“Never, ever underestimate the degree to which people will scatter themselves into a deep fog in order to avoid seeing the basic realities of their own cages. The strongest lock on the prison is always avoidance, not force.” (Stefan Molyneux)
A wounded creature, torn into a million infected pieces, poisoned with a nihilism of the soul, agonisingly aware of the sickness that condemn his life, whispers, pleads, cries and finally, sings to the life giving agent who started it all.
‘Mother,’ you do not want to make soul contact, for there is madness here, a sticky madness that binds to the abyss. Take the hand of your guide, and visit the frozen no-man land where insanity reigns. Breathe in the intoxicating dankness of the pit where there is blood on the walls, but do not linger. Be as a tourist, explore in safety, but then, please, return quickly to the love of your family and the sanctuary that is your home.
Two songs, ‘ Mother,’ a wail of disease, wallowing in degradation, on a cold marble floor, stained red with deep scars of despair. Did you really do what you think you have done? Ponder on it, for you have all of eternity, here, now, in stasis of regret, sick-boy you have reached ‘The End.’
Available at the link below, with an excellent comic book, raw-pain alien lizard god art, a narrative of Nephilim and bloodlines, sleeping Gods, awakening, a vessel, a boy, destruction of the world. If you are like me, if you are a student of Bible prophecy, Zecharia Sitchin, David Icke, Erich Von Daniken and Graham Hancock, if you know these names, you’ll want the comic book. If however you are reading these lines with a puzzled look upon your face, stop, it’s okay, there’s a door opening. Buy the book, CD included, read, listen, experience. The doorway to VON has opened for you.
Click on link. Buy now, music and book or digital single. Use the discount code "rant" and you will receive an amazing 50% off all orders. You can thank me later:
Art: Owen Gieni Script: Ryan K Lindsay Publisher: Dark Horse Released: 23rd September 2015
‘Misery mourns to be devoured.’ (Manic Street Preachers- Removeables)
I have been thinking about that line, analysing it, deciphering it, and trying to extract every last ounce of meaning from it. I’m still not 100% happy with my conclusions, but as far as I can understand it, what it’s trying to say is that unhappiness feeds on itself, leading to more unhappiness, the cycle continuing forever, more misery, more unhappiness, feeding forever, never satisfied, always unhappy, but demanding more unhappiness.
‘Negative Space #2’ takes this idea of unhappiness as energy, and speculates that as well as it feeding upon itself, perhaps there is some other entity that benefits from it as well? I’ve read about the concept before, the idea that there is a race of extra-dimensional beings that feed on human suffering. They are usually referred to as Archons, or Reptilians, and are often described as working within the bloodlines of the ruling elites of our planet. David Icke talks about it all of the time, so if you are reading this review and are not already aware of the idea, get one of his books, you won’t regret it.
Anyway, the idea of an alien race feeding on human misery is given a slightly new and different take in ‘Negative Space.’ There are no reptilians here, no mention of bloodlines, and no mention of government agencies or any of the real world slave masters of planet Earth. As far as I can tell, the blame is being put onto a private corporation in this book, a corporation that works with the aliens, harvesting the food for them by promoting misery all over the world.
I don’t really have too many problems with corporations. It’s governments that control the world, not corporations. Corporations are powerful, but they don’t have a monopoly on the use of violence. They can’t put you in jail for failing to pay them. They can’t start wars. They can’t even force you to buy their products. Government however, can pretty much do whatever they like. They can extort you, rob you, torture you, kill you and kidnap your kids, then say that it’s legal and that there’s nothing that anybody can do about it.
I didn’t see any mention of government in ‘Negative Space #2’ and I don’t know if that’s a deliberate omission, or just something that the writer didn’t think about. The blame for misery appeared to be completely heaped upon a corporation, and I find that a bit strange. Sure corporations have power, but real power is always within the centralised control system, and that system at the moment is government, not corporations. Corporations do indeed try to pay off politicians and I do understand the revolving door between the two, but government has the gun, and guns have a way of getting things done.
Perhaps the omission will be addressed later? I hope so, because Negative Space is a very interesting book. There is a daft sense of humour to it all as well, making it a very enjoyable, occasionally silly, read.
There are quite a few interesting characters in the book as well. The main villain is ridiculously over the top, (‘I can only beat on a hipster for so long before I need breakfast nutrition.’) and issue #2 introduces a daftly entertaining alien character that is on the side of the heroes.
My favourite character however is the main protagonist, an overweight, unattractive, unhappy, middle-aged bloke. That one character alone is enough to get my interest in a comic book. If I have to read another supposedly ‘rebellious’ book starring a punk haired young girl then I’m going to start losing my mind, so it’s nice to see some real ‘diversity’ in comic books for a change.
I have to mention the art as well. It has a unique atmosphere to it, a dark, almost abstract quality, like it’s touching on reality, but is not quite there yet. It’s unique, and for an equally as unique book, it’s a perfect fit.
Issue #2 of Negative Space adds a heavy dose of dark humour to the pathos of issue #1 and that combination of misery and comedy produces an excellent black comedy with depth and emotional resonance. I need more government in my misery, but apart from that noticeable omission, this is an excellent book that stands out from the crowd and is well worth you investing both your time and money on.
Rating: 8/10 (Not as doom laden as you might think, there is a lot of enjoyable silliness in this one)
Writers and artists: Numerous Publisher: Rebellion Released: 10th June 2015
A warped out Slaine is on the cover of 2000AD this week, excellent, let’s see what’s inside.
A new Judge Dredd arc begins this week, and it starts with a mercenary trying to murder a judge. The interest in the story is in discovering, who paid him, and why? I’m not a fan of the judges, so I don’t really care, but it could be interesting, we’ll see.
The second story is more my kind of thing, mainly because it’s got ‘False Flag’ in it’s title, a term that scares the mainstream media so much that they don’t use it, out of fear that merely mentioning the term will get people to question what their government slave masters are doing.
You know what? I agree with them. If everyday news consumers knew what ‘false flag’ actually meant (attacking yourself and blaming somebody else in order to justify actions that would otherwise be unjustifiable, see 9/11, 7/7, Gulf of Tonkin and Reichstag Fire) then there might be a moment when the news watching programmed masses start to question things and discover a thirst for truth about what their governments are getting up to.
The story itself (Absalom- Under a False Flag) initially confused me. It certainly wasn’t making it easy for the readers to get into it, and it took me a couple of reads just to understand what it was supposed to be about. It had some lame blokey jokes about people from Newcastle, the art was very nice, and the plot involved Police/Slave controller protagonists and one of their assets. I’m intrigued, and look forward to see where it goes next week. Oh, and it was set in a demon and magic filled future, so it could say something about the world as it is today, under disguise of it’s fictional sci-fi setting, but we’ll see. The title at least is a good start.
Third story is Slaine. This is the one where Slaine ‘warps out.’ In other words, it’s backside kicking time for the order following legions. Dialogue standouts from the week include the following nuggets of truth:
‘What seems to me to be white will be black, if you tell me it is so.’ (True words spoken by a loyal order follower who does not want to know the truth.)
‘They hate living flesh and will only tolerate it when it can be controlled.’ (Do you ever get the feeling that governments hate their own people? I do. People are always the real enemy of government. They want compliant slaves, dogs, and that is why they lionise order followers, soldiers and cops as heroes at every available opportunity, whilst cutting their pensions and letting them starve and die when the cameras are no longer shooting. A compliant population is a slave population, and that is the goal of all governments.)
Slaine talks about the ‘archons’ this week, the gods of humanity, the slave masters at the top of the pyramid. It’s fascinating, dripping with truth and revelation about the state of humanity as it has been since the dawn of time. What is an archon? Watch this ten-minute video, and find out:
It’s not possible to top something as essential as Slaine, but ‘Helium,’ the last story in PROG 1934 of 2000AD is fun, and easy to get straight into (unlike ‘Absalom- Under a False Flag). I am uneasy with the central narrative premise though, that being the commonly pushed mainstream lie that you can change a corrupt system by joining it. I dislike that premise, because it’s not true, and I see it everywhere, from television cop shows, to this comic book script. We need to break the illusion, and we need to expose the lie.
You do not change evil by joining evil. The opposite is true. By joining evil, you become evil yourself. Whistleblowers have that same mindset, that you can change evil by working for evil, and look at what always happens to them. They try, fail, and are persecuted because they tell the truth. Evil systems perpetuate evil deeds, and individuals within the system exist only to follow orders. When they no longer comply they are discarded, replaced by somebody with less morals, and more ambition and willingness to serve. That’s how evil replicates itself, it is how our world really works.
Once again I’ve put together a far too long review, but what can I do? I start writing about 2000AD and there’s so much to say, and I can’t help myself, being the blabbermouth that I am. Thanks for reading, if you got this far, it’s another great week in 2000AD, get the book, support UK comics.
Rating: 9/10 (Interesting new arcs begin here, plus Slaine continues to excel)
Main story: Demon in A Silvered Glass, by Doug Moench & art by John Bolton.
Publisher: Dark Horse Comics
Released: April 1st 2015
Note- The images in this review are of the 1981 black and white version of the story. The 2015 version in Savage Sword #10 has been beautifully coloured by Jim Campbell, so to enjoy the coloured version please buy the book.
Savage Sword #10 was a reminder of quite a few things, of feelings, of moments in my life. It triggered a recollection of boredom, and of what can (or will, to be more precise) happen to you when you let the hooks of inertia dig deep within your psyche. Boredom will kill you, it will leave you open to the Reptilian part of your nature, that old demon that lurks, waiting for an opening, before pouncing at your moment of weakness, taking you over, killing your body and rotting your soul.
The book also reminded me of being a kid. Of being a young boy in love with comic books where brave heroes battled against evil sorcerers and their seductive, yet equally as dangerous daughters. It reminded me of that boyish suspicion of all things ‘girl’ related, that there is something alluring there, but be careful son, that beauty has a heck of a bite on it as well.
The story I’m talking about in Savage Word #10 is the old one, the story about a bored King and what happens to him when he gives into adult boredom, and the boyish fear of all things girlie is ignored. It’s the longest story in Savage Sword #10, and by far the best. The title of the story is ‘Demon In A Silvered Glass,’ written by Doug Moench, and with art by John Bolton. The story was first released in 1981, and it really stands out because you don’t get anything like this anymore. It’s too good, too clever, too intelligent, too insightful about the nature of power, boredom and human nature. It’s brilliant, and you don’t get that many brilliant comic books in 2015.
I hadn’t read the story as a kid. How I missed it I do not know, but I did, so reading it here for the first time is pure pleasure, a mix of nostalgia not only because the story (and art) is in a different league to anything available today, but also because it brings me back to my boyhood of reading cool American comic books with manly heroes who you could really look up to as being the personification of the man you want to grow up and become when the lazy days of boyhood fights and tree-house adventures sadly comes to an end.
Like I previously mentioned, the story is about a bored King. He gives in to the animal side of his nature, and becomes something akin to the neo-liberal democratically selected leaders that we have in the morally bankrupt west today. The spiritual, moral side of his nature, the very thing that makes him a man slowly ebbs away as he lives a life of authoritarian pleasure. He reverts to the Reptilian side of his nature, and by doing so he leaves not only himself open, but his entire Kingdom open for take-over as well.
This is a book that could have been written by David Icke himself. What this is about is the leaders of humanity being taken over by Reptilian outsiders who have hacked into the DNA of our species, implanting their evil into our brains in order to corrupt the species and eventually take it over and use it for their own ends.
The only difference between this book and our real world is that in this book the Reptilian outsiders are eventually defeated and the spiritual, eternal soul of man wins over the grounded, animal part of our nature. In our world the Reptilian elements have yet to be defeated. They haven’t yet won, but they are largely in charge of the world and are currently running it for their own benefit through the use of their Reptilian (influenced at least) front-men in the political sphere. Look at the world, look at what is happening, look at who is running it, and then ask yourself this question:
Is the world being run for the benefit of the human race, or is it being run for the benefit of something else?
I know how it looks to me. It looks like a world being controlled by the kind of woman/man who has given in to boredom, the kind of human who has completely given in to the animal side of their nature who want to kill, to destroy, to rape and pillage and indulge their baser instincts. If there is a God, he is not in charge of this planet. What is in charge is an animal/reptilian man who sits on a throne of boredom and decadence. He looks at the world and hating humanity, bored with it all, wants to set it all on fire, and warm his toes as he watches it all burn.
‘Demon In A Silvered Glass’ then is not just a silly boyish nostalgia tale from the early 1980’s bought back to life for a new generation of comic book readers. It’s much more than that. To me it is a warning of what happens when you give in to boredom and see yourself as nothing more than just another beast in the field. But more than that it’s a warning about what happens when you allow that kind of mindset to be the dominant mindset of the leaders you allow to control your world. That is the mindset of the neo-liberal consensus leaders who are controlling our lives today. We stupidly vote for them every four years or so and expect ‘change,’ then when we get none we are confused and angry. That is stupid, really stupid. We get what we deserve. We vote for the reptilian, the animal, so that is what we get.
This 1980’s comic book gets to the heart of the matter. It is telling us not just what is wrong with society, but what is wrong with each and every one of us. We are potentially independent, powerful and self-governing human beings, but we have become inert, lazy, and are ruled by the worse of us because we have allowed ourselves to be ruled.
We would rather be bored, owned animals than the strong, powerful, self-determined heroes that we should be. The comic book heroes that we read as children had important moral, ethical, societal and spiritual messages to impart to our young minds. These lessons have gone unheeded, and what we have today on this enslaved, chaotic, archon infested planet is just the natural result of what happens when a lazy species allows itself to be enslaved. This is what is always going to happen to a bored, decadent, indifferent, lazy, selfish, animalistic race of beings who refuse to learn and insist on repeating every single mistake of the past.
When a King gets bored and lazy his Kingdom decays, the people revolt, outsiders capitalise on the disorder, and eventually it collapses. So what happens when an entire species is suffering from the same disorder? I ask that question because that is what is happening to the human race right now.
We are bored, lazy and ruled by those with a Reptilian mind-set. Collapse is inevitable. It’s not if, it’s when. That is the warning that is contained within this comic book. Whether or not we act on this warning and start doing something to stop the decline, well as always, that’s up to us. We have been too decadent, too indolent, and too indifferent for too long. The Reptiles are in charge now, we let them get in charge, and the only question left is whether or not we are too far-gone to do anything about it.
Overall Rating: 8/10 (Best of the rest was ‘The Sea Dog’s Tale’ by Ron Marz. A very good parable about evil, false religion and mind-control)
Demon In a Silvered Glass: 10/10 (Perfect)
Note about the heading, 'Drugs Come Out of Boredom Babe' The quote comes from a Manic Street Preachers Song called 'Another Invented Disease.' Click link to have a listen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PK133q19lg
Comic books were always a part of my life. As a young boy I read the Beano, then graduated to reading the more ‘adult’ 2000AD. I read them for the same reason that any young boy reads comics, as a means of exploring the wider world outside of his little town, little hopes, little dreams. They told me that the world was bigger, that there were possibilities for me outside of my familiar surroundings.
My first love
As I grew into my teens I became obsessed (like most UK boys growing up in the 1980’s) with all things American. American culture was cool, exotic, their heroes had big muscles and their girls were very, very pretty. Along with American football and the A-team there was Marvel comic books. Spiderman was my favourite, but then again, of course he would be. He was a teen who looked a little bit like me, but he had spider powers, and a hot girlfriend for some inexplicable reason. If he had a chance, then surely I did as well, right?
After my dalliance with Spiderman came to its natural conclusion I moved into young adulthood with Alan Moore’s Constantine and Neil Gaiman’s Sandman. I was a young, lost adult and these books offered me something that was lacking in my own life. They offered magic, and a sense that there was beauty in the mundane, and let me tell you, I was more than familiar with mundane during this time of my life. As I continued into adulthood, moving from unfulfilling job, to pointless college course, back to another depressing job my comics (and other ‘proper’ books) became even more essential to me. The great big world had shrugged its shoulders and apathetically passed me by, so back to the comics, where there was still life, still possibilities.
I began to read again as a disappointed, depressed and lost adult and I could pretend that I was still a child again. I wasted years reading the same kind of Marvel and DC comic books that dominate the market today. I got up to date with the Avengers, with Iron Man and was excited when they made movies about the books that had a bit of money behind them and actually looked pretty good. But then I woke up to life, and my relationship with comic books would never be the same again.
I loved this book, it helped me get through my twenties
My university education hadn’t helped me at all. My Marxist text books, my keen interest in feminist studies, it all lead me to nowhere, just feelings of guilt for things that I hadn’t even thought about, let alone done. I was confused. I was a good person, and yet here was my life, empty, with nothing to show for it but years of sitting on the sidelines, of reading comics, of reading books, of passing college courses, of being nice, of being kind and considerate. So why the empty feeling?
The comics weren’t giving anything to me anymore, nor were the books, so I put them all down and decided to look at something new. To my immense surprise I found it, and continue to find it each and every day. So what did I find? Don’t worry, it wasn’t religion, it was truth or the search for truth at least.
I found people who had broken out of the restrictive left wing educational paradigm, people who rejected Marxism, Feminism, Liberalism and wanted to carve their own path, rather than follow an old ‘progressive’ route that led to Russia, China and every other totalitarian ‘left’ leaning state. I discovered ‘alternative’ names like David Icke, Michael Tsarion, Mark Passio, Alex Jones, James Corbett, Jordan Maxwell and countless others. I put away my preconceptions, listened, read and learned and then wondered (very loudly) why I hadn’t heard about any of this information during all of my years at school, college and university and all of the countless hours I had spent reading two or three newspapers every day. It was an eye-opener, my world-view 180-degree changed, and I started to see things as they really are. Then I went back to my comics and I read them with completely different eyes.
David Icke, a truly great man.
Why were they not talking about important issues? Why were they so obsessed with race, gender and sexuality when these issues only serve to separate us from each other? Why were they not talking about the US invading Iraq based on an obvious lie? Why were they not talking about Saudi Arabia and their role in 9/11? Why were the superheroes acting like US soldiers? Why were all the heroes acting like cops? Why was anarchy (which just means freedom from state control) always portrayed as a great evil? Why were villains still robbing banks? Surely it was the banks robbing the people, not the other way round? What was happening here? This wasn’t right, and yet whenever I read comic book reviews on the Internet they wouldn’t even bring up all of the contradictions that I was reading in my comic books. So, I did what had to be done. If nobody else were prepared to speak uncomfortable truths about mainstream comic books then I would have to do it for myself.
So I set up my blog, and started to review comics from the perspective of freedom, of saying whatever I wanted to say. I began to use my comic book reviews as a platform to discuss issues and ideas that interested me even more than the comics themselves. The point of the review became not the comic book itself, but the ideas that were being expressed within that comic book. My analysis of artwork, panel layout and narrative structure became secondary to an ideological analysis of the text. Many of my reviews ceased to be reviews at all, instead they were opportunities for me to discuss what I was learning as I broadened my horizons and learnt more and more about how the world actually works. I began to question everything, and that is what I continue to do today.
My blog here also contains my own original fiction writing and as I continue to expand my intellectual horizons I can envision it beginning to take on a lot more subjects other than comic book reviews. The blog has given me a platform to rail against what is lacking in contemporary comic books, but also to celebrate the rare book that does attempt to deal with some of the issues of our post 9/11 world. I am now rapidly reaching the stage where I need to concentrate on my own original fiction work. I have read and reviewed a lot of books, so perhaps it’s time I stopped criticising and started to put out some substantial product of my own.
