Hour Of The Polls 30 Dec 2014 Just a last reminder - we are running two exciting POLLS this year, for the best tracks and best comics of 2014. You can still vote in them both! And,…
The Freaky Trigger Comics Poll 2015 18 Dec 2015 Back by popular demand! (Kat asked) As last year, we are running a COMICS POLL. This was an intimate occasion in 2014 with a small but magnificent body of voters,…
WHAM! POW! Polls Aren't Just For Pop Anymore! 11 Dec 2014 As well as the Freaky Trigger pop poll, masterminded by Kat, I thought I'd try something else - a Freaky Trigger COMICS POLL. This will work in exactly the same…
10 reasons it's okay to not like The Wicked and The Divine #1 18 Jun 2014 Coronations are dull things You read enough Vertigo comics in your youth (or, last week) and you have had sufficient for the next decade of ingénue audience identification figures having…
Marvel Comics: A Character Guide 10 Feb 2015 Marvel Comics' famed innovation in the 1960s was introducing characters who were "human" with "relatable flaws" as opposed to the super-icons of rivals DC. These relatable flaws gave each Marvel…
The Freaky Trigger Comics Poll 2014: #38-#26 6 Jan 2015 Inside the Arctic Base, the men from the website peered nervously out as SHAKO paced the snow. The giant bear showed no signs of tiring. But what could it want?…
Ragnarok And Roll 6 Nov 2014 The Mighty Thor, by Walt Simonson I got into comics in the 80s, a copy of Walt Simonson's Thor was one of the first Marvel Comics I bought with my…
The Freaky Trigger Comics Poll 2014: #25-#11 11 Jan 2015 "Wotcher, HUMES! Sewer robot RO-JAWS here, taking time out from cleaning THARG'S CLUDGEY to bring you the second part of the 2014 Freaky Trigger comics poll. And MANKEY MOSES, it's…
About the Author
Tom invented Freaky Trigger on a bus journey in the mid-90s. A page about what he's up to can be found here
29 Sep 2014
#817, 21st February 1999 How was I supposed to know that something wasn’t right? It was a gilded age: the commercial zenith of the music industry at the end of the 20th century. In America, its apex as a money-making force came in 1999 when – adjusted for inflation – $71 per head was spent […]
1 Jun 2002
1 The weather matters. Saturday 1st June: 8pm, and the sky out of my window is still fading pale blue, weightless, benevolent. A jubilee weekend of rain would be a symbolic down: but then, we are long used to finding a meaning in the rain. Not just we aesthetes (‘I’m happy when it rains’; ‘You’re […]
5 Jul 2013
#725, 26th August 1995 BOXING? A “heavyweight battle”, the NME cover-billed it. And if “Country House” vs Oasis’ “Roll With It” was a title bout, the music press were desperate to play Frank Warren. Perhaps they had most at stake. It was, in a way, their last great fight. Many other moments define Oasis. Blur […]
13 Jul 2018
What if a World Cup lasted ALL YEAR? That’s the experiment we appear to be running with this year’s PWC, and a grand experiment it is too. Here we are with the fourth match, group C, which even features a team that is STILL IN the football tournament. France are one of the great exponents […]
21 May 2008
I give marks out of 10 to every song – based on whatever criteria you like, here’s your opportunity to say what you’d have given more than 6 to from 1976. Tick as many as you like. And use the comments to discuss the year as a whole, if you like.
4 Sep 2009
#543, 15th December 1984, video “Do They Know It’s Christmas” is significant in one way, and insignificant in another. First, it raised a lot of awareness and money and established the pop single as an excellent mechanism for doing those things. This was significant. Gargantuan “supergroups” like this fell out of favour but charity records […]
10 Aug 2004
Distilled from several years of pop experience, here from the WORST to the BEST are ways to approach a cover version. The Acoustic Guitar: i.e. “Any good song will sound great on an acoustic guitar”, runs the prized nugget of MOJO wisdom which results in Travis mauling “…Baby One More Time”. Culprits throw up their […]
1 Jul 2013
This article by Laurie Penny on the pervasiveness and persuasiveness of the manic pixie dream girl trope is really good. I’m the same age as Laurie Penny, so was plagued by the same cultural stuff as her- I don’t know if it’s just egocentrism for my own timeline but I feel like the 90s marked […]
