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Oh, and if you watched on dvd and not some newfangled online delivery method, did you find The Dead sort of froze in several places? At first i thought it was a stylistic thing, but its obviously not. My dvd player is literally a week old and this is only the third or fourth time ive used it.

Watched it on dvd, and no, didn't notice anything you could describe as freezing - ran fine.

After SBT's ringing endorsement earlier in the thread, I ordered and watched 'The Dead', with a certain amount of trepidation. Why trepidation? Well, for one it's a zombie film post-1994. And whilst I've sometimes found the wee blue fella's tastes to be comparable to mine (mutual love of The Thing, Day of the Dead, Michele Soavi movies, mutual distaste for Shaun of the Dead), at other times, they seem quite different (the recently mentioned Diary / Survival of the Dead, for instance – Diary is due a rewatch, but I can't see it ever being a film that'd receive my unconditional love.)

Anyway, 'The Dead' then. Yeah, SBT got this one right. It's very good (much better than the aforementioned late-era Romero films.) It reminded me a lot of when Jean Rollin described how he reverse-engineered 'The Poisedon Adventure' to get the structure for 'The Grapes of Death' – x number of minutes travel, set piece, travel, set piece, and so on. But the set pieces are frequently gorgeous and thrilling – shooting in Africa has absolutely set this film apart, and nowhere more so than the 'Devil's Claw' sequence, though for tension, the situation in which the two protagonists meet is pitched perfectly. But it's the 'travel' sections that really hammer home what a relentless threat the dead are. No matter what, the dead are there, emerging from the foliage with a stately menace when our heroes pause in their journey. Much of the time, they're simply a background detail, wandering by the roadside and individually easily dealt with, but their sheer omnipresence and the inexorable peril they represent is conveyed expertly. The film never lets you feel safe. And that's exactly what I want from a movie like this.

So, a thumbs up from me, and thanks to SBT for bringing this 'un to my attention.

Still no-one's figured out why the closing date is when it is.....

All Souls Day / Day of the Dead?

It's a very good interview - she's clearly led a fascinating life and has a lot to say for herself. Makes a welcome change from the usual self-promotional interview fluff that can crop up on the likes of CBR and Newsarama. I like the fact that she seems to come at things from a completely different perspective to many other writers. She also has a likeable respect for the continuity of a series - how often does someone take over a series these days and announce they're not about to jettison the supporting cast? And she gets bonus points for writing a fight between the Silver Surfer and Mephisto as a terrifying clash of two forces beyond mortal understanding, like gods at war.

The last DD arc... that's the one where Matt and Bullseye change places, isn't it? Bullseye (dressed as Daredevil) becomes so confused at to what's going on that he starts insulting himself and going on about how pathetic Bullseye is. That's great stuff.

Genius!

Well, I've never read an issue of Green Arrow in my life (though I have an understanding of the character) but this'll be the news that changes that. I love Nocenti's wonderfully peculiar run on Daredevil... the wildly unlikely (and yet totally logical) combination of Daredevil and Mephisto always stood out, though the highlight might be issue #277, a done-in-one where Matt encounters a woman with some manner of mental health issue. So I'll certainly give this a shot - I would hope Green Arrow might be a good fit for Nocenti's talents.

Or indeed a couple of Queensryche fans outing themselves.

"I need to forget her face, I see it still."

I would say Day of the Droids - I think that it has the best overall script, and the best examples of the problem spiraling completely and hilariously out of control, but the artwork was a long way from Ian Gibson's finest and it drags it down a lot.

True... I've got a piece of the original art, where Molotov brings the God-Droid's men out on strike (http://www.comicartfans.com/GalleryPiece.asp?Piece=674690&GSub=102213) and while it's a fun, truly story-packed page, you can tell Gibson's rather running out of enthusiasm as it goes on - by the time he reaches the ninth and tenth (!) panels, it appears he's had rather enough of drawing the God-Droid and his advisors.

The first one, 'Verdus'. Brilliant from start to finish, one of the all-time 2000AD greats. The balance of comedy and cruelty was perfect, Dredd-like in fact... many of the latter stories veered more towards the comic and didn't have the same edge as 'Verdus'. All those dehumanised colonists... and Sam accidentally burns them all to death!

Judges from around the world fighting each other in some frosty locale to try and recover the secrets of some MC-1 type who's apparently met God or something (and transformed into a big green hairy thing in the process.) It's the one with the Inquisitor (great character design from Mick Austin) and one of those famous Morrison / Millar conveyor-belt fights. It is mostly appalling, but it does have the classic 'Pax vobiscum, creep!" line, and Mick's depiction of the big green hairy thing is actually quite scary.

I was never a fan of Siku's art, but I remember quite enjoying the apocalyptic and mythic nature of the second series. The first one, however, I seem to recall as being bloody awful.

I see you guys got a cracking review over on Comics Bulletin:

http://www.comicsbulletin.com/reviews/13181088335239.htm

Best line of the review:

"I have no idea what the heck is wrong with Dirk van Dom, but I think I like it."

I reckon that's the sort of compliment all writers want to hear.

So by refusing to give the poor creature the jolly good seeing-to she richly deserved, not only did you cause her to move away, but she decided to erase all evidence of her life for the last year? This is like that Red Dwarf episode, 'Thanks For The Memory' taken to an epic scale.

I tell you, someday I'm going to take these 46 pages of urban alienation, bittersweet romantic disaster and post-modern existential trauma, and get a prize-winning novel out of them. Written in your inimitable prose style.

That, or a comedy series for BBC3.

But thanks for giving us the coda to what indeed has proved a saga in the truest of Icelandic senses.

But language has always evolved-new circumstances, invasions, isolation all lead to changes or diversion. Is it any different?

True, but are we seeing evolution or reduction? Are we heading inexorably towards the future envisaged by Orwell's '1984' where the lack of words to express an idea means the idea itself vanishes? As Wittgenstein famously said, "The limits of my language mean the limits of my world." Or am I just a rambling English teacher, who would if pressed have to admit that he sees no shortage of articulate, well-read intelligent kids in his day-to-day job, but equally sees no shortage of those whose level of literacy is terrifyingly poor?

Red Lanterns is an interesting book, I must say. I read #2 yesterday: is it me or is Milligan basing the story on that first Wikileak where the US helicopter gunned down a load of innocent people in Iraq?! It seems to essentially be 'Punisher vs. the Universe' which is intriguing, to say the least. The other GL books are pretty crap.

Also, demon blood-puking cats in space.

I am starting to having a sneaking suspicion that, against the odds, Red Lanterns is going to exceed expectations. The art remains far from my taste, but the philosophical underpinnings that are starting to emerge are quite intriguing - the idea of Atrocitus deciding to gift one of his degenerate followers with a higher degree of consciousness is very Pete Milligan (I assume he's going to try it, it'll go wrong, and he'll induct that human chap from issue 1 instead.) But yeah, this book is worth keeping an eye on.

Animal Man is still the best thing to come out of the relaunch though. Just brilliant on every level. Lemire has a real gift for nightmarish ideas (as Sweet Tooth often showcases.)