Thanks you to comics writer extraordinaire Kieron Gillen for bringing this odd bit of culture to my attention. In the most recent of his newsletter, Gillen shared a playlist he made which opened with a sinister song about Sinister Ducks, performed by a band called Sinister Ducks, which was fronted by none other than the great wizard of Northampton, Alan Moore hisself.
More on that musical group, courtesy of Bleeding Cool:
Sinister Ducks, of course, being the band formed by Alan Moore, former Bauhaus bassist David J, saxophonist Alex Green from the ska band ARMY, and singer-guitarist Grant Series of D-Go-Tees, under new pseudonyms, first formed in 1979 when another band had pulled out of a performance. There were a few subsequent performances with other members Glyn Bush of Rockers Hi-Fi and Bridget Enever, and a couple of vinyl releases in the early eighties with cover art from Savage Pencil and the late Kevin O'Neill. A flexi-disc was published by Fantagraphiucs in Critters #23, which featured an Alan Moore story. Here's a couple of examples that have hit YouTube and have not yet been taken down.
It's a weird song — yet also weirdly appropriate, both for Moore's oeuvre, and for the playlist, is sort-of meant to accompany the release of the Gillen-penned Immoral X-Men #1, the latest in the X-Men's current Sins of Sinister saga. In case you weren't aware, the X-Men have been in a sort of renaissance period since the release of Jonathan Hickman's House of X / Powers of X miniseries in 2019. The mutants have now built their sovereign nation on the living island of Krakoa, and must deal with all the struggles of running a nation and building a culture and society — the least of which includes some radical approaches to healthcare and criminal justice reform. (Yes, really, these are ongoing X-Men storylines.) Unfortunately, "amnesty for all mutants" includes the dandy Machiavellian sociopath Mr. Sinister, who, as always, is running schemes-within-schemes-within-schemes that will ultimately come back to bite everyone in the ass. This particular Sins of Sinister storyline depicts a future in which Sinister has successfully taken over the world by infecting everyone's DNA with his own. And it sucks, even for him. The story is set in three timelines: 10 years from now, 100 years from now, and 1000 years from now, picking up from the X=10 motif established in the aforementioned House of X / Powers of X series (get it? Powers of X? Powers of 10? So 10 to the 10th power is … okay cool just making sure).
None of this X-Men story has much to do with Alan Moore (whose only real contributions to the mythos — or to Marvel in general, as far as I'm aware — was some early work on Captain Britain, where he did notably introduce the multiversal designation "616" for the main Marvel universe). Just that I like the current X-Men books a lot, and also this song was fun and weird enough to share.
