Quicksilver in the kitchen

 

Bryan Singer's X-Men movies never really came together as complete films, and were often flabby and played so low at times that the sheer charisma of the generally excellent casts was the only thing keeping them above water. 

But they all had great individual scenes, and portrayed characters' powers in ways that were often thoughtful and interesting.  There were times they could be uninspired - they never really got hold of what Storm was capable of, and Cyclops brought nothing new to the party - but the Quicksilver scenes; or Nightcrawler in the White House; or some of the vibrant antics of the Last X-Men On Earth's fight against the sentinels in the Future Past movie, (especially Blink's teleportation holes), were memorable and rewatchable in ways most superhero films just are not.

The Quicksilver thing was so effective they did it all over again in the next movie, even as the scripts twisted themselves into knots to explain why they didn't just use Pietro to save everybody all of the time. And while that run of X-Men films has run its course, and the mutants have some kind of a MCU future ahead of them, the freaky nature of their powers in these original films still lingers.

Love and Rockets: And love is everything

I'm always been on Team Jaime, man. It's the easier option - his art has a flowing beauty that remains intoxicating after years of high-grade comics. And his Locas tales are some of the greatest stories I've ever read in any medium, and have an emotional resonance built over decades of human growth. His comics span the length of a lifetime, and can be funny and goofy and scary in a way nobody else can touch.

Whenever I get a new issue of Love and Rockets - and it remains one of life's great little pleasures to do so - it's almost always Jaime's comics that I go for first. I always get to Beto, but it's the misadventures of Maggie and the gang that I always need to mainline.

Gibert's comics are still absolutely marvelous, and the older Hernandez can do something like a Poison River or a Human Diastrophism and make it all look so easy. And sometimes, his comics are the strongest thing in an issue.

Beto's story in the most recent issue is just staggering - the sheer simplicity of it, just two people in love, wandering around a bunch of sand dunes, and so happy in the moment. It's blatantly sentimental, and all the better for it, because we could all use a little more sentiment in these bleak fuckin' times.

There is also something about the way it compliments the story behind the cover of this issue - a tribute to somebody who gave up on some dreams of art for family, and ending up raising two of the finest artists in modern comics - that comes with a real emotional kick.

Jaime's Princess Anima thing has been going on forever, and has had nowhere near the soulful resonance of the Hoppers crew, but was never intended to be. It's been a blast to read, even if I could never quite untangle the convoluted continuity of this sci-fi wonderland, and has come to a surprisingly bloody climax. It's great comics, but Beto's stuff is more haunting, and somehow more essential for these times.

Love and Rockets is still the best comic in the world. 

Do I really need all that?

After moving away for a year, putting a bunch of stuff into storage, and then coming back and moving it out again into a new space under the new house, I've been given a real perspective on how many things I actually need to hold on to.

My comic, magazine and book collection has always been an unwieldy thing, but it really does feel a bit out of control right now, and it needs some harsh pruning. I do this every few years, and it's been a while since the last time, and I'm feeling particularly ruthless with this purge.

Culling the collection, figuring out what really matters. I should not be having so much fun doing this.

But it took me years to complete a full collection of the generally excellent Shade The Changing Man comics by Peter Milligan and his pals, but do I need all 70+ issues? I'll read them again for another concentrated dose, and then they're gone. I'll shift them on in bulk, giving somebody else the chance to inhale all the Meta madness in one go.

I certainly don't need all the Kick Ass comics I have - it's some of John Romita Jr's finest mayhem, but nothing much more than that. But I'm also starting to realise that I don't need all the Groo and Sgt Rock comics I've got, even though they are all of consistently high quality. 

Because as good as they are, and they are really good, there is a certain amount of repetition. Groo really only has one joke, and it's a great joke that can play out in an infinite variety of situations, but I don't need all of it to hand, and just a few choice examples would do. I've got about half of the Groo comics they've put out, which must be well over 200 issues by now, and that's a  lot of jokes about cheese dip. 

And the mild pacifism and propelling thrills of the Sgt Rock comics have the same kind of delicious repitition, and I've got another 100 of them, and really only need a dozen. So I've gone through and picked those 12 out out, partly because they have particularly good stories, but mainly because they have nostalgic value, or just really good Joe Kubert covers.

I'm not getting rid of any of my Unknown Soldier or Enemy Ace comics, of course. I'm not crazy.

The biggest chunk of the collection that is already destined for a new home is the past 20 years of  Empire mags, as previously mentioned. I've picked some of them out too - I'm not getting rid of the one issue I got on my first ever trip to London - and my mate Kyle is getting every one with an X-Men cover, because that's his thing.

There's piles and piles of other comics that can go - I've come to the realisation that I don't need any of the Hellboy comics after his properly mythic adventures in the underworld, and I definitely don't need all those Warren Ellis comics that I thought I had already ditched.

It took me many, many years to realise I couldn't collect everything, and only needed to keep the stuff that actually met something to me, one way or the other. Sharpening your collection is surprisingly fun and good for the soul, when there is always more to cull.

Maybe I don't need quite so much Unknown Soldier.

Fighting with Frank (part 4 of 13): Must try harder next time.

- Multiversity: Pax Americana #1
Art by Frank Quitely
Story by Grant Morrison
Colors by Nathan Fairbairn
Letters by Rob Leigh

My life is my own

I don't know much about poetry, just a few lines from random epics have cling to the inside of my brain, but most of it has been pushed out by the desperate need to know who was in the New Warriors.

But the words of Number 6, and even the order he lists his demands, is seared into my soul forever, man. I don't know much about poetry, but I know it when I see it.

21st century Radiohead (through the CDs in the car)

It's taken me a few decades, but I think I'm finally ready for 21st century Radiohead.

I will always regret the fact that I missed a very early Radiohead concert at a South Island pub that all my best mates went to, but it took me a while longer to get onboard. The first album was 20 percent too whiny for me at that time of my life, and The Bends was lots of fun, but it was the eerie way that OK Computer felt like it was beamed in from the future - even with the odd duff song - hooked me in.

And that enthusiasm carried on to the next few albums, but then I dropped away, and have barely listened to the past three or four albums.

There was no conscious reason for this, I still liked the band as much as I ever did, I just never quite got around to it. I still always enjoyed the singles, but it was the full esoteric breadth of the albums that somehow put me off.

Fortunately, we still live in the 1980s here in my corner of the arse end of the planet, and still have CD players in our cars, so when there's nothing good on the radio - or when they sync up their ads to all run at the same time - we play a CD. I don't have the very modern laziness of not wanting to keep changing the discs, so if one goes on, it needs to be something I can listen to a lot, and the past few Radiohead albums are good for that

I'm also a bit over the playlist thing, and just crave full albums, and I need ones I don't get sick of after a couple of listens during the week. And I've been listening to In Rainbows, and Hail to the Thief, and even the most 'difficult' songs make an easy soundtrack for driving around town, and I can listen to them over and over again, in a way I haven't listened to albums since I was a teenager.

I still don't know what they're on about in a lot of these songs, and I'm still struggling with some of them, but I'm not skipping through anything. If I can listen to Throbbing Gristle enough times to find the beauty in Hamburger Lady, I can handle Pyramid Song.

There are rumours of a new project from the Radiohead crew, and I don't know much about that, but if they do, maybe I can get into it before we get too much closer to the 22nd century. Or maybe I'll just save it till then.

The money cliché: We're better than that

We've all got those moments in movies that hit us the wrong way  - clichés that never fail to bug you and take you out of the movie. Sometimes it's when the movie is trying to depict something you have personal knowledge of - it never fails to bother me how movies think daily news journalism actually works - and sometimes it's saying something small about the world we live in, and getting it weirdly wrong.

And while there's loads of cinematic clichés that really annoy with their ubiquity, the one that always bothers me is where someone -  usually in some kind of serious crime business - throws armfuls of money up in the air,  and everybody loses their minds trying to grab it so our protagonist can make an easy getaway.

It's like the sight of money drives people crazy, but if you drop something in real life and somebody grabbed it and walked away, you'd consider that theft, and rightly so.

Like, there might be the thrill of free money over-ruling all rationality, but it's not free, you're just straight up stealing it, and with the predominance of cameras everyhwere in your life, you could get prosecuted for a few measly bucks, which seems risky.

When I've seen people accidentally drop their shit in the street, they haven't had to scoop it all up before human vultures descend on it. If anything, the vast majority of people nearby will want to help, because they genuinely want to. That's the kind of reality I see, not this silly cliché of animalistic fervor for dead presidents in the sky.

Actually, maybe Seto Thargo can be a thing again

If this blog leapfrogs the rest of the world's AI and somehow gains sentience, it'll have some wild mood swings, because my recent wailing at the difficulty of getting the new 2000ad and keeping the complete collection going may have been drokking premature.

After looking around the whole city for a good thrillpower dealer and failing miserably, I found a bookshop 20 minutes walk away that is run by a fellow Squaxx dek Thargo who is now my regular dealer, and has even filled in a little of the gap. But he is assuring me that I'll be able to get an issue every week, and the Meg every month and that's all I want.

Now I just got to resist the urge to get every issue of The Dark Side that he gets in. I've been reading that horror movie mag since 1992 and I can't believe it's still a thing.

High on rhinestones and wearing the best cocaine

My absolute favourite podcast in the world right now is Andrew Hickey's revelatory history of rock music through 500 songs, and it is so painstakingly researched, considered and presented that it can take weeks to get a new episode.

Any and all delays with the podcast are fine by me - complaining that creators take too long to produce your favourite stuff is so fucking crass - but I need to have something to listen to while doing the housework or wandering around the suburbs, and Hickey's regular shout-outs to Tyler Mahan Coe's Cocaine and Rhinestones podcast made it an obvious choice.

Both podcasts end each episode by talking about the importance of word of mouth to grow an audience, and it certainly worked in this case, because I am very much not a country music person, and would not have sought out something like this on my own. 

Even though I grew up around adults that loved the twang of country, I just don't know shit about that type of music. I always appreciate the ragged cowboys like Townes Van Zandt, and immortal voices like big Johnny Cash, but my knowledge wasn't ridiculously limited

But now I'm having a great time hearing about country stars I know nothing, and their weird and wonderful stories. It's all new to me.

Fuck, isn't that what we're here for? Isn't that why we're here on this planet? To learn new things, to gather new information and throw it into the churning infinite mass of your mind, and the less you know about the subject going, the more pours into your head, and shapes who you are in tiny ways.

Plus you get to learn how fucking evil Spade Cooley was, and gather further contempt for the fools who tried to rehabilitate his image.

There hasn't been a new episode since 2022, because the older I get, the longer it takes me to catch up with everyone else. But there is plenty of listening about country music and all its mysteries before Hickey does his next podcast, and learning of the glory of George Jones while doing the dishes.