Scansion tells us very little

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Andrew and Steven, Those Amusing Brothers in We Could Be Heroes Part 1

Starting today! An epic, novel-length exploration of what it means to be a hero. Read and learn, cowards!

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COMA by Zara Slattery (Myriad Editions, 2021)

I was initially drawn to COMA, Zara Slattery’s graphic novel describing her experience of coma from the inside, by its luminous artwork. Slattery can really draw, and the book’s Ronseal title doesn’t do justice to the baroque, psychedelic visions contained therein, all beautifully rendered in moody watercolour. Comatose Zara tumbles through a surreal underworld of snakes (a subconscious symbol of the necrotising fasciitis ravaging her body) floating heads, chained Blakean demons and accusing nurses - there’s even a Singing Detective musical number.

Her comatose limbo land is replete with wildlife - Brighton seagulls and ominous ravens, and she herself transforms into a hare and fox. Most fascinating are how impingements from the external world are incorporated into her roiling internal narrative, most obviously in the ubiquitous hospital curtains. My favourite recurring creature/character is a Winsor McCay-esque blue dinosaur with a hospital ward for a head, who appears to represent the coma itself.

But equally well drawn, literally in dark blue pencil, and in its subtle characterisation, is the other half of the novel, a tender depiction of the family she has ‘left behind’. In a narrative apparently taken verbatim from his diary, her husband and their three kids cope with their suddenly transformed life, equally surreal in its own way, of school, swimming lessons, car breakdowns and hospital visits.

In humdrum contrast to Slattery’s bizarre and solitary coma-verse, here relatives and friends rally round, giving lifts to the hospital and cooking lasagnes. This side of the narrative floored me, a poignant depiction of life when something terrible and unexpected befalls you, all the more honest and moving in its mundanity.

It’s no great spoiler (Zara Slattery is thankfully alive!) to say that these two mutually illuminating strands eventually meet in a reunion that, like the book itself, is tender and subtly underplayed.

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Planks Constant

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The Horned God (Pat Mills, Simon Bisley)
Part Two: And so we return 

If you want to destroy a people destroy their dreams. Cyclical Time is the heart of Sjoo and Mor’s Goddess. A society in communion with the ever-changing Goddess, led by women, centring on the cycles of their body and observation of the seasons. A society where they control their reproductive cycles. A society where the spiritual and the sexual were united, the necessary condition for ecstasy and illumination. 

Into this storm the solar gods, imposing linear time as a means of control. Christianity perfects the technology with a religion where we progress only to Armageddon. Our suffering is deserved, our suffering is right. The only life worth living is in imitation of Christ and in heaven you will have your reward. 

To do this they had to destroy cyclical time, humanity’s link with the rhythms of the body and the rhythms of the world. The Malleus Maleficarum has ‘observation of times and seasons’ as the third most dangerous superstition. 

The spiritual has been ripped from the sexual and sex is sin. Men control reproduction. Sjoo and Mor place control of women’s labour in giving birth as the primary source of capitalist control. The mythic is their present. Increasing anti-abortion activism in Regan’s America, the sterilisation of Filipino workers making Barbies for Mattel in Free Trade Zones, manifestations of the same patriarchal process. 

Abstraction from material reality has been perfected by the Financial Sector. Labour and material production replaced as profit generators for abstract notions of financial instruments and the impossible myth of infinite growth. 

But the planetary crisis this is accelerating is crashing back into the imaginary numbers. 

Historic data stops accurately forecasting. Unprecedented floods occur with terrible regularity. Insurers are suddenly exposed to risk, the liabilities undermine capital, costs explode. The market responds by issuing Catastrophe Bonds, a new financial instrument that allows you to bet on natural disasters. 

The Horned God ends with a flood. The Goddess washing away the city virus that has already infected the Tribes of Danu.

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Can I just axe a small favour?

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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Monica (Daniel Clowes, 2023)

Nine short strips, from war story to cult expose, encompassing the span of a life. The format demands an expert, someone who can see beyond what’s in front of their face. Thankfully the publishers put their best man on the job! “The stories with the brownest pages depict the most fabulous and sensational events” - TCJ, 11/10/23. “I'm not sure I want to reveal the "secret meaning" behind the color schemes” - Dan Clowes to TCJ, 30/10/23.

Breath on the back of the neck. The end is near.

The gaps between strips created a similar effect in earlier issues of Eightball, but they’ve been announcing their high intentions since at least Ice Haven. The post-pulp visuals will likewise be familiar to readers of The Death Ray and Patience. No one’s rushing to call Clowes’ art “toyetic” but in the right context his work captures what it feels like to find a childhood trinket in a family loft. It’s not impossible to imagine them as they once might have been seen, but it’s easier to intuit what’s been lost along the way.

About that diminished feel. There have been times in the post-Eightball era where Clowes’ aesthetic has demanded the world be smaller than it actually is – the despair of Prospero seeing his face in his well-buffed trinkets. As Monica gets closer to annihilation, the question of what these bits and bobs are getting at becomes harder to avoid, hence that business with the paperstock. Crucially, despite all the harshly drawn faces, it’s possible to adduce what satisfaction might look like in this world.

That these elements sometimes feel convincing but still don’t quiet the need to scratch away for a deeper meaning makes Monica feel like the perfect product of a moment that’s crying out for an ending.

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“CAUSED CONSIDERABLY LESS SHITTING THAN THE PREVIOUS INSTALMENT - 9/10”

New Big Alan of course - both the Long London books have seriously distressed my innards, I think appropriately given contact with a higher world with no fixed points of, like, scale and distance (how does Soundwave shrink, don't think too long on it) for all concerned is actually quite upsetting. Coincidence, no mate that's how magic works - I am only 2 chapters into this and have spent two nights so sleep deprived from gut inflammation that the subconscious mind starts broadcasting and words start to feel like real things and of course at this point you can’t think of any nice words - possibly some psychological barricading because I have signed up to a nutrition course to get swole(r) and I find investing in myself very difficult oh my God did I not want to think about high calorie and protein intake but I largely blame (& simultaneously respect massively) Alan.

Mind that tweet about English folk calling people “an absolute legend - and a total cunt” well that's specifically about his one time peer Frank Miller. That's the actual guy. It might also be Steve Ditko but importantly, it is not Brendan McCarthy who is simply a disappointment (well and a cunt) after all that, a guy who could genuinely make you go “yeah tell him glinner”. Unbelievable.

As I say 2 chapters in so not counting chickens and intestinally fortitude fully but I really do think these are his best prose by some distance because they go down with a sugar of commercial storytelling and some good laughs and such, the real deal concepts, the bloody…Inferred Saracen doing an atempotal soundclash and presaging Goldie by 40 and Jim Legxacy by 70 years - that Future Sound of London drifts through more effectively… buttered up.

I can remember exactly when drum'n'bass and jungle were commodified into irrelevance btw, and it was when that fairly decent Roni Size LP won the Mercury, just the notion of this playing at keyswapping coke dinner parties in [I don't know what area of London]... dreadful. Weird how this only happens to African genres too innit idk idk