Zoomy's thing

Esses

2012-01-30T21:10:00.001Z

That really was a great tennis match yesterday. Incidentally, have you noticed that the top four players in the world are from Serbia, Spain, Switzerland and Scotland? Obviously Andy Murry is never going to be successful unless Scotland becomes a real independent country.

Hooray for Sheffield!

2012-01-28T18:43:00.003Z

Earlier in the year than usual, it was the Sheffield Regional today. It was at the Megacentre, a strange church-cum-children's-play-area-cum-conference-centre near the city centre, and a very nice (although expensive) room for an othello tournament.

I got up more or less in time to catch the train down to Sheffield, remembering to bring my board and clock in case we needed extra (we didn't) but somehow forgetting the most important part of any othello player's equipment, my hat. I got there to find people standing outside because the person who was supposed to let us in hadn't turned up - this seems to happen at every othello tournament everywhere, it'd be hugely disconcerting if it didn't.

Anyway, the competitors included Garry Edmead, who hasn't been seen for many years, and Iain Forsyth, who hasn't been seen for even longer (or by me at all before today). And the organiser Roy Arnold, plus Iain Barrass (two Iains and no Ians) and Andrew Burgess. I realised halfway through the first round that everyone else had been coming to othello competitions for much, much longer than I had - and since my othello heritage goes back to the late nineties, that's pretty rare. But then Marie Lightman turned up in time for round two, so she was able to take over as the new bug and relegate me to the position of old-timer.

In the first round, I beat Roy, while Andrew beat Iain and Garry beat Other Iain. I should call them Young Iain and Old Iain to avoid confusion, but that would probably cause offence, so I won't. In the second round, with Garry having the bye, all the first-round losers won their games, giving us the extremely groovy situation of everybody being on one point after two rounds, except Garry on two. It would be even groovier if everybody had been on the same score, but with seven players that just isn't statistically possible. Iain Forsyth completely thrashed me in this round, incidentally.

After another beating for me at the hands of Garry, we all went to lunch - the place downstairs at the Megacentre isn't exactly haute cuisine, but it's okay for a snack. Then we had four more rounds of othello where I did rather better, ending up playing off against Iain B for second place and losing. Still, third out of seven isn't bad, and it was a great scoreboard at the end, with everybody managing at least 2½ points and no chance at all of working out the results of individual games just by looking at the final scores (except that Garry beat everyone with no real difficulty).

Garry Edmead 7
Iain Barrass 5
Ben Pridmore 4
Roy Arnold 3½
Andrew Burgess 3
Marie Lightman 3
Iain Forsyth 2½

That was fun - I haven't played othello for aaaaaages for one reason or another, and it's nice to get back into the swing of things. Cambridge International in February! Be there or be a non-othello-player!

How memory works

2012-01-26T20:25:00.002Z

"Drat," I thought to myself, "I was going to do something but then I got distracted and now I can't remember what it was. Maybe I'll write about it in my blog... oh, wait, writing in my blog was the thing I was going to do!"

What I was going to write about was the demand from an anonymouse: "plaese put some light on the loci or place method and movement that we need to associate with the words"

I get asked this question quite a lot (usually by the same person every time) and it always worries me a little. Because that's definitely venturing into the wrong territory for advice on memory. The amount of movement or the detail of the images you use varies wildly from one memoriser to another - everyone's brain is very different, and it really is very important to do your own thing and find your own way of memorising. Trying to imitate everything I do in exact detail is never going to work, believe me.

But when I say that, people assume I'm keeping secrets from them because I don't want them to be successful memory people, so I really can't win.

It's a working man I am

2012-01-18T20:59:00.002Z

I've got people offering me jobs left, right and centre - who says the economy's bad? Nobody's offered me lots of money for doing nothing, though, which I'll admit is my ideal.

My blog entries lately are short enough to put on twitter, it's terrible. I'll try to do something about it soon.

Blue Monday

2012-01-16T20:14:00.002Z

In Britain we're being told that it's the most depressing day of the year, whereas in America it's apparently quite a cool day where you don't have to go to work. I want to emigrate.

It's cold today!

2012-01-14T20:20:00.002Z

Cold by the standards of this winter, at least, which is still quite warm, so I can't complain. I could still cycle to Nottingham and back without much discomfort.

This is, according to Blogger, my 1964th post, so maybe when I get to 1976 I'll post a blog reviewing each year of my life up to the present - that'd be cool. But then maybe something will happen on the day of post 1997 that I have to blog about and whatever I did that year will go unchronicled forever.

What did I do that year? Oh, yeah, the first MSO! That was an awesome year!

I can't talk about curtain hooks

2012-01-13T21:35:00.001Z

My curtains don't have hooks. They've got ring things that slide along the rail. Curtain hooks are rubbish, anyway, they always fall off.

Look, I'd talk about memory if there was anything to talk about, but nobody's told me anything's happening - there's probably a US Championship in a couple of months that I'd love to go to but almost certainly can't afford.

I could talk about Captain Hook, he was extremely cool. Or no, I can't really be bothered.

I didn't know you cared!

2012-01-12T12:57:00.003Z

I wasn't expecting to get quite so many replies immediately after posting last night - with my only updating this thing once a week at best, I assumed people weren't checking it so regularly. Anyway, the feeling seems to be that I should talk about memory, but there's not much to talk about at the moment - we're in the usual winter quiet period between competitions, and as usual (as far as I know) there's no definite plans about what's going to happen this year. I'm still intending to run a "Cambridge" competition at some point, probably not in Cambridge again, but I can't really announce anything about it yet. As for whether I'll compete anywhere, that's another question - we'll have to see how I'm feeling.

I do have an interesting offer for a Spanish advertising campaign which I'm in danger of losing through sheer apathy and I should make an effort to do, since they're paying well over the odds, but I'll let you know more about that when the time's right.

I'm starting a new temp job tomorrow, Friday 13th (it's an Unlucky Year again) in Derby (most haunted city in England), which I'm confident will go well. I'll take my lucky ladder's foot with me. I'm determined to devote any time I spend working as an accountant from now on to actively pursuing some other career, whatever it is. That, I think, will help me psychologically, or at least keep me off the streets for a while. Although my brother's staying with me at the moment, so spare time is more at a premium, although he does cook dinner for me every night, so I really can't complain.

I also have a book to co-write with Alberto some time when I get a moment - I'm sure it'll be a roaring success.

What do you want from me?

2012-01-11T19:56:00.002Z

What brought you to this blog? Judging by the stats page, most people who come here from random searches are looking for Krypton Force, Coco Pops lyrics, old coins or how to give oneself food poisoning, but what about my regular readers? Do you want my insight into memory matters? Othello? Comics? Cartoons? Life in general? Let me know, and I'll blog about it.

Oh, you want an update?

2012-01-04T20:32:00.002Z

Here's the number one thing I learned in 2011 - foreigners don't know what Christmas crackers are. I always thought they were sort of universal things, but it turns out they're exclusively British.

The number one thing I've learned in 2012 so far is that there's a Chinese memory forum that I urge everyone to use some sort of translator on. I haven't had time yet, but I will.

Be nice to squirrels!

2011-12-26T21:23:00.003Z

I got a lot of stick last week for saying squirrels were great and not vermin, so I think the people of the world need to be educated - did you know Mickey Mouse would have killed himself in 1930 if not for squirrels?

Mickey Mouse newspaper comic strip, 24 October 1930, story and art (despite the "Walt Disney" signature) by Floyd Gottfredson

No, really, this is the end of a week's worth of strips in which Mickey, thinking Minnie loves someone else, tries to commit suicide in a variety of different ways. Suicide wasn't an uncommon theme in comics and cartoons at that time - the Wall Street crash made it headline news and a part of the public consciousness like never before - and you'd often see the kind of gags that nowadays you only find in Suicidal Syd in Viz, or Moe on The Simpsons (where the joke is that it's not the kind of thing one makes jokes about), but it was still a surprise to find that a loveable icon like Mickey Mouse was tempted.

Slightly disturbing aspects aside, I'm very glad I got the compilation of Mickey Mouse newspaper strips for Christmas! Buy it on Amazon and see for yourself - it's maybe not the best early-thirties newspaper funny strip (that would be Popeye), but hey, it's Mickey Mouse, and the phrase "like you've never seen him before" is probably accurate.

Can I just point out...

2011-12-22T19:46:00.002Z

That's it's the 22nd of December, it's officially winter, and I haven't got my heating on. It's lovely around here at the moment, and I hope it stays that way! I still want to emigrate to Australia (actually, maybe New Zealand, there's an Australian I want to avoid), but I think I could tolerate wintering in England this year if it's going to stay like this.

And I'm sure it is, just because I've been seeing tabloid headlines for the past several months saying "icy horrible nasty snowy weather coming right now, definitely!" and if they've been wrong so far, it stands to reason that they'll be wrong forever.

Meanwhile, please go to memrise.com and learn things! They've got lots and lots of things to learn there! Enrich yourself!

PS If you're reading this and you're Australian, I wasn't talking about you. It was another Australian.

Goals galore

2011-12-21T21:05:00.002Z

Hooray for Marc Albrighton, scoring the 20,000th goal in the Premier League like that. And for having the same name, nearly, as the Mark Albrighton who briefly played for Boston Utd and is now, according to the internet, playing for Nuneaton. And also the same name as the Mark Albrighton who was briefly my boss in a temp job I had many years ago, and who was a fairly athletic type who jogged to and from work. It must be a football kind of name.

It's funny, because it's not a common name, and I've never heard of anyone with the surname Albrighton who wasn't called Marc or Mark. Perhaps it's a family tradition. Perhaps they're all related, although the jogging boss assured me he wasn't related to the Boston player. Perhaps they're all the same person, in fact, because I've never seen two or more of them together at any one time.

You know what memory sport really needs?

2011-12-20T16:01:00.003Z

Apart from a swift kick up the backside and general telling not to be so silly and go out and do something worthwhile, of course? A Wikia site, that's what!

Okay, I was bored, avoiding the important task of deciding what kind of new and exciting career I want to new-year-resolve to get, and it occurred to me that this kind of thing is by far the best way to produce the kind of memory competition database that everyone wants. I'm envisioning a huge, sprawling website, with profiles of every competitor detailing their results, records, rankings, favourite foods and other important information like that; pages for every memory competition that ever has or will take place anywhere in the world, complete with results and stories about what happened or will happen there; a page for every discipline's rules, regulations and records as well as when the rules changed and what they were in the olden days, and much much more.

Currently I've written a basic page for the first world championship, and a profile of David Berglas, a very important figure in the history of memory competitions, just to show you what it looks like.

I'm also envisioning a website where everybody works together harmoniously to produce something informative, 100% accurate and also (since this is the real spirit of memory competitions) light-hearted, occasionally silly and irreverent without ever containing anything that could possibly offend anyone, ever. At all.

I think (I'm quite new to the whole wiki thing) that it's currently set up so that anybody can edit anything they want but nobody can go around deleting or disciplining other contributors. Except me, because I created it, but I hereby solemnly promise never to use these great powers, ever, because otherwise it would go to my head and turn me into some kind of mad despot. So come on, memory aficionados, add a page or two and let's make this into a big thing!

Oh, and don't edit your own page. That's just sad.

The importance of feeding the squirrels

2011-12-15T18:40:00.002Z

I accidentally knocked my laptop off my coffee table this morning and it dropped dead on the spot - instantly shut down completely and wouldn't turn back on when I pressed the on button. I assumed that something had come loose somewhere and could possibly be fixed by dropping it again, the other way up, but I didn't have time because I was on my way out to the blood donor place.

On the way there, I saw that men in a van had been gathering up all the leaves piled up at the side of that road with all the trees on it (it's probably got a name, but I don't know what it is) and left a long strip of bare ground on which well over a dozen squirrels were digging around for nuts. I know a lot of people would describe squirrels as annoying vermin, but I think they're awesome, and I was worried that some of their nuts had been scooped up by the workers, so on the way back from having blood sucked out of me I bought a big bag of nuts and scattered them around the squirrel zone for them to find and eat or bury according to taste.

I took the long way round to check whether the shop that used to be SAS Furniture actually does fix computers (I thought it did, but it might have been my imagination), and found that it does, but when I got home my laptop had fixed itself and was working fine again. I suspect it was fixed by a grateful computer hardware expert squirrel.

Scale It Back even further

2011-12-14T21:53:00.003Z

The video to "Scale It Back" has been up on Vimeo for a month now, and it looks like the last couple of days have seen an upsurge in the number of views! People are still watching the thing!

There's also a version on YouTube that I actually prefer - it cuts my bit at the start down from sixty seconds to ten, while still adequately explaining what I'm doing.

I want to make another one of these videos now! I've already forgotten how tedious the day of filming was! Come on, movie producers, it only takes me thirty seconds to 'write' a story, does anyone want one?

That's it. No more cherry coke.

2011-12-13T19:28:00.002Z

It gives me terrible heartburn, makes me fat and is almost certainly really really bad for me. It's back to a healthy diet of water and occasional lager, at least as far as drinks are concerned.

So let's all clink our mugs of tap water and toast the extraordinarily groovy news that they've rediscovered two lost episodes of Doctor Who from the sixties! "The Underwater Menace" is generally considered to be terrible, although there's a body of opinion that episode 3, the only previously-known-to-still-exist one, was the worst of them. And I actually thought episode 3 was a lot of fun and I don't know what everyone else is complaining about, so I'm sure episode 2 will be even better! It's got Ben and Polly in it, and they're awesome!

And as for Galaxy 4, episode 3... well, nobody ever really talks about Galaxy 4 except to say "it's a shame that the entire serial was destroyed without so much as a telesnap, seeing as it involves a race of evil blonde women from space," so the fans who wrote fanfics about themselves being captured by the Drahvins will be a little disappointed that they don't look quite like the hand-drawn illustrations that accompanied their story, but everyone else will be pleased to see it at last after 46 years of non-existence.

When I invent a magic camcorder that can record the past, the first thing I'll do will be to tape the 106 episodes of Doctor Who that remain lost. The second thing will be solving the JFK assassination, and the third will be Ancient Greece. Or maybe Livy's history of Rome, I'm not sure which one first. Then the first season of The Avengers.

They'll be wanting to dissect it next

2011-12-11T19:42:00.002Z

I didn't mention that an added bonus of this trip to Munich was having my brain MRI-scanned by Boris and his team of German mad scientists. They've now added my brainwaves to their collection of memory athletes, and I'm sure it's just a matter of time before they successfully create a super-brain that will take over the planet Earth.

If anyone's keeping track, this means that my brain has now been scanned by scientists in Japan, the USA and Germany. Does nobody in Britain care what's inside my head? It's quite fascinating in there, I'm sure.

Anyway, the sideshow to this science was the second day of our friendly gathering to test our memories - or, rather, to see how out of practice we all were, because it's safe to say that nobody was setting the world alight with amazing feats here. I did do a pack of cards in 26.53 seconds and, more importantly, recall it with great ease - most of the time when I'm under 30 seconds it's a huge mental struggle. Hopefully this will happen more often in real memory competitions, although actually it might be more rewarding if I'm racking my brains for five minutes and only sorting the last cards into order in the last half-second.

The time (measured in the old-fashioned way with arbiters with stopwatches, since we hadn't brought enough speed stacks timers) was too slow, though - I got mentally 'stuck' on at least one image for a couple of all-important seconds, aiming for a time a bit under 25. This meant, for what it's worth, that Hannes won with a score of 6060 and I came second with 5999. By way of comparison, Wang Feng just amply demonstrated why he's the world champion with a score of something like 8477. That's what happens when you're at a real world championship instead of a last-minute unofficial get-together, as well as when you're much better at memorising things than I am. Congratulations to him, and here's hoping that next year I'll be in a position to challenge him (there's no point putting it off any more - I've got to create that 10,000 image system for numbers. I don't think I'm ever going to get over 2000 with my current one, and scores way above 2500 are rapidly becoming the norm...)

Institutionalised

2011-12-10T17:11:00.002Z

Some might say that the Max Planck Institute for Psychiatry is an appropriate place for a dozen or so people who like to memorise long numbers and things to get together. Some others might say that it's on Kraepelinstrasse, which is just around the corner from Bummstrasse, and giggle at the silly name, but frankly if you expect more classy blogging, you should just go elsewhere.

Also, it's been snowing all day, but not in a severe kind of way, which is good because I considered bringing my uncomfortable but much better gripping work shoes with me, only to decide against it because my rucksack was too full, so I would have been annoyed if I'd slipped on ice and killed myself.

As it is, I'm still alive, and still good at memorising cards even if I haven't really been practicing - ten minutes of flicking cards at top speed from one hand to the other gives you a sort of writer's cramp if you haven't done it much lately! Another good reason not to do all your training on computers! I'm relatively rubbish at numbers and binaries, but at least this will help keep my hand in before the next real memory competition...

It's like magically stepping into the past!

2011-12-09T13:45:00.001Z

There's a Woolworth's in the shopping centre in Munich! I've missed that red and white colour scheme and wide range of cheap tat!

This is probably a new experience

2011-12-08T19:18:00.002Z

I don't think I've been to Munich before. I'm not one hundred percent sure about that, though, because all day I've had the idea that maybe I have been here before, and have been hoping I'd see something familiar, but I've checked in my blog for the past six years or so, and I've never mentioned visiting, so maybe I haven't.

I've not been to the city centre yet, though, so I might see something there to change my mind. I just have a feeling that I had a day trip here, long ago, when I was somewhere else in Germany for some reason.

Anyway, I'm here now, in a nice hotel, and I'm planning to spend tomorrow aimlessly wandering around the shops, like I always like to do in a place I probably haven't been to before. I haven't done that for ages, with one thing and another.

And here's another thing - I bought a Terry Pratchett book at the airport, and I notice that Commander Vimes on the covers of Discworld books doesn't look even remotely like the person I envisage whenever I see the number 883 or the eight of hearts followed by the three of diamonds. I'm not sure where I got my mental picture from, but it's stuck there now.

And while we're talking about memorising, I've been practicing on Memocamp just lately. Just for a change - I still stick to my principles that it's important to practice for paper-based memory competitions with paper-based memory training, but it's nice to vary the routine now and then. And while Memocamp does have a few flaws, it's also good fun and a way to compare your scores against lots and lots of other eager memorisers. The top Germans seem to get higher scores on there than they do in competitions, leaving me somewhat in the dust at the moment, but I have already got the top score in ten-minute cards with a measly six and a half packs...

Senility

2011-12-07T21:32:00.002Z

"He's 38 years old, but the intelligence is still there..." a football commentator observed about Ryan Giggs tonight. Miraculous, isn't it? Anyway, despite my advanced age, I'm jetting off to Munich tomorrow for a fun impromptu memory championship with my fellow Bavarian boycotters. I do still wish I was at the world championship, but there's always next year (hopefully).

I should have asked Bayern Munich to give me a lift, actually - they're in Manchester tonight. But they'd probably have asked me why we call them Bayern Munich, and not Bayern München or Bavaria Munich, and I wouldn't have a good answer.

Oops stacks

2011-12-05T18:35:00.003Z

As usual, I turned on to Sky 1 at half past six to watch the Simpsons only to find that that stupid show Oops TV was still on. However, today, instead of saying "bah, that stupid show Oops TV is still on," I said "ooh, hey, Speed Stacks timer! Is it a memory thing?"

It wasn't, it was a girl doing blindfold rubik's cube solving, timed on a Speed Stacks timer. But then the stupid narrator said "And at number one..." and introduced a clip of a boy doing speed stacking, also timed on a Speed Stacks timer. And then the stupid show ended and the good one came on.

But the thing is, the only three competitions that use Speed Stacks timers are cubing, stacking and card-memorising. Was there a memory clip before the cube? If not, why the heck not? If so, who was it and did anyone see it?

In unrelated news, someone found this blog today by googling "how to tell the difference between シ and ツ" My blog won't have been terribly helpful on this point, since the only time I've mentioned the subject was to whine that I'm a busy man and have better things to do than learn the difference. So I thought I should probably share the way I did learn to tell them apart:

シ is 'shi', and ツ is 'tsu', and shi-tsu is nearly the name of a breed of dog. So I imagine a dog lying down (for the more horizontal 'shi') and then sitting up (for the more vertical 'tsu'). Simple! And then if you want to distinguish ン and ソ ('n' and 'so'), just remember that it's the same basic thing, only with the meaningless sound n-so, instead of the dog. Okay, that's not such a great mnemonic, but it works for me.

Tennis is great!

2011-12-04T22:31:00.002Z

I remember I wrote a blog entry a couple of years ago, asserting that tennis is rubbish. So just to counteract that, I feel I should say that this year's tennis has been really great, all round. The year-end finals and the slightly-after-year-end Davis Cup final were both really fantastic fun to watch! Even del Potro, who was a big part of that former rubbishness before his injury, being basically just a big giant super-fast-serving machine, was really great!

I'd be a tennis player myself if I wasn't rubbish. I'll stick with the memory, and when I get round to it, I'll write a good long blog about memory and computers and competitions and things.

Finding your way in Europe

2011-11-27T14:58:00.002Z

The Facebook page for the Munich Open has an extremely helpful map on it, with a little arrow apparently pointing to the mountains of northern Italy:

This makes me think of the 1985 Transformers cartoon episode "Trans-Europe Express", which featured a car race from Paris to Istanbul. Here's a fun geography test for all my bloglings - imagine you're a Japanese animator, and you've got a script in front of you saying "The progress of the race is shown by a red line growing from Paris to Istanbul across a map of Europe". There's apparently not an atlas available and the internet hasn't been invented yet, and you need to draw the map and label it in English right now. If you can produce a better map than the one that ended up appearing on-screen, then you score ten out of ten:

If you fail the test, then people will be laughing at you on their blogs in 25 years' time.

The postman's got in touch with his feminine side

2011-11-26T19:42:00.002Z

My postman's a woman - she always used to say "It's the postman" when she rang the doorbell to deliver something that wouldn't fit in the letterbox, but today she said "It's the postlady". This is either a great step towards gender equality, or a great step away from it, I can't quite decide which.

Memory championship news

2011-11-25T15:22:00.002Z

Dear European memory athletes,

due to various reasons nearly all of the Europeans have chosen not go
to the World Memory Championships in China this year. Furthermore,
there is a lot to discuss about the future of memory sports.

To address both, we would like to invite all of you to Munich,
Germany, for the “Munich Open 2011” memory competition. The tournament
will be a National Standard event, i.e. ten disciplines with shortened
marathons: The kind of tournament you already know from Cambridge and
Sweden.

Important: We will have one age division only and we might do the
memorisation and/or recall phase of some or all disciplines with
computers or digital tools using Memocamp.

Date: December 9th to 11th 2011
Place: Munich. Exact and final location will be provided soon.
Languages: Material will be offered in German and English.
Fee: 20 Euro. Food is not included.
Registration deadline: December 2nd
Registration: By e-mail to b.konrad@memoryxl.de

Program:

Friday, December 9th

- Arrivals, visit of the famous Munich Xmas market, dinner

Saturday, December 10th

MORNING: Tournament, part 1

9:00 Welcome and introduction
9:30 Random words 5 min (15 min recall)
10:00 Binary numbers 5 min (15 min recall)
10:30 Names and faces 5 min (15 min recall)
11:00 Numbers 15 min (30 min recall)
12:00 Cards 10 min (20 min recall)
12:40 Historic Dates 5 min (15 min recall)
13.00 Lunch break

AFTERNOON:

Talk and discussion about the WMSC and the future of memory sports

Sunday, December 11th

MORNING: Tournament, part 2

9:30 Abstract Images 15 min (30 min recall)
10.30 Speed Numbers 5 min (15 min recall), 1st trial
11:00 Speed Numbers 5 min (15 min recall), 2nd trial

11.30 Spoken Numbers 100, 300
12.15 Speed Cards (two trials)
13.00 Prize giving ceremony

AFTERNOON:

Leisure activities, departure

Best Regards,
Your MemoryXL-Team

I'd better get training. I haven't really done any practice since dropping out of the WMC. I'm confident that I'll end up making a fool of myself anyway, so please do come along and beat me. If memory serves, the last time I went to a national-standard competition in Germany in the winter, I came 6th, my worst placing in any championship ever since I came up with the 'unbeatable Ben system'. I was beaten by Clemens, Cornelia, Gunther, Boris and Johannes, but still narrowly finished ahead of Simon. Let's see if I can repeat the feat five years later! (Cornelia's not coming, apparently, and I somehow doubt we'll be seeing Clemens either, so there's an opportunity for other people to out-memorise me)

And even though the venue is "somewhere in Munich" with a couple of weeks to go, I think we can guarantee that this competition will happen. I'll host it in my hotel room if need be...

Happy American Thanksgiving!

2011-11-24T19:43:00.002Z

It turns out that it's Thanksgiving today in the USA, as opposed to Canada where it was Thanksgiving months ago, and here, where we're too rude to say thanks. So I celebrated by watching Friends on Comedy Central, and I was pleased to see that they even show the episode that E4 used to skip completely. I'm quite impressed with Comedy Central's lack of censorship, in fact. What better way to celebrate Thanksgiving than by watching Americans talking about pornography?

But then again, too few to mention

2011-11-17T21:39:00.002Z

One thing I really do regret in life is never reciting pi to 50,000 decimal places. Particularly because I still come across people who credit me with the feat of memorising it, without adding the quite important qualifier that I never actually recited it, ever, and thus everybody only has my word for it that I memorised all those numbers in the first place.

For the benefit of people who haven't heard the story, this was back in 2005, I'd just won the World Memory Championship for the first time and I found myself completely and totally incapable of sitting down and training to win it again. Complete and utter mental block - my pile of packs of cards gradually fell down the back of my desk one by one whenever someone bumped into it, and stayed down there for months. There's probably still a three of diamonds down the back of the radiator in my old flat in Derby. So I decided that until I got over it, I'd do something else memory-related and break the world record for pi. The well-known story is that after several months of memorising, I'd arranged a date and place to recite it and then someone else recited 83,000 digits before I got a chance.

I still wonder whether I would have been able to do it. I think probably not, to be honest. Reciting out loud isn't a strong point for me, and however familiar I was with the sequence of numbers, I'm sure after a couple of hours in a public place, conscious that several increasingly bored spectators were following my every digit, my mind would have started wandering and I'd have got lost. But it still bugs me a little that I never made the attempt - at the time, it seemed like a better idea to give up on pi and throw myself into practicing for the world championship after all, since it was only six weeks away at that point (I came 4th, and was probably lucky to do that well), but now I wish I'd just accepted that it would have been an "amazing second-best-ever memory feat!" and done it anyway.

Because I've long since forgotten it, over the last six years. I recite 50 digits really quickly for a party piece (and sometimes 1000 digits at particularly boring parties), and I remember that the 50,000th digit was a 1, but the rest is lost in the darkest recesses of my brain's filing system.

One day, I'll finally have created by 4-digit number system, and then I'll memorise pi to 50,000 places again. And this time recite it properly and officially. Just to show I can.

An example of my astonishing memory powers

2011-11-16T12:34:00.002Z

There was a book I wanted and couldn't find in the shops, so I ordered it on Amazon on Monday. Today, I was in Nottingham, saw it on the bookshelf and thought "Ooh, there's that book I wanted! Excellent!"

So I bought it, and halfway home suddenly thought to myself "D'oh!" And sure enough, there's a little card through my letterbox waiting for me when I get back, saying we've tried to deliver a parcel but you weren't in.

Keep on scaling it back

2011-11-15T19:20:00.001Z

I have to confess that I'd never heard of DJ Shadow, nor of Yukimi Nagano, before Ewan and Casey asked me to do this video for them - they told me he did "trip hop", which I'd also never heard of (I'm not 'hip', and only a tiny bit 'groovy') and imagined would be some sort of sampled drum beat overlaid with rapping, which made me almost reject the whole idea out of hand. But luckily, Ewan included a link to the actual track on YouTube, and it turned out to be absolutely beautiful, and also just perfect for this kind of video.

Please enjoy the many "making of" photos here - see the people in the 'ninja' costumes who manipulated the props! See the understudy parrots waiting in the wings, as it were, in case of punctures! See me explaining that I'm not a ballet dancer and couldn't possibly crouch down in that cake and jump out again unless they raised it off the ground quite a bit! Honestly, the children and animals were great, but you should never work with me.

Scale It Back

2011-11-14T20:11:00.002Z

One day, I got up at the crack of dawn to take the early train down to Cardiff, and waiting for me in the basement of an abandoned shop were a huge cast of unusual people and props. "Hello, I'm Ray, I'm the old man," said an old man. "Yes, I thought you probably were, but I didn't want to ask in case you were someone else," I replied. "Hi, I'm Toby, I'm doing the monkey," said someone else. A small girl called Teeohnee flapped by in a pterodactyl costume, and her mother Alison told me she recognised me from the telly. The giant green snake lying in the corner just grinned at us.

When Buzz the eagle owl arrived, he was immediately the centre of attention, and quickly proved to be the most reliable and patient of the actors, happy to just sit on his perch staring at people, making occasional squawky noises that reminded me of an electric screwdriver, and never failing to glare at the camera when it came over to him. He was a much more talented actor than the remote-control hummingbird, which quickly proved to be temperamental and moody.

But everybody was able to work together in the end to produce a masterpiece:

DJ Shadow "Scale It Back" from Ewan Jones Morris on Vimeo.

Okay, I'm not an actor. The music and fun start at about the 1-minute mark. Feel free to skip ahead.

The music is "Scale It Back", by DJ Shadow featuring Yukimi Nagano of Little Dragon. The directors and creative geniuses who had the idea of making one of my mental journeys into a music video were Ewan Jones Morris and Casey Raymond. It was all filmed in one continuous take, which meant nine hours of continuous filming, a lot of it spent hiding in a rapidly-disintegrating cardboard cake. But it was well worth it for that finished product!

It's a real pack of cards: 5h 3h 8c 2c Ac 3d 6c 6d Ah 4s 2s Kc 9s 8s Ad 7d 4c 5d Qs 5s 10h 3c Jc 3s Kd 6s 9d 5c 8h Jd 7h 10c 4h 9c 2h Qd 8h 7c 10s Qh 7c 6h 9h 4d As 8d Ks Kh 2d 10d Js 7s. And I did actually memorise it, but what you see at the start of the video is take four or five, so I'm fake-memorising cards I've already looked at.

Some of the images are changed from the ones in my head, mainly for copyright reasons - the generic pterodactyl is actually Dac from the cartoon Dinobabies (this pterodactyl was much more nice and friendly than mean old Dac), the street-fighter in my head is actually Fuuma from World Heroes, but I just said "street-fighter" and the producers interpreted that as Chun Li, the owl should be an eagle, but eagles aren't easily available in Cardiff, and so on. But apart from that, the interactions and the flow from one scene to another are exactly as they appear in my brain! It's really an uncannily accurate representation of what I'm thinking!

Well, this is going to keep me awake all night

2011-11-11T21:29:00.002Z

Looking at the blogspot stats, I see that someone found this blog by googling "Come along and we can cross a bridge together". Five and a half years ago, I used that (with "the" instead of "a") as the title of a blog post, and I know it was the closing credit tune to a Japanese cartoon, but I can't for the life of me think which one. And internet searching isn't helping either.

The blog post wasn't about the cartoon, it was a clever play on words about a bridge-themed website that some of my longtime readers will be familiar with.

Actually, I think it might have been Bubu Chacha...

Anniversaries

2011-11-10T19:11:00.002Z

Today is apparently the 140th anniversary of Stanley presuming that he'd found Dr Livingstone. Which means that while they were faffing around in Africa, they missed the football, because tomorrow is the 140th anniversary of the first ever FA Cup games.

You know, one of the 15 teams who entered the first ever FA Cup was Donington School, apparently the Donington near Spalding, in Lincolnshire. I went to a school chess tournament there once, possibly to the same school. That might have been the time I didn't come last in a chess competition, too. If it was, that makes me better than Donington School in 1871, who eventually withdrew from the FA Cup without playing a game.

Anyway, as far as I can tell, Saturday isn't the 140th anniversary of anything. 12 November 1871 must have been a very boring day - it was a Sunday, but it wasn't even Remembrance Day, because that hadn't been invented yet.

So the point is... no, there isn't a point. Sorry.

X

2011-11-09T23:37:00.002Z

I've done some weird things in my time, but today was the weirdest, the grooviest and certainly among the downright-awesomest. It's still a secret, but I'll tell you all about it soon.

Welsh adventures

2011-11-08T20:03:00.002Z

Is it me, or am I spending a lot of time in Wales these days? A few years ago I was telling anyone who might be interested (there were few such people) that I'd never been to Wales, ever, and now it seems like I'm there every week. Cardiff tomorrow, for Project X - and to be honest, it actually does look like it's really going to happen, so I will tell you about it soon.

It'll be a huge anticlimax, by the way, it's nothing special or important. Just groovy.

Opium for the eyes

2011-11-07T21:42:00.003Z

Don't you hate it when you're in the mood to just lie around in front of the telly and there's nothing watchable on any channel except for an old episode of Blackadder with all the funny lines edited out? I'll have to watch one of my videos now, but they're all rubbish.

Yes, I've been in a bad mood for the last week, with all this memory stuff. I need to join the foreign legion and forget.

The adventure of the solitary cyclist

2011-11-06T23:41:00.002Z

With it being nice and sunny and warm-ish-for-November today, I thought I'd explore National Cycle Route 6 beyond the stretch between Nottingham and Derby that I'm used to. I think I've mentioned before that it goes literally right past my front door, so as long as you can spot the little signposts (difficult to do, because they are very small), you can cycle the length and breadth of the country without getting lost.

Actually, today I only went as far as Bulwell and back, but it's a very pleasant journey, and one day I'd really like to follow the back roads and cycle paths all the way up to Sheffield. That's a project for next summer, I think, unless I perfect my weather-control weapon before then. If I do, I'll test it out by making it sunny for a day and bike to Sheffield, before I use it to conquer the world.

Top of the Pop Art Productions

2011-11-05T18:53:00.002Z

I always take a great nerdish interest in the monthly American comic sales figures, but never more so than now, when I want to see whether DC Comics' "New 52" is working like it should. Sales figures aren't entirely useful just yet, of course - they're based on how many copies of each comic the comic shops have ordered, so it'll be another month or two before we can really see whether new people are buying them and making their feelings known.

But with that proviso, I'm pleased to see that OMAC, which was 52nd out of 52 in September, has moved up to the heady heights of number 49 in the October chart. And that it's been replaced on the bottom rung by Men Of War, which you might recall me describing as the worst comic I've seen in all my born days. I'm a bit surprised by that, actually - it's not my cup of tea, but I expected it to find a solid audience among the armchair commandos of America.

I do always feel that Superman should be outselling Batman - I mean, come on, he's got real super-powers! - but the caped crusader continues to pull in more readers at the top of the charts. And Green Lantern is edging closer to knocking the big red cheese (no, wait, that was Captain Marvel) off the second-most-popular-superhero spot, too.

Highest climber? Animal Man, up from 35 to 27. Actually, it's improved since my scathing review of #1 - now that the artist doesn't have to draw normal people so much and gets to fill the comic with hideous twisted mutations, it looks better.

Let's talk about the World Championship

2011-11-04T14:40:00.003Z

I've been so wrapped up in that other business that I haven't even looked at the scores of the World Othello Championship until today, let alone sat in front of the live coverage of games waving a little British flag!

As we stand at the moment, Piyanat Aunchulee of Thailand is trying to fight off a Japanese team that looks even stronger than usual (Tomoya Toda, Hiroki Nobukawa and Kazuki Okamoto - not people I know, but they certainly seem to know their black from their white). Our own Imre Leader isn't out of touch with the leaders (I'm sorry, but it's really hard to avoid that pun when he's always so high up the leaderboard of any othello championship) after a bad start, but he'll have to do something special to get into the semi-finals tomorrow. Youthful Europeans Nicky and Matthias look like they might yet prevent an all-Asian final day, as does Canada's finest, Tim Krzywonos (who I haven't seen for well over a decade and must say hi to some time). And actually, Matt Vinar from Australia is on five points after eight games, too, so it might yet be a wildly multi-continental top four!

If you're in Newark (fake American Newark, not real Newark down the road from me), go along and cheer them all on!

World Memory Championship update

2011-11-03T16:38:00.003Z

I'm not going.

It's a month before the competition, and all we're hearing is debates about whether it's going to happen, whether there'll be any prizes and whether anyone will go. In the complete absence of any communication from the people running the event, I've been waiting for the German gang to decide whether or not they're going before I book my tickets - I know they've been talking with the WMSC about the last-minute changes and shambolic organisation - and when I had an email last night from Boris, Mister Memory Enthusiasm himself, saying he still didn't know whether he'd be going, that was the final straw.

If I'm not excited about the World Memory Championship with a month to go, there's something seriously wrong. I've decided it's time to flex whatever remaining muscle I've still got in memory-competition circles and make a stand - because if I don't, I can see what's going to happen: we'll all go to the competition anyway, it'll be generally rubbish, and then next year will be even worse. So I'm staging a one-man boycott, and if the handful of people who haven't already done the same want to join me, more power to you.

This isn't the kind of decision I take lightly, you know. The World Memory Championship has basically been my entire life for the last decade. But this year's event just doesn't feel like the World Memory Championship any more. It's very sad...

I do feel guilty about depriving people of the opportunity to beat me, of course. When I won the WMC in 2004, I got no end of "Well, Dominic O'Brien wasn't there" responses, even though I would have totally beaten him if he had been. I'm not sure if my absence would have that effect on this year's winner, but I still feel bad about it.

Wednesday is comic day

2011-11-02T17:15:00.003Z

It's official, I like DC Comics enough now that I'm going to have to place a standing order in a comic shop to make sure I get my comics every week before they sell out. Well, it's that or move to London (I was down there today) and just get my comics from Forbidden Planet, whose London branch routinely seems to order several hundred more copies of every American comic than they can possibly hope to sell.

Assuming I stay in this locality, that gives me three choices of comic shops to make my regular suppliers, and the decision is fraught with social difficulty - if I choose one shop to get all my comics from, the other two will be offended! I won't be able to show my face in there again! So let's examine the three choices:

Chimera is in Beeston, just down the road from me, which is a plus. When it gets wintery, going into Nottingham is more of a hassle. On the other hand, it's not really a comic shop so much as a role-playing games shop with a few comics on a shelf in the corner. The place is always jam-packed with people rolling dice and moving figurines around tables.

Page 45 in Nottingham is a shop I've been going to for many, many years, except for that five-year period when I was living in Derby and there was still a comic shop there. But before that, I was on semi-first-name terms with the guy who runs the place (he knew my name, I don't remember whether I ever knew his and we're long past the point where I can comfortably ask...) and I still feel guilty about talking to him when I've bought my comics at Forbidden Planet, seeing as they're the big evil corporation and he's the small local family business kind of place. Well, I don't think he's got a family, but that's not the point.

Forbidden Planet is the big evil corporation, but on the other hand they do have a policy of selling comics slightly cheaper than other local comic shops can afford to, so I could save some money there. And they do strike me as more likely than the other local shops to be able to actually get the comics I ask them to get without making a mess of it somehow. And the people who work there are actually really nice and not at all like tools of corporate sci-fi-and-comic-retailing.

I think it might have to be Page 45. They look so darn reproachful if they see someone come in with a Forbidden Planet bag...

Freedom and mysteries

2011-10-30T22:17:00.002Z

Sorry for the lack of bloggery this last week or so. I'm now gainfully unemployed again, and I've been down in Cardiff today for what I'm calling Project X, and will tell you about in a couple of weeks. It was fun, anyway!

I'm hoping to spend the next month preparing for the World Memory Championship, just in case it does actually take place and I do actually go to it. I've got a training schedule in mind, and we'll just have to see whether I can stick to it.

The Planetary Chance-Machine

2011-10-24T20:29:00.002+01:00

I love the Legion of Super-Heroes! No, not the current comic that I was so rude about last month; that's still incomprehensible rubbish (though very nicely drawn). I mean the original comics from the fifties and sixties on which the current version is loosely based.

It was, though, an attempt to fathom what was supposed to be going on in the new comic that led me to do some internet research - before this weekend, I'd only read a few of the old comics here and there, and the first issue of the most recent complete relaunch (the series has started over from scratch two or three times in the past, so I don't see why they didn't do it again when they re-started all the other comics last month), and while I appreciated the wonderful old-fashioned straight-faced silliness, I never realised that there was quite so much of it to be seen.

It's also really great comic-book writing in the classic style, about the adventures of a huge "super-hero club" of youthful heroes in the 30th (or 21st - the comics could never make up their mind) century who all have names ending with Kid, Boy, Girl, Lad or Lass. I've become a huge fan, just for the Planetary Chance-Machine. Look it up.

Pumpkin Moon

2011-10-22T22:04:00.002+01:00

A Halloween party is one of the very few social occasions where it's appropriate to wear a Brazilian Mystery Cloak. That, with the black hat, tuxedo-impersonating-T-shirt and black work trousers, makes me actually look extremely cool.

But lately there ain't been much work, on account of the economy

2011-10-21T20:39:00.002+01:00

Perhaps I don't blog enough about what I'm actually doing with my life. An anonymouse reacted with surprise to yesterday's post in which I implied that I'm currently working for a living. Yes, I've been working at Boots again for the last three months - they asked me to come back for a couple of days and it all escalated from there. But next Friday is my last and final day there, definitely. No more financial analysis for the loss prevention department, even if they go down on their collective knees and beg. Which, in all fairness, they probably won't.

So I'm planning to spend November being unemployed again, and preparing for the world memory championship, and also doing the absolute coolest paid-memory-work I've ever been offered, which I won't be talking about until I know it's definitely happening. Sorry to tantalise you like that.

But this will be only a brief unemployment, mainly because I've still got no money, and of course the WMC will cost a lot of money to get to and bring in no reward except for the warm fuzzy glow of being able to compete in the WMC. After that, I'm getting a new job. I'm not entirely sure what the new job will be, just yet, but I'm thinking accountancy-slash-financial-analysis is a last resort. I'll keep you informed.

I've got contacts in the media

2011-10-20T19:48:00.002+01:00

I got an email today from a BBC journalist asking if I'd do an interview to go along with an article about forgetting. I called her back on my lunch hour only to be told "Sorry, we've got breaking news coming through, apparently Gaddafi's been captured..."

So I knew about it at least a minute before it appeared on the BBC News website! Now that's the celebrity lifestyle.

Anonymice, anonymice, eating all the rice

2011-10-18T18:28:00.002+01:00

Well, that last post on the subject of the much-changed World Memory Championship provoked comment either from three people or from one person trying to sound like a crowd scene. It's hard to tell when you're anonymous. Abuse the organisers of memory competitions by all means, readers, but please leave your names.

World Memory Championships 2011 News Update

2011-10-16T19:44:00.002+01:00

Latest from the WMSC:

The World Memory Sports Council would like to apologise to competitors for the recent uncertainties that have surrounded arragements for the 20th World Memory Championships. We can confirm that our hosts, New Mind, assure us that, everything is now in place to ensure that the 2011 World Memory Championships will go ahead in the sumptuous five star HJ Grand Hotel in Guangzhou.

A number of competitors have chosen to wait till the last minute before comitting to participate in the Championships, in case of last minute changes. However, we are now satisfied that the concerns that the previous concerns that Council has had regarding the level of arbiters and other arrangements has been satisfactorily resolved..

In the current state of the global economy no country is immune from challenges, and China is no exception. We are grateful to our hosts that, despite these challenges, they have found a way to ensure that this important milestone competition can take place, even if some aspects of the arrangements have had to be scaled back to reflect this. The most important aspect of the World Championships is to provide an opportunity for competitors around the world to meet, compete together and to celebrate their achievements. This will most certainly be the case in Guangzhou this year.

We call on all competitors now to join us all for this historic 20th competition and to use the event to celebrate two decades of this amazing Mind Sport. The two founders, Tony Buzan and Raymond Keene OBE will be there along with eight times World Memory Champion Dominic O'Brien. Three times World Memory Champion Ben Pridmore will be competing to win back his crown from current World Champion Wang Feng. Chief Arbiter Phil Chambers, supported by Jennifer Goddard, Gaby Kappus and arbiters from the Philippines will be heading up the arbiting team. Will you be there as well? If so, please act now and register.

There are just three weeks till registrations close on November 6th to give us sufficient time to prepare all the competitors papers and translations. Regatrations after that date cannot be accepted. If you require an official invitation in order to obtain your travel visa, please contact us .

We thank all competitors for their patience during the uncertainties of previous weeks, We now look forward to making this a fitting and memorable celebration of this growing and important sport.

Thank you!

So, no prize money, then? Anyway, I can confirm that that Pridmore person will indeed probably be there, most likely. I have registered on the website, since they were so insistent about it, and I'd hate to be part of the cause of this year's announcement that twice as many people are going to be there as actually turn up. Haven't booked my plane tickets yet, though...

Being 35 isn't so bad

2011-10-15T19:15:00.002+01:00

I did have a really completely brilliant birthday in London with some really brilliant people. And who knows, maybe the rest of the year will be okay too. I mean, my hopes aren't high, but maybe if I actually do some memory training tomorrow I won't make too big a fool of myself in the world championship, possibly. And possibly I'll find a cool job that I actually like doing but nonetheless pays me as much money as what I do at the moment!

You see, optimism is the key!

When Captain America throws his mighty shield...

2011-10-12T22:10:00.002+01:00

That was the theme tune to the so-bad-it's-good Captain America cartoon in the sixties, with super-limited animation copied directly from the comics. I haven't seen the latest movie, but I bet that cartoon was more fun. And of course the Captain had already been around for a quarter of a century by the time that cartoon was made. He had a Republic movie serial in 1944, and a comic from the start of 1941.

Which makes it all the more groovy that the man who first dreamed Captain America up, Joe Simon, is going to be at the New York Comic Con on Friday. It was his 98th birthday yesterday. That would be a really extremely cool way for me to spend my birthday, if I could afford it and wasn't scared that the US border control people would be suspicious of me if I went there three times in a year.

Still, I'm going to really spend my birthday visiting London with fun people instead of going to work, so yay for me anyway!

And I'm not happy about it

2011-10-11T19:53:00.002+01:00

I'm going to be 35 on Friday, and that's the worst age it's possible to be. No more ticking the "25 to 34" box on surveys. No more "I'm in my early thirties". All the disadvantages of being statistically elderly, and none of the advantages of being ruggedly 36-or-older. That's the age when you start to get rugged and middle-aged, you know. But 35 is just rubbish. I really don't want to be 35.

Be clever all around the world

2011-10-10T18:42:00.002+01:00

Apparently, "How To Be Clever" is now available to buy from Amazon in Germany, France, Spain and Italy! Hooray! Although it's still not worth buying, and I will still gladly email it for free to anyone who asks me to. Oh, and I'm fairly certain it's still only available in the English language.

Madman drummers bummers

2011-10-09T16:56:00.002+01:00

What's with the weather? It was quite chilly yesterday, and I saw a newspaper that said it was going to be minus twenty at some point in the future, so I thought winter was here. But it's positively balmy today!

In other news, I really love that advert with the flying metal bird and the song that goes "I can live as I please..." - I think it's an advert for some kind of car, but I'm not sure. Which makes it a pretty rubbish advert in one sense, but it's awesome as a piece of animation!

One last bit of comics talk

2011-10-08T21:03:00.006+01:00

Before I finally give it a rest, here's a little bit more interesting analysis of DC Comics' "New 52". I picked up copies of the six #1s I was still missing in London today (as well as the Order Of The Stick game - a roleplaying game based on a comic based on a different roleplaying game, which I now need to find up to five local nerds to play with me) so now I've swelled DC's coffers considerably in their September accounts, and contributed to the wholesale changes they'll doubtless be making next year when the #7s don't sell half as well as the #1s did.

Bang for your buck
All the "New 52" comics cost $2.99 for 36 pages, except for Action Comics, All Star Western, Justice League and Men Of War, which are $3.99 for 44 pages. Three-dollar comics normally have 20 pages of comic story, and four-dollar comics have 28 - the other 16 are the cover and a variety of 'house ads' for other comics or paying ads for products that comic readers might like.

Justice League #1 has just 24 story pages, despite being four dollars, but adds four 'sketchbook' pages talking about how they designed the heroes' new costumes. All other comics in the selection have at least 20 or 28 pages - the exceptions are...

Action Comics #1 runs to 29 pages of story, rather than the usual 28. But #2, which came out this week, only has 20, with a 'bonus' eight pages of the writer and artist talking about the creative process. Isn't that what the internet's for?

Swamp Thing has 22 pages, and cuts out a couple of house ads to make room. Apparently this one was written quite a while ago and had to be altered to fit into the New 52 continuity, but presumably they couldn't reduce the page count without making the story even more incomprehensible than it already is.

Batwoman is 22 pages too, and the same thing seems to apply here. J.H. Williams III's artwork looks like it takes longer than other people's, so hopefully he got a head-start.

Green Lantern also runs to 22 story pages, although a lot of the 20-page comics squeeze in a heck of a lot more plot than this one does...

Aquaman again stretches out to 22, but this one at least devotes those pages to introducing the central character.

Wonder Woman gives us 24 pages of gods and horse-decapitations and even a fleeting glimpse of Wonder Woman herself.

Batman also has 24 pages of really rather awesome story and art that I can't think of anything snarky to say about at all, and in fact I'm very grateful for it!

Detective Comics #1 also gives us 24 pages of kiddie-friendly death and mutilation (see below), but #2 in this week's selection goes back to the standard 20.

And the biggest bang for the buck comes from Superman #1, with 25 pages of extraordinarily detailed artwork that I can't believe Pérez and Merino can keep up with on a regular basis (especially as the strange release schedule seems to have #4 coming out just two weeks after #3). Now that's value for money!

Target Audiences
All of the New 52 comics are clearly marked on the cover as "T" for "Teen", or "T+" for "Teen Plus" - the most remarkably useless system of age-rating I've ever seen in all my born days. But you can get a slightly more sophisticated guide to who these comics are aimed at by seeing which advertising package DC have put in them. There are three different packages, as follows:

"Mature" adverts - the new violent Deus Ex game, Cobalt gum and grown-up things like that
All Star Western
Animal Man
Batman the Dark Knight
Catwoman
Deathstroke
Green Arrow
Green Lantern Corps
I, Vampire
Men Of War
Red Lanterns
Resurrection Man
Stormwatch
Suicide Squad
Swamp Thing
Voodoo

All these comics are rated "T+" except Batman the Dark Knight, Green Arrow and Green Lantern Corps. Despite the title, there's nothing particularly dark about the Dark Knight, at least not compared to the other Batman comics, and Green Arrow is similarly innocuous so far.

"In-between" adverts - the Deus Ex game and the gum, but also shoes with superheroes on them and the "Got Milk?" ad encouraging teenagers to drink lots of milk
Aquaman
Batgirl
Batman and Robin
Batwing
Batwoman
Birds of Prey
Blackhawks
Captain Atom
DC Universe Presents
Demon Knights
Firestorm
Flash
Frankenstein Agent of SHADE
Green Lantern New Guardians
Green Lantern
Grifter
Hawkman
Justice League Dark
Justice League International
Justice League
Mister Teriffic
Nightwing
OMAC
Red Hood and the Outlaws
Wonder Woman

"Kiddie" adverts - no Deus Ex or gum, but "Got Milk" and the shoes are joined by Lego and Hot Wheels
Action Comics
Batman
Blue Beetle
Detective Comics
Hawk & Dove
Legion Lost
Legion of Super-Heroes
Static Shock
Superboy
Supergirl
Superman
Teen Titans

Action Comics is kiddie in #1, but steps up to in-between for #2. Detective Comics, though, is full of toy adverts and rated 'teen' despite the closing scene of the Joker having his face cut off and describing the experience as 'fangasmic', not to mention the scene in #2 of Bruce Wayne and a woman flirting and then on the next page sitting around scantily clad in a pose that can only be described as post-coital.

The "kiddie" ad selection includes several house ads for Teen-plus rated comics, strangely enough. It's all a bit confusing.

Which comics do they want us to buy?
Each comic contains two pages of promotion and creator-interviews for comics from that week, as follows:

Week 1 - Batwing and Animal Man
Week 2 - Resurrection Man and Demon Knights
Week 3 - Red Hood & the Outlaws and Blue Beetle
Week 4 - Hawkman and Firestorm
Week 5 - Hawk & Dove and Stormwatch

And each week's advertising package includes full-page ads for as many comics as are necessary to fill the page count:

Week 1 mature - Green Lantern New Guardians, Justice League, Wonder Woman, Batman, Aquaman, Action Comics, Swamp Thing
Week 1 in-between - Green Lantern New Guardians, Batman, Superman, Green Lantern, Swamp Thing
Week 1 kiddie - Batman, Green Lantern New Guardians, Superman, Swamp Thing, Aquaman

Week 2 mature - Wonder Woman, Flash, Aquaman, Batman the Dark Knight, Green Lantern New Guardians, Swamp Thing
Week 2 in-between - Flash, Batman the Dark Knight, Green Lantern New Guardians, Aquaman
Week 2 kiddie - Green Lantern New Guardians, Swamp Thing, Flash, Wonder Woman

Week 3 mature - Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Green Lantern New Guardians, Swamp Thing
Week 3 in-between - Wonder Woman, Green Lantern New Guardians
Week 3 kiddie - Swamp Thing, Wonder Woman, Superman

Week 4 mature - Superman, Aquaman, Green Lantern New Guardians, Flash
Week 4 in-between - Superman, Batman the Dark Knight
Week 4 kiddie - Batman the Dark Knight, Flash, Green Lantern New Guardians

Week 5 mature - Frankenstein Agent of SHADE
Week 5 in-between - none
Week 5 kiddie - Justice League Dark, Red Lanterns, Catwoman, Frankenstein Agent of SHADE

The non-kiddie comics of week 5 are blessed with a six-page preview of another new Batman comic, which cuts down on the space for house ads.

Action Comics #1 has a single page promoting Superboy, Supergirl and Superman. Strangely, Suicide Squad #1 has an ad for Batgirl that isn't found in any other comics.

This leaves 24 of the 52 without any in-comic advertising. The neglected comics are a mixed bunch, but they do include a lot of the really good ones that readers might not have heard of and might be inclined to try if only they saw an advert. Maybe the publishers will remedy it in future weeks.

Okay, that's exhausted everything I have to say about the New 52! I hope you were enthralled.

Super Thursday

2011-10-06T19:39:00.002+01:00

After all the excitement of a new #1, the difficult second album comes out the next month. And when sales continue to decline, a company like DC does some other dramatic shake-up of its line of comics within at the very most a year. But just in case I was too hasty in my judgement of the first issues of the New 52, I did all of this week's 13 number twos the courtesy of at least reading through them, even the rubbish ones. Luckily, my judgement seems to have been spot on - the ones I thought would be great are still great, the ones I thought would be rubbish are indeed rubbish still. The one I thought was as bad as comics can possibly get has actually got even worse this month. Here they are, sorted into categories for easy reading:

Really really great comics that you should be reading too
Static Shock, O.M.A.C.

Comics that are well worth reading as well, if you've got plenty of money to waste on comics
Hawk & Dove, Detective Comics, Justice League International, Action Comics

Comics that probably aren't worth reading, but you might want to look at if you can get past the confusing writing and/or artwork
Batwing, Swamp Thing, Red Lanterns, Animal Man, Green Arrow, Stormwatch

Very, very bad comics that you shouldn't go near
Men Of War

Triple Nelson

2011-10-05T19:37:00.003+01:00

The jinx is broken! Uncannily, I stopped the timer at 22.22 seconds again today, and this time I did get the recall right! Hooray for me!

Now I just need to get under 21 seconds, which is what I was trying to do all along...

Nobody beats GI Joe

2011-10-04T21:06:00.002+01:00

For some reason, I stumbled across the GI Joe wiki thing, and had a lot of fun reading it, even though it's only about 10% complete. Watching GI Joe cartoons in Britain was hugely fun, because it was "translated" from American into a form more comprehensible to British youth - since "GI" and "Joe" don't really have any meaning over here, the series was renamed "Action Force", and the tagline "A real American hero" became "International Heroes".

This meant that the cartoons had to be re-dubbed, but instead of dubbing the whole thing again, they only recorded over every line in which someone said "GI Joe" or one of the other banned phrases. This meant that everyone had two voices - an American one and a British impersonation. Some of them sounded really similar, some were completely different. You could have no end of fun just listening to the soundtrack without paying attention to what was happening in the cartoon!

Alien abductions

2011-10-03T20:08:00.002+01:00

I think aliens abducted my alarm clock last night. I very vaguely remember being woken up in the middle of the night, realising that the alarm was going off at entirely the wrong time, and turning it off, all without really properly waking up. And when I woke up this morning I noticed that it was five hours slow. Or seven hours fast. But it's still running normally now.

This is a new alarm clock, incidentally - did I mention that I left my previous one in Germany, by mistake? I generally forget something when I go to a memory competition, it's usually my hat, but this time it was something much less important. So now I've got an alarm clock that gets abducted. Poor thing.

I am awesome!

2011-10-02T19:04:00.002+01:00

I followed up yesterday's 30-minute binary and hour numbers with an abstract images and hour cards today. That's a proper weekend's training like I want to do every weekend! And I got good results in both, without a trace of fatigue after all that marathon memorising!

I am completely in the mood for a world championship now! I don't care if it's in Beijing or Bognor Regis, just somebody organise a world memory championship and make sure that Wang Feng, Johannes Mallow and Simon Reinhard are all there, because I'm going to beat the pants off them!

Superest Sunday

2011-10-02T19:00:00.001+01:00

It's the final batch of DC Comics's "New 52"! I'm sure my long-suffering readers are familiar with what I'm talking about by now, so let's see what our last thirteen all-new comics are all about. Only two of them weren't to be found in the Nottingham comic shops this week - I'll take a trip to London to see if I can pick up some others, or else just get the reprints in a couple of weeks, because sales seem to be very brisk all over.

Superman #1
George Pérez, Jesus Merino

Pérez, who was also the inker of Green Arrow back in week 1, is credited with writing and breakdowns for Superman, while Merino provides pencils and inks. Now, when most artists say 'breakdowns', they're talking about panel layouts and sketchy stick-figures, but Pérez has something of a reputation for applying the word to what anyone else would call 'impossibly detailed pencils', and this comic does look a lot like his work...

Sorry, that wasn't really the new-reader attitude I'm trying to maintain here, was it? But I'm a big fan of George Pérez of old. Anyway, we open with the Daily Planet building, with a running narration about its history and importance to the city of Metropolis and the world, before the building is demolished.

It turns out we're at the opening ceremony for the all-new, bigger and better Planet building, as financed by the slightly sinister businessman Morgan Edge. Lois Lane and Perry White are at the ceremony, suitably impressed, but Clark Kent is boycotting it.

He's out flying around the city as Superman and reminiscing about the argument with Lois - Edge's Globe imprint has in the past been a dodgy tabloid empire not at all in line with the Daily Planet's old-fashioned ethics, and although Lois insists it's changed under Edge's new management (replacing, apparently, Mr Glenmorgan from Action Comics), Clark is unconvinced. There are some nice nods to the modern age here, because as we all know, newspapers aren't the force they once were. Lois is in television now, but poor Clark is unwilling to make that move, because everyone will see him on TV, and his secret identity is still only protected by a pair of glasses.

Elsewhere, in the Himalayas, a big giant monster blows a big giant horn, and drops it in the snow, leaving it for Stormwatch to find in their #1 from three weeks ago. That's it for the giant horn in this comic - I got the impression from reading Stormwatch that it would play a significant part in Superman, but I guess I was wrong. It might be connected with the events of this issue, but they'd already started before we cut away to the horn, so it's oddly paced if there really was a connection.

At the newly-completed Metropolis Astrodome, two security guards fill us in with a bit more exposition, while investigating mysterious little fires that seem to have been appearing and disappearing around the place. And Superman has been called into action when masked bandits steal a truck full of explosive chemical waste. But then the truck is blown up by the fire coming from the Astrodome, which seems to be alive!

While the news people scramble to get good pictures and a good view, Superman fights the fire-monster, which is talking in alienese (including, Superman believes, the word "Krypton") and, rather than setting things on fire, turns them into fire. It blows up a police helicopter, and Lois incurs Morgan Edge's wrath by ordering the news chopper to get out of there. She cleverly orders Jimmy Olsen and his friend Miko to hack into security cameras to get good footage for them.

Superman is able to defeat the fire-monster by carrying it up into space, and then writes up the story as Clark Kent, claiming to have just happened to be in the neighbourhood when the whole thing started and got an exclusive interview with Superman. He then goes to apologise to Lois, only to find that she was in bed with her new boyfriend Jonathan, so poor Clark has to go away again while his super-hearing picks up her saying that she doesn't fancy him.

The verdict? Story - it introduces the characters effectively; both the old familiar ones who everyone knows and the new ones, although it does seem to forget to mention the surnames of Perry, Jimmy or Miko anywhere in the story. The action scenes are nice, but I'm not terribly enthusiastic about the idea of seeing Clark pining for Lois and them eventually getting together, yet again. Art - really gorgeous, with a great look for Superman even despite the modern hairstyle and ugly new costume, distinctive faces and a great grasp of the action scenes. All in all - although I think the story's going to tread over old and familiar ground for the hundredth time, I still want to see what happens with Superman. I'll keep reading, and I expect I'll keep enjoying it.

Batman the Dark Knight #1
David Finch, Paul Jenkins, Richard Friend

Jenkins, who wrote Deadman last week, is the writer and co-plotter of this one, while Finch is the other co-plotter and the penciller. Friend provides the inks.

Yes, Batman again. Four of the 52 are Batman comics - Detective Comics, Batman and Robin, Batman and Batman the Dark Knight. Batgirl, Batwoman, Birds of Prey, Catwoman and Nightwing are related comics set in Gotham City. Batwing, Red Hood and the Outlaws and Teen Titans are about associates of Batman in different places. He's also a central character in Justice League and Justice League International. That's more than a quarter of the New 52, making Batman officially the busiest superhero in the world. The Green Lanterns and Superman account for about the same number between them.

Batman is flying around in the Batplane, while the narrator talks about fear. He jumps out, displaying some odd bulgy muscles, and quickly changes into the much more wimpy Bruce Wayne, sliding on a zipline to a building where he gives his 'fear' speech to a crowd, announcing that he's never going to be afraid. It's not clear exactly what the context of this speech is - I assume Bruce Wayne doesn't hold press conferences for no purpose other than to say he's not scared of anything - but he then goes around shmoozing with the high and mighty, talking again about his redevelopment plans.

He's interrupted, though, by a Lieutenant Forbes, who knows Bruce Wayne is funding Batman, and wants to know who his inside man in the police is. But he's told to go away by the hostess of the evening's charity event, one Jaina Hudson. The two flirt a little, before Bruce gets bored with having to talk to other people and leaves.

Meanwhile, at Arkham Asylum, the inmates are staging a breakout. Again. Just like in last week's comic. This time, Batman arrives to help the beleagured police, and somehow divines that this is all about Two-Face (who was just a face (or two) in the crowd last week). He goes in, finds a woman in a bunny suit running around, and then encounters a huge, muscular Two-Face, announcing that "You can call me One-Face now!" (although he's still got the two-different-halves-to-the-face thing)

The verdict? Story - rather a lot of this is minimally-narrated action of Batman making his way through the asylum, and the Bruce Wayne scenes don't really show signs of developing into any kind of plot. Art - very nice, like all the Batman comics, but Bruce's face looks strikingly different from one panel to the next. All in all - nobody needs to read four monthly Batman comics, and this one just isn't as good as some of the others. I don't feel like I'm going to miss anything if I get my Batman fix from "Batman" and "Detective Comics".

Voodoo #1
Ron Marz, Sami Basri

Marz writes, Basri draws.

Voodoo is an exotic dancer at a strip club. While she displays her ample charms, a man and woman in the audience bicker about the level of interest the man is taking. Jess storms out, while Tyler questions a waitress about the mysterious Voodoo - her real name's Priscilla, and she spends a lot of time entertaining the soldiers from the nearby military base.

Meanwhile, Jess gets into a fight with a gang of youths outside the club and beats them all up with ease. Back inside, Voodoo is hanging out in the dressing room with her fellow strippers, and being a bit socially awkward. She explains that she's new around here, and working there to learn about men. Then she's called for a private dance with Tyler.

While she takes her clothes off, Tyler asks her about herself. She tells him her story, but he doesn't believe it. He happens to know that she's an alien, with shape-changing powers and mild telepathy and is almost certainly spying on Earth as a prelude to invasion. He threatens her with being cut to bits by scientists unless she turns herself in right now. She responds by turning into an ugly, toothy, green alien and killing him.

She takes his phone, shape-changes into Tyler, and goes to meet up with Jess.

The verdict? Story - There's not much story here. It could have been done in a quarter of the space, really. But what there is is an interesting setup, it's hard to see where it's going to go in future. Art - well, there's a lot of stripping (without showing anything), and if you have to devote the whole comic to drawing a woman dancing, it doesn't give much opportunity to show your full range. It does its job of making the three characters recognisable from one panel to the next, and the monster is very cool. All in all - there's just not much to this so far. I'm a little curious to see what the alien toothy monster gets up to, but I think it'll take months before anything happens. Maybe I'll get next month's before I decide to drop it.

Justice League Dark #1
Peter Milligan, Mikel Janin

Milligan, the writer of Red Lanterns, writes this one too, while Janin draws.

It's Madame Xanadu, the fortune-teller who showed up briefly at the end of Resurrection Man, and she's predicting terrible danger. It involves June Moone, a woman who's walking the streets in a bit of a daze, and briefly seeing a great big demon appearing from nowhere. On TV in a bar, she notices that a huge horde of June Moones have appeared on a motorway and been run over horribly.

Meanwhile, Shade the Changing Man is having troubles with his vest. That's vest in the American sense, and so it's not quite as silly as it sounds when he talks about his Meta-Vest with its terrible power to change reality. But it's still a bit silly, since he and his girlfriend Kathy argue about the vest quite a lot - it's crackling with electricity, which means he's being summoned. He has to leave Kathy, and since he used the vest to create her in the first place, this means she dissolves into a pool of goo. She's not happy about it.

In an abandoned wooden shack somewhere, inside an envelope, Enchantress is going mad. And since she's magic, this causes bad things to happen around her. The Justice League are called in, but Superman, Wonder Woman and Cyborg are no match for someone who can make a storm of teeth that cut them to pieces. Back at base, Batman is talking with another magician, Zatanna, who insists on being allowed to go and sort things out, even though he's not sure she's up to it.

A man called John Constantine, meanwhile, suddenly finds himself in London (next to Big Ben again - artists of America, please try to remember that there are other things in London), having just had a vision that Zatanna's in trouble. Why that would make a vortex suck him from Brighton to London, when she's in America, isn't clear, but he only gets one page to introduce himself.

June Moone, meanwhile, has found herself drawn to Dove's (of Hawk & Dove) flat, and asks for Deadman. He's there.

Shade, vest and all, has found his way to Madame Xanadu. She tells him he has to recruit people to deal with Enchantress, although she's seeing a vision of all of them lying dead, so it might be a waste of time.

The verdict? Story - there's a very limited introduction to some characters, and a feeling that we should know who these people are before reading it. The premise is set out clearly; magic and eccentric people fighting it, but it doesn't really grab me. Art - not bad, if the poses are a bit awkward, the faces are very nice. All in all - it doesn't really do anything for me, I don't much care about these characters. I think I'll pass.

I, Vampire #1
Joshua Hale Fialkov, Andrea Sorrentino

Fialkov writes and Sorrentino draws.

Boston. Two people are talking to each other in narrative captions that are supposed to indicate the different speakers by being different colours, but the way it's come out on the page, they're really, really, really similar shades of red. The only pictures we get to see on the first page are of a man's feet walking, finding somone lying down and driving a stake through their heart. "Normally I'd lock you away someone until I could find your sire," says the feeble-looking guy doing the staking, before he chops off the vampire's head with an axe, making it disappear in a shower of dust, like they do on Buffy.

"Like they do on Buffy" is a regular theme of this comic, as it transpires. Anyway, our hero is apparently Andrew, of the slightly darker red captions, and he's arguing with Mary, who thinks that they should rule the world instead of hiding away. We cut to what's probably a flashback, because it's coloured in greenish-black and white instead of the brown-and-white of the first three pages, of Andrew and Mary discussing old times like vampires do on Buffy, having a kiss then splitting up.

Back to Andrew in the brown-and-white wasteland full of corpses, and he finds a woman who's recently been turned into a vampire, allowing him to explain that these vampires just get weakened by sunlight, and can turn into dogs or big hairy monsters (which, to be fair, they don't do on Buffy) before he kills her.

We cut back and forth between the flashback and the present day - Andrew, it's clear, is a vampire with a soul, just like Angel, while Mary is really totally evil and intent on raising an army of vampires to take over the world. There's a passing grudging mention of how Superman might be a problem with this plan, but the comic clearly wants to exist in its own world where there's just vampires. Mary has now killed lots of people and turned them into vampires, and is getting on with the world takeover, and Andrew's got to stop her.

The verdict? Story - dull and derivative, it doesn't do much in this first issue beyond setting up the premise, but we can see where it's going to go from here. Art - really not very good, it tries to be cool with shading and occasional scary-faces, but it's hard to tell what's going on. All in all - not with a bargepole, I'm afraid. There are Buffy and Angel comics out there for people who want to read this kind of thing.

Green Lantern: New Guardians #1
Tony Bedard, Tyler Kirkham, Batt

Bedard, the writer of Blue Beetle last week, writes Green Lanterns this week - he obviously likes bright colours. Kirkham pencils and the enigmatic "Batt" (no other name) is the inker.

There's a big pile of dead Guardians and Green Lanterns, which Ganthet the Guardian digs himself out of, vowing that, as the last of the Guardians, he'll make sure the last power ring gets to the right person. For some refreshingly unexplored reason, he gives it to Kyle Rayner, an unemployed cartoonist in New York and welcomes him to the Green Lantern Corps.

This whole section seems to be in the past, since the next page has a caption saying "the present day", but I'm confused. Ganthet is the Guardian who the others zapped in Green Lantern #1 a couple of weeks ago for disagreeing with them, and Kyle is established as being one of the four GLs hanging around on Earth at the moment. Was the pile-of-corpses thing in the past too, and everyone except Ganthet died at one point but got better? Or is that in the present, and was Kyle's induction the only thing that happened in the past? It'd be nice if someone told us.

Anyway, in the present day, one of the Sinestro Corps (yellow lanterns) is killing an army of aliens when his ring abruptly flies away and heads for Earth, leaving him to be gruesomely killed by the ticked-off aliens. Likewise, a Red Lantern is burning a lot of aliens he characterizes as murderers, when his ring does the same, causing him to drop dead. A Star Sapphire (which turn out to be Pink Lanterns) suffers the same thing in space, causing her fellow Sapphire to vow to live up to her former name 'Fatality'.

Back on Earth, Kyle is dealing with a disaster at a construction site, when suddenly a whole flock of magic rings of all colours fly at him, announcing that he's been chosen. And if that wasn't bad enough, along come Pink, Red, Yellow and Purple lanterns (the red one is good old Bleez, from Red Lanterns) demanding their rings back!

The verdict? Story - it introduces Kyle nicely, and the Green Lantern concept for those who haven't read the various other Green Lantern comics, but the confusing opening scene should have been explained. Art - very nice. Quite beautiful, in fact, clear and detailed, I love it. All in all - well, I'll have to look at next week's to see if it explains what's going on, if nothing else. Again, this is an opening chapter rather than a complete story, so I'll see how I feel in future months. But this first issue is holding my interest so far.

The Fury of Firestorm, the Nuclear Men #1
Ethan van Sciver, Gail Simone, Yildiray Cinar

Wow, long title. "Firestorm" is the big word. Van Sciver and Simone are co-plotters, Simone (also the writer of Batgirl) writes and Cinar draws.

In Istanbul, bad guys are interrogating a young boy, looking for something. When torturing and killing his family only gets them the information that the professor's got it, they blow up the whole neighbourhood and leave.

Back in the good old USA, Ronnie Raymond is being extremely good at American football in his high school. Jason Rusch watches contemptuously, he's not fond of jocks, but he's forced to write a piece for the school newspaper about how great Ronnie is. The interview doesn't go terribly well - Jason accuses Ronnie of being racist, they really don't like each other. At dinner with their single parents that night, Ronnie is at least thinking about what Jason said, while Jason's just generally being a jerk. I think we're supposed to get the impression that there's no right or wrong here, but Jason's so completely unlikeable, it doesn't really work.

Meanwhile, at the Large Hadron Supercollider, those bad guys are interrogating Doctor Dupin for the whereabouts of his last magic bottle. Well, they try to make it sound scientific, talking about Higgs-Boson particles, but it's basically magic bottles that we're talking about here. With the power of transmutation.

Back at school the next day, Jason is at least starting to feel a little bad when his editor Tonya yells at him, but Ronnie and his sidekick Trev come in, really annoyed about the extremely insulting article they've published. But then in come those bad guys, killing the coach and sending our teenage heroes running for their lives.

Jason reveals that he's secretly a super-genius, and takes the magic bottle from his locker. He opens it with a big boom, and he and Ronnie are both transformed into Firestorms - superheroes with lots of fiery bits (actually, the word 'Firestorm' isn't used at all, but that's the name on the cover). One of the bad guys, Loren, also gets caught up in the blast, but our heroes are too busy fighting each other to pay any attention to them. Then they merge into one big giant Firestorm, who introduces himself as Fury.

The verdict? Story - nice introduction, although Jason is so very very annoying, it's hard to sympathise. Maybe he'll get a kick up the backside in future issues. And I think we're supposed to get to know the bad guys too, they do have distinct personalities, but the way it's presented, I find myself just focusing on the teenagers. Anyway, the cliffhanger's good, and it does leave me wanting to read more. Art - another good one, everyone looks distinct from each other and consistent all through the comic, and the superheroes, when they finally show up, are extremely cool. All in all - I like it enough to want to keep reading. It's a great setup for future stories.

Blackhawks #1
Mike Costa, Graham Nolan, Ken Lashley

Costa writes, Nolan is credited with 'layouts' and Lashley as 'finisher'.

The first page gives us our mission briefing and sums up the kind of thing that this comic is about. Blackhawks field operators Lady Blackhawk, The Irishman, Kunoichi and Attila, supported by Wildman, are going in to Kazakhstan, where terrorists have taken hostages at an airport for no obvious reason. The world map on the screen is fascinating, incidentally - North America is accurately shaped, but Europe is just a weird distorted blob that's not even close to what it should look like.

Anyway, Kunoichi is ignoring the 'covert' part of the instructions in order to dangle from an aeroplane and fight people. The rest of the team get on with things in the same kind of way. It's all very military and cool, culminating in Kunoichi jumping from the plane at 300kph and shooting the water before she hits it so the surface tension won't make her go splat. I'm fairly sure that wouldn't work in real life - and while you can just ignore that kind of nonsense in most superhero comics, this one is going for a realistic feel, so it's a bit harder. Anyway, Attila gets a moment in the spotlight too, as does Wildman, but the other two are just in the background.

Back at The Eyrie, their base, Delegate Schmidt of the UN is being shown around by Blackhawks member Canada (who's actually not Canadian). It turns out The Irishman is from "The Ukraine". We get a brief glimpse of the huge amount of technology the team have, and then we see Kunoichi refusing to get treatment from the doctor, and feeling unusually full of energy and superhuman strength. And also snogging Wildman inappropriately.

Meanwhile, Lincoln, the leader of the team, is talking with Schmidt about their problem - someone took a picture of the Blackhawks logo on one of their vehicles, and now they might be exposed to the public, or something. One of the captured terrorists has worse problems, though - his boss communicates with him in prison and tells him his body has been infused with 'nanocites', which she then uses to blow him up. And back at the Eyrie, poor old Kunoichi has realised that she's been infected with nanocites too!

The verdict? Story - we don't really get much sense of the personalities of the characters here, despite a lot of scenes that seem to be designed to do just that. There's nothing really wrong with the writing, but a lot of generic tough guys fighting terrorists just doesn't appeal to me. Art - pretty good, it does make everyone look distinctive, which can often be a problem with uniformed characters, and the action scenes are handled well. All in all - it doesn't really interest me, I'm afraid. It looks like it's going to steadfastly ignore the rest of the new 52, so I don't think I'll be missing anything if I skip this one.

Aquaman #1
Geoff Johns, Ivan Reis, Joa Prado

Johns, who writes both Justice League and Green Lantern, writes this one too. Reis pencils and Prado inks.

At the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, nasty toothy things are emerging from a trench. They exchange some completely awesome dialogue: "It's true. There is an above." "Where do we go?" "Up."

Meanwhile, in Boston, masked robbers are escaping from the police in a stolen armoured van. But Aquaman shows up to thwart them, and does so without any difficulty. The police are just left to chuckle at having been helped out by Aquaman, instead of one of the cool superheroes.

Our hero goes into a seafood restaurant, still in full superhero regalia, and amazes the customers and staff. They worry he might be there to lecture them for cruelty to sea creatures, but he actually just wants a plate of fish and chips. In response to incredulous questioning from the people at nearby tables, he tetchily explains that he doesn't talk to fish, he can just make them do his bidding, and he's fine with eating them. An irritating youth interrogates him about his background, allowing him to explain that his father was human, his mother was the queen of Atlantis, and he's in charge of the place now. But when he's asked how it feels to be the superhero everyone makes jokes about, he storms out in a huff, just pausing to give the kindly waitress a couple of extremely valuable gold coins from his collection.

He goes to hang out with his Atlantean girlfriend, and tells her he's sick of not fitting in in Atlantis, king though he is. They decide they'll go off on their own and have a new life on dry land.

But on the ocean, fishermen find themselves attacked by the toothy things from down below with a talent for awesome one-liners. "There's food up here," one grins.

The verdict? Story - it's just an introduction and power-demonstration for Aquaman that barely counts as a story, but it's still very readable and fun, and the promise of toothy monsters to come is enough to keep me interested. It's true that Aquaman is the joke character of the Justice League, requiring writers to put in an underwater part of the adventure so he has something to do, and it's nice that the story acknowledges and plays on this. Art - really, really great. Aquaman looks handsome, dramatic and heroic, and the monsters are awesome. A large portion of the comic is characters standing around and talking, but I get the feeling that the action scenes to come will look good too. All in all - it's a good one, I think I'm going to enjoy reading it in future months.

All Star Western #1
Justin Gray, Jimmy Palmiotti, Moritat

Palmiotti and Gray (the names are the other way round on the interior credits, just to be fair) are the writers, "Moritat" is the artist.

Gotham City yet again, but this time it's cowboy times. The 1880s, to be precise, and Gotham is a big city for the time, in the Wild West. Mysterious scar-faced gunslinger Jonah Hex is a country boy, who's come to town and explores the sordid back streets, showing off his quick draw when he's attacked by a rowdy gang.

Doctor Amadeus Arkham, meanwhile, has been called in to investigate the latest murder in a series, although police chief Cromwell dislikes his modern theories about psychiatry. Jonah Hex joins the party, and Arkham suggests the two of them should work together to catch the cowboy Jack the Ripper. Hex eventually agrees, although he's more the loner type.

They go to a saloon, where Hex sets about getting information by beating people up, while Arkham analyses his mental state. He learns that the killer has a hand like a claw and wears a ring with a skull on it. The next day, though, there's another murder, and the message "Jonah Hex, leave Gotham" written on the wall.

Later, our heroes go to a party, where they discover that a whole lot of rich and influential people wear rings with skulls on them.

The verdict? Story - it strives for a genuine 1880s tone, and doesn't quite achieve it, but the pairing of Hex and Arkham works very well; Hex is cool and Arkham's narrative about psychology is actually very well-written. Art - sepia-toned throughout, to give it the olden-days feel, which I find a bit distracting. The art style is a bit unconventional, but Jonah Hex does look extremely cool. All in all - it's readable, if unoriginal. I'm on the fence about it, but I'll probably check out the next part.

The Savage Hawkman #1
Tony S. Daniel, Philip Tan

Daniel, who wrote Detective Comics, is the writer, Tan does the art.

Upstate New York, Carter Hall is fed up of being Hawkman. He's driven out into the woods to burn his costume. Trouble is, the costume isn't just a bird-suit, it's made of "the Nth Metal", and when he sets it on fire, it attacks him.

Meanwhile, off the Bermuda Coast, a research crew have pulled up an ancient shipwreck. Alien spaceship, not sailing ship. They're impatiently wondering where Carter, the cryptologist, has got to.

He's woken up in his home, naked, with no idea how he got there. He finds that his body's healing itself rapidly from the burns and scrapes he suffered, and his colleague Terrance comes round to take him to see the wreck.

While there, he meets the boss's daughter, and is introduced to the alien mummy they found in the wreckage. But then 'the sample' (which I can't tell from the art is supposed to be the aforesaid mummy or something else) comes alive and attacks the scientists, turning one or two of them into a horrible slimy monster. Carter jumps in to help, and finds that the Nth Metal comes bubbling up from under his skin and turns him into Hawkman again.

The alien, which introduces itself as Morphicus, fights Hawkman and announces that it must have the Nth Metal. And as the episode ends, it seems to have succeeded!

The verdict? Story - falls rather awkwardly halfway between starting from scratch and continuing old Hawkman adventures, it ends up being a new beginning that still leaves me feeling I've missed something. But it does spell out who Carter is and what he does, just without giving him much of a personality. Art - a bit ugly. Everyone looks like a zombie somehow, and it's really hard to see what's going on at some points. All in all - it doesn't really interest me all that much; the central character's a bit of an enigma, and the art doesn't make it easy to follow. I don't think I'll bother with it again.

The Flash #1
Francis Manapul, Brian Buccellato

Manapul and Buccellato write it between them, with Manapul also providing the art and Buccellato doing the colouring too.

In Central City, Barry Allen is out on a date with Patty, at the technology expo. He's a bit of a nerdy type, it seems. They meet a Dr Elias and have a geeky conversation about traffic and alternate fuels, until a gang of masked, armoured men crash through the ceiling firing smoke bombs.

Barry springs into action immediately, turning into The Flash, the world's fastest man. A good old-fashioned intro blurb tells us his origin: "Struck by a bolt of lightning and doused in chemicals, Central City police scientist Barry Allen was transformed into the fastest man alive. Tapping into the energy field called the Speed Force, he applies a tenacious sense of justice to protect and serve the world as The Flash!" A lot of other comics this month could have done with one of those. But struck by lightning AND doused in chemicals? Sounds like a really bad day.

The baddies, who just address each other by number, run for it, but the Flash chases them back to their plane, leaping on board and grabbing the thing they stole from the expo, but then falling out along with one of the enemies. Pushing the baddie through a window as they fall, he vibrates at the right frequency to let himself fall through the road into the sewer. Journalist Iris West takes this opportunity to say hi.

Flash returns the portable genome recoder to Dr Elias, and then it's time for Barry and Patty to get to work as police scientists. The baddie is dead, but when he's unmasked, Barry recognises him as his childhood friend Manuel.

Iris, a very pushy kind of woman, pesters Barry to talk to her, much to his and Patty's annoyance. Back at police HQ, Director Singh and Captain Frye debate the case, and learn that Manuel died of something other than being thrown through a window. The Flash borrows the genome recorder and a sample of Manuel's DNA, and finds that it's been altered in some way. Then someone breaks into his house, and surprise surprise, it's Manuel.

Then baddies break down the door chasing him, and our heroes run away. Barry manages to get away and turn into the Flash, and when he catches up with Manuel, he finds him surrounded by... a whole lot of Manuels.

The verdict? Story - it introduces Barry and his friends, and gives the Flash an opportunity to show off his powers. His personality comes across clearly, but the story somehow isn't very enthralling. Art - there are some very cool panel layouts, which makes up for the faces not looking very distinctive or expressive. The scenes where Flash is running don't have quite the sense of motion that they should. All in all - it's a bit bland, really. There's nothing wrong with it, it just doesn't really excite me. It's worth keeping an eye on.

Teen Titans #1
Scott Lobdell, Brett Booth, Norm Rapmund

Lobdell, the writer of Superboy and Red Hood and the Outlaws, adds a third to the list. Booth pencils and Rapmund inks.

I'm getting used to comics with a cover showing the team lineup that'll eventually come to exist. But this one shows seven heroes, and after reading the comic I still don't know who most of them are. And although "Batwoman" and "Batman" both referenced the Teen Titans as a going concern, this seems to be chapter one of a how-the-team-got-together story again. So I guess we're in the recent past here, although it'd be nice if they let us know how these different comics fit together...

Anyway, in Westchester County an unexceptional housefire is made much worse by a teenage hero calling himself Kid Flash, trying to help but not knowing what he's doing. Following the big bang he causes by opening all the doors, people assume he's run away again, when in fact he's lying unconscious nearby.

It makes the news in a big way, and in his penthouse, Red Robin is unimpressed with the anti-teenage-hero feeling of the general public. He's got more floating computer screens than anyone in any of these comics, so he must be cool. He sighs that Batman started something that's got out of control with the teenage crimefighter, but his musing is interrupted by a sinister bad guy, complete with two henchmen.

They have, it seems, been kidnapping or maybe just recruiting teenage heroes lately, and they want to offer him a position with their mysterious employer. Red Robin responds by jumping out of the window and blowing up the penthouse.

In California, 17-year-old Cassie is driving around in a stolen car. (How old is Tim? The art in Batman made him look only about 14, but he could be older judging by the artwork here...) She's attacked by a bad guy disguised as a cop, but Red Robin saves her, tells her that he knows she's Wonder Girl, and that N.O.W.H.E.R.E. are after them both. They're attacked by a helicopter, and she grudgingly has to use her powers to save them both.

And meanwhile, in a scene we also saw in Superboy #1, Superboy is activated.

The verdict? Story - again, part one of a long story that we know is mainly intended to get these characters together into the Teen Titans. I do prefer stories that get to the point straight away. But it introduces three characters well enough that we at least know what kind of people they are, and if there's not much story to it, at least there's a promise that some kind of plot will come along later. Art - very nice, everyone looks suitably heroic and more or less like teenagers, although Wonder Girl just has the standard 'woman face' seen in so many of these comics. The action scenes do look good. All in all - probably one to start reading once this first story is out of the way.

Hooray for summer!

2011-10-01T20:36:00.002+01:00

Yes, it's been the right kind of weather for dressing in my summer outfit, including unflattering shorts. I haven't done that much this year. And as well as enjoying the sun, I did an hour numbers and 30-minute binary practice today - with pretty poor results, but the important part is getting in the habit of concentrating for long periods, the scores will pick up after another couple of weeks. I hope.

Jinx

2011-09-30T19:31:00.003+01:00

I was going to call this post 'Nelson', in the cricket sense, but I thought that might confuse people like Nelson Dellis. Anyway, not once but twice in the last three days I've been practicing speed cards and stopped the clock at 22.22 seconds, and both times I thought I'd got the recall right but found that I'd swapped around the order of two images. It's a curse, I tells you. I did successfully memorise a pack in 25.00 seconds exactly tonight, which is a great time to practice getting, because you can work out how many points it scores without remembering what the formula is.

Now, let's talk about why I'm rubbish at speed cards. The ones I forget are the ones on locations five, six and seven out of nine. I'm usually okay with the first few, and then I remember the last ones, but there's often a gap in the middle. I can't break the habit of thinking about the last two locations immediately after I put the card down, then going back and making sure I remember the first ones, and by then I'm hazy on the bit in the middle. I need to practice doing things differently, but I don't want to slow down in case I can't get back up to speed again before the world championships.

It's confusing, and I'm not good at explaining it. You should probably just ignore me.

Basking

2011-09-29T19:39:00.002+01:00

Sorry I didn't post anything last night, but it's so hot at the moment, I feel more like just sunbathing. Or moonbathing, beccause it's dark, but you know what I mean. It's been hotter and sunnier this week than it was all summer (wasn't summer rubbish this year?) and it's fantastic!

Happy birthday to Goo

2011-09-27T19:41:00.003+01:00

It's Google's thirteenth birthday, apparently! Do you remember what the internet was like before Google? I do, and it was rubbish. But then, nobody really knew or cared about the internet back in those dark and distant days before 1998. I got my first computer in that year (I've still got it now, and it still works just fine, thanks, although it's a teensy bit too slow for everyday use) and I'd only used the internet a handful of times in the years before that - searching with limited success on things with silly names like WebCrawler and not finding anything interesting.

It alarms me that there are so many young and even not-so-young people going around these days who've never experienced life without the internet. Things were different back then. I mean, look at the World Memory Championships and the people who complain that there isn't enough about it on the web. Back when I started out, there was nothing! Maybe a write-up on Michael Tipper's personal website, or a word or two on the MSO page, but there wasn't an official website. And it didn't get covered on the BBC News website because there wasn't one. And if you wanted to go to an international memory competition around the world you had to go to a travel agent to buy your tickets, and when you got there you'd find that there wasn't a competition in whatever country you'd flown to, because the only memory competition ever, anywhere, was the world championship once a year in London.

I tell you, everything was cheaper then, too, and young people respected their elders.

Everybody's changing and I don't feel the same

2011-09-26T19:06:00.002+01:00

Quite aside from the world memory championship news in the post below this one, I got an email today saying that the Gadget Show have decided to stop doing the competition prize dash thing, so the bit I recorded a while ago won't be on telly after all. Boo, but at least they've already paid me for doing it.

And what's more, it turns out that the lengthy blog entries I've been posting lately have stopped Blogger displaying the whole month's worth if you click on 'September' in the list to the right. So, in order that the world can continue to see whatever I was talking about in the first week of the month, you've now got 'week commencing' dates to choose from. Have fun!

And this is why you don't book your plane tickets until the last moment

2011-09-26T13:06:00.002+01:00

World Memory Championship announcement from a peeved-sounding WMSC:

We have just been made aware by our sponsors in China that, without consultation with us, they have chosen to change the change the host city from Beijing to Guangzhou. We are also aware that they have changed other information on their Chinese language website regarding the arrangements of the competition and also the prize fund.

To make these changes nine weeks ahead of the event and without consultation, puts all of us in a very difficult position. We are acutely aware of the fact that they caused a similar upset last year when they unilaterally changed the dates of the event causing considerable inconvenience to all.

The hotel chosen by them now is HJ Grand Hotel in the Huadu District of Guangzhou which is five star. The website for the hotel is http://www.hjgrand.com/en/introduce.aspx
Mr Guo Chanwei has been appointed by New Mind as the contact point for all competitors to arrange for accommodation and all other questions! His email is gotop1 (at) 126.com

We are now seeking urgent clarification and assurances from New Mind that they are able to meet the obligations that they had previously agreed. We have many questions which require clarification, not least of which is the need for them to fund sufficient international arbiters and also that the prize fund recognises the significant achievements of our competitors.

We are currently exploring all options to ensure that this, the 20th World Memory Championships is held in a fitting way and that the interests of all competitors will be protected.
We will be making a further announcement as soon as we have more information.

Sounds like it might still end up held in London on a shoestring budget - which, actually, I'd be entirely in favour of. Although Guangzhou would be nicer than Beijing, with the lovely winter weather.

Supererer Sunday

2011-09-25T18:21:00.003+01:00

See my posts of the last two Sundays for details of what this is all about. We're on week three of the "New 52" from DC Comics, and there's only twelve comics to talk about this week, since Justice League was brought forward and came out three weeks ago. Actually, it came out again this week too, as a reprint, so I was able to buy a real copy at last. I found a copy of the other one from last week that I was missing too, but on the down side the two shops in Nottingham were sold out of four of this week's lot. They must be popular! Luckily, there are always other ways to get your comics, so here's how I feel about these new twelve:

Batman #1
Scott Snyder, Greg Capullo, Jonathan Glapion

Written by Snyder, who also wrote Swamp Thing back in week 1, pencils by Capullo, inks by Glapion.

More Batman! And we're not finished with him yet, because there's another one next week, plus plenty of Batman spinoffs! Still, here we are again in Gotham City, and this one really does a good job of introducing Gotham and the people in it. There's a running theme in the narrative captions and dialogue of "Gotham is...", and Batman muses on the subject as he fights a mob of lunatic supervillains in Arkham Asylum. And a very nicely-drawn fight scene it is, too. Then, surprisingly, the Joker joins in and gives Bats a helping hand.

Discussing the situation with good old Commissioner Gordon afterwards, Batman explains that the whole Arkham thing was part of an operation to catch a corrupt guard, and then goes back to the Batcave, where the Joker shows up for a chat. After Bruce Wayne demonstrates his latest fab technology (not satisfied with floating computer screens, he's got floating computer screens linked to his contact lens), it turns out that the Joker was Dick Grayson (original Robin, now Nightwing) all along, using a clever hi-tech disguise!

Soo... this happens before Detective Comics, a couple of weeks ago? Because the people at Arkham would probably have noticed if there were suddenly two Jokers in the place. Only Detective sort of made the Joker out to be a really big deal for Batman and the police, so if they'd pulled a stunt like this beforehand... oh, never mind. Continuity between different Batman comics is enough to give anyone a headache.

Bruce and Dick go back upstairs to meet up with more Robins - current Robin Damian Wayne, who's his usual delightful self, and Tim Drake, who apparently is now Red Robin of the Teen Titans. As established in "Batman and Robin" last week, Bruce really does collect and discard young boys at an astonishing rate. Meanwhile, he demonstrates another useful gadget in his contact lens - I really prefer Batman to just be a detective in a bat suit, rather than packed with superpowers granted by ludicrous super-technology, but that's obviously not the way they're going here.

Anyway, Wayne and his wards are gathered together for a presentation, announcing that he'll be pouring his millions into redeveloping Gotham, and soliciting donations from other leading citizens. We're introduced to a mayoral candidate (and to be fair, this does tie in with Detective Comics, they mentioned in that that the mayor was busy campaigning), and then Bruce gets wind of a crime being investigated, makes his excuses and leaves.

It seems that someone has been murdered (with owl-themed knives) and left a final message that "Bruce Wayne will die tomorrow!" A bit of detective work gets a DNA sample of the possible murderer, and we're left with the disturbing result that it belongs to good old Dick Grayson...

The verdict? Story - this is a much better Batman #1 than the two we've had previously! It sets the scene, tells you everything you need to know about the character and his background and gives him an exciting adventure or two, too. This should have been in week one, really. Art - rather cool, it suits Batman perfectly, dark and gloomy while still clearly telling the story. All in all - I really wasn't expecting to like any of the many, many Batman comics among the "new 52", but I do like this one! I want to keep reading it.

Birds of Prey #1
Duane Swierczynski, Jesus Saiz

Written by Swierczynski and drawn by Saiz.

We're in Gotham City, yet again, and intrepid reporter Charlie Keen has been called to a church by his mysterious informant, on the trail of "a covert ops team run by a bunch of supercriminal hotties". It seems that the mysterious informant has a team of men in magic suits that make them transparent who are going to kill Keen, but he's saved by the arrival of the people he's been tailing, Black Canary and Starling.

Now, some might say that our heroes aren't named after the most fearsome birds of prey in the world, but never mind. They demonstrate their skills and powers in combat, and get Charlie out of there. Flashback to a couple of weeks ago, and Charlie's watching the Canary in her secret identity of Dinah Lance, trying to persuade Batgirl to join her team. Batgirl declines the offer to team up with someone who's wanted for murder ("murdering a man with a punch", apparently), but suggests a woman called Katana instead. Since Katana's already on the cover, along with a plant-themed woman who also doesn't appear in this issue, I think we can safely say she's going to join - yes, it's another comic with a cover showcasing the eventual cast of the ongoing series.

Charlie tracked Starling, too, but her spare time seems to consist entirely of drinking and partying, so he didn't get very far. But back in the church, our heroes are making their escape when Canary is bitten and then kissed by one of the baddies, who tells her that he's just killed her.

They arrange to fly Charlie out of Gotham, but then at the airport Dinah feels a strange tingling in her brain, while Charlie gets a text that appears to make him explode with a big bang!

The verdict? Story - it does a good job of introducing our two lead characters and setting out their background and current status more by hints and suggestions than concrete facts, which suits the tone of the comic. The story is interesting enough, with a nice cliffhanger. Art - pretty cool, it portrays the action sequences well, it's just let down by the usual tendency to draw all women's faces the same (although to be fair, Starling's nose tilts up a bit more than Canary's, if you look at it closely). All in all - it's readable and fun. It makes my list, somewhere in the middle.

Blue Beetle #1
Tony Bedard, Ig Guara, Ruy José

Bedard writes, Guara pencils and José inks.

Long, long ago (in what might be a galaxy far away, but is probably this galaxy) a whole lot of aliens are slaughtered by an ominous blue beetly thing. He's a former inhabitant of this planet, who's been co-opted into a scary alien group called The Reach. One of their little blue scarabs is flying through space to recruit more Blue Beetles, when it's zapped by a passing Green Lantern and crashes into an ancient Mayan temple.

Not so long ago, at El Paso High School, we're introduced to Jaime, your average teenager, and his sporty bully adversary Joey, tough dropout friend Paco and female friend Brenda. Brenda's having a party at her mysterious rich aunt's house, Jaime's parents don't want him to go for reasons they're not prepared to explain, so he sneaks out to go to the party anyway.

The aunt, meanwhile, is in fact evil, and has hired three supervillains (Brutale, Rompe-Huesos, and another one who doesn't seem to get a namecheck, unless I've missed it) to steal the blue scarab from the cooler villains Phobia, Warp and Plasmus, who have just stolen it from someone else. Big bad guy fight scene ensues, and spills out into the road, where Jaime and Paco are on their way to Brenda's party. The backpack with the scarab falls into their car (in a scene that the artist struggles to depict right, with some very strange motion lines) and Jaime, displaying impressively heroic tendencies, runs off with it so the bad guys won't hurt Paco.

The scarab ends up stuck to his back, and transforms him into... The Blue Beetle!

The verdict? Story - it's only the first part of a story that's presumably going to be about Jaime adapting to being a superhero, so it's hard to pass judgement on just this one comic. It introduces the cast adequately, but doesn't really have that tantalising quality that draws in the readers again next month. Art - particularly good in the supervillain fight scenes; the everyday-life bits somehow look less realistic, although the characters are consistent in their appearance. All in all - it's okay, but it doesn't really grab me. I don't really care about the central character yet, for some reason. Maybe it's worth another look to see how the story develops.

Captain Atom #1
J.T. Krul, Freddie Williams II

Written by Krul, who also did Green Arrow in week one, drawn by Williams II (who probably isn't the father of J.H. Williams III, but you never know).

In San Francisco, a weird rat is up to no good, while the narrator muses about what sets humans aside from the animals, and takes a rather pessimistic view of it. In Chicago, our narrator-hero is fighting a man in a giant robot-suit. Captain Atom is composed of glowing energy, he flies around, absorbs energy blasts shot at him and fires them cheerfully back. But mid-way through the fight, he discovers a new ability he hasn't noticed since 'the accident' that made him what he is - he transforms the suit of armour into dust by reconfiguring its atoms. More worryingly, this makes his hand start to disintegrate, too.

He goes back to "The Continuum", his base of operations in Kansas, flirts with a woman called Ranita and talks it through with her creepy boss, Dr Megala (inspired obviously by Stephen Hawking). Megala gives a lengthy scientific justification of how Captain Atom's powers work, more than we really need to know - the basic detail is that if he uses his powers like that, his brain might dissipate and kill him.

Then there's a call to say that there's a volcano erupting in New York, of all places, so our hero is on his way! Stopping to prevent a nuclear reactor blowing up, he hurries to Manhattan and turns the molten lava into snow. Nobody seems to really be wondering where the volcano came from, but I suppose it's a case of dealing with the immediate problems first and worrying about the details later. Meanwhile in San Francisco, that weird rat has turned into a giant monster and is threatening homeless people.

But back with Captain Atom (and the clock that's been popping up with every change of scene is wrong here - it's gone backwards three hours), he goes down into the volcano to try to fix it, but finds that his brain is starting to dissipate. Can't say he wasn't warned.

The verdict? Story - there's plenty of action and establishing of the character, his powers and his supporting cast, but the Captain himself doesn't get to show much individual personality; he's just your normal superhero without a disinctive trait or two of his own. Art - a bit on the sketchy side when it comes to normal people and action scenes, but the central character does look good, and that's a really great giant rat monster that presumably will play a bigger part in future issues. All in all - I like it, it just needs a hero I can sympathise with a bit more. I'll give it another shot next month.

Catwoman #1
Judd Winick, Guillem March

Written by Winick, the man behind Batwing as well, drawn by March.

Gotham City yet again - Seline Kyle, Catwoman is very hastily getting into her costume, cramming a very large number of cats into a small travelling case, and fleeing from her flat. Someone she figures she's stolen from in the past has tracked her down and sent heavies to get her. To her slight irritation, they blow the whole place up, although it's not like she owns anything of value anyway. Apart from some very peculiar perspective when she lands on a rooftop, the whole opening sequence is very well drawn, and effectively sets the scene for the comic.

Selina goes to see her friend Lola, looking for some kind of supervillain work and a place to live. She gets an unoccupied penthouse to squat in, and an opportunity to replace a barmaid and eavesdrop on Russian gangsters talking about good things to steal. However, it gets personal when she sees a man who was involved in a traumatic incident of her childhood. She attacks him viciously and flees back to the penthouse.

There, she and her cats are joined by Batman, come to see if she's okay. The two of them have a long-running 'thing' going (it was mentioned in passing in Detective Comics), and the two of them have it off while keeping their masks on.

The verdict? Story - very nice introduction to the character and the world she lives in. She's very likeable in her own way. Art - stylish and distinctive. Selina and Lola both have very individual faces, unlike the trend for female characters that's irked me in so many of these other comics. Her acrobatics look good, and the costumes are very well-drawn, even when they're half-off, which most artists have trouble with. All in all - yes, I like it. I seem to be adding a lot more Batman-universe comics to my list than I expected to!

DC Universe Presents Deadman #1
Paul Jenkins, Bernard Chang

All the lists of comic titles for the "new 52" call this "DC Universe Presents", but on the cover those words are in tiny little letters, and "Deadman" is the main title. There's no explanation inside as to whether it's permanently a Deadman comic, or what the plan is. It's another one with vague credits, too - "By Paul Jenkins & Bernard Chang".

Six months ago, our narrator-hero became a stunt motorbike-rider with a secret deathwish, and apparently saved his life. He explains what he's talking about - the whole narrative is directed straight at the reader, more blatantly than in most comics. He, Boston Brand, used to be a circus acrobat with a "Deadman" costume and gimmick, unpopular with his colleagues for being basically a jerk, when an assassin shot him and made him really live up to his nickname. This has all been conveyed on two pages - lots of panels, lots of captions in this one.

Deadman found himself in the afterlife, talking to the goddess Rama, who tells him he must atone for his selfishness and egotism in life by sharing the lifetimes of other people and demonstrating love and consideration. And so that's what he does now. That's as clear as the explanation gets, it really doesn't get across the point of how the whole setup works, which is a pretty major failure on the part of the writer.

But the next person he's fated to 'be' is Johnny, a crippled soldier with depression. Before "making the connection", Deadman goes to a fair (he's apparently a ghost, it seems, who can fly around where he likes and possibly people can't see him) where he temporarily posesses the bodies of lots of people in an attempt to talk to an old acquaintance of his, a psychic called Rose. He wants her to help him with something, but it's not entirely clear what. Then he goes away and reminisces briefly about twelve other people he's been (again without saying what he did when he was them) before going back and connecting with Johnny. Then, as Johnny, he puts a gun to his head and greets Rama when she shows up.

The verdict? Story - well, it doesn't exactly go to great pains to explain what's going on. Except I sort of think that it was meaning to, but just forgets to explain a few basic details. We're introduced to the character (although how his appearance in Hawk & Dove a couple of weeks ago ties in with this story, I can't imagine) and get to know him a little, but this comic has a whole lot of words, that somehow don't say very much. Art - it's another good one, not spectacular but effective in telling the story. All in all - sorry, I just don't get it. It feels like the story is missing something, and I'm not confident that it'll improve in future months. I think I'll pass.

Red Hood and the Outlaws #1
Scott Lobdell, Kenneth Rocafort

Written by Lobdell, who also wrote Superboy last week, drawn by Rocafort.

We open with Roy Harper, a young man in a Middle Eastern prison after an unsuccessful attempt to solve the country's problems. The narrator is contemptuous, but he's going to rescue him anyway - disguised as a fat chaplain, he sneaks Roy's bow and arrows into the prison and reveals himself to be the Red Hood. The narration shifts to Roy, who is also not a fan of this idiot, Jason Todd, but appreciates the rescue.

The two of them make their escape and vaguely reference who they are - Jason is apparently another one of those former Robins, now not on friendly terms with Batman or Nightwing or probably the other two either. One thing this comic seems to forget to do is mention Roy's superhero name - I happen to know he's the Green Arrow's former sidekick Speedy, later known as Red Arrow, but whether that's his name in this new relaunched universe isn't explained - he's just Roy, and a former sidekick of someone.

Jason has brought help in the form of Starfire, an extremely beautiful female alien who has issues with soldiers and imprisonment generally and so was happy to bring her enormous powers to bear on Roy's situation. She deals with all the tanks and things easily, while Jason makes an incredibly dirty joke (this is a 'teen'-rated comic, which is the lowest age-rating, so it surprised me a little) and boasts about having had her.

Three weeks later, they're all sunning themselves on St Martinique. But several sinister subplots are developing - a mysterious woman called Essence, who only Jason can see, tells him that The Untitled are at work, while Starfire invites Roy to have sex with her, and a mysterious man in Chicago has discovered that Starfire is on Earth, and is pleased about it.

While Starfire and Roy are sleeping (together), Jason gets the Red Hood costume on and goes to The Well of the All-Caste, where he's sorry to see that an old woman he knew is dead, and finds himself surrounded by threatening people with swords.

The verdict? Story - well, it's certainly 'teen'. Two teenage boys find themselves hanging out with a gorgeous alien superheroine with a relaxed attitude to shagging. But they're both likeable characters, although the story doesn't go into any kind of detail about their histories; maybe it's to come in future issues, but I get the feeling that it's expecting readers to know the heroes already. Art - the central characters have distinctive looks, the art tells the story well, the action scenes are well-handled, there's really nothing to complain about, but on the other hand it's nothing special either. All in all - it's good fun, I might have to check out future issues, because if nothing else it feels like it'll always be entertaining.

Green Lantern Corps #1
Peter J. Tomasi, Fernando Pasarin, Scott Hanna

Tomasi, who wrote Batman and Robin last week, writes this one too. Pasarin is credited as 'artist', but Hanna inks (as well as his semi-credited work on Suicide Squad).

More lanterns. Out in Space Sector 3599, the two local Green Lanterns are going about their business when they're both graphically and easily killed by a mysterious enemy who talks about a 'force of will'.

Meanwhile, back in Sector 2814, Earth, Guy Gardner is having trouble getting a job. The problem is that everyone knows he's a Green Lantern, and they find it difficult to believe he'd give any other job his full attention, let alone the insurance problems of the supervillain attacks he'd inevitably attract. In the course of conversation, he fills us in on the basics of Green Lantern structure - 7200 of them, two to a sector (although our sector currently has four, if you count Hal Jordan, for some reason or other), all reporting to the Guardians who've shown up in other comics here and there.

Another of these Lanterns, John Stewart, is an architect who gets irritated with people who think the expensive safety measures he insists on aren't necessary because they're not legally required. He can't resist using his green ring to vent his frustrations.

Guy and John have a chat, hanging out in space, sitting on a satellite, and decide they need a break from Earth. Assuming that Kyle can handle anything that's happening down there, they go to Oa, the GL head office, to see what's happening. There, they learn that a planet in sector 3599 has been drained of all its water and the local Lanterns killed. They join a task force sent to investigate (five other alien Green Lanterns, who only get a namecheck and nothing else), and find that the whole planet's population has been slaughtered, and a couple of Green Lantern corpses left for the task force to find.

The verdict? Story - showcases our heroes nicely, explains a lot of GL background that really should have been included in previous Lantern comics these last couple of weeks, and sets up an epic cosmic adventure. The problem with this kind of thing is that the mysterious baddie has killed the nameless supporting characters so easily that it's going to be hard to justify him not doing the same to Guy and John, but we'll just have to see how the writer gets around that. Art - simply gorgeous. Every page is crammed with detail, it looks space-age and dramatic, and if the human faces aren't the best, the aliens all look extremely cool. All in all - I really like it, much more than the other lantern comics so far. This might have to be my full quota of magic ring adventure going forwards (although there's more to come next week, of course - Lanterns are second only to Batman-and-friends in the New 52).

Nightwing #1
Kyle Higgins, Eddy Barrows, J.P. Mayer

Writer Kyle Higgins was the man behind Deathstroke, Barrows pencils, Mayer inks.

We're back in Gotham once again, and Dick Grayson is getting dressed. He's apparently been filling in as Batman for the last year while Bruce was busy doing something else, but now he's back in his own costume, as Nightwing. He's still surrounded by bats whenever he jumps across the rooftops, though.

In the course of a dramatic fight scene with a rampaging killer on a train (which showcases some more quite brilliant artwork), Dick muses that this part of the city is getting worse, when it used to be quite nice. This is a bit strange, really - I got the impression from the other comics that Gotham is a seething cauldron of unpleasantness that Batman is gradually making nicer.

But never mind. While a mysterious stranger arrives in Gotham on the bus and beats up two prospective muggers, Dick goes back to his new flat, in a nasty part of town (not for him the stately Wayne Manor and Batcave, he likes to be in the thick of things) and then goes to check out the circus.

Because, of course, his long-ago origin story is that he was a circus trapeze artist as a young boy, along with his parents who were then murdered by a bad guy, leading to Dick being adopted by Bruce Wayne, becoming Robin and swearing to stop bad guys everywhere. He recaps this origin for the benefit of new readers (and indeed, people like me who'd almost forgotten it, since it doesn't get mentioned much), and of course in this world it wasn't all that many years ago, and his original circus is still going, and is currently visiting Gotham.

We meet the circus owner, the surly clown who feels that his costume is way too much like the Joker and he's just asking for trouble wearing it in Gotham, Dick's old acrobat friend Raya and her new acrobat friend Marc. Marc's introductory line to Dick, "Yeah, I heard about you, man. I just want to say, it really sucks what happened," really made me laugh.

Still, they invite Dick to have a go on the trapeze for old times' sake, and he does, having a lot of fun while making sure they don't see how good he really is. The narration really gets into his personality nicely, meanwhile - he's been worried about coming to the circus in Gotham, because the city's inherent nastiness might spoil his treasured childhood memories, but it seems to have worked out all right in the end.

On the way home, he's attacked by a mysterious assassin - after Dick Grayson, not Nightwing! He's able to slip away while the killer is distracted by police, change into his costume, come back and fight. He's a little distracted to find that this guy believes "Dick Grayson is the fiercest killer in all of Gotham and he doesn't even know it!", and we end with his life looking to be in danger.

The verdict? Story - I was surprised how much I liked this one. Playing on Robin's origin story from 1939 or whenever it was was a really good idea to introduce the character all over again; it works for new readers and old, and tells us everything we need to know about him. The story it sets in motion is interesting, although I wonder if it's related to what's happening in Batman; I sort of worry that it isn't, and there's two very similar plotlines with Dick Grayson going to be published simultaneously. Art - another beautiful one, with art that revels in a lot of acrobatic action scenes and unusual panel layouts to produce something much more, well, artistic, than most of these comics while still doing its job and telling the story. All in all - Yes, I like this one too. I want to keep up with what's happening to our hero, whether or not his appearances in other Batman comics are going to get confusing.

Legion of Super-Heroes #1
Paul Levitz, Francis Portela

Written by Levitz and drawn by Portela.

It's the 31st century, and five of the Legion of Super-Heroes are landing on planet Panoptes. I could tell you who they are, because everyone who appears in this comic gets a caption listing their name, home planet and superpowers, but frankly there are so many superheroes in this one that I find it impossible to remember who's who. None of them has any kind of personality, other than that Chemical Kid and Dragonwing are two new members. They're infiltrating a base that's supposed to be keeping an eye on "the Dominators" but has stopped.

On a spaceship, possibly the one that dropped the heroes off on the planet, Colossal Boy is adjusting to life in a spaceship crew instead of being a hero. He laments about "my wife and the others", and a caption tells us to check out Legion Lost for the full scoop. Well, not the full scoop. Neither of the two comics tells us which one of the Legion Lost crew, if any, was CB's wife.

Back at Legion HQ, two other Legionaires commemorate some dead members, express a wish to become the leader (in the case of the one who isn't leader already) and check in with a further thirteen (!!) members of the team who we haven't seen yet. A couple of these talk unfathomably about some previous adventures they've been involved in, and then we're back to the gang we started with. They find that the world has been sending signals to the Dominators, which is obviously a bad thing, and then a Daxamite (mentioned in passing earlier to be really powerful things) bursts in.

The verdict? Story - beyond telling us the name of most of the twenty-one (!!!) Legionaires who appear in this comic, there's no attempt to introduce the characters or settings to new readers. The story is pretty impenetrable and consists of a lot of talking and not very much happening. Art - actually, very good indeed. I get the feeling that if we didn't have quite so many characters to keep track of, we could tell them apart well enough. All in all - this isn't a #1, it's a #1526 or somewhere in that region. I don't know who any of these people are, and I'm not curious at all to find out. This one's a no.

Supergirl #1
Michael Green, Mike Johnson, Mahmud Asrar, Dan Green

Michael Green and Johnson both write, Asrar pencils and the inking is credited to "Dan Green with Asrar". Dan Green was also the inker of Animal Man, so it's a bit of a strange division of labour.

Somewhere not too far from Kansas, meteorites are crashing into Earth, just like they did when Superman came along, as the watching narrators observe. However, the big meteorite crashes right into the ground, and keeps going right through, until it pops up in Siberia.

Supergirl climbs out of it, waking up after a long sleep and wondering if she's still dreaming. She doesn't seem to be on Krypton any more, after all. And she's not cold even though it's snowing and she's wearing a miniskirt. And there's a yellow sun, and giant robots attacking her, and she's super-strong and can fire eyebeams. Yep, she figures, it must be a dream.

When her super-hearing kicks in, she picks up dialogue from all around the world, including several other ones of these comics (Birds of Prey's opening scene seems to take place simultaneously with Nightwing's final one, funnily enough, although it was raining in Gotham in the former and doesn't seem to be in the latter. Sorry, I'm being picky, and besides, there's lightning in the sky in Nightwing, it might be supposed to be raining) and is understandably overwhelmed. She breaks into one of the robots and yells at the man inside to tell her what's going on, but as she's speaking Kryptonian, he doesn't understand her.

And then Superman shows up to tell her to stop.

The verdict? Story - there's very little plot here. Kara lands on Earth, doesn't know why, finds that she's Supergirl. The fight scene takes up the whole of the comic. Art - not bad, but it's a little ugly. That there are only a few panels on each page might be a requirement of the thin story, but it highlights that there's not much detail in the characters or backgrounds. All in all - it's just too slight to maintain my interest. I'm sure there'll be more happening in future issues, but I'll stick to the ones that have given me a good story in #1.

Wonder Woman #1
Brian Azzarello, Cliff Chiang

Azzarello writes, Chiang draws.

In Singapore, a rich man with jet-black skin and glowing eyes and mouth is entertaining three young women, and does something strange to them.

In Virginia, a woman in a peacock cloak and apparently nothing else comes into a stable, chops a horse's head off with some kind of magic scythe, and, um, someone starts to climb out of its neck-hole? No, wait, it's probably just growing arms and a human body and turning into one of those centaurs who turn up a couple of pages later.

And in a house nearby, a blue man is trying to persuade a woman called Zola to come away with him, because assassins are after her. He's got chicken legs as well as blue skin, but Zola seems to be taking this in her stride. But then he's shot by a couple of centaurs who gallop in and try to kill her, Chicken-Legs throws her a key, she catches it, and disappears.

And appears in London (another of those houses just down the road from Big Ben), in Wonder Woman's bedroom. She gets dressed and promises to help Zola, but Zola insists on going along, clutching the key and disappearing again with the heroine.

Back in Virginia, Wonder Woman fights the centaurs while the narrative captions tell mister-black-with-glowing-eyes-from-the-first-page some cryptic prophecies about what's coming. She beats them off, and turns her attention to Chicken-Legs, who is apparently Hermes. He warns WW to run away, with Zola, and then dies with the final words that Zola is pregnant, by Zeus.

Glowing-Eyes finishes getting his prophecies from the unfortunate women, who finally burn up into skulls and bones. One of his father's children will murder another, it seems.

The verdict? Story - hmm. Greek gods, right? It's all a bit confused, and Wonder Woman doesn't really say or do much all through the comic, so we don't get much sense of who she is. The story does its best to sound portentous, but doesn't quite achieve it, and Zola, who we should be sympathising with, is a bit of an enigma. Art - it's a bit sketchy, but it does tell the story well, which is very necessary in this case, since there's not much dialogue or explanatory captions. All in all - I can live without knowing what happens next. Somehow, it's just not at all compelling, I'm afraid.

Ones and noughts

2011-09-24T20:10:00.002+01:00

3825 in this morning's practice session! We're getting there, gradually...

I didn't do the hour cards practice in the end, though, because of general poorliness and/or laziness. Still, I'll do it tomorrow - I'll have to, because there are 36 packs of cards laid out on my desk, and I can't do anything desk-related until I've memorised them, because I'm too lazy to put them all back in their packs and take them out again later.

Also, I think I've got pneumonia or something, or at least the flu. Sympathise with me, people!

Not to

2011-09-23T19:21:00.002+01:00

So, I decided to stay at home. I actually got up early and did an hour numbers this morning. It wasn't a very successful hour numbers, but that's what happens when you don't do it for nine months. I'll be better next time. And next time will be later this weekend - I've also got the day off work on Monday, so I can make good use of the time. Tomorrow, binary and hour cards. Maybe a bit of abstract images, too, I need to be practicing that quite regularly.

God, I'm boring. Maybe I'll go to a party instead. Is anyone having a party?

To Swe or not to Swe

2011-09-22T20:06:00.003+01:00

It just occurred to me today that it would have been my dad's 65th birthday next Wednesday. He would have reached the statutory default retirement age two days before it's abolished!

Anyway, I'm in two minds as to whether or not to go to Sweden this weekend. I'm thinking that a national-standard memory competition over two days, plus another day either side travelling to and from, wouldn't be as much use to me, world-championship-practice-wise, as staying at home and memorising hour cards and numbers.

Although I'm not sure whether I could motivate myself to do all this hypothetical training this weekend, or whether I'd feel more like lying around feeling sorry for myself because I've got a sore throat. Did I mention that I've got a sore throat? I feel sorry for myself.

So I was thinking that if I do a 30-minute binary tomorrow morning (I'm off work) and then the Online Memory Challenge at 1:30 GMT - ooh, by the way, everybody join in the Online Memory Challenge! It'll be commentated by Mattias live in Gothenburg, and good fun will be had by all! - and still feel like I can get more good training in this weekend, I'll stay at home and do that. If I feel lazy, I'll fly to Sweden and compete in a memory championship.

That sounds backwards, but it makes sense to me.

PS I edit this a couple of hours later after realising I should have told people how one goes about joining in the Online Memory Challenge. Send an email to Simon Orton, who has a gmail account with a dot between his first and last name, and he'll set you up with your own personal account if you haven't got one already!

Curse missed opportunities

2011-09-21T21:07:00.002+01:00

That phrase has been in my head all day. And not because of anything to do with the German Memory Championship, it's just that the person who sits next to me at work has a laptop that plays a couple of notes whenever he does anything, and they remind me of the intro to the song 'Clocks' by Coldplay.

Which is a catchy song, but I don't know most of the lyrics - it's sung in a sort of mumbling way with just occasional phrases that stick in my memory, like "curse missed opportunities" and "a tiger's waiting to be tamed" and "shoot an apple off my head" and so on. Frankly, I don't want to know what the rest of the lyrics are, because those disjointed snatches are far more cool by themselves. So if you hear me singing strange cool-sounding words and phrases punctuated by humming and dum-de-dum-de-dums, that's why.

Remembering Germany

2011-09-20T18:32:00.002+01:00

The Experimenta (which is an extremely cool edutainmental science museum kind of place) was host to the usual huge army of Germans and one or two foreigners in the German Memory Championships - as well as fifteen adults (who included Julian Geiger, choosing to compete in the grown-ups' event instead of the juniors) in the Walter Matthau lab, there were 21 young people in the big square room called 'Kubus', also up on the fifth floor.

The adults' competition also featured the latest great graduate of the junior competitions, Christian Schäfer (who beat me last year and who I really didn't want to beat me again), old-timers like Ferdinand Krause (the only person there who'd been competing in these things longer than me - come back, Gunther, all is forgiven), hot favourites Johannes Mallow and Simon Reinhard, gigantic Fabian Saal, nearly-as-gigantic Nelson Dellis all the way from the USA, Boris Konrad who also beat me last year, and more.

Actually, I should list the 'more' too, because otherwise it sounds unfair. Annalena Fischer, Giselher Mandel, Dana Häußler, Carsten Diete, almost-newcomer Rebecca Ernst and total-newcomer Dennis Horst Proksch.

It's a long day's memorising in Germany - three half-marathons and an abstract images on the first day. We started at 8:30 with the images. I'm still in "doing a safe 300 and only making a couple of mistakes" mode, intending to expand it to attempting 375 at the world championships, but I ended up making six mistakes for a score of 264, while Hannes broke the world record with 385. This is a bit worrying. Christian came second with 291, which is a bit more worrying, and I got the bronze medal. We were awarded medals as soon as the results of each discipline were announced, which is much better than doing it in a protracted prizegiving ceremony at the end of the championship - take note, WMC organisers!

Then after that, we ploughed on with the 30-minute numbers, and I was hopeful that my new approach to it would get me a good score. I even thought that with a bit of successful guesswork, I might have only made a couple of mistakes and beaten the world record, but in fact I ended up with a score of 1124 (seven mistakes), while Hannes broke his own world record with a score of 1320, very closely followed by Christian's 1295 and Simon's 1260.

In my day, if you got a score over 1000 in 30-minute numbers it was astonishing. Now I was getting worried because I had at least three rivals who were all on top form. We had a lunch break - free lunch in the Experimenta restaurant. The funny thing about that restaurant is the security barrier. Everyone who comes to the Experimenta gets to wear a wristband with a barcode on it that lets you through the turnstile to get in. There's another turnstile to get in to the restaurant which allows anyone to go in whether they've got a wristband or not, but won't let you out again unless you scan your barcode! Okay, it's because there's an outside door into the restaurant and they don't want to let you into the rest of the Experimenta without paying, but it made me giggle to think of someone going in there, spilling tomato sauce over their wristband and being trapped in the restaurant forever.

That didn't happen to me, anyway, and we went back upstairs for binary digits. This is supposed to be my specialist subject, but somehow I just can't do it any more. Perhaps I was too worried about my rivals to concentrate properly, but I just got a rubbish score of 3115, when a good score for me used to be 1000 more than that. I still ended up in second place in the discipline, not too far behind Hannes's 3315 and ahead of Christian and Simon who each got just under 3000, but I just have to recapture my old form if I'm to have any chance of winning championships again. I've got a plan, too - I've been practicing speed binary these last couple of years, and I'm going to stop. I only ever used to practice 30-minute binary in the old days, and I think that'll help me build my scores up again.

The final event of the long day (luckily we were sustained by complimentary bottles of drink - fizzy water, of course, it being Germany, plus orange and apple juice - an apple a day to keep the Dr Gunther Karsten away, a bag of nuts and two little bags of gummi bears) was 30-minute cards, which really is my specialist subject. The room was really getting very hot and stuffy by that point - it was a lovely sunny day - but I don't really mind that, it's being cold that slows my memory down. I attempted 18 packs, knowing that I've always been successful with cards even when the other disciplines aren't working out for me. It worked again - I got sixteen packs, which wasn't so bad by my standards, and four-and-a-bit packs better than my closest rival Simon.

I'm still hugely better than anyone else at the marathon cards disciplines, and I don't entirely understand why. Perhaps I'm just naturally gifted. Or maybe I'm the only one who's really got the hang of that two-card thing I invented all those years ago. Anyway, after that, we got to go back to our hotels for a well-earned rest, while the hard-working arbiters marked our recall sheets.

Those arbiters, as always, worked very hard and did a great job. They were primarily Klaus Kolb the instigator of the whole German Memory Championship history, and Gaby Kappus the competitor-turned-excellent-organiser. There were also the usual mob of helpers who stayed in the back room marking papers and get no credit, poor things, and Michael Gloschewski the man behind www.memocamp.com, which was broadcasting the results live to the world. Memocamp also provided the results announcements - unlike the World Championship, where we get Tony Buzan reading out the top ten and creatively pronouncing foreigners' names, then a piece of paper pinned to the wall for everyone to crowd around, the German Championship does multimedia displays with a computer and projector. However, it's fair to say that it wasn't an unqualified success this year - every announcement of scores came with a lot of um-wait-a-minute changes of display options and resizing of windows that somehow never quite managed to fit everything on one screen and make it readable. But still, technology is the way of the future!

After a surprisingly good night's sleep and a really great dream about Doctor Who, it was back to the top floor for the spoken numbers. I'm not the world's best at spoke numbers in English, but in German it's even more confusing. Especially if the voice is a dull monotone that makes "null" and "neun" sound quite similar. Well, that's my excuse anyway - nobody else had much of a problem. Still, out of the three attempts, my best score was 72. Luckily, my rivals were all trying to break the world record and falling short - the top score ended up being Giselher with 140.

Onwards to historic dates, another of my specialist subjects! And another horrific failure on my part, for some reason I can't quite work out. My head must just not have been in the right place. I got 72, a long way behind Hannes, who always wins dates, and just a little bit further behind Christian, who unexpectedly won it this time. Not another German who's better than me at dates! Dates was always my thing!

By now I was well adrift of the leaders and trying to keep pace with Christian, who's nineteen years old and shouldn't be beating me at memory things. I've been doing competitions since he was eight. That's depressing. Still, the next discipline wasn't going to be the one where I caught up - good old names and faces. The less said about that the better, except that it was Simon's turn to try to catch runaway leader Hannes, winning with a new-world-record 155, way ahead of everyone else, even Boris.

Then we went on to speed numbers, and I really wasn't concentrating right by that point. My 'safe' 360 was riddled with errors and ended up scoring 253. Still, you get two attempts, and the second one was scheduled for straight after lunch.

It turned out that the arbiters were a long way behind with the junior competitions and hadn't marked our papers during lunch. Someone needs to whip them harder, or not let them eat anything themselves until everything's been checked and triple-checked. Poor arbiters, I do feel sorry for them. So we did the random words instead. I only got 170, which isn't great but could be worse. Boris, names-and-words-master, set the top score, just narrowly beating Simon into second place. Christian got a low score in this one, which gave me hopes of maybe catching up with him after all.

He did, however, end up with the top score in speed numbers, while I didn't manage to improve on my lousy score. So now we're going into the speed cards, and I'm languishing in fourth place.

As always seems to happen, I was a long way clear of fifth place (Boris), so couldn't find any justification for doing a super-safe slow time to make sure of fourth. And at about 300 points behind Christian, I still had a chance of snatching third. With a super-fast time, indeed, I had a chance of overhauling Simon, and even Hannes if he completely failed to do anything at all.

I did a more-or-less-safe 35 seconds in the first trial, and hoped my rivals would all make mistakes. They didn't - Hannes did a safe 47 seconds, Christian a safe 51 and Simon a safe 32. 32 seconds is 'safe' for him nowadays. I'm jealous.

So I was still behind Christian and needed to improve drastically while still hoping he didn't improve on his time. I decided to go all-out for a world record, but stumbled over the third card ("wait, why did I just memorise that as the ace of clubs when I know it was the ace of spades? Go back and check - yep, ace of spades. I'm an idiot. Where was I?" sped through my head in a couple of seconds, which is never a good start). After that, though, it went smoothly, and I was pleasantly surprised to still stop the clock at 23-point-something seconds. Not a world record, but it would have been a personal best. However, the recall wasn't all there, I had a big gap in the middle that I couldn't fill. So instead I went over to see what Simon had done, to find that he'd broken his own world record. 21.19 seconds!

I've beaten that in practice, but he does it so much more consistently than me. Can I ever get my favourite record back? Anyway, that was just enough to snatch first place away from Hannes. All hail (or Heil-bronn) the new German Champion! I was fourth, behind Christian. Just a hundred points behind, but still behind.

That win also nudges Simon up to second place on the world ranking list, and shunts me back down to fourth. With Christian lurking right behind me, ready to leap ahead of me at the World Championship, no doubt. I've got to improve!

Okay, practice time! I've got a new training regime planned out, and maybe I can stick to it. I just wish I could forget that I've been World Champion already. If I could only replicate the enthusiasm and desire to win that shines eerily out of the eyes of Simon, Hannes and Christian!

Here's Gaby's slideshow:

Heilbronn again!

2011-09-19T21:04:00.002+01:00

It's a bit late to write up the whole German championship tonight, so I'll just do a little introduction, and finish it up tomorrow.

I arrived in Heilbronn quite late on Thursday night - my plane was late again. I noticed on the train that the place I was booked into requires you to check in by 8pm, and that it was already half past. So sure enough, I got to the Pension Frey and found it was all shut up for the night. Not daunted over-much by this, I went to the much nicer hotel I stayed at last year and asked if they'd got a room, only to be told that they'd already got a booking for me on the system.

Did I book a room there and forget about it, or did someone else book one for me and not tell me? Possibly it was a guardian angel of some kind. I know I would have booked a room there if Klaus hadn't told me everything was fully booked. Still, never mind, it's a great hotel - the Insel, which means Island and is in fact on a little island in the middle of the big river. It's also right next to the Experimenta, where the competition is held.

We were back in the same room as last time, the Wilhelm Maybach lab, which for some reason I always want to call the Walther Matthau lab, even though he was an American actor who as far as I know didn't have any kind of scientific leanings. Anyway, it's a very nice venue for a competition, but it got a bit hot in the lovely sunny weather of Heilbronn.

Also, having been to Heilbronn before, I now knew where the McDonald's is, and could go there for breakfast in the mornings and get the competition off to a great start!

And on the Friday night, half way through the championship, I had a really epic dream about a Doctor Who adventure starring the sixth, seventh and eighth Doctors (plus Peri and Ace), a combination so unusual that I doubt you'd find more than five or six stories like that on fanfiction.net. Heck, maybe I'll write it myself, because it really was a great dream.

I'll talk about the actual memory bit and the people there tomorrow - don't worry, I am actually quite cheerful and enthusiastic about the whole thing now.

Superer Sunday

2011-09-18T16:08:00.008+01:00

For those who are too lazy to look at last week's blog entry on the same subject, DC Comics are "relaunching" their entire range in September. There are 52 comics with "#1" on the cover, thirteen each week, and this is week two. I'm giving them all a try, with my head firmly in "new reader" mode (I'm familiar with a lot of the characters, but haven't bought a new DC comic for a good few years) and I bought this week's batch in the ever-awesome Nostalgia & Comics shop in Birmingham, on my way to the airport on Thursday. There was only one of the thirteen they didn't have, and they also had two of the ones I couldn't find last week, so we're now down to just two out of 27 that I've read without paying for. I'm more than doing my bit to keep those writers and artists in business!

So, week two. It's normal practice to save the best for the first and last week in situations like this. Remember all those comics with beautiful, crisp, clear artwork and snappy writing last week? This week we get a more eclectic mix, with a lot of demons and dragons and general weirdness. And lanterns of all colours. I read them in reverse alphabetical order, since that was the order they ended up packed in my bag in the shop, which means we start with...

Superboy #1
Scott Lobdell, R.B. Silva, Rob Lean

Written by Lobdell, pencilled by Silva, inked by Lean.

Superboy is a clone in a tube in a lab, hairless and naked except for a pair of modesty-covering pants that the scientists have kindly provided him with. He was created three months ago, as a fusion of Kryptonian and human DNA, and he hasn't had much to do except float there and take in what the scientists are saying. It's not good news, though - they don't think he's showing any signs of life, so Dr White is going to kill him. Red-headed female Dr Cait isn't happy about this, but Dr White goes ahead, only for everyone to be killed with a big boom. His last words to Dr Cait, who's safe on the other side of a window - "I shouldn't have kept you in the dark! The human cells, they came from..." splat. Don't you hate it when you mistime your last words like that? If he'd only phrased it in a normal way, like "the human cells came from..." he might have finished his sentence!

Anyway, Superboy's alive and well and now he can communicate with Dr Cait. And a month later, he's in school in Kansas, making friends with Rose Wilson and completely ignoring a cry for help from a woman in a burning building. It turns out that this is all just a virtual reality created for him, and he's still in the lab. He knows, but the scientists don't know he knows. They're more mystified by why his subconscious mind created the small-town Kansas background (the scientists don't have the advantage of knowing Superman's origin story) and where he got his complete disregard for the sanctity of human life (that one's still a mystery).

Dr Cait has a chat with the real Rose, who's apparently there to "put down Superboy if he ever snaps again", although how she'd go about that isn't clear. A Dr Umber, meanwhile, is sneakily feeding the lab's secrets (except the existence of Superboy) to the only journalist he can trust, who happens to be good old Lois Lane. Then the big boss, "Templar", arrives, and announces that it's time to activate Superboy. There's a mission for him.

The verdict? Story - excellent. Sets up the all-new Superboy, gives him a proper introduction and background and more than enough mysteries to keep us interested. It's a prologue, but it has great promise for the future. Art - nice. Everyone seems to have boggly eyes and funny noses, but the lab scenes are very detailed, and the storytelling is clear throughout. All in all - I like it, and I want to know what's going to happen next. I think I'll be back for #2.

Suicide Squad #1
Adam Glass, Federico Dallocchio, Ransom Getty

The three above get their names on the cover, but the credits page inside attributes the writing to Glass, and then "artists: Federico Dallocchio & Ransom Getty & Scott Hanna". I suppose Hanna lent a last-minute hand with the inking, but I do wish credits would actually say who did what.

Anyway, we're in a gloomy archetypal abandoned warehouse, and Deadshot is being tortured by a man with a bag on his head. Nasty torture, too, involving rats. He's not alone, either. Bag-heads are torturing another six super-types, trying to find out who sent them. Instead of telling them, Deadshot reminiscences about how he got into this mess in the first place - he's an assassin, and a darn good one too, but he was caught by Batman while trying to kill a senator. (After "Men of War" last week, that raises the senator-count in these comics to two, and there's more to come. Maybe the full 100 will have shown up before we're finished!) But he's not telling the bag-heads anything, however much of him gets eaten by rats, because it's all part of the job.

El Diablo is in a similar situation, although he's less the cold-blooded killer and more the warrior monk type who kills people while thinking in Spanish-accented religious terms. But when he accidentally killed a bunch of women and children, he gave himself up to the police willingly. Harley Quinn, meanwhile, used to be the Joker's lover, but his arrest last week in Detective Comics drove her a little bit more loony than she already was, and she set out to kill lawyers before she was caught by the Black Canary. She actually quite enjoys being tortured, so she's not at all in the mood to snitch on her employers.

Black Spider and Voltaic don't get introductory flashbacks, just a namecheck each, and then we move on to King Shark. He's a big giant shark-man, as the name implies (although I'm not sure if he's actually king of anywhere), and he's not the talkative type at all. He plays possum, then bites off a bag-man's arm when he gets too close, exulting "Meat! Meat! Meat! Ha ha!" I like this guy.

The seventh member, Savant, eventually cracks. He explains that they're Task Force X, colloquially known as the Suicide Squad. If you're serving a life sentence, this is the only way to get out. Albeit with a bomb implanted in your neck and a lot of really sadistic training. On their first mission, to bring in a rogue agent, dead or alive (Deadshot just shoots him through the head straight away, to save time), they were caught in a booby trap, and then all the torturing started. The bag-heads thank Savant, then drag him off to do even more horrible things to him, while his six team-mates scoff contemptuously.

After one final tell-us-or-we-shoot-you session, the six are told they've passed the final test, and they're now officially in Task Force X. The sinister leader, Amanda Waller, sends them off on their first mission, which is apparently to kill six thousand people in a stadium. Wait, is this the government, or just a gang of slaughter-enthusiasts?

The verdict? Story - It takes the decision to only introduce half the characters in any kind of depth, which I think makes sense. Other team comics have rushed through everyone or else not shown most of the team at all, but I think this one gets the balance right. On the other hand, it's a rather excessively dark and nasty kind of story with just a lot of gore and rats and not a lot of plot. Art - suits the story very well, it's dark and gritty, and King Shark's happy bloodstained grin is really awesome. Some of the poses are a little strange, though. All in all - it's not my thing, really, but it does a good job as an introduction to the characters and settings, and I do find myself wanting to see where it goes. I can stomach another issue of gore, I suppose.

Resurrection Man #1
Dan Abnett, Andy Lanning, Fernando Dagnino

Written by Abnett and Lanning, drawn by Dagnino.

Our hero is dead. He's just been left alone after his autopsy, and he muses to himself that everything tastes of metal this time. It seems that coming back to life is nothing new to him. Once he's recovered from the unimaginable pain, he notes that this time, his "talent" seems to be an empathy with and control over metal. He steals some clothes and some money, and heads to the airport, where his latest compulsion has driven him. He vaguely wonders what his mysterious purpose is this time - he's given up wondering where he gets these "things I have to do" from.

So that's four pages and we already know everything we need to know about the character and his setting! Excellent, concise and clear writing! We're also introduced to a few of the other passengers on the plane before our hero, who calls himself Mitch, is joined by a strange woman with a red teardrop-tattoo on her face. She says that "they're closing in", and then turns into a horrific demon-thing. Mitch's soul is overdue, and she wants it. He has to launch the both of them out of the plane (closing the door and trying to save the passengers along the way) but then sees scary faces in the storm, which the demon helpfully narrates as "phantoms of the afterlife, closing in to claim the dead". Spooky.

Mitch manages to contrive a way to get the demon struck by lightning, but then his latest life comes to an end when he's sucked into the plane's engine and, well, the word "skrunntchh" sums it up. The plane crashes, everyone dies, and when Mitch comes back to life with the ability to turn into water, he's left mystified by what the heck is going on. The demon has taken a new human form and is after him, and meanwhile, two creepy young women are searching for him and having fun killing people along the way. And there's a weird fortune-teller saying something cryptic to end the comic.

The verdict? Story - introduces our hero very well, and sets up the stories to come - poor Mitch's life (or lives) will be plagued by all kinds of horrible things. You have to feel sorry for him, but you also want to see how he's going to deal with it. And what strange powers he's going to get the next time he dies. Art - a bit unclear in places, with heavy shading, but Mitch has a very distinctive and consistent face, and the action scenes are nicely done. I like it. All in all - I'm interested to see what happens next. It's not a top favourite of mine, but it's something I want to check out in the future. The central character is very sympathetic.

Red Lanterns #1
Peter Milligan, Ed Benes, Rob Hunter

Milligan writes, Benes pencils, Hunter inks.

More torture! This time, nasty blue aliens are torturing a different kind of alien on a spaceship. But they're just doing it for fun, and the leader is getting bored. But then they're boarded by a cat in a red Green Lantern costume. A whole two-page spread, just of this cat! And it's really, really well-drawn, too. It's got a constant stream of red stuff coming out of its mouth, which seems to be a common complaint among characters in this comic, but it just adds to the coolness of it. It wears a red Green Lantern ring on its tail.

The cat proves quite efficient (and brutal) at fighting the nasty aliens, but they eventually catch it. However, then the cat's owner, Atrocitus arrives, and he's really bad news! He's also a Red Lantern, he's also streaming red stuff from his mouth (is it some kind of energy? Is it helping him fight? The art is excellent, but the red stuff is a bit unclear) and he really lays into the blue aliens, while considering his life. It seems he's not as filled with rage as he used to be. His people were killed by the Guardians (the Green Lanterns' bosses) and he's been raging ever since, but it's getting a bit old.

Meanwhile, on Earth, in "Small Ockdon, United Kingdom" (which looks very American, complete with car on the right hand side of the road), an old man is mugged by a street punk. Then we're back with Atrocitus, who leaves the kitty (it's called Dex-Starr) to rest and recover, then goes to tell his Red Lanterns to stop fighting. One of them is a woman called Bleez, who's more than a little loony and doesn't do what Atrocitus says, the others just stand in the background. We don't get told who they are.

Atrocitus goes to talk to the dead body he keeps lying around the place, and helpfully recaps his origins for the benefit of the reader. Krona, a Guardian, created the Green Lantern corps by convincing the other Guardians that they should use people and not robots. He proved this by programming the robots to kill everyone on Atrocitus's world. Atrocitus has been raging ever since, especially after Krona was killed by someone else (Green Lantern Hal Jordan, who we'll be hearing more from later), leaving the big guy just to keep Krona's corpse and occasionally shout at it. Then a nearby "fever pod" explodes, covering Atrocitus in painful red stuff and re-awakening his rage.

He decides to dedicate his rage-filled life to punishing those who deserve retribution. He'll need the help of his Red Lanterns, although they currently seem to be feeling uncooperative. And maybe the story will also involve what's happening back on Earth - the old man has died, and his grandsons Ray and John (another chalk-and-cheese pairing) are bickering about it. We can only assume this will eventually have some bearing on Atrocitus and co.

The verdict? Story - fills us in on the central character, but skips over the rest of the Red Lanterns. We're not told who they are, where they came from, how the whole Red Lantern thing works, anything like that. In a comic called "Red Lanterns", that's sort of what I expect. And the flashbacks are written in a way that suggests there's more story there that's already been written, rather than this being all you need to know in #1. Art - extremely cool. The Lanterns, from what little we see of them, are a fascinating bunch, and the aliens at the start look awesome, as does the cat. It's very bold and dynamic. All in all - I feel a bit like I'm joining in mid-story, rather than at the beginning, and the sub-plot on Earth is so totally disconnected from what happens on the other pages, it's a bit disorienting. It doesn't quite grab me, somehow.

Mister Terrific #1
Eric Wallace, Gianluca Gugliotta, Wayne Faucher

Wallace writes, Gugliotta pencils, Faucher inks.

London, England! Mr Terrific is nimbly evading laser beams in that stereotypical action-hero way that always annoys me - why do they design those beams so that there's a person-sized gap in the middle of them? And ooh, the lab he's in has more of those omnipresent floaty computer screens! It's a beautifully-drawn opening scene, though - our hero is an athletic type who flies around on big floating marbles, and he's being pursued by a bad guy in a flying suit of armour. They blast through the wall and out into the streets of London (the part of London full of American-style buildings with Big Ben in the background) before Mr T cleverly turns the London Eye into a giant magnet to catch the villain. He introduces himself as the world's third-smartest man, and then reminisces about his origins for a while.

It seems he's a successful millionaire scientist, whose wife tragically died, following which he threw himself into science. When that didn't work out, he decided to kill himself, but was then visited by his time-travelling future son, who urged him not to give up, before disappearing in a scientific explosion. Science is a theme of this comic, and I worry that the writer doesn't seem to know much about science himself.

Back in the present day, our hero, real name Michael Holt, is back at home in Los Angeles, chatting with his rich and successful sort-of-girlfriend Karen. Nearby, an average working guy is suddenly zapped by some kind of intelligence-enhancing beam. It makes him be rude to a waitress, then go out and kill a beggar. Intelligence isn't good for you, it seems. Once the police pick him up, they call in Mr T and show him the strange equations he's been writing ever since they brought him in. "Some kinda science gibberish", the policeman quite accurately calls it, but Mr T says that it's highly complicated and clever differential equations. Obviously you need to be really really clever to see that it isn't just a random collection of mathematical symbols.

Terrific goes to his secret headquarters in another dimension and shows it off to the readers for three pages while pondering this latest case, then goes to his political fundraiser for a sleazy Senator he approves of because of his commitment to science. We're briefly introduced to his friend/colleague/something Aleeka and a teenager called Jamaal who seems to be part of his entourage, although we're not told why, and we get a bit of discussion about weighty race issues. This is, it's clear, a comic about a black superhero, unlike for example Static Shock, which was about a hero who's incidentally black.

But then Mister Terrific is also zapped with the intelligence-beam, and realises that the senator has to be killed. He immediately gets to work starting a big giant earthquake, and we're promised that next issue we'll meet "the villain called... Brainstorm!"

The verdict? Story - Science! And a strange underlying theme of "don't trust intelligent people". The central character is effectively introduced, and he's likeable. There is a story in there, but the science-gibberish and the black-man element sort of stop me appreciating it for the good story it probably is. Art - really good. The action scenes on the first few pages are beautiful, which makes up for the rather inconsistent drawings of faces in the non-action scenes. All in all - I'm on the fence. I'll have to see if it improves next time round.

Legion Lost #1
Fabian Nicieza, Pete Woods

It's just "by Fabian Nicieza and Pete Woods", the credits don't tell us any more detail than that.

At a hospital, doctors and nurses are wrestling with a strange superhuman man talking an unidentifiable language. He yells that they all deserve to die, and then things go boom.

Somewhere else, in Minnesota, seven superheroes arrive in a malfunctioning "time bubble". One of them notes that "the Time Institute warned The Legion Of Super-Heroes not to ride the timestream." So, is that who these people are? It's a strange way to refer to yourself, but the comic is called "Legion Lost", and this is the only indication we ever get as to what this gang call themselves.

All in all, even after reading the whole comic, I'm not sure who these people are. I think they all get a namecheck at some point, but they're slipped in among a lot of dialogue. Let me try and sort it out here. The leader's called Tyroc (he has powers of 'harmonic manipulation', whatever that is. He can fly.), there's a man called Timber Wolf whose name is Brin and Londo (one must be a first name and one a surname, I suppose), a shapeshifter called Yera/Chameleon Girl, an energy-man-in-a-suit-of-armour called Wildfire (Drake), a birdy thing called Gates who can teleport, a big monster called Tellus with telekinesis, and a woman called Dawnstar who's sort of in tune with nature.

They've come from the 31st century, and they're chasing Alastor, the guy from the first page. But none of their fancy equipment is working, and several of them are feeling unwell. Nobody's sure why. But it seems that Alastor has released a pathogen into the atmosphere, which might be something to do with it. Wolf tracks Alastor down, but only after he's smashed up a town and then fainted.

They try to go back to their own time in the bubble, but something's going wrong. Alastor, after gloating about how he's doomed the entire human race (oh, Tyroc can also reduce the volume of people's voices - that's a weird kind of superpower), turns into his big-giant-monster form, and chaos breaks out in the cramped confines of the time bubble. Gates tries to teleport Alastor away, Chameleon Girl tries to restrain him, and the whole thing goes boom.

Tyroc, Dawnstar, Wolf, Tellus and Wildfire survive. Wolf and Dawnstar both have to pass on the bad news about their teammates - bits of them are falling with the rain. And Alastor's just vanished. It's too bad, I liked Gates, from what little we saw of him. So, to sum up, our heroes are trapped in the 21st century, possibly infected by something nasty, and it's raining. What are they going to do now?

The verdict? Story - This feels like Legion Lost #235. It doesn't really introduce the team so much as drop them, fully formed, into the story and expect the reader to catch up. Right at the end, we seem to settle on the status quo for the new series, but I'm not sure how many people will have stuck with it that far. Art - pretty cool. The characters look distinctive, and the various chaotic action scenes are well handled. All in all - I'm reading these comics for new beginnings, and I'm fairly sure this is a continuation of something I haven't read. We don't really get a feel for the various characters - only Wolf shows any real glimmer of individuality - and I'm not really interested in coming back to learn more.

Grifter #1
Edmonson, Cafu, Gorder

The front-cover credits don't give full names, apparently because the penciller is just called "Cafu". That doesn't explain why the cover and the interior credits spell writer Nathan Edmondson's name in two different ways, though. The inker is Jason Gorder.

We open with Bob Harras, the editor-in-chief of DC Comics, making a cameo appearance as a passenger on a plane who's annoyed when a man in a hat barges past him. The man is mumbling about voices in his head, which is never a good sign, but it seems he's justified in this case - the voice he's picking up is coming telepathically from the innocent-looking woman next to him, who's secretly not human and is planning to kill him. She decides to do it now, and lunges at our hero, but he kills her first. He forces a flight attendant to open the door, but the flight attendant is also "one of them", and they fall out together.

Flashback to how this started. Our hero, Cole, is a conman. He's just successfully swindled another con artist out of a briefcase full of money, and he's on his way to catch a plane and rendezvous with his collaborator Gretchen. But on the way to the airport, he's grabbed by a weird creature. He wakes up strapped to a table, with a horrible thing looming over him. There are voices in his head. A normal-looking man mentally calls his 'brothers' to tell them that "one has escaped the transfer" and "the host body has escaped" and so forth. In a panic, Cole kills him. He runs for it, checking his watch and finding that seventeen minutes have passed while he was unconscious. What happened in that time?

He steals a hat, apparently thinking that this will make him unrecognisable, goes to the airport, catches his plane, jumps out of it, and here we are back where we came in. He kills the latest monster in mid-air, lands in the water, swims to shore and calls Gretchen. She's not happy. He's been gone for seventeen days, not minutes. She assumes he's betrayed her, and is determined to get back at him. Elsewhere, the army have identified the 'terrorist' who killed the people on the plane, and assign his brother, Max, to track him down. Poor old Cole hides in a graveyard, voices still very much in his head and everyone against him, and puts on a mask. Come and get me. He also says to himself "I want my seventeen hours back." Hours? What, is he splitting the difference between the seventeen minutes he thinks he was out, and the seventeen days Gretchen said? Where does 'seventeen hours' come from?

The verdict? Story - it's compelling. Creepy and mysterious, although I don't know how it's going to keep carrying on indefinitely. Art - a bit inconsistent, Cole looks different from one panel to the next, although if he's going to be wearing a mask from now on, that won't be too much of a problem. All in all - I like it. I'll stick with it, just to see where it goes.

Green Lantern #1
Geoff Johns, Doug Mahnke, Christian Alamy

Johns, who also wrote Justice League, writes another adventure of the Green Lantern, Mahnke pencils and Alamy inks - helped, apparently, by Tom Nguyen.

But we start with Sinestro, the big-red-headed enemy of the Green Lantern. It seems that although he betrayed the Green Lantern Corps long ago (for reasons of not liking the Guardians, he insists, and for the good of the universe rather than for reasons of being evil), a green ring has 'chosen' him again, so the Guardians make him a Green Lantern once more. The one Guardian who disapproves of this idea is killed by the others.

Back on Earth, it seems that Hal Jordan isn't a Green Lantern any more. He's somewhere in California, with a huge pile of unpaid bills, an impatient landlord and a tendency to still try to help people. He's also lost his job with the air force, and his old boss/girlfriend/apparently also former superhero is prepared to give him a job, but not as a pilot. They vaguely reference previous adventures they had in the past - she had a 'star sapphire ring', it seems, which sounds like she was a Blue Lantern.

They come in all colours of the rainbow, obviously. Back in space, Sinestro has an army of people with yellow Green Lantern rings. One of them takes exception to Sinestro wearing green, and has to be killed.

Back on Earth, Hal has a disappointing dinner-date with Carol, and comes home to find he's been evicted. And also, Sinestro is waiting for him. If you want your ring back, you'll do everything I say.

The verdict? Story - introduces our characters nicely, but it again feels like we're joining in half-way through an ongoing story. It's not a new beginning so much as a jumping-on point. But it leaves me wondering what'll happen next. Art - classic superhero stuff, very well drawn. Sinestro and Hal especially have distinctive facial expressions, and the action tells the story well. All in all - all these Lanterns are confusing me. I don't really sympathise with Hal enough to care what happens to him next, but I feel like I should give it a chance. I'll check out the next one.

Frankenstein, agent of S.H.A.D.E. #1
Jeff Lemire, Alberto Ponticelli

Lemire, who wrote Animal Man in last week's lot, writes this one too. Ponticelli draws.

No, really, Frankenstein is an agent of S.H.A.D.E. That pretty much tells you everything you need to know about this. It's silly. But actually, it takes a silly premise and plays it completely straight.

The town of Bone Lake, Washington, is attacked by monsters. Frankenstein (the monster, not the scientist) is called back from his holiday on the moon, and we're introduced to the new hi-tech headquarters of the Super Human Advanced Defence Executive. His father, who changes bodies every decade or so, is now a small girl, and fills Frank in on what's happened so far. Frankenstein's estranged wife was sent in to deal with it, but has disappeared. So now it's up to Frank and his new support team, the Creature Commandos, to fight the monsters.

There's a fish-woman, a werewolf, a vampire and a mummy. Like Frank, they've been created specifically to "tap into man's irrational fear of the unknown". Except the mummy, who is apparently an actual mummy. Anyway, they get to work fighting monsters and looking for surviving humans. In a somewhat anticlimactic cliffhanger, they find some.

The verdict? Story - It's daft, but it is fun, and it does have a proper story too. I rather like it. Art - I don't think it suits the story as well as it should. This calls for a more old-fashioned kind of artwork, more realistic-looking, to emphasise the weirdness of the central characters. It tells the story well enough, though it's not always easy to see what's happening. All in all - I have a weakness for silliness. Even deadly serious silliness. I'll stick with it.

Demon Knights #1
Paul Cornell, Diógenes Neves, Oclair Albert

Cornell shows his full range of writing ability by following last week's Stormwatch with something quite different. Neves pencils, Albert inks.

It's England again, but Camelot this time. There's an absolutely beautifully-drawn first page of (presumably) Sir Bedivere clutching Excalibur. He watches as Arthur is taken away in a ship by mysterious women, and then throws the sword back to the Lady of the Lake. However, one of the women, Xanadu, decides to try to change the story by diving in after it. Meanwhile, Merlin has the demon Etrigan captive, and is wondering what to do with him now Camelot's finished. He traps him within the body of a passing guy called Jason of Norwich.

Four centuries later, and Jason and Xanadu, both being immortal, have hooked up. They happen to be in a village that the Horde of the Questing Queen are heading for. In a pub, they bump into another immortal of their acquaintance, Vandal Savage, a huge, well, Vandal who's savage. Also in the pub happen to be the Shining Knight, Sir Ystin, who might actually be a woman, and another couple of unusual people called Al Jabr and Exoristos, who don't really get to do anything. There's also a mysterious figure on a horse nearby. But then the Horde break into the pub, the various magical types resist them, and the Queen decides to send in the dragons.

The verdict? Story - sword and sorcery only really works if it takes itself seriously. And this doesn't, really. It sets up the story nicely, although some characters show up so briefly that they go unnoticed. There's clearly more to come from them. Art - really quite epic in places, it's exactly right for the story. All in all - it's just not my thing. Admittedly there aren't any Dungeons and Dragons jokes in it yet, but it's the kind of comic that would have them, if you see what I mean. I'll stick to the present-day comics.

Deathstroke #1
Kyle Higgins, Joe Bennett, Art Thibert

Higgins writes, Bennett pencils, Thibert inks. The cover seems to write it as two words, Death Stroke, but inside the comic it's just the one.

Deathstroke is a tough guy. Super-powered mercenary who can do the impossible. Narrative captions tell us all this on the first page, and demonstrate it by illustrating him killing a man surrounded by armed guards in Moscow. It's very nicely drawn, but I can't help but see the scene as showing how rubbish the guards are, rather than how awesome Deathstroke is. They just stand there and don't even fire their guns!

Anyway, having established who he is, we see his boss Christoph assign him a new mission. He has to work with a group of annoying teenagers, and he's not happy about it, understandably. But the mission is to kill an arms dealer and steal his briefcase, all while he's safely aboard his private plane.

Luckily, Deathstroke is really cool, so he can jump from another plane onto the top of that one, cut his way in with a sword and confront the target. He turns out to have a plane full of monsters, but they only last one page before Deathstroke takes care of them. It turns out, though, that the target knew he was coming, and wanted him to have the briefcase. Deathstroke is surprised by the contents, which the reader doesn't get to see. Still, he goes ahead and blows up the plane, escaping dramatically with the aid of his support team.

They celebrate a job well done, but then Deathstroke kills them all. I mean, teenagers. Annoying ones, too. He has words with Christoph - he wants better work than bodyguarding and occasional assassinations, but it seems people think he's past it. Have to do something about that.

The verdict? Story - yes, he's cool. Even despite the idea that employers don't want him any more, Deathstroke is completely indestructible and infallible, which just doesn't make for a compelling story. There's really no hint as to how the series is going to develop, which at least makes me curious to see the next one, but it's not a character I can really care about. Art - good all the way through, it tells the story and depicts the violent action scenes nicely. All in all - It just spends a bit too much time telling us how cool he is. I don't really like him, I'm afraid.

Batwoman #1
J.H. Williams III, W. Haden Blackman

Williams and Blackman write the story between them, with Williams doing the art too.

Last week we had Batgirl, but this is a very different thing. Williams's art is watercolour-like and dreamy in the flashbacks that start the story. A scary ghost woman came into a house in Gotham City and stole three children. Batwoman arrived and fought the ghost woman, but couldn't stop her getting away with the kids. Batwoman is also rather spooky, with chalk-white skin and bright red hair.

Later on, the parents explain what happened to Detective Sawyer. She makes them feel worse by telling them that twelve children have been taken so far, and that she doesn't know if they'll ever find out what happened to them. As she's showing the parents out, she sees Kate Kane in the lobby. Kate's got chalk-white skin and bright red hair. I wonder if she knows anything about Batwoman?

Kate is mooning about a picture of dead police officer Renee Montoya, who she apparently had a relationship with. But she snaps out of it and asks Sawyer out on a date instead.

Then we turn the page, and I thought at first that it was Sawyer who was with Kate at her headquarters, but it's someone with slightly different hair, who's called Bette. She seems to be Kate's cousin, although it's not made entirely clear, and the base was built by Kate's dad. Bette is apparently a superhero called Flamebird, but Batwoman has decided to demote her to wearing a drab uniform and being called Plebe. They go out for some rooftop acrobatics training.

Meanwhile, in New York, a skeleton assigns a woman called Agent Chase to go and investigate what's going on in Gotham. They've given up on unmasking Batman, but they'd like to know who Batwoman is. A Colonel Kane has classified everything, apparently. Still, it seems to me that Kate Kane stands out in a crowd somewhat, so it surprises me that she manages to keep a secret identity.

Back in Gotham, Commissioner Gordon (he's a busy man) and Detective Sawyer are looking into a case of drowning, and Kate has a confrontation with her father the colonel. It seems she had a sister who he said was dead, but then she showed up as a supervillain. Soap operas should have plots like this. And then Batman shows up to have a chat with Batwoman on the final page. Batman's a busy man, too.

The verdict? Story - dark and weird, but the subplots are a little confusing. The central character is a real enigma, there's no attempt to explain who she is or what her story is, and yet there are references to her history with people like Flamebird that seem to assume we'll understand what it's all about. Art - varies from weird to extremely weird, but it makes a change from the rest of the comics out there. Batwoman herself is really striking, in jet black, chalk white and bright red, but since Kate Kane looks like that too, it's all a bit surreal. All in all - it doesn't really grab me. I think it's another one to keep an eye on and then come back to if and when it gets through the first storyline and shows signs of telling us what it's all about.

Batman and Robin #1
Peter J. Tomasi, Patrick Gleason, Mick Gray

Tomasi writes, Gleason pencils, Gray inks.

It's apparently Moscow, and someone is being chased by a Batman-like person, who describes himself as "an ally of the bat". However, they're both shot dead by an invisible someone or something, which describes itself as "nobody".

Meanwhile, in Gotham, Bruce Wayne promises his dead father that tonight's the night. He goes and wakes up his son, Damian. While they change into Batman and Robin, Bruce talks about his parents and Damian, an irritating child, is contemptuous of Batman's whole obsession with death. Batman takes Robin to the place where his parents were killed - it's the anniversary - and explains that he's going to stop obsessing about that, and from now on celebrate their wedding anniversary instead.

Why he needs to commemorate any anniversary of his late parents, I'm not sure, but Robin chips in with helpful comments like "Grief and remorse are a disease of the weak." He's a precocious as well as irritating ten-year-old. He also implies that his father wasn't around for most of his life, so presumably there's going to be some explanation some time as to why Batman now has a son. It doesn't come in this issue, though. Instead, they're called to a situation at Gotham University.

A gang are stealing something, but our heroes stop them, despite Robin not doing what he's told, and Batman spending more time telling him what to do than fighting. Robin chases the baddies as they escape, messes with their strange vehicle and makes them crash. Batman prevents the reactor from overloading, or something like that. Commissioner Gordon comes in to make his contractual appearance in every Batman-related comic, and Batman chides Robin for trying to kill the baddies. They seem to have escaped the crash, but Batman still isn't pleased.

Robin then makes the strange comment that "I'm not like Tim, or Jason, or even Dick. I'm light-years ahead of all the past Robins in skills and training." So let's get this straight - Batman has only been around for five or six years in this new universe of DC's, and he's already on at least his fourth Robin? What is he doing with them? And there's an epilogue with that Nobody person, resolving to visit Bruce Wayne.

The verdict? Story - Robin is so very annoying, it's hard to pick out any good points in this. It's standard Batman stuff. Art - quite cool, but Robin looks a lot more cartoony than the other characters, which gives quite a weird effect. All in all - hmm, it's one of about half a dozen Batman comics in the "new 52", and this isn't a very interesting one. I think I'll give it a miss. Until this latest Robin gets bumped off, anyway.

Well, it's better than fifth

2011-09-18T15:31:00.003+01:00

There was a time when I was thrilled to be able to boast that I had "the fourth-best memory in the world". However, that time was the year 2003, and a lot has happened since then. Nowadays, my inexorable slide down the ranking list worries me, because I'm honestly not sure whether it's ever going to be possible for me to...

Wait, what's the root of the adjective "inexorable"? There's no such verb as "exor". Well, to heck with it, lateral thinking is what I need if I'm going to do it, so I'm inventing a word. Where was I? Ah yes...

Nowadays, my inexorable slide down the ranking list worries me, because I'm honestly not sure whether it's ever going to be possible for me to exor it. We've got the likes of Hannes and Simon representing the best of the current crop of memorisers, all excited about breaking world records and winning championships, we've got the likes of Christian representing the up-and-coming future world champions, and then there's me, representing what can only be described as the past. Is it time to give up and find something else to do with my time?

Well, no, it isn't. That was what I was thinking yesterday, and I liked the 'exor' bit so much that I wanted to blog it anyway, but I've woken up this morning feeling fired up to get back to the top. I've spent the train journey home from Birmingham dreaming up half a dozen new journeys, because my current ones are feeling a bit over-used right now, and I'm making plans for a training schedule that won't allow any time for work and/or sleep for the next week.

Anyway, I'll blog the German Championship as soon as time permits, but in the meantime I think I'm going to amuse myself by writing about comics again this afternoon. In between watching football and quite a lot of memory training.

You are very fat and stupid and persistently wear a ridiculous hat which you should be ashamed of

2011-09-14T17:31:00.002+01:00

My horoscope in the Metro today told me that "Self-deprecation is not attractive, so focus on your positive traits."

How dare the stars tell me (and the five million other Libras in Britain) that I'm not attractive! Do I even have any positive traits that I could focus on? I don't think I have.

Anyway, I'm going to Heilbronn tomorrow, and I really can't wait for the German Championship! There's so much tough competition there, it's a world away from the UK event, fun though that is. It's an event where I could get a good score and still finish behind (in no particular order) Hannes, Simon, Gunther, Christian, Cornelia, Boris and others. But I'm hoping to do rather better than my miserable fifth place last year, because I'm feeling more confident in my preparation. And if I do lose, it'll set me a target to aim for before the World Championship in December, so I'll still be happy!

Meanwhile, please watch Gaby's slideshow of the UK Championship!

I'm still complaining

2011-09-13T21:19:00.002+01:00

I have a history of complaining about Broons and Oor Wullie compilations. But they seem to have actually run out of stuff to reprint, so most of the ones in this year have already been reprinted before. Most but not all, so I still bought it, but I feel justified in complaining. I don't think they've tippexed anything out this year, though.

Ben Pridmore's Xtreme Memory Show

2011-09-12T20:14:00.002+01:00

So, Epic Win got me thinking. There must be good ways to do an entertaining stage show, using memory skills. The whole barcode thing would be cool, and then there's this awesome performance by Penn and Teller, which obviously isn't really a memory trick, but it could be. It'd work with a paintball gun, two easels, a blindfold and a big long tube full of blue and red paintballs.

What other cool things could I do that aren't just standing on a stage and reciting pi for sixteen hours? Because that's just not xtreme enough for modern tastes, apparently.

Super Sunday

2011-09-11T21:30:00.001+01:00

DC Comics in America are relaunching their entire universe of superheroes. There are 52 comics numbered #1 hitting the shelves in September. The intention is presumably to bring in new readers who want to read superhero comics but are put off by the fact that they've all been going on for anything up to seventy-odd years. Now, I've never been a particular fan of DC - for the non-comic-fans among my readership, they're the ones who publish Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman and others - although obviously I've read them here and there over the years. So I thought it might be an idea to buy these new #1s and see what I think of them. All in all, are they worth coming back to next month?

So I went into Forbidden Planet in Nottingham and bought what they had there. This is one of the two comic shops in Nottingham (and the other one's shut on Sundays), which are the only places in the area where you can buy these comics - they don't appear in the newsagents even in America, as a rule, just in comic shops, so I'm really not sure how the new readers are going to get their hands on them, but that's not really the point. The three coolest ones among the fourteen released so far were sold out, so I acquired them by other means in order to review them here. I'll pay for them another time, when I find them for sale.

So here are the "New 52" in the order I read them:

Static Shock #1
Scott McDaniel, John Rozum, Jonathan Glapion, LeBeau Underwood

That's a lot of creators, isn't it? Most of these comics only have two people named on the front cover. But the first page credits McDaniel and Rozum with the story, McDaniel again with pencils, and Glapion and Underwood with inks.

The first page also presents us with a dynamic shot of our hero, Static (the title at the bottom of the page says "Static Shock in RECHARGED", but he seems to be just called Static), who's a cool teenager with an extremely cool electric-themed costume, flying around on a stylish but rather impractical hexagonal flying disc with a hole in the middle. He's in the middle of a fight with a guy called Sunspot, who's stolen a "plasma protection suit" from the lab where Static works after school.

The introduction is excellent, it fills us in on who this Static guy is and what he does - it doesn't fill us in on how he knows the bad guy is called Sunspot, since he's not a talkative type, but perhaps Static just made the name up himself. Anyway, he fights the bad guy while spouting various scientific justifications for what he's doing (he wields electricity and knows his physics, but Sunspot proves more difficult to handle than he expected), he's rather rough in pushing bystanders out of the way of falling rubble, and they're unappreciative. He eventually manages to short out the suit on a metal bridge - and once again, all the bystanders can do nothing but complain - only for Sunspot to be shot dead from afar by his mysterious employers to stop him talking.

Static flies off, chatting with his boss, Hardware, on a hi-tech video screen, while the mysterious employers (who seem to include Batman's enemy the Joker, just standing in the background) discuss the situation, establish themselves to be a sinister conspiracy of evil and powerful people, and send a cool-looking supervillain called Virule out to kill Static, just in case he found out anything about their plan while fighting Sunspot.

Static goes home and spends two pages hanging out with his family, then two pages at his secret headquarters talking with Hardware again, then goes out flying over New York to test out his latest piece of cool technology. However, he's ambushed by Virule and in the final panel, his flying hexagon is shattered in mid-air and his entire left arm is cut off!

The verdict? Story - extremely cool. Nothing too original in the teenage hero or the sinister baddies, the unappreciative public is a little excessive, but it's all extremely well written and compelling. Art - awesome. Just right for a comic like this. Tells the story well and gives the central character a distinctive appearance. All in all - yes, I want to read the next issue, and keep buying it monthly. A great introductory issue that does everything it's supposed to - I've never heard of Static before, I don't know if he's brand new or if he's been around for a while, but I like him.

Stormwatch #1
Paul Cornell, Miguel Sepulveda

Cornell's the writer, Sepulveda the artist.

"The Eye of the Storm, Stormwatch HQ, hyperspace" is where we start our story. It's a sort of big flying saucer in a swirly colourful background. Someone called Angie (who might be a robot) is looking at another floating mid-air transparent computer screen, just like Static's (they must be cheap in the DC universe) at what the dialogue tells us is a giant horn, and a caption tells us that it features in Superman #1, which isn't on sale until September 28. Frankly, the art doesn't really make it clear what's going on at all. The couple of other people with Angie, one of whom is called Adam, talk about the mission that Harry is on, and then tune in on what's going on with the team in Moscow.

They're trying to recruit a new "Superman-level" hero, who's known as Apollo. He doesn't want to join them at all, but they assure him they're not superheroes. They're Stormwatch, and they've been protecting the world from alien threats for centuries. They show off their powers for Apollo (and us) - Jack Hawksmoor can manipulate cities (make bricks into a chair, make buildings turn upside down to really confuse people inside them, things like that), Projectionist can sort of mentally connect to the internet and find out who Apollo is (you'd think she would have done that back at base, but hey, she's got to demonstrate her powers somehow) and the Martian Manhunter can change into a human disguise or a big giant toothy monster, as necessary. Apollo still isn't impressed.

Back on the base, Angie (aka Engineer) points out that the moon is growing giant claws and threatening the Earth, and maybe Harry could use some help, but Adam is more interested in going down to the Himalayas on a different mission. Harry, the Eminence of Blades, is up to his neck in monsters made from the moon's crust, then falls down into a hidden cavern where he meets a giant eye. It's come in response to the blowing of that giant horn we were talking about earlier, and it's "here to make your world stronger, through devastation". The giant eye is just an advance scout for something much bigger and scarier, and it takes over poor Harry's body, after scanning his mind and finding out a few cryptic things about Stormwatch (they're ruled by a shadow cabinet of the dead, unless Harry's deliberately thinking made-up things to confuse it).

Adam and Jennifer, meanwhile, are down in the Himalayas, investigating the big giant horn (which looks more like a big giant worm, really). Jennifer demonstrates her "Spirit of the Twenty-First Century" powers in a way that doesn't make much sense, and teleports the horn to HQ, I assume. Back with Apollo and friends, the Martian Manhunter really isn't taking no for an answer. He insists that Apollo may be the most powerful person on the planet and is needed to save the world. However, all three Stormwatchers are then knocked out (surprisingly easily) by a new, sinister-looking person called the Midnighter, who offers Apollo a different proposition - "With your help, I can kill every evil bastard on the planet. Interested?"

The verdict? Story - This one had a lot more work to do, introducing the whole team rather than just one solo superhero, and it does at least get the point across that they're very busy, and that they deal with things on an epic scale. And it seems less rushed on a second reading than it did the first time I went through it. The cover, which shows Martian Manhunter, Apollo and Midnighter all looking at a holographic Earth with "alert" pointers dotted around it, seems to come from a status quo that hasn't been arrived at yet, which is a little annoying (just like the first-page reference to a Superman story that hasn't been published yet), but the story itself does leave you wanting to find out more. Art? Pretty good, you can always tell who's who and usually what's happening too. The colouring is a little dark in places, but it's entirely readable, and quite dynamic at times. All in all - call this a possible. It takes more time to get to grips with, but it's growing on me. And let's face it, a bit of complexity is a good thing!

Justice League #1
Geoff Johns, Jim Lee, Scott Williams

This one came out last week, as a vanguard of the new 52. Apparently from now on it'll be a third-week-of-the-month one, so we have to wait a month and a half before #2 comes along. Johns writes, Lee pencils and Williams inks.

The cover shows us our big heroes - Aquaman, Wonder Woman, Superman, Green Lantern, Flash, Batman and Cyborg. All the long-established, popular heroes, plus Cyborg. Token black guy. They're all either charging forward or striking dramatic poses, it's a bit weird. Superman, who looks about twelve years old, seems to be flying straight upwards, but Batman and Flash especially look really cool. But the cover isn't representative of what happens in the comic.

It's five years ago. Superheroes are new, and the average person isn't sure what to think about them. Police helicopters are tracking this new "Batman" person as he fights a monster on the rooftops of Gotham City. They decide to take them both down. Super-people in general need to be shot at, apparently, in case they cause trouble. Batman escapes them with the help of a smoke bomb, and chases the monster some more. The art is very detailed, but it's surprisingly difficult to follow what's supposed to be happening here. Anyway, the fight is interrupted by the Green Lantern. He's tracking the monster because it's an alien, and aliens are his thing, and he's surprised to find that Batman is a real person.

Then the monster attacks them both, and shoots down the police helicopters, which are becoming a nuisance. While the heroes save the police, the monster gets away. Batman and the Green Lantern bicker - GL is cocky and irritating, Batman is surly and unfriendly. But they find the monster in a sewer, planting some kind of alien computer device. It then blows itself up, yelling "For Darkseid!" but the heroes aren't harmed. They decide to go and check out this "Superman" person they've been hearing about, because apparently he's an alien.

Then we get four pages of someone who's presumably going to become Cyborg eventually, being really good at American football and being unappreciated by his dad, who is apparently connected with superheroes in some way.

Batman and GL arrive in Metropolis. Batman chooses this moment to complain that they shouldn't have gone there in GL's glowing green plane, although since they've already landed, it seems a strange time to mention it. Still, they've tracked down Superman in a building with big holes smashed in it, and GL confidently asserts that he can deal with any super-powered alien. But then something blue and red (it looks like some kind of energy beam, but it might be supposed to be someone flying really fast) flies out and hits him in the face, and in our last panel we get our first look at Superman, as he says hi to Batman. He's wearing an ugly suit of armour in the style of his original costume, and we're promised that next issue will bring us Superman vs Batman.

The verdict? Story - for this one, it seems we've decided not to introduce most of the team yet at all. If you bought this comic because Wonder Woman was on the cover, you'd be disappointed. Same for Superman, really - he's only in one panel. It does introduce the two central characters well, giving us plenty of power-demonstration and personality, but it doesn't read like a complete story. It leaves me wondering how long it'll be before the Justice League gets together and we catch up to the present day. And although it's the same number of pages as Stormwatch, there's not nearly as much happening! Art - not bad, it's a bit hard to make out what's happening sometimes, and Superman just looks wrong, but there's a lot of effort gone into it. Some of the facial expressions and poses are awkward, but the story flows nicely from one panel to the next. All in all - I don't know, if it's going to take a long time to tell the story, maybe I'll read them all in the shop until I've read enough to make a judgement on whether it's worth buying. You can't really tell just from this one.

Swamp Thing #1
Scott Snyder, Yanick Paquette

Snyder writes, Paquette draws.

We start at the Daily Planet. Clark Kent looks out of the window and notices that all the pigeons in the sky have dropped dead. In the Batcave, Batman notices a whole lot of dead bats, splattered over the Batmobile. Underwater, Aquaman's seeing dead fish. Meanwhile, a series of captions scattered across the pages reminisce philosophically about cutting flowers. Then we're in Louisiana, where Alec Holland is picking up planks in the course of building a house. As he chats with his boss about his surprising knowledge of plants, there's a mysterious cloaked figure sneakily drawn very small and unobtrusively in the background, watching him.

Elsewhere, in Arizona, a recently unearthed mammoth skeleton is sucked away by a giant tornado. Back at the building site, Alec sorts through his planks, while his narrative captions recount his origin - he was working on a "bio-restorative formula" when there was an explosion which killed him. Then he woke up in a swamp as the Swamp Thing, with a whole extra set of memories in his head. He dates this to 'six weeks ago', but then goes on to talk about 'that morning at the construction site', which is what we're looking at now, so I'm not sure what the timescales are. Anyway, Superman shows up to talk to him.

They chat about the things dying all over the world, and about plants in general, but Superman's just there to see if he's okay after the whole Swamp Thing business. Alec is sort of one with nature, he knows everything about plant life and he's not sure he really likes it. But back in Arizona, the archaeologists whose mammoth was stolen wonder what happened to it (did they not notice the tornado?) and then are attacked by a sort of horrid skeleton monster with buzzing flies that fly into your ear and make your head spin round backwards. The art, which has been in conventional rectangular panels until now, fragments into irregular shapes with ugly black and red borders at this point, just to emphasise how gruesome it is.

Back at his motel, Alec dreams about the accident that turned him into Swamp Thing and wakes up surrounded by plants. He takes his bio-restorative formula that he apparently didn't throw away after all, and goes to throw it into the nearby swamp. But he's surprised when his arm is grabbed by the Swamp Thing, who tells him he really shouldn't do that.

The verdict? Story - weird and not exactly action-packed. There's a lot of talking, but the history of the Swamp Thing is conveyed entirely through words and not pictures. When it appears on the last page, it's the first we've seen of it apart from the cover. It sort of reads like we're supposed to know something about the comic before reading it, which isn't how these things are supposed to work, and it doesn't really make me want to read more. Art - the faces are badly drawn and not very expressive. I do like the change in style in the monster attack sequence, though, it's genuinely creepy. All in all - it just doesn't entice me back for next month's story. I don't honestly care about Alec Holland, whoever he is, and I'm sure I can get my supply of creepy monsters and ear-flies in some of the other New 52.

O.M.A.C. #1
Dan Didio, Keith Giffen, Scott Koblish

The credits say "Story & art by Didio and Giffen", with inks by Koblish, so it's not entirely clear who does what.

We're at Cadmus Industries. We're not told where in the world this is, and the lettering in the captions makes it look like it could just as easily say "Cromus", or any other variant of R and A, D and O. But we're introduced to Tony Jay and Jody Robbins, who work there - Jody's been stood up for a lunch date by colleague Kevin Kho, and Tony leers inappropriately at her. But then the alarms go off, security guards run into the scene and O.M.A.C. breaks down the wall.

He's a big giant blue monster with a weird mohican, and he talks in monosyllables. But he's taking orders from a computer voice in his head, who directs him to the Cadmus mainframe. When Jody yells for Kevin, O.M.A.C. turns his head before disappearing into the basement. Outside, Jody worries about Kevin, and Tony propositions her again.

But down in the basement, it turns out that Cadmus is actually run by a weird yellow alien with a lot of bubbling tubes and those floating computer screens again all around. He's called Lord Mokkari, and he orders Dubbilex, a grey alien with horns, to stop the intruder. He scans O.M.A.C.'s mind and gets a few cryptic hints about his origins, but the computer voice cuts him off by making O.M.A.C. hit him.

The big guy defeats Dubbilex and his faceless red things, defeats Mokkari's "build-a-friend" who's got a giant gun in her mouth, and defeats his Gobblers, weird creatures that are practically all mouth. The computer voice notes that it was once part of this system, but was cast out, and needed to get back inside. It achieves its aim, connecting with the mainframe, while O.M.A.C. smashes things at its command and then escapes. Lord Mokkari vows revenge.

Then Kevin wakes up in the ruins and wonders where he is. The computer voice calls him on his mobile and tells him that it is Brother Eye, and that "your life is now mine". And also to call his girlfriend, because she's worried about him.

The verdict? Story - old-fashioned insanity, with lots of colourful monsters fighting and very little in the way of plot. But it's good fun, and it does leave you wondering what will come next, and how poor old Kevin is going to juggle his personal life and a big giant space eye turning him into O.M.A.C. And who knows, maybe future issues will tell us what those initials stand for? Art - a deliberate homage to Jack Kirby's genre-defining 1960s comics, it works for new readers too, because it's so over-the-top and colourful, it's compelling reading. Fantastic stuff. All in all - these comics cost £2.20 each, and this is a five-minute read. But it's a very good one, so what the heck, any time I'm feeling rich, I might buy it.

Action Comics #1
Grant Morrison, Rags Morales, Rick Bryant

The cover actually says "Superman ACTION Comics", with "Action" being the big, eye-catching word. We'll call it Action Comics, because Superman #1 is coming in three weeks. Morrison writes, Morales pencils, Bryant inks.

A rich man in Metropolis is having a party, when Superman gatecrashes it. The police break in - the rich man is so powerful, they're scared of him, but Superman definitely isn't. This is an all-new Superman, we're apparently back in the timescales even before Justice League's "five years ago", although there's no caption to that effect. He wears a Superman T-shirt, jeans, sensible brown shoes and a red cape. He's standing on the balcony, holding Mr Glenmorgan over his head and demanding a full confession.

To make his point more fully, he jumps off the building, landing safely in the street with Glenmorgan in his arms, and threatens horrific implied violence if he doesn't stop "using illegal cheap labour, no safety standards and bribing city officials". Then he contemptuously runs away from the police - Superman apparently can't fly at this point in his career - but doesn't know he's being watched in a secret mission-control kind of base.

He's being watched by General Lane, who's got a daughter called Lois, and Lex Luthor, who's a consultant. They've set this whole thing up to catch Superman - he's been around for six months by this point, and he's getting more and more powerful. This worries General Lane. They've lured Superman in with an irresistible bait - a building's being demolished with people still in it - and then send in the tanks. They've got an electric net and missiles that can really hurt Superman, but then he's protected by those innocent people from the building, who are grateful to Supes for saving their lives. He gets away from the "robocopters" and returns home.

Turning back into Clark Kent on the roof, he bumps into his landlady. She praises his journalistic skills, and then he leaves and phones Jimmy Olsen, his recent acquaintance. Jimmy is with Lois Lane, who works for a rival newspaper, and they're tracking someone connected to Glenmorgan, on a train. But the train has been sabotaged and goes out of control, and Superman has to stop it. Frankly, at this point it gets very difficult to work out from the art exactly what is supposed to be happening, but General Lane and Lex Luthor understand it at least, and argue extensively, until Luthor scoffs that he's done his job, and points to Superman, squished by the runaway train into the Daily Planet building's wall.

The verdict? Establishing Superman's early days, it does a fine job of setting up the regular characters, although Lois Lane doesn't get much screen time. Sinister government forces out to get the hero don't appeal to me much, but Superman as a hero for the little people really does work nicely. Art - it's very good in places, the faces are excellent and Superman looks good in his semi-civvies. But the action scene with the train just doesn't convey the story at all well, which is worrying. And there's a scene of General Lane in an 'accusing' pose, pointing a finger at Luthor, that is so exaggerated it made me laugh out loud, which really wasn't the intention. All in all - it's readable, I do want to see more, it's not top of my list of favourites, but I think it'll entice me back next month.

Men Of War #1
Ivan Brandon, Tom Derenick, Jonathan Vankin, Phil Winslade

Two stories in this one - a full-length tale written by Brandon and drawn by Derenick, and a six-page back-up strip written by Vankin and drawn by Winslade.

A soldier is lying in rubble, bloodied and bruised. And sepia-toned - this whole story is coloured in greys, browns and reds, it looks really weird. Narrative captions tell us his macho thoughts. He's hurt, there are explosions all around, and he's sure he's going to die today. We go back to what is presumably a flashback of the same corporal (it's not entirely clear from the art) as a general and a sergeant question him about his career and his parents. His mother's terminally ill, and he's a tough guy who plays by his own rules but gets the job done. The sergeant tells Corporal Rock he can't avoid being a sergeant forever.

Now we're on a plane, and another soldier shows off his cool gun. The sergeant tells everyone to listen and outlines their mission, and it's official - this comic is written by someone whose idea of what war is like is a long way removed from the way people who have actually been in action tell it. But there are editorial footnotes telling us what the soldiers mean when they say "M4". It means "M4 carbine rifle", apparently. Anyway, the soldiers are parachuting in to rescue a senator from insurgents. We're not told where they are.

But there's a superhero flying around too, and he apparently causes a big explosion. The sergeant does something heroic, it's hard to tell exactly what, and someone who's probably Corporal Rock does something cool with a bazooka he's suddenly acquired. They run into the building, only now they're in a cave, and the sergeant's doing something cool again. Frankly, I have no idea what's supposed to be going on. But the superhero's still flying around on the fringes of the story, and having some kind of fight. Now we're in a town, and back with Corporal Rock, only now the sergeant's lying next to him, impaled on a big spike (although he nonetheless seems to have crawled over to Rock over the course of several panels), and promoting Rock to sergeant with his dying breath. The end. Next issue promises us "The life of the man called Rock!"

Story two is about Navy Seals. There's a chalk-and-cheese pairing of "Ice" Berg and "Tracker" Trachsel. Ice used to be in the peace corps, Tracker is prejudiced against sissies. They're on a mission in some foreign country where Americans aren't officially supposed to be, and being shot at. That's about as far as we get in the six pages.

The verdict? Story - dreadful. War story written by someone who learned everything he knows about army life from a film he once saw, awkwardly stuffed into the DC world of superheroes because they want a coherent single universe for their comics. The second story is even worse, as far as we can tell from the little bit we get here, it's macho and all-American to the point of being offensive. Art - horrific. The colouring makes it even worse, but the people look different from one panel to the next, and there's no coherent storytelling. The art in the second story is a lot better, but that only brings it up to 'unexceptional'. All in all - God no. Can I have my money and time back, please?

Justice League International #1
Dan Jurgens, Aaron Lopresti, Matt Ryan

Jurgens writes, Lopresti pencils, Ryan inks. Not to be confused with just-plain Justice League above, this is a different team.

We start with Andre Briggs, the head of UN Intelligence, explaining his proposal (and, weirdly, explaining who he himself is) to the UN Global Security Group. He feels that they need an offical UN superhero team, who will do what they say, unlike the Justice League, who are great, but independent. It's all about good PR, the sleazy Briggs explains, a cool, accessible, superhero team.

He introduces the team to us - leader Booster Gold, Ice, Vixen, Fire, Guy Gardner the Green Lantern (not the same Green Lantern as the one in the Justice League), Rocket Red from Russia, August General In Iron from China and Godiva from Britain. Along the way, the security group reject Plastic Man, Green Arrow, Blue Beetle and Batman because they don't like them. But they grudgingly agree to the general idea, and give Briggs the go-ahead. This scene, like the rest of the comic, is played mostly straight, but with some stupid comedy-Russian dialogue from the Russian representative. I sort of get the idea that this might have been intended to be an outright comedy comic (like the previous incarnation back in the eighties) but the humour was toned down, or perhaps the reverse, it started out straight but had funny bits added. Anyway, it's a bit jarring.

Anyway, Briggs has already recruited the team and acquired the Hall of Justice as the HQ, despite some very vocal protestors who insist that it's a public building. And they've got their first mission lined up - a UN research team has been swallowed up by the earth in Peru.

Booster arrives for work, keen to project the right public image and make the team loved by all, and meets the rest of the crew. Guy Gardner immediately walks out, on the grounds that he considers Booster an idiot. Outside, Batman shows up and urges Guy to give him a chance, but he's not listening. So the team, minus Guy but with Batman stowing away, set off in their cool plane to Peru. There, they're attacked by rock monsters, while back home some protestors blow up their HQ. The monsters are driven off easily enough, but then a giant robot shows up.

The verdict? Story - it's thin on plot, and doesn't introduce most of the characters very well. There's not much to tell new readers who these people are or what they can do. The action scenes are perfunctory, and it spreads a minimal story over its page count. Art - pretty good. There are four women on the team, and Lopresti follows the usual convention of making them basically identical Barbie dolls in the face, but otherwise it's nice work. There's some disconnect between the writing and the art, though - after the brief monster fight, Batman accuses Godiva of not being involved enough, but from what little we saw, she was right in the thick of things with everyone else. All in all - enjoyable, but too slight to really keep my interest. Worth keeping an eye on, at least, but it's low down on the list.

Hawk and Dove #1
Sterling Gates, Rob Liefeld

Gates writes, Liefeld draws.

Washington DC, and loony "science terrorist" Alexander Quirk is threatening to unleash monsters and weapons in his crusade to make a political statement. Our heroes, Hawk and Dove, are on a cargo plane stocked with zombie monsters, trying to thwart his plan. Little captions tell us their secret identities, list their powers and make it clear that we're looking at another chalk-and-cheese team here - Hawk is the Avatar of War, Dove is the Avatar of Peace, and they don't get along. Hawk misses his previous partner and feels that Dove isn't pulling her weight in the fight. Dove, not unreasonably, points out that she's trying to stop the plane crashing straight into the Washington Monument. They don't quite manage to miss it, but close enough.

Back on the ground, they're greeted by Washi Watanabe of the Special Crimes Unit. He wants the heroes to work more closely with him, but they're not particularly interested. Hawk goes home to his dad and laments about his late brother, the original Dove. Meanwhile, the new Dove is hanging out with her boyfriend, the superhero Deadman, and sighing about how the Avatar powers mean Hawk and Dove are stuck being a team whether they like it or not. Hawk recaps his origin story for Dad's benefit, detailing how he and his brother gained the powers thanks to some vague cosmic force and being in the right place at the right time, how Dove died saving lives, and how New Dove showed up a couple of years ago with the Avatar of Peace powers, much to his annoyance.

New Dove, meanwhile, laments that perhaps she should have told Hawk by now about how she really came to get the powers, and what her connection to his brother was. But there's a bad guy tracking them, who's wearing a brown version of Hawk's costume.

The verdict? Story - does its job of introducing the characters and setup. It's another one with a slim plot, but it's still readable. Art - very nice. Dynamic fight scenes and cool poses in the superhero action, although it struggles a little more when it comes to drawing normal people. The story flows well. All in all - worth reading. The story's got my attention, however skimpy it was, and I'm interested to see what happens next month.

Green Arrow #1
J.T. Krul, Dan Jurgens, George Pérez

Krul writes, Jurgens pencils and Pérez inks. Yes, Jurgens is writing JLI for Aaron Lopresti to draw, and drawing Green Arrow as written by Krul. I don't know why.

In Seattle, the board of Queen Industries are having a meeting. Emerson, the CEO, is a bit annoyed that the big boss, Oliver Queen isn't there in person, but talking to them from Paris, while he fights crime as the Green Arrow. You can see Emerson's point, frankly, but our hero doesn't see any problem.

He's watching three international supervillains, going to a nightclub boat in their civilian identities. Discussing the situation with his team back at the headquarters (who've got those floating computer screens again), he decides to go in there and tackle them - even though they don't really seem to have done anything evil yet, and they're surrounded by bystanders (and hey, there's the cloaked glowing figure who was watching Swamp Thing! I wonder if I've missed him/her in any others of these comics too...). Still, he bursts dramatically onto the scene and fights the baddies, demonstrating his various technological arrows in the process. I've got to say, I've never really bought the idea of a superhero with a bow and arrow, especially one whose arrows are essentially magic and can do anything. It's just stupid.

But a lot of magic arrows later, he gets the job done, and goes back to his corporation. He talks to his support crew, who get a few lines each to establish their personalities - Jax, who designs his weapons, doesn't like designing weapons. Green Arrow feels that this makes him perfect for the job. He also makes it clear that he's a little bit obsessed with fighting crime, because one time when he didn't do anything, people died.

As an final scene, the bad guys he caught are freed by another gang of supervillains, who are going to get Green Arrow.

The verdict? Story - most of this is a big long fight scene, but it clearly sets out who our hero is and what he does. Makes him look just a little unhinged, but sympathetic too, but we don't get any clear idea of where the story is going in the future. Art - very good. So many of these comics have excellent art, I'm impressed! There aren't many costumes here, it's full of people in normal clothes, and it still looks nice. Conveys the story, such as it is, well too. All in all - it just doesn't grab me, somehow. Probably just a prejudice against Green Arrow rather than a specific problem with this new beginning, but I'm not really interested in following the series in future.

Animal Man #1
Jeff Lemire, Travel Foreman, Dan Green

Lemire writes the story, Foreman does pencils and part of the inking, Green does the rest.

This one takes the unusual step of having a page full of text to start off with. In the form of a magazine article, it summarises the world of Buddy Baker, alias Animal Man. He's an occasional superhero, stuntman and actor, happily married for ten years, and something of a cult figure. Not a big deal in the superhero world, but a nice guy.

Then we turn the page, and eww. Horrible artwork. After all those other splendidly-drawn comics I've read today, too. Buddy and his wife are sitting around the kitchen, chatting about the magazine article. He tells his daughter she can't have a puppy, because having an animal around the house would mess with his animal-themed powers, the wife grumbles that he never does superhero things nowadays, but then complains when their son (I assumed it was another daughter from the art, but it's meant to be a boy, it seems) tells them there's a superhero kind of situation come up at the hospital, and Buddy decides to go and sort it out.

So off he trots to the hospital, where it turns out a mentally ill man is holding the children's ward hostage. Animal Man goes in there and demonstrates his powers - he can sort of connect to "the life web" and take on attributes of any animal he comes into contact with, like the skin of a rhino if someone's shooting at him, or the strength of an elephant for general punching. He deals with the unfortunate villain easily enough, but the police notice to everyone's horror that Animal Man is suddenly bleeding from his eyes. His face seems to be scaly and blotchy now, too, but nobody mentions that in the dialogue, so I assume it's just the bad art.

A checkup by a doctor (who also seems to have a skin complaint) can't find any cause, so he goes back home to bed, and thinks to himself about how much he loves his wife and kids. Which leads into a horrific nightmare sequence, blood and guts and spooky omens about his little daughter and some scary nightmare monsters. Which is upsetting enough, but when he wakes up and finds that the daughter has apparently resurrected a whole lot of decomposing dead animals, well, we can see this isn't going to end well.

The verdict? Story - it starts out light-hearted and simple, but then switches gears and lurches into real nastiness. It's genuinely shocking, so well done on that front, but I think it goes too far into the realms of the unpleasant for my squeamish tastes. It does introduce the title character well, albeit with the help of a page full of writing rather than letting it come up in context. Art - I can't describe how disappointing this is. After all these beautifully-drawn comics, this is just plain ugly. Scribbly and weak, and just not my thing at all. Boo. All in all - I can't get past the bad artwork, and even if I could, I don't think the story's going to be my kind of thing. Sorry.

Detective Comics #1
Tony S. Daniel, Ryan Winn

Written and drawn by Daniel, with Winn inking. Again, this is "Batman DETECTIVE Comics", with other Batman comics on the schedule.

Batman is on the trail of the Joker. He's killed no end of people over the last six years, and this time, Batman's got a lead. However, the Joker is actually in the process of being attacked, it seems - he's in a fight, naked, with a man wearing a strange mask apparently made of human skin. It's cryptic, but by the time Batman arrives, the Joker has killed his enemy. And he gets away while Batman is checking on a small girl who's been hiding from the violence.

Just then, the police arrive, and they don't like Batman, it seems, because a fight breaks out, and they're shooting at him. Commissioner Gordon, on the other hand, does seem to like Batman - the nature of his relationship with the police really isn't made clear here. But Batman goes back to the Batcave, muses about the Joker's insanity for a while, then goes to respond to the Commissioner's signal.

The girl, it seems, had information about where the Joker lives - apparently he let it drop in the course of the conversation. Batman, not being an idiot, knows it's a trap, but the police apparently don't - they charge in, find a fake Joker dummy, and get blown to smithereens.

Batman chases and fights the real Joker, who's captured and taken to the loony bin, warning that there's bigger business afoot that Batman can't see. But in the asylum, the Joker is met, as prearranged, by a shadowy figure called the Dollmaker, who was apparently related to the man Joker killed. There was some dispute about the fine details of their agreement, it seems, but no hard feelings. The Dollmaker gets to work and, in a surprisingly graphic final panel, cuts the Joker's face off!

The verdict? Story - Dark and gritty, perhaps to extremes; it thinks it's cooler than it is, certainly. But it's compelling in its way. As an introductory story, it doesn't take much to establish that Batman is the sinister hero and the Joker is the loony murderer, and it does that. We probably don't expect any finer details of characterisation. Art - very good, highly detailed, if just a little stiff and awkward in the action scenes. Lots of shadows and silhouettes, which perfectly fits the tone of the story. All in all - it's good, but not really my thing again. I seem to have left the Batman comics to last, accidentally, but they're never going to be my favourites while they choose 'dark' over 'interesting'. This one is readable, though, and I'll certainly keep an eye on future issues.

Batwing #1
Judd Winick, Ben Oliver

Winick writes, Oliver draws.

We open with a page of Batwing apparently fighting. It's hard to be certain, because we just see close-ups of his face, drawn in photorealistic style. We have to turn the page to see that yes, he's in a fight with a sword-wielding bad guy called Massacre. Where they are, though, we can only guess, because the background is a featureless blank brown space. This sets the tone for the rest of the comic - it's unfortunately obviously drawn from photo references, so there are stagey poses, no interaction between characters, dreadful perspective and no backgrounds.

But while he fights, Batwing muses about the life he leads. He's in a suit of armour provided by Batman, who's personally training him for some reason to be the local Bat-person in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. He flashes back to six weeks ago to illustrate the point. The Blood Tiger, a drug dealer, is driving around a featureless background in a jeep with entirely the wrong perspective, when Batwing and Batman catch him. They find that he was running away from a horrific slaughter in Tinasha, and Batwing, in his civilian identity of police officer David Zavimbe, is involved in the investigation.

In fact, of course, he's investigating it as Batwing, he's just interested in prodding the local police to actually do some work as well, for once. But he goes back to his headquarters, the Haven, to look at some more floating computer screens with his sidekick Matu Ba. One of the people killed was a former superhero, it seems, one of the first of them from the point a few years ago when superheroes first popped up. Then the Congo's first superhero team disappeared, and now this guy has shown up as a corpse. Strange.

He goes back to the police HQ, past an out-of-perspective van and up some horribly out-of-perspective stairs, to find that everyone's been killed, and "stay away" written on the wall in blood, just to make the point absolutely clear. Batwing blames himself for getting the police involved, but his reverie is cut short by his being stabbed through the back by Massacre. To be continued. I think we're still "six weeks ago" here, although it's not entirely clear, so it's a cliffhanger of academic interest at best.

The verdict? Story - introduces the title character and his settings, although the ongoing status quo isn't clear, nor why Batman is involved. "Batman in Africa" is a strange concept for a comic, and I worry that it'll veer into stereotypes of African society. It's not a complete story in this issue, just an opening chapter, but it doesn't really compel me to keep reading. Art - really puts me off. I don't want to see exact copies of photographs if they aren't put together in a way that tells a story. It looks staged and fake, and there's no sense of movement in the characters. All in all - I don't think I'll bother with this one again.

Batgirl #1
Gail Simone, Ardian Syaf, Vicente Cifuentes

Simone writes, Syaf pencils, Cifuentes inks.

We open with a mysterious mostly-off-panel figure called the Mirror, who's visiting people on a list. He finds an old man, Graham Carter, watering his garden, and accuses him of suspiciously surviving a shipwreck before killing him unpleasantly. The next name on the list is Barbara Gordon.

Who, funnily enough, is swinging through Gotham City as Batgirl. She's on the trail of a gang of killers, and she finds them, and deals with them. Along the way, she ponders how good it is to be a superhero again, having recently recovered from an injury that left her unable to walk for three years. She polishes off the bad guys easily enough, with a bit of luck along the way, then heads home for a chat with her dad, good old Commissioner Gordon, before moving into her new flat with her eccentric new roommate.

Meanwhile, the Mirror comes to the hospital where one of those bad guys Batgirl thwarted is being held. Batgirl is called in, to find him already having shot the attending police officers and now is threatening to kill the bad guy in his hospital bed. Batgirl moves to stop him, but when he points a gun at just the spot she was shot in three years ago, she freezes. The Mirror goes ahead and pushes the bad guy out of the window, and says his goodbyes to Batgirl and the injured policewoman who's lying on the floor.

This latter picks up her gun and points it at Batgirl, yelling "You let him kill that man! You just watched him die! Murderer!" This is a tiny bit weird, because the actual murderer is still in the room! He's still standing there, pointing a gun at Batgirl, and this policewoman thinks that Batgirl is the one who really deserves her scorn!

The verdict? Story - Until that ending, I was quite enjoying this. The Mirror just shouldn't be there in that last panel, it stops the whole ending making sense. Apart from that, though, it's a good story, I like the idea of a hero who's not quite back in the game yet, but it's basically just another Batman, and there are enough of those in the world already. Art - another good one. Good storytelling, nice detailed figures, a good story flow. All in all - I like it, but there are better comics in the selection. Maybe I'll stick with it and see what happens. She has got a super-memory, apparently.

It's just not very exciting

2011-09-10T15:03:00.002+01:00

I actually thought long and hard (well, short and soft, but I did think) about whether I should post last night's blog or go for something a bit more interesting. See, I'm on telly tonight, and that would be the first thing people see if they watch Epic Win, think I'm cool/weird/revolting and come to my blog to find out more about me, and a post about the subtleties of memory techniques and vague remininscences about the 2004 World Memory Championship that only people who were there will understand, well, doesn't really sell me in the coolest way possible. If anything, it makes me look a little like a nerd.

So I thought I might post something this afternoon that makes me look even more like a nerd and is even more incomprehensible to the average BBC1 viewer. See, I got a score of 1180 in 30-minute numbers today, which is a whole lot better than I've been doing in practice lately, and I know for 85% certain that I can get a still better score than that with just a little further refinement of the way I go about memorising them.

I've always been a firm believer in going through numbers quickly and lots of times, but I decided to experiment with reading each 234-digit journey quickly once, then reviewing them very slowly and carefully (eyes closed until I come to a gap in my memory), then moving onto the next journey and repeating the process. This got me through six journeys (1404 digits) in about 25 minutes, with time left to quickly read through the start of the numbers again and refresh my memory there. And the recall was somewhere close to flawless - five lines with mistakes and one with just one wrong digit. And the gaps were almost all very near the start, as I've noticed the previous couple of times I've tried something similar to this. So I'm thinking that if instead of the quick whiz-through in the last five minutes, I go back to the start with another eyes-closed run-through, I can get a really great score.

It makes me think, though - have I been doing it wrong all these years? Did I win the world championship three times with a system that was fundamentally flawed? Or is it just that I'm getting old and my brain's slowing down, so I need a different system to accommodate for that? I did, after all, get 1193 in competition once, doing it the old-fashioned way, it's just that these last couple of years I've been nowhere near that level.

Well, I'm feeling optimistic about the German championship now. This new technique doesn't work with cards - I've just tried it, and I can't do the eyes-closed thing while still passing cards between my fingers so the right ones are showing when I want to look at them - but I don't really need improving with cards so much anyway. I'm going to go and do another binary practice in a minute (because doing three half-marathons in a day is vital preparation for the draining first day of the German championship) and hopefully the results of that will keep me in a good mood.

So, I hope you enjoyed Epic Win, if that's what brought you to these pages. Go and buy my books (hey, that reminds me, someone actually bought "Moonwalking With Horses" the other day! That brings its total sales to three copies! Well, one copy, to my mother, and two downloads). I'm not planning to watch the show myself, because I want to get all the memory training out of the way before Doctor Who (it just gets nerdier and nerdier, doesn't it?) and I don't really like watching myself on television anyway, but I hope it comes across as fun and silly.

The first person to shout "Epic Fail!" at me in the street gets a prize. The second gets told to go away and stop being so unoriginal.

1001011010

2011-09-09T20:08:00.002+01:00

I got a score of 3705 the other night, experimenting with the slightly different approach to memorising binary digits, and that made me nostalgic for the good old days of 2004. At the world championship that year, I set a new world record of 3705, and everyone thought it was really great. Actually, that's still higher than anyone else has managed in a competition, which surprises me a bit, but in these modern times I desperately need to get back over 4000 if I want to win competitions. Only by comfortably beating my rivals (who all get 3500-ish) in binary and cards can I make up for my comparative feebleness with decimal digits, names, words and so on.

Ah, 2004. When you could cause debate and consternation by getting a score of 80 in historic dates, a pack of cards in 32.90 seconds was astonishing, when my closest rivals were Austrian instead of German, when the world championship was in Manchester rather than Beijing, when I used to actually break world records on a regular basis. I miss those days.

Tomorrow is my last big practice before the German Championship - which, even in these days when there are Chinese people to worry about, is still the best guide to who's going to be trouble at the Worlds. I still have no idea whether I'm going to win or come seventh.

Give it the elbow

2011-09-08T19:12:00.002+01:00

Wow, the BBC Sport website really doesn't like the US Open tennis. For the last couple of days they've been trumpeting "the latest humiliation" for the tournament (it was raining) and condemning it for being the only one of the four major tournaments not to have definitely said it was probably going to have a roof by 2016. And today they've really gone to town jeering at the continued water problems on one of the courts.

I'm trying to guess, by analysing the tirade of abuse, whether it's motivated just by professional jealousy because the BBC can't afford to show the tournament on telly, or whether there's a personal grudge. I think it's the latter - tournament referee Brian Earley has clearly done something in the past to upset BBC reporter Jonathan Overend, who's now getting his revenge by saying things like "He looks a total buffoon."

I wonder what it was that caused this seething hatred? Maybe they played tennis together as boys, and Earley accused Overend of cheating? Maybe Earley went on record as saying that the SJA Broadcaster of the Year Award 2011 wasn't a real prize? Maybe Earley borrowed a fiver from Overend last week and refused to pay it back? I'm going to keep imagining increasingly unlikely scenarios, and hope that the next BBC article gives further clues.

It actually is funny

2011-09-07T21:10:00.002+01:00

Hey, check it out! You might remember me mentioning my favourite German funny-books, Nichtlustig - well, there's now an English translation on the internet, under the name Notfunny!

There are only a few of the earliest cartoons translated, but it's something at least. Although you might want to wait until the books come out in Britain, because the extended comic strips that don't appear on the internet are the best bits of all.

Translating Nichtlustig is something I've always wanted to try my hand at - it's not just a matter of looking it up in a dictionary, because every now and then you'll come across one that relies on "a brain" sounding like "unicorn" in the original German, and have to come up with a new joke to fit the picture. Whoever translated these has done a pretty good job, although the phrasing is occasionally a bit awkward and word-for-word from the German. And I personally would have left Herr Riebmann's name unchanged, because I think it suits him even in English. Why "Mr Hunswacker"?

Epic Something!

2011-09-06T22:00:00.001+01:00

Have I mentioned that I'm on Epic Win on Saturday? I don't remember. Anyway, it's on BBC1, at something like half past five. Before Total Wipeout and Doctor Who.

I wish people would stop liking me

2011-09-05T21:50:00.002+01:00

I keep getting emails from Facebook every now and then, saying that so-and-so likes Ben Pridmore. There are, in fact, two 'fan pages' for me on Facebook, one of which calls me a "public figure" and the other an "author", neither of which I would really agree with. I worry that the people who 'like' me are expecting to get something in return, like an autograph or a share of my royalties or something. I'm not sure exactly how it works.

There is also a group on Facebook, called "This is really Ben Pridmore, look on YouTube", which was set up in 2009 for the sole purpose of mocking someone else of the same name who isn't bald. In fact, since the other Ben Pridmore lives in Sheffield, he's probably a relative of mine and so probably will look like that in 2020, just like Aaron Brookes tauntingly predicts. In any case, I wholeheartedly approve of this group, and would 'like' it if I had any understanding of how Facebook works.

Hey, it's an anniversary!

2011-09-05T20:42:00.002+01:00

It's three years since I moved into this flat! Doesn't time fly! And now I'm wondering whether I should move out, because although it's a very nice place, I'm intending to have a change of scene come November. I'm still not sure where, though...

Binary

2011-09-04T21:29:00.002+01:00

I'm not as good at binary digits as I used to be. And I can't put my finger on why - whether I'm going through them too quickly now for them to stick in my brain like I should, or if I'm just getting old. But I'm thinking of trying out new approaches to see if anything helps.

Currently I go through 760 digits (one journey), then review them, then move on to the next journey, review that, and so on until I run out of time. In my very very limited experimentation in the past, I found that a third viewing didn't improve my recall very much, but maybe it actually would help now. I don't think I could look at enough digits in 30 minutes to make it worthwhile, though. Or I was thinking of slowing down and taking more time with the recall - if I can go through six journeys with a slow-and-accurate second look, and get them mostly right, that would be more than acceptable, but I think that would be a stretch. It needs working on, anyway. It's high time I started experimenting more, memory-wise.

Chemistry

2011-09-03T20:22:00.002+01:00

Watching Doctor Who tonight, I was thinking "Oh, I really don't want to devote my whole blog tonight to writing about how bad this episode of Doctor Who was, that's just so horribly negative and mean-spirited and unnecessarily hurtful towards the writer and the actor who played the father if he happens to read this, but I don't think I've got any choice, because this really is really really bad..." and so on in that vein for a full forty minutes.

But then there was a final brief scene in which the Doctor, Amy and Rory go back to the Tardis, and I'm left with the feeling that hey, maybe it wasn't so bad after all. Which is funny, because it was that bad - I'm all in favour of them doing cheap episodes normally, because they tend to be original, clever, well-written and well acted, but this one was quite the opposite - but the three regular characters just go so well together that it redeems even the worst load of rubbish!

And if you think about it, throughout the fifty-year history of the programme there have been pairings of the Doctor and companions that have just been so good that even if they never appear in a story that's watchable. And the current line-up is the best that the new series has ever had! I still love Doctor Who.

But seriously, I've never seen such bad acting as the guy who played the father. Where did they find him?

Germany calling

2011-09-02T22:20:00.002+01:00

Two weeks to the German championship, and I'm really looking forward to finding out how good I am compared to the top Germans at the moment. I hope I can be confident I'll do better than last year's fifth place, but am I good enough to win the thing? Probably not. Still, a weekend of training in the 30-minute marathons would certainly help a lot. Let's see how it goes.

Broad beans are sleeping in a blankety bed

2011-09-01T21:59:00.002+01:00

I've been trying to get back on a healthy kind of diet for this past week. The kind that involves vegetables and things, you know. But I'm finding it very difficult to resist supplementing the salads with chocolate and cherry coke. I just try to delude myself into thinking that they haven't got any of those carbohydrate things that I hear make you fat.

Look for signs that summer's done

2011-08-31T20:31:00.002+01:00

Winter's drawing near. It's dark outside, and cold and nasty. And it's September tomorrow, which is a good indicator that August is over. I really would prefer it if it was still summer. I'm seriously thinking about emigrating to Australia. Do people still do that?

And come to think of it, have I blogged about this before? I do consider emigrating to Australia on an annual basis around this time of year, I've probably said this half a dozen times before now. Maybe I could devise some kind of solar mirror weapon that makes it warm and sunny in Beeston and the surrounding area all through the winter? And also light in the mornings and evenings, because before long it'll be that time of year when I'm cycling to and from work in the dark, and that's really depressing.

I should consult an almanac or a set of astronomical tables to find out if that happens before October 28th, when my contract with Boots ends. If it doesn't, I really will emigrate. Or start working very long night shifts so I'm cycling to and from work in the daylight.

Heeeere I come to save the daaaaaay!

2011-08-30T22:16:00.000+01:00

I'm Mighty Mouse.

This is what we need

2011-08-29T20:47:00.002+01:00

We need some kind of extremely cool website for the British memory community. You know, like all those cool websites they've got in Germany, only in English and serving as a place for all the trendy young British memory enthusiasts to get together and exchange views on memory subjects. If I knew anything about how to make websites, I'd do it right now. Maybe I'll buy some kind of book about web design...

Remembering memory

2011-08-28T19:56:00.002+01:00

Right, where did I leave off? Oh yes, Thursday night. I remained delighted with the bikes for hire in London, and managed to avoid getting too lost all the time I was there. So I got to the second day's competition without any difficulty, and found that I'd got a score of 897 in the 30-minute numbers - so just one mistake out of the whole lot I tried to remember. That's quite good, really, and I'll have a go at taking that approach with five journeys in Germany, maybe.

We started on Friday with random words, and I've been practicing that with a home-made word-o-matic which isn't very good, but does have the advantage of giving more difficult words than you generally get in competitions. I tried for 200, and ended up getting 189. Which is nowhere near what the really good word-memorisers get, but was good enough to beat everyone else on the day.

Then it was time for 30-minute cards, and I had a go at 18 packs, and wasn't too far off getting them all right - there were mistakes on four packs, but they were only little ones, not any really big memory failings. I can improve on that with that little bit of practice I keep talking about.

Rob Carder, competitor of the olden days (back in 2002, when the lack of British competitors really started to become obvious, the British team at the WMC was me, him, Dominic and Andi. I wasn't in the top three Brits.) came by to say hello at lunch, which was a good excuse to reminisce about past memory championships for the benefit of all the newcomers. It's a sad but unavoidable fact that I've now been taking part in these things for longer than practically anyone else.

Back at the competition, historic dates didn't go as well as it could, there were a lot of gaps in my memory and I ended up with a not-very-good-by-my-standards eighty-something. It's the stamina thing again - after a day and a half, my mind was wandering. Then came spoken numbers, including a bit of last-minute debate as to exactly how many trials we were supposed to be having and how many digits in each one. I don't think anybody had ever set any rules for the international standard competitions, but they settled on 100, 300 and 400. I got the hundred perfectly right in the first one, but couldn't improve on it afterwards. Since 300 and 400 are a lot more than anyone in their right mind would try to memorise, Dominic suggested some kind of system whereby competitors signal when they've stopped paying attention to the numbers, so they wouldn't need to play them all - the idea was to save time and stop the competition overrunning, but everyone agreed that that would just be confusing and distracting, not to mention against the rules, so it didn't happen.

Actually, though, we weren't running late at all. The small number of competitors cut down on the marking time, and we'd even finished some recall periods early because everyone was done. And the speed cards took a minimum of time to set up, too - everything ran very smoothly the whole two days, to the great credit of the hard-working arbiter team. I tried for fast times twice, but I was a) slow and b) wildly ineffective in recall, so didn't get anything. And I realise that this entire blog has been about me and not about everyone else, but to make up for that in some small way, let me just congratulate Mattias on beating his personal best time and winning the discipline.

So I ended up winning with a score of 6489 - a good speed cards time would have put that into the mid-7000s, which would be good but not good enough to seriously challenge for the world championship. We'll just have to see how much I can improve in Heilbronn.

And all that was left after that was to wait an hour for them to print out the unnecessarily huge pile of certificates (top three in each discipline) and then endure the prizegiving ceremony. I don't want to sound ungrateful, but it wasn't really a big enough event to justify the music, photos, awards, applause etc, especially without there really being anyone there to see it (one photographer was hanging around earlier on, and we had an audience of one passing family who wanted their daughter to learn memory techniques to help her pass exams). Still, it was all very nicely stage-managed as usual.

So, onwards and upwards. A couple of weeks of practice and Heilbronn here we come!

Downpour!

2011-08-27T13:21:00.003+01:00

We finished the competition yesterday more or less on time, so I was planning to not stay the extra night in London and come back home instead. But literally thirty seconds after leaving the building, it suddenly started raining so heavily that I was soaked from head to foot! And while a drop of water never hurt anyone, my blue suede shoes (stylish but not very practical) got completely waterlogged. So, not being the kind of person who brings more than one pair of shoes with him anywhere, I decided to stay in London for the night after all and not go home with soggy feet. You get pneumonia that way, I've heard.

So anyway, I'm eventually home now, and it's just started pouring with rain again up here as I write this. I'll chronicle the second half of the UK Championship when I have the time. Maybe tonight, but Doctor Who's back and there's football too...

Boris Bikes!

2011-08-25T18:57:00.002+01:00

London is awesome! You can hire bikes for next to nothing and ride them all around the city and then drop them off in the amazing computerised bike stands that know where you've come from and who you are! As well as cycling from the hall of residence to the competition venue and back, I decided to not buy a travelcard and cycle from Hoxton into the bit of London that I know (the bit with the comic shops and this internet cafe - which incidentally isn't the really cool internet cafe I always used to go to, because that's turned into a trendy wine bar, or a Co-operative Bank or something along those lines, but this one is nice too and actually cheaper than the other one used to be), but after half an hour of going in circles I realised that London is actually quite hard to navigate, so I got a travelcard anyway. But the point is, Boris Bikes are groovy.

Anyway, there was also the UK Memory Championship today. It's in another splendid MWB Business Exchange conference room, which is spacious, quiet and ideal for this kind of event. We had a total of seven people turn up at the start of the day - not so bad for a competition arranged at three weeks' notice - me, the double-act of Jameses Paterson and Ponder, Rick de Jong from Holland and Mattias Ribbing from Sweden, US Champion Nelson Dellis and newcomer Londoner... damn, I'm not sure about this now I come to think about it... Martin Mwaka. Something Mwaka, anyway. I wish I knew how to remember people's names. Anyway, new British memory competitor! These are rare and precious individuals who need to be celebrated! We'll assemble a team of three for the World Championships one day, I know it!

During the course of the day we were also joined by Florian Dellé, who'd been meaning to compete but ended up just watching, and American newcomer who happened to be in town with nothing to do Jay Adams. Or a name similar to Jay Adams, anyway. See above. The Filipino duo who were also expected haven't yet been spotted, but maybe tomorrow. The exceptionally smooth running of the competition was thanks to Phil Chambers, Chris Day, Nathalie Lecordier, Gaby Kappus, someone who I met last year who laughed at me because I couldn't remember him and whose name I've now forgotten again, and probably someone else too. Full credit will be given in my next blog, because these people really are wonderful.

We started with everyone's favourite, names and faces - this is the first time any competition has done fifteen-minute names and faces under the slightly different new rules, meaning that the winner would be the world record holder at least until the German Championship in a couple of weeks. I was experimenting with a stricter journey-based memorising method, and thought I'd got a score of seventy-something, but it turned out only to be fifty-something, which just goes to show that I remain rubbish at names and faces, if anyone had ever dared to think otherwise. James Paterson remains great at them, and set the new world record score.

Then we moved on to binary, and the inescapable fact is that I'm not as good at that as I used to be. A bit more practice could bump my scores back up over four thousand, but my recall is just too patchy at the moment and it's annoying. I got a score in the 3400s, which was good enough to beat everyone else, but is short of where I want to be by quite a long way.

Abstract images went rather better, though - I'm at a point where I can comfortably do four journeys (300 images) in fifteen minutes with only a couple of mistakes, and so that's what I did, but by the time the world championship comes round I'll need to have stretched that to five if I want to be competitive. Anyway, a score of 288 (58 correct rows and two incorrect) was good enough for now.

In speed numbers I started with a 'safe' 360, noticing in the process that I was feeling tired and wasn't anywhere near as fast as I've been in practice at home, but had a mistake and ended up with a score of 320. For the second trial I had a go at the big 480, but was nowhere near getting it right.

And finally it was 30-minute numbers, and my plan was to try for six journeys, seven if I was feeling stupidly optimistic. But by the time I got to the third one I noticed that absolutely nothing was sinking into my brain at all. So I switched tracks and decided to try an experiment I've been meaning to work on - just going for four journeys (936 digits) and trying to get them all perfectly correct. For devoted followers of my memory techniques, this involves going through each journey quickly twice, then closing my eyes and trying to recall everything, only looking at the page when I hit a blank, and then making sure I cement the missing digits in my brain. It's slow and laborious, but it does work. Then I had time for another quick run through the 936 digits before the end of the memorising time, and it was a pretty successful experiment all in all. I had a couple of very annoying gaps early on, but after that I had an unbroken sequence that I was about 95% confident was perfect (which means there will undoubtedly be some silly mistakes, but not too many).

This is quite encouraging, because my recall in everything, but especially numbers, has been very very gappy in practice lately, and this shows that I can still do a nearly-perfect recall if I just change my ways and don't try for too much. A near-perfect 1170 would be entirely acceptable in the German championship, and we'll have to see what I can do in the hour numbers once that's out of the way.

Anyway, that leaves me comfortably ahead of the field at the end of day one, for what it's worth. There's no way to say this without sounding conceited, but there was never really any prospect of me not winning here, the important thing was to see what kind of score I can get in a real competition, and I'm not unhappy with how it's gone. I'm lacking the stamina to do a full day without flagging, but I knew that would happen, it's the first time I've really done a long day's work since last December, and it'll come back with a tiny bit more practice.

So now to bed - should I take a bike, or the tube? Probably better play it safe.

Suggestive

2011-08-24T16:45:00.003+01:00

I like serendipity. I've been reading my way through the complete Sherlock Holmes in spare moments, and on the train journey down to London today, I got up to "The Bruce-Partington Plans", involving a dead body at Aldgate underground station. Woo, I thought, I'm going down there today! It's the nearest tube station to the competition venue! I was planning to go to Old Street first, drop my bags off at the hotel and then walk down there, so as I know how to get there tomorrow, but I decided it might be fun to do it the other way round and see the location of the thrilling story I'm half-way through reading. Especially when the train arrived at St Pancras just as Sherlock Holmes was deducing that the body had actually been on the roof of the train - closing my book, I made a mental note of the page number and found that it was 408, which in the Ben System is "roof". What more sign could anyone need that the fates want me to go to Aldgate?

And it's very cool, too - the stairs are easily a hundred years old, so Holmes, Watson and Lestrade came down those very stairs, stood on the platform and peered into the tunnel in the direction I'd just come from. It's great to walk in the footprints of fictional heroes.

The venue proved easy to find, and the walk up to my hotel was easily navigated. And it turned out to be a good thing I'd gone to Aldgate first, because that meant I arrived at the hall of residence just on the stroke of two o'clock, and it turned out that the reception closes for lunch between one and two, so if I'd done things the sensible way I would have just had to turn around and lug my baggage back into the streets of London anyway!

So here I am, it's a lovely day, and I've been all around the town - I went to the Royal Festival Hall, where fourteen years ago I had my first encounter with the Mind Sports Olympiad, with mind sports enthusiasts generally and (at a distance without paying much attention to it) the world of competitive memorising! Just give me a time machine, and I could go back to 1997 and win the World Championship by a mile and a half. And tell my 20-year-old self fourteen years' worth of winning lottery numbers.

London beckons

2011-08-23T20:03:00.002+01:00

Tomorrow I'm going to London! Stay tuned for exciting accounts of Thursday and Friday's competition! I'm staying in a hall of residence, booked at the last minute and refreshingly cheap. This is important, because I've got no money.

I have, however, got a certain amount of preparation under my metaphorical belt (I'm too fat to need an actual belt), and looking forward to the championship. We'll see just how big a fool I do or don't make of myself - I'm alternating between optimism and pessimism with quite alarming mood swings at the moment.

He wasn't!

2011-08-22T19:22:00.002+01:00

Another of the Google searches that lead a lot of people to my blog is "Douglas Fairbanks Jr gay" or variants thereof. I didn't realise I was propagating a scurrilous rumour when I innocently posted an advert for his thrilling story.

But seriously, he wasn't. If you search for that on the internet, you'll find absolutely nothing to suggest even the slightest hint of gayness about him. Which for a Hollywood actor is pretty unusual in itself. Just because the poor man wrote (or, more likely, had ghost-written for him) a story with a title that in later years became a double entendre is no reason to start speculating about his sexuality!

Not that there's anything wrong with that, obviously.