Grendel versus the vampires

Matt Wagner's Grendel saga has gone to some very strange places over the years of publication. It's gone far into the future and deep within the darkest psyches, but one thing has been a constant for decades and decades - it's that vampires fucking suck.

Grendel started out as the anti-Batman, but had something else in common with the very earliest versions of the Dark Knight - they both hate bloodsuckers. To be fair, original Grendel Hunter Rose's main nemesis was more of a werewolf, but ever since Christine Spar picked up the forks, vampires have been Grendel's bane.

And far in the future world, where Grendel has metamorphized into something strange and honourable, vampires became a society-threatening scourge, and almost wiped out the sun with the power of bananas before all getting locked up in Vegas (it got complicated).

And the vampires have been there ever since, simpering in the dark before launching into slaughter, throughout the Grendel Tales, and hiding in the arctic snow in War Child.

Wagner's return to Grendel Prime and his fucked-up future world in recent years have seen Prime shot off into the great beyond, and there are no nosferatu in space, although there were plenty of other monstrosities, (the Trump stuff was so on the nose, I'm a little surprised it wasn't commented on more, although that might be because we're all just fucking sick of that guy).

But Prime is back on earth in the most recent series, and the first few issues of Devils Crucible have revealed that the vampires have finally won. Their longevity and animal ruthlessness have conquered the world, with the only technologically advanced part of the planet in a society built on cruelty and base servitude, while gross naked hags wandering the wasteland, all beautifully rendered by Wagner with his typically unflinching line.

The story of Grendel does get very complicated, but can also be utterly direct, and Grendel Prime's latest foe is the oldest of enemies. The demonic influence of Grendel might have blown up the world, but it's also the only thing left standing against the leeches.

Twists, cameos and the benefits of shutting the fuck up

It wasn't easy, watching the latest series of Slow Horses with the lovely wife. I'm seven books into the series, and am hooked on its vibe of a bunch of useless cunts in a world that demands never-ending competence. So the big twist in the new episodes is old news in the books, and even with the smll changes of adaptation, I had to answer all of her 'does this mean...?' questions with a stony silence that just felt mean.

But it was worth it, because I don't want to ruin the fun for everyone, especially the love of my life. 

So all I could do is literally bite my lip when an obvious clue to a main character's parentage flashed across the plot, and let her figure it out for herself. And she did! She absolutely fucking nailed it, two weeks before it was confirmed on screen. Right down to the question of why the doppelganger looked so familiar. It was very, very sexy to see her work it out.

The same thing happened with Beetlejuice, where my sheer fucking delight at the use of the climactic song had me aching to bellow it out around the house, but I didn't want to ruin it for the wife, and I sorted it out by taking her to another screening.

That worked too, because then she started singing it around the house in moments of high melodrama, and all is well in the home. Except for the poor kids, they think that song is fucking awful and visibly cringe every time we launch into it. 

They are still pre-schoolers, and they really have no idea of the cringe to come.

I'm still keeping my mouth fucking shut on something else - the beautifully gratuitous cameos in Deadpool/Wolverine. She's relatively offline and still has no idea who shows up in that wasteland, or what actors are playing what parts, and I'm pretty sure she'll remain oblivious until she actually sees the film, somewhere down the line.

Maybe she'll see something on some other website, but she won't see it here. I ain't ruining anything for anyone anymore.

This is a house of McMahon: Bat, man.

I still maintain that the one thing than McMahon's typically gorgeous and gonzo art on an early 90s Batman book, and that's reading the letter column four issues later, which is 99 percent 'what the fuck is this shit?'.

Looking for the light in the Story of Film again

I've been running out of things to play in the background for my worknight triple features, so have been going through Mark Cousins excellent Story of Film documentary again - that's 15 hours right there.

It's worth going through to find out about things like the wildly innovate Brazilian films of the 1930s, but mainly I just like the way Cousins keeps saying 'look at the light' in his outrageously soft accent. Considering he is talking about a medium entirely composed of lights, he says things like that a lot.

I really do need to check out his women in film update to his story. There is always more light. 

Inside the Majestic

While most of my day job as a journalist is spent dealing with breaking news and putting active language into other peoples' stories, sometimes I get to write about other stuff that I'm interested in. So of course the only significant thing I have done so far this year is a feature about the current state of the first movie theatre I ever remember going to.

If I can't write about that, what am I even doing here?

So here is my story about The Majestic Theatre. I might never hear those voices echoing off those vast walls anymore, but at least it's not dead yet.

Spider-Man doesn't really need a dead body

The last animated Spider-Man movie was a wonderful overload of the sense, with incredibly kinetic cartooning, outrageous style choices and some great character work.

But while it really cements Miles as the future of all things Spider, the big spider-society multi-versal thing was already feeling stale and unwashed, and they are all, quite frankly, a bunch of unimaginative losers, not worthy of the Spider-Man name.

The rabidness with which Miguel O'Hara and the hundreds of other Spider-Men chase after Miles is so obviously villainous, because they, more than anybody, should know that the ends do not justify the means, but still insist that somebody has to die before anybody can really be a proper Spider-Man. It's the rules, man.

This requirement, that Spider-Man has to stand over a dead body before he becomes a true hero, just bugs me, in the same way it's always annoying to se religious people express their bafflement that atheists aren't murdering their way through life, because they don't believe in divine retribution.

Because it's the obviously right thing to do, maybe?

Peter Parker is a goddamn genius, but his origin story is so selfish, like he can't see this obviousness in doing the right thing. And extending that to the vast, vast majority of Spider-Men throughout existence,  degrades the whole idea of Spider-Man

If so many of them can't transcend this strict requirement, what good are they? If they don't even try to save the day, regardless of fate or destiny, then they're not fucking Spider-Men, they're just cosplaying.

Miles is the hero of these films, so we're obviously not meant to be on the side of the mob, but when so many wear a spider mask and don't even try to buck the system, they're all just terribly ordinary.

Namor is in the pool

It's widely accepted that Namor absolutely rocked the power suit in the John Byrne series from the early 90s, but this little sequence from the fourth issue of the run also lingers in my mind, long after the padded shoulders faded from fashion. 

It's just a simple scene that advances the greater plot slightly, but the way the ripples of the water reflect around the room sell the aquatic nature of our hero in a way few other Sub-Mariner comics ever bother with, and the casual way Namorita is just lying there with her face submerged show that Byrne (and, of course, colorist extraordinaire Glynis Oliver) are putting some real thought into the depiction of Namor's wet life.  

Irvine Welsh and the poetry of the scum

Trainspotting changed my life when it was released in 1996, but in my defense, I was 21 at the time, and a lot of things were changing my life on a regular basis at that age.

At least the things I took from Trainspotting weren't stuff like heroin addiction and fucking over your mates, (I might have been only 21, but even then I knew junkies did not look like Jonny Lee Miller.) I was more influenced by the way Renton could just escape to the big city and start a new life, or the way you could tell such a grim story with such huge energy ('Yes, this is the movie, not a trailer', I tell my little sister, 10 minutes into the film.)

I actually read the book shortly before the movie came out, because I fucking loved Shallow Grave and wanted to see what that crew were doing next, and it turned out that Trainspotting's biggest influence on my life - other than a deep desire for Sick Boy's bots that has never faded - was in the prose of Irvine Welsh, because he was telling stories about the sorts of people I didn't usually read about.

It took Welsh's books to show me how bloody middle-class my literary tastes had been until then, I hadn't read many novels about people on the very lowest levels of society, and it was brilliant to read about the kind of scum I saw down the pub on a Friday night, and find poetry and in their grim desperation. (While this led to extremely pleasant discoveries like the films of Shane Meadows, this also led down the path of writers like Bukowski, but they were always so fucking depressing and self destructive.)

Welsh's books are full of brilliant use of language, and incredible character work. They often contain outrageous coincidences, but that's weirdly more realistic, because we all have outrageous coincidences hitting us all the time. 

And while there is no doubt that Begbie is a complete fucking psycho and that everyone else in the book will rip you off without a second thought, the stories of Welsh's people are told without the usual burdens of judgement these stories usually have. It's just people finding light in the grimy darkness, any way they can, and the death of Tommy isn't a moral failing, it's just shit that happens.

While I did really like the second Trainspotting film for all its sordid slickness and its open discussion of the ache of getting old and past, I actually found the first book sequel more moving, with Renton getting in the ambulance with Begbie, rather than an attempted lynching in the top floor of the pub. 

And now I'm almost a decade behind on my Welsh books, but it's still nice to catch up with his books when I can, especially when he goes back to the Trainspotting cast. I care about Spud bloody Murphy, in all his uselessness, and the voices he and the others contribute to my literary consumption.

Sometimes I think I'm still on the Ghost Train

I literally never had the stomach for the big thrill rides at the amusement park. The parks weren't exactly large in my part of the world - Disneyland might as well have been on the moon - but when I did get to the few amusement parks in my area, I went for the more sedate pursuits.

I've been to some big parks since, and even braved a few of the roller-coasters on Australia's Gold Coast, but those days are certainly behind me now - I went on a simple roundabout thing at a playground a few months ago, and felt horrendously sick after less than 30 seconds, 

But no matter how fast or high they go, none of them could be as incredibly thrilling as the old ghost train down at the Caroline Bay Carnival in the early 1980s.

The Carnival has always been a big thing in my home town - I'm Tiny Tots champion for 1980-81, and still have the blue sash - and it had some thrills like the Sizzler, and the Tornado, and the Octopus, but I was more of a Chair-O-Plane and Big Wheel person, or out on the bumper boats.

And if I had the guts, I went in the ghost train.

Looking back, it was a tiny thing, rumbling through the back of a truck trailer, rattling around in less than a minute. Mostly it was full of skeletons and spiders and mannequins screeching at the train as it went past, and sometimes they went the whole hog and had one of the carnies waiting in the gloom to leap out as you went past. It could get genuinely creepy.

It was the most amazing ride in the world to a young me, full of surprise and threat and unease and I just wanted to go round and round again.

I don't need the tugs of gravity or velocity to get my blood pumping down the carnival, I just needed to squeeze onto the smallest train in the world, and go into the dark of the ghost train.