Comic Review (X-Files) Millennium #5- Sleepwalking Into a New Dark Age

Writer: Joe Harris
Artist: Colin Lorimer
Colourist: Joana Lafuente
Publisher: IDW Publishing
Released: 3rd June 2015



This X-Files cross-over book has now come to it’s dramatic conclusion, the series is over, put up your feet and stick the kettle on. So let’s scratch our noggins and ask the question, was it worth it?

For the nostalgia, art and beautiful colouring, yes. For the story and any deeper meaning that I could salvage from it, not really.

It did give me one thing though, that being a reminder of the times in which I am now living. A time when old (middle-aged really) men are portrayed as the sad, dying past and young girls are presented as the shining new, hope filled future.

It’s a lie of course, as everything connected to the corporate whore mainstream media is, that kind of goes without saying, though I do like to repeat it, less we forget.

I did however find Millennium #5 to be useful, as it’s narrative conclusion is a mirror that points at the norms of contemporary comic book culture. I can now take that mirror and shine it back onto itself, and explore what is happening within mainstream comic book, and corporate media programming.

The useful mainstream/corporate sponsored narrative 'liberal' lie of our age goes thus: The ‘mistakes’ of the past, the ‘mistakes’ that have made the world so unfair today, were caused by racist, sexist, homophobic white men. What we need now is a new age of strong independent young, multi-racial women with purple hair, nose rings and blurred sexual identities to see us into the promised land of butterflies, tolerance and free lollypops for everyone.

The implication here of course is that there is nothing wrong with the system itself, it's the people within the system that need to be changed, then everything will work out just fine.

Funny, isn’t it? You have to laugh, if you don’t then it’s crying time, and what’s the point in getting all depressed about the mainstream media anyway? It’s dying, it’s message is discredited, the lies are catching up with it, and whatever it portrays is well known to be fraudulent, manipulative bs coming direct from PR firm’s press releases, regurgitated onto newspapers and television screens by career journalists who couldn’t give a damn about the truth and what is going on in the world.

The mainstream media might be dying, but it still has the power to set the agenda. When that agenda is neo-feminism, lots of young girls are going to buy into it, not because they want to make the world a better place, but because the system is now opening doors where young women can have successful careers working for the corrupt system of human enslavement.

It might not be a very moral thing to do, to join a cartel of human slave owners, but the pay will be good, and the feminist guff gives it the illusion of ‘progress’ as well.

Lots of young men will go along with this nonsense as well, not because it benefits them, but because they want to impress young girls and show how politically correct their attitudes are, even if that means them facing a lifetime of low paid work or unemployment. They’ll understand later on, but by then it will be too late for them to do anything about it.

The new slave handlers, or management class of humanity, will be women, with careers and money thrown at them to keep them onboard. Not all women, of course, it will be a rat race for those controller jobs and those who do get them will actually feel like they have accomplished something, when all they are doing is helping the neo-liberal slavery system to continue business as usual.

Writer Joe Harris (of Millennium) is not part of some great ‘conspiracy,’ where he is subtly influencing the minds of his young readers. The conspiracy doesn’t work like that. What he is doing in this book, by having a young woman defeat evil, reject the help and advice of her father and leave to join a cool and sexy secret group (Hello CIA) is to play into the agenda as being set by the dying mainstream media.

All of the old men in this book are useless bystanders. They represent yesterday’s way of thinking. They represent a failed generation, used up, worn out and no longer needed. The female protagonist has the power of options now, and she doesn’t need old men in her life anymore.

She wants to join something cool, something fresh, something sexy, and something that will really upset her mean old Daddy. What does he know anyway? He’s just an old man, and he failed. She will choose to be used by the system, the system wants her, they can feed off each other, parasitic and diseased, they can rot the collective soul of humanity together. She can even kid herself that she is keeping evil under wraps, when she herself is the very embodiment of it.

Harris is working on a subconscious level here, and is producing a story that is allowable, that will shift a few units, comply with the PC dictates of the time, and not upset anybody. To this end he has succeeded.

Old fans of the X-Files and a couple of new fans will read the book. They will enjoy the art, and it will be mostly forgotten. What will remain, however, is the idea that the new age is a female age, that males are no longer necessary, that the system is fine, it just needs a personnel change, and that experience doesn’t bring wisdom, it brings obsolescence.

I don’t mind having women in positions of authority, but changing the gender of the person holding the whip is not genuine change, it’s Obama change, it’s fraudulent, and we need to call it out for what it is. Placing women in positions that used to be held by men is not the way to change a corrupt system. The system will easily adapt, and women thinking of themselves as survival of the fittest Darwinian alpha-females will be used as pawns and puppets against humanity, just as the men have been used before.

The cries of sexism, racism and homophobia will herald the dawn of the new world order, and as the lucky chosen few, purple hair and nose rings amongst them, take their positions as cattle controllers, for the vast majority, it’s more of the same.

There will be a new, friendlier feminine voice barking out the orders, as opposed to the old and out of date masculine version, but nothing else of any substance will change for the slaves on the corporate plantation. That is the vision of the future that is being presented in so many mainstream media narratives, and also in this fabulously coloured and drawn, but woefully entrapped in the mainstream matrix X-Files cross-over comic book. You boys have had your fun, but it's all about the girls now.

I loved how it looked, but the more I think about the story, the more depressed it makes me feel about the state of the world as it is, and also what is going to come next for the entire human race as a whole. But will I let it get me down? No way, the future is not set in stone, and slave masters don’t always get what they want, especially when the slaves get wind of what they are up to.



Rating: 5/10: The art and colouring by Colin Lorimer & Joana Lafuente worked so well together, creating something that I enjoyed looking at, even if the story itself ultimately didn’t offer me that much except confirmation of the agenda that I’m already (vote Hillary) aware of.

Comic review: Millennium (X-Files) #3- 90’s nostalgia for my useless generation

Writer: Joe Harris
Artist: Colin Lorimer
Colourist: Joana Lafuente
Publisher: IDW Comics
Released: 1st April 2015



Millennium has been a very enjoyable series so far. The art is great, the colouring’s superb, the script is interesting and the construction of the narrative itself has a screenplay element to it that makes the entire experience feel like you are watching an old episode of the X-Files television show.

That screenplay element is in use again at the beginning of issue #3 with a plot device that is usually used in television dramas. A moment of high (spooky) drama opens the narrative, before the story flashes back 24 hours so the viewer can see the prelude to the dramatic scenes that are now unfolding.

I enjoy that technique, it brings you straight into the narrative with a monument of adrenaline, hooking you into the story with drama, and having you hang around for an explanation about the context behind that drama.

As with all ‘conspiracy’ shows the game here is to hint at what is to come, revealing slowly, drip by drip, tantalising clues about the bigger ‘conspiracy’ picture behind surface events. Throw in some interesting characters, have a daughter kidnapping (that always works) and you have a show.

It sounds like, from what I’ve just been underlying here, that this ‘Millennium’ book isn’t exactly busting with originality, and that’s a pretty fair accusation to lay on the project. It’s not original, but that doesn’t mean that it’s not any good. Yeah the references are a bit old (The Millennium Bug and the Pixies) but for people over the age of forty (that’s me) there’s still fun to be had here.

If you pick up this title you’ll get a mixture of X-Files nostalgia (like the returning show) good art and a well-paced and competently executed script. I’m enjoying it, but bear in mind that I am a 41 (almost 42) year-old guy who grew up with this stuff on his television during my prime (they weren’t really prime, I was terribly depressed back then) twenties years.

This book transports me back to the days when the X-Files was the coolest, newest, edgiest show on television. That’s not really the case anymore, and if you expect the upcoming new shows to be anything other than nostalgia I fear you are in for some disappointing viewing.

The X-Files was of it’s time, and as I read ‘new’ versions of it today I come away with the feeling that it’s not connecting with anything that has happened post 9/11.

All of the usual globalist, New World order, failing democracy, surveillance and illegal, never-ending war stuff that I always talk about in my reviews, and want to see reflected in my comic books isn’t really happening in this book, or any of the other X-Files titles coming from IDW Comics.

That’s okay. If you want to talk about new stuff you have to update the vehicle, and the X-Files wagon is a bit rusty these days. It’s become a nostalgia thing, and when it’s done well it still has something to offer, at least to blokes like me who grew up with this stuff during our late teens or twenties.

I like this book, but I’m being realistic about it here. I’m not going to pretend that something game-changing is happening.

It’s a nostalgia book, done well, that is centred on a conspiracy group that was designed to cash-in on the silly (and it always was silly, this is not hindsight) Millennium bug fears of the late 1990’s. Get Millennium if you miss the X-Files and are looking forward to the new television shows. The book looks great, the story is interesting and the entire project has been carefully and thoughtfully constructed.

Rating: 7/10 (Nostalgic fun for the 35+ generation)

Comic review: Millennium #3- Glorious colouring, boss front cover

Writer: Joe Harris
Artist: Colin Lorimer
Colourist: Joane Lafuente
Publisher: IDW Comics
Released: 18th March 2015


Along with the gloriously gothic and spooky regular cover from menton3 you get some equally atmospheric and splendidly coloured interior art in Millennium #2.

This is a book that you’ll want to enjoy with the lights on, as every page is awash with psychedelic swatches, blurs and shades of dazzling colour, creating an effect that’s really quite impressive and a joy to experience.

I’m one of those reviewers who doesn’t usually mention the art and colouring, so the very fact that I’m mentioning it here must mean that it's stand-out good. Actually it’s a lot better than good, it’s great, and bottom line, a heck of a lot of fun to look at.

The story itself is inoffensive to this jaded anarchist, even though it has murders in it, but I forgive that as it’s a conspiracy/murder-mystery genre book and I guess you have to sprinkle a few corpses around a bit to make it what it is.

The book, at the moment at least, is in the stage of the narrative where things are still being hinted at, and the fun to be had here is to follow it all the way through and see everything link up at the end.

The key is whether or not it’s interesting enough that you want to hang around. I do, not because it’s a ‘conspiracy’ book, but because the art is great, there’s nothing in it that offends me too much and the plot is interesting.

I want to follow that plot to the end. I want to know what is happening. I want to slowly find out where it’s all going and I want to find out with the evil villains are up to in relation to unleashing evil into the world (err lads, it’s already here, it’s in charge, and it’s called ‘Government.’)

I’ll keep on buying it, and I’ll keep on putting my lights on when reading the book in order to get the full benefit of the very good art and absolutely stunning colouring work by Joane Lafuente.

If you like the X-files, and if you like books where occulted groups are getting up to mischief, only to eventually be thwarted by brave agents of the state (sorry, but that’s what’s happening here) then you should get a kick out of it. It’s atmospheric, subtle, interesting and well worth spending a couple of quid on. Just look at that front cover with a Slender Man/Demon on it. That’s great, and the book itself isn’t too bad either.


Rating: 7/10 (Not exactly government shattering, but it’s a fun read)

Comic review: Millennium #1- Cleverly constructed, intriguing and fun

Writer: Joe Harris
Artist: Colin Lorimer
Publisher: IDW
Released: 21st January 2015



It was the overarching concept behind this book that hooked me, that tempted me into a purchase, and not the association with the old ‘conspiracy’ television show of the 1990’s.

That show was The X-Files, and the concept I’m talking about here is evil, and how it manipulates the world, hiding just beyond the scope of our current ‘scientific’ understanding.

That’s the real ‘conspiracy’ behind the pathetic, see-through lies and manipulations of our puppet politicians. It’s an interdimensional conspiracy with demonic entities attaching themselves to those in positions of power and influence in our particular ‘reality.’

Do these entities have to psychically manifest in the minds of individual men in order to manipulate them, or perhaps it’s just an in-built disease of our DNA that allows us to be so open, so eager to embrace evil? Either way, the demonic entities attach themselves to the minds of men (and women) in order to guide them, to manage them, and to encourage them to give out the immoral orders that those in uniforms unquestioningly follow.

That is the story of our planet. A wilfully ignorant, immoral, psychically contaminated species in love with order giving, and order following. The inevitable result of this toxic mindset is endless war, suffering and inhumanity, with man killing man, not for a good reason, but because he was ordered to. This is our past, our present, and if we keep on voting for it, our future as well.

That is the reason behind my purchase of this book. I am hoping for an exploration of that very human disease, the disease that allows us to give and take orders with no regard to moral rights and wrongs. I am hoping for an exploration into control systems, of slavery, of the collective Stockholm syndrome that is affecting us all. I have high hopes, and that is why I am such a harsh critic.

I will not accept a good story with interesting characters and give it a 10/10 because it was exciting or ‘cool.’ I am no longer a child. I demand much more than cheap thrills in my comic books these days. Say something, or go away.

This X-Files companion book takes the idea that the year 2000 was to be the end of something, acknowledges that it wasn’t, explains why it wasn’t, and carries the idea forward. There was a group of human plotters working for the evil entities that I have just mentioned. The group had something planned for the big day, but when 1999 turned into 2000, they failed, and the promised end of times failed to materialise.

But what is time to the eternal evil that lives, that hides, that manipulates, that plots, that conspires, that deceives, that tempts, that sows seeds of discord, disharmony, hatred and despair within the heart of us all? Nothing, and so the poisonous metaphorical spider continues to weave it’s web, mankind entraps itself, and a new threat emerges.

It’s a very comic book thing happening here, introducing a threat, and then having order following agents of the state thwarting it. It even has that tired old trope, the serial killer, but there’s something happening in this book that interests me, at least so far. It could be the structure (which is very good) and it could be the dark shading and colouring (which I like very much), but there’s a feeling of something hidden here that appeals.

As long as writer Joe Harris can ratchet back the statism, it should be a decent read. I’m not a frequent reader of his work, so I don’t know where his mindset is, but all I can do at the moment is keep my fingers crossed and hope that this story doesn't devolve into yet another book where state sanctioned agents save the poor innocent victim-civilian-suspects.


I’m going to take a gamble here and give this book a cautiously optimistic thumbs up. Time will tell whether or not it’s trying to say something, but I have to acknowledge that it’s a very cleverly crafted, intriguing and interesting beginning to the arc. A good opening can often deceive of course, so we’ll have to wait and see with this one. At the moment it’s worth purchasing, but time will be the ultimate judge. Will this book stand up like a nail, or will it just end up being another in a long, long line of police state supporting contemporary comic books? We’ll see.


Rating: 7/10