Review: Sheltered #10- No surprises yet

Writer: Ed Brisson
Artist: Johnnie Christmas
Publisher: Image Comics
Released: 2nd July 2014


I’m still expecting, or at least hoping, for something a little bit out of the ordinary to happen in Sheltered, and that’s why I’m still reading the book. It’s been ten issues now, and so far it’s been a half-decent cult leader story, involving the murderous children of ‘Preppers’ so, on the surface at least, it appears to be more contemporary and relevant than your average cult leader book.

Issue #10 doesn’t contain any surprises that would turn this good book into an excellent one. It’s still cult leader stuff, and as the children squabble and fight amongst themselves the power dynamics continue to evolve. There’s also the question of whether or not the wounded outsider will make it back to civilisation alive, and reveal to the outside world what is happening on the camp. That is resolved in this issue, and I won’t spoil it. It gave the story some dramatic moments, and it was interesting, but I want more.

One of two things has to happen to make this a better than average book. 1- The predicted climactic catastrophe actually happens and the cult leader was right all-along. 2- The cult leader is a mind-control dupe, set up by the CIA, and the whole thing has been a psychological operation on the general public designed to demonise groups that go off the plantation and stop being willing slaves to statist (government) tyranny. Do I think that any of these two things will happen? I used to think so, but I’m starting to doubt it now.

If the book is just a cult leader book, well that’s all very good, it’s been okay, but it’s not exactly revolutionary is it? I’ll keep reading to the end, just to see if the ending delivers something spectacular. Hopefully it will, but I won’t be surprised if the story ends like this particular issue. With lots of blood, dead bodies and the conclusion that people can’t be trusted to be free, and that you need big brother government to look after you, and keep you safe from yourselves. I have my fingers crossed, but comic books have a habit of disappointing by not going the whole way. However, I’ll be fair to the creators and leave my final judgement until the story is actually concluded.
 Rating: 7/10

Review: Swamp Thing #33- Blunt shears, mangled bushes

Writer: Charles Soule
Artist: Javier Pina
Publisher: DC
Released: 2nd July 2014

It’s time for me to drop this book. I’ve been hanging on for a bit too long, as I tend to do, but after reading the latest unremarkable issue of Swamp Thing I have to stop wasting my time and money on it. There are far more productive things for me to do with my reading time, and I hate to waste money on something that offers so little to me now.

Swamp Thing #33, by Charles Soule, has unimpressive artwork by Javier Pina, and dull colouring from Matthew Wilson. The art is competent, but there is a lack of atmosphere and detail in it. Have you ever watched a football match where the commentators describe an unimpressive performance by a player as ‘workman-like?’ That’s what you have here. It’s competent, but I want more than that. I want art that is alive, creative and impressive. The artwork in this book lacks all of those qualities. It would be fine if the story was doing something special, but it really isn’t.

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Alec ‘Swamp Thing’ Holland has been all over the place recently. Last month he was quite uninterestingly messing around with Aquaman, and the month before? I can’t even remember, but it certainly wasn’t memorable.

The one constant has been two incompetent villains, hanging around in the background and threatening to bring some life into proceedings. So far they have failed, and in this issue one of those villains fails again. Next month the other villain will get a go, where she will undoubtedly fail. Why would I want to hang around to witness that? I don’t.

The Swamp Thing title has potential, especially in 2014 where we have an urgent debate going on about genetically modified foods, and how it could be contributing towards the massive increase in cancer rates and every other kind of life threatening illness and disease in the western world. I thought this was where the book was going when the ‘Seeder’ character was introduced, but that is over now, and so many avenues and possibilities that could have been explored ended up leading to nowhere.

 Swamp Thing is supposed to be the avatar of all plant-life on this planet. You’d think he’d have something to say about large corporations genetically altering all of that plant life wouldn’t you? Imagine the fascinating, cutting-edge, controversial stories that a good writer could tell with the Swamp Thing character going up against the Monsanto Corporation and their army of lobbyists in the US congress? Don’t you think that would be great? Hell, you could even talk about global warming. Take a side, any side. Are the plants being affected, or is man made climate change just a political con? Or, you could ignore all of these fascinating contemporary concerns and define ‘pollution’ as a bloke pouring a barrel of chemicals into a lake.

You are not going to get anything relevant here, because relevant, contemporary issues are always controversial. If you are allowed to say it, then I don’t want to hear it. I want to hear unpopular speech because that’s the only kind of speech that is worthwhile listening to, especially in the dumbed down, politically correct times in which we are living today. DC doesn’t do controversial, and Charles Soule fits in perfectly.

DC and Marvel are the corporate status quo, and their job is to support it, not question it. It’s understandable. After all, why would they want to question the structure of something that they are very much a part of? It’s sad, but here’s a truth. No questioning of powerful corporations/banking institutions is allowable in contemporary comics.

Perhaps it’s time I stopped reading all Marvel and DC comic books, and just supported independent books instead? I never thought I’d feel like I do today, as I’ve always loved the mainstream superhero books, but it’s getting very difficult for me to read them now.

The New World Order is not a secret group. When I use the term all I am doing is referring to the corporate/banking/media/political/military elite’s who get together, have a chat and decide what country to invade next, how to spin it to the public and how to further screw over that public in order to maximise corporate profit and keep us all on their corporate slave plantation. They have arguments and differences of opinion, and they are always stabbing each other in the backs, but there is one thing you can be sure of. They don’t give a crap about you, or me.

Marvel and DC are very much a part of the corporate control system, so anything you read in these books will always support the elite’s version of reality and the status quo they want to protect. Swamp Thing is an avatar of plant life who cannot discuss contemporary issues involving plant life. It’s also not particular well drawn, or entertaining.

 

Boiling things down, what I’m trying to say is that Charles Soule’s Swamp Thing is irrelevant, and not entertaining enough for me to keep bothering with. Forgetting the underlying corporate issues that I’ve just mentioned, and judging it purely as a childish comic, it’s a very boring book. Swamp Thing is an unlikeable dictator, his friends are dull, and his enemies are incompetent and feeble. I can see absolutely no reason to keep on reading this book, and so I shall not do so. Goodbye Alec Holland. Give me a call when you start taking on Monsanto. Until then, you have nothing to say to me.
Rating: 3/10

Comic Book Review: Sinestro #3- Sinestro is President Assad of Syria

Writer: Cullen Bunn
Artist: Dale Eaglesham & Rags Morales
Publisher: DC Comics
Released: 2nd July 2014 (Release date for the UK. Book was released on 25th June in the US)

Comic book fans won’t notice this, but that’s to be expected. Comic book fans don’t really notice anything. They like comics, so reality isn’t exactly their strong point. They think that the important issues of our times are highlighted by the corrupt and dying corporate mainstream media, so you have to expect a certain level of ignorance from the group as a whole. The title of this review is ‘Sinestro is President Assad of Syria,’ because that’s exactly what is happening in this book. What writer Cullen Bunn has done here is to take a real world, contemporary situation, change the names, stick it in space, and see if anybody will notice. They won’t notice Cullen, but I did.

Sinestro is a brutal dictator who was massively unpopular with his own people, so he left. But now that he has left his people desperately need him back. Why? Because a group of religious zealots are rampaging through space, slaughtering the helpless ‘Korugians,’ and selling them into slavery, all in the name of their bloodthirsty religious dogma. Does that sound familiar to you?

We are talking I.S.I.S here, aren’t we? And we are talking the Middle East. Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gaddafi, and Bashar al-Assad. Iraq, Libya and Syria.Three countries ruled by dictators. Well, they used to be until our leaders decided to bomb the crap out of them and fund and train the terrorists who are currently turning their countries into Hell on Earth.

Three countries destroyed by the New World Order. Three countries where the surviving people are being slaughtered by Sunni Islamic terrorists funded from Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar and the US. Last week the liberal saviour President Obama revealed that he was going to give a further $500 million to these maniacs, but because he’s ‘liberal’ I guess that’s okay, right?

Comic books will not, in any way shape or form, criticise Islam. But whilst political correctness dictates that you can’t even give the merest hint that it’s Islam we’re talking about here, it’s perfectly acceptable to attack Christianity. So instead of references to a caliphate, suicide bombings, jihad and other familiar terms you get allusions to Christianity with words like ‘Inquisition, ‘Congregation’ and ‘Bishops.’ That’s understandable. Cullen Bunn has to wrap it up in Christianity. If he didn’t then he’d be in big trouble with the thought Police and his career in comic books would be over. But for those paying attention, we know what this is all about, and it’s not what happened in Spain in the late 1400’s.

I want to end this review by congratulating writer Cullen Bunn. He’s demonstrated that you can explore contemporary issues and concerns in modern, feminist liberal comic books, as long as you are clever with it. You have to dodge the politically correct land mines, but it can be done. Most of the readers of this book won’t see any connection between what is happening in the Middle East and Sinestro’s adventures in space, but that’s okay. Cullen Bunn has done some clever writing here, and he’s done it in such a way that he won’t get criticised for it. If anybody points out what that his themes seem strangely familiar and contemporary, he can just smile and tell them not to be so daft. After all, it’s just a silly comic book about a bad guy in space, isn’t it?
Rating: 10/10

Movie Review: Troll Hunter- Not quite as exciting as you might think

Released: October 2010

Wikipedia Page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trollhunter

*****Spoilers in review*****

Troll Hunter is one of those movies that I kept seeing in the supermarket, and a couple of times I was almost tempted into buying it. Mainly because of the cool looking 3D front cover, but also because I knew it was a foreign language movie, and as an old film student I’m particularly tempted by any movie that’s not in the English language.

Anyway, for one reason or another I didn’t buy the movie. I probably had too many comics to read and review or something like that. Yes, my life really is that dull. But give it time and eventually I’ll find just about every supermarket movie played late at night on Film4, and such was the case with this one. Now that I’ve actually seen it would it have bothered me to spend about £7 on it? Yeah, probably. I’d pay about £2 for it and be happy, but nothing more than that.

The movie has a few problems, and they all come from the script. It’s one of those ‘found footage’ movies that everybody is getting fed up of now. You know the type? Blair Witch shaky camera, documentary realism and a group of overly frightened, snotty nosed young adults.

In this particular movie the snotty kids are clandestinely filming what they think is a bear poacher, who very quickly turns out to be the one and only Norwegian Troll hunter. This Indiana Jones (Sr.) character is a Government Park Ranger of sorts whose job is to keep control of the native Troll population. He’s a bit like somebody working for the department of wildlife who has to cull a few rabid foxes/badgers every now and then. The only difference really is that he has to take care of giant Trolls, oh and not tell anybody about it, but that doesn’t appear to stop him happily spilling the beans about his Troll hunting activities on camera.

Yeah, it’s pretty stupid, and it makes zero sense that the government would employ ONE elderly man in a battered old Land Rover to take care of roaming Giants in the countryside. You’d think they’d have the army and airforce on the job, wouldn’t you? But no, one old bloke will do apparently.

And how come in this Internet age of every bugger having a camera on them there’s no photographs of these far from reclusive Trolls on the Internet? It’s not like they are very good at hiding or anything. They certainly ain’t no Bigfoot, Nessie or Abominable Snowman.  All the camera crew has to do is go out into the woods and they have the stupid Trolls all around them. They are as big as a house, and roar like a boy racer revving up at the traffic lights. You couldn’t miss them if you tried to.

Despite the slap your forehead stupidity of it all, the main problem I had with the movie was it’s lack of drama and suspense. Far too early on the Trolls are seen in close-up, slap bang in the middle of the screen, and even on night-vision camera, just so you can see absolutely every contour, angle and dimple on their big flabby arses. That to me was a completely inexplicable decision for the director to make. You have one thing going for you. One thing that will keep the audience glued to the screen. That being, what do the Trolls look like? Tease us. Show us a shadow, a blurred arm, a brief glimpse of something that could, or could not be a Troll. That’s the art of film-making, manipulating the audience, not sticking everything on a slab and poking it with a stick so many times that the audience begins to nod off or check their mobile phones.

This movie could have kept me mesmerised to the very end, but the director decided that he didn’t want to play it that way. No, he was going to turn what should have been a thrilling monster drama into a dull wildlife documentary, and that’s what he did. The rest of the movie is just a camera crew of dull student types following a previously taciturn, now chatty bloke around the country as he tells them every single thing they could possibly want to know about Trolls. Amazingly, he makes them sound quite dull. It’s like he’s talking about squirrels.

A ‘found footage’ movie about Trolls shouldn’t be this dull, but it really is very blah. There simply aren’t the characters, personalities, conflicts or dramas to sustain it all. There are couple of promising sub-plots (one that could have been interesting was whether or not Trolls hated Muslims as much as they hated Christians) but they are never fully developed, probably consigned to the cutting room floor, and the movie just kind of splutters to an end.

You’d think that Trolls would be scary, exciting, exotic and dangerous, wouldn’t you? But no, in this movie they’re just giant rabid pests who are easily controlled by one elderly man and his flashlight. I’ll include a couple of photographs of the Trolls themselves alongside this review, as the special effects were the only good thing about the movie. The Trolls looked great, but they were wasted. They were seen far too early and far too often, and all of the potential thrills, suspense and drama that the movie could, and should have offered, ended up being replaced by what amounted to a cinematic version of a yawning squirrel in a suburban back garden. What’s that you say? It was supposed to be a comedy? How come I didn’t laugh at any of it then? It wasn’t funny, at all. It was boring, very, very boring.
Rating: 3/10

Review: Doctor Spektor #2- Let's make this as confusing as possible

Writer: Mark Waid
Artist: Neil Edwards
Publisher: Dynamite Comics
Released: 2nd July 2014

Why do writers do this to us? Have they never heard of the old saying, ‘Keep it simple, stupid?’ I guess not, and so here we go with the second issue of a book that I thought might be quite interesting, getting needlessly complicated. A book where writer Mark Waid has a great laugh at the readers by getting them all confused and, as the book concludes, bloody annoyed as well. This is not good writing, it’s arrogant writing.

What’s wrong with just writing a good, easy to follow enjoyable book that deals with contemporary issues? This cleverness without wisdom nonsense starts to get annoying after a while you know?

Doctor Spektor #2 is littered with captions above the pages, explaining when the scene is happening (NOW, 60 MINUTES AGO, 54 MINUTES AGO, AN HOUR LATER). These captions are almost impossible to follow, and as you read the book you don’t know where you are, what is happening and who it is happening to.

What is real, what is future stuff, what is past stuff and what is just something going on in a crazy person’s head? And what’s that superhero doing in the book? There’s too much happening here. It’s not interesting or intriguing. It’s just cluttered and confusing. How the Hell am I supposed to follow, and enjoy something like that? You know what? I can’t. Was that the whole point? Why was that the point? Why are you trying to confuse the reader Mr Waid? Aren’t you supposed to write enjoyable comics, not confusing ones?

It doesn’t help that the main character is a quipping cliché twat, and that the dialogue is the kind of crap you get from people in love with Kevin Smith movies. I want to enjoy it, but Mark Waid isn’t helping me at all.

The art is pretty standard, not bad, but the characters are unlikeable and now I’m just confused by everything. Should I be cheering for the celebrity protagonist with the trendy haircut, or should I hate him? He’s not at all likeable. He’s a bit of a self obsessed twat, the kind of twat you see on television and then hear about getting arrested on child abuse or drugs charges. I can’t be cheering for that guy. Am I supposed to care about him?

Am I also supposed to care about the generic pretty girl who might, or might not be mad? Why should I care about her? To misquote Gwen Steffani, she’s just a girl. The other main character is a (Ghost?) television producer, and his wise-ass dialogue reads like cleverness written on a keyboard, not words coming naturally from the lips of a middle aged human being/ghost. There are no characters here for me to care about.

Perhaps I should look at it as a puzzle, and get drawn into the narrative to see that puzzle untangled? I like puzzles. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s original Sherlock Holmes books were all about the puzzles, and I loved those books. But I liked the idiosyncratic character of Sherlock Holmes, and I also liked the more straightforward, but morally upstanding Doctor Watson.  I don’t like any of the people in this book, and Sherlock Holmes was never as confusing as this purposefully jumbled mess. That’s all it is. A mess with characters that I cannot connect with at all.

Why should I read this book? My main reaction after reading it was confusion. I was not intrigued, at all. Just confused, and indifferent to what happens next. That’s not good. It’s bad. Why would I want to read a confusing book with characters that I don’t care about? I’m a comic book fan, not a bloody masochist you know. Goddamn it, I’m all hot and bothered now. I thought this book would be good, and it wasn’t. Arrrggggh, how bloody annoying.
 Rating: 4/10

Black Metal Album Review: Abhorrence of Light by 13th Moon

Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/pages/13th-Moon/553037841387465?sk=timeline

Bandcamp Page: http://13thmoon.bandcamp.com/

Black metal should be dirty, cavernous and angry. It shouldn’t pretend. Put the corpse paint away lads, it’s not needed. You are not playing at being evil. If you want to be evil get a job at the BBC. Everyday one of their presenters gets arrested on child-abuse charges, and today a long time fixture on British television, Rolf Harris, was exposed as a decades spanning paedophile who used the status gained to him through working on television to sexual abuse little girls, for decade, after decade, after decade. That is evil. That is real evil.

Black metal is not evil. It is music, and when done well it taps into something else, not of this realm of consciousness, but something floating in the ether, a parallel dimension, as real as our own, no scratch that, a dimension far more alive and vital than our own dulled prison planet. To me, and this is a subjective thing, it is a realm of otherworldly defiance. It is realm that spits on the paedophile rings at the BBC. It brings into existence realms that will take those smiling charity working paedophile presenters to one side and give them a good bloody kicking. That’s my black metal. That’s what Black metal is to me, so don’t talk about Satanism and corpse paint, and any surface nonsense. Black metal should create something that transcends the everyday bullshit of this reality, and that’s what The Abhorrence of Light by 13th Moon does for me.

I’m not a bloody music reviewer. I’m not even a comic book reviewer, though that’s what I mostly do on my blog. I’m just an unpopular guy who has an opinion about everything, and although most people don’t want to hear it, I put it out there anyway.

My opinion on this black metal album is that it’s bloody good. There are only three proper songs, the other two tracks are atmosphere setting little interludes, a bridge of calm before more black metal fury. These interludes intensify the feeling of the album as a whole though, so don’t confuse them as being an exercise in time wasting, because they’re not. They are the backgrounds that define the whole. They are Dracula’s empty, lonely castle, high on the hills, falling apart, a relic of a bygone time that represents the lost, moribund, out of time character of the Count himself.

The three full tracks have furious blast beat percussion and bass and guitar riffs that are there to soothe you through the passage of angry noise. The vocals are demonic. A man tapping into the other realms, finding inspiration there and spitting it back in your face. There is testosterone and strength there. This is not a defeated soul. This is an angry sound, full of life, passion, blood and thunder.

The best track is the first. ‘The Rite as Sinister as Old’ defines the album. Brutal, it sounds like it was recorded in a cave by a troupe of pumped up, channelling souls who want to rip through the temporal realm that some mistakenly believe is all there is, and wake up the living dead that still insist on watching BBC paedophile facilitating programming like they are a good person, like the BBC is a channel for good people so they must rightfully sit like zombies in front of it as their life force rots away as they are patronised by the latest paedophile presenter employed in the land of the sick.

Get this album if you want to hear anger, passion, creative belligerence and the channelling of other realms through artistic endeavour. Or you can watch Animal Hospital with a soundtrack performed by the Lost Prophets. Who loves evil? Who is evil? Your television mate, it’s your television, not this stuff. This is angry and defiant, the complete antithesis to the real evil emanating from your television sets. Rating: 9/10

Review: The Goon-One For The Road- A mildly amusing diversion

Writer: Eric Powell
Artist: Eric Powell
Publisher: Dark Horse
Released: 25th June 2014


There’s not a lot you can say about this one really. It’s on my pull-list, and it comes out very infrequently, but when it does eventually arrive I always get a bit of a giggle out of it.

The previous book, about a Spanish critter, was a lot funnier than this one, but this was okay. It was a one-shot about a sailor losing his friend on shore leave, worrying that he was going to get in trouble, and going from bar to bar with the Goon and his buddy Franky in an attempt to find his friend.

Whilst doing so they run into the usually assortment of wacky Eric Powell characters that you would expect them to run into. The funniest character being a large man eating World World 1 era German army Gorilla and his two handlers in a Red Baron type aeroplane. If that sounds pretty wacky, then it’s because it is pretty wacky. That’s what you get in a Goon book. However, there was something about this book that was a bit too safe, a bit too formulaic, a bit too Eric Powell going through the motions for me to get all that excited about it. It was okay, but he’s done a lot better.

There’s nothing here for me to get my teeth into as everything is set in a safe comedy past of old Frank Sinatra movies about World War 1. There’s no contemporary socio-political commentary, and nothing for the liberal thought Police to get their knickers in a twist about.

That’s a shame, because I love it when the feminist liberals expose themselves by calling for censorship on something that doesn’t conform to what they think is allowable in comedy. That’s the best comedy. Something of its time, taking a much-needed swipe at contemporary concerns and hypocrisies. You get none of that here, so even with the wackiest of characters and funniest of lines it’s not going to be a top-notch comedy book.

Don’t listen to other reviewers telling you this comedy is in any way rebellious, dark or twisted, because it isn’t. This is very safe comedy. This is thought Police approved comedy that the liberal elite’s are quite happy for you to consume.

Eric Powell is a decent artist, so I have no complaints about his over the top funny and grotesque depictions. Like most artists who write their own books, it’s perfect for the tone of the writing. However, this issue of The Goon reads like something he could knock out in his sleep. It’s not a bad book; it just seems a bit, well irrelevant really. It’s a decent distraction, but as I’ve previously mentioned, because it’s comedy set in the safe cinematic past it’s never going to be anything more than a silly little distraction, designed to make you giggle.

I understand that the Goon is not supposed to represent life in 2014, but it’s written in 2014, so there should be something here that shows the writer is at least aware of contemporary concerns and issues. There is nothing here to suggest that Eric Powell is aware or even cares about anything that is happening now.

This book could have been written in 1960. I know a lot of people will be okay with that, but not me. I don’t live in 1960. I live in 2014, and lots of things are going on. I want to see the world reflected in my comic books. I don’t care if I disagree with the writer’s point of view, but when he doesn’t even have one I find it difficult to engage with the comic/book/movie/music. The world outside your window exists. Call me strange, but why not reflect some of it in your writing?

Back to this particular book. I had a couple of giggles with it, but not as many as usual. It was okay, but I’m not kidding myself. I’m a big Eric Powell fan, and he was quite obviously going through the motions a bit here. Something about sailors and a bar crawl? Yeah, that will do. Rating: 7/10