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I have been reading Gwynne's Kings and Queens: The Indispensable History of England and her Monarchs. Blow me down with a feather if the first recorded British king wasn't King Brutus. I thought his name was just a pun by Pat Mills: the British Empire being the brutish empire, Britons being brutes, etc. King Brutus was recorded as the first British king by Geoffrey of Monmouth, and most British historians think his history is a bit fanciful. Got to say, when I read King Brutus was a grandson of Aeneas, I was rather doubtful myself. I thought Aeneas was fictional. We did a bit of Virgil's Aeneid at school. According to Geoffrey of Monmouth's account, King Brutus arrived in Britain at Totnes, which is oddly specific, and quickly took over.

My wife bought me Blood Meridian last Christmas, after I had been mainlining Richard Matheson's western stories for about a month. I still havent gotten around to reading it, but it is always "the book after the one I'm.currently reading"... sadly, after discovering the Foundation series and that there were three Ari Thor novels I hadn't read, that is always getting pushed back. I genuinely can't wait to read BM, and fear my continual evasion may just be a nervousness that it can't possibly live up to my expectations.

SBT

I would like to read some more westerns. It is a curious thing that there are not many of them in the bookshops any more. There is the Lonesome Dove series, True Grit, and Cormac McCarthy, and that's about it. The last book I read that I thought was a western turned out to be some western/sci-fi/horror mash up. I want to read Blood Meridian, although I hear it is not a bundle of laughs. It's strange. I think westerns were a victim of their own success. If anyone wrote a half decent western it was instantly turned into a film, and people only heard about the film. I dare say you can find more books in bookshops about Romans or sea warfare from the age of sail than westerns.

I asked my local comic shop to order my copies of 2000AD. I want to do my bit to keep the comic shop alive. Annoyingly, with the recent  tier restrictions I was not able to get my copies. Then I got all five issues just before Christmas, but now it looks like the shop will be shut for God knows how long. Even when it was open it was frustrating because only one customer was allowed in at a time. For some reason they only sell the Megazine at WH Smith, which isn't shut because it's a newsagent. Of course I could have ordered straight from the website. I don't think think virus is going to help the comic shops much.

I liked the recent Judge Dredd story about the Simp woman who tried to rescue her partner from normality re-programming. I particularly liked the last prog. I suppose I am not making too much of a mental leap in thinking the Simps are analogous to the gay community. When did the Simps first appear in 2000AD? I ask because I recently watched a YouTube rant in which men who tried to be over nice to women in the forlorn hope they'd have sex with them were called simps. What is the OED definition of simp?

I learnt something today off YouTube. There was a character called Spring-Heeled Jack from a Victorian penny-dreadful, who had about a fifty year run. I have wondered before whether penny-dreadfuls were more like comics than books. However, would  he really be the first? What about all those ancient Greek gods and demi-gods? I mean, Thor already has a comic strip written about him. But supposing you were to stick to regularly published printed characters, who would be the first?

You know, I quite liked that JD story in which the bean counter judge works out that reallocating justice funds to education would be more cost effective at reducing crime. However, that did make me reflect something I saw Judge Jordon Petersen say on YouTube, which was that it was relative inequality, rather than poverty that was the cause of crime and other social problems. I read a book, called The Spirit Level, which basically said something similar. That did make me wonder, because from what I can work out, just about everyone in Mega City One is poor. Most people are unemployed, and the ones that are employed have crummy jobs. So is there a class of relatively wealthy Mega City One-ites, who drive around in swanky EuroCity hover cars, dress in suits, and live in luxury apartments, where they can be seen sipping mineral water on their balconies, admiring their carefully tended, living wall gardens, and chatting about their holidays in Ciudad Espana?

I walked past another comic shop in Plymouth this morning. It was in Cornwall Street, I think number 32. It had Marvel, DC, Dark Horse (is it?) comics. Pretty interesting part of the street for me. There was a computer gaming shop a little way down. I don't game, but it's useful for my work to know it's there. A little way up the street was a model shop. Apart from Hobby Craft, I don't know anywhere in Reading that sells Airfix models. I couldn't see any 2000AD in the comic shop, so I bought my copy at WH Smiths at the station, although I was aghast at the price. - 5 quid.

Didn't The Dandy try to sue Jacob Rees Mogg for pinching the persona of Lord Snooty? If I were him, I'd be getting annoyed with comics.

The Out is sort of reminiscent of the horrible Madeleine McCann case. I wonder if this is going to be a one-off series or a repeating series. It's interesting, it's different, but I hope it does not spiral out of control. I think I preferred it when she was a vacant travel photo journalist. We'll have to see.

Sinister Dexter doesn't really do it for me I'm afraid.

The Diaboliks is better than I anticipated so far.

Dredd: still enjoying it. I suppose Cassandra is not dead for good.

I am pondering Shakespeare. I am not a great fan to be honest, but plenty of stuff happens in the tragedies. Swords are drawn, body parts are lost, but Shakespeare is still reckoned deep, none deeper. Not sure you could get all his words into speech bubbles though. Maybe I'll get onto Amazon and see if they have any Shakespeare in graphic novel form. I suppose another possibility is subtext. For example, the film Jackie Brown is not really about some crime caper. It's a difficult ask though.

Alright, how many deep comics/graphical novels are there?

2000AD's current series The Out is a brave attempt. Obviously there have been psychologically deep comic strips like The Watchmen and Persopolis. Actually, I don't know about Persopolis, because I have not read it. To be honest, I don't think comics are up there with novels and plays, maybe not even up there with films. Why is that? Can't the speech bubbles contain enough words? Maybe it's because the artists have to paint dramatic pictures, and cannot paint lots of frames of people sitting around talking.

I hear from some of the angrier comic enthusiasts on YouTube that comic shops are in a dire position, at least in America. In Reading, I've noticed a new comic shop has opened. It's in Harris Arcade near the station if you're interested. I've not been in it. I've just looked through the window, but it looks like it sells mostly American comics. I have not spotted any 2000AD titles. I wish the owner well anyway. The only shop I've found that sells 2000AD was WH Smith by the station.

I'll go for Harry Exton. The Button Man was one of my favourite strips. Actually, it probably was my favourite strip. I loved the artwork. When I started reading 2000AD in the 90s was about when they killed Johnny Alpha off. I am not sure whether they brought him back by the time I stopped reading some time after 2000. Must have been after because I don't remember how he was brought back. I was disappointed by his death. His replacement just didn't cut it.

Is Spock a superhero?

You have to give Leonard Nimoy credit for bigging up his character. In the pilot episode he was an alien. The cold, logical person was one of the female crew members. When the series started, the woman was gone and Spock got the emotionless, logical persona. Then there was an episode in which he had to knock someone out with a heavy object. Nimoy thought this unVulcanlike and invented the Vulcan nerve pinch. Then there was that episode where that silicon-based, mattress-looking lifeform was offing miners on some mining planet. Spock mind-melded with the thing, so it turned out he was telepathic too.

Did anyone else try the Vulcan nerve pinch at school? I could never get it to work.

He has no secret identity and he wears a uniform, not a costume, because he is only one member of a large force.

Like Green Lantern, you mean?

And yay, the Legendary One returns, our very own superhero!

I am unfamiliar with the Green Lantern. I had to look him up on Wikipedia. Alright, he is a member of a cosmic force of good enforcers, but from what I understand, he is the only one in the sector that includes Earth. I suppose he has to answer to higher authorities, but he is also allowed a lot of discretion as to how best handle local contingencies, like a marshal in a western territory.

In his screenwiting course, John Truby defines an action hero (or any classical hero) as a person who can do things ordinary people can't.

As to superhero, if the Six Million Dollar Man is a superhero, then Dredd's bionic eyes might shift him closer to this category.

However, as Dredd isn't really a hero perhaps we should consider him either a superbastard or an action bastard. I think action bastard best describes old Joe...

I am quite interested in Dredd's bionic eyes. Are those the reason he doesn't like taking his helmet off? I wasn't reading 2000AD back in the 70s or 80s when he got those. Are Dredd's eyes just replacements for his natural eyes or do they allow him superhuman sight? I have never read him using superhuman vision. Perhaps they enable him to read text without reading glasses, which would be superhuman for someone his age. Concerning his age, Dredd did undergo a rejuve job after Necropolis, but I thought that he was ordered to that because he had had his face burnt off after he had been exiled to the Cursed Earth. I did wonder how rejuve jobs could fix facial disfigurement like that. Do rejuve jobs also rejuvenate bodies?