Biscuits or crisps, biscuits or crisps..I can never decide.

I suppose I live a fairly normal existence these days, eat work, sleep, repeat. I live next to the beach in Ayrshire, Scotland, a little south of Glasgow. ‘Adventure, excitement; a Jedi craves not these things!

Comic wise, I suppose I started early with weekly escapes into books like ‘The Spectacular Spiderman’ and ‘The Incredible Hulk’. I still own a full set of high quality prints from 1974 by Lopez Espi (Hulk, Spiderman, Captain America, Ironman, Thor and Daredevil) which I have framed and have recently given pride of place on my living room walls. Whoops giving away my age a bit there…doh! It was the DC heroes which really captivated me though and I still to this day keep the softest spot in my heart for Ollie, Barry, Hal and friends.

I was soon sidetracked in 1977 with the release of Star Wars and spent my pocket money on the Star Wars comic; until that is I joined the comic revolution. Other papery things were landing on the newsagent’s shelf, papery things which were both violent and absorbing, and which credited kids with intelligence; and it was a very British revolution. I’m talking of course of 2000AD and it’s imitators like Starlord. Anti-heroes like Judge Dredd drawn by incredible artists like Esquerra and Bolland were suddenly essential reading for me and I lapped them up.

The revolution soon spread to America and Marvel and DC were suddenly hiring new talent from across the Atlantic and revamping their books and characters…comics started being cool, not just gentle Saturday morning escapism for kids who crammed them in between episodes of ‘Casey Jones’ and ‘The Virginian’. Comics began to grow up with their readers, and the readers, like me, decided to stop putting down childish things and embraced the new masters. Writers like Frank Miller, Grant Morrison and Alan Moore have taken comics onto another level with books like ‘Watchmen’ or brushed off old heroes like ‘Animal Man’ and ‘Doom Patrol’ and have breathed new life into them.

Recently I’ve enjoyed Kevin Smith’s resurrection of Green Arrow and his work on Daredevil was … well visionary. Very recently though I’ve been enjoying ‘The All New Atom’, the new ‘Blue Beetle’, ‘Antman’ (the irredeemable one!) and Deadpool is always a great read. I’ve also been following the ‘Civil War’, ‘52’, and ‘Countdown’, although all these crossovers and alternative realities are getting quite confusing and I hope that DC especially will get back soon to writing good solid adventures with a beginning and an end as I worry that all this tinkering in the past and tweaking of parallel worlds will eventually stomp all over classic storylines like ‘The Killing Joke’ in the same way that they have done with ‘Infinite Crisis’ (the clue was in the title there I guess), and ‘The Omac Project’. If I was cynical (who me) I would say that the whole thing has been developed to sell multiple books at the expense (literally) of the fans.

Ohhh I nearly forgot, I also recently tracked down a few issues of Glen Danzig’s (yup, he of the Misfits fame), ‘Jaguar God’ book which are fabby and well worth hunting down, and I completed my Neil Gaiman (he can do no wrong) collection with the ‘Harlequin Valentine’ graphic novel.

Darkness

Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water; Jack fell down and broke his mind and Jonas tumbled in after Ha Ha. He’s not the first you know, oh no. I crossed the Rubicon with Caesar and have pranced and prattled in my motley robes in the courts of kings; I once even stalked the alleyways of Whitechapel with my medical bag. This one is different though, stronger, I am as much a prisoner within his mind as he is held captive by me. He makes me feel good, he makes me do good….am I a good boy now? We do good now in this body but Jonas is not a do-gooder, laws are not made for us, our brand of retribution is our own. Will we take a life?...If the mood takes us and the moon is full and vengeful; but it will be a life worth taking Ha Ha. An eye for a lie and a tooth for the truth. Can we die? Perhaps our flesh can? But can our essence? Not unless a cure for madness can be found Ha Ha.

Our pretty costume drips with diamonds of many hues which shift and blur, our rictus expression concealed behind a mask of many faces; these are the faces of our many parts, all mad Ha Ha. We live within the wonderland of the city at night; don’t believe in the dark, the neon glitter and reflected dazzle of streetlights and signs which reflect in the puddles and the rain make these hours as vibrant and colourful as a fairground arcade. Be afraid of it though, evilworkers, bastards and rascals crawl out from their dens and bawdy-houses at this time making the night seem a little darker. They discard the light, seeking the dark places, content in the knowledge that their spreading pox can be seen by none but the lonely shop mannequins and those who live on the edge of the abyss and see nothing for fear of losing their grip. It is time that they too learned to fear the dark…for here be monsters HaHa!

Sometimes I see things inside my realm of meandering dreams and spiralling nightmares and I am compelled to wake him. I see the couple, the young lovers, tomorrows human carrion, taking a shortcut home past the fountain in the park and I see the canker which lurks at the night’s dark edges. I see it pounce and I see the stamping and stomping, I see the flash of the chib in the moonlight, I smell their blood, I see it ooze and crimson spray, I see the grins and hear bones pop and I hear the laughter, it echoes in my head, it wakes me and now I must wake him, Together we must wait by the fountain and escort the young pair home safe and sound for they should see nothing but the reflection of the stars upon the Clyde and the reflection of love in each others eyes tonight.

Our colours are hidden by our tame shadows, stalwart and constant companions, they writhe and twist around our form, they move with us, their tendrils reaching out embracing wantwits and lackbrains, they steal the very breath from their lungs as their fear and our madness envelop their thoughts. The mind is threatened by its own fragility is it not? Ha Ha. We need not show ourself to those who wish not to view our being, we can cause such delightful chaos with our macabre puppetry from within our cosy miasma or can bend and distort their dreams and waking thoughts leaving them terrified by the thought of sleeps embrace for eternity if we choose; but it gives us such a thrill to stamp and stomp that sometimes we forget this and dance with them the timeless dance of fear, whirling and pirouetting with abandoned self consciousness and chilling precision. We possess no weapons, save a razor edged tongue and a guiltless insanity which flushes our brain, hastens our steps and strengthens both his body and my resolve; we are Jonas Shade Ha Ha.

Other rattlebrained gallants and costumed thief-takers have often misunderstood us, some even mistaking us for a miscreant or a knave. They attempt to interrupt our revelry but we are too quick of wit and fleet of foot, Ha Ha, and they too full of self importance and unquestioning belief in the righteousness of their own actions, fools to their own lies. Let them keep their putrid morals and petty restraints and leave us be in our quilt of dark vapours, alone with our voices, to dance our giddy dance. They have their law and Jonas has his, all we have in common is that no one appointed any of us as custodians of the peace and enforcers of justice…the difference between us is that we know that we are mad, but they refuse to free themselves by recognising the same malady in themselves. The man in our mirror smiles back at us; all be it with sad eyes.

Light

Is he gone? Where do I start? I have no idea who I am or where I come from. I have no knowledge of any family except the hazy recollection of a woman’s face; my mothers? I carry with me a photograph of a child, of myself as a child, but it’s ripped concealing from me anything or anybody else who may have been there, that I could use to identify myself. I live the life of a vagrant, drifting from town to town, taking work where I find it and seeking succour with those who live on society’s fringes. If I have any powers at all in daylight it is only the power of not being seen, or not being noticed anyhow, I guess most people who live on the streets possess that ability. I have no name but I use Jon Doe now and again, heh, I sometimes use the name Bruce Wayne when signing into a hostel, just for the irony. Occasionally they will lock me up, tell me that they will help me find what I’ve lost. Once after a fall, or was I mugged, it’s all hazy now, they locked me away in a big house somewhere near Glasgow, I think. It was nice there; they cared for me, fed me. They gave me tablets to help me sleep. That was when he came at first; Jonas.

God does he even exist or have I truly lost my reason as well as my memory. I guess he does, the papers say he does. They say that the city’s criminal fraternity are in terror of him, I’m not surprised, so am I. He speaks to me at night, first as a whisper and then louder and louder, pumping through my dreams like blood through my veins. Once my eyes open, he is in control, distorting my thoughts and urging me to join him in his unholy covenant. I fight him though, I have to, without anyone holding his chains, he could be terrible. As it is I can just about keep him in check long enough for his will to become malleable. By this method I am able to insure that the symbiotic creature that we combine to become is a force for good, all be it Jonas’s interpretation of the word. I am driven to discover who I once was and to repair my broken mind, however my greatest fear is that this will drive Jonas out, to find a new host, and in the wrong hands there is no telling what he may be capable of.

At the moment I am stuck with him though, even if I rip his diamonded rags from my body and throw them in the river, come night-time, when he rouses me, there they’ll be, under my shirt. If I try to rip his mask from my face all it reveals is another. He gains in strength all the time and as he does so I feel less and less able to rein him in.