Iconoblast

Articles

Do Not Feed The Egregores

1 week ago | iconoblast.substack.com | Pat Mills

A fictional entity, with no basis in reality, it was created or adapted by the Catholic Church. It terrorises believers into obeying and funding the Catholic Church. Catholics are afraid of falling into the Devil’s clutches in Hell if they don’t go to Church on Sunday etc. So for them, the Devil is real. I say he’s a fictional entity with some authority, because as a kid I was quite indifferent to him, despite all the Hellfire nonsense from the pulpit.
Requiem Vampire Knight: The lost years

1 week ago | iconoblast.substack.com | Pat Mills

Hardly had Requiem 11 been published, when catastrophe hit us. Nickel, our publishers, had mismanaged its affairs and couldn’t continue. Worse, it left me owed a significant amount of royalties, and Olivier even more. Tens of thousands of Euros. So we both had to find work elsewhere. It would be over ten years before Nickel sold Requiem to Glénat Éditions, Olivier was available again, and Glénat could publish Requiem 12: The Fall of Dracula.
The Green Man

2 weeks ago | iconoblast.substack.com | Pat Mills

My thanks to Anthoney Hart for finding a Youtube of my appearing – with Simon Bisley – on the BBC Omnibus programme ‘The Return of the Green Man’. Omnibus was a legendary BBC One arts documentary series. I wrote a sequence about the Green Man in Sláine: The Horned God, specially for Omnibus and you can see Simon painting it on the show. If you want to skip ahead to our section, it starts at 16:52.
Theocracies: Real and Imagined

3 weeks ago | iconoblast.substack.com | Pat Mills

Today, there seem to be more theocracies than ever. My family came from Ireland, which was a recognised cruel, evil and oppressive theocracy until fairly recent times. Among its numerous crimes were the treatment of young women in the Magdalen laundries and the restrictions on family planning. It even goes back to the time of the Great Hunger, where the ruling English Raj used and funded a Quisling Church, willing to carry out its commands.
Requiem Vampire Knight 10: Blood Bath

3 weeks ago | iconoblast.substack.com | Pat Mills

In this volume, we see the aftermath of Hiroshima. The three American ‘tourists’ being pulled in rickshaws are authentic and the image is based on a photo reference. But any consideration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki makes us think about the origins of evil. Whether there is a place such as Resurrection, where the perpetrators will be punished, which is what so many of us would like to see happen.
Small Things Like These (KAWK)

1 month ago | iconoblast.substack.com | Pat Mills

I've just watched Small Things Like These, starring Cillian Murphy. It’s set in the 1980s and exposes yet more crimes of the nuns in the Magdalene Laundries in Ireland. Crimes which, as far as I’m aware, no nun has served a prison sentence for. It’s valuable because it shows that Matriarchies can be just as evil as Patriarchies. Even if the nuns are a product of a patriarchal religion, they are certainly autonomous and powerful in the film.
Requiem Vampire Knight 9: Sources of Inspiration

1 month ago | iconoblast.substack.com | Pat Mills

I’ve often wondered what Olivier’s sources of inspiration for Requiem are. There’s the central character of Requiem himself, who may be visually inspired by Moorcock’s Elric. A couple of years back, Glenat, our publisher, asked Moorcock if he would write an intro to the Requiem series but, unfortunately, he was too busy. Then there’s the aerial city of Pirates on magnificent display in this volume – I have no idea where that might have come from.
Fat Comics

1 month ago | iconoblast.substack.com | Pat Mills

Apologies again for writing yet another post that isn’t Matriarchy versus Patriarchy. It will return!The definition of comic books comes up from time to time, so I thought I’d share my recollections of how comic books became ‘graphic novels’. I have reservations on that description of them. I believe Mick McMahon called them fat comics, or possibly fat comics with bits of cardboard around them, which still makes me chuckle.
Requiem Vampire Knight 8: Back to the Past

1 month ago | iconoblast.substack.com | Pat Mills

We’ve caught up with the future. Many of the dystopias and dreams of science fiction have been made manifest. Its triumphs and nightmares are all around us and there’s a case for thinking there’s nowhere left for them to go, despite Elon Musk’s implausible and scientifically bonkers boasts about missions to colonise Mars. The futuristic Concorde has been and gone. The moon landings have been and gone. Shanghai rivals the cities in Blade Runner.
The Secret of Speed Writing

1 month 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.