December to May

Well, why not. Rumours of my death et cetera.

Oh, there's a bit to add in the past four months. Stick around! I might add them!

In the mean-time, crikey, the spam-wolves have been busy...

'What is the Future of the Future?'

Manic Street Preachers: Resistance is Futile (2018)

With a vintage group announcing a new album, the long-term fan may feel an approaching leap of faith. Will this be the best? The least-loved? The peak? The last? Every release is a spin of the chamber.

I'm tempted to regard a dichotomy to Manic Street Preachers album releases - like Guillermo Del Toro's on-off Hollywood and arthouse projects, or the alternating quality of Star Trek movies. With Manics the commercially-oriented alternates with the artistic - not perfectly, and with not as much regulatory as would fit the comparison, but compare Resistance to Postcards and Send Away the Tigers... and you may sense a pattern. 

This is an accomplished album, but not characterised by the confident musical probing of Futurology or the greater lyrical reach of This is My Truth; instead, Resistance presents an album meticulously arranged, familiar in trappings, and reliable in themes: memory, loss, disenfranchisement. Not an angry album, but one resigned to being... resigned. There are clear highlights after the table-setter People Give In , International Blue comes across as pure pop Manic - James Dean Bradfield once again offering a tenor belying his years, and Nicky Wire and Sean Moore bringing up a thundering rear. 

Consciously, the album is reflective not only in its mood, but also in its sound - Sequels of Forgotten Wars (a personal favourite) the closest to the faster, early Manics, Dylan and Caitlin a return to earlier albums' wining duets (Your Love Alone and Little Baby Nothing more than Sullen Welsh Heart). Topically there's a looking back - at past idols like Bowie (In Eternity), while Liverpool Revisited finds itself haunting the same Hillsborough as Truth's SYMM, from the other side of the later coronial inquest and twenty years on from the disaster. 

 (Wire even provides a guitar solo for Liverpool) 

That said, there's a lot to like. International Blue is a belter, Broken Algorithms could have been a great closer (I do wonder if the album could be a couple of tracks shorter), and penultimate single Hold Me Like a Heaven provides the singalong stadium who-oahs and memorable hooks to surely make it a live favourite. As said, the album is engineered well - reflective of the extra time put into it while the band's new studio was being built. As any ageing rocker will argue - why rush quality? 

As ever, you might find yourself wondering where the next Manics album will lead.

Cover story: A colourised portrait by Baron Franz von Stillfried-Ratenicz: 'Samurai Warrior 1881' - a once-heralded soldier captured on the eve of a new century, and a future that will be characterised by automatic weapons and machines of war. The band (as has been noted) cast as a relic, composed and dignified, displaced and resigned.

Here's my gift to you: a soundtrack to the void.

Giving a Hoot

My latest mindfulness strategy is microprojects. So far they've served me pretty well, with the great Pumpkin Ladder being an early victory over outdoor living space.

Rather than anticipating pumpkin futures though, this project is a look back at the past.

My Gran passed away twenty-one years ago, and I have few material objects to remember her by, such was the nature of the Simian couple's upping sticks from the South to North Island. A bookmark, an Art Deco desk calendar, and a bookcase (which was vast and the bane of Mrs Simian, but nature and borer won in the end, and aside from a few salvaged shelves, it made a sad and warming fire for a few nights.) Add to that her plaster owl, which sat at her front doorstep for many years, slowly weathering and losing its fancied original lustre. It's travelled with us from flat to house and sat in damp garages and rooms for a long time, now, its plaster form softening with age. Restoring this is my new microproject.

I don't know what type of owl it was supposed to be (horned?), how old it is (1950s?) or from whence it came, but gingerly dusting off its efflorescing surface has uncovered some interesting details hitherto covered up by (I imagine) house paint. A feather quill lying on a small pile of books, pages picked out in shallow relief, as well as corner protectors for their covers - all of which will be picked out.

But first, a serious undercoat of protector. I don't know if old tawny will sit out in the open, but if he or she does, he or she will be well-protected. The shop assistant at the local paint shop suggested simple acrylic - maybe even from a humble test pot. But then, she didn't know my Gran. No, something fancier and harder-wearing for an undercoat, and then we can talk colours. 

And also whether it remains an outside owl or stays indoors. 

A Box of (Past) Delights

 A recent trip down home unearthed a bounty of old playthings and bits of playthings from... oh, over thirty-five years ago. Yikes! They all came in an old, slightly garagy box, near bursting with nostalgia and forget. 

So: what's in the baaahx...?

Ooh. It's densely packed! And everything's individually wrapped. What sort of twisted mind would do such a thing? Oh yeah - that's right. I did that myself.

A plethora of playthings are here. Some of it useful (missing original Kenner line Star Wars Stormtrooper still in pretty good nick! Hello, boy!) And some probably not so much (a Hot Wheels ramp without its struts, some terrain for a WW2 field gun, its parts and crew probably long since tossed to the four winds.) That green Matchbox car might be salvageable. There's even some promising modeling work here, maybe. Like... 

Bits of spaceship models. There are three separate examples here, none of which are or likely ever will be complete. The Space Shuttle is missing its tail fin at least, and was never finished in its day, so it could be.  

This Apollo 11 'Eagle' lunar lander I'm undecided on. It's definitely not complete - and some of the surviving plastic bits are so thin I'd consider replacing them with something sturdier, like brass rod. That said, I do have the plans  - as brief as they look; and allegedly the classic Airfix model above is not known for being entirely accurate. Oh, the astronauts are there, too. A little bit disembodied in the limb department, but might be worth a crack. Unlike... 

...this guy. Who is some more parts of this guy See - I knew I had some more pieces! Beats me where the rest is, though. Even with these bits reunited, the result might have to be... creative.

And some vintage transfers for racing cars and hot rods. I say vintage transfers because I'm pretty sure these days they'd be a download file somewhere, rather than be something you'd actually have to hunt down and buy in your local model shop. Or combination bike shop, fishing gear shop, toy shop and model shop - which is what we had back home, and in my mind it was - and remains, awesome.

So, a few more projects here to add to the pile. And in the mean-time, a bit more clutter to put in the basement.  

Jim Baikie

As mentioned elsewhere, my entry point into 2000AD prog-wise was the early 300s, and in those initial issues a short-lived strip was begining to wind down.

Skizz, by Alan Moore, was the story of an alien interpreter from Tau Ceti crashing to Earth and evading the Authorities with the help of a local kid. It was E.T, I knew, but I also recognised that Moore had other things to throw into the mix: this wasn't the autumnal suburban hills of California that Interpreter Zhcchz was dragged into, but central Birmingham amid the bleak early 80s winter of Thatcherism, record unemployment and bleak opportunity Its human protagonist is Roxy, a girl - still a newish thing for 2000AD and in retrospect predicting Moore's realisation of the same in Halo Jones.  In short, it's E.T meets Boys from the Blackstuff by way of a little bit of contemporary TV (Philip Sandifer nods towards the likes of Minder and Grange Hill, but therese are minor influences at best), and while the clash of realism and fantasy would recur in the years that followed in the comic, this was the first roll off the slipway, and one of the best-remembered.

Key to me is Moore's script alongside the art of Jim Baikie, whose time at 2000AD was just beginning, Baikie had come from a variety of UK illustration jobs, often working on various licensed products and titles (Monkees, Star Trek, Hammer House of Horror, Look In and Countdown, for which he provided some Doctor Who art) plus forays into TV spin-offs such as Charlie's Angels, The Fall Guy, and more recently, Terrahawks. Like Moore he had a previous association with Warrior magazine, and was imported into Tharg's team from there. Baikie has a pen-based apporach, with  nice heavy brush on shading anfd a flowing approach to his linework. I can see a lot of contemporaries in his work - Jim Burns and Steve Parkhouse in particular. He likely co-created the look of the kangaroo-like Skizz with Moore, but he could do fantasy well enough - although it's the realism in his work which sells Skizz and becomes a recognisable trait in his work. Baikie's humans arent the elongated strips of sinew that Mick McMahon rendered the likes of Dredd and Slaine, nor the beefcake slabs of muscle under Bisley's tenure, but realistic, unexaggerated forms. His Dredd looks harder for this, and importantly for Skizz, his Lol,Roxy, and tragic no-hoper Clarence Cardew look as though they've come off a Birmingham high street - their fates accrus a pathos because of their recognisability.

Outside of Skizz Baikie also turned his hand to Dredd, helping out with the mega epic Oz, and providing some memorable shot stories and one-shots - in particular the three-part Hitman with its loathsome, toad-like human assassin, and the classic In the Bath which features early 90s cranky Joe Dredd doing what he does best... well,that would be telling.

Baikie went beyond the parent comic to work on spin-off Crisis, where he collaborated with John Smith on the action-oriented New Statesman, as well as turning up Stateside for a brief run on Star Wars. The relaunched Eagle magazine saw him team up with fellow Scot John Wagner for their dinosaur romp Bloodfang, which I look forward to covering in a future instalment of Where Eagles Dare.

In the early Nineties he returned to Skizz for the second series as an artist-writer, giving the story a more satirical edge, but the first story remains the superior, and I'd say so because of its more worldly elements. 'Reliable' is an epithet I apply to a lot of artists who turn in just that sort of work - consistent, faithful, relatable, and it's no dismissal agaist the likes of innovative artists like those above. Blaikie's work remained no less recognisable and was always faithful to its subject. Those first few encounters with his work in Skizz made a big impression on me, and no doubt will remain for some time.

Rest in peace, sir.

Jim Baikie 28 February 1940 – 29 December 2017

Christmas 1987. Respect!

2017 is guttering its last light, and to many I'd imagine it's goodbye and good riddance. But before we leave it all behind and ride the shopping trolley into oblivion, let's enjoy this moment in which, at the Monkeyhouse at least, a real sense of Christmas cheer has genuinely descended.

Your writer, once a few days of non-work had passed, finaly shucked off a year's work worries and just learned to enjoy the brief time off. His wife of now sixteen years (for whom he is eternally grateful) found her groove in seasonal craft and no wooden clothespeg is safe. Meanwhile, Jet Jr has 'clicked' with Christmas, his days filled with revised wish lists and enquiries about the physics of Santa's chimney-related speliology.

It would be ill-fitting, therefore, to select a Christmas song which is anything but traditional, and so in 2017 I'm going back to the classics. Thirty years ago to 1987, in fact, where an SAW-revived Kim Wilde and a peak-powered, late lamented Mel Smith have joined forces to squeeze out a cheesy hit for Comic Relief. Here's the other Mel & Kim with a distinctly Eighties' take on the Brenda Lee yuletide belter:


Look at that. Look at it! So Eighties with the big hair, the obligatory Ray Bans, Curiosity Killed the Cat, random video effects and the quaint 50s nostaliga of it all - including the Mekon! I've just watched it with the sound down and it's still watchable for one key ingredient: Melvin Kenneth Smith, one of my favourite UK comedians and his marvellous ability to mug his way out of any situation, however ridiculous.

Sure, his erstwhile comedy partner Griff Rhys Jones is in the mix, but for me Mel was the greater talent, his presence a mark of quality on many projects outside their combined efforts Not the Nine O'Clock News and Alas Smith and Jones. One of the things I want to do in 2018 is reacquaint myself with his short-lived sitcom Colin's Sandwich, featuring Smith as the titular sandwich would-be horror writer and his take on British comedy's most enduring couple: the middle-aged man and his neuroses.

But I'm drifting. Outside it's a balmy 25 degrees, the hills are scorched and water restrictions loom for Wellington, but inside this house there's a little piece of northern hemisphere tat to mark the occasion and see us through. So Season's Greetings from Jetsam and the Simian family, and here's to a wonderful 2018.

Justice Denied

Holy cow, how did this happen?

I've been careful since Batman v Superman... and probably since before that, to champion movies where the outcome wasn't entirely guaranteed to be positive. I've felt guilty doing so, and would rather not, but in the wake of F4ntastic Four, Amazing Spider-Man 2 and Suicide Squad, you can understand if I feel somewhat of a jinx.

Whether you're a DC/Warners fan or not, this movie should not have 'failed' as soundly as it did; and yet the numbers are damning - and now I've seen it for myself. And, knowing I should prepare for disappointment, I went in with medium expectations. My paragraph above notwithstanding, I left before the credits came up -  in part because it was a daytime screening on the last week and I had a life to get back to; but it was hardly like being torn from my seat. This movie is a bewildering disappointment.

The fault is not with the characters; the Justice League should sell the movie themselves, most being recognisable now for over fifty years. I do believe Whedon at least worked to rule, if he didn't quite bat his best. 

The back story should be known well enough by now - initially helmed by Zack Snyder, this movie was to be in part a culmination of his three (or five?) story arc, but for a family tragedy which saw him stand down from the production, and Warners to swiftly helicopter in Joss Whedon in to finish the job. The history of trilogies being finished by a new director has been patchy at best - and in the superhero genre you can look easily at the Christopher Reeve Superman movies and Bryan Singer's X Men franchise to see clear and cautionary examples of what happens where there's a disjoint. Whedon had a brief: cut down the run-time to enable more screenings; add more humour; convert the doomladen Snyder vision into an audience friendly Marvel-like one. It doesn't work.

Many of the jokes don't land or just don't fit (an alien anal probe gag would struggle past the Nineties, let alone the Twenty-teens) , scraps of Whedon's script for his unfilmedWonder Woman have been reused, and there's an odd disjoint where scenes which feature in the two trailers have obviously been reshot for the movie. Timing? Grading? Mood? It can't be to add to the story, because al signs point to the Whedon version drastically cutting Snyder's story down to a more chewable (or boltable) size. Like its principal (well, only) villain.

As a threat Steppenwolf comes across as vague and somewhat undersold. He comes to Earth after Mother Boxes, but with no clear motivation after that - is it terraforming? Is it conquest? Who is this 'Mother' he refers to? And who is he talking to?

The frustration lies in knowing at least some of what there could have - or should have been, fed in tantalising scraps  by Snyder's friends and allies.  So what we're left with is this cut-down could-have-been - which has inevitably been compared to the Marvel model and Whedon's bigger, brighter, more confident and much more loved Avengers. But this is not good, and after the mixed batman v Superman, and the financially successful but critically thumped Suicide Squad, this will be a tough move to come back from.

And so is the plight of the DC movies fan: a wild pendulum between moderate success and painful failure. Cynicism and ridicule. I don't know what Zack Snyder's vision might have been outside this botched remix, but it could at least have been a little more complete, and a lot better looking. 

The fans deserved better.