Mindless Ones

A weekly strip by Fraser Geesin

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

A, B, Cs part 1, Cs part 2

Clayface

Me: so why do you like Clayface so much then?
The Boy: He’s scary
Me: But what’s scary about him
The Boy: He’s got goop
Me: But what’s scary about goop?
The Boy: Carnage and Venom have got goop, and there’s no man.
Me: No man inside Clayface, you mean?
The Boy: Yes. He hasn’t got a man.

Me: What’s good about Clayface?
Amy: I’m thinking of a story where you could have a dead body buried inside him. Maybe even in a coffin.

I struggled long and hard with this one until I realised that Clayface isn’t a character, he’s something that happens to you. I can’t imagine a Clayface story arc being up to much, the obvious and done to death route is to go all snoretragic, loss of humanity, etc… but personally I think I’d aim for a few panels where someone (perhaps the little girl in the panel above) is dragged screaming into its earthy darkness and play out the consequences. Clayface isn’t a monster that I want to understand, I don’t want a POV shot or interiority, you don’t identify with walking graves, you have people get buried alive in them, and you make sure that you make the getting buried alive sequence is suitably terrifying and distressing.

Clayface is a one or two issue, all horror bat-foe, and that’s that. He’s a horrible inevitable event like death. There is no man.

Cluemaster

Fuck Cluemaster

Next: finally the Ds

Sinatoro: It’s a roadtrippy movie due for global release in 2012, written & directed by the team of Grant Morrison (we heart 4evs) and Adam Egypt Mortimer (video director bloke man).

It was announced just the other week at the San Diego Comic-Con with an emphasis on obviously how rad-awesome-skill it’s going to be, but also promises of how original new, innovative etc. the whole production is going to be, from promotion to the shoot to the DVD commentary no doubt. (We’ll do that by the way: exclusive superfan commentary by us for the Blu Ray 2-disc edition, yeah? Who could say no?) What this means for a no-cash indie flick like this is, inevitably, crowdsourced marketing with a viral twist. ‘X-Ray Cinema’ someone called it, not the next step on from 3D with added cancer risk, but referring presumably to the avowed full disclosure & transparency from the production team that we’re told will be part and parcel of the movie’s gestation.

Here are the basics, spreading linkmulch around like the finest organic man-manure:

Web: Sinatoro.com
Faceplace: Facebook.com/sinatoro
Twitter: Twitter.com/sinatoro

(Plenty links on those pages above to some interviews at IO9, CBR and other places, which we’ll no doubt be referring to a bit throughout this post, some of which go in to the movie in some depth, given how nascent the whole project still is. The total disclosure thing seems genuine at least, although time will tell if this approach has been wise – I still want the movie to surprise me, ‘know? Whatever, good for them because they’ve been busy, putting the word out there proactively, which hopefully means they have been able to find backers, rather than the reverse. [which it might! – Zom])

So far so un-unusual ho-hum…. ah, who’re we kidding? it would be easy, too easy to be sniffy about this shameless grab to keep their promo costs down, but come on: this is Grant Morrison and his chum –  our hearts were theirs years ago. We’re going to take them at their word: stick the accumulated Sinatoro stuff through the usual Mindless Ones Dot Com reading machine, and see what comes out the other side.

That’s right, we’re going to take a poster and some interviews and smoosh them together and pretend they’re worthy of the same kind of analysis as a fully formed and complete work of art! What of it? As a wise Montell once said: this is how we do it, fucko!

A weekly strip by Fraser Geesin

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

Catwoman

Before you go any further you should read (or remind yourself of) what Amy had to say about her in his ancient Rogue’s Review. It’s a little bit woolly in places but it’s also full of great ideas and he covers most of what I have to say here and then some. Not only that, he manages, in true Poodle style, to anticipate popcrime and Morrison’s it all happened approach to the bat-characters, but instead of focusing on Bruce he spends his energy on Selina. His take on her relationship with Holly is especially cool.

Stop heading down. His is better. Go read and come back.

Read the rest of this entry »

M is the British comic creator’s surname initial par excellence.

You are nine months into the nineties revival! Do not let these pamphlets decieve you!

So it goes right back to Morrison’s very first issue, does it?

A weekly strip by Fraser Geesin

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

Hi true believers! Sorry INSOMNIA has been away for so long but REAL LIFE and paying work have conspired to get in the way of my once tight weekly scheduling. But fear not, I’ll return soon with the latest PULSE-POUNDING installment!!!
In the meantime I thought I’d share with you a page from yhe SUN RA comic strip I worked on with the right honorable Lord Nuneaton Savage, for the SUN RA book published by the venerable HEADPRESS:

You can pick up a copy of the SUN RA book from the Headpress website, which features essays, interviews, diatribes and comics about the legendary skronk-master himself…well worth a look.

Until the next time, true beleivers, MAKE MINE FREE JAZZ!!!

The ever lovin’ Beast.