The Devil’s Heir- Chapter 11

CHAPTER 11: THE CONQUEST OF MABUS

Groethuis was halfway through explaining exactly how the God-killer worked when Mabus raised his hand to silence him.

“Master?” said Groethuis, looking up from the schematics he had spread across the table like a treasure map.

“That will be all today, Doctor. You may finish tomorrow.”

“As you wish, Master.”

“Can the weapon be fired?”

“It is primed and ready.”

“Good. We may get precious little warning.”

“Master, if I may ask…”

“That will be all, Doctor.”

Sensing that Mabus was close to simply vanishing him out of the throne room with a thought, and without much consideration as to whether he reappeared on the ground or a hundred feet above it, Groethuis gathered up his papers and left without another word.

Mabus silently rested in his throne for a full two minutes.

Finally, he rose to his feet and opened the door to his private bedroom.

He already knew, indeed had known from the second he had raised his hand to silence Groethuis, what he would find there.

“Ave Mabus.” said the figure who was now sitting in his chair with his legs crossed nonchalantly over the table.

“What do you want?” Mabus asked.

“Why do you think I’m here?” the second Mabus asked.

Mabus studied his double. A horrific, skeletal figure draped in sack-like skin and with the barest, mist-thin wreathing of grey hair here and there. And those terrible, milky pale eyeballs, nestling in cavernous sockets like terrible pearls in some ancient shell. Since he had no memory of this meeting, this Mabus was from his future, not his past. But how far in the future? Impossible to say. Even back in the living world, Mabus had been aged as much as a person could be aged. He could not look older if he tried. And here in Hell, no one aged anyway, making it doubly pointless. This Mabus could be from ten seconds in the future, or ten million years.

“To warn me?” Mabus asked.

The second Mabus opened his mouth to let the pale lips slip over his teeth, the closest he could come to a grin.

“To give you a little helping hand.” he said “The hard part’s coming. I think you know to what I refer?”

“But I do win? We win?”

“Well that’s up to you, isn’t it?”

Am I truly this insufferably smug? Mabus asked himself.
“Yes.” said his double.

Walked into that one, I suppose, Mabus thought.

“Yes you did.” said the second Mabus, again with the awful skull grin.

“Get to the point.” Mabus snapped irritably “What do I have to do?”

“Here.” said the double, passing a roll of yellowing paper across the table to him.

“What is this?” Mabus asked him, unfurling it, his eyes adjusting to the script. Ancient Greek. He tried a few words as an appetiser, long disused parts of his brain flickering into life at the taste of them.

“The Conquest of Mabus.” said his twin “It’s a poem, written by one of your soldiers. It commemorates your glorious victory.”

“Why give it to me?”

“Because it’ll tell you everything you need to do. And it’s good for your ego. Enjoy.”

Mabus simply nodded. He didn’t bother thanking himself. What was the point?

His double vanished, and Mabus unfurled the scroll and began to read.

(more…)

Catching up on the Devil’s Heir

Sorry, sorry, sorry.

Sorry.

Sorry. It’s taken a ridiculously long time for me to do this and I can only apologise. Anyway. Regular updates of new chapters of The Devil’s Heir will resume starting next Thursday and Chapter 11 is up now. In the meantime, here is a master list of all the chapters of the Hangman’s Daughter/Devil’s Heir just in case any one wants to get caught up or has forgotten where we were (and I could hardly blame you if you have).

The Hangman’s Daughter

Chapter 18

The Devil’s Heir

Huge thanks to my brother Eamonn for all his help. You’re a legend, dude.

We were conquered by these people how exactly?

IDIOTS.

Sorry, I was going to do a proper, well-reasoned, nuanced reaction to the Brexit vote with references to the increasing alienation of the British working class in an age of globalisation and blah blah blah yadda yadda.

NO.

FUCK THAT. I have been drinking, my country’s economy has just been thrown into very real jeopardy and you Little England cunts have now threatened my daughter’s future. No no. You’re getting the lash. (This, by the way, is not directed at the forty odd per cent of Britons who voted to Remain. You get a big hug, I am so, so, sorry).

Apparently the number 2 google search in Britain right now is “What is the EU?”

So let me explain. The EU was an utterly unique political union of 28 sovereign nations working together to promote free trade, democracy and human rights on the European continent that spent most of its fifty year history kissing your goddamn arse. You didn’t want to be part of Schengen? You didn’t have to be part of Schengen. Didn’t want to adopt the Charter of Fundamental Rights? No problem, rude of us to even ask. You thought a single currency was a stupid idea? Well, you were right about that one in hindsight but the rest of us didn’t force you.

You had it all, you dumb fucks. You had the best possible deal. Now if Greece says they want out? That’s understandable. But you guys? What exactly about the absurdly preferential treatment you got was not to your liking? Were the handjobs not suitably vigorous, WHAT?!

Oh you’re having second thoughts? You didn’t really think your vote would matter? You’re starting to realise that the man leading the Leave campaign is a racist, lying ferret in a man-suit?

LET ME LICK YOUR FUCKING TEARS. OH! OH! THEY TASTE SO GOOD!

(more…)

Fritz the Cat (1972)

“Heeey everyone.”

“Oh look guys, it’s Spouse of Mouse!”

“Heeey everyone. I was just hoping we could have a little chat before Mouse starts the review. Just us.”

“I know you all think it’s really funny that you got Mouse to review Fritz the Cat. I’m sure you’re all having a big laugh. “Ha” you might say, and also “Ha.”

“But here’s the thing. This movie messed him up so badly that I don’t know if he’ll ever recover. And I’m a simple mouse who lives by a simple rule: You hurt the ones I love?”

“I WILL FUCK YOUR FUCKING SHIT RIGHT THE FUCK UP. IF YOU EVER PULL ANYTHING LIKE THAT AGAIN I WILL TRACK YOU DOWN THERE IS NOWHERE YOU CAN HIDE. PAIN? I WILL MAKE YOU LONG FOR SOMETHING AS SWEET AS PAIN.”

“’Kay? Enjoy the review.”

***

Do you know what it’s like to review Fritz the Cat? To sit in the dark watching that cat fuck everything that moves, to feel your brain slowly coming apart from the constant assault of surreal, messed up, toked out, crazy shit? No. You don’t. Because you’ve never been out there, man. Out in the real deep shit. This movie man. You don’t know, man. It’s like, you think you have a handle on things, man, like life and art and truth and beauty man like they’re all just packaged and sold in these neat little Styrofoam boxes, man, and then this movie comes along and it’s like, you know man? Like, what does it all mean, man? I…I…I shouldn’t be doing this man, I should be a pair of ragged claws scuttling across floors of silent seas, man…

“Mouse, relax. You’re going crazy over there, man.”

“YOU WEREN’T THERE, MAN!”

Sorry. Sorry. I’m alright. Okay. Let’s do this.

For as long as there have been comics there have been “underground” comics, the kind of comics that aren’t read in a newspaper at the breakfast table on a lazy Sunday morning but are more usually read at night. Under the covers. With a flashlight.

Jerkin’ it.

Pornographic comic books or “Tijuana Bibles” were especially popular in the Great Depression and usually featured well known comic book characters or public figures engaging in what scripture calls “the hard fuckin’”. No one was safe. Popeye, Betty Boop, Superman you name it, someone drew them doin’ it.

Trust me, just be glad it’s Minnie and not Pluto.

By the 1960s the underground comics (or “comix”) scene had merged with the broader counter culture movement. In contrast to mainstream comics which had to abide by the Comics Code Authority, comix were uncensored and didn’t abide by jack shit. These books were absolutely steeped in sixties drug and music culture, often politically radical and transgressive and extreme in their depictions of sex and violence. They also, it must be said, frequently had a streak of misogyny a mile wide. But at its best, the comix scene produced some of the finest American sequential art of the twentieth century (Art Spiegelman, for example, honed his craft in indie magazines in the seventies).

The one creator who is probably more associated with the comix scene than any other is Robert Crumb and his most famous creation is almost certainly Fritz the Cat, an anthropomorphised cat who’s kinda like Felix crossed with Roosh V. The Fritz strips first appeared in the magazine Help! where the editors famously responded to his submission with a letter saying; “Dear R. Crumb, we think the little pussycat drawings you sent us were just great. Question is, how do we print them without going to jail?” The comic became a genuine breakout hit and was read by many a long-haired hippie degenerate, one of whom was our old friend Ralph Bakshi.

Bakshi had set up his own animation studio and was looking to create animation for adults. He came across one of Crumb’s books and bought the rights to the strip. Warner Bros originally were going to fund it but then they saw Bakshi’s early shoots.

Instead, the movie ended up being funded by Cinemation Industries, purveyor of such highbrow classics as The Black Godfather, Sweet Sweetback’s Badasssss Song and The Eighteen Year Old Cheerleaders.

It’s important to remember that there was a weird period from the late sixties to around the mid-eighties where porn was pretty much mainstream, and you could just go to the cinema and watch a big budget porno made and financed by a large studio as opposed to some dude with a camera and a couch. Fritz the Cat is very much a part of that. It’s not solely a porno but it’s got relatives who are pornos if you catch me. So before we get into this review please take note that this is a movie with sex and nudity, pretty grotesque ethnic caricatures, frequent homophobic and racial slurs and some generally fucked up shit.

What I’m trying to say is…

“This review ain’t NSFW for nothin’ baby.”

(more…)

Those wacky Sharpson boys.

Happy Father’s Day everybody!

As some of you may know, my brothers John and Donal are both regulars on the Facts series on YouTube. For Father’s day they brought my Dad onto the show (thanks for showing me up guys, I just got him a frickin’ book) and not to brag or anything but my old man just killed it. Here’s the video.

“We’re sort of like a team. “Earth’s Mightiest Heroes” type thing.”

Superhero teams have been around for almost as long as there have been superhero comics, with the first, the Justice Society of America, debuting in 1940. Since then they’ve been a staple of the genre and for good reason. They give editors a place to test out new characters that can be spun off into their own books if readers take a liking to them and there’s simply more stories you can tell with a large group than you can when you’re focused on a single hero. One character’s not working out? Simply kill him off and replace him and the book carries on unaffected, much like the earth will keep turning inexorably after your inevitable death (wow, where did that come from, Mouse?). In fact, it’s pretty much a cast-iron rule that where you have superheroes, you will have superhero teams. My point is, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby did many ground-breaking, ingenious and innovative things with the comic book medium during their partnership in the sixties, but inventing the Avengers was not one of them. Once they had created a certain number of superheroes, putting them all in the one book was about as inevitable as the tides. And to be honest…that kinda shows. When you read those old comics you can tell when Stan and Jack were really invested and bringing their A-game to a book (Fantastic Four, Thor, Silver Surfer) and when they were kinda phoning it in (Daredevil, X-Men and the Avengers). Even the name is half-assed. The first issue literally ends with the heroes standing around and saying “What should we call ourselves?” “The…avengers?” “Sure, let’s go with that.” Like, they literally just went with the generic place-holder superhero team name.

If the creation of the Avengers comic book was unremarkable and by-the -numbers, though, the movie was anything but. In fact, I’m pretty sure future movie historians will be looking back at this as the start of something entirely new. Whether that’s a good thing or not remains to be seen but regardless, this movie is a big effing deal. For the first time, audiences were expected to go to a movie that shared continuity, characters and plot with four separate pre-existing series of movies. This was something on a scale that the film industry had simply never seen before.

And, be honest, you kinda thought it would suck. Didn’t you?

Didn’t you?

C’mon. Be honest. You thought it was going to suck. You can say it.

“Yeah…”

“SEIZE HER!”

Seriously though, the reaction to this movie was damn near euphoric but part of that just had to have been due to the fact that Marvel had even pulled it off. The fact that it was simply something you could point to and say “Yup, that’s a movie.” was in and of itself something to Marvel at (I ain’t ashamed). Four years later, though, when every studio and their mother is trying to ape Marvel’s shared universe concept, does it still hold up as anything other than a well-executed gimmick? Is it even a good movie in its own right? Does it have what noted film-maker Jackie Treehorn called the “little extras”?

“Story? Production values? Feelings?”

Let’s take a look.

(more…)

Justice League: New Frontier (2008)

Comic Book historians divide the history of superhero comics into “ages”. The Golden Age lasted from the late thirties to the end of the second world war. It began with the creation of Superman and saw the births of Batman, Wonder Woman, Captains America and Marvel, the original incarnations of the Green Lantern and the Flash as well as a host of others. Owing to the ongoing unpleasantness at the time, many of these characters were patriotic, Japanazi fighting do-gooders like the greatest superhero for all time, the Original Human Torch.

“Mouse, stop showing that panel of the Original Human torch calling Hitler a liar while burning him a…”
“NEVER!”

Also, owing to the fact that this was a brand new genre and folks were still figuring out the rules these comics tended to be absolutely batshit insane.

In the forties we had a superhero who was a giant flying eyeball. How’s that for diversity?

And then, with the war over, the superhero fad died about as quickly as it had ignited and superheroes pretty much vanished from the shelves with the exception of a few stubborn holdouts like Superman.

Now, I want you to imagine that you wake up tomorrow and everyone is playing POGs. Like, POGS are suddenly huge again. Kids are playing POGs, college students are playing POGs, journalists are writing long earnest think pieces about the cultural ramifications of the POGsurgance instead of doing actual work. This weird fad from fifteen or twenty years back suddenly comes roaring to prominence again and never leaves and before you know it movie studios are making massive-budget spectacle movies with inter-connected continuity and people are lining down the street to watch Pog versus Pog: Dawn of Pog. That’s kind of what happened with the dawn of the Silver Age of comics in the late fifties/early sixties. So what happened?

“Two words. Sput! Nik!”

With the dawn of the space race, America became obsessed with science and its wild, stoner little sister science fiction. Whereas Golden Age heroes tended to have magical or mythical based powers, the new crop of superheroes belonged firmly in the realm of science fiction. Instead of getting his powers from an old magic lantern, the new Green Lantern was a space cop gifted with fabulous technology by a race of all powerful aliens. The new Flash was police scientist Barry Allen who eschewed the Roman mythology inspired look of his predecessor, Jay Garrick. Even the few surviving Golden Age heroes adapted to the times; I mean look at what poor Batman had to deal with for chrissakes:

“I AM THE NIGHT!”

Over at Marvel, the hottest new properties were Spider-man, a science student turned superhero, and the Fantastic Four, a quartet of astronauts who literally got their powers as a result of the space race.

Much like “the sixties” doesn’t simply mean the years between 1960 and 1969 but refers to an entire cultural…thing, “silver age” has come to represent a specific attitude and aesthetic in comics. The comics of this period tended to be bright, optimistic, occasionally goofy as hell and suffused with a spirit of Moon Shot era can-do. New Frontier, Darwyn Cooke’s classic 2004 love letter to that whole era, simultaneously interrogates the period in which those stories were written while simultaneously celebrating what made them great. In 2008, Cooke teamed up with his old partner Bruce Timm (Batman the Animated Series) to adapt this story as part of Warner’s line of direct to to DVD animations. Did Cooke’s work make the transition unscathed? Let’s take a look.

(more…)

A Tale of Two Republics

A few weeks ago I wrote a post about Donald Trump where I called him mean names and mocked the size of his tiny, tiny hands. It was fun. We all laughed. Good times.

He’s now the nominee of the Republican party.

Also, around a month ago I wrote a post on the results of the most recent Irish general election and how it was going to be damn near impossible to form a government. Let’s tie those two together almost as if that was my plan all along. *tents fingers*

Trump. What? FUCK.

Trump What FUCK indeed, amigo. There’s a whole squirming nest-of-naked-baby-rats mess of factors that have brought us to this point and account for the appeal of Donald Trump.

Like racism?

This is a big part of it, no question. Some of it is just the general home-grown racial tension that’s been apiece with the American cultural landscape since…oh, Columbus. But more specifically to this moment in history is the fact that vast swathes of white America is in full on demographic panic. Current US immigration policies have led to a huge shift in the size of the Hispanic population relative to non-Hispanic whites, something encouraged by both main parties. The Democrats, obviously, because Hispanics form a core part of their coalition, but the Republicans too because, while they make political hay from coded racist appeals to white voters, having more low skilled workers than there are low skilled jobs helps keep wages depressed which is good news for the Koch brothers and other corporate Republican donors. Throw in lingering post 9/11 Islamophobia and a candidate who promises to deal with all of the above in short order, and presto, you have a Trump rally.

So Americans are just racist and we can all go home?

No, and here’s where I think it gets scary. Because I think the rise of Trump means that we’re seeing the final days of American democracy as we know it.

To counterbalance the grimness of that last sentence, here is a picture of a kitten wearing a jaunty little hat.

Now, I don’t mean that Trump is going to win (he probably won’t) or that once he won he’d abolish democratic institutions and declare himself dictator*. Any president who tried that (particularly one whose support in his own party is as tenuous as Trump’s) would very quickly find himself impeached, arrested or shot in no particular order.

No, the problem is built into how America actually votes. Sooner or later, Trump was going to happen.

(more…)

Darwyn Cooke: 1962-2016

Man, 2016 can eat a big one.

News has broken today that Darwyn Cooke, probably one of the most skilled and distinctive comic book artists of his generation lost his battle with cancer in the early hours of this morning.

He was 53.

Despite his phenomenal talent, Cooke had a hard time breaking into the comics industry. He submitted work to the major publishing houses in the early nineties because his work was simple, elegant and utterly beautiful and that’s just not what the nineties were about.

He did however, work as a storyboard artist on Batman The Animated Series, Superman the Animated series and Batman Beyond, animating the main title of the latter. He finally found success in comics in the early 21st century, with a notable run on Catwoman, creating a new visual look for the character that was instantly iconic. He is probably most famous for New Frontier, a story featuring most of the DC comics stable set in the late fifties/early sixties which ranks with Watchmen and Kingdom Come as one of the all-time great superhero stories.

He was also, from what I hear from my friends in the comics industry, a thoroughly wonderful bloke.

I was originally planning to review The Avengers on the 26th. However, in light of today’s news I have decided to review a movie that I’ve been meaning to for quite some time. To commemorate the life of this remarkable artist, I will be reviewing the 2008 animated adaptation of New Frontier.

Ar dheis Dé a anam. RIP, Mr Cooke.

Unshaved Mouseketeers Assemble!

Hey guys, so you know how everyone is always saying how women in Saudi Arabia have it so easy? Yeah, they don’t say that, and there’s a reason. Longtime readers of the blog already know my friend Sahar and her blog Saharcasm.

“Good title.”

Sahar has just been shortlisted for the Philadelphia Creativity for a Cause contest. As well as making sweet, sweet, delicious cheese, Philadelphia is offering to fund a business idea to improve the lives of people in the middle east. So what’s Sahar got in mind? I’ll let her explain it in her own words:

“If I win, (when I win – let’s stay positive!) I will get the mentorship and support to put my business idea to life. I want to focus on an English club for ladies in the Middle East. After living in KSA for 17 months, working as an English teacher, I have realised that it can be very difficult for women to survive. THERE IS NOTHING TO DO.

There were days where I almost went mad with boredom and I’m seeing a lot of the same from various online communities. I want to offer ladies English lessons, new mommy classes, book clubs, public speaking courses, microsoft word/excel/powerpoint course, halaqa, art & crafts, and so much more. The education system in KSA for the most part does not include any extra curricular activities so for some ladies it will be the first time they ever did anything like this. We don’t have a service like this in KSA, and anything even a little bit similar doesn’t cater specifically to the needs of the women involved. (Nurses struggling to keep up in an English speaking environment? Unemployed women without a college education who want to enter the work force?) They’re all just thrown together and given a standard course – it just doesn’t work!

I want to bring this service to the women in Saudi Arabia that really need it. I will be fighting constraints that hindered their education in the past such as – transport, childcare, timing, commitment, and cost so anyone can avail of the service. I’ve met these women, I know what they need, and they are some of the most wonderful people I’ve ever met in my life. There’s so much potential, it’s time to tap into it…”

This is a fantastic cause and I really want to help Sahar pull this off, so if you’ve got a second, please click on this link log in with your Facebook account and give her a vote. Thanks guys.