Reality Cat in- A Short History of the White Poppy

Comic review: Secret Wars #5- Atheism, propaganda, dictatorship, democracy, truth and lies

Writer: Jonathan Hickman
Artist: Esad Ribic
Publisher: Disney/Marvel
Released: 12th August 2015



In my previous review (18 Days #2) I bemoaned the fact that contemporary neo-liberal corporate hegemony supporting comic books are pretty much all the same.

I moaned and complained that their narratives feature crazy dictators as the villains, and order following agents of democracy as the heroes. These ‘heroic’ agents of the state just want to bring ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy’ to the world and to stop evil dictators from killing their own people, or something.

‘War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.’ (George Orwell)

The lie that democracy means freedom is the lie that allows western governments to propagandise their own populations and to enslave them to a centralised control system.

Through the repeated telling of this lie the numerous wars that have become ever more apparent since 2001 can be sold as wars for peace, and not the wars for resources, profit and control that they actually are.

The wars are now sold as protecting people (by bombing them) and bringing democracy, which of course equates to freedom, seeing as we are all so free in the west, cough Edward Snowden.

“Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it” (Adolf Hitler)

“All art is propaganda. It is universally and inescapably propaganda; sometimes unconsciously, but often deliberately, propaganda.” (Upton Sinclair)

The first thing that we need to recognise is that we are living in a lie. Your life is a lie, and so is mine. The west is a lie, a lie that we drink, eat, and bathe in, daily. It washes over us, flowing from everything and everywhere, yet the lie is so big, and so relentlessly repeated that we come to think of the lie as truth itself. We work for the lie, we feed the lie, we caress the lie, we nurture the lie, we treasure the lie, we love the lie, and we get careers as writers, and repeat the lie until the day that we die.

Do I think that comic book writers working for Marvel, DC, Darkhorse or any of the other US comic book corporations care much about truth and lies? Perhaps in their personal lives, but I know one thing for sure, I know that it’s not coming out in their comic book career lives.

I read a lot of contemporary US comic books and it’s become very apparent to me that the writers don’t want to go anywhere near truth. They want to tell exciting stories, they want to please liberal, progressive minded readers and they want to keep reality, truth and the real world a million miles away from what they are doing in their comic books.

It’s a choice. They choose the easy life and they echo chamber the thoughts and beliefs of their left leaning audience back to them whilst dreaming of the big television or movie deal. I wish them the best of luck with that and hope that they make lots of money and win award after award after award. It’s meaningless, but as most of them are atheist, solipsist, Darwinian types, that isn’t really an insult to them, it’s just stating a fact about their collective mindsets. Rats in a cage, and they are happy to be so.

Secret Wars #5 is a mainstream American comic book written by Jonathan Hickman. The story is about an evil dictator, and there’s a bit of tame religion bashing going on as well, which is par for the course in contemporary comic books.

The book is beautifully illustrated by Esad Ribic, and doesn’t touch on any real world concerns of 2015. It is an uncontroversial book. It does what all of the other books do, but there’s a lack of jokes, puns and quips in it, meaning (I suppose) that it’s a ‘serious’ comic book.

The ideology that runs through the book compares God to a deceitful, murderous, petty, insecure dictator. It’s an ideology that atheistic neo-liberal types will agree with, and thus is just another continuance of the mainstream echo chamber that stifles all debate and doesn’t address the predominant lie of our times.

I didn’t hate the book. It’s just another lefty comic book. It looks nice, it toes the line, and it does what it is supposed to do. It keeps the neoliberal democratic lie intact, our heads submerged within the corporate matrix, and successfully farts out another unit for the Princess programming, unreality pushing, crazy as a Rihanna video, bathed in children’s blood Disney Corporation.


Rating: 6/10 (It’s all about Doom, how he’s not God, how he created the world and how he’s a big old mean dictator that needs to be taken down by the atheistic democracy squad)



Check out Rihanna's charming new pop video below. Yep, the mainstream sure is a crazy place these days.

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)

Comic Review: Drones #1- Television stupid and depressingly banal

Writer: Chris Lewis
Artist: Bruno Oliveira
Publisher: IDW Comics
Released: 22nd April 2015

So, here it is at long last. A comic book that is actually going to look at the favourite dehumanising murder weapon of the neo-liberal elite’s, the death from above that is the satanic predator drone.

How to deal with such a subject matter? How do you look at a nasty bit of US imperialism in a comic book without depressing all of the (largely American) readers? How do you make the drone pilots look like the heroes that are demanded by the corporate whore mainstream media? After all, they sit in a warehouse and murder people all day, a lot of those people being women and children and civilians just getting on with their everyday lives. It’s going to be difficult isn’t it?

Readers might get upset. They might not want to read a comic book about nasty US war policy. There is a reason why comic book geeks prefer the insular safety of their superheroes fighting aliens and cold war era Russians. It’s a nice safe nowhere land where they can pretend that Nato and the west are somehow making the world a better place, and not doing what they are actually doing.

That’s what comic books offer, a respite from the unpleasant reality around you, a reality where your tax dollars are used to bomb the crap out of countries for banks and corporate interests. The countries are then turned over to the Sunni proxy army (known as ISIS this week, I think) to completely destroy what is left and behead anybody that disagrees with their ideology of turning the country back to the stone-age. Ah, welcome to reality in 2015, got anywhere I can hide?

Comic books let you hide from the desperate, pleading hunger pangs of your guilty conscience. They offer you a comfortable hole in the sand where you can safely place your head and pretend that the world that you’ve helped to create and maintain doesn’t actually exist.

So, yes, it’s going to be difficult to write a comic book about drone pilots in 2015, a time where reality is thinning out, and what is left is some bizarro fantasy land with comic books existing in a alternative dimension immune to reality post 9/11.

Writer Chris Lewis could have been really brave and shown the drone situation for what it really is. He could have written a comic book about the horror of it all. He could have focussed on children terrified to look at the clear blue sky, knowing that somewhere a drone could be lurking to rain death from above. He could have done that, but that’s expecting too much. Like I said before, people would be upset, soldiers would look like the murderers that they actually are, and people (comic book readers in their fantasy 1990’s nowhere land mainly) wouldn’t want to read that kind of book.

What he has decided to do instead is construct some kind of weird sexy fantasy narrative that is commenting on the pornographic nature of watching war on television by turning his entire comic book into an exact duplicate of that sick televisual popcorn and bombs experience. His characters are silly, everything is a joke and none of it really matters because it’s not serious, it’s not real, and it’s pretty much a waste of everybody’s time, exactly like the television war porn that I guess it’s attempting to satirise.

I didn’t like it, and it took me a while to understand what exactly it was trying to do. To me it read like a very disrespectful way to talk about a serious subject matter. I found it depressing, empty, shallow and desperately trying to be clever whilst somehow not being very clever at all.

There’s something fat, smug and American about this book, and that’s coming from a guy who likes America. I understand that is the whole point of the comic book, that it’s satirising that dehumanised mind-set, but by doing so it has fallen into the trap of becoming exactly what it itself is attempting to mock. People will read this, have a laugh, and nothing will have changed. All resistance to US corporate sponsored neo-liberal imperialism will be labelled as terrorism, and the drones will continue to fly.

If you want to get a serious comic book that looks at the impact of drone warfare and how it has become nothing more than a recruitment tool for insurgents fighting US/Nato wars yet to come then you won’t want to read this book. The light-hearted way that it is scripted, the banality and unlikeability of ALL of the characters is nauseating and whilst others will read the book, feel confused, then leave it be, I have to call it out for what it actually is.

Drones #1 is a deeply unpleasant comic book. It has taken a delicate subject matter and turned it into a very unfunny joke. If there is subtle social commentary going on here then it’s lost underneath a wave of comic book silliness. Drone warfare is state-sponsored murder. No evidence, no trials, no judge, no jury, no law. It is terrorism, designed to terrify an entire country, so to see it being portrayed in such a light-hearted, inhumane, jocular manner is a bit shocking really. I should be disgusted, and it shows how much I’ve been normalised to the horrors of our time that the abiding emotion I feel after reading this book is merely disappointment that a comic book about drone warfare could be so depressingly banal.



Rating: 0/10 (Depressingly banal)

Theatre review: Journey’s End- The never-ending futility of war

Written by: R. C. Sherriff
Performed by: The Western Players
Performance Date: 5th November 2014
Venue: The Arts Centre, Old Town, Swindon
Future Performances: 6th 7th and 8th November, at the same venue.
For tickets: 
http://www.skiddle.com/whats-on/Swindon/Arts-Centre/Journeys-End-by-R-C-Sherrif-presented-by-the-Western-Players/12205152/

https://www.wegottickets.com/location/7108


I’ve just spent the evening at the theatre watching a play that explores the utter futility of war. The play was first performed in 1929, and it had me thinking. What has really changed in all of these years, in all of these decades of movies and theatre performances, and poems, and paintings, and songs about the futility of war?

What has really changed? Modern warfare is different. Young men no longer kill each other in trenches. Today the young men kill each other from a distance, with high tech weaponry, a missile or a drone. But are the dead any less dead? Are the orders not followed just the same? What has changed?

As I travelled back home I passed Bus shelters with advertisements for the latest video game. A game called ‘Call of Duty,’ a game of war where the young are taught to kill on a computer console. It’s a game. It’s not real. Just like a drone flying over a Pakistani village. Shoot, kill, get medal, complete level, follow orders, you are a hero now. What has changed?

Following orders, the biggest problem that humanity still faces

Journey’s End elicits these emotions. It makes you question, makes you ponder on the futility of endlessly following orders from those in positions of ‘authority.’ What would happen if the young men said No? What would happen if humanity as a whole refused to kill each other, for the rich, for the country, for the corporation, for the medals, for the banks, for the oil companies?

There was a heavy scent of authenticity about the entire performance of Journey's End, an aroma that wafted through the excellent set, the muddy boots, the ringing wet socks, the cigarette smoke, the unwashed bodies, the sweat and grime of waiting to die in a military uniform.

The performances increased in intensity as the play progressed. This was the opening night of the show, and the confidence of the cast increased and increased, rising at a crescendo until the very final scene, a scene that wiped away all recollection of Private Baldrick and his Rat au Van. Instead you are left with a sense of deep sadness that these funny, complicated, tormented, decent men died because they were told to die, and being honest patriotic chaps, they felt it was their duty to do so.

Four members of the excellent cast

As the play concludes The Western Players leave the audience in a state of numbness, of shock. There were jokes during the play, but none at the end. The shadows of Blackadder, Ronnie Barker and Allo Allo loomed, but the emptiness of following orders shone through as the final curtain dropped.

It’s so sad, and more so in the knowledge that this order following mindset continues today. No, we don’t have the draft, but what we do have instead is a dearth of opportunities for the young, working class men living in this country today.

In the Swindon town army recruitment centre window there is a list. A list of how much you will be paid if you put on a uniform and go to die in Afghanistan, or Iraq, or Libya, or Syria. Iran next? Probably. The pay is very, very good. Far better than what you would get working in a warehouse or at Tesco’s. So no, there is no draft today. That has changed. Instead there is the money, the possibility of getting out of unemployment, out of hopelessness, out of drug addiction, petty crime and prison. It is poison laden bait, and sadly enough, far too many of our young men take it.

Journey’s End is an excellent play, performed at a very high standard by the Western Players. So much has already been said about the futility of war, but this play is far from derivative. Instead, it is funny, sad, and agonising in it poignancy, but the final emotion it tears from me is pure, hot anger. Yes, anger. It made me feel tremendous anger that the wars of yesterday are not so different from the wars of today. Things have changed, but they remain the same. Lessons are unlearnt, and the business of war continues as usual.

Rating: 9/10

Comic book review: Green Lantern # 34- Stop thinking Soldier, and get back to the killing fields

Writer: Robert Venditti
Artists: Billy Tan & Rob Hunter
Publisher: DC Comics
Released: 6th August 2014

This isn’t a particularly great book, but it had one moment of interest. That moment being when the stand-in for the rule of uniformed, governmental authority, Hal Jordan, questions the legitimacy and existence of both himself and the organisation that he works for.

'I just got done fighting a war against who knows how many worlds that think the Green Lanterns are parasites. And here’s the thing: they might not be wrong.’

It’s a moment of doubt that’s quickly refuted by his brother, a brother who believes that we live to consume and that you shouldn’t think too much about whether war is right or wrong, you should just keep on fighting because of the families back home. It’s the old psychological warfare/propaganda tactic that the elite’s pump into the heads of every soldier. Every single soldier who has ever thought in any war is given the same line, do it for the children, do it for your family, do it to protect them from the evil that the enemy represents.

We don’t hear Jordan’s reply to his brother’s statist propaganda cliches, instead the book ends with that new threat. Is it the Russians? Well, it is in the real world isn’t it? There always has to be something new to fear. A new bogeyman for the eugenic elite’s to scare us with so they can continue to keep us enslaved. That’s how it works, that’s how it always works, and if there is nothing real to fear, they just invent something. The mainstream media plays along with it, as they are happy and willing partners in the control system of corporate/government slavery.

In this book the new threat is something to do with the return of the Black Lanterns. We see them mouthing something that sounds vaguely religious, and as we all know by now, the only religion allowable in the dying secular west of 2014 is an unquestioning devotion to government. And so the wheel of endless war continues, not just in comic books, but in the real world as well.

Leaving the statist war propaganda aside for a moment, I enjoyed the art in the book, the dialogue was a bit quip happy at the beginning with Hal Jordan sounded like a complete jerk, but there were light moments as well that were enjoyable to read.

This was a bridge book, there was a brief threat from a daft villain, then a chat on a hill, with a non-military man telling a soldier to get back to war, and to stop questioning what he is doing. That’s where it ends, with a new threat, and the military man preparing himself for more death and destruction. Will Hal Jordan continue to question his role? Let’s hope so, because that was by far and away the most interesting thing about this book.

Rating: 6.5/10