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Any creative types on here who like a bit of lettering should remember to head over to Comicraft's website before the end of the day.

It's their annual New Year's Day Sale and all their fonts (even the really expensive ones!) are just $20.20 for the day.

Honestly. I've seen it. Save yourselves three hours of your life, because it's fucking terrible. Spoilery rant below.

[spoiler]I see now why it was delayed. Someone completely bottled the 'faithful adaptation' idea. They clearly went back and inserted a bunch of flash-forward scenes to a post-invasion apocalyptic world that utterly ruins the whole thing. It's been fucked about in the editing stage by people who had no faith in the source material. I'm actually quite angry about spending a chunk of my life watching this thing.

The maddening part is that there was probably a perfectly decent adaptation buried in this thing somewhere. Early on, the book stuff is well-realised although the editing seems to be off — some scenes don't seem to be coming in the right order. Nothing I can point to as outrageously out of sequence, just a general sense of "Wait... what...?"

It really feels like they made a straight adaptation and someone decided it wouldn't gel with a modern audience, so they went back and messed about with it.

As the thing continues, they go all in on the flash-forward stuff which sucks all the life out of what's left of the book material.

You were hoping to see tripod vs HMS Thunder Child? Don't hold your breath. There's a bit on Skegness beach ("We're heading for safety in Dunkirk!" Ooh! The fucking irony!) but it never develops into the scene we all wanted.

My previous point about not trusting the source material...? There's a point late on where a character ACTUALLY SAYS "This is all white people's fault, isn't it...? This is like what we did to those poor chaps in the jungle..."

It's FUCKING AWFUL.[/spoiler]

[SO...]

I'm not sure why some members of this forum seem unable to parse a short series of logical IF/THEN operations that wouldn't defeat a copy of Microsoft Excel, but let's try this from first principles, shall we?

STEP 1: Someone says something I think is sufficiently stupid/ offensive/ whatever to warrant a response. Please note that other forum members have the right to find anything they damn well please stupid/ offensive/ whatever, and deploy this or any other discursive tactic to make their case.

STEP 2: I quote the thing that someone has said. I do this because I may have misattributed the statement, or I may have missed/omitted some important context. However, the other person can be in no doubt as to the configuration of words I am discussing. If I've misquoted or omitted context, all the other person needs to do is point this out and we stop right here because I need to go back and look at the original statement and we do not need to progress to STEP 3.

STEP 3: I explain my understanding of the quoted statement. This, right here, is the get-out-of-jail-free card. It's important that I'm clear on how I'm reading the statement, but the other person can, at this point, either explain how I've misread/misinterpreted their statement, or explain that the statement doesn't represent their position (because of poor phrasing, choice of words, etc). At that point, there is no STEP 4 and you will find me, on this very forum, apologising to people because I've misunderstood their words. That's what this step is for.

STEP 4: I posit a logical conclusion from my understanding of the other person's statement. If we're dealing with this step, then the other person must have accepted that my understanding of their statement is correct. Often that conclusion is an extreme one for rhetorical/(allegedly) humorous purposes and is often formulated as "if you think X, then Y..."

At this point, people seem to immediately leap to "HOW DARE YOU SAY I THINK Y?!" and completely ignore the "IF" part of that sentence. They can refute the logic of my conclusion if they think it's faulty, but they've already accepted the basis on which I came to it if they've accepted STEP 3.



I'm not saying the other person is stupid. I'm saying: "You said Thing X, which I think is a stupid/ offensive/ whatever thing to say. This how I understand Thing X. If you think Thing X, as I understand it, then logically we end up at Position Y which shows why saying Thing X is stupid."

Contained within that process are multiple opportunities to correct/refute me, because I absolutely acknowledge that I may have misread/misunderstood the original statement, or be lacking context because the other person knows more about the subject than I do. All of these are fine. I'm happy to be corrected. You learn things by being wrong, and I like learning things. For the sake of brevity, all these steps are rolled up into a single post, rather than a back-and-forth, but the logical progression exists nonetheless. If the other person derails the argument at STEP 3 by (for example) showing that I've fundamentally misunderstood their position, STEP 4 is automatically refuted.

SO... Applying all this to the minor kerfuffle on the Forthcoming Thrills thread... I imagine no one would disagree that the basic notion of finding it "troubling" that a man in his seventies might be considering retirement is ridiculous?

In fact, Richard immediately abandoned that position... all he had to say was that wasn't what he meant, because it clearly wasn't. Of course he can be sad about when Wagner retires — I'm going to be sad about it. Instead, however, he chose to claim that he didn't say the thing he very clearly did say and then add in an accusation of bad behaviour on my part, to which I take exception.



Please cut out and keep this handy guide to refer to before you leap to outraged responses when I say "...and if you think that, you must be trolling" or something similar.

After a very promising debut in Titans, here's an extended trailer for the full series. There is so much Morrison/Case stuff in just those four-ish minutes. I'm really quite taken aback.

[FONTS! Get 'em while they're hot!]

It's Blambot's annual sale (runs until Mon Dec 3rd), wherein Nate's brilliant and already ludicrously cheap pro fonts get an extra discount. You have literally no excuse for using terrible fonts when lettering your comics.

Just use the code SAVE30 at the checkout for a 30% discount.

FONTS! Get 'em while they're hot!

Just a quick note to remind people that it's Blambot's annual sale — 30% off all the 'pro' fonts, which I happen to think are a bargain to begin with. Runs until about 1pm on Dec 4th (UK time).

CelSys have announced Clip Studio EX (formerly MangaStudio) for the iPad Pro. It's on a subscription model, which is slightly disappointing but, I suspect, just A Thing We're Going To Have To Get Used To. Free for the first six months, $8.99/mth thereafter.

The iPad Pro/Apple Pencil combo has been the best-in-class digital drawing experience since day one, but has lacked a proper pro-level art application before. If I was Wacom, I'd be shitting my pants right about now.

Requires iOS 11, and should be in the App Store now if you're running it.

Thought, per comments on the GRIM RUMOURS thread, that we could do with a more appropriately-titled thread!

Not seen Ep4 yet (the wife's away for a week due to work and it's more than my life's worth to watch it without her...) but I'm really enjoying it.

Spoilers are fair game from here on in. Have at it. I'll be back on Friday, when I've seen Ep4!

Prompted by Supersurfer's post on Steven Denton's Art Comp thread, I thought it might be fun to have a place for people to post their art comp entries that they didn't quite get done in time, or thought maybe weren't quite good enough to enter.

Every month, I mean to enter, and every month time defeats me. Usually, I never even get further than thinking about it (I had a cracking idea for Pat Mills month) but to start us off, here's my colour rough for the 'Death of' comp, which never got any further than this...

The long running war comic, Commando is currently inviting submissions, something I figure may be of interest to a few of the talented writers and artists hereabouts.

No particular spoilers in this post, but I don't see the point of the entire thread being a mass of spoiler blocks. It's right there in the title. Steer clear until you've seen whichever is the current episode.

Well, it's great to have arguably the best thing on TV back for a new (albeit slightly shorter) series. A fantastic opening scene, followed by the usual series opener of careful set-up and a fair bit of what (presumably) is foreshadowing.

I'm already seeing the usual moaning from a small sub-set of (presumably amnesiac) fans who seem to forget every year that the awesome stuff at the back end of ever series only works because of the care the writers spend moving all the pieces into place in the early stages.

I'll make a point of mentioning that the character development of the Hound has been fantastic over the last few series: a brutal and brutalised man thoroughly confused by a moral transformation occurring almost against his will... it's just great, and Rory McCann handles it fantastically in this episode.

I can't wait for the next episode, and the only downer is that the series will be over all-too-soon, followed by another agonising year-plus wait for the finale.

Just an apology for the profusion of broken image links you'll find in my posts as of today, including a lot of the art comp stuff. I'd been using Photobucket but, as discussed elsewhere, they want you to upgrade your account for the privilege of being able to link to your own images and, better yet, if you don't then they will retroactively break the links to all your old images, too.

The cost of preserving your linked images? $400/yr.

You read that right.

So I deleted my Photobucket account this morning and told them why. Frankly, I hope they go bankrupt.

But I'm very sorry for the number of broken links this is going to cause in my posts here.

Another cracking prog in a run of fine form, IMO.

Dredd speeds along with a proper old-school vibe, Eglington's script hits just the right tone and Dyer continues to channel his inner Cam Kennedy to great effect.

Brink again is superb. Tense, literally claustrophobic, big ideas churning just below the surface and gear-shift at the end that works brilliantly.

Defoe is my favourite Mills strip in many years, and is lent a new vigour by MacNeil sepia-hued art. The script, unsurprisingly, heaves a little too much unsubtle commentary into the mix, but there's still much to enjoy.

Scarlet Traces focuses in on some personal peril after the large-scale action of the previous issue, and D'israeli, as always, handles both with care and skill.

Deadworld just oozes menace and decay, exactly as it should. I have no idea where Kek-W is going with this, which is all to the good and surprising considering we (at least notionally) know how this story plays out. The unshakeable feeling that This Will Not End well adds to the mounting sense of dread. No pun intended.

A fine prog, in a lengthy run of fine progs. Bravo.

Submitted without comment...

Judge Dredd TV series in development.

Short version: due to the very generous comp copy policy of some publishers, I've found myself with enough boxes of comics to stock a small shop and I can no longer get to my drawing desk.

I figure I'll keep one copy of everything and eBay the rest, but I'm a bit of an eBay novice. Obviously, the TPBs are easy enough, but would I better off offering mini-series as bundles of the complete run, or as singles?

Just seeing if the forum's working -- no new posts in about three hours seems a bit odd.

Just a quick reminder that the Comicraft annual New Year sale is on. All fonts are $20.17 for the rest of today, and the sale closes when whichever timezone is the last one to do so ticks over to Jan 2nd. Get your lettering fonty goodness here.

Remember last year, when Michael (Roche Limit) Moreci and Tim (Enormous) Daniel were so stoked about The Force Awakens that they put out a free (unofficial) digital comic?*

Well, ahead of Rogue One, they've done it again. This time, it's 115 pages of Star Wars-y goodness (some of which I lettered). Info and download link can be found HERE.

(You might also want to check out this page, which has a handy timeline to show you where all these fan stories fit into the continuity...)

*Don't worry if you don't, last year's effort is available from the CBR link above.

Written and drawn by John McCrea, according to a tweet from John just now...

http://io9.gizmodo.com/thank-the-maker-keiron-gillen-is-going-to-write-a-new-1786818965

Kev Walker on a Star Wars book... no details yet, other than that it's on ongoing series. Probably the best fit for an ex-2000AD droid since Cam Kennedy.