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Don't know if anyone else saw that there was a free preview edition of the old sixties educational magazine/comic Look and Learn with thguardian recently. Anyway, it's a nice newspaper-style reprint of various articles and strips from the comic's heyday, including Don Lawrence's gorgeous Trigan Empire, by way of building anticipation for the upcoming relaunch of the title next year.

Anyway, if anyone wants a copy, we were handed a great stack of them at work, so drop me a line if you want a copy...while stocks last!

Link: http://www.lookandlearn.com" target="_blank">Look and Learn

There's only one thing worse than a chav/spide/pikey...

And that's a Goth.http://www.encyclopediaofstupid.com/stupid/images/thumb/1/17/297px-Goth.jpg">

I think everyone in the Marvel universe will just wake up in the shower one day, and realise that it was all just a terrible dream...

Everything since 1979, that is...

Yes. Yes I did.

"Last time I looked infinite crisis didn't have any rape in it...now Identity crisis however not only had rape but the murder of a well loved character which still pisses me off even all this time after it happened."

Ah, Identity Crisis...Infinite Crisis...there's too many of these fucking Crises about in the DC universe - they all just blur into one murky lump of shit to me eventually...

"I don't know, Infinite Crisis wasn't perfect"

I don't think it's a question of being 'perfect' - it's a hacked out, morally-questionable piece of crap that lacks any intelligence or charm whatsoever, and displays the rather worrying trend to have women violated or murdered, or violated then murdered, in comic books as a bit of cheap sensationalism.

I can just imagine the DC editorial meeting now:

"Gee, well I like it - it's a pretty hot concept, guys - I just think there's something...I dunno, something missing. Something badass..."

"Got it! Let's stick a *rape* in there! Everybody loves a rape, huh?"

"...Jesus Christ, kid - you're a goddamn *genius*!"

First off, hope you weren't too offended by my rant before - no offence, it's just that all this 'realism' in superhero books (or "badassery" as those canny DC execs like to term it, when talking about Identity Crisis) just *really* gets on my tits! ;-)

I guess part of it is personal taste - I mean, I can't stand that bloke who wrote Babylon 5, but I do know people who like Supreme Power, so I'll admit that I'm not saying anything other than my own personal opinion. That said, I don't think it's a question of accepting bad storytelling - it's about not throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

I mean, other than All-Star Superman and that Alan Moore/Dave Gibbons annual, there hasn't been a decent Superman story since Crisis on Infinite Earths, and it was those Silver Age glory years that Donner and co were tapping into when producing their films. Now, I do acknowledge they have their faults (I never got the whole 'spinning the Earth backwards' when I was a kid, and was kind of amused that it now ends the cut of Superman II as well!), but overall I thought they were a pretty decent stab at the heart of what the Superman mythos was all about. As for Lex Luthor, this was more of the kooky supervillain he used to be, as opposed to the corporate evil genius he's been since Crisis. In fact, the nature of his schemes always involving real estate is brought up in the new cut of II, and he says something along the lines of 'real estate is what I know', so I guess it is actually consistant for the character. Perhaps it was just the fact that Kevin Spacey was voicing them in Returns that put you off?

Thing is, superheroes began as stories for kids - now, I'm not saying that you can't have intelligent stories or themes within those tales told today, just that I believe you have to acknowledge that fact in the telling. Unlike those tales from mythology you cite, these are set in the modern day, and since our view of the ancient past is, to some degree, mythologised already, it's easier for people to accept those than it is for a spandex-clad superhero strolling round New York. That's not to say that you can't do that, just you have to consider how the world would be changed by their presence (as indeed it was in Watchmen).

If we're talking about the world outside gaining a greater appreciation of comics through film adaptations, well it's probably more likely to happen through non-superhero films like Sin City or American Spleandor. Superheroes in film and those in comics seem to be increasingly disassociated from one another, and films seems to be vastly outperforming them - there's probably far more people who've watched the Spider-Man films than read the comic book.

By the way, if you haven't read Supreme or Top 10, you really ought to - it's all about Moore's love for the Silver Age, with a thousand and one mad ideas chucked into the pot, but it still manages to balance it with some 'issues' and dashings of pop culture as well (if you ever wanted to see Monica from friends get shot "execution style" then it's well worth checking out) - ask Santa to stick them in your stocking! Actually, it's also worth checking out Moore's Judgement Day crossover, which is pretty much a critique of the modern day 'dark' superhero, even if it does feature some ugly, *ugly* art from Rob Liefield...shudder...

Still, think about it this way: we may disagree on many things, but at least we're all united in our loathing of Jeph Loeb... ;-)

But then I was a film student, and therefore obliged to argue pointlessly about flicks...

Anyway, I didn't want to distract from the actual job of reviewing the latest issue of the Meg, which is really very good, and one of the best so far this year. Dredd made me laugh, Black Atlantic looks interesting, nice to see Jack Point back, and a good choice of reprint. I particularly like Devlin's new look on the cover too...

Well, he just seems to have entirely missed the point of superheroes. According to this Worley chap, superhero adaptations were rubbish in the past, because they weren't set in the 'real' world, ala the works of Moore or Miller.

But that utterly misses the point - we had superhero 'realism' in the form of Watchmen and Miracleman, but ultimately there's nothing more to say on the subject. The titles mentioned as being great 'realistic' superbooks - Kingdom Come, The Ultimates, etc - are all sloppily-written, fanboy rubbish. Superheroes and the real world are two mutually exclusive factors - if our world had superheroes in it, then we would be changed by that fact, and our world would no longer be 'real' in the same sense that it is now. That's why the best works of recent years have been Morrison's JLA and All-Star Superman, or Moore's Supreme or Top 10 - books that were able to actually enjoy themselves as modern updatings of the classic Silver Age books that the creators loved when they were kids, acknowledging the inherent silliness of the superhero as a concept itself. Ultimately, it's people actually taking the time to enjoy what they're doing and producing something with a bit of soul, instead of the souless, by the numbers cash-cows that are something like Identity Crisis or Civil War.

Also, the reviewer isn't even consistant - I mean, one minute he's berrating Superman Returns for being apolitical, but then the next he says that Supes catching people falling out of buildings is a reference to the Twin Towers. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't he do the exact same thing in the very first film? Was Richard Donner somehow fortelling the future?

"Consider the cocksamamie scheme cooked up by supposed criminal genius Lex Luthor (Kevin Spacey), who plans to build a whacking great heap of crud in the middle of the Atlantic and then sell real estate off it...Such Crayola-level stoytelling might have washed with comics readers in the '70s (lest we forget 'Costa del Lex'), but twenty years after Moore and Miller, doesn't it sound just a little bit childish?"

What, you mean like a bloke flying around in the air in a cape with his pants on over his trousers...?

Anyone else read that article on comic-to-film adaptations? I'm fucking fuming over that...

I thought that the reason Ezquerra refused to work for 2000AD at first was because he didn't draw the first Dredd strip to see print, which was drawn by McMahon?

"He does say it was a new launch though, so that would be two misremembered facts - and its not like there was only the oe strike in the 80s, or only one comic axed to show those pesky unions who's boss..."

Has anyone got John Sanders' home telephone number? Let's get this sorted once and for all...

;-)

Cheers chaps, much appreciated - once again the hivemind comes to the rescue! ;-)

There's a good piece on Scream in the last issue of Eagle Flies Again, in which editor Barrie Tomlinson says that the launch issue was watered down at the last minute due to managerial censorship, possibly because they were worried about being prosecuted under the Children and Young Persons Act, instituted in 1952 as a result of the furore surrounding the reprint of b&w American horror comics, which lead to the creation of the original Eagle.

"In 1980 there was a union strike and Sanders decided a show of force was needed so he considered closing 2000AD for a few days then decided to close down a 'high-profile' girls comic instead. My words, not his. There was a discussion on what comic this was before, possibly not Misty due to the dates."

Misty ran from 1978-1980 though, right? So doesn't that place it in the right timeframe for being Sanders' sacrificial lamb?

Okay, this is a bit of a cheeky ask, but does anyone have a copy to hand of the Meg that came out a couple of Christmas' ago which featured an interview with IPC Editorial Director John Sanders, as well as Da Bish's ongoing TPO (Meg 214?) My copy seems to have gone walkabout, and I can't find the dratted thing anywhere!

Reason I ask is because I seem to remember that in it, Sanders says that one of the reasons behind the premature closure of Scream was the NUJ strike which had delayed publication on a number of IPC titles, with management wanting to teach those militant unions a thing or two.

Of course, I could be remembering this entirely wrong, but if anyone could maybe scan or post the particular portion of the interview as plain text, you'd be doing me an absolutely massive favour, for which I would be very, very grateful...

Link: http://www.2000adonline.com/index.php3?zone=prog&page=megprofiles&choice=214" target="_blank">Possibly...maybe not...

Or Orlando's were...

No, other way round, you FOOL!