50-Word (Comic) Review- Red Thorn #1- If Kurt Cobain were alive today he would be 48-years-old

Writer: David Baillie
Artist: Meghan Hetrick
Publisher: Vertigo (DC)
Released: 18th November 2015 (not 1994)



Halfway through and it’s annoying the heck out of me. The characters are douchebags, nothing is believable, and the references are early 1990’s bands. Yuck, I don’t want to read about unbelievable, unlikeable asses. Why are comic book writers still stuck in 1993? Will I read the entire issue? No.



Rating: 2/10

I was a huge fan of Nirvana, and when Kurt died in 1994 I found it sad, but predictable. His songs were about a miserable, nothing happening adolescence, and as he got famous they morphed into songs about hating fame, and wanting to go back to the life that he hated anyway. Heroin addiction and death were inevitable for a man who refused to look on the bright side. He left some great, angry, pounding music behind him, but his refusal to embrace the possibility of future happiness killed him. I got over Nirvana a long time ago, but that’s doesn’t appear to be the case for a lot of people. I was in the supermarket today, and Kurt’s face was on the front of a top-selling (meaning it sells about ten issues) music magazine, and now I’ve just read a ‘new’ comic book from Vertigo, and Kurt is all over that as well. What the hell happened? When did our culture grind to a halt? When did looking back, relying on nostalgia, become the norm? Kurt died 21 FN YEARS AGO!!! It’s time to move on, and do something genuinely new, so when I read a comic book with (yet another) young female protagonist, and she’s all about Nirvana, it’s an immediate turn-off. A big flashing neon sign clobbers me over the head and tells me that this writer has nothing to say about now, so is going back to the past in an attempt to pump some meaning into his already moribund creation. Goddamn it man. Another FN comic with Nirvana references. I can’t believe it. Well, I can, and that’s why it’s so bloody depressing. Agggghhh, enough words, sod this comic book, over.

Movie review: The World’s End- Empty Nostalgia for the Loser Generation

Written by: Edgar Wright & Simon Pegg.

Starring: Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Martin Freeman.

Release Date: July 2013

Box Office: $46.1



Simon Pegg is Hollywood diet body gaunt, he looks wealthy, his new hair must have cost him a fortune, but is Nicholas Cage bad. Nick Frost, his old buddy, is still Humpty Dumpty rotund, an everyman foil to the overachieving Pegg machine. That Office bloke is here as well. He plays the same character that he always plays, with the wide-eyed facial tics and air of bemused exasperation that has served him so well during his entire acting career.

Mocking nostalgia, whilst making money out of nostalgia.

The plot is perfunctory and involves some boring middle-aged gits and their pathetic old mate (Simon Pegg) going on a final pub-crawl around a sleepy English town. The movie sags as the boring old men sit in pub chatting about the past. Pegg is wacky, but the rest of the cast look bored and not into it at all.

Imagine a group of tired middle-aged salesmen having a chat in a pub with a ‘wacky’ 1990’s character trying to get a reaction out of them. That’s the first third of the movie. It then gets purposefully silly as some ridiculous alien robots are introduced into the narrative. They had to appear, as nothing else was happening. The movie then descends into fight scenes with aliens exploding into blue goo, lots of running around, and sight-gags involving Simon Pegg falling over fences, as he tends to do in all of his other movies. Hey, isn’t this the same plot as Shaun of the Dead?

Yeah, it’s Shaun of the Dead 2, just like the first movie, but with an added sense of overwhelming sadness and nostalgic regret. The narrative is unsure of itself, it sags, it’s overwritten, it’s dull and it lacks a strong new idea to give everything a sense of urgency and life. The attempt is to criticise nostalgia, whilst making money from nostalgia. The contradiction comes across as hypocrisy, as the movie is nothing if not painfully, apologetically self-aware. As it concludes you can feel the producers panic as they realise that their theme of an invading alien population might be misconstrued as an attack on the open borders mass immigration policy that is turning the UK into a segregated nation of warring tribal communities. It doesn’t want to do anything that might upset the neo-liberal corporate consensus of cultural genocide of indigenous European culture, so it shoehorns in a politically correct ending to appease the almighty god of cultural diversity. Nice one lads. I think you got away with it.

Here comes the forward rolls and fights in a pub.

It’s all very sad, to see the cool of the past, regurgitated with diminishing returns. What you have in this movie is a nostalgic unit shifter aimed at a generation that gave us Tony Blair, the Iraq war, Police state surveillance, lies and corruption. It’s a generation that paved the way for what we have now. A crumbling western civilisation, being looted by a political class of neo-liberal lunatics with an enslaved population losing itself in I-Phones, fantasy, gambling, sports, celebrities, nostalgia and anything that helps to distract their minds from the painful reality that surrounds their everyday waking lives.

I left ‘The World’s End’ with my mind very much on waking concerns. There was no distraction from painful reality here. It left me with a familiar feeling of sad emptiness and regret that you always get from indulging in corporate sponsored nostalgia. What was new and cool has become old and lame, and try as you might, you cannot reinvent what is now gone. The World’s End is an old man sitting in a pub, alone, thinking about the good old days, unable to recreate them. He’s alive, but lost in a dead past. He’s out of time, and his cool old friends are married/buried (as Kurt said) in the suburbs.

The old man looks pathetic, but then reality kicks in and you realise that Simon Pegg is a Hollywood career actor. He appears in Star Trek. He’s a star. There’s no austerity for him. He escaped the UK. He did very well for himself. He might be playing the sad old man in the pub, but that sad old man, drinking alone, stuck in the past, wrapped up in useless nostalgia, he’s not Simon Pegg. That pathetic old man is the 1990’s generation, the defeated, retreated viewers of this movie.

I loved these guys in 'Spaced.'

We cannot recapture a lost feeling. We cannot live off of the fumes of the past. It’s dead, gone, we need to move on, and we need to deal with the reality that is now. If we stay in the nostalgic past we are the suckers, because we are the people paying for the nostalgic movie that does not resonate with concerns of today. The actors are doing very well, don’t worry about them. They’ll go home to big houses and careers, we’ll go home to debt caged routines and dreams of the days when our world still had possibilities.

Simon Pegg is a winner, just like he always was. These days he’s selling nostalgia to losers, a winner, milking the failures that make up his audience of ageing fanboys, a well he can drain before going back to making irrelevant movies in Hollywood with unfunny American actors. Why then does he still go through the old UK routine, with diminishing returns, when he can stay in Hollywood making nonsense movies for the big US market? Who knows? Perhaps he just needs to sure up his UK fanbase every now and then? I think that’s probably it.

I don’t want to be reminded of a useless past. Pegg portrays a loser in these movies, but he’s no loser. The audience fanboys stuck in useless 90’s nostalgia are the losers, he panders to them, he pretends to be them, and why not? He’s a winner, and winners always portray themselves as losers in order to gain favour with their audience. I don’t want to be a loser. I don’t want to be stuck in the past. The 1990’s created what we have now. I live now, not then, I want to talk about now. I want to move on.  I have no desire to live in the useless, dirty old past. I want to live today. I want to talk about today. I want to do something about today. Today is all we have. The past is a graveyard, an overgrown nowhere land of sad-eyed nostalgic losers. I don’t want to go there. I have to move on.


Rating: 4/10 (The movie is nostalgia aimed at UK males who grew up in the 1990’s. I grew up during that time period, and loved ‘Spaced’ so I’m in the target demographic, but all it did for me was to leave me feeling empty and depressed)

Comic review- Miracleman #2: In this wasteland of the now

Story: Neil Gaiman
Art: Mark Buckingham
Publisher: Marvel
Released: 16th September 2015 


I’ve spent my morning with Neil Gaiman, and he’s led me down the path of yesterday, leaving me drenched in sweet, nostalgic sad, empty, hindsight regret.

Still waiting.....

There’s an initial pleasure to be gained in looking back, but when you get to deep you see yourself as you actually were. You see the stupid mistakes, the missed chances, the should have beens, the almosts, and the never weres. Regret rises to the surface and pleasure soon ebbs into a useless, longing feeling that things should have been better, but they weren’t, and there’s nothing that you can do about it now, because the past is gone, the people are gone, and you yourself, as you used to be, you are gone as well.

Miracleman #2 is split into three individual parts. The later two are probably connected, and are tied into the larger narrative, hinting of a return, of the villain.

The second part is school in the late 80’s/90’s, in England, as I remember it, personally. It’s behind the bike-shed, a pretty girl, spots, being cool, being detached, messing things up, being a silly boy, it’s the things that I remember, and I’m not sure if it will mean anything to kids in their twenties who are reading the book, but for a 80’s/90’s kid, Gaiman is a witness to how things actually were, he gets to the soul of it, and he takes me back to that time, that place of memory and regret, a school uniform and the wish, now, that things had turned out a bit better than they actually did.

The first story, the main story is equally as sad, but in a grown-up sense of deluded expectations, disappointment and waiting for something that isn’t there. The story is about a man holding out for physical perfection, stupidly, rejecting the possibility of love, rejecting reality, and waiting for the return of an impossible Goddess.  It’s a lonely tale, and it reminds me of 90’s libraries, reading Gaiman, walking home in the rain, alone, of course, but with Gaiman in my head, telling me that the world is sad, telling me that I shouldn’t give up, because who knows? Perhaps, some day, somebody will give a s***.

for the girl

Yes, it’s an emotional trip for me to spend time with Neil Gaiman on a September morning in 2015. I have emotional baggage with the dude, old memories, mostly crappy, but they would have been even worse without him. He’s a bloody good writer you know. He’s a craftsmen, and I do appreciate him, and I do admire his work, even the new (old) stuff, with the memories that come with it, stuck in my own past.

I should probably leave Neil Gaiman well alone from now on. I’m too old, and it’s making me painfully aware of my own useless past. I read his work today, and it’s good, very good, but there’s deep sadness there.

When I read Miracleman #2 I feel a sense of time, of wasting it, waiting, too much time waiting, only for nothing to happen and to wake up one day with nothing gained from the wait, just more waiting, more waiting. Reading Gaiman takes me back to the past, my own neglected graveyard, of dashed hopes and an almost tangible feeling of time slipping through my fingertips.

The world outside swirls and changes, and yesterday fades into memory, becoming further, and further away, as new memories fail to materialise, so all that is left, though not worth remembering, is all that there is, in this useless, silent, far too still, wasteland of the now.


Rating: 9/10 (Taking me back, as Gaiman always does)

Comic Review: Fight Club 2 #2- Repackaging Fake Cool Revolution

Writer: Chuck Palahniuk
Artist: Cameron Stewart
Publisher: Dark Horse Comics
Released: 24th June 2015



There’s no shining up this one. Fight Club 2 #2 has now officially plopped down, and the only thing to do with it is to flush it away as soon as possible, open the window and spray the heck out of the room to remove the foul stench of it’s existence.

Can we finally bury the 1990’s now, please? No more attempts at nostalgia cool, it’s getting a bit embarrassing and very desperate now. Yes, I know that Nirvana were great, but the dude died in 1994, find something new, find something that says something about NOW, not then.

Fight Club #2 is Nirvana, grown up, married, buried, not dead, but it might as well be. The narrative follows a bored suburban couple. The man is old, tired and useless, his wife is having an affair, but because it’s Fight Club, she’s having an affair with the married bloke’s alter ego, Tyler six-pack. Throw in a child kidnapping (Yawn, somebody call Liam Neeson) and vague references to change (call Obama) and you have your book.

It’s very boring, the jokes are ‘cool’ and meaningless, and nothing about it holds any interest to me, mainly because, as I said before, it’s a 1990’s relic, rejuvenated for nostalgia cool, and not something that should be read by anybody under the age of about thirty-five.

I’m over the age of thirty-five, and I remember the movie when it was first released. It was cool, we thought it was saying something, and it probably was, but what it said was largely back-drop to the all pervading ‘cool.’ The world watched, took nothing from, it other than entertainment value, and carried on doing the same voting, buying and moaning that they always do.

Fight Club was a movie that appeared to be revolutionary, but that was surface, as this comic book now proves. No revolution is happening here. Don’t expect it from career cool people, and don’t expect it from those hanging onto 90’s glories.

I decided to give Fight Club 2 a chance. After two issues I’m done with it. Nirvana were great, move on, get something new. Fight Club was great, move on, get something new.


Rating: 3/10 (Redundant)

Comic Review: Sandman Overture #5- “Hey Barry, get out of your bedroom, it’s lovely outside.”

Writer: Neil Gaiman
Artist: J.H. Williams III
Colours: Dave Stewart
Publisher: Vertigo (DC)
Released: 27th May 2015


Sandman has returned, belatedly, and I enjoyed wallowing in the slow, bedroom depressed, self questioning, unsure about activity or inactivity world of 90’s gloom once again.

The art works perfectly with the mindset on display within the book. There’s a cat, the Goth King (Dream) mopes, he’s unsure about everything, a war is going on, a battle against the blackness of staying in his bedroom, and the difficult world outside, where everything is being destroyed anyway.

Why not settle down with a nice woman, asks his Mum? Goth bloke mopes, back to his bedroom again. Who is to save him? A text message, destiny forces him out, and his cat has a nice surprise for him in the kitty litter.

The delay on this title has been so long, but it works, because when the book finally does turn up, the narrative itself is all about themes of delay, being static, thinking about destiny, and time, and dreams.

‘I did not need rescuing. I was doing perfectly well on my own.’

Of course, he wasn’t, and as he falls reluctantly back into reality would it be so hard for him to mumble a small word of thanks?

Kids, 90’s Goth kids at that, what are you going to do? They just need a bit of sunlight, to go to the park with their younger siblings, to play on the swings and have a laugh, swings always cheer them up.

Yeah, I enjoyed Sandman Overture #5. The art is beautiful, the story is as Goth as Goth gets, and although Dream doesn’t smile, there’s hope in the litter tray, sunshine on the swings, and it’s nice to see him getting out of his 90’s bedroom, at least for a short time.



Rating: 9/10 (Enjoyable 90’s Gothness)

Comic review: Savior #1- Pretentious, tired, old, smelly and flat

Story: Todd McFarlane & Brian Holguin
Art: Clayton Crain
Publisher: Image Comics
Released: 8th April 2015



There are so many things about this book that annoy the heck out of me, so many that I don’t even know where to start, but I do know this for a fact.

I’m going to enjoy slogging this one off.

Yeah, I know that sounds mean-spirited of me, but I’m sorry. I’ve just been served up a turd sandwich, taken a big optimistic bite of it and spat it out all over my carpet. The sandwich was bloody awful, and I want to tell everybody all about it. I want to moan. I want to vent. I want to warn anybody else who might be tempted into taking a bite of this monstrosity.

DON’T.

IT TASTES LIKE DOG ****.

The book begins with a television visual trope of a bird pecking at roadkill. It then moves onto another television trope, the moment of violence, that ends mid scene to be replaced by a ‘Six-Month’s Earlier’ panel. The idea is to get you excited with violence, and to then rewind the story and give you all of the boring stuff that preceded it.  So far, so formulaic, the book is reading like a screenplay for a television show or at least a pitch for one. Ho-hum.

From formulaic it gets pretentious and annoying REAL fast. The plot switches to ace female reporter Lois Lane (or whatever her name is) lecturing and patronising a bunch of school kids by basically telling them that they are going to live their lives with closed minds, only going to Internet sites that talk about the President being an alien and the Moon landings being a hoax. Err, what Internet sites is she talking about? I’m the ‘conspiracy’ comic book guy and I can’t EVER recall seeing any Internet site that claims the President is an alien. A globalist puppet fraud perhaps? But not an alien, that’s a new one on me.

And the moon landing hoax thing is so old and irrelevant now that I can’t even remember the last time that anybody talked about it. This ace female reporter is supposed to be some young up and comer in her early twenties, so how come she sounds like a fifty-year-old guy who is scared of the Internet?

She then goes on to make the case that because people have more choice on the Internet that means that they are really dumb and never look at any alternative points of view to the ones they already have. Yeah, I agree with that, but that’s exactly what television news does as well, and if this ace reporter works for the mainstream media herself it will be exactly what she herself is doing. She will know her audience, and pander to it in order to climb her skinny arse up the corporate pole. If she doesn’t then career over and yet here she is lecturing kids like she is some sort of independent voice who is only looking for the truth. I call BULL**** on that one.

If she really were an independent voice looking for truth then she wouldn’t be on the mainstream media at all, she’d be an independent journalist doing her own thing, not following the well trodden corporate whore path, but making her own.

The point I’m making here, rather long-windedly, is that the heroine protagonist of this story is a fraud, and I don’t buy her for one single second. She is portrayed as a heroine, but what she would actually be in the real world is a part of a discredited and dying dinosaur disinformation system that is being wiped out by independent, truth seeking journalists on the Internet.

I can’t read a comic book where I despise the supposed heroine protagonist, but what about the story? Is it any good? Nope, it’s horrible. This ace reporter (after patronising everybody in the small town where she grew up with her smug, self-satisfied ‘success’ story) then finds herself bang in the middle of a huge story as an airliner conveniently crash lands about ten yards away from her car. Don’t worry, she’s not hurt. After a unconvincing attempt at pretending she cares about injured passengers she goes straight into ace reporter mode, picks up her camera and, get ready for the cliché, witnesses a miracle. It’s Jesus, the Second Coming, he’s saving people, and this is impossible.

That’s it. That’s all you’re going to get in Savior #1.

This is tired old repackaged Hollywood nonsense.  Savior is one of those stories that you read and think; ‘I’ve read this one before haven’t I?’ The answer to that question is, YES. You’ve certainly seen it before, probably a thousand-times over in fact. I remember seeing one that had Bruce Willis in it.

That movie (Unbreakable) wasn’t exactly applauded for it’s originality when it was first released, and all you are going to get in this comic book is another twist on that uninspired old idea.

There is nothing here. It’s lazy, outdated, and woefully lacking in the ideas department. I don’t care if issue #2 is the best book in the world, because I won’t be reading it. This debut turd of an issue has killed any interest I could ever have in the story.

There was nothing about this book that I liked, absolutely nothing. It’s pretentious recycled bog rolls wrapped up with some vague 90’s Internet and religion guff. A total waste of time from beginning to end, Savior #1 is a turd sandwich so pungent, so gross, so awful that it needs to be wrapped up in an air-tight bag and flushed away as soon as possible.



Rating: 1/10 (Pretentious old codswallop)

Comic review: Millennium (X-Files) #3- 90’s nostalgia for my useless generation

Writer: Joe Harris
Artist: Colin Lorimer
Colourist: Joana Lafuente
Publisher: IDW Comics
Released: 1st April 2015



Millennium has been a very enjoyable series so far. The art is great, the colouring’s superb, the script is interesting and the construction of the narrative itself has a screenplay element to it that makes the entire experience feel like you are watching an old episode of the X-Files television show.

That screenplay element is in use again at the beginning of issue #3 with a plot device that is usually used in television dramas. A moment of high (spooky) drama opens the narrative, before the story flashes back 24 hours so the viewer can see the prelude to the dramatic scenes that are now unfolding.

I enjoy that technique, it brings you straight into the narrative with a monument of adrenaline, hooking you into the story with drama, and having you hang around for an explanation about the context behind that drama.

As with all ‘conspiracy’ shows the game here is to hint at what is to come, revealing slowly, drip by drip, tantalising clues about the bigger ‘conspiracy’ picture behind surface events. Throw in some interesting characters, have a daughter kidnapping (that always works) and you have a show.

It sounds like, from what I’ve just been underlying here, that this ‘Millennium’ book isn’t exactly busting with originality, and that’s a pretty fair accusation to lay on the project. It’s not original, but that doesn’t mean that it’s not any good. Yeah the references are a bit old (The Millennium Bug and the Pixies) but for people over the age of forty (that’s me) there’s still fun to be had here.

If you pick up this title you’ll get a mixture of X-Files nostalgia (like the returning show) good art and a well-paced and competently executed script. I’m enjoying it, but bear in mind that I am a 41 (almost 42) year-old guy who grew up with this stuff on his television during my prime (they weren’t really prime, I was terribly depressed back then) twenties years.

This book transports me back to the days when the X-Files was the coolest, newest, edgiest show on television. That’s not really the case anymore, and if you expect the upcoming new shows to be anything other than nostalgia I fear you are in for some disappointing viewing.

The X-Files was of it’s time, and as I read ‘new’ versions of it today I come away with the feeling that it’s not connecting with anything that has happened post 9/11.

All of the usual globalist, New World order, failing democracy, surveillance and illegal, never-ending war stuff that I always talk about in my reviews, and want to see reflected in my comic books isn’t really happening in this book, or any of the other X-Files titles coming from IDW Comics.

That’s okay. If you want to talk about new stuff you have to update the vehicle, and the X-Files wagon is a bit rusty these days. It’s become a nostalgia thing, and when it’s done well it still has something to offer, at least to blokes like me who grew up with this stuff during our late teens or twenties.

I like this book, but I’m being realistic about it here. I’m not going to pretend that something game-changing is happening.

It’s a nostalgia book, done well, that is centred on a conspiracy group that was designed to cash-in on the silly (and it always was silly, this is not hindsight) Millennium bug fears of the late 1990’s. Get Millennium if you miss the X-Files and are looking forward to the new television shows. The book looks great, the story is interesting and the entire project has been carefully and thoughtfully constructed.

Rating: 7/10 (Nostalgic fun for the 35+ generation)

Comic review: Bill & Ted’s Most Triumphant Return #1- Nostalgia for the bearded generation

Writer: Brian Lynch
Artist: Jerry Gaylord
Publisher: Boom! Studios
Released: 11th March 2015


The last Bill & Ted movie (Bogus Journey) was released in 1991, and when my young niece watched it last week on Netflix she called it, ‘The most boring movie that I’ve ever seen.’ 

So, in regards to this 2015 Bill & Ted comic I’m guessing that the potential audience will consist of old people like myself whom lived through those dark days before the Internet, mobile phones and Edward Snowdon.

Who exactly is reading comic books in 2015? You know, sometimes when I look at all of the pointless alternative covers on new books I suspect that it’s bearded forty-year old losers like myself. My friends, I have seen the future. It’s a bit sad, and it needs a shave

Bill & Ted’s Most Triumphant Return #1 is fluffy, inoffensive, cute and friendly. The art is nice and colourful and everything about it scream ‘nostalgia’ for the 40 year old bearded bloke crowd. I’m a part of that crowd. I’m the guy that the comic book is aimed at. So, did it hit?

Yeah, it did what you would expect it to do. It offered a five-minute jolt down memory lane, but I can’t see it winning over any younger converts. The comic book is still set in the early 1990’s (the safest place for comic books to exist in today) so it’s not really doing, or saying anything. It reminded me of the silly movie, but I was a different person back then, heck, the world was a different place back then, and things have changed whilst Bill & Ted have remained the same.

I don’t want to go back in time to the early 1990’s. I was there, and they weren’t that great the first time around. In fact, times were so stiflingly dull that Nirvana had to come along just to kick some life into the party. Okay, so they told people that they sucked, but at least they said something, and that was the problem with the early 1990’s, people were going through the motions, nothing was being said and nothing was really happening.

I guess in that sense we are living through a period much like the early 1990’s once again in 2015. There is a cultural vacuum that is becoming increasingly more apparent as the days pass. Who is going to fill it? Is it going to be a self destructive, nihilistic rejection of everything as represented by the band ‘Nirvana?’ Or is it going to be something more positive? Something that looks at the corporate/government tyranny of our time (like Nirvana did) but rather than turning inward and self-destructive, instead turns outwards and looks for solutions to the problems that face us all today? My money is on the later.

Bill & Ted are not going to help, but by going back to what they represented in 1991 we are being reminded that it’s time again for another shake-up.

2015 is the new 1991. It’s time for something genuinely new, genuinely revolutionary and genuinely determined to shake this joint up again.

There’s an open space, people are sleeping again, and the most exciting thing about living in 2015 is to have that sense of anticipation that feeling that something is lurking, planning, scheming, creeping, ready to pounce and ready to get this party going again.

Rating: 6/10 (Not bad, but it's just a nostalgia book)

Comic review: Mister X Razed- Xmas In Somnopolis #1- Great, well done, clever boy, have a biscuit.

Writer: Dean Motter
Artist: Dean Motter
Publisher: Dark Horse Comics
Released: 25th February 2015

After the first ten pages of this book it was annoying me so much that I could barely muster up the energy to keep on reading it.

Fighting against the urge to chuck the book in the bin and read something less irritating I continued to read on and was pleasantly surprised by a clever plot twit mid-way through the book.

This twist kept me reading until the end, and I have to acknowledge that it was a very well thought out, cleverly written and expertly drawn comic book.

My problem with it is that it’s an exercise in cleverness that doesn’t really say anything.

Well, perhaps the twist might say something? Don’t jump to conclusions, perhaps? Read a story through to the end, and it might be cleverer than you think? It certainly says that, but that’s just about all I could get out of it.

If you want your comic books to engage with the world outside of your bedroom window then this isn’t going to be a book for you. There is nothing in the book that couldn’t have been written in 1985, 1995 or 2005.

The narrative is set in a dystopic future, but it’s a big generic US city future and the characters both look and act like they are in a 1940’s Humphrey Bogart movie. Is that cool? Some people might think so, but to me it just looks old, really, really old.

The plot twist surprised me, but that was just because I assumed that the book was awful, and not because I hadn’t seen the twist done before in a similar detective/crime book.

The script had the usual coincidences that help move it along, and the eponymous Mister X appeared oddly supernatural as he just popped up whenever needed, and then disappeared when his narrative role was completed. That’s a manipulative writing technique, and some people accept it because they just want a good story. I dislike it because it feels contrived and fake.

That’s it. I cannot think of anything else to say about the book other than it’s clever and that it doesn’t resonate with contemporary socio-economic-political concerns. If you want a clever book with a lovely use of the colour red in the artwork then get the book. That’s what’s on offer here: Cool, clever and red. Great, well done, clever boy, have a biscuit.

Rating: 7/10 (Well written book with lovely colouring, but there is no connection to the world that I am living in)

Review: Spawn #245- 90's adolescent

Writer: Todd McFarlane
Artist: Todd McFarlane and Szymon Kudranski
Publisher: Image Comics
Released: 9th July 2014


It might seem a bit strange for me to say this, especially if you think that I am some sort of far too knowledgeable comic book geek (which I’m not), but I didn’t know much about the Spawn character before picking up this book. I knew it had something to do with Spiderman, and that’s probably why I hadn’t bothered with it before. You see Spiderman is for children, and I haven’t been a child for a very long time, so I pay no heed to Spiderman. That makes sense, right?

I picked up Spawn #245 because I liked the creepy front cover of the fat evil clown, and yes I know the image is a very worn out cliché, but it’s still a good image and also because I didn’t have that many comic books to read this week.

I was initially a bit confused with the book as I saw it was an Image comic, and even I know that Spiderman is Marvel, so what was going on here? A quick Start Page search later (I don’t use the NSA search engine of choice Google) and I was up to date with the situation between Todd McFarlane and Marvel. It's not that complicated.

McFarlane created Spawn in the early 1990’s (not that bloody time period again. Comics have been stuck there for far too long now) whilst working for Marvel, and he had a bit of success with it and decided to bring the character out of Marvel and into Image comics, which he helped to set up. A good idea, and I’m sure he has a healthy bank account now because of it. But is the book any good in 2014?

First off, this is not really a comic book for grown-ups. It’s still very much a comic, with themes and characters designed for the perpetually adolescent mind-set. An audience that might be physically in their 20’s, 30’s, 40’s or 50’s, but it’s an audience still stuck in the dating and getting to find their way in the world stage of their developments. It’s a Spiderman book basically, for people who haven’t grown up, and perhaps never will. Why do I say this? Because issue #245 has all of those teenage, adolescent concerns that you will find in a television show about twenty-something’s, before children and commitments come along to make things complicated, and stick you on the boring treadmill of routine that so many adults waste their lives upon.

The main protagonist is a handsome, well built superstar celebrity with a gorgeous girl desperately in love with him, a great career and strangers obsessing over how intriguing he is as he nonchalantly passes them by in the street, all cool and mysterious and handsome. This is a wish fulfilment character for teenage boys. The story is all about him, his exciting past and how people just want to understand what makes him so fascinating, so dangerous, so sexy, and so handsome. The book ends with a common fear of the teenage boy, a crazy girl with a knife who will emasculate you (choppy) and take away all of your cool independence and boyhood testosterone driven power.

The art has a darkness to it that gives the impression that this is more ‘adult’ and serious than it actually is, but some of the facials look a bit expressionless and two dimensional. Overall, I’ve seen a lot worse and it does create an atmosphere that just about carries the narrative. There’s no Clown in the book by the way, but that’s okay. If you trust covers you don’t know comics.

It sounds like I hated the book, but I didn’t hate it at all. Comic books by their very nature are adolescent, and this is a half-decent adolescent comic book. There are no New World order issues explored in the book, so it could have been set in any time period, and is most redolent to myself of the early 1990’s time period in which the writer first created the character.

There are mentions of blogs and celebrity television, but there’s more to these times than just throwing in references to new technologies every now and then. Just ask Edward Snowden about it. A guy who told the truth, and is now hiding out in Russia because the criminal US government wants to put him in jail for doing so. We live in very strange and dangerous times. Times where the lies of the western governments that are owned and controlled by undemocratic banking families and corporate interests are being increasingly exposed. The best comic books will reflect the times in which they are written. This book doesn’t do that.

I have to ask a question of myself. Do I really need another 1990’s comic book in my collection? This book is okay, but it’s not exactly cutting edge, and I’m looking for cutting edge these days. I want to read something that screams 2014, not 1992. I’ll be fair to it though, because it does intrigue me, a little. I’ll give it two more months, and if I see any 2014 concerns explored in the book then I’ll keep reading. If I don’t, then at least I know what Spawn is about. It’s not bad. It’s a good comic for teenage boys, but for somebody of my advanced years I need just a little more than it’s giving at the moment. But hey, two months. We’ll see.
Rating: 7/10