Mindless Ones

What I like best in art – and I like loads of stuff, I like jokes that I can’t help but laugh at, I like being able to just fucking marvel at someone doing something that seems impossible, I like that moment when something that didn’t seem like it could possibly come together does, and so on – is being put into difficulty.  Not in terms of being faced with something that’s hard to watch/read/look at/listen to necessarily, more in that I like it when I’m made to confront something that I can’t easily resolve or ignore or explain away.

The Millar/Hitch Ultimates doesn’t look like the most promising territory for this sort of experience, and for the most part that’s true. It’s probably the last Mark Millar comic I was able to enjoy without vomiting up qualifiers, and it definitely represents the last point where Bryan Hitch’s artwork looked good to my eyes, but if I like it at all then I like it in a fairly breezy way.  I laugh at the crude bits, I follow the fight scenes, I enjoy the brash, bratty character beats, and all of this is good.

The point of difficulty, for me, the point where I find myself getting really tangled up in the book, involves a cameo by the man who was President of the United States of America at the time the story was published:

DIVE! DIVE! DIVE!

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GET OUT OF THE ROAD YOU LITTLE FOOLS!

IN TODAY’S EAR-SCALDING INSTALLMENT: The Beast finds his life has taken on lashings of fully painted Euro-sauce, while Lactus drags his cosmic chassis from the sofa to the table!!! The Beast debuts his paean to internet fuckwittery ‘Steve Dave is Online’. SILENCE! News comes and goes like a ship in the night, but not before the Greatest Jingle of All Time makes an appearance.

Finally the pusillanimous pairsome get onto the important business of comics. They discuss America’s Got Powers from top British TV man, and all round alpha-nerd Jonathan Ross, SAGA no.2 from BKV and Fiona Staples. Lactus talks about Avengers Assemble and Avenging Spiderman and Avenging Avenginators vs X-Avengers (one of those is a fake, eagle-eyes!). Mark Millar and Dave ‘The Rave’ Gibbons’ new spy tale the Secret Service is chewed and digested; Frankenstein Agent of SHADE is a thing, Casey & Fox’s Haunt is too. Saucer County and the Shade – these are the things that little boys are made of… Lactus has a less yellow experience with Fantastic Four and then the Beast tackles the baffling but kinda brilliant Glamourpuss from Dave Sim in You Should Have Known Better.

All this and the second coming of Tupac Shakur? Surely not (don’t call me Shirley) I didn’t I said ‘surely’ (Oh. my mistake) That’s okay Shirley.

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Don’t forget to click below for the SILENCE! gallery…
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Yes, there is!  We talk about Chris Ware’s Acme Novelty Library # 20, also known as Lint.

Then there’s some rambling chat about Mark Millar, Marvel Ultimate stuff, The Authority, Bryan Hitch, Warren Ellis, Freak Angels, The Boys, Garth Ennis, Unknown Soldier, Jesse Custer’s hair and white jeans,  Peter Milligan and Hellblazer. Then the battery ran out and we all went home to bed and it was all a dream.  Or was it?  Of course it wasn’t, you can hear it here:
[audio:https://mindlessones.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/mindlessoneslint.mp3]
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The Marvel UK Transformers comic occupied a special part of my young heart for a fair while back in the 80’s (I often think all boys of a certain era were actually built with a small Transformers shaped compartment in their heart) The weekly adventures of the Robots in Disguise came somewhere between Battle Action Force (UK GI Joe to you colonials) and 2000ad. What could have been a shonky toy cash in title had a unique flavour all of it’s own, mainly thanks to the stalwart work done by premier Trans-scriber Simon Furman. Under his guidance the Transformers mythos grew into something rich and strange. And violent. Very very violent… Alongside such Brit comics luminaries such as John Wagner and Pat Mills, Furman was one of the most prolific writers of the 80’s carving out a niche writing for Marvel UK, taking the Transformers mythos and running with it. Once the animated movie was released the strip really hit it’s stride, with the addition of Galvatron, Cyclonus and Scourge and the rest of the 2006 mob. Not to mention a certain freelance peace-keeping agent…yes?

Along with Transformers, Furman also created the wonderful robot bounty hunter Death’s Head, as well as the super violent futuristic sports mercenaries Dragon’s Claws. For a while Marvel UK became a hotbed of fun new comics that provided a well of young British comics talent the chance to cut loose.

Soon after Furman started working in American comics for Marvel, IDW, Dreamwave and Dynamite. He has also worked in animation, computer games and continues to write Transformers to this day. An extremely personable chap, with an extensive knowledge of exploitation movies, Simon kindly agreed to do a Mindless interview. Read on…yes?

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