I Am Going To Have To Explain Myself, Aren't I?
Wonderful, I love a bit of didactic pointificating, which is like pontificating just sharper.
My first port of call when digging about a phrase or word is my 'Brewer's', which had nothing between 'Gorbals Kiss' and 'Gorby', so it was back to my 'Collins Concise Dictionary', which came up with the goods:
"Gorblimey: 'God blind me', an exclamation of surprise or annoyance."
As for the 'Lloigor' part, well if you've been paying attention then you'll be aware that I've been focussing on "Zenith" from '2000AD' waaaaaay back in 1988, 1989 and 1990. Art!
The name was nicked by Grant Morrison from Lovecraft, as it refers to his 'Elder Gods'. Morrison invented the alternate title, "The Many-Angled Ones' and good luck if you haul one of these in on your fishing line.
ANYWAY back to Zenith. Here Your Humble Scribe is going to detail a bit of criticism about some of the background, because that's the kind of nit-picking hair-splitting pedant I am, and in fact it's one of my better qualities. Art!
This is the alternative world 'Axis Mundi', where the anarchist superhuman collective known as 'Black Flag' have been recruiting superhumans and heroes from across the alternatives. They've been at this process for a whole year by the time you see this panorama. Shockingly, no mention of catering or bathroom arrangements.
ANYWAY and I hope I'm not spoiling things too much, after all this series is over 30 years old, for all sorts of complicated reasons, teams of superheroes have to be sent to Alternative 257 and Alternative 666. Art!
These are the two groups; sixteen in one and perhaps a dozen in the other.
Excuse me? Twenty-six people out of the thousands depicted in that first picture? Why wait a year when a couple of days would have been sufficient to recruit that few people?
You'll have to pardon me here, I'm going to get a bit of lunch.
<pause>
Okay, another peeve that I had about 'Phase 3' is that on at least nine occasions we are informed that the Lloigor have 'possessed' the bodies of various superhumans, thus turning them into mere fleshy transports for TMAO. Here's an example. Art!
That's Captain Miracle speaking - or, rather, the Lloigor-infested body of said superhuman, and behind him is Ace Hart.
I put these up as an example, because at no point do we ever see what being possessed by a <quote> 'Lloigor mind colony' looks like.
However - O beautiful word! - I did vaguely recall that waaaay back in 'Phase 1' we get to see an individual Lloigor, getting ready to occupy a specially-grown body. Art!
Why, for a human sacrifice, mate, and guess who's going to be that very same sacrifice? What you see here is 'Iok Sotot' manifesting itself, and the reason it doesn't occupy the non-sacrifice is because the body awaiting it has been frozen on ice for over forty years, and is of superhuman stock.
Thus, potentially and implicitly, this is what a Lloigor out in the open looks like, before it does any possessing.
Unfortunately for Iok Sotot, neither the body it possesses nor the Lloigor itself are particularly bright - that same syndrome which befalls the chief villains in both 'The Stand' and 'Swan Song' - and it also encounters Peter St. John and Zenith.
SPOILER ALERT!
Art!
As you can see, Zenith punches a hole in him big enough to see daylight through. That's the end of Masterman.
Hoorah, ticker-tape parade, awards, trumpets, freedom of the city and all that!
Except not. As I recall the dialogue, St. John warns the prematurely celebrating Zenith - "You only destroyed the physical body." Art!
So, another iteration of Lloigor when it's not wearing a suit of skin. Must pay one heck of a dentist's bill, and at the optician's too.
Perhaps this, then, is why all the possession is done 'off-stage' in 'Phase 3', since both Morrison and Yeowell had already covered it and considered it a done deed.
There you go, I hope you enjoyed my pointificating. O and by the way, 'Phase IV' that appeared in the weekly comics shortly after the end of the above, didn't see a collected edition in trade paperback for nearly 25 years. Copyright issues, you see. Even superhumans have them.
"Are You Sure That's Wise, Ma'am?"
As proof that manglement crosses all gender boundaries, here is a short tale from a Youtube Reddit collation, where the narrators exhibit Malicious Compliance.
The Copywriting Transgressor, hereafter CT, worked at a Public Relations agency, which was run by a fearfully horrid tyrant he called 'Marcy'. Marcy was one of those managers who would happily have gone down with the ship as long as she was captain and forced everyone else to drown, too. Art!
"Marcy overdid her mascara, again"
What was Marcy's response when CT pointed out a major problem that would have cost the agency's client lots and lots of moolah?
The classic over-controlling bottomhole manglement phrase "You're not paid to think, you're paid to write what I tell you."
Got it, agreed CT and proceeded to Maliciously Comply from then on. No further warnings, or suggestions, or edits, even when things were O so very obviously going wrong.
In fact they went so wrong that the PR agency lost two major clients within the next two months, which included one client that CT had tried to rescue - only to be told by Marcy NOT TO INTERFERE. Art!
That's Marcy attempting to throw CT under the bus and blame them for everything going wrong. Well, CT was smarter than she was - which doesn't sound very difficult - and had kept ALL the relevant e-mail chains about not thinking or intervening to help. These were sent along to HR.
"She was restructured out of the company three weeks later."
Tee hee! This happened to one of my old managers. She was so bad management eventually had to take notice, carried out an Organisational Design and made her redundant. As for Marcy, one supposes that a 'restructure' like this is cheaper than firing a person and having to pay them Unemployment, as is the case in South Canada.
"The War Illustrated Edition 207 29th May 1945"
We are now past the central page montage. Art!
Picture 1 shows troops of the British 49th Division entering Ede, led by a Sherman Firefly bedecked with lengths of track to add improvised armour. Clearly there are no live Teutons in the vicinity or the tank would be buttoned-up and those cheery Dutch civilians wouldn't be standing up.
Picture 2 shows a couple of Canuckistanian soldiers in conversation with a pair of much older Dutch ex-servicemen, in a bit of cheery interaction. Picture 3 shows the opposite, with a pair of Teuton policemen passing behind a rather grim Canuckistanian provost (a military policeman), who shows no inclination to chat. The blurb informs that only Teuton policemen were allowed to wear uniforms, so they ought to feel appropriately grateful.
Picture 4 shows the difference in how the Dutch felt about the Teutons and Allies. This is a hospital only just liberated from Teuton occupation, and people are making a bit of a fuss.
Our Journey With Bernie
Is a matter of some concerny. I'm not going to try and track down any more of the 'Frankenstein' subset, as they don't seem to be present on teh Interwebz beyond the first handful. Instead I've opted for Series II from 1994, and #1, "Undead". Art!
Bit of a cheat, this one, as it was two separate Google images I Snipped as a single image. Conrad is unsure if the pithy remarks on the back of this card are Bernie's usual reference to what media he used or what inspired him.
Riffing On Tariffs
I see the Orange Land Whale is making noises with his mouth again, this time about imposing tariffs on 'foreign films'. Well, then, kiss goodbye to your $50 million tax rebate from filming in the UK, or the 20% rebate in the land of the Polite Australians, or the 30%+ rebates in the land of the Ockers. Art!
Does he have the intellect of a seven-year old*?
'"Dying fast" or "Dying very quickly" but NEVER "Dying very fast".
Your Honour, I rest my case.
* Don't answer that question
No comments:
Post a Comment