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Some sad news:

Mike Simpson's excellent website Planet Magrathea (dedicated to Douglas Adams and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy) has closed for business.

Since Mike posted his review of the upcoming movie he's been blasted from all sides because, it seems, some people don't like him having an opinion of his own.

The torrent of abuse he's received has reached the point where he basically just got fed up with the whole thing and decided to call it quits. I don't blame him; there are people out there with pure vitriol for blood!

I've known Mike for almost twenty years, and he's one of the nicest guys you could hope to ever meet. I've never heard anyone say a bad word against him until he posted his negative review of the movie. Then all of a sudden - Bam! - hundreds of nasty, bitter, jealous people come crawling out of the woodwork to attack him!

Who'd have thought that any Hitchhiker's fans could be so mean-spirited?

Shame on them!

Mike C

Link: http://www.planetmagrathea.com

As some of you will know, later this year there will be an "Absolute" edition of Watchmen... This oversized edition will contain pretty much everything that any Watchmen fan could want, plus it's being re-coloured by original colourist John Higgins.

As luck would have it, yours truly is the webmaster of John Higgins' website and we now have some exclusive examples of John's re-colouring work!

Yay!

-- Mike Chttp://www.turmoilcolour.com">

Funtwangle, your idea won second place in the Advertise 2000 AD competition! Please get in touch with me so that we can sort out your prize!

Cheers,
Mike

Just a quick question, chaps and chapettes: did anyone watch all the Doctor Who stuff on BBC2 at the weekend? I taped it but I haven't watched it yet for fear of spoilers!

Toodles,
Mike

Hooray! I'm off to Blighty for the weekend! Anyone know of any good comic shops / SF bookshops in Brighton?

-- Mike

Just read on the Internet Movie Database (which is occasionally accurate, so I'll trust it), that the great Mr Pegg - AKA Tim Bisley, Shaun and, of course, Johnny Alpha - is thirty-five years old today!

I know that Simon is a big 2000 AD fan, so I guess there's a chance that he's one of us online Squaxx. If so, Simon, please e-mail me with your address so I can send you your present!

-- Mike

P.S. I promise that I'm not a deranged stalker. I am perfectly sane. My pet cabbages can verify this!

Galactic Greetings, chums!

Anyone interested in participating in a wee competition, in which you could win one of a small number of not-very-good prizes?

The idea is that you should create an advert for 2000AD or the Megazine. The advert can be a text piece, a drawing, or even a short audio or video-clip (for the sake of everyone's bandwidth, videos should be not more than a minute long, certainly no bigger than five megabytes).

The competition's judges (i.e., me and my wife) will be looking for quality of ideas rather than quality of execution. In other words, if you have a great idea but your drawing skills are pants, don't be shy about joining in!

The competition deadline is March 31st - that should be enough time for you all to get your entries done!

Text and image ads can be posted here; videos are a different matter, though. If you can put them on-line yourself, then great, otherwise get in touch with me and I'll try to find space to host them.

Prizes: The winner(s) will receive some old tat that I happen to find lying around, to be decided later!

(Of course, if not enough people are interested in participating, then I reserve the right to call the whole thing off and have a sulk).

Lotsa luck,
Mike

P.S. Below you'll find a link to a short video-type advert I've put together as a sample. It's in WMV format (Windows media video, or something), and it's just over four megabytes.

Link: http://www.iol.ie/~carrollm/advert001.wmv" target="_blank">Mike's 2000AD advert

Just wondering: who on this board is from - or currently living in - Ireland?

Apart from me, that is.

-- Mike

Oooh! Tonight's episode of Scrubs on Network 2 (Ireland, for all you non-Irish folk out there) was, as usual, excellent.

Made even more excellent by a mention of Judge Dredd!

I won't go into details - don't want to spoil the show for anyone who hasn't seen it yet - but it was cool to hear the lawman's name mentioned!

Love and cuddles,
Mike

Just wondering: who's going to Mecon 7, then?

For those of you not in the know, Mecon is the annual convention of the Queen's University of Belfast SF&F Society, taking place from Friday 5th to Sunday 7th.

The comics guests are Paul J. Holden and Glenn Fabry, both of whom I've met before; sterling chaps and always up for a sketch or a signing!

Plus there's the chance to meet top authors Robert Rankin, John Meaney, Ian McDonald. And some hack whose name escapes me at the moment.

The missus and I are making a weekend of it (we're planning to get there nice and early on Friday to take advantage of the city's numerous top comics shops) so I'm hoping to meet up with some of you guys there...

Link: http://www.mecon.org.uk/" target="_blank">Mecon

I'm new to this message board, so please forgive me if I'm raking over old coals here...

Personally, I love the first Dredd movie. Okay, maybe "love" is too strong a word, but I do like it a lot. I think it looks cool, has some great action sequences, and it about as true to the Dredd mythos as we could expect from Hollywood (it was closer to the "real" Dredd than the DC Comics version)

As for whether Stallone was a good choice... The jury is still out on that one. I would have liked to see someone who didn't remove his helmet, so a non-star would have been a good choice.

For the next two movies, Dredd should be played by someone a lot bigger - maybe Dolph Lundgren? He doesn't have to act much - just be tough (and permanently helmetted).

Regardless of the actor or the budget, the key thing to get right is the script...