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I don't imagine I'll ever give gamebooks another go, but I've really taken to these write-ups.
Please carry on.

I was able to distance myself from The War Game because of its sixties setting and documentary style. But Threads was something else. That was the eighties. That was my world.
I don't imagine I'll ever be watching that film again.

rampaging round the street in rowdy drunken mobs

Just think how far we've come since then.

[1 Grinder]

1 Grinder
Small but perfectly formed. Made me laugh out loud.

2 Working Girl
Life in the Big Meg, and the further adventures of an instantly likeable character.

3 Sentientoid's Big Idea
Straight out fun.

Art and script perfectly complementing each other in all of the above.

Prog 2273

Because it's Trevallion at his best.
Because there's no hint of Hellboy about it.
Because of the fag butt floating in the coffee cup.

(And just look at the contrast in texture between the pilot's photo and the Constanta portrait miniature! Look at it, dammit!)

"My greatest fear - nanobots eating my brain!"

Things to say at a job interview.

Third World War is where Mills's preachiness started to grate on me. Even so, if Finn had followed hard on the heels of that story I'd have liked it a lot more, open-minded lad that I was. As it happened though, Finn came along during the dark years when I was no longer as willing to give it a fair chance.
If I strip away the accumulated layers of prejudice, I see a story that had a lot going for it, both in script and art, but I'm just not going to bother. Thanks for the write-up, Broodblik. It absolved me from having to reassess this. I'm leaving Finn back in the nineties where I found it.

[CASABLANCA]

CASABLANCA
First time watch, if you can believe it

I saw this properly for the first time when it was released in the cinema donkey's years ago and I had pretty much the same reaction as you.
I've probably seen Casablanca too often now, but last week I watched To Have And Have Not, which I hadn't seen in forever, and I loved it. It was made off the back of Casablanca's success and has many of the same elements: a hard-bitten Bogart in the midst of divided wartime loyalties and various beautiful women, and all in an exotic French colonial locale. The studio couldn't get Ingrid Bergman this time round, so they settled for the 19-year-old Lauren Bacall, who smoulders like nobody's business.
Legend has it that the whole thing was the result of a drunken bet between Ernest Hemingway and Howard Hawks (or maybe it was William Faulker). Anyway – not as good as Casablanca, but a treat nonetheless.

if you want 'breath marks' around a GASP or a KOFF, use the 'curly' brackets — the vast majority of lettering fonts have breath marks mapped to these characters.

You've just handed me the key to good story-telling, Jim.
From now on all my characters will be in a permanent state of surprise and/or suffering a coughing fit.

This is not to say I automatically agree with editorial decisions or I won't make my case for doing things a certain way, but when I'm being paid for something I'll do what I'm asked to do.

I've occasionally argued the toss with an editor (albeit in a wheedling, mealy-mouthed way) but the way I see it, the editor is – for the moment at least – 100% of my readership, and I'd be a right fool if I didn't give my readership what they wanted.

I actually find it kind of fun balancing what I want to, with what the editor needs, and doing it to the word count.

Meeting word count is my pride. It proves that I can be creative to an exact specification. This is one of the reasons I so admire pulp writers who can consistently produce to order, and that's one of the reasons I want to try my hand at a comics script.

I've been writing professionally* for about three years now and I still haven't written a comics script, so this sort of thing is much appreciated.
Although I've never had to reckon with artists and letterers, your 'first in, first out' remarks struck a chord. I was instantly reminded of my years as a draughtsman and how any self-regard I might have had as a creator had to be subordinated to the requirements of the project. It didn't matter how good my drawings were if they didn't convey exactly and succinctly what the men in the workshop and the men on site needed to know.
And once my drawings were in their hands it was their project and not mine.
You don't want to be too precious about your creation when dealing with impatient engineers, or too jealous of your unique vision when arguing with steel fabricators – not that you want to argue with them. If they have cause to seek you out for clarification (your contact details being written on every page, remember) it often means that you haven't been doing your job properly.

So if that job gave me one thing, it gave me a thick skin when it comes to creativity. I may not be a team player, but I understand the dictates of collaboration.
Now, when an editor tells me to revise, I revise. My sensitive soul might be screaming, 'How dare you!', but I have enough professional sense to know that the project is bigger than my feelings.
And I know enough to number my pages.

Anyway, thanks for this, Alec, and a happy new year.

* 'Professionally' meaning that I write for publication – not that I make a living out of it. (The idea!)

I don't know Shakin Stevens

You've perhaps heard of Elvis Presley?
Shakin' Stevens was the Welsh Elvis or, to put it another way, Elvis was the Tennessee version of Shakey.
Maybe not as pretty as Adam Ant, but he had a longer career, and he had moves.

These are wonderful.
Such a shame that the internal art or the stories themselves so rarely matched up to the quality of the covers (or maybe I was just consistently unlucky the odd times I picked up Commando).

But it's all I ever dreamed of!

...the answer is of course Madness.

That's your answer to everything...

It's got me this far.