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Hence your name?  I do remember watching bits of it on MTV Europe of all channels, back when we shared the same MTV station as the rest of the continent... and it was a music station!  It was the daftest thing I'd ever seen!  Looked hilarious!

Let's just leave it as I respect the guy, having followed his career closely, and you don't, as you're perfectly entitled to, but I've really said all I'm going to now and I stick by it all.  We have different opinions, and that's fair enough. 

If you watch Crusade from episode seven (I think) onwards you'll see the original vision.  As with B5 and most shows since it set up mysteries and stories which we'd tune in to see the origins and meanings of.  Then watch the first six or so, when TNT wanted everything explained first.  Complete mess and I can't blame JMS for walking away.

I do see your point about Spidey, I really do, but that's what they get when getting JMS on board.  I loved his storyline which started with a simple question of "Are you sure you were bitten by accident?" to Peter.  I can't comment on the children storyline but given the recent rubbish (in my own opinion of course) of killing him and then having him haunt (for want of a better description) Doc Ock who had taken over the Spiderman role I can't see how it's improved since.    They knew who they were getting so maybe it would've been best just not to hire him, they would've known what they were in for.  A marketing idea which backfired perhaps?  Fair play to him for sticking to his guns though, it's meant some projects have been cancelled after they've started but he doesn't back down and I respect  that in a writer and creator.  I've seen too many times shows turn to crap when executives interfere too much and end up handing a show over to a different head writer because they don't get what they want from the person who create the damn thing in the first place.  I'd rather they went out on a high than go down the pan over time.

Yeah I thought I remembered something about that.  I did read the occasional issue of Titan's Aliens comic as a teen and loved them, though again it felt strange.  These days it's commonplace to have comics on normal newsagent shelves for adults or at least a more mature audience but back in the 90s it was a unique thing to see them.  Especially when, despite Titan's minuscule "For mature readers" comment on the front page, they were placed amongst the regular children's titles.

Always thought it a bit strange to make toys and cartoon series of 18-certificate films.  Hence why it was no surprise to see RoboCop 3 come with a 15, then the series as a 12.

Babylon 5 is a serious show for the most part, it has an epic story to tell, but it had wonderful humour throughout - I wouldn't say a show where an alien uses one of his eight penises to cheat at poker as taking itself too seriously lol!  I know JMS is passionate and can certainly attack when others try to interfere with his work (see Crusade and Spiderman) but I agree with writers when that happens.  In the situation with Spiderman some may say they think he was unreasonable to complain when Marvel wanted to change his stories.  But I think if they wanted to control the story to that degree then why hire him in the first place, they obviously knew of him and how he worked, and they must've wanted to bring his form of storytelling to the title.  Makes no sense, just the same as TNT buying Crusade then interfering the way they did.

But like I said, each to their own.

I think they'd caught on as we both kind of... paused.... before leaving.     Maybe they would've thought it cute if we had, or more likely maybe would've moved tables instead!

Call me old fashioned but unless the title is only available in digital (or too hard or expensive to get a hold of in print) I'll also plump for what I'd call the real thing - paper.  This counts across everything from comics to novels.  Factual books are much better in print too with nice, big pages and double-page spreads etc.  But to stay on the topic of comics I always stick with print too.

At one stage I started reading IDW's new Transformers range and had a couple of years of back issues to plough through so in that regard the digital downloads were a lot cheaper to get caught up on, and looked lovely on a full-sized iPad with Retina display.  But once I got to purchasing the brand new comics it just felt right, and so I collect 2000AD that way too, there's just something about a proper comic or book that you don't get from digital.

Of course this is just me.

Cartoonist extraordinaire Lew Stringer has put up a post on his Blimey! blog about a new Dave Gibbons interview at IGN.  It also includes a little preview of his work on 2000AD's new collection of his classic Dan Dare strips:

http://lewstringer.blogspot.co.uk/2015/06/new-interview-with-dave-gibbons.html

For anyone interested, Lew also brought Dave on board for an issue of satirical kids' comic Oink! in the late 80s to draw Lew's The Superhero's Day Off strip.  In a shameless plug for my own blog you can see this marvellous piece of his work here:

http://the-oink-blog.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Dave%20Gibbons

[The Lost World: Jurassic Park]

The Lost World: Jurassic Park - it has its detractors but I loved it.  Definitely one of my fave sequels of all time, Goldblum makes the movie and the tension and jumps are still there.  I remember seeing it in the cinema and while the initial wow factor couldn't be repeated, obviously, it still blew me away.  Before the cinema I'd kept away from trailers (as I continue to do today when there's a film coming out I'm really looking forward to) so I'd no idea about the San Diego bit - a brilliant surprise!  Thought in later years I saw the two deleted scenes on DVD and I wish they'd kept them in, they added a good bit of character to the hunter, and a nice lot of background to InGen.

However, I watched this on ITV2 on Sunday night.  This is a PG certificate film (albeit it one with a special warning in the cinema a la Jaws and the first Jurassic Park), parents took their kids to see it etc., however when ITV show it between 7:30pm and 10pm(!!) they feel we need protected and they trimmed the hell out of it!  Hate that.

Did anyone ever watch any of the Robocop cartoon shows?  I didn't see any of them at the time (I probably would have hated them at that age), but watching them as a more indulgent adult I thought they were silly, certainly, but fun in the way the Rambo cartoon was.

just bringing some of the facts of the production and since to the table from the books I have, that's all

As we've seen in the years since, facts can change where JMS is concerned. He has become painted as a somewhat unreliable narrator by his colleagues and collaborators in the years since B5, and alternative narratives seem to end up surfacing about the B5 years, particularly the DS9 thing that he now seems eager to put to bed.

Being a fan of it back then but now pooing all over it because you've grown to dislike the creator I don't understand at all, but hey, each to their own

Babylon 5 is neither the first or last thing in the world to be tainted by a creator's later journey up their own arse.

There was a Rambo cartoon?  I shudder to think!  I tried the RoboCop cartoon, but seeing him having dinner in a restaurant in the opening scene was enough to turn me right off!

Like I said, each to their own, but it'll never make sense to me to change my opinion about something I really loved just because the creator later did something I didn't like.  It's a much happier life to continue to enjoy it but maybe not their new stuff.  That's my two cents anyway.  Not sure about this being painted as unreliable too, I've followed his career very closely ever since and still stand by all I said previously.

For three of us the 'day' ended a bit later, after dinner... later still for Judge Russell and myself.  A good day all round, even if I still say we should've stayed put at Wetherspoons to enjoy the... company... Jack!

While I'll be on the non-alcoholic beverages, I say we still raise our glasses to propose a toast... to no more American Reaper.

Don't get het up at my opinionating, Oink - I freely admit I was actually a big fan of B5 at the time, but JMS' attempt to control the narrative at the time and ensuing historical revisionism - about B5 and his other projects in the years since - where he comes off as some kind of martyr to conspiracies of corruption and/or incompetence have rendered me quite happy to shit all over B5 given half a chance.

No, no, not getting het up just bringing some of the facts of the production and since to the table from the books I have, that's all   Being a fan of it back then but now pooing all over it because you've grown to dislike the creator I don't understand at all, but hey, each to their own

Interesting insights there Oink, didn't know any of that.  Matter of fact...I thought it was always on TNT??  Memory ain't what it was....or at least I think it used to be better...I can't remember.

Yeah Ghost MacRoth, TNT also did the TV movies and the re-edit of the pilot.  JMS was always so forthright and honest about the making of the show, he never held back on his hatred of TNT when they started to interfere.  It made for interesting reading in the official magazine, always read his page first - fascinating insights and I put it all down to that column that I became interested in writing myself.  It was also there and in the pages of several making-of books by him and by other writers where I learned about Paramount's origins for DS9 too.  I do remember some Trekkie fans at the time giving off about another space-based show being on the air, but the general consensus after a while (i.e. once they started actually watching it properly) was that they loved it too alongside their Trek.

Hmm... might be overdue a re-watch after all this actually..... which leads me nicely into:

I think the old CRT TVs are better for watching sports since they can withstand the remote/empty beer bottle bombardment when my team inevitably fucks up. I've heard gamers say they're better for some games too, but the internet told me they're a bunch of Big Fat Sexist Monsters so you probably shouldn't listen to them.

I find that with older video game systems definitely.  I've a 3DO and the picture is far crisper on my old JVC CRT than on my new HD screen, no matter what leads and equipment I buy.  So in the end I just played it on the CRT through S:Video, after all that's the way it was designed.  (Plus it has a kick-ass woofer!)

I've got all of Babylon 5's first two season on VHS and they are so much better than the DVDs too.  While the show was forward-thinking enough to shoot its live-action scenes in widescreen (this was the early 90s remember), any CGI or special effects shots were filmed in 4:3.  There was a reason, probably cost, but I forget what it was.  So the DVDs cut the top and bottom of these scenes off to make it all widescreen, but it just results in poor quality, blurry, zoomed-in effects.  So I watched a few on VHS last year and they're lovely and crisp and clean.  Will definitely be investing in the remainder and keeping that CRT!

I also enjoy watching...

RoboCop: The Series

Good call.  I actually enjoyed this show.  Yes he wasn't killing anybody but the black humour was definitely back and it made for some nice, slowly-developing storylines involving his family.  Such a shame it was cancelled after the first full year, especially with that final episode and [spoiler]his father finding out who he was[/spoiler]!

Stupid work computer.  Please insert appropriate winky smiley face after the first sentence!

Nothing I can do about it, but the Daily Mail have put a picture of my wife and 1yr old son on their website. The fucking Daily Mail. Grrr!

What have they done this for?!