No Marvels around here

There are many weird things about the way superhero comics have changed over the years, but the strangest thing might be that while everyone knows who Thanos is now, and you can get a Groot tee-shirt in the local chain-store fashion outlet, you are shit out of luck if you just want to read a new Spider-Man comic. 

The movies might be racking in billions - and all the toys and lunchboxes and other tat even more - but you can only get new comics from the biggest comic publishers in the English language at one comic store in the whole goddamn South Island these days.

It isn't a complete drought, There are still issues of the Beano in the bookstores that have held on, and sometimes I even find a precious 2000ad. And there is always bloody Phantom comics everywhere, because of course there are bloody Phantom comics everywhere. But nothing by the big American companies, apart from occasional remaindered collections of random shit at the big box stores.

You can, of course, order what you want over the internet - I've kept up with the usual Love and Rockets and Punisher comics by Garth Ennis on mail order, and you can order any comics you ant from all over the world with relative ease.

But you can't just walk into a shop and buy a new Marvel comic book anywhere. So there is no chance of picking up something random, just because the cover looks aces, because there is nothing there.

And they really did use to be everywhere, long before Robert Downey Jr started flying around in his iron jocks. There were a couple of dozen places, even in my small town - bookstores, corner dairies, supermarkets, post offices, cafes, you could find a Marvel Team-Up or Avengers West Coast or What The-?! or Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe Deluxe Edition in all of them.

The direct market was just really kicking in when I was a kid, and it might have saved the comics industry in the 80s, but now you can't find the actual issues anywhere, it's no wonder the original publications are viewed as no more than IP farms.

So no chance of grabbing a Captain America because it's got Diamondback in it, or spying a Daredevil with a great cover while I'm down the store, or picking up an Uncanny X-Men on a whim. They are just not there, even as they cinematic counterparts are universal. I know I could just grab that Groot tee-shirt - it even has actual Kirby art! - but it's just not the same.

It's just not the same.

This is a house of McMahon: Tank Girls, Hellboys and Cybermen

When Mike MacMahon draws a character that has had very specific artists define their look, he makes sure you recognise what you are looking at, while still making it very much his own.

Flatbread conspiracies and barfi slavery

There was this takeaway place in Auckland a couple of years back which did these amazing flatbread things, full of beef cheek and polenta chips and dazzling sauces, and they never seemed to be busy, and were always a bit surprised by people actually ordering food. So the only possible explanation was that they were a front for some kind of drug operation, and it didn't make any money but that was okay, and the guys running it were high as fuck and making gorgeous food as a by-product of their money laundering. It only lasted six months.

That probably sounds a little far-fetched, but a few years before that, there was this one place in the suburb of Sandringham that sold the best barfi in the country, and then they closed down and we were sad about it, but then it turned out the people owning the shop were treating their workers like actual slaves, and got sent to jail for a hefty stretch, and thank God those workers got their justice, but boy, we do miss that barfi.

All night long with the 200-game hire

Of course I've played less video games as I've got older, that's what happens to most people. The time and money needed to sink into the modern gaming experience is beyond a lot of people with families and careers and all that, and I'm definitely no immune. So I generally stick to simple shoot-'em-up games from 10 years ago these days, and am happy enough with that. 

(Although I have got stuck into Spider Solitaire again recently, after successfully breaking that addiction a few years ago. Games go in and out of fashion, but the Spider is eternal.)

But I can still remember the pre Playstation days, when most of the video games action was in the arcade, or in the most rudimentary consoles, usually ripping off Pong or Space Invaders, and how easily amused we could all be with the most basic games.  

The PlayStation wasn't a thing in the world until I was in my very late teens, and the first console I ever hired out with my own money was a weird machines with 200 games on its tiny hard drive.

They were games in only the most basic sense, and we would be paying twelve bucks a night for various kinds of very simple games, almost all platformers of some description. None of them were titles that anybody would remember  these days, I can't even recall what the machine was called. I just remember how much incredible fun it was, racing down a pixelated ski slope.

Most of the games wouldn't even load properly, but still felt like we got our money worth, sticking to the six or seven ones that worked, and playing them until dawn.

The incredibly complexity of modern games is all well and good, but the simplest games are always the best, and I still occasionally play these types of games when you see them around online. I don't play them all night anymore and I don't pay $12 to access them, but I do still play them.

The real Superstars of Wrestling: Vindicated about the Ventura

The only time I ever truly gave a damn about wrestling was when I was 13 years old, which is the way the world works. That was the late 1980s, and the era of Superstars of Wrestling, where the big wrestlers of the day would beat the crap out of a bunch of no names every week. Occasionally, somebody would get a fourth-generation video copy of Wrestlemania 3 or something, but it was mainly just Superstars.

I know the recent Mr McMahon documentary glosses over a lot of shit, and does have the gross veneer of the sanctioned product (the whole 'no, we really do care about the wellbeing of our employees now' feels particularly corporate). But I do feel vindicated that I never liked McMahon or Hulk Hogan back in that day, and was always more partial to Jesse the Body.

Which was weird, because during that period, with Ventura and McMahon on the commentary desk, the Body was the guy sticking up for the heels, while McMahon was clearly the cheerleader for the good guys.

I mean, I hated the heels as much as anybody, unless they were outside the usual black/white paradigm, like Demolition of the Ultimate Warrior. But I never fell for Hulkamania, and still remember that the first time I realised I was over wrestling was when Hogan won the 1990 Royal Rumble because he was winning fucking everything, and had a big old nothing of a personality, compared to the wonderful freaks like hacksaw Jim Duggan or Randy Savage

And then I get through the McMahon doco, and while a heck of lot of it was familiar, I hadn't heard the details of Ventura trying to set up a union for the wrestlers, and Hogan scabbing him out to the boss, so, you know, screw that guy. All this time, and the real heroes were the ones who acted the meanest, but I think I always knew that.

Lost Highway: 'You'll never have me'

I swear, the way Patricia Arquette tells Balthazar Getty that he will never have her, after they've just fucked in the dust, towards the end of David Lynch's magnificent fever dream of a movie, is genuinely one of my top five line readings in any film ever made. It would be just for the way she draws out the 'never' in a deeply unsettling way, but in the context of the entire movie, it's the point of the whole damn thing.

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.

This has always been a House of McMahon: Kiss my axe!

It's often been noted that Mick McMahon's Sláine artwork looks like it has been carved into wood before being printed on paper, full of thick, heavy slashes and chunky figurework. But there is also a looseness there in those deep, dark woods; a kind of goofiness that gives his work life, and set a standard for Sláine artwork that all others would have to follow.