Dino-Saw-Us is a sticker collection game thing, running at this year’s UK Web & Minicomix Thing. And the above pic should prove, as if any proof was needed, that we will be participating. And that I need to cut my fingernails!

I bet Dan Brown is shitting himself! Yes the new Hope For The Future collected edition is out now, and courtesy of our pals at Fallen Angel Media Printing, it looks fantastic. Including issues 9-12 (with the customary cleaned up art and occasional redrawn panel), as well as Crystal Tips (from Judge Dredd Megazine issue 256), Godiva Jones, Warrior Princess of Mars (from the UK Web & Minicomix Thing Anthology 2009), and various previously unpublished strips. You can get it from us over on our shop page or pick one up at the forthcoming UK Web & Minicomix Thing this March 27th at London’s Queen Mary University in Mile End.

I just finished playing through Brütal Legend, an absurdly badassed videogame, in which “Eddie Riggs” (the world’s greatest roadie, voiced by Jack Black) is transported into a Sword & Sorcery Fantasyland, seemingly based on every Heavy Metal album cover ever. Here he finds he can make people’s heads explode by playing guitar, and sets off to unite the rock loving population against some S&M demons (lead by Tim Curry).

Although it inexplicably turns into a Real Time Strategy game, not a genre I have ever excelled at, it has enough action/adventure/exploration stuff to keep me happy. Unsurprisingly, given that the project was masterminded by Tim Schafer of Monkey Island and Day of The Tentacle fame, it has a terrific storyline and cast of characters. It’s these, as well as its loving tribute to the absurdity and awesomeness of the world of metal, that are its strongest elements.

In fact, the characters and design of the game are so strong that it seems to me Brütal Legend would totally work as a movie. Some time ago I bemoaned the fact that with all the “epic fantasies” being adapted by Hollywood, in the wake of the Lord of The Rings and Harry Potter movies, none of them has had the balls to have a full on metal soundtrack. Bombastic fantasy imagery fits perfectly with bombastic music (see also Flash Gordon). When Eddie first comes face to face with demonic scumbag monks, Black Sabbath’s Children of the Grave comes creeping out of the mist. Escaping a glam metal “Pleasure Palace” in a souped up hot rod is soundtracked by Dragonforce’s furiously hyperactive Through The Fire and Flames, and battles with the goth faction Drowning Doom are fought to the symphonic black metal sounds of Cradle of Filth, Dimmu Borgir and Apostasy. Elsewhere, bonafide classics such as Diamond Head’s Am I Evil, Budgie’s Breadfan and Motörhead’s We Are The Road Crew can be heard. As a game it’s a wonderful romp, but as a cinematic experience, it would be a riot.

Here’s a quick sketch of Admiral Ackbar, in honour of #MonCalamariMonday.  The Mon Calamari are, of course, the best “Mon” in the Star Wars Universe, closely followed by Mon Mothma, Ephant Mon, and Mon Julpa (I had to look that last one up on Wookieepedia).

Go to see a band play live and chances are you’ll get pretty much the same thing every time. A few songs from the new album, a few old favourites, and encores of the biggest hits. Occasionally you might get a cover, if you’re lucky. As a devotee of all things prog, and indeed ressive, I’ve recently become fascinated by Jethro Tull bootlegs from the early 70s, as it seems they were determined to be different.

1972’s Thick as a Brick was already a pretty left field proposition as an album. Ian Anderson now claims it’s a parody of overblown prog rock concept albums, but I’m not sure I’m convinced. Much of their work from that period revolves around the themes of religion, education, class and hypocrisy, and TAAB seems to be an examination of at least some of those themes, as one, album long song.

On stage, the band played (nearly) all of the album, interspersed with a few solos and (fairly interminable) jam sections (seemingly de rigeur for bands of that era that came out of the British blues scene). In addition to this there were interruptions by telephone calls, roadies in costume, musical commentary (suspiciously similar to a section of Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells which followed a year later) and a news and weather report (which related to the original album cover, a parody of a local newspaper). The influence of Monty Python lies heavy on all this stuff, and the band were definitely going for a “look at us wacky English eccentrics” vibe (as you can see…)

It’s not that Thick As A Brick has a story that needed to be acted out (like say, Genesis’ prog rock magnum opus surrealist mindfuck  The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway) but it clearly needed something other than a standard rock gig, just as the album had been packaged in a non standard cover. The follow up album A Passion Play is even more opaque, ostensibly following the deceased “Ronnie Pilgrim” through a peculiarly bureaucratic afterlife.

This time, they played the whole thing, start to finish, with less dicking around, but with a couple of films shown to augment the performance, including this amazing piece of creepy, none-more-English whimsy…

Yes famously ditched half of Tales From Topographic Oceans partway into the tour for that album, as audiences were (understandably) finding the unbroken string of lengthy pieces a bit indigestible. Similarly, later on the A Passion Play Tour, the Tull inserted an older song into the middle of the piece, My God from 1971’s Aqualung. Maybe this was to grab the attention of the audience whose interest may have been flagging in the middle of a long, unfamiliar piece, but another reason may have been that, as postulated here, My God was already conceptually linked to A Passion Play, so it became a legitimate part of the longer piece. They even played some unreleased songs such as No Rehearsal and Left Right which were lyrically connected to the concept, as they had been originally written for the album.

I like the idea of that. Plenty of bands have played specific albums in their entirety, (more recently many have done so as special, nostalgic or anniversary shows), but to put a concert together where every element plays into the concept seems to be a pretty rare occurrence. Take That may have an album called The Circus, and adorn their concerts with acrobats and fire eaters, but they’re still bashing out Relight My Fire and Shine, neither of which, to my knowledge, are about sad clowns or evil ringmasters. And how much cooler would it be if they were?

Here’s a Christmas pic for you. Enjoy. And why you’re about it, why not listen to the At Least It Wasn’t Santana Soundtrack playlist? Old faves, some obscurities and some stuff that doesn’t really have anything to do with Christmas, but is a bit “wintery”.

The Christmas #1 Single is dead. I know I go on about this every year, but The Darkness’, Christmas Time (Don’t Let The Bells End) was a great tune (wretched title pun aside) that’s not only about Christmas (unlike 85% of the songs on Xmas compilation albums) but also has a direct lineage to the fun spirit of Merry Xmas Everybody and I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day. But it couldn’t even make it to the top spot (pipped at the post by that gloomy version of Mad World from Donnie Darko). And if that couldn’t do it, nothing can.

In recent years, the charts at Christmas have been dominated by the just released X Factor winners’ single. Last year, if you recall, it was a horrendous cover version of Jeff Buckley’s cover version of John Cale’s cover version of Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah.  Add a key change and a choir, and suddenly the song is “Hallelujah, I’ve won a TV talent show” rather than whatever that lecherous old rake laughing Len was on about. Being tied to a kitchen chair is just something that you do at Christmas, then. Nothing weird about that.

A campaign on Facebook and Twitter to get Rage Against The Machine’s Killing In The Name to number one ahead of it was announced recently, and although this was quite clearly a jokey dig at The X Factor in general and musical nazi Simon Cowell in particular, a lot of people didn’t see the funny side. In fact there was a massive amount of pomposity on both sides of the fence. It’s a 17 year old rock track! RATM’s records are distributed by Sony! It’s not Christmassy! The appropriate reponses to these comments are so? so? and so?

My immediate thought was as long as they rerecord it with sleighbells and a children’s choir, they’re a  shoo in, although it’s unlikely that Zack de la Rocha, the angriest man in rock would cooperate. Tom Morello might have though. I reckon he’s a laugh. His squeaky windscreen guitar solos prove he has an appreciation for the ridiculous.

Rage’s self titled debut album is apparently mostly about imprisoned activist Leonard Peltier. I always though it was about monster riffs and shouting. I suspect most of their fans throughout the years have shrugged at the “politics” and just got off on the fact that they rocked like a bastard. Rather than Killing In The Name, Know Your Enemy is actually the key track from that record. It has everything you remember about Rage: the off kilter stop-start intro, the killer riff, the rather clumsy lyric “forward into ‘92,/still in a room without a view!”, the scrap of proper old school metal vocal from Maynard James Keenan of Tool, and that bit at the end where de la Rocha screams “ALL OF WHICH ARE AMERICAN DREAMS!!” over and over again.

Unfortunately the lasting legacy of RATM is that they inspired that most oafish of musical genres, Nu Metal. I bet that made de la Rocha even angrier.

The band split, and three quarters of them formed the okay-ish Audioslave with Soundgarden’s Chris Cornell. During this time Morello worked on the soundtrack to Dodgeball and appeared in Guitar Hero III. De la Rocha’s promised hip hop album never emerged, as he was obviously too angry to actually get it done. Eventually though, like every other band ever, Rage Against The Machine reformed for a comeback tour. Sell outs to the very machine they were raging against? Maybe. But if a bunch of Generation Xers want to go out and nostalgically punch the air to Renegades of Funk, why should anyone begrudge them that?

A campaign for Shelter, related the the RATM4Xmas Campaign has so far raised £30000, miraculous when you consider the self absorbtion of the average Twitter user, so without question the whole enterprise has at least done some good.

I finally decided to download Killing In The Name, as I realised that I’ve never legally owned it. I guess I owe those boys something. Maybe a Christmas number one would make Tom Morello smile (and make Zack de la Rocha furious), and that’s the least I can do for all the hours of fun I’ve had playing air guitar along to them in a thousand rock clubs. And if some kid hears it and realises there’s something beyond the impossibly narrow view of music that The X Factor presents, then so much for the better.

Merry Christmas I Won’t Do What You Tell Me!

For those of you that missed it at Thoughtbubble (and that would have to be all of you, right?) Hope For The Future Issue 12 is now available to buy direct from us. Just pop on over to our shop for details. Inane soap opera shenanigans give way to creepy occult goings on and a genuinely terrifying (not to mention unexpected) conclusion. And a talking lizard.

It seems to be de rigeur to write up a “report” after attending a comics convention, but what to say that everyone else hasn’t already said? ThoughtBubble 2009 seems to have been a resounding success for exhibitors and attendees alike, which is a testament to the professionalism and friendliness of the organisers and staff. In fact the convention was being reported on largely as it happened, through the magic of Twitter. We are truly living in the future. Usually at this point I struggle to remember specifics, but because of Twitter I can tell you exactly what I was doing at pretty much any point. Let’s take a little trip back into the mists of time…

9.56 Finished setting the table up. After being surly all week at the prospect of HFTF issue 12 not arriving, it actually appeared on Friday, which was a bit of a relief. Of course issue 11 hadn’t been ready for the last con we did, so that was essentially “new” too, but I’m really pleased with how 12 turned out so it would have sucked to not have it available. Remember to order your comics well in advance kids.

10.45 Sold first comic. It was Andrew’s.

11.16 We got interviewed by some girls, one of whom was dressed as Spider-Girl. Not “The” Spider-Girl, or at least not Spider-Girl in her official costume. She looked more like Spider-Girl if she was out at an indie night. Anyway, I’m always up for pontificating in public, especially if it gives me a chance to publicise my comic. However, I’m not actually very good at it. If you thought these blog posts were rambling, stilted and incomprehensible, they are as nothing compared to when I struggle to remember what Hope For The Future is actually about and string a sentence together live.

11.35 At this point we remembered our promise to stick anyone who bought something into the next issue. The guy didn’t look too thrilled about this, but we still took his picture.

12.00 At this point I realised that there were no Imperial Stormtroopers about. There were millions of them last year. I was looking forward to getting a photo of myself getting bitchslapped by “our brave boys” in the 501st. Plenty of cosplayers were around though – these were mainly kids dressed as characters from manga that I don’t recognise, although there were a few Zatannas and a great Riddler/Penguin double act doing the rounds. I’ve never seen anyone as The Penguin before, which is surprising as I imagine it’s an easy costume to put together. Easier than killer Croc and Man Bat anyway. I don’t know what this guy was meant to be. Maybe he always dresses like this

1.00 There was a bit of a dinnertime lull, so Oliver decided to do a ukelele based cover of Marillion’s Kayleigh. I would have preferred Interior Lulu, but that’s not quite as well known, although I realise that Kayleigh is only recognisable to most people today because of the vast amount of girls born in the mid eighties who are called that. I’m not sure whether our uke assisted serenades were actually keeping people away, but I suppose the main thing was that we were enjoying ourselves, even if no one around us was. It’s instructive to note that by this point, some drink had been taken.

1.56 At this point we noticed a particularly badass Iron Man. Now that’s a costume. We should have invited him over for a drink.

2.42 At this point, we were proper drunk. I can tell this as I tweeted about the fact that we had decided our comics should be recommended by a gentleman by the name of Awesome Wells. This struck us as absolutely hilarious, and we vowed to at least create a T shirt featuring him. Probably doing something awesome. Sadly no one took us up on our free comics offer, which is proof that no one actually reads my blog, or my twitter feed, or that they were so intimidated by being in our presence that they lost control of their faculties. I choose to believe the latter.

So we hung out, had a few drinks, sold some books and spoke to a few fellow comics creators, such as Chris Doherty, Richard J Smith and Garen Ewing, gents all deserving of your attention and support if they are not already receiving it. We would have schmoozed more with our fellow creatives but, as misanthropes, that goes against our image. And we are socially inept.

Once we had eaten (and sobered up a bit), we went along to the after party and attended the post con chat show, brilliantly hosted by the boys from Geek Syndicate. Someone should give these two their own TV show, seriously. However, interviewing comics creators about the difficulty of interpreting Grant Morrison’s scripts and the finer points of producing sketches for glue fixated weirdoes, while fascinating to someone like me, may not have the mass appeal of, say, getting deluded no marks to sing Robbie Williams songs tunelessly while brutalising rare tropical insects. Ah well, I’ll never understand the modern world.

Thoughtbubble is nearly upon us, so that means we have a couple of competitions for you. First of all it is the Great Hope For The Future Reader Cameo Challenge. Actually, it’s not much of a competition or a challenge, and despite the punning name of this post, has nothing to do with Twitter, but I have decided that anyone who buys one of our fantastic products at Thoughtbubble this Saturday gets the chance to APPEAR IN THE NEXT ISSUE. I believe the appropriate response to this is “W00T!”.  Here are a few things to bear in mind:

1. The more stuff you buy, the better your chances. Hey we have a massive post con drinking binge to support.
2. The next issue is set at an event primarily attended by young, cool, sexy people. If you are in fact a young, cool, sexy person your chances of appearing are significantly greater than if you look… y’know… more like me
3. If you don’t make it into the next issue  (ie all the “slots” are filled) you’ll pop up in a subsequent one. Although I doubt we’ll be inundated with requests, frankly, so that’s probably not a problem.
4. It would help if you’re easy to draw.
5. If you’re a stormtrooper it might be a bit tricky to justify, story wise
6. Of course all of this depends on the life of my camera batteries, or the availability for replacements

So far, so awesome. The second competition is the Great Hope For The Future Twitter Feed Scavenger Hunt. All you need to do is follow me on Twitter and wait for the special super secret tweet. I was going to make it some weird riddle that you need to work out from a series of fiendishly cryptic clues, but I can’t be bothered so it’ll just be some clearly signposted daft phrase that I will tweet between now and Saturday morning (depending on when I remember to do it). Come up to our table during the convention and repeat the stupid phrase, and you’ll get a free comic. Free stuff, just for the brief embarrassment of saying some gibberish to a complete stranger? Every comic book publisher should do that!!