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An exclusive comic created by Grant Morrison and Rian Hughes for the BBC's freedom2014 season. The award-winning creators tell a story of freedom, which, apart from the title, has no words. Find out more about the story behind The Key, in an interview with the creators.

[he]

"I have written these things. I'm not proud of it. I have nothing but abhorrence for the superhero as a figure. I think that there is something wrong with our culture. These are responsible adults, and they are thrilling to concepts and characters and stories that were written to entertain the 12 year old boys of 50 years ago.

I think that it says something a little bit disturbing if we just want to regurgitate the culture that we grew up with and which takes us back to our happy place. I really thought comics was about something more than that."


Moore's got new product to promote! Radio Four's Today Programme brought him in from the field, made him wipe his unshod feet on the doormat, and sit up straight like a real author, before asking him every single question he's asked whenever he does an interview for the mainstream media. As well as the playground taunt reproduced above, he manages to perform the Stan Lee trick of forgetting that there was some guy called David Lloyd hanging around while he "created" the look adopted by the Occupy movement - he neglects the Wachowskis, for that matter.

It's actually an interesting interview, which seems to reveal the formative influence collaborating with Malcolm McLaren had on Moore's approach to storytelling - he compares McLaren to William Blake! Moore's promoting the comic adaptation of his script for McLaren's unfilmed Fashion Beast - which I had no idea was even coming out - and mentions that he's having another prose novel published next year, called Jerusalem.  Endearingly, Moore upbraids the interviewer for referring to his new work as a graphic novel, "lets just call them very expensive comics". Classic Alan:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-24032641

Hoighty-toighty Radio 3 went into a geek frenzy this week, devoting prestigious interview slots to the lusciously coiffured Neil Gaiman and the round and shiny Joss Whedon. The Gaiman one features him talking about his childhood as a Jewish Scientologist and reveals the formative influence of both GK Chesterton and his hit biography of Duran Duran on his career as a writer. Whedon talks about his radical feminist Mom. Brigadoon (!) and attending Winchester boarding school in England. Whedon did Kermode's show this week too, talking about his anti-Avengers home made version of Much Ado About Nothing.

Truly, we are pandered to.

[Rich]

Only kidding; I agree with the sentiments expressed in your final post, Rich. I couldn't believe that thread was real (or unironic) when I first looked at the forum.

Mark Millar's appearing at Glasgow's Mitchell Library tonight (Monday 15th of April) as part of the Aye Right book festival. According to this laudatory and uncritical article in today's Daily Record, Millar relies on hearing the unvarnished opinions of the ordinary down-home folks (among whom he feels most at home) regarding his work, rather than those phoney, gladhanding Hollywood fat cats (p-too!). If you can make it along, be sure to tell him exactly what we all thought of his Robohunter stories - he hates folk who mince their words.


The festival, which runs until Saturday, is held at the Mitchell Library. For more information, call 0141 287 2999 or email ayewrite@glasgowlife.org.uk

[douglaswolk]

Reading through some of douglaswolk's now completed Dredd Reckoning blog, I was reminded of his request for information regarding the identities of the creative and editorial droids returning from their fact finding mission in preparation for the Oz epic in this star scan. I'm reasonably confident in my identification of all but two of the parties involved, but any help in identifying them all would be greatly appreciated.

As a sidebar, one of the most useful aspects of the brilliant Barney is in identifying the sometimes uncredited artists responsible for covers and pin-ups which I spent many hours speculating over as a kid (i). In this particular instance though Barney disappoints, crediting the Oz star scan to the unusually prolific Chilean artist, Unknown. That hand gesture is an instantly recognisable Dillon trope, but this depiction of Tharg is markedly different to how Dillon portrays him just a short while later. Dillon inked by someone else? Kitson? Mark Farmer? Are the droid caricatures by the same artist as the framing image of Tharg?


(i) this series of Dark Judges pin-ups being a particular example. I'm sure I guessed Gary leach at some point, but I also spent years speculating they could also have been produced by Cliff Robinson, John Higgins, Simon Harrison and Steve Dillon too, since lots of the early painted colour work of familiar artists varied quite wildly - see Dillon's schizophrenic painted/flat colour work on stories like Alabammy Blimps and his covers for Oz and Tyranny Rex around that period.

[Directors' Top Ten Greatest Films of All Time:]

Every decade, Sight and Sound conduct a poll to see which films critics and industry professionals rate most highly. Across both lists, I've only seen nine (the most obvious) of the greatest films of all time, and that doesn't include the critics' number one. Anyone seen them all, do you agree with the rankings, and are they worth seeking out?


Directors' Top Ten Greatest Films of All Time: 

1 Tokyo Story (Ozu, 1953)

2 2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick, 1968)

2 Citizen Kane (Welles, 1941)

4 8 ½ (Fellini, 1963)

5 Taxi Driver (Scorsese, 1980)

6 Apocalypse Now (Coppola, 1979)

7 The Godfather (Coppola, 1972)

7 Vertigo (Hitchcock, 1958)

9 Mirror (Tarkovsky, 1974)

10 Bicycle Thieves (De Sica, 1948)


Critics' Top Ten Greatest Films of All Time:

1 Vertigo (Hitchcock, 1958)

2 Citizen Kane (Welles, 1941)

3 Tokyo Story (Ozu, 1953)

4 La Règle du jeu (Renoir, 1939)

5 Sunrise: a Song for Two Humans (Murnau, 1927)

6 2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick, 1968)

7 The Searchers (Ford, 1956)

8 Man with a Movie Camera (Dziga Vertov, 1929)

9 The Passion of Joan of Arc (Dreyer, 1927)

10 8 ½ (Fellini, 1963)

[British Comics: a cultural history]

The publication of James Chapman's British Comics: a cultural history  (Reaktion Books, 2011, ISBN 978 1 86189 855 5 (Hardback only, £17.50 from Amazon)) had passed me by until Radio Four's Thinking Allowed (Jeremy Kyle for academics) devoted a measly quarter of an hour to a bracing sprint through the history of British comics (LINK), where a breathless Laurie Taylor is joined by Chapman himself and rent-a-quote pop culture sage Matthew Sweet.

The emphasis of their discussion is on childrens' titles, with the public outrage over Action being the most topical subject that merits discussion. 2000ad, Viz and Darkie's Mob are at least mentioned, and Eighties Eagle and the modern day franchise rags that pack out the shelves of Asda get a kicking from Sweet; but you could be forgiven for walking away from the programme with the impression that- just because da yoot aren't (generally) reading anymore- comics are primarily of historical interest. That's probably true for R4's middle aged and middle class demographic, but the tone of the programme still got on my fuckin' goat.

Chapman's book, though- judging by the reviews from History Today, The Telegraph, and Paul Gravett- exhibits greater breadth of coverage and analytical ability, and he's written a paper specifically concerning 2000ad that I'm going to have to track down.