Trumpzilla: The collapse of neoliberalism is imminent

50-Word (comic) review: 2000AD-PROG 1959- Reflections on a world gone wrong

Writers and artists: Numerous
Publisher: Rebellion
Released: 2nd December 2015



2000AD, you really are spoiling me. What can I complain about when your stories are about Police brutality, political corruption, false justifications for war, resistance to tyrants and the ‘highest’ being questioned by the ‘lowest?’ This is how you get with the times. This is how you actually say something.


Rating: 10/10

Check out the following quotation from ‘Defoe//London Hanged’ by Pat Mills- 

‘By what authority are the highest in the land to be questioned by the lowest?’ 

Look at the front cover on this issue of 2000AD (by Cliff Robinson) where an unrepentant Judge Dredd is caught on a camera phone beating a civilian to death for the crime of talking back to him. 

Read ‘Bad Company//First Casualties’ a story where ex-soldiers find out that the war they risked their lived for was based on fear propaganda and lies. 

Something happened to 2000AD recently. I don’t know how or why, but something clicked, and rather than being lost in the silliness of identity politics (like US comic books) they started to reflect real world concerns within their narratives. 

When I read a typical DC, Marvel (and most of the 'indie' US books as well) I read nostalgia, style over substance, identity politics and the worship of collectivism and state authority. 

When I read 2000AD I read about individuality, resistance and the desire to be free from those that wish to enslave and control. PROG 1959 of 2000AD has three excellent stories: Dredd, Bad Company and Defoe. These three stories are UK stories. You will only get them in 2000AD. 

When people ask me- ‘Why should I bother reading 2000AD in 2015?’ I will point them to these three stories. If you care about the world around you, about what is happening now, then you will get a heck of a lot more insight from these stories than anything that you will read coming out of the almost completely worthless US comic book industry. 

For a story to excel, it has to reflect the times in which it is being written. We don’t live in the 1990’s anymore. The cold war is over. Things happened. They continue to happen all around us as I type these words. Comic books need to reflect these realities. We are not children, and we don’t need a ‘safe-space’ to protect us from harmful reality. 

When we get with reality, things change. Politicians cannot fob us off, as they always try to do, and they have to actually engage with the people that they are supposed to represent. 

That’s us, we are the people that are supposed to be in charge, not corporations, not banks, and not arms dealers. We get with reality and things start to change, so when I read 2000AD reflecting the real world of 2015 back into their narratives, that makes me very happy indeed.

Black Metal Review- Split 12" with Hessian (The abyss stares back # 2) by Primitive Man- Unable

-Of the feelings unleashed through listening to 09:33 of extreme music. Make of it, what you will-

Get the song here:
https://primitivemandoom.bandcamp.com/album/split-12-with-hessian-the-abyss-stares-back-2

Primitive Man on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/primitivemandoom

Primitive Man on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/primitivemane


You think that morality is an abstract concept, that it’s not at all relevant in your life, a word as meaningless as a political slogan, an advertising campaign for a new, healthier margarine/butter concept? There is no God, there is no meaning, there is no point to anything, so let us all enjoy family time in a cocoon, post it on a government surveillance platform, an idealised mawkish memory for when the tears won’t come anymore. What you do has no meaning, so why don’t you just buy into the nothingness? Get this, that, the other. Cut through in-line, suckers everywhere. I’m going to get my own before somebody beats me to the punch, but where is the pat on the head? I need to convince myself that the lie is real. Charity mate, begins at home, and ends there. Nothingness begins to fill up with cancerous worms, you look for a lie, give me a lie so I can feel secure in my own emptiness. Not the void, there is no void, there is no nothing, though nothing is nothing. To give money to a collection box, somebody retiring at work for a plaque, nobody cares, nobody minds, they all buy in. Will a quid salve the rotten maw of my avaricious fawning, mourning conscience? And the collective, for there is a collective, ROTS. Oh, how it rots, maggots and flies everywhere as the mass collects in little tribal groups, feeling good, but only about themselves, only about their own, not caring, not really caring about what is going on around them, but only, only, only if inconvenience slights. Lives lived in routines of empty, selfish nothingness, there is no pit, I won’t look, don’t want to see, till one day. Routine broken, turn around, face what was there all along, no longer a concept, now as real as your boring traffic jam. The pit, the abyss stares back, will no longer be denied. A life wasted, you are dragged into what was always there, a pit of reality, and the eternal resting-place for your carrion prey urine blanched soul.

Rating: 10/10 (Don’t stare, don’t ignore, acknowledge, change, speak truth)

A Life through Comic Books: From mainstream disinformation into a world of reality

By: Mark. A Pritchard

Produced: Friday Evening- 20th February 2015



Comic books were always a part of my life. As a young boy I read the Beano, then graduated to reading the more ‘adult’ 2000AD. I read them for the same reason that any young boy reads comics, as a means of exploring the wider world outside of his little town, little hopes, little dreams. They told me that the world was bigger, that there were possibilities for me outside of my familiar surroundings.

My first love

As I grew into my teens I became obsessed (like most UK boys growing up in the 1980’s) with all things American. American culture was cool, exotic, their heroes had big muscles and their girls were very, very pretty. Along with American football and the A-team there was Marvel comic books. Spiderman was my favourite, but then again, of course he would be. He was a teen who looked a little bit like me, but he had spider powers, and a hot girlfriend for some inexplicable reason. If he had a chance, then surely I did as well, right?

After my dalliance with Spiderman came to its natural conclusion I moved into young adulthood with Alan Moore’s Constantine and Neil Gaiman’s Sandman. I was a young, lost adult and these books offered me something that was lacking in my own life. They offered magic, and a sense that there was beauty in the mundane, and let me tell you, I was more than familiar with mundane during this time of my life. As I continued into adulthood, moving from unfulfilling job, to pointless college course, back to another depressing job my comics (and other ‘proper’ books) became even more essential to me. The great big world had shrugged its shoulders and apathetically passed me by, so back to the comics, where there was still life, still possibilities.

I began to read again as a disappointed, depressed and lost adult and I could pretend that I was still a child again. I wasted years reading the same kind of Marvel and DC comic books that dominate the market today. I got up to date with the Avengers, with Iron Man and was excited when they made movies about the books that had a bit of money behind them and actually looked pretty good. But then I woke up to life, and my relationship with comic books would never be the same again.

I loved this book, it helped me get through my twenties

My university education hadn’t helped me at all. My Marxist text books, my keen interest in feminist studies, it all lead me to nowhere, just feelings of guilt for things that I hadn’t even thought about, let alone done. I was confused. I was a good person, and yet here was my life, empty, with nothing to show for it but years of sitting on the sidelines, of reading comics, of reading books, of passing college courses, of being nice, of being kind and considerate. So why the empty feeling?

The comics weren’t giving anything to me anymore, nor were the books, so I put them all down and decided to look at something new. To my immense surprise I found it, and continue to find it each and every day. So what did I find? Don’t worry, it wasn’t religion, it was truth or the search for truth at least.

I found people who had broken out of the restrictive left wing educational paradigm, people who rejected Marxism, Feminism, Liberalism and wanted to carve their own path, rather than follow an old ‘progressive’ route that led to Russia, China and every other totalitarian ‘left’ leaning state. I discovered ‘alternative’ names like David Icke, Michael Tsarion, Mark Passio, Alex Jones, James Corbett, Jordan Maxwell and countless others. I put away my preconceptions, listened, read and learned and then wondered (very loudly) why I hadn’t heard about any of this information during all of my years at school, college and university and all of the countless hours I had spent reading two or three newspapers every day. It was an eye-opener, my world-view 180-degree changed, and I started to see things as they really are. Then I went back to my comics and I read them with completely different eyes.

David Icke, a truly great man.

Why were they not talking about important issues? Why were they so obsessed with race, gender and sexuality when these issues only serve to separate us from each other? Why were they not talking about the US invading Iraq based on an obvious lie? Why were they not talking about Saudi Arabia and their role in 9/11? Why were the superheroes acting like US soldiers? Why were all the heroes acting like cops? Why was anarchy (which just means freedom from state control) always portrayed as a great evil? Why were villains still robbing banks? Surely it was the banks robbing the people, not the other way round? What was happening here? This wasn’t right, and yet whenever I read comic book reviews on the Internet they wouldn’t even bring up all of the contradictions that I was reading in my comic books. So, I did what had to be done. If nobody else were prepared to speak uncomfortable truths about mainstream comic books then I would have to do it for myself.

So I set up my blog, and started to review comics from the perspective of freedom, of saying whatever I wanted to say. I began to use my comic book reviews as a platform to discuss issues and ideas that interested me even more than the comics themselves. The point of the review became not the comic book itself, but the ideas that were being expressed within that comic book. My analysis of artwork, panel layout and narrative structure became secondary to an ideological analysis of the text. Many of my reviews ceased to be reviews at all, instead they were opportunities for me to discuss what I was learning as I broadened my horizons and learnt more and more about how the world actually works. I began to question everything, and that is what I continue to do today.

My blog here also contains my own original fiction writing and as I continue to expand my intellectual horizons I can envision it beginning to take on a lot more subjects other than comic book reviews. The blog has given me a platform to rail against what is lacking in contemporary comic books, but also to celebrate the rare book that does attempt to deal with some of the issues of our post 9/11 world. I am now rapidly reaching the stage where I need to concentrate on my own original fiction work. I have read and reviewed a lot of books, so perhaps it’s time I stopped criticising and started to put out some substantial product of my own.