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Topics - Jim_Campbell

#1
Film & TV / Rogue Trooper News…!
29 January, 2024, 02:28:51 PM
Details in this Variety article.
#2
Film & TV / Dr Who: The Star Beast
26 November, 2023, 10:58:31 AM
An anniversary Dr Who special? Based on comic by Pat Mills and Dave Gibbons...? And there's no thread for it? Jeez... they'll come round and take your geek cards away, folks!

Anyway... I enjoyed that. A whisker short of an hour, and zips along at a decent pace. Meep, the spaceship, the Wrarth, are rendered with remarkable fidelity to Gibbons' original designs and the plot maintains the broad strokes of Mills' story.

I suspect a big part of the success (or not) for the viewer will be how one takes (or not) to Catherine Tate. I've never particularly cared for her, but I always liked Donna as a companion, not least because it finally took out the unwelcome romance aspect between the Doctor and his companion, so I really enjoyed seeing Tennant and Tate back.

I'm sure there are gammon all over the internet losing their shit about the non-binary/transgender representation in the story but, hey, I'm OK with that.  :D

It was great fun, and I'm very much looking forward to next week's special.
#3
Events / Thought Bubble 2023…
16 October, 2023, 01:14:51 PM
...is nearly upon us. As in previous years, I'm going as a punter, rather than an attendee, but if you feel the urgent need to have a comic devalued by getting me to scrawl on it, just collar me and I'll be more than happy to do so. (If you just want to say "hello", likewise, please feel free. Contrary to popular belief, I'm relatively personable in real life!)

Any of you glorious mo-fos planning to make the trek to Harrogate this year?
#4
Books & Comics / XINO: a new SF anthology title
20 May, 2023, 10:30:57 AM
Possibly of interest to some folks on here... a brand new SF anthology book coming from ONI in June — XINO. A fantastic list of creators, plus lettering by some old hack... :)

YouTube trailer here.
#5
(Starting a new thread to include a spoiler warning in the header, since the spoiler tag doesn't seem to be working. You have been warned!)

Reaction to the first couple of episodes of the latest series seems to have been pretty lukewarm which, I assume, is born out by the lack of comment here to date.

I'll be honest, I've been slightly baffled by most of the griping I've seen elsewhere on social media, mainly that the new season is "fluff" or "insubstantial"... which seems (to me, at least) to be attributing a seriousness and depth of meaning that the series has never delivered, or even promised to deliver. I don't know if people were needing a readjustment period coming out of Andor (in much the same way that I needed a readjustment period going into Andor, in order to acclimatise to the slower pace and more sombre tone) but I really enjoyed the first two episodes.

It looks great, and exciting stuff happens, and there's a fantastic chill-down-the-spine moment towards the end of Ep2.

Ep3, however, is genuinely fascinating, providing a mirror to several scenes in Andor, showing that the good intentions of the post-Empire Republic don't stop the grinding bureaucracy chugging away in much the same way as it did under the previous regime.

There's also the contrast between the prevailing attitude on Coruscant (that the war is over, the Empire is gone) and the fact that someone in the farther-flung corners of the galaxy seems to still have an awful lot of TIE interceptors and bombers at their disposal.

Plus, there's an excellent aerial chase/fight sequence.

So... all good for me, so far. I'm hoping The Mandalorian doesn't stray too far down Andor's miserablist take* on Star Wars, but I'm intrigued to see where it goes.

*Don't get me wrong — I thought Andor was great, but I don't want all my Star Wars to be gloomy political allegory. I quite like being able to have Serious Star Wars™ and Fun Star Wars™ at the same time!
#6
Books & Comics / Long Lost Simon Harrison Work…
13 December, 2022, 01:19:07 PM
...has resurfaced, in the shape of Shuk & Doode.

From the link below, the synopsis reads:

QuoteDark & Golden Books are excited to collect the 1988 comic serial Shuk and Doode for the very first time. Unseen since its initial publication in the pages of Computer and Video Games magazine, Shuk and Doode is the wild and excessive misadventures of two demons who have escaped from hell, urban satanism, cat burglary and other moments from the night life of a big city.

TBH, eight quid seems a bit steep for a 28-page book which only has 18 pages of strip, but it might make a handy gift for that Simon Harrison completist in your life... :-)

LINK here.
#7
Film & TV / MCU TV: Werewolf By Night
09 October, 2022, 09:49:21 PM
Didn't want to start a new topic, but couldn't see an appropriate thread to tack this onto!

That was fucking great!

Also, my wife wants to adopt 'Ted'.

Kinda sorry I didn't save it for actual Halloween, now, but... we didn't have anything to watch last night. :-)

Thoroughly recommended for those with a Disney+ sub.
#8
General / Thought Bubble 2022 Roll Call
07 October, 2022, 01:10:43 PM
Well, we're a little over a month away from Thought Bubble 2022. I believe The Mighty One is despatching a delegation of droids, and the 2000AD Pitch Competition returns.

I'll be pottering around for the whole weekend in a non-droid capacity, but feel free to say hello if you spot me — I'll be the one who looks like me. ;-)

I appreciate in these trying times, there's a lot of belt-tightening going on right now, so are any of you fine folks planning to attend...?
#9
Film & TV / Star Wars: Andor
21 September, 2022, 10:49:35 PM
Usual deal applies here, I think. Expect spoilers for everything aired and avoid the thread if you haven't watched the latest episode. I'm going to spoiler-tag my comments below (even though there are no real spoilers in there) but after that it's fair game. You have been warned!

[spoiler]I'm not sure about the near-universal praise I've seen for this. I've watched the first three episodes, and I understand why they dumped the first three on Day One: because basically fuck-all happens in the first two episodes.

Don't get me wrong — the whole thing looks great and the actors are all excellent. But the first two episodes are barely twenty minutes of plot spread out over eighty minutes. You're going to have to stick with it, because episode three is actually pretty good but, honestly, getting there is a slog. There are still a few "Wait? What?!" illogicalities, but I've resigned myself to those in most modern TV.

It's a handsome show, with a brilliant cast, which I hope will finally get to shine from Ep4 onwards...[/spoiler]
#10
Film & TV / GoT: House of the Dragon
22 August, 2022, 10:25:01 PM
NO SPOILERS.

(However, per previous TV threads, spoilers should be expected if you're not up to date with the current episode.)

Not at all sure about that. It's terribly fucking po-faced — it wouldn't have killed them to put a joke in it. The dialogue creaks with faux-Tolkien riffs and the whole thing plays like LotR with added tits and gore.

Also not helped by the fact that, by the end of Ep1 of GoT, you at least liked Ned and Tyrion, whereas the overwhelming impression of this is: what a shower of cunts.

I'll give it another couple of episodes, but it seems to lack the... earthy side-view of the fantasy genre that gave the original its energy.

(Plus: definite mistake losing the map at the start. Incorporating the all-important 'fantasy books have a map at the front' into the GoT title sequence was genius.)
#11
How can we not have a thread for this yet? I'm not going to post any spoilers here, but I'd suggest going forward that if you haven't seen the most recent episode, steering clear of this thread until you have.

I'd suggest that anything that's been broadcast is fair game and doesn't need a spoiler tag, but if you've got a rumour of something upcoming, or even just some informed (or inspired!) speculation, you whack a spoiler block over it so people can decide whether they want to come to each new episode cold.

So... short, non-spoilery opinion after two episodes: it's fucking great. It looks fantastic, the performances range from fine to excellent, and there's an inspired plot driver that wasn't in the trailers that very quickly takes the story somewhere you might not have been expecting. As I understand it, pretty much everything that was in the trailers was taken from these first two episodes, so it's safe to assume there may be a few surprises in store before the end.

Highly recommended, by me, at least.
#12
Film & TV / Dr Who: Legend of the Sea Devils
19 April, 2022, 11:46:58 AM
Caught this on iPlayer last night. Even by the low standards of the Chibnall era, this was fucking terrible. I can't even start to count the ways the plot made no sense, but that's par for the course with the show these days.

The directing, however, was objectively awful — the action sequences were disjointed and hard to follow, and there was no sense of a coherent 3D space in any of the scenes, with characters just popping up in places where they clearly hadn't been moments earlier.

Most of the acting was pretty poor and the jokes, such as they were, completely failed to land.

On top of all that, it managed to look like the production had quite a lot of money spent on it, whilst simultaneously looking cheap and plasticky.

Is the next one Chibnall's last? God, I hope so...
#13
General / Rogue Trooper: Who Did What?
16 March, 2022, 07:18:05 PM
Because the forum search function is so bloody useless, I can't be bothered to try and track down the thread where we had a big ol' discussion about Rogue Trooper's development and GFD's contribution.

However, thanks to an unrelated Facebook post, I've been directed to this article on Down The Tubes.

If you scroll down a ways, you'll find the original pitch document which, the accompanying text confirms, was written by Dave Gibbons. There's an awful lot of what went into the final strip in there, whilst we also know that a lot of what GFD brought to the table ("He's like the Euro-Fighter plane project — one group made his legs, another made his arms!") was (rightly, it would seem) jettisoned at the thrashing-it-out meeting between Gibbons, GFD, and Steve Mac.

I'm not trying to make a particular point here — I'm only breaking this out into a new thread because I can't track down the original discussion and I thought it might be of interest to those who participated in that thread.

(And, again, I have a lot of time for a big chunk of what GFD did in Battle... I'm not trying to spin this into a 'worthless hack' narrative, but I still maintain he was never a great fit for 2000AD.)
#14
Announcements / Twenty Years of Mightiness!
08 January, 2022, 09:04:06 AM
As Matt Smith noted on Facebook, yesterday marked the twentieth anniversary of his ascension to The Right Hand of Tharg.

I hope you'll join me in munching a plastic cup in celebration of this milestone, and of the many thrills, classic and new, we've enjoyed under his stewardship.

It's amazing to me that I'm still excited to read a new prog after 43 years of readership (and it still feels slightly unreal to see my name in a credit box every prog).
#15
General / Help! Specific Image Needed…
07 August, 2021, 12:13:31 PM
Can anyone help me out with this? I need a decent resolution scan (or capture from digital) of some specific images — I can't remember which of the end-of-year progs it was in, and my back progs are scattered across multiple boxes and locations.

You'll know the one I mean — the story is the Alan Grant penned/Cam Kennedy illustrated Dredd with John Wagner in a flying bath. If any one can help me out with some of the panels of John from that episode, you'd have my undying gratitude. :)
#16
I know not everyone reads every thread on here, so I wanted to break this out, just in case.

The Art Comp this month was for Strontium Dog-based art tributes, or text of any kind, to the much-missed Bolt-01 (Dave Evans) and, as I said on there:

QuoteAt the end of the month, I'd like to gather everything together and see if we can't get a printed collection made up that I'm hoping some kind soul will forward to Dave's family. I can't imagine what they're going through, but I thought it might be nice for them to have some permanent record of how well-loved Dave was here.

With hindsight, using the Art Comp thread for submissions might have caused some people to overlook it, and I don't want anyone to miss out, hence this separate post.

The ostensible deadline for submissions is the end of the month, but I still have some contributions to come via email so I won't be thinking about making a start for at least another week.

Many of you have said some wonderful things over on the RIP thread, too, but I don't want to go harvesting quotes from people without their explicit permission. At the same time, as I say, I don't want people to feel they've missed out when they would have liked to contribute.

If you posted on the RIP thread and would like your words including in the book, then just say so here and I'll take that as permission to quote you from the other thread. If you want to post some specific text here, then please feel free.

If you feel like you don't have any words, but would like to express condolences anyway, then I'm open to the idea of a page of general sympathy/condolence with a list of names. If you'd like to be included in that, then, again, you can post here to that effect.
#17
Normal service will be resumed next month, with Tomwe's cracking theme, but I didn't feel like we could just press ahead as normal this month in light of the heart-breaking news about Dave.

So we're going to do something different.

This month, the theme is STRONTS.

Anything Strontium Dog related is fair game. We're not going to vote — I'm just going to leave the thread open until May 31st. Take as long as you like over your entry — if you want to use Dave's preferred medium of biro-on-Post-It, that's cool. If you want to give us some lovingly-rendered full colour wonder, that's cool, too, as is anything inbetween.

Not an artist? That's fine. If you want to write something, there's a place for that here, too. Doesn't have to be Stront-based — if you've just got something you want to share about Dave, share away.

At the end of the month, I'd like to gather everything together and see if we can't get a printed collection made up that I'm hoping some kind soul will forward to Dave's family. I can't imagine what they're going through, but I thought it might be nice for them to have some permanent record of how well-loved Dave was here.

Over to you, my friends.
#18
Sorry for the delay getting these votes tallied and the results posted... it's been quite a week.

Annnnyway, finally it's time to announce the winners of the thoroughly thrill-charged third Unofficial Sketch Competition!

In THIRD PLACE, it's...



Colin YNWA #4

In SECOND PLACE, we have...



Dark Jimbo

And, by a whisker, the WINNER is...



Tomwe #2

Congratulations to all our worthy winners, to everyone who contributed so many fantastic entries, and to all of you who took the time to grapple with the impossible task of picking their favourites and casting their votes.

Take a bow, Tomwe, and bask in the radiant glory of your well-deserved win. I'll pop you a PM shortly so we can get your prizes sent to you, and I'd ask you to pop your thinking cap on and consider a theme for competition #4, which will be along in the next few days...
#19
Books & Comics / Kiss His Axe…?
24 April, 2021, 12:41:23 PM
It occurred to me that Squaxx who are now facing an axe-wielding-barbarian-shaped hole in their comic reading might want to ask their favoured purveyor of funny books to procure them a copy of Vault's Barbaric #1 — a 3-issue mini-series which might scratch that particular fantasy itch.

You can find a preview of #1 here.
#20
With apologies for the unseemly delay getting here, it's finally time for the Unofficial Forum Sketch Comp #3 voting thread!

Voting will be open for one week — the thread will close to votes end-of-day Sunday 25th of April after which we'll announce the winner, and hopefully kick off competition #4 in early May.

Don't forget there are TWO GLITTERING PRIZES for the winner. In addition to choosing the theme for competition #4, the winner will receive a randomly selected graphic novel from my Terrifyingly Tall Tower of Comps, plus a signed Nick Percival Dredd print, courtesy of the generous Colin YNWA!

Please clearly rank your selections first, second, third and, in if you're choosing one of multiple entries by the same person, please make it clear which one you're voting for. You can also single out entries out for an honourable mention, which I'll use for tie-break purposes.

Everyone's done fantastic work again this month, and I have no idea how anyone is going to make selections out of this bumper crop of brilliant work, but here they all are...

Bolt-01


Colin YNWA #1


Colin YNWA #2


Colin YNWA #3


Colin YNWA #4


Dark Jimbo


Dog Deever


Funt Solo #1


Funt Solo #2


Jayzus B. Christ #1


Jayzus B. Christ #2


Jim Campbell


Pete Wells #1


Pete Wells #2


pictsy #1


pictsy #2


pictsy #3


pictsy #4


tomwe #1


tomwe #2


tomwe #3


tomwe #4


Woolly #1


Woolly #2