Why I won't be buying any comic books today

A definition of freedom: Negative reviews, a prison world, collectivism and the right of an individual to remain outside, alone, unhappy, but free.

Article by: Mark.A Pritchard (aka Rorshach1004/SwindonPoet)

Date: 29th October 2015



It can be tiring, frustrating, depressing and soul destroying when you read and review a book (or movie) that isn’t very good.

People don’t want to hear ‘negative’ comments about something that they like, so what you are doing is spending your time writing reviews that will be ignored. People will see it as a ‘negative’ review, and will not bother to read the entire article, and they certainly won’t comment or leave you any feedback on it. However, if you go over the top with mad praise about something, you’ll get a big audience and receive plenty of positive feedback, some probably coming from the creator/writer himself.

Here’s the deal, as I see it. In 2015 we live in a world of media choices where people choose only to consume the media that conforms to their particular world-view. Liberal types read liberal media. Conservative types read conservative media, and ‘geek’ types read media that offers them a little cocoon of unreality where they can hide within a soft feminist, identity politics obsessed, cultural Marxist, neo-liberal world of get-along-gang unreality.

So when somebody like myself comes along and starts to slag off their beloved unreality texts, they do what you might expect them to do. They ignore my words, and stay within the confines of their familiar reservations, where they don’t have to think about anything that makes them feel uncomfortable with the comic book ‘geek’ culture programming products that they are consuming.

I’m not complaining about this situation, I just want to state on the record that I’m very much aware of what is going on. I expect to be ignored, and I also expect to have the occasional pat on the head when I go overboard and heap praise on something. That’s just how it works today in 2015 where the consumer self-censors his own thought processess.

You don’t need Internet police or censorship to stop 'difficult' people like myself. Comic book fans do the work of the censors for them. Anything outside of their neo-liberal, progressive, corporate/statist consensus world-view is disregarded as the ravings of a madman, as something coming from a crazy person who is taking the fun out of comics, taking things too seriously, or just somebody who has too much time on his hands. If that doesn’t work then they can always fall back on their beloved identity politics and call me racist, or sexist, either category will do. My opinionated words challenge the established comic book order, and so of course, they must be ignored.

What I want to do here is to offer up some words of encouragement for sidelined people, like myself, that might be reading this little article.

Keep on writing, keep on doing what you are doing. I don’t have to agree with a single word that you say, but we need disagreeable, individualistic people more than any other time right now.

We need the nutters, we need the moaners and complainers, and we need the wacky and the strange. We need the anti-social outsiders to mock and insult the socio-political norms of our times.

Humanity is sleepwalking into a world of soft state collectivism, and the people are happily imprisoning themselves within a cage of their own making.

In other words, and this is me talking about myself now: I know that I am outside, and I choose to remain here, outside. I can see the cages, the bars, and I can see the people happily existing within them. I see families building the prisons, and I see well-intentioned mothers and fathers encouraging their children to reinforce the gates and bars. The people look so happy living within their own self built prisons, and if that’s where they are happiest, then who am I to demand that they free themselves?

If they want to live in jail, then they are free to live in jail.

I myself though chose to stay here, alone, outside of the prison, and although it can be a bit depressing and soul-destroying at times, there’s nowhere that I’d rather be. To quote from ‘A Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley: ‘ All right then, said the savage defiantly, ‘I’m claiming the right to be unhappy.’ And this, my collectivist friends, is the very definition of being free.

Judge Dredd//Serial-Serial: Is it time to kill off the serial killer genre?

Judge Dredd//Serial Serial (2) is written by John Wagner and published in PROG 1951 of 2000AD.



A very, very long time ago I decided to write. I did so in an attempt to escape the apathetic emptiness in which I was existing. My writing was a desperate, hopeless and ultimately fruitless attempt to connect with the world around me, a world that felt empty and devoid of all meaning and hope.

I was a young guy, rudderless, with no mentor, and with very little experience of real human 'adult' interactions. So, with no practical experience of life, no insight into anything really, and with nothing to say about the world other than- ‘I’m hopelessly adrift here,’ what could I possibly write about?

I looked at the world around me, and saw apathy and people stuck in routines. I saw dull faces and dull lives. I could have written about that, and probably should have, but the last thing I wanted to do was to relive the disapointingly mundane world around me. So, making the first in a long list of bad life decisions, I decided to write scary stories about the easiest narrative protagonist that I could think about. That protagonist was the ‘serial killer’ a villain loudly lauded over all mainstream media, in films, books, television shows, and just about every other form of mass media entertainment.

Another creative death in a moribund genre.

The serial killer was cool, exciting, menacing, infamous and most importantly, very easy to write fictional stories about.

I would sweat all day in a soul-sucking job, and spend the evening writing ‘cool/sick’ stories about serial killers, in the misguided hope that the stories would offer me a connection to the world.

Everybody loved serial killers. How could I fail?

Guess what? I failed. The connection with the outside world never happened. I wrote my stories, they were ignored, and my isolation from the world around me continued. My stories were terrible, and I feel embarrassed now that I was so blinded by the apathy of the world around me that I used to write such meaningless tosh.

Now zoom forward to October 6th 2015 and imagine my reaction to a ‘new’ story arc in 2000AD that features a serial killer sending cryptic, taunting messages to Judge Dredd, as the big chinned cop looks out into the empty city sky-line asking:

‘Who is he? Where is he? How do we identify him? How do we stop him?’

That short example of dialogue in ‘Serial-Serial’ by John Wagner is the kind of nonsense that I was coming out with twenty years ago, the kind of generic serial killer cliché crap that says nothing about the world, because it’s not even trying to. It is the kind of dialogue that you would expect to come from a lonely, isolated young man, not a professional writer working for a long time established comic book like 2000AD.

When I read stories like ‘Serial-Serial’ I get this horribly despairing feeling that twenty years have flown by, and nothing has changed, that humanity is just as purposefully blind and dumb today as it always has been.

I got over ‘cool’ serial killer stories a long, long time ago. Today, when I read them I am taken back to the lonely lost kid that I was, and I don’t particularly want to go back to those empty, useless times.

I do however understand why John Wagner is writing a story about a Serial Killer.

Serial killer stories offer thrills, twists and ‘cool’ whilst safely avoiding all of the important issues of our time. They are easy to write, uncontroversial, and simple. They are stories for children. A heroic cop chases a crazy villain. Spin it out for a bit, throw in some bodies, have a twist at the end, wrap it up, then onto the next villain. They are stories wearing reality blinkers, refusing to look at the world around them, refusing to reflect the reality in which they are being produced, and if that’s what 2000AD wants, that’s what they’ll get.

A veteran writer like John Wagner will find it ridiculously easy to write these generic bad guy stories, and if 2000AD publishes them, who’s to blame, the writer or the publisher?

A celebration of sickness and authority in uniforms

I blame the publisher. They should demand more, and reject this kind of story. They should have higher standards. They should want their stories to say something, to reflect something, and not just settle for mediocre 90’s thrills to pay their 2015 bills.

The last thing I want is reality obsessed stories featuring stony-faced crowds staring like zombies into their I-phones, but I would prefer blank pages over the tired, lazy, useless, anachronistic, dull, sad and pathetically childish nonsense that is the ‘serial killer’ genre.

Is ‘Serial-Serial’ a bad story? No, it’s not bad. It’s something worse than that. It’s a competently structured story that is pushing suspicion of strangers and dependency on authority figures. That pushing of suspicion makes the world less friendly, people less approachable, and reinforces the sense of isolation that I myself felt as a young man. It’s a story that tells you that the world is scary, and that you are probably safer keeping yourself to yourself, doing what you are told, and relying on the ‘authorities’ to keep you safe from all of the imaginary evils that exist in the world.

That’s not a good message. It keeps people afraid, isolated and dependent upon authority figures. It’s a message that benefits the state, and damages social interaction and overall human happiness.

Today I look at this kind of story and it makes me feel sad, sad because the fear porn lies are the same, and sad that 2000AD is still prepared to publish them.

I’ve lived a little, and learnt a lot in the past twenty years, but when I read stories like ‘Judge Dredd//Serial Serial’ it’s like the world has stood still. Serial killer stories are silly and lazy, they always have been, and all they do is reinforce social isolation and dependency on uniformed authority. I have no time for them anymore. I used to write them, but that was a very long time ago. I changed. I grew up. I stopped wasting my time. I moved on. I started to live, and to write about life. Is it asking too much of 2000AD to do the same?

Monday Night Raw 11th May 2015: WWE television programming and why it sucks

What I am about to say about WWE television programming has undoubtedly been said many times before, but after watching Monday Night Raw on 11th May 2015 I feel like it needs to be said again, as the message is evidentially not getting through.

On WWE’s two main flagship television shows (Raw and Smackdown) the wrestlers are portrayed not as tough independent fighters, but as employees of the McMahon family. Their role is to entertain, and the winning or losing of their matches is secondary. If they entertain the fans then they are kept on as employees, but if they fail to entertain then they are fired.

The employees

The WWE makes it very clear that their employees/wrestlers are expendable and lucky to have a job. If they fail to entertain the fans they will be fired, and if they fail to do exactly what the McMahon family tells them to do they will also be fired. Here is the message that is constantly reinforced on their television programming:

Our employees/wrestlers are utterly worthless and would be unable to make a living if they were fired from their jobs here at WWE. 

This attitude is very depressing, very insulting and very dehumanising. It makes the wrestlers look like fools. The WWE (McMahon family) sees people as commodities. If you make money for the McMahon family then you are valuable and respected, if you don’t then you are worthless. It’s all about the McMahon family you see, and this message is the one constant of the show.

All of this is played out on weekly television, by a cast of overly muscled young men who were not quite athletic enough to make it in legitimate sports, where the pay, health benefits, holidays and everything else are 100% better than what you get as a WWE ‘superstar.’

Emasculation time

WWE performers have no health benefits, no job security, no holidays, and no pensions. They are not even employees. The WWE uses the Orwellian legalise term, ‘Independent contractors’ in order to really screw them over. This term allows WWE to treat them not as employees (who need insurance and rights, and all of those other pesky things) but as expendable lumps of meat. You work until your body is broken, and if you don’t like the conditions, tough. There’s no unions, no representatives, no way for you to complain, no way for you to improve your working conditions. Oil up, and work, or oil down and get out, that’s the WWE way.

And what about the pretty young females who appear on their television shows? If you are a young bikini model prepared to do everything that you are told to do, then you might be lucky enough to have a short career with the corporation. Your role will be to wiggle your butt and to do some reality television ‘acting.’ No athletic ability will be needed.  As you get into your 30’s though you’ll need to look for another job. You might be one of the lucky few and get to date George Clooney or do some straight to DVD movies, but for the vast majority the long-term prospects are about as bright as the ex male employees of the WWE ‘family.’

I’m talking addiction, unemployment, jail, homelessness and death. I could do an entire article about the people who worked for the WWE and ended up prematurely dead, but we all know about those all too common tales, don’t we?

The Corporate champion

That’s how disgusting the WWE actually is. Nothing is hidden, everything is out there, it’s on display, and yet, who cares? It’s just pro wrestling, right? It doesn’t matter because it’s fake. Okay, so it’s fake, but the people on the show are not fake. They are real human beings that are being horrendously exploited by a corporate vulture, yet nobody cares.

Here is a television show, aimed at children, that is full to the brim with horrifically anti-human corporate poisons, and still nobody cares.

Look at what the show is saying to children. It’s telling them that they have to be shallow, ruthless, manipulative, greedy, selfish, vain and violent to get what they want in life, and that they can get away with this disgusting behaviour just as long as they work within a corporate structure.

The hero of the show is John Cena, a man who epitomises this corporate attitude of selfishness and oozes it from every pore of his cartoonishly bloated body. 'Hustle, loyalty and respect' is his catch phrase, but hustle, loyalty and respect to what?

To the corporation of course, everything is for the corporation. Be loyal to the corporation and you will become a bloated star who gets to salute the troops and send them off to the latest war. Humanity be damned, we have money to make.

The message is clear: Be ruthless, be evil, be greedy, be selfish, be vain, but do it all within the safety of a corporate structure. All is allowable here, just as long as you are loyal to the corporation. Corporations are people, but people without need of a conscience. There is no morality here. Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.

If you think that I’m being a bit harsh here just watch the first ten minutes of this week’s Monday Night Raw. Watch how McMahon family leader HHH emasculates his employees, referring to himself as the ‘Daddy’ as he disciplines his unruly children. These unruly children are grown men in their thirties and older by the way. Watch how he mocks two wrestlers for being shorter than himself, belittles a seven foot supposed monster, and talks down to the champion of the organisation like he’s a naughty little boy.

This isn’t about wrestling. It’s not even about entertainment. This is about the worshipping of corporate authority, of bowing to the awesome power of the McMahon family. The wrestling isn’t even important anymore, this is nothing more than one giant vanity project, and I don’t know how much longer it can continue if this is all it has to offer.

I used to enjoy pro wrestling, but how can I enjoy the WWE in 2015 when all of the wrestlers are portrayed as sad sack losers who are lucky to have a job?

I used to idolise wrestlers. They used to be real-life superheroes, substitute Gods for our atheist age, but not anymore. Today when I watch WWE television programming all I see is failed athletes who if not for the generosity of the McMahon family would be working at minimum wage neo-liberal McJobs. I look at the wrestlers on my television set and I don’t admire them. I feel sorry for them.

Loyalty, but only to the corporate brand

I don’t want to feel sorry for the wrestlers. I used to like wrestling, and I want to like it again. I don’t want to hear about drug overdoses, heart attacks, suicides and deaths, and I don’t want to see them being emasculated on my television set before their corporate overlords.

I want wrestlers to get unionised, to start standing up for themselves, to demand change in their working environment. They need to be the heroes that they are supposed to be. They need to stand up to the McMahon family. They need to get organised. They need to take a risk, to do something that needs to be done. They need to be strong and brave, not just in body, but in mind and deed as well.

I remember watching wrestling when I was a kid and the wrestlers were heroes, not employees. What kid watching WWE programming today wants to see a show where all of the wrestlers are portrayed as loser employees? It makes no sense to me, and as WWE continue to lose viewers and ratings go down the toilet somebody out there has to point out these flaws to them.

The McMahon family's real life adoration of morality free neo-liberal corporatism is bleeding through to their television programming and what is being produced is a near unwatchable show that is dripping with satanic corporate anti-human ideology.

They need to make the show about the wrestlers competing against each other to see who is the best. They need to start telling us that their wrestlers are the best athletes in the world, and that they can do things that other professional athletes cannot do. They need to make us believe that this is unique competition between the toughest men in the world, because that is what pro-wrestling is supposed to be.

What the WWE is doing at the moment is putting a group of emasculated losers on our television sets, telling us over and over again that they are interchangeable and lucky to have a job. It’s not working, and they need to change things whilst they still have the chance.

Perhaps they just want to help?

The mainstream consensus corporate/political media elites have their collective (and yes, it is very collective) arm around certain ‘victim’ groups, crouching to support the weak, or so it seems.

How benevolent of them, don’t you think?

Would those in a position of power help people, knowing that by doing so it would threaten their own positions?

It seems unlikely.

So why would they do it?

Why would they support social justice groups if these same social justice groups threatened their centralised control system?

Answer: Social justice groups supported by the mainstream consensus corporate/political/media elites are useful, not detrimental to the agenda of the control system.

Or, perhaps the psychopathic murderous scum in charge of the slave system known as western democracy just have a soft side?

Perhaps they just want to help people?

What do you think?

A critical dissection of the underlying themes and ideological assumptions in the opening segment of WWE Monday Night Raw (Monday 14th July 2014)

- The following article will attempt to critically analyse and evaluate the content of the most watched pro-wrestling television programme in 2014. It will look at the story lines, characters and underlying societal assumptions that are made within the programming. I am a long time pro wrestling fan, but this article will not be a typical pro wrestling article. There will be no match ratings, and no complaints about my favourite performers not being pushed. The article will look at portrayals of fake rebellion within the corporate slave plantation known as western capitalist democracy.

The show begins with the usual in ring talking segment. This time it’s the two biggest fan favourites in the company. John Cena- the old fan favourite who is nearing the time where he need to be replaced, and his replacement, Roman Reigns. Cena is a fake face of rebellion, in that he goes against the main villain group, a group called ‘The Authority’ who represent the companies owners, but on a closer analysis of why the authority group would dislike Cena there is very little reason for them to do so. After all, he is still very popular with women and children. Because of this he makes the company a lot of money. He never says anything ‘politically incorrect,’ he never criticises the company, he is clean living and never appears in the media doing something wrong, and he’s a loyal employee who always turns up for work, even when he’s badly injured. In other words, he’s the perfect corporate employee. He tells children to support the troops, to do what you are told, support cancer charities, never question anything and be loyal to your corporate employer. In WWE story line however they represent him as a ‘rebel’ to the authority figures. This is not at all believable, and thus John Cena is the perfect embodiment of fake rebellion within the corporate system. He’s safe, and he is easily controlled because he wants to be controlled. He even begins his talking segment by telling the fans to order the WWE network, an Internet only product that the WWE is hoping will be the future of their business. In every way possible John Cena is the perfect corporate yes man, and there is no reason whatsoever for the story-line villains to be against him and what he is doing. After all, he is perfect for them, and only wants to make them as much money as possible.

Roman Reigns

The young replacement for John Cena is a handsome, tattooed, long haired muscular man who has been given the name of Roman Reigns. Quite an appropriate name really for a man who lives in a country largely modelled on the old Roman Empire. Roman Reigns began his run with the company as a bad guy, beating up good guy wrestlers with a group of black clad thugs. The reasons for them doing so were revealed as being disingenuous and the group later aligned themselves with the corporate authority figures where once again they assaulted wrestlers, but this time because the authority figures ordered them to do so. That group of order following thugs became very popular with the fans, and so became fan favourites. This says a lot about the fans, that they would identify with order following thugs, simply because they looked ‘cool’ in black uniforms (like swat team members of the Police force) and further cements the impression that WWE fans are corporate statist slaves who love their own enslavement. Roman Reigns has very little individuality, personality, or character, but that doesn’t appear to matter to the fans. He looks cool, and he beats people up. That’s all the WWE fans appear to care about.

The opening segment is a popularity contest with the new young lion challenging the old lion. Who wins depends upon the reaction of the paying customers. In this segment the younger lion wins, probably because he’s fresh, and because of his good looks. This will inevitably lead to the old lion turning villain, as that is where the money is in pro wrestling. This will be built up over several months where it will be paid off in a big stadium, for as much money as is possible. The segment also includes a third man, a man called Dean Ambrose who is portrayed as slightly crazed and anti authority. This man also used to be a black clad order follower who worked for the authority figures, but who now wants to strike out on his own. Ambrose is then attacked by wrestlers working for the authority figures, and is beaten down in much the same way as he beat down people before him. This however will not be mentioned by the commentators. Ambrose is a good guy now, and his past order following actions are not to be mentioned, as are the past order following actions of Roman Reigns.

Dean Ambrose

The overall impression created from this opening segment is of two factions within the company. The first faction is the order following goons. They do what they are told, and they do not question. The second faction is of individuals who are individually fighting for power, but need to get together and work as a team to fight against the order following goons. This is a good message, telling the audience that authority figures divide and conquer their enemies, and that the best way to defeat them is to put aside your difference and team up with like minded individualistic people to fight them and their order following goons. The only problem with the WWE storyline however is that the individualistic heroes are only really fighting for themselves, not for any greater good or long-term change. Simply put, all they want is power, wealth and status. Not for any greater cause, but for themselves. They dislike the authority figures, but only because they themselves want to be the authority figures and enjoy the wealth and status that comes with that position. John Cena has been a long time corporate yes man, and both Roman Reigns and Dean Ambrose are corporate thugs who have put down their uniforms for selfish, careerist reasons. They represent nothing but their own self-interests.

The 'Authority.' A group that represents the owners of the WWE. 

Conclusions: 

The WWE is sending out mixed messages here. It is telling it’s audience that blindly following orders is a bad thing, yet its top heroes are all men who blindly follow corporate orders. All three main heroes blindly follow corporate orders in their real lives, as not doing so would disqualify them from the positions they now hold in the WWE. To illustrate the point, just imagine what would happen to one of these wrestlers if he went onto twitter and criticised what Israel is doing to the civilians in Gaza right now? He would be suspended, forced to apologise and his career would be irreparably damaged. They know this, and that is why they will never do or say anything that is politically incorrect or controversial. They are on the corporate plantation, and that is where they are happy to stay. However, on television they are the faces of rebellion, telling fans that fighting for what is right is the way to live your life, even when in their own real lives they are fighting only for themselves and their self-interests. They are fake fighting on television so they can buy a bigger house, buy a bigger car, date a hotter girl and take care of their immediate families. Even on television their motivations are see-through. They all fight for power within the corporate system, but they do not challenge the system itself. They are house slaves, fighting for promotion within a system that they will not challenge. That is how WWE portrays both its authority figures and its wrestlers. The authority figures known as ‘The Authority’ constantly mention, over and over again, that they can fire any of the wrestlers at any time, and for any reason. If you don’t blindly follow their orders then you’ll lose your job. This story-line has been portrayed many times recently, with wrestlers sadly assaulting other wrestlers simply because they fear for their jobs. The only possible conclusion to be made by the audience is that everything that is being portrayed here is fake drama, pre-approved by the corporation/authority, for the slaves on the corporate slave plantation. The wrestlers are simply lucky slaves, picked off the plantation, much like in the Hunger Games movies. They get to fight each other for promotion, but they do not get to challenge the circus ringmaster who is setting them to fight against each other. What you are getting on WWE television programming is the perfect embodiment of false rebellion and resistance within the corporate paradigm. It’s a boxing match, with the only winner being the promoter. It is the blue party versus the red party, with the only winner being the corporate elite’s that own both parties. They say that pro-wrestling is fake, but there’s more fakery involved than the pretend fighting. The fakery also exists within the story-telling and ideological programming of the product itself. It’s the same fakery that exists in the mainstream media, financial system, politics and all other areas of fake fighting allowed upon the corporate slave plantation. A system where you can say and do whatever you want, as long as you don’t actually challenge the system itself.

Review: Weird Love #2- The past is not as weird as today

Writers and artists: Numerous
Publisher: IDW Comics
Released: 2nd July 2014


This book is a re-print of old ‘romance’ tales from 1950’s American comics, with a targeted audience of young girls, dreaming of romance and marrying a rich, successful, popular and handsome young man. I don’t see this as something to laugh at by the way. I know that most feminised liberal twit young readers will read these books as horribly sexist, but what’s wrong with young girls dreaming about marrying a successful man who loves them? I don’t see anything wrong with that, unless of course you are a liberal idiot who doesn’t want anybody to be happy, which, come to think of it, is kind of my point really about the innate idiocy at the heart of feminist liberal ideology.

Of course a lot of the underlying assumptions and portrayals of male/female relationships are going to be dated now that the Rockefeller funded mind control of modern education has warped generations of minds, but I’ll review this book as something of it’s time, aimed at young girls, and at least trying to give them a good sense of morals, something that’s lacking in modern comics where all men and women blur into an indistinguishable mesh of sexless human beings, all competing for the same goals and all acting like they don’t know what it means to be either a man or a woman. These comics might be a little ‘weird’ but that’s only because we don’t know who we are anymore.

The front cover is very suggestive, with an overly painted young women pointing at her lips whilst looking at some sparkly jewellery. The words coming out of her lips are undeniable risqué, ‘And just what must I do to get those?’ she asks. This tone however is not reflected in the actual stories inside the book. It’s just one of those covers that comic books used to do so well, where you are teased into buying the book by a slightly deceptive cover that promises far more than the actual stories deliver. Some people might feel slightly conned by that, but if you’ve ever read any comics you can’t pretend to be surprised. You know the score with front covers. They are the honey trap, designed to ensnare the reader, and this one does that very well.

The first story is probably the most salacious of the tales, in that it is the story of a prostitute, told with her own words. This could have been pretty scandalous, and controversial, but the writer makes it very clear that the prostitute is the victim of this story, and that she’s a good person who has good morals, and is just doing the job because she’s desperate for the money to further her education and live a good, morally upstanding life as a honest tax slave like the rest of us. Plus, she just escorts the men, she doesn’t have sex with them, so she’s a good person and she always escapes the evil men at the end of the dates with her morals intact.

The story concludes with the girl marrying the perfect embodiment of corporate morality, a Policeman who had been investigating the morally dubious operation that she had been a part of. No blame is put upon the woman, even though she freely chose to be a prostitute, and the story ends up with her being safely taken back into society by one of their corporate enforcers. Modern readers will laugh at this story as the young woman is portrayed as an enfeebled victim who needs a man to protect her. They won’t like that as all women in modern comics have to be portrayed as fierce and independent, sticking up for themselves like they are men in a dress. I disliked it because the women is portrayed as a weak victim and the only thing that will safe her is a statist symbol of corporate ‘authority,’ that being the cop. Have comics changed all that much? Look at all of the statist authority figures in comic books today. Are they not all cops or special agents to the corporate state as well?

The second story is something that you certainly won’t see in contemporary comics. Again it’s from the point of view of the female protagonist (which is understandable, as that’s the best way to bring the female readers into the story, to make them empathise with the main character.) This time her problem is not financial (like the first tale), it’s her physical appearance. Is she too fat for love? Yes, I know how funny that sounds, but can you tell me that young girls today won’t be going through these same emotions? Look at their skinny role models, and look at all of the tales about anorexia and bulimia that you hear.

This tale follows a rich young girl as she finally realises that her weight isn’t as important as she thinks, and that a man will love her for more than her appearance. The only problem with the story is that it doesn’t follow through with it’s own premise, as at the end of the tale the young girl loses all of that weight as the love of her life jumps into her arms and happiness overwhelms her. If you are going to tell young girls that being fat isn’t a bad thing then it’s probably not a good idea to have the girl lose all of the weight before love finally arrives.

This tale really shoots itself in the foot, and in that sense it’s unintentionally really, really funny. But would you see any of these themes in a contemporary comic? That’s very interesting to me, as I can’t recall ANY portrayals of fat girls in my big stack of comics. That could be a real issue today, and perhaps it’s the reason why you have so few girls reading comics now? After all, why would they want to read comic books where female characters have unrealistic physiques that they cannot compete with? Come to think of it, you have the same issue with young boys as well, don’t you? Body image is something that comic books don’t deal with in 2014 and in that sense little has changed since the 1950’s.

The third story is about ‘drugs.’ Its portrayal of illegal (non-taxed) drugs as bad is very contemporary, in that this portrayal has changed very little in the mainstream over the past sixty years. All drugs are bad, well, all of the illegal ones. The legal drugs are fine, and they don’t count as ‘drugs’ because a statist authority figure (a Doctor) gave them to you. The only difference in this 1950’s portrayal of addiction is that a nice boyfriend ends up saving the young girl at the end of the tale. In modern tales that nice boyfriend wouldn’t be allowed to save her, as the girl always has to be portrayed as ‘independent.' No boyfriend is allowed to save her, because that’s ‘sexist.’

This story has a predictably happy ending where an exciting boyfriend is dumped, and she is taken back into the safe arms of corporate society by her boring and safe boyfriend, her boring and safe friends and mainstream education and ‘medicine.’ And what is the moral to the story? Watch out for excitement, it will probably lead you into becoming a drug addict. It’s best to be a corporate slave. It might be boring, but at least it’s safe there. That’s not true of course, but that’s the story you’re getting here.

Lots of readers of this book will get a lot of fun out of the next full page spread, of a young Ronald Reagan (Yes, that Ronald Reagan) as a dapper, handsome young man who is the ideal husband for all of the young readers of the book. He’s portrayed as handsome, ambitious, sporty, respected and caring for animals. It seems very naff, but if you take away his obsequence to statist authority figures I can see that he has some admirable qualities here. He’s a statist honey trap of course, bringing young girls into the control system. But is he any more ridiculous than the male celebrities that young girls are taught to admire these days? At least he’s not a wife beater, a talentless television non-entity or somebody who boasts about his wealth and power, like just about every moron celebrity worshipped by young girls today. Sure, he’s Ronald Reagan, but at least he’s not prancing around in a bejewelled facemask and calling everybody who doesn’t worship him a ‘racist.’

The next story is pretty stupid, and at its core it’s fulfilling a fantasy that is politically incorrect these days, where a man saves a woman from physical danger and they fall in love and live happily ever after. The only way you’ll see this played out today is in reverse, with a woman rescuing a pathetic man from danger, emasculating him in the process and taking all of his masculine power away. But hey, that’s okay, because that’s progressive, right? Girls love weak men you know? They can’t get enough of them. So this story about a man rescuing a girl from a bear at the zoo is ridiculous, but at least they have the gender roles in the right order, and you won’t see that these days.

The next story, about a man at work being distracted by his mini-skirt-clad secretary, is obviously very dated now. With it’s portrayal of men as being the bosses (not anymore, the women are bosses now) and with the girls wearing mini-skirts not to feel good about themselves, but to attract the men and get themselves successful boyfriends. No way would this be allowed to see the light of day in a 2014 comic. It shows just how much gender roles have changed since the 1950’s, and as you look around the world today, do you think that’s been a good thing? No longer can a man be a man, go to work and feed his family. No, that role has been taken from him. The wages have decreased and the bills have gone up, so now both men and women have to work just to live and pay those bills. This has led to increased divorce rates, and the situation where men have been taken away from their children, and those children have brought into the control system of the new daddy figure in their lives, the corporate state. Do you see how this works? How the corporations and governments have colluded to control families, by destroying them and taking control of their lives? If you think this is a progression in humanity then you’re a bloody idiot. Take men out of the home and society collapses. That is what is happening right NOW.

The last story in this book is a tale about how physical appearance is not as important as being a decent human being. Okay, it's a slightly ridiculous tale, but at least it’s attempting to tell young girls that a man should love you for more than just your appearance, and if all he’s interested in is your appearance then he’s probably not worth having anyway. Again the woman is portrayed as the less dominant partner, waiting for the man to make his decision, but, and I’m sorry to break this to all of you deluded liberals out there, this is the role that men and women are supposed to be playing. They are the roles that make us happy. They are the roles that have always made us happy, both men and women. Is there anything so bad about that?

So what did I get out of the book as a whole? I got the impression that gender roles were far less confused in the 1950’s than they are today. Men knew how to be men, and women knew how to be women. There was happiness there, not confusion, loneliness and resentment. Sure there were problems, and the portrayal of women as helpless victims, waiting to be rescued by a strong, handsome male protagonist who is little more than a fill-in for a corporate government system is deeply problematic to me. There was a soldier and a policeman, and a politician and the rest of the ‘good’ men were little more than drones to the corporate, work hard, never question, pay your taxes and die system, but at least they were recognisable as men.

When I read comic books today there is little difference between the male and female characters. Do you think this is not problematic? Look at the world you live in today. Is it a paradise? Because that is the world that has been created by people who have been indoctrinated into the erroneous belief that men and women are the same. They are not the same, and the longer we kid ourselves about this the more unhappiness is spread in our decaying western world. Broken homes, less and less jobs with both sexes competing for them, no breadwinner roles for men, increased intrusion into the family by a corrupt state, unhappy women who find comfort only in alcohol, and a generation of children who lack strong father figures and have abandonment issues.

The end result is unhappy children eager to put on the control system's uniform and serve as their minions, where they get to unleash the anger caused by abandonment issues on anybody who does not bow down to the global Police state that is being built all around us. So look at this silly, ‘politically incorrect’ comic, and ask yourself this question. Were things really so much worse in the 1950’s, where men were portrayed as men, and women portrayed as women? What is wrong with that? And, more importantly, what is wrong with the world we are all living in today?

Rating: 7.5/10

Ten warning signs that you might be a feminist liberal drip

(A feminist liberal drip is somebody stuck in the mainstream corporate control system/matrix. He/She is a slave to the New World Order who cannot think for him/herself.)

1- You think that there are no differences between men and women, and that anybody insisting that both sexes need completely different things, in both their work and family environments to live happy and contented lives are ‘sexist pigs.’

2- You regularly buy a ‘left-leaning’ mainstream newspaper and generally agree with the viewpoints spouted by that newspaper.

3- You think that ‘man made global warming’ is a slam dunk, scientifically proven fact, and that we should pay the new priest class of billionaire ‘experts’ carbon credits, much like we used to pay the Catholic church ‘Indulgences’ for our sins. If we don’t do this the planet will explode, or something, but you haven’t looked at any of the actual evidence, as that obviously will take time, and Al Gore is so trustworthy, and I’m sure he wouldn’t lie to us, would he?

4- You hated that ‘war criminal’ George Bush, and admire President Obama even though the policies and actions of Obama are almost identical to the policies and actions of Bush. The only difference being the words used to justify their actions, and the deliberate pandering of the media to their ‘liberal’ hero.

5- You laugh at the billions of people in world history who have talked about God and religion, thinking it’s just a silly tale about a spaghetti monster in the sky, whilst having great admiration for Charles Darwin and Richard Dawkins, two New World Order front men who have been pushed into their positions of prominence by a Satanic cult who hates humanity and works tirelessly to enslave, dumb-down and poison both you and your family.

6- You jump all over some white guy saying something vaguely racist, but when you see and hear real racism from black celebrities you look the other way.

7- You think that anybody criticising the obvious societal problems inherent with mass immigration and porous border control, both in the US and in the EU, is a ‘racist.’

8- You think that the public should be completely disarmed, and that the only group allowed to have guns should be the government, even though governments have murdered over 260 million people in the 20th century and are on course to murder over one BILLION people in the 21st.

9-  You are very supportive of ‘gay rights’ and think it’s perfectly normal and acceptable to have two men French kissing on day-time television as your ten-year old daughter looks on in stupefied horror. 

10- You think that all talk about GMO food, Chemtrails, Vaccinations, Fractional reserve banking, MK Ultra, Operation Gladio, Operation Northwoods, Operation Fast and Furious, Statism, Rockefeller Foundation, Carnegie Foundation, Rhodes scholarships, Bank of International Settlements, Banker funded NGO’s, Banker funded think-tanks, and bloody obvious insider Mafia groups like the Bilderberg group the Trilateral Commission and the Council on Foreign Relations is ‘silly conspiracy stuff,’ even though you know nothing about any of these subjects, and wouldn’t look at them if your life depended on it, which it does.

The use of allegory and metaphor in comic book writing: Throwing seeds onto the concrete?

al·le·go·ry  (l-gôr, -gr)
n. pl. al·le·go·ries
1.
a. The representation of abstract ideas or principles by characters figures, or events in narrative, dramatic, or pictorial form.
b. A story, picture, or play employing such representation. John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress and Herman Melville's Moby Dick are allegories.
2. A symbolic representation: The blindfolded figure with scales is an allegory of justice.

I was having a brief chat with the owner of my local comic book shop today about how the latest Trees book by Warren Ellis read to me like an allegory/metaphor for the current day banking industry. I was trying to explain to him how the image of an alien tree in the middle of a city with it’s roots under everything and periodically dripping poison on the population was not actually about an alien tree, but a commentary on the way that the banking industry has buried itself within the roots of our civilisation and has ended up owning and poisoning everything, including our everyday interactions like the one we were just having. I told him that the banks owned him, and he thought this idea was ludicrous because he didn’t have much money in his account. That was my entire point. That the lack of money in his account defines what power he has in contemporary society. No money equates to having no power, so when you have private banks that make money out of nothing it gives them supreme power. Supreme power over politicians, and the people they tax to control. These people are you and me, and the bloke that owns the comic book shop. My point is that the banking sector now has so much power and control over all of our lives that they might as well be represented by a giant alien tree that is spitting out poison in the middle of our cities. But to the owner of the comic book shop this is a ludicrous suggestion. The book is just about a tree that spits poison, that’s all, and it will be a good book if the narrative flows well, it has interesting characters and it has some exciting twists and turns in the plot as it goes along. These factors are what makes an exciting comic book, to him, and any allegory or metaphor contained within it sails way above his head, and not being too mean about it, that’s the way that he likes it. Comic books are fun, and he doesn’t want to think about the real world around him, even though he’s living in it, and what happens all around him is going to have a huge impact on his (and his families) life, whether he likes it or not.

This attitude of not caring or even wanting to understand the wider world is a common trait amongst comic book fans in 2014. This is a huge generalising statement to make, but since I got back into reading comics and have had some interactions with comic book fans (in their twenties and thirties, sometimes late teens) it appears that this generalisation is largely true. So why are comic book fans living in a strange state of denial where they think that the real world around them has nothing to do with their own lives? Why do they know nothing, and care to know nothing about the most important issues of our times? Seriously, talk to a comic book fan about fractional reserve banking, Edward Snowden or bank complicity in money laundering for Mexican drug cartels. They couldn’t care less about any of these issues, and most of the time they won’t even have an opinion on any of them either. However, if you want to discuss the latest take on Batman’s back story they’ll be hugely informed and will know every detail about the new take, and every other old take since the early 1990’s. Remember that these comic book fans are educated adults who see themselves as intelligent people. They are not stupid people, yet they purposefully make the decision to remain ignorant about all of the important issues of our times, and when a comic book creator tries to bring up these issues by way of allegory or metaphor they couldn’t care less about it, and are surprised when some annoying guy like myself points it out to them.

I remember the old bible story (Matthew 13:1-23) about randomly throwing seeds, with some of them falling on stony ground, and a few finding fertile soil where they would prosper and grow. This is what Jesus was doing when he talked to his followers. He was talking in allegory and metaphor, and most of it sailed over the heads of his followers. He knew this would happen, but he did it anyway. Why? Because some of the seeds land on fertile ground, and the message is understand by those willing to look a bit deeper than hearing a story that on the surface seems a bit ridiculous. What the conversation in the comic book shop taught me today is that humanity hasn’t really changed much in the couple of thousand years since Jesus (maybe) walked the Earth and confused people with his allegorical way of talking. Heck, if you want to go even deeper, the Christ figure himself is an allegory, for Sun worship obviously, that was then taken literally by the Romans and pushed ever since as a control system to enslave the masses. All of the wisdom he talked through allegory and metaphor was thrown onto stony ground and humanity has been in slavery ever since, thanks in large part to the religions that insist on literal interpretations rather than the bloody obvious ones that Jesus was talking about in the first place.

IF YOU CANNOT SEE THE ALLEGORY AND METAPHOR IN THE STORY YOU DO NOT UNDERSTAND THE STORY.

Is this the state of consciousness where humanity is forever doomed to dwell? With people purposefully not wanting to understand what is right in front of them? Reading the story, but not understanding the meaning behind the story, or even wanting to understand when it’s explained (or suggested, in my example of ‘Trees’ by Warren Ellis) to them?

We are surrounded by truth, but how many people really want to see it? How many people have picked a comfortable little corner where they will stay, and live their entire life in ignorance (meaning to purposefully ignore the truth) whilst the world around them burns? How disconnected from reality can humanity get? It seems to me that the vast majority of the people living in the UK today pick a hobby, but never, ever pick the truth.  Truth is all around them, but they are not interested, and when the truth evades their little hobby bubble of non-reality in the form of a metaphor or allegory they still refuse to see it, even when it’s dancing, singing and screaming in their face.