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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.

...and had a lovely eye for design: https://www.darkhorse.com/Company/Jobs

But I can't think of anyone who fits the bill...

[THIRD:]

The votes have been tallied in a nail-biting, photo-finish with only a single vote between first and second places! The results, in reverse order, are:

THIRD:



Brian Corcoran

SECOND:


Mark Higgins

FIRST:


Adrian Bamforth

Like a numpty, I left it a little late to solicit the Mighty One's opinion this month and he'd departed for a short (but doubtless well-deserved) break on the outer Rings of Quaxxann's third moon by the time I remembered. I hope to bring you His Verdant Majesty's verdict upon his return to our unworthy planet.

DROID'S CHOICE: PJ HOLDEN

PJ returns this month to cast an eye over the competition entries having previously done so four (!) years ago. He says:

"Winner: Ade Bamforth. Caveat: I know Ade well — but I was looking on my phone so didn't spot his name until I'd decided which one I liked. Reminiscent of Cam Kennedy as much as anyone. Hauntingly simple, beautiful mood music to the unmade Halo Jones."

A huge thanks, once again, to everyone who entered, or who went to the trouble of voting. An additional tip of the hat to CrazyFoxMachine, for doing this every month for the last—what?—six years? Normal service will resume for next month's compo. I've been your guest host for July, and it's been my pleasure.

Cheers!

Jim

[Albion: The Marriage of Haloallied72: Robinson Jonesallistermac: HaloAdrian Bamforth: Halo, Space PirateKarl Brown: Her Name Was HaloBrian Corcoran: Book IV: OUT.Mark Higgins: The BalladThe Legendary Shark: More Things in Heaven and HoopJames Newell: The Secret BalladTulio_Vilela 1: Halo Jones meets Abelard SnazzTulio_Vilela 2: Halo Jones Book 4: Back on the Chain GangUwe de Witt: Halo Jones]

Please vote for one FIRST, one SECOND and one THIRD - first will get 3 points, second 2 points and third 1 point.

The vote is decided by total points accumulated overall. You can honourably mention up to five other entries and these HMs are used to decide on tied scores so use them wisely and be aware that saying "all other entries" won't be counted. The deadline is midnight this Saturday the 30th July.

Albion: The Marriage of Halo



allied72: Robinson Jones



allistermac: Halo



Adrian Bamforth: Halo, Space Pirate



Karl Brown: Her Name Was Halo



Brian Corcoran: Book IV: OUT.



Mark Higgins: The Ballad



The Legendary Shark: More Things in Heaven and Hoop



James Newell: The Secret Ballad



Tulio_Vilela 1: Halo Jones meets Abelard Snazz



Tulio_Vilela 2: Halo Jones Book 4: Back on the Chain Gang



Uwe de Witt: Halo Jones

Writers Michael (Roche Limit, Burning Fields, Hoax Hunters) Moreci and Tim (Enormous, Burning Fields) Daniel decided that to show how excited they were about the new Star Wars movie, they'd round up some artists, colourists and letterers and make a fan comic with, not one, but two original stories set in the Star Wars universe. Art by Kendall Goode and Morgan Luthi, colours by Matt Battaglia, Jordan Boyd and Dee Cunniffe, letters by Adam Wollett and me.

Get it here.

Cheers!

Jim

[Slow-cooked Mutton Rogan Josh]

...Also known as the Necronomnomnomicon.

Really, I just thought I'd start a cooking thread to make it easier for people to avoid all my wibbling on about barbecues.

(Plus, my ongoing efforts with Slimming World have produced some worthwhile recipes, and I'm enjoying our attempts to eat less meat, and I know there are a fair few vegetable-arians on here whose brains I'm hoping to pick. Not eat. Definitely not eat. And not with fava beans or a nice Chianti.)

Since we're out of barbecue season even for me,* I thought I'd kick off with a recipe I posted on Facebook a couple of weeks ago:

Slow-cooked Mutton Rogan Josh

(Serves 5 regular portions, 4 fat bastard size)

I cobbled this recipe together from about half-a-dozen different ones I found online by stealing the bits I liked from each one.

1lb/500g diced mutton/lamb (roughly 1" cubes)
2-3 tbsp Garam Masala
1 tsp turmeric
6x cloves of garlic
2-3 cloves
1x green chilli
2-3" piece of fresh ginger
1-2" piece of cinnamon bark/cinnamon stick
2x bay leaves
2tbsp uncooked cashew nuts
3-4x large white onions
6x fresh tomatoes
2x green peppers
1x chopped tinned tomatoes
1x tin of chickpeas

Note: this starts off in a big pan on the hob, and transfers to the slow cooker. Because you're cooking it long and slow, I can't see why it wouldn't work just as well with stewing steak or beef skirt. Skirt, especially, is tasty and VERY lean.

Before you cook:

Make the garam masala, turmeric, cloves, 4x garlic cloves and 1/2 of one onion into a paste in the blender. I like to warm the spices and the (bruised) garlic cloves in a frying pan before making the paste, but that's a bit poncey...! Just add water or a splash of oil if you need to make the consistency wetter. Coat the lamb with the paste and leave to marinade. I only did mine for an hour, but if you did this part the day before, I imagine it would be awesome marinating overnight.

Peel the ginger and again using the blender, make a paste out of the ginger, the remaining two garlic cloves and the green chilli. Deseed the chilli if you prefer it milder.

Make a paste out of the cashews, either with a blender or in a mortar & pestle, adding water to get a paste consistency. It doesn't need to be perfectly smooth,

NOTE: the cashew paste is about the only thing in the recipe that isn't Slimming World compliant. It works mainly as a thickening agent. You could skip this part of the recipe completely and just add two or three big handfuls of red lentils to the curry when it goes into the slow cooker.

Cooking:

Finely chop the onions.

Oil/Fry-lite a large pan, bring up to a vigorous heat, add the onion. Cook until it starts to soften and go transparent. Add the cashew paste and the ginger/garlic/chilli paste. As soon as the onion is starting to go a golden colour, add the meat and all the marinade. You might want a little extra liquid, so you could rinse out the container/freezer bag/ whatever you've kept the mutton in with half a cup of water to get the last of the spices out.

Keep stirring.

Chop the tomatoes and add (I chopped them fairly finely — into quarters and then those quarters two or three times, but leave them chunkier if you prefer).

Add the tinned tomatoes. You can probably turn the pan down to more of a simmering heat at this point.

NOTE: At this point, I tasted the curry and decided it was a bit mild and added some chilli flakes. On reflection, I don't think they were necessary, because the curry was quite fiery in the end, but it's worth checking at this point.

Chop the green peppers and add. Drain the chickpeas and add. The chickpeas aren't in any of the recipes I found, but I love chickpeas in a curry. Leave them out if you don't! In all honesty, I think this quantity of curry would have taken a second tin. If you put in 2x tins of chickpeas and 2x tinned tomatoes, I think this would comfortably feed six people.

Once the pan is back to a regular simmer, transfer to the slow cooker. Add the bay leaves and the cinnamon.
As noted above, if you leave out the cashew paste, add two or three big handfuls of red lentils at this point and stir through.

Leave to cook for at least four hours. The longer, the better. Our Crock Pot has two cooking heats — I gave it a couple of hours on the higher setting to start and then turned it down for the rest.

If you don't have a slow cooker (and I can't recommend one highly enough — they're very energy efficient, too) there's no reason why you can't just transfer this into a suitable recepticle and stick it in the oven on the slow-cook setting.

Serve with plain basmati rice and/or naan if it takes your fancy. (Remember to take out the bay leaves and cinnamon stick before serving!)

If you think the curry might be a bit hot, make a mint & yoghurt dressing to accompany — just finely chop a few mint leaves (or cheat and use two teaspoons of mint sauce if you're not on a diet) into a bowl of fat-free natural yoghurt. Add a tbsp of lemon juice, a pinch of salt, a pinch of sugar (Splenda for the dieting) and a light sprinkle of cayenne. Mix and serve.

One final note: because there's no yoghurt in the actual curry, this freezes perfectly well, so it's worth making a big pan (I cooked the quantities given here for two people) and froze three portions. We've found this is kind of the key to eating well... we don't always have time to cook a meal from scratch, but if you make enough to freeze whenever you are cooking a curry/ chilli/ bolognese/ stew/ soup, you don't have to fall back on junk food when you're pushed for time.

A couple of other people have cooked this from my FB post and seem to have enjoyed it, so have a go!

Cheers

Jim

*I did barbecue a mixed grill for Boxing Day lunch a couple of years ago, though...

...I liked:

John Carter. An only-slightly muddled plot and lack of focus on the part of the villains doesn't detract from the fact that the film looks great and has a slew of great set-pieces. It's tremendous fun.

Tron: Legacy. Castigated for not being as good as Tron, but the thing is... Tron isn't actually very good. There's a film in your head which is amazing, but that's not the actual film. That's the film your imagination created as a result of seeing the original Tron and having all those amazing ideas ricochet around the inside of your head. But... the execution of those ideas in the actual movie can be quite dull. There's some great stuff in Tron: Legacy, which gets overlooked simply because it's not the most amazing movie ever.

Men In Black 3. Worth it for Josh Brolin's Tommy-Lee Jones impression alone.

Matrix: Reloaded. Despite some turgid connective tissue, this is a sequence of fantastic set-pieces, evidenced by the fact that no one ever mentions the chateau staircase fight, which would have been the centrepiece of any other movie.

The final series of Lost. I accepted going in that there was never going to be One Big Answer that would satisfy everyone, not least because people were still demanding answers to stuff that had already been explained (like the polar bears). Maybe there was potentially a better final episode, but so many long-planted plot seeds slammed back into that final series like meteors on elliptical orbits that I found getting to that final episode utterly exhilarating.

Anyone else want to stand up for a film or TV show the consensus says wasn't so good?

Cheers!

Jim

Lots of info on this year's Nottingham Comic Con at their website but I'm here to pimp my lettering talk at this year's con!



Starts at 11:00 — about 45 minutes on lettering, the role of the letterer, and how the choices we make contribute to the tone of the book, the look of a series, and even affect the storytelling. Ten minute Q&A at the end.

Come along! I'm having nightmares about talking to an empty room!

Cheers

Jim

No love for Rick Remender & Sean Gordon Murphy's new mental SF adventure? Remender specifically name-checks Dredd as an influence, and I think it shows. Great first issue. Thoroughly recommended.

Cheers

Jim

Just in case this hasn't made its way across any of your social media feeds yet, sit back and enjoy all ten invective-filled minutes of this review of Pixels.

TL;DW: he didn't enjoy it very much.

Cheers

Jim

Just a quick note to point out that Manga Studio 5 (the non EX version*) is currently on sale as a download for FIFTEEN DOLLARS:

http://smsi.me/1Csx1LY

Also, Comicraft have got a half price font** sale on until July 21st:

http://www.comicbookfonts.com

Cheers

Jim

*The 'basic' version has all the functions of EX, except for multi-page 'stories' and a couple of printing/export options, as far as I can tell...

**Always buy the OTF version of the font where available.

Firefly meets Strontium Dog. Without being anywhere near as good as that summary might lead you to believe.

It's OK, actually. Apart from some very stupid science and an opening shot in the pilot that made me think of the title sequence from Third Rock From The Sun, it passed the time amiably enough — the leads are easy enough on the eye to please both ladies and the gentlemen, the plot didn't make my nose bleed from egregious stupidity, and the effects work is at least as good as a decent console game cinematic.

Which all sounds very sniffy, but I'm trying to manage your expectations! I have a gap in my viewing schedule for something insubstantial and at least moderately fun, and the first episode ticked enough of those boxes to bring me back for episode two.

Cheers

Jim

A relatively brief, but also fairly illuminating, with the usually publicity-shy Arthur Ranson on Tumblr.

Cheers!

Jim

This just popped up on Twitter from the inestimable Mr Kennedy:

@CamKennedyArt: At last found someone to help me show new upcoming work and existing stuff of course! All the best, Cam. http://t.co/rFKpJg7KKa

That link -- if it doesn't display in this post -- should take you to a new illo by Cam.

Cheers!

Jim

Courtesy of Alex Ronald on Facebook...

Detailed close-ups of Star Wars spaceships and vehicles.

Cheers

Jim

Affinity Designer is already shaping up to be a serious Illustrator contender, and Serif have just launched the second application in suite as a free beta. I've only had time for the briefest of experiments since installing, but it looks like it might well as strong a challenger to Photoshop as Designer is to Illustrator.

Mac only, I'm afraid. Sign up for the beta programme here: https://affinity.serif.com/en-gb/photo/

Cheers

Jim

Yet to be picked up by UK broadcaster, you might have to be a bit —ahem— creative to get to see this new Marvel TV series any time soon...

Which is a shame, because it's terrific. Lovely period feel and generally high production values for a TV series, exciting, well-paced script, and a fantastic star turn from Hayley Atwell.

(And I can't help but wonder... these eight episodes of Agent Carter sit in a break in Agents of SHIELD's schedule, which then returns for ten episodes. I wouldn't be at all surprised if Carter somehow leads back into  SHIELD and — unless my calculations are off — SHIELD is due to wrap up just as Avengers: Age of Ultron hits the cinema screens...)

Anyway, if you should... happen across Agent Carter, or if some UK broadcaster shows the good sense to pick up the series, it's a huge amount of fun.

Plus, y'know, Hayley Atwell in a well-starched blouse.

Cheers

Jim

I think most people round these parts who read Ben Read and Chris Wildgoose's lovely Porcelain enjoyed it, and I suspect may have wondered what happened next after the book's ending.

Well, you won't have to wonder for much longer... details here.

Cheers

Jim

Beginning with: time in comics.

Picking up from the discussion with Steven Denton which starts roughly here about how time passes in the comic medium and whether a panel is a 'frozen' instant or not... Steven argues, via Scott McCloud, that a panel is a snapshot and the time passes between the panels, I argued (with illustrations in the linked posts) that this ignores the fact that there are many ways that time can pass within a panel.

Putting together the Dept of Monsterology TPB, I came across this rather nice illustration of my point:



The comedy in the PAF derives from the passage of time within the preceding panel, which is created by the TSSSSSSS sound effect. Without the sound effect, we have no way of knowing whether the image is intended to present us with an instantaneous reaction shot from the vampire or a longer moment of puzzlement. PJ could have repeated the panel, or repeated it with a push in or a pull out, but that's a wasteful way to demonstrate the passage of time when it can be achieved in a single panel with just a long sound effect.

I'll reiterate for the sake of clarity that I don't dispute that time generally passes between panels in comics, but* the use of the form is enriched by also thinking about how time can pass within panels.

Cheers

Jim

*And I'm not specifically taking issue with Steven, here — I'd had this exact argument over on Sequential Workshop a couple of years ago and hadn't realised that the contrary view was being rigidly adhered to because it was coming from McCloud's book.

No details yet, but some talented newcomers are getting a shot at the big time through Black Hearted Press.

Cheers

Jim