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Aye. There's a brief bit about it in today's Guardian. A year to film, apparently, and it's going to be used from this weekend.

each of the six people who pressed the "compulsive button pusher" option

Good chance it was the same guy!

Option missing:

He was an OK character - The new stuff is pointless (unless you've got a game to sell) - The game looks OK for yet another dull shooter; I might hire it - Whither Will Simpson?

Doesn't Dredd normally end up taking anti-rad pills or having some sort of medical treatment after he's been exposed for too long?

That would keep the problem down a bit.

You can also create an index in Word.

When you add a new entry, highlight the title then go to Insert>>Index & Tables>>Index>>Mark Entry..

The first time you do this, it'll generate an index at the end of the document. As you add more entries it's a simple task to update the index as you go.

I am beginning to have doubts over the wisdom of some of the casting decisions in this new series.

This, in particular, smacks of :"Oh, people liked it when Simon Pegg was in the last one. What comedian can we get this year?

The only saving grace will be his inevitable grisly death.

Can you be Straight Edge without being Emo

Well, that depends if you want to call Henry Rollins or Fugazi Emo.

Sad news.

An overused word, but this is a case where it is justified: he was unique and we shan't see his like again.

To clarify. As with a few others who've posted, I was always a big fan of Slaine, as he first appeared not long after I started reading 2000AD, but there has been a distinct downwards trend in quality. I was trying to express my frustration with the simultaneous misuse of Slaine and some half-decent ideas in the Carnival storyline.

My personal favourites are some of the early one-parters, Time Killer, Slaine the King and the Horned God.

I am currently in the process of reading a pile of back issues from 1300 to 1450 and I've just read the first parts of both Books of Invasion and The Shadow Warriors. I was very surprised to find both were engaging and amusing in the way that the best of Mills' writing has always been, unlike the lumpen plods they have both become.

Langley's art in Moloch seems to be much more organic than it had become by the time of Carnival and I like it a lot more.

Well, I thought I'd waste valuable minutes of my preciously finite life writing a totally pointless set of reflections on the last Slaine story. Having done that, I reckoned the only thing that could make the whole enterprise have even the smallest semblance of purpose was to post it here so you can all enjoy it too.

Cheers, Pete.


Every week, people race each other to post a review of the latest Prog before it?s even in the shops. That?s fair enough, but I?ve always thought that you only get the full measure of a story when you can read it from start to finish and I try to make the effort even when I really haven?t enjoyed a story.

Which brings us to Carnival, which I did not enjoy reading in weekly instalments. While none of the obvious criticisms are contradicted in re-reading, if you?re willing to give it a chance there are some redeeming features. The carnival itself as a narrative device for introducing a bunch of new characters is a great idea and the bravura opening spread with Ukko?s huckster?s introduction of the cast is a brilliant way of handling the necessary info-dump. It?s also a neat little fanboy reference to the very early days when Slaine was hawking himself around village fairs as a sideshow attraction. Unfortunately, by the time a character turns up again ? six weeks later ? you?ve completely forgotten what his particular peculiarity might have been.

Having set all this up, we could have reasonably expected an enjoyable character piece exploring the changed relationships between Slaine, Kai and Ukko while being introduced to some new supporting characters and the  dangling threads of future plots. The incomprehensible decision to turn the whole thing into Inspector Mac Roth is its undoing for two reasons. Firstly, Slaine is a character who generally solves a mystery by slicing it in half with his axe. I?m all for trying new directions, but this is so blatantly contrary to the spirit of the character that it seems, for a second, like somebody else has taken over writing the strip.

This may have been bearable if Mills had come up with a decent whodunit, but my second big problem is how miserably he fails in this regard. To be effective, a story like this has to give the reader enough clues to make him at least think he could figure it all out for himself, while still remaining relatively plausible when the rug is inevitably pulled out from under his feet. What we get instead, is a series of preposterous and unwieldy coincidences leading up to a conclusion which, rather than making you smile at the author?s clever sleight of hand, simply leaves you nonplussed by the completely contradictory revelation.

Compare this with the artful misdirection of ?Your Beating Heart?. Rereading that story once you know the punchline makes you appreciate the storytelling even more as everything still makes sense in light of the (admittedly daft) resolution. Going back over the scenes with the Shoggey family just infuriates. There is no subtle misdirection here. Skathan is explicitly characterised as a stroppy teenager: ?It?s not fair! I hate you! I hate you!? then we are simply told, ?Em, actually. NO. She?s forty.?

What the penguin feck?

Frustratingly, in amongst all this Mills can?t help but throw in a few decent moments. Ukko gets a few good lines, some of the carnival acts are great (the zombie band, Crom Dubh putting his detachable head in the lion?s mouth) and the scene with the Chitterling hanging up her washing is an inspired mix of the mundane and the fantastic.

The merits or otherwise of Clint Langley?s art get an airing every other week; I tend to find it murky and hard to follow and this tale was no exception. Reading it in one go, however, it didn?t seem so bad. Whether this was because I was more willing to concentrate on it or because it didn?t present the same distraction form the more traditional styles in an average prog is hard to say. Either way, I found it far less irritating than normal and was able to tease out more of the background detail than usual. I was also impressed with some of the layouts, particularly some of the double-page spreads at the start and finish of the story. Having seen the first episodes of the new ABC Warriors, however, it seems this is more likely to be down to Mills than Langley.

Despite these green shoots of hope, there are still some big problems with the art. Essentially, the flashy photoshopping is getting in the way of telling the story rather than helping it. First off, it?s just too dark: reading this under less than a 150 Watt bulb would be nigh on impossible. Then the characters are frequently in the wrong place in the panels and are usually staring off in completely the wrong direction. Couple this with awful scenes like the one where a whole page of dialogue seems to have been misplaced until you finally realise its not the two characters in the foreground who?re speaking and it becomes a real trial just to work out who is supposed to be doing what to whom. Never mind why!

The poor acting ability of the character models doesn?t really help matters either. Slaine seems to have much the same expression regardless of whether he?s in the middle of a titanic battle on some blasted heath or trying to get an eyeful of Skathan?s shoggey fanny on a sunny afternoon.

In conclusion, Carnival is a bit better than I remembered it ? its failings having overshadowed the good bits in my memory ? but it?s probably not worth the effort of rereading. And the hours spent writing this have certainly been a waste of time that I?ll regret on my deathbed.

So, I was wondering. When you're copy arrives on a Monday morning, does it actually fit through the letterbox, or do you have to go and pick it up from the local post office. Which would defeat the purpose of subscribing for me.

Are you being groomed to take over from Rennie when his ridiculous wage demands become unsustainable for Rebellion?

Aren't there some old ones with no actual title? Or would that be being overly pedantic?

Big Train, surely?

Ah, yes. I always get all those sketch shows mixed up. At least I didn't say Naked Video.