DFC Day - Friday? Saturday?

Oh well, late but still here. Yesterday (Friday) was DFC day at Bruton mansions where the red and yellow envelope drops through the door and I have to wait until Molly gets home and rips it open, then reads it before I get my hands on it.

Issue 35. No time to break the whole thing down. But another, as always, good issue.

Cover by Wilbur Dawburn, really playing with the logo. The DFC has let it's covers be altered more and more as it goes on, a plus point for them not being on the local newsagent's shelves with the children's comics I suppose. Wilbur's strip Bodkin and the Bear is a genuinely funny one and has very quickly become a favourite as the tale of our stupid Minstrel and his all too cunning Bear moves forward.

Okay, out of time, but the othe laugh out loud moment? Fish Head Steve with this great mock ad leading into the strip, brilliant:

The Stupid Ipod A-Z Idea - update

It's been a long time since I last mentioned anything about the Stupid Ipod A-Z idea. In fact it was in October and I'd gotten all the way to E. Well, amazingly, it's still going on. I'm currently mid way through S and having a bloody great time.

Along the way I've rediscovered a love of REM and had a particularly good time in P; Pixies, Polyphonic Spree, Propaganda. Around Christmas I hit L and downloaded a load of Leonard Cohen so Molly could hear what Hallelujah should really sound like. She preferred the Buckley version, but that was okay, as long as she didn't like the Xfactor abortion of a song.

Now we're onto the Shamen.
I know, I know.
Get the snickering out of the way now.



I heard Something About You, from their first album Drop on Peel or somewhere in 87, making me 16ish. Drop sounds nothing like anything they did subsequently; a mix of 60s psych pop and indie tunes from a 5 piece band. But what really made me sit up and start following them was Christopher Mayhew Says; industrial dance music with extensive samples of Christopher Mayhew on his LSD trip.

A quick trip into dance culture and sampling for In Gorbechev We Trust (1989). Will Sinnott (Will Sin) was on board and it became a bit of a two man operation for the best period of their work. Phorward (1989) got even more dance orientated and EnTact (1990) was where it all went a little more overground and mainstream. Still great, just really tapping into the dance culture at exactly the right time. Of course, it also saw the partial introduction of Mr C.



Disaster followed. Will Sin drowned in 91 just as ProGen was about to become a huge hit the second time round, MrC was all over everything and success just seemed to make it all just that little bit more bland. Boss Drum (1992) was okay at the time but It's almost unlistenable bar three or four tracks now. Ebeneezer Goode purely as stupid nostalgia, but Re-Evolution, the spoken word track from Terrence McKenna is still great. I had the best time watching them play Re-Evolution live at Glastonbury one year. I can't remember the year, in fact I can't remember much about the night apart from the great light and sound show. How much of that was on stage and how much in my own head - I have no idea.



I've not even heard anything after that. And I almost dread to do so. Maybe one day. But in their time, especially during the early years - they were great.

Learning Platforms and falling asleep in training sessions

I couldn't help it. We'd done a long morning in the ICT suite on the Learning Platform. Back from lunch at the local pub who do an excellent buffet spread for us on training days so we thought we'd have the lunch out for a change. And the ICT suite is boiling hot, yet some of the trainees are moaning it's cold and can we leave the air con off. I've got a throbbing headache and then my eyes start going.

I did the falling asleep in my seat thing for a few minutes until I decided I needed a break and went and looked in on the Year 1 class doing some word processing in another (cooler) room. That seemed to clear my head enough to get through the rest of the session.

The Learning Platform is still a huge thing hanging round my neck, but we're going to try and encourage (railroad) some of the teachers to take on responsibilities for certain sections. That makes it a little easier in the long term. but short term is still the complete set up of all the architecture. And by short term I mean all of summer term at least. Because I'm determined to get the new website absolutely sorted and finished by the end of March. Seems so far away but technically it's just 37 days away and I've got an awful lot to get done. But at least it's not something ridiculously laborious and longwinded (like the Learning Platform for example).

After school it was a quick dash across to Beverley for the Orthodontist. Molly will need braces at some point but today was just a preliminary thing where he looked at her mouth for 5 minutes and told us to come back in 18 months. Strange dentist though. The actual room had four dentist's chairs in it, all in a row with no partitions at all. We were the only people in there but I imagine when they have the place full it's even stranger. With the harsh lights and dental apparatus around it looked like some high tech spacelab of some sort. very strange.

Tomorrow it's back to normal at school and that's my week done. I've got Friday as a work from home day again - NHBC are coming round to look at the roof and agree with us that it's a shit job and the builder deserves shooting. Although I imagine the bloke wont quite phrase it that way...

Of Learning Platforms, Battlestars and Lost

Battling another cold (combination of the weather, working with lots of small germ carrying children and being absolutely worn out - sleep worse than ever recently. Tonight I may be in bed before 4am; a definite improvement) so blogging has been sporadic at best. Forgive me all of the reposting of reviews. They've rather build up in my "to be posted" pile. I may as well fire them all off in one go.

To add to the misery of another cold, today was another one of those Learning Platform Training Days. Except this one was, if anything, even worse than the rest; as it was just a recap for the teaching staff of various schools on the stuff I did a while back. The idea was that we'd host it and put in several staff over the two days. Unfortunately it seems every other training course in the world decided to clash with these days so we had one of our teachers for half a day today and two tomorrow. The day didn't start out well either as the trainer couldn't log into the RM site and for a few minutes of early morning panic we thought it was our network that had gone down. Luckily we found out it was a general east Riding thing - they'd upgraded their connection overnight and thins had rather messed up.

After that it was a day of mind crushing boredom. At one point this afternoon I was nearly asleep; head doing the lolling thing so much that I had to excuse myself and head off for fresh air.

And as is the way with these things, come the end of the day I actually found myself a lot more tired than if I'd actually been at work properly all day. So tonights been a rest night. No reviews, no blogging (until now), no website work for school. Instead it was Battlestar Galactica and the repeat of the double episode opener for the new season of Lost. Now, having not watched anything of Lost since season one and the occasional accidental viewing of a couple of season finales, I thought I might have trouble getting into it and was perfectly prepared to head for bed early. Except I found a You Tube summary of the last 4 seasons in 8 minutes that did the trick and I really rather enjoyed the two hours spent watching the new season.

The summary video is here. I may continue with the rest of the series. Maybe Tuesday will become my night off. There's a novel idea.

PROPAGANDA Reviews: Phonogram - The Singles Club Issue 1

Dance till the stars come down from the rafters
Dance, Dance, Dance till you drop.
-W.H. Auden

Phonogram: The Singles Club #1

by Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie

Image Comics

I loved the first series of Phonogram (see the review here) and thought Gillen and McKelvie’s black and white comic was a fantastic debut series. Quite amazingly good. But this second series confidently, effortlessly and quite breathtakingly blows away that first series with just this first issue.

All seven issues in the series are going to be self-contained tales that will all create a larger, more complex tale across the series, each issue featuring different characters yet taking place across one night in one particular club. If Gillen pulls that off after this absolute peach of a debut issue, we’re in for a fine treat because this first issue does something very special indeed. Every line of dialogue sparkles and shines, every action dazzles and the music wafts above it all, wave upon wave of it. The comic just dances. And we dance with it, invited to do so by the characters themselves.

(If she asked you to dance, you’d be up on the dancefloor before you knew what was going on, admit it. Penny B, phonomancer, dancer, about to get in trouble.)

But dancing in Phonogram isn’t something we watch, it’s something we’re being invited to experience. I’ve never read anything in comics that manages to thoroughly express that sheer joy of being young and beautiful as this comic does, nor anything that captures the ecstatic moment when the music becomes too much and you just can’t help but give yourself over to it and get up and dance. That’s something that should be nigh on impossible to put to words. But Gillen does it so very well.

So join Penny B and Laura Evans, two phonomancers (magicians who use music) on a night at the coolest nightclub in town. Penny B dances like an angel, and will make you feel like dancing as well, whether you want to or not. But the nightclub she’s in has just three rules: One; no boy singers: Two; you must dance: Three; no magic. She’s fine with the first two. But the last one’s going to get her into so much trouble tonight.

(Meet Penny B. Epic covered in sparklers and win-flakes indeed. From Phonogram: Singles Club issue 1. Published Image Comics.)

The story is more than matched by Jamie McKelvie’s art. He was impressive enough in the first series, improved no end in his own series Suburban Glamour (review here) and now eclipses everything he’s done before with absolutely beautiful artwork in Phonogram The Singles Club.

In an attempt to win over those of us who wait for the collection, The Singles Club also boasts plentiful annotations and backup strips / B-Sides written by Gillen and featuring a variety of artists, starting off with Laurenn McCubbin and our old friend Marc Ellerby:

(Marc Ellerby’s art from Kieron Gillen’s story as one of the two B-sides in the first issue of Phonogram; Singles Club.)

Phonogram The Singles Club is one of the best single issue comics I’ve read in a long while. Issue 1 is already set for a second printing, but once that’s gone, then you’ll have missed out on something very special indeed; a comic that not only wants you to dance, but leads you onto the dancefloor and starts playing just the right tunes to make it impossible not to.

As is usual in these things, all concerned are online:

Phonogram blog (with sample pages and more on future contributors to the B-sides, Gillen’s blog, McKelvie’s blog, Marc Ellerby, Laurenn McCubbin.

Rumour Killing - Captain Britian not cancelled

At the end of the week rumours started circulating that Captain Britain & MI-13 has been cancelled. Now I read and reviewed issue 1 of this comic and really enjoyed it, and I'm one of those waiting for the first collection to carry on reading.

The good news is that those rumours were just rumours;

Captain Britain & MI-13 is not cancelled, and according to the piece on Newsarama, Marvel assures everyone that it's a healthy book. Which is nice to hear.

However, Mark over on his great blog; The Sword Is Drawn puts forward a very good argument as to why we should all be heading to our local comic shops or even online to pick up the latest issue (Issue 10) which is due in stores on the 12th of February in the UK. And if you want a really good reason to pick up that issue:

(Yep, Doctor Doom and Dracula. On the moon, with a lunar lander. In Captain Britain. Intriguing enough to go out and buy the comic?)

The recent Panini collection of issues 1-4 of the comic has pretty much sold out and Panini are going back to press for a 2nd printing. Definite proof of how many of us are out there waiting for the trade. And I imagine when the Marvel edition comes out in mid February, that should do good business as well. That should be proof, if proof were needed at Marvel that this is a great comic with a large following and deserves to be around for a long, long time.

Schools adopting new (old) technology badly:

Molly's school has recently begun using text messaging to keep parents in touch with breaking news and the like. This works exceptionally well, although the school has placed great emphasis on parents having to keep the school up to date with mobile contact numbers.

However, they do seem rather blind to the inherent problems of the system and seem to rely on it a little too much regardless of any problems.

For example, given that I work in a local village school in the middle of a signal dead zone, and the only place I can get even a weak signal in school is by walking out of the front gates and 20 yards up the road, maybe it's not the best idea to text me twice during the day to tell me that Molly's football practice after school is cancelled. I did get the message, at 4:20, on my way to the car as I left school to pick her up. Luckily, Molly's teacher stays late and didn't mind having her in the classroom helping out.

But it does point out the obvious problems of using new technologies in schools. There has to be a mixture of new and old to ensure blanket coverage. Otherwise the new tech just counts as a fail.

Richard (over) analyses the comics industry?

Over at the FPI blog I have a looooooong piece about the comics industry and what I think about the recent changes that Diamond comic distributors have brought in regarding their minimum order threshold. If you're a comics person it's important and may well change the comics industry in a pretty big way. If you're not a comic person its 2000ish words of gibberish.

What I did on my work from home day..

Friday's should be a half day for me. that's what I'm meant to work, but when I started the job I got into the habit of staying on and getting extra stuff done instead of leaving. Eventually I decided that I really needed to take the afternoon and have been trying very hard to make the very best of Fridays now. A regular Friday now consists of settling down with coffee, lunch, Radio 5 and a bit of reading or writing before picking Molly up from school. A lovely relaxing end to the week.

But this week I had to drop the car in to be looked at - apparently a grinding noise on the brakes is not a good thing. Nothing wrong that a clean and check couldn't solve though. This meant that there was no way I'd be able to get into school without having to work late. So a work from home day was arranged.

I've decided I like them. Drop Molly off, drop car off, back home for coffee, do a morning's work on the website and then a little reading and writing whilst waiting for the roofer. With our leaky roof still being leaky we've finally managed to get the NHBC around next week to look at what needs doing. I figured it might be a good idea to get a second opinion in advance. And the nice roofer came in and told me that it's just a bloody bad job and he's seen this sort of thing before. But the better news is that it can be fixed, all I have to do is get the NHBC to agree with what the nice roofer man said.

After that it was an afternoon of writing. First up, a quick comment or two on the current situation with Diamond Comic Distributors putting up their minimum order purchase threshold (essentially if Diamond don't think your comic will make the minimum they wont carry it). That quick comment took most of the afternoon and the results can be seen here on the FPI blog.

But despite not getting done half what I wanted to do, despite still having to be working a bit late in the night again it's still a great thing this working from home lark.

Noel's HQ - saving Britain, one patronising skit at a time.

I had the great misfortune of watching Noel's HQ tonight. Where dear old Noel decides he's going to save Britain, one patronising skit at a time.

The most annoying thing about this was the segment on Empire Direct. A couple of pensioners were on with a sob story about a fridge and cooker that they'd carefully saved £10 a week for over 18 months. They then went out and paid cash for them. Empire Direct promptly go bust and the administrators are called in. Noel & Keith Chegwin wade in and try to chase the items up, eventually buying the old dears a new fridge and cooker. The old dears had to go without a holiday last year so they could get the white goods.

Poor things. Seemed a little ridiculous really. Old couple who are out a fridge and a cooker and might have to go without another holiday to save up for them again or the poor bastards who were working for Empire Direct who can't make the mortgage this month. Who really needs our sympathy now?

After that he presents a youngster who saved his mom and friend from a burning car with free tickets to We Will Rock You. Surely that's more of a punishment for a music lover?

The highlight of Molly's week: Buddying

She received the call last week, the thing she had been waiting for for so long.

Molly was going to be a Buddy. Once a week she'll be going from the year 5 & 6 playground to the little ones playground and by virtue of wearing a bright orange sash she becomes a magnet for tiny little people, who want her to play, help, peel oranges and see her as some sort of fun climbing frame. Basically it's a playground assistant in miniature form.

So she goes to bed Wednesday night and it's the last thing she talks about, so full of happiness. Next morning, it's pouring with rain and there's no chance she's going to be outside today. Her face was a picture of complete misery, barely holding back the tears. But the fates must have been smiling on her (well, who can blame them really?) and by break the sun had been out a little but not enough to make a big difference. It looks like the buddy session will be off, until the Teaching Assistant from the class comes in with the great news that their playground is dry and they need Molly to come round.

One of those moments that I really would have loved to have seen her face. It was still ecstatic hours later as she told me all about it. She's already started talking about what games she's going to play with them next week and it wouldn't surprise me to find her playing buddys with all of her cudddly toys tomorrow.

It's DFC Friday .... DFC Issue 34

Friday came and went I'm afraid in a bit of a blur, so DFC Friday becomes DFC Saturday.

But the The DFC issue 34 is out with Jason Cobley and Andrew Wildman's Frontier gracing the cover. Inside they're being menaced by a devious gang of werewolves in Weird Wild West. Getting better as it goes this one is, although it does suffer slightly from John Blake syndrome with each episode being not quite long enough to get enough story in. I'm beginning to think this may be down to the artist; Andrew Wildman likes big panels, which means we only get 21 panels across 4 pages. It looks nice, but maybe smaller panels to get more story in would serve it better?



New this issue is the slightly strange Wilbur Dawbarn's Bodkin and the Bear, a 2 page "funny one" that had Molly and I smiling when the inept medieval minstrel gets captured by the bear. It's only strange because the art looks different from the usual funny strip style. It's more rough and angular, but funny is funny, so it's passed the Molly test which is good enough for me.

Also this issue: Super Animal Adventure Squad by James Turner; Dave Shelton's Good Dog, Bad Dog; Simone Lia's ever funny Sausage and Carrots and more Lazarus Lemming. Sarah McIntyre's Vern & Lettuce is still the high point for Molly though and this week we get to see an Underground ghost station and meet Vern's ghostly Grandad leading Vern to utter the great lines: "Am I also doomed to spend an eternity chasing dead moles?"

As before, the two strips Molly doesn't read are the two highlights. Ben Haggarty and Adam Brockbank's Mezolith just looks gorgeous and reads as though Haggarty was in the room reading it to you. And then there's Mirabilis. This time round we get to see a devious old wizard's escape from Bethlehem Hospital for the Insane, our hero gets filled in on what's going on a little more; seems the green comet's trail across the sky happens every thousand years or so and always brings with it miraculous events. Camelot, the Arabian Nights, Hercules, Odysseus and the Mahabarata. What it has in store this time we shall wait impatiently for.

More next week. Maybe even on the Friday this time.

Tom Spurgeon on Essential Avengers Volume 2

And it is oh so good. Spurgeon's Comics Reporter is a must visit comic site. Excerpt from the review of Essential Avengers Volume 2:

The crying androids can wait. At this point it's still all about copious ass-beatings and ladies straight from the set of Mad Men proclaiming the handsome awesomeness of Hercules. Mostly, it's the violence. Don Heck and especially John Buscema drew all of their male superheroes as thick-shouldered brutes, the kind of people you could imagine punching out livestock, drinking things out of barrels, cuffing one another to the floor of the kitchen in order to grab the last pop tart. In fact, my childhood comprehension of the title was of a bunch of large, angry men sitting around a house waiting for a call to go thump something.

Morph in mourning

No idea where this comes from (I got it from Jamie McKelvie's Twitter) but it pretty much says everything I thought when I got the news of Tony Hart's death.

Hope in today's world?

Bloody hell, who'd have thought it? The Internet will probably roll over and die at some point today with the weight of the entire 8 million people in Washington DC uploading the back of someone's head and a flash of car or the sleeve of a sharp suit to You Tube.

But it's an infectious thing this feeling of hope and change isn't it? Although whenever I start really thinking this could be something special I just have to reach back into the memory and start playing the first few bars of "Things Can Only Get Better" to bring me back down to earth. Please, please, please let Obama be better than Blair, please let him live up to this hype and hope.

That would be nice.

Monday 19th - Blue Monday.....

See, if I'd have been aware of this I'd have had the song on a continuous loop at school. Oh well.

Of course, Blue Monday is about as good/bad/indifferent as any other Mon/Tues/Wednes/Thurs/Fri/Sat/Sun day really. At least I go t a half day today. Granted the other half was spent at home doing more work and for longer than if I'd have actually been in work. Ho hum.

Bed now. Blue Tuesday awaits.

Oh, I could do this all the time... the joy of the half day.

We had the gasman coming round yesterday afternoon to check the heating system (amazingly, given the trouble with the roof, there's nothing wrong with the central heating) so it was home for lunch and a pleasant afternoon adding stuff to the school website. An afternoon of genuinely working from home rather than the usual where I work from home in the evenings and weekends. It gets better as well: since I have a car check up this friday and the NHBC are coming round next friday I'm having to take both of those mornings as work at home mornings as well.

And I'm absolutely sold on it. It's very, very easy to get loads of things done, completely free from distractions. The only downside of it of course is that working from home means I don't actually get to do anything with the children. However, today was a relatively clear afternoon after 2 sessions with the children trying to explain robot directions and having an impromptu maths lesson on angles and then a session on information, searching an online encyclopaedia and finding out fun stuff about animal. The favourite of the class? A tie between the Owl being able to turn it's head almost 360 degrees and the Gecko being able to jettison it's tail and grow another one.

So I think some sort of arrangement where all the stuff involving kids is in the morning and then all the tech stuff is done in the afternoon and I get to do those at home if it's possible to. I think that's a great idea. Wonder if the head will go for it?

That Interview in full / An introduction to me and UK comics....

I wasn't sure whether to post the Bugpowder interview with me that I recently mentioned but then realised that, since I see the blog as both a place for me to say, do and share things I like with you but also to put these same things somewhere I can find them again.

It also counts as an introduction for anyone wanting to talk to me about comics:

Passionate about Comics: A kind of Interview with Richard Bruton

Richard Bruton is an ex-comics retailer and lifelong comics fan. His reviews, posted at the Forbidden Planet International Blog and on his own blog, Fictions, are essential reading for anyone who loves comics. We asked him two questions and he responded with some comprehensive answers that actually worked better as one article/essay. Here it is:

I'm a 37-year-old comics fan brought up in Birmingham on a diet of Marvel UK, Herb Trimpe Hulk and weekly Spider-Man. But it all changed on a couple of fateful days; firstly finding a copy of Marvel Superheroes 388 and being introduced to Alan Moore and then there was the day I discovered Nostalgia & Comics in Birmingham and realised that comics could have shops [devoted to them] as well.

Fast forward a few years and I become a 16 year old comic fan who blags a job sorting out the basement at Nostalgia & Comics.

The job, unbeknownst to me, is going to last 19 years.

Possibly the longest Saturday job in the world.

Certainly the most enjoyable. Nostalgia & Comics is a great comics shop and over the years I've made many, many friends there.

As I get older my tastes in comics change and I get more and more involved in the running of the shop. The manager, Dave Hopkins had an attitude that, as long as we didn’t screw anything up, we were able to do almost anything we wanted to promote the comics we loved. It's a perfect approach really and fostered a great friendship that lasts to this day. It also meant he didn't bat an eye on the days where I'd decide to spend hours completely redesigning the shelf layout, or do bizarre new window displays or a host of other things.

With one of these big changes I deliberately set aside an area of the shop just for the comics I wanted to promote. This led to contacts with the burgeoning UK scene of the time (Paul Grist's Kane, Gary Spencer Millidge's Strangehaven, Nabiel Kanan's Exit and much more was out at this time in the UK, whilst it was the time of Strangers In Paradise, Bone, Vertigo, Sandman, Preacher et al in the US - a great time for the medium).

In time, just putting the good stuff on a shelf and selling the hell out of them wasn't enough and I started compiling a monthly reviews newsletter for the shop. I called it Propaganda and made one area of the shop into the Propaganda shelves.

I reluctantly left Nostalgia & Comics in 2006 when we moved up here to Yorkshire. But Nostalgia & Comics wouldn't leave me and I really found myself missing my regular contact, not just with comics, but with the friendship, camaraderie and involvement of being in the shop. Over time I started blogging about my time at Nostalgia & Comics over at my Fictions blog. (Nostalgia & Comics & Me posts - all 20 of 'em)

Well, this came to the attention of Kenny Penman, one of the directors of Forbidden Planet International (owners of Nostalgia & Comics since 1997). He asked if I wanted to start doing Propaganda reviews online at the FPI blog. I think initially we agreed that maybe one a week would be about right. That was February 2007. It's now October 2008 (NB: Bugpowder apologises for any delay in posting interviews;o) and there are 149 Propaganda posts on the blog. It's been a great learning curve doing this, and although I can still look at some of my reviews and wince at the writing, there’s hopefully enough good writing to outweigh the bad.

As well as my reviews I'd like to think that everyone out there realises by now that Forbidden planet International is not some horrible comic retail chain. The passion of people at FPI is comics, pure and simple. Just have a look at the webstore, with its large UK Small Press section. Or the stuff Joe Gordon highlights on the blog. Joe is the main blogger at FPI and over the years has shown tremendous support to the UK scene. Then there's Kenny Penman and Jim Hamilton, two of FPI's directors. Both with an incredible passion for comics. So much so in fact that they're more than prepared to put their money where their mouths are and have recently formed Blank Slate books with the express intention of developing a comics publisher in the UK with more in common with Fantagraphics, Drawn & Quarterly and Top Shelf than with Marvel, DC or 2000AD. I'm continually surprised that FPI often gets a sniffy response in the UK comics scene and hopefully between the FPI blog, the Propaganda reviews, Blank Slate and the sterling work of countless passionate staffers we're changing that perception. (I would point out here that Blank Slate is completely separate from FPI. Kenny & Jim are investing an awful lot of their own money into it and it's not connected to FPI in any way.)

Propaganda at the FPI blog is all about comics. I'll review anything I've read. From cutting edge bizarre stuff to the latest Batman to children's comics to small press. I set no boundaries on what I'll read and consequently, no boundaries on what I will review.

One great thing about doing the reviews has been getting back into the UK small press comics scene after many years out. I last looked at UK small press in a major way many, many years ago when Pete Ashton used to run Bug Powder as a small press distributor and I had a load of his stock on my shelves. Since then, one thing and another has meant I've lost touch. But following the 2007 Birmingham Comics Show I picked up a few books and loved them. Then a few more. And more and more. Helping this refresher course in UK small press has been the relationship with the London Underground gang. Every once in a while Oliver Lambden sends me a huge bag of books to look through and possibly review.

The important thing for anyone reading this to realise is that there's no way I can possibly keep up with all of the great UK comics being made. And because of this I keep putting out the call for any UK small pressers to get in touch and send me their work. If I like the work I'll review it, if I don't like it, I won't. It seems to me there's no point writing a nasty review of something from the small press. After putting your time and effort into making comics, the last thing you need is a nasty, critical review. The other thing about the small press review that we do on the FPI blog is that I'm certainly not trying to blag loads of free comics. In the small press world I'm well aware that margins are ridiculously tight. So I'm only borrowing your books; I send them back to you when I'm done so you can make money off them and make more. Seems the fairest way to do things to me.

The only other thing I'll say is that I'm still a bit of a luddite regarding webcomics. I hate reading on screen and it's very rare I'll review a webcomic because of this.

Hopefully it makes a difference. Possibly the nicest moment of the whole gig so far came at 2008's Birmingham show when Sean Azzopardi came up to me and told me that he'd had a sale just that morning directly from the review of Twelve Hour Shift I'd posted on the FPI blog. That was lovely. I'm hopeful that more of the reviews I do will translate directly into more sales for the folks I'm reviewing.

How to win in the anniversary memory stakes...

Every year, without fail my memory fails me over anniversaries. Specifically the wedding anniversary. Not that I have trouble remembering the date; after all the 13th of February is not a date you're likely to forget, especially when it was a Friday we were married on.

But this year I've won the annual anniversary prize. Because although I remember the date, I rarely remember the year. But last night I did. And even better, Louise got it wrong. Much crowing was done. In fact, it's something I think I'll be mentioning regularly over the coming year.

I've never been interviewed before..........

I've been interviewed by Matthew Badham over at the Bugpowder blog as part of a series on people in the UK comics scene. Quite shocked and very chuffed to be asked to be honest. Interview is here. Actually it's not really an interview, more a blog post / statement of intent about small press reviews and my background in the comics world.

The Bugpowder blog is essential reading for anyone interested in keeping up with the UK Small Press and self-published movement. And Matthew's picked an interesting selection of folks to talk to:

So far we have:

Francesca Cassavetti - she of the long titled comics including The Most Natural Thing In The World (review here).

Karrie Fransman - Author of My Peculiar World in The Guardian G2 section every Friday and talented mini-comics maker.

(My Peculiar World by Karrie Fransman)

Marc Ellerby - maker of fine comics and webcomics. We’ve talked of Mark often and reviewed him here.

Lizz Lunney - another fine purveyor of wonders. Review is here.

Rob Jackson - maker of some lovely comics as reviewed here.

Adam Cadwell - autobiographical comics wonderkind and guiding light of the Manchester Comix Collective. (Joe caught this one earlier)

(Cover to The Everyday Volume 2 by Adam Cadwell.)

Scott McCloud - 17 minute presentation on comics. And it's perfect.

Scott McCloud gave a 17 minute talk to the TED Conference in 2005 and they’ve just added it to an incredible archive of free videos. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment and Design, three aspects of life that McCloud is perfectly suited to talk on.

In the presentation he covers an awful lot of ground, much of it similar to his Understanding / Reinventing / Making Comics books but he does so in such a wonderfully spellbinding and skilful way.

Scott McCloud talk on TED. (via Pete)

Oh what a horrible week that was, tales of insomnia continued:

Well, not really insomnia. That's technically a problem getting to sleep. I have a problem getting to bed recently. Even more than usual my brain has decided to zombie out on me until very late and I'm finding myself up until 3am, sometimes 4am. Not good at all.
And then I find myself feeling like absolute crap at 6pm and have that horrible sick with tiredness feeling for a couple of hours. Yes, I know that this is not normal. Yes, I know I really should do something about it. Must try harder I suppose.

On top of that we're still having various problems with this bloody roof and the never-ending leaks. After having the builder tell us that he'd had to lay his men off and wasn't going to be able to help us (even though he's meant to under the NHBC guarantee because all the leaks are ones that we reported 18 months ago, during the initial 2 years of the house) we got in touch with the NHBC and they sent people out, who reported back, giving the builder 14 days each time to reply. Eventually it went out to the NHBC's external contractors who came and investigated and gave the builder 14 weeks to get in touch again.

At each stage we made it clear we thought it was stupid. Builder was never that good at communicating and after saying he definitely wasn't going to help, we somehow doubted he'd have a change of heart now.

Of course, eventually the contractor/investigator did hear from the builder who told them that he'd had to lay his men off and couldn't finish the works. Nearly 3 months for the contractor to find out what Louise had told them on the phone in the very first instance. So it's back to the NHBC and hopefully a date for them to come round and assess what work needs doing.

The thing that really gets me about this is that our twat of a builder is just playing the system. Now, as far as I understand it he's either a builder, operating under the NHBC standard or he isn't. But our idiot thinks he can just turn round and stop being a builder for a bit it seems. He likes to have the NHBC mark since it proves how good and professional he is.

Next time he does start trading I swear I'm finding out where he's building and I'm staging my own little demo with banners, sign, flyers and plenty of chanting.

Okay, rant over.

School was horrible for some of this week as well. It was the training days for the next stage of the Learning Platform training. Two days, mind-numbing. And at the back of it all was the realisation that it's going to involve so much bloody work. Even the best estimate says 4 hours admin time per week to get it set up over at least two years. That's going to work isn't it?

Apart from the Learning Platform my week, indeed my entire term is going to be involved in setting up and populating the new school website before we stop paying for the old on in April. It sounded so far away when we decided this last June. Not so bloody far away now though, oh no.

Okay, back to the other main thing that's keeping me up at night; reviews. You may remember me mentioning that I was going to try to reduce the amount of books to review on the reading shelf. Well, that hasn't really worked. So far this month I've managed a pitiful 6 reviews written and now have 30 things to review on the shelf. Ouch.

Back to work, back to work. Aiming for a 3am bedtime tonight, which would be better than the 4 or 5am I've managed so far. It's like zombie dawn around here at 7am when Molly tries to wake me. And then it's night of the living dead around 6pm when I crash completely. But I'm determined to change.
No really. Stop laughing at the back.

And the G&T just ran out...

Incredibly I've finished the big bottle of Gin that I got for my birthday. There was a time that the bottle would probably see me through to the next birthday.
Not anymore.
Oh dear.

Latest Andi Watson online comics ......

There’s a lovely new Andi Watson comic up at Tor.com: Great Uncle George’s Will. 15 pages of typically gorgeous Andi Watson. Go look everyone.

And a reminder that Andi’s Glister is getting it’s proper re-release from Walker Books in July. One to look forward to.

(tip o’ the hat to Jamie S Rich for pointing it out - he’s right though - Andi should really call mom and dad more often and tell them what he’s doing!)

DFC Friday - issue 33 out now

Friday mercifully came around again after a nasty old week (more on that some point later on providing I don't collapse from exhaustion). Which means it's time for a DFC review thing.

Issue 33. Cover star is Lazerus Lemming, back for another series. Good news, but not as good as seeing Crab Lane Crew back again. Counting the weeks till Jim Medway gets back into the comic.

This issue was pretty much as good as usual, but most of the faves from last week: Mirabilis, Mezolith, Frontier having slightly off weeks. Not that they were bad or anything, just that all three had very low key episodes after some crackers recently.

But Vern and Lettuce and Sausage & Carrots made up for it by being very good. Especially Simone Lia's Sausage & Carrots strip, which had Molly and I in fits of laughter after reading it:

Do you want to ask Alan Moore a question for an interview?

(Alan Moore and Pádraig Ó Méalóid on a recent jaunt out, pic from Pádraig's Flickr)

Joe at the FPI blog has some great news:

Pádraig Ó Méalóid is planning a follow up to his in-depth interview with Alan from last year (part one here, part two can be read here) ahead of the first part of Century, the third volume of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, being published by Knockabout and Top Shelf. There will be three books for Century covering three different periods, starting with 1910 and including gentleman thief Raffles and the eternal Orlando. And even better, readers have a chance to take part:

“In March, before the publication of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Century 1910, I’ll be doing another interview with Alan Moore, once again to appear on the FPI Blog. As well as talking to him about Century 1910 and other forthcoming work, he has agreed to a suggestion I made, which is that I should ask for questions from the general public."

So, if you do fancy asking Alan Moore anything (within reason - I'd steer clear of films if I were you) , either comment at the FPI blog post here, or send them to Padraig directly at pomealoid[at]yahoo[dot]com.

A is for apple, B is for bomb, C is for cavity search?

It's obviously never too early to teach the kids about the important things in life:



(via but sadly unavailable to buy on amazon right now)

I used to buy toy cars with my Christmas money ..... Molly gets her i-pod touch

Okay, not quite true. It was Christmas and Holy Communion money that paid for it. She's been after a new Ipod for a long time, having used an old ipod mini for a little while.

The orriginal plan was to get a Nano. But then cousin Helen came down just before christmas and showed Molly all the lovely things she could do with the Ipod Touch. A couple of application store games later and Molly is sold on the idea.

By the end of Christmas she'd saved enough in extra Christmas money and Grandma & Grandpa pocketmoney to pay for it. Then the pestering started. We gave in today and went and got it. It's shiny and lovely and I really want one, because Molly's only letting me use it to sync her music and apps and put the passwords in for the apps store.

Oh, it's been too long: new Blue Monday

No, not Blue Monday by New Order. Blue Monday by Chynna Clugston. Fantastically fun comic book series that's been missing from my life for far too long.



Go here for blog.
Go here for Oni Press Chynna books.

Cerebus diablog, 1 issue down, 299 to go.

Laura Hudson & Leigh Walton have just started their Cerebus diablog. They intend to read and write about every single issue of the 300 issue Cerebus series by Dave Sim, one issue per week. Which means they’re going to be going at this until sometime in 2014. A huge undertaking.They’re both coming at it fom a point of the new reader to Cerebus, neither of them having plowed through the 300 issues before.

But like all things of this nature, the impressive idea only works if the writing behind it is good. Luckily, based on the first post on issue 1, we’re on safe ground here. It’s well written and fascinating to read a fresh view on the character. Of course, right now they’re in the early bits. They’ve got the best bits of High Society, Church & State and Jaka’s Story to look forward to in 2009, 2010 and 2011. But then the going gets harder with the later issues. Good luck to them for that.

Cerebus diablog; one to bookmark.

Dredd Concept Art by Jock

As reported by IO9. Whether or not you think a new Dredd movie is a good idea or not, it’s still good to see they’ve got Jock on board doing the concept art for the movie. Jock is the superbly talented artist from Vertigo’s Losers & Hellblazer, DC’s Green Arrow Year One and much 2000AD work:

Personally I didn’t think that the original Dredd movie was as bad as it’s often made out to be. But then again, I was never passionately attached to 2000AD growing up so there wasn’t the feeling of them messing with something I held dear. And I know it’s very easy to get over-excited about concept art, but that is a very nice picture of ol’ Joe isn’t it?
(via Mark)

DFC Friday - Issue 32

Issue 32 of the weekly comic of choice at Bruton mansions: the DFC



A little bit scary on the cover - Molly certainly thought so. The cover feature is the return of Mezolith; a strip which I'd venture appeals a lot more to the older readers of the DFC. By which I mean older readers like me and all the other parents reading the comic. Mezolith is a cracking story, beautifully illustrated by Adam Brockbank (so beautifully illustrated that at the time of writing this his website is showing that bandwidth exceeded message - a sure sign of sudden interest). But it's the storytelling that really impresses me. Ben Haggarty is a performance storyteller, going through his comics and literally acting them out beforehand to give his artists the feel of what he's trying to do. His stories (Mezolith and the great Will Scoggin's Skull) are stories withing stories. A set up invariably leads to some character sitting down and telling a tale about some aspect of the stone age life of Mezolith. It works very, very well. Pacing is slow, but unnoticeably so and each story builds nicely towards the climax.

Unlike (and here I go again) John Blake by Phillip Pullman. Another week, another three pages of nothing. At one point in this weeks three pages the heroine thinks "Oh, Boy! I'm only ever going to get this story in bits and pieces!" Exactly my thinking. Unfortunately Pullman just doesn't do enough to make me care one bit about what's going on here and the glacial story has become an annoyance, taking up three pages that could easily be filled by something better. I feel rather sorry for John Aggs, the very talented artist of the strip. It's a waste to see great art on a plodding story.

Okay, onto the rest of the comic. Molly loved her usual stuff; Sausage & Carrots by Simone Lia, Vern & Lettuce by Sarah McIntyre

Quick aside; Sarah was kind enough to do a best of year over at the FPI blog - go look for some fantastic illustrations of her choices of which Monkey Journey To The West was one - kindly posed by Vern & Lettuce:



Fish Head Steve made a welcome return, with the ninja story tickling Molly's funny bone nicely - boy with cow on his head dressed in full ninja gear - that's funny.

But overall this issue was more for me than Molly, with the weighting of older strips greater than it's been for some time: Mezolith, John Blake, the wonderful Luther Arkwright meets Hellblazer stylings of Mirabilis and Frontier all made the comic a far older affair this time round.

But that's one of the things about the DFC; variety. Marvellous, wonderful variety. You can't like everything in there. But you're not meant to. It's still a great thing to have land on the mat every Friday, so go ahead and subscribe already.

Brendan McCarthy's Doom Patrol

Rich Johnston’s Lying In The Gutters this week had this little nugget of spectacular beauty for all of us. Back in the depths of time (1991), Brendan McCarthy and Grant Morrison got together to bring us issue 45 of the Doom Patrol, a comic that McCarthy had already done some initial character designs for:

Grant Morrison’s Doom Patrol was a wonderous, technicolour nightmare of a series, taking the concept of the world’s strangest heroes and really going wild. One of the many fun and interesting characters Morrison introduced was Danny The Street; the time-travelling, dimension-hopping, sentient, transvestite street that featured throughout Morrison’s marvellous run on this comic, still very possibly my favourite of any comic run. Issue 45 was marked out to be a special imaginary tale of Danny The Street, written by Morrison and drawn by McCarthy but sadly it never got beyond the script stage, tantalisingly covered in McCarthy’s character doodles. Such a shame.

Anyway, the scans of the script are here. And you should already be familiar with The Strangeness Of Brendan McCarthy.

Currently worming their way into my brain: Beyonce and Lily Allen....

Every so often a song will come along that really doesn't leave your brain for weeks. I find myself humming it at various points during the day and night and usually end up searching the radio or music channels for it. (Of course, in these days of quick downloads there is another way).



But it's rare for two such tunes to come along at the same time. But currently fighting for supremacy in my brain are Beyonce's Single Ladies and Lily Allen's The Fear. Both absolutely wonderful little slices of pop majesty. The Beyonce track has such a weird time signature all the way through and a great hook.

The Lily Allen song is equally good, more pop and straightforward than her last load of stuff to my ears. It's a standard Lily Allen structure though; talky, sweary verses and swooning, uplifting choruses. Really one to sing along to at volume.

Stephen Fry on language

Mr Fry does some marvellous podcasts. Some may go on a little too long perhaps and there are times I'd rather read his thoughts than listen to them. But the recent half hour podcast on Language is wonderful. And should you desire a written version on the subject - it is here.

Take this for example from the written version, as Mr Fry begins talking about his absolute joy of language and the pleasure in using it in all it's forms:

There are all kinds of pedants around with more time to read and imitate Lynne Truss and John Humphrys than to write poems, love-letters, novels and stories it seems. They whip out their Sharpies and take away and add apostrophes from public signs, shake their heads at prepositions which end sentences and mutter at split infinitives and misspellings, but do they bubble and froth and slobber and cream with joy at language? Do they ever let the tripping of the tips of their tongues against the tops of their teeth transport them to giddy euphoric bliss? Do they ever yoke impossible words together for the sound-sex of it? Do they use language to seduce, charm, excite, please, affirm and tickle those they talk to? Do they? I doubt it. They’re too farting busy sneering at a greengrocer’s less than perfect use of the apostrophe. Well sod them to Hades. They think they’re guardians of language. They’re no more guardians of language than the Kennel Club is the guardian of dogkind.

National treasure indeed.

January so far .....

Well, having spent the end of December planning what a productive January I would be having, I think no-one should be surprised to find out it hasn't really worked out that way. I've spent the start of the month feeling under the weather, bogged down with the same crappy cold thing I had over Christmas and suffering a bloody awful case of the January blues.

So instead of doing anything useful I spent the last couple of nights playing with the blog. Messing, breaking, putting it back together again, tinkering, changing completely, changing back, breaking it again and finally leaving it like you see before you now, with lots of little changes and a nice big new header. It's very probably not worth the trouble it took, but I like it anyway.

Things that make you go huh? Helen Killer.....

Saw this ad on CBR:



God help me, I had to find out.

Yes, it really is what I thought it was. Ladies & Gentlemen, the synoposis for Helen Killer #1:

1901, Helen Keller, with the aid of a fantastical device invented by her friend and mentor, Alexander Graham Bell, regains her sight and hearing as well as near super-human strength and agility. Helen is enlisted by the Secret Service to protect President William McKinley who has been targeted for assassination by Anarchists. As a deeper conspiracy to destroy America unfolds around her, Helen discovers that her new abilities come with a dark and terrifying price.

Yes, that's the Helen Keller. God bless comics for making me smile and continually proving that there really is no idea too dumb to be made into a comic. But the best came with a little investigating of the website. The tagline for this MySpace ad had me nearly falling off the chair. And we thought Will Eisner got a raw deal with the Spirit movie......

And Molly would love one of these.....

Made the mistake of showing Molly what Jim Medway was given for his Christmas present this year:



She wants one of her own now!

Back to school .......

Today I go back to school for a training day, before the children return tomorrow. I have no idea what the training day is. I do know that it doesn't involve me. Which means I can just get on with start of term stuff and get out early. Suits me.

But I always wonder about training days. To be honest I really can't remember a single one that I've been involved with that had any real point to it. I've been to training sessions that were useful, but in the majority of these cases the entire training; all of the information I needed to take away from the session could quite easily be sent in a couple of e-mails.

But the terrible cult of the trainer comes in at this point. I'm sure that there are some trainers out there who manage to have an entire day of training and energise their audience with new information and send them away desperate to try out these new things. But I haven't met them yet.

My Birthday T-shirt

Useful for those moments at the school gates when I have a complete blank and have lost my voice. A wonderful gift from a wonderful little girl. She was so very excited about my birthday. It's quite strange really, because usually I don't get excited at all about the annual plus one to the age. But ever since Molly's been old enough to grasp the idea of other people's birthdays it's been really joyous. She enjoys getting presents more of course, but she still really enjoys handing them out.

Year Plans for 2009 ....... and the back to school weekend.

As sometimes happens I was emailing a friend the other night (hi Dave) and suddenly realised some of the things I'd written were blog worthy. Recycling is good you see.

Well, the christmas tree is down and school starts on Monday. But all is good and the glass is half full again! That's the big change about being up here. I remember dreading going back to school after holidays when I was at Smiths Wood. The final weekend of the school holiday was always a down time. There was never any joy about going back to school at Smithhs Wood. It was just too hard to go back into that aggresive environment where the majority of the children were what most people would casually describe as the classic representation of an underclass. Smiths Wood was a horrible place. All of the worst aspects of a modern down at heel sink estate. And even wheen I worked at Lordswood Girls' School - one of the better secondary schools in Birmingham that wasn't a Grammar School - the dread of going back was real. But that was always about the management at the school. I must get around to writing more about that at some point. But not here.

Anyway, the back to school dread just doesn't exist up here. Of course, given the choice I'd rather spend time not working than working. But the job I have isn't all that bad. Of course, with the way ICT is going now I'm actually beginning to start talking about social media - blogging club may well start this year, I fancy setting up some of the pupils on things like twitter. Looking very exciting. Although it's going to be a bloody lot of hard work, it's something I'm looking forward to. Of course, before all that I actually have to transfer our old website over to a new website that I've got to build and structure.

As for the blog and the reviews I'm really trying to keep the number of things I'm doing to an acceptable level as it all rather got away from me last year. I've got 30 books on the shelf to review and once they're done I want to try to cut it back to 8 a month. 2 a week should be doable.

After that I really want to try flexing the writing a little and actually start pitching stuff at magazines. Of course, I've picked perhaps the worst time ever to try this. No bugger is selling work at the moment to mags. But I want to bloody try. Of course, this time next year when I'm looking back I may not have done a bloody thing, but who knows?

Doctor Who? Matt Smith? Doctor Who?

So that’s it then. The new 11th Doctor Who is Matt Smith.

All of the speculation, all of the hype. It’s now been replaced by cries of Who? Who is Who?

So congratulations to Steven Moffat for keeping it so quiet and spinning the speculation away from Matt Smith. Everyone was wrong. Rich Johnston called it for Matt Smith earlier today via twitter. But it does mean that his daughter doesn’t get new shoes for a while because Rich put a bet on Paterson Joseph.

Matt Smith is the youngest Doctor yet at 26 and his C.V. is hardly substantial, with his biggest part so far being Party Animals and The Ruby In The Smoke (with that strange Docotr Who synchronicity of sharing the screen with Billie Piper). And there’s this interview with Smith in the London Theatre Guide. And a piece on thisislondon.co.uk with an article entitled “That Face To Watch”. Oh how right that proved to me.

But I imagine the Internet will be awash with information about him in the next few months. The backlash will probably start with cries of “he’s too young” but this happens every single time the Doctor regenerates. The only way we’ll know for sure is when the 11th Doctor takes his place sometime in 2010. (Unless some of the wilder rumours about Tennant stepping down earlier than planned due to the back problem are true.)

Happy Birthday to me .....

Yep, 38 today.

God, I hope this year's better than last year. Although I feel it's possibly up to me to make it that way, since most of my bad year last year was of my own making. Or rather, my particularly bad reactions to bad events.

It's DFC Friday - issue 31 (okay, touch late)

The DFC # 31

Okay, so it arrived earlier this week due to the New Year's lack of postman, but I haven't managed to get around to posting it until now.

The cover: This is a weird side effect of making the comic subscription only. There is absolutely no way I can imagine this being the cover if it had to exist physically on shelves. It's a great cover, please don't misunderstand, but it's not a children's comic cover is it?

And whilst we're on it, the cover features Mirabilis. This is shaping up to be absolutely great. It goes a little wibbly wobbly jumping to and fro into fever dreams and flashbacks, but even with these, it still accomplishes more in the five pages this episode than the dire John Blake has done for weeks. Because with this issue I've completely given up on Pullman's John Blake. It's just too ponderous, too drawn out and too unbearably dull. It's the first strip that's completely failed for me. But given the number of strips in the DFC in these 31 issues, that's not a bad strike rate at all.

Other things: Molly as usual gravitated straight to Vern & Lettuce and Sausage & Carrots. But for the first time since I can't remember when there was no Crab Lane Crew for her. Come back soon Jim! However she has decided that Good Dog Bad Dog, Peach De Punch and Super Animal Adventure Squad are great replacements.



This issue also saw the first episode of Frontier, by Jason Cobley and Andrew Wildman. I used to know Jason when he popped into Nostalgia & Comics with his great Bulldog Adventure Comic. (FPI interview here) It's great to see him doing so well with the DFC and Classical Comics. But, after the double episode introduction of Mirabilis at Christmas, I can't help feeling that this could have done with the same. It's four pages are good and fun, but it's all over far too quickly to get anything more than a taste of the series. A double episode of any new adventure serial may be a good idea. Give the reader something substantial to start with. Just an idea.

Now, if you haven't already done so, toddle off to subscribe to the DFC. Make good children's comics one of your New Year resolutions.

And the new Doctor Who is ........

Ah, for that you'll have to wait until Saturday 3rd January at 5:35pm when it's going to be announced as part of the Doctor Who Confidential on BBC1. (BBC story)

But tomorrow may finally prove that you should always back Rich Johnston's predictions early at the bookies. He made his prediction for Paterson Joseph on October 13th:

"My last couple of Doctor Who leaks were fairly solid — Neil Gaiman to write 2010 “Doctor Who” and Tom Baker returning to the series proper in an unnamed role. Both have been bubbling under ever since. The next one is not so tied down. It’s still rather up in the air. But it’s quite a possibility.

The sixth series of “Doctor Who” (2011) will star Paterson Joseph as The Doctor.

Previously playing Roderick in the “Doctor Who” episodes “Bad Wolf”/”Parting Of Ways,” Joseph is known for fine upstanding and terribly-well-spoken-dontcha-know roles as Johnson in “Peep Show,” the Marquis De Carabas in “Neverwhere,” Space Marshall Clarke in “Hyperdrive,” Lyndon in “Green Wing”……and more importantly Benjamin in “Jekyll.” Written and produced by upcoming “Doctor” Who showrunner, Steven Moffat."

I imagine the odds would have been fantastic then, as opposed to todays 10-11 (bet £10 to win = £9 profit). I'll kick myself and promise to always listen early if Paterson Joseph is finally confirmed tomorrow.

Comics I am missing ....

Well, not missing as in "I really, really miss not reading these", more along the lines of missing out on knowing about what's going on. I've talked about this before but it's been brought into sharp focus by a few things I've been reading over the last couple of days. There was the Newsarama Blog piece on Marvel legacy heroes and the CBR 100 greatest comics of 2008 series (starts here).

I read both of them with mounting amazement over the number of things I've not picked up on. Whether it's who happens to be Captain America, the way that X-Force is now a completely covert killing squad run by Cyclops or Doc Strange being replaced next year after he uses dark magic.

When I used to work in Nostalgia & Comics I wouldn't read the comics, but I used to keep up to date with all that was going on in the world of comics with chats to staff and customers and just quickly flicking through the latest X book or Bat thing or even perusing Previews. But now, even with the entire Interwebby thing at my disposal I've got almost no clue what's going on. New Batman? Female Black Panther? Imagine my surprise.

Of course the CBR best of 2008 list does throw open the doors of incredulous debate. Any sort of best of list always does. For example, although I didn't actually get around to reading Jason Lutes' Berlin: City Of Smoke this year I really have problems imagining that there are 89 better comics published last year. And I have a real problem with imagining that Nova is a whole 17 places better than Berlin or that the hideous mess of All-Star Batman & Robin could be at #54. (Play along, pick your own ridiculous examples).

Of course, the problem isn't that the information about these stories isn't available, a quick check on a couple of blogs and wikipedia proved that all the info from recent Marvel and DC series is there for my perusal, it's that I really don't have the time or the immediate access to do the research. Picking it up casually in the shop was easy. Making time to find out about all the details in the latest Marvel, DC and other comics is far harder.

My favourite Christmas presents ....

Not even something that I got, this is the present I did for Louise this year from Molly. It was meant to be just one frame of collaged photos of Molly, but it rather got out of hand! But even though it cost a fortune and took ages, it's still my favourite thing of this Christmas.