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Surely a job for Thyrllseeker if ever there was one?

Just read the Dredd so far, and I thought it was excellent. If I had to nit-pick, I'd say that I found the banter between Rico and Giant a little jarring - I've always seen Rico Jr. as an even more uptight, humourless version of Dredd, but then I suppose that doesn't give a writer much to play with.

Yeah, Rico's character was the only thing that jarred a bit. In Sector House he's as grim and taciturn as Dredd, to the point where Dredd himself, of all people, has to tell him to loosen up a bit and remind him that they're only human! Still, a great tale all the same, and always nice to see Paul Marshall on art duties.

John Ringham... Played Tloxtl the baddy in Doctor Who and The Aztecs.

Shame - I only finished watching The Aztecs for the very first time yesterday, and his performance really impressed.

he just keeps coming off as Alan Moore-lite.

You say that like its a bad thing?

Well, yes, because he's doing himself a diservice.

He has the potential to be a really great writer on his own terms, but these little things keep dragging him perilously close to nothing more than a 'Poor Man's Alan Moore' label. Surely you want better for him than that? I know I do.

Having read this thread last night, I ordered the book below off amazon for £9.79 - but it's a different cover to the one advertised in this morning's prog (£13.99 from Tharg) - can anyone tell me if this is the same book, or will I be missing out on any content?

Same book. You'll find the one you recieve will have the same cover as the one advertised in the prog. The blue Charley cover was just a placeholder, like the VCs cover above.

I read it as rave-era infantilist pop-culture references that only a brain-dead stoner would find clever or remotely funny...

...gags of this sort going on the foreground don't really add anything to the entertainment value of a sci-fi fantasy strip. It's a pity, because Ian Edgington usually does intertextuality very well, especially when he's working with D'Israeli (Bagpuss cats, Dalek kettles, George Orwell cameos). Although it did get on my tits in Stickleback a little bit; but you've got to have a gimmick, haven't you?

Quite so. The Thunderbirds bit really got on my wick. Ian Edginton's generally quite a good writer, but every time he shoehorns in these references he just keeps coming off as Alan Moore-lite. The references make sense in LOEG - for instance, I'm pretty sure not only Thunderbirds, but also Jeff Hawke, Dan Dare and Thunderball XL-5 were all mentioned in Black Dossier - but they cropped up during a visit to a 1950s space-port, where their inclusion made sense, worked within the confines of the story and the era, and added to the general vibe. What on earth, by contrast, is the point of a Thunderbirds reference in the middle of a 1930s-set Lovecraftian horror, exactly? It's clumsy, silly and distracting.

Yipee!

Maybe we could get something organised for next year on the board?  If I'd got to grips with it sooner, I'd have posted sooner.

There really can't be many less motivated people than myself in the world.  The trick, I guess, is to find a way to con yourself into doing it, and this(currently) seems a good way to me.

I don't know if I'll finish this year, enthusiasm is a finite resource I find, but in theory I'm up for it next year too if anyone else wants to do it.

I'm up for that. Procrastination is my middle name, so it's good to have a self-imposed deadline now and again to shoot for.

Back in 2005, during my last year of Uni, I wrote a 260,000 word novel (and that was the heavily edited version!). Unfortunately, I realised a little later that, some good bits aside, the majority of it was complete tosh, so now it sits languishing on my harddrive, forgotten and unloved. Still, doing it taught me a hell of a lot, and I'm glad I did it.

Currently 64,000 words into another book, the first in a planned series of 5 or 6, and I've already got the first few chapters of the second book written.

Not that any of this has much to do with the event in question, which I might well have used to spur me into a faster rate of creativity if only I'd heard about it sooner.

The mayor is prepping a series of charges against Nolan and Warner Bros., which owns the right to the Batman character, including placing the blame for a number of unsolved murders and a high female suicide rate on the psychological impact that the film's success has had on the city's inhabitants.

Ha! I'd forgotten that bit. Must admit it kinda makes it all harder to take seriously.

Maybe not unjustified, but then why didn't they file the lawsuit way back when the first Batman comics came out, or when the '89 version came out? No, instead they wait until a Batman film becomes the second-highest grossing film of all time to air their grievances. Call me cynical, but I doubt it has anything to do with their town honour....

Quite true. 1939 to 2008 is a looooong time to wait to do something like this.

The non-cynical part of me would like to think that the DC lawyers simply weren't making things difficult for the town before then, but even so, you're probably right, Shutdown.

I groaned when I first heard this, though in fairness, DC have been banning the residents of Batman from using the name of their own town in buisness ventures and such like, so it's not as though they're entirely unjustified.

My hat is off to Monarch - Canon Fodder was a thoroughly decent little tale with a genius premise and gorgeous art. Well worth a repeat showing. I spent several years championing a reprint of Armoured Gideon only to be thoroughly, horribly dissapointed when I got to re-read the first series in the EE.

Also thoroughly pleased to find that most of the current stories ended this issue, most only having been two/three parts long. Not a comment on their quality, but I often find a heavy sense of fatigue hanging over me when I read the Meg, when in the middle of stories that have already been around for four or five months and still have several parts to run. To keep interest and, most importantly, momentum, I think Meg tales need to be short, punchy affairs, ideally never more than four parts long.

Well, speaking as a woman trying to make it in a man's world - oh, hang on. I'm not.

I'm posting this at 10.52pm, when the board tells me it's 11.35pm.