Cameron Stewart Queue

I just thought it would be interesting to see a recorded document of my 2.5 hr wait in Cameron Stewart's queue at Thought Bubble, Leeds. Note the blonde guy in the red and blue checked shirt, behind and to the left of the interviewee, at 1:11 mins in - glancing through a Seaguy graphic novel...........

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cuGsxT8pEM&feature=related

The Veritable Pantheon of all things Northampton

Your resident authors managed to pick up Alan Moore's latest venture at Thought Bubble in Leeds yesterday and thought it was worth sticking a link on here for you to peruse:

http://www.dodgemlogic.com/

R.I.P. SGT Howie

Summer is icumen in, loudly sing cuckoo. Grows the seed and blows the mead, and springs the wood anew. Sing, cuckoo! Ewe bleats harshly after lamb, cows after calves make moo.

Annotations - When You Fall

The Girl On The Netherley Bus is a poem (currently unfinished) about either Marge, Sarah, Fliss or all three, written by a Roger McGough style Mersey Beat poet about a girl he falls in love with on a bus. I felt that I had to include it here to ensure that no-one thought that my unflattering portrait of a middle aged poet was a dig at my fine co-author after Sweet & Fitting...

Joni - Joni Mitchell, the prototypical wailing witch who spawned an endless stream of twee, oh-so-earnest singer/songwriters from the late 60s onwards.

Bill Hicks - The single greatest stand up comedian of all time, famous for dying tragically young and donating all of his best material (unwittingly) to Dennis Leary.

One Day Like This - By Elbow. Great song, absolutley hypnotic video which suggests that you can find a kernel of joy in even the most crushing of jobs. Still waiting to see the Golf Sale guys in Oxford Street trying this.

Minnie, Mickey, Adolf and Eva - A bizarre night in with the Mouse family and their good friends the Hitlers. I'm not aware of any such picture existing, but perhaps in DW there's an issue of Air Pirates Funnies that never saw print over here?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Pirates

Going Underground - A collection of interviews with notable undergorund cartoonists, culled from the pages of Full Bleed. The title of course also references the single by The Jam.

Portmeirion - Where am I? In the Village. What do you want? Information. You won't get it! By hook or by crook, we will...

No other great references from here to the end. Appearances from the Silver Star, Elliot and the Majister Templi and a very messy break up (and knowing what lead to it and how it plays in to the wider tragedy made it extremely difficult to write, which is why it wound up late).

But the title has a whole different level of meaning to DW and to these young ladies in particular. It is, of course, a line from the one and only Bill "Compo" Owen in the classic WWII movie Carve Her Name With Pride. There are some pieces out there which inform and shape DW, and then there's Virginia McKenna as Violette Szabo, running around war torn France in her tweed suit, Felicity Makeshift incarnate. In the space of about 90 minutes, she goes from working on the perfume counter to languishing in a concentration camp, from picking up a French Foreign Legion soldier at random in Hyde Park to running a team of resistance fighters against the Nazis in Rouen, and from a giggling, reserved English Rose (well, half French anyway) to a hard-as-nails, karate chopping, sten gun waving, torture resisting minx. It's a truly inspirational movie about the limitless resources within even the most unimposing people, and a testament to a true wartime heroine, and in DW terms, it has the whole armed females, fake identity, recreation of self, life during wartime vibe to it, and it has an amzing mix of comedy, terror and tragedy.

And best of all, it has Compo teaching Judo, flinging himself all over the place and reminding his cadets that if you' have to fall, get it right. Violette Szabo did, and I think Ari will too.

Annotations - This Is How It Feels

So here we are again with the astounding Inspiral Carpets. This is how it feels to be lonely, this is how it feels to be small, this is how it feels when your world means nothing at all. (although I'm sure there are verses where he sings work instead of world, they're both equally valid here). The subtitle, An Investigation, fits with the main title as it's quite an unflattering look at Sciliton, his physical and mental shape, and also with the fact that he's the cop investigating Marg's disappearance.

This piece was started on Saturday the 11th of August, the day I learned that Tony Wilson was dead. Considering how northwest-centric and pop-tastic DW is shaping up to be, I thought it only fitting to commemorate his passing with a cameo appearance which tops and tails this piece. Granada Upfront was the late night discussion show he presented with Lucy Meacock, where a semi inebriated bunch of students, agitators and stooges got their chance to harangue selected special guests on key topics of the day. Back before TV went 24 hour, this was about the only thing worth watching after 11 on a weeknight, and I'm sure it would have covered the disappearances.

Professor Stanley Unwin was a true English eccentric, inventing his own language which was put to great use on Ogden's Nut Gone Flake and in films and TV shows like Gerry Anderson's Secret Service and Carry On Cleaning.

Her mother was a basket case - As mentioned in Factory Wall, Mrs Cornell is not coping well with the modern world.

Sightings in Liverpool and Manchester - Again, we appear to be about halfway between the homes of Merseybeat and Madchester.

Roger Cook - Fat, punchy investigative reporter, famous for almost getting beaten up in the course of every single story he ever covered. Seriously mining some early 90s vibes here., with shit that even I had forgotten about...

Dennis Nilsen - Another great English eccentric who kept his dead boyfriends under the floorboards of his London home.

Schrodingers Cat - A famous thought experiment intended to show the effect an observer has on events at the quantum level. Basically, a cat, a vial of acid, a gieger counter and a tiny piece of radioactive matter are all sealed in a solid box. The radioactive matter is decaying and may or may not break down within an hour. The geiger counter is set to recognise this break down, whenever it occurs, and respond by breaking the vial. The acid contained gives off a gas which is immediately fatal to cats in even the tiniest of doses. We know that the breakdown will occur, the glass will shatter and the gas will escape, but unless we open the box to check, we don't know if it's happened yet. In our minds we hold two opposing views of the cat, alive and dead, with no way to check except opening the box and changing the nature of the experient. For Sciliton and everyone else, Marg is in that same state for now.

Gregor Samsa - Awoke one morning to find that he had been transformed into a giant insect, according to Kafka's Metamorphosis (probably a key work for DW, with good and bad changes occuring constantly). The tiny, transmogrified Marg's put me more in mind of the tiny shrieking victim at the end of the original 1950s The Fly. Help me! Help meeee!

Twin Peaks again - Because everyone was watching it, and Sciliton probably identifies with the unconventional Cooper.

And here's where it got away from me, with the sudden introduction of Sciliton2, 3 & 4. The basic idea of this piece was to introduce the cop and move on, but I didn't just want him to be a stereotypical detective. Little did I realize that he would be quite this fucked up. If you look closely, you might see that his story here echoes/prefigures xxxx in xxxxxx. His desk in the centre of the room, covered in documents that map out a life, the numb, dead right arm (although in Sciliton's case it's only temporary), the scars on his body that will later be revealed as the result of a car crash when he was a beat cop... None of that means anything at the moment, but with some of this stuff, I'm layering in plot points which will only make sense once you've read the whole thing through once, then start all over again, spotting stuff that didn't register the first time round.

Very few references from here to the end of the chapter. Man at C&A should help to fix us in the 90s again, just in case anyone forgets where we're up to, while the Ajna Chakra is the supposed resting point of the third eye, between the eyebrows. In this case, it sees past the solid, physical reality of Sciliton and the romanticised version created by his self image, Sciliton2, which is harsh in its criticisms of the man but still stops short of examining his motives. Sciliton3 has no such qualms, pulling up something rather nasty from his past, with the unspoken implication that he's yet another abandoned child, with his search for Mummy sublimated into the cycle of praise and rejection from other women who will never match up to his needs.

I don't know what the pills are, but they sound like good ones. He drifts back into the lounge in time to hear the chapter being wound down with a typically portentous Wilsonism, in the form of a quotation from The Times They Are A-Changing by Bob Dylan. For reference, the full quote is

Come mothers and fathers
Throughout the land
And don't criticize
What you can't understand
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command
Your old road is rapidly agin'

Which is probably also going to have greater signifigance as time goes by.

The Man in the White Suit

I've been travelling through Liverpool city centre, on a regular basis, for the best part of a year now and every Thursday and Friday morning the Edge Lane rush hour traffic is greeted by a man, stood outside the Hindu Cultural Centre, dressed in a white suit, elvis sunglasses and a dayglo pink, sometimes blue, stetson. He waves at passing vehicles and responds to my thumbs up with his own two thumbs up greeting. Who is he? Does anybody know what he's up to? Maybe he's just waiting for his lift in to work........?

And no, it's not Alec Guinness!

I said to the wife "I think this'll look good in our dinning room"

Here He Comes, He's All Dressed In Black

OK, here we go again with a special mid-week edition of deranged ramblings. After a considerable delay, Craig finally returned from France, I sent him my questions and here is the (badly edited and somewhat stilted) Whatnot interview in full:

Craig, let me start by saying that Whatnot is a great piece of work, but you've previously been pretty successful with live action too; What prompted you to move into animation?
Thank you! It started as a throwaway experiment - I made a sort of flick book on post it notes of the Dreamer falling from the sky and left it for several weeks whilst working on other things. Eventually I couldn't resist going back and scanning it in, assembling it in the edit suite as an animation. As I did this, it occurred to me that it would be interesting to try to animate more about how the Dreamer ended up in the sky (and subsequently falling from it) and so began a sort of 'automatic animation' process whereby the most important thing was to feel my way through and animate the next and most striking images that came to mind, only later striving to create a semblance of order within the images. Obviously the kind of story I was telling (albeit subconsciously) would not have worked in any other media.

Technically, this is far more advanced than The Spoon Of Retribution (Craig's 2007 animation). Is that a result of better technology or did your learnings on the earlier film directly impact on the making of this one?
The latter - I made many mistakes whilst rushing The Spoon Of Retribution through to completion and knew I had to be far more patient on this one. What I didn't realise was that patience does not come naturally to me, and the whole process became a real tortured grind - animating through the unholy hours of the night, hunched over a scanner with dried glue on my hands and trimmed paper scattered about the room, swearing and listening to Bernard Herrmann.

You've assembled quite a regular repertory company for your live action works, while many of your musical endevours are more of the solitary, bedroom studio variety. Was the animation a one-man show or did you have a team of Disneyesque slaves drawing endless whales and writhing tongues?
It was absolutely a one man show. It was far too unsociable to get anyone else involved and the vision (though I dislike this word in this context) had to be allowed to leap from my mind onto the paper. In short, I may be a control freak.

It looks as if the whole film was converted to a negative image. What prompted that, and how far into the production did you make the decision?
The idea was to create a sense of hazy uncertainty and I felt that by inverting the colours I'd put the viewer in a strange position where they are looking at something unconventional and dark which would automatically throw them a little. I decided to invert as I was animating the first sequence, although there were two versions of the film (one inverted, one regular) right up until completion just in case I changed my mind. When the decision was final, I destroyed the regular version. Choice can be a cruel mistress, and by eliminating choice I sometimes find things easier.

Some of the character designs recall The Beatles' Yellow Submarine cartoon, while the sparse landscapes and wavering, skeletal trees evoke the haunted locales of The Moomins (the terrfying stop-motion classic rather than the pastel anime abomination). Did you have any specific influences in mind when you made the film?
I agree about The Moomins, the stop motion series is so beautiful and eerie. I had more traditional art in mind when I was creating the aesthetics of the film, artists like Hieronymus Bosch, Max Ernst, Gustav Dore, Aubrey Beardsley. I recently watched the fantastic French animation 'Le Planet Sauvage' and noticed that my film shares some sensibilities with it, although I’d never seen it when I made Whatnot.

In a wider sense, which animators and artists do you admire, and are there any you particularly aim to emulate?
I hopefully emulate no one on purpose, but the greats to me are people like Franz Kafka, David Cronenberg, Adam Curtis, Werner Herzog, David Lynch, Francis Bacon, Powell & Pressburger, Max Fleischer, Jean Cocteau. I particularly love Victorian art and design. Anything with lots of curlicues.

Obviously, a linear plot is hardly a requirement to appear on the Doubtless Wonder site, but is there a preferred reading for Whatnot?
Not at all. My intention was to make something which expresses both my hatred for and the general detrimental nature of bureaucracy and its stifling effects on creativity, but I accept that due to the ‘automatic drawing’ manner in which I made the images this is not so clear cut. I prefer people to tell me what they see in it. That’s not a lazy way out or an excuse for wilfully perverse pretentiousness - it gives me great pleasure to hear people’s own readings. After all, there’s little point in creating things and keeping them to yourself.

Having said all that, some of the characters like the sleeping king and the sacrificial diver seem like they should have quite elaborate back stories. Do you have any ideas in that direction, or is there any one else in the film who you think has more to offer?
Not as such, but I’ve noticed that the Lightbulb and the Dunce Duck at the end are quite popular! I’d like one day to show more of this world but with perhaps with more of a Public Information Film bent to it. I had it in the back of my mind when I was making this film that it was going to be a sort of surrealist anti-establishment propaganda film, which in a way it is, but it’s not so obvious. So perhaps I’ll make one.

Being a silent piece, the music has to carry a lot of weight and convey a lot of the plot, which it does brilliantly. You're an accomplished musician yourself (the driving force behind every incarnation of Lovecraft, a solo artist and sometime member of Zombina And The Skeletones) - What made you hand over the musical responsibilities to Jon Hering?
Jon is a real musical innovator and craftsman and I wanted someone who could offer their own perspective. If I had done the score myself the film would all be very one sided whereas Jon came up with things I would never in a million years have thought of. Also, he’s a very good friend of mine so it wasn’t like I was handing the project over to a stranger - there was plenty of room for talking and collaboration. The same is true of the music’s producer, Barny Riley. The three of us have known each other for some time and have worked together on lots of different things, so it’s more like play than work.

Tell us a little about Jon's background - Is he another Pondlife regular or is he a recent discovery?
I was in Zombina And The Skeletones with Jon for a few years, he plays in my own band Lovecraft and also in a fantastic avant garde renaissance band called a.P.A.t.T. for whom I’ve done visuals, so we’ve known each other through these various avenues and of course as friends. He’s a talented actor too and has appeared in a few things I’ve made. It’s the same with most people I know - they all end up getting roped into something I’m doing eventually!

So how did the collaboration actually work? Did Jon write to the finished film or did you animate to the music?
Because the animation took so long to complete, I’d give Jon versions of the film to compose to at home. As the film got nearer to being completed he’d play me his ideas and we’d discuss them, then I’d give him another updated version of the film to write to. This meant that the visuals and the music were in sync with one another throughout their creation for the most part! Eventually we went into Barny’s studio and recorded the sound bit by bit, which was quite gruelling at times but ultimately very rewarding and fun.

You always seem to have half a dozen projects at various stages of development; What's next, and will there be more animation in the near future?
If I’m not spinning plates, I’m not happy! I’m currently finishing a film I shot last year called ‘The Gauntlet’ about a man who murders his gay lover and goes home to his wife as if nothing really happened. Then there’s a horror film I’m writing with a friend called ‘Bill Is Dead’ which explores the notion that seeing a ghost changes one forever and is in part a homage to ‘Whistle And I’ll Come To You’, Jonathan Miller’s excellent short film from the sixties. I’m also in the process of reviving my beloved pop band Lovecraft and shooting an untitled post apocalyptic art film, so plenty of plates but no animation in the near future!

Thanks for that Craig, I'm sure we've taken up enought of your precious time already, but do you have any advice for budding filmmakers?
Here's my film making manifesto:
The Alchemist Film-maker's Manifesto:
1. To ignore even a fleeting abstraction is sinful.
2. Characterisation before plot progression.
3. No long shot is too long, no close up too close.
4. A measured openness to chance is admirable.
5. Improvisation is grand when the obvious is avoided.
6. Illusions nourish the mind's eye - effects starve it.
7. Film more than you need.
8. Natural light is a cruel mistress, beautiful and beguiling but fickle.
9. Fear no refusal, refusal can be a catalyst for progress.
10. Know your location as surely as you know yourself.

Annotations - Dead Souls

Wherein we pick up with Mark a couple of years before his first appearance and we find out why his mum abandoned him to the Ghost Town. It's a Thursday night in 1981 or thereabouts, a couple of years before Ghost Town, and Mark is doing everything he can to be grown up and responsible. I like the way that this piece dovetails with Mark's later (chronological) appearance. In both pieces, you get the impression that Mark is struggling to become something more than he is. Here he's tring to be one of the older, cooler kids, to meet his mum's expectations, to be more than his father, to keep his sister safe and to figure out what to do with all these strange new urges. There's no way he's going to manage all of that, and this story exists at the moment when it all falls down. If there's a central tragedy to DW then it's this: Mark only ever wanted to be good.
I also like that it's almost a direct parallel of The Word Is - Two stories about semi - abandoned children who retreat into music at every opportunity,drift into dreams about nuclear wastelands and silver stars, then wake to find that something has been taken from them. Again, there are certain recurring plot threads and symbols throughout the whole of DW.
Other than those thoughts, there isn't a lot to say about this one. The title is a track by Joy Division, later covered by Nine Inch Nails for the soundtrack to The Crow, a goth superhero movie. Here it refers to the whole Wilson family, living out their squalid little lives as if they were already dead, the ghosts in Mark's dream, the M.A.D. global wipeout and of course, Messrs Peel and Curtis who appear in the first paragraphs. This is Peel's first published appearance in DW, although he also crops up in an unfinished Sarah piece set in the heyday of pirate radio boats.
Chronologically, we're all over the place with this one. Curtis died in 1980 but Bucks Fizz didn't get to number one until April the following year. The only Joy Division track likely to get a play on Top Of The Pops is Love Will Tear Us Apart, which was released posthumously, although Peel appears to introduce the band live in the studio. Oh, and Peel didn't start presenting Top Of The Pops until 1981 and probably never introduced a band by predicting the aquatic demise of the human race. But I like to think that if Curtis had lived, if Joy Division had appeared on the same episode of Top Of The Pops as Bucks Fizz and that if John Peel had introduced Dead Souls to a shellshocked nation, those are precisely the terms he would have used.
In a similar vein, bonkon and spaz are hardly the most PC of terms these days, but both were in common playground parlance back then. You may not agree with their usage here, but it's true to the character and the time.
The man with the guitar by his knees is Peter Hook. And he does look cool. There will be no argument with this.
Going Underground by The Jam fits nicely with the ideas of reinvention and a counter culture that run through a lot of DW, while the Visage song is probably going to be Fade To Grey, both because of the scenes which follow in Mark's dream and because it's the only song of there's that anyone remembers...

And nothing has changed, but nothing's the same

Okay, a mad flurry of activity and we're back up to date on the annotations, and I've also made some very small changes to the main site to make reading easier.
Firstly, at the end of each piece, there's a link called Notes which takes you straight to the annotations for the piece. Now, if you're desperate to know where a title came from or what liberties we've taken with recognised history, geography or cosmology, click Notes and you will be transported directly to the relevant back matter over on the notes site.
Secondly, and more importantly, I've overhauled the labels on the main site. It should be fairly clear now that there are a number of different plot threads running though DW. Some of them appear to cross over with the others, some seem (at the moment) to exist in their own little pocket universe. There's no set running order for the pieces and no right or wrong way to read it, and Phil and I both feel that potential readers should have the opportunity to remix the chapters to form any sort of meaning they can find (and let us know what it is when you find it. Please?). The labels now list the characters and locations featured in a specific piece. That way, if all you want to read is stories about Monk Blue then click his name in the labels at the end of the latest piece and you'll be shownn all of his earlier appearances. The same goes for each of the characters, so you can just read Sarah's story, or Mark's, or whichever character you choose to follow. The labels will expand as more characters and locations are featured, but we've got a good start.
That should do for now. Back tomorrow with the latest chapter.

Annotations - Absolute Beginners Part 3 : Let's Go

No major references for the most part. Let's Go is a translation of the Indian word "Hokahe" which crops up later.
I don't know how well it comes over, but I wanted to evoke a changed reality for most of this piece, hence the change in prose style and tense, from past (he did) to present (he does). I also loosened the mind a little bit and threw in some stream of consciousness business which I then tried to make sense of in the following paragraphs. It's meant to suggest a concertina effect to time - The fight takes place over eight hours, but all takes place in the time it takes Blue to fall down and stand up again.
Eyes as dead as John Wayne's... Just goes nicely with the later cancer cowboy. The original line was Eyes as dead as John Waye's left lung, but I've just checked and it was stomach cancer that got the Duke, so that's changed.
Believe it or not, Zzyzx is NOT another sigil word - It's a real place in the Mojave desert, keeping us in the same place as the Manson/Bradys reference in part 2. There was a natural mineral spring spa at Zzyzx (pronounced zeye-zacs) which the owner never had permission for as it's all federal property. He was eventually arrested for using the land and also for allegedly breaking drug and food laws (whatever they might be) and the land was confiscated in that foul year of our lord 1974. I think that might be where the training camp from part 1 now stands...
"If he moves, kill him" obviously, paraphrasing the great line from William Holden's Pike Bishop in The Wild Bunch (Which I think I even mentioned at one point as a subtitle for part 3?). A Pike-monster now appears to take down the Nagual in standard action movie style, smothering him inside and out with tumours birthed from Blue's throat (and yet everyone in this episode seems to be smoking constantly - Will they never learn?).
Before we reach the end and our big guest appearance, there's one more thing to point out, another interloper who has snuck in from someplace very different:
"Bishop..."
Pike smiled.
Read together, that's Bishop Pike smiled. No big deal, but I like it as Bishop James Pike was a good friend of PKD and the basis for Timothy Archer in The Transmigration Of... Transmigration, of course, is the idea of the soul or psyche's movement from one body to another, whether through reincarnation or possession of a pre-existing body. Could that also appear here at some point? Hmmm...
And finally, ladies and gentlemen, a drum roll please for our latest star: Midge! If Fliss is Felicity and Ari is Arihaily, could Midge really be anything other than our old friend Imogen Dangerfield?

Annotations - Absolute Beginners Part 2 : A Night On The Town

Named, of course, for the Gene Kelly musical about sailors in New York. Or maybe not - I just like having that as a title, then skipping the whole Night On The Town bit to join our heroes on their way home...
Fewer references this time -
"This same lonely desert..." paraphrases HST in Fear & Loathing, talking about the Manson Family. That pretty much fixes us in the Mojave Desert, demonises those little blonde fuckers the Bradys and allows us an opening for the Pope himself at some later point...
Pretty much reference free then, until we hit the endless guitar solo of Freebird by Lynrd Skynrd. I like the fact that it's on for over an hour, as it's famous for being one of the most overblown, cliched 70's rock stormers. It ties in once again with Monk's preference for that era's music, I also include it just because I like it, and have recently been battering their albums whilst writing.

Annotations - Absolute Beginners 1: Soldier Girl

Another reference-heavy piece here, so here's the annotated version:
The titles are taken from 2 songs, by Bowie and the Polyphonic Spree respectively. I especially like the fact that for their third album, the PS are ditching the robes in favour of army fatigues, a fact I only discovered while preparing to write part 2. And I figure that Blue will eventually come to Absolutely love Fliss. I've taken the liberty of having her blonde in this piece, but that can change from chapter to chapter as easily as, well, ANY woman can change her hair colour... For now though, think Patsy Kensit in the movie of the same name, Twiggy in 1967 and Claire Danes in the Mod Squad movie, dressed in Israeli army cast offs.
"We can swim like the dolphins, be kings and queens, or even be ourselves, for eternity." This is a VERY loose paraphrasing of the lyrics to Bowie's Heroes. I think the concept fits well with the overall idea of this trilogy of bits - We all have massive untapped potential. Fliss, Monk and Ari just figure out how to use theirs.
Matus: Don Juan Matus, the (allegedly fake) Nagual who coached Carlos Castaneda in various esoteric Mayan magics. Nagual (pronounced Na'wal) can be taken to mean both teacher and the totality of existence. Tonal, used in a couple of paragraphs, means both student and the single closed reality in which the uninitiated are bound to spend their lives. This man may or may not be the same Matus from the Castaneda books, but as there are questions as to whether he ever actually existed, I think we can leave it hanging and get away with it; It's never really pointed out anyway. There's also another meaning for Nagual - An evil shapeshifter, like a Mayan werewolf.
...slapped him harshly between the shoulder blades: The creed taught to Castaneda states that we are beings of lumious energy fibres which extend from a point between our shoulders to about an arm's length behind us, anchoring us to this Tonal/reality. By displacing it, we can refix our point of reference wherever we wish, inhabiting other minds and bodies in this realm or any others (which seems to explain a lot of the weird stuff in Donnie Darko, now that I think about it).
...his legs twitching like a dreaming dog... This echoes the scene in Ghost Town and uses the same phrasing, hopefully suggesting that what happens to Mark in that piece is more than just a mind rape - He actually sees the past as another reality.
...there are many dark actors playing games : A phrase used by Dr David Kelly in one of his final emails on the day of his alleged suicide, which has been seen as a key piece of evidence for foul play. Using it here prefigures some later developments, as well as suggesting that one of our characters killed the Doc...
...A humble Earthworm: I'm not sure there's even a connection here myself, but after I'd written this, I realised that in Dr Bloodmoney, the consciousness of the psychic foetus Bill is temporarily trapped in a worm, and I think Hoppy Harrington winds up in there permanently at the end of the book. No big reference, just an interesting aside.
This one will always have trouble with his appetite : Obviously, with his prodigious drug-taking in later days...
cihuapilli: The Nahuatl word for Princess. I think there may be more history with Matus and Fliss than we may ever get to see. Or not - It might just be an old lecher's term of affection.
Wax on, wax off : Please tell me I don't have to annotate that?
Christa Paffgen : Another icy blonde bombshell, better known to most of the world as Nico, of Velvet Underground and Chelsea Girl fame.
Fata Morgana : Another name for Morgan Le Fay, half-sister to, sometime nemesis and occasional ally of King Arthur Pendragon, star pupil of Merlin and latterly taken as a feminist icon for her role in the Grail legends. No real reason for Ari taking that particular pseudonym, but a handy reference to drop now in case we ever choose to hit the Grail cycle for other resonances.

Annotations - The Girl On The Factory Wall

Finally, after almost 20 years, Marg Cornell lives and breathes the rarified air of Doubtless Wonder. Marg was the original star of the show, created by Phil in a late 80s/early 90s maths lesson, in between discussions about the meaning of Twin Peaks, arguments about the relative merits of A Nightmare On Elm Street 2 and 3 and attempts to sing the songs of JRR Tolkien without being beaten up every single day of our school lives.
Lots of references, both real world and DW. Obviously, music plays a huge part in Marg's life, so plenty of bands named here, with the chemical plant referred to as a Factory right at the head of the page to start things off.
"Cool As" ...Fuck - The slogan of Clint Boon's stoner cartoon cow (I always wanted an Inspiral Carpets tee shirt but didn't think I'd get away with it. Marg clearly has a rather more relaxed mother than I do...)
Lovecraft - The original incarnation who wrote the songs Bow Down and Lady Fliss.
Floyd, Morrison, Marley and the Sex Pistols, through to "the current crop of Madchester bands." So we're in mid 1990, when baggy ruled the world, George Dubbya's daddy had his finger on the button and the poll tax rioters decimated Trafalgar Square and huge chunks of Brixton.
Stone Roses, Happy Mondays and Northside. Good God, Northside! Shall we take a trip?
Hawkwind, Doctor and The Medics, Velvet Underground and Primal Scream; All have their places on the DW soundtrack, and I'm pleased with their inclusion here. The connections? Besides covering Spirit In The Sky, D&TMs also covered Hawkwind's Silver Machine (while Hawkwind themselves frequently collaborated with SF's beardiest wierdy, Michael Moorcock, on tracks inspired by his Eternal Champion stories). Meanwhile, the Velvet Underground (the original Factory band) had an album called Loaded, which was the title of Primal Scream's biggest single from 1991's Screamadelica (but released over 18 months ahead of the album, in March 1990).
A worn out husk full of brittle glass and rusty nails that squealed and scraped as it fought to stay alive - Somehow, Sarah goes from the bright young thing of Another Girl to this broken down robot. The description echoes PKDs ersatz human psychotic and the animatronic creatures which appear in Little Boy Blue.
With her weekend job in Woollies, Marg earned enough to bring home two or three new albums every week - If we ever decide on a fixed running order then this will be the opening story, meaning that this would prefigure the similar description of a young Sarah in Another Girl, rushing home with her LPs stuffed under her coat so old man Schnitzler won't find them. Again, music is massive in the lives of these women.
And a big shout out for Simms Cross Curios where, in 1990/91, I bought my first ever Neil Young LPs.
Same as it ever was. Same as it ever was.
And here's the Inspiral Carpets tee shirt.
And then there are a couple of boy geniuses, wandering aimlessly round the post industrial wasteland, discussing the possible meaning of Gandalf's horse appearing in Laura Palmer's bedroom and sniffing solvents from a shirtcuff. Well, if Hitchcock can have a walk-on role in his movies then why can't we?

Annotations - The Word Is...

...Love, according to the Beatles track. Basically placing Sarah little more than three months on from last time we saw her. Again, not vital to an understanding of the story, but hopefully, the burgeoning counter culture will tie in with the development of our little Sarah as she loses her dad and joins a succession of less than helpful cults and churches. I guess she's my way of squeezing some theological and spiritual concerns into DW, on top of the already existing ideas.
I wanted to try and draw some correlation between Sarah and her father, so that when we finally get into the possible familial links with Fliss, there's an existing lineage of slightly odd spiritual/magical/revolutionary figures stretching out behind her. I now see her as the final manifestation of the line, the perfect distillation of all that went before, meaning that she didn't enter DW so much as bring it into being here on Earth (or in the realm next door at least).

Running late... that's a private joke, because this was once again supposed to be Sarah meeting George King and the Aetherians (who are now called Arthur Pendleton and The Order Of Intergalactic Angels. They WILL turn up eventually. But not tonight.)
No specific reference, but I like the idea of Sarah being particularly susceptible to the shamanistic power of music, the drum beat of The Word helping her to reach a transcendent state. That's why she drifts so much into her own thoughts both here and in Another Girl. Felicity's mum lives right on the border betwen our world and hers.
Lamplight on the bridge... The corpus callosum is the link between the left and right hemispheres of the brain, and a malfunction of that link is often characterized by visual halucinations, particularly random flashes of colour and light, like PKDs pink laser beam. Just to completely contradict everything in that last paragraph, we could play up this aspect and have it seem that Sarah is experiencing halucinations and hemispheric cross-chatter due to a mental imbalance, which would just make Fliss a third generation schizophrenic thrown into full-blown episodes by the ingestion of the DW substance. Maybe.
Everything from Deep in thought... to ....the higher realms is a fairly straight description of Astral projection techniques AND the standard hypnagogic/sleep paralysis state. This is when the body goes into lockdown to prevent sleepers from thrashing too wildly in their dreams. In some cases it can occur before you're asleep, leading to a wide variety of folklore and strangeness. PKD claims that most of his VALIS visions occurred in this state. The Mara is a German witch creature which is said to sit upon the chest of a sleeper and bring nightmares. Again, this reinforces Sarah's Tuetonic roots and ties in with the sleep paralysis.
A silver star - Notes deleted.
The red forest, the zone of alienation - These are the names given to the area directly surrounding and a dead wood adjacent to Chernobyl. Sarah is seeing the future here. We might make it back to Chernobyl at some point in the near future.
An earnest young man - Notes deleted.

Annotations - Ghost Town

This has the rare distinction of being the only 'lost' DW chapter. Somehow, both Phil and I managed to delete the original and I had to rewrite it from memory. It wound up twice as long as theoriginal, with extra homosexual activity and a completely different ending. In honour of that, I've also rewritten a lot of the notes on the piece.
This is the second appearance of The Imperial, after the mid-60s version gets a mention in Another Girl. Here we are again, some 20 years on. The shop names and ESB tee-shirt should place us in the early 80s, along with the title which, of course, comes from that Thatcher/Early 80s/Brixton & Toxteth Riot-era classic by The Specials.
We've also seen Mark's mum before, I think. Compare:

...the stain on Cynthia's blouse, the clumsily re-applied lipstick and the cigarette burn on her far too short skirt, (Cyn in Another Girl).
He saw her work clothes, the stained blouse and the skirt with the cigarette burn... (Mark's mum in Ghost Town).

Yeah, it surprised me too, but the town bike is more than she seems, and there's a whole lot of pain in her life before she stands at the gates and waves goodbye to her son...
I've nicked a couple of place names from Widnes, again tying in with Another Girl, but beyond that, there's nothing too deep. Humbug Billy was a genuine sweet-seller who inadvertently caused the great Bradford sweet poisoning of 1854, selling around 200 bags of arsenic-laced sweets, but no-one really needs to know that, it's just a dumb joke for my own personal edification.
However.... Things take on a very different hue if you look at that description of the boys in the attic and their concerns about Humbug. They armed him, set him off, and now they want to beat him down before he gets too big for his boots. That sounds a bit like America and Iraq. And Mark gets pimped out to keep him occupied, then holds him down as he dies - Blair's Britain? So the house is the UN, with us getting royally screwed by the US, then waving our big dick at the smaller EU boys. That would then mean that the riot stricken town is a metaphor for the modern world,with all its violence and bloodshed and brutalized children, and the reason for it all? That crazy old whore Thatcher gave up on us and left us to fend for ourselves all those years ago. Sure, we miss her now that we've forgotten how bad she really was, and in a lot of ways, we're a lot like her, but when the smiling man (who isn't Jesus...) comes around, we're going to have the veils lifted from our eyes and we will see what we're doing to the world, and we'll have to decide, lying there on the Imperial steps (or beyond the Empire, to put it a different way...) whether we really want to grow up and do something right for a change.
Probably completely overblown, and maybe I'm the only one who can see it, but it makes sense to me, and I think it works well either way, so what the hell.

It's The End Of The World As We Know It...

So I've had about 24 hours to digest the news that Disney has bought Marvel and I've come to the conclusion that this is a good thing - For DC Comics.

Opinion has been fairly mixed across the comics blogosphere, with die-hard fanboys weeping into their Spider-Man comforters and Stan The Man (currently on an exclusive first-look deal with the House Of Mouse) claiming, unsurprisingly, that it's great.

Arguments put forward by supporters of the deal include:

Disney own Miramax (producers of Kill Bill, Pulp Fiction etc) so clearly don't mind their subsidiaries producing adult-oriented content.
The financial security will allow Marvel to publish critically acclaimed but low-selling titles without worrying about the bottom line.
The deal gives Marvel a ready made pipeline to Pixar, making a CGI X-Men movie a strong possibility.

And so on...

But there are some very strong counter-arguments for each of those ideas.

Firstly, why would Pixar want to make an X-Men movie? The Incredibles already showed that you don't need 40 years of continuity baggage and (questionable) brand recognition to produce a great, family friendly superhero movie.

Secondly, the idea of Marvel continuing to publish loss-making titles is based on the assumption that Disney will operate the same way Time Warner does with it's subsidiary DC Comics, but that's not necessarily the case. Disney have bought Marvel at a time when there are literally dozens of comic book movies in production and countless more being pitched all the time. Warner bought DC in 1969, when the closest thing to a multi-media superhero crossover was the Adam West Batman series which had been cancelled three years earlier. Looked at from that angle, it's highly unlikely that Disney have bought Marvel because they want to expand into comic book publishing (they already have an existing deal with Boom Studios for that) - The House of Ideas is about to become The Factory Of Ideas, churning out comics which are little more than illustrated spec scripts. The recognised, iconic characters will be packaged and pitched as potential movies. Follow that up with action figures, lunch boxes, branded babygrows and a thousand other merchandising opportunities, then ask yourself - Who wants a Captain Britain Happy Meal? Fool Killer underpants? Nextwave flavoured vitamins?
(okay, I'd probably go for that last one, but I don't think I'm Disney's target demographic...)
At the end of the day, Warner bought DC and let them get on with it for 9 years before they finally made Superman The Movie. For every Dark Knight there's at least two Schumacher abominations, a Quest For Peace for every Watchmen. Warners have no clue what to do with the characters and have let countless opportunities slip through their fingers over the years (anyone remember when Clint Eastwood was rumoured for The Dark Knight Returns?), right up to Whedon's amazing disappearing Wonder Woman. By now, DC is so autonomous that Warners probably forget they even own them. Disney will be a completely different kettle of worms though. You don't pay $4bn for Alias and Kabucki, and every new title will be seen as a dry run for the eventual movie. If it can't even pull in the fan boys for $3.99 a month then it will never be a worthwhile investment for the big screen. Kill it. Move on. Kill it. Move on. Kill it. Move on. If anything, lower tier titles will probably get canned quicker than ever.

And finally, The Tarantino Defence. My favourite of the bunch, and the reason I think we'll soon see a whole bunch of creators heading to the Distinguished Competition. And it all boils down to one thing - The Disney Store.
Yes, Disney owns Miramax and was therefore behind the distribution of Pulp Fiction, The Crying Game, Heavenly Creatures and a host of other movies about matricidal lesbians, transvestite terrorists and smacked up hitmen. They also (allegedly) bought foreign films to keep them off the market, forced cuts on Tarantino, Kevin Smith and Michael Moore for political and moral reasons and practically buried Dead Man when Jim Jarmusch refused to make the cuts requested.

Leaving all of that aside though, the one thing all of those films had in common - Reservoir Dogs, Dogma, Fahrenheit 9/11 and the rest - is that not one of them had a cuddly doll sold through the Disney Store. There was never any chance of Little Johnny buying a Chuck Heston NRA Forever duvet cover and going on to see the film, or of Cindy Lou wanting to snort heroin because her Mia Wallace Styling Head looks so great with a ruptured septum. But over at Marvel, things are not so clear cut. Every month, they produce a range of all ages titles, wherein Wolverine goes to a theme park with Thor, Captain America and MODOK open a pet store and Doctor Doom's latest scheme revolves around making Ben Grimm the perfect birthday cake. Those cute and cuddly characters will be stacked high in every Disney Store worldwide.
And then every month, those same characters appear in the other Marvel comics. The ones where Wolverine castrates rapists, Thor pounds his enemies to a bloody paste with his hammer and Captain America demonstrates the best way to beat up a semi-comatose post-Hulkout Bruce Banner is with a kick to the head.
These books appear in the same format, often alongside each other on the comic shop shelves, and if Sweetpea wants to read about the X-Men then there's a fifty - fifty chance that he'll pick up the wrong one (hell, at 8 I would have flicked through them both and gone for the one with the highest booby count, so it's probably more like eighty - twenty). You can't have characters on sale in plush form at the Disney Store discussing genocide, much less commitiing it in the name of truth and decency. The first time that happens, the balloon will go up, there'll be screaming headlines about Disney corrupting the young and a massive public outcry. Disney can't afford that (remember how scared they were by the rumours of a naked Jessica Rabbit?), so they will be drawing up a list of proscribed phrases, scenes, situations and poses right alongside that exclusive merchandising rights deal. Let's face it, on a slow news day, a flash of MJ's side-boob will get headlines. Once the mouse gets involved, it will be massively overblown.

So, Marvel will be de-fanged, effectively neutered by the mouse, before they see a penny of that fat movie cheque. And that will have a massive knock-on effect for DC. Previously, for both of the major companies, the biggest names have pretty much all followed this route; Take a second or third string character who is either out of print or on the verge of cancellation, turn the book around and gradually push the edges of what is acceptable as you build up a small but vocal fan base and a strong critical reaction, then take on something bigger, better and more adult that will make your name. That's Miller with Daredevil, Morrison with Doom Patrol, Ennis on The Demon, even Moore on Swamp Thing (about to be cancelled for the third time when he took it on, remember). With no room for poorly performing books, those new creators wil have to jump straight to the major leagues, with little or no time to develope and grow. Anyone who does find themselves riding a wave of success will soon find themselves stifled by editorial interference ("No Grant, you can't annihilate Genosha." "Frank, we can't show sais in the book. What about some sort of rubber sap for knocking people out?").

So with no opportunity to do stretching, adult work like that, the brain drain will soon begin, and DC / Vertigo is the obvious place to go. We'll lose the edgier superhero books that Marvel does so well, but we could get the next Sandman, Preacher or Transmetropolitan, so on balance, I think I'm glad that Disney bought Marvel, and the sooner they drive them into the ground the better.

The Dark Prince Strikes Again

And the Dark Prince strikes again as he rapes and plunders the cosy Marvel Universe!!

Disney to buy Marvel in $4bn Deal

I Fought THE LAW

Over at Bleeding Cool, the one and only Garth Ennis touches on genocide, morally conflicted heroes and the forgotten gods of comic art in a sweet little celebration of 2000AD's 32nd birthday. If you're not sure why it was the Galaxy's Greatest, just read the list of insanely talented contributors who made their first big splash there, then try and picture a world where they never made it past mimeographed pamphlets and nu-wave fanzines.

When 2000ad was the future

And he doesn't even mention the later generations - Bisley, Morrison, Millar, Jock, Diggle, Ennis himself...

Apologies...

I must apologise for stepping out of the regular Saturday night posting sequence and posting Prison Letters this afternoon. It kind of popped into my head a few days ago and I had to write it out today as a kind of response to some of the sterling work that Karl has been posting over the past few months. Yes readers, if it wasn't for Karl, Doubtless would have died a death years ago. Thanks for keeping the torch burning Chief!

Doubtlesswonder 1990-Present

Phil

Striking Cobra Quick Kill Maneuver

Begins here first account of operative me, Agent number 75, on having completed Pygmy. Fellow operatives must read this book. Read great story about human cultural, sociological and political juxtopositions. Reading is a worthy tool for operatives of the Wonderdoubtless.

Don't mess with the bull, young man. You'll get the horns.

Neal: Del... Why did you kiss my ear?
Del: Why are you holding my hand?
Neal: [frowns] Where's your other hand?
Del: Between two pillows...
Neal: Those aren't pillows!

Rain Keeps Falling, Rain Keeps Falling, Down, Down, Down...

"Life moves pretty fast. if you don't stop and look around once in a while you could miss it."



John Hughes, February 18, 1950 – August 6, 2009

No One Told You When To Run

Okay, so we're about four pieces behind on the annotations but trust me, we will get caught up. Time is fluid in DW, but in a house with a six month old baby, time is practically non-existent. Just consider yourself lucky that I even remember to update the main site...

Anyway, to business. It's quarter to midnight on a Friday night, which seems like the perfect time to watch cartoons like Whatnot. This is the latest work of art from Mr Sinclair, and it's pretty darn good (as well as breathtakingly beautiful in an icy, Eastern European kind of way). I can see The Wicker Man, The Yellow Submarine and the horrifying stop motion Moomins cartoon in it, and I'm sure there's a whole lot more besides. I hope to have an interview piece with Sincalir at some point over the next week, talking about inspiration, creation and all that stuff, but for now, just sit back and enjoy:

http://www.mif.co.uk/events/it-felt-like-a-kiss/

Annotations - Another Girl

Okay, here we go again. First up, the title refers to several things all at once - Sarah as the latest key character in DW, how she views Cyn, her idealised self and a song from the album Help! by the Beatles. In DW, certain types of music may have transformative powers, and chief among them is The Beatles (and not just the later druggie-era work either, you philistines - I was listening to A Hard Day's Night while making a vegetarian sausage and mushroom omlette earlier and it still sounds amazing). So, a Beatle-centric chapter, which is either really bland or kind of intriguing, depending on how much you know about the Fab Four and their lyrics and lives.

The main feature at The Imperial, Doris Day and Rock Hudson, the World Service News, the danceclub and the church hall coffee bar should all help to place us in the mid 1960s, a timezone clearly marked out when Sarah runs through the song titles (the first three tracks on Help!). That album was released in August 1965, and Rubber Soul came out in time for Christmas that same year, so by calling it the new Beatles LP, Sarah firmly places us in late 65. We're so close to the age of psychedelics and swirly-print shirts that you can almost smell the patchouli oil. The next 5 years will change Sarah (and so much of her world) in so many ways that the echoes are already shaking her from her little Northern world. She can almost feel it, just around the corner, a world where people live real lives... Obviously, she has a serious thing about musicians, and the magical powers of the humble pop song, which ties in with xxxxxxx. Over on the other side of the world, Blue's mum has just gone into a bookshop to look for a nice poetry collection to read during her upcoming holiday...

So, in my head, when I plotted this little fragment of madness, Sarah was going to catch a glimpse of Cyn on the other side of the road and that was it. Bill would then turn up and they would go off to a party in a dodgy basement where all manner of wierdness would ensue. The best laid plans... Cyn likes to talk, and she wanted to defend herself from the rather unflattering view I had of her, so she just walked in and took over.

Freddy And The Peacemakers, John Lemon - Cyn is a drunk and a tart, apparently, but is she really that dumb? She confuses Freddy and the Dreamers (whose lead singer did bear an odd resemblance to Buddy Holly) and Gerry and the Pacemakers, which is fair enough, but to be a teenage girl in 65 and get the name of John Lennon wrong? I think she puts a lot of this on, just to seem harmless. And knowing a girl at The Cavern puts us in the Northwest, one of those forgotten little towns like Widnes (where The Beatles played support to Rory Storm & The Hurricanes and Paul Simon wrote Homeward Bound).



It's a shame, what happened... And here's the proof. Cyn is resolutely NOT talking about her relationship with Sarah, although you could see it that way if you wanted to. She's talking about the breakup of the Beatles, the strained Lennon/McCartney partnership, Lennon's move to New York and his eventual death on the doorstep of the Dakota Building in 1980. This is a girl who knows more than she ever lets on. But she does give Sarah a very good piece of advice - Whatever gets you through the night, it's alright. That also happens to be a Lennon song from 1974, while "you can't get back to where you used to be" paraphrases Get Back, from 69, coincidentally the last track on the last album before the split.

(And more bizarre synchronicity - I had two thirds of this finished when I remembered the name of John's first wife... This isn't her. In terms of names, it was chosen because it fits with the main characters' penchant for shortening (Felicity/Fliss, Arihaily/Ari, Imogen/Midge), which might lead some people to conclude a maternal link with one of the girls, and because of its similarity to sin, which works with her being such a bad girl at times.)

Give it a few years and it will start to make a whole different kind of sense... Cyn knows where Sarah is going.

I'll see you later - Ditto.

So, here we are in Widnes, 1965, reading about a young woman who dreams of the future and understands the power of a classic pop record. But for all of her importance, for all the sorrow and pain she will experience in the coming years, this story isn't really about her at all; It's about Another Girl altogether.

The Written Word Is A Lie

So, have I kept you in suspense for long enough?

"Oh yes wise one, please tell us why these four books are integral to the development of Doubtless Wonder!"

Very well then. Let's begin.

Tricked By Alex Robinson is a black and white slice of life indie novel from the author of Box Office Poison. It's reminiscent of those 1990's indie films where Ethan Hawke is stylishly mopey, Winona Ryder is mopily stylish and they all meet up in fraught, frequently violent circumstances at the end. (although now that I think of it, I can't name a single example of the genre, so maybe it just reminds me of the sort of films they should have been making but never got round to. Anyway...). We meet a blocked ex-rock star, his cute, naive muse, a slightly overweight waitress with commitment issues, a forger who works for a Russian mobster autographing baseball memorabilia and of course, the fat obsessive off-his-meds fanboy who hears secret messages in the singers' work. Which naturally tell him to KILL KILL KIIIILL!!! Of course, the maddest character in the book is the most interesting, but the others are all pretty likable and well drawn and written, and the violent climax is nerve jangling in a low key, indie kind of way.

The Ring is an adaptation of the novel by Koji Suzuki, although from memory it seems closer to the straightforward movie versions, adding the mother/son pairing from the American remake in place of the original Japanese male journalist and losing most of the weirder aspects of the novel. (Again, It's been a while since I read the novels, but I think there was more to The Ring than what we get in the movies and comic adaptation. By the time of Loop, Spiral and Birthday, the whole idea of a malevolent psychic has been left light years behind in favour of intelligent viruses and recursive metafiction). The artwork is a little uninspired, suffering from the generic similarity which can often make all manga look alike to Occidental eyes (although I wonder; do Western comics look the same to Oriental audiences? There's an obvious difference between the works of Bill Sienkiewicz and Mike McMahon, for example, but what about the solid yet uninspired superhero work of Val Semeiks, Tom Raney or Jim Balent?) So anyway, psychic corpse imprints unadulterated hatred on conveniently recording VCR and creates a cursed videotape which dooms anyone who watches it, yadda yadda yadda. Between the workmanlike art and the over-familiarity of the plot, it left me almost completely underwhelmed. The only stylistic flourish which did work was the artist's habit of occasionally drawing the main characters without eyes, but I'd be at a loss to explain why they did it that way...

Deathnote is more manga, but where The Ring was too safe and familiar, volume one of the epic Deathnote series actually seems like something new (despite being about five year sold). A deathnote is a notebook which allows the bearer to cause - and dictate the circumstances of - anyone's death. Write their name in the book and they die of a heart attack. Write a more detailed description and the events will, for the most part, come to pass. The owner of this particular deathnote is Ryuk, a Shinigami (God of death, demon type deal), but when he apparently loses it in the human world, it's picked up by studious teenager Light. Realising the power of the deathnote, Light promptly sets about wiping out the criminal element which plagues the modern world while trying to stay one step ahead of the mysterious detective L. Light is almost insufferably smug, while L is possibly even worse, but the art is nice and distinctive, Ryuk is fun and the whole Emo element (I have so much power, it's so heavy, woe is me...) makes a nice change from curses and psychic schoolgirls.

Finally, Testament is the 22 issue comic book series by counter-cultural commentator Douglas Rushkoff and a slew of artists, most notably Liam Sharp. Retelling archetypal bible tales in a near future setting, Rushkoff unleashes a slightly heavy-handed broadside of religious posturing and deliberate provocation (Astarte and Shiva spend a whole issue screwing, for example). Talk of cumming, God's dick and techno whores is slightly let down by the fact that only Frank Miller and Brian Bolland can get away with genitalia in a book published by (Time Warner subsidiary) DC Comics, so for all the filthy words, every picture of sex and nudity is partially covered by conveniently drifting smoke, waving scarves or panel borders. Similarly, the plot (several good gods struggle against their opposite numbers to create a living bible, rewriting it as they go and allowing the real world human protagonists to do the same, hacking reality as they go) is slightly less than the sum of it's parts. Think about it for too long and it all falls apart, but for the 22 issues it's a pretty wild ride. The last couple of issues are less satisfying - The series was cancelled so there's a definite sense of Rushkoff struggling to tie up all the plot threads way ahead of time. Sharp's art is similarly weaker towards the end, lacking a lot of the fine detail seen in the first story arc, but as one of the more under-rated artists working in mainstream comics even his weaker output is well worth a look (and he's a really nice guy too).

And all that says what exactly about Doubtless Wonder? Well, look at the connection between all four: Aggressive media.

Tricked - Rock and pop songs containing hidden messages (real or imagined) which tell troubled souls what to do.
The Ring - A videotape which kills its viewers.
Deathnote - A book which kills anyone named in its pages,in the way specified.
Testament - A book which warps reality, past and present, to reflect the latest rewrite.

In each of the four, the media becomes more aggressive, more pro-active and with wider reaching effects. The songs in Tricked only work on one, admittedly mental, listener. The Ring videotape will work on anyone who watches it, but can't force you to press play. The Deathnote can affect anyone within certain parameters but requires a degree of direction before it can work it's magic. The Testament Bible is formed by the random acts of a million people and will feed those acts back to affect their lives, their past present and future lives and the lives of the deities they worship.

So, with thoughts of aggressive media in mind, we have to ask, is Doubtless Wonder about one of these strange artifacts, or is it an artifact in and of itself? Does it tell the story of an art form with the power to change reality, or is that what it is?

That's up to you to decide, but one other thing all four of those books had in common - Every piece of aggressive media has an effect. Even if you survive the encounter, you will never be the same again.

Cheers,

Karl

Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes...

So, those of you who are paying attention (and somebody must be, surely?) will have noticed that the non-fiction pieces have all been deleted from the main site and moved across here to the notes. We chatted a few nights back and decided that this would preserve the purity and focus of the main site and give us a wider range of nonsense over here. Think of the Doubtless Wonder blog as a strange new form of life, gradually developing to confound various branches of science and religion, with the notes site as a loose collection of musings from interested parties, all attempting to map the emerging forms and predict their eventual shape.

Or not.

For now, simply understand this : In the last week or so, I have read the following comicbooks:

Testament by Douglas Rushkoff, Liam Sharp and others
Deathnote Volume 1 : Boredom by Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata
The Ring Volume 1 by Misao Inagaki and Hiroshi Takahashi (Adapted from the novel by Koji Suzuki)
Tricked by Alex Robinson

And as wildly disparate as they might seem, those four books all have something important to say about where Doubtless Wonder is going and what it will do when it gets there. Muse on that for the time being and I'll return tomorrow to explain.

Cheers,

Karl

Annotations - Little Boy Blue

Okay, here we go with the annotations. This references both earlier and later pieces, most of which have yet to see print here, so I've had to chop a lot out of the notes for the time being. Instead, you get a bit of an insight into the brain as it attempts to make sense of he whole thing. No chance.

In this piece I'm laying the groundwork for another DW concept - Monk Blue as Christ The Redeemer. Maybe. Little Boy Blue is the old nursery rhyme which goes:
Little boy blue, come blow your horn.
The sheep's in the meadow, the cow's in the corn.
Where's the boy who looks after the sheep?
Under the haystack, fast asleep.
Will you wake him? No, not I
For if I do he's sure to cry.
A bit of a stretch maybe, but here's my reasoning - Monk is a man of the cloth. He has the power to reanimate dead matter and to create new life (the sand city in this very tale). Little Boy Blue looks after the sheep, while Christ is frequently referred to as a shepherd of men. Basically, the rhyme says that the world is going to hell, cows and sheep causing mayhem etc, while the shepherd (or more likely, the shepherd's son...) is fast asleep, buried. And when we wake him, he will kick up a ruckus the likes of which we've never heard before. Armageddon baby! Of course, Phil's long term plans for the character may be completely at odds withthis, and my own thoughts can change byy the minute, so this may never be touched on again...

It's not named, but this takes place on Glenelg Beach in Southern Australia. Blue is Australian, which allows him to be a little less brash and a little closer to the very English Fliss but still participate in Nam etc. Blue is a popular Aussie nickname of course. Glenelg Beach is where the Beaumont Children were last seen in 1966, their disappearance sparking four decades of debate and speculation in Oz. This ties into the mention of children on the English moors - At the same time as the Beaumonts went missing, police were closing in on the moors murderers. This puts us squarely in late 65, early 66. As this wasn't as obvious as I'd hoped without some of the other peieces to reinforce the idea, I've also given Norris an extra line about putting a man on the moon.
Ern Malley - A famous Australian controversy surrounding the publication of poems by the late Mr Malley. Met with rapturous approval by the literatti of the day, the poems were later revealed to be the work of two disgruntled poets who created a fictional life for their tortured genius and intentionally wrote the worst poetry they could imagine, just for a laugh. A book of poems by an author who doesn't exist - A DW idea if ever I heard one...

Blue builds a castle... This is another one of those surprise moments, where what I'm thinking and what I'm typing go in two completely different directions. There was never any indication of this when I thought up the plot, but here it is.

Morgan T Norris - Psycho Killer. And once it was out of control, this really got away from me. Norris was going to be a throwaway character who would pop up, initiate Blue with a forced jellyfish sting then bugger off, never to be seen again. I made him dress in black because I thought it made him sinister, I gave him the knife to make him more menacing and I made him bald because xxxxx xxxxx xxxx xxxxx xxx and it made me chuckle. I was up to the point where he kills all the fish before I realised that he was Death with a capital D, and I had to reread it to see that, yes, I'd actually written him as Death from the start. He even looks like the classic Bergman version, updated for a night out in the 21st Century. Truly odd.

And yes, that mention of Psycho Killer should really be followed by Qu'est Que Ce...

So Death and Christ sit in the classic lotus position, facing each other across the clay The Redeemer has raised to life. Norris clearly knows everything there is to know about Blue, and he knows that he's infected. He begins the long, slow process of waking Blue, firstly by forcibly ejecting the toxins from his body. The clear goop is meant to evoke Morrison's Magic Mirror substance, but this is a twisted, distorted version of it, controlling and subduing its vessels.

I like the fact that Blue is almost completely powerless in this passage, and that the mention of the Moors children has set the reader up for some really nasty business, but in fact, Death is here to help. I also think that the moments when Blue is unconscious are the moments when his mum goes. Norris flashes the knife after he's used it (instead of a scythe) to keep Blue away from the body until the lesson is done.

God, The Devil and James Bond - Strange in DW that a boy would think of these three, then ask instead, "Are you my dad?" It's the return of the abandoned child with parental issues! Norris's response suggests that Blue Snr was no prize catch either.

Do you ever feel like you've done everything there is to do at least twice? - When I wrote this, I was beginning to wonder whether Norris was really an alternate future Blue. (and strangely, that was phil's reading of the character too). Now I think it just makes him sound old and tired. He stands at the edge of the land and daydreams about how it will all end.

I spent about three nights rewriting the dialogue for the next few paragraphs. Hendrix, Nixon, Kennedy and the moon landings all came ino it at different times. I suddenly realised that I had no clue what Norris was really here for, what he was going to tell Blue. Finally, I realised that he didn't know either - It was just a vague warning. Things got a bit easier then.

Old men wandering home, children playing out in the sun - Three of them will go from this very beach. - That's xxx xxx xxxxxxxxx, and the Beaumont Children, gone without a trace.

every stoner in the free world will be looking to the skies and singing Good Morning Starshine, actually inviting them to come and make contact with you - Good Morning Starshine is from the musical Hair, which didn't exist untill 1967. And the whole idea of singing it while looking to the stars for UFOs comes from the crossover X-Files/Simpsons episode where Mr Burns gets mistaken for an alien...

the man who called himself Norris felt compelled to look away - Little Blue has the power to face down Death.

That's right little monk - This is the first time Blue is ever called by that name. Norris knows the man he will become.

And that's about all I can give you for now - There's more going on here than I can readily reveal in the annotations, with stuff that won't be touched upon for another six months or more.

(Originally Published 19/05/09)

Annotations for In A Lonely Place

I’m not sure about the exact date on this piece. I think it must have been written sometime in 2003.

The title references Joy Division’s In A Lonely Place, one of the last tracks written by Ian Curtis before he committed suicide in 1980. New Order re-recorded the track and placed it as a B side for the single release of Ceremony (another Joy Division track re-recorded by New Order).

I have some sort of fixation with telegraph wires, electricity pylons, communication masts, satellite dishes and aerials (please note our DB profile image). I’m still trying to put my finger on why I suffer this affliction; I’m not sure if I really want to know – but the problem still persists. Hence, the telegraph wire in In A Lonely Place. The hanging corpses are, yet again, in reference to Ian Curtis’ suicide.

I’ve had an unhealthy interest in military history, in particular World War II, since my Dad introduced me to old war movies like; In Which We Serve, The Wooden Horse, The Dam Busters, The Colditz Story, The Battle of the River Plate, The Bridge on the River Kwai, The Enemy Below, The Longest Day, The Hill and Where Eagles Dare. I then faithfully followed, on a weekly basis, heroic adventuring in Victor and Commando comics and more recently in Garth Ennis’ War Stories, Enemy Ace and First Flight of the Phantom Eagle. Thus, Stalingrad fell into my personal research remit back in 2003. I had been reading Antony Beevor’s Stalingrad and I thought this, particular campaign, would fit nicely within the world of Doubtless Wonder.

The MP35 or Machine Pistole 35 was the main SMG (sub machine gun) of the Waffen SS and some Wermacht units.

Having read IALP again, there is a lot hidden within the piece that I can’t annotate at this time. I don’t want to give too much away.

Cheers

Phil


(Originally Published 07/05/09)

Theme From A Lost Spy Movie?

Okay, time for one short message to introduce the third member of our merry band. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Mr Craig P. Sinclair:

Yay! Woo!

Late of this parish, Mr Sinclair moved on to pastures new in the heart of the city and now spends his time writing surreal plays about beekeepers, directing short films about urban witchcraft and honing his skills as the musical genius behind acclaimed Scouse Victorian Goth merchants Lovecraft. He has also been known to play live with Zombina & The Skeletones, but under an assumed name and so much makeup that no-one's actually sure if he's still in the band or not.

For our purposes though, all you need to know is that he was the first test subject for Doubtless Wonder and allowed the festering mess to infect his brain until he began to produce themes for the main characters (like the one you are currently listening to - Miss Felicity's Theme) and gloriously deranged collages, the most family friendly of which currently sits at the top of this page. He will no doubt provide us with many more wonderful works, and we will repay his kindness by stealing his name and his likeness and plastering them all over Soho's most insalubrious phone booths.

And all in time for his birthday.

(Originally published 06/05/09)

Annotations - String Theory and the Immaculate Conception of Imogen Dangerfield

This piece was written on the day of posting and is a reaction to the previous - Woman of Mass Destruction chapter by Karl.

It's wonderful how these chapters bounce off and collide with each other.

STatICoID also introduces characters, locations, groups and incidents that date back to the inception of Doubtless Wonder in the early 1990's.

The piece is split into three differing time frames and locations, spread out over 15 years. However, the incidents occur within only minutes of each other on a linear timeline. This brings into play the notion of Cause and Effect. Each incident is carried into the next, almost like a narrative relay race, and creates the relational Causality. I'll post some links to Causality philosophy on our sister website(Notes on the Sublime).

The line "Imogen Dangerfield wept salty tears on the edge of the chemical soaked embankment" relates to an actual location within Widnes, Cheshire known as The Bongs. The Bongs (An Olde Cheshire name for light wood) acts as a natural border between Western and Eastern Widnes and is intersected by the Bowers Brook, which opens directly into the River Mersey. About 15 to 20 years ago the brook was used as a chemical waste outlet for local industry and it was not uncommon for it to change colour on a daily basis. The nearby embankment was also covered in an oily film, that when stepped on, would leave a multi coloured footprint. Hence, "the chemical soaked embankment". The Liverpool - Manchester line runs through the northern section of The Bongs. It is also worth noting that the original screenplay and short movie for Doubtless Wonder was going to be filmed on The Bongs back in the early to mid 90's. I'm sure Karl has some recce photo's, from the period, stashed away somewhere...

Thollon-le-Baines is a corruption of Thollon-le-Memises and Evian-le-Baines. It's a wonderful location set between the French Alps and Lake Geneva. It was also the location for Mr and Mrs Roberts' Honeymoon in 2004. Incidentally, Evian is the source for Evian mineral water and the location for the 2003 G8 Summit. Does this have something to do with Imogen Dangerfield?

The man in fatigues talks to someone called 'Swedish'. Look out for Swedish in further chapters.

'Colonel Blue' is Monk Blue's rank within the SAF. Yet again, the SAF will be explained in further chapters. I don't want to give too much away here.

The final incident is set within a high school mathematics lesson. This harks back to the original birthplace of Doubtless Wonder. Where two young idealists dragged DW into the expectant arms of our current dimension space.

'The Red City' is another name for the Moroccan City of Marrakesh. This relates directly to 'The Marrakesh Express' in WOMD.

The Dandelion Brigade is a specialist detachment of the SAF (see prior comments for SAF).

The Algebraic equation here, is actually a String Theory equation for motion. For more info on String Theory, look at: Notes on the Sublime.

Well there we have it. We just have to wait for the next installment. In the meantime, check out our sister blog; Notes on the Sublime-Comments on Doubtless Wonder.

Cheers

Phil


(Originally Published 21/04/09)

Annotations : Woman Of Mass Destruction

So, the first couple of pieces are up and digging for something to write about while we wait for next weekend, when we get the next chapter, I thought again about the annotations I used to put together. These are a sort of a DVD extra, alternate ending kind of deal; I've redacted a couple of spoilers here and there so we don't ruin the whole arc plot inthe first couple of weeks, but otherwise, this is exactly as it was at the time. I don't necessarily agree with half the ideas in here now, and I'm not sure where most of the plot threads were leading, but they're an interesting glimpse into the mind of the writer a day or so after the chapter itself was finished. What's most interesting to me is the stuff that I only pulled out on reading the finished chapter, the stuff I included in the writing without even realising it was there....

Obviously, MB think’s he’s Galactus at the start here, with FM as his Silver Surfer. He’s part Spider Jerusalem, part HST in this episode, raving and staggering like a king hell acid fiend. The dress, qat and Allah references all place us somewhere in the Arab states.
Pictures Of Lilly – The Who. A young man obsessing over a dead woman – Foreshadowing later moments, or telling us something now about FM? Also, John C Lilly was a contemporary of Leary who wrote the classic texts on isolation tanks and ketamine use. He also wrote a lot on the possible communication between human and dolphin, which may also turn up in later stories. Ketamine is often used as a battlefield tranquiliser, especially in developing nations, so its purchase here is in keeping with current usage.
Poppy field – opiates are still a major source of income in the Afghan mountain towns.
Dotar – an Afghan stringed instrument usually played at weddings. Afghan folk/classical music has no tradition of mourning/funerary music, so the use here suggests that the things in the station have taken part in a marriage of sorts, though clearly less than happy.
Dari – again, the predominant language in the Afghan mountains.
I am travel weary… This paraphrases a poem by Jami, a 13th century Sufi mystic poet. Basically, a traveller arrives in a teeming city and wonders how he’ll recognise himself in the morning. He ties a pumpkin to his ankle, but when he wakes, a beggar has stolen it and tied it to their own leg. The wanderer exclaims, if I’m me, who are you, and if you’re me, then who am I? Much Sufi poetry deals with the impermanence of identity, with the idea that we’re all part of the deity, so arbitrary distinctions such as you, me, us and them are illusory. We are all part of the greater being, like the thing in the station. That could mean that FM and MB are part of a greater whole, or that FM kills god, depending on your point of view here.
The Beloved is all that lives… A line from the multi-volume epic poem written by Rumi, another Sufi poet from the 15th century, widely regarded as the Persian Qu’ran (it does have a name, but I can neither recall nor pronounce it…). Again, the lover is revealed as simply an extension of the divine, with all love truly owing to the creator. But is FM referring to the man or herself here?
The scene of MB writing FM’s true name in the sand – This is another steal from the Jami poem referenced above. A young man writes his lover’s name in the sand again and again, an epic novel which no-one will ever read. The name is as unreal and brief as the lover and the love. The only thing which truly exists is the sand and the wind. This also ties into xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, as well as further foreshadowing a possible death.
The Marrakesh Express – Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. The classic song about travelling to the Middle East in search of heavy medicine and enlightenment – Is that what we’ve found here? Also, as with The Who track, this firmly places MB in the late 60s, early 70s.
The latex mask – Just to suggest that the FM who was scarred by the man is NOT the FM who kills him, and also riffing on the old Mission Impossible series, where the super secret agents wore rubber masks to do their dastardly deeds in the name of Nixon’s government.
I’ve also got a back-story for the thing in the station, but whether we’ll ever get to it…

And that's it for now. Check back later and I might get round to introducing our special guest artist / composer. Or not.

Cheers,

Karl

(Originally Published 16/04/09)

Author's Note : Everything That Happens...

...Will Happen Today.

Which is probably rather unlikely, seeing as there's only about an hour of it left. Still, one thing which will happen is that the epic Doubtless Wonder will finally be unleashed upon an unsuspecting world. And that's about as close to Everything as you can get.

But what a long, strange trip it's been. Way back at the dawn of the second Summer Of Love, when clothes were baggy and the Stone Roses were the hot young things, a couple of Northern schoolboys decided that rather than pay attention in Maths class, they would instead spend their time in pursuit of far loftier ideals, like the creation of a completely new universe and the ceaseless psychological torture of the fat kid at the next desk. We broke him in a week, but the universe took a little longer to assemble.

Starting out as a hazy, drug-soaked riff on Alice In Wonderland, Doubtless Wonder was a fairly straightforward tale: Swallowing an experimental halucinogenic, a young woman finds herself trapped in a nightmare world of crazed fishermen, sword-wielding David Bowie clones and robotic policemen. Simple.

But while the plot was too small, the ideas were probably too big for us to do them justice at the time. We thought we knew it all and that we could express it in a better way than anyone else ever had, but looking back on photos from the time we were little more than babies. Judging from some of the fragments that remain of this and other great projects, we were dour, earnest, hopelessly in thrall to Philip K Dick and JRR Tolkien and possessed of that special strain of pretentiousness that can only be found in wannabe teenage poet-warriors. I can't speak for Phil, but I know that I was so bad I thought Jim Morrison had a really, y' know, incisive grasp of, like, the human condition.

Sweet Jesus....

So time passed and things changed. Jobs came and went, girlfriends too (and lets face it, how earnest can a warrior poet be once he's finally got his end away? Lets see My Chemical Romance weep on stage when they've all been blown in the dressing room - The best they'd manage is a guitar-heavy rendition of I'd Like To Teach The World To Sing...). College, university, psychotic breakdowns and trips to Amsterdam all left their marks on us and our little shared world. Phil made short films and worked as a runner for one of the more embarrassing hair metal bands (and I'm too much of a gentleman to say which one, but if you pester him enough he might let it slip). I wrote a Brit-pop vampire screenplay called Live Forever and a mutant police procedural in which everyone was dying of the plague, neither of which went anywhere, mostly because I didn't have the balls to show them to anyone beyond my immediate friends and family. Every so often, we'd get together, shoot the shit and reminisce about the great, lost works of our youth; Bloodstock. Limelight. And what was that wierd thing with the fishman?

Oh yeah. Doubtless Wonder. What was that about again?

Sometime around the turn of the millenium I moved down to Essex to be with the great love of my life. At the time the internet was something that other people had, so we would have to settle for snail mail to stay in touch and we decided that we would send something more than the usual Hi, hello, how are you? We would start to write a lengthy, episodic tale, each responding to the other's chapter until we had a whole novel to start shipping round publishers. We'd both hit 25 by this point (Phil was all grown up, with a house and a dog and everything), so time was ticking by and if we wanted to write the first great English novel of the 21st century then we had to get started pretty sharpish. Phil's first piece features Monk Blue and Felicity Makeshift as terrorists blowing up schools. Mine features Storm Thorgerson and sigil magic. Before we know it, we're back in Doubtless Wonder. It seems that ten or so years of neglect had turned it into some sort of wierd fictional graveyard where all the unfinished stories dragged themselves off to to die. Arihaily was in there somewhere, various vampires and superheroes, pretty much anything we had ever intended to write. We had a whole world full of ideas that were crossing and colliding in strange new ways, sparking off each other and sending ripples outward through everything we did. It couldn't fail.

So naturally, we ran out of steam after about 5 chapters.

Flash forward another couple of years. I'm moving back to the North to find a job and a house because the prices in Essex were ridiculous (This was around March 2003 - God knows what they're like now). Phil has the house to himself and works bizarre shifts and agrees to let me crash there for as long as it takes. In the end, I'm there about a month and a half, and in all that time we see each other for more than five minutes maybe half a dozen times. Other than that we leave each other cakes and cryptic messages in the kitchen and try not to get in the way. When we do get together we watch documentaries about the siege at Waco, eat lots of nachos and talk about what might have been. Bloodstock. Limelight. And what was that crazy thing with the terrorists?

And then one day, I sit down at Phil's new PC, tear my eyes away from the amazing new world of internet porn (my far better half had handed her notice in at this point but was still trapped in Chelmsford for several weeks so don't judge me too harshly) and I start to write. I don't actually know which one of us suggested it, or whether my piece came first or not, but I remember the thrill of creation, of actually doing it. When Phil got home, there was a small pile of A4 next to the danish pastry I'd left in the kitchen. When I got up the next day, not too long after he had gone to bed, I found a similar sheaf of paper next to my bedroom door.

A month later, we printed everything we had and laid it out on the living room carpet. If we put this piece first, then this one, then that one... But what about this one? Where does the poem fit? The Japanese advertisement? The transcript of intercepted messages between Midge and Swedish Chainsaw?

Somehow, in the same way that a house full of women are said to gradually synchronise their cycles with that of the dominant female, we had both fallen into the same rhythm. Something about the concept allowed us to write entirely separate from each other but develope the same themes and ideas. We could take those chapters and assemble them into something far greater than either of us had previously considered; a patchwork novel of conflicting voices, hearsay and advertising jingles which would gradually coalesce into the story of three generations of outright crazy people and their connection to the strange realm of Doubtless Wonder.

And then the real world gets in the way. Again.

Another few years pass. We change jobs, repeatedly. We both get married. I buy a house, Phil becomes a father, I follow him a couple of years later. Sometime around 2007, we're talking. Bloodstock. Limelight. That mosaic novel thing, what was it?

Another dozen or so pieces appear in a flurry of activity. I start to work out the main themes in my pieces and obsessively annotate them, looking for points of reference, different ways in and out of the story. I rewrite old pieces as if they were 1960s underground comix, then write them again as kitchen sink alien invasion tales. I throw in every half-baked notion I've ever wanted to write about; my new found vegetarianism, my flirtation with buddhism and my thoughts about my father. And music. Always with the music. The day Tony Wilson dies I write him into a chapter. John Peel's in there too, along with My Sweet Lord and Freddy And The Dreamers.

There's a website and a myspace page, I steal the name of my cousin's band for a group of 70s stoners, then cheekily ask him to write some songs for them. Fliss and Monk get their own theme tunes and I start looking into print on demand services. All of a sudden finding a publisher doesn't seem like a concern, and making a profit never was. We can upload everything to a site like Lulu and let people make their own minds up whether to buy it or just read it for free on our own website. More pieces follow, layering in different levels of reality, divergent timelines and multiple identities. Song lyrics, photos, the beginnings of a screenplay.

And then it's dark, for a long time. Stuff happens, life drags along, nothing gets written. We mothball the website and take down the myspace page. There's one last effort at rallying the troops, previewing a few pieces under an assumed name on Urbis, and the results are encouraging but it's not enough. Doubtless Wonder dies a fourth time, leaving behind a trail of incoherent emails and a couple of nice collages that were intended for the dust jacket.

Felicity Makeshift is dead. Long live Felicity Makeshift.

And then last Friday night we went to see David Byrne at the Liverpool Philharmonic. Taking a pre-gig drink or two, we got to talking. Same as it ever was: Limelight. Bloodstock. Yadda yadda yadda.

But what if? And how about? And then?

And within an hour or so, we were back. It's about 20 years since we created this crazy little world (and about 18 since we last saw David Byrne) and a lot has happened in that time, but some things never change. The buzz of working out each new link in the chain is as strong as ever. Doubtless Wonder is the puzzle we've been trying to solve for all of our adult lives. Pretty much every idea we've ever had has come from those fertile grounds, however remote they may seem at times, and every path we've taken has somehow lead back there.

So here it is. The earliest pieces date back to the end of the last century, while the most recent is being written even as I type this. In between, there are dozens of fragments which gradually add up to tell the tales of Marg Cornell, Felicity Makeshift, Monk Blue, Harry Love and countless others whose lives are touched by Wonder. Every other Saturday, somewhere between the end of Doctor Who and the stroke of midnight, one of us will post a new piece on here. Between each piece we'll be popping back to see what's happening. If you want to discuss hidden references, plot developments, secret identities or major influences then this is the place to do it. We're more than happy to talk to anyone who reads our work, and if you want to go off topic and recommend films, books and music that might go down well then feel free. We'll probably go OT quite often ourselves to tell you about films we've seen, places we've taken the kids, the latest comics we've bought and the blogs we're reading. And if you just want to wade in and trash the great endeavour then go for it - I'm pretty sure it's tough enough to outlast us all now.

Cheers,

Karl

(Originally Published 05/04/09)