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4 days ago | 
iconoblast.substack.com | Pat Mills
I was amazed by the prolific nature of indie writers, the speed and the quality of their work, and their generosity at sharing their insights, at the recent Global Publishing Summit in Seville, so I’ve had to reflect on how they differed from the traditionally published ‘pulp fiction’ books we are all familiar with.
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5 days ago | 
iconoblast.substack.com | Pat Mills
This volume – the Sisters of the Convent of Blood – is once again a visual feast for the eyes. In my opinion, the Requiem series – and especially this volume – is more colourful than Star Wars and other SF classic movies. Olivier’s imagination is in overdrive. And it has an original angle that generates the story and art concepts – namely: this is Hell where everything is reversed. So I’m always in awe when I look back over our past work together.
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1 week ago | 
iconoblast.substack.com | Pat Mills
I’ll come back to my Matriarchy versus Patriarchy series shortly, but this week I simply had to write about a self-publishing event Lisa and I attended last week in Seville. And to encourage my readers who are also writers to visit the UK and Irish equivalents:The UK event is in London 25 to 26th June. https://selfpublishingformula.com/tag/james-blatchThe Irish event is March 2026 near Shannon.
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1 week ago | 
iconoblast.substack.com | Pat Mills
This volume has some of the most splendid art so far. It’s absolutely amazing – from the medieval battle on the ice which opens the story to the baroque splendour of the Hellfire Club. I believe Olivier told me he based the architecture on the Vatican. The character who dominates this episode is Black Sabbat, Aleister Crowley, ‘The Great Beast’. I researched him carefully, read everything I could find on him, and his own paintings feature in the story.
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2 weeks ago | 
iconoblast.substack.com | Pat Mills
Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst are the most widely known Suffragettes and this is hardly surprising as they were elitist, supported Britain’s role in World War One and sent so many young men to their deaths. Emmeline campaigned to give unlisted men white feathers, symbolizing cowardice and betrayal of their duty. So the State honours the memory of those betrayers of freedom who endorsed its murderous plans.
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2 weeks ago | 
iconoblast.substack.com | Pat Mills
The great thing for me – writing Requiem – was that I could get a decent financial return for my science fiction ideas. It was becoming increasingly difficult to make a reasonable living writing for 2000AD unless I cut corners, as every 2000AD creative has to do from time to time, and this was something I hated doing. The similarities between Requiem and my 2000AD stories are very apparent to me, but writing for France I could take my time playing with different concepts and not have to rush them.
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3 weeks ago | 
iconoblast.substack.com | Pat Mills
This post is continuing on from last week’s Enter the Manosphere! on the TV series Adolescence. Friends I spoke to were equally critical of Adolescence. One insider professional cited its lack of realism, and I’d agree with them. But they found it easy to dismiss from their minds. I couldn’t, and I had no idea why. Usually I get a clue from dreams or nightmares that the Muse ‘kindly’ sends to assist me. So the night after pondering on Adolescence I had a fairly bad nightmare about Loss.
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3 weeks ago | 
iconoblast.substack.com | Pat Mills
The volume opens with a dark story of how Rebecca meets her end in a concentration camp, shot by the commandant who happens to be Otto, Requiem’s best friend on the planet Resurrection. Looking at it today, some two decades later, it’s still deeply disturbing, and not just for the obvious reasons of the subject matter and the brilliant rendering by Olivier. There’s a dark truth here that Hate rather than Love has triumphed, born out by history and by the times we live in today.
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1 month ago | 
iconoblast.substack.com | Pat Mills
No consideration of matriarchy versus patriarchy would be complete without looking at misogyny today, which has been transformed into a potent and coherent force known as the Manosphere, possibly more powerful than any patriarchal institution before. I say ‘possibly’, because the Catholic Church has had its own highly successful Manosphere for two thousand years.
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1 month ago | 
iconoblast.substack.com | Pat Mills
Torquemada, my all-time favourite villain, returns in this volume. But it was actually Olivier’s doing, rather than my own. I’d originally featured an ordinary Catholic priest of my acquaintance for the role. He was a typical pervert who appeared to be holy, while in reality he was a wolf, a perfect basis for a werewolf. But Olivier rightly felt that the priest wasn’t big deal enough and a more classic figure was needed for the role.