Artaud

image courtesy of 50watts.com

Listening to the new Fat Man on Batman podcast where Kevin Smith interviews Grant Morrison convinced me to re-read Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth for the first time in ages. Reading the afterward got me thinking about how ever since hearing the Bauhaus song below I've wanted to look into Artaud.

Batman, Incorporated #8 (Spoilers)

Oh my! I am very curious about this upcoming issue of Batman, Incorporated which - despite there being apparently a lot of hate for the book - I REALLY like.

Morrison's Batman run, which started somewhere around 2005, was overall fantastic. However I thought what really knocked it out of the park was the short-lived run on the post-Final Crisis Batman and Robin title that featured Dick Greyson as Batman and Damian Wayne as Robin. Batman, Inc. was the book that seemed to carry on that thread and tone for me, a sister book if you will. But Grant has made it clear that he's leaving Batman altogether soon and as we wind up, no one is really sure what is going to happen or how the ongoing conflict with Leviathan is going to end.

Now, the above cover is awesome, but there's another one that's been leaked and potentially has a MAJOR spoiler on it, though we all know what appears on a comic's cover is often hyperbolic and not necessarily a direct translation of how the same concept appears inside. If you want to see that cover go ahead and go here and scroll down a bit. You'll see it.


DC's solicitation for Batman, Incorporated can be found on their website here. There's also a lot of speculative articles on newsarama. Issue #7 killed one of my favorite peripheral Bat characters - Knight of Knight and Squire, a duo both Grant Morrison and Paul Cornell did a spectacular job with. As Morrison's run on Batman, Inc. is winding down we may be in for some shocks. Especially as the Bat-stuff he's writing is, I think, the only DC book that takes place in the old DC continuity and not the New52

Godflesh Cover: Like Rats by Mark Kozelek

Many thanks to Tommy at the WONDERFUL heaveisanincubator for posting this. Mark Kozelek has always hovered at the far corners of my awareness but I'm completely unfamiliar. Then I see this - A GODFLESH cover!!! And it's awesome.

For comparison sake (and cuz I love to post anything Godflesh):



and finally, a live version from Justin and crew:

The High Confessions - Chlorine and Crystal

It's been nearly three years since the debut album by Chris Connelly, Sanford Parker, Steve Shelley and Jeremy Lemos, collectively known as The High Confessions. I want more.

This song, the album closer, reminds me a lot of the tone of The Cure's Pornography. Let's juxtapose this with a track so maybe you can see what I mean. A good creative day for me is sitting down and writing to first Turning Lead into Gold with the High Confessions, then Pornography. It doesn't get much moodier than that.

Azar Swan - Lusty

Wow. I found this via Brooklyn Vegan. The group's website is here, there's a few more tracks on it. I know nothing about Azar Swan (apparently formerly known as Religious to Damn) but that needs to change.

The Return of Bendis & Maleev's Scarlet

image courtesy of multiversitycomics.com

If you're not reading this you should be. Trust me. I just wrote a piece on it for Joup in my weekly comic book column. Link to that here.

Sooooo good it's got me wanting to pull out my Daredevil and Alias runs by these guys and give them a looooong overdue re-read.

Playmobile Joy Division Perform Transmission (and...)

This is fantastic - if you watch, they even have the Playmobile Ian Curtis dance a bit like In Curtis did.

I've been having a very Anglophile year thus far, what with all the Pulp, Smiths, Eddie Campbell, Alan Moore, Gary Spencer Millidge, etc. A couple weeks ago it was a brief but rabid Joy Division jag that has come back around today. I've been dying to go out and buy a copy of Control, the brilliant 2007 biopic written by Matt Greenhalgh, directed by Anton Corbijn and based on Ian Curtis' widow Deborah Curtis's Touching from a Distance: Ian Curtis and Joy Division. That film is available on Vimeo in segments, the first I posted below, however how do you watch this kind of beautiful B&W in segments? Control is brilliant and beautiful but very sad. There's a fabulous scene where they had the actor who played Curtis walk the actual walk rom home to work that Curtis did every day - detail such as this makes for greatness, and even though by the end of the film the tone is as dower as it gets, for Joy Division fans, Anglophiles and rock history buffs Control is a must-see. And the above, which I found accidentally on youtube, should help take the edge off the dark stuff.
Joy Division story (Control)-part 01 from jomenz on Vimeo.