Nobody trusts anybody now, and we're all very tired

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The Vile Dead 5: Evil Dead (Fede Álvarez, Jane Levy, 2013); Evil Dead Rise (Lee Cronin, Lilly Sullivan, 2023)

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Flare

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 for reading.

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Andrew and Steven, Those Amusing Brothers

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A Brief History of British Comics
6: THE REAL GHOSTBUSTERS

• Publisher: Marvel UK       
• March 1988 - March 1992
• 193 issues

1984’s ‘Ghostbusters’ is such a relentlessly odd pop-cultural phenomenon. A bizarre fusion of SNL alumni star-power, crude post-Animal House humour, Dan Aykroyd’s fervent Fortean passions, and a cresting wave of crazily explorative film SFX, it somehow cohered to lightning-strike the pre-adolescent consciousness of 1980s youths. Kids tore around playgrounds zapping each other with imagined proton rifles and musing on the mysteries of phantasmagorical blowjobs.

The ’no-ghost’ logo was instantly iconic, Bill Murray became an awkward leading man, and the idea of capitalist ghost-hunting heroes took hold with a powerful tenacity.

Naturally there were spin-offs, merchandising, novelty pop hits, a belated sequel, and predictably a copyright lawsuit. It was this, concerning a little-loved and now forgotten other Ghostbusters cartoon, that led to the long-running and beloved ‘Real Ghostbusters’ cartoon having its confusing sobriquet. This ran from 1986 to 1991 and for a time, eclipsed the original film in ubiquity and popularity.

A comic followed, published weekly in the UK. This was nothing uncommon for the times. Lazy cartoon tie-in periodicals littered newsagents’ shelves at the tail-end of the 1980s. The Real Ghostbusters comic, however, was something sneakily special.

It featured three / four strips, almost always standalone, a text story from ‘Egon’s Spirit Guide’ and some form of puzzle. Pitched at a younger audience than Transformers or Action Force, it utilised a bold ‘ligne claire’ cartooning style from a pack of eager, talented UK artists, including Andy Lanning, Anthony Williams and Phil Elliot. The colours popped with ectoplasmic vibrancy, and the whole package had a great, clean design sense. Slimer (originally a backhanded homage to the excesses of John Belushi) held an irritating sway, but the comic was largely charming fun for its duration, all the odder when you consider its seedy filmic origins.

Sometimes it seems, you should cross the streams. 

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Haunted: One last thing 
February 24

My aunties are accusatory. ‘You were a right horror. You used to grab our hair and try and smack our heads on the floor… Laughing.’

“You’ll be happy to know my son is paying me back on your behalf’.

We’re here for the scattering. Grandad’s been in the cupboard 20 years. Toolmaker by trade, when things broke in the house Nan would shout ‘You’ve left me alone with all this!’ and hide him in the back bedroom. 

Auntie K ‘ I feel the bed springs go sometimes. Like someone’s sitting there.’ 

Auntie J ‘I used to get that. Whenever it happened I knew my life was about to go to shit! I still get the pipe tobacco. Every so often I can smell him.’

It’s a beautiful spot. Looking over the Dee to Wales. Three saplings in a rough triangle is the spot we choose. Probably everyone does. 

J. ‘In spring this is full of flowers.’ 

K. ‘She’d hate this. She hated the countryside. Hated flowers.’

Dad. ‘She wasn’t too keen on Wales.’

Grandad is coarse orange flakes. Nan is fine grey powder. 

Significant advances in cremation technology in the last decades. 

Later, in the pub, Dad (police) and K (nurse) discuss post-mortems with detached intensity.

‘When you get a good pathologist it’s like watching art.’ 

J. ‘I’ve done past life regression. I was swimming in purple. He said that means I’m on me first life! I get to go round again.’ she cackles, does a little chair dance. 

I hate the cheery game show binary of Team Believer and Team Sceptic. Asking if ghosts have the same ontological status as giraffes. The reality of ghosts is there, on the thresholds, in the ruptures and the loops we all experience.  I’m not sure I can become a ghost but I think my ghost can happen to others. But, anyway, when we die I’m really going to miss you. 

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Kinaesthetic - ‘Kin’ AESTHETIC - FUCKING AESTHETIC 

It’s hard to know why the Red Hot Chilli Peppers are so bad. There was that one video, with the tubes, wasn’t that alright - no, no, the tubes are RHCP themselves… I see.

They are actually so bad that they have effectively destroyed the genre called funk for going on four decades now - a truly mesmeric feat, everyone thinks they don’t like it - WRONG, you entirely correctly dislike Red Hot Chilli Peppers, and well done on this, however: category error. I literally couldn’t believe the first time I heard Parliament and Funkadelic (clue in the name) that it was ostensibly the same genre, because it was very good and all I had ever heard was a limpid rotten imitation.

THESE ARE TEXT-ONLY VIDEO ESSAYS

I probably over-concern myself with taxonomies and categorisation but it’s a living folks! Today’s preamble inspired by George Clinton doing a star turn age 90 or whatever on Miguel’s new album ‘CAOS’ closer - I like to say Miguel is my favourite pop star because he is a loveable div, but also I found an excellent troll when Wildheart (with its Corgan swiping Leaves: Miguel - leaves (Official Audio)) came out was to perhaps simultaneously insist it was rock album of the year, guitar based album of the year. This really bothered a couple folk but I think - and he has talked about N*E*R*D and Fishbone promoting this new LP - it is a constant cultural category error, perhaps post-Hendrix and post-Thin Lizzy that black guitar music does not appear to come under the rubric of ‘rock’; Bono is a twat right but he has seen a lot of guitarists and he said Prince was the best. 

Living Color, Bloc Party, Blood Orange, Lenny Kravitz, what’re they, chopped liver?!?! Something to think about there. The interesting feedback here is things like Playboy Carti confidently asserting Ima rock star I coulda joined Slayer on ‘Slay3r’ a track that while somewhat dissonant could scarcely sound less like its purported inspiration - see also Future, when not naming albums after a Chester Brown comic (‘I Never Liked You’) calling an album HNDRXX because he likes purple and paisley mainly afaict

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More Magnus

Black line tubes had been stubborn since morning, and on the way back refused to move at all from the platform at Bank station, beneath the encrypted dead of St Mary Woolnoth. 

The walk from Bank to my connection is quick, and crossing the river late dusk is always good, especially when it promises motion and escape from a day in the air of trains, rain and co-working spaces. The Monument shoots upward from the corner of King William and Fish Street, and, with horror, I’ve walked into last week’s post. Gonna miss my train, but maybe the tube had been telling me something. Stopping there for a reason.

St Magnus The Martyr turns shamefaced, smothered by the refit of Adelaide House next door, named for William’s wife, the queen who would have given anything for just one healthy prince. Wrapped in plastic bandages, mummified Egyptian deco walls.

Wren’s steeple looms beyond sight, and here is an instant shift inside the outer gate. Not the manic desolation of the City at night, or the low pull of the river’s edge, or the familiar, talcum thinness of church air, worn clear through prayer. None of those. A bad feeling. Like something covering its eyes to make itself invisible. And I nearly don’t see it, the faint white marks swallowed up by the LED glare from the faux Victorian hanging lamp.

An eleven year long palimpsest of Epiphany chalk - deep royal magic - written and overwritten. A definitive account of the last decade, the timeline shattered by the parson’s busy hand. The plague year, 2021, is gone entirely: the denials and noncooperation. The earliest mark, just visible, is January 2014, when the prince reversed the magicians’ journey and visited Bahrain, site of both Eden and the Dilmun civilisation which left the earliest evidence of the concept of trade.

The photograph has been censored to avoid accidental reproduction of the invogram’s intent.