Comic review: UFOlogy #1- Do you remember when people used to talk about UFO’s?

Writer: James Tynion IV & Noah J. Yuenkel
Artist: Matthew Fox
Publisher: Boom! Studios
Released: April 1st 2015



Ufology #1 is one of those new comic books that already feels a bit old and dated.

There are a lot of them around these days. Sometimes a nostalgia factor kicks in and I can enjoy them, pretending to myself that the world is not the way it is today I go back in time to my old comic book reading days when things were fun and I didn’t really think about things too much. The problem with Ufology #1 is that it’s not fun enough to allow me to do that.

The book is about teenagers and UFO’s and it has an old radio Art Bell narration thing going on as well, so it already feels of a certain age. The young people are generic, lost, and rebellious in a way that they always are in comic books, but my own experiences of real life never seems to match that cliché. Get ready for another trademark Rorshach Rant. Okay, here we go:

Rebellion is not going to come from the younger generations in 2015.

Children of the post 9/11 generation have been ‘schooled’ by government indoctrination camps masquerading as centres of education. They don’t question, they look to conform, and their only desire is to join a system that wants to use and abuse them. Be a celebrity, be famous, be rich, be a slave to materialism. This is the young, programmed to obey, programmed to conform. All sense of wildness, of rebellion, of questioning authority and establishment lies has been wiped from the choice options of a compliant generation of overly protected and monitored car passengers.

It’s a generation of lazy order followers where God is dead and government has taken his place, but when I read comic books I don’t see anything that resembles children/teenagers in a contemporary context. What I do see is a facsimile of 1980’s rebellious kids, but with mobile phones in their hands just to make the reader think that these kids could actually exist today.

Ufology #1 is centred on a rebellious, confident, intelligent young girl. Her Dad is a cop. He is friendly and cool and lets her do pretty much whatever she likes, driving her around to have a date with a boy who he has never even met. It’s pretty ridiculous.

A cop, the most scared, paranoid, distrustful, government enslaved, power tripping, morality free, order following people alive today and he acts like a liberal parent from 1967. It’s terrible, and it takes me completely out of the story. I can’t believe this is real. This is fake, and thus the magic trick that is story telling is broken. I can’t read these people, as they are not people, they don’t exist.

The subject matter of this book, being about UFO’s, is not very ‘cool’ really, is it? UFO’s are something that old people used to talk about when they were younger, and the people still hanging on, still looking at the sky are starting to thin out now. Kids don’t look at the sky anymore, they look at their phones, so any book about flying saucers is only really going to an attract an older audience. UFOs might have been cool, but not now.

The comic book felt too long, and it lost my attention well before the end. It concluded with some panels featuring something to do with aliens that were designed to pique my interest; to make me want to keep on reading, to buy issue #2, but all they did was confuse me. I didn’t quite understand what was going on, and that is okay in a book that interests me, but when a book is starting to bore me it becomes a chore to go back, re-read and make sure I understand what is happening.

I did go back though. I re-read the story, and it still bored me. I’m writing this review feeling a bit fed up with it now, hence my pessimism about the whole thing.

So why did it bore me? I’m a guy in his forties, so I should like a book about UFO’s right? Yeah, I might have enjoyed the book when I was twenty something and UFO’s were cool and interesting, before the Internet and before everything else that has happened in the world in the past twenty years, but not now.

Plus, I don’t really want to read about teenagers AGAIN in my comic books.

Why has it always got to be about bloody teenagers when the writers must be aware that it’s only old people like myself who are actually buying the books? And if you insist on writing about teenagers then at least make them interesting and believable teenagers.

The rebellious young girl protagonist in this book doesn’t even come across as a real person to me. She’s a comic book character created by some old writer. She’s somebody for a pedestal, somebody to admire, but you know she isn’t real. She’s a ghost, a comic book cliché that comes with the requisite feminist liberal credentials, but she’s been done so many times before and there’s nothing there for me to grab hold of, to orientate myself with reality or to care about. I can’t care about a statue. I can’t care about a con. I can’t care about something that is evidently not real.

Ufology #1 isn’t a terrible book; it’s something worse than that. It’s a blah book that washes over you and metaphorically disintegrates into dust the moment you attempt to interact with it. It’s UFO’s and old paranormal radio shows, and it’s the young teen female rebel from 1986 who doesn’t exist today. It’s vapour, dust, old, a memory, something that has been done, something that used to be something, something that is fading as fast as a dream of a ghost that was never really there.



Rating: 4/10 (Boring)

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: Memetic #1- Don’t worry, government will save you from the Internet

Writer: James Tynion IV
Artist: Eryk Donovan
Publisher: Boom! Studios
Released: 22nd October 2014


A good way to judge the mindset and world-view of any writer’s work is to examine whom they position as heroes/villains in their narrative. In issue #1 of Memetic by James Tynion IV the heroes are the military and the government. The villains, at the moment, are unclear, but the tools they are using are the Internet and social media.

'Look into my eyes.'

The story is simple. A meme of a hypnotic Sloth goes viral. It makes people feel good, then turns them into blood crazed, murderous zombies. The Internet attacks the poor innocent people, so it needs to be shut down by the heroes working in the military and government. Does this sound familiar?

What happened in Tunisia when the people started to get fed up with their government and refused to keep on apathetically and cowardly supporting it? The government shut down the Internet, of course. What happened when the Hong Kong students refused to allow their criminal slave-masters to continue with business as usual? The government shut down the Internet. Or at least they tried to. The students found ways around it, and the Internet continued. Do you know why government fears the Internet? It’s because the Internet is freedom, and when people have freedom why do they need government?

Answer is, they don’t, and so the only interesting thing about Memetic is to find out whether or not government (or the banks/corporations/intelligence agencies/occulted secret societies) that run it are behind the Internet ‘problem’ that has made the government want to shut it down.

I could read this book, hoping than in two-issues time it will be revealed that the government created a panic just so it could gain tighter control on their slave public, but so far I see no hints that the book is going in that direction.

Instead, what I read is a scare story about the evils of the Internet, and with the heroes being the usual feminist liberal crowd working for the military industrial complex, the very evil that has turned this planet into one giant prison camp in the first place.

What I see with this book is an old man going, ‘Oh, look at that scary Internet. It’s brainwashing people. Something must be done about it. Save me government, save me pentagon, save me heroic young feminist.’

Decent art

That sounds like a load of old man bullshit to me, and so I won’t be reading any more of this book. Hey, if I’m wrong in a couple of months I’ll gladly admit my error and buy the trade paperback and put up a grovelling review here on my blog where I will personally apologise to writer James Tynion IV. I hope that happens, but it’s looking a bit unlikely at the moment.

I’m fed up of reading books where the heroes are all ignorant children, pet dogs of the power elite’s who control this planet. Heroes do not wear uniforms. Heroes reject uniforms. Uniforms are slavery. You do not work for the people when you put on a military uniform, you obey orders, you do what you are told, and the people who give you your orders are not good people, they are slave-masters, they are the enemies of human freedom. This is not my opinion. Uniforms have always been symbols of state control and slavery, always have been, and always will be.

Put on a uniform, wear their badges and you are a tool of the system of human enslavement FULL STOP. Stop giving me more uniformed slaves. Not interested mate. Give me a hero unattached to the control system of human slavery. Give me something new, something real, something that doesn’t bow down to uniforms and the corrupt scum who act like God. They are not gods, and we are not their dutifully worshipping slaves.

We need to start a revolution where we refuse to be their poor, helpless, dumbed down sacrificial victims.  A revolution where we stop looking for them to save us from the engineered (Ebola) crisis’s that they themselves manufacture to keep us scared, dependent slaves. We are free people, but people who choose to bow down to the slavery of uniforms, and until we get rid of the tyranny of uniform it will be absolutely impossible for us to be anything other than their slaves.

This comic is still bowing down to uniforms, and because of that one reason, I cannot recommend it for any free thinking person’s reading pleasure. That could change, but at the moment, it’s just another book about a random villain using the Internet to turn the people into zombies. And in positions to save us, it’s the same old crowd in government uniforms, sigh.

Rating: 6/10 (based on my reservations about it's statist worship)

Click link for details of recent government censorship of the Internet during ‘Arab Spring’ uprisings.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_the_Arab_Spring

Click link for recent government censorship attempts in Hong Kong:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/01/world/asia/chinese-web-censors-struggle-with-hong-kong-protest.html?_r=0

Comic book review: Evil Empire #4- Say hello to the bad guys

Writer: Max Bemis
Artist: Andrea Mutti
Publisher: Boom Studios
Released: 27th August 2014


I know this review is a bit late, but I’ve just got around to reading the book, and I have to say something about it, late or not. If you read my review of Evil Empire #3 you’ll know that I absolutely loved the conclusion to that issue. It promised something more than I was expecting, something that is continued in Issue #4 where our punk rock heroine realises that she’s been played for a sucker by a devious politician. This issue introduces a creepy comic book style villain, and has the newly elected President of the USA giving a very crazy acceptance speech, a speech that is probably a bit too crazy:

‘We will be their Nazi’s, their Al Qaeda, their Sith, their Hydra.’

The Evil Empire has revealed itself, with the newly elected President of the United States telling America that it’s sick, and that he is going to cure that sickness whether they like it or not. How is that going to go down with the statist suckers that voted for him? My guess is that they’ll do what Barrack (Hope and Change) Obama’s supporters are doing now. They’ll be wilfully ignorant or try to blame somebody else for their cult leader’s lying ways. That’s how it usually works in cult mind control situations like political puppet worship. The followers cannot accept that they have been lied to, so they go into denial and make excuses for their beloved leader rather than look at the cold hard facts of what he has actually done.

I can envision some reviewers complaining about the nature of the speech made by the new president in this issue, as it’s so completely unlike the bullshit and platitudes nonsense you usually get from the professional liar scum politicians. I agree, it is highly unlikely that any politician, let alone a President would speak in this manner. That doesn’t stop me from enjoying this book though. The story is something that you don’t often get to read about in comic books, so I appreciate it as a refreshing change from the norm.

Evil Empire #4 is a full stop to the first stage of the story arc. Our punk rock protagonist has been played for a fool and the Evil Empire has been established. This issue feels like an end, so it will be interesting to see how it starts to kick into gear again. That’s a problem with this issue, that it feels like a full-stop and as we already know how the story ends (due to the frequent flash-forwards in time) it doesn’t really offer much hope for a happy conclusion.

The entire series so far has been exploring how America slipped into totalitarianism and became a moral vacuum, but now it has been explained there doesn’t appear to be any more story to tell. Is this a mistake by writer Max Bemis, or does he have something else up his sleeve? I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt here as I’ve really enjoyed his book so far, and I’ll be picking up the next issue just to see if he can inject some new life into a story that already appears to have been told.

Rating: 7.5/10

Comic book review: Cloaks #1- Robin Hood meet One Direction, meet David Blaine, meet Occupy Wallstreet

Writer: Caleb Monroe
Artist: Mariano Navarro
Publisher: Boom Studios
Released: 4th September 2014

Cloaks #1 is a cute, fluffy, merry little waltz of a comic book, set on the streets of one of those big cities that you always see in comic books, with a young street magician protagonist and a couple of brief allusions to the criminal scumbags operating out of the financial district of the city.

The books begins with a funeral, but even the corpse is smiling, and when a street magician is intimidated by fat cops they come across as silly rather than as the menacing shoot you in the head for their own safety kind of coward, thug cops that have been causing so many problems in American cities like Ferguson, Missouri recently.

The main protagonist in ‘Cloaks’ is a cute boyband type who helps orphans and does magic tricks for free in the streets, organising his gigs via social-media. How does he make a living? It appears that he robs the rich to give to the poor, using his parkour skills (which are shown in the best panel of the book) and other street magic tricks to make his daring, and cinematic thefts.

I had problems rooting for this character, as he is a bit too cute, a bit too perfect, a bit too fluffy to come across as a real, flesh and blood person. He’s fantasy boyfriend material for young girls, so as an adult male it’s a bit difficult for me to get too excited about his adventures, even though I’m obviously in favour of Robin Hood type characters in my comic books, especially in this day and age of corporate, state sanctioned crime, with no consequences for rich criminals and massive consequences for anybody that doesn’t want to join their criminal control systems.

The book ends with a chase and the boy given an ultimation by what appears to be a gang of special agents. Who are they, are whom do they work for? Are they state sanctioned three letter (CIA, FBI) criminals, or people trying to do some good in the world? That’s the hook for the next issue, but is it enough for me? I’m not sure it is, but that’s not to say it’s a bad book, because it isn’t. The art is big, bold and colourful, the story is easy to follow and the tone of the writing is reader friendly, light and enjoyable. I’d recommend it to young female comic book fans, but for for an old git like myself it’s just a bit too light, a bit too unthreatening and a bit too cute, cuddly and fluffy for me to get terribly excited by it all.

Rating: 7/10

Comic book review: Evil Empire #3: The Hagman and Hagman Report of comic books

Writer: Max Bemis
Artist: Ransom Getty
Publisher: Boom Studios
Released: 30th July 2004 

Just when I thought it was getting predictable, with the fake liberal left, and the fake intolerant right lined up as the heroes and villains of the book, something happens at the end of this issue that has thrown my expectations into chaos, thus making this third issue of Evil Empire more than just another formulaic politically correct leftist leading comic book, and something that is trying to get in touch with the pulse of our times.

Corporate enforcers enjoying their time off with drink and drugs

This is a comic book unlike a lot of the others on the market today, in that it refuses to close the curtains, bathe in ignorance and pretend that we are all still living in the mid to late 1990's. This is a book that says something about the world, as it is today. It’s a book that is dealing with the present day anxieties that a lot of aware people are talking about. Evil Empire is the Hagman and Hagman Report of comic books.

I’m not going to spoil anything here, and I’m not going to detail the plot like many of those other boring and formulaic reviews you find on comic book web-sites. I'll briefly sketch some of the plot, but I'm going to spend most of this review talking about the bigger issues that the book is addressing.

This book is about the future of America, and how it has turned into a fascist totalitarian Police state ran by criminal elite’s and policed by drugged up psychopaths in corporate enforcer uniforms.

Yes, it’s the very near future, but like any good dystopic work of fiction, this is really talking about what is happening in America today.

So what is happening in the America of 2014?

America is a country where hard fought for freedoms are diminishing by the hour. A country taken over by private banks and corporations that own and control both mainstream political parties, and where democracy is a rigged game. A country where the media works against the people, lying to them, distracting them and telling them that black is white and up is down. A country where large numbers of people refuse to look at reality, simply because political correctness dictates that they cannot criticise a man of the president’s particular skin pigmentation. This is America as it is today, and yet the vast, vast majority of comic books just refuse to even go there, at all.

Here comes some justice

Evil Empire is unlike the vast majority of comic books that you will find in your comic book store today.

Before I talk about the actual content of the book I have to give credit to artist Jay Shaw for the fantastic cover that adorns Evil Empire #3. It really is exceptional. It is a cover that says everything about the state of America as it is today. A flag dripping down the plug hole, leaving a bloody stain around the rim. That is America, slowly fading away in a pool of blood. Blood from it’s foreign policy of supporting terrorists abroad, and blood from it’s using the fear of terrorism back home to erect a concentration camp around the sleeping distracted masses.

And as America slips away the vast majority of it’s citizens obsess over sports, celebrities, materialism and divide and conquer media ploys like racism, sexism and homophobia. It’s a liberal thing in 2014. Guilt tripping over their own thought processes the President literally laughs in their faces as he deliberately flushes America down the plug hole of history.

The book begins with some drunken corporate enforcers getting what they deserve. It’s a very good start. It then jumps straight into a thrilling narrative about a right wing politician going all Satanic whilst the feminist liberal left (as represented by a pierced and tatooed rock star with a funky haircut) do all they can to stop him. If that was all that was happening here then I’d congratulate it on the cover, applaud it for the corporate enforcers being shown as the control freak psychopaths that they are, and then just leave it as another feminist liberal book that thinks that political correctness and socialism is going to save the day, and stop America from going down the sink.

Not everything is as it seems here

But that is not the case. Something happens near the end of this book, something fantastic that really pushes this book over the edge, making it a country mile better than what you usually get in comic books that are dealing with socio-political issues.

This is not just an aware comic book though.  It’s an exciting, fast paced and unpredictable comic book as well. The pacing is spot on, and there is barely a wasted panel in the entire book. This book is tight. It doesn’t mess around.

Evil Empire really intrigues me now. Last month’s issue did a great job of sending me off in the wrong direction, but after the exhilarating events of issue #3 I’m back on this bandwagon big time.

This one could be very good. It’s a book unlike so many others, in that it appears to at least be attempting to interact with the reality of the world as it is today. How revolutionary eh? A book that hasn’t got its head stuck in the sand and it’s ass in the air. What a revelation. If you haven’t been following then follow. Get the first three issues; read them all in one sitting and you’ll have the same expression that I’m wearing on my face right now. A big old smile, surprised that a comic book of 2014 is actually reading like a comic book that was written in 2014.
Rating: 9/10

Comic review: Black Market #1- What the Hell was that supposed to be?

Writer: Frank J. Barbiere
Artist: Victor Santos
Publisher: Boom Studios
Released: 16th July 2014


This book read like it was missing captions that explained what was happening now, and what was happening then. I’ve read it two times over now and I’m pretty clear on the plot now, but still a bit confused about the order of events and when they happened. That’s a pretty basic mistake for a comic book to make, as a confused reader is not a happy reader.

I don’t really understand why they’ve confused what should be a very simple story. It’s just another take on the Watchmen, and yeah I know that’s the last thing that anybody needs, unless it shines a light on contemporary concerns in a post 2001 setting of course. Does it do that?

No.

Okay, the plot. It’s set in a generic comic book no-man land of 2013 where superheroes fly around saving people from the usual unimportant minor issues that plague people in comic books, like office fires and bank robberies I guess. How about dealing with illegal foreign wars, criminal corporations and banks colluding with the government to screw over the public, poisons in the food supply and all of the jobs being shipped over to China whilst the remaining slave population in the west is socialised under tyranical control of the corrupt state?

Nope, none of that.

The idea of this book is that superhero blood can cure cancer, and all of the other diseases caused by the toxic chemical jungle that the elites have set up for their western slaves (this last part is not mentioned, that was me). So what’s the problem then? Surely the superheroes would be happy to donate their blood, wouldn’t they? And if they don’t want to donate their blood surely there’s a good reason for that, right?

Here’s the reason as explained by a cliché bad brother drug addict criminal type- “They’re not willing to share it.”

Okay, that’s that sorted then. Time to kill some superheroes to get their blood and flog it to pharmeceutical corporations, End of book.

What the Hell? The book features basic art with blank backgrounds that are coloured in the same shade as my bedroom wall, and the main hero protagonist looks like a weasly computer geek who you wouldn’t want anywhere near your kids. There is nobody to cheer for here, nobody to boo, nobody actually to give a rat’s ass about. The book ends with a damp squib that might as well be a page in bright neon lights that reads- NO POINT IN READING ANYMORE OF THIS CRAP.

Oh god, oh god, Oh god. You know I check out a website called comicbookroundup that is a good little site for quickly scanning a few reviews from all of those horrible ass kissing comic book sites that say nice things about absolutely every single awful comic in a tragic attempt to get re-tweets on twitter. It’s going to be difficult for the children writing on those sites to say something nice about this dried up old turd. What can they possibly say to get a mention on twitter? That’s going to be interesting, but as for this book? There’s absolutely nothing of any interest happening here whatsoever.
Rating: 2/10

Blast Review: Thomas Alsop #1- American Constantine

Writer: Chris Miskiewicz
Artist: Palle Schmidt
Publisher: Boom Studios
Released: 18th June 2014

My initial impression on reading the preview for Thomas Alsop was, ‘Oh, so they are going to try and launch an American version of John Constantine then.’ Now after reading the book I can confirm that my initial impression was 100% correct. That’s all I really need to say about it. It’s Constantine, but in Manhattan New York. The titular character is from an old American family that protects Manhattan from supernatural stuff. He drinks a lot, thinks it’s very cool to do so, does some reality television and blogs (to make him seem contemporary) and that’s it.

If you want to see the glorification of degenerate alcoholism with some ghosts thrown in, and echoes of the recent past of native people’s and slave ships then you might be interested in picking up this book. The art is okay. I liked it. It’s a bit scrambled, smudged and loose, and it fits the character of Alsop himself. A man who drinks, smokes and acts like John Constantine with an American accent.

This brings me to the reason why I can’t really be arsed with the book. It’s all very corporate focus group and box-ticking fake ‘rebellious.’ It feels second hand and forged, and there's something very unappealing about it all. Perhaps it's the smugness, perhaps it's the insistence that the main character is interesting, when he really isn't, but there's something really unlikeable about the whole project. And just because you talk about reality television and a blog it doesn’t mean that your mindset isn’t still stuck in the early 1990’s.

There is nothing new about this book, nothing exciting, nothing cutting edge and ultimately there’s no reason to buy it. If you want Constantine then get some of the old Hellblazer books, the good ones from 1988 that you can still get on Amazon in trade paperback. Thomas Alsop needs to be kicked out of his too cool for school drunken lethargy. He also needs to be told to stop pretending that it’s the early 1990’s, and to stop play-acting like he’s John Constantine. Constantine was good, back in the day (as none of the kid’s say), but generations have come and gone since, and an American clone in 2014 just doesn’t cut the mustard. This is derivative, and ultimately, pointless. Oh, and being a drunken celebrity really isn’t cool. Never was, never will be. Rating 4/10

Review: The Empty Man #1- Do you mean ‘Slender Man?’

Writer: Cullen Bunn
Artist: Vanesa R. Del Rey
Publisher: Boom Studios
Released: 11th June 2014


Have you heard about the Slender Man? Did you hear about those two girls, and what they did? The mainstream media feeds this monster, and copycats will inevitably follow, making the Slender man materialise through the actions of children who should be out playing, but are spending far too much time ’safely’ locked away in their bedroom’s, where they are bombarded with the most dangerous form of propaganda in the world. That being the mainstream ‘programming’ coming from their television sets. Monkey see, monkey do. You know how it goes, and serial killers are so ‘cool’ these days, aren’t they, Dexter? Sick, sick, sick, and comic book fans love it. The more they talk about these sick mainstream monsters, the more people will copy them, just like the recent school shootings in the US. You see how it works? How the virus is really transmitted?

The Empty Man, written by Cullen Bunn, and wonderfully illustrated by Vanesa R. Del Rey taps into this new subtle form of mass media induced murder cult. They are clever though, and they do it very subtly, I guess to avoid upsetting anybody effected by the real world tragedies. In their book ‘The Empty Man’ is a pandemic that, ‘Doesn’t spread like any ordinary virus.’ 

Issue #1 frames the future narrative, having government officials investigating the pandemic. This is pretty formulaic, and the two main characters could just as well be Mulder and Scully from the X-files. A lot of people will keep on reading this book to follow their investigation, but I won’t. This is a personal issue of morality, and I’ll briefly explain it.

By writer Cullen Bunn having government officials investigate the case of the Empty Man virus he is putting his cards on the table, stating that he believes that outside bodies have authority over our lives because they wear silly uniforms or have badges. This mindset is called ‘Statism,’ and it is one of the most dangerous forms of cult worship that this planet has ever been plagued by. Alongside worship of the monetary system, statism is directly responsible for humanity being in the current state of slavery that it is now being subjected to.

When you give an outside group total control over your lives you are no longer free, you are a slave to that group. That group is a cult, no matter what badges or uniforms they are wearing. Your government is a cult, and if you worship them you are a cult follower, like it or not.

I do not read books about government cult worship, and that’s why I will not be reading this book. If the main protagonists were independent people, perhaps community organisers or the local church, then I would be interested in following the book, as the subject matter is very contemporary, and the art is gritty, original and very appealing. However, if I read this book I am passively accepting that a group of people (as represented by the Mulder and Scully characters) has legitimate authority over people, and are just there to help them. This is a very dangerous mindset, as governments are the biggest mass murderers in world history. This is called DEMOCIDE, and it is the number one cause of unnatural death in the past century. I’ll leave a brief video link to it at the end of this review, and I strongly suggest you spend four minutes of your time looking at it.

‘The Empty Man,’ is not a bad book, but it has that one fundamental flaw (supporting the legitimacy of an illegitimate cult group) that will stop me from reading it. The art is great, and if you don’t see any problem with supporting the biggest mass murderers in world history (government) then you’ll probably get some enjoyment out of it. Don’t expect it to look at the impact of television, and the people behind the programming placed on it, but it might do some interesting stuff, whilst skirting around the edges of truth, about what is really causing something like the recent Slender Man murders. If it blames the ‘Internet’ for the murders, as is being framed by the corporate whore mainstream media, well you know it’s just playing into the long term agenda where the government wants to start censoring and controlling that as well, just like the lying box. I won’t be reading issue #2 to see what happens next, but this is an okay book. I don’t hate it, but I can’t read it. Rating: 7/10

Please check out this link for important information about democide- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LgraVpwiM6Y