Oh goody. Ill.

Last couple of days of holiday have been spent fighting against a particularly nasty bastard of a cold. Nose, sore throat, cough, sinus pain, aching body. And before you think it, I don't think we're looking at a swine flu outbreak yet.

But it does mean I was very grateful to see Molly off to swimming and then playing around at a friends today - meant I could just sit and do nothing except dose myself up with painkillers, cough medicine, liquids and olbas oil.

But it was horrible having to sit inside feeling crap on such a lovely day. And tomorrow it's back to school. With a cold. Great.

Reviewing and inferiority complexes...... I'll get to them after moaning about diets and dentists first

Currently sitting waiting for Louise and Molly to return with the half term treat of a chinese take away. This is the one treat I've allowed myself to have in the last week and something I know is going to be wonderful. It's a special treat because I've been on a health kick / diet over the last month.

Buying the bike has meant I can actually enjoy exercise. Because no matter how much I enjoy the scenery, walking without a purpose just seems slightly silly to me. Running was always better, but my left knee is completely shafted (snowboarding injury many years ago) so that's out. But riding the bike suddenly meant I could exercise and go places. A perfect solution. Add in the cutting out of crap food and my weight and worryingly middle aged spread type thing is going away little by little.

However, whilst sitting here waiting for Louise and Molly to get back I'm sitting here trying to write a review of a strange little graphic novel that contains nothing but artwork from a couple of artists referencing various Eastern European folk tales. And it's one of those things that just fills me with insecurities about what little I know. in an ideal world I'd know about these things, be able to trot of a series of theories about them all and feel really smug in my own knowledge on this and every other subject in the great big world. Sadly I'm not. But then again, how many of us really are?

This is the reason we all seem to hold such wonderful minds as Alan Moore and Stephen Fry in such high regard. It's the amazing way they just knnow so much stuff about so much that we find amazing.

But I really have to try to feel less insecure about it all and just get on and review the damn thing.

missing gigs again.....

That Petrol Emotion are touring again. And it's one of those tours where I'm going to find it so difficult to make it to any of them. Not good. Either too far away on a weekend or on a school night. Bother. And this is after missing out on the Kraftwerk gig in Manchester happening in July. (I could get tickets from ebay but I haven't got the 300 quid or so that they're going for.)

It's something I really miss about living in Birmingham, having gigs on the doorstep that I could walk to and walk home from. Now I have only the choice of York or Leeds, driving to gigs and sriving home. it's just not the same. last year I was really lucky to be able to get to see That Petrol Emotion in the summer holidays and Carter on a saturday, but it looks like this year I wont be so lucky. Damn.

ER Finale

Spent a lovely evening tonight watching the ER documentary on More4 followed by the ER finale. A wonderful ending to a programme I used to religiously watch for about the first 6 seasons and then rather fell out of love with. I have made a deliberate effort to follow this final season though and it's been a really good one. The finale was special though, full of everything that made it so unmissable 15 years ago. And all of the little nostalgic touches, designed to bring little tears of recognition to the eye did just that for this soppy old git.

Look ma, tis me......

This is the great power of the Internet: I makes a twitter post to Oli Smith about the recent interview and made mention of him being "nice and controversial". To which he made twitter comment "'nice and controversial' now there's a good description of me... better than 'sketchy and self absorbed' at least ;)"

So I twitter back: "how about "able to take his criticism well"? Anyway, I think we're all looking forward to the responses to the interview."

Which leads us to this:



Oli Smith ladies and gentlemen - currently stressed out over final exams. He's not normally this violent. But I am now a famous cartoon character. So all is good. And Oli is still my favourite london based, comic convention organising comic person in all the world.

speeding along.....

Tuesday morning was spent on one of those speeding courses that Humberside police run. I got flashed by a speed camera a while back doing 59 in a 50. My own fault, I was rushing to get somewhere. So I've no complaints about it.

But the speed course was offered as an alternative to 3 points on the license. £75 for the course rather than a £60 fine and two and a half hours of my life spent in a small room. Not the most exciting time I've ever spent in a small room, but not too bad. Thankfully not too many of the people in attendance decided to open their mouths too much and we were all polite and attentive pupils. There was one bloke a few rows back who kept enquiring about the relevance and effectiveness of speed cameras. As soon as he started talking you could almost hear everyone in the room realise that he was adding an extra quarter of an hour onto the day. But thankfully, he shut up after a little while and we all sat there for the rest of the course being good pupils and taking our medicine well.

Interestingly I did find out some things during the day that I didn't know before going; namely that the speed limits I had in my head were wrong. Seems I've actually been going under the speed limit all this time; 60 for an A road on national speed limit and 70 for a dual carriageway on national speed limit. Possibly not the thing I should have taken from all this. But aside from going faster on A roads and dual carriageways, the £75 has done the trick and I find myself being a much nicer driver now. And sticking to 30 in a 30 zone really, really pisses everyone behind me off. It's worth it just to see their stressed out, annoyed faces in my rear view mirror.

Holiday fun, biking with the Brutons....

Today Molly and I went for our first proper bike ride together. She's on the big bike now and is so very proud of herself and she and I cycle our way around Pocklington on our new bikes. We didn't venture that far, just a mile or so there and back, but it was great being able to see the place you live from a different perspective.

I've walked most of it at some point or other in the two and a half years but having the freedom of being on a bike means you can go exploring that little bit more, something Molly and I are determined to do over the coming months.

At one point today I even found myself making the altogether rash and stupid promise (just to myself) that I really have to look at cycling the five or so miles to work. Maybe one day.

Tomorrow it's back in the car for an early start and a trip to Hull for a not too pleasant meeting. More on that tomorrow later in the week.

Is It Funny? Should I Forward It? I wish some folks who email me would read this.....

(via Shoeboxblog & Pootling.)

Bike. I has a bike.

I've bought myself a bike. A rather nice looking Apollo mountain bike. No idea whether it's any good or not, because I know just slightly less about bikes than I do about D.I.Y. or space travel. But it looks good and rides well. And seeing as it's fairly new and cost £45 and seems to have all the essential things in the right place (2 wheels, frame, brakes, seat) I think it was a pretty good deal.

Molly and I went out on the bikes earlier as we dropped her down to her friend's house for an afternoon. Then I went off on a little round Pocklington tour. About 2 miles of country roads resulting in leg muscles that wouldn't stop twanging for a little while afterwards. But it was fantastic. Haven't been on a bike properly since I was mid teens and fell off one rather spectacularly, but riding around the country roads was just great. Can see myself really enjoying this new hobby rather a lot. If only so that I can keep up with Molly on her bike now.

Molly loves the bike thing....

After taking forever to get her onto a bike (see here), it now seems that we can't get her off one. Everywhere we go she insists upon taking the bike along and is getting to be quite the little speed demon on it. We knew that she'd love riding but even we weren't quite ready for how much.

Next week we may well take back the small bike we borrowed and try out the big bike that someone at school very kindly gave us ages ago. And here, partly as proof and partly through pride, is Molly.......







And later today, because I'm getting fed up with walking everywhere with her, I'm off to look at a second hand bike. The last time I seriously had a bike was over 20 years ago. I might be a little rusty.

Coraline movie ... and how much does it cost? Bloody hell.

Molly and I headed across to York to see Coraline in 3D. £15 for 1 adult and 1 child. Including the oh so fair extra for the 3D effects. Considering the film industry seems to consider 3D as the future of the movies I think they're rather shooting themselves in the foot, leg and groin here. Because 3D may be clever, it may be pretty but I've had enough of it now. Every film I've seen with 3D doesn't actually use the 3D as a film-making device, it's simply used as eye-candy. And I'm done with it. Stop charging me extra for it, stop shoe-horning it into films (pointing, throwing things etc etc just to get a 3D effect in.) Well, Coraline 3D certainly didn't need the 3D. It added nothing to the movie.

I was expecting something very lavish and true to the book, scary and strange. But for the first half of the film I was really disappointed, it was tedious to be honest, nothing seemed to work properly, the inspired visuals in my head as I read the book with Molly just weren't there. It did get better in the second half, with the scary stuff working pretty well - still not as scary as they should have been though. The one brilliant visual effect was the effective use of whiteout to denote the Other Mother's lack of interest in the world beyond the apartment - that was impressive.

But overall, a disappointing movie. Perhaps I was expecting too much. And I have a sneaking feeling that it might be one to grow on me, time will tell. But the book's still so much better than anything I saw on the screen today.

Half Term, no school work, bring on the reviews. And the gin.

Oh look, it's nearly 3am.
I'm struggling to stay focused. One bit of me wants to finish the review I started an hour back, one bit of me wants to desperately work out how to get to any of the new That Petrol Emotion gigs they've announced (completely wrong for me - a few weeks later and I'd be on holiday or a little better scheduling and I'd be able to make a local gig on a weekend) and a big bit of me wants to go to bed.
Yes, it's half term and it's late and the gin has flowed too plentifully. Tomorrow we have Coraline in 3D but tonight the night appears to be still young.
More gin I think and then finishing the review, which means tomorrow night shall be spent wondering what the bloody hell I really meant to say in the review. Yes, drunk reviewing - never a good idea in the light of the morning.

Warren Ellis will have you beaten up by security....

But read this and you'll see why:

I’m at the London MCM Expo tomorrow, in the Comics Village area from about 1pm. I’m aiming for noon, but, you know, I work late and get up late, so let’s assume I’ll shamble in around one.

I will sign stuff, but two warnings:

1) If you turn up with a cart full of everything I’ve done (and this has happened before) waiting to be signed, I will laugh at you and then have you beaten up by security. Seriously. At one show, a guy conscripted his brother to pull the other cart. Pick five things you like and I’ll be delighted to sign them. Bring a hundred things and I will not be pleased to see you.

2) I’ll sign five items, at a go, but I’ve managed to bugger up my left wrist through (I don’t know how) sleeping on it, so if you’re one of the people who likes to drop a stack of wrapped, bagged, sealed, taped books on my table and then expect me to do all the unwrapping and rewrapping… well, that’s not going to happen, and if you give me shit about it I’m going to tell you to fuck off to Tesco’s if all you really wanted at my table was someone to do your packing for you. And then I’ll have you beaten up by security.

And having been at a fair number of signings in my time, mostly from the side of being staff at them, the presumptions of the folks getting things signed is quite breathtaking at times - coming up to an artist or writer with a stack of 50 comics, planting them down and just standing there; no hello, no polite chat, just the expectation that the creative monkey behind the table should get a move on and sign the comics. Rude, rude, rude. It's not everyone of course, most comic fans are a delight. Just the occasional one or two that always seem to appear at signings.

On a related note I heard back from Rich at N&C last weekend that his mate Shaun had gone down to the recent Alan Moore/Kev O'Neill League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen signing at Gosh. The queues were round the block several times, yet Alan and Kev still managed to spend 10-15 minutes chatting with lots of people, no pressure to move on, no rush at all. Gentlemen both of them was the report I had back.

Grey days at school..... and protest marches in Pocklington

Well, this final week of school before the half term has been a bit of a downer and no mistake. Starts off with me in a prime funk after a weekend away. Then I just run into a wall of work as soon as I'm back. Every day this week has seen me start with the very best of intentions and then get bogged down with jobs that can't be finished, work that is so horribly bitty and unending.

To top it all off, it seems that everyone at school is under a horrible grey cloud at the moment. All is not well it seems.

Finally, tonight I came in and pretty much collapsed into the chair. Absolute exhaustion had got me. So it was possibly the worst time for dear old dad to ring up and ask me if I'd forgotten the planned protest march heading off in half an hour from then. I wasn't in the mood for this. Did he not realise all I wanted to do was sink into an exhausted slumber?

The idea of protest marches in Pocklington is rather new. Being a rather sleepy little town in the shadow of the Yorkshire wolds we're not usually required to arrange angry mobs to go rampaging around the streets of the town chanting slogans. But there's a growing frustration in the town regarding East Riding Council's decision to bring in car parking charges to the town. It came to light a few months agao and since then opposition has been building. Liek I said, we're a rathe rquiet town, not really benefitting from the tourism of the nearby coast or the attractions of York, Beverley and Bridlington. But ERYC have got it into their heads that they should really have one homogenous charging policy for their car parks. On the face of it, it does make sense. But get deeper into it and the disparity between us and other, larger towns means that to charge for parking in the town would more than likely seriously harm the future prosperity of Pocklington.

But ERYC seem committed to bringing them in. Which is why about 200 people marched from the town centre to the rugby club where the council were holding a consultation event.

I'd honestly decided not to go. But I did have to go to the post office and on the way back found myself having to walk alongside the growing crowd of people waiting for the off. Guilt got the better of me and Molly and I found ourselves joining the crowd on our first ever family protest march. Strange times.

Sherlock Holmes - Guy Ritchie style?

Thanks to Philip Spence for this - the first trailer for the new Guy Ritchie Sherlock Holmes (imdb has trailer). It's a strange one - I'm bouncing between incredulity and interest. Has that strange Plunkett & Maclaine feel to it - a film that just shouldn't work, is wrong in so many ways, but turns out to be pretty enjoyable fun. I get the same feeling off this one.

And that loud, whirring noise you might be able to hear in the background; that would be Sir ACG spinning loudly in his grave.

Oh what a place my head is at....

For some reason, tonight I spent most of the night writing and copy editing reviews whilst listening to Amanda Palmer and choking on tears.

No, I have no idea why. My world is a strange place sometimes.

Just be thankful I deleted the last 500 or so words I wrote trying to express that in less mysterious tone.

What Richard did this Weekend

Being the mildly anti-social, typically only child sort that I am, I took myself away for me weekend. Friday I travelled down to Birmingham and met up with friends at Nostalgia & Comics for comics and drinkys. A lovely night was had by all, and a bad head in the morning wass had by me.

Saturday I took my miserable, anti-social self off to Dudley. It's something in my personality that never goes away. No matter how much i enjoy the company of friends, no matter how much I love being me and having family and Molly around, there are still times where I can just take myself away from it all and be completely alone for a day or so and just have me time. Selfish perhaps, but tolerated in the household. Anyway, Molly and Louise had plans for a good meal out on Friday and a trip to the cinema to see hannah Montana on Saturday as part of their great girly weekend.

Whilst they were busy watching Miley Cyrus putting a blonde wig on and off and on again I heaed to Himley Hall and Gardens for a couple of hours, sat myself down in the coffee shop and wrote and wrote and wrote. Himley Hall is one of those places etched into my childhood psyche and it was so lovely to spend hours wandering round:


















After that it rained. And rained. And rained some more. But I didn't care. The hotel bar was quiet so it was gin and writing and reading till the early hours. Sunday I made my way slowly back through more and more rain. Biblical style sheets of rain at times. But home now. Exhausted, in need of a break to recover from my break. But glad of the me time.

Mustard Mag - make your own Alan Moore

Must remember to pick this when I get chance; Mustard magazine's a comedy mag, far too classy looking to be called a fanzine, but from the website I get the impression it's a real labour of love - and at £2 an issue, a very cheap labour of love.

Issue 4 has an Alan Moore interview - 15 pages of the great man. And as a very bizarre extra, the website has these very daft print and make Alan Moore dolls:

Mark Thomas weighs in on the MP expenses thing....

Over on the Guardian website, Mark Thomas has decided to weigh in on the MPs expenses thing in typically Mark Thomas style:

It is unfair, unjust and profoundly undemocratic. Which is why lawyers acting on my behalf have served legal papers on Speaker Martin this morning. As the chair for the House of Commons Commission, he should take urgent steps to commence a review of the department's actions in dealing with MPs' applications for expenses. These should include an independent audit of expenses and the forced repayment of wrongly claimed expenses; and in cases of fraudulent claims, the police should be called in. Speaker Martin has 14 days to respond. If he does not, I will instigate a judicial review of Speaker Martin's decision, on the legal grounds that public law should be consistent. MPs should not be allowed to be above the law and what is good enough for us is good enough for them.

This might be interesting.

Training Course hell.....

Today's training course was a refresher course on Learning Platform administration. When the email came through a couple of months ago this seemed like a good idea. After all, wasn't the initial plan for the summer term at work to spend the first half term doing email changeover and school blogging and the second half term to actually start the work on the Learning Platform? So a refresher on the LP admin would be a good thing. That was the theory anyway.

Of course, in practice I found myself drowning in work stuff, with the plan to not do much (if any) work stuff at home working well but putting me behind in what needed doing. So a day out re-learning stuff on the Learning Platform suddenly seemed a complete waste, especially when I knew the training day rule applied - anything learned on training days that isn't immediately applied is almost instantly forgotten and will need to be re-learned when actually tackling the problem. So, with permission from the boss I decided to just go for the morning and duck out at lunch to get back and do the more important stuff.

And I was glad to get out. The content was just ridiculously basic, all stuff I knew anyway and none of the difficult stuff was dealt with. To make matters worse we found ourself trapped in a room with that annoying teacher stereotype - the far too loud, know-it-all type who spent 10 minutes talking about what they'd done in their school with the learning platform so far during the usual round of "let's introduce ourselves to the room" rubbish. And how, pray tell, had she managed to do so much with the learning platform - simple - she just did it all at home. No life. No life. No life. I had to leave at lunch just to avoid saying something very unprofessional to her.

But it's no help to me. I've spent the first three months of the year working far too many hours getting the school website done with lots and lots of hours working on it at home. But at least with that I knew there was an end in sight. It had to be done by the end of March. With the learning platform the end is at least 3 years away, if it ever really ends. There's no way I can commit to it in the way I did the website and I've decided it's something I'm only going to work on at school. So I'm going to be pushed to find 10 hours a week to work on it. Not enough. But it will have to be enough.

Diamanda Galas - thank you Kieron Gillen

I read and loved the latest issue of Phonogram the other night. For those of you that don't know, Phonogram is a wonderfully good comic by Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie that is simply the best evocation of the magical ability of music I've ever read.



The first volume was good (review), but the first issue of the second volume absolutely blew that out of the water (review). The second issue goes one better. Unless the rest of the year proves to be the greatest year in comics so far in my life, Phonogram Volume 2 should find itself as one of the comics of the year.

Anyway, one of the things that Phonogram has done is led me to discover the work of Diamanda Galas. The trigger came from a simple 2 page back up story in Phonogram Volume 2, issue 2. Diamanda Galas sits at the pianoand sings. Gillen and Heard present that moment thus:



And from that image I knew I wanted to hear what they were communicating. I'm two albums in and I just know it's goin gto be annoying the other residents of Bruton mansions all week. Her voice is just amazing, her range incredible and what she does with both is mesmerising.



Diamanda Galas: official, wiki.

Monday, gin, reviews, school work. Maybe just gin and reviews then

Here's a good plan, Monday night, sat here writing reviews, thinking I should do some schoolwork for the new email system, realising that the strange buzzing is my ears and the wooziness is down to the gin intake. So maybe no more school work.

But I think a littl more reviewing is in order. Sometimes the old trick of reviewing slightly drunk works brilliantly, sometimes it's just gibberish to be deleted as soon as a sober eye gets chance to look it over...... here goes....

The Kindle thing....

Scott McCloud weighed in recently with his thoughts on the supposed print killer of Amazon's Kindle. There's an article on it over on the FPI blog.

Basically Scott's argument goes:

“Cinema is wider than it is tall. TV is wider than it is tall. Theater is wider than it is tall. Laptop and desktop monitors are wider than they are tall. In fact, with the advent of widescreen TVs, there’s little difference in the shapes. They’re all around 3×5 or 4×5 range. Wider than tall. All of them.
And print? Well, print is taller than it is wide right? The printed page is the exception to the rule, isn’t it?
Wrong. The default shape of print is not taller than wide. It’s wider than tall just like all the rest, because the default shape of print is two pages side-by-side. And the reason is the same reason as the shape of TV and cinema and theater and surfing and all the rest: because we have two eyes next to each other, not one on top of the other.

I don’t even have a Kindle yet, so this isn’t meant as a specific critique of the device. And I’m sure its engineers had solid practical reasons to design the device the way they did. You can even turn it sideways when needed. It just reminded me when I went to Amazon this morning and saw images of the latest, how design principles in the wild can always be adjusted on the fly, but as soon as they’re embedded in hardware, they tend to stick around. For decades in some cases.

So if I could humbly suggest a new cardinal rule of designing anything meant to be read (including webcomics): Step #1, look in a mirror.”

But I think he's wrong. Print is most definitely, at least for me, a portrait medium. In fact, his final comment of "look in a mirror" doesn't even work because most mirrors tend to be portrait as well - or at least a lot of the ones I look in.

Print is portrait to me. Every time I open a book, comic or magazine I may initially view it as a 2 page spread, but when I'm reading both eyes are focused on just one page - portrait.

But it's worth reading Scott's views and worth even more to think about it yourself. Will electronic readers eventually supplant print? I think they will - but only up to a point. I read a lot more articles online and onscreen now - simply because they're there. And I can certainly see something like the Kindle (or whatever Apple inevitably comes out with) becoming the way newspapers and magazine articles are read in the future. They're temporary, transitory things - read once and then dispose of.

But books and comics are different. Sort of. I can't ever see electronic readers replacing the actual physical pleasure of reading long form works such as books and graphic novels. They're just to fixed in the psyche as a form. The often used analogy with music or film doesn't wash - these media have been switching formats regularly since the first methods of recording sound or moving images. But the printed page, bound between covers has been such a fixed point in civilisation that I really can't see a sudden shift to a slab of electronic screen. Sure, there might be uses - the holiday book bag replaced by a lightweight reader perhaps. But near complete replacement the way that mp3s and similar are replacing records, tapes and cds - can't see it.

However, comics are a different matter. I've been a champion of the comic form since I first read one. And I've long been a champion of the collection, the graphic novel as the perfect form for the medium. I see comics as mere previews to something bigger. They, at least to me, are throw away, temporary things, just like newspapers. If I'm interested in a comic I'll read an online preview or buy the first issue. If it's worth it, I'll wait for the collection. So I can see an electronic reader, if it reproduces the look of the comic page well enough, replacing that aspect of my comic reading.

How about you?

Pocklington Pictures

A long time ago I thought it might be nice to start photographing this lovely town of ours. I got off to a good start and then, as is always the way, stopped.

Well, since we were out with the camera today for the Flying Man Festival it seemed an ideal opportunity to start again:

5th Annual Flying Man Festival

Every year, at the start of May Pocklington has a strange occurrence of flying stuffed animals. All day long they get thrown off the top of the church to plummet to safety at the landing zone beneath. It's all part of the annual Pocklington Flying Man Festival, which took place this weekend.

The reason for the flying teddies? One Thomas Pelling, who decided to try coming down from the church tower on a zip rope back in 1733. The men who were meant to be securing the rope on the ground were a little drunk, or so the story goes, and Pelling smashed into a wall of the church.



So, being British, we decide to celebrate this strange and unfortunate man who met his end in such a silly way. The Flying Man Festival is a 3 day celebration based around All Saints Church with hot air balloons filling the sky, stalls in and around the church and on the Sunday the flying teddy bear slide.

Molly's taken part every year we've been up here and this year it was Charlie Bear's turn to ascend the tower and be sent hurtling down:



Handing Charlie Bear over at the "departure lounge"





Charlie Bear takes flight!



Bear and child reunited. Molly says Charlie had a great time and was only a little scared at the top.

We had, as usual, a lovely day and everything about the festival went very well. This year we even had the added bonus of a flypast by a Spitfire (and unfortunately this happened after the camera batteries died) which was rather spectacular.

the blogging problem

you know, every time I actually sit down with the computer to write something for the blog I find I'm looking at the very wrong side of 2am. And I find I'm getting to the point in my life where this isn't the best time to be writing anymore.

This all comes from a decision to actually try to get up earlier in the morning, which is working by and large. But not being 20 anymore, this getting up earlier is screwing up my ability to stay up past 2 and do writing, bloggery stuff.

All of which is a sort of explaination, sort of apology to folks who read this blog and a bit of a promise to try and do better in future.

PROPAGANDA Reviews: Blueberry Girl by Neil Gaiman & Charles Vess

Blueberry Girl

by Neil Gaiman and Charles Vess

Bloomsbury

For an explanation of the genesis of this book there’s nothing better than the author’s own words from Neil’s introduction to the book at his website for younger readers; Mr Bobo’s Remarkable Mouse Circus:

“This is the kind of book that comes about when a friend phones you and says, “I’ll be having a baby in a month. Would you write her a poem? A sort of prayer, maybe? We call her the Blueberry. . . .” And you think, Yes, actually. I would.

I wrote the poem. When the baby was born, they stopped calling her the Blueberry and started calling her Natashya, but they pinned up the handwritten Blueberry girl poem beside her bed. I kept a copy at my house, taped to a filing cabinet. And when friends read it, they said things like “Please, can I have a copy for my friend who is going to be giving birth to a daughter?” and I wound up copying it out for people, over and over.

I wasn’t going to let it be published, not ever. It was private, and written for one person, even if I did seem to be spending more and more of my time handwriting or printing out nice copies for mothers-to-be and for babies.

Then artist Charles Vess (whom I had collaborated with on Stardust) read it. And somehow, it all became simple. I made a few phone calls. We decided to make some donations to some charities. And Charles began to draw, and then to paint, taking the poem as a starting point and then making something universal and beautiful.

It’s a book for mothers and for mothers-to-be. It’s a book for anyone who has, or is, a daughter. It’s a prayer and a poem, and now it’s a beautiful book. I hope you enjoy it. I’m really proud of it. And I hope this means I don’t have to copy it out any longer…. Neil”

(Gorgeous Charles Vess pencils and finished page from Blueberry Girl.)

And after such an introduction, it shouldn’t be a surprise to find out that Blueberry Girl is a beautiful, moving and deeply poetic book. At just 28 pages and 18 lines of long, there’s barely anything to it, but it’s still a wonderful, loving thing. Gaiman’s words, although written just for Tori Amos’ daughter, have enough universal meaning to be applicable to any mother, to any daughter. His message is simple, his emotions true and touching, every line is full of love and sentiment.

Whilst most of Gaiman’s children’s work tends to be more father & child orientated, he shows with Blueberry Girl that he’s just as capable of identifying so well with the intense bond of unconditional love between mother and daughter. He’s managed to perfectly capture that nighttime prayer that every parent says over their sleeping child at some point in their lives. The wish for their lives to be blessed, glorious things, full of adventures and wonder. And these Blueberry Girls are living that wish; with lives of adventure, exploring the world, laughing, dancing and filled with joy.

And thanks to the beautiful artwork of Charles Vess this tiny poem becomes an incredible picture book. Vess took Gaiman’s words, designed for one child, and drew his pictures in such a way to make the poem universal. The Blueberry Girl of the title becomes every girl and each page features a different child, wandering through the narrative on spectacular flights of fancy.

Gaiman’s words, together with Vess’ visuals have made a beautiful thing. There was a lump in my throat most of the way through. There was a tear in Louise’s eye when she finished it. This is a book that will speak to every parent, but it will sing to all mothers and it may well send expectant mothers into floods of joyous tears.

(More of Charles Vess’ gorgeous artwork from Blueberry Girl)

It’s possibly too late to really push this as exactly the sort of book you should be getting for Mother’s Day. But it’s exactly the sort of book you don’t need an artificial event for. Get it for a mother, she’ll thank you for it with her smile and her tears of simple joy.

Part of the proceeds from the sale of Blueberry Girl goes to the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network.

Neil Gaiman’s website.
Charles Vess’ website.

12:45am. Bedtime or review time? This is why I'm permenantly tired....

Get in from school. Take molly riding on her bike. Get in from bike. Tea. Schoolwork. Find out from Joe at FPI blog that the server is being changed this weekend so spend a little while putting some posts up.

It seems such a small set of things.

But now it's quarter to one in the morning and I'm sat here faced with the choice: bed or reviews.

I shall go downstairs, fix a G&T and get started on the reviews I think.
Bed's over-rated. Or I'm an idiot. One or the other.

Tone Matrix.... say goodbye to hours and hours.....

This is amazing. A complete time waster but wonderful:
Tone Matrix. Fully flash generated sinewave sythesiser.

I've just spent an hour entranced by it. Tomorrow I think it's going to be up on one of the whiteboards at school so it's making music by touch - the kids will absolutely love it.

FPI blog - the #1 comics blog in the UK

And that's not just our opinion either. Recently we had some very surprising and very pleasing news that the FPI blog, that which I do all these comic reviews and articles for, is ranked #31 on the list of top UK blogs. The table is here, the methodology by the company that collected and collated the data is here.



As Kenny wrote on the blog yesterday:

The FPI blog has ....... been ascertained to place 31st in Cision’s listing of the ‘leading 50 blogs’ in the UK. To say we are surprised is something of an understatement, but we are all flush with pride nonetheless.

Cision are one of the world’s leading media ‘intelligence’ companies - in a simple sense they provide information for marketing and PR people which will allow them to target audiences more comprehensively in pursuit of getting across whatever useful or fanciful message they might want to disseminate.

It’s pretty unusual for something as specialist as the FPI blog with its primary coverage of Comics and some related fields to feature in a list like this. It made us sit up and realise that whilst from day to day we can sometimes feel we are ‘broadcasting’ to the void there are in fact many people out there reading the blog.

Very pleasing to think that we're that popular and I get to be a little part of that. I especially liked the bit later in the post where Kenny talks about the potential future of the blog and dismisses almost out of hand any thoughts of trying to "monetise" the blog following this achievement.

That's what I like about the FPI blog - we have to sit in the formidable shadow of the parent company, which is still, rather ridiculously seen as rather a big, corporate player in the UK comic retail industry, and I think we still manage to be an unbiased, level-headed place to talk about every aspect of comics. Kenny's reluctance to slap advertising all over the blog, pack it out with links and his determination to let us all write pretty much whatever we like is much to his credit. So we'll carry on doing what we do, talking about comics in every aspect; from tiny print run small press work to the biggest names in the business and from all over the world; the UK, Europe, the US and beyond.

So thanks very much to everyone reading this who reads the FPI blog. And if you don't, give it a go; we think you'll like it.

Thatcher, Thatcher, 30 years ago the other day.....

30 years ago yesterday and that evil woman took power. Most people who know me will know I don't hold much warmth in my heart towards her. Which is fitting because there's not much warmth in her heart and I don't believe there ever has been. I'm one of Thatcher's children, coming out of education just as her bizarre plan to completely screw up the country was in full effect.

"Where there is discord, may we bring harmony.
Where there is error, may we bring truth.
Where there is doubt, may we bring faith.
And where there is despair, may we bring hope."

All lies. All terrible lies. And now I have to live in Thatcher's legacy watching a Labour government who not only have politics to match some of Thatcher's worst, but see her as someone to be admired and invited round for tea.

It's been long enough. The last few years have given us some entertainment on her behalf but it's time. It's past time. Can she hurry up and give us the street party we all deserve please.

Hellboy II The Golden Army

It takes something special to make an all out big budget action adventure and make it seem like a spectacular art movie. I've had this on the list of things to watch for a long time. I enjoyed Hellboy I but I made a mental note to get Hellboy II after hearing Mark Kermode talk about it in glowing terms. He described it much the same as my opening line, talking about Guillermo del Toro's brilliance in crafting something rather speacial from a big budget film. It was everything I hoped it would be and more, with a richness and invention in the look of the film that was just like seeing Pan's Labyrinth all over again, except with lots of fighting.

Certainly made me want to go back to Mike Mignola's Hellboy comics and re-read them.

Swine Flu - a note from history.....

(via Boing Boing)

Propaganda Reviews: Newthink Books

Newthink Books

by Thomas Plaskitt

Self-Published

(The New Think package that came through the post - comics, mini-comics and more)

Thomas Plaskitt’s comics are incredible little things, more a complete multimedia art experience than anything else yet so beautifully made and inventive to make the reading of them an absolute joy, as they look at life, death, self discovery and do it with a delicious sense of gentle satirical humour.

It’s also the very physical nature of them, the little touches of design and content that make the whole thing so enjoyable. Although I imagine some folks may look at them in the same way my wife looks at some Modern Art, with a sneer and a “call that art” comment. Likewise some will look at these and immediately write them off as “not comics”. But they are. They just don’t fall into the narrow definition of comics that we still seem constrained by.

I’ve even modified the way I do these reviews for these; usually I scan covers and art, but the flat scans seemed too flat and lifeless to convey the work properly. So I got the camera out and photographed them as three dimensional objects and it worked so much better. They’re actually more than comics rather than “not comics”.

These Newthink comics come packed with a host of extras; handmade little treats, the cut out and keep bits, the CD-ROM to be played in tandem with reading the comics, the mini-comics inside envelopes taped onto the pages of the bigger comics, the instructional booklets. Even the little touch of sealing his comics with a mini bulldog clip; it seems that Thomas Plaskitt is trying very hard to make his work a mix of comics and object d’art.

The two comics in the package; The Meaning Of Life and A Short Story Part One: Realisation are both lovingly hand made comics, with simple card covers and quality interiors that mix card and paper, different textures, different colours; anything and everything to make each comic something a little special.

Meaning Of Life is the more satisfying of the two on first reading; a look at Plaskitt’s fictional Meaningland, “a slightly dark symbolic fictional area just outside of your conscious, each character an aspect of the modern world, enter at your own risk…” populated with minimalist blocky figures. You work through to your life destination, finding various pithy meaning of life statements and meeting various characters along the way, characters representing aspects in your life that hold you back; media time wasting, money, work, houses, governance and more.

(Pages from Plaskitt’s Meaning Of Life on the left and A Short Story part One on the right)

But A Short Story - Part One; Realisation really takes Plaskitt’s immersive experience to another level, the story makes full use of the included CD-ROM to compliment the story of a man lost in a strange world of strange things, that he needs to explore and make sense of, whilst also making sense of himself. And these themes of change and self-discovery run through all of Plaskitt’s work, including his 10 Commandments mini-mini comics, 3 inches square or thereabouts, which function in some small way to provide a road map to his comic work; that sense of changing yourself to change the world.

(More from Plaskitt’s A Short Story, with the mini-mini comic taped onto the page on the left and his even smaller The Ten Commandments on the right.)

In addition to these marvelous little art comics, Thomas Plaskitt’s New Think website is well worth a visit to see the sorts of multimedia delights he’s showcasing in his work. Because even though he says he has no answers in A Short Story Part One (see below), he does have something better; comics that make you think about life, art and the self whilst providing a thoroughly entertaining immersive experience:

(But sometimes it’s the act of asking the question that is the important thing - something Thomas Plaskitt does so very well.)

Grant Morrison announces major new project - oh shit, it's this.....

From the Wizard interview which Weekly Crisis has read so I don't have to:

I've started a series called The Multiversity, which will pick up a bunch of strands from 52 and Final Crisis. Back when we laid out the return of the Multiverse in 52, I asked if I could establish some of these books as potential ongoing series. We wanted to set up each universe as its own franchise. [...]
So this is my big project for the next year, and I'm working on books for seven different parallel universes. Each one is a first issue with a complete story and series bible. Each one spotlights the major superhero group of a different alternate reality. And they all link together together as a seven-issue story that reimagines the relationship between the DCU and the Multiverse.

I love Grant Morrison, but I haven't read anything by him in ever such a long time. The last thing I read was All Star Superman Volume 1, which was genius stuff. But everything else has been so involved in the complex headache inducing continuity heavy stuff of Final Crisis and the like. Now some folks are saying that it might be a continuity free thing - seeing as each issue takes place in a separate DC world as a self contained story. But that doesn't play - that just means I have to attempt to navigate 8 different shite continuity nightmares instead.

I want MY Grant Morrison back dammit.

Dear Salma ..... Fantagraphics want to talk movies with Hayek

On the Fanta Blog the other day: Eric Reynolds to Salma Hayek - "Please have your people call our people. It is... your destiny."



It was close when she was pregnant, but now it's uncanny.

Reet Comics

Reet Comics is the work of Hugh “Shug” Raine. On his website you’ll find an enormous collection of his work, loads of strips, the entire run of Reet Comics (all 37 issues of it) and a host of other stuff.
And pretty much all of it is worth an hour or two of your time. Whether it’s the very, very funny “Jenny’s Weird Friend” strip, the cutesy “Olive’s Mix tape”, the boozy silly rhyming seduction of “A God Awful Small Affair” or a rather good 24 hour comic, there’s plenty on Reet to make you smile. But my fave was Interference, a series of silent single panels mixing absurdity and imagination with Shug’s signature cutesy stylings.
Well worth a visit. Here’s a couple of samples, see Hugh’s website for more.


(Jenny’s Weird Friend by Hugh Raine.)

(Olive’s Mix Tape by Hugh Raine.)

(Inteference by Hugh Raine)