No context, all feeling: Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma

A recent urge to only read reviews of new movies after I've seen them has been really paying off. I can still get the idea of whether a film is worth seeing from headlines, star ratings and general vibe, and I can leave the analysis for afterwards.

Sometimes I don't think I'm getting anything further out of it, and almost every piece of criticism about something is making the most basic of observations, the most inane of takes. And increasingly, I find a lot of modern film writing genuinely baffling, because they are immersed in a wider context that is so broad that I just can't get my head around it.

Teenage Sex and Death At Camp Miasma is clearly not for everybody, but I definitely got my kicks from it - I got the jokes about who produced The Burning, or the name of the old-school director. It's not the sort of film that I would recommend to everybody, because there is complexity in the way it tells its story, and I'm not entirely sure what is real and what isn't by the end of it, and I am 100 percent fine with that. 

I'm sure I am missing a whole bunch of subtext, just because I'm not a gender-fluid young person still figuring out their place in the world, but there are universal pleasures in a subversion of a slasher film, along with recognisable feelings of awkwardness and horniness that can resonate with anybody. If nothing else, we can all admit to having a giant crush on Gillian Anderson, no matter which way you roll.

And I have read some writing about the film since seeing it that has giving me wonderfully intellectual food for thought, and most of it has been generally positive about the film. But I've also stumbled across some fairly harsh criticism of the film, and it might be completely warranted, but I honestly have no idea. They are all about the film's place in a vaster and largely online culture that is completely alien to me. I just have no idea what they are talking about. (And I'm not going to link to the piece here, because that's not going to help.)

I have only tasted the tiniest portion of queer cinema, and love it as much as a painfully hetro dude can, because it gives me another point of view of the world, and that is always valuable. But I don't really engage in the wider culture around it because it's not my culture, and the last thing it needs is another buffoon like me trampling all over the fuckin' place.

But I do my best, and I don't sweat it when this film is slammed for improper representation, because they might have a point. I don't know.

I'm sure this kind of criticism is extremely useful for people who do understand what they want, but looking at a single work as just as a tiny piece of a wide context also feels like a faintly miserable way to engage with an artwork.

There is a blissful ignorance in not knowing exactly what is going on, and what it is trying to say, and I look forward to making some effort to getting my head around it. It's something new to learn about, it's that wider view of the world again, it's what it's all about.

No context, all feeling: The Hunger Dogs by Jack Kirby

For many years, all I knew about The Hunger Dogs graphic novel was the house ad in other DC comics which reproduced the cover - Darkseid awkwardly crammed into a jet sled, blasting away as he flees the filth who dared rise up against him.

Beyond that, most of what I heard about this comic book was negative - that Kirby was forced to compromise for his grand ending to the Fourth World saga, that last-minute rewrites crippled the story and that there was general bitterness about the way the King was treated. And all the fanzine articles and essays focused on how it's a deeply pessimistic work, with Kirby's hope for the youth curdling away, and the whole book is generally regarded as some kind of failure.  

But finally reading this comic book in the sci-fi year of 2026, all that bending of the plot to cohere with the wider DC universe deeply doesn't matter. The New God continuity has been twisted into a glorious incoherence in the years since, and it really doesn't matter what the current status of New Genesis is in the wider universe.

All you can hope for with any kind of Fourth World story is that it stands up on its own merits, and is an entertaining package in some way, and the Hunger Dogs certainly gave me that.

It might be a downer of a story by Kirby's usually optimistic standards, but it also has his amazing overwrought dialogue and captions, and brilliant full page spreads like this - 

- and this - 

- and this! -

It's magnificent art on slick paper in an oversized format, and the energy Kirby puts into every single page show no hint of the pressures he was under to conform to a mid-1980s DC vision. 

It stands as a spectacular and fitting end to the artist's DC work, and while it may have been sneered at over the years, it's a comic that can still blow your face off with its 40-year-old art. That's no failure to me. 

Death of the big box PC

Our last big box computer shat to death itself last week. It was going okay, but then things started catastrophically failing, and there were a few tense days where I couldn't get it to boot up at all, and I struggled to save my data, which I only managed to do through the glory of the safe mode.

When I say data, I mean all the kids photos, music collection, old fan fiction I wrote in 1997 and rips of Adam Curtis documentaries. You know, the important stuff in life.

I couldn't blame the computer, it was something like 12 years old, so was ancient for that kind of technology. Usually they only lasted four or five years. By my count it was the fifth big box of computing power that I've owned since the 1990s, and almost certainly the last.

Nobody except the most well-off families in town had a personal computer when I was growing up. There were plenty at school, and I did have friends where we could go play the Dune strategy game, or the first 3D Wolfenstein, but they were little more than tools, even for the people who used them for vital business stuff, and also for playing solitaire when business was slow.

Even with the internet exploding all over the show in the 90s, I didn't get my first PC until around 2000 because they were just so damn expensive. My first attempt was an embarssing failure, as I discovered I had been lumped with an awful credit rating after an unreliable flatmate had fucked me, but I finally had my own computer around the turn of the century. I had to save up the money and pay for it up front to get around that shit credit.

Since then, I've crammed files onto these hard drives until they shiver and shake, and then I've uploaded to a new one. My first one played the first halting internet videos, a few years before Youtube changed everything on that front, but I mainly used my computer to stay in contact with my fan fiction mates.

But the time I had got to this last PC, it had accumulated decades of data storage, movies from the 2000s, all the photos of children and travel. Every CD I've bought or borrowed in the new century got ripped onto the drive, and that's thousands of hours of music. All sorts of insane writings, although I did somehow lose a lot over the years - a film script I once wrote with the great Joe Rice somehow got completely lost, and while that's the one thing I missed the most, it's also makes me wonder what else got lost forever that I didn't even notice.

Now that last PVC has died, all the options seem to be laptop based, and there are few options for a chunky box that takes up precious space in the world. The laptops are slim and delicated, but have just as much computing power, and it's dead easy to hook it up to a bigger screen. Nothing has really changed, although I am annoyed by the lack of CD/DVD drives.

So that's the end of another quiet era, and while that thrill of connection my own computer gave me has evolved into a general weariness with the availability of the world of my phone, I will miss my big box of technology.

Daredevil: Get in, sucker!

-Daredevil #265 

Pencils by John Romita Jr 

Inks by Al Williamson 

Words by Ann Nocenti 

Colours by Max Scheele 

Letters by Joe Rosen

You don't know what I want to say

I'm so anti-AI that when my phone tries to predict what I say in a text message, I most definitely do not use what it suggests, even if it's exactly what I was going to say, which is often is. Fuck you, I won't say what you want me to.

This will really make me feel superior when the Terminator crushes my skull into the apocalyptic dirt, is all I'm saying.

Hulk belongs in the desert

Almost all the Marvel movies have some small moment that I can appreciate - a piece of action, some charming moment of acting, or even something approaching some kind of emotional resonance. And one of my favourites came from one of the earliest movies of the modern superhero age, when we first saw the Hulk bounding into the desert and beating the shit out of some tanks.

There was something wonderful at seeing the impossible physics of the jade giant bounding across vast distances - the speed, the surprising agility, not just the raw power you'd expect from the strongest creature on the planet. It's easy to buy into that unfeasibly large bounding across the desert, and you can believe that this unreal creature would be able to crush a full-sized tank.

It's interesting to note that this movie was released just as American troops are heading off to a desert on the far side of the world, and getting bogged down in battle against an enemy that has none of the technological advantages. But it's also a time when everyone has to Support The Troops, and it makes the point of seeing the battered and bruised tank crew stagger out of an impact that should have turned them into red paste coating the interior of their vehcile

But all that wider context doesn't detract from the fun of the thing. This movie was made when they bothered getting directors with actual visions, instead of just people who will serve corporate demands, and Ang Lee and his collaborators made a move that doesn't have that dull reality of later Marvels. 

It's biggest thrill is actually in the unreality of the thing, the relative crudeness of the CGI creation, the vibrant green, which was later dulled down and dirtied up for every subsequent cinematic Hulk, because dorks couldn't stop making Shrek jokes. 

There was a sadly bold focus on the use of split screen to capture the feel of a comic, but the setting brings the familiarity of the original four-colour adventures. For decades the Hulk was roaming around the desert, getting into the shit. 

He belongs in these wide, empty spaces, where he has the room to do a sonic boom clap, or hurl some artillery away over the horizon, and where the only people that could get hurt are the fools that try to pick a fight with the Incredible Hulk.

Raging at the silly shit

I took myself right out of anything to do with Doctor Who fandom a few years ago, and my enjoyment of the show increased, so I remain as convinced as ever that if the entertainment you consume makes you angry, than you're doing it wrong.

Some stuff is supposed to make you angry, to get you fired up about something in the real world that deserves your rage, but so many people seem to think this is the appropriate response to anything you disagree with, no matter how trivial the source material is.

I'm disappointed when my entertainments are disappointing, especially if they waste their potential, but these things are there to make you feel and think and groove, and they are not the most important thing in the world. They are definitely not worth getting angry about.

It just feels like we are all drowning in gross entitlement that so many people mistake for loyalty, that the viewer or reader is owed something by the creator, and that if they don't fulfill those expectations, than they deserve insults and scorn.

I still hated the last Star Wars as much as anybody, but that whole sequel saga is still getting some outraged reactions, and fucking hell, it's not the end of the world. Movies and comics I dearly love have soured, but so fucking what, they're only movies and comics? They're not real, they're no substitute for real love and human connection. 

I do have some hope that we're all just getting burned out by this kind of reaction, after two solid decades of social media foolishness, but it still keeps simmering away.

The world can be a shitty, shitty place sometimes and the past year has been particularly grim, especially when we feel unable to stop the world from burning down, and that's where my rage goes, not into who is being cast as the new James Bond.

All the money in the world can't buy a single gram of style

One of the striking things about the Succession TV show were the spaces these ultra-rich wankers all lived in. They looked like classy hotels, not a place where real people loved and were loved. They were just nothing, with any personal touches styled right out of the room, so they ended up having homes that spoke of their own vapidness.

And I have a weird belief that that the more valuable something is, the tackier it is. The one time we went to the Tower of London, and saw the fabled Crown Jewels, I just thought they were a bit tacky. Too ostentatious, trying too hard to be impressive, and steamrolling any sense of style this finely crafted jewelry could ever have.

Having the kind of money to spend on any kind of jewel, or living in the same places the Roys called home, are not anything I have to worry about. But it's also something I don't think I'll ever miss.

Hellboy and the inevitable end of all things

While there is a general consensus that the BPRD series by Mike Mignola and pals went on for too long, and never really recovered from the loss of Guy Davis' art, the slow apocalypse that truly breaks the world of men in this story is a hell of a ride.

And I remain a little haunted by the final issue of the series, as a metaphor for my own mortality, and the inescapable fate we all must face, sooner or later.

Mignola's art makes a welcome return in those final pages, delivering on the grim promise the entire series has been dealing with. The end that was always spoken of is finally there, and it really is Hellboy standing there with Hecate at the end of all things. The world is destroyed, and he takes his final steps into an iron coffin.

Every Hellboy story has been telling us this will happen, but after reading about the endlessly noble efforts to stave it off, it can't be avoided. And Hellboy has reached the final moments of his story along with the end of the world, and it haunts me because I know we all get there in the end, 

At some point we all face that same moment, despite our own efforts to delay it. We can fight the bug-eyed monsters coming up from the earth, but it will be overrun by dragons, before burning in a  cleansing flame. And one day, no matter how much we don't like to think about it, we will all face our own demise.

We will all be there.

Of course, there have been loads of Hellboy-related content ever since, with the adventures of Big Red as a young monster hunter, or Frankenstein going out into the truly post-apocalyptic world for his own adventures. But this is the inevitable end of all things.

None of us know when that last moment will come, or even if we will face it with fear, or dignity, or something unexpected. Hellboy just gets on with it, and it's something we all have to do as well.

Falling into rock albums again

This might be the lamest thing that a thoroughly basic middle-aged wanker like me could ever say, but it's still true - I think listening to rock albums is awesome.

I feel quite strongly about this awfully controversial opinion at the moment, because I have recently got back into the entire idea of listening to a whole album, to the exclusion of everything else. Lying down on the sofa, putting on some headphones, cutting out the world, and just luxuriating in the music.

I work nights and have some free time during the day while the kids are at school, and I can usually carve out 45 minutes in a day to do nothing else but listen to some Pink Floyd. It is enormously relaxing to do so, and just wipes everything away. I never fall asleep, so it's not an actual nap. Just a lie down.

Everybody everywhere is very stressed at the moment, for unique and justifiable reasons, so immersing in an album is one way to deal with it - and it's one that works for me. 

I sit in the sunshine with my eyes closed, and see patterns as the music plays, strange thoughts coalescing into something almost tangible. Not actual hallucinations, just the brain seeing patterns that aren't there and making some sense of them.

My music listening has been largely run by playlists for a while now, so it actually feels refreshing when you give in to one artist's vision. I try to vary the types of music I listen to in this state, but have been unable to avoid falling into prog rock. I have visited the Court of the Crimson King, and I have really into the Pink Floyd.

The Floyd will always be my first favourite band, the first group where I would listen to their albums on headphones. Sometime in 1988, when I'm just starting to really get into music, I've got some Pink Floyd on the stereo on a regular basis, and spend hours hooked up to the system, oblivious to all the usual teenage angst.

Four decades later, and it's just as relaxing to listen to the same tunes all over again. Possibly more so, with all the stress of actual adult life to deal with and shut out. Get your kicks where you can, kids. even if you have to resort to prog rock.

The War of the Worlds: Is there anyone out there?!

- The War of the Worlds

Art by D'Israeli 

Story by H G Wells 

Adapted by Ian Edginton

We covet what we see every day

Hannibal Lecter was always a good laugh in the hands of Sir Tony Hopkins. He really only tries to kill the rudest of people, and who can really blame him for that? 

But there is something properly horrific about the way they figure out a crucial fact about Buffalo Bill - that we covet what we see every day - that has always stuck in my mind as something deeply uneasy, because the real terror isn't Hannibal the Cannibal coming to bite your face off, it's the people you see every day that you really have to worry about.

Four big thoughts about the chunky cassette tapes on the new release shelf

Four thoughts that quickly went through my thick head when I saw the above display at a local store:

1) Oh cool, cassette tapes must be making a comeback. That's nice. Tapes were the way I first heard the music I really loved.

2) They're having a laugh asking forty bucks for Mariah Carey's Christmas album. I'm sure I could get you a copy for 50c down the dump shop, it sold like gangbusters for decades and millions of those tapes are still out there in the world.  

3) Putting the new Phoebe Bridgers album out on tape is probably a great idea, but giving it a flimsy cardboard cover defeats much of the point that these things are an object, a chunky slice of possibly unearned nostalgia, and the extremely resilient plastic covers that the tapes went in is a big part of it. It's bad enough that the new CDs I still buy to listen to in the car come in flimsy carboard covers that quickly rip apart, instead of the sleek plastic of the originals, but if you want people to pay forty bucks for some kind of cultural artifact, you have got to give them some heft.

4) I don't need new tapes, I still got ones that I bought in the 80s, man. 

How to be absolutely rubbish at self promotion

I was recently reading a short book about David Lynch and, as always, I came away with a sneaky admiration and blatant jealousy towards his dedication to the Artist Life, although I do feel sympathy for the loved ones he ignored in that never-ending pursuit. 

I don't have anywhere near that kind of dedication, but do still feel that need to create something from nothing, like almost everybody else in this world. I'm not particularly talented at drawing pictures or carving sculptures, and lack the collaborative skills to create something bigger like a movie.

But I do like putting words in a particular order to make fleeting thoughts permanent, which is how I've managed to keep this blog going for almost two decades, and I do like writing stories. 

I enjoy the problem solving of a larger narrative, putting it all together in a way that makes sense, playing around with grammar and plot convention to try and scrape out something new to say. I adore having finished a short novel, and completing it to my satisfaction.

What I really hate is the idea of trying to sell it, or even having to advertise in any way whatsoever.

I never do any kind of promotion for this blog, and have multiple novels that I've completed and lost all interest in actually doing something about it afterwards. The idea of having a larger social media presence to put the word out there about something I've created, of having to go out into the world and selling it, just repels me.

There's definitely some cowardice in there. If I never show anything to anybody, nobody can tell me it is terrible - or worse, boring - and I stay in my safe little bubble. But for me, the work really is the thing. I care too much about the journey to ever give a damn about the destination.

It's one of the things I always liked about Banksy, and while he has a talent for acerbic wit and some pretty stenciling, his greatest accomplishment is his anonymity. People try to out him every few years and I never pay any attention, because it's all about the art, and nothing about the human behind it.

That's my excuse for that cowardice, and how once I have finished something, I can just move on to the next thing, and don't look back.  

All my dreams come true

I sound like a fucking idiot every time I go to one of the local comic book stores - the absolutely excellent Iron Age Comics in Auckland's beautiful Eden Terrace, which I recently scored a bunch of mindbogglingly good $1 comics - because every time I'm in there I say something like 'holy fuck, I've been looking for this book for 30 years!' like a goddamn rube.

It's true, though. I had been hunting for the first Love and Rockets sketchbook since the 90s - I got volume two not long after it was published, but never saw the first edition anywhere until the week before last. And I had been after Lars Pearson's 'I, Who' book about all the Doctor Who novels since at least 2001 (and finding i recently could not be more timely); and the DC Comics Presents annual with Superwoman had been on my list since sometime in the 1980s.

I sound like an idiot because I actually am an idiot, but it doesn't take much to please a fool and I am so incredibly chuffed to get these treasures I was after for decades, and then just fiund sitting on the shelves. 

Looking for the next big nerd project

While I try to vary the type of novels that I read as much as possible, Doctor Who books have been a constant in my life for the past seven or eight years.

I've been regularly reading all the Doctor Who New Adventures books published by Virgin in the 1990s. after completing my collection of them a decade ago (after 20 years of searching). It made perfect sense to read them all in order, and actually follow the whole story across thousands and thousands of pages. It took me a while to get going, but after a while I started sticking to a schedule of reading one every month, and now I've just knocked off Bad Therapy by Matthew Jones, number 57 in the series.

There were 61 novels in all, so I am just about there. And while I am enjoying the accomplishment, the obvious question is about what to do next. What long series of novels can I spend the next few years churning though?

I was considering the Wild Cards books, about the strange world of Aces and Jokers and their superhuman wars. I read the first half dozen in the 90s, but haven't really dipped into it since then. I would have to track down at least a dozen or so books before I got into that, though, so that one might be one for later.

Maybe all the James Ellroy books - I enjoyed the fuck out of his most recent novel and have read all of them at some point of another, but never in any kind of order. I just don't think immersing myself in the headspace of his incredibly deplorable characters for a long period of time would be that healthy. 

I'm leaning towards more Doctor Who, in some form, because they've been enormously entertaining. I do have all the Bernice New Adventures books, and that could last me a couple of years. Or maybe I can time travel into the past with the Virgin Missing Adventures, although I am still maddeningly short of a full series. I could even get started on the BBC Books with the Eighth Doctor, although there are massive holes in that series.

I don't have to rush. I have longform comic things that I can get into, I recently spent weeks reading almost nothing but Garth Ennis comics about the Punisher, and still remember how a full read of Lone Wolf and Cub helped get me through two Covid lockdowns, but they usually only take a week or two. And watching a whole longform TV series might take a couple of months - I just started ripping through all the Tales of The Crypt episodes last week. 

But a series of novels can take years to get through, and that feels like something of an accomplishment. A small amount of dedication and some perseverance. That's all it takes to tackle the most massive of narratives.

My peak dad is explaining Storm on the work to school

Like all parents of young children, I ache for the babies they once were, but I do adore the creatures they are becoming. Especially when they ask me about the X-Men.

We walk to school every morning, and it takes about 20 minutes through mainly quiet suburban streets, and we spend that time talking about the usual things, like the other kids at school, and what they have been learning, and what they want to eat for a snack when they get home.

But we have also recently been spending a lot of time talking about superheroes, and it feels like the most useful I've ever been as a parent. When the seven year old needs to know the back story of Iron Man, I've got the goods, and when she demands a list of all of Wonder Woman's enemies, I can spend 10 minutes just talking about the Cheetah.

Filling young brains with this nonsense might be intellectually dubious, but in a world of never-ending uncertainties, the kids can be reassured that their dad knows his superhero shit. This gives me an enormous sense of wellbeing.

There are interesting side effects - after giving up some details about the X-Men and Storm in particular, I did catch the kid out in the back garden, trying to move the clouds with her mind. I tried to not laugh too much, but the skies did quickly clear, so she definitely got the last laugh. (The whole neighbourhood has also recently avoided rain showers that soaked nearby suburbs, just enough to make me wonder...).

I just have so much useless information stored away, ready to come out whenever anyone asks, and nobody has ever asked before. Endless hours with the Marvel handbooks and the DC Who's Who and it finally pays off. 

I do desperately want the kids to find their own things, and encourage them to consume entertainment that baffles me, and delights them. But if they ever want to know about the Legion of Super Heroes, I am one million percent here for them.

Justice League America: I never learn!

- Justice League America #33 

Art by Adam Hughes and Art Nichols 

Words by Kieth Giffen and JM DeMatteis 

Letters by Bob Lappan 

Colours by Gene D'Angelo

They spilled AI on my Batman comic!

I don't know if the miscreants who put this execrable blurb on the back of a perfectly serviceable Batman comic used AI for it, or if their brains have just been so rotted by AI use that they think saying 'This intentional focus reassures readers of a steadfast commitment to a more authentic, detective-driven experience...' is an acceptable thing to say about a Batman comic book.

Either way, this is an anti-blurb. They are meant to be selling you on this comic, not actively turning you away. There are many things about the use of AI that are wrong and indefensible, but actively doing the opposite of what they should is certainly one of the big ones, and one even the money men should understand.

Student radio forever

I still feel like a total perv when I get into the pop music produced by young female musicians - while I am very much not the target audience for it, I can't help it if they keep making some stonking music. Our household has been listening to a lot of Phoebe Bridgers lately.

I also feel similarly awkward when I listen to student radio too much, but they also give me great music to listen to, and I can't do much about that either.

The main reason I end up listening to so much of the local student radio station is the very dumbest reason in the world. I only listen to the radio while driving around town, and Auckland University's BFM is the only radio station that plays music at the top of the hour, and I get unheathily angry at the ads all the other stations are playing (I even have a oddly visceral reaction to the way every ad ends with somebody saying 'tees and cees applies', as if that is just so much cooler than saying 'terms and conditions').

And every other radio station (apart from my beloved public broadcaster, if I'm in the mood for news), fills the airwaves with their awful braying commercials, except for the students, and I just end up listening to them by default.

But I also still like the shabby nature of student radio. I never really went to university, but I still adore the drawl of the young student announcer, the bored monotone is quite relaxing compared to the hyperactivity of the commercial radio DJs.

And, most of all, it's where I hear the new music that I would never hear anywhere else. All the hip young things and the forgotten legends. There is always a part of me that craves the new sound, the tune that isn't like anything else in the world, and the student radio delivers it up every single day.

And then there are the shows focused on hardcore dub, or old school reggae, or eternal old country tunes, or thrash metal. Old beats and archaic sounds that are as fresh as anything else produced in 2026, because they are new to me, and not like anything else on the airwaves. I still feel old while I listen to them, but not that old.