From The Archaic Revival by Terence McKenna:

‘What is happening to our world is ingression of novelty toward what Whitehead called “concrescence”, a tightening gyre. Everything is flowing together. The “autopoetic lapsis”, the alchemical stone at the end of time, coalesces when everything flows together. When the laws of physics are obviated, the universe disappears, and what is left is the tightly bound plenum, the monad, able to express itself for itself, rather than only able to cast a shadow into physis as its reflection. I come very close here to classic millenarian and apocalyptic thought in my view of the rate at which change is accelerating. From the way the gyre is tightening, I predict that concrescence will occur soon – around 2012a.d.’

So, Happy New Year, then.

Christopher Nolan is currently shooting his third and final Batman movie.   I imagine you’ve heard about this, seeing as though you’ve got access to the internet and everything.  It’s called The Dark Knight Rises, a title which – to me at least – sounds a bit like one of those vintage soft porn parodies of Hollywood blockbusters, like Flesh Gordon and Die Hard-On.  In any case, I imagine the film will be very good.

But I bet it won’t be this good:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RppxhOdby4

There’s more about this wonderfully executed made-up film here.  The image at the top of this post is from a Batman comic called Mask, in which British comic artist Bryan Talbot tackled a similar subject way back in 1992.  That’s very good, too.

Here, for instance, is “Boss” Tin:

An old "Boss" Tin sketch by Yours Truly

During the 1970s, Birmingham’s motor industry was thrown into disarray by the sudden influx of new car workers who never took a sick day, agreed to double shifts without grumbling and rarely mixed with colleagues in the staff canteen.  They were the first wave of assembly-line “robots”, and their arrival gave rise to industrial unrest, crippling strike action and – as is so often the case – elaborate urban myths about mechanical mobsters.

The most famous of these so-called MoBots was known only as “Boss” Tin.  Short, stocky and pathologically violent, he was notorious throughout the city for his unbridled ambition, ruthless opportunism and expensive taste in tin-foil Hawaiian shirts.  From his modest beginnings as a small-time re-bootlegger, he single-handedly built a vast empire of nightclubs, speakeasies and counterfeit Tandy stores.  These were often financed by the proceeds of protection rackets that targeted the city’s beleaguered community of drinks dispensers, pinball machines and Casio digital watches.

“Boss” Tin’s reign of terror finally came to an oil-soaked end in 1982 following a botched attempt at kidnapping seven welding robots from the Mini Metro assembly line at Longbridge.  After leaving an adult theatre in the early hours of the morning with Tin-Pan Alison, a tawdry strip-teasmade, he was ambushed by the militant mechanized union leader “Red Robo” and his treacherous Underboss, Al Machino (AKA “Carface”).   They shut him down in cold blood on Birmingham’s Victoria Square by forcibly removing his batteries and holding a magnet to his tape spools.

 A statue depicting a crude metal figure now marks the spot where he died.

The article features a veritable menagerie of similar beasts, critters and shaggy dog stories, each painstakingly illustrated by my old pal Nigel Lowrey.  The sketch above, incidentally, was something that originally accompanied an unsolicited script submission to the comic 2000ad which, sadly, never made it past Tharg’s slush pile.  I’m all for recycling, me.

Dirty Bristow issue 2 is available from here.

Recently I was asked to provide an illustration for The John School, a marvellous short story by my old pal Dan Powell that appears in the second issue of Dirty Bristow magazine. The John School is a morality tale set in kerb crawler rehabilitation unit and – without giving too much away – it’s powerful stuff and not for the faint hearted.

My illustration for the story tried to evoke the style of a 1950s EC horror comic: in a dimly-lit classroom, a frightened man turns to us and screams; in the distance, the skeletal ghost of a prostitute stands at a whiteboard and – in her own blood – writes a single word: ‘WHY?’

Sure, it’s vulgar, lurid and as subtle as a breeze block to the back of the head, but I feel it conveys a certain poignancy that was absent from my original version of the drawing:

Dirty Bristow issue two is available from here.

A lot of the e-petitions that have featured in the news are the predictable outpourings of the rabid reactionary forces we all know and love.  I was in a bit of a mischievous mood today and had a few minutes to spare, so I decided to engage in the democratic process and submit an e-petition of my own:

We strongly urge the government to ignore all online petitions (including this one)

We urge the government to resist the collective brainwrong of blood-lusty paranoids whose political views often share the same postcode as those of Genghis Khan.

Remember the former-Soviet principality of Gertrudestein?  President Zeppo Connery (a former Politburo Chief who trimmed his eyebrows as a concession to Glasnost) was so eager to appease irate petitioners that he outlawed certain types of lederhosen and unveiled a new national flag depicting a gingham napkin set against a turquoise backdrop. While there was some popular support for tighter lederhosen controls, the masses were violently opposed to the napkin’s prominence in the new flag, especially as the traditional national symbol was the serviette. Before long the nation was in the grip of a civil war as mobs took to the streets, the streets took to the hills and the hills fled to the border.

The situation was finally resolved then rebel forces submitted a petition to government forces demanding their surrender.

Sadly, my e-petition was rejected.

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBCozy67VIQ

I think it looks ace, but then I would.  I’ve always had a weakness for comic-book superheroes and WWII films, so a film about a comic-book superhero that’s set in WWII will probably trigger a catastrophic endorphin eruption that’ll fuse my synapses together.  Or maybe I’ll just leave the cinema disappointed.  Who knows?  It’s still too early to call.

For the uninitiated, Captain America: The First Avenger (to give the film it’s full and slightly cumbersome title) is about Steve Rogers, an impoverished, idealistic, wartime weakling who longs to join the US Army and beat the Goddamn Shit out of Nazis. Unfortunately, the US Army of the 1940s wasn’t in the business of recruiting scrawny streaks of piss, so Steve signs up for a top secret government ‘Super Soldier’ project that transforms him into a well cut, star-spangled fighting machine with an all-purpose circular shield.  After several years of successfully beating the Goddamn Shit out of Nazis, he finds himself frozen in a block of ice only to reawaken in the modern era, a perfectly preserved relic of a simpler time struggling to adjust to a world where cigarettes and Nylon tights no longer pay the rent.

The reason why I was able to write that last paragraph without consulting Google, Wikipedia or Stan Lee’s Origins of Marvel Comics is because I’m a bit of a Captain America fan.  I know: this may seem odd coming from a Chomsky-reading  lefty like myself, but I devoured his comic-book adventures as a kid and have no problem reconciling an enduring fondness for the character with a strong dislike for certain American administrations, institutions and assholes.  To me, Captain America – when handled right, at least – represents all the things I like and respect about America.  On a more practical level, of course, this patriotic hero with his trademark shield was one of the few comic characters I could easily identify with as a kid.  Birmingham in the 1980s wasn’t known for its rich abundance of radioactive spiders, Gamma Bomb explosions and high-tech suits of armour.  Dustbin lids, though, were everywhere.

I expect the film will do big business in the US, but I’m not sure how well it will fare in parts of the world where turning up at a fancy dress party in a stars-and-stripes unitard will likely get you killed.  It’s already been confirmed that Captain America’s name will be dropped from the film’s title in Russia, the Ukraine and South Korea, where it’ll presumably be called Colon The First Avenger.  On a positive note, there’s no truth in the rumour that it’s being marketed in certain Middle Eastern territories as ‘Captain Great Satan’.

Closer to home, some may wonder what this All-American hero has to say to a typical British cinemagoer living in a city like, for arguments sake, Birmingham.  By ‘typical British cinemagoer’, of course, I mean one that didn’t spend his or her childhood hurling dustbin lids at their little brother (AKA ‘The Rednal Skull’).  What many of these people probably don’t realise is that Marvel Comics has its very own UK-based patriotic superhero called – you guessed it – Captain Britain.  In contrast to his US counterparts humble origins, Captain Britain was an aristocratic Home Counties chap who got hand-picked by Merlin (yes, that Merlin) to be this country’s champion.   His origin probably says more about the endemic unfairness of the British class system than any of its creators originally realised.

No, if Birmingham-based cinemagoers want a superhero they can really identify with then they’ll have to look elsewhere.  Luckily, an ideal candidate already exists.

His name?  Captain Midlands.

Yes, that sprawling and overpopulated metafictional monstrosity that is the Marvel Comics Universe actually contains a patriotic, shield-slinging, living legend of World War II who is also a Brummie.  If the likes of Captains America and Britain are (in the language of the aviation industry) national flag-carriers, then Captain Midlands is (in the argot of social media types) a hyperlocal hero.

As you might expect, the character shares a similar wartime backstory to his more illustrious American counterpart, with Brummie Sid Riley signing up for Britain’s answer to Project: Super Soldier (presumably called ‘Project: Splendid Soldier’).  Unlike Captain America, though, he wasn’t cryogenically preserved in a block of ice but instead grew old and increasingly uncouth and belligerent.  To put it another way, he became Marvel Comics’ version of some miserable old scrote on the number 11 bus, a super-powered senior citizen  equipped with a Pumping Iron-era  Schwarzenegger physique.

Unlike his A-List counterparts who habitually deal with big name supervillains and interplanetary threats, Captain Midlands spends most of his time rehabilitating low-level ASBO types and battling tower block crack dens.  To put it another way, he’s a sort of meta-human Neighbourhood Watch Co-ordinator.  And while the big shot patriotic heroes represent some kind of noble, nationalistic ideal, Captain Midlands is a lot more – shall we say – down to earth.  In fact, one character memorably describes him as “the only super soldier I know who complains about his piles.”

As you might have guessed I’m rather fond of him, too.

I was introduced to the character in Marvel comic called Captain Britain & MI:13 during a storyline called – I shit you not – ‘Hell Comes to Birmingham’.   It featured Captain Britain, Captain Midlands and Blade the Vampire Slayer (yes, that one) battling a monstrous psychic critter that terrorised the good people of Hodge Hill.  It’s a cracking yarn written by Paul Cornell (who also penned several of my favourite David Tennant-era Doctor Who episodes) and I recommend it highly, particularly if you’ve got fond memories of school holidays spent braining a brother with a dustbin lid.

With a big-budget Captain America movie almost upon us, it’s probably unlikely that Birmingham’s own hyperlocal hero will ever get a similar big screen treatment.  Yet, in a world where just about every comic book character has been optioned for a lucrative movie deal, maybe it’s only a matter of time before we hear Captain Midlands complain about his piles in a multiplex near you.

Somebody should give Shane Meadows a call.

Further details can be found here and here.

As you were.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzgIBVYQQ-Q