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Um, Its called intertextuality. How exactly have you managed to watch any Films or  TV or read any books or magazine produced in the last twenty years without noticing it before?

I dunno, with Partridge I just like seeing the wretched little man tortured by his own greed and incompetence.

I forgot to add that in general I liked B&K and I'm looking forwards to seeing more.

- Can Bec and Kawl, the series, survive without film quotes?

No. They can survive with a few less film quotes. You've got the whole film-quote thing turned up to eleven right now.

In Gordon Rennies "White Trash, Moronic Inferno" the central character is a complete dip-shit who spends most of his time quoting dumb heavy metal bands, and yet it never gets boring. I suspect the reason why that works and the B&K film quote thing doesn't is simply a matter of saturation.

- Are non-filmic references enough to sustain a series which has pop-culture at its core?

TV, pop-music, tabloid sensationalism, advertising, there's a lot to work with in pop culture. This is probably a bit mad and impossible but if B&K had a really short turn-around and referenced things that were actually happening THAT WEEK (or the week before) then it would give it real pop energy.

- Are situation-references preferable to 'single panel' ones?

Probably. But it doesn't just have to be . Tank Girl did this sort of thing all the time, and that was brilliant

- Aaaand any other market-research type stuff you feel might be handy.

Read shitloads of Evan Dorkin. He does the pop-culture-reference thing better than anyone.

Shit, its turning out like Scriptdroids here.

Yes.

Erm, well...

"I have charged sigils while bungee-jumping, lying dying in a hospital bed,
experiencing a toal solar eclipse and dancing to Techno. All of these methods proved to be highly effective but for the eager beginner nothing
beats the wank technique."

Link: http://www.grant-morrison.com/pop_magic!1.htm" target="_blank">http://www.grant-morrison.com/pop_magic!1.htm

Mr Morrison has writen some damn weird Lovecraft/Cthulhu stuff:

Link: http://www.grant-morrison.com/luvkraft.htm" target="_blank">http://www.grant-morrison.com/luvkraft.htm

Its out - i found a copy tucked away in tower, down some stairs, in an obscure and tiny "dance music" section, behind some other stuff by various other artists with "DJ" in their handle. For what should be one of the most hyped titles of the year I find this strangely understated.

This is Scojo we're talking about.

KILLFILE

Well, I think 2000ad needs a something like this in spirit, and Si definitely seems to be the Man to write it, but Bec & Kawl seems to have gotten off to a rocky start, mainly due to being weighed down by the need to stop the action and quote Reservoir Dogs every other panel. It's not that riffing off culture is wrong, is that directly quoting films is the lowest form of it and shouldn't be stretched out over an entire strip.

Other than that, the level of manic intensity is right, the settings and characters are pretty much right, the occult aspect maybe should be toned down a little or made a little less obvious.

(The second one is actually a lot better for this.The low point was definately midway through part II of the first one)

...and I still maintain it's ten times better than Teleguff.

Give him a bunch of speed, get him to write 20 of them and pick the best ones, that's what I say.

Nah, storming Heaven needed to be much longer so that you actually cared what happened. As it was it was like picking up the first and last issues of "Crisis On Infinite Earths" and reading them without any foreknowledge of the DC universe.

You know, I have heard rumours from a pretty reliable source that Ewins had actually suffered some kind of mental breakdown, and thats why his artwork isn't what it used to be.

Six parts? Thats a bit disapointing. Is there some kind of rule these days that if Frazer Irving works on a story it must be annoyingly short?

Pop culture these days for you, all stale retro  and fake rebellion.