Messages

Ooo oooo oooo can I have my name in it this time?

There's going to have to be so many forum members' names graffitied in the backgrounds of each panel, the text in the word balloons will be as tiny and cramped as the writing in John Doe's diary. I'm thinking of arriving too late to see the new comic, in the hope that Alex Garland will send me a drawing of Dredd and some cool memorabilia.

[DreddRunner]

Hiya, DreddRunner. Is all of Maryland like The Wire? I suppose that would explain why the new Dredd film appealed to you, but not how you could afford a new ipad.

Good to have you around, and in anticipation of your next question - no you can't edit your profile or post in certain areas of the forum right away. Try posting uncontroversial and friendly posts in the threads you currently have access to so the Moderators can see you're not a mentalist and you'll be upgraded soon enough. The Political Thread is an ideal place to make a good first impression and win new friends!

I didn't realise, as a child, that the a-bombing of Berlin was just something that happened in Zenith's universe.  I thought it really happened.

Do you remember Tharg's snotty reply to the guy who wrote in at that time to point out that only two nuclear devices were dropped on civilian populations during WWII, and that neither of them detonated over Berlin? Way to patronise a readership who grew up in a culture of war comics which at least gestured towards historical and technical accuracy.

This presumption of familiarity with the paradigm of alternate universes common in US comics came not very long after Tharg berated another reader for assuming that Anderson's psychic abilities and Johnny Alpha's mutant traits would conform to the depiction of those phenomena in the pages of X-Men. I don't think Tharg's even real.

I see Jeremy Clarkson is off to the funeral, or has been invited at least..

... along with Blair, Brown, Clinton, and Bushes 39 and 41; I can see why the cops have been talking about the need for a ring of steel around the capital. If any Islamic fascists fancy having a go at achieving what the Luftwaffe never could, here's the route they'll be taking to St Pauls:

[Jayzuz]

God bless ye', Jayzuz; If only everyone paid such rapt attention to the stupid shite I come away with, and provided a point-by-point response. That should have been Paradox Prog above, rather than "Paradax Prog" - although that would be cool too. An all-McCarthy end of year prog is an idea whose time has come.

The definition of low income here is the universally accepted one of any household earning 60% or less of the median income.

http://www.poverty.org.uk/03/index.shtml

I always thought that the money from the sales was destined to go into more builds and I am wrong. Still doesn't alter the main fact in the end though does it, that no-one built enough new council stock in the end and still to this day we haven't enough.

There isn't really any incentive for local authorities to invest in creating more social housing when they would be forced to sell their stock off in a few years time at a very generous discount. No political party is going to repeal the right-to-buy legislation because it's been an enormously popular policy - who wouldn't want (almost) free stuff, or at least an investment that would only appreciate in the long term? - and, as you say, all political parties are only interested in gaining or keeping power.

That's why the only new social housing in my area has been built as a result of 'partnerships' between the local authority and housing trusts, where taxpayers' money is basically given away to private corporations to get round the problems presented by right-to-buy. This doesn't really address the housing shortfall, because changes in funding and grant allocation mean local authorities can only really afford to make housing provision for the most vulnerable and difficult to home tenants.

The new housing association homes under construction next to my work right now are intended to house both the profoundly disabled and newly released felons, which sounds like a recipe for trouble. Although that's all very necessary, it doesn't help the majority of folk who don't meet those criteria find accommodation at a time when private rents (in an area of the country officially recognised as an economic disaster area) are upwards of $400 per month, a 2 bed former council flat will set you back £70,000, and the days of 90% mortgages and low deposits are a distant memory. Housing costs now account for almost half of the spending of low/middle income households and that percentage has been rising since the eighties.

I worry way too much about what will happen when we get to the 'other' prog 2000.  I really hope they don't just reset the clock, older Megazine- /New 52- style.

Issue Zero ... prog 2000 A ... prog MM ... prog 2000 +1 ... 2000ad presents the 2017 anniversary special ... The Paradax Prog, no 1 ...

[average]

I work for an average wage, so all these horrible things should be killing me but somehow they don't. Plus, why should you have a job for life. What happens when your company is being undercut by a competitor, do you cut your prices and cut them again because that in the end would make your wages impossible to pay!

I left the forces and was prepared to do any job just to pay the mortgage and managed to get a job that was enjoyable and after a long time was made redundant, along with everyone else of the 100+ workforce and I was the SHOP STEWARD (I bet that shocked you all) and so had loads of stuff to sort out for everyone else as well as look for a new job myself. I cried my eyes out and cursed the Labour government, the company, the new company that took the contract away, baby Jesus, Santa, Manchester United, etc... I lie, I didn't blame anyone, I just looked for another job and got on with it as that my good friends is life in this evil world!

That doesn't surprise me at all, John; you have the organising instinct, sense of community and bolshie streak that make a good shop steward.

People tend to discuss these matters in absolute terms; the behaviour of unions across Europe in the seventies was out of hand and unrealistic, but economies like Sweden and Germany managed to negotiate their way out of similar difficulties to our own without the social and political division experienced here. In Sweden today, union membership is still as high among executives as it is among their employees, disputes are resolved through collective bargaining, and they managed to reform working practices without doing away with almost the entire industrial sector of their economy, as we did.

I think the crucial difference might be that their unions are unaffiliated to a particular political party, and the fact that UK unions and associated industries were targeted by cuts which were driven as much by ideology and political self-interest as they were by practical reality is probably as much a fault of the unions and their financial control of the Parliamentary Labour Party as it is of the Thatcher government.

[Old Tankie]

I don't know how old Old Tankie actually is, but his description of the seventies sounds a lot more like the collective picture of the seventies drawn by TV and newspapers than a personal reminiscence, drawn from direct experience. I remember the regular power cuts he mentions (which lasted well into the eighties), but I'm sure I gained my knowledge of unburied bodies in seventies Liverpool from the same sources as he did.

I'm 56 next month which makes me more than old enough to remember the 70s personally ... You can't personally experience everything that happened in a decade all round the country!!  ... I do have personal experience about the "wonderful" pre-Thatcher days.  It's not me who's getting their history through the media.

That was my point, Tankie; your personal experience of the seventies is just that. Your impression of what happened in the wider world during that decade, on the other hand, is mediated by the same second hand sources as that of someone reading a newspaper account or a historical study of that time. For example, my Dad was a fireman at the time of the industrial action by the FBU to which you refer; consequently I have a very different personal experience and opinion of that episode than your own. That doesn't invalidate your experience of those events anymore than yours invalidates mine; all it proves is that subjective experience differs wildly, and that the only real way of discussing such matters is a sober analysis of the facts.

Any appraisal of the Thatcher government's response to the appalling industrial unrest which afflicted the country in the seventies has to also take into account the fact that the process of deregulation of the financial sector (continued by successive administrations) led directly to the greatest depression in recorded history, and that adjusting the balance of power in favour of employers has resulted in a situation where real-terms income for the majority of people are falling, and the incomes of those workers in the bottom 60% of earnings have been falling for the last three decades.  Whether you think our current difficulties are any better or worse than than those of the seventies probably depends on your own subjective experience and what you read in the papers.

[YOU ARE MAGGIE THATCHER: a dole-playing game]

Pat Mills never disappoints, and this irreverent and timely blog entry contains some great Hunt Emerson artwork too.

YOU ARE MAGGIE THATCHER: a dole-playing game

If I'd been aware of the devastating events in Brett Ewins's personal life at that time, I would have been a little more forgiving of the results of what was basically an art therapy program. I could never understand why Milligan had decided to return to that strip - or 2000ad in general - but it makes a lot of sense that he would help out a good friend and mentor. Alan MacKenzie's gone up in my estimation for continuing to supply Ewins with paying gigs and for publishing Brett's art book/biography, all proceeds of which go directly to Brett:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Art-Brett-Ewins/dp/095691490X/ref=sr_1_cc_1?s=aps&ie=UTF8&qid=1365540945&sr=1-1-catcorr&keywords=brett+ewins

[Pro Bear]

I share Pro Bear's opinion that Nolan's Bat films differ from the Burton/Schumaker era only in their visual aesthetic - and only slightly, at that. All the angsty stuff and mirroring of heroes and villains is there in the campest of the nineties material, and all the homo-eroticism, unfeasible logic and toy-fixation of the 'kiddie' films is present and correct in the auteur movies.

Since the visual aesthetic of Dead End resembles that of the Nolan films even less than it does that of the Burton/Schumaker era, I'm not sure how it provided any kind of inspiration for the reboot.

[Talking Comix Issue #25: LSCC 2013 Spider-Man Gets Judged]

John Wagner starts talking at 10:11 and the interviewer really enjoys himself, especially when they talk about dying!

Talking Comix Issue #25: LSCC 2013 Spider-Man Gets Judged

Fantastically off-message, as usual. Given the infirmity and mortality rates of 2000ad creators, Wagner needs to get to work on that script right away. I found these and posted them ages ago, but nobody seemed bothered. Prepare to be underwhelmed all over again:

BISLEY

[Pops]

I don't belie ... ah, I see what you did there, Pops.