50 Word Review- The Goon in Theatre Bizarre: Halloween break from despair

By: Eric Powell & John Dunivant
Publisher: Dark Horse Comics
Released: 14th October 2015


Ephemeral, inconsequential, gorgeously illustrated and coloured, Halloween fun, made to make you smile, dialogue is jokes, butts, one-liners, asides, quips, spooky clown, ghost theatre, fog, olde no time, fun with the boys, no depths reached, read, enjoy art and jokes, Goon so depressed by recent events, takes Halloween holiday here.


Rating: 7/10

The Goon has been having a hard time recently, suicide inducing hard. He's been down in the dumps, betrayed, lost and in fight/drink/fight despair mode. Is there any point in living (hard as it is) when there is no love in your life, and no possibility of finding it in the future? Probably not, and when there is no hope, it's all over. Goon was in desperate need of a break from despair. He gets it here in this Halloween special where he takes a trip to a spooky theatre. The story relies heavily on beautifully painted artwork and silly jokes based on female posteriors. I didn't like the ending, it fell flat, but the book looked great, and most of the jokes hit. It's a decent Halloween book, not scary, not really doing much, but as a break from the trauma and despair of recent Goon stories, it's a welcome break and a silly, inconsequential, throwaway bit of fun.

The Goon- Once Upon A Hard Time # 4- How to Make a Comic Book Reviewer Eat Humble Pie

Writer & Artist: Eric Powell
Publisher: Dark Horse Comics
Released: 7th October 2015



Nice one Mr. Eric Powell. You got me. I read this conclusion to your excellent Goon-Occasion of Revenge/Once Upon a Hard Time arc, thought it didn’t make sense, then hurried into writing a scathing review where I described the book as ‘betraying the readers.’

Luckily for me I decided to check before I posted that review, just to clarify a few points, and guess what happened? I discovered that I am in fact a complete idiot, that my review was nonsense, that you didn’t betray your readers, and that this final issue does actually make lots of sense after all.

I made a huge assumption. I was conned. I thought that something happened when it didn't actually happen, and when the ending that I was expecting to take place failed to materialise, I instantly assumed that the writer was in the wrong, not the reader, that reader being me.

That’s a big lesson in humility for me. Just because an ending doesn’t pan out in the manner that I expect, that doesn’t mean that it’s a bad ending. When reading single issues I need to go back, check, and re-check, and only then should I post one of my daft ‘reviews.’

This book is going to read great in trades, so if you haven’t been following it, wait, and get that trade, it’s going to be awesome. The story is gripping and has emotional resonance, the art is superb, and the characters are a world removed from the two-dimensional quips and puns superheroes that you get in a lot of comic books today. Plus, the twist at the end of the book, the surprise that blindsided me, is very clever, and yes, obviously, a lot cleverer than arrogant old me.

Thank you Mr. Powell. Thanks for a top twist at the end of a thoroughly engaging and ultimately rewarding comic book arc. I promise not to make silly assumptions ever again. I promise to be a better reader. I promise to be better reviewer, and I promise to take more care and attention and not be so instantly dismissive in the future. My scathing review is binned, and I feel very embarrassed about it now, and extremely relieved that yes, I might have been daft enough to write it, but at least I didn’t post it and make myself look like a complete moron.


Rating: 10/10 (Far cleverer than me, this is a superb conclusion to a fantastic arc)

The Paybacks #1 (Plus a rant about the general state of contemporary comic books)

Writers: Donny Cates & Eliot Rahal
Art: Geoff Shaw
Publisher: Dark Horse Comics
Release Date: 16th September 2015



I had a big list of new comic books to check out this week, but that’s going to have to wait now. Post office delivery issues mean that my weekly supply of comics is going to be a day late,  and as I’m not going to go into any comic book store without buying at least one book, I now have a copy of’ The Paybacks #1’ to review.

The Paybacks #1 follows a team of superhero debt collectors as they repossess super-powered gadgets from broke superheroes. The team are daft, their target (A character ripped off from Grant Morrisson’s Batman & Robin arc) is ridiculous, and the narrative proceeds with knowing ‘geek’ jokes and lots of silliness. The art is very cute, cuddly and colourful. It suits the tone of the narrative, that tone is ‘Let’s all have a laugh at the absurdity that is the comic book superhero genre.’

I read the previews, so I knew what I would be getting. I expected a daft superhero mickey-take, something inconsequential, but fun, and that’s exactly what I got.

Here are the questions:

- Was it riotously funny?
- Should I have picked it up when it first came out?
- Does it contain anything within the narrative that resonates with real world concerns?
- And lastly, will I be purchasing issue #2?

And the answers to those questions:

- It’s funny, not riotously so, but it’s trying to be silly, and it achieves that.
- No, I don’t regret not picking it up when it first came out.
- There is nothing in the book that has any relevance to the real world of 2015.
- No, I won’t be purchasing issue #2.

I picked up ‘The Paybacks #1’ after looking at lots of comic books on the shelves and coming to the sad realisation that I had zero interest in any of them. That’s a depressing situation. I’m a long time comic book reader, in a comic book store, and I’m struggling to find ANYTHING that I’m interested in. What happened? I used to have lists of the books that I wanted to read, but today that list has dwindled away to nothing.

Here’s what I found on the shelves during my long search for a book that I could read whilst having a sandwich and cup of coffee.

I started off by flicking through the ‘independent’ section, and noticed that a lot of the writers were mainstream names such as Matt Fraction and Ed Brubaker. These writers have been producing unit shifter superhero books for as long as I can remember. I’ve read their work before, and I no longer have any faith in their ability, or willingness to connect with, or reflect the world as it is today. They might write ‘clever’ stories with competent structures, but are they actually going to say anything? They haven’t said anything before, so why should I expect them to say something now?

Having rejected the ‘independent’ books I moved on to the DC and Marvel sections, only to find book after book that was coming from a ‘progressive’ point of view and dealing with issues related to identity politics and political correctness. Oh look, a young girl protagonist, oh another one, and another one, and another one.

Look, I’m a bloke in his forties, so why the hell would I want to read about state agent teenage girls in daft costumes? Answer, I don’t. I find this comic book obsession with young girl protagonists to be creepy and weird, and I don’t want to read about their daft adventures in PC never-never land.

This agenda of ‘empowering’ women is getting ridiculous. Women in the west don’t need any more empowerment. Our entire western society has been structured around the needs and demands of women for over fifty years now. The Muslim world is where you want to go if you are advocating for women’s rights, not the west, but no, comic books won’t mention that, will they?

This pushing of so-called ‘progressive’ identity politics bull**** is corporate and cowardly and it backs up the status quo of human enslavement to a combination of state and corporate power elites. I find it to be insulting and dumb, and targeting the young. The sad thing about it is that this relentless onslaught of third wave feminism is telling young men that there’s something wrong with them, just because they are men.

What are they trying to do here? They do realise that there are inherent genetic differences between men and women, don’t they? They do realise that men and women have had clearly defined roles for thousands of years, and that these roles have helped humanity survive and prosper for all of human history, don’t they? Oh God, I don’t think that they do. They think that there’s no such thing as gender, don’t they? They are insane, they really are, and they don’t even know it. They are writing about imaginary crazy villains, but the craziest people are the writers themselves. They are real world crazy. The kind of crazy where you don’t even realise that you are crazy in the first place.

These crazy comic book writers obsess over race, gender and sexuality, thinking that having a young girl kicking somebody in the face is an empowering thing to write, and they do this whilst ignoring all of the real issues that dominate the every day lives of their readers. Issues like unrepresentative democracy, the violent coercion that is statism, media manipulation, wars based on lies, fought by the poor, and keeping the 1% in their positions of power where they dominate the world like a comic book villain on reality steroids.

It’s 2015 and I don’t need race, gender and sexuality politics shoved down my throat like it’s 1982 and I’m in a student dormitory with a big bloody picture of Che Guevara on the wall. Comic books need to get with the times, as at the moment they are doing an absolutely terrible job of it.

The US comic book industry of today reminds me of the UK Labour party with their ‘new’ grey-haired leader straight out of the 1970’s. Unable to deal with anything that’s happening now, they go back to the past in the hope that they’ll find something useful that will reconnect them with the issues and concerns of the neo-liberal consensus world of today.

Here’s a spoiler, it won’t.

If comic books keep down this progressive path of wilful ignorance they’ll end up in the same rubbish bin of history that is currently reserved for Jeremy Corbyn and his completely out of touch Labour party.

All I am saying is wake up, look at the calendar, and start talking about the world as it is today. Is it really that difficult? It isn’t 1926. Women have all of the rights of men. There is no 'Patriarchy' there is no 'rape culture,’ nobody cares if you are gay and nobody cares if you are a black or white, or a girl or a boy.

Comic book writers need to get with reality and pull their thumbs out of their regressive progressive, communist collective a*** holes. They need to do it now, because at the moment they are becoming an absolute joke with this identity politics nonsense.

Okay, rant over, I feel better now. Back to the book that I’m supposed to be writing about…

I purchased ‘The Paybacks #1’ not because I thought that it would be any different to the neo-liberal ‘progressive’ norm, but because I knew that if nothing else, it would be a bit of a laugh.

I did laugh, a bit, but there’s nothing of substance here. It’s a one joke book. Superheroes go broke, and it takes other superheroes to repossess their stuff. That’s all there is to this one, and even though the final panel recognises that weakness, hinting at a ‘darker’ tone as the series progresses, there’s not enough here to make me want to stick around to see if it has anything more to offer than occasionally amusing, but really quite tame, superhero genre jokes. It doesn’t get too bogged down in the identity politics quicksand of the Marvel and DC universes, but you have to offer me more than an occasional chuckle if you want to have me coming back for more.


Rating: 5/10 (Offers the occasionally laugh, but it’s not particularly clever or insightful)

Comic review: Adam.3- I dislike not liking this book

Story & Art: Scott Kolins
Publisher: Dark Horse Comics
Released: 12th August 2015




Um, how do I review this book?  How do I say something about it that isn’t going to sound unnecessarily unkind? I want to like it. I tried to like it, but it’s not doing anything for me.

It’s a book about a family, with an angry (adopted?) son, causing trouble, but the dialogue is so stilted, and so needlessly complicated, and irritatingly disjointed to read.

Why would you do that?

Why would you put so much effort into world creation, and make the dialogue so reader unfriendly?

The world that is being created here, it’s old and new. There’s technology, little orb things, but with a muscled up, Tarzan looking bloke roaming the jungle, chatting to animals (the animals talk back) and sorting out conflicts.

It’s cute, and there are jokes within the text, but I don’t know. Where’s the fun? Is it there? I’m looking, and I’ve read it over and over again, and it feels like work, yes, that’s it, it feels like work.

I can’t get anything from it. I’m flicking back through the pages and some of the art looks great, but none of it means anything, it doesn’t resonate, and I’m a guy that can find meaning in anything, but I can’t find it here. I look and I look, but I can’t find it.

I see the family conflict, and I see the need for revenge, to avenge injury, and I see the jealousy of a sibling, and there’s a greater threat, looming, but I can’t attach that narrative information to anything greater. It just kind of hangs there, alone, in it’s own little world, doing its thing, but not connecting to anything outside.

I can’t stand my meanness here. I dislike not liking the book. I want to like it. I want to rave about it, but there’s a cold awkwardness about it, probably caused by a combination of the dialogue and the generic muscled up protagonist. I have to care about him to care about the book, and I don’t. Is he too perfect? Is he too unrealistically drawn? Is he just a cartoon man that I cannot picture existing in any sort of reality? Perhaps that is why I cannot warm to him? He’s too unreal, and being unreal means that I cannot build any empathy for him.

That could be the problem. I think that it is.

The book looks different. It opens like an art pamphlet, but is that just form over substance? This is a first issue, it’s supposed to impress you, and to hook you, but it didn’t do either of those two things to me, and I feel bad that it didn’t succeed in doing so. Perhaps it’s going to be a grower. Perhaps it will read better as a trade. I hope that it does, because unfortunately, this debut issue is doing nothing for me at the moment.



Rating: 4/10 (Nice design and lovely art, but there’s something missing, and it failed to hook me.)

Comic review: Rebels #4- Liberty, Career, Money, Mud and Corpses

Script: Brian Wood
Art: Andrea Mutti
Colours: Jordie Bellaire
Publisher: Dark Horse Comics
Released: 8th July 2015


Rebels #4 starts with a gunfight, a battle with redcoats walking in line, getting shot by the ‘Rebels’ hiding behind barricades. It’s a lesson about following orders. Follow them, and you will get pointlessly shot. Think for yourself, improvise, and you will survive. The lesson holds true today. Follow orders and you might as well be dead. Think for yourself and you will be truly alive.

Andrea Mutti’s art is ferociously, terrifyingly real. Shrapnel and dirt fly through the air, you wouldn’t want to be there, it looks dangerous, and you’d want to keep your head down less something takes your face off. War is no fun. I might die. I want to keep my head down, but soldiers are approaching. I must stand up. I must shoot back. This is terrifying. I’m going to die.

The other noticeable thing about the book is that the great hero of the American war of Independence, George Washington, is portrayed as a bit of an elitist snob. I can buy that. He was a high-ranking soldier, and armies are always based around tribalism, self-interest and elitism.

The theme of disobeying orders follows through to the end of this issue, with the main protagonist determined to do what is best to win the war, and to sacrifice what is best for himself personally in order to do so. That’s what a hero is supposed to do, to act selflessly for the benefit of others, not for personal advancement or glory.

There’s an abundance of fake heroes in this world today, and not too many genuine ones. I’ve never met a genuine hero, but I don’t get out too much.

Rebels #4 is a book about lining up, following orders, mud, blood and how to win a war. The art, and the colour palette in particular, conjures up a feeling of terror, gunpowder, blood, death, grass, spittle, sweat, dirt, fear, the thunder of a rifle, and the squelch of a bullet through soft human flesh.

It’s not pleasant, but war isn’t pleasant. War is stupid, pointless, painful horrific death. It’s not cool. It’s not high kicks and muscles. It’s silence, boredom, then fight or flight adrenaline and the horrifying realisation that you are about to die in a muddy field, or be horribly mutilated, and finished off with a bayonet to the chest as you writhe in pain and beg for mercy on the cold, wet, muddy ground.

That’s what I took from Rebels #4. It’s a tough book, a relentless book, a book that is as serious as war. There is nobody laughing or joking around here.

The story is about shooting people who want to shoot you first. Some shoot for liberty, others for career advancement, for others it’s just about the money. The end result is the same, people ripped apart by bullets and shrapnel. It’s not a lot of fun, but war isn’t supposed to be fun.

What you are getting here is truth about war, unpleasant as it is, truth can be empty, find heroism where you can, find a meaning, but the ground still ends up being littered with corpses.

Rating: 8/10 (Harsh war realism)

Blitz review: Negative Space #1- Letting go and falling into creativity

Art: Owen Gieni
Script: Ryan K Lindsay
Publisher: Dark Horse Comics
Released: 8th July 2015



Negative Space is very much a book about, and for, writers. It’s about the creative process, the manipulations of corporate paymasters, and what happens when creativity dries up.

The best thing about the book is the artwork by Owen Gieni. The cover doesn’t do the book justice, as the interior art is stunning, washed in sadness, and dripping with sweet melancholic beauty.

The narrative is sad, depressed, but hope flickers and as you follow the day in a life of a suicidal writer you know that he’s going to be okay, that there’s going to be a twist, and that he’ll learn how to live again.

And so the book ends with that twist, not really a twist, but an expected hope spot (that’s a wrestling term) that keeps you interested in the protagonist, and invested in his story.

It’s a bit weird, but the beautiful art, refreshingly different protagonist (he’s fat and ugly, not young with a cool haircut) and overall impression that the book has a rare spark of creativity, of originality about it, has hooked me.

I’ll be back for issue #2, and I’m very much looking forward to reading it, not just because of the art, but because of the concept and the protagonist. I like them both, and I want to tag on, to see what happens next.


Rating: 8/10 (I dislike the cover, but everything else about the book works very well)

Comic review: The Tomorrows #1- What’s for dinner tonight?

Writer: Curt Pires
Artist: Jason Copland
Publisher: Dark Horse Comics
Released: 8th July 2015



Feisty young girl with punk haircut as main protagonist> CHECK.

Too cool for school dialogue> CHECK.

Dystopic future that looks a bit like Blade Runner> CHECK.

Vague referances to corporations and social media> CHECK.

Villainous white guy planning to rule the world from his corporate headquarters> CHECK

Fight Club vulgarity and sex talk> CHECK

Secret cyber hacker group full of cool young kids> CHECK

‘Cool’ references to fashionable pop culture icons> CHECK

Inability to recognise that the tyranny of the ‘future’ is happening right now>CHECK

Exposition overload in issue #1> CHECK

Creepy villains with televisions for heads> CHECK

Talking animal for added ‘cool’ factor> CHECK

Futuristic motorcycle for punk girl to ride about on> CHECK

Confusing subplot about the nature of reality, complete with academic references> CHECK

Guest appearance by Alan Moore clone> CHECK

Confusing end that leaves you with a feeling of emptiness mixed with bewilderment>CHECK

That’s the book then.

What is it about?

Ah, nothing really, but it’s cool, it’s about the future and stuff, I think man, about corporations being evil and stuff.

Ah I see, so it’s just another faux-rebellious comic book with a punk female protagonist who looks like the 1992 era Tank Girl? 

Yeah, pretty much.

The kids will buy it, won’t they?

Yeah, a couple of lonely art students will drool all over it.

Don’t be cruel.

Sorry, easy targets.

What a laugh, it’s just a waste of their time though, isn’t it?

Yeah man, but don’t tell them that. It’s just a comic book. Don’t spoil it for them.

Okay man, I won’t.

What’s for tea tonight anyway?

Lasagne.

Cool man, I love me some Lasagne.



Rating: 3/10 (Overly complicated, yet maddeningly generic)

Comic Review-Age of Reptiles- Ancient Egyptians #1- I don’t empathise with lizards

Creator: Ricardo Delgado
Publisher: Dark Horse Comics
Released: 3rd June 2015



The Reptilian part of the brain is concerned with fight or flight. It is the part of the brain that governments around the world want their (tax netted) subjects to be caught in.

If a population is in fight or flight mode they can be easily controlled, as morality and intellect play no part in the decision-making processes. You simply need to scare them (terrorism, global warming, new diseases) and then offer them your pre-prepared solution, a solution that will of course lead to less freedom for the people, and more control for the government slave controllers.

Richard Delgado’s ‘Age of Reptiles- Ancient Egyptians- #1’ has no Egyptians in it, no humans, no governments, and nothing else that holds my interest. Oh, and it doesn’t even have any dialogue either, so it’s a quick read, and that’s probably the best thing about the book, that it’s quick to get through, leaving you plenty of time to read something else.

The book is about lizards doing what lizards do, struggling to eat, to survive, and to dominate territory. Writer Ricardo Delgado attempts to put human characteristics and personalities onto these animals, even though they are incapable of them, so the entire project fails at the first hurdle.

‘DINOSAURS stood on beaches embracing each other moments before a meteor killed them all, it has been claimed.

Nikki Hollis, Professor of Hollywood-style Natural History at Roehampton University, said: “As they realised they were doomed, the dinosaurs stopped eating each other and all became friends.

“A T-Rex stood, put its tiny arm around a stegosaurus and said something profound in a voice like Morgan Freeman’s.

“Probably it was about being part of the great wheel of life, or along those lines.” 
(From ‘The Daily Mash’ 8-2-13)

That was a joke article, but Age of Reptiles is po-faced and serious.

The book attempts to portray one of the lizards as a human character, by having the story follow him as he does what lizards do, alone, like Clint Eastwood, fighting against the odds, tough, stoic and cool. But he’s not Clint, he’s a lizard, so there’s nothing there.

The Daily Mash article was funny and entertaining, but this book is trying to do something serious, and I’m not getting anything out of it at all.

You can’t seriously humanise a lizard, because when all is said and done, it’s just a lizard. It’s not capable of higher human spirituality or empathy, and it doesn’t have the ability to act according to the natural laws of morality and the golden rule. Anything that is there is what you are putting there, not what is actually present and real in anything resembling reality.

A large, meat-eating dinosaur was simply a machine programmed to eat, breed, fight for dominance, or scamper off when in danger. That’s all there is to it. Some humans act like this, but that’s not what being a human is supposed to be about. If you act in this way you are a sociopath, you are an animal, and not a human being at all.

A truly awakened human looks for meaning, the lizard machine simply looks for the next meal, and putting human characteristics onto that machine is fraudulent and deceptive story telling.

I’m not a lizard, and I’m not looking to get into the human rat race that is pushed by capitalism and Darwinian survival of the fittest mainstream programming. I don’t identify with the lizard, and I don’t want to either.

I didn’t like the book, but I didn’t hate it either. To me it falls into that worse of both worlds, the middle pit abyss of indifference. The art wasn’t great, the colours kept changing and it confused me.

Is that the same lizard? I don’t know. I don’t care really. Is that lizard supposed to be a person? What? Is this supposed to be serious? Oh, that’s the end? Good, I won’t be reading that again. Get the book if you want to read something that gets awards, is about lizards, and has no dialogue.

Lizards are lizards, and humans are humans. Reject the reptile, act like a human, reject fight or flight, get higher, not lower. Get hot, not cold. This book was looking to scoop up the low and if it is saying anything, I’m either not getting it, or not wanting to get it.

You can heat up the cold, but it’s cold, that’s it’s nature, like it or not, and it will always revert to what it is supposed to be. Humans are hot-blooded animals that have been given free will in order to question and to act in accordance to universal moral principles. Dinosaurs were cold lizards, running to, or running from, in fear, or creating fear. Let’s not devolve, lets leave the lizards behind and move on with warmth. This book left me feeling cold, and I don’t like to feel cold. I have a reptile hack in my brain, but it doesn’t define me. I’m not a lizard, and a lizard, however warmed up it may be, is certainly not a human being.


Rating: 3/10 (Not much fun I'm afraid. To me it read like experimental student art. Sorry.)



Link to the funny Daily mash article:
http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/science-technology/dinosaurs-had-big-emotional-moment-before-meteor-struck-2013020859135

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

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)

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: Neverboy #3- Transcendent

Story: Shaun Simon
Art: Tyler Jenkins
Colours: Kelly Fitzpatrick
Cover art: Conor Nolan
Publisher: Dark Horse Comics
Released: 6th May 2015


There are two full-page panels* of beautiful artwork in Neverboy #3, and after you experience them it’s quite easy to forget that you’ve just been reading a beautifully complex, subtle, intelligent and emotionally engaging comic book narrative as well.

Neverboy #3 has a feel of philosophy about it, that feeling of concepts that you can almost touch, but try as you might they always seem tantalising near, yet just out of reach. I really do enjoy the book. It’s one of those books that I read over and over again.

I take my time with it because I know it’s good, and I want to understand why it’s good. I want to deconstruct it, like you are supposed to do if you are a proper comic book reviewer, or even if you are just a bloke reviewing a comic book for his Internet blog.

I like how the story lets you make your own mind up about it, that’s probably the key. I like how it lays itself open. It’s not telling you what to think. It just wants you to engage, in your own way, to make of it what you like. That’s rare in comic books, a book that invites contemplation, doesn’t preach and doesn’t tell you what is right, what is wrong, what is real, what is fantasy.

It’s a floaty book with floaty art, and I love it. It’s arty, but good arty, if you know what I mean. There’s no snobbishness to it. It’s just plain and simple good.

There are two moments that stand-out to me about issue #3, the first is the moment when the artist character reveals his painting, the masterpiece that shows he is back on form, full of new inspiration and ready to go. That’s a difficult thing to do as the painting is shown in a full-page panel, and it has to be good, really good, to work within the narrative.

You can’t talk about a writer regaining his creative muse and then show a blah example of his work that is supposed to be great, can you? What you need is something that is actually really very good, and guess what? That’s what they have here in this book, a full page painting of a diner with two space alien type creatures emerging from it’s Dr Who Tardis like front door, and it looks absolutely superb. I want it framed. I want it on my wall. I want to spend money on it and enjoy it every single time I walk into my living room.

The second moment is when a group of women talk about their life motivations. They openly admit that they live for material concerns, for shopping, for a house, a car, the status, the shoes, the plastic surgery. It’s all empty physicality, appearance, that idea that we are animals, that you get what you can because death lasts forever, and there is no heaven.

That Satanic (and that’s what real Satanism actually is, the belief in nothing but the animal self) is the dominant mind-set of our age. To see it expressed here by a group of pretty young rich ladies seems awfully real, and it’s the contrast with the mind-set of the artist, of the fantasy dreamer that puts a sharp edge to that awful contrast that is a real as real gets. 

Neverboy is fantasy, but fantasy on the edge of brutal reality, and to see the juxtaposition between the fakery of flesh, ego, materialism and status, and that which comes from the pure joy of the creative process is quite a jolt. It forces you into the realisation that there is a truth transcendent from the material status of the self, and that happiness does not come from a thing, it comes from within.

Neverboy #3 then continues the excellence exhibited in the first two issues of the title. I’ve attempted to get to the core of why it works here, but I really cannot do it justice with words alone. Buy the book, read it slowly, enjoy it, then do it all over again.


Rating: 10/10 (Transcendent)

* The first panel is in the main narrative of the text and is by main artist Tyler Jenkins. The second full-page panel of beautiful artwork comes after the conclusion of the story and is by Taylan Kurtulus.

Comic review: Rebels #1- A New World Order Survival Guide

Writer: Brian Woods
Artist: Andrea Mutti
Colours: Jordie Bellaire
Publisher: Dark Horse Comics
Released: 8th April 2015

‘In a rush of great public resistance to an oppressive and excessive government, a home-grown militia movement is formed in rural America. THIS IS NOT 2015, BUT 1775.’

And so begins Brian Wood’s already fascinating tale of small town rebellion against tyrannical government, with a hint that things are not so different TODAY than they were back in 1775. Hinting that the tyranny has returned, and it’s time that small town folk started up their militia once again to reclaim their freedom from centralised, unaccountable government.

I had high, high hope for this book. I was happy to forget Wood’s recent work on mainstream comic books that’s been so dull that I can’t even remember what titles he was working on, and I was even happy to forget all memories of his probably Communist/Collectivist analogy ‘The Massive’ where a ship has been sailing around a post-apocalyptic world for what seems like forever without getting to the bloody point of what it’s all supposed to be about.

Yes, I’m a patient man, and when I saw that Brian Wood was writing a book about the American war of independence against King psycho and his British order followers I immediately had visions of strong masculine father figures, men acting like men in comics for a change, strong, independent FREE FROM GOVERNMENT SLAVERY types and a good, valuable history lesson about bloody well standing up for your rights and kicking government in the arse when it gets too big for it’s britches.

Guess what?

I got MORE than I was hoping for in Rebels #1. It’s a fantastic book, subtle, free of story-line maudlin coincidences and happy outcomes from the off, it’s rough, realistic, dirty and real.

I’m English/Welsh and the slave masters of my time don’t want me to know anything about my history. That’s why my school history classes were all about Nazi Germany, and nothing to do with the immense, proud history of my own people.

I grew up with no sense of identity, which is exactly what government wants. It makes you easier to control, easier to enlist in their armies, easier to control, easier to kill. America is different, or at least it used to be. Americans still have a grasp on their history. They know who they are, even though the present government is starting to wipe that history away, exactly like they did in the UK in order to create a bunch of ignorant statist voter slaves to feed the corporate borg system, or New World Order.

DON’T LET THAT HAPPEN AMERICA.

Buy this book. Learn about your very recent history, learn about government tyranny, and learn how to stand up to it, and defeat it.

Books like Rebels #1 are depressingly rare in this era of the New World Order. It’s a book about resistance, a book about looking after yourself, a book about defending your family, a book about being a real man. Buy it. Buy it now. It’s not just another comic book, it’s a New World Order survival guide.


Rating: 10/10 (Brian Woods is back on form)

Review: Conan the Avenger #12- Dreaming of pretty girls, wizards and monsters

Writer: Fred Van Lente
Artist: Brian Ching
Publisher: Dark Horse Comics
Released: 25th March 2015


Dreams of pretty girls, of wizards, monsters, and far away lands of legend, myth and adventure give you a reason to live, a reason to battle through the hangovers, a reason to keep on writing, to keep on dreaming, to keep on living.

For if there cannot be anything better in this world, write it, and live it in your mind.

I can sense that feeling of silent desperation and loneliness when I read Robert E. Howard. It’s a feeling of disconnection from his world, and a longing to go back, to be somebody else who could be brave, strong, fearless, a leader with passion in his life, a passion that drives him, that makes living not a chore, but a pleasure.

Reading ‘The Adventures of Two-Gun Bob’ by Jim & Ruth Keegan (the excellent short at the end of Conan the Avenger #12) I get a sad sense of who Conan author Robert E. Howard actually was. It’s not a happy tale. Dreaming of being somebody else, of a beautiful woman, of a ship, a monster, a beach, he wakes to reality with a hangover:

‘Dreams, and dreams and the ghosts of dreams. Last night I was drunk but there seems to be no especial hangover this morning.’ (Robert E. Howard)

Looking on the bright side, at least his head doesn’t hurt from the wasteful nothingness of the night before. He can write again, make something happen in a world that he feels no connection to.

Conan is essentially a boyish dream, a fantasy character that allows you to experience a life you want to live, but without the difficulty that real life contains. You get the muscles, the cool hair, the exotic locations, the monsters, the wizards and the pretty girls, and you don’t even have to put your pants on and leave the house to get it all.

But live there for too long and you will start to rot from the inside. You cannot hide from the real world forever. You can try, for a while, but reality has a way of getting to you, and of bringing you kicking and screaming back to that dull grey place that you don’t want to be.

Reality can be awful disappointing, and people are never as interesting or courageous, as you want them to be. If people were like the characters in Conan comic books then I would be surrounded by heroic, honest, strong, morally upright, beautiful, monstrous, interesting, passionate, deceitful, mendacious, scheming, mysterious, fascinating people. Guess what? I’m not surrounded by those kinds of people.

I’m surrounded by the bored, the lonely, the stupid, the uninteresting, the cowardly, the trapped, the dreary, the suspicious, the petty, the angry, the spiteful, the lost, the indifferent and those just stuck in an endless routine of keeping their heads down until the day that they die. That’s real life, and it’s hard to square it with what you read in a Robert E. Howard story about Conan. You end up asking, where are the heroes? Where are the villains? Where are the interesting characters? You find none, and it’s bloody depressing, so here’s my solution to the problem. If you cannot find somebody who interests you, then be the person who interests you.

Set a goal, go for it, be good at something, achieve something, increase your social status and have adventures.  You don’t have to stay indoors, and you don’t have to create worlds in your head. The real world is big enough, and although the people might seem a bit dull and predictable compared to the wonderful characters of fiction, there are real adventures waiting for you in reality.

Take the masculine essence of Conan if you want to be Conan, and achieve, achieve, achieve, and if you don’t achieve, well sod it, a good failure can be just as much fun as well. There are a million ways to do this, all you have to do is set your mind on a goal, and go for it. Having something to strive for, to get out of bed for, to live for, will be enough, and don’t worry; there will be plenty of wizards, monsters and pretty girls along the way.

Robert E. Howard wrote a lot, probably too much. He created so much, but lived too little, and when life kept kicking him in the guts there was nothing left to anchor him to the reality that he didn’t really care much for anyway.

You have to force yourself to care. Fantasy is enjoyable, but fantasy is not reality. Take the metaphors, the analogies and the moral lessons, and use them to navigate the real, but don’t get the two confused, and don’t spend too much time in a world that doesn’t exist. Fantasy can lead to unhappiness, to self-delusion, it can lead you into voting to be a slave, and reality is a lot more interesting than you might think.



Rating: 8/10 (A happy ending to the arc with some enjoyable moments of humour from a delirious Conan)

Review: Mister X: Razed #2 of 4- Shuttered from reality, please leave me alone to read my ‘noir’ detective book

Story and art: Dean Motter
Publisher: Dark Horse Comics
Released: 21st March 2015


This issue of Mister X is an involving, interesting and enjoyable read that is laced with subtle humour throughout. There’s no denying that Dean Motter is a very clever writer indeed.

You know me though, or do you? I like stories that deal with deeper issues, with BORING real world stuff, like human consciousness and slavery (aka government), but that’s just me. I’m a bit weird you see. I like my stories to actually say something, not just do pretty figure skating patterns before concluding with a bow, left the stage, was everybody entertained? What, I was supposed to say something? Not happening here mate, I do clever patterns, not thinking. Yeah, that’s me, annoying critic that I am. I want thinking, not just pretty patterns.

My main concern with the writing coming from Dean Motter (as I’ve experienced it so far at least) is that it appears to be about pretty patterns, about cleverness, about putting on a good show. He’s great at that, and that’s why I’m reading his book, but is he saying anything?

Let’s look at the two stories that make up this issue of Mister X. The first story (Razed Expectations) is about a missing building. It’s a great idea, that an entire skyscraper can disappear overnight, and nobody knows what has happened to it. That’s a great launching point for a story, you have me interested already, just because it’s so bizarre.

From that starting point the narrative introduces quite a lot of other stuff, characters and situations that make-up the backdrop to the missing building. It’s like a movie really, with lots of things going on that you assume will make more sense later on, being drawn together to form a coherent whole from what is at the present seemingly disconnected threads.

Mister X himself is one of those characters that I can see a writer identifying with. He’s cool, mysterious, high status, the girls like him and talk about him when he’s not there, and he is at the centre of everything that happens. He’s the kind of guy who a writer wants to be. The writer can’t be that guy in reality, so he writes him, enjoying the experience as he does so. X is not just an detached observer of life (as the writer is) he’s a powerful observer who actually drives the narrative rather than just sitting on the sidelines and watching other people do all of the exciting stuff. That’s how I see Mister X. He’s a writer’s image of himself, or how he wants to be, but cannot be in the real world. In that sense he’s quite a childish creation, a wish fulfilment creation born out of loneliness and the need to make yourself more interesting and important than you actually are. Oh Mister X, you’re so in charge, so cool, so mysterious, and all of the pretty girls are secretly in love with you. See how it works? Well, that’s how I read the bloke anyway.

The second story (Electropolis) isn’t really a second story at all, rather it is a story occurring at the same time as the main story, and what happens in it will probably tie into the larger picture. The main protagonist in this second tale is highly involved in the first story (she’s that easy story-line tie in, a reporter) and although Mister X isn’t involved here you know that if something important occurs then he’s bound to pop his bald head into the narrative if needed.

This second story introduces new characters into the world, and they are funny, adding an element of humour into proceedings, which makes for a more enjoyable read. See? It’s that Dean Motter. He knows how to write a good story, the clever, clever bloke. This is really good stuff. You have an ostensible ‘main’ story, and a secondary story that follows it. But the ‘secondary’ story is actually about the main story as well, and what happens in that story is going to affect the outcome in the main story. Isn’t that a great idea? Other comic books should steal that one.

Okay, so there’s some clever stuff going on here, but (and I always go back to this point in ALL of my reviews) is it actually saying anything? Let’s have a look. The story involves a missing building, a dodgy architect/millionaire, stolen gold and chemical zombies being used as bank robbers. It has a recovering alcoholic reporter in it, and a pretty young girl who is the love interest of Mister X. It’s interesting for sure, but I’m not getting anything deeper. There’s a very noticeable lack of sub-text going on here. It’s not really about anything at a deeper level other than exciting and intriguing the reader on a narrative level.

I could be wrong, but I’m not getting anything here. Is it about the commodification of all human interactions where your value as a human being is purely dependent upon your financial status? Is it about the transhuman agenda? Is it about collectivism, the idea that humanity needs to be herded into a dumbed down mass of spectator order followers to be bossed around by their betters and eventually exterminated/culled like in Communist Russia or China? No, none of that is going on here. All of the important issues worth debating in a 2015 context have fallen into a black hole as far as this book is concerned. We will have nothing contemporary here please. This is a comic book about a missing building and all of the wacky individual characters involved in it’s disappearance, that’s all.

The clue to it’s determination to shutter itself from reality is there in it’s deliberately ‘nowhere’ setting. It’s set in a noir movie futuristic robot kind of place that I used to read about in my old copies of 2000AD back in the 1980’s. This setting is futuristic, but not in a 2015 sense. It’s futuristic in a 1980’s sense.  It’s very 80’s actually, and as I read the book I can’t see any nods to the present day world of 2015 at all. This one could have been written in 1986, as there’s nothing here that connects with the post 9/11 world at all.

You know what? I’m okay with that, just because it’s so well written. I’m going to keep on reading it, and I’m not going to harp on how it doesn’t connect, how it’s not saying anything. It’s a 1980’s book that has gone through some kind of time-warp where the last 30 years didn’t happen, and as long as you treat it like a very well written 2000AD story from the mid 1980’s then there’s enjoyment to be had here.

It’s never going to be a nine or ten out of ten book because it’s not trying to say anything. It’s trying to be a good story. It’s trying to be clever, and it’s trying to be funny and cool. To me it is a 7/10 book because it has set it’s own limits and is happy to exist as a 7/10 book that ignores the world around it.

I’m going to read it and pretend that I’m that ignorant kid in 1986 that I once used to be. I’m not going to be silly and declare it a work of contemporary genius, because it isn’t. It’s a comfy pillow to lay your head upon as the bombs go off outside.

Austerity, never-ending wars, the new world order, media lies, privatisation, academic consensus, corporatism, statism, banksterism, false flags, anarchy, freedom, liberty, truth. You’ll find none of those VITAL issues being discussed here, but what you will find is a very clever, involving story that will entertain you and help you ignore the reality of the world around you.

Take it, read it, enjoy it, but this kind of clever story telling is best taken in small doses. Too much cleverness will warp you, making you act like a new age hipster prat, inculcating within your mental make-up a love of ignorant shallowness, and ‘geek’ culture nothingness.  I have nothing against shallow comics and cleverness, but life is short, so we have to say what we want to say whilst we are here.

Comics like Mister X are fun, but they are not going to help the human race break free from it’s current condition of slavery to centralised control systems. Clever ultimately helps nobody but the state and all of their scurrying little helper minions who live their lives in order to divide, distract and eventually load you and your kids into their BBC, World Bank and UN approved paddy wagons. Clever keeps the masses busy, clever keeps them away from reality, clever protects the status quo, and clever keeps humanity enslaved.


Rating: 7/10 (Very well written, enjoyable, clever but there is no connection to anything that has contemporary socio-political relevance)