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: 2000AD PROG 1932- ‘I Spit on Your Gift of Obedience!’

Released: 27th May 2015
Artists and writers: Various
Publisher: Rebellion



‘All hail to the majesty that is my mighty organ.’

And so begins another week of 2000AD with editor extrordinare Tharg boosting about the superior spatial capabilities of his green storage box. How strange, is he an alien or something? Oh yeah, he is, I forgot. I didn’t forget about my weekly dive into his comic book though. So here we go again, with my weekly ramblings on the latest edition of 2000AD.

It begins, as it always does, with the big chinned control freak, good old Judge Dredd. Seems like he’s actually going to help somebody in this story, he’ll arrest them afterwards of course, but I guess that’s better than the real world Judge Dredd? At least he isn’t planting stuff on them and beating them up for ‘resisting arrest’ as they have their hands cuffed behind their backs.

Judge Dredd is a funny old character, a hero who should be a villain, but cannot be portrayed as a villain because of what he represents. The most enjoyable part about his adventures is reading how the writers do somersaults in order to portray him in a good light. This story is a perfect example of that, and the simple way to do it is to create people that are worse than him. It’s the old excuse that we need uniformed order followers to control us because there are bad people out there. What a laugh it all is, the justification for immorality in a uniform, and so the world keeps on turning, orders keep getting followed, and nothing changes.

Onto Slaine, and immediately it’s excellent, with dialogue about control, slavery and dog like human obedience to anti-human control systems. It’s a world removed from the Police state authoritarianism of Judge Dredd. People say this story is all about the art, but it really isn’t. The art is self-evidentially excellent, but read the story, read the dialogue. You are getting deep essential moral truths here. ‘I spit on your gift of obedience!’ The dialogue here really is the best, and alongside the spellbinding art you have something special, not special because it’s clever or witty, but special because it is all about truth, a truth that you don’t always get in comic books. Pat Mills, Simon Davis and Ellie De Ville, you are doing amazing work here, and it has to be released in a collected hardback format when it inevitably, and sadly comes to it’s conclusion.

‘Future Shocks- The Big Heist’, is a story about a bank robbery in space, as you might have expected from reading the title. It starts by addressing the main problem that comic book readers of 2015 would mention when reading about a futuristic bank robbery, that being why would there be any physical money at all in the future? After addressing that problem, the story gets straight down to action, and there’s a good twist at the end, a twist that makes sense and delivers a satisfying conclusion. It was a decent short, with basic art, but the structure of the narrative was professional and strong.

‘Tharg’s 3rillers- Commercial Break- Part Two’ introduces some aliens, sparkly bits and the idea of willpower holding constructs together, much like in the Green Lantern comics. The tone of the book is not serious, the protagonists joke and quip and it’s all done with a smile at how ridiculous it all is. I liked it, it’s light, it’s entertaining, the art is cute, colourful and cuddly and it’s a nice change of pace from the other stories in PROG 1932.

There’s lots of intrigues, political double-dealings and betrayals going on in Strontium Dog- The Stix Fix- Part Nine,’ and it can get confusing. There’s a strong vein of humour running throughout it as well though, and it’s always nice to see our hero insult people who cannot understand his language, it’s cheap, but it’s fun. The story is essentially about an every man caught in the middle of political shenanigans, he’s Johnny Whistleblower in space, but rather than having a whistle he has his fists, and oh look, he’s just stolen a gun. It’s fun, but it’s not in the same category of excellence as Slaine.

That’s it for another week in 2000AD. I enjoyed the book, as I invariably do. Slaine really was exceptional this week, and there are a couple of other treats to enjoy as well. It gets two thumbs up from this not alien, not green headed man with a decided average organ. Yuck that sounded gross. I was talking about my little brain, and it came out all gross. How did that happen? That’s it. I’m off. Buy the book, it’s good.

Rating: 8/10 (Slaine is the main course, but there are some nice side-dishes as well)

Comic Review: Material #1- Slaves to the Wage

Writer: Ales Kot
Artist: Will Tempest
Contributing Author: Fiona Duncan
Publisher: Image Comics
Released: 27th May 2015


There’s a long essay at the end of this book, and it goes on and on and on. Self-obsession, sex references, Marxism and a bit of moaning about neo-liberal capitalism are the themes, but does it really say anything?

I was going to do a short review on this comic book, keeping it simple, unlike that long essay, but as I was writing this review I answered my own question about whether or not that essay actually said anything, and I changed my mind about a couple of things.

Don’t be confused, this won’t be complex. I’m a simpleton, so don’t worry about not being able to understand what I’m going to go on about here. What I have to say about the essay ties in with the themes of this book, so I’ll discuss those themes first.

Material #1 is about unsatisfied, depressed, confused, traumatised, disaffected people.

There’s a Chomsky like professor who is sad, as I expect the real Chomsky to be as well. After all, being a careerist gatekeeper to real truth can’t be that much fun, can it? This professor talks his theories, but is in the process of questioning reality itself.

There’s a girl, an actress, she takes drugs, is creative, and self obsessed. A director wants to make a movie about her. Why? What’s going on here? We’ll find out at as the book progresses.

Next we get some ‘I can’t breathe’ panels of horribleness, with some order followers doing what order followers always do, and a young boy possibly being radicalised by the control system that shouldn’t be as he witnesses scenes of order follower (cop) violence.

Next there is some sex stuff that involves a bloke released from Gitmo. He’s innocent, messed up, and it’s sex stuff. He’s sad and confused, as you would expect him to be, but the sex stuff felt a bit over the top, a bit too outrageous, just for the sake of being outrageous, but that’s opinion. I’m not a fan of the weird sex stuff in ‘adult’ comics. Bottom line, I don’t think that it’s necessary.

Then we get some real world horribleness again, with some panels showing a young boy being interrogated in that Chicago black site called ‘Homan Square.’ Hey, it’s order followers just doing what they do. You vote for a master, you get a goon in a black uniform that’s how it works. That’s democracy, suckers.

Then Chomsky (his name is Julius Shore in this book) gets an email. The email claims to be from the, ‘First artificial human intelligence on earth,’ and finally, amidst the sex stuff and sadness we have some semblance of plot. There’s no connection between the characters as of yet, but at least something interesting appears to be happening.

The book then goes to the self obsessed girl and her movie, hints more about the radicalisation of the young boy, and concludes with the sad Gitmo bloke wanting to have a chat with the girl he pays for sex. It’s a weird ending, but then again, I guess it was supposed to be.

So, what do I make of it all? Look at the subject matter: Gitmo, Police brutality, the radicalisation of youth, useless academic careerism, human life being defined by ‘Market Value,’ and the vague notion that things have to change, if not, we might as well not bother getting out of bed in the morning.

That’s my kind of stuff, the kind of stuff that I talk about on my blog, and in real life, and the kind of stuff that results in one overwhelming reaction.

That reaction being, indifference.

I’m a reality junkie, writing about a genre (comic books) that has an audience of hard working people, busy people (it’s a theme in this book) that have no time for my reality/truth nonsense, and would rather spend their free time reading about superheroes, and cool stuff that reminds them of when they were happy, when they were children.

I can understand that. I can understand the need to escape for ten minutes from a life that sucks. People that know me in the real world, the people that I meet at work and out and about, they don’t really like me. I know. It’s no secret. I’m not a popular guy.

People see me as somebody with too much time on his hands. They see me as somebody who does too much thinking, and not enough working. They dislike me because I jumped off the career, jumped off relationships, jumped off of the endlessly moving airport treadmill (goes back and forwards, but never up) way of living my life. They would like me more if I was more like them, if I stopped writing, stopped thinking, and instead spent all of my day working in a job, any job, just as long as I don’t have this wicked ‘too much time’ on my hands.

That is a mindset, and it’s nicely summed up by writer Fiona Duncan in her essay at the conclusion of this book. (Fooled you. I didn’t hate it. I just thought that it was too long). Here we go:

‘Everything has to be sacrificed to an abstract growth of money, and of value, of nothing. This is madness. This philosophy of the deregulated (neo-liberal) economy where everybody is demanded to give CEASELESSLY in order to survive.’

She borrows quotations from a Marxist (Boo) academic called Francis ‘Bifo’ Berardi, to make her point, but even though I have no time whatsoever for dusty old discredited Marxists, I have to recognise a point well made.

The problem that we have (as a whole) is a mindset problem. We have been taught through our schooling and mainstream media programming (funded by the neoliberal, free-market rulers of our time) that our value as people lies not in our actual inherent qualities as decent, moral human beings, but in our ability to maximise our own profit potentials.

This has turned money into a god, and humanity into a slave to that false god. I talk about the New World Order, and people hate me for it. I talk about governmental control systems (like Marxism) and people hate me for it. They want me to shut up, get a proper career job and to stop talking, please stop talking, just stop talking. They want me to join them, and I understand. The system, the society that has been created around them is all about joining, about maximising your earning potential, and when somebody like myself refuses to play the game, it makes them question the game that they are spending their entire life engaging with.

So what did I think of the book?

I thought that it had ideas that somebody like myself could interact with. It is a very different book, because it’s slow, and it has real world issues in it. I didn’t like the sex stuff, but sex sells, so I understand. Hang on. A book with themes that concern the maximising of earning potential includes a weird sex angle that reads very much itself like the maximising of earning potential. Is that ironic? What did Alanis say? Oh, she was wrong, yeah, funny.

Anyway, it’s not the sex that interests me about this book, it’s the ideas, or the possibility at least of ideas being discussed at all. The essay at the close of the book was a very good idea. It created more scope for thought, for ideas, for somebody like myself to interact with.

Here’s the problem, and I’ve hinted about it during this review.

Material #1 is a book that somebody like me is bound to enjoy and give a positive rating to, but do you know how many people I’ve met in my life who are like me?

Just one, and yeah, obviously, it’s me.

The book is talking about ideas, about the real world, about how messed up it is, about how we need to stop sleep walking through life and start doing something other than making money. Comic books largely cater towards the sleeping sections of society, the workers, the careerists, and the young people that want to join the money making, anti-human system themselves.

I enjoyed the book, and I’ll keep on reading. It intrigued me, it helped me to think, but in a comic book world largely dominated by fanboys/girls who want to chill-out and not think at all, how many other people will be up for this one? I’m the one comic book reviewer who is guaranteed to like this book, but I really do worry about what the other reviews are going to say about it. *

Rating: 9/10 (A rare book, worth checking out)


* Just checked the other reviews. There’s not many. The majority of the reviews gave the book a low rating and didn’t appear to understand it. It’s not surprising, as the mindset that the book is addressing is the same mindset of the comic book reviewers themselves. 

Comic Review: Fight Club 2 #1- It’s a New Tyler World Order

Script: Chuck Palahniuk
Art: Cameron Stewart
Publisher: Dark Horse Comics
Released: 27th May 2015


I often say this, but my experience of comic book fans is that they are the most asleep to reality people that I have ever met.

It’s a generalisation, but the comic book fans that I have interacted with are not exactly big fans of reality and truth. “Comics are supposed to be fun man, stop being so serious man, nobody wants to hear about all of that boring ‘conspiracy’ stuff.”

I can see the comic book crowd reading Fight Club 2 #1 as something that is ‘cool.’ Cool because men are in a secret fighting club, and the art has flower petals and pills that hides some of the dialogue. Cool because it has nostalgia value, and cool because it has a girl inappropriately talking about sex with a group of old looking (Hutchinson-Gilford Progeria Syndrome) kids in it.

Edgy man, sick man, so cool man, yeah man, really cool, just like the movie. The problem is that the people saying ‘cool’ are probably the least cool people in the world today. Sorry, but that’s the truth. Comic book fans are not cool. I’m not cool. Cool is for the young, and comic book readers are far from being young. If you are young and reading comics, sorry, I have bad news for you. You aren’t cool, and you’re reading stuff that is designed for old blokes like me.

People prefer to spend their lives trying to find something that is cool, rather than searching for the truth. Writers know that, so they try to give their readers what they are so desperate for, but can never actually attain. They can try and be clever and give readers some truth within that all-elusive cool, but what can they do when people are completely indifferent to truth?

The original Fight Club movie was about male emasculation caused by corporate, capitalistic compromise, and how men are unsatisfied because of the unnatural ways they are forced to live their lives. It was about the corporatisation of humanity, how everything has become monetised, but nothing has any real spiritual value. It was about the search for meaning, in a world that offers spectacle over truth.

A lot of people missed that of course. What they will remember is soap, Brad Pitt shirtless and sweaty, cool dialogue and a twist at the end with cool explosives. Message lost, and the world continues much the same way as before.

Which brings me nicely to that new Avengers movie? It was bloody terrible, wasn’t it? And do you know why it was terrible, why it left you with a feeling of emptiness in your soul? It was because it was all spectacle and attempts at being cool, with no heart, with no reality and zero truth.

I should be fair to the people of today, because it’s always been this way. The world changes, ‘cool’ changes, but humanity is still stuck in the same old rut of the past 2000+ years. I want to mention the Bible for a minute. Don’t worry, this won’t take long, and I really need to make this point clear.

Jesus said that he was the truth, the only way (John 4:16- Jesus answered, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”) And what do people do? They set up a divide and conquer religion and completely miss his message. His message was that you have to fall in love with truth. He sacrificed his life as an example to us all, his life being about the adoration of the father, the father being moral truth.

What is moral truth? How do I get it? How do I fall in love with it?

Remember all of that stuff about not murdering and lying and stealing and being horrible to people? Remember, do unto others as you would have done unto yourself? That’s moral truth. That’s the goal, that’s what Christianity should be about, that’s what life itself should be about, but isn’t.

Jesus wanted people to love truth more than anything else, but the message was lost, and thus Christianity, a moral philosophy that is supposed to be based on an adoration of truth became just another government sponsored control system.

How bloody sad is that? It’s an indictment of how determined we all are to ignore truth.

And so back to this book, a comic book sequel to a sixteen-year old movie about empty consumerism and living the hollow western capitalistic half-life. A movie that had a strong moral truth at it’s core, a truth that people completely ignored and carried on living their lives exactly as they had done before seeing the movie.

Do you see what I mean? Offer truth, and it gets ignored, every single time. People take the surface glitter, ignore the core, and the world continues to spin, exactly as before.

Do you remember that movie? Do you remember the main guy, the boring bloke? Fight Club 2 #1 opens with him. His name is Sebastian, he’s married, and the cool Brad Pitt character has disappeared. This Sebastian guy’s life has turned into nothing. Married, with a young child and drugged by big pharma, his wife misses the good old days with Tyler, and I don’t blame her. Most people compromise, and at least this book is realistic in that it shows this shallow, hollow, empty compromise suburban nothing life played out into boring middle age.

Unfortunately that makes most of this first issue a bit dull, you get the cool jokes of an adult nature, but they seem blunt now in these days of full frontal graphic horribleness on our Game of Thrones idiot boxes. The book started to bore me, the cool wasn’t enough, it was old cool, Dad cool, not the cool that it used to be, but the cool that it still wants to be, but can never reclaim. The book isn’t quite embarrassing Dad dancing bad, but it’s not the cool that it once was. The panels feel like old re-treads (therapy group jokes, bruised waiters waving the bill) and it needs to do something new to be relevant to the world as it is today.

I was about to give up on it, but then as it concludes, something happens. The Dad dancing stops, Tyler Durden returns, and he’s seems….different.

I didn’t quite get what he was from the main book. I knew he was supposed to be different, he looks different, but I didn’t get it. On a first read he just appeared to be a wild and crazy old (imaginary) friend, perhaps involved in international arms trading, who was going to make the boring protagonist live a bit. But there’s an added section to the book titled, ‘Chaos Report,’ and it does a fantastic job of explaining who this new Tyler is.

Okay then, here is the bit that most people will miss. Tyler Durden now represents a Non Governmental Organisation (NGO) that is sent into foreign countries by the new world order to start revolutions, cause chaos and make sure that foreign governments do what they are told by the western banking elites. Vladimir Putin announced new laws a couple of days ago that are designed to stop these NGO groups from messing around in Russia, and the west isn’t very pleased about it, for obvious reasons.

‘Putin has frequently named NGOs as a threat to national security. “Western special services continue their attempts at using public, non-governmental and politicised organisations to pursue their own objectives, primarily to discredit the authorities and destabilise the internal situation in Russia,” Putin told senior officials of the federal security service in March. “They are already planning their actions for the upcoming election campaigns of 2016-18.”’ 
(Guardian newspaper article 19th May 2015)


These NGO’s often hide their true purposes under the umbrella of being ‘charitable organisations’ (like ‘Human Rights Watch’ and ‘Amnesty International’). The vast number of their members think they are doing good things, helping out the homeless etc, but in reality they are controlled by western intelligence agencies, and exist only to maintain corporate western hegemony. If you want an assassination done, a bomb planted or a revolution started (see the Ukraine right now) then the NGO’s act as an entry point to help you get the job done. Putin understands that, as does the writer of this book, Mr. Chuck Palahniuk.

Tyler Durden, the Brad Pitt character, is now the head of a NGO called Project Mayhem, but what is his long-term goal? Is he an independent operator looking to create his own New World Disorder, or is he helping to bring in the long planned (and real-world) New World Order?

Is Tyler a dusty old totalitarian communist type, or a freedom hungry (from governmental slave masters) anarchist?

Are any real world truths going to be revealed to the comic book reading audience, or is this just a middle life crisis book about one bored bloke and his chaos loving alter ego?

Is it going to tackle the real world issues of 2015, or simply ignore them like so many other contemporary comic books? We’ll see. So far they mentioned Spain, and the collapse of the Euro, so it’s a decent start, but we’ll have to wait and see how far it dares to go. No ‘conspiracy’ theories are necessary, the facts alone will do.

The original Fight Club movie felt real, it felt like it was saying something, but it was set in a time before 9/11, before the war on terror, before the modern age of mass government surveilance and endless wars based on lies. This sequel is set in a very different time. How far will it dare to go? Will it seek truth, or middle aged nostalgia cool? Will it point a spotlight on what is happening in the world today? Will it tell the truth, or will it compromise and just try to tell a funny, cool and entertaining story?

Time will tell, and would anybody notice the truth when they see it anyway? History teaches us that truth will stare us in the face, and shout until it makes our ears bleed, but still, the sleeping face of humanity will fail to see what is directly in front of it. The sad fact of the matter is that people don’t see, not because they are stupid, but because they don’t want to see. Life is easier that way, and the search for cool always wins out over the search for truth, especially when it comes to the world of comic books.

So, bearing this in mind, I hope that Chuck goes for it. Dump reality over our head Chuck. Engulf us in a tidal wave of truth. Most people won’t even notice. Give the comic book fans their ‘cool’ bits, tell us that the suburbs are a bit boring, treat us to a punch up and explosion every now and then, and I think you’ll just about get away with it.


Rating: 7/10 (Not that exciting so far, but it has promise)



Link to article quoted in this review:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/may/19/russia-bans-undesirable-international-organisations-2016-elections

Alan Moore’s New Comic Book (Review)- Providence #1: An Open Doorway to the Occult

Writer: Alan Moore
Artist: Jacen Burrows
Publisher: Avatar Press
Released: 27th May 2015



Mr. Moore has a good story-telling technique going on here that just might entice the feminist liberal types into an understanding that there are deeper things happening in the world than they are at present conscious of.

The technique is to present his story ‘Providence’ through the eyes of a closeted homosexual, Jewish news reporter. The book is set in the post WW1 period in the US, a time and place where being a homosexual Jew might have a detrimental impact upon your career. This man has two huge secrets, and he has already experienced tragedy in his personal life. That tragedy links him to the main story, and with the idea that just as this man hides his deepest, darkest secrets in order to blend in with the everyday world, so does another more powerful group of people.

‘There is a concealed country, therefore, hidden below the society we show the world. Uncomfortable truth, it lurks behind our pretences.’

Sounds like a member of the illuminati speaking some truth behind closed doors, don’t you think? Throw in the fact that the man who is saying these words is obviously doing something that involves prolonging his own life, and you have a link to transhumanism, or the idea that man can become immortal through technology. Well, only certain kinds of men, obviously.

The Billionaire controllers of this world fear death so much that they are investing heavily in life enhancement technology. Why do they fear death so much, are they not religious people? That’s the issue. They are religious people, but rather than being on the side of God, they are on the side of Satan.

Transhumanism offers these criminal ‘elites’ the possibility of avoiding their inevitable day of judgement, when they will have to pay for the crimes they are committing against humanity. If they live forever, they will never have to pay for their crimes.

Providence #1 hints at these secret world controllers and transhumanism, but it’s not aimed at people like me, people who already talk about these kinds of things. Alan Moore is being clever here. He is strategically aiming the book at the generation of children who have been brought up by feminist liberal Marxist ideologies in their schooling. What he is doing in this book is giving them occulted truth that they might otherwise instantly (like a trained parrot) dismiss as ‘conspiracy theories’ and thus, not even bother engaging with.

By using one of their own heroes (a tormented gay guy) he is giving them exactly what they want to read, but placing occulted truths about the real nature of world power into that feminist liberal friendly narrative.

It’s a magic trick performed by a skilled master of misdirection. Look at the left hand, whilst what I am doing is concealed in the right.

The book itself is wonderfully crafted. It’s subtle, you have to take you time reading it, and there are joys to be had in re-reading it at least two times over, as trust me, you’ll see things on the second or third read through that you missed on the first. The book is literary, huge in scope, and is more of a novel than a comic book, even concluding with a long essay from the main protagonist in something called a ‘Commonplace Book.’

This ‘Commonplace Book’ clarifies not just the plot, but the sense of empathy that the reader will feel for the tormented protagonist, and as I’ve mentioned repeatedly throughout this review, that empathy is the key to getting Moore’s message across here.

Providence #1 is a fascinating book, not just because of the superior comic book construction skills of Mr. Moore, but because it’s hinting at deeper truths, and allowing readers an easy, open doorway where they can casually stroll through and discover those hidden truths for themselves. Mr. Moore, you are a genius, a very clever dude indeed, and I applaud what you are doing here.



Rating: 10/10 (Mr. Moore’s friendly invite into the world of the occult)

Boycott the new Fantastic Four Movie: Race-Baiting as a Marketing Ploy

Read about the ‘controversy’ here:
https://uk.tv.yahoo.com/michael-b-jordan-racist-reactions-000700333.html

Fantastic Four movie Wiki Page:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fantastic_Four_(2015_film)

Fantastic Four Wiki Page:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fantastic_Four



The one thing that this recent controversy, surrounding the casting of a black actor to play Johnny Storm in the new Fantastic Four movie, has taught me, is that white people finally appear to be getting fed up of being called ‘racists.’

The new Johnny Storm

Perhaps the movie’s use of race-baiting as a marketing ploy is going to be a watershed moment, the moment when mainstream media race-baiting finally gets kicked to the curb for good? Could we be witnessing the dawn of a new era, an era of real hope and change?

The hope and change I’m talking about here is not rhetoric designed by a PR team to get a shyster politician elected. No, the hope and change I’m talking about here is that the pernicious era of political correctness is finally going to come to a much deserved and unlamented end.

What after all is political correctness but self-censorship, a mind-block of Orwelian proportions that stops people from saying what they are thinking, and to feel bad about even thinking it in the first place?

Pretty insidious, don’t you think?

But let’s get to the details of this latest PC controversy. Long-term comic book fans don’t like the fact that Johnny Storm is to be portrayed by black actor Michael B. Jordan. Johnny Storm has always been white you see, and now he’s black, and if you question this odd decision, well apparently that means that you are a racist.

Cool poster.

Johnny Storm isn’t a new character by the way. He’s a character with over fifty years of comic book history, and he’s always been white. He has a white sister as well, and their relationship is key to the whole dynamic of the FF team. But now he’s black, although his sister is still white, and if you say anything about it you are racist.

Sounds pretty daft, don’t you think? What the producers of the FF movie have done here is deliberately created a race controversy to sell their movie. They’ve made their decision, and you better like it. If you don’t, that means you are a secret member of the all-powerful KKK.

Questioning bizarre decisions is now racist. You have to accept it, and like it, and if you don’t that means you are racist.

Racist, racist, racist, racist, racist, racist, racist.

Can you see why this might upset people who aren’t actually racist?

When you are not racist it gets a bit annoying when people keep insisting that you are one. It would be like calling a Manchester United fan a closet Manchester City fan, day after day, after day, even though he goes to Old Trafford each week and has a Manchester United tattoo on his neck and calls his pet dog ‘Giggsy.’

The original comic from Nov 1961.

You can only do this nonsense for so long until people finally get fed up with it, and it appears that the line has finally been crossed with this new FF movie. People are getting fed up with being called secret racists, and the whole media generated culture of political correctness and white guilt race baiting is finally being called out for the BS that it actually is.

The bottom line of course is whether or not the movie makes any money. If it does, then political correctness wins, but if it doesn’t, that means that things are changing.

A low box office for FF will mean that people are finally getting fed-up of political correctness and being labelled as a racist just for questioning anything to do with skin colour. Time will tell whether or not political correctness gets a kicking here, but it’s up to us now. We can send a strong message to the producers of the movie by boycotting it. Don’t watch it, it’s as simple as that.

Boycott the movie, but not because Johnny Storm is black. Boycott it to send a message. That message is ‘enough with the race-baiting nonsense.’ If you keep calling all white people ‘racists’ then eventually they are going to get fed up with it. This movie is using race baiting as a promotional tool, so we need to send them a strong message of disapproval. Boycott FF, and let’s give political correctness a long overdue flaming torch boot up the ar**.

Comic Review/Mark Passio vid on Ignore-ance: Groo: Friends and Foes #5- Funny & Good

Art: Sergio Aragones
Story: Mark Evanier
Publisher: Dark Horse Comics
Released: 20th May 2015


It’s so refreshing to read a funny comic, that’s actually funny, and not knowing, clever, ironic, self-modern, neo-liberal, feminist or Marxist.

Reading this issue of Groo: Friends and Foes #5 took me back to a time when comic books were good. A time before the influence of cultural Marxism, and what we have in the majority of comic books today.

Contemporary comic books are not funny. I want to enjoy them, but it’s impossible. How can I enjoy a comic book that reminds me of one of my old Feminism/Marxism College classes? It’s really depressing that those dated and discredited ideas have managed to permeate themselves so deeply into the psyches of writers today.

What the Hell are they doing? Have they not being paying attention to the world recently?

They do realise that Marxism is 100% sponsored by private banking interests, don’t they?

They do realise that feminism is anti-family, anti-individual and being used to enslave people to the corporate state, don’t they?

They do realise that new legislation is being passed that will make you a ‘terrorist’ if you don’t agree with the tyranny of the state, don’t they?

Do they not realise what is going on in 2015?

What the Hell is going on with all of this cultural Marxism feminist crap that I read in my comic books today?

I realise that writers have been indoctrinated by their suburban educational experiences, but they do have the Internet, right? They might have been lied to at school, but they have no excuse for doing what they are doing. They have no excuse for their ignorance.

When you have the information available, and refuse to look at it, that’s ignorance, and that’s what I see in mainstream comic books of 2015.

IGNORANCE (ignore ance) OF THE TRUTH (Please watch this short video)

Groo is different. It’s silly, and funny, and there’s no cultural Marxism in it, at all. The characters are daft, it’s written with a wink, and a sense of the absurdity of life. It made me smile, it made me think back to the times when comic books were like this, when they were their own little thing and the world looked interesting and full of possibilities.

When I read contemporary comic books I’m reading statist propaganda. I’m reading the death of all hope, the death of rebellion and any chance of human emancipation from the tyranny of the neo-liberal corporate status quo. Imagination has died, and the books are being written by suburban fanboys looking to sell a script of spectacle and quips mixed with a dollop of politically correct feminist Marxism to their all powerful Gods of the Tele ‘lie’ Vision.

I don’t want to read that. I want to read something that is good. I want to read something that doesn’t want to join the corporate borg. I want to read something that is free, something that is a celebration of life, not a negation of it.

Groo- Friends and Foes #5 is silly, and funny, and it made me smile. The characters are always smiling, even when they are frowning, even when they are being beaten up, they are doing it with a smile. If you want to smile, then buy the book. It’s timeless, and good, and unlike any other comic book out there today.


Rating: 8/10 (Daft, funny, timeless and good)

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)

Comic Review: C.O.W.L. #10- Union City Blues

Writers: Kyle Higgins & Alec Siegel
Art: Rod Reis
Publisher: Image Comics
Released: 13th May 2015


How many people have been reading and enjoying C.O.W.L. a comic book about a superhero union, political intrigues, corrupt officials and organised crime, that is set in a mythological 1960’s setting in Chicago USA?

To me, it’s Watchmen with unions, but set in the 1960’s, not the 1980’s. I don’t understand why it’s set in the 60’s and not now, a time where we really need unions to fight back against a neo-liberal political consensus. A cosy consensus between politics and corporations with the corporations having all of the power because they own the governments, and with the workers (that’s you, and me) being screwed over and told that everything is okay by smiling corporate faces on their HD television sets.

It was the late 70’s and early 80’s when union power was largely destroyed in the UK by the first wave of neo-liberalism. Margaret Thatcher used the police to beat up striking miners and to destroy their communities. The miners were standing in the way of corporate profit, so they had to be destroyed, and destroyed they were.

Working class communities all over the UK today have never recovered from Thatcher. In 2015 these communities have been devastated by privatisation, by international markets, by corporate, state backed neo-liberalism. The people still living in these devastated communities are addicted to drugs shipped in from Afghanistan, long-term unemployed, working in MCJobs that don’t even pay a living wage, fighting (and dying) in evil foreign wars for corporate profit, or languishing in prison. Destroyed by neo-liberalism, the people are herded like sheep, controlled by the drug laws that are designed to ensure that they never again become a threat to the neo-liberal elite.

Somebody should write a comic about that, but C.O.W.L. is an American comic book, so it’s about Chicago, not Liverpool or Durham. Like I said in the opening paragraph, I don’t know who is reading it, because in my comic book shop in Swindon, Wiltshire I am the only one. Batman and Spiderman sell hundreds of copies. C.O.W.L sells one, to me.

I buy it because there is a hint of reality there, just a hint, but that’s about as good as you are going to get today. I buy it because it shows how the cops and politicians manipulate public opinion, how they stage events to justify their own existence.

Imagine a comic book where a terrorist event in the west is shown to be staged, not for the illuminati, or stonecutters (Simpson’s reference) but for the obvious reason that the staging of said event justifies budgets for anti-terrorist departments within the police, military and intelligence agencies?

C.O.W.L. gets about as close as doing that as is allowable today. It counterbalances it by having good people working in the Police, and I’m sure that the villains will be exposed in the end.

People enjoy cleverness in their movies and books, but if that cleverness exposes how the real world actually works they get uncomfortable with it, and label it a ‘conspiracy theory’ that nobody should take seriously. That shows you just how effective mainstream media propaganda still is in this world of the Internet. It’s sad, but true. People buy conspiracy, intrigue and manipulation in entertainment, but in real life they want to pretend that it doesn’t exist. That doesn’t make any sense to me, but the world is a bit mad at the moment, so it doesn’t surprise me that people want to believe in fantasy more than the harsh reality that they are actually living in.

I always wondered who was reading this book other than myself, and as I read the letters page at the end of this issue my question was answered.

The book will be wrapped up in next month’s issue #11.

I know why comic book readers in the UK weren’t reading the book. They weren’t reading it because it was complex, because it was about new characters, and because it was about fictional US superhero unions in the 1960’s. That sounds like ‘politics,’ and the last thing that comic book readers want to read about in their comic books is boring old politics.

That says a lot about my generation, a generation of men unwilling and unable to connect dots, to see how important politics and unions used to be, and still are today, if they wanted them to be. But rather than getting involved, joining unions themselves and fighting back against neo-liberalism, what instead do they prefer to do?

Here’s what they do: They buy comic books that remind them of better times, when they were children, when they didn’t have to worry about work and bills. Anything that reminds them of adult reality is no fun. They don’t want to read about that. Give them Batman, Spiderman, and the Avengers. Give them cool quips, action, characters, plot-twists and exciting stories about nothing. That’s what they want, that’s what they demand, that’s what they buy, and the corporate comic book publishers are happy to oblige.

Enjoy this week’s event book. What, your future career went to China? What, your college degree now means nothing? What, you can’t even afford to buy a house? What, you are on a conveyor belt of endless work, no retirement in sight? What, no unions anymore?

Never mind, here’s a copy of the latest Batman. It has zombies in it, just like the walking dead. It’s a mocking metaphor. Don’t try to understand it, just enjoy, it’s cool, zombies are cool, it’s cool to be the walking dead. Bang, cool man, did you see his head explode?

I’ll miss C.O.W.L. It was about politics and unions, and about questioning those that claim authority over you. I would have preferred it to have been set in 2015 so they could have dealt with what is going on in the world today, but for a book about US superhero unions in the 1960’s it was a worthwhile read. I enjoyed it, and next month’s finale will be a book that I’m very much looking forward to reading, just to see how everything is tied up and whether or not it concludes with a message about what is happening in our neo-liberal, non-unionised slave worker world of today.


Rating: 8/10 (Nicely ramps up the tension for next month’s finale, plus there’s a ‘cool’ Nosferatu like villain for all of the geeks to enjoy)

Comic Review: Winterworld- Frozen Fleet #1- A Warm Book about the Cold

Writer: Chuck Dixon
Artist: Esteve Polls
Colours: Diego Rodriguez
Publisher: IDW
Released: 20th May 2015


I like Winterworld because it takes its time. It is confident, it has a story to tell, it doesn’t panic, there is no rush to impress here, the story is all, and it’s a good one.

Don’t worry if you haven’t read the book before, it’s not difficult to follow.

The story is about humanity, about living in a cold place where you struggle to keep your belly full, and to survive the biting cold not just of the weather, but of the human heart.

I’m not being clever here, that’s what the book is about. It’s about the coldness that infects the human heart, not about the weather.

Winterworld Frozen Fleet #1 has human disappointments, contradictions, and an encounter with a savage tribe. The savage tribe hunts in a pack, like wolves they have left their humanity behind, becoming Darwinian, like a pack of suit wearing executives at HSBC bank, morality no longer figures in what they do. They want something, and if they have to stamp on an anonymous human face to get it, well, that’s not going to be a problem for them.

Being cold is a test. Can you keep the warmth in your heart alive, or will the cold erase your humanity? How many of us compromise our moral values for a career, a relationship, a car, friends, some petty material warmth that puts the soul man in a freezer, and the animal man in a pack of wolves?

I contemplate these issues when reading this book, and then something lurks from beneath, a mystery, and the story that was taking it’s time becomes hugely exciting, ending on a cliff-hanger, with questions, with our heroes, our soul warriors in alarming peril.

That’s how you write a comic book. Emotional connectivity, an underlying questioning of what it is that makes us human, then danger, momentarily thwarted, ending with the protagonists looking down the barrel of a gun.

Winterworld is a far better comic book than I ever thought that it would be. There are no gimmicks here, this is a book reliant on superior story telling, not click bait gimmickry. Chuck Dixon poses questions about what it is that makes us human, he touches the heart, massages the brain, then puts his foot down on the accelerator and kicks his narrative into high octane action overdrive.

When the action kicks off you care because he’s taken his time, told a story, and made you emotionally connect with the people now fighting for their lives. That’s how you write a good comic book, and that’s how you make people care.

The world is cold, we all need a bit of warming up every now and then, and Winterworld: Frozen Fleet #1 is the perfect hand warmer for these austerity bitten times. It’s so easy to fall into apathy, to go into survival of the fittest mode. Why not just get a job at a bank and screw people over for a living? After all, that’s what all the successful people are doing, right?

I think I’ll turn down the chance to screw people over. I don’t want to join the pack of wolves. I’ll stay alone, reading comics, trying to stay warm, and trying not to let the cold of the world freeze up what remains, flickering, warmly, stupidly, optimistically, within.


Rating: 10/10 (A superior comic book about the human heart)

Comic Review: The Goon- Once Upon A Hard Time- Part 3 of 4- Killer be Killed

Writer and artist: Eric Powell
Publisher: Dark Horse Comics
Released: 20th May 2015


The Goon doesn’t believe in making the world a better place.

He believes in pain, trauma, revenge and death.

His life philosophy is laid out in this book, and it’s a philosophy that I cannot, and will not endorse.

The idea is that you enter life as an innocent. You are a passive creature, things happen to you, horrible things done by horrible people, and your needle of tolerance goes up, and up, and up, until it hits breaking point. At this point you start smashing back, doing the horrible things that were done unto you, to people you deem responsible for your sorry, sad, depressed state of affairs.

This mindset makes the massive assumption that you personally have no impact on the situation that you find yourself in. It assumes that you are good, passive and disconnected from your own life. You sit (like a Goon) and watch as things happen to you, and when things finally get too much, you strike out with violence.

How about doing something before you reach your breaking point? How about standing up, and changing your situation before you get to the point where you act out like a crazy man? How about purposefully putting some good out into the world, therefore lowering that metaphorical needle of tolerance?

That’s what a sane person would do, but this Goon character is far from sane. He’s a crazy man who is looking to justify his rampage of violence, and this is how he does it. He puts the blame on others, he justifies his violence as righteous revenge, when all it really is, is violence begat from violence that will inevitable lead to more violence.

That’s how violence works, the more you put in, the more you get out. Adding more violence to a violent situation doesn’t make things better. It makes things worse.

It’s US/EU foreign policy in Iraq, Libya, Syria and Afghanistan. It’s Israel and Palestine. You cannot solve issues of violence with more violence, and when you try to do so you are never going to succeed. You can argue that we will finally have world peace when everybody is dead, or in a (new world order) prison, but does anybody other than a goon really want that?

The Goon-Once Upon A Hard Time Part 3 of 4, is about a man who wants to leave nothing in the world but, ‘Mangled heaps of p*** and blood.’ 

He is a man of our times for sure.

Goons don’t want to make the world a better place. They have been hurt, and they want to hurt back.

Goons join armies and strap guns and bombs to themselves. Goons are hurt little children that strike out at the world, leaving a trail of blood in their wake. They kill, and they are killed. Nothing changes, and the world repeats, repeats, repeats.


Rating: 9/10 (Beautiful art, brutal comic)


Check out this awesome 'Killer be Killed' video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qg3mhoHjdXE

Comic Review: Planet Hulk #1- Captain Pony-Tail & His Pet T-Rex

Writer: Sam Humphries
Artist: Marc Laming
Publisher: Marvel Comics
Released: 20th May 2015



I’ve often wondered, and reading Planet Hulk #1 has made me think about it again, that the only thing that makes a comic book hero an actual ‘hero’ is that he fights against dictators.

The hero stands up for ‘democracy, and freedom.’ That is what he does, and that is why he is a hero. The unquestioned assumption of course being that democracy equates to freedom.

So what happens when a democracy becomes compromised? What happens when obscenely wealthy people purchase the democracy, and propagandise the people through their media manipulation machines, thus making the democracy a sham, an empty charade where the people are not as ‘free’ as they might think that they are?

What happens when change is impossible, when the political parties represent not the people that vote for them, but the people who fund them? What happens when a democracy becomes nothing more than a dictatorship of the wealthy, and people go along with it in the hope that they can at least make a decent living out of the corrupt situation that they have found themselves living in?

Where are the comic book heroes to be found in such a situation? Where are the comic book heroes in 2015? What do they do, what do they say, and do they even deserve to be labelled as 'heroes?' Let's jump into the larger than life world of comic books, and see what the heroes of today are getting up to.

Heroes in Marvel comics of 2015 come in many different shapes and sizes, but they all do one of two things:

1- They fight against fictional bullies and dictators (whilst ignoring real ones like the western backed gangster family in control of Saudi Arabia) and pretend that democracy in the west is not broken.
2- They become ‘social justice warriors,’ and fight for all of the politically correct ‘freedoms’ that are pushed by the mainstream media, the same media that is ran and controlled by the people who run and control the sham democracy.

I think it's safe to say that Marvel comic books of 2015 focus mainly on evil dictators, and social justice warrior issues. The writers are almost 100% feminist neo-liberal in their world-views and frequently pat themselves on the back for having stories that deal with issues related to race, sex or gender. Their idea of controversial is what would have been controversial thirty years ago, not what is actually controversial today.

Why am I bringing all of this up in a review of Planet Hulk #1? It's because that backdrop informs what I am now going to say about this particular comic book.

Planet Hulk #1 has a simple story, and reads like any other mainstream comic book that you will find in your comic book shop today. It doesn’t have as many zombies or third-wave feminist empowered young girls as most of the other junk books on the shelves, but its overarching assumptions are very familiar.

The book’s villain is an evil, world controlling dictator. This dictator (Doctor Doom) sits on a thrown and orders people to do his bidding. People follow his orders (just as they would do in a democracy btw) and the world is a horrible place that needs the help of some comic book heroes. Captain America is one of these heroes, and as we begin this story he is a pony-tailed gladiator who rides around on a T-Rex. He works for said evil dictator in order to help his friend, Bucky. The book is about fighting, and if you like fighting you’ll like the book.

Oh, I almost forgot. You also get a backstory about how a place called ‘Greenland’ got to be radiated, and thus turned into a big monster play-park. The story might be fun, but only for those under the age of about ten years old. This add-on story is about monsters, and more fighting. So again, if you like fighting, you'll like this bit as well, and if you like monsters fighting then this will really make your day.

Here’s how I read Planet Hulk #1. Captain America is a US marine, a man who is fighting not for a great cause, but because he wants to help his buddy. I’ve read interviews with real soldiers, and when they are asked what they were fighting for their answer is normally the same. They were fighting to help their friends, not America, not democracy, not freedom, they are fighting for their friends, and their friends are fighting for them. Their objective is to get home safely, and if they have to murder people to do so, well, they’ll do it, a lot.

Don’t ask the soldiers why they are occupying a foreign country, and don’t question why they would agree to do such a thing in the first place. You don’t question the troops, and you certainly don’t criticise the troops. They are heroes, just like Captain America. What they actually do is not important. You thank them for your freedom, and you don’t question anything that they do.

Do you see the problem here?

I don’t have to spell it out, do I? You have a culture being created, being celebrated in comic books like Planet Hulk #1, where questioning is something that you just don’t do. But then look at the comic book again and look at the villains. Who are they?

Who are the villains in Planet Hulk #1?

It’s not Doom. He’s the face of it, but look at what he actually does. All he is doing is sitting in a chair. He’s not killing anybody. He’s not forcing people to do anything. All he is doing is giving orders, and people are obeying him.

Doom has an army of ‘Thors’ who fly around subjugating the local population on his behalf. This army of Thors rain death and destruction from the sky, targeting civilians as they do so, indiscriminately using violence to sucessfully complete their missions.

The Thors are the villains, the SOLDIERS. Doom is a politician, the president, and the man who gives orders, but he doesn’t do the actual killing himself, that is what his order following Thor/Soldiers are doing.

The villain in this book is not Doctor Doom. The villains are the people who follow his orders, the Thors, the SOLDIERS.

How do comic book readers read this book, and then look at their own soldiers as heroes? The Thors are soldiers, but they are not heroes. Soldiers are never heroes, because people who follow orders are not acting under moral law. They are voluntarily giving away their moral responsibilities, and acting in an immoral way that is inconsistent with the actions of a good, moral person. This is what soldiers do. It’s what soldiers always do. It’s a part of the job. You cannot be an order following soldier and also be a good moral person, the two things are completely incompatible. People might not like to hear this truth, but truth is what it is, and it needs to be said.

After acknowledging that order following soldiers are not heroes, the book then uses the ultimate order following soldier (Captain America) and attempts to portray him as the hero of the narrative. It’s already contradictory, that a man who follows orders is a hero, but then look at what he is actually doing in this book.  He is also working for Doctor Doom, accepting a mission where he is to murder somebody, just on the say so of Doom. His rationale of course being that he is doing it for his friend, the same rationale I discussed previously in this review.

What is this comic book saying?

To me, it’s saying two things. Firstly, that it’s bad to be an order following Thor/soldier, but if you are doing what you are doing in order to help your buddy (remember, the cry of all soldiers) then, well, that’s okay, you a good moral person now.

I guess that if you are following orders to help your buddies then morality no longer counts? You are not a villain anymore. You are Captain America now.

Tell that to the Nuremberg trials of 1945/6 and see if they’ll buy it. They won’t, and do you know why they won’t? They won’t buy it because it’s BS. You are always morally responsible for the results of your actions, no friendships, no orders, and no excuses. If you do evil things, the only person responsible is YOU.

Do you see the insanity, the self-delusion, and the practised ignorance of reality that is on display here in this (very typical) comic book? It’s quite incredibly really, and that’s what you have going on in most mainstream comic books in 2015. An acknowledgement that following orders is probably not a good thing, but this idea that if you are doing it to help your friends then that’s perfectly okay, and even admirable.

It’s madness, pure madness, encouraged in comic books, like Planet Hulk #1, by Sam Humphries, and on display in countless other Marvel, DC and independent comic books that are on the market today.

Is the world mad, or is it just asleep? They understand that western democracies are broken, don’t they? They understand that following orders is what the Nazi’s did, and that is why we call them ‘evil’ don’t they?

They have to understand, and yet they (I’m talking about the writers and readers of contemporary comic books here) are ignoring these two issues.

I’ll read other reviews of this book and they’ll talk about the plot, the art, the characters. I know they will. The deeper issues will not be discussed. My review will be the weird, ignored one. I know that is going to happen, because that is what always happens. And so I put out this review for one reason only, for the sake of my own conscience. I saw what was going on, and whilst others remained silent, I refused to say ‘cool,’ and ignore what was going on. I’m the bad guy who told the comic book reading world that their emperor is not wearing any clothes. Somebody had to do it, sorry, but it had to be done.


Rating: 4/10 (Get it if you want to see a pony-tailed Captain America riding a T-Rex) 

Review: 2000AD PROG 1931- You can’t have a big bang every week

Writers and artists: Various
Publisher: Rebellion
Released: 20th May 2015 (I got mine a day early)



The week, my week, begins when I review my first comic book.

Tuesday, and I’m down town, going through the pound shops, buying batteries, chocolate and folders for my comic books. The people look ill, but they are orderly, so well behaved, no eye contact is made, we queue like gullible voters on election day.

A homeless guy tucked away in a shop doorway doesn’t even bother to beg, he looks defeated, resigned to a life of non-communication, of being ignored, like myself as I go into WH Smiths.

I go straight to the checkouts, to ask the lady for my copy of 2000AD that is waiting for me in a folder behind the tills. I forget how to talk, and my request comes out all wrong. She smiles, ‘It’s okay, I know what you mean.’ She gets my comic, she is very nice, tells me, ‘I’ll see you next week,' as I finish my transaction.  I smile back, genuine human interaction, first (and probably last) time today.

I’m back home now, that poor homeless guy. I would have given him a quid, but he was huddled, head down, the world dead to him, and I respect people who just want to be left alone. I understand it, all too well.

So, to the book.

Judge Dredd introduces a new element to the narrative, it should make things more interesting, but there’s no connection between the two plot threads yet. Next week perhaps, but this week it’s just building for what is to come later.

Grey Area starts with a suicide attempt, and I’m thinking about my trip down town again, and then it gets really funny and I end up smiling about the stupidity of everything. It’s a good time this week in Grey Area, the best it’s been so far.

Slaine is tremendous, as it always is. This week there is a battle between a free man, and an order following coward. The coward is afraid of being free. He has joined a control system that offers him safety in a uniform. The free man might die, but he will die free, the order follower is already dead.

The free man fights, deliberately stumbles and calls to the feminine element, the element of human consciousness that is entranced not to order following, but to blissful ignorance of the harsh reality that surrounds it.

Will she wake up? Will she join with the masculine element and fight back, as together the two elements will surely win. Alone and separated they are doomed to fall under the yoke of the control system. Masculine and feminine need to join as one. Together they can break the control system, but separated they are like cattle in a slaughterhouse, waiting for their turn under the stun gun and butchers knife. The narrative concludes on a crisis point, the two elements on their knees. Will they rise as one, or will they fall as two? Next week cannot come quickly enough.

‘Commercial Break’ is a new story, and it starts in 1997. Already I’m concerned, as the 1990’s are a favourite time in contemporary comic books, a nowhere time where writers can purposefully, and cowardly, stay clear of all of the tricky things that have occurred post a certain date in 2001. Oh well, I read on, let’s see if this one’s different. The story is about a television commercial doing something weird. I like the art, but why is it set in the 1990’s? I don’t get it. It is 2015 right? Oh well, I’ll reserve judgement until the story concludes, but the whole 1990’s thing doesn’t exactly make me warm to it.

It’s plot development time in Strontium Dog, and the reveal isn’t exactly a surprise. It’s a bit tame, a family power struggle thing, but then I did watch a documentary on Caligula yesterday, so perhaps the family feud thing (conspiring to kill each other basically) is just fresh on my mind? Last week’s Dog felt like the Return of the Jedi, but this week’s just feels like ‘The Phantom Menace.’ A bit of a letdown really, and a flat way to end this week’s 2000AD.

PROG 1931 of 2000AD is okay, it’s a calm week, with some plot development going on, not so much fireworks, but lighting the fuse before the big explosions.

You can’t have a big bang every week. You need the quiet to enjoy the noise, much like a walk in the town centre, you need to experience the heads down indifference, it makes you appreciate the loud bits in life when they occasionally come around, and they do, just as long as you are patient enough. I’m patient, and the week, my week, has begun.


Rating: 7/10 (Still good, but it’s relatively quiet in 2000AD this week)