Mylo Xyloto - The comic series review. Issue 1: Mylo Xyloto

I'm annoyed at writing this review. Not because I lost my hands in a freak garbage disposal accident and that meant that I had to carefully control my bashing of my now bleeding stumps on the keyboard in order to type out actual words. No I'm annoyed because my first review of the prequel to this series of comics had a slight air of taking the absolute piss out of it because it looked like a massive piece of shit. But now I find, when we have a few more words and some actual characterisation that it isn't actually all that bad. Yeah none of it still makes any sense within the context of it being based off of Coldplay's album Mylo Xyloto. I still have difficulty this is what Chris Martin actually envisioned when he wrote the thing, especially the song Major Minor is actually a song about a large armoured alien dictator called Major Minor. It's also funny to see story by: Mark Osbourne, writer of Kung Fu Panda, and Coldplay in the opening page of a comic.

But it actually starts off pretty strongly. It manages to hit all of the main points of a good dystopia. It borrows heavily from a lot of other popular dystopias though of course; from 1984 to Brave New World, it's all in there somewhere. But it also manages to put in enough of its own ideas that it doesn't become a rehash.

There's the chemical sedation that all the populace gain from the Hypnofeed, a device that pumps sweet sweet entertainment straight at your face all hours of the day. And everyone lives in this situation because they are frightened of a race of monsters called The Eaters, who are attracted by sound and colour. We find out that they are falsified by the evil dictatorship later on, but at least they've set up a reasonable foundation for the dictatorship to remain in control. The people are terrified of The Eaters so much, that they will abandon their previous way of life in order to survive, but are all anaesthetised on entertainment and stimulus privately, that no one ever revolts.

The idea though of people being able to privately watch hardcore porn is still a terrifying idea. Is that father in the bottom right, walking with his kid watching some extreme all anal action gangbang right now as he holds his childrens' hands.

Another slightly stupid thing about the feed is that it's wired, so I guess people just wander the streets, always in their feed but only being able to walk about 20 feet from their door. And if they do walk further, then that'd be even more insane because check out that clusterfuck of wires getting dragged around the street. I can barely take my laptop into my room without the charger getting wrapped round the door handle and yanking the thing out of my hands, without an entire city wandering around aimlessly, all drugged up and tangling up the whole place. Sadly however this tangling complaint I have is the basis for quite abit of the plot. It's a story about tangling, but at least they know the problems and are setting out to fix them. I can respect that.

Anyway so then our blue thing creature, I guess we have to call them Silencians even though that's still a stupid name, runs into a poster of The Eaters and goes nuts. 

In order to keep the peace the armed force of the Silencers hunts him down and “bag” him. “Bagging” entails putting somehow literally into a big bag, and not a state sponsored punishment of dipping your nutsack into someone's screaming mouth to silence them.

And then hey look who it is. It's Mylo. We last saw him in the prequel issue as a fat little baby with paint all over his hands, but here he is now a man. Even more shockingly he's even a member of the Silencers. Either way though we have at least learnt that this is set quite far into the future from the prequel issue. 

We also learn that Mylo is a dirty crack whore who loves the hypnofeed and will even jack up in the middle of the street with the feed of a man who they just dropped into custody.

I can complain about alot of things with this comic, but from an artistic standpoint, it does look damn pretty at points.

But then the soldiers get another call and holy lord the damned Sparks, or revolutionary street artists, have struck again. Obviously everyone freaks the shit out of their bodies at the sight of all this colour out of fear that The Eaters will come gobbling their way into town. What's even more monstrous about the Sparks, other than threatening the city with a hypothetical mass genocide by a ravaging beast, is that they insist on spreading their political message solely in terms of Coldplay lyrics. Imagine how underwhelming the Berlin wall would've been if all the political graffiti was comprised of lyrics from Speed of Sound. “I look up at night, planets are movin' at the speed of light”. Take that you commie bastards.

So that's the beautiful poetry there that the revolutionist have chosen to litter their walls with. And it all comes from the mind of a man who in a song, sang about planets moving at the speed of light and birds flying at the speed of sound. Or maybe that's the type of mindless thinking that got them into this mess in the first place.

So they wash it off, as they do with all graffiti, and this is when we're introduced to...

Major Minor. Now I really hated him in the few strips he was with. He seemed so serious and boring, he looked over the top compared to the rest of the characters and just seemed so outrageously evil, but in a rehashed and trope riddled way. However, here he's actually a character and completely unexpected to me, he's a comedy character. As far as you can go with characterising a giant alien slug middle manager who is the head of PR and face of a dystopian government, they do it well and it's pretty funny at times.

He's horrific but is forced to host a show called Miles of Smiles in front of a green screen which is full of asses and fine alien bitches chowing down on high calorie foods. As soon as the cameras are off him though he goes nuts. During the course of the comic, simply for people faiuling to carry out orders he bags people up himself, chucks people out of windows and smashes a guy's hand with a hammer. 

This is one cold motherfucker, in a very PG context, and in light of there being no real other stand out characters, except for the angsty as hell Mylo, Major Minor really stands out as the most enjoyable part of the comic.

We even find out why he's so hostile to those around him and yet has such a cheery persona when in front of the camera or away from his men. Major Minor is scared because as I said before he's a middleman, given the most menial tasks of PR, and to pose as the cheery and friendly head of the government. But he constantly has the other 12 members of the cabinet breathing down his neck to get all the Sparks killed and maintain control of the world of Silencia in preparation for what they describe as 'the next phase'. 

Within all this Major Minor is even taking time out of his day to redesign the hypnofeeds into a wireless model known as the Hypnoflow (there's that subplot I mentioned), and that in distributing this, they will have limitless control over Silencia. The only problem is all the Sparks must die for this to be achieved. Another problem is that Hypnoflow does sound like some kind of psychic laxative.

I know it sounds like I'm sucking on Major Minor's big slug dick here, but he really is a genuinely funny character. Given that it's by the writer of Kung Fu Panda, he does come across as a one note , entertaining joke of a villain which you'd find in most Dreamworks Animation movies. He's not the greatest idea in the world but funny enough to stand out in what is primarily a series about revolutionary graffiti artists. It's the kind of fantasy that inhabits the masturbation realm of Banksy's self perception.

So then Major Minor cracks out the big guns. The idea is that he rewards individuals of the Silencers if they catch a Spark, out of desperation to not defenestrated by his fellow dictators.

Some stereotypical angry character gets really angry at it. He's a regular stand up poster boy, who believes in the cause and thinks that this selfish aspect will ruin the unifying philosophy of survival through fear that Silencia is built upon.

We then learn why he hates the Sparks so much. It turns out that the two twats in the prequel comic started a 'colour war', if there was ever an example for why revolution through graffiti alone is funny then this has got to be it. A colour war sounds more like an apartheid than a dick swinging contest, where colour is the cure and Chris Martin's poetry is the weapon.

To sum all the character motivations in the last several decades then; the Sparks from earlier issue started a war and this got a lot of people killed including fat baby Mylo's parents and the parents of his grumpy friend. 

Who as you can see here was even a grumpy baby even back then.

So the angry guy then experiences some serious PTSD in front of us

Mylo is so angry that he storms off like an angry teenager and then...

Finds a Spark soiling some more wall with Coldplay lyrics.

The colours themselves are so beautiful that they make Mylo orgasm so hard that jizz spills from his eyes.

And then as if he was before a giant ass, he holds out his hand to touch it like the sick bastard he is.

But upon realising that it's just a wall and so he can't have sex with it, Mylo becomes angry and then chases the fleeing Spark.

Now what I do quite like here is that the motivation of self interest introduced by Major Minor into the system, does actually have consequences. Silencers become incapable of capturing Sparks as a team because they don't want anyone else to get a share of their prize, that prize being a lifetime supply of hypnofeed and immediate retirement. So it's basically the modern day equivalent of your pension package also including a lifetime supply of heroin and blowjobs.

So Mylo lets the Spark leader, Fly, escape. Not a big loss since he didn't put a lot of effort into tracking her down, having accidentally stumbled upon her down a back alley.

How no Sparks have ever been caught though is a mystery to me because she leaves such a shit dump of colour behind her, that she must be insanely easy to track.

I mean look at this, she must incontinent or something. It really makes me feel slightly sick because I don't really know what the colour is anymore. I guess it's just liquid that oozes out of them uncontrollably and just makes me ill at the thought of what I guess is just period paint.

Period paint that's alive as well. Look at that butterfly. What the hell is this stuff. It's paint, but it can also make portals, create life, yet is primarily just used to colour in walls. What a waste. To have miracle technology and to have so little imagination that to just squander it in such a pointless and mindless way is just such a waste and it's no wonder these people got enslaved in the first place if they're going to be so stupid and.... Oh I just realised that I was using the internet for this. 

But aside from selfish motivation ruining the once great police force of Silencia, we also find out two other things. One, that Fly is a girl. And secondly, that Mylo can't shoot her for that reason, because she's a pretty lady.

So we leave this particular issue to be continued. What are the further adventures of Mylo Xyloto going to be. Well judging by this issue. I'd say they're going to be fine, but whenever there was a positive aspect to it that I enjoyed, such as Major Minor and the consequences to his desperate attempt to impress the higher ups, there was an equally uninteresting and sometimes unintentionally funny aspect, such as Coldplay lyrics everywhere, revolutionary graffiti artists as a major threat and some slightly boring main characters.

Oh did I also mention this is based off the album Mylo Xyloto. Yeah I know. But anyway I'm going to crack on through these and review each one in turn. They're about £15 quid on the Coldplay store for the set of six. At the moment they're half entertaining, but there are a lot of better things to spend your money on. But if you have money to throw into a pit, then you may as well alternatively put that money into the bank, buy the Mylo Xyloto comic series off of the irritating to manoeuvre Coldplay online store and then invest your time in an alright comic. So far at least.

Alternatively, you can just come and check these reviews and I'll happily just spoil what happens anyway, saving you a pretty bit of dollar.

And if you don't like the comic for its story then you can always tune in for the numerous and sweet pictures of asses.

ASS ASS ASS       ASS ASS ASS  ASS ASS ASS  ASS ASS ASS

And as a Jerry Springer final thought; please find nourishment on this Fat Hamster, for the time being at least.