Here we stand in our secret place

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The Swanage Superman

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The Story of the Egg

Is the Cadbury’s Creme Egg truly decadent? It certainly fulfills Wilde’s insistence that “the first duty of life is to be as artificial as possible” (“creme” vs cream). Not art for art’s sake, but face-puckeringly sweet. An excess that has the potential for Wildean admiration. 

And yet, if the tabloid shrinkflation discourse and the suspicions of one’s own experience are anything to go by, the Creme Egg has diminished both physically - its smaller, fewer are sold in packs  - and in terms of its recipe and desirability. Where once it was Dairy Milk chocolate, it’s now “similar, but not exactly”, according to a Cadbury’s spokesman in 2015. Moreover, its commercial ubiquity sits at odds with the exploratory excitement of the decadent experience. 

The Creme Egg is often explicitly measured in terms of formative encounters. For the Gen X inner child, the platonic Creme Egg will always be rare as a unicorn and a vehicle for parental anxiety-inducing sugar levels. For the grown adult, not only is the egg physically smaller (probably), it’s relatively smaller and far less scarce. I could afford to buy them in their tens, even hundreds and not break a sweat. Don’t tempt me. 

Egg mad philosopher and legacy decadent, George Bataille, made the case that the immanence of the sacred is revealed in sacrifice and limit experiences through their erasure of utility. Arguably - and I might actually mean this - the limit experience of Creme Egg sweetness gave 80s kids an encounter with that kind of erasure. So I guess the real question is are adults still chasing that high? Is “How do you eat yours?”, with its suggestion of personalised ritual, tempting us back by reminding us of the Creme Egg’s sacred quality?

This is what happens when you are stoned and eating Creme Eggs. Happy Egg Day..

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Check and Mate

Amazingly, Aliens is the least controversial of the assorted sequels. Not that it’s universally beloved, and you can have some damn good fights over your preferred version (‘maybe we got ‘em demoralised’ is my personal favourite line that goes towards justifying the director’s cut). It’s not even the one that introduces the phrase ‘bio-weapons division’, even though it feels like it should. It definitely feels like the one that locks that in.

An absolutely absurd notion. Try and imagine some general making the case for deploying a bunch of monster eggs. Assuming they survive, the parasite inside doesn’t get killed, manages to impregnate someone, you just have to hope the beastie is carried to term and survives long enough to mature. Then, oooh boy, it’s on. Probably slowly. It’s a very specific scenario that requires such a thing. Probably just as solvable with a bunker buster.

The high tech military deployment of this one, fighting the horde obliterates much of the mystery, the dread. Giger’s aesthetics are diluted. ‘Those things are world enders’ declare fanboys on Reddit. Tosh. The real enemy is the human, the greed, what proximity to the things drive people to do. The franchise struggles with trying to introduce anything more substantive than sell it to the military.

The real star of the sequel is the Queen. Before he became a guy entranced by computer, Cameron used his knowledge of effects to give us something incredible. He knew how it could be built and how to film it. Much of his early work stripmines a short he made called Xenogenesis.

Hunter-Killer tanks and power mecha battle it out in Cameron’s living room. The Queen lives, she walks, she conquers. Utterly convincing in her rage and presence. The tension of special effects lies in artistry and realism. 

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Elevator door

I don’t know how I knew, I just did. Like, not long after seeing Star Wars age not quite six, I knew Darth Vader looked like that cos he had a fight with Obi Wan and fell into a volcano.

It’s a feeling. Like when I saw The Stone Roses on Glasgow Green in 1990, tripping on Black Dragons, smoking Leb and Rocky, I knew, like everyone else there and then, that this would be their greatest ever performance.

Another thing I just knew? That the ’99 eclipse would be shit. Flat. Underwhelming. Not worth the 12-hour drive. At Lizard Point, with the sky not quite clear, so it would prove to be. To be fair I hadn’t quite got over the sight of Hale Bopp a couple of years before. For what felt like weeks on end in sunny, breezy Glasgow 1997 around April-May, Blair victory time, when you looked up, there it was: a swish-as-fuck comet there in the evening sky, even before it got dark, like a comic book drawing. Was it really quite as visible - as present - as that?

What else was I so sure of back in the day? Along with most other kids my age? That the Russians wouldn’t bomb us with nukes. Which is why we laughed at Threads. Better than When the Wind Blows for sure, but you know . . . not cool.

I knew that when comics were blowing up in the mid-to-late 80s, any programme about comics, on the radio, the telly, wherever, was gonna be cringe.

And I knew it was over with Vicki after I used her as a shield against The Xenomorph when it lunged at me in the elevator that time - Alien War in the Arches, 1992 I think.

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One year later

Tell just one person that you liked this newsletter. Word of mouth, more than any other form of promotion, is how creative works get noticed and sustain themselves. Thank you very much for reading.

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The Fate of Westlife

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A Brief History of British Comics
20: Spider-Man and Zoids

• Publisher – Marvel UK
• March 1986 – February 1987
• 51 issues

First albums are mission statements. 

Not necessarily the best, but usually the purest representation of who bands are, what they want. There’s a roughness, but also a purity to them. The culmination of fervent bedroom dreams of world domination. All the ideas the band has ever had, wrestling for supremacy. Messy, thrilling. The sheer energy humming off them is contagious and often garners ardent acolytes for life.

Grant Morrison’s run on the weekly Spiderman and Zoids comic (approx. issues 18 –50) isn’t exactly their first album. The 150-episode Captain Clyde published in the Govan Press probably counts as that, but is perhaps more a lo-fi demo full of rough and rowdy potential. 

The Zoids run, with the relatively slick production veneer of Marvel UK, abetted by future mega-collaborator Steve Yeowell, is the more polished, confident debut release.

(Zoids Sidebar: When these mini animal-mecha toy kits first appeared in my local toyshop, it was like a laser beamed straight from Japan into the dreary heart of early 1980s Britain. They were thrillingly exotic, mysterious. Aesthetically charged and foreign in the very best way.)

‘The Black Zoid’ saga is the first instance of Morrison conceiving a grand, conceptual narrative with someone else’s toys. It contains ideas that would reverberate through their career, rendered in a delightfully uncluttered, pure way. A beautiful confluence of chords simply strummed.

In the proud UK tradition of taking a toy tie-in comic and alchemically creating something divine, Morrison artfully foretold their next 40 years of comics themes and tropes; Manichaean struggles, fictional self-awareness, the end of the fucking universe. Existential battles on desolate landscapes. 

Picking up toys, bending them into strange new shapes, moving on. Forever altered by a deity of questionable motives.   

Of course, there are great, often transcendent albums to come.

That first one though.

(with thanks to Ben Hansom and Deep Space Transmissions)

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The Swanage Supergirl

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Agents of A.C.R.O.N.Y.M.

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“A late, luxurious, superfluous tool” – 52 (Keith Giffen, Geoff Johns, Grant Morrison, Greg Rucka, Mark Waid et al, 2006–2007)

Buddy Baker’s journey there and back again takes the best part of a year. The stakes are established early – “Animal Man’s wife calls every other day! Ellen. Nice lady.” – but the story meanders. It’s an odyssey, complete with temptations, intimations of the whims of the gods, the displaced realities that war creates. 

If that urgency isn’t always felt, it’s still a trip. 52’s all over the place, it has everything, even (ugh) The Crime Bible. Sometimes you just need to drift off and think about meeting Lobo, though you might wish he’d brought back his disco duds for his “pacifist” phase. 

Born to be alive - Patrick Hernandez

Buddy Baker thinks the universe likes him, but its attentions can also look monstrous when we see them in action. Death and destruction on a schedule, a dream drawn taught and sleazy.

A comic like Seaguy gets the horror of making circular entertainment out of this, but there’s something else there, a persistent yearning. Buddy’s tuned into the frequency of life, after all.  To quote a 52 line that Morrison would use again in Luda, it’s the paradox of “Lightning that can’t strike”. Every day will be the day where I am able to share the universe of my thoughts with you in the living room; every day, I pray you will be able to do the same. Doesn’t usually work out that way. Never mind. No matter. 

The social implications of other realities are profound, and deserve the attention of a social novelist. Philip K. Dick, perhaps – “With each new action of the demiurge, the statue gradually emerges from its limbo.”  Buddy’s story bends domestic, but those realities are still inside/out there looking to make contact. 

No shame in heading further into the cold and dark and trying to signal back.

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Focus (Dry Horizon)

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If there’s something inside that you want to say, say it out loud it will be okay. 

I’ve always struggled with the validity of my thoughts, the manifestation of my voice whether spoken or written. It had reached a point where thinking I had things to say that I wasn’t saying had become believing I had nothing to say. 

Then the call came in over the aether. Somehow, without realising it, I had been enough. ‘You are now, and have always been, a Mindless One’ they said. It’s no exaggeration to say this newsletter has changed my life. ‘It’s a rescue mission.’  

This is for everyone who might be struggling to believe in what they want to say. 

Name: LITNINODENCLIFF

Purpose: When the lightning flash of the idea hits you this servitor is there to catch you before you dismiss it. It keeps it safe, it speaks in your ear to give you the confidence to do something with it. 
Colours: Gold, Blue/White, Green/Red 


Smells: Lightning, Rosemary, Pine, Frankincense 
Tarot Cards: The Star/Prince of Wands/Eight of Pentacles

Sounds: Go epic. Go thunderous. Go declarative. Also hip-hop. 

Servitors are aetheric entities created to perform particular tasks. This servitor was created using techniques outlined by Phil Hine. It was launched in a ritual performed on the 4th April 2026. You can perform rituals to add to their power and/or call them to your or others aid. 

1) Set the mood. You may wish to use the colours, smells, sounds and cards associated with the  entity. 2) Clear your space. 3) Banish. The LBRP or Starry Cross are popular methods 4) State your intent ‘It is my will to empower [name] for its mission to...’ 5) Energise yourself. Use breathing, visualisation, movement to build up a core of energy within you. You may wish to dance. You may wish to laugh. Please yourself. 6) At the moment of peak, at the moment of no mind that is all mind visualise the entity before you and give that portion of the energy to it. 7) Settle. 8) Banish again. 9) Later, but soon, do something sympathetic to your intention, make something, reach out to someone.

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Teddy Boy

My Mindless colleague’s recent distillation of 2000AD and the ‘beautiful damage’ it wrought on a generation struck a chord as I have recently been wheeled out as ‘inspiring example of adult who draws comics’ for some of my daughter’s friends.

My first comic was the inevitable Transformers rip-off, Mega Bots, but aged 9 I began on my first magnum opus, Teddy Force, obsessively drawn in biro on folded, now yellowed A4. In it my beloved cuddlies were recast as an elite anti-terrorist combat group, (ahem) modelled on Storm Force, who had recently taken over as lead strip in IPC’s Battle.

I continued this comic into my teenage years (while others were presumably outside playing football). What’s extraordinary about perusing these objects now is not just the levels of suffering inflicted on my poor teddies, but also that you can literally see the moment(s) at which 2000AD and Frank Miller entered the picture, when my model changed from kids adventure comics to the sardonic violence and attitude of Judge Dredd, The Dark Knight Returns et al.

This roughly coincided with the title change to Animal Squad. Presumably this was now a comic ‘for Mature Readers’ (teenage boys).

By the time I abruptly ceased drawing half way through issue 19 the teddies, erm I mean animals, were regularly dismembering each other in Bisley - or even Hicklenton-esque waves of uber-violence (in full colour!), and then… I guess I got into pop music?

My parents must have been at least a bit concerned about the graphic images that arrived at the breakfast table and then flowed from my biro, but to their credit they never attempted an intervention. The odd thing is that pretty much everyone I have met who succumbed to the beautiful damage of 2000AD (and its creators’ subsequent projects) went on to be culturally literate, funny, thoughtful, kind and brilliant people. 

And now here we all are.

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52

Has it really been a year? It doesn't feel like it. But then, what does a year feel like any more? In one way, 2020 hasn't ended, in another we're still in the eternal 2016; yet I look at my life now and compare it to 2016 and almost nothing is the same -- I'm not doing the same job or married to the same person, I don't have the same social circle, my income and social status are wildly different, I'm not in the same political party... but it still feels like no time passes.

I think part of this is because of something else I've been thinking about recently -- the easy accessibility of, not all, but a *lot* of old pop culture. I live surrounded by the detritus of previous generations. Collectors' DVDs of Looney Tunes cartoons with commentaries by archivist experts, box sets of outtakes from albums nobody bought the first time around, deluxe hardbacks of comics that were originally printed on newsprint for 50p. Can we ever feel time is going forward when we're surrounded by yesterday? Is it healthy to be wallowing in yesterday's ephemera, watching a lovingly-restored Blu-Ray of The Strange World of Gurney Slade, a flop sitcom from 1961, rather than something new? But then, the new is increasingly a regurgitation of the old -- Lord of the Rings prequels and Harry Potter remakes. If we're stuck with past creations, maybe it's better to go to the originals rather than sampling the version that's been processed by the Human Centipede that is the modern IP factory.

But also, some things *haven't* changed. It's been one year since this newsletter started but sixteen since I first wrote for the Mindless Ones, and I hope I still am in sixteen more. Some things don't *need* to change.

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BUT WHAT ABOUT [SOME COMPLETELY NONCOMMENSURATE THING] ISN’T THAT THE SAME?!?!

Friends fear, despite the renunciation of antisemitism, he is listening to Kanye again — well I am actually, and ALL THE LOVE, from this week’s BULLY with its (son of) California Love squeezebox vocals, in particular. This is a great song, I realise he has made everyone “unlike” him (soon as they liked him) but I do think the acting out - which is certainly vile if not violent - is related to the head trauma documented in early hit Through the Wire. Troubled Genius pass tho. 

UNBREAKABLE, WHAT YOU THINK THEY CALLED ME MR. GLASS

One of the most striking and insightful things I heard about rap was Kanye saying he made self-confidence music, another was Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth saying rap was ideal music when you are traumatised… this is hurt dad music, the lyrics are extremely positive but the delivery mournful - Future is a blues artist, this - All the Love - is a blues song. Men need an avenue to express hurt that is not anger, it’s a hyper compression.

Latter Kanye exists in a critical hinterland - there are great songs intermittently on each post-YEEZUS album, apart from Vultures 1, which is a genuinely, rank, bitter and sickening piece. Checking now, he seems to have removed Field Trip from 2, another difficult habit, so maybe write that off too. Any creative expression is a mirror though, I have felt that way too and if you are over 30 you have most likely too, at least once.

White people hate anything with a churchy bent too, but try and explain Kenny G and the Clipse otherwise then eh…? I’ll wait. Speaking of hurt, I had noticed Vince Staples, 070 Shake and Kodak Black - to some slurred, intoxicated extent - all share a crushed, affectless, flat and wary tone… I find it very moving; brittle, delicate soul wrapped in a barbed wire. Transmuting shit into gold is literal alchemy.

PUT IT ON YOUR FLOWERS GREG

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The Gospel according to St Matthew (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1964)

On a wheel within a wheel, this week Spy Wednesday also fell on All Fool’s Day - Saturnalia-Hilaria, old New Years’. First time in eleven years, since April 1 2015 - an unremarkable day of massive oil fires, F-18s in Taiwan and new international cyber laws.

Traditionally the day the Iscariot plotted to betray Christ, when it is holy to strategise, subvert or conspire, Spy Wednesday and the fools’ feast will next overlap eleven years from now, then eleven years after that. A run of four eleven year gaps in a 33-year streak we won’t see again until 2395. The last time it happened was 1643-76 - decades of civil war, plague and rebellion throughout Britain, Europe and the Americas.

Hiding inside the rubble of Gregorian lunar calculation and the Yì 易 effect of leap years - a dynamic insertion, giving the calendar an arbitrary whim analogous to that of life itself - this spy  cycle crosses another eleven-year heavenly effect: the Schwabe-Sekhmet turn in solar magnetics.

Wednesday’s extra special blessing for snitches and rats was the only one of the current four which further aligns with a solar maximum, fitting the emperor’s grand address to the world - entirely disbelieved by the markets, finally learning to distinguish between a wolf’s cry and crying wolf.

Otello Sestili’s Judas is tormented and affectless at once, dawning into horror as he discovers how fully his treachery is foreordained, how little his words are his own, watching aghast as they fall mechanically from his mouth and become scripture. Revealed to himself as a channel for forces larger than he can imagine, life is instantly, shockingly intolerable, and he races desperately towards the hanging tree. Pasolini makes Matthew feel both timelessly ancient and bracingly modern, a calling into being of a necessary corrective. What was true once - but lost -  will become true again.

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The Swanage Batman