Mindless Ones

WELL THEY LOOK SO GOOD I WANNA EAT ‘EM, AND THEY TASTE SO GOOD i GET TO NEED ‘EM

Okay, I want you to split into two teams. Now you guys are the red team, and you guys are team two. Now, everyone in the blue team needs to split up into teams of one and practice the trust exercises I showed you earlier. Team One, I want you to elect a leader then shout any ideas that come into your head at them. There’s no bad ideas here, brown sky thinking but you have to do this in complete silence. Okay, now I want the green team to split into two groups then those groups who will be Team A and Team Seven. Those teams then need to split in two once more and those groups split in two again and agin until everyone is in Team Blood Red And Bisected Lying Dead On The Floor. I’m off to the staff room to watch pornography. And Richard? You write the blurb.

They said it could easily be done and they were right!  It’s SILENCE! #291!

<ITEM>Gary Lactus and The Beast Must Die have both got into separate scrapes recently.  Listen to them tell you all about it in the new feature, SILENCE! Because The Internet’s A Prick!

<ITEM>SILENCE! (Because The Film’s Started). The Beast Must Die has seen a film and that film Justice League, The Snyder Cut.

<ITEM> Gary Lactus is now doing commissions so get in touch with him as he needs the money.

<ITEM>Come with us to Reviewniverse, with Pssst!, Kiss Of death by John Watkiss, The Eternals and Darker Image of course!

<ITEM>Buy Gary Lactus’ comics at frasergeesin.com.

<ITEM>Buy The Beast Must Die’s comics at milkthecat.wordpress.com.

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I’ve done almost shit all blogging on this site. Plenty of comics and podcasts but only one proper blog, so when it came time to choose my classic post my decision was incredibly easy. Here it is, nearly ten years old. It’s gone a bit stale, iPods aren’t a thing anymore and there’s plenty more magnificent millinery and hamazing headgear not included here which I have discovered since. Ten years! We’ll all be dead soon…

Hello, Gary Lactus here. I’m just sitting at home enjoying an Excelsior lager and thinking about The King’s Crowns.

More after the jump

Do you think that he’d even know? I’m not sure. He’s always so busy, isn’t he? The character and the book he starred in are a perfect match that way.

I’ve been spending a lot of time round at Kirby’s recently, and my favourite Kirby is the chatty, energetic old guy who’s perpetually setting up a big picture with the intention of hinting at an even bigger one. I’m talking about the Kirby who’s always happy to sit you down, offer you a drink and ask how you’re doing before the trip so nighttown begins. You’ll find this Kirby in The Eternals, of course, as well as in his Fourth World stories, and it’s hard not to love the guy.

The Jack Kirby you meet in OMAC is every bit as sharp as that other Jack, but he’s forever on the move. You head round to his place only to find him halfway out the door. This situation poses no problem for Kirby: ‘Of course you can come along!’ he barks. ‘I’m about to grab a taxi down to the “Brother” Eye if you’re willing to take a detour?’

Before you even have a chance to say yes you’re jumping out of the taxi and into the “Brother” Eye, a dingy old man’s pub untouched by the smoking ban, the sort of place that’s packed full of cigar smoke and shifty characters. And talking about characters, did Kirby really just tell you that that girl over there is a robot? And what’s that he’s saying about a man so rich he can afford to rent out whole cities for his private parties? You’re sure that he just said that the most recent party had a more sinister purpose, but somehow Kirby’s over at the other side of the bar now, stopping a nasty brawl before it can properly get going. One minute he’s holding a man ten years his junior by the throat, the next they’re heading towards you, talking quite intently with each other about the “Sickies”.

Kirby slaps you on the arm, buys you a drink and introduces you to his new friend Bucky… no, wait, it’s Buck, sorry. Kirby starts to settle down; he stretches his back out, and it looks like he’s about to chat to you when he suddenly decides to throw a nearby chair through the closest window. You’re about to tell the old guy to chill the fuck out, but then he leaps clean through the window and chases a mugger off down the street.

A brief ‘Good to see ya kid!’ and a hastily written check to the bar owner later and Kirby’s off into the night, shouting ‘OMAC lives so that man may live!!’ as he goes. Shit, that was exhausting, you think. But hell, when was the last time you had that much fun with a comic book superhero?

Does OMAC know what’s best in life? I’m not sure, but the man who created him certainly did! Happy birthday, then, to Jack Kirby – still missed, still the only king I will ever bow to.

A funny thing happened after I read Jeet Heer’s twitter essay on the debt popular culture owes to Jack Kirby: I found myself wanting to get some Kirby in front of my eyes again for the first time in a couple of months.

Remembering The Beast Must Die’s classic (#classic) post on The Demon, I decided to start there and I was impressed by the supremely elegant hackwork I found within:

This might sound dismissive, but it’s not meant to be. Mark Evanier’s introduction frames these stories as an attempt to horror comic on demand – “Carmine [Infantino] wants a comic about a demon? Fine. I’ll give him one. I’ll even call it THE DEMON!“ – and compared to Kirby’s Fourth World books or his work on The Eternals, there’s a lack of grandiose philosophical ambition coded into this particular eruption of granite-faced monsters and face-splitting energy blasts.

The Demon is a formula book through and through, with Kirby sweating away to recapture (& literalise) the magic of The Hulk: Jason Blood socialises in glorious Gotham city until an occult menace emerges, prompting the titular Demon into action; after spending a few pages getting kicked around by this month’s threat while his friends trail or pine after him in a state of groovy bewilderment, Etrigan will best his opponent through sheer energy and force of will; eventually, Jason Blood returns to his wonderful social life with a slightly more sombre look on his face:

And yet, there’s an admirable thematic consistency to these adventures…

A brief thought on Grant Morrison’s work that I might disown in the morning…

While hyping his upcoming Multiversity mini series for DC (at least half a decade in the making, and from the sound of it pages are still being done), Morrison has made reference to the Stan Lee method, in which the comic makes the reader an accomplice in the story.

Here’s the man himself, making some typically bold claims for his adoption of this technique in Multiversity #7, Ultra Comics:

I’ve used a lot of hypnotic induction. There’s an old trick that Stan Lee used to do — it was quite popular at Marvel — of the comic talking to you. I took that and this thing, and I think we’ve actually created the world’s first actual superhuman being, which you’ll see how it works when you read this comic. Then the world’s first super human being on this earth has to fight the most malignant entity. So the bad guys in Multiversity who are attacking the entire multiversal structure are also attacking the real world, and this comic is their only way through right now. So it becomes the reader versus the bad guy on the page. I think it’s actually quite scary, this thing. It scared me!

Read the rest of this entry »

At this point we’re all getting a bit drunk and we all like comics. This is the best time to get excited about The Official Handbook Of The Marvel Universe and Who’s Who in the DC Universe. Listen now as grown men turn into children before your very ears!

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Click here to see some images relevant to the conversation

PREPARING REACTIONS TO THE NEWLY REDESIGNED DARKSEID DOT DOT DOT

Darkseid Is… An inaction figure/A “21st Century big bad”/A redesign of a redesign of a real design/A quaint plastic monster farting out an unclean sun.

Darkseid Is… Straining for relevance/A big Depeche Mode fan/Dangerously indebted to the robust sartorial choices of a certain Lex Luthor.

Darkseid Is… A dullard’s idea of raw spectacle/Actually quite ripped underneath that hard shell/Pretending to be a pint man now, probably.

Darkseid Is… Representative of nothing/Reflective of nothing/Currently unable to smuggle meaning under his dainty little skirt.

Darkseid Is… Singing the Arkham City blues/A capitalist realist’s dream/Safe now for renewed consumption.

Darkseid Is… Honestly, pretty fucking dull in this incarnation.

I don’t usually deal in the sort of criticism that tries to find the spirit of our time in this or that piece of pop culture detritus, but for the past few years I’ve felt smothered by four little words – THERE IS NO ALTERNATIVE! – and every time I see or hear a variation on that theme, there’s only one face I see.

No point in trying to keep the bastard stuck in a corner anymore.  You can only fight him off for so long, you know?

It’s time to let Darkseid out of the box:

This is the way, step inside.

Aww, fuck. Might as well start off with a quote from Millar, the Instigator:

“But I love that Kapow! is sold out. I want people to turn up, find that out and think: ‘Damn, I’m definitely going to get my ticket next year.’ There is something cool about that.”

(Kapow! Superheroes come to Britian – man, this even willingly leans in to those Zap! Pow! punches, eh?)

Ok so one of the weird things about Mark Millar, as a figure in popular culture, is that I’m predisposed to disbelieve almost everything he says in interviews. He’s like Tony Blair that way for me, only, you know, Millar’s not actually irredeemably evil.

He is the king of the obvious idea, apparently, and as such the first person to write a comic where a supervillain is the main character. The book in question? Nemesis (Icon Comics, 2010), except… that’s not quite right.  You see, the weird thing about this particular boast is that Millar actually beat himself to the punch on this one, with Wanted (Top Cow, 2003). Or maybe the pluralisation invalidates that example, in which case all I have to say is: Zodiac (Marvel, 2009). Or maybe: Irredeemable (Boom Studios, 2009). If plural supervillains count then maybe I’d be saying Empire (Gorilla Comics, 2000)  instead, but the point is that it’s a silly boast, one that’s easily proved to be untrue.

Still, at least it’s still a relatively new idea, eh?

Oh. Okay. Maybe not. Well… there probably weren’t any gay incestuous womb-bombs in those old Joker comics, but maybe that’s just because it’s a shit idea?

More fear and self loathing at the comics convention after the cut!!