Messages

http://forbiddenplanet.com/events/2013/10/09/death-sentence-1-forbidden-planet/

Mike Dowling, of Six Brothers, 1947, and Judge Dredd 'Closet' fame, will be signing at Forbidden Planet London on Wednesday 9th October as part of the Death Sentence launch.

He's currently drawing a major Judge Anderson story with Alan Grant, and I'm sure he'd be delighted to chat to any boarders in the room.

Thanks! Do check out my awesome run on Nikolai Dante while you're about it

No, I wrote the two strips and only did the art for the story with the crappy art. The one with great art is by the sequential master, Mr Simon Fraser, making me look cool with his awesome renderings.

Do check it out though. It's a good story.

Thanks, Mr Proudhuff.

Sauchie - Mike's been talking in interviews about Anderson for a while. It's awesome, not your average story. He's doing a signing at Forbidden Planet on Oct 9th from 6pm, if anyone wants to ask him about it.

Good work, sir. The first book was a masterpiece. Hoping for more of the same.

Graphicly are very good to deal with, Alex. They put it on all the platforms other than comixology, really: Apple, Kindle, PC, Kobo etc - for a small flat fee. They've got a web app where you upload the pages and break it down into panels to enhance the reader experience, which works well.

Though if its a higher profile you're after, comixology is the place.

[Dredd]

Loving Dredd. The slow boil of Lock's visions of his mum's murder allied to his calmer reflections on his mental illness ratchet up the tension very well. It's great to see other judges fleshed out and follow a street level investigation up the chain - it adds texture and depth. The art's cool too. Great to see the two lawmasters in action together - a lovely touch and fine draughtsmanship.

Defoe: Sweet Jeezus the last two eps have been incredible. The mix of Tudor politics, zombies, character drama, action and original visuals are thrill power personified. Pat's rarely subtle with his subtext but when he's on fire like this it just adds to the power. Leigh's art is pitch black perfect - you can see he's putting everything into it and boy is it worth it. I thought Savage was good but this series has been better still. Timeless work!

Age of the Wolf has kicked up a notch as it builds to a fine climax. We've got undead werewolves, a heroine who becomes a lycan, a double page spread wolf city in a massive tree, and a werebattle to the death. This is what 2000ad was designed for!

Mick McMahon last week and Fabry this week on Slaine. Is this heaven?

Ten seconders is still brilliant sci-fi. Edmund's art has been epic and I liked the movement and space Ben brought to it this week too.

Seriously scorching stuff, with some amazing strips round the corner. It's truly a golden age!

I bought Comic Heroes and it's a fantastic issue, with a lot of Titan comics coverage in it. They chat to Titan's owner (and ex Tharg) Nick Landau about the line, and focus on all the comics and graphic novels in the roster. They review about six of the new titles out soon, and there's a little bonus preview mag from with greater depth on each title, reviews, when it's coming out etc (Marada the She Wolf from Chris Claremont and John Bolton looks amazing)  Best of all there's the bonus 52 page comic sampler, with Death Sentence, Thrud, First Kingdom, and It Came inside. Haven't read it all yet, but I was eager to check out It Came and it's delightful. If you're a fan of 50's sci fi or British cinema you will adore this. Some lovely storytelling touches and an original tone that affectionately revels in and lampoons the genre. 

There's also a great interview with Al Ewing on his new writing gig at Marvel, an in depth look at the incredible David Lloyd's timeless body of work, and lots of other cool looking stuff with Joe Hill, Bendis etc which I haven't got to yet.

AND a free pen and writing pad. Seriously...If they'd added a Space Spinner I couldn't have been happier.

Recommended.

Apparently there's a free 11 page sample of Death Sentence in the new Comic Heroes magazine, along with First Kingdom, Thrud and more. Though I haven't seen it myself.

Also Al Ewing on Avengers and Jedi master David Lloyd in the same issue - so I will definitely be buying this.

Clooney was dreadful, and that is coming from a Batman & Robin fan.

Yeah, I don't mind Affleck and don't get the hate. I feel like Clooney could have made a fantastic Batman in the right film.

That's the only problem I can see with Affleck. He and Clooney are exactly the kind of handsome, confident, intelligent and popular alpha males Bruce Wayne would be in real life. Watching them play slightly exaggerated versions of their own personae on screen is a bit like watching them preen in front of a mirror. Like the similarly impossibly good looking and charming Johnny Depp, their most successful and best regarded roles have been those where they play losers or idiots.

It would be impossible to look at any of the actors listed above pouring their toned bodies into tuxedos or tight fitting rubber, swanning around their old money mansions and flying their boutique item, billion dollar experimental aircraft, without hating them a little bit. John Hamm looks so much like the classic conception of Bruce Wayne it's uncanny, but he seems to understand that mortals need an excuse to feel better about themselves when they look at him.

Yeah. Hamm is the bomb.

Clooney's a good analogy here. Great actor, director; wincingly bad Batman.

It's a crazy world where people are saying things like "that actor will not do this Zack Snyder movie justice" with a straight face.

Nail on head.

Personally I'm more of the "This sounded awful and this only confirms it" school.

Affleck being a good actor is irrelevant. He's not right for the part of Batman in any film I want to see. He can't grow a beard for a start, which is the standard way someone with matinee idol looks adds some piss and vinegar. Though I would be very interested in seeing a film where Batman has a huge dirty beard that bats emerge from, now I think of it. It's clear that Snyder's going in the opposite direction here.

And those quoting Hollywoodland as an example of Affleck's ability to provide layered and moving portrayals of a superhero are missing the point of that film. George Reeves wasn't a superhero. He was a limited actor with classic old school matinee idol looks. That plays to Affleck's strengths. He can undercut that and add enough texture to make the audience care about Reeves tragic life, playing against the air of clean cut cheesy manliness suitable for Superman in the 1950's. 

That's the perfect metaphor for Affleck's career. Do some genuinely good work  that everyone loves (Good Will Hunting, Argo etc), then cunningly parley that into some big paycheck cheesy popcorn flick that firmly establishes you as a chinny doofus (Pearl Harbour, Gigli).

Why, Ben. Why?!!!!



 

I don't see the problem - he's a fine actor.

Unlike Zack Snyder, who is a shit director. There's the problem, not with Affleck.

Cheers

Jim

Yes. THIS is the real danger.

A danger that leads to casting two chinny dreamboats as the main protagonists. Because that's the principal criteria for casting a superhero film. The manly jawline.

Affleck is a indeed a fine actor in the right role. And a brilliant director. But this is just a rollback to Armageddon. To Daredevil. He doesn't suit this kind of role at all. He comes across as a smarmy male model in this kind of picture.  He hasn't got the grit, or the look - for Bruce Wayne. 

It's bad news for us, and even worse news for his career. What the hell are they smoking!

Ben Affleck then. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-23806756

What next, Minnie Driver as Alfred?

This is a Halle Berry/Catwoman situation. I'm raising Nerdcon to Level 1 and quarantining all cinemas till further notice. This is not a drill.

[Slaine]

Only read the Slaine so far, but i thought it was brilliant. 

Langley does a solid job of reproducing Bellardinelli's designs and layouts faithfully, but here rendered in his own refreshingly scruffy linework and washes in place of the Maestro's elegant brush. Particularly fascinated to see how well the Spassimo has aged, still completely freaky and unique.   Interestingly there also seems to be a Jean-Claude Gal vibe, a major influence of the styles employed by two of the key artists missing from this project, Angie Kincaid and David Pugh.  Yes, I liked the art a lot, although Feg without antlers came as a bit of a shock. 

As to the script I thought it was remarkably subtle and deep, addressing the greater wisdom Slaine earns in later years, the essential truths he has learnt about the similarity of his and Medb's religions and their situation as pawns of their macrocosmic overseers, as well as his long-standing attraction to her.  Remember that Feg is eventually revealed [spoiler]to be merely the Old Horned God still hanging on to life millennia beyond his 7 year span[/spoiler], much as Slaine himself has.  It's all neatly done and pretty significant in recasting the original tale in the light of the whole saga.

My only real regret is that it would have been nice to see Slaine the father effect a reconciliation with Roth Bellyshaker, who only gets a cameo portrait, but it's a minor quibble and the pages are pretty packed as it is. 

Clever thoughtful stuff by Mills, and a neat turn by Langley.  A positive beginning.

Good post, that.

[Dredd:]

Dredd was okay. Really nice art but a bit too much future slang in the script.

Dredd: Good start, good art, but again, looks like this one is gonna be fairly predictable.  Good cop (Lock) and bad cop (bender) team up, Bender will go too far, Lock will Challenge, but will be tempted to go the way of Bender due to past events.  Or it's the past events first, Lock does something bad, and Bender uses it to control him or whatever.  Hope I'm so very wrong.

The Ten Seconders: Still building I guess.  But it really has to quicken the pace I feel.

I dunno, man. [spoiler]You may be right - but with Judge Lock you've got  a borderline frootloop with a grudge against whoever decapitated his mother under the wing of a bad judge. I'm guessing Lock's capacity to raise the stakes on Bent to psychopathic proportions may escalate this in interesting ways.[/spoiler]

And I reread Ten Seconders. It seemed both perfectly clear and brilliant. I guess Age of The Wolf et al blew my circuits. And I don't agree with JamesC that the pace needs to be stepped up, there's a hell of a lot happening. [spoiler]Resonances of the past (Rachel) and foreshadowing to the future (Damage)[/spoiler]. I'd argue the only improvement to be made is giving it more pages. This is the stuff, for sure.