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October 2015

Ham on Rye

First I must apologise for my absence to my readers (all three of you), I’ve been deathly ill with some unknown pathogen and haven’t been capable of doing much more than playing payday 2 endlessly and coughing up chunks of lung.

With my return I decided to share one of my older Dahmer and Greg sketches, this was a guest piece by the guy who does the art for 3 Ring, the one and only Mike (Now Ike, there was already a Mike Golden in comics) Golden. And use it to address a current trend I’ve noticed or maybe it’s just me.

It’s become quite ‘trendy’ so as to say mainstream or socially acceptable to mock Christianity and creationism and Catholicism and all that jazz. This is not to say I have anything against them being mocked, quite the opposite as you can see from the strip, I did it myself.
I feel any and all beliefs should be rife for scrutiny and parody at all time without exception.
I personally consider myself an atheistic Satanist but that’s a long story in regards to why I don’t call myself an atheist anymore, which is tangentially linked with this but a bit too much of a digression, don’t want to hurt that flow.

I think its fine and necessary to mock all beliefs and anything that isn’t nailed down including and especially atheism, which is why Trey Parker and Matt Stone of South Park will always be heroes of mine for leaving no stone unturned for parody and having the balls to carry it through.

I think I may have touched on this before when I talked about the Isis cake thing, but I do think there’s a reticence in the left or at least the social justice left to criticise Islam when they’ll happily mock Christianity and get a million retweets on twitter.

But if you criticise Islam you’re instantly a bigot and a racist and you deserved to be hounded off twitter. If you criticise feminism you’re a misogynist, if you criticise blacklivesmatter you’re a racist again. All these labels are just there to squash discussions and to not have to debate their points logically.

But that’s not really what I’m trying to get at, the overall point I’m trying to make is that mocking Christianity has as a result of it becoming socially acceptable it’s become boring and meaningless, oversaturated. It would be like making a pedo priest joke, everyone’s heard them all. There’s not bite anymore, I guess with this new wave of social justice warriors I’ve garnered a new found respect for Christians. I don’t in any way believe in objective morality but after seeing the depravity and solipsism of moral relativism, I can appreciate the goal of seeking moral objectivity despite it obviously being impossible.

I think to myself if I had kids who would I prefer them to be brainwashed by a feminist or a Christian? I come up with Christian every time. I mean there’s not a lot of difference really, both will tell them they’re broken pieces of shit that need this overbearing force in their lives to get right with. Both will tell them only through them can they be saved and both will say anyone that disagrees with them is an idiot or a bigot. But the Christian will at least instil them with some sense of morality even if it’s for a completely ridiculous reason when the feminist will just ask mindless obedience to whatever scattered ideal they have at the moment.
Maybe if you gave social justice and feminism a couple thousand years more it would be a better or a more solid religion than it is but right now it’s all over the place.

I think that’s way with all culture to be honest, once it becomes mainstream and socially acceptable is the point it stops being edgy and it stops making the point it made before. Christian beliefs if you truly believe them literally are silly, let’s face it but allegorically they’re not that bad, a lot of the book is pretty inconsistent and is relative of the time for most of the bullshit about justifying slavery, I’m by no means being an apologist for Christianity but moreover the most radical of Christians are just fucking annoying, they don’t blow (usually) blow your shit up or cut your head off on camera or try and get you fired from your job and destroy your life for disagreeing with them on the internet.

So to me hating them seems like a waste of energy, I don’t agree with them, I don’t support them; I just think it’s better than tumblr. The bible is better than tumblr there I said it ha-ha (I’m full of shit, I’ve never read either). I just can’t summon the energy to hate them when there are forces amassing in power that are far more insidious than some 2000 year old Jew zombie cult. It just leaves a bad taste in my mouth, like someone smacking an old donkey. It’s like how it’s sort of socially acceptable to be racist and sexist towards white guys, even among white guys, these people, these sjws think they’re counter culture. They think they’re not mainstream, they’re edgy and hip, they couldn’t be more wrong, they couldn’t be more mainstream, they are the establishment and the sooner people realise that the sooner they’ll fall apart.

Forgive this dazed sickness induced rant, just been rambling incessantly from one abstract point to the other incoherently and I must put it to a stop right now and get back to trying not to die.
Peace out!

0

First review for Green Sunday chapter one

In a bit of a shameless quid pro quo back scratching, Florian has done a lovely review in thanks for the review I did of his story Wayward Salvation. So you know it’s completely unbiased and subjective haha.
It’s a nice review, I think he did a great job and captured it nicely but take it with a grain of salt because he’s a friend.

Thanks again Flo, don’t forget to check out his story Wayward Salvation and of course Green Sunday.

Katanas and Cheese Graters

Green Sunday chapter one reviewed by Florian Maier
Let's be honest, whether we like it or not, the Zombie Apocalypse has been done to death. From films like the legendary 'RomeroTrilogy' and TV-shows like 'The Walking Dead' to books like 'World War Z' and video games franchises like 'Dead Rising', there have been so many incarnations, they could fill the coffers of any zombiephile to last them several lifetimes.

Let me take you aside for a second, and let's look at the bigger picture: a fresh take is needed.

Yes, we've had self aware zombie comedies in forms of our 'Shaun of the Deads' and 'Zombielands', and not to forget a hammy teeny love-story/comedy called 'Warm Bodies', but none have been particularly daring, at least for modern standards, when it comes to the setting or story department. 

The gist always is: 'Zombies happen (for whatever reason), modern society as we know it crumbles and someone (or many) must step up to do stuff, or just survive, or keep their humanity intact, or all things at once..' 

Sound familiar? No? Well, then you've probably never seen 'Dawn of the Dead', or the remake.

'Green Sunday' is not only a fresh take on the whole Zombie Apocalypse shebang, it also  dares to abandon the gritty seriousness of more recent incarnations for a return to Romero-style satire and humour.

Now I know you probably think this is going to be about the Zombie Apocalypse, but to be precise, the Apocalypse has happened, and passed. Turns out our shambling friends were no match for the Military  leaving a lot of disappointed teenagers and zombie themed web-shows in the wake of the disaster. 

TJ, our protagonist, is one of those disappointed teens, a tubby neckbeard with an affinity for cutting up plastic water bottles  in his Mom's backyard with a mall katana. 
His loud mouthed neighbour, Zed, runs one of the aforementioned web-shows and brings his audience (and us as the readers) up to speed on how things are now, of course hinting (or rather hoping) the Apocalypse will return so he can finally show off his automated killer cheese graters some more (yes, you read correctly, cheese graters) instead of having them tested on toothless zombie 'stumps' in his backyard. 

TJ, meanwhile seems content swinging about his swords and imagining himself as a samurai in feudal Japan. So, why is he our main character again? Well, who doesn't like a lovable loser and underdog? I sure do. 

Right from the title of the chapter you will notice that 'Green Sunday' relies on its humour, and it's far from toothless packing a real bite (obvious pun intended). I must honestly confess however that the humour may not be for everyone, since it does not shirk away from being vulgar and upfront. Don't get me wrong, it's funny, and I Iaughed and smiled all the way through. 

Besides its off-beat humour, its writing is visual, the opening being a prime example for this. I'm a huge fan of visual and descriptive writing and found it to be one of the things that lifted it up from seeming like your run-of-the-mill piece of fiction published on the web. There was one point when the tense seemed to change abruptly but that is easily forgiven since the story flows off the page like a zombie oozes pus.

Overall, I found it to be an entertaining and not to forget refreshing read. To some TJ may seem a bit passive as a main character, but we're so spoiled nowadays by our quirky hyperactive and not to mention whiny emotional main characters that we have expected these to be the norm making it no surprise whatsoever when the protagonist does something badass or brave. 

Needless to say, the story shows off its potential right off the bat and the author definitely knows what he is doing and how to tinge his universe in satirical comedy. To quote John Hurt here:

"We can expect great things from you."
0

Wayward Salvation review

Some shameless friend promotion here, you’ve seen Florian’s art pretty much all over my blog, he’s the artist for Jeffrey Dahmer and Greg and Bat Country. His quirky style and dark, dismal themes are definitely up my alley.
He’s been a mate since uni but now the uppity twat thinks like every other twat on the planet that he can write too ha-ha. Well let’s just see about that as I review his preview chapter for a sort of offbeat sci-fi drama called Wayward Salvation… CUNT! 😉

Straight out of the gate you can tell this is his first attempt at writing something like this and like all newborn’s the first steps are the trickiest and result in a few bumps and bruises. But there’s an obvious natural aptitude as these wrinkles are quickly ironed out and the tension and the atmosphere is built quite easily even for something that was quite benign. I thought it worked really well, putting you in India’s perspective and her heightened sense of emotional vulnerability.

The first thing that threw me because Florian literally told me nothing about this and he only confessed to writing anything a couple of days ago was the sci-fi theme. And to be honest it seems a little off as I’m reading this and it seems to be a drama and then it turns out Lora, the love interest, is like an alien cat person.

And I literally messaged him and was like ‘Dude is this furry porn?’ to which he told me it wasn’t so I was like ‘Ok then’ and continued reading.

I really found it, I hate to say it; ‘Tantalizing’ the description is really great, some of the similes suck but that’s what a good editor is for but the atmosphere is great and I found myself getting really swept up in the sci-fi romance aspects.

It reminded me a little bit of Mass Effect and romancing Tali Zora, this exotic alien woman, of which the captain isn’t even sure if her body is compatible with his for sex or whatever ha-ha. So you not only have this dynamic tension of the standard ‘Will they won’t they’ love romance scenario, it’s almost like ‘is it even feasible’ because you love who you love but as Fry found out in Futurama; you can’t fuck a mermaid.

Overall I think the tension is built nicely and he really captured the awkwardness that surrounds forming a new relationship, just telling someone how you feel about them. My only criticisms despite what I mentioned about Mass Effect, is that I don’t really get the relevance of the sci-fi back drop. You could literally replace this with any other back drop, steampunk/cyberpunk/fantasy/zombies. I realise I’m being over-critical and this is just a preview/introduction and the initiation of probably a pivotal relationship in the story.
Regardless not a lot happened or was hinted at but again just a preview.

The romance was very believable and frankly fucking hot ha-ha. I’m a little reluctant to say I wish it had gone further ha-ha, baka hentai right?

Fuck you Florian, fuck you! Blue ballin’ motherfucker! She could have at least fingered her ha-ha!

It fumbled a little with perspective which is a bit of a no-no, we go from India’s perspective then it switches mid-paragraph to Lora, which editor’s usually pitch a fit over but could easily be corrected.

I really got into the chased romantic elements and I can see how it could really be exacerbated in a sci-fi setting. Some of the exposition was a little blunt and hackneyed, it could have been a little smoother but it worked for the scene overall in terms of setting the parameters of their relationship and individual back stories.

Overall I really liked the emotional aspects, the description put me in the room enough to feel the sexual tension and want to push further and the sci-fi back drop makes me want to read more to see how it ties in with the overall story.

All in all I’d recommend it as one to watch unfold, a great first attempt Flo you pervy old sauerkraut muncher.

If you want to check it out and drop it a review on inkitt, the three people that read this blog, have at it haha! http://www.inkitt.com/stories/34780

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Green Sunday; Ramblings of a Zombie Apologist

I know the first instinct you have when you hear ‘zombie horror’ to the most cynical of hipsters is to utter a collective angsty yawn. But give me a break. I’m writing a zombie story, Green Sunday is a for lack of a better term, coined by Shaun of the Dead a RomZomCom. Just give me a chance, come back! Hey! It’s nothing like Walking Dead!… Hmm that may have backfired.
Well for the people that got through that and are still reading which is probably all of three people, I thank you and now I shall begin my zombie apologetics.

The reason I wrote this story is two-fold, I wanted to write a zombie story, but every motherfucker wants to write a zombie story, especially every crazy motherfucker like me that wants it to actually happen. But I wanted to write it from the perspective of someone like me, someone who wants it to happen. I thought this might help me understand why I want that and why that’s crazy. I realise it’s a state of cognitive dissonance, I want the zombie apocalypse to happen so I can use my collection of sharp pointy things and have a blast but I also don’t want it to happen because I like not having to cut my friends and family into bits because they’re trying to eat me and more importantly Fallout 4 is coming out next month. Maybe next year.

Zombie stories are tricky because essentially they’re too easy, you can’t write a story just about zombies. Zombies are just an inciting incident, they’re just a framing device for what is essentially a disaster movie and overall a character drama. It’s not about the zombies it’s about how the characters react to the zombies. The zombies aren’t characters, they don’t have back stories or motivation, they’re just flesh eating monsters that could be replaced by nearly anything; Aliens, flesh eating penguins, fish men, the world’s worse case of herpes.

They’re not important to the story except as an obstacle and to be honest people like watching people kill people, they don’t really want to see people killing animals and with aliens that’s sort of a grey area. There must be something in our brains that just prefers to watch people die, harking back to the coliseums.

So why choose zombies if they’re so overdone? For that exact reason. I wanted to write a story satirises the oversaturation of zombies into our culture and to mock from the inside people like me. Nutters that are preparing or at least fantasising about it really happening. Saying something is overdone is just a way of trying to lower the market value so you can do it when no one’s paying attention and come out the omega hipster, like me ha-ha. No.

I’m a writer nothing is overdone if it’s done well, everything can be turned on its head, when someone has an expectation that’s when they’re the most vulnerable to have their expectation completely levelled and you have them by the seat of their pants.

I wanted to write a zombie apocalypse story that wasn’t really about a zombie apocalypse and to mock zombie apocalypses and this spate of summer teen movies like Hunger Games just a bit. So I thought instead of making a straight up zombie apocalypse story or a post apocalyptic story, I’d write a post-post-apocalyptic story.

It’s always been the case that the most far-fetched thing about a zombie apocalypse is the idea of it actually happening or indeed ending the world. Even an air born virus probably wouldn’t end the world, it could kill 80% of the worlds’ population and would definitely change the world but it wouldn’t end it. So how could a virus spread by touch/bite spread so quickly, and how could it overcome every army/police force/pmc of the world? Or indeed happen in a country like America where ‘There would be a rifle behind every blade of grass’ as Isoroku Yamamoto Fleet Admiral and Commander-in-Chief of the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) during World War II is according to wikiquote is misquoted as saying.

But obviously I don’t live in America, I live in England, but we still have armed police and despite what you may here about our gun laws, we still have guns, knives, cricket bats. I set it in America essentially to mock America and open it up a wider audience. America is always rife for parody as it has the delightful habit of taking everything to its greatest extreme. Although this ‘prepper culture’ has spread to the UK, it started and it lives in the US. And really for the story to work it needed an isolated are and although there are small villages (like the one I’m from) and lots of open spaces and countryside. I wanted a small mountain town to really capture the isolation possible even in a semi-thriving small town.

Ok I realised I’ve been waffling around the point, the story is I suppose a little more like Dead Rising the videogame. I.e. This shit is done on purpose, it’s not an accident or a virus, this is an isolated incident done for a specific reason. Not as a test but for fun.

Green Sunday is named for the main character, Sunday is sort of a modern homage to Red Sonja, and before I start pandering telling you how she’s a ‘bad ass/asskicking’ woman and the quintessential and much sort after ‘strong female character’, I posed her as more sort of a Don Quixote character or a Sherlock Holmes. She’s the main character but as a whole She is left a mystery and the story is told through the eyes of her cohort, her Dr. Watson; TJ.

That way I felt that she could remain a mystery and through TJ she could be this tough character but waves of softness could be intermittently shone on him from time to time for a potential romance (I say potential because I’m in the process of writing it and I’m not sure Sunday really likes him, sometimes I have a scene planned out and it goes down a completely different path which better fits the character themselves).

Waffle fit yet again, tangents, tangents everywhere! The story is about a zombie game show, I got it out, there it is. Beautiful isn’t it? Not really *Shakes head*.

Ok so the generic ‘Sinister Corporation with ties to the government’ moves into town and seals it off to play their own little internet zombie game show. So it’s basically Battle Royale meets Dead Rising or Resident Evil. I’m trying to capture the irony of the main characters being zombie obsessed Youtubers caught in what is essentially a zombie internet reality show. And they have to fight for their lives over three gruelling days of bloody violence.

That’s it in a nutshell.

I’m having a hell of a lot of fun writing it, the zombie stuff is always good fun, with a feckless neckbeard fanboy character propelling the story and lots of crazy people brought into the town to fight and rich assholes paying to hunt zombies, it’s a delicious clusterfuck of gore and black humour.

The first ‘beta’ chapter is up for you to read on inkitt, I’ve proofread it but it’s still away with my editor, so hopefully within the month I can re-upload it after it’s been professionally edited and then move onto the next chapter.

Follow this link Green Sunday to read the first chapter and review it and tell me it sucks ass just read it ha-ha.

See ya.

0

Shameless Flaggotry

I know I’m a little late to the party with this and I sort of already touched on it, well a lot late but I’m running out of comic strips while Florian is taking his extended holiday and I need to blog about some controversial shit. I’m trying to come at it from a different angle at the very least.

I don’t really believe that someone had an Isis cake made when the confederate flag was banned from that shop, I mean I could believe it, America is that dumb. I mean I could see some person making a cake and not knowing what the Isis flag is or what it means and just making a cake thinking it’s for a bar mitzvah or something. The Isis flag doesn’t say Isis on it and it doesn’t have pictures of decapitated heads on it, its just words no one can understand.

So I’d forgive someone for mistakenly turning it into a cake.

What really annoyed me about this issue and what really annoys me to this day is the way Islam is coddled by the left. I don’t really identify with any political movement but I’m definitely left leaning and I’m not religious. To me the way the left treats Islam it’s almost like an abusive spouse making excuses for their abuser. An Islamic attack occurs and they’re the first to shout, ‘he/she didn’t mean it, I was asking for it/I know he/she loves me really’. But as soon as it’s a white guy all white guys are guilty, suffering from a case ‘toxic masculinity’. It’s become socially acceptable to hate someone as long as they’re either white or male. Not just socially acceptable, almost lorded.

I have no idea what point I’m trying to make, just seem to be rambling but I just can’t logical inconsistencies and this constant barrage of ideologies trying to claim an event and use it to propel their own sense of moral authority.

This whole thing with the flag is silly, the people on the left want to take it down because it offends them and they believe it’s a symbol of racism etc and the right want to keep it up because why the fuck not, it’s history. To be perfectly honest I have to agree with them, I personally wouldn’t march down my road in an ss uniform but I’d like to live in a world where someone was free to that without some asshole chiming in saying they were offended. I don’t want to wear an ss uniform I just think it’d be nice to have the option ha-ha.

The idea of banning the flag is ridiculous to me; it’s like going into a museum and asking them to take down the ancient Egyptian exhibit because the Egyptians enslaved Jews. It’s just history and regardless of whether you think the flag is racist or not, you don’t care about what the flag means to other people, the people that like it so why should they care what you think it means?

So a guy who shot people liked the flag, so what, people who like the American/UK/Israeli flag shoot people daily. It doesn’t mean we should ban the flag. It’s no different to me than when Jack Thompson tried to blame the columbine shooting on doom. People just use shootings to propel their own pet project. They just find a shooting and then just savage it for titbits to take out of context or twist to push their particular brand of moralist fascism.

This week it’s a flag, banning a flag, will that stop racism? No, so why do it? I’ll tell you why, because this is just a tug of war, politics has become a petty point scoring, mud sling off, where each side just tries to one up the other, maybe it was always like that and I only just noticed. This flag is just a slam dunk; it’s just a way to piss off the right while the left can remain morally self-righteous and snooty about it, which pisses off the right two fold.

It’s not about racism, a racist person can own the confederate flag but the majority of people that own them I imagine are not racist. There’s a difference between a neo-Nazi and a person that collects ww2 memorabilia. You don’t need to hate Jews to read Mein Kampf, but we live in a culture of witch hunters these last couple of years and guilt by association is their favourite game. If you’ve ever brushed past an anti-semite on the train you’re Adolph Hitler’s cousin, if you’ve ever not liked a post on Lizzy the lezzy you’re a transphobic misogynist racist.

Merely owning a confederate flag makes you suspect, you’re guilty until proven innocent in the court of public opinion.

To quote the wise words of Ben Affleck ‘Eww that’s racist’. Islam is not a race you numpty, nor is it oppressed; it’s the most rapidly growing religion in recent history.

It’s ok for feminists and sjws to hate white men but to criticise Isis would be problematic, and this is the state of moral relativism we live in. We can’t shame terrorists because that’s not trending.
So what should be done in regards to the Isis flag, should we ban that, or would that be racist? If you even have to ask there’s no hope for you, how about we just leave all the flags alone and call it quits?

0

Welcome to Bat Country, breakdown of the first issue.

I wanted to do a breakdown of the first issue of Bat Country, try to make some sense out of the whole mess that is Bat Country, try to lay that whole twisted bag of snakes out, and if you’ve read any of it, you know this is going to be a long one.

If people would ask me what I wanted to achieve with this book, I don’t really know if I could sum it up in a few words. But I guess the closest thing I could say would just be a fear of open spaces. I wanted to cultivate and exacerbate my fear of the outside world. That’s basically what the title means; the world is full of carnivorous flying rodents that want to suck your blood.

Basically I’m just trying to make excuses for why this comic makes no sense ha-ha. It’s told from the perspective of someone who can’t see in straight lines, everything enters his brain differently and since he’s the narrator of his own story, the narrative is unreliable.

So the first page I get my sneaky twin peaks reference in to Big Ed’s Gas farm (I’ll look a right twat if that’s wrong now ha-ha) and get into my thing about sugar, I’m sure if I was some hypersensitive writer for the guardian I’d call it ‘sugarshaming’ ha-ha. But since I’m not I tend to think people associate lots of sugar with childishness, as if growing older means you no longer see a reason to enjoy ‘the sweet life. I wanted to introduce Ransom as a character that relished in his childishness and was almost petulant in his reaction to people trying to shame him into conforming to their own way of thinking.

TLDR: Motherfucker like his coffee sweet.

I think maybe a year or two ago, I began this strange fascination with cooking shows or just food shows in general. I watched come dine with me just to watch absolute cunts sit and try to withstand each other for a few evenings in a row, talking shit about each other in the backroom. There was something delicious about uncomfortable silences shared by complete strangers who had never the less grown to hate each other over the course of one evening ha-ha. English people like myself have such an acquired taste for awkwardness.

Then I started to watch Man VS Food, for those that haven’t watched it, it’s basically a show about a chubby American fellow going from town to town taking up eating challenges. Eating a giant burger or a colossal omelette or something, or a really hot curry. I really enjoyed it for the food (I love food) and the competitive nature, it was just a fun show.

But this was when I was little more social justicey, so I started to spin my Marxist (did away with those thankfully away, just a nice empty space now ha-ha) and it made me think this show was everything wrong with America. It was decadent, ‘people are starving’ I said to myself as I watched this pudgy American stuff his face with a hotdog the size of a skateboard.

I was both in awe and disgust with America and the American way, a fine line between love and hate indeed.

One of my many fantasies is that of walking the earth like Cain in Kung fu, I’ve often thought about just walking, getting into some adventures and just travelling. Then to hit the ground realising I have no money and my shoes are made from inedible canvas. The realities of it were just too glaring, how would I eat, how would I make enough money to travel and survive? But then I realised that in America those two things could coincide. In the wondrous USA you can be paid for eating, so something that could have been just a throwaway piece of plot filler became almost the crux of the story.

On a whole the basic joke of the story is that it’s almost as if to America thinks it can reach enlightenment through eating. Purely by how much they eat and how much of science they honed of gluttony.

This was going to by my satirical comic poking fun at the American dream, the hypocrisy of modern culture and capitalism and religion and all that good stuff. But after a while those things started to bore me and realised that trying to force people to think like me through a comic made me as bad as the assholes I was critiquing, so I cut that shit out. Now I just want to make people laugh and make them think and deliver something so fucking out there, they’ll never forget.

Diagnosis love is another reference to Twin peaks, well the first season, which is my favourite. It had this soap opera running in the background of the occasional episode, the story of which was cheesy but was a mirror of what was happening in the show. I really liked the feel of it and how it added another layer to story, making it seem self aware. I initially was introduced by this; I don’t know what you call it really in Max Payne 2. The idea that you can’t tell if you’re mimicking the art or it’s mimicking you. Obviously Max Payne must have copied it from Twin Peaks.

I suppose in a way a part of me wanted to mock most other webcomics where this type of storytelling isn’t intentionally cheesy and ridiculous ha-ha. It’s there to contrast the goings on in the ‘real world’ but mirror them just enough to seem relate-able.

It’s choked full of odd references, Night of the Hunter, Wild at heart, dune, Beetlejuice, I want to get across to the reader that outside to Ransom is literally an alien planet, these diners in the middle of nowhere are like ‘safe spaces’ from all that nature trying to get him.

Liberty or the cowboy is another matter all together; I guess he’s a reference to the Big Lebowski in a way.

The first issue that makes me cringe is the dialogue; yeah my own dialogue makes me cringe. I wanted to copy the style of Max Payne, Address Unknown and Twin Peaks, so essentially I wanted the dialogue to be as cheesy and as hackneyed as possible. I want it to feel fake and strange and just wrong, like a 90’s TV show. And gradually if people keep reading that’ll fade away and it’ll grow with the reader. It’s very much, I hate to say like Natural Born Killers (I hated that movie), the style, the critic of American culture. That niggling feeling that all that freedom and all that space gives you. I can’t help feeling that that feeling is intoxicating and addictive and the reason for all the evil in the world and all the good.
People can be so free they feel trapped, they have all this power to do whatever they want but they stay where they are, pacing back and forth in a cage of their own making. Or they toss it all away like Ransom and burn out rather than fade away. That’s conflict we have here, that’s what I think American culture is, ultimate freedom driving people mad, I don’t think it’s a bad thing, quite the opposite in fact.

Now the second part of the story, some paranoid people are actually being followed. Now I can’t hope to hide this, this entire scene was inspired by my favourite scene in Mulholland Drive, the hitman scene. I thought that scene was so funny, I couldn’t resist. I really love that film and I feel robbed that it wasn’t turned into a full TV show as it was intended, I would have really loved to have seen more from that bungling hitman. I can’t help feeling if Netflix existed in the 90’s Lynch would have been even more popular than he is and not this cult god we admonish him as now.

This scene where the henchmen are going through his apartment is a back story hint, the story of Bat Country just like Twin Peaks starts in the middle. The reader will have to work back as the story moves forward to understand why Ransom is on his journey and who he’s running from.

I got a lot of influence from Silent Hill 4 the room. That game really stuck with me for the voyeuristic nature, and its dreamlike interpretation of agoraphobia. Despite it bombing I found it really intriguing. Another influence is Oldboy, but that might be too spoilery ha-ha.

I was listening to the new Nick Cave album when I wrote this scene and for some reason I decided to put lyrics from Higgs Bosom Blues directly into the scene, don’t ask me why.

Ransom is on a journey, he’s trying to find the American dream and these two bumbling killers are following him.

He wakes from his dream for a minute then he’s back in it again harder than ever. The idea for this comic sort of came from the idea of the idea of the hero. What is a hero? To me a hero is a normal person who has no regard for themselves whatsoever, they’re not afraid of pain, they’re not afraid of humiliation or getting things horribly wrong. And that’s what Ransom tries to be.
I wanted the combat to be real and disgusting and brutal and just… messy and Florian really delivered with this scene. He really captured the brutality and the inelegance of an actual fight, no kung fu bullshit, no gimmicks, just blood and cuts and tooth and nails.

…and then it ends as abruptly as it started. I wanted the first issue to be a snapshot, a glimpse into this dream world, something that would make someone want to dig deeper and discover the underlying meaning. But shit, I’ve rambled enough.

Just go read it already ha-ha.
http://tapastic.com/series/Bat-Country

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First knife review; Tora tora tora!

I was a little hesitant to write a knife review, mostly because what the fuck has it got to do with writing? Nothing really, I just like it and I know what you’re thinking; ‘Oh so you’re a school shooter?’ I can’t tell you why I like knives any more than someone can tell you why they like collecting stamps.

It probably ties in with my obsession with the zombie apocalypse, of which I know isn’t coming, but at one point I sort of did. I haven’t always been sane and don’t really claim to be now, or even that there is such a thing to cling to. A little Lovecraftian? Yeah maybe.

Nevertheless I still fantasise about zombies ravaging the world for some reason. I wrestled with this a long time, I know it’s a little sad and childish but I did really fear that it would happen and I started collecting knives preparation. I literally almost breathed a sigh of relief when I bought my first cold steel gi tanto, so sad ha-ha.

But I remember when I had a dream about zombies and I started to realise that what I really needed was a crossbow or a gun or something but then I realised that that would take all the fun out of it and also be more than I was willing to pay. I realised that I realised it was just a fantasy and I didn’t really think it would happen because otherwise I would get a crossbow or learn to use a bow or something but I didn’t. I just wanted to collect cool knives and display them. It was a way of using cognitive dissonance to justify my collecting of something I liked, like I wasn’t just collecting shiny things like a magpie, I was assembling an arsenal to survive.

I used to watch these shows like doomsday preppers and I realised I wasn’t like these people, I didn’t really think it was going to happen, my brain wasn’t as broken, I didn’t feel the need to horde food or learn to eat bark or something, it was just a hobby not a way of life or an actual reality.

But it still intrigued me and wanting to understand and satirise that mentality is what drove me to start writing Green Sunday, not another zombie apocalypse story but one that tried to get into the heads of the people that actually want this. I didn’t want to write another zombie story as just a framing device for some pointless drama, I wanted to get into and satirise the minds of people not too dissimilar from myself and try to understand the fascination with zombies and more broadly the end of the world.

Ok rambled enough, bullshit ceased, now for the review for the;

Tora WW2 1/2nd Battalion Kukri

This isn’t my first Khukri/kukri/Khukuri? Fuck it, big shiny leaf shaped knife! I was kind of ambivalent towards them since being a zombie film lover I’d see their love affair with the knife and being a little contrarian hipster fuck I naturally rejected them and samurai swords and anything else lots of people liked and poopooed them. But then someone bought a samurai sword and I fell in love with Khukris after watching an episode of ultimate warrior and I’d been going through this phase and still am of loving anything WW2 related that can be used to hurt people. Pretty much anything that resembles something that killed Nazis interests me. I would collect some Nazi stuff too just for balance but it’s either a tacky replica or a ridiculous expensive antique, there doesn’t seem to be a happy medium of knife makers making quality replicas, could be the stigma I guess, guilt by association or some such silliness.

So I shopped around and I skimmed through condors and your cold steels and all manner of KLO’s (Kukri like objects), my brother has the cold steel Kukri machete and it’s functional but nothing special. I hovered over the condor and kabar but I kind of wanted something really authentic so… I bought a Khukri house. Now I know if you’re a seasoned knife collector or a Khukri lover that was probably a punch line. But I liked some of their designs and they had great prices for knives that were actually handmade in Nepal, not china or Taiwan or America, actually from their country of origin.

When I got hold of it, I quite liked it, it was a little heavy for a ten inch knife but I liked it, seemed nice and tough, I thought, ‘shit if it’s blunt I could just throw it at them’. So I was happy with that. But after a while I stumbled on Tora and realised what a twat I was.
And now holding a tora in my hand I understand the extent of my twattishness. When I first picked it up, it felt like I was picking up a piece of a downed alien space craft, made from some eldritch unknown metal. It was so unbelievably light for a twelve inch ww2 replica kukri. I was amazed by how light and agile it was.
It made me realise how pointless the Khukri house knife was in terms of its use, it’s over built with the full integral tang and the thickness of the blade and it makes it cumbersome to a point where it becomes almost unusable when you go above ten inches. Those two features are purely to sell it to American tourists who want some big knife and see the tang when really having the tang visible all the way through the handle doesn’t denote the quality of the knifes construction. So I’m not trying to shit on Khukri house and as a collector they make handsome knives and I will definitely buy from them again because they go beyond the standard replicas and make their own styles which I love.
But if you want real quality replicas, a real Khukri made to the specification of world war designs of authentic Khukris I’d go with Tora.

The blade came fairly sharp but to be frank, Khukris are like axes in how they chop, it’s all leveraging of the blade angle, it doesn’t need to be hair shaving sharp to cut, but I appreciate a little bit of an edge. The mirror polish is lovely, the sheathe is very nice quality, well stitched, I remember with the Khukri house one I could see where it was glued but it’s still functional.

The blade feels great in the hand; it has a partial tang, so the handle isn’t bulky like the Khukri house Kukri. I think the wood handle is a slippery and it takes a little practice to get the edge alignment right for cuts. But as you can see I’m a weirdo who likes ruining his expensive knives by wrapping the handles in masking tape, I’m just too lazy to use paracord and I think tape works better and I think it looks cool but I’m a retard so don’t listen to me ha-ha.
Overall the knife is great quality, I noticed a bit of a bend at the hilt but it’s to be expected from a handmade knife, it doesn’t really affect the knife; it just irked the perfectionist that lies within.

I think what amazed me the most about the Tora is something that just caught me off guard and that was the point; it actually has a functional point. Which is something I had come to expect was not something you could get with a Kukri, which is why most of them don’t come with hilts or any form of guards because they’re not knives that are meant for thrusting (Which is sort of interesting since most people seem to think they originate from the Greek kopis which has a really extensive guard for stabbing… yeah it’s the 300 sword… philistines ¬_¬).

I was pleasantly surprised that it was actually quite pointy, I’m sure it’ll come quite a shock to those hapless pumpkins.

The only negative points I could say about it is the waiting list, you have to wait quite a while to get hold of one because they make them in batches and also they use parcel force, I think it was, and they’re about as useful as an arsehole on your knee. I’d have preferred something like ups or FedEx but as it stands I’m very happy with it and I would recommend it to anyone.

I haven’t actually taken it out and whacked a tree with it and I don’t plan to (well I hacked the shit out of the box, but that’s because my daddy didn’t hug me enough as a child), but it makes a beautiful addition to my collection and I hope to get many more, salary willing.IMG_20150922_112518IMG_20150922_112521IMG_20150922_112525IMG_20150922_112537IMG_20150922_112603

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