Alex Jones

SF & F: Axel America and the News Election Race

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Everyone’s keen to talk to me about Axel America and Donald Trump. Huddled together neighbours at a car crash, gleefully hiding terror. Never mind the politics, glance at the news media: photo-fit and run. The novel is about communication sciences: propaganda and cyber-stalking, everyday rather than futurist. It has many of the elements of science-fiction: Manchurian Candidates, super-intelligent defence systems and Tesla technology in the first five chapters and more throughout. Then there’s the psychology/SF cross-over: a presently advanced world subjected to Axel’s delusionary perception of global pandemics and martial law, holographic waves, time travel, light and sound weapons. It’s a book on the border of the news and conspiracy theory, fused by recent advances in social media. Threaded through it are themes of order versus chaos, war and peace, authoritarianism versus free will. One question I get a lot is ‘how do you satirise the satirical?’, and I say it’s a challenge, and we chuckle. Rupert Murdoch, Kay Burley, Piers Morgan, Donald Trump, Alex Jones: how do you look at the dark human cartoon and study their projections? One answer is to go right past the fiction of SF and into Fantasy. The novel pulls on the strings of bible prophecy, distant Pangaea, mercenary assassins, secret caves and valuable artefacts and more fitting elements to frame these dark cartoons. They’re comfortably enjoying their lives which disrupt. The incoherent, or unacceptable, nature of these news media antagonists and their rules requires hacking: not from the choices they give us, but from every choice.

I’ve been invited as a last minute guest to Titancon in Belfast this weekend at the Wellington Park Hotel. There you can pick up a copy of Axel America and the U.S. Election Race from myself at the AGPublishings stall.

You can support bookstores in Belfast by purchasing it from No Alibis, The Thinking Cup, Comic Book Guys and Forbidden Planet International. Or in Dublin, from Sub City Comics or The Winding Stair. The book is also available on Kindle and Smashwords.

belfast-89fm

Lisa Flavelle’s Morning Talk-In, Belfast 89FM.

We’ve had some good reviews in The Irish News, Authors Talk About It and Belfast 89FM, which you can find on the Axel America page, along with a round-table vid-cast I’m on, produced by Nimlas Studios, talking about mental health in fiction.

Cover artist Sean Duffield models Axel America.

Cover artist Sean Duffield models Axel America: oh, the pride!

179: ALEX JONES MUST FIGHT

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I’m not quite sure how Sontaran/Alex Jones mash-ups came about, except Geoffrey D. Wessel told me to do them.

ALEX AND STRAX

1 for the glory of sontalex false flag-ha 2 false flag-ha for the glory of sontalex

And because it’s all too easy to have a go at him:

neil sontar

“Andrew Neil was one of Fleet Street’s most controversial figures with a hard-won reputation as an abrasive egomaniac.” – The Guardian, 25 April, 2005

You can still buy ‘Hold the Phones, It’s Alex Jones!’  by Geoff, myself and a whole buncha talents.

Sir Reginald continues tomorrow.

Hold The Phones, It’s Alex Jones! (Re-release)

Andrew 3 Comments

myebookalexI’ve been watching Alex Jones on and off for nearly a decade now, and I think this is the first time I’ve seen the one-man media corp trend on Twitter. Unfortunately, for nothing good. I’ve not seen the clip yet but I’d imagine it’s one dubiously opinionated a-hole scream at an opinionated dubious a-hole.

A year ago, I got together with five other comics creators to release a sitcom-spiracy based around Alex’s domestic life. In some respects, it was a success, with the fourteen page preview amassing well over 10,000 views, most of those on Myebook. From another view, we’ve sold not a single copy of the PDF, and I’m beginning to suspect somethings a little awry. Conspiracy? I’ve moved the Myebook sales back to my own control, just to be sure.

For the record, I think guns are the tools of aggressors, be they government or citizen. So it might seem callous of me to take advantage of the #trend to $cash in on Nutjob Vs Nutjob. Still, giving me your traffic and cash is better than giving it to anyone who promotes those two right now.

Hold the Phones

The pitch:

Follow the father of 911 Truth as he travels in time through American history, faces vaccination and innoculation, resists the attempts of big media to hypnotise his kids and join him. See him advertise water filters and gold seeds, fight enemies foreign and domestic: including Alex’s wife, their son Constitution, daughter Wrench, 1776 the family dog and Orwell, their deceased cat.

Co-created by Andy Luke and Professor Octagon
Includes: Swimming Pool of Death, Declaration of the Co-Dependents, Beck Vs Jones, Anger Management, Good Constitution Hunting and You Want Answers?
The Winged Head of Alan Watt and Alex’s Personal Guarantee! by Ben Stone
Super Bowl of Fascism by Geoffrey Wessel and Sean Duffield
Co-Opted! by Professor Octagon and Bisson
The Sound, The Fury and Alex Jones! by Luke and Bisson.

A bumper 44 pages of conspiracy comedy!

You can buy the PDF for the bargain price of 98 Cents (US) through Paypal by clicking on this link

You can also get the print edition of the comics mag through Indyplanet – costly 10 dollars or so when the postage is in, tho they’ve done a lovely job.

Here’s previews.

BONUS FEATURES

Columns on comics from the old Alltern8.com here 

ComicsWest convention in Galway (8th-10th February)

Heroes and Legends con in Belfast the following weekend.

More details in a while.

Bounce!

Andrew 3 Comments

Dates for your calendar: the Mercurial Stephen Downey and I will be inviting you to make comics with us at The Arts and Disability Forum in Belfast. We were there in February and executive produced the baby leviathan, Beneath The Tide.



 Beneath The Tide, featuring the work of Gareth Smyth, Andrew Cochrane and Roisin O’ Hagan.
You can see the full project behind this strip by downloading the pdf version which also features work by Richard Barr and Bisson. [15mb – pdf  link]

The event is on Saturday 25th August. It’s free, and limited to fifteen places. Please get in touch via info@adf.ie if you’d like to be on board.

ADF Festival logo designed by Gillian O’Hagan

It’s one of the first acts in the ADF’s week-long Bounce! festival. The programme has a number of people excited  with an enormous roster of talent including Sinead O’Donnell, Garry Robson, David Hoyle, animator Joel Simon, Dan Eggs, Andrew Cochrane and Claire Cunningham.

More news on the Arts and Disability Forum website, including links to the programme and purchasing for ticketed events. [

I’d a lovely weekend at the Dublin Zine Fair run by the nimble Sarah Bracken and her team. Paddy Brown did a lot of arranging for us to be there, and there was a very positive turn out. I managed a spontaneous short comedy open mic bit, and got a lot of new friends from the series of six interviews I did with artists last week.

Sold a fair few comics too, including my sequel to Optimus and Me. Unfortunately Moods of Prime went out with a page error. It didn’t make a difference to the great story, but I thought I’d reprint the correct sequencing here.

My KaBlam/IndyPlanet copy of Hold The Phones, It’s Alex Jones! arrived looking like a grown-up magazine gospel rocker dancing on ice. The Series 1 11 page preview has racked up over 5,000 views.

The book has 28 pages of new material and costs  $3.99 plus Indyplanet’s postage fees, which from the UK are a whopping $10. [Link to IndyPlanet print copy]

But you must have your forty-four pages of big fat Sitcomspiracy. The Myebook digital is still only £1.00, and works out well. [Link to Myebook Digital, gets me 90% of the sale, and so sell cheaper]

You can buy Moods of Prime in black and white for £1.25 or £2.50 in colour (plus and extra £1 for far overseas), by sending the amount over Paypal to drew.luke@gmail.com and including your address. All sold out of my own copies of Hold The Phones.