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.

WANT TO LEARN MORE?

The images in Petrichor look like a series of portraits of a flight of stairs as seen by someone in the process of falling down them.

The images in Petrichor are black and white except for those that are in colour.

Individual panels do not contain any words, except from when they do. These words form a non-linear narrative, except for the ones that are drawn on the images themselves, which form a different part of that narrative.

The narrative comes crashing in and out like waves.

This does not mean that it always starts or ends in the same place.

The visual parts of this narrative look like portraits of these waves as seen from the perspective of the sand the waves are breaking on.

Each panel is a wave.  Each page is a wave.  Each wave is…

Every element of the narrative is a grain of sand.  The waves are crashing over.

***

Petrichor is a book about dying.

Petrichor is a book for the dead.

Petrichor is a book about life, for the living.

It’s a book about how ghosts are made up and why we need them anyway. It’s a book about how ghosts are real.

Petrichor is a book of stray thoughts, abstract images, brand names, missing people, scenes repeating as the waves crash over.  It’s a book about love and loss and family.  All of this feels like an accident.  Everything in this books seems carefully put together and well maintained.

Petrichor is a black and white comic except when it’s in colour.

And you are still falling down the stairs.  And the waves are crashing over.  Ghosts and sand.  Missing people.  People who are here.

And the waves crash over.

PUT A RED NOSE ON YOUR CONK AND LET’S STONK

Imagine world. Go on, close your eyes, imagine a world. Come on, Imagine a world. A whole world. Quickly! COME ON! NO, NOT THAT WORLD, IT’S TOO MUCH LIKE THIS ONE! THINK OF A BETTER WORLD! Ah, forget it. No, don’t bother.

Imagine a blurb. Okay? Good.

<ITEM>Uncharacteristically scorchingly hot on the heels of SILENCE!#263 comes SILENCE!#264!  Too much?  Never enough?  Never mind, Gary Lactus and The Beast Must Die remain consistently inconsistent.

<ITEM>We hope you enjoyed the SILENCE! Special with Gareth A. Hopkins, pick up a copy of Petrichor here.

<ITEM>BIG NEWS! We will be joining Al Kennedy for a special SILENCE! To Astonish Live! at the Glasgow Comic Con on June 29th.  Come along and make it good!  Not only that but The Beast Must Die will be exhibiting at the Leicester Horror Con!  

<ITEM>The Beast has a few choice words to say about Neil Gaiman’s Writing Masterclass and Lactus has a few random words regarding the experience of watching Ant Man and The Wasp on screens of various sizes.  Mr. Die has also seen half of Ready Player One but I hardly think that’s enough for him to have formed an opinion about it.  THINK AGAIN!

<ITEM>Come with us to Reviewniverse, with The Female Furies, Doomsday Clock, X-Force, Captain Clyde, Emotional Data: Test Tube Sugar Baby, The Quiet Place, the Captain Marvel Movie and you of course!

<ITEM>To see you out there’s some Dadmin regarding Hey Duggee (good) and Bing (anxiety inducing).  Gary bemoans the ridiculousness of iTunes (please rate and review us) and The Beast recommends the Chart Music podcast.

<ITEM>No more items, just listening.

@silencepod
@bobsymindless
@frasergeesin
@thebeastmustdie

[email protected]

YOURS IS HOLLOW SOUNDING, FRANKLY YOU’VE BECOME SUCKERS

Alright pod-monkeys! I recorded a chat with the extremely talented comic creator, friend of the pod and all right super-mensch, Gareth Hopkins about his amazing new comic Petrichor. As it’s me, we’re out and about, so you get the aural delights of the Barbican as a background for our chat. Gareth was gracious, eloquent and honest so I hope you enjoy the chat.

Pick up a copy of Petrichor here.

Normal SILENCE! Service will resume shortly.

@silencepod
@bobsymindless
@frasergeesin
@thebeastmustdie

[email protected]

As debuted at Thought Bubble, KOMISK, the Ikea themed comics anthology, is now available from Fraser Geesin’s webstore!

Featuring strips by Geesin, Kathryn Briggs, Gareth A. Hopkins, Tom Mortimer, Paul Jon Milne and David Allison (that’s me – hi mum!), KOMISK exists at the point where mild domestic ambition blurs into existential terror and where novel shelving solutions seem to mock you in your dreams.

“Darkly humorous… really very, very funny” – Andy Oliver, Broken Frontier

“Includes Fraser Geesin’s THE INCREDIBLE EVERYDAY, the best thing I’ve read all weekend” – Colin Bell, Thought Bubble 2018

As a wee taster, you can download an alternative version of one my contributions to the anthology, Spegelvärlden, RIGHT HERE!

The finished version of the strip is shorter, less oblique and packed full of words cos yer man Geesin was keen on providing value for money for paying punters, but I still quite like this version and hopefully it’ll give you a flavour of the ruined good that await you in the anthology itself!