Don't Blame the Ducks (A webcomic about explosive eggs and a religion for ducks)

50 Word Review: The Covenant #4- Swords and Sorcery, Bible Style

Writer: Rob Liefeld
Art: Matt Horak
Publisher: Image Comics
Released: 14th October 2015



Philistines sacrifice virgins to beasts, an offering to snake god Dagon, the power of the arc, of Jehovah is unleashed, a plague strikes the Philistines, an earthquake causes chaos, true God Jehovah favours the Israelites, is this truth, or Israelite propaganda? We’ll never know, history is an agreed upon lie.



Rating: 8/10

There are lots of beasts, monsters and brutal death scenes in this Bible story, so much so that it reads like a very contemporary swords and sorcery text. There’s even a role for warrior women as well, the kind of role that you get in modern feminist texts like Gail Simone’s Red Sonja, with women fighting as warriors and going toe to toe against the men. It’s an exciting book, but for the first time it’s starting to read like propaganda that a religious group would put out after a victorious battle against their enemies, where they portray the real ‘God’ as being on there side, working with them, and helping them to destroy their enemies. It’s fascinating stuff, and well worth picking up, not just for the big battles, beasts and warrior heroes/heroines, but because it’s a Bible story, it’s teaching you something about world history, something of real importance (even if it is the propaganda of a victorious people), and that’s a lot more than can be said for most comic books.

Secret Wars #6 of 8: Fatherhood versus State Collectivism

Art: Essad Ribic
Story: Jonathan Hickman
Publisher: Marvel (Disney)
Released: 7th October 2015

This article is not a review. It’s intention is to discuss the role of fatherhood, using Secret Wars #6 to illustrate some of the broader points about the importance of fathers within the family unit and as a vital component in today’s fight against the collectivisation agenda pushed by the modern state apparatus.

In Secret Wars #6 a young girl (Valeria) is undergoing the process of realisation that her stepfather is a liar. His name is Doctor Doom. He is a dictator, a man pretending to be God. He represents the western democratic bogeyman of 2015, the anti-democratic dictator. This evil man must be disposed by western military intervention. He represents the past. He is an obstacle to change.

Valeria Richards appears to be about twelve years old, and is portrayed as independent, intellectual, very smart, very questioning, and very self-aware. She is like no twelve-year-old girl that I have ever met. Simply put, she is exceptional, a genius.

This positioning of the exceptional young female who questioning male authority figures is a common theme in contemporary comic books. The old structure of western society is portrayed as being organised around male power, normally tied to religion. It is portrayed as corrupt, violent and an obstacle to human progress. It needs to be replaced by young females. The message is clear. Old men need to step down. Religion is a lie. There is no God. The message is feminist and atheist.

The argument is that men, and the religions that they have created, have made the world the terrible place that it is today. Men and religion are oppressive symbols of the past. Women and atheism are the future. What we need then is a brave new (atheist) world controlled by exceptional young women. This is the idea, and it comes from Rockefeller funded university classes that push Marxist, feminist identity politic cultural programming onto the middle-classes, specifically girls, but men get it as well.

This is how it works: Middle class children are taught that white males are to blame for all of the evils of the world. The real reasons (blind obedience to the violently coercive power of the centralised state) is not taught. They are taught that the solution is to build up girls as the replacement, as the future leaders, that girls (because they are not boys) will make the world a better place.

Boys and girls go through the same cultural programming, girls are empowered by it, and as boys want to please girls, they go along with it as well. It doesn’t matter if the underlying assumptions are true, or not. What matters is that boys want to please girls, so they are happy to accept it as truth, even if it’s not, even if all the evidence around them contradicts what they have been programmed to believe. What young man would want to be labelled as a misogynist? None, and so they go along with the cultural programming.

Will the future then be a utopian society ran by female geniuses? No, it will not. The future is NOW, as this cultural programming has been pushed by universities for over fifty years, and has been a constant in progressive mainstream media texts for the past decade, at least.

So why isn’t the world a wonderful place today? What went wrong?

Instead of producing a western world of female geniuses changing the world for the better, what has been produced is a broken society where family break-up is the norm. The family unit has been targeted, and destroyed, and females now compete with men in order to serve state control systems that collectivise the individual and make the world a worse place for all of us all, men, women and children alike.

Men have been continuously told that they are bad, just because they are men, and women have never been more depressed, lonelier and isolated.

The progressive world of feminist ideology leads to frustration, depression and dependency upon the state. The genius girl as portrayed in Secret Wars #6 is all grown up now, and she is a retired government worker. She is a spinster, surrounded by cats, with no family of her own, drinking, taking prescription medicine for anxiety and depression, and wondering why her life turned out the way that it did. And how does she answer this question? She blames men, and thus, the cycle is complete.

In 2015 progressivism as pushed by cultural Marxism has created a society that blames men, depresses women, destroys families and empowers the state.

That is the inevitable end result of progressivism. When you attack tradition, attack masculinity itself and put young girls on undeserved pedestals you get a breakdown of the family, and a subsequent breakdown of society itself. Of course you do, what else could possibly happen? That is the disease of contemporary liberal ‘progressive’ ideology fused with third wave feminism. It is an ideology of destruction, of collapsing all that has come before it, in order to bring in a utopia that has never existed, and cannot exist as it goes against human nature itself.

In a progressive society nobody is empowered, women are miserable, families collapse, and the world that is created is a collectivist, soviet Russia style Hell hole. All that is remains is ideology wedded to the state. This is Hell. This is the world that we live in. This is the world that we are continuing to build with disenfranchised men, bitter, disappointed women and unhappy, fatherless children.

Secret Wars has a chance to tackle the ideology of collectivism wedded to the state. You have to remember that Doctor Doom is not the real father of Valeria. He is a stepfather, and thus could be portrayed as a state stand-in, an artificial substitute for the real father, the real head of the family unit. Valeria’s real father (Reed Richards) is plotting against the state as represented by Doom, so this story could put out a strong message about the role of the father in reuniting the family unit against the tyranny of the state.

If Doom represents the tyranny of the Collectivist State, a tyranny that takes the role of absent men/fathers within the family unit, then the victory of Reed Richards will be saying that men need to return to the family in order to resist the power of the collectivised state.

There are two issues left in this Secret Wars arc, and it’s very likely that this will happen, so even though I get fed up with this continuous pushing of the girl genius as the liberator of humanity, the likelihood is that this book will have a very positive conclusion. Will it happen, will the role of the father as a barrier against state collectivism be re-established, just as it needs to be in the real world? I hope so, and I’ll keep on reading in order to find out.

Comic review: 2000AD- PROG 1947- Some Light Within the Darkness

Artists and writers: Numerous
Publisher: Rebellion
Release Date: 9th September 2015



There is a reason why I stick with 2000AD. It’s not nostalgia, and it sure as hell ain’t consistency, it’s the moments, those brief, fleeting moments when the writers say something, and in PROG 1947 that happens, something is said, and so here is my review, to analyse, and to record it.

Tharg’s bit is passive aggressive this week, and the conclusion of the Dredd- Enceladus arc says nothing. Does Dredd ever say anything? To me, he says love authority, worship uniforms, do what you are told, rely on the state, rely on others to protect you. That’s all he says to me. He’s a villain, always has been.

The Alienest messes up this week. Why? Because the main protagonist shows a disregard for human life, killing a man because he was about to reveal her secrets, she kills him, and doesn’t appear to particularly care about it, at all. I can’t root for her. I can’t invest in a character that shows so little regard for human life. This story is starting to fail, and the pretty art can no longer redeem it.

Apocalypse Anonymous ends this week, and it manages to sneak in some meaning, at the end.

‘The question is- How can we keep the legions of Hell at bay when so many monsters already live among us?'

Do they really want an answer to that? My answer is the same as it always has been. You change the system by refusing to join it. The ‘heroes’ in this comic book story wore uniforms of the state. That is not how you change things. You change things by abandoning statism, and by going your own way. That’s the message, and that’s the truth that people do not want to hear.

Grey Area has one moment, a moment that exposes the pathetic psychological block that stops many western people from doing anything to make the world a better place. I’m thinking of Christians, Buddhists and ‘New-Agers here. I’m thinking of the kind of people who say a lot, and do nothing. The attitude is summed up in the following line:

‘We are too enlightened to defend ourselves.’

Yes, so enlightened, so enslaved. Christianity, Buddhism and new age spiritual enlightenment. Do nothing philosophies, ideal for the state, ideal for the New World Order. Lambs to the slaughter, doing nothing, and lining up for the slaughter house.

Dreams of Deadworld- Mortis has a tie in to that philosophy, that idea that ‘good’ people carry with them, that idea that makes them prey to a sociopathic predator like the modern state. However, in this tale, the predator is a monster called ‘Mortis,’ and not the soft, collectivised, smiling BBC ‘progressive’ monster that we have in the real world.

The story follows a group of explorers. They arrive on a planet destroyed by monsters, and the first person they meet is one of the monsters that killed off the planet, that being Mortis. They greet him warmly, optimistically. He views them as voter dupes, as fresh meat. The explorers open up to him tell him of their ‘human resources,’ resources that he will inevitably feed off. He smiles, coos nice words of support, of friendliness, and then he kills them. Hey Mortis mate, with talent like that you should be working for the BBC, or some other New World Order PR firm.

The message in this story is clear. If you go through life thinking that everybody you meet has morals, that everybody feels the same way as you, that everybody is ‘nice,’ well, reality has one heck of a surprise lined up for you. It’s a meat wagon, and it’s waiting outside your house, line up, line up, women and children first, we’ll take the men later.

Do you see now why I stick with 2000AD? It stumbles, it mumbles, it messes up, it confuses itself, and it’s very much stuck within the collectivist statist, New World Order, banking tyranny matrix.

However, as it stumbles, blindly through the dark, occasionally, just occasionally, it comes across a light switch. It’s hand lurches, fumbles in the dark, finds the switch, and all of a sudden, the room is seen for what it actually is.

It’s a slaughterhouse, and here I am, on my daft little blog, to take a snap-shot of that slaughterhouse, put up the evidence, on-line, to detail it, fingers crossed that somebody will see, and who knows? Perhaps one day, we can start to do something about it? Hey man, I’m an idealist, that’s why I write, and that’s why I stick with good old 2000AD.


Rating: 8/10 (Dave Kendall's art in Deadworld is awesome. Sick, dark, diseased awesome)

Comic review: Our Friend Satan (the first seventeen pages)- A review of a Kick-Starter Project

Read comic here:
http://ourfriendsatan.com/comics/


Kick-Starter Page:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/imagomedia/our-friend-satan-graphic-novel



Why would Satan be depressed in 2015? The west has gone secular/atheist and the middle east is a Hell on earth with the west bombing it and funding, arming and training Sunni Muslims (ISIS) terrorists in order to take control of any country that is not part of neo-liberal western hegemony. Throw in the Ukraine and the western intervention there, and you have a world of chaos, no Christian God in sight, demonic Sunni Muslims beheading people on the daily news and a refugee crisis that gets worse by the hour.

A spooky beginning.

No, Satan wouldn’t be depressed, he’d be bloody, hellishly delighted. Satan has won, he was right, God was wrong. Humanity is dumber than ever, they cannot stop murdering each other, and millions of people don’t even believe in the immortality of the soul, and have been taught that humanity is nothing more than a bunch of over evolved monkeys that live, breed, fight and die. This is what Satan said in the very beginning. He argued that humanity was unworthy of the gift of life that was bestowed from the creator, and who would argue with him now?

That leads me to this kick-starter Graphic novel titled, ‘Our Friend Satan.’ The concept is that Satan is depressed. That intrigues me. How do you write a book where Satan is depressed when all you have to do is look around you to see that things couldn’t really be going better for the old red devil? What is going on here? I have to know more.

Let’s take a look.

The book begins with an evocation to the Devil, the art is very cuddly, the Devil appears, and he’s just an old, bald bloke in slippers. He's depressed because the Catholic Church are making him out to be far scarier than he actually is. Okay then, it’s not going to be a serious book. Instead it’s a book that’s going for laughs. The art is great by the way, very colourful, very professional, top drawer really, and a lot better than quite a lot of the haphazardly thrown together deadline chasing material that you get in Marvel and DC.

Then the Devil shows up, and the tone is set.

The setting is the future, so there’s no mention of anything contemporary, so scrub any mention of what is going on in Syria and Libya right now. That’s a good way to avoid controversy, and I don’t really like it.

I see it all of the time in mainstream comic books with characters like Captain America being sent to different dimensions where he can safely beat up some alien Nazi’s or something safe, thus ensuring that he doesn’t have to deal with the contemporary US foreign policy of arming terrorists and invading countries in order to maximise profits for western banks and corporations.

Captain America should say something about US corporate imperialism, but as long as he is safely hidden away in BattleWorld, he doesn’t have to.

I see the same thing happening here in ‘Our Friend Satan,’ but that doesn’t mean that it’s a bad comic. It’s a safe comic, and the villains are the future Catholic Church, so yep, it’s the Christians again who are getting it, and that’s disappointing, but not surprising. In this neo-liberal world of corporate consensus you are allowed to criticise the Catholic Church, to mock them, to make them look silly, or evil, and you’ll get no pushback at all.

The villains in the book are the Catholic Church.

If you mock Islam or Judaism then you’ll be in a whole heap of trouble, so comic book creators prefer to play it safe and leave them alone and attack and mock the one religion that it’s safe to mock. That religion is Christianity, the religion of the dying west, the religion that has been demolished by secular atheism and is currently being demolished by US backed Islamic terrorists in the middle east.

All of the villains in ‘Our Friend Satan’ are white, middle-aged men. That’s also something that you are allowed to do in 2015. What you don’t do is have women, or women of colour, or homosexual women of colour (that would be the worst thing to do) as villains. Keep the villains white, middle-aged, male and straight, and you’ll be okay with the PC brigade. Does that annoy me? It used to, but now, it just bores me, and tells me that the writer and artist are obediently ‘progressive’ in their world-views. I don’t hate it. I expect it.

‘Our Friend Satan’ then is a happy, colourful, playful, funny, well-drawn, cosy, PC, neo-liberal book about a comedy Satan and a cartoon evil future Catholic Church, in space. It’s not terrible, but it’s not really my thing. Lots of comic book readers will love it, and who am I to shoot it all down? I wish the creators all the luck in the world, and if you enjoy cute and cuddly comic books that come from the neo-liberal, progressive centre of what you are allowed to say in contemporary comedy, throw them a couple of quid, as I’m sure you’ll love it.


Rating: 5/10 (Politically correct neo-liberal consensus comedy book that features superior artwork)

Comic review: The Covenant #3- Bible story kicks superhero butt

Created and written by: Rob Liefeld
Illustrated by: Matt Horak
Coloured by: Ross Hughes
Lettered by: Chris Eliopolous
Publisher: Image Comics
Released: 26th August 2015


The Covenant #3 is doing what I like my comic books to do. It’s keeping it simple, letting the story unfold and keeping the readers thrilled, excited and in eager anticipation for what is to come next.

They didn’t teach Bible stories at my school, and I never knew what I was missing out on. This story is a superhero story, with all of the constituents that you need to excel within that genre. It has bloodthirsty evil villains, brave heroes and a supernatural angle that makes you think that the humans might be the players, but there’s a bigger game going on here.

The Covenant is a comic book that brings God back into play, in a world that no longer believes in him. I like that. I like the fact that it’s so different, that it’s going against the mainstream atheist grain and telling a fascinating story about the history of the ancient Israelite and Philistine people.

This story can be given to children, but it’s not childish. The art helps a lot. It’s big, bold and uncluttered. It matches the script, which has the same uncluttered qualities. There is nothing needlessly ‘clever’ or ‘ironic’ or Kevin Smith post-modern about this book. It’s a good story, simply told, and clearly illustrated and, dare I say the word, educational.

It’s giving me fascinating, valuable insight into Biblical history, and I’m very appreciative of all of the people that have spent their time and energies on producing the book.

I’m being sincere here. Guys, thank you.

Three issues in and The Covenant is fast becoming my most anticipated book of the month. I shouldn’t be enjoying a story based on a Biblical narrative so much, but I am, it’s as simple as that.

There’s no feeling of emptiness here, a feeling I too often experience after reading mainstream superhero comic books. This is a story that resonates, and I’m enjoying every single second of the time that I spend with it. The Covenant is a Bible story that makes me want to know more about the Bible. It’s great, sorry atheist nation, but it is.


Rating: 10/10 (Revelatory Bible story that reads like a contemporary superhero tale)

Theatre review: The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes- Atheist Picnic at Lydiard Park

Event: Open Air Garden Theatre
Venue: Lydiard Park, Swindon, Wiltshire, UK.
Date of Performance: Friday 31st July 2015
Performers: Chapterhouse Theatre
Website: 
http://www.chapterhouse.org/show5.html
Writer: Laura Turner
Director: Phillip Stevens


The ideology underpinning this quaint, twee and inoffensively anachronistic play in the park was that ‘progress’ means the abandoning of religion, and that we need to boldly stride into a new world order of humanism, abandoning religion to the dustbin of history where it rightfully belongs.

This disregarding of religion (mainly Christianity) is ubiquitous today, especially in the UK, and especially on the BBC, so it’s no surprise to see that the writer of this play already has BBC writing credits under her belt. Her atheistic ways will fit in very nicely at Jimmy Saville towers, so I wish her all the best. I’m sure that she’ll do very well for herself writing liberally deluded multicultural fantasy plots for EastEnders, or the latest murder or hospital shows where politically correct multiculturalism is forced onto the BBC audience of wilfully ignorant, corporate indoctrinated statists.

I have no doubt whatsoever that this cultural ideology of Godlessness will have been barely noticed by the majority of the audience in Lydiard Park on Friday night 31st July 2015.  I’m equally as sure that the writer herself wouldn’t have noticed it. Why would she? God is silly, right? God is for children, right? God doesn’t exist, right? That’s not a radical point of view in suburban households in the UK of 2015, it’s the majority view, accepted like gravity or the idea that democracy, bombs and taxes equates to freedom.

Laura Turner, the nice lady who wrote this play (and I’m sure that she’s very nice) has written a simple play about Sherlock Holmes, and her main concerns will be about entertainment and clarity, not ideology. Her ideological underpinning of atheism is a cultural assumption. It’s how she thinks, and it’s how she has been taught to think. This indoctrinated, programmed version of reality informs her writing and subconsciously assumes that her audience will share the same cultural, atheistic programming as herself.

If you are taught as a child that God doesn’t exist, then that must mean that he doesn’t exist. It’s not something that you think about, it’s just taken as a given. That’s probably as far as Laura’s thinking goes. God doesn’t exist, of course he doesn’t. Would my teachers and television lie to me? Of course not, and so onto my career as a writer.

I assume that Laura won’t have thought very long and hard about the atheism in her play. Like I said before, it’s a cultural assumption, and all it says to me about the writer is that she was brought up in a UK middle class suburban household, watched television, and went to school, that’s all. I could be wrong, but that’s all I get from her writing.

In ‘The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes’ her intention would have been to construct a light-hearted, fun, slightly silly, enjoyable play that would be easily understood by an outdoor audience watching it in a park.

In that sense, she did a fine job. The plot was silly, and easy to follow and inoffensive. The bloke playing Holmes (Matthew Christmas) was suitably eccentric (in a BBC Doctor Who kind of way) and I enjoyed my Ginger Beer as all of the nice, middle class atheists around me drank their wine and rustled for crisps in their picnic hampers. The play was the backdrop to the evening. It rumbled on, serenely, in the background, lots of wine was consumed, and everybody enjoyed a lovely, early evening picnic in Lydiard Park.

My lasting memories of the evening will be of concentrating really hard to hear the dialogue, trying to work out who the villain was, and being slightly shocked, but not that surprised when the ideology of the play became apparent as it began to wrap up. The play was okay. It was very middle class, BBC atheist, tame and polite. It was a mainstream play for people who watch television and think that religion is something for museums, not everyday life.

I didn’t hate it, but that’s probably because I’m not a religious man. If I were a regular churchgoer then I’d probably be quite offended, but that’s the mainstream in the UK today. The mainstream has abandoned Christianity and abandoned tradition. I’m old. I notice these things. It happened slowly, but it’s the norm now. Jesus might be alive, but there’s little sign of him in the UK of 2015. The people have turned to humanism. God no longer exists. The people are their own gods now. Does that sound dangerous to you? I am living in a society that has rejected God. That can’t be good, can it? What do you think about it? Seriously, I want to know.


Rating: 6/10 (Easy to follow, silly, fun, but it has an ideological underpinning that left me feeling cold)

Comic book review: Grant Morrison’s 18 Days- The Mahabharata In Comic Book Form

Writer: Grant Morrison
Art: Jeevan J. Kang
Publisher: Graphic India
Released: 30th June 2015



I often come across references to the ancient Indian poem ‘The Mahabharata’ in books and television shows that can be loosely categorised in the ‘ancient alien’ bracket, but I’ve never actually read the poem for myself.

All that I know is that it sounds extraordinary. It’s about superheroes, gods, monsters, demons, flying craft, devastating weapons and the past, present and future of humanity. In short, it’s perfect fodder for a comic book.

Grant Morrison has actually read the poem, and obviously agrees that it would make a fine comic book, because he’s done just that, and here it is.

In ‘Grant Morrison’s 18 Days’ I now have the perfect entry point into learning all about the Mahabharata. I feel terribly lazy that I hadn’t done it before, but this comic book is going to force some knowledge onto me, and I couldn’t be happier.

Morrison can get a bit abstract, a bit weird, a bit trippy, but not here. He’s keeping it simple, and making sure that the reader understands exactly what is going on, who is involved, and what the consequences are. The first part of the book explains the ages of the earth (we are in the last age now, which explains a lot), and sets the stage for the major battle that is about to take place. If light wins, the cycle repeats, darkness is banished and a new age of enlightenment begins. If dark wins, the cycle will cease to turn, and darkness will be here to stay.

The book then introduces the participants on each side, and Krishna, the living God, who is on the battlefield, but has taken a vow not to fight. I’d heard of Krishna, but I knew nothing about him at all. To see him in a comic book, looking like a superhero, really brings him to life, and I can’t wait to find out more about him and to expand my woeful knowledge base on all things related to the Hindu religion.

The vast majority of comic books are fluff, a waste of time, something to read, moan about, or enjoy, and forget. I’ve read a lot of comic books like that, and what have they given me? Something to do when I was bored, that’s about it really. These days I’m looking for something with a bit more substance, and that’s why you won’t see too many detailed reviews of the latest DC and Marvel teen girl books on my blog.

I’m an indie hunter now, still in love with comic books, but looking for books that say something, books that give me a little bit more than amusement or a way to waste my time.

Grant Morrison’s 18 Days #1 puts comic book life into an ancient Indian text, and introduces mythological (or are they historical?) characters that were the original superheroes. The art is big, bold, colourful and perfect for a superhero comic book, and fits very comfortably alongside other 'superhero' genre books that you will find in your comic book shops today.

For those looking for an accessible entry point into ancient Indian mythology/history, 18 Days is a must buy comic book. For everybody else, pick it up anyway, you won’t regret it.

When you purchase the book (It only costs $1) you’ll get a traditional powers and fights superhero comic book, but with an added element. That added element is fascinating insight into what an ancient Indian text has to say about the nature of humanity, where we came from, what we are doing, and where we are going. You won’t get that kind of information in your average comic book, so don’t miss out on this one.



Rating: 9/10 (The Mahabharata in accessible comic book form)



Check out the digital version of this comic book on You Tube:

Comic review: Doctor Fate #1: PC Muslim Hero Abandons Faith to Join Egyptian Cat Cult

Writer: Paul Levitz
Artist: Sonny Liew
Publisher: DC Comics
Released: 17th June 2015




Here’s an interesting book, that within its pages includes a valuable lesson about the portrayal of Islam in contemporary neoliberal western comic book narratives.

The book stars a Muslim hero, with a white Mother, a hot girlfriend, and a promising future career as a Doctor. Wait, it gets even better. If all of that wasn’t enough for you, the narrative then has him saving a baby from underneath the wheels of a subway train, sacrificing his life for a complete and utter stranger.

What a guy hey? See multiculturalism is great, no problems to be had at all. Muslims love to integrate and contribute to society, they even save babies from underneath subway trains. I say let them all in, and take over the country, take over the world actually, what could possibly go wrong?

White racists need to die anyway. Let’s bring in the dawn of this brave new era of ‘moderate’ Islam, with tolerance and diversity for all.

Certain kinds of people are going to love this review. They are going to read it, and positively explode with righteous indignation and rage. So I say, come on, bring it on. Come on then. Accuse me of being an evil intolerant Islamaphobic racist. I know you want to, go on, accuse me until the cows come home, it will be fun.

Jump up on that moral high horse of progressive liberalism and tell me that 99% of Muslims are moderate and tolerant. Pretend that ISIS doesn’t exist. Pretend that Saudi Arabia doesn’t exist. Pretend that Syria doesn’t exist. Pretend that Libya doesn’t exist. Pretend that Boko Haram doesn’t exist. Pretend that Sharia law doesn’t exist. Pretend that the Rochdale sex trafficking gang didn’t exist. Pretend that the Beslan school massacre didn’t happen. Pretend that the Charlie Hebdo massacre didn’t happen. Pretend that all of the other massacres and beheadings and atrocities worldwide didn’t happen as well.

Blame US foreign policy. Hell, even blame George Bush if you like. Pretend that the UK Muslim community doesn’t shut itself away in their own little communities with their own laws. Pretend that Muslims just want to integrate into society like some kind of neo-liberal mythical paradise. Pretend that reality itself is an abstract construct and those moral high horses and neoliberal utopias are the ‘tolerant’ way of looking at reality.

It doesn’t matter what evidence you see or hear, it doesn’t matter, because you will always be right. Even in the middle of a massacre when you yourself are being chopped up because you are not the right kind of wahabbi Muslim. They are not extreme, it’s intolerant to say that, they are just expressing their dissatisfaction with US foreign policy as they chop you and your kids into little pieces whilst screaming for their god like a nightmarish cult of devil worshippers. No, you will always be right, because you are a liberal, a dead, chopped up liberal, but always right, and always tolerant and always passive and pathetic and indoctrinated and self-hating and feeble and weak, and useless until the very end.

Here’s a question. Have you ever read a comic book where Muslims were portrayed as the villains? I have. It happened ONCE, in a book called ‘Holy Terror,’ by Frank Miller. The following quotation pretty much sums up how it was received by the mainstream press:

"Frank Miller doesn't do things halfway. One of the true comic-book greats, he’s created several of the most extraordinary stories ever to grace the art form. So perhaps it's fitting that now he's produced one of the most appalling, offensive and vindictive comics of all time ... Miller's Holy Terror is a screed against Islam, completely uninterested in any nuance or empathy toward 1.2 billion people he conflates with a few murderous conspiracy theorists." (Spencer Ackerman of Wired Magazine)

You don’t criticise Islam in comic books, even in a very small way, and if you do, then prepare for a whole heap of trouble coming your way. No, if you write Muslim characters in a 2015 era comic book then they must ALWAYS be positive, heroic, tolerant, liberal drips, just like the writers themselves actually.

Doctor Fate #1 then is a specimen of it’s time, an example of how you write Muslim characters in contemporary comic books. For that reason alone the book is worthy of study. I don’t expect contemporary comic books to demonise the Muslim community, because that would be horrible, and completely unfair to the vast majority of peaceful Muslims around the world. So what do I want? What is the point that I’m making here?

My point is that comic books have to stop being so bloody cowardly. I know that the writers watch the news. I know that they see the same things that I do. I know that they have opinions on it, so why am I not seeing a DIVERSE range of opinions in my comic books when it comes to the portrayal of Muslim characters? They can’t always be heroes can they?

What is being created here is a parallel universe, with mainstream comic book creators going out of their way not to offend. This snake-bellied cowardice is creating a mythical almost idolatrous image of Muslim people that is completely at odds with what is happening in the real world and DAILY on our television sets. What I am complaining about here is a LACK of diversity when it comes to the portrayal of Muslims in mainstream comic books, as described by the dictionary definition of the word.

Diversity
/daɪˈvɜːsɪtɪ/
noun 
1.
the state or quality of being different or varied
2.
a point of difference
3.
(logic) the relation that holds between two entities when and only when they are not identical; the property of being numerically distinct

All I am calling for here is for diversity, a point of difference, and when it comes to the portrayal of Muslims in comic books in 2015 I am not seeing this at all. What I am seeing is a very PC image, an image of the tolerant Muslim, of the not very religious Muslim, the neo-liberal fantasy Muslim. It’s a fantasy as real as the moderate rebels in Syria and the integrated Muslim television characters I see in Eastenders, that fantasy neoliberal London paradise of integrated communities that bears zero resemblance to the real London of today.

So what about this actual comic book? This is supposed to be a review, right? Yeah it is, so here we go.

The art is messy, the tone is soft and fluffy, and the story is about Ancient Egyptian Gods preparing a new flood to wipe out humanity. The Muslim protagonist takes to the Egyptian religion very easily, a cat speaks to him, tells him to put on a silly hat, and after some initial fears that have nothing whatsoever to do with his own faith, on it goes. This means that the protagonist is about as serious and dedicated to his religion as neo-liberals are to their own. He doesn’t even identify himself as a Muslim. Instead he very noticeable describes himself as ‘an American.’ Ah, it’s the liberal dream of diversity, alive and well within the pages of comic books at least.

In reality, this guy is a terrible Muslim. He completely disregards his own faith and jumps on board a new religion like it’s no big deal at all. He is a Muslim, but his faith plays no part in this comic book narrative whatsoever. His Muslim identity then is exposed as hollow, and meaningless. It’s a token gesture, a bone of political correctness thrown out so DC can stamp a label of ‘diversity’ onto one of it’s comic books.

This book is not going to impress any strong believer of the Islamic religion, as the religious aspect is mere background, and when faced with miraculous, amazing things that are happening around him, the protagonist doesn’t even refer to his faith one single time. So if it’s not trying to impress actual Muslims, who is the book trying to impress, and what is it trying to do?

You already know my answer to that question, right? The book is simply ticking PC boxes, and going out of its way to not offend anybody. The ironic thing about this situation is that offending Muslims is an extremely easy thing to do, and as hard as you try not to offend, the more likely it is that you will end up offending somebody. I’ll explain.

The very fact that the writer has put the old Egyptian religion into the lap of a young Muslim is probably something that he didn’t even think about. It’s just a story, something cool to do, right? What he has actually done, if he thought about it for a bit, is to make a young Muslim a Kuffar (an unbeliever) by willingly accepting the authority of another religion that is not Islam. As soon as he buys into the powers of the magic helmet, he has in essence rejected his own Muslim faith.

‘He that chooses a religion over Islam, it will not be accepted from him and in the world to come he will be one of the lost.’
Quran 3:85, "The Imrans,"

So by going out of his way not to offend liberal sensibilities, what writer Paul Levitz has actually done here is to create a narrative that demeans Islam and would likely cause huge offence to many Muslims all around the world.

What a twit.

That’s how it goes when you pussy foot around a topic that needs to be tackled with true courage and integrity. The more you try not to offend, the more you do offend, and that’s the problem with Islam, the problem that mainstream comic books do not want to discuss.

Writer Paul Levitz probably really is a very decent and tolerant person, but that counts for nothing, and by trying to write another PC Muslim hero he’s just gone and dug his own pit of trouble. I feel sorry for the guy, really. His intentions were good, they always are with liberal types, but this whole fake ‘diversity’ thing is a difficult construct to escape from, especially with people shouting ‘racist’ at you whenever you even question it.

I didn’t hate the book. I see it as misguided, and it teaches a valuable lesson about the portrayal of Islamic heroes in contemporary comic books, so it’s worthy of a purchase. American popular culture is at a bit of a crossroads at the moment, it’s lost, confused, and trying to find it’s way through these dark times of neo-liberalism where truth is dying at the alter of political correctness. This time period in world history will make for a fascinating area of study at some future date, but at the moment it’s not easy. I can write my reviews and say whatever I like, but the poor comic book writers are trying to make a living, they are trying to be PC, trying to be good people, but ultimately they are just ending up getting lost in a maze littered with corporate ‘diversity’ landmines.


Rating: 4/10 (PC Muslim hero ends up quickly abandoning his faith at the first opportunity, oops)

Comic Review: Captain America & The Mighty Avengers #8: Vote Hillary

Writer: Al Ewing
Artist: Luke Ross
Publisher: Marvel
Released: 13th May 2015



Here’s a review that is probably going to offend you if you are a liberal minded comic book reader.

If you enjoy getting offended and feeling morally superior on issues of race, gender and religion, then you’ll want to read this review. You can leave your passive aggressive comments at the end of the review in the open, uncensored comment section. That’s okay, I expect it. You can tell me that I’m a bad person, and insinuate that I need to be put into a camp or something. I welcome the comments, because that is what I expect. What I don’t expect is a serious, polite debate about the issues that I’m about to bring up.

Okay then, ready? Here we go:

Conspiracy theories are for basement dwelling, tin-foil hat wearing paranoid morons. You know the kind, right? Pathetic loser white men with dirty beards and comb-overs who call people ‘sheeple,’ and go on about 'Chem-trails' and other stupid things like that. These conspiracy men (they are always men) are sweaty, fat, paranoid, totally uncool and always wrong.

Young Muslim girls (keep it vague, don’t identify them as Sunni or Shiaa) are brave heroines, and we should respect everything that they say. Don’t actually do anything to help them though, as discussing Sunni Islam, Saudi Arabia, and other crazy dictatorships supported by the west is not to be done at the moment.

Say whatever you want about Christians though. Those crazy cult followers (make sure it’s always Christian, and please don’t mention anything to do with Jews or Israel) always think that it’s the end of the world. They need to be mocked and beaten up. They are brainwashed, dangerous, violent, and suicidal and err, that was close, you didn’t mention ISIS, did you? No, I definitely made sure that it was just the Christians that we were mocking here. Okay, phew, thank atheism for that.

The illuminati are real, and there really are secret groups of powerful men who control the world and lie to us on the television, making decisions that affect us all, but not telling us about it when they do so.

But what about the Christians and Conspiracy nuts, didn’t they talk about this? Yeah, they did, but that doesn’t matter. They are still wrong, even though they told us all about the illuminati thing decades ago. The people in charge just wanted to help and protect us, and the Christians and conspiracy nuts are uncool, and old, and losers anyway, and they’re far too white as well, so they’re probably racist or something as well.

What we need is women and people of colour (women of colour would be best) to take charge now, and to fix the mess caused by the stupid white men. But, what about the structure of the system itself, and how it is designed in a top down fashion to enrich a handful of rich people (of all colours, genders and religions) whilst exploiting the 99%? No, let’s ignore all of that. Democracy is a great system, we just need to change the race and gender of the people in charge of it, and then everything will be okay.

Makes no sense whatsoever, does it? The liberal drip obsession with race and gender, and the mocking of Christians and people who question mainstream consensus (as ‘conspiracy theorists’) is getting really old, and tired now. But that’s the mainstream liberal world-view encapsulated, and if you want to see it played out in all of it’s self-deception and race/ religion baiting glory (Christianity only, of course), then buy ‘Last Days- Captain America and the Mighty Avengers #8.’

The book is liberal America (and it’s UK cousins) trying to make sense of it’s own lies. It might be worth purchasing the book if you are a critically aware student and you need to do an essay on the collapsing liberal establishment and their reluctance to deal with the lies of the Obama establishment. But for anybody not stuck in the mainstream liberal web of lies it will make for a painful and even depressing read.

Most comic book fans will let the liberal consensus guff wash over them and will probably describe the book as a bit too talky, light on action and dull. It was that as well, but the self-delusion of it all was the thing that stood out to me.

This is a book that would support Hillary Clinton as the next President of the US, not because she’s going to be any good, but because she is a woman.

Don’t worry Mr. Ewing, you are a good man. I detected no hint of racism, sexism, or Islamaphobia in your book, and you didn’t question anything of any real importance at all, so well done to you. No thought Police will be knocking on your twitter door anytime soon, and your precious career in mainstream comic books will proceed as before.


Rating: 3/10 (I enjoyed the nice clear art from artist Luke Ross, but the rest of the book was not for me)

Review: ‘The Merchant of Venice’ at the Globe Theatre London: April 24th 2015

The Merchant of Venice
Written by: William Shakespare
Directed by: Jonathan Munby

CAST (MAIN)

Bassanio: Daniel Lapaine
Antonio: Dominic Mafham
Portia: Rachel Pickup
Shylock: Jonathan Pryce

Dates of Performances: 23 April - 7 June 2015

Venue: Globe Theatre, London

Website (for tickets and more info):
http://www.shakespearesglobe.com/theatre/whats-on/globe-theatre/the-merchant-of-venice-2015



I always hated Shakespeare. It was hard, boring, far too dense and about as much fun as a science or maths class. As a school-kid it was just another waste of my time, something I had to suffer through before a lunch time kick about or skive in the local village.

A song and a dance

Yeah, Shakespeare really sucked to me as a kid, and sitting there in class trying to correctly pronounce all of those old words that nobody I knew ever used was a completely joyless experience. By the time I left school at the age of sixteen years old I was glad that I would no longer have to suffer through any more classes of his hard to understand and completely fun free books.

I wasn’t that unusual as a kid. We all hated Shakespeare, the boring old git, and that was that. Fast forward twenty six years in the future though and here I am, standing in the ‘Yard’ of the Globe Theatre in London. What am I doing here? Is it a new job, or something I have to suffer through to pay the bills? No, I chose to go there, to give it a chance, and what I am experiencing is nothing whatsoever like what I had to suffer through as a kid.

This play, ‘The Merchant of Venice,’ is a bit good, the actors are amazing and it’s not even difficult to follow what is going on. It’s fun, it’s entertaining and I’m enjoying every second of it. Shakespeare isn’t supposed to be fun, is it? I’m watching this boring old Shakespeare play, and laughing at the funny bits, becoming completely involved with the serious bits, and having the best theatre experience of my entire life.

Love is in the air

What happened to me? Shakespeare was supposed to suck, but he didn’t. His play was pretty bloody good, funny, and it was saying things that people are scared to say today. We are talking about the J word here, yeah the play was about Jews, or one Jew in particular, a money lender, a man called ‘Shylock’ who was so full of anger and hate caused by the way he had been treated by good Christian folk, that he was prepared to cut a pound of flesh from the breast of a man rather than collect the huge sum of money that was owed to him. This Shylock was even prepared to do it himself, showing what a heartless, brutal character he really was, sharpening his knife and sorting out his scales, just to make sure he did a really proficient job of it.

Would you want to cut out a man's flesh in this manner, and do it with a little knife and then carefully place it on some scales? Would you even be capable of doing something as brutal as that? I wouldn’t, and wouldn’t this pound of flesh thing also kill the man? And why was the man strung up like he was being prepared for a crucifixion? What was that about?

Ahhh, I get it now. This wasn’t about revenge or anything like that, it was about mercy and how the Jewish people showed none to Jesus Christ, allowing him to be crucified, instead choosing to free a murderer called Barabas. So what this play (written in about 1596) was doing was giving the Jewish people another chance, another shot at showing mercy to a defenceless Christian.

Shylock is determined to have his pound of flesh

So when Shylock refuses, and insists on his pound of flesh, what is that saying? It’s saying that Jewish people are incapable of showing mercy, of forgiveness, of the very quality that defines the entire teachings of Christian morality. The only way that the character of Shylock can be redeemed is for him to be forcibly converted to Christianity and to renounce his Jewish faith.

It’s strong stuff isn’t it? Would you get away with saying something like that today? No chance mate, no chance at all, the accusations of anti-Semitism would bury your play before it even got through the first couple of performances, but because it’s ‘Shakespeare’ it can be put on in 2015 and nobody is going to say a word about it.

Amazing.

A play written in 1596 is more controversial than anything that I will see on television, screen or theatre in 2015. It says a lot, don’t you think?

I was standing there in the ‘Yard’, having paid a measly £5 to get in, and was in absolute awe. Not just because the play was far more controversial than I thought it would be, but because of the performances by a ridiculously talented cast, and the audiences reaction to it all as well. This was red-hot theatre, performed before an enraptured, packed audience, and I was being swept away to another era, a time when Shakespeare was alive, and this was the best show in town.

Shylock and his traitorous daughter

What am I saying? There’s a time portal at the Globe, and the best performance in town is simultaneously occurring in the 1600’s and in 2015 as well. The Merchant of Venice is the best show in town, of course it is, it always was, and it still is today.

Dominic Mafham, as Antonio, was exceptional. The melancholy of his character as written in the previews I had read before the play appeared to be self-indulgent and weak, but to see him brought to life by this fantastic actor was quite a revelation to me. I left the theatre feeling more intrigued about what was going to happen to that one character alone than any of the other characters in the play. His melancholy had substance, and the performance by Mafham nailed that substance, creating a person where before I had only read a character in a play.

Jonathan Pryce, as the villainous Shylock, was unbelievable. Like every great performer he bristled with charisma, with presence, with electricity, and when he was on stage it was almost impossible to train your eyes away from him, even when all of the dialogue was coming from the other characters. His mannerisms, his facial tics, his anguish, his pain, his need for revenge, his frustration, his joys at the misfortunes of others, the body language, the gestures. Oh my God, this guy was ridiculous. Jonathan Pryce was beyond exceptional, a man at the top of his game giving a performance directly in front of me that I could scarcely believe I was witnessing.

The spellbounding Jonathan Pryce as Shylock

If you are going to London, or if you live in London, or live anywhere near London, then you need to go to London NOW.

Forget your school day classrooms where bored English teachers slowly killed Shakespeare, line by painful line, and go to the Globe theatre and see it performed as it supposed to be performed.

The Merchant of Venice runs until 7th June, so see this wonderfully performed play if you can, but if you can’t get there for then check the schedules and go to see another play instead.

Any play will do, just get there for the early evening performance, pay your £5, stand in the yard, get aching feet, get close to the stage and experience Shakespeare as it’s meant to be experienced.

I always hated Shakespeare, but not now. The Merchant of Venice in 2015 is the best show in town. Controversial, funny, electric, and full of powerhouse performances by world class performers. If you just want to boil it all down, take away the history, the snobbery, the reputations and all of the baggage, what it really is, is a wonderful night’s entertainment at the theatre.

Banish those painful memories of old school English classes and reading dusty old books that you didn’t understand or give a toss about. See Shakespeare in the flesh, see it at the Globe, and then you’ll finally begin to understand just what all the fuss has been about.

Rating: 10/10 (A controversial, funny, intense play that features ridiculously accomplished performers)

Defender (CBLDF)- Spring 2015: You don’t need a censor when writers are already censoring themselves.

Produced by: The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund
Released: April 1st 2015
Facebook page: 
https://www.facebook.com/CBLDF/timeline



Free speech in a 2015 western context is not about complaining that books that feature gross acts of torture are not available at your local primary school. It’s not about the Comics Code problems of the 1950’s, and it’s not about individual (rare) examples of censorship in New Mexico either. No, in my far from humble opinion, free speech in a 2015 western context is about fighting back against the fascist, communist, Marxist, liberal drip left and their insidious mind control tactic called POLITICAL CORRECTNESS.

This debut issue of ‘Defender’ features an interview with Neil Gaiman, a man with one single example of his work being censored by government. The example is from Sweden, and happened to this great champion of free speech TWENTY-SIX YEARS AGO. In the end nothing happened, nobody went to jail, nobody got fined, nobody got censored. That’s it, that’s his battle with censors, well, that and one teacher in New Mexico not liking one of his books. That issue was easily solved without any censorship or prosecutions either.

Why are they interviewing this man? I’ve read his stuff, and he’s about as safe as you can get. His work is neither edgy nor controversial in the slightest. He says nothing about the world, nothing about politics and nothing that anybody could possibly get even slightly upset about. That one teacher in New Mexico that didn’t like his Goth teenager stuff didn’t have anything valid to complain about, and that’s why her complaints were dismissed. Seriously, if I were publishing my own pamphlet about comic book censorship then the last person in the world that I would want to interview would be Neil bloody Gaiman.

So who would I interview then? How about somebody who is actually fighting against political correctness (real censorship) in comic books today, or at least somebody who is putting some real world analysis into his comic books?

Here’s the problem. It’s very difficult to think of any individual working in mainstream comic books today that actually fits that bill. The closest you would get is Sergio Aragones, and his work in ‘Groo- The Hogs of Horder’ where he talks about things that other comic books wouldn’t even dare to mention. But he’s rare, very rare.

There’s always Frank Miller and his excellent work in ‘Holy Terror’ of course. Why not interview him? You might not agree with his views, but he put his neck out and went somewhere that everybody else working in mainstream comic books today still refuses to go. What did he do that was so controversial? He criticised Islam, an act that is completely absent in mainstream comic books today, even as suicide bombs and school massacres now become a daily occurrence all over the world. Criticise Christians as much as you like in your comic books, but never, ever, ever criticise Muslims. Well, you can do, just don’t bother coming into work the next morning. That’s censorship. That’s real censorship, and that’s exactly how it works. You have certain ‘topics’ that you cannot discuss, and if you do discuss them, career over.

‘Defender #1’ does discuss the aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo massacre, but there’s only one short paragraph that briefly touches on the real issue that is at the heart of what happened there. The issue is not censorship, or free speech when it comes to discussing issues related to religion. No, the ONLY issue is whether or not Islam can be discussed without some nutjob threatening to murder everybody who dared to mention his satanic death cult. That’s the issue in 2015, not free speech, but ISLAM, the violent religion with legions of cult members who will threaten to chop your head off or machine gun your children if you dare even question ANYTHING about it.

Liberal comic book writers will do somersaults to make excuses for this death cult, and go out of their way to not offend them. Suicide bombings and massacres don’t appear to matter at all as they preach ‘tolerance’ and respect, protecting the very people who would gladly massacre every single last (tolerant) one of them. This is not tolerance, it’s cowardice, and the murdered cartoonists that worked for Charlie Hebdo are the inevitable price we are currently paying for our liberal tolerance/cowardice in the west.

When one person says something that needs to be said he becomes a target, but if everybody is saying it then the truth of what is being said can be properly understood and acted upon. I read so many comic books, and whenever religion comes up it always has a Christian slant. 99% of the time that slant is negative, with the Christians portrayed as a mad/dangerous cult with a crazy leader and brainwashed followers. That’s the norm in my comic books, but what isn’t the norm is the actually truth of what is happening today in the religion of Islam with violent psychopaths murdering non-believers all of the time, and with the PC liberal prat crowd too bloody cowardly to say anything about it. Well, I’m sticking my own head up here and saying it loud. If you want to portray violent extremist religious cults in my comic books then get with reality and start making them Muslim, not Christian. Be like Charlie. Stop being cowardly. Stop self-censoring.

Mainstream comic books in 2015 are extremely tame, and you’d be hard pressed to find anything controversial in ANY of them. The writers are so liberal, so drippy, and so politically correct, that they are actually censoring themselves. Here’s a true statement:

MAINSTREAM WESTERN COMIC BOOKS DO NOT NEED TO BE CENSORED BECAUSE THEY ARE ALREADY CENSORING THEMSELVES.

I buy a lot of comic books, too many actually, I need to cut down. Do you know how many of them say something that I would consider genuinely controversial? Hardly any of them, and that’s why I’m well known for slagging them all off. I have to. I’m not good at keeping quiet. I have a big mouth, and when I’m confronted with wave after wave of nonsense I have to say something about it.

There are so many ‘controversial’ topics that you won’t find being discussed in contemporary, mainstream comic books. DC and Marvel are the worst, they don’t discuss anything that’s not corporate approved, but don’t expect anything revolutionary or genuinely rebellious coming from the rest of the comic book publishers either. Expect a tonne of nostalgia and a million variant covers, but truth? That’s a depressing rarity in comic books today.

Here’s just a few of the subjects that the mainstream comic book genre is terrified of discussing:

1- The problems with Israel.
2- Mainstream media manipulation.
3- The problems with Islam.
4- The men’s rights movement.
5- Third wave feminism and how it has been used to destroy families and make females more dependent upon government as a substitute ‘Daddy’ figure in the lives of their children.
6- Saudi Arabia, and the west’s ties to this murderous regime.
7- China owning US debt, and having all of it’s ‘outsourced’ jobs.
8- US wars of aggression based on acknowledged lies.
9- Late stage democracy, and how your vote no longer even matters.
10- Anarchy or freedom from centralised control systems (Government).
11- The poisons in your food and water.
12- The poisons in vaccines.
13- Big pharma, suicide pills and the pink ribbon cancer con.
14- Guns, and how an unarmed population is an enslaved population.
15- Muslim suicide bombers (they never appear in comics).
16- Sunni/Shiaa, what is the difference between the two? You’ll never know if you keep on reading comics.
17- False flag attacks like 9/11 and the London tube bombing and how they are used to justify the Police state.
18- How the ‘race’ ‘gender’ and ‘sexuality’ cards are manipulated by the powers that shouldn’t be (government) in a process of thought control and censorship wrapped up as ‘tolerance.’
19- Public schooling as government indoctrination camps, turning children into order following slaves to the corporate/fascist state.
20- International privately owned banking, including the concept of fractional reserve lending, designed to enslave the masses under waves of unpayable debt.


This list could go on and on, and on. Seriously, I could get to 100 without even thinking about it, and if I gave it some serious thought the list would probably get closer to 500. So when I read a book like this one (Defender) I react in the only way that I can. I go to my computer, write up some truth, and stick it on my blog. That truth is simple. I said it earlier on in this article, but it needs to be repeated ad nauseum:

MAINSTREAM WESTERN COMIC BOOKS DO NOT NEED TO BE CENSORED BECAUSE THEY ARE ALREADY CENSORING THEMSELVES.

That’s a sad state of affairs, but that’s what’s happening right now, and that’s why I continue to write my ‘controversial’ reviews here on my blog. I applaud SOME of the work being done by the 'Comic Book Legal Defense Fund’ (not the stuff where they try to get sick books put in school libraries) but they need to look a bit closer to home.

Censorship in liberal fantasyland works not by having censors, but by having the politically correct, feminist liberal ‘tolerant’writers subconsciously censoring themselves. They can talk about gay rights or women’s rights as much as they like, but genuinely controversial subject matters like Islamic terrorism are a no-go area.

Defender Issue #1 has the laudable goal of standing up for free speech, but what it is really about is protecting PC liberal free speech. The freedoms we really need to protect are the freedoms to say what is NOT politically correct, and I don’t see that debate being raised in this comic book. I’m not enjoying writing up this article where I’m criticising a comic book that has been designed to protect free speech, but the fact of the matter right now is that mainstream western comic books don’t even need to be censored, as the writers are already censoring themselves.

Comic book review: Sinestro #9- Evil Christians, drugs, police and dictators

Writer: Cullen Bunn
Artist: Brad Walker
Colourist: Jason Wright
Publisher: DC Comics
Released: 28th January 2015



For the first time in it’s nine issue run this comic book, as written by Cullen Bunn, reads like just another matrix dwelling mainstream slice of deception and disinformation.

It’s a shame, because I expected better than this, but after reading this new direction (after the New Gods crossover books) all I can do is call it out for what it is, and unfortunately it’s extremely derivative stuff.

The book begins with an attack on religion. Not the religions that are actually causing all of the troubles in the world today, but the religion that it’s politically safe to attack, that being good old Christianity.

I can envision people arguing that ‘The Pale Vicars’ or ‘The Sallow Priests’ are not Christians, they are ‘aliens’ but let’s be honest here. A vicar? A priest? It’s Christianity, so let’s stop pretending.

I don’t see any Rabbi’s or Imams being referenced in mainstream comic books, it’s always religious leaders that are connected to Christianity.

Comic book writers do this because they are allowed to criticise Christianity. If they criticise Islam or Judaism then they’ll lose their jobs. In other words, they are cowards who only criticise the religious organisations that they are allowed to criticise. I don’t respect that, at all. If you are going to criticise religion then criticise them all, and if you are too afraid to do that, if you value your career more than your integrity then I’m not going to read your comic books anymore.

After Sinestro #9 lamely attacks Christianity it goes on to tell the readers that drugs are bad, and that we have to rely on a third party (the Police) to save us from the evil people who want to give us poor helpless suspect-civilians something that is bad for us. Wow, the book really is scraping the barrel this month. Christians baaaaaaad. Drugs baaaaaad. World Police goooooood. What’s next, a power crazed dictator who wants to get revenge on Sinestro?

Yep, that’s exactly what we get next. The good old power crazed dictator. A mainstream media generated villain, and the perfect justification for another ‘humanitarian intervention,’ another bombing campaign, another war waged for resources where the lives of innocent human beings count for absolutely nothing.

Forget about the reality on planet Earth 2015 where western ‘democracies’ have been waging war, raping, pillaging and torturing all over the planet for over a decade now (and that’s just recent history). I can’t believe that people living in 2015 are still pushing this fairytale that the number one threat to world peace is power crazed dictators, and not the centralised, top-down, corporate/banking interests that control western governments.

I’m standing back now, looking at what is on offer here in this comic book, and I just can’t read it anymore. It’s too simplistic, too lazy, too ignorant of reality, and it’s just not making any sort of connection to the real world realities that have taken place in the world post September 2001.

I can’t be buying this book and pointing out this stuff every month on my blog. I don’t enjoy it you know. It bugs me, annoying me big time that I’ve wasted so much of my time (and money) on a book that has given me absolutely nothing.

Writer Cullen Bunn has revealed himself here, and his mindset is worryingly stuck in generations passed. If he thinks that the most important issues in 2015 are Christian fanatics, dictators and the need for a Police state to save citizen-suspects from the evil of drugs then he is just the right kind of ignorant that the comic book industry wants. And when I say ignorant I don’t mean that he is stupid. I mean that he has chosen to ignore the world, and to push out a mainstream media version of reality that in no way whatsoever corresponds with what is actually going on in the world today.

I feel terrible now. I don’t want to put up these reviews where all I do is complain, insult the poor writer and go on about the mainstream media, the corporate matrix, etc, etc, etc, but what can I do? I buy a book, it insults me, and so I have to call it out. Sinestro is off my pull-list, so no more reviews of the book here on my blog. My search for awakened, independent, free-thinking writers working in the mainstream comic book industry continues. Wish me luck, it’s a bloody desert out there.

Rating: 3/10 (I enjoyed the colouring by Jason Wright)