James Robinson and Greg Hinkle's AIRBOY

... is the topic of discussion on in this week's edition of Thee Comic Column, over on Joup.

Before Bane There was... The Bonecrusher!

What? All will be revealed in this week's edition of Thee Comic Column, over on Joup.

Brian Buccellato's Sons of the Devil...

..., cults and The Great Satanic Panic are the topic of discussion in this week's edition of Thee Comic Column, over yonder on Joup!

Wolf Moon

Type O Negative. One of my favorite bands of all time. Lead singer/bassist Peter Steele's death is one of only two rock n roll deaths from my era that actually affected me - the other being Layne Stayley's. I don't listen to Type O all the time - favorite or not their music affects me so strongly that I have to be in a very particular state of mind to fully revel in it. And that state of mind really only comes around two or three times a year - Spring and Autumn definitely and maybe once at some other point. And when it hits me, I go into that headspace and their music super hard.

I've been in that headspace recently, and ironically my friend Tommy has too because he posted about it in his awesome Joup column Endless Loop.

I've posted this track before - I have TONS of baggage associated with it. I'm posting it again but wanted to do a different version, namely something live that does it justice, like this version from the band's Symphony for the Devil video does.

Scott Snyder and Jock's Wytches...

... is the topic in this week's edition of Thee Comic Column, over on Joup!

Age of Ultron and Joss Whedon's Influences

... are the topics of discussion in this week's edition of Thee Comic Column over yonder on Joup!

So Tonight that I Might See

Tommy from Heaven is an Incubator does a marvelous column over on Joup called Endless Loop. It's great - the idea being one that I can most certainly relate to: songs that you can listen to over and over and over again without getting tired of. This week's entry is Fade Into You by Mazzy Star. I love this song and the entire album it's on. Back in the day... well, I won't even bothering trying to describe what it means to me because if you follow this link right here and read Tommy's words I think you'll find that once again he nails it. I'm off work sick today and the first thing I saw when I woke up was this post. It inspired me to put on the song and then the album. I am now in the middle of my fourth go-through with the entire thing. It's perfect for how I feel today, so I have to thank Tommy for blindly hitting the right chord for me. Like I said, I love the entire record, however the title track is my own perfect Endless Loop from this one. There's something about its quasi-Doors desert psychedelia of it that just grabs me and never lets go, like it's always been playing in the static just below my conscious mind since the first time I ever heard it, waaaay back in that magical land called the 90s.

Let's Talk Valiant Comics

Valiant comes in general and the unbelievably awesome Rai: Welcome to New Japan specifically are the topics of discussion in this week's edition of Thee Comic Column over on Joup.

Iska Dhaaf - General Malaise

Tommy from the ever diligent Heaven is an Incubator posted an amazing piece about SXSW today over on Joup. In it he covers a full week of SXSW happenings in the way that only someone who lives in Austin and has been attending the, ahem*, "festival" for a long time can. You won't see any "It" band blow jobs here; Tommy covers everything equally, spending as much time in the less publicized venues with the less hyped bands as he does with the hype monsters that deserve it.

Case in point: Iska Dhaaf. I'd never heard of them before. As I began going through the names of bands he lists and checking into them for myself I really hit a very particular frequency with these guys. This song is one of the reasons why. They're on bricklanerecords and are very much worth looking into, as this track is only the tip of the iceberg based on my research thus far.

Thanks Tommy!

*Sorry, haven't been, always wanted to go but about six months ago when, while applying for a place playing there I found I had to write an essay about what it would mean to me to play there, SXSW quickly became as eye rolling as Coachella to me. I've never been to either and although there's no way I'll ever do Coachella I would absolutely do SXSW - despite the "essay" thing - if I could hang out with Tommy.

Big Man Plans...

... the new collaboration between Eric Powell (The Goon) and Tim Wiesch, is the topic of discussion in this week's edition of Thee Comic Column, over on Joup. It's vertically challenged, nice and violent exploitation and, accordingly, a whole lotta fun!

Adam Green's Digging up the Marrow & Joe Begos's Almost Human

Not only does Thomas Williams run the best damn music blog around, but he contributes A LOT to Joup, the online magazine my good friend Grez started a few years ago and I help run. One of Tommy's columns is Thank God for VOD, where he begins every entry with the acknowledgement that he isn't able to go to the theatre as much as he would like (same here) but VOD helps him see most of what he wants to. Of course, coupled with the difficulty heading out to the movies these days is the fact that a lot of the movies guys like Tommy and I want to see don't even open in more than one theatre in any given major population center, for a weekend at best, so VOD is a godsend. But I'm behind in my movies and I finally made it around to one Tommy wrote about last june, Joe Begos's directorial debut, Almost Human. I liked it a lot, it was a great nod to 80s sci fi horror, specifically as Tommy points out early Carpenter, and Begos crafted a very specific late night UPN tone - also as Tommy points out. I love the nostalgic approach when it's done right. And Almost Human is - there's definitely room for him to grow, but I got the same vibe from Almost Human as I did from Ti West's The Roost when it first came out, and if that's any indication, there's sure to be some great stuff following this debut.

Afterward watching the film, while researching Begos and the cast on IMDB, I stumbled across the trailer for Adam Green's new film Digging up the Marrow, and after watching it I am VERY interested. First, you had me at Ray Wise. Second, Green will forever get the benefit of the doubt from me because of Frozen. No, not the disney movie. I'm talking about the film where three college kids get stranded on a ski lift over a long weekend. Can you say traumatic?

Anyway, looking forward to seeing this quite a bit. And if you haven't given Almost Human a chance yet, you should. It's streaming on Netflix so that makes it even more accessible to most. Also, directly after I posted this I flipped over to Bloody Disgusting and found an article and pictures of Looper star Noah Segan on the set of Begos's follow-up to Almost Human, The Mind's Eye. Excited!

Beneath the Panels #4: Nameless and the Place of Fear

The new and final Beneath the Panels pertaining to Nameless #1 is up over on Joup. Issue #2 comes out this coming Wednesday, so this is a last minute wrap-up until we receive the next transmission from Morrison, Burnham and Fairbairn, courtesy of Image Comics.

Spider Gwen and the Inclusive Age

Art by Rodriguez & Renzi, Mod by @erinoutrageous

Let's talk Zeitgeist, shall we?

Beneath the Panels #3: Nameless and the Tree of Life

Beneath the Panels #3 is up on Joup. It continues my attempt to interpret and catalogue the Occult underpinnings of Grant Morrison and Chris Burnham's new comic Nameless. For this third installment dealing with issue #1 we get into some serious Qabalah, Tarot and media-tampering. This one's a doozy and it prompted a bit of an 'episode' last night after I ate a quarter slice of a pizza made with THC oil, tripped pretty hard and met what my brain at the time chose to dress in an Enochian persona but was apparently a fairly dark aspect of my own psyche. Whewwww... glad that's over, and here's another reminder to myself NOT to eat pot.

Grant Morrison & Chris Burnham's Nameless: Beneath the Panels #1

As I said in this week's edition of Thee Comic Column over on Joup, I've read Nameless #1 twice so far. Between reads I began digging around on the internet for some of the concepts Grant Morrison builds into the code that underlies the story begun in the book, and as such I've started to piece together some of what I think may be the initial ideas at work beneath the panels, so to speak.

Nameless #1 begins with a narrated series of atrocities taking place across the globe. The paneling on these first couple of pages is unique and, I'm betting, charged with some degree of subliminal meaning. After drawing them out and pondering them as distinct images by their own right I'm left with one observation and one theory.

The images, especially the first and third, bear strong resemblances to letters from the Hebrew alphabet, which is steeped in occult science and often used in the creation of 'spells'. However, despite the resemblance, after consulting a Hebrew dictionary I found myself unable to draw any direct comparisons. Stumped I thought about this some more and eventually came to a different conclusion about the shapes:

They are part of an elaborate sigil. If you are unfamiliar with sigil Magick - a concept Morrison has talked quite at length - go here and take the author's crash course.

Okay, moving out of the design aspect and into some of the direct references Morrison makes in Nameless #1, the first glaring one is during the aforementioned narrated atrocities on the very first page, we get another sigil-like image and four words:

The image is later defined by one of the characters as "the door to the anti-verse, the Gate of Az". If you google Gate of Az the search engine makes the assumption that you're abbreviating Arizona. However, if you do not search the phrase as you enter it, allowing instead the engine to use its intuitive functions you get three things, the aforementioned Arizona result, followed to more likely possibilities:

Gate of Azeroth

Gate of Hell, Azerbaijan

Here I began with the latter result, as it was something I was unfamiliar with. In a nutshell, there is a deposit of natural gas in the country of Turkmenistan known as the "Gate of Hell".

Once you reach the end of the issue you find there is definitely a parallel to be drawn in terms of what we find out this image represents in actual, physical terms to the story in Nameless. However, that's not it. Let's go back to the other search result and explore that a bit, shall we?

At first glance I misread Azeroth as Azathoth*. That is not the case; Azeroth is a setting in the World of Warcraft game. I don't think that has anything to do with what we're dealing with here. However, because Grant Morrison is as much a utilizer of pop culture in his Magick as he is occult code, this may be the point. It is not too much of a jump to consider that WoW's Azeroth derived its name from Azathoth, a character from H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu cycle. Morrison has utilized some of Lovecraft's lore before, and there is an entire area of Magickal practice that treats Lovecraft's mythos as something of an operating system for ritual. In his story The Dream-Quest of the Unknown Kadath, Lovecraft describes him as the following:

[O]utside the ordered universe [is] that amorphous blight of nethermost confusion which blasphemes and bubbles at the center of all infinity—the boundless daemon sultan Azathoth, whose name no lips dare speak aloud, and who gnaws hungrily in inconceivable, unlighted chambers beyond time and space amidst the muffled, maddening beating of vile drums and the thin monotonous whine of accursed flutes

I have always drawn an indirect comparison between Azathoth and Choronzon, a demon that traces its origins back to Elizabethian magician/scholars John Dee and Edward Kelley. Choronzon's entry in Watkin's Dictionary of Magic is as follows, and when juxtaposed with the definition for Azathoth above fully illustrates the reasons for my theory:

In Enochian magic, the demon of chaos and guardian of the Abyss. Aleister Crowley described Choronzon as "the first and deadliest of all the powers of evil". This point notwithstanding, Crowley invoked Choronzon while experimenting with the so-called 30 Aethyrs in a magical ritual on the top of an Algerian mountain in December 1909.

There is a great visual recreation of Crowley's ritual with Victor Neuburg in Alan Moore and JH Williams, III's Promethea, specifically issue #20, where the characters are on a multiple issue long trek through the spheres of the Kabbalhistic Tree of Life and fall through Daath, the abyss. Here they encounter Choronzon and are torn to pieces. Bringing this back around to Nameless #1, the Abyss - or Daath - could be the "anti-verse" discussed in the final pages, where we learn the harbinger of this Gate of Az is an asteroid on a collision course with Earth and thus inevitably going to destroy it, or rip it to pieces, the same way Choronzon or Azathoth obliterate those who encounter them in their respective mythological contexts.

Okay, I've barely even scratched the surface of this first issue but this is proving to be a much bigger project than I originally thought it would be. I'll continue with more decoding of Nameless #1 in a few days, in the meantime here are a few links for further study of the ideas I've discussed thus far:

Choronzon

Tree of Life

Promethea #20: The Stars are but Thistles summary/annotations

...........

* Another possibility, although less likely, is Astaroth. A quick referral to The Goetia and you will find the following definition for Astaroth:

The twenty-ninth Spirit is Astaroth. He is a Mighty, Strong Duke, and appeareth in the Form of an hurtful Angel riding on an Infernal Beast like a Dragon, and carrying in his right hand a Viper. Thou must in no wise let him approach unto thee, lest he do thee damage by his Noisome Breath. Wherefore the Magician must hld the Magical Ring near his face, and that will defend him. He giveth true answers of things Past, Present and to Come, and can discover all Secrets. He will declare wittingly how the Spirits fell, if desired, and the reason of his own fall. He can make men wonderfully knowing in all Liberal Sciences. He ruleth 40 Legions of Spirits. His Seal is this, which wear thou as a Lamen before thee, or else he will not appear nor yet obey thee, etc.  

Goodbye Marvel Universe Hello... Battleworld?

Although I recently decided to stop reading Marvel Comics on a monthly basis in an effort to grant my wallet a little bit of a break without having to stop supporting all the great creator-owned and indie books on the market, I'm still a Marvel fan and this week's big news really didn't leave me anything but optimistic. Well, except for the Battleworld moniker. My complete thoughts on the coming apocalypse in the MCU are the contents of this week's Thee Comic Column over on Joup.

My Top Ten Albums of 2014

Tuneyards's Nikki-Nack is #1and Protomartyr and Jenny Lewis make an appearance. Read the full list over on Joup! Then go over and read Tommy's from Heaven is an Incubator, also on Joup!

John Constantine Short Film "Soul Play" - NBC learn from this!

This wonderful short film by Waking Dream Studio's is the topic of discussion in this week's edition of Thee Comic Column, over yonder on Joup!

Wytches

... the new series by Scott Snyder and Jock. In the words of my co-host on Drinking with Comics, Mike Wellman, "It's creepy as all hell," and it's the topic on tap in this week's Thee Comic Column over on Joup.

Southern Bastards...

...and how it blew my mind this week is the topic of conversation this week in Thee Comic Column.