The world is alive and no living thing has any remedy

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Pretty chill

The cold grip of the mid-life crisis isn’t subtle. Small, everyday tasks or things you used to enjoy become a site of exhaustion. A little too much cognitive load, a tiny bit too uncomfortable, maybe just the tedium of having done it tens of thousands of times. 

That’s where the Storror boys come in. Chances are you’ve seen at least one of their videos: world class feats of parkour; hair-raising stunts - their dam runs or rope swings; or one of their gruelling “straight line missions”. The sheer *possibility* of youth supercharged with 11 million YouTube followers.

Storror reaches its apotheosis in the form of Toby “Bob” Segar. A parkour prodigy, Ninja Warrior finalist with the demeanour of a cheerful granddad and the false teeth to match. Toby is the Storror crew’s elite force, sent in to do the jobs the rest can’t handle. Always “chill” with a kindly word of advice for his brotherhood.

Of course, the secret is that they’re old for what they do. The risk of becoming that one conspicuous adult down the skate park with his jeans slung below his arse more deadly than the stunts. And yet they are also young. Founder member Benj Cave’s (33?) cowed chill energy contrasting with the mature authority of a miner when the boys are caught trespassing. The channel itself named after the Cave brothers’ generational middle name - Storror-  a gesture towards venerable masculinity in defiance of the youthful vigor that ostensibly powers the channel.

In this confusion of signifiers, to be old and young simultaneously seems possible, but it's the freedom to go anywhere, to do anything unimpeded that most charms the semi-centenarian. We're told that we can become a “Joiner”, a member of a club - an “army” -  that welcomes boys of every age, simply by paying a fee. Our participation authenticated by a hyper compressed movement across a 2D tile plane where the small moves will be effortless until we're cold and dead. Pretty chill.

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A Brief History of British Comics
18: 2000AD

• Publisher – IPC Magazines, Fleetway Publications, Rebellion
• February 1977 – present
• 2,463 progs and counting

At the bridge of the 1970s and 1980s an artistic movement of fervent creativity occurred that had never been seen before, nor was subsequently replicated within the form. To be mentioned in the same breath as the Beats, Bloomsbury Group or French New Wave. An epochal, game changing convergence. 

An astonishing set of artists erupting from the inkwell, brought together by opportunity, coincidence and kismet, who would twist comics into revolutionary shapes with cheerful anarchy, and disruptive, bravura rule breaking. 

Because of their ties to a proudly genre-based, commercial form, and innate critical snobbery, this movement wasn’t recognised or crowned as such. To those that mattered though, it was clear. In school playgrounds, adolescent bedrooms, and bedsits, this renegade artistic revolution was forging its way into eyeballs and veins, consuming an eager audience. Changing them forever. 

It wasn’t that there hadn’t been geniuses or innovators in comics before then. Rather, it was the astonishing array of maverick talent that found itself drawn to this grubby, fledgling sci-fi comic. Five Michelangelos every week. How was it possible? What confluence of butterfly-winged chaotic ripples led these hungry, eager artists to this collective moment?

Angular, fractured explosive images; deep black voids of shadow; perfect sinuous linework; grotesque body-horror distortions. Whole sideways worlds conceived routinely, bringing toxic-hued joy and terror to suburban bedrooms. 

It cannot be overstated what this artistic movement did to a generation. Beautiful damage inflicted willingly. Rippling through films, computer games, music videos, music. Most importantly, exposure to real, raw art on tatty, smudged newsprint every week. Imaginations fired, horizons broadened.

Mike McMahon, Dave Gibbons, Brian Bolland, Kevin O’Neill, Massimo Bellardinelli, Carlos Ezquerra, Garry Leach, Cam Kennedy, Steve Dillon, Ian Gibson, Brendan McCarthy, Ron Smith, Bryan Talbot, Brett Ewins.

Say their names. Exalt them out of the credit box and into eternity. 

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Summa Mycomms

1 spare ticket to see Phillip Pullman @ the British library - Haunted Woods and Grimm Tales Friday 27th March if anyone would like it. Event sold out. Deeply sad I can’t now go due to a clash with child’s first ballet concert, and it would be a shame for it to go to waste. Let me know.

Nice evening – I had some good post-speech conversations. Sneaked off without saying goodbye but couldn’t see you! Best, PF.

Twitter is very bleak these days (esp since Niall was hacked).

We're writing to let you know about changes to the Coinbase User Agreement.

Dear Parent/Guardian, Following the recent outbreak of meningococcal disease (MenB) in Kent, we wanted to make you aware that two Kent secondary schools are confirmed to take part in the National Literacy Trust Reading Champions Senior Quiz trip that your child will attend next week.

It’s time to celebrate: 2026 marks the 10th anniversary of New York Review Comics! To mark the occasion, we're offering up to 40% off all books from the imprint from now until the end of the weekend.

I sort of feel grateful to Milligan. Moore and Morrison huge obviously, but that sense of gratitude is reserved for PM. He ‘delighted’ me in the true sense of the word. When I found Strange Days and Paradax that delight caught fire…so important to my brain. Moore was telling me great stuff. Morrison was showing me great stuff. Milligan was making me laugh and feel lucky ✨

Hi! Looking forward to seeing you later. Steve will head up a bit early, I’ll get there a bit later. Will you be there if he gets there before 6? Anything in particular you want or just the usual? Xx

Got my ears vacuumed, joy!

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Andrew and Steven, Those Amusing Brothers

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We Can Plan a Murder and Start a Religion - Mariam Tovmasian (2025)

Disconsolate men in tracksuits smoke cigarettes, lost in the boredom of the city. When they meet the alien it’s clear what they have to do, commandeer the UFO, show the alien the kingdoms of the world and tempt it to become a god. 

Mariam Tovmasin’s distinctive colour palette and graphic design background combines beauty with extreme awkwardness. Characters bend against the limits of the panels, deform with their feelings. Jesus doesn’t owe you pretty.  

As a teenager in Armenia Tovmasin moved away from the church, resenting the limitations it placed upon women. Moving to the UK shifted her perspective. ‘The alienating experience as an Armenian here and the systems that are at the core of the most horrifying global events in recent decades pushed me closer to what I resented back home.’ 

Armenia knows God. Jesus descended from heaven smashing a golden hammer into the land to show them where to build his church.  

Armenia knows horror. The genocide that began the 20th century is one of the great crimes the British Government find it easy to deny. Modern crimes are also easy to ignore. White phosphorus, cluster munitions and drone strikes on civilian populations. Armenia makes the Genocide Watch list. 

Ever silent the alien declines the chance to become god. We do not understand what the alien wants but the alien does not want this. The janky men’s desire becomes violent in the face of refusal.  Events take on the inevitability of dreams. 

Once your anger has erupted and you have stabbed the alien what else can you do? 

Redefine it as an animal, decapitate it and cloak yourself in its beautiful hair, wear its beautiful face, slip inside the tingling skin. 

But to wear the alien is not to become god, it is to become unknown, bodies transform into abstractions, abstractions confront their shadows. Powers unknown. Potential unknown. Next steps unknown. Using the knife starts a process you can’t stop. 

https://www.instagram.com/tomwunderbar

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Express Elevator to Hell

We queued for ages. A mixture of nerves, excitement and impatience. Frustrated as we got closer due to the presence of Konami’s Aliens coin-op. Not enough time and money.

Eventually we group in front of a Colonial Marine officer escort. Trying to recall our party... Two nondescript men, probably in their twenties but proper adults to us. We’re braver than them, we’re sure. A couple in leather jackets: the man long haired and bearded, the lady with dark hair. My brain imagines Elvira hair, but I don’t think so. A granny with her two grandsons. Younger than us, they evoke feelings of pity and contempt. My friends? The group blurs. Three of us? Four of us? Hard to say. Twelve year olds on average.

Inside, vents hiss, causing us to jump with sore ears. I get picked to open a sliding door. It jams, but our escort can’t wait for me to get it right, rushing through. I fume with embarrassment. We linger and start to question the fear. This is it, isn’t it? They’re just going to try and work on us without showing anything.

Our escort returns and moves us into the next section. We wait but the motion tracker tells him we have to go. Strobe lights flash. It’s me then granny. I look down the corridor we entered from. Granny is abandoned to a walking nightmare.

ISAWITISAWITISAWIT. I’m shaking. My friends missed it. We’re paired in twos to cross an egg chamber. My fear slightly melts as not Elvira clings to me for dear life. Crammed into a lift, a nondescript guy says he knows it’s a ride, but he wants off. Don’t touch that door! He’s ripped out by claws and snarling teeth. We flee to the gift shop, surrounded by t-shirts and Halcyon model kits.

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“A back door into a life divine” - David Comes To Life (Fucked Up, 2006/2011/2022)

I’m wary of full album shows. To quote Simon Munnery: “In Russia nostalgia is regarded as an illness. Or at least it used to be… in the good old days.” Once you’ve cleared a few rooms that belonged to lost souls who lived for the same shit you do, you start to doubt the pharaoh's gambit of holding on to all this stuff forever.

And yet hearing David Comes To Life played end-to-end back in 2022 while a man of podcasting experience stuck plastic water bottles to his head felt like getting the barnacles scraped from my soul.  

It helped that Robin Hatch was there adding layers to the sound. It helped that we needed to scream together after lockdown. It helped that I’d just quit a job that had started to smell of impending breakdown and suicide: “The boot off my throat/Life is returning.” 

Of course, David Comes to Life is also cyclical. A prog-punk concept album in which activism begets romance begets tragedy begets a rammy with the narrator about who’s responsible. Not that you’d necessarily know all that on a passing listen. Fucked Up has evolved since 2011, fleshing out the sequel to this album and the later entries in their Zodiac series with guest vocalists and genre switches to match the narrative sprawl. On David Comes To Life most of the parts are played by chief screamer Damian Abraham, and most of the music charges ahead trying to do all that rock can do at once. It sounds like someone arguing with themselves about whether it’s possible to go on, or whether they even deserve to. It’s too much, relentless. Somehow, in the end it finds strength in the knowledge that things can always be re-told: “The pictures we take don’t resolve/They only reflect”.

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LISAN AL-GHAIB I SEE A TINY LINE OF SILVER

It’s probably worth thinking of North American culture as part of a monadic American culture in order to look at it better; for example consider Mexican bandoleros - when not vaunting lazy former Smiths’ frontman Morrissey - singing of various criminal malfeasance and Young Thug’s trial, the perennial battle between the socialists and fascists which characterise or underlie every Garcia Marquez… A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings is it? Yeah I think you’ll find he’s called Adrian Toomes aka The Vulture, mate.

How can I put this in a sense you - and more importantly I - can comprehend? Right well, DC is surrealism [in its original sense of ‘super-real’:] timelines tectonically overwrite one another, everything is unremembered - it is outwith time; primal and childlike - and Marvel is magic realism, of a moment but underscoring the weird and uncanny aspects of an ever-passing modernity - right hopefully nobody ever needs to explain that again and it’s done.

Lovely stuff, never mind what happens later…

Forsooth, it could never be/for I am a Marvel, and thee a DC

I WOULD DIE 4 U

In music this week, I have been listening to covers of Prince - I Would Die 4 U by Greg Dulli and Holly Humberstone, it never really occurred to me so fully that the song is written as a gospel entirely from the perspective of the Christ as in her hands… in his, well I like the thorough reassertion of masculine ego with Baby I’m A Star at the end so, ehh, maybe that’s telling ;)

LIFEHACK: GAMIFY DULL TASKS BY THINKING OF A GLADIATORS EVENT NAME AND SAYING IT IN THE VOICE, E.G. “PAPERWORK”, “BATHTIME” ETC.

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I'll bloody borag thungg you in a minute!

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Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man (Steven Knight, Tom Harper, Netflix, 2026)

Ever eager for company, dead men love a good war. Underneath us, inverted, noise here is peace there. The war economy is a mass seance, laying rubble on the corpse road for crossing over, sometimes crossing back. Munition factory outputs commence a new production line of human deficits. Construction of red wet voids where people used to be.

Thomas Shelby is the exile king in a hermitage of older ruins, speaking silently with daughter Ruby (sapphire curse) and brother Arthur (Yperite), working the traditional technologies of death. Opium and typewriters. Gypsy perfume. Seeking new words from the spaces between tree, sky and stone. Ancient twist on the resurrection trick, migrating the soul from one lifeless body to another. Digging escape tunnels from the Asphodel Meadow with dynamite and tobacco.

British fascists in alliance with black sun cultists have the parallel strategy of Operation Bernhard. Condensing synthetic labour time from air into promissory notation, casting white fivers from rag paper in the forge. Fatally undermining the crown’s monopoly on currency, temporal coordinates can swell or foreshorten through such manipulation of monetary flows, prolonging empires indefinitely or collapsing their lifespan into months.

Both plans intersect in the body of the son who survived. Raised in secret by his mother, he believed his father to be the lord of the Saxon Shore, so takes the name Duke: a false name stripped from Roman fortifications securing both sides of the channel, a fantasy spun from the inscription on a stolen pocketwatch.

Far from sullying a clear slate, this mess of personal traumas, ancestral damage, testosterone poison and toxic expectation makes Duke a rich loam for the exchange of souls. ‘I’m a horse’ Tommy begs him, riderless, for the mercy bullet with his name on, cursing his son to complete the circuit and release them both into the horror of new life.