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Post-op Vienna?

Darn it, pipped to the post by the buttoned one.  Ah well.  

COVER: Shakara.  Brains.  'Nuff said, really.  Nice uncluttered pic showing the freaky alien gimp in all his freaky alieny gimpy glory, courtesy of Nick Percival.  Good stuff.

DREDD: Continues this prog's brain theme, subsituting judges and apes for alien gimpery.  The art's rather nice (Mike Collins on pencils, Cliff Robinson handling the inks and Chris Blythe colouring it all in) and the story's perfectly good fun, but after Wagner's recent stuff it just seems a little, well, disposable by comparison.  Which ain't saying much, really, since not many things beat Wagner on Dredd these days.  Still, good stuff.

SHAKARA: Alien gimpishness, giant floating eyeballs, swarms of pissed-off frogs, and most of the above going splat in one way or another in glorious Flint-o-vision.  Morrison's writing skills deserve praise here; in the hands of a less skilled writer this would simply be an interminable mess of alien splattery and gratuitious weirdness (as opposed to alien splattery and gratuitious weirdness with a plot and characters and things).  Very good stuff.

KINGDOM: Bit of a change in that there's no scrapping, no giant bugs and Gene only appears in three panels.  We do get a look at a settlement of human survivors which doesn't (as yet) seem to have any connection to the Masters in Antarchticy, raising a couple of questions abot the urgings that led Gene there.  Elson keeps up his usual high standard of art and the general design of the settlement is a good blend of shiny future tech and old frontier farm.  The human inhabitants look more like they've strolled in from Little House on the Prairie than from a bug-infested post-Apocalyptic wasteland, but it fits their dialogue and the general feel of the place better than a Mad Max-esque aesthetic would.  And I loved the "Can I keep him?" line, even if it was visible a mile off.  Very very good stuff.

STICKLEBACK: Bloody hell, where to start?  D'Israeli's art is just mind-boggingly good, and he's crammed the pages with enough detail and little references to merit poring over each panel for ages.  Despite that, though, the art never looks cramped and the detail doesn't get in the way of the story.  The writing makes a similar achievement; the plot moves on, little nuggets of information are dropped, but it never feels forced or overly talky.  Plus there's a punch-up with a zombie bear and the appearance of a horde of undead cowboys and indians.  Very very good stuff.  Exceptionally good stuff, even.

STRONTIUM DOG:  No big twists or surprises this week, but the plot progresses nicely.  Ezquerra's art is just as pretty as we've come to expect (though the colouring in the last panel of the first page does make Alpha look strangely like his own undead evil twin) and it says a lot about Wagner's writing that this fairly by-the-numbers jailbreak and escape never seems dull or predictable.  Good stuff.

One damn fine prog overall.  I think it says a lot about the quality of the current lineup when a Dredd story featuring apes and brains is the weakest of the bunch (even calling it the weakest is a bit of a stretch... 'least stonkingly ace', perhaps).      

Cod?

Army of Articulated Phlebotinum Tea-Brewing Automata?

"Bolt-01, never miss a pimp..."

Shouldn't that be 'never miss an opportunity to pimp' or is there something you're not telling us?

BBC4 is showing a documentary about the theory of parallel dimensions tonight at nine.  It's presented by Eels frontman Mark Oliver Everett, because as it turns out it was actually his father who first came up with the theory in 1957.

Link: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7113098.stm" target="_blank">Should be good...

Arsebiscuits. Off, dammit.

I think you're grossly underestimating the board's multitasking capabilities: there's probably quite a few people here who could give you sympathy and death.

And hey, if there was ever a day when you could projectile vomit on your boss and get away with it, it's today.

Some impressively PSU-style antics from the colonies:

Link: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/6995061.stm" target="_blank">We can seeeeeee you!

"Ramone Dexter - same as Chopper, except it's even less explicit."

Agreed.  At the risk of sounding dense it never even occurred to me that he might actually be dead (though I was fairly sure Billie had snuffed it, so there you go).  

'Curing' Ray's paralysis may have seemed like a cop-out, but not doing so would have been worse - we've already seen that the setting has a high level of medical technology (Rocky's legs, Steampunk Willy, Kal's hand, clones et al) so it would have been too much of a stretch to accept there was absolutely nothing they could do for a spinal injury.  

Finny's agonizing was excellent, but in my opinion it would have been cheapened more by keeping Ray incapacitated for no good reason than by curing him.

Get some rest.  If you haven't got your health, you haven't got anything.

Surely a bona fidey answer would involve imparting information  to solve the original conundrum, while a response wouldn't necessarily even address it?

Aren't we supposed to be answering questions with questions, rather than merely responding?

Much as I hate to pick holes in such a genius plan, but doesn't a geostationary orbit require it to be above the equator?

Of course, if part of the plan is to realign the Earth's rotational axis so that Texas is on the equator then I'll be even more impressed.  

Eschewing the standard atheist line of 'nowt religious' I'd quite like my funeral to be simultaneously officiated by a priest, a vicar, a rabbi, a voodoo (vodun?) hounghan, a druid, a high priest of Odin and as many Buffy-esque Wiccans as can be found.  

Not sure about leaving my body to medical science, but if there was the option to leave it to evil science I'd sign up like a shot.  Educating first year medics by letting them chop up your cold dead corpse is all fine and very laudable, but it doesn't really compare to being reanimated as a Frankensteinian monster.