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.