Mindless Ones

The cult film podcast with Mat Colegate (aka Lord Nuneaton Savage) & Dan White (aka The Beast Must Die).

The Savage Beast No.6: Sideways Superheroes

In this sixth episode, we discuss superhero films, through a twisted lens. Films discussed include:

• Joker (Todd Phillips, 2019)
  
• Super (James Gunn, 2010)
• Brightburn (David Yarovesky, 2019)
• Darkman (Sam Raimi, 1990)

Check out The Savage Beast tumblr, for some visual accompaniment to the discussion: https://savagebeastpodcast.tumblr.com/

Follow us on Twitter @SavBeastPod

The third of three posts looking at stand out appearances of the Joker

Part 1 here (The Killing Joke)

Part 2 here (The Dark Knight Returns)

I. Quiet in the back row

“It’s quite possible we may actually be looking at some kind of super-sanity here. A brilliant new modification of human perception, more suited to urban life at the end of the twentieth century Unlike you and I, the Joker seems to have no control over the sensory information he’s receiving from the outside world. He can only cope with that chaotic barrage of input by going with the flow. That’s why some days he’s a mischievous clown, others a psychopathic killer. He has no real personality. He creates himself each day. He see himself as the Lord of Misrule and the world as a Theatre of the Absurd.” ~ Dr Ruth Adams, Arkham Asylum

Strangely enough we’ll need to begin this critical excavation not with a Batman comic but with Morrison’s last true commercial failure for DC. Co-authored by Marky Mark Millar and drawn by N. Steven Harris, Aztek the Ultimate Man (ably assessed by my fellow Mindless, The Beast Must Die, here) was Morrison’s first ongoing superhero gig and his only man in pants book to implode in a mere ten issues. As the sales plummeted parachuting in big draw characters like Batman and the Joker must have been as much an editorially mandated necessity as a creative choice, but Morrison made it work and gave us a glimpse of a Clown Prince that wouldn’t be fleshed out for another decade.

Go super-sane over the jump

PAGE 1: OPENING CREDITS

Question: was it Morrison’s art direction, or was Irving responsible for the decision to construct this scene out of these calming blues?

I used to have a friend who would perform his own peculiar brand of dance: DANCE FIGHTING

So you’ve skanked a hole in your Batsocks. It’s time to leave the basement. Head on up the stairs – feet light and stomach fluttering two steps ahead. Things go a bit strange and your head slides away into the ringing in your ears, just for a second, but when you pop out the top of the stairwell again, something very strange has happened. You’re not in the basement of some boring britshit revivalist toilet in an imaginary town in Northern England anymore. Like a fearless innovator of some time-tripping new dance move you’ve jumped up two storeys, spun through thirty three years, and flipped sideways three thousand odd miles. A downtown loft. New York. 197Something. It’s time to put your Spidey Socks on.

Witness birth of Disco Punk and HipHop! Thwipp Thwipp!.

The Mylestones – The Joker

[audio:http://mindlessones.files.wordpress.com/2009/02/the-joker-song.mp3]

There’s talc on the floor. A bag of ‘blues’ in your pocket, or so you like to think – dexys, mandys, but mainly ripoff caffeine pills. Door receipts are down – times are lean, leaner than the waists. Even the youngest acest faces are deep lined, adorned with feather cuts starting ever further up the head. The tribes have had to pull together and mingle even though the soul boy purists hate it, so for you, in those socks, it’s the basement mate – ska, rocksteady, and, of course, 2tone.

And take your porkpie hat with you, victim.

And you thought we’d forgotten. For the lucky uninitiated, check the Cape-Killer archive:

To catch a cape killer

Cape killer apokriffer

Join Us!

What are you waiting for? JOIN US!!

So. We caught one.. A genuine, real life, stone-cold Cape Killer. Hero-blood under the nails on her dialing finger.

Beware! The mind of a Killer lurks beneath!

Just a couple of things before we dive in: keen minds have already pored over this issue, so I don’t intend to cover all the bases, instead I’ve decided to offer up a subjective and personal response (nothing new there, then), served up with some bat-thoughts you won’t have read anywhere else. Also, I haven’t included the ads as *pages*. Has anyone noticed DC was generous enough to grant us 24 pages of story this month? I don’t know if that means they’re getting stingier with the specials, or if they’re getting more generous with the regular books. Regardless, big boys, can we have our comics this fat all the time now please?

And now, without further ado….

‘To the Batmobile, let’s go!’

Annotatin’ action after the jump…