Songs to thrill me: Lloyd Cole & The Commotions - Rattlesnakes

Part of a select few songs that instantly put a huge goofy smile across my face, Lloyd Cole & The Commotions' Rattlesnakes does it for the fantastic guitars, strings and incredibly uplifting melody, but mostly it does it for those first five lines of lyrics:

Jodie wears a hat although it hasn't rained for six days
She says a girl needs a gun these days
Hey on account of all the rattlesnakes

She looks like Eve Marie Saint in on the waterfront
She reads Simone de Beauvoir in her American circumstance

She's less than sure if her heart has come to stay in San Jose
And her neverborn child still haunts her
As she speeds down the freeway
As she tries her luck with the traffic police
Out of boredom more than spite
She never finds no trouble, she tries too hard
Shes obvious despite herself

She looks like Eve Marie Saint in on the waterfront
She says all she needs is therapy yeah
All you need is, love is all you need

Jodie never sleeps cause there are always needles in the hay
She says that a girl needs a gun these days
Hey on account of all the rattlesnakes

She looks like Eve Marie Saint in on the waterfront
As she reads Simone de Beauvoir in her American circumstance
Her heart, hearts like crazy paving
Upside down and back to front
She says ooh, its so hard to love
When love was your great disappointment

Beautiful.

Spot the odd one out ......

Spotted today on the FPI website advance listings right next to each other because they're all "The Art Of ...." books: Jaime Hernandez, Jim Balent and Harvey Kurtzman.



Two geniuses and one man whose idea of great sequential art is putting three butt shots in three separate panels.

Where The Wild Things Are

The idea of a live action movie of Maurice Sendak's Where The Wild Things Are seemed, at first, to be a completely wrong idea. Something so wonderful, so magical, so keyed in to my childhood couldn't possibly be made into a movie. Could it?



I've just watched the trailer from the forthcoming Dave Eggers written, Spike Jonze directed film. It looks amazing. There's a moment in the first few seconds when the mind tries to reject the images as silly and wrong, but then the emotion of the thing kicks in and I found myself going with it. One to watch out for.

Big Numbers #3 by Alan Moore - the find of the year?

Or maybe it's the find of the century so far?

Everyone thought this was lost forever. Big Numbers was the classic "lost" Alan Moore story. It was going to be 12 issues, 12" square, black and white with more and more colour as the series progressed. Published through Moore's own Mad Love company, issues one and two came out and then nothing more. Ever.

The incredibly complex story and the intricate detailing required put too many pressures on Bill Sienkievicz, who quit part way through issue 3. Mad Love went under due to the delay and the project passed to Kevin Eastman's Tundra. At the time Kevin was well used to throwing money by the millions at comic projects with dubious history and ever less likelihood of finishing - this was around the time they were delivering the merchandising money from the Teenage Mutant Ninjas Turtles in huge trucks.

Art duties fell to Sienkievicz's assistant Al Columbia who then either had a complete breakdown, a big strop or just lost interest depending on who you ask. The third issue was finished but never released. And allegedly the entire fourth issue was drawn by Al Columbia, but he destroyed it rather than have it see print and all that Kevin Eastman ever saw was a tiny scrap of a panel.

And that was it. Until now

Pádraig Ó Méalóid has now managed to get hold of a complete issue 3 photocopy. It looks genuine, and all concerned are convinced. An amazing find. But it really makes us wonder what on earth the whole thing would have been like. Such a missed opportunity. It would have been incredible. As Pádraig explains:

In January 2009 I bought an eBay item listed as BIG NUMBERS #1 & 2 + RARE UNPUBLISHED XEROX Alan Moore, which had this as the item information:

The REAL draw here for Alan Moore completists is a set of black-and-white Xeroxes of the unpublished THIRD issue of BIG NUMBERS, with art by Al Columbia, Sinkiewicz's assistant, who had been scheduled to take over the project. These might possibly be first-generation copies; more likely, they are second- or third-generation, but the art is very crisp and clear, and the story is easily read. This is a MUST for Moore fans.

I decided that it was at least worth investigating ... I honestly didn't believe that I had that easily bought a copy of something that, to the best of my knowledge, simply didn't exist. But this is exactly what it is. In any case, everything I know leads me to believe that this is a copy of the unpublished third issue of Big Numbers, and I genuinely didn't believe it existed, and certainly never expected to actually see a copy, led alone own one. Even Alan Moore doesn't have a copy, to the very best of my knowledge, which in this case is considerable, as I decided to specifically ask his permission before I posted this here. He is happy for it to be made available to the world, so here it is.

Explaination and low res on Live Journal.
The high resolution version on Flickr.

And, like all good stories, this one has a kicker. Eddie Campbell has posted up his take on the find at his blog. Complete with this section that just floored me:

Another thing I remembered, and I don't think I ever mentioned it to Alan, but I always felt a certain resentment that Billy the Sink got Big Numbers and blew it while i was stuck drawing Jack the bloody Ripper for ten years (I once described it as a penny dreadful that costs thirty five bucks).

I stand by my opinion that Big Numbers was the superior idea and would have been Alan's masterpiece. Of course it is also true that Sinkiewicz is a world class illustrator and there's no way I could have done a job that complicated in 1992.

I could have taken a crack at it later (post-Birth Caul/Snakes and Ladders), and offered, but Alan wasn't up for that.

That's right: Eddie offered to finish the bloody thing. Christ. That would have been great. Part of me loves the idea of it being finished. But I do take Eddie's point of it being very much a snapshot of it's time and publishing it now would either require a huge rejig (that Moore just isn't going to do) or treat it purely as a period piece.

Play Barns, Different clientele to a Wacky Warehouse but many of the same problems. Richard goes off on one again.

We don't really go into wacky Warehouses any more; there just aren't that many around us. We still go to wacky warehouse type places, it's just that the ones we do go to are a little better than wacky warehouses in inner city Birmingham. (And yes, that is meant to be as snobby as it sounds.)

One problem you do get, particularly when it's just me sat here on my own with nothing to do but read, write and listen to other people talking is an awareness of how unbelievably ignorant some folks are, especially the ridiculously chattering middle class types. The woman next to me has just been spouting some bollocks about training to become a primary teacher, but she's determined to just do juniors, and only teach subjects like History and Geography that she's interested in. Because that's how Primary teaching works isn't it?

The table next to us is indicative of the sorts of people we get at these middle class Wacky Warehouses. Invariably it's some group of Moms who have nothing to do with their lives and live from day to day dropping the kids off at school and working out who's house they're having coffee at before their weight-watchers meeting in the afternoon. It's a life of intense drudgery but they will defend it until they're blue in the face. In fact I even heard one Mom point out that she was really annoyed at her husband, home between contracts last month, who dared to question the intensely difficult job of being a stay at home mom. She was incredulous about it. But is being a stay at home mom, dropping the kids off at school, doing cleaning, shopping and cooking really as hard as the job done by Louise or Me for example - we both work jobs and do all that stuff as extras when we can. Surely we have a harder job? But she'll never see it.

Worse still, every word that comes out of their mouths is purely concerned with themselves or their kids. And it's always positive, always self-centered. It's the never ending determination that they are right, their lives are so bloody important and their kids are the most wonderful, angelic, perfect little things in the world. We decided very early on that our child, although lovely, although wonderful, although perpetually interesting and delightful would still be subject to the same rigours we apply to everything else in the world. So she's decidely not perfect. And it's so much better that way.

So the play barn experience may be different from the Wacky Warehouse experience, but only by degrees. The parents may earn more, drink less (whilst they're in the play barn at least), have less facial tattooing and drive a better car, but the fundamental problems are still there, they just exhibit themselves in different ways. Instead of the parents getting drunk and ignoring their children at the WW, in the play barn the middle class moms are so busy talking amongst themselves - usually about how wonderful their children are and how they're thriving in their French / Ballet / Clarinet / Horse Riding / Skiing / insert ridiculous club and/or activity here - that they fail to notice their little diddums causing havoc,, upset and inflicting pain upon some little one three years younger than they are.

But try to point it out to them - go on, try. It's like you've accused one of them of abusing children.

Because every time I go to these sorts of things there's always at least one event every hour where some little kid runs screaming from the ball pool because one of these middle class, over-indulged children has decided that they're going to jump on top of the smaller child without waiting for the smaller one to get out of the way. Why? Because they've never actually been taught the value of waiting, of considering others, of actually following a few simple rules. Hence the reason that said group of women have 6 boys between them who've just run past screaming into the ball pit designed for under 3s without a care in the world, ignoring the shocked, surprised little ones already in there. And the mom's reaction? Didn't even notice. They're actually so used to their children's bad behaviour that they find it much more convenient to ignore it than actually face up to the fact that they're not that good at this parenting lark.

(Yes, we went to a play barn today. Yes, I had a good time. Yes, I could have cheerfully said a lot of this to many people in there. And no, I didn't say it. Because it would be a pointless exercise.)

The DFC spirit continues: Super Comics Adventure Squad

A little good DFC news in amongst all the gloom with the final issue coming out earlier. A group of the writers and artists who worked on the comic have put together a blog:

This from Garen Ewing, one of a number of creators who've got work done that was meant to appear, but sadly won't be seen in the pages of the DFC:

The DFC is dead... long live The DFC!

Actually, no... The DFC isn't dead. David Fickling and his inspiring team brought into this world something new and exciting, something that is just too good to disappear back into the ether. So until it finds its place again, the creators who found a home under the covers of The DFC (both published and nearly published) have come together under the guise of the Super Comics Adventure Squad!

Despite the Economic Woe, it is still an exciting time for the medium of comics and this blog will act as a hub for some of the best in British graphic storytelling talent, a place where you can keep up with what they're doing, all in one place, and where they will post
news, events, sketches and comics, with links back to their own websites where you can see and learn more.

There is already a small archive of posts to view, written over the past week as we got ready to go live, including, for instance, some of theconcepts that nearly became DFC strips (and may yet find an outlet somewhere else).

In the meantime, thank you for visiting, and please spread the word and drop in as often as you like - who knows what other exciting stuff will emerge from this little collective?

So there you go: Super Comics Adventure Squad. No substitute for the comic perhaps, but it may soften the loss a little.

On a related note, the DFC website has gone, but it has been replaced with a page with links to the concluding parts of several stories from the comic. (But, much to Molly’s disappointment, no mention of Crab Lane Crew. Jim? Jim? What do you plan Jim?)

More birthday thoughts....

It was the third birthday of the blog yesterday and originally I had put this up then, but writing about the final DFC rather took over yesterday so I thought it best to move it.

Just looking through the first few weeks of doing this, it's amazing how horrible some of the writing is (and for all I know it hasn't really improved that much in the time since). But what I am proud of is how quickly this post on Wacky Warehouses appeared. In fact, here it is again - think of it as a birthday present:

Wacky Warehouses and the like........

God I hate them. On the plus side they're lovely for Molly and I can get a cup of coffee and a sit down. But the shit you have to put up with.....

If you didn't want children maybe you should have taken a little more care with contraception? Moronic parents with a pint in one hand and their mobiles glued to their ears whilst their 8 offspring wander around the wacky hitting my child. But heaven forbid the parent who points this out. The little chav devils can do no wrong in their chav parents eyes.

Of course, I say Chav parents, what I should have said was chav parent. Singular. Seemingly always singular. Which is not to say I have anything against single moms. But experience and observation lets me make some hideously sweeping generalisations about this.

Take, for example, the single mom in front of me. I'm assuming she's a single mom of course. But she's with a bloke and her child keeps calling her mom and him dave so it's either step dad or boyfriend or she's picked a really dumb place to have an affair.
Her: Chav, horrible, cheap chocolate brown velour tracksuit, hair pulled harshly back onto scalp, designer label clothes and shoes, two mobiles on the go constantly.
Him: short, shaven headed and having that vaguely threatening manner of a football hooligan in waiting. The sloping brow, the dull, lifeless eyes and the slightly disbelieving looks at anyone who flaunts their ability to read. Of course, the deciding factor is the crap birmingham city chain round his fat, corpulent neck.
Why do single moms always seem to go for this sort of bloke? Why do they always cling onto them in public, mauling each other with the same level of passion your laborador uses to greet you. Of course, after a little while this passion will transmute into violence and they'll spend hours wasting police and hospital time.

And possibly worse are the Harbourne mums and dads.
You all know the sort..... just insert your own area (West Bridgford mums for Nottingham I hear)
Middle class or at least want to be, organic/ free-range / hand-reared bioyoghurt, alternative remedies, packed lunches of celery sticks and carrot puree, french at 6 months, violin appreciation classes from birth, that sort of thing.

Just go down to the Botanical Gardens and observe the playground, it's all liberal attitudes and swirly chiffon skirts and desperately trying to outdo every other Harbourne mom there by signing your child up for Mongolian Yak farming courses or whatever is in-vogue that week.

They seem to find it impossible to discipline their children. At least the bloody chavs can't be arsed. Harbourne mums are worse, they've made a conscious decision to neglect this rather important aspect of parenting.......

"Little tarquin doesn't mean to kick everything he sees and run around shouting like a monkey on acid, it's just his nature."
Absolutely, his nature is to be an arrogant and aggressive fuckwit, just like his dad and an ignorant, pompous harpy like mommy.

And at least Chav kids are only running around MacDonalds causing havoc, Harbourne mom's little angels run around the restaurants I eat in.
And that really wont do.

Final DFC. Sad day.

(Click on the pics for bigger Flickr versions)

It came through the door a few minutes ago. Lovely, bittersweet cover.

I haven't read it yet, only flicked through it. To be honest I've cheated somewhat and opened it before Molly. Have to glue down the envelope again when I'm finished here so Molly can open it herself when she's home from school.


(Click on the pics for bigger Flickr versions)

There's a lot of very sweet moments throughout the entire comic, with many of the creators saying their goodbyes and thank-yous. And best of all, Molly gets a name check from Jim Medway at the back! (Unless it's another Molly that is. Doubt it though. And we'll certainly tell Molly it's her!)



(Thanks to Jim Medway for the mention. And thanks to all of the creators who've emailed to say thanks to Molly for her work on promoting the DFC)

Friday just wont be the same anymore. Sad, sad day.

Thoughts On The DFC

Well, it's finished. DFC Issue 43 arrives today.

I've put some thoughts together about it over at the FPI blog here and here. But thought it might be nice to have the text here as well:

Today is the final day that we, and many other households (although sadly, not enough) will see the last DFC from Random House dropping through the letter box.

Molly and I have been subscribers from the start and we’ve written about it here on the FPI blog previously. (Here, Molly’s interview here, here, here, here, here, here). We even did a big spot just a few months ago for the six month anniversary here on the FPI blog and I was already thinking about what we were going to put together to celebrate the first year of publication. But that’s not going to happen now. The DFC finishes today.

Molly and I are obviously really sad to see it go, since it’s introduced us to many, many great strips and many, many great writers and artists. It’s definitely succeded in making Molly a proper comics fan for which I thank it. Before the DFC she was, like many children I’d imagine, rather more interested in what piece of plastic crap was attached to the front of the comic or magazine, but the DFC changed that. With it’s unique marketing point of being a proper comic for children, concentrating on story and art and entertainment and fun, no ads, no toys, just great comics, it was a valiant attempt to do something different, something better.

I’d struggled for many years to find something Molly could read, something she’d look forward to getting every week. We’d tried the Beano and the Simpsons, but neither of them lasted. Sure, she knows that she can get graphic novels when she wants and she certainly enjoyed her experiences of reading Owly, Simpsons, Calvin & Hobbes and the rest, but I still wanted her to experience the thrill of a weekly comic.

(DFC Issue 1, 30th May 2008)

So when the DFC came along it seemed as near perfect as it could be. We soon settled into a pattern. Friday afternoons she’d come in from school, release the comic from it’s distinctive yellow and red envelope and settle down to read. Once she’d finished it, I’;d get chance to read it as well. We’d talk about what we liked and what didn’t do it for us. Over the weeks Molly decided that she far preferred the shorter comedy strips and developed three great favourites; Sarah McIntyre’s Vern And lettuce (review), Simone Lia’s Sausage & Carrots (review) and Jim Medway’s Crab Lane Crew (review). I could see what she saw in Vern And Lettuce; a gorgeously drawn, sumptuously coloured gentle adventure comedy strip. I could see the fun in the three panel Sausage & Carrots. But I didn’t get Crab Lane Crew at first. Not until she sat me down and explained that it was great because it was just a group of kids doing kid’s stuff together. Then I got it, and it became one of my faves as well.

(Crab Lane Crew by Jim Medway, a Bruton family favourite.)

Of course, like any comic with a number of different strips there were bound to be hits and misses, but overall the ratio of stuff we liked to stuff we didn’t was impressively high.

Personally I think that the DFC just suffered from incredibly bad timing. It’s business model of selling to subscribers only was either clever, a matter of necessity or completely foolhardy, depending on who you ask. I thought it was a good idea, although of course I had my reservations and fears about how sustainable the model was. Sadly for David Fickling and his team, it seems that they picked a really bad time to try this grand experiment in children’s comics. As far as I know the subscriber base has been building steadily since the launch. Numbers were going up, but they were rising very, very slowly. This was always going to be the problem with the subscriber only model. There’s no opportunity for children to get hold of the comic, as very few of them actually have the required credit card to make the subscription. The pester power factor was missing. In return though they did have a fighting chance. With no expensive, even crippling, distributor cut, no sale or return problem and the backing of a major publisher they seemed to be doing very well indeed. And then the financial world imploded and everything changed.

(Vern & Lettuce by Sarah McIntyre, another Bruton family fave)

When Random House pulled the plug on the comic there were quite a few voices of complaint, looking to blame the big company for the demise of the DFC. But I don’t go along with that. The amount of money that Random House has put into this product is astronomical, maybe 1/2 million quid or so. I’d like to be optimistic about it and think that, but for the immediate necessity to trim back the company to survive the current terrible financial climate, Random House would have played the DFC as a long game, building it slowly, confident that the comic and it’s subsequent spin-off graphic novels and collections would make money.

But it’s not to be. The DFC, a marvellous comic, a grand experiment, a great introduction to some fine comics and best of all; a lovely experience for parents and children to share in a love of reading, is gone. I’d like to say thank you from Molly and me for all of the enjoyment it’s given us. I’d like to wish the creators all the best in the future. It’s been a wonderful 43 issues.

Happy Birthday to Fictions - 3 today

Happy birthday to blog. Three years doing this. Gosh. Seeing as I'd never managed to keep a diary beyond the second week of January before that's rather impressive really.

First post: here. Comics, moaning about comics and a pilgrimage to visit Mrs Thatcher's grave when she eventually does the decent thing. (Having her go mad was entertaining enough, but it's boring now. Would like her to get on with it please.) So that was obsessing about comics and ranting from the start.

Promethea Absolute - One for the want list ... or maybe not.

Over on his blog JH Williams puts up the cover image to the upcoming Promethea Absolute edition.

Now, I've tended to shy away from those huge hardback slabs of comics - with the sheer size of the things making it difficult to actually read the things comfortably. But of all the Absolutes so far, this is the one that might make me change my mind, since JH Williams' art seemed perfectly suited to the vast ideas that Alan Moore put into every issue. Very early on in Promethea they practically gave up on the idea of a standard page layout and Williams' art just got better and better.

Nope, scratch that. Just looked over on the FPI bog here and found out it's just the first of three volumes. Don't know why I hadn't figured that out already, but now I see it's going to cost me at least £150 I'm not quite so excited about it.

Bloody hell - a good day......

Good day at school. Everything went well. No annoyances from shitty software. Lovely day with all the Foundation pupils in the ICT suite. That great joy they have of experiencing something new. Tuesday's are always a tiring day, looking after the little ones and keeping them amused all day is knackering but so much fun. At one point I ended up wearing a piece of A4 paper selotaped to my back with some lines drawn on - it was a superhero cape one of the kids had made for me. That's why Tuesday's are great.

Then got home and started the job of installing the new Home Hub that BT had shipped to me as an upgrade. They phoned up a few weeks ago and offered me a broadband price reduction and a new Hub. Now I know a lot of people have a real problem with BT and their broadband service. But I can honestly say I've never had a problem with them (yet).

But as with any sort of upgrade there's always that problem of replacing stuff what works with new stuff. So I'm a touch wary of potentially screwing up my entire Internet setup. But I shouldn't have worried. Unplugged the old one, plugged in the new one, blue lights came on, stuck the cd in and set it up in 10 minutes. Bloody great. Stuff that works exactly way it's meant to. Amazing.



(The full-on Bruton Mansions multimedia experience; Coffee, Blog, iPlayer)

And now I'm sat upstairs typing this out, answering e-mails and getting stuff done before the Battlestar Galactica fest later on tonight.

I've got the eepc sat in front of me and the iPlayer on. Have watched last weeks QI. Now onto Dave Gorman's Genius - like I thought, so far it's really good, but not as good as the radio version. After that I reckon I've just about got time to catch up with the Stewart Lee show I missed last night.

Perfect Day. Near enough.

(& yes, I realise that talking about how great the Internet setup is means that it's very likely to go hideously wrong any time now.)

A wasted day ... why government organisations shouldn't produce software. Ever.

The day went well today at school. Up until the point I was asked to do something with a dvd that the dfes had produced on dyslexia. Then it all went downhill fast. The dvd itself is the worst resource I've ever seen. Complicated beyond belief and completely impossible to navigate in any meaningful way. It looks very pretty. But functionality got lost somewhere in the design process. Talking to various people who went on the original course on this, they have nothing good to say about it at all. Even the people delivering the training spent more time apologising about the crapness of the dvd.

The only way we can even use the dvd is to just treat it as a very simple resoource and guide the staff through it without letting them go off on their own and get impossibly lost. Even then it's going to take me sitting down and spending hours making a spreadsheet for them to fill in as they go. My rage at the moron who designed this cd just grew and grew as I realised there was no way we were going to be able to get this rubbish ready for a training session on Wednesday. Thankfully the head was willing to change the training session to next term.

The bad news is that the morons who brought us the Dyslexia dvd are coming out with a dvd on Autism. And that's going to be on a training course as well. The temptation to start trying to find the person writing these awful dvds is great. I could probably track him down and, in these financially troubled times, be able to hire a hitman for about £8.50. After the afternoon I had, it's very tempting.

We trail our April Fools Gags now?

It seems we do.
Unless you really think Ikea is introducing an environmentally friendly car on 1st April:



The Internet. Somewhere to avoid on April 1st.

Oli Smith's Grumpy Days With Sean & Oli

Oli Smith and Sean Azzopardi, the loveliest couple in British Comics are the stars of the new webcomic by Oli Smith called Grumpy Days with Sean & Oli. You can find it over at Oli's new website. It's funny.

A day of stupid big sci-fi movies and folks on ice

Strange kind of Mother's Day over here. After a morning spent opening her presents, we've spent a lovely day, went out for a walk around Pocklington and ended up spending the afternoon watching one of Louise's presents.

She's always had a real love for big, stupid sci-fi. Armageddon, Terminator; that sort of thing. Hates some of my favourite sci-fi. Doesn't like 2001, not too keen on Close Encounters. But today we spent the afternoon watching Independence Day. Yes, that big, stupid clunky bit of sci-fi with the really stupid ending. And we had a fab old time doing so.

Next up, Molly & Louise have got three hours of Dancing on Ice to watch. It's the final it seems. They're both very excited about it. I'll be upstairs. But they'll have a great time.

Happy Mother's Day

Molly and I have been busy baking and making stuff and getting cards and presents ready. Tomorrow we expect to be woken very early for the Mother's Day unwrapping. This was the message Molly left for Louise on her board:



Very sweet.

Calvin & Hobbes bootlegs .....

Seems that loads of these things have been cropping up over the Internet for the last few weeks. Presented here for your entertainment and a possible giggle.

This one’s sweet and it works:

(Via Wim and done by this guy.)

This one’s sweet enough as well:

(Line art by Nami, finished colour version by Sora)

And this is an oldie, but much loved (via):

Whereas this is just wrong. (Don’t worry, safe for work, just disliked it so much I couldn’t bring myself to putting the image up).

Save The DFC

This is interesting - a new blog has surfaced that's talking about saving the DFC with a subscriber buyout. Could it work?

From the Save The DFC blog:

Random House are looking to sell the title, and whilst the idea of a single wealthy benefactor coming to the rescue sounds great, it also sounds improbable in the current climate.... although with interest rates close to zero and the stock market tanking, you never know...

In any case, it seems unlikely that Random House is actively seeking a buyer.

A great alternative might be to galvanise the subscriber base of the DFC to get as many people as possible to know about it and, if they are interested, get them to pledge a small sum towards an eventual 'subscriber buy-out'.

More on this as it develops no doubt.

DFC - The second to last issue

Another week, another lovely DFC through the door. Sadly, this is the second to last issue. And although they said they'd have some news about where to go for more information on the DFC characters and possible places they're going to finish, there's nothing this week, but there is a message on the inside back cover saying we'll have news next week.

The cover this week is absolutely lovely; Woodrow Phoenix gives us the front and the back of Donny Digits and his brother. The strip is a big hit here, with Phoenix's artwork just so lovely and fresh.

Gary Northfield's Little Cutie is a cracking tale of duck revenge. Julian Hanshaw's Chicken Caesar Jnr is funny again. And of course, there's Jim Medway's Crab Lane Crew; the very first thing Molly looked for and read. We're going to miss them all.

Alan Moore doing stand up?

The Guardian had a nice piece about Alan Moore the other day that I forgot to link to.

Rather acted as an antidote to this piece of really bloody awful journalism in the Mail (I know, I know; The Mail and really crappy journalism - who'd have thought eh?)

And I also received an email that I thought I'd share with you, a little tale of Alan Moore as told by Paul Rainey, who kindly gave permission to reprint it here:

"My friend works with the son of a guy who knows Alan Moore and told me about an evening they were organising to raise money for Romanian orphans. So us and two other friends got tickets and went along.
The evening began with a folk-type band but once they finished it was all mainly Moore's event. He started with about 30 minutes of stand up. He was actually very funny. After, he recited a poem, did a Q & A (featuring some insider Michael Jackson/Simpsons insider knowledge that may or may not be true) and sang with two bands (one being old guys he had performed with 30 years ago and the other being made up of young upstarts).

It was an unexpected but enjoyable evening that, clearly, he had put some effort into. Anyway, I learned one of the important ingredients to his success which is not arrogance but unshakable faith in whatever creative thing it is he is doing."

Paul went on to say, in a follow up e-mail:

"From my POV, the important point is that this idiotic piece appeared in the Mail not even two days after he had helped to raise thousands of pounds for these kids with A.I.D.S.. Here's a quote from the night's organisers - " An absolutely brilliant night, thanks to everyone for their support and help in making it all go so well. We raised £1337, which is being matched by an anonymous angel, plus we hope to get £750 from Barclaycard's charity section, making £3424 in all."

Event Facebook, webpage.
Love Light Romania Charity.

Hardly the grumpy old man the Mail were trying to portray, don't you think?

Batman & Robin. Morrison & Quitely are in

Or maybe more importantly: Miller out. Miller out. Miller out.

I have no idea what's happening with the All-Star Batman & Robin The Boy Wonder series that Frank Miller and Jim Lee were doing. Personally I thought it was hideously bad stuff - review here. The review ended with:

You read it. And something inside just dies as you realise that Frank Miller just lost any semblance of being the writer you once thought was up there with Alan Moore.
There are so many things wrong with All Star Batman & Robin, The Boy Wonder that it's almost impossible to list them all.
It's vicious, nasty and just plain awful. I'm done with Frank Miller.

And that's why I neither know nor care what's going on with Miller's Batman. But recently there has been some good news. First Neil Gaiman gets to do a special two-parter Whatever Happened To The Caped Crusader (sat on the shelf right now and i'll read it as soon as I get a moment). But more importantly we have this:



Batman & Robin #1.
Coming in June from Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely.

This is the team that was responsible for the wonderful All-Star Superman that was everything you wanted for a Superman story. (Review). So hopes are high for this one, even if it looks like Quitely will only be doing art for issues 1-3 & 9-12 of the 12 issue series.

Meanwhile, Morrison discusses the book with IGN here:
'Batman and Robin', which opens with the 3-part 'Batman Reborn' arc, is maybe more poppy, and more colourful, but it's also creepier. It's like David Lynch doing the Batman TV show. The story arcs are 4 short 3-part 'events', which combine to tell a longer, 12 part mystery.

Builder living in his own little builder world.....

He looked at me completely seriously yesterday and told me he'd probably be finished by the weekend. Maybe I should have asked him which weekend?

Because I very much doubt it's going to be this one. It's Thursday. He's got to finish the replacement of the drip trays and flashing on the road side. He's got to dismantle the scaffold, re-erect it behind the house, work out why the hell the roof is leaking that way. And then he's got to get onto the main roof and fix the gas flue.

So I think we'll have the grown up climbing frame for a little while longer. And the builder. And the mess. And the leak. In fact I think I'll only acknowledge that we don't have the leak anymore when we've had at least a months worth of heavy rain and a completely dry attic.

Hello Builder, my old friend ....

The saga of the builder continues. Years ago now, we had a leak on the roof. Builder (eventually) got it fixed. Except it wasn't. So he fixed it again. Except he didn't. Thus began a pattern of trouble and frustration that's now been going on for two years. It all finally came to a head a while back when builder said he wasn't going to do any more because he'd had to lay his men off. We got the NHBC involved and before Christmas they finally give him his very last chance. Then they gave him another. And another. And another. You get the idea.

And still the rain came down. And the towels became a permanent addition to the insulation in the attic, only being taken out for a quick visit to the tumble-dryer, like prisoners on day release to some bizarre funfair.

Finally, no, really finally. No honestly. The NHBC get it together and he finally decides to do something about it. Which is why I was working from home today. Builder arrived at 9am. By midday they'd moved some bricks, cement and sand into the garage and set up the scaffolding on the driveway. They'd also had a couple of cups of tea and buggered off twice to get whatever it is builders get when they bugger off.

The work this week is three fold. Part one is drilling out a line of brickwork and reinstalling the driptrays (this time in the right place). Part two is looking under the tiles on the back roof to work out where that leak's coming from. Part three is sealing the gas fire flue vent in the main roof. All three get done and the leaks stop. In theory. But I've heard that before. Many times before. I'll only actually believe it's finally finished and fixed when the first really bad lot of rain doesn't end up in the house. Then I may start relaxing when the rain starts.

Okay, back to the builder. At 12:09pm the drilling started. No warning. Just heart attack inducing suddeness. I'm sat at the computer working on the school website and suddenly my heart tries to jump out of my throat as this horrible noisee goes through every wall in the house.

Luckily I didn't have to suffer it for long. 12:25pm. Lunch. Builder naffs off, gets chips, reads paper and sits in the car.
1:30pm. Work starts again. Heart nearly stops again.
3:30pm. I fetch Molly from school. Builder takes this as sign that working day is over.
4:00pm. Builder leaves. Having replaced 6 whole bricks on roof line. 6. I counted them.

Hopefully tomorrow he'll be a little faster of the mark and maybe get into double figures.

Happy St Patricks Day - Feck Off

Art by Declan Shalvey from the new Eclectic Micks blog of Irish artists. And what's more Irish than a drunk priest with a shamrock. Now to go and find that Father Ted marathon that must be on TV somewhere today.

Great service miracle - the Nintendo service centre

Molly's DS went wrong a while back. The touch screen just wouldn't calibrate and we needed it repairing. Friends of ours told us about the Nintendo Service Centre and how good it was.

We registered, got the freepost returns label and sent the DS off. Always a little worrying, sending something valuable through the post, but I shouldn't have worried. The website tracked the package, updated us when it was received, when it was repaired, when it was shipped out. And the postman dropped it off this morning. All fixed, no cost

A modern miracle; absolutely wonderful service. Thanks Nintendo.

Alan Moore on QI, well there's an idea.....

PJ Holden suggested it first on twitter, but it's a great idea; Alan Moore On QI.

Everyone send their #alanmooreonQI tweet to Stephen Fry.

Reasons to hate the Daily Mail # 8154644973

This.

I shouldn't really be surprised when I see that, yet again, the Mail has decided to go for it's own brand of pointless, idiotic, crappily written and badly researched journalism.

But it's Alan Moore. When you try and explain him to people who don't read comics you generally have to lead with the terms genius, eccentric, brilliant writer, great bloke, wizard (repeat the eccentric part here perhaps). But you always try to emphasise the general decency and genius-ness of the man.

The Daily Mail comes along and basically tries to imply he's some sort of penniless weirdo who dares to think he's above taking money that Hollywood has offered him. I know I should expect no more. But just occasionally I'd like to be surprised by them. But I'm not holding my breath.

Crikey, busy weekend

Sat here, 3 minutes or so to midnight on Sunday night. Busy weekend just finished.

We had friends down on Saturday, so a day of kids and parks (and me doing work) followed by a night of chinese and pub and drinks in the kitchen. Strangely enough they are our kitchen friends. I have no idea why, but whenever they come up, we always spend the night in the kitchen around the table getting drunk.
Other friends, we let in the lounge.

Today, it was Trampolining competition number 2. Molly did okay, bouncing well. We had a hair bobble incident as well, the coach decided she did have enough hair to tie back (which is the club rule) and took it upon herself to scrape back Molly's hair and do an enforced ponytail.
Molly. Not. Very. Happpy. At. All.

After that it was a chilled Sunday of rest, relaxation (for Louise and Molly) and work (me - how did you guess?). Got website stuff done early and then actually got a review done of Scott McClouds Zot finished. And I'm most of the way through a review of the beautiful Neil Gaiman, Charles Vess Blueberry Girl book.

All in all, very good weekend.
Goodnight.

DFC 41 - This is the beginning of the end .....

Underneath this great Lil' Cutie cover by Gary Northfield comes this....

Dear DFC Reader.... We really don't want to spoil your enjoyment of this brilliant new issue, but we have some important and very sad news to share with you...... The DFC is going to have to close in two weeks time - so your issue 43 will be the final DFC in print. We're really sorry to have to stop so suddenly and that your stories will be interrupted. But we haven't been able to find the funding to cover the costs of creating more comics. We will be making sure that you get to find out what happens next in all the stories - look out for more information about that next week.....

That's the way the message starts on the inside front cover of this weeks DFC. All the subscribe buttons have gone from the website. This seems to mean that no buyer has been found and this wonderful attempt at something great has failed.

I'm betting that they'll keep the website going for the time being and maybe use that and the DFC previews site to publish the rest of the material they have on file that was ready to be published.

Such a terrible shame really. A wonderful comic. I do mean to write something about it, but will do that nearer the end.

Comic Relief at school

and I was at home all day working on the website. I did get to take Molly to school with everyone there wearing their pyjamas......



......including Molly.

And the funniest thing - one of Molly's friends had exactly the same outfit on! Fashion calamity!!!!

May is Spawn Month - but what's the year?

Take a look at this Previews cover, but try not to look at the date. Now, doesn't it just seem like it's something from 1995?

This is how far the comics industry seems to have moved in the intervening years.

For those of you who aren't into comics, Previews is the main catalogue of the main comics distributor in the US & UK. It's too thick, hideously laid out and has far too many pictures that I'd be rather uncomfortably with Molly seeing and associating them with comics.

Richard is away right now....

I'm off doing something or other involving school websites, gin and a terrible feeling of ennui right now. Hence very little blogging.
Just pretend you've read a few hundred words of biting, incisive commentary and I promise to be back in a little while.

Watchmen goodies

I promise not to mention it again for a while, but here are the latest Watchmen related goodies....

“Lil’ Watchmen” by Glen Brogin.

Ombudsmen by Scott Kurtz (via Wim) is from the very funny PvP.

and finally, no really, finally, we have Steve Murray and Barry Hertz giving us an illustrated history of Watchmen from page to screen (detail below, follow this link for the full sized version):

Okay, that's it. No more Watchmen stuff for a while from me. Who knows I may even get to see the movie eventually.

Latest From London Underground Comics: 176

Oli and the gang (sounds like a Saturday morning cartoon) at London Underground Comics have announced their latest step in global domination: 176

Instead of doing their weekly comics stall at Camden they've decided to take over the Project Space 176, a grand converted church for a day of small press fun on 27th June 2009, 12 - 7 pm.

Looks like it's going to be a great day. Full details on the website.

Watchmen reviews .... Two that count.

First Mark Kermode gave it a fairly flat review, touting it as all surface and no depth and failing to capture what made it so good as a comic. (Kermodes Radio 5 podcast page, direct download link o Watchmen review here).

Then I read what Pádraig Ó Méalóid had to say on the film. Pádraig’s a major expert on all things Moore-related and looks at it with first hand knowledge of what Alan Moore thinks of the whole affair and has put some much needed historical perspective into the review. But essentially he and Kermode are saying much the same thing.

From Pádraig's review:

It looks a lot like the original Watchmen book, but has none of its grace, or beauty, or subtlety, or sinuously beautiful timing. Watchmen is the most perfect graphic novel there is, and a huge amount of work went into making it that way, and attempting to streamline that for the big screen was never going to work. Alan Moore said it was unfilmable, and I have seen that he was completely right.

I'll see it eventually, but after those two reviews I can't see myself heading off to York to see it. I think it's one that I can wait a little while to see when it comes to Pocklington Arts Centre.

Watchmen - The Saturday Morning Cartoon

I get the impression that this spoof may be better than the film. Brilliant stuff from Happy Harry, Watchmen done in the style of a kid’s Saturday morning cartoon.

(via Pádraig Ó Méalóid).

DFC Friday. Only three to go now....

Issue 40 dropped through the door today. But it was a bitter sweet moment after the news earlier this week that Random House have put the DFC up for sale and if a buyer isn't found issue 43 will be the last one.

So every strip I enjoyed, every strip Molly loved in this issue was met with great fun but also some sadness. It's the very last (in the DFC at least) Vern & Lettuce by Sarah McIntyre, something she talks about here. At least she's one of the lucky ones in a way, having wrapped up Vern & Lettuce this issue for a break before coming back in issue 52. Sadly that wont be happening now. And it's a gorgeous double page spread from Sarah as well:



Jim Medway's Crab Lane Crew returns this issue, but it won't be finishing in the DFC. Hopefully Jim will find some way to get his proposed 12 issues out - someone fancy publishing the whole lot as a graphic novel? Go on, it's fab.

But the artistic highlight here is the new strip; Donny Digits, 3 pages of beautifully drawn wackiness by Woodrow Phoenix. Previously serialised in the Guardian (read some online starting with episode 1 here).



Super Animal Adventure Squad by James Turner is excellent as ever, Sausage & Carrots by Simone Lia was as funny as ever and Julian Hanshaw's Chicken Caesar Jnr gets funnier each week.

But sadly there wont be that many weeks left.

On paranoia data backups and a kaput hard disk

I have a paranoid attitude to backing up my data. It's something I always used to have, even to the extent where in the old days I'd make tape copies of my original music tapes in case my cassette player chewed them up. In the digital age this paranoia has only increased.

The back up routine means I have: 2 external hard drive backups done monthly, copies of my backups on the schools external hard drives and a full dvd copy set done every six months.

This is a good thing. Because last night one of the external drives just gave up the ghost. No power at all. Faulty power supply by the looks of things. But it's obviously cheaper to buy new than repair. The only problem is that I only have about 40Gb of data to backup, including my music. In the past this meant buying 120 or 160Gb drives. But now the smallest I can get is 250Gb. I was in PC World tonight looking at the shelves and wondering what sort of person buys a 1Tb drive. Surely they must be using it to store music, movies and the photo library of several small countries. But in that case they must have at least two of them? Because I sure as hell wouldn't trust a single copy backup of anything now.

Like I say; paranoid.
But I do have a nice, new, shiny 250Gb portable drive. Ideal for taking on holiday with me. well, you never know what might happen.

10 Stories behind Dr Seuss tales....

Nice little Friday story; the stories behind the works of Dr Seuss.

I knew this one about Green Eggs And Ham:
"Bennett Cerf, Dr. Seuss’ editor, bet him that he couldn’t write a book using 50 words or less. The Cat in the Hat was pretty simple, after all, and it used 225 words. Not one to back down from a challenge, Mr. Geisel started writing and came up with Green Eggs and Ham – which uses exactly 50 words. The 50 words, by the way, are: a, am, and, anywhere, are, be, boat, box, car, could, dark, do, eat, eggs, fox, goat, good, green, ham, here, house, I, if, in, let, like, may, me, mouse, not, on, or, rain, Sam, say, see, so, thank, that, the, them, there, they, train, tree, try, will, with, would, you."

But this one's new to me:
"Yertle the Turtle = Hitler? Yep. If you haven’t read the story, here’s a little overview: Yertle is the king of the pond, but he wants more. He demands that other turtles stack themselves up so he can sit on top of them to survey the land. Mack, the turtle at the bottom, is exhausted. He asks Yertle for a rest; Yertle ignores him and demands more turtles for a better view. Eventually, Yertle notices the moon and is furious that anything dare be higher than himself, and is about ready to call for more turtles when Mack burps. This sudden movement topples the whole stack, sends Yertle flying into the mud, and frees the rest of the turtles from their stacking duty. Dr. Seuss actually said Yertle was a representation of Hitler."

Working at home - Mondays and Fridays........

Had a word with the head this week about the ongoing problem of trying to get the old website transferred to the new website by the end of March. Essentially I've hit a brick wall with it. I've done the majority of the pages to the casual eye. All of the school information is up, all of the parents information, all of the governors information and all of the nice things like pupil gallerys and artwork is up and looking fabulous.

But my problem is that I spent far too much time populating the old website with pages and links that were designed for the pupils to use in lessons and at home. The idea being that if we could integrate the website into the daily life of the school it would make it far more useful and looked at more often than an average school website.

The problem is that, despite being better in so many ways, the new school website really makes the creation of long pages of links a real pain. It's all in the way that it renders a page; each title text box, each descriptive text box and each associated link is a different unit on the page. So when it comes to making a big long page of links it takes absolutely ages to refresh.

So the prospect of doing about 50 pages of links that I created for Years 3-6 filled me with dread and the realisation that I wasn't going to get it done before the end of March unless I fancied doing a lot of late nighters.

The result of the chat with the head: Every Monday afternoon and Friday morning I'm working from home on the website. Hopefully that will give me enough time. But I bet night works will be called for even then.

DFC closure announced

“The DFC, a weekly comic (launched May 2008) for boys and girls is up for sale, following a decision by The Random House Group to cease publication.

Philippa Dickinson, MD RHCB, said: “We are very proud of the DFC and the reaction it received from families, schools and especially the children who have enjoyed reading it. It is an innovative concept which we have been very happy to back. There can be no successes without taking risks, after all. Unfortunately, in the current economic climate, we have decided that the DFC is not commercially viable within our organisation.

“David Fickling, the staff at the DFC, and all the comic’s contributors have worked tirelessly to produce what is an amazing weekly publication and we would be delighted if a buyer could be found who would like to take the DFC on as a going concern”

If no buyer is found, the title will close on March 27th.”

Sad, sad news.
More on this as I get chance.




FPI blog, Down The Tubes, Sarah McIntyre, Jim Medway, James Turner,

Molly's parent's evening...

What a lovely little girl we have it seems. Sometimes, when she's stropping around the house like the teenager she's trying to impersonate it's a little too easy to remember exactly how good she is. And then you go to a parent's evening at her school and are told, in glowing terms, that she's absolutely lovely in class and pretty damn bright indeed.

She's doing really well in Year 5, helpful, considerate, friends with just about everyone, gets involved, tries really hard and works incredibly hard.

Practically perfect in every way really. But I would say that wouldn't I?

Being Human

Got around to seeing the last Being Human the other night. It's turned into a surprisingly good series. Not perfect, but certainly worth my while staying up and catching the episodes.

The setup of werewolf, vampire and ghost sharing a flat played up the comedy to start with but the darkness of the situation quickly came to the fore with the comedy taking just a small but important back seat. They made the right choice by keeping the effects low key and concentrating on the characters. And the whole thing built up to a suitably satisfying climax complete with the nice couple of setups for the second series just announced by the BBC. It's looking like we might have a nice British Buffy style sci-fi series on our hands.

National Service for the over 65s to solve the oncoming pension crisis?

What an interesting idea from the Guardian's Phillip Inman. Make the pensioners workfor their pension.

I'm forever butting heads with my parents over their contention that they deserve the incredibly high standard of living they currently have as retired folks, far higher than we have now and far, far, far higher than we'll have when we get old.

Completely impractical perhaps, but it does serve a great purpose of something else to annoy them with.

Fictions talking about Fictions

I've been slightly lazy recently with the blog. There's been an awful lot of reposted reviews from the FPI blog and a lot of quickie comics link posts popping up and very little of actual me.

Okay, some of this is a matter of necessity. I decided a long time ago that I'd repost all of the reviews I put up on the FPI blog up on Fictions to make sure that they were all in one place. My place. And because I've been doing a lot of reviews for the FPI blog and not posting them up regularly they'd all rather built up. So I decided to get them all onto the blog in one go. Or at least over a very short period of time. This is the reason why it seems like there's been one a day for a long time.

It came to a head when Louise complained about it, saying she'd been on the blog at work trying to find something about Molly to show to someone and couldn't find her way through all of the comics stuff. So it's time to change it back a little and make it a bit more of a balanced blog about my life, parenting, ranting about various things and comics. So from now on the reviews will get posted up at weekends only. That way I'll actually have to write a little more in the week, something I've been meaning to do for a long time.

Molly's first published photograph

I always said she was a better photographer than I'll ever be. Of course, it's for one of those free web things where they trawl Flickr for relevant photos of stuff. But she's thrilled to bits with it and so are we. Well done darling.

It's here. You might have to float over the Rainforest Cafe entry.
Molly's Flickr (updated far too infrequently - there's a load of photos waiting) is here.