Mindless Ones

Living legend David Wynne has commissioned me to write 500 words on this topic. Last night in the pub he teased me with the idea that I was going to be tasked to write 500 words on Frank Miller: Feminist Icon.

Having worked out my pitch for that one in the shower this morning (it’s actually really easy to read his work as an extended deconstruction of chauvinist tropes… so long as you just DON’T LOOK AT THE WOMEN IN HIS COMICS and only pay attention to the men – not an approach that’s conducive to feminist values, hence why this reading of Frank Miller is unlikely to catch on anytime soon) I now find myself face with a far more daunting task.

Five hundred words on “Hard Men with Big Truncheons: The Sexual Politics of Mega-City One”. I mean seriously: what can you say about this subject? What can’t you say?

Casting about for a place to start that wasn’t the bathroom, I asked Douglas Wolk…

Yes, it’s another THOUGHT BUBBLE SPECIAL POST!

This is the first of two essays commissioned by James “patron of the arts” Baker, who has asked for five hundred words each from me and Bobsy. James wants me to talk about what Daleks mean to me.

It’s a difficult one, actually, because I grew up in the 1980s, when the Daleks were mostly being used for their recognisability, but being written by a writer, Eric Saward, who would much rather have been writing Cybermen stories. So while the standard iconography of the Daleks tends towards a combination of fascism and Frank Hampson space adventure, for me, the Daleks are all about body horror. The formative Dalek story for me was Remembrance of the Daleks, and so I think of humans being turned into Daleks, of Davros reduced just to a head, of dead bodies being processed for food.

So taking everything together, the Daleks for me, more than anything else, represent the dissociation from the body.

Yes, it’s ANOTHER THOUGHT BUBBLE LIVEBLOG!

This one is a three-hander, commissioned by Ruan S, who wants me, Illogical Volume, and Bobsy to write six hundred words on We Are Robin #4.

This is a DC Entertainment comic-style product, written by Lee Bermejo and with art by James Harvey, Diana Egea and Alex Jaffe, and it is almost precisely as “good” as you would expect from a DC Entertainment comic-style product. There are many young people dressed as Robin, who are angsty about angst-making things — one of the young people has apparently died.

There’s narration told in Tweets, because in DC Entertainment comics-style products, Twitter is used by the young persons, rather than middle-aged angry people in the media.

There are inspirational speeches about Batman, and symbols, and legacies, and how important symbol legacies are important and symbolic. There are scenes set in a high school, and there are teenagers who use “Facespace” and perform minor crimes to attract superheroes so they can take selfies.

It is, in short, precisely the kind of desperate attempt to appear cool that one would expect from the talented people at DC Entertainment. I’m a thirty-seven-year-old fat bloke with a beard, and even I know that this isn’t how the kids talk and act.

Over to Illogical Volume…

Kids today, with their anti-social medias and their secret identities, doing the troll dance under a bridge as big as the whole world… they sicken me.

Imagine writing something under a fake name… Ridiculous!

This is a THOUGHT BUBBLE SPECIAL POST, by the tag-team team of Andre Whickey and Illogical Volume. Our task: “Write five hundred words about Dungeon Fun and make it as product-placementy as possible.”

Never let it be said that the Mindless don’t rise to a task…

Dungeon Fun is a collection of the award-winning all-ages comic, based around a parody of dungeon-crawling fantasy adventure, with the same kind of sarcastic meta-humour as, say, Order of the Stick or Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, but with a gentler feel than either of those, more suitable to its all-ages audience. Neil Slorance’s highly-stylised art perfectly expresses the whimsical children’s adventure story, in which Fun Mudlifter, a little girl raised by trolls, has a sword fall from the sky and becomes an adventurer.

With her ghost companion Sir Barnabus Games, Fun goes on an epic quest, encountering such characters as Gullibelinda the Gullible.

And now I’m tagging Illogical Volume…

Always a mistake, that!

We’re in Leeds, we have jumble, and we’re ready to liveblog. If you’re at Thought Bubble and want Bobsy, Illogical Volume, or myself to do a blog post for you, we’re charging a penny a word. Short posts will be added as updates to this post, larger ones will get their own.

We’re currently sat in New Dock (definitely not Savile’s) Hall, and waiting for your custom. We have cakes.

The Beast Must Die is flogging his British Comics Award nominated Cindy and Biscuit:

When he’s not shaming us all with his good looks and professionalism, Dan will be selling the collected edition of the first four issues  (We Love Trouble!) alongside the latest issue, The Bad Girl.

Kind of cosmic sciatica Gary Lactus is elling his comics, including two volume of The Cleaner, his excellent autobiographical comic:

Don’t be fooled by the fact that he’s produced the comic under his (ridiculous) stage name Fraser Geesin, it’s 100% Lactus!

Gary’s completed the second volume of The Cleaner for Thought Bubble, and it’s essential reading for anyone who like stories about people doing things.

And I have a selection of my books-without-pictures for sale, for those of you who come to a comics convention but don’t want to buy any more comics. £5 or best offer.

Liveblog update one:
This is fifty-two words (to be comicy) for “Mystery Beardman” on the subject of “Elemental Micah: Just Exhale” by Michael Georgiou.
This is a black-and-white comic about a gay young man with the powers of a god. I am told it is very very good, and very very gay.

Liveblog update two, paid for by a mysterious benefactor:

Table 65a though bubble marquee – graphic violence and black and white female led sports drama – Freaktown 

Not so much a blog post as an advert but one that was overpaid for to the cost of 5p so we’re not going to complain!

Liveblog update the final:
And finally, commissioned by the Mindless Ones’ own The Beast Must Die himself, we have two hundred words by Andre Whickey and Illogical Volume on Image United #1.

“Mayhem! Destruction! There’s no limit to the pain and misery I can cause!”

This is the ultimate comic, sequential art reaching its peak of potential. What could be better than Rob Liefeld layouts? How about Rob Liefeld layouts with Whilce Portacio finishing them? How about Liefeld, Larsen, Portacio, McFarlane, Silvestri, and Valentino?
Comics’ greatest creators, comics’ greatest characters, all in colour for three dollars ninety-nine. The greatest story in history.

HI KIDS! ILLOGICAL VOLUME HERE, BEAT-BEAMING MY THOUGHTS STRAIGHT ONTO ANDREW’s COMPUTER DIRECT! LIKE AN OLD-SCHOOL IMAGE COMIC, MY BRAIN IS REALLY FUCKING LOUD SO FORGIVE THE ALL-CAPS!

WHAT AM I DOING?? I’M JUST LIVING THAT LIFE, LYING ON THE GROUND, TOUCHING MY TITS UP, PUNCHING MY OWN FACE OF THEN WATCHING IT SOAR THRU THE SKY! YOU THINK I’M DOWN BUT THEN BAM!, I’M FISTING A SHARK, GETTING PEGGED BY THE SPIRIT OF STANLEE! THIS COMIC HAS THE REAL ANIMAL MAGIC, Y’KNOW? WHEN PAPPA’S GOT A FINN PAPPA’S GOTTA GET HIS FINN ON! I’VE SPENT MY WHOLE FUCKING LIFE TRYING TO BE CLEVER BUT NOW I’VE FINALLY FUCKING REALISED IT: ALL I REALLY WANTED WAS A WITCHBLADE!

Sleeping Dogs – Cabal Press 2015 – written by Fraser Campbell, drawn by Lautaro Capristo, coloured by David B. Cooper and lettered by Colin Bell.

“One reads so few comics that are truly juvenile, knowingly juvenile and proud of it” – is that true? If not, why did it hit me with the force of a thousand failed understandings when my pal Plok said it, in relation to Millar/Hitch’s work on The Ultimates?

If it’s not true, why does it feel that way? Is it because I’m disconnected from my more juvenile instincts now that I’m a high-faluting comics critic on the internet, or is it just that I don’t encounter comics that play to my own juvenile tastes that often these days? Having read Sleeping Dogs, I’m starting to think that the latter might be the case.

It knows that it’s a bit crude, Sleeping Dogs, which isn’t to say that it’s particularly gross or shlocky in comparison to fairly mainstream things like, say, Takeshi Miike movies or Mark Millar’s creator owned comics and their Hollywood adaptations. You don’t get the feeling that Campbell, Capristo and co are trying too hard to shock you or that they’re fundamentally damaged in some way when you’re reading Sleeping Dogs, but it has a rude energy to it. It reminds me of Philip Bond comics, of Garth Ennis when he’s almost-but-not-quite being too much of a piss-taking arsehole, of a million silly alternative roads for British comics that could have been well-stomped post-2000AD and post-Deadline but which are perhaps a little more neglected than they could be.

It’s tempting for me to overdo this UK comics connection, so strong is the appeal of this book’s big faced hardmen to me…

…but for all that the shabby locale (a run-down tower block) and the clipped, action movie patter put me in mind of those comics, it’s worth remembering that Capristo is Argentinian. I know little of the man or his work, let alone of his living environment, but I think I know what he likes in his comics and I like it too.

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The following post was written as a response to The London Graphic Novel Network’s discussion of From Hell. 

Here’s Graphic Novel Network/Kraken bod Joel‘s final flourish, just so you have some idea what I’m arguing against:

when I read [Moore’s] stuff I get the feeling is that nothing has been lead to chance and everything is designed for very definite and exact reasons you know? If other comics are a little jelly and playful and “make your own mind up!” – Alan Moore in a labyrinth of cold hard steel: arranged in such a way that the only possible stance you’ll allowed is that of a mouse – desperately trying to find its way to the piece of cheese at the end.

And here’s my response:

Joel, the way you describe Alan Moore’s work there makes it sound hugely unappealing. I don’t think your account of how his art works is fundamentally untrue, mind, but it makes his work sound awful, tyrannical even – “Imagine being held in the iron grip of The World’s Mightiest Beard… FOREVER!”

What’s The Story?

The Joker is committing odd crimes, like just stealing a hairpin from a woman’s hair when in a shop full of furs worth half a million dollars

WRAPPED ON THE JUNGLE FLOOR, JACKIE’S DRESSED IN COBRAS

<ITEM> Administration Nation! From station to station! With The Beast’s detailed rundown of the S.M.A.S.H event run by the London Graphic Novel Network, 21 Statements About Comics Criticism, Thought Bubble 2015, breathtaking tales of deadline crushing, burning David Cameron effigies, the Lewes Bonfire, and of course listener’s favourite SCIATICA!

<ITEM> Egadz man, it’s the Reviewniverse, shimmering before us, like some sort of…some sort of…Reviewniverse! Talking’ bout Claus no.1 by Grant Morrison, Dr Strange, Hotel Shade, Doom Patrol, Steve Gerber, Unfollow, Survivors Club, more Magnum P.I. Team Up, Paper Girls, Howard The Duck and more

Now do one, you rowdy rabble

click to download SILENCE!#164

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