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
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:
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!!
How time flies. A year ago we were fresh faced young scamps at our first comic convention (in Leeds). Now we are grizzled veterans with the attendant emotional scars, gearing up for this years’ Thoughtbubble on Saturday 21st November. For the first time ever I am actually prepared. And by “prepared” I mean not still setting up two and a half hours into the actual convention. Only one thing remains in question – that is whether issue 12 of HFTF will be back from the printers. They are cutting it a bit fine, it has to be said. Of course issue 11 will be available for the first time at a convention, but I was hoping to have 12 as it’s… well… better.
Never fear, dear readers. We promise to hide any crushing disappointments and not be “Captain Bringdown”. You can rest assured that we will be sparkling, witty and accomodating. Failing that our musical director Ol has promised that he will perform a song on his ukelele for everyone who buys a comic. Actually that seems a little excessive… maybe we’ll hold back on the musical accompaniment and just keep it for the people who buy our “high end” stuff (basically, the collected editions).
So whether you buy anything from us or not, come over and say hello. You’ll need something to do while the queues to see the popular artists subside. Talking of which I see some of my favourite comic book creators are in attendance. Duncan Fegredo, Frazer Irving, Frank Quietly… honestly I can’t decide who to stalk most.
Yes, after endlessly deliberating I have finally done some T Shirt designs. And by that I mean I have drawn two and then just dug up some old unused art for the others. Rest assured more will be added, especially if I get any requests to make t shirts featured in the comics available (although please note, I do not own the rights to Dr. Zoidberg). Trot on over to here to check them out.
May all your Halloween dreams come true… actually that’s not good is it? That would be awful! Instead, why not read our fantastic Halloween based story, starting here. Much better than eating apples filled with razor blades!
Issue 12, aka the one that I have neglected to title, is now finished. Yes, I’m sure you were wondering why there was rejoicing in the streets. This issue should be available at Thoughtbubble in Leeds this November if all goes to plan. If not I will no doubt be found weeping quietly in a corner somewhere. However, you can order this issue directly from our pals at IndyPlanet.
As suggested by Flying Monkey Comics‘ very own Andrew Livesey, we go from a picture featuring a telly, to Telemachus, and his dad Ulysses 31. This was a cartoon in the early eighties, chiefly remembered for having a kickass theme tune, which is awesome. If you can ignore the Countdown bit. Weirdly enough, no matter what language it’s in, it’s always strangely reminiscent of Journey’s Steve Perry.
Unlike most cartoons when I was a kid, Ulysses 31 was actually good. It was weird, creepy, atmospheric and had a definite conclusion. Of course, Greek Mythology is a terrific source for a sci-fi makeover, and both France and Japan have pretty distinguished credentials with regards to surreal sci-fi/fantasy, so a combination of the two is always going to be a winner.
In The Odyssey, Telemachus is at home on the island of Ithaca, no doubt developing a raging Oedipus complex, whereas in Ulysses 31, his dad takes him along on his suicidal cosmic adventure. You may be a Groovy French Space Jesus, but that’s just bad parenting, dude.
This picture makes specific reference to Steven Spielberg’s War Of The Worlds 
So where next? Suggestions for something cool, related in some way to any of these auspicious subjects, can be made here, on my Twitter feed, or at the Facebook Group.