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[I WANNA BE A DRUG SNIFFIN' DOG]

Nothing like The Power Of Lard, my man.

I WANNA BE A DRUG SNIFFIN' DOG

I once put that on over the PA at work, and my horrified manager asked "what is that?". I started explaining about Jello Biafra and Al Jourgensen, but he interrupted- looking existentially disturbed and confused- and clarified, "no, what ... is ... that?". He has David Guetta as his ring tone.

[red/green colour blind]

According to newspaper reports, that guy in the Colorado shootings died his hair orange/red 'to look like The Joker'. This suggests he's either not really a fan of the comics/films, or that he's red/green colour blind.

[very good news]

Douglas Wolk, who has a better handle on Dredd than anyone else who's seen the film so far, has posted a partial review on his excellent Dredd Reckoning blog. It's more very good news:

http://dreddreviews.blogspot.co.uk/        (third paragraph down, underneath the blue 2000ad cover)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-YDO8HR_2Xg

Fuckin-A!

He can halt the death plunge of a de Havilland bomber, but he struggles to breach the door to the cockpit?

[all]

... Ice T was on Channel Four News yesterday. He was charisma personified as he patiently explained the difference between rap and hip hop to Krishnan Guru Murthy, and that not all hip hop was about scary black men with guns and bentleys. Then ruined it by responding to a question about Boulder with the same you can have my AK when you prise it from my cold, dead fingers bullshit you'd expect from Garth Brooks ...

He was on there to promote Something From Nothing, his documentary about the craft and creation of hip hop lyrics- which seems to have been deliberately buried by releasing it at the pictures in the same week as Batman.

Millers idea of Supes as a government agent was an interesting twist on the whole formulaic Superman concept.

Aye, but he's the embodiment of US foreign policy and America's ability to project its power oveseas, sinking battleships and doing what Kennedy couldn't do (in 'Corto Maltese'/Cuba) to Soviet missiles that threatened the US mainland.

Bruce Wayne and Oliver Queen are used as cyphers to represent the right and left wing (respectively) strains of American political dissidence that threaten the domestic political status quo. Mrs Kent's little boy being unleashed on US soil is a foreshadowing of the way the CIA expanded their brief to cover domestic 'threats' following the collapse of the USSR and the creation of the Department of Homeland Security in response to the 9/11 attacks.

[SBT]

Pops, in all seriousness, no one 'involved' in 2000AD fandom- sc*t* *e*t*l included- is as frightening as the dc comics/ dr who fan i have in mind.SBT

I'll ask, then. Which Record Producer/nerd do you mean, SBT?

[GWAR!]

Every Soulfly and Sepultura album mixed into one mighty playlist of tribal metal goodness.

I'd enjoy Sepultura more without the vocals; a problem with most metal, and one that RATM and Limp Bizkit partially addressed by employing some annoying twat to occassionally repeat a sweary chant then shut the fuck up and let the riffs take over for the rest of the song. Fred Durst looked and sounded every bit as ridiculous as GWAR!, though

Chemical Brothers have made an official song for the Olympics that's equal parts Thriller and Tangerine Dream, except it's good. This and Survival (by Muse) are part of six songs commissioned for the Olympics, which are intended to demonstrate to the world what groovy fuckers we all are. I can imagine both working quite well as beds for the build up to events and highlights packages, so you'll be sick of the sound of them soon enough:

VELODROME         SURVIVAL

[Shark]

Writing this from my hospital bed @ Liverpool Heart and Chest Hospital, Broad Green where I'm recovring from having 5 stents inserted following my 3rd heart attack.

You are one seriously hard bastard, Shark. Get well soon.

[Pro Byah]

Frank Millers take on Supes was very interesting in TDKR.

Miller's Earth-bound God approach sounds a lot like (what I've heard) Moore's Marvelman did. The introduction of the character as a literal force of nature, manifesting only as a tornado or an earthquake- something ineffable for which there's no direct evidence and to which witnesses are afraid to put a name- is something mythic and fascinating that I'm not aware of any other writer even trying to follow up.

The oft-made Christ comparisons seem a useful way of portraying the duality of such a character; like Jesus, Kal-el is essentially an omnipresent, omnipotent and omniscient consciousness manifesting itself on the physical plane to experience itself subjectively. The sentimental ties to his adoptive human parents (and the sexual imperative embodied by Lois) are really all that's holding Supes back from behaving in exactly the detached, rational and utterly terrifying fashion CF and Pro Byah describe above.

The tension between acting in a way which our reason and experience demonstrate makes sense, and obeying what our biological urges and psychological weaknesses compel us to do, should make for storytelling gold and reader identification. As it is, the only issue of an actual Superman comic I own is one from the Eighties, where Lex Luthor builds a super-computer to work out Superman's secret identity. It's not really very good.

[In-story theory:]

So....any theories as to how the belt got left behind in Gotham?

In-story theory: Die Laughing begins with one of The Joker's goons explaining that Mean Angel dropped it in the park. When Laughing Boy tries to use the belt it malfunctions, so maybe whatever remote monitoring software the boys at Tek 21 were running on it reported the device as inoperative. Why bother retrieving broken magic?

Real world theory: Wagner & Grant thought Die Laughing would be published fairly soon after Judgement On Gotham, so it wouldn't be stretching the internal logic of the story too much to imagine that no-one in tek division had got round to doing due diligence clearing up the aftermath of an extra-dimensional breach of security. Then Glenn Fabry got the gig and seven years passed between books.

[Monkey]

Holy mother of Grud, BK - that very last link was mental! The description of the video and then the posted comments were quite scary. 

Part of my attempt to Godwin every thread, Monkey. On less contentious ground; ever wondered how you get to party in the DJ booth with Steve Aoki?

TWIN DECKS

[Mick's blog]

Well I went ahead and just asked Mick about it.

"This was to have been an animated film from Animation City. It was to be set in North London in the near future and would have featured aliens, Merlin and Morgana, plus ancient Romans."

Sounds fascinating, but now I'm even sadder that this didn't develop further.  Anyway, Mick hinted that he might try and find some old material from the project to post on his blog, so I'll update this as and when (or someone else will).

That belongs on the DVD shelf of the Sandman's library of unwritten books, alongside the pilot episode of the Strontium Dog TV show and a box set of the many different film versions of Dredd that preceded Stallone. Mick's blog is a treasure trove that's always worth a visit anyway, but a link to anything he unearths relating to that project would be fantastic, Ming.

[to reveal the incadescent orb of Bel]

There is no wickerman in The Wicker Tree, and nothing burns! Though i am now watching the news' interminable coverage of the 'olympic torch' and wishing it would all end in the lighting of a wickerman stuffed with coe, johnson, cameron and osborne et al. What could possibly be more british? SBT

If Danny Boyle could time it so the wicker-head (containing Coe, Johnson and Osbourne) falls off at exactly the right moment to reveal the incadescent orb of Bel (5m 35s), I could see that working.

[OLD BIG 'EAD]

I think the helmet is beginning to look small to me as I become more used to seeing it. I say Bigger Helmets for sequel.

OLD BIG 'EAD's helmet does seem to get bigger over time.