Mindless Ones

PRELUDE

In times like these as in all other times, you are allowed to be relieved when someone else has done the heavy lifting for you.  As such, it’s comforting to find that Clark has put together not only a series of thoughtful posts on the immediate impacts of Covid-19 on the comics industry, but also a run of weekly link blogs to keep folk up-to-date on what’s going on in this little corner of the world.

Free from any delusions of being thorough, I figured I’d write a short post drawing attention to a few free comics / comics related videos closer to home, and maybe highlight a couple of ways you can help the artists involved along the way if you’ve got the cash to do so.

PART 1 – FREE COMICS!

Lockdown has seen a number of comics artists giving away their work for free, or at a discount.  Here are a few such works that we’ve reviewed before, if you’re stuck in the house and want a sense of what you might want to amuse and enervate yourself without splurging your last few iso-bucks!

Sarah Broadhurst, Jules Scheele and an army of sharp feminist voices – Identity: An Anthology (One Beat Zines, originally reviewed November 2015)

DOWNLOAD IT FOR FREE HERE

This is not only a truly beautiful object but a useful one too.  From Sabba Khan‘s elegant self-reflections to Alia Wilhelm‘s too-close photography by way of Sammy Boras‘ more traditional use of the comic book form to explore difficult questions of sexuality, Identity always makes intersectional feminism feel as natural as it really is, despite what some commentators might have you believe, arranging all of these disparate voices and means of expression together in one powerful volume.

This might sound like damning with faint praise but it’s meant sincerely.   Seemingly taking its cue from the punchy, “here’s my point and I dare you not to take it” expressiveness of Scheele’s cover design, this collection of comics and essays transforms lived experience into a rallying cry against complacency, against the possibility of mistaking your own experience for the only one worth listening to.

I can’t recommend it highly enough.

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On the night our young decade was trying to be born, those trapped in the ritual of havering between TV channels in the UK might have found themselves wondering which century they were in.  On one channel, Travis, the slightly more nimble proto-Coldplay.  On the other, the Stereophonics, Oasis without the world-threatening streak of experimentalism.

The only sign that this wasn’t 1999 was the beard on Travis singer Fran Healy’s face, a mass of hair that would have made it impossible for Healy to perform ‘U16 Girls’ without being arrested on sight, even in the ’90s.

So we were living in the future after all. It didn’t feel like it, but then it rarely had before either.

Near the top of Zach Snyder’s 2004 remake of Dawn of the Dead, ‘Have a Nice Day’ by the Stereophonics plays in a pre-carnage sequence where Anna drives away from her prophetically long hospital shift and towards the last glimmering daylight of suburban comfort.  Cynics would say that this is just an early example of Snyder’s penchant for the obvious, a tendency that would see him hose every scene in Sucker Punch and Watchmen with big classic massive anthems until all ambiguity is blasted from the frame.  True believers know otherwise.  Those of us who have studied the sacred texts know that Snyder works on a mystic level – this is the man who anticipated 9-11 a mere twelve years after it happened in Man of Steel, after all.  No mere filmmaker, Snyder is an occult operator who predicted his own Man of Steel three years after it happened in Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice, thus ensuring that pop culture and pop reality were caught up in a perpetual feedback loop.

So while to the uninitiated the use of ‘Have a Nice Day’ at the top of Dawn of the Dead might seem to be the sign of a filmmaker battering you with dramatic irony, to those attuned to the Snyderverse it will be apparent that this move was really part of an effort to reprogram the world, a slow spell that has really started to take effect in the year 2020.

Coincidentally, Snyder’s Army of the Dead has a tentative release date of winter 2020.

HOLY HECK! WHAT THE FUN IS THAT?! PARDON MY FRENCH BUT WHAT THE ACTUAL FUN IS THAT?! THERE! UP THERE! LOOK!! IT’S DOWN THERE TOO! IT’S… IT’S… BLURB!!!!

Gary Lactus and The Beast Must Die are back together, just like the good old days, talking over Skype, drinking beer, and being total legends forever cruising down the highway until they crash into the Sun and the sky explodes!

<ITEM> Talking! Covid 19, crumpets, Closed comic shops, the collapse of television, lunch and dinner and The Beast has seen the sci-fi horror, Await Further Instructions.

<ITEM> Come with us to Reviewniverse and hear tell of Steed and Mrs. Peel, Modesty Blaise, Punisher: Soviet, Green Arrow: The Longbow Hunters, Jimmy Olsen, Ilya’s second collection of his End Of The World Club strips, Timewarp and a whole lotta diverging chat about revisionism, the death of Gary Lactus and bladders.

<ITEM> The end of the episode

<ITEM> Hey listen!

@frasergeesin
@thebeastmustdie

si************@gm***.com

Hello there. This issue of SILENCE! has been put together from conversations between Gary Lactus and The Dear Listener. Normal SILENCE! service shall return soon.

CONTENTS!

Little Kieron Gillen is off school and talks The Ludocrats and Asterix with the recent passing of Albert Uderzo. He also bigs up Pulp by Brubaker and Phillips before getting on with his homework.

Spare 5 tells Gary about life at home right now where he’s found time to get round to reading Uzumaki and watching Galaxy Quest.

John Bishop tackles the topics of the sickness of collecting, his new dog, Ryan Brown and Blast Furnace.

Illogical Volume fulfills a diversity quota with his Scottishness. He tells Gary about The Drifting Classroom the newly colourised From Hell and Gary tells him about Billionaire Island and there’s speculation about our post-virus world.

Zom is our final caller even though he lives close enough to Gary’s spaceship in space to shout. He’s done a right good read of David Boring so the pals talk about Daniel Clowes and ponder what sort of Batman they are.

The end. Now wash your hands. Seriously, wash your hands.

@frasergeesin
@thebeastmustdie

si************@gm***.com