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I really should have a shot at that comic again.  I've got some great ideas for it!

Some of have been saying this for quite some time. See if you can rescue Sean Phillips from the desk he's chained to in Ed Brubaker's cellar while you're at it. :-)

Failing that, how about a bit of Peter Doherty?

Cheers!


Jim

Yeah - Pete would be ace on "Hellblazer"!  He can draw brilliant monsters and he does scruffy and squalid really well!  ;-)

Console yourself, John, that you wrote one of the bext issues of Hellblazer there has ever been. The one in the laundrette.

Brrr...

- Trout

Thanks!  You're not the only one, apparently:

http://mindlessones.com/2008/04/06/dee-do-dough-don%E2%80%99t-dee-dough-or-why-hellblazer-51-is-the-title%E2%80%99s-best-issue/

I really should have a shot at that comic again.  I've got some great ideas for it!

I've got loads of copies.  You can have some, if you want.  The artwork is... well, quite pretty in a photorealistic way.  The story's a dog's dinner.  Worst experience I've ever had on a comic (except maybe for "Scarab").  Apart from the fact that Vampirella is an inherently stupid and one-dimensional character, it was written before/immediately after 9/11 for a mediocre craven New York-based company that forced me to pull all its teeth out.  My pitch was: Vampirella as Andrea Dworkin/Valerie Solanis/S.C.U.M. manifesto (Society for Cutting Up Men).  Make her every heterosexual males' worst fucking nightmare.  (Have you *seen* the readership of that comic?  It's 100% the dirty mac brigade.)  Vagina dentata in high heels.  Etc.  Instead, I was forced to write a toothless parody that sucked big time - pun intended.

One example: I had a supporting character called Harry Krishna who wore a turban.  My editor:  "God, no!  We can't do that!  Those filthy murderous Arabs wear turbans!"

And believe me, that's a relatively MINOR example of the sort of censorious bullshit and constant rewriting I had to put up with every day.  The pay was good but it really wasn't worth the hassle.  It was soul-destroying hackwork and I feel embarrassed to ever have been associated with it...

Does that make it any clearer?

Brendan McCarthy's just done one...

Well when meadering through the world of the internet I stumbled across the fact that that John Smith wrote a little run of Harris' Vampirella comic in the early 2000s? Now Vampirella is a character I know nowt about aside the two obvious points but I love me some John Smith. So the question is has anybody read these and are they worth tracking down?

Any info gratefuly recieved.

They're fucking shite.  Don't bother.

Cool!  Thanks for the link - never come across that story before and I've read most of Berlitz's stuff (cranky though it may be).  That's well weird, innit?  There's a story waiting to be written right there!  Reminds me a bit of Trevor James Constable's "critters" too...


http://www.freeweb.hu/tarrdaniel/documents/Ufology/skycritters.html


I guess the moral is: Keep watching the skies, eh?   

That sounds well cool!  Very "2000AD"ish!

How about the upcoming horror film "Altitude"?

http://www.matttrailer.com/altitude_2010

From the trailer it looks like a proper Cthulhu film...

Yeah - it's fascinating - especially if you're an Alan Moore fan (and who isn't?).  Watch it: you're in for a treat!

I haven't voted because there's such a crappy and limited choice to vote for!  I've never heard of two-thirds of the nominees on there!  They should've included a blank space where you could vote for "Other" or summat...

Good Meg!

Lead Dredd was a nice one off IMO. I think criticizing the inconsistancy with the Wagner scripted township issues is missing a trick; Wagner only shows the TOD important events, not the usual Judge stuff. Well, that works for me!

Lily's charmed me already and I'm looking forward to this developing.

TFTBM I wasn't that fussed on, although it reminded me how much I loved the City of the Damned arc when I read it as a youngling.

Johnny Woo - I was disappointed this was only a two parter! It felt like it was just warming up!

Also nice to see Siku hasn't taken a huff over the criticism he recieved...

M.

True, but - ugh! - the guy's a Christian!  And what was that he said about Dredd being like Jesus?  I was in hysterics when I read that bit!  (Although he was very nice about me, I suppose, so I shouldn't really moan...)

Fuck, man - you're even slower than me! 

I should probably point out that I haven't been working on this for the last fourteen years. My thoughts have only recently turned to the idea of a new series and, having got the nod from Kev, I'd started turning over plot ideas to the point where I really should have started writing them up. That said, I think Gordon would still have got there first, so -- frustrating though it is -- I would have been more annoyed if I'd fully plotted the damn thing and written up a synopsis!

And, no -- there's no salvaging it.

Cheers

Jim

What about your werewolves on the moon story?  Man, that's a killer idea!  If you can't be arsed working up a whole new pitch and world and stuff, couldn't you do it as a Dredd (or Dredd-world) story on Luna-1?  I'd pay good money to read that!  (Erm, well, I would if I didn't get complimentary progs!)

You've stuck your toe in the piranha tank now John! 

But yes, some Indigo Prime, the continuation of Waugh, and more freako weirdo one-offs like Cradlegrave, soon as you can please!

As a matter of fact I'm writing "Indigo Prime" right now!  It's a bit of a bitch but we're getting there...  Before "Ship of Fools" there's a one-off Devlin story - told in song in the style of Noel Coward - called "Exquisite Corpses" that I'm still struggling to finish... then the new "Strange & Darke" series... so I'm supposed to be busy.  I just wish this bloody weather wasn't so nice!

So when can we expect that New Statesmen sequel we were promised, John?

Not in my bloody lifetime!

In other news, this month's Johnny Woo utilizes what would have been a key plot driver in my slowly-forming Inspectre prequel.

Back to the drawing board with that one, then.

Curse you, Rennie! *shakes fist*

Cheers

Jim

Fuck, man - you're even slower than me!  The supposed trick is to
get those ideas out there - like, err, now! - otherwise the chance
has gone.  No point whining about it, eh?


As Fort said: "It steam engines when it's steam engine time..."

Carpenter's "The Thing" is, of course, a wondrous piece of claustrophobic body-horror-based film-making.  Apparently they're doing a 'remake'/'prequel', which will no doubt be crap if they use CGI rather than proper make-up effects...

http://upcominghorrormovies.com/movie/thing

If you like "The Thing" - and who possibly couldn't? - can I recommend a lowish budget horror film by Larry Fessenden also set in frozen wastes (this time it's an Alaskan oil drilling time hoping to ship out their last batch of oil before the ice melts) called "The Last Winter"?

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0454864/

It's tone is very reminiscent of "The Thing" - very creepy and low-key and claustrophobic - and while it doesn't have the outrageous monster effects it IS very effective, with a really chilling ending...  Stars Ron Pearlman, too, who always worth watching...

john