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Or am I missing a joke somewhere..?

A very poor attempt at humour on my part. I'm blaming the gin.

Kingdom's weak "lazy" ending just messed the whole series. So Dan bring it back and give us a proper ending, it is an awesome series

I had the impression that it wasn't definitely the end, but the Elson droid is much in demand on both sides of the Atlantic, so Dan wanted to leave it somewhere where it could be the end...

Up to Ep4 now. Still enjoying this a lot.

Arsom!

Nort scum marines! Dispense anti-pun grenades!

'Close the curtains, Geoffrey, I'm ambiguous!"

Abnett is good at ambiguous endings, isn't he?

Nothing as good as an ending that works equally well on land and in the water, I find...

If the choice is between so-called pretentious Sandman or willfully inane Big Dave (other "comics are disposable rubbish" stories from the 1990s also available) then I know which I'd pick.

I have nothing against the 'grown up'/'pretentious'* comics of the 90s. I struck up a conversation about our mutual love of Milligan/Fegredo's Enigma with a young lady who was, frankly, waaaay out of my league at a con. Ran into her in a pub later in the day and the subsequent chat and drinks turned out much better than I expected. ;-)



*YMMV

Delano was credited, and you appear to have more reservations than Delano himself does, if twitter thread is anything to judge.

OK, that's all good. I didn't sit through all the credits. If Jamie and RPR are good with it, I withdraw my reservations!

Significant slice of Delano/Piers Rayner Hellblazer sneaked into Sandman Ep3, even using Delano's Casanova/Newcastle wordplay to set it up. Maybe there was an acknowledgment further down the credits than I sat through but, still, felt a little... dodgy.

Still enjoying the series overall, but that bit...  I dunno.

Out of curiosity, what didn't you like about the comic, Jim?

I enjoyed the first dozen or so issues but, as the series wore on, Gaiman just seemed to get ever more pleased with his own cleverness whilst progressively less and less actually seemed to happen.

There's a point in 'Season of Mists' where Lucifer gazes out over his realm and muses: "Better to reign in Hell than to serve in Heaven..."

Rather than trust his readers to spot a quotation from Milton, he has a minion say "Whatever you say, my lord..." solely so that Lucifer can reply: "I didn't say that, Milton did..."

But this isn't enough for our Neil — oh, no! The full line is: "I didn't say that, Milton did. And he was blind."

Oh! A little biographical detail as a cherry on top of this little dollop of self-congratulation.

In isolation, it seems like a petty thing to nit-pick, but he was doing it all the bloody time and it got right up my nose.* I made it to the end of 'Season of Mists' feeling that it wasn't really worth the effort and bailed completely early on in 'Game of You', I think.

I get that this is probably just me, but it really grates.

*He doesn't seem to have got any better. I decided to read the Neverwhere novel, having actually quite enjoyed the TV series. Then I got to a sentence where he describes Vandermar's voice as being "oleaginous" — good adjective, Neil, I thought. Apposite, and slightly onomatopoeic. And then he adds "as sump oil." Just in case we don't know what "oleaginous" means, or failed to appreciate what a good word it is.

Oh, do fuck off, Neil, I thought. :-)

Verrrry odd to have been a lone voice shouting that the Emperor is naked* right through the monthly run of Sandman, only to now be be in the exact opposite position with the TV series...

*I actually had a magazine piece spiked by editorial circa 'Season of Mists' on the grounds that, and I quote: "You can't say that about Sandman."

Only up to Ep2. I'm on record as very much not being a fan of the original series, but I'm enjoying the TV series a lot.

He's also ruled out any cooperation with any other party after a GE.

I'm not, by any stretch of the imagination, a fan of Starmer, but I don't see what any Labour leader could say on this particular issue, given the ferocity with which the Tories and the right-wing media pushed on the "Vote-Whatever-Get-A-Labour-Government" and "Vote-Labour-Get-A-Whatever-Government" in the past, mainly to try and keep wavering Tories in line.

There's no way Labour would allow a minority Conservative government to form if the only way to stop it was some kind of arrangement with the LibDems and/or SNP, however loose or informal.

I saw an interview with Mick Lynch where he was asked what Starmer's values were and he replied "to not say anything controversial".

Mick Lynch is great. Have you seen the one where he says he'd be prepared to consider trial by combat with Grant Shapps as a possible means to resolve the dispute...?

I am surprised that Starmer is so weak as to back the Tories' stance of undermining the unions. I suppose he thinks that the only way to power is to become a New Tory. (Blair did it with New Labour - Starmer is trying to go even further.) For shame!

Yep. Keep in mind that in the leadership contest that got Corbyn elected, every other candidate was positioning themselves at least as right-wing as the Tories, with several of them promising to be harsher on curbing benefits and implementing austerity measures than the incumbent Conservative chancellor.

The Blairite wing were genuinely surprised when the membership responded with a comprehensive "fuck that" so they spent four years working tirelessly to prevent their own party's electoral success, simply to 'prove' that it was impossible to win from the left. Having finally disposed of Corbyn, it's back to business-as-usual circa 2015, aided by the current drive to get rid of anyone to the left of a Liberal Democrat.

(Party members are being purged for offences as terrible as retweeting something originally tweeted by a Green Party member, whilst party procedures are being deployed in highly suspicious ways to engineer the deselection of 'troublesome' left-wing MPs.)