Messages

It happened after publication -

Oh — thanks for that! So, I was sort of right, in as much as Big Dave wasn't commissioned as a creator-owned series. (In much the same way BARNEY lists Hilary Robinson's series as being creator-owned... they certainly weren't commissioned on that basis, but Fleetway gave her the rights back to make a potential legal headache go away.)

Barney lists it a creator-owned. I don't know what that is based on, but if I recall correctly that site used to be official.

Could well be, then! TBH, I can't be arsed to try and find the Summer Offensive progs and see what the copyright blurb says...

I do think it's a shame that 2000AD seems to have gone backwards on the issue of creator ownership since the days when they published some creator-owned material like Button Man and Big Dave

Was Big Dave creator-owned? Morrison may have claimed it was using the same argument he was using for Zenith, but I don't think it was 'officially' a creator-owned strip.

(I suspect it hasn't been reprinted because it's not looked on very fondly by a big chunk of the potential audience and so any hypothetical rewards from doing it are likely to be small and not worth the possibility of a ruck with Morrison and/or Millar.)

Well it is difficult to review prog when 3 out of 5 stories is literally wordless (speech bubbles has been shot to bits by Dredd). I believe this is a digital only problem it is on the App and the downloadable progs as well from the webstore.

Yep. Both the CBZ and PDF versions. Duly reported to the Powers That Be...

It was. Even if nobody else finds it funny, it amuses me no end that they have the same name.

Apologies again, then!

Jones is an absolutely terrible presenter in an absolute dog turd of a show. But doubtless the BBC will keep paying her far too much for THE ONE SHOW for this to matter.

Apologies if the above was intended humorously, but (for clarity) I suspect JBC was referring to this Alex Jones.

[Slow Horses]

Currently working our way through Slow Horses on AppleTV+. It's pretty great, TBH. Fantastic cast, particularly Gary Oldman's spectacularly sleazy Jackson Lamb, but the performances are all good and it seems unfair to start picking actors out. (OK, maybe Kirsten Scott Thomas' icy deputy head of MI5...)

There's a nasty, twisty plot that stays just the right side of cynically believable, whilst the whole thing is stylishly shot, but resolutely unglamorous.

The basic conceit (focussing on MI5's worst of the worst, a collection of fuck-ups shuffled off to the dilapidated environs of Slough House, a few miles across London from the shiny HQ of MI5) makes a pleasing change from the usual slick, competent types that populate these kinds of thrillers... and you quickly realise that even the smug bastards of MI5 proper are really only there because they're better at covering their arses than the losers.

Oh, and an original theme tune performed by Mick Jagger, no less.

We haven't finished this series yet, but I believe a second is in the works, which I'll be very happy to watch.

Sorry Jim, I worded that badly but that was exactly the point I was angling for.

Right. Understood!

*the trajectory of sterling against the dollar has been fairly consistent for the best part of 20 odd years.  In fact you'd have to go back to 1985 to find a time when sterling was doing as badly as right now.

It dipped under $1.19 a couple of days back, and it's only been lower twice in the last fifty years — briefly in 2020 and, as you say, for about a week in 1985.

As someone who gets maybe two-thirds of their income in USD, this is actually fantastic news (the difference between $1.48 and $1.19 is effectively a 24% pay rise)... except that it's not, because of the reasons for it. I'd happily have lived with a $1.40+ exchange rate, and not left the EU. :-(

The 7.5% increase is towards the upper end of inflation at this moment in time but with the dollar doing as badly as it is right now it could be worse.

I'm afraid you've got that the wrong way round with the dollar — the sterling has been steadily sliding since 2016 and is currently schlepping around the $1.20 mark, which makes imports from the US more expensive. A $3.99 book at an exchange rate of, say, $1.48* would have worked out at £2.70. At the current $1.20 rate, the same book comes in at £3.32.


*Which is what it was the day before the EU referendum. Why, yes, I have picked that date completely at random. ;-)

There are massive paper shortages at the moment. That alone is having a big knock-on effect in publishing. (Not that I have any info about this particular book, but I'm seeing it elsewhere, even with giants like Marvel.)

Yeah... it's wreaking absolute havoc with scheduling for just about all the publishers I'm working for right now, with books getting pushed back, or rushed up the schedule, in response to the printers having an available slot on the press and the paper stock to actually print the damn job on.

Standing ovation for Alan Grant at SDCC today.

[Blackadder]

I bet that he's relieved that nobody recalls Blackadder Deathwatch in the Meg.

I certainly didn't! Until now. Thanks for that...

him not thinking much of Grant Morrison

ISTR, after Morrison & Millar slagged off the 2000AD 'old guard', him saying something along the lines of "You came round my house, y'wee bastard — I gave you your fucking tea!" :-)

One of the newer thrills Brink can maybe cause an upset

I'm also wondering where Nikolai Dante sits in all of this. Not a 'new' thrill by any stretch of the imagination, it also doesn't have its roots in the 'Golden Age' (in fact, it squeaks past my arbitrary "first twenty years" cut off by a month!) and I could see it giving some of the Golden Age heavyweights a run for their money.

And XTNCT + the less memorable Pan-African Judges

Yes! TBH, I was just thinking of what he'd done since becoming far better known as a Dr Who writer.