Xtinction Agenda: Comics of 80s, 90s, and Beyond

Listen folks, we were feeling chatty at the beginning of this episode. It happens. If you don't want to listen to three guys shoot the shit about current events, our conversation about everyone's favourite Kafka-esque dark romance, The Lobster, begins at about the 10 minute mark. Don't say we didn't warn you! "We dance alone. That's why we only play electronic music."

Why do you believe something? Ask yourself. Ask yourself about light. Ask yourself about light asking about light. Why do you believe? What is it, that underlying certainty? Is that love?

Love, the mother of all bombs, is a mirror, looking back at the horror you might have been.

Thinking about how the red pill/blue pill metaphor was co-opted by racists and shitheads, the blame has to be laid at the feet of David Icke, doesn't it? If he wasn't the first to steal the idea, his online and in-person popularity must have opened the door for all sorts of peddlers of conspiracy ideation. From the Matrix to reptilian infiltrators to FBI crime statistics and great replacement theories. A shameful trajectory that dishonours this great film.

It's symmeTRY, goddammit! SymmeTRY!

Exit the generals, spooks, and games of chicken missile. Enter horror. The things that man does to woman. The things that power does to us all. Let the noir shine in, illuminating the dark weakness of our hero. Watch him fight against the odds, stoic red, and get revenge for us all. https://mindlessones.com/2008/05/01/superpowers-are-real-goran-parlov/

Little disrespect to Gordon Chan in the title of this episode, I admit. Jet Li did not direct this one. But, really, no one showed up to this event for Gordon Chan. He did a good job, don't get me wrong. But this is a Jet Li movie. And what a Jet Li movie it is.... "So, it's about energy. But tell me something, does a rock have as much energy as an opponent would?" [Slices a leaf floating in air with hand]

Witness the film that PROVES that George Lucas traveled into the future in order to steal the secrets of martial arts success. He brought it back to the past and profited. With his ferocious nature, he bent the fabric of space/time, all so that Jet Li could become Luke Skywalker. From then to before and now to now. 

Hinged wooden tripod flashes, fire capturing flame, the fall, the blurred chaos of love and family and loss, a trouble-making box that, once opened, refuses to hide its promise, bodies be damned. "Whenever there's trouble, we Chinese suffer."

Aristocrats and royalty wear armour and carry swords. They buy and sell what they need and lie about the rest. Our hero was once on track to aristocracy but gave it up in a fit of conscience and a brush with mortality. Not so our villain. Like all established royalty, he wants to sit upon a throne of fear and desire. "You know what keeps going through my head? Where's my sandwich?"

Gender and Apocalypse. Hear me out. Laurie's mom pushed her into it, right? And Jon, that guy was pushed around by pops so badly, he didn't even have an 'h'. Both waltz around like binary stars. But neither collapses. Instead, centre lost, they hurtle outwards, yin and yang, and then back together. Up until the end. "I--I'm scared. I feel like there's big invisible things all around me."

The gloves removed hit the floor like lead, puncturing lungs, bleeding red, untold bodies left for dead. All this, despite the concussive rounds, remained unsaid, silent infrared exploding heads. The gloves removed hit the floor. The world changed forevermore. "Roth, don't get sentimental on me, okay?"

Why should we not gamble, we at the bottom whose lives are without glory? "Well, we have nothing to lose but our futures."

Behold the rattling swaying snake that chases and swerves along the spine, from shakra station to shakra station towards the eye, dropping passengers, like memories, at the end of the line, where darkness-light divine incinerates the lonely weeping mind. "This shit's something else."

Oh God, don't let those harsh flames and sleepless nights touch me. Don't let them destroy my world. Don't let that grim, waiting horror come upon my life. Let all those ghosts live elsewhere, away from me. Let me have peace. "New toys are coming!"

curious object in my hand, woman/teenager gone, bizarre instrument foreign land, disappearing liaison; far-off frozen sand, I demand save me from this isle of man.   "Just shadows in the fog."

Incremental loss unnoticed. Ignored. Red slurpee disaster. Bedside love revealed. Dance club heat enjoyed. Man lost in hurt. Desire given wide berth.  "No amount of study or research can stop whatever it is that's destroying the sky...."  

Bright bright James Dean daylight katana blade fight, slash flip throw all in plain sight, machine gun bursts, explosions galore, man oh man, do I want more. "Listen to what I'm saying. With your skills, we could make some easy money."

Frank heaves the dusty, splintering crate from the flatbed of the truck. He breathes weakly, his body skinny as a chicken bone. Never been good at anything else, he thinks, sweating in the New York heat. No one who counts notices the daring daylight theft. "I can see it!"

Hair-soaked, standing before the bag, he is an unimposing sharpness, a body forged to figure and spin and strike. Inside, his red intuition whispers and questions. Something has long haunted his life. Black sheet ghosts of the past. "That's the kind of girl I'd like to settle down with, pretty but not too pretty." Note: For a moment, Doc James confused Karen Carlson with Carol Bagdasarian. He feels badly about this.

poison seeping  burning circle, dystopian amulet spawns father nightmare babylon.   fragile candle hopeful ray, utopian amulet dawns  ghostly daughter eidolon.   "This is everybody's future."  

Memory. Ghost. Mystery. Joke.  History. Blood. Rose. "Well, I'm sure I wouldn't know anything about what the Polish people think!"

Cigar whisky jealousy. Sad sad man. Moustache in darkness. Moustache flaking skin and long dead fingernail growth. Daddy put me inside you. She will understand. "You've truly taken your father's place."

Blistered, peeling rot stretches reality like spandex, tears through cotton innocence,  erupts from places of pleasure and rest, a geyser of inverted, twisted blood,  a sound of sharp steel dragged along a pipe, piercing your ears.  A crime born of sleep.   "Well, all the lawyers got fat and the judge got famous, but someone forgot to sign the search warrant in the right place and Krueger was free just like that."

The night bleeds red rain, beating hearts aflame, pummeling lives like meteors into moonrock. Grand adventure awaits this drifting spectral waylaid soul. An adventure of darkness and love and woman divine. "There is nothing bigger than the night, Batman, and the eternal blackness beyond."

Rollin' in the mud, gittin' dirty. That's what War Pigs do. They tuck into that homecooked meal, dream of shore, and do what needs done. Nazi superweapons beware, the Allies have broken the perimeter! "I guess tomorrow you formally join the US Army for the first time, Sergeant."

Long-lingering shadow takes tender hand, leading the blood waltz; on red screen its silhouette a tale of lust and illusion, hunger and restraint. "Gentlemen, we are not fighting some disease here."

Ravenous thirst and fear to drink, rabies flecks the mouths of all these scum. I stand in judgement, standing alone in the rain. Genuflecting only to those monied interests I long to embrace. "That's right. Human bean juice. Ha Ha."

Soft hands that never did a day of work, insisting on the pollution of kindness, stamping freedom down with chips and fancy book learnin' words. A nightmare tower, ripe for atavistic ghouls to haunt and rule. Call the Demolition Man. He'll know what to do. "Brake! Brake! Brake now, you Mickey Mouse-piece of shit!"

Star bright towering rays, the ticking fingers, a clock counting days. Glimmering before cracks and crumbles and then collapse. And then worse. Second-rate workmen who brought calamity and vice. Money that froze time and fucked by the pool. Forever. "Thing like that... you felt you was up against the power of God."

Flames lick and pop warm, red and black, caressing the dual duelling dualities, the hidden wounds, the secret faces that tumble and twirl and whip or rumble through the streets alone. "Don't hurt us, lady. Our take-home's less than three-hundred."

Skeletal steel crushes skull, a powdered plume uneasy, marching forward, dreams of immortality swapped in a midnight rendezvous. World lost in fear. World lost until, rising from the ashes, a new warrior born. "All the armies of the world under one voice."

World turned toward dawn denied the sun, handed over instead to lightning and blitz. A forever war of sinew and splatter, bodies branching and melting in sick tribute of some dark storm. Senseless, deadly serious, and--sadly--unfinished. "Get a move on, girl. We haven't got all day."

In war, the thunder distant voice always asks a question: whom shall I send and who will go for us? Among the muddy bodies, who will harvest flesh? Stand tall upon horror divine? In the darkness without choice, there is an answer: here am I, send me. "Hey, you want to talk Mexican? Join another tank, a Mexican tank. This is an American tank, we talk American."

There's still blood in that old dog, red and thick, pumping black upon the earth. still faith beneath the warding snarl. still devotion. coal black in the sunken snow, soon to find rest in the soil. "No, the hotel I keep for Agatha. We were happy here, for a little while."

Left behind and much maligned, a tangled mess they wove, an action comedy tale too hastily told. Catch the excitement, catch the laughter, catch the lead into gold. "Looks like you won't be attending that hat convention in July."

In the sky, a groove twisted panic, bloody bloody panic; On land, love and bloody bloody panic; In mind, crooked timber panic, bloody bloody panic. "La Guerre. Strange that it should be feminine, do you not think?"

Overwatch eyes centre-mass; chest burst, strings cut, while green and white lightless soldiers hunch down in the dark. Dead or alive, the mission will be complete. "Zondi, send it."

Black-circle sunken red-webbed sclera, eyes of hang dog priest begging for a slim chance at peace. To walk away from bleeding streets, plastic-bagged men who reek the wretched stench of milk, the dying, and the dead. "What the hell kind of name is I.B. Bangin'?"

This one is for The Troops. "I grew up in Kansas, General. I'm about as American as it gets."

Coal crushed underverse condensation fragment glints among the  F-35s, kept small to be kept safe and quiet before explosion, pale red and blue among beige and black. The sins of the father a playground of skulls, atomic fire like the sun. Happy ending workplace kink. "I wanted to hit that kid. I wanted to hit him so bad."

Green, shitty loose-fitting masks. Change task, lift metal, Maltese ISIS cult plan. We're off the map, man. Among the dads we are the daddest dad. Take aim and... blam. "It's fine. I'm in the CIA. Do we have anymore of that Crash."

Corrosive chatter follows the flightless grey temple strongman. He travels ghost-like, gathering exiles of violence and self-doubt, dragging them into the sun. Despite this, round table lamentations shadow liberalism's end. The only option left: quit the game and bring the thunder. "Maybe it was never going to work. Not on this planet. But I made a promise to poor, doomed Jack Kennedy."

  "Daddy, please hear this song that I sing."   

Five graveyard years, crystal black reborn, he listens. Up where gravity fades, zone of salvation, he listens and watches. For her. Through walls and ocean sprays, her warm flesh radiates across the world. He listens. And laments his choice. "He said: You can print money, manufacture diamonds, and people are a dime a dozen, but they'll always need land. It's the one thing they're not making any more of."

Razor point rat death. Diamond encrusted celebrity. Angry and alone. Wishing humanity lost. All while father watching, soothing mother-like. Dirty city needs beat down. Cowabunga. "It's not Donnie who's lost."

Simple hints of sex sprinkled over mega death. Beat beat beat, make the jokes and push. Beat beat beat, reach back into past, paste past wound. Think two steps, take five. If you leave them behind, forever gone. "Somebody blew up our desalination plant?"

Four-colour monstrosities, polymorphous perversities, dashing from hole to hole, and lording it above the rest. Reach over to hard crotch in the dark of the theatre and put it in the ass. Through binocular clear, the depth of depravities, adds up slowly to broken bridge and ruined world. Jack boots to clean. "Hughie, fuckin' twat him one!"

Fleet footfall, jump, hang, glide. Physics is your plaything, Bond. A full-lipped quip in a red dress. A lithe, lip-biting woman who craves your death, pulling you down into the rocks below. Always pulling. As you escape. "Oh, please James, spare me the Freud. I might as well ask you if all the vodka martinis ever silenced the screams of all the men you've killed... or if you find forgiveness in the arms of all those willing women, for all the dead ones you failed to protect."

These young people, they give me hope. They don't turn their backs and they don't walk away. Not when innocents are caged and shipped and filmed and shot. Not when the alphabet agencies collude with transnational human traffickers to line their shifty pockets. They take aim at the heart of corruption and they pull the trigger. (NOTE: Apologies for garbled sound at the end. Not sure what happened!) "That's really going to clean me out."

She is living in a material world and she is a material girl. "Sea bear!"