Mindless Ones

AND I WOULD HAVE GOTTEN AWAY WITH IT IF IT WASN’T FOR YOU MEDDLING KIDS!!!!

Lo, it was so. SILENCE! no.9 descended upon the earth like a particularly weighty turd from an overfed poodle’s arse!  The Beast brings the noise in a very real sense, with his hip hop meisterwork ‘COMIX (NOT 4 KIDZ). They then jaunt in a spritely fashion into the SILENCE! News wherein Lactus reveals what might be the BIGGEST news story of 2012 (let’s just say the word ‘Avengers’ is part of it – SPOILERZZZ!).

After that they proceed to lustily tango into last week’s releases, discussing Daredevil no.10 (and the practical ways to exit a monster), the eternal sunshine that is Bulletproof Coffin: Disinterred no.3 (by Dave Hine serial comic abuser Shaky Kane) and briefly touch upon Spaceman no.5. Lactus is TOTALLY PSYCHED over the devastating psychological complexitiveness of Bloodstrike, and talks up Atomic Robo Presents: Real Science Stories (including a devastating critique of Tesla’s working methods, no less!). Next up is The New Deadwardians (sweet Lord…) Secret Avengers (Shhhh…secretly Avenging) and a Bowfinger reference. Then there’s a double dose of You Should Have Known Better with the twin-horrors of AVX no.0 (buh?) and Comic Book Men (hurry Mayan prophecy, HURRY!) The Beasts Bargain Basement concerns Paul Duncan and Phil Elliot’s Second City (props to Michel Fiffe) and the brief glory that was Harrier Comics, and the pair froth merrily over Booster Gold and how fucking rad his origin is. Not to mention the adrenalin-soaked thrill ride that is The Coming Attractions. Put it all together and you have Another. Comics. Podcast!

All this and perhaps a little bit more, from the lovable odd couple that the internet is calling “the Tango & Cash of internet-based comics criticism”. Grab your earpipes and snuggle down you hobbits!

(And click below for the SILENCE! gallery…)

[audio:https://mindlessones.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/silence009a.mp3]
click to download

[audio:https://mindlessones.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/silence009b.mp3]
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The following piece appeared in the very fine Architects’ Journal, written by AJ’s Deputy Editor Rory Olcayto *. We’re proud to represent it here on Mindless Ones for your pleasure).

*aka Proto-Mindless One Brother Yawn

The vertiginous cityscape Moebius conjured for The Long Tomorrow is one of the most influential works of architectural art created in the past 50 years. It first appeared in cult magazine Metal Hurlant (Heavy Metal in the UK) in 1976, but its impact beyond comics, his medium of choice, is huge. Sadly the Frenchman, master of spatial representation in comic-book art, died of cancer a couple of weeks ago, aged 73. If you don’t know his work, here’s a short introduction.

In The Long Tomorrow, written by Alien scriptwriter Dan O’Bannon, a hard-boiled detective thriller unfolds on a planet-covering conurbation – an ecumenopolis (a term representing the idea of a worldwide city). Sky bridges and anti-gravity updrafts, now standard fare in Hollywood sci-fi, are set among towering monoliths defined by a stylised Brutalist and Art Nouveau mix.

It has been massively influential – particularly among filmmakers. George Lucas was ‘impressed and affected’ by Moebius, and Ridley Scott claimed The Long Tomorrow inspired his Blade Runner. The artist himself implemented his comic-book vision while production designer on Luc Besson’s The Fifth Element, the most literal transfer of his work to celluloid. The literary world was also in thrall, as William Gibson notes: ‘It’s entirely fair to say that the way Neuromancer-the-novel “looks” was influenced in large part by some of the artwork I saw in Heavy Metal. Those French guys, they got their end in early.’ Even Federico Fellini couldn’t resist Moebius’ art: ‘I have nothing but this to tell you, continue to draw fabulous for our joy, all of us.’

Moebius however was more than a science-fiction artist. He was first noticed for his Lieutenant Blueberry strips, a standard cowboy comic. And some of his most famous artwork depicts Venice, ‘a magical city out of time and space’. There is a typical Moebius twist – gondolas don’t float but fly, and canals have been replaced by deep ravines. Another image shows a floating Mont Saint-Michel, as if the citadel has uprooted itself from the shore below. This sense of breaking free from gravity is a recurring theme. Curiously given his mastery of the subject, Moebius confessed to having no special interest in architecture until he discovered Winsor McCay, the early 20th-century cartoonist who remains a key influence in comic-book art. ‘At first I was scared of architectural designs, because of their difficulty in terms of perspective, etc. When you draw as much science fiction as I do, it is hard not to dabble in architecture. But I remain an amateur. Winsor McCay was a master professional.’ Moebius. Modest. Magnificent. And very dearly missed.

Being an irregular series wherein I spotlight some particularly beautiful cover runs, from some comics you might have forgotten about, or never seen before. This time it’s the turn of Ted McKeever’s late 80’s NY art-house urban apocalypse Metropol:

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Don’t worry, despite the title, this isn’t an attempt to take on the SILENCE! boys at their own game – if I was trying to do that I would have sabotaged Gary Lactus’ spaceship while he was up visiting me in Scorchland, then suggested myself as a replacement for the podcast while “comforting” The Beast Must Die. What’s the point in playing if you’re not playing to win, right?

Right.

Talking Comics is an attempt to reanimate that stinkiest of walking corpses, the comics review post. Now I could have called in Mister Attack aka The Eurythmic King of Nowhere aka The Boy Fae the Heed aka Flippant She-Creature like I have the last couple of times in the hopes of making these grizzly bones dance, but I decided to place my faith in technology.

So: rather than writing reviews of last week’s comics the old fashioned way, with fists, I decided to speak my brains into twitter via my smart phone and see what happened.  Unfortunately, since I’m a Scottish, and since the Scottish are natural enemies of voice recognition technology, the results are a little scrambled:

Daredevil #10, by Mark Waid, Paolo Rivera, Joe Rivera, Javier Rodriguez and Joe Carmagna.

See, told ya!

More nonce-sense follows!

For those of you who don’t know – probably all of you – some of us Mindless like Mad Men a whole lot, and I think now that the new series is underway it might be time to get my thoughts down about it. The general format of these posts is presently undecided, so it’s difficult to give you an idea of what to expect. Whole screeds, mini essays, round robins with the other Mindless – all are possible. Whatever, these posts will be dense, but hopefully enjoyable if you’re familiar with the show, and, I’m sure, in some cases even if you’re not you can even enjoy it.

Today it’s Botswana, Ad and myself chewing the fat.

WE’RE GOING IN!!! IT’S THE RETURN OF THE BIG DOGS! WOOF WOOF!!!

Wait… sorry, where am I? Who are you people? WHERE AM I!?

Welcome then weary mortal to the 8th soul-scorching episode of the podcast that the internet is calling ‘a podcast about comics’. The Beast is back in continuity and living it up as super-powered *ahem* teenager in the 30th Century. Lactus, meanwhile, unveils his mighty Rock EPIC ‘Who He Is, And How He Came To Be’. Quake weaklings!

After the abortive SILENCE! news they hurl themselves face first into the morass of weekly comics, taking in Snyder and Capullo’s Owl Comics no.7, Dominique Laveau Voodoo Child no.1, the always swell Prophet (with a minor Jonathan Lethem digression) , Secret History of DB Cooper (again), Justice League Jeans and the Jeansification of Captain Marvel, Wonder Woman no.7, Amazing Spiderman something-or-other, The absolutely awesome sounding Stan Lee’s Mighty 7 (REALITY!). Lactus reaffirms his love of superhero dinners once again and the Beast compares Rocketeer Adventures to Band Aid. Then, in You Should Have Known Better, they tackle Mark Millar’s latest pitch Supercrooks. Following that The Beast froths about his bargain-filled week and talks up Chaykin & Garcia Lopez’s Twilight, Carol Swain and the simple beauty of Schulz’s Peanuts (always with his finger on the pulse this Beast!). Factor in a trawl through next week’s comics shizzle and you have a fat fist full of comics meat shoved right in your facehole. Suck it in you filthy rabble.

Also click below for the SILENCE! Gallery…

[audio:https://mindlessones.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/silence008.mp3]
Click to download

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NOT the best comic got this week – that was the Dahmer one, shit man – but five pages of McCarthy = min five extra pp worth reading, so ten in total twenty-three and a half pee a page, stiff but SOLD!

BUT the second best comic of the week, and it was more like fifteen cash-worthy pages as it turned out, maybe a smidge above that even. Well worth the getting.

Resurrecting this sometime feature then, like the apparently endless reincarnaions of one’s interest in “)))ad itself, to ask the timeless question – Any Cop?

Believe. Renaissance, new Golden Age, best in decades, all that.

Being: the first in a series of posts about John Smith and Edmund Bagwell’s top British horror comic Cradlegrave.

ONE – If you didn’t look past this cover-cum-promotional piece for Cradlegrave, you might think that it was telling a very specific sort of story, the sort of story you might describe as being either “tabloid shit” or “a bit Jamie Delano” depending on which of those two targets was more worthy of disdain.

When I first discussed Cradlegrave back in December, regular comments thread contributor Thrills said he was looking now that he’d got past his concerns that it would “be like that Denise Mina Hellblazer where ‘hoodies’ are ‘demons’.”

Ah, so it’s tabloid shit that smells like Jamie Delano.  The worst of both worlds.  Fuck.

TWO – Despite the fact that the “Fear they Neighbour” text is missing, the cover of the collected edition still aims to make a similar impression:

To my eye, there’s something less real about the four hooded figures in this reformatted cover though.  The overly harsh, pixelated light that gleams off of their shoulders is even more unnatural when set against an all-black background, a background that now seems to expand outwards from the empty spaces where four young faces should be.

These are absent phantoms, not flesh and blood monsters, and while I wouldn’t want to pretend that they’re being deliberately undermined here I still find it hard to imagine anyone taking them seriously.

The only fear in this image is the fear you bring with you, be it fear of “savage” yoofs or of dehumanising right wing rhetoric…

Click here to drink the black milk… IF YOU DARE!