OK the new entry in the Star Wars saga is pretty interesting, but I’m not sure where it fits in the timeline. For one thing The Mos Eisley Cantina has turned into one of those ghastly sports bars. It looks worse than The Outlander Club from Episode II. Daft Punk fit right in, of course, as they look exactly like those police robots from THX 1138 and Indie Godheads Ian Brown and Noel Gallagher are now so grizzled that they don’t exactly look out of place next to Hammerhead and Snaggletooth. I don’t know about Snoop Dogg awkwardly handling a lightsaber though. The Drop It Like It’s Hot hitmaker is about as convincing a Jedi as Don-Wan Kihotay. Walrus Man is clearly disappointed with the state of hip hop today and just wants to make his feelings known.

Girly voiced male model and occasional “Soccer” player David Beckhams makes an appearance, being hassled by Greedo… or at least some other rodian – they not only all look alike but they even dress the same. Jabba wants him to play for his team – at this point I could hear a million voices suddenly cry out in terror – or at least a bunch of fanboys bleating about their childhoods being raped. Look, if Adidas is going to sell overpriced sports gear with stormtroopers on or something, that’s fine, but all they need to do to get me to shell out is flog those casual jackets that Luke and Han wear in Empire. That’s what was wrong with the prequels, no casual jackets!

My introduction to KISS was with their 1987 hit Crazy Crazy Nights. At the time I was getting into the finer points of high culture (Genesis, Iron Maiden, Middle Earth Role Playing), so I dismissed its cheesy glitziness and fake live whooping (“Here’s a little song for everyone out there!”). It was only later in life that I realised their importance – they were pivotal in (American) rock music and influenced pretty much every (American) band that followed them. I guess we never really “got” them over here. Why would we when we had Queen?

KISS have returned to their 70s roots (ie. wearing kabuki makeup and ridiculous comic book superhero style stage gear) and are touring the UK, so, obviously, we’re in attendance at Manchester’s cavernous MEN arena. Kicking off with their rather tasty new(ish) single Modern Day Delilah from the album Sonic Boom, they proceed to play a set of (mostly) classics. KISS made their reputation on the strength of their stage antics rather than their playing, but here they deliver a tight musical performance that’s worlds away from the clunky sound of live shows from their “heyday”. There’s also some blood spitting and fire breathing from Gene Simmons, which, while I realise it’s customary for a KISS show, is a little at odds with their songs, which are mostly good natured thumping party metal anthems.

In addition to that we get a solo from Tommy Thayer, which culminates in his launching flares from his guitar, and a drum solo, in which Eric Singer avoids the natural tedium that usually accompanies such things by producing a bazooka and blowing up part of the lighting rig. My wife pointed out that she enjoyed the show because there were “no lame ballads”, but if there had been you can bet something would have exploded halfway through.

The nearest thing we get is Paul Stanley flying across the arena to perform his party piece I Was Made For Lovin’ You, a bizarre disco rock hybrid, and an example of their talent for producing great pop records. Stanley, with his bare chest and glittery tassled stack heels flounces around the stage in a manner that Freddie Mercury would have considered a bit too camp. He’s the star(child) of the show, however, with his constant whoops of “Hey Man chest uh!! Man Chest Uh’s a Rock City! Let Me Hear You Man Chest Uh!”

During God Gave Rock ‘n Roll To You, another great single, the screens show shots of The Beatles, Zeppelin, Hendrix, The Stones et al. Okay, maybe they could have at least put Argent in there, but Kiss aren’t shy about giving some respect to their (mostly British) influences. They throw a bit of Won’t Get Fooled Again into Lick It Up, and play a brief version of  Whole Lotta Love. And while most critics would rather die than put them alongside such auspicious company, they’re true icons. Like Mickey Mouse, only badass.

Oh and Crazy Crazy Nights? Awesome!

After an inessential movie, and a patchy, but sporadically impressive first run, Clone Wars returned for a second season and has vastly improved (and also managed to cram in fan pleasing appearances by Bossk and Boba Fett).

While being ostensibly aimed at a younger audience, and certainly having plenty of fans among the Ben 10 constituency, it seems the Star Wars saga just can’t get away from a (mostly) healthy seam of nastiness. Most startlingly, we have our central character Anakin Skywalker playing bad cop and secretly torturing information out of insectoid Seperatist bigwig Poggle The Lesser, in a clear foreshadowing of the monster he will inevitably become. In another episode, Duchess of Mandalore, he impales some dude through the back with his lightsaber. Hardly the actions of your average protagonist in a kids’ cartoon, and it’s played for laughs too.

For the most part, it’s a regular kid’s show with regular kid’s show plots. The Zillo Beast and Brain Invaders employ standard tropes for pulp space opera, that shift the series away from the source movies, but closer to the original inspiration. Formulaic and familiar they might be, but they look great, and have a wide eyed, “everything but the kitchen sink” charm.

A common discussion point on the Star Wars movies is in which order should they be first viewed (the obvious answer being the release order. Duh!). However we now have fans of the TV show who have seen none of the original movies. As long as they don’t push the foreshadowing too far, or ever employ flashbacks/forwards, the series could be watched as a prelude to the movies, as they would not reveal any of the saga’s pivotal plot points. Anakin would merely be the brave (if rash and occasionally troubled) hero of The Clone Wars, with Obi-Wan as his loyal friend and brother in arms. When the series was over the films could be watched, with the appropriate backstory told, but with none of the characters’ fates revealed.

The central problem of creating tension in plots that centre on those whose fates are known (at least by older audiences) remains, but has been somewhat minimised by concentrating on new or marginal characters. In Weapons Factory and Brain Invaders, padawans Ahsoka Tano and Barriss Offee, seem to be genuinely in peril. Ahsoka in particular, originally loathed by fans as a hybrid of Wesley Crusher and Hannah Montana, is coming into her own as a worthwhile addition, and Anakin’s (negative) influence on her is revealing itself. I still don’t know about her outfit though. She’s supposed to be a Jedi warrior, not Christina Aguilera.

Something that has always bugged me about The Clone Wars is that so far everything we have seen of it has been a war, (singular), between The Republic and The Separatists. Calling them “Wars” always implied that there were several separate conflicts going on. During the Mandalore trilogy of episodes, we see a gathering army of the Boba Fett armour wearing mercenary badasses. This is exciting to aging fanboys such as myself because Fett’s initial backstory, sketchily intimated the the Empire Strikes Back novelisation, was that the Mandalorians were warriors that fought The Jedi during The Clone Wars. Could there be a a separate conflict within the larger one in the coming seasons? Yes please!

Some fans were not happy about The Mandalorians showing up, as it didn’t quite jibe with some of the existing spin off novels, which is a bit like being upset that Owen Lars turns out not to be the brother of Obi-Wan Kenobi after all, but I see their point. Lucasfilm has always been cagey about the place of the old Marvel Comics in the current continuity, and who can blame them when you consider it involved six foot tall green rabbits, telepathic pink hamsters and the invasion of the manga goths. But I have a lot of affection for some of those stories because I grew up with them, so when I see an episode like The Deserter, it takes me right back to The Alderaan Factor. This, and light hearted one off stories like Lightsaber Lost, remind me of some of the issues of that series, as well as the slightly grungier videogames but truthfully, they’re much, much better.

The poem Jabberwocky seems to be an exercise in language – the point is you’re never supposed to see The Jabberwock, The Slithy Toves or the Frumious Bandersnatch, they just live in your imagination as uncanny, twisted and shadowy possibilities. Of course Tenniel did illustrate the poem, presumably just because he wanted to draw a cool weird monster. So that’s exactly what I did.

Geek Syndicate certainly don’t need any introduction from us, at least judging by the fact that they have ten times as many Twitter followers as we do. If you didn’t know, they’re a podcast covering comics, movies, TV, and video games, and they do it with a winning sense of humour and level of enthusiasm that you don’t find too often. The triple headed hydra that is Flying Monkey Comics saw them present a Q&A with various A list artists at the Thoughtbubble Festival in Leeds last year, and even though we pick up new comic books about as often as… something that doesn’t happen very often, we still had a great time and found the whole thing extremely entertaining (even when the billed artists didn’t show up for the first hour, and the GS boys had to improvise).

So, we’d like to thank Barry Nugent for the exemplary review of HFTF, or at least the first couple of issues on their most recent podcast. It’s pretty weird getting critical notices on work that’s getting on for ten years old, but hey ho – it’s complimentary so I don’t need to find a way to travel back in time to persuade myself to not do it. You should head over there and listen to it right now. And then buy our stuff. Or read through our archives.

More stuff from the Gallery…

With Kick-Ass, we are now in the peculiar position of comic book movies that refer more to movies than they do to comic books, right down to star Aaron Johnson’s perfect reprisal of Tobey Maguire’s voice over in Spider-Man. I guess Mark Millar writes film treatments first and comics second (if the execreble Wanted is anything to go on), but in this case it works brilliantly. The film has been universally praised, although certain reactionary news sources have predictably claimed that it is the end of civilisation as we know it. The Mail writer seems to think that an eleven year old girl in a purple wig constitutes a “sexual image” (!), and gets in a right old tizz about the swearing and violence, branding the film “evil” and “amoral”. But, most heinous of all is the fact that the film was written (read: adapted) by Jane Goldman who just so happens to be married to Jonathan Ross. To The Daily Mail, Ross is, along with immigrants and gay marriage, destroying the very fabric of Britain. But anyone who did this can’t be all bad.

It’s customary to write a report of a convention you’ve attended as soon as humanly possible, but frankly they’re all pretty similar, so to minimise the risk of repeating myself, here are some pictures…

I shouldn’t have been surprised, but it turned out no one had seen this…

… despite my best efforts to pimp it. Turns out it could have been shown there, on a big screen, if only I’d been aware of it. I will endeavour to have it projected onto that Dalek building in Leeds this November when Thoughtbubble rolls around again.

As we were setting up, some bloke whose name I didn’t get, casually suggested we draw “any old thing” and put them on sale. We baulked at this for about 5 minutes and then proceeded to spend the rest of the day scribbling away. People seemed to really like the sketches and snapped them up, especially those that featured HP Lovecraft’s much loved eldritch monstrosity. Unfortunately I didn’t get a photo of my favourite stupid pun of the weekend: Cthulhu Live At Leeds. Maybe we should do some in advance for next time? Having said that we still have a few left over, so if anyone buys a book from our store I’ll liberally chuck some in! I still have my “Edward Cullen: What a cunt!” pic, so, y’know, form an orderly queue Twilight fans!

As ever we met some great people – a few of which seemed to actually be fans. Someone (again I didn’t get anyone’s name) started a conversation with “what I like about Hope For The Future…” as if it was a real comic like Maus or Cable or something. The most frequent comment was that the art style changes from issue to issue. That’s… er… at least partly intentional I can assure you.

So there we go for another year. We came, we saw, we sold some comics, we had a few drinks, and we then spent seven hours stuck in traffic on the way home. Thanks as always to anyone who bought anything, and massaged our fragile egos. Enormous overdue thanks to our mate Jim who every year puts us up and provides us with food, booze, oyster cards and a seemingly unlimited supply of terrible terrible horror movies on DVD. These are the ties that bind

Here we have the trailer for the new Hope For The Future Collection. Our last two trailers for HFTF were greeted with worldwide acclaim, and grown men were seen to weep openly in the streets and embrace their former enemies, inspired by the sheer awesomeness of extremely limited animation and a burst of some tasty tunes.

This is no different, as you can see, but this time we decided to write some lyrics in order to fully express the mind manglingly cryptic themes of this epochal comic book series. The ideal musical medium for this was naturally a vaguely glam rock mid paced guitar stomp, with plentiful harmonies, because, as Brian Eno says,  backing vocals solve everything (although he’s never heard my nasal rasp). Many many thanks to our resident musical director Oliver for putting the whole thing together, and to our pal Ben who played the bass.

Let’s not forget the real message here, which is BUY HOPE FOR THE FUTURE BOOK 3, which is something you can do at the UK Web & Minicomix Thing, next Saturday, March 27th at London’s Queen Mary University in Mile End.  You can also buy a bunch of our other crap, pick up our contribution to the Dino-Saw-Us project, get a sketch, or just say hello. We will probably have Quality Street. I also have a four page strip in the Dinosaur Themed Official Anthology, but that’s the last time I’ll be doing fully painted comics as it takes too long!

Even though our Be In The Next Issue Of The Comic and Twitter Feed Scavenger Hunt went down like a fucking lead balloon at November’s Thoughtbubble, we’ll be doing the same thing here, so if you want to appear in HFTF issue 13 pop over and buy something, or repeat something from our Twitter feed to us to get some cool free junk.

I don’t know anything about Phish. I think they may be the heirs to the legacy of The Grateful Dead, eternally jammin’ their way across America. They’re ubiquitous enough over there to have been mentioned on an episode of The Simpsons, but I don’t know a single person who listens to them. I imagine they sound like Blues Traveler or The Dave Matthews Band, and I bet they probably played at Woodstock 2.

Of course this could be solved by a quick look at Wikipedia but where’s the fun in that? I like the idea of going off on one, completely misinformed.

However, Phish have come onto my radar as they recently appeared at The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in order to induct the least Rock & Roll band ever, Genesis. They did an OK version of Watcher of The Skies, and a pretty ropey No Reply At All, but this speech from frontman Trey Anastasio is a heartfelt tribute to the I Know What I Like (In Your Wardrobe) Hitmakers and proves what a fan he is. You don’t get this sort of thing at the Brits when someone lobs Robbie Williams his 47th gong…