Tops and Bottoms – 18th November 2025. – Never Iron Anything

“Carpets Dave! They’re just carpets.”

Banging about all weekend. Comics reading throughout the land of the commuter. At night reading Rushdie on the Luton train chancing intervention. In the morning catching up on the pile in a Costa.

I was just listening to an interview with Suzanne Vega. A long-term favourite. I’d lost contact with her new output for a while but occasionally pop on the greats. Whilst appearing on radio 4’s ‘Private Passions’ she mentioned her feelings about finding out at nine years old that her father was not her birth father and said:

“It’s better to know the truth.”

A wide ranging absolutist answer. And one, that after some quiet commuting thought, I decided wasn’t how I feel. Lies do many things. Hurt and help. As does the truth. The nuance of the moment demands either, neither and sometimes both. In all honesty (sic) I love a lie. (Take that Harry Mudd!). They can be amusing, challenging, knowing, inwardly sarcastic, downright funny and part of the elaborate knit that makes our lives and links with others.

They can be a mighty weapon as well as a darkness held for years. They appear in a multitude of forms. Not least of all aimed solidly at ourselves by ourselves. Wilfulness weaponised delusion being the one that travels like a virus across the comics community. A manipulated lack of self awareness only encouraged by the chinless dribblers and their need for recognition.

I hope everyone had fun at Harrogate.

“Carrots can grow anywhere” she said. “But you don’t like carrots” I replied. – ‘Lollipop Revolution’ by Barbara Stork- Whaley.

Big week for my postman and another trip to the Comic Shop. The more things stay the same…

‘How does one find comics?’ – Father Kenneth Crickle.

With some difficulty and a rather large financial wound! You can find them if you really look. (Promise). But luck is ever present in the comics world. Look at how amazingly fortuitous the world is to have a new writer with all the right credentials on the new Dan Dare comic! We really should be counting those chickens about now.

Competition Time – Your lucky number this week is ‘146’. If you got it in your mailer then you get a prize.

Let’s get on with the ongoing system of brief reviews.

Small Press Comic of the Week.

One of the best of the year. The format and style of creation – drawing one panel a day for a year with no planning and zero arc really pays off here. Henty is one of the upcoming talents in the Underground scene. Jump on this or miss out.

Tops.

Another Ghost Machine comic! Top of the craft and showing the so-called competition how it’s done every single month. This issue has a lot of heart. And the art will blow your socks off.

Bottoms.