early stage. As I’ve noted above, this wasn’t a remotely plot heavy issue, and was mainly built from panels introducing new characters and concepts, as a consequence we’ll see how Broxton fairs when he needs to push the story uphill rather than link up a bunch of largely disparate elements in an anarchic pub.

If I have any big worries for this book they’re around the idea that “moderation” is a concept on which to build a superhero comic. Cornell goes to great pains to set-up this idea: the very notion that supervillains and superheroes would share the same drinking establishment requires it*, as does the woolly subplot where a young turk has to choose which side of the hero/villain divide he will stand, as if he were choosing between apples and oranges. While I think moderation has its virtues, and I can see why someone might want to sell it to an American audience (sorry, Americans), moderation isn’t the bedrock of entertaining popular fiction, quite the opposite, and as a guiding principle it runs the risk of feeling very forced. This first issue could afford to be quite self-aware, in fact it benefitted from it, but the same approach might become more of a problem down the road, especially if the plot is unduly effected by such meta-texual concerns, and particularly if those concerns are antithetical to drama.

*At least it does in so far as Cornell’s vision for the pub goes.

I hereby award this comic three brains out of five

Pree-zentin’ what will probably be the most comprehensive interview you read with Patrick Meaney, the director of

…this week, anyway.

 

Nobody sees the show, not till my heart says so/That special something, that you are hunting = under the cut

As part of our commitment to ensuring nothing that occurs on this blog could ever be construed as ‘journalism’, what follows is a scrambled and unattributed sample of snippets – only very slightly tweaked to make a semblance of sense – of recent backroom chatter by all (or nearly all) the Mindless Ones on Alan Moore and Jacen Burrows’ recent cockpunk horrorbook Neonomicon #2. Some extracts may be recognised from other websites and/or previous publications.  Nothing agrees with anything. All opinions are rubbish.

“By refusing to exclude rape from his depictions of violence and power in action in my view Moore is fulfilling an important function. While ninety nine percent of popular fictions are happy to present us with a picture of violence that excludes most of the troubling bits, a violence that is fundamentally fun and entertaining, Moore is prepared to go to much more uncomfortable places and thank God.”

Putative primal ‘innocence’ hopelessly bespoiled by the vile means-of-production that have oppressed Moore so awfully all these years

A weekly strip by Fraser Geesin

Andrew and Steven in

KNIGHTS OF THE REALM

Part 8

LISTEN UP! (literally)

We are entering the action phase of this amazing Graphic Novel*,

the part where the sound track kicks in!

[audio:https://mindlessones.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/08-wired-for-sound-cliff-richard.mp3]

*Copyright 2010 Fraser Geesin.

The book Dream Date by Tim Leopard and Fraser Geesin is available from Running Water Press or from Amazon.

UPDATE: PLOK’S ESSAY IS NOW FIXED!

Finally, here it is. The Prism is the first and possibly the last (but by no means the least) Mindless Zine, beautifully designed by our Dan White.

We have:

Sean Witzke on Casanova
Amypoodle, Bobsy and Zom on The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Century
Go Robo 4, a new strip by Dan White
David Allison on Brian Chppendale’s Ninja and Maggots
Andrew Hickey on comics and Christmas (that’s how late this little project is)
Plok on Kirby’s celestial dreams
The Satrap rogue reviews Kang

It’s a big file, 19 megabytes of non-stop, comics oriented, PDF action, but it’s worth it, because you’re worth it. Download from Mediafire here.

If you have any problems getting hold of the file let us know!

A weekly strip by Fraser Geesin

Andrew and Steven in

KNIGHTS OF THE REALM

Part 7

The book Dream Date by Tim Leopard and Fraser Geesin is available from Running Water Press or from Amazon.

YOU WILL NEED:  Card, scissors, all that shit, a rainy afternoon with fuck all else to do, and a shitload of blutac to make the cunt stand up.