Messages

:: Heck, Jonathan, if y'all could reissue Devlin Waugh: Red Tide
:: with all the lettering and caption errors corrected in the
:: new trade dress, I'll happily replace my rainbow-spine
:: edition with a nice black-spine version.

Frankly, that book should have been recalled and reprinted. It's one thing to have a few typos, but to miss out masses of speech balloons from a comic is insane.

You didn't miss anything. I wish I'd have done the same with Austin Powers 3 (which has a cracking first 15 minutes before becoming almost entirely unwatchable).

:: The author will typically earn about 6% of the cover price
:: for each copy.

It's worth noting two things here:

1. Most publishers work on a sliding scale. The royalty is usually significantly lower than 6 per cent until several thousand copies have been sold.
2. Royalties aren't due until the advance has been "paid back"; this means that your book usually has to sell 3,000?5,000 copies before you see any royalties (unless your advance was tiny). In addition, things like review copies and "book club" copies usually don't count as sales and, in some cases, may actually be deducted from the sales count.

Yes, but at least all that money was well-spent, what with the amazing film that ended up getting released. No, wait.

That just seems like a regression?plenty of old WB/HB cartoons moved in the same manner. As for the short itself, it was quite entertaining, although I wouldn't have wanted to watch a longer movie with those characters.

Well, apart from the other 699 or so digital shots...

There were a few references here and there (the tortoise gardening ornament, and the quotes from earlier W&G films via one of the introduced characters, but that was about it); and the only concession I heard was when certain types of cheese were being "listed" at one point, Monterey Jack was mentioned?like Wallace, a cheese connoisseur, would have anything to do with that.

I thought it was great: thoroughly entertaining.

:: Tell us more about the performance piece...

Like Lost, it wasn't much cop, and its first few seconds were the best. The concept was one built around set processes (as most of my performances were): a "director" on the stage would roll a dice six times and read out the numbers. These would correspond to one of six actions, which six participants planted in the audience would then carry out. (One was to read their lines from a script myself and my partner in crime had written, one was to "play dead", whereupon they were "written out", and so on.) The initial flurry of activity as six people in the audience suddenly got up and started doing stuff was better than the rest of the piece, when people were actually doing stuff.

Are you referring to Lost or Battlestar? With the former, I can see how it'll just trudge on and go nowhere (after all, it's by the person who did Alias, isn't it?), but I'd be surprised to see Battlestar go to shit after season 1, seeing as that was pretty good.

As for Lost, it reminds me of a critique I got for a piece of performance art one time: the tutor said that the biggest problem with it was that the first ten seconds were excellent, and the rest had no hope of matching it. The same seems true of Lost. The opening was, I admit, excellent, and the first episode after that kept the interest level quite high, but now I'm just bored of the whole thing, and C4's, what, about a third of the way through the first season?

What impresses me is how a series with such glacial reveals can keep everyone engrossed. I'm still watching, but it's becoming habit. I really don't care about these people, and I know I'm going to be grumbling when we get to the end of series 1 and nothing much has happened.

It's at http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/1593074743/ref=wl_it_dp/026-8961482-4158852?%5Fencoding=UTF8&coliid=I29SSHP2OXCGZS&colid=3MJA5JTZYAHEW and has duly been added to my wish list!

Kingdom of the Wicked has the best production of any graphic novel I've ever bought?it really is stunning, and I only wish all GNs could be as good. The fact that the story and art are great, too, is obviously a good thing!

Most definitely. Here's hoping the next Edginton/Brooker collaboration is at least a 20-parter. (Fat chance, I know.)

No idea. I'm personally hoping for a brutal new edit by Alan Barnes that sees Charley shot in the head, preferably next month, so we can be rid of the strip that seems to have been dragging on for years now. This kind of endless reprint annoys the crap out of me (in the same way that Necropolis did in vol. 3 of the Meg)?there's no end in sight, and as it's such a "love it or hate it" strip, it's surprising it's lasted this long.