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Not seen this mentioned yet, apologise if I've missed it. Anyway Arthur Ranson is producing a web'comic' (his inverted commas) over at his blog. Thought it might be of interest.

Introduction to what he's doing here

http://www.arthurranson.com/content/sirius-coming-soon

and first part here

http://www.arthurranson.com/content/sirius-page-1

Not sure if folk are interested but thought I'd share. Book Depositary are running a competition one of the prizes being one of five signed copies of Kingdom. All you have to do is sacrifice your e-mail address to the best rival to Amazon owned by Amazon and you are in with a chance to win.

http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/blog/post/tag/Three-in-1

Well the times certainly are a changin'

Marvel / DC crossovers have seemed a long way off for a long time, but, according to Bleeding Cool at least that's all about to change.

http://www.bleedingcool.com/2012/01/04/scoop-marvel-and-dc-to-publish-new-twelve-issue-crossover-spider-man-batman/

Not sure how much value they'll be in this... well creatively at least. I figure with both having movies out this year the two companies will be thinking there's a lot of dollar value in it... we'll have to see more details of the creative teams etc. That said interesting that the two big uns are trying this thing again. A case of desperate times calling for desperate measures?

Great interview with the majestic Brendan McCarthy focusing on the up coming Zaucer of Zilk with Al Ewing. Including a date and issue for Radiator's Upcoming Thrills thread, 1775 in March.

http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=35694

2000ad once again front and center over at CBR. Nice one.

http://www.bleedingcool.com/2011/12/01/andy-kubert-to-draw-watchmen-2/

Not sure how I feel about this. But Rich Johnson certainly feels confident its now going to happen. Andy Kubert... well his Dad I'd be happy to see drawing anything... him... not so much...

Well I might not be the biggest fan of his work in 2000ad but my 2 year old absolutely loves Steve Roberts BAFTA winning show DIPDAP.

http://www.bleedingcool.com/2011/11/28/2000ad-artist-steve-roberts-wins-a-bafta/

Which just goes to show a two year old girl has better critical faculties than me... damn it.

Sorry this is a bit of pimpery BUT I've started to re-read Sinister Dexter (thanks to The Cosh) from the off. While I'm doing so I was going to do my normal trick of posting my thoughts about it here as I so often have in the past.

The trouble was it was turning into quite a lot of stuff a lot of which were really going to be reviews as such. So instead I decided I'd try something different and piggy back off the success of others. So I asked Bluemeanie if he would be so kind as to let me bum rush his excellent blog and post some stuff there. Damned fool that he is he's agreed and so the start of what I hope will be good enough to become a bit of a series of posts about Sinister Dexter has appeared today.

So it'd be lovely if you checked it out... though the first post just kinda says what I've said here... but ya know maybe its still worth reading... or the next one, defo the next one...

... I hope.

http://2000ad.wordpress.com/

CBR are running a news story quoting Jason Kingsley saying that two 2000ad strips are currently in negotiations in Hollywood. This has been linked back to the Rogue Trooper rumours a while back.

http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=35473

I'm assuming the other isn't Buttonman as that already optioned (and creator owned) so Strontium Dog would be the obvious choice, or given Conan and fantasy is in the air at the moment maybe Slaine, or maybe... oh wild speculation gotta love it!

Either way interesting tit bit

Well this is like a gazillion years off if its happening at all but Bleeding Cool have been running a few stories on a potential Doctor Who movie (cited as being a reboot, but then what isn't these days?)

http://www.bleedingcool.com/2011/11/14/doctor-who-reboot-movie-to-be-directed-by-harry-potters-david-yates-it-needs-quite-a-radical-transformation/

http://www.bleedingcool.com/2011/11/14/doctor-who-movie-story-met-with-denials-from-some-corners-of-the-bbc/

and then the BBC news site even has its headline article on the matter

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-15730665

So something's happening but not much. Oh well its all just fodder for speculation and wild imagines. The very stuff of an Internet comics forum. WAYHEY

Okay so over the last few months amongst other things I've been reading through Cerebus from the start and last night finished 'Minds'. Still have 'Guys' to go but since 'Minds' wraps up the main story (according to the writer Dave Sim) I could no longer wait to post (decided on a fresh thread as last time this was discussed it derailed the 'What I've just read' thread for a wee while.)

First and foremost what an utterly superb read. I was obsessed by Cerebus back in the day when it first came out and aside from 2000ad it was the last comic I stopped reading around issue 181. Not for any of the obvious reasons just 'cos I'd stopped reading comics. Its still, on reading today, one of the best works of fiction I can remember, not just comic fiction, fiction full stop. And that my friends is why I find it so bloody annoying.

When I first started reading it I had no idea Dave Sim was heading down the road he did. In fact when I first started reading it (end of 'Jaka's Story' I think it was) neither did he come to that. I don't think so anyway. I just devoured this great product, saved for the 'phonebooks' as they were called then and loved every minute of it. Even during 'Mother and Daughters' I hadn't really fully cotton onto some of the frankly ludicrous things he was starting to think (I'll come back to justify why I feel its okay to call another man's beliefs ludicrous in a bit). Its a superb story with wonderful, well realised and well rounded characters of all shapes and sizes. A complex plot that manages to balance both intricate, detailed, political fables and action, comedy and romance absolutely seamlessly. It can be intimate and it can be epic. Often in the same issue. Its just wonderful, wonderful story telling of the highest order.

Okay so this time I knew full well the ridiculous things he has said and the frankly insulting and unbalanced belief system he now has (again will justify this. Well at least to my mind anyway). I read his infamous and frankly, poorly thought out essay 'Tangents' and read a load of what are laughing called FAQ about his thoughts on the various chapters over at a fan site written in 2005 (I think it was)

http://www.jazzbastards.org/cerebus/Cerebus_FAQ.html

Serious at what point did the bloke who called these FAQs think questions like

"Q1c: Similarly, is the demon Female (Void) sucking the souls out of the Male warriors, who at the end when released are depicted as Lights flying off into the night an intentional direct parallel to the similar description of the Void and Light that you presented in i186?"

are frequently asked (I may well have missed an inside joke here but I'm getting a bit side-tracked aren't I. Excuse me)

Back on track, the comic was still as good, with this knowledge and aside from a few bits in 'Reads' it really could have been read without any great belief that there is a misogynist behind it. Sure there is a horrific regime in the later issues based on beliefs of motherhood but frankly all the power figures, be it church or state are pretty appalling, or seemingly ridiculous in one wonderful example. A sympathetic reading (which I assume I had when first going through this) could take it as an examination of how power and political necessity can twist any belief system to become pretty unpalatable, especially in a brutal 'medieval' world like the one Cerebus inhabits. I was probably (and still am probably) missing a host of things that others readers didn't. I stopped reading the letters page around 150 I remember that much.

Why is this so infuriating? 'Cos one of the greatest talents in comics has a world view that I not only disagree with but that I find quite hateful and hate filled. Well no its not that, maybe it should be that, but one does not detract from the other alas. No its the fact that I really see his belief as twisted beyond words (I'm not saying for one minute that he doesn't have the right to hold that belief by the way. That's important). I've read 'Tangents' I laboured over each word and passage and fought through the genuinely farcical lines of arguments that he makes. They can be picked apart and safely cast aside each and every time. He will suggest a view, an opinion one minute and then develops it as fact and concluded the next and often throughout. Oh it is written well, there are loads of superficial connections and apparent logic in what he writes, but it does not hang together. It does not make sense under any real scrutiny. It is therefore a world view that is ludicrous and all those other negatives I've labelled it earlier. Which again if anybody is still reading what has turned into a right old rant by now - sorry, he has every right to hold.

He is a superb observer of people as I said his characters are wonderful rich creations. Its just he has twisted these same observation we can make but don't have the skill to distil and represent and fitted them into his world view. He has re-read and re-interpreted his own motives or subconscious reasoning for great chunks of the story from before he developed this world view and twists them to have new meaning.

Who am I to doubt the creators own vision for what his world and his story is about? Well thankfully I'm an equal part in the experience, or more precisely my experience. As the reader I create the work with Dave Sim. I take what he's written and I make my story out of it. His story is so good and for the vast, vast majority of the telling is so beautifully observed that I get a fantastic brilliant story out of it. It may be a million miles from what Dave Sim now want's me to get from it, or for a long time at the end there wanted me to get from it from the outset, but hey there you go. Its a strong enough story and he's a great enough storyteller (even if its not the story he wants to tell anymore) for the work to survive.

So read Cerebus, read ever last bit of the first 11 books and ALL HAIL THE POWER OF THE READER. We can save his masterpiece from its creator.

(Now then, that got a lot more involved than I was thinking it would! The question remains (and asked before I know) after 'Guys' do I continue... I mean look what the last lot did to me!)

Damn you postie. if' you'd delivered it this morning the thread would have been mine I tells ya. It would have been mine. Damn ya eyes

Caught the last third of the first Beetlejuice the other day and really enjoyed. Okay so the effects haven't aged well (how the hell did that look sooooo fantastic when it first came out?) but its still a fantastic yarn. So this but of news from off of Bleeding Cool caught my eye.

http://www.bleedingcool.com/2011/10/27/beetlejuice-sequel-to-star-michael-keaton-in-true-continuation-26-years-later/

Could be fun?

Dave Taylor has been working on a Batman graphic novel (or will it  be two) for what seems like an eternity. Well Dan Didio has apparently just named it at New York Comic Con. Its called "Death by design" and is written by famous designer (and author I've just learnt) Chip Kidd. Kinda cheesy title for a designer but been looking forward to this for an age and will now only have to wait until... next summer!

After finishing Case Files 1 I had time to quickly read Rob Williams and Simon Fraser's Family. Its funny that Simon Fraser is the co-creator here as it reads like a condensed version of Dante focusing on the Romanov's veiled in a Mob story.

That reads like its a bad thing, far blooming from it. It was a superb read, loved it. Nice tight stuff with loads packed in and well deserving of a stand alone product like this. It was only in hindsight that it struck me how few characters were actually involved. Williams gets a hell of a well paced, intriguing mob political struggle out of a very small cast that makes the story feel more epic than it had any right to.

One thing I'm curious about is it took me a wee while to get into. In this format that's fine, 20 odd pages in and I'm sold. In 'real' time that was 3 parts and three months and I might have been really struggling with it?  Oh and is it just me or is there a little of the Will Simpson's in Simon Fraser's art?

A hit.

Holy Mother of God. There is good news and there is good news.

There are any number of threads this could have gone in from the Nu 52 thread to the Daredevil one but I was so excited I decided to spurt it out in one of its own.

Nocenti's run on Daredevil is one of my favourite of all time and was my absolute favourite (in American comics) when I was first collecting comics back in the day. I have also been really wanting Green Arrow to get a good team on his book as I love the character but haven't really read anything after the Kevin Smith stuff (okay okay but I liked it) as he hasn't had the creators he deserves. So this news just gave me a nerdgasm.

http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=34894

DC may well be taking this call to get more female creators on board but when they're of this quality who the heck cares whats motivated it!

Well the British comics thread reminded me to check in on the progress of Alan Grant's forth coming graphic novel '1812 War' and I've learnt a couple of things.

The good news is that Renegade have it slated to come out for X-mas, so hopefully this one will be in my stocking.

The bad news alas it would seem that George Freeman is no longer providing art. I'm not as familiar with Claude St Aubin, though the name rings a bell but hopefully it'll still look great.

http://www.renegadeartsentertainment.com/comics-thewarof1812

Sorry if this has been mentioned but not seen it myself.

Anyway a video interview from San Diego with Matt Smith and Keith Richardson.

Have to say they both look very distracted, or tired or just not into the whole thing. Doesn't help that the CBR interviewer makes his lack of knowledge and current interest in 2000ad apparent from the outset but still Keith does his best to push the line.

http://video.comicbookresources.com/cbrtv/2011/cbr-tv-cci-2000-ads-matt-smith-keith-richardson-on-judge-dredd-uk-comics-more/

By slightly sporadic attendance on the site (for reasons discussed elsewhere) mean I think I forgot to rave about this. Over at BleedingCool a week or so back I stumbled across this

http://www.bleedingcool.com/2011/08/19/paul-auster-has-co-written-the-mr-vertigo-screenplay-with-terry-gilliam/

Terry Gilliam, Paul Auster, Mr Vertigo (my favourite of Auster's books) how cool would that be. PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE...

...PLEASE

Let this happen.

Okay this is a bit weird. I don't seem able to access the site or forum from my home PCs. Been on holiday and when I got back Friday got into the site absolutely fine on our laptop. All good.

Then Saturday morning both the forum and the main site just timed out whenever I tried to get in on both Google Chrome (my preferred browser) and Internet Explorer. Okay so later I was up in the attic doing so stuff and tried the stand alone PC up there again on both browsers and nowt. Same problem Sunday so just assumed the site was down and with it being the weekend no one was about to pick it up.

Back in work today and just checked and its working absolutely fine and appears to have been all weekend? So I thought no problem just check it when i get home tonight. The trouble is I can't for the life of me think were to start checking why I can't get in from home? As i say two different machines and one of which I was able to use fine on Friday and I'm not aware of any changes having been made in the meantime?

Any suggestions?

Via Bleeding Cool

http://www.bleedingcool.com/2011/07/25/jean-yves-ferri-named-as-new-writer-of-asterix/

My ignorance of continental comics means I don't know either of these two. If anybody has any insights it'd be interesting to hear. Going to be very strange to see Asterix handled by a completely different team but I'll keep an open mind.