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Got up at quarter to seven and planted french beans, squash and sweetpeas. Drank loads of strong coffee and had two bacon rolls one with egg. Driving my monster truck into town this aft. to buy saturday night beers. Ah the crazy hedonism of the weekend!

Funny Dredd, good new story from Sir Pie Suppers & Boo C, Bit of an eh? for last ep. of Synammon, 10 seconders continues well, fab bit of bullet time shenanigans in new ABCs as well as some nice humorous bits.
That was quick.
Is it really a whole week till next prog?

Ah, the good old Grauniad.  I'm still waiting for the right moment to watch Dune, which they gave away a few weeks ago.  "The slow blade penetrates the shield".  

Thanx indigo, yes I don't think there's any sensible way round the faff issue and in reality I'm probably not going to burn 1000 odd albums onto my computer -who's got the time? Not me.  So the records can stay as records and the mp3 player will be used for CDs and possibly downloads if I ever get round to working out how to do that. But I do think the sound recorder might be of use to me as a way of recording stuff off the radio, so I may go for the Creative Zen wotnot.  And yes, probably sensible to go to a shop.  But I live in the back of beyond and amazon is so damned convenient.  Sigh.  I'll probably end up paying my heating bills and stick with the minidisc.

I too am considering buying a mp3 player - never owned one before, but my christmas bonus is burning a hole in my pocket and may get spent on bills if I don't buy something frivolous and selfish soon.  I've been looking at the creative zen 20 gig on Amazon, that gets good reviews and is apparently less gimmicky than the ipod in that it doesn't bother with videos, album art etc. but restricts itself to sound/music. Apparently a bit sturdier too. Also it's got a FM radio and sound recorder. I dunno.. My problem is that much of my music is on flatblack plastic discs with holes in the middle and I guess this would be a bit of a faff to transfer to mp3, it certainly is when I try to burn it to CD, to the extent that I don't bother and just listen to the records on a record player or record them to minidisc.  Perhaps the zen will allow me to record vinyl straight to mp3 via the sound recorder?  Who knows.  

For what it's worth, I reckon this run of slaine is a try-out for a halloween special for the US market.  It's a bit "Slaine does iron age Mrs. Marple at the scary scooby doo funfair", isn't it?  With a touch of Sleepy Hollow (headless horseman, burning pumpkin hinky punk).  That whole "carny" vibe is very American to my mind.  And surely Skathan's far too young to be Estella's mother? Doubtless some aspect of the Shoggy lifestyle I was hitherto unaware of.

Funny you should mention Moorcock 'cos I came here to say I thought Valentine D'ath reminded me of Jerry Cornelious from MM's books, and also a little bit of the guy from Ian S Banks "use of weapons".

I too found this week's Slaine very good, a great conclusion to the Books of Invasion.  He shoud meet up with Ukko again on his search for Kai!  Bet he does.

I thought he was maybe 19-20 in the first series which makes him 70-odd now.  I thought he's been looking a bit like James Woods lately.  A nice touch is the little pointy scap of hair left on his baldy heed ( he had a pointy Dan Dare style 'do back in the day).

I like this latest "book", has anyone else noticed the parrallel between Slaine's men burning out the villages to get rid of the demons, and the Nemesis episode way way back which had Torquemada doing exactly the same thing to the tree/flower people? Similar, even down to the villagers nearly getting away from it but for the tree woman being in bloom/ alloween having to go for a dip.  Except that, like, Slaine's a "goody" and Torquemada's a "baddy".  Excellent, clever and a little treat for long-term fans.

Yeah, I thought Altamont too...great art I thought, looks like time well spent.  Has he got a thing about men with bushy blonde hair and goatees?  And is it just me, or has there been a lot of rock band stuff in the prog recently?

At the other end of the art scale is American Gothic.  What the hell is going on here? It looks worse than The Mind Of Wolfie Smith, and the introduction of a half-tone screen this week makes matters no better.  A shame, as the plot's OK and could be better served with clearer artwork.  Someone suggested it could be a problem at the inking stage?  I can imagine the original pencils would look better, if it was done like that.

I'm liking this Slaine, don't know why really perhaps the inclusion of a warp-spasm a couple of weeks ago helped...am expecting the lovely bucolic villagers to be hopelessly tainted with "civilization" in a typically bombastic Millsian style but what do you expect?  And the art's just lovely, I can even get past everyone looking like photos these days.

Bec & Kawl is typical amusing throwaway light hearted stuff and I've no problem with that...liked the balloon joke.

And finally, Esther, I have to say that the VCs is the unsung great of the current line up with it's twisty plot and garish nightmarish colour scheme.  Go Abnett & Williams!

Time travel.  It's just silly, isn't it?  

Great episode, though, "What're you going to do? Sucker me to death?"  Heh heh...and I for one actually liked the self destruct bit, it gave a novel purpose for the round metal studs on the dalek's body.

Kicking myself that I've missed a few episodes and waiting anxiously for the repeats.

We went to see it yesterday.  I was expecting to be disappointed but it wasn't as bad as it could have been.  I was a bit surprised that they'd changed the plot to the extent they had.  I agree Ford was underused, and Marvin the wrong shape.  The comedy/feelgood ending also missed the underlying dark hopelessness of the original. However I was glad I went to see it, surprised they actually made it and that so many people went to see it.  Having said that, there was no laughing out loud from the Galashiels audience, and a few people did actually walk out.  The whole "it didn't happen like that in the book!" factor has now led me to contemplate re-reading the whole thing.  I have to say, surprise, that the new radio episodes do it better.

Yeah, I'm not sure about the art on American Gotheek either, it has the look of 70s-80s second-string stories, a bit heavy-handed and looking like all the reasons I used to hate b&w strips, before I came to like the styles of Dom Reardon, Frazer Irving et al. who use black ink and contrast to far greater effect.  As for the story, well it still has time to develop so I'm prepared to give it a chance, and maybe the artwork will improve or I'll get used to it or something.  I'm kind of 50/50 on it at the moment.

The VCs, though, is looking good at the mo in my O.  I was initially disappointed when Ant Williams took over the art from Flint, who seemed the natural and obvious successor to McMahon and Cam Kennedy, but AWs style has developed, he's got rid of the dodgy CGI, and the whole thing has a cohesive stylized look combining high contrast light and shade with an unusual colour palette which perfectly suits the craggy-faced vets and the twisty plot.  And as to the plot, I think it's a good development from the slam-bam make-it-up-as-you-go-along style that GFD used to favour - fun at the time, I loved the original VCs when I were a lad, but this more intrigue-laden plot certainly tickles my grown-up fancy.

 

"Apparantly theres a shitload of 2000ads round the corner at oxfam."

If that's the Oxfam bookshop in Edinburgh,  it's well worth a look as last time I was there they had loads of tooth including 70s bog-paper ones, several copies of issue 1 of the Meg and much much more.

I remember Krazy.  It was great!

I'm seriously considering getting rid of the last 5 years worth of progs lying under the bed which I'll never realistically re-read, it kind of makes sense to sell them all in a lump and get some reasonable cash for them, justifies having kept them all rather than passed them on or thrown them out - however if my complete collection stretched back to the late 70s and not just the last 5 yrs I might feel differently - and those few early bog-paper progs that have survived in my hands down the years of house moves and communal living I'm definitely hanging on to -why, I don't know, nostalgia probably and they only occupy a single medium sized cardboard box.