Not to be confused with Llandrover

This year's Welsh Memory Championship was in the village hall in Llanover. I find it impossible to write that name without accidentally sticking a D in there and calling it 'Llandover', which makes Google maps redirect me to Llandovery, which is a different place entirely.

I got there by the unusual but healthy method of taking my bike on the train to Abergavenny and cycling the four-mile distance to the venue. I'd sort of assumed there would be road-signs, but there weren't, so I just relied on memory and knowing I was headed in roughly the right direction. When I saw a sign saying that Upper Llanover was half a mile away, I was pleased, and headed in that direction, only to find that 'Upper' means 'On top of a mountain' (I was hoping for 'to the north, and down a hole'), and when after about a mile of steeply uphill road I came across another sign saying Upper Llanover was half a mile ahead, I turned around and free-wheeled back to the road I was originally on. The real Llanover was about a hundred yards away if I'd kept going without turning off.

Anyway, I got there at about ten past nine (the competition was due to start at nine o'clock prompt), so I wasn't all that late, and found everyone else already there. The venue was perfect for a memory competition - spacious, quiet and with a little side-room for marking papers, plus a kitchen where people made sandwiches for us to have for lunch. The only problem, like the equally awesome venue in Highley, and for that matter the smaller and less-ideal (but still very nice) nature reserve where I held my own competition last year, is that it's quite difficult to get to. A quiet village hall in the middle of a big city would be a perfect location.

We had five competitors, me, rival Welsh memory-masters James Paterson and John Burrows, Joachim Andersson all the way from Sweden and small boy Alexander (whose surname nobody mentioned to me as far as I can remember) all the way from Denmark.

All I can say about my performance is that it was very obvious I hadn't done any training since last year. I couldn't even keep my concentration going for five minutes without my mind wandering, so I had to reduce my expectations sharply. I still won, just barely, but it was very close. James won the War of the Welsh to become the Welsh Champion.

The whole competition ran perfectly smoothly with no hiccups or delays at all! And it's not often you can say that about a memory championship, so kudos again to Dai Griffiths and Phil Chambers for running everything so well!

Now that I'm back in more of a memory-competition mood, I should organise a Cambridge Championship (something I've completely neglected so far this year). But when? The German Championship is at the end of July and the UK in August, so is there time to get one in before then?

And on a related note, would people want to come here for two days rather than one, and have some fun and different events as well as the 'real' competition?

Welsh

When train announcements say "Please mind the gap between the train and the platform", the words "gap", "train", and "platform" are all the same in Welsh. I can practically speak the language already!

Anyway, it was the Welsh Memory Championship today, and to prove how very out of practice I am, it's given me a headache. Memory competitions don't normally do that (they just make me sleep for a week afterwards), so I obviously need more training. I'll write about it tomorrow, but big thanks to Dai, Phil and Nathalie for running a fantastic event!

Memorise!

Can I urge everyone to visit memrise.com? It's the language-learning site cultivated (there's a plant theme to it) by Ed Cooke, the memory master who unlike some memory masters I could name has done something useful with the principles and created an excellent website! I've been using it today to relearn all those Chinese characters I learned last year and forgot about, but you can learn pretty much any language ever invented on there if you really want to.

Learn Esperanto (which is probably available on there, although I haven't checked). I firmly believe that everyone should learn Esperanto, and I fully intend to learn it myself one of these decades.

Also, I have to report that my diet, scoff, chomp, isn't going quite as well, munch, as it might. I haven't got the willpower. I have got a big tube of Pringles and a bottle of cherry coke. What's a memory master to do?

Stagestruck

I'll admit, I quite enjoyed being filmed extensively in Spain the other week. It made me think that I could enjoy a life of being told what to say and do repeatedly. So much so, that I feel the need to get it out of my system by finding something fun on the StarNow website - full of people looking for actors to star in short films, usually with terms along the lines of 'no pay, but it'll look great on your portfolio'. I've been offered a couple of memory-themed things in the past on the promise that it'll be great exposure for me, by people who really don't know me at all. I'll happily work for nothing, people, but please be up-front about it rather than trying to pass it off as a bad thing.

But doing some 'proper' acting would really help with my life's ambition of being an evil scientist in a Japanese monster movie. Or possibly even my other life's ambition of starring in Doctor Who. Actually, there's a student movie in Derby that wants someone to play the Doctor, I definitely should do that!

In other news, I'm on a diet again, officially, starting today. I can feel the weight coming off already. I haven't had a single drop of cherry coke all day!

And in other other news, I think next month I'll do more reviews of DC Comics' New 52 - with six of the 52 reaching their final issues in April, and doubtless another wave of cancellations and new launches to come as soon as the latest batch has had a moment to find its feet, it seems a good time to look retrospectively back on them. Or maybe I'll focus my attention on Marvel Comics instead, which is still focusing on an annual 'event' and launches it next month - Avengers v X-Men. The prequel that came out today has a really very nice Avengers story (and it's not often I say that about anything written by Brian Bendis), but a not-very-good-at-all X-Men story, so my hopes for the big event aren't high...

Legal highs without catnip

I'm really mildly freaked out by these adverts for something you plug in the wall to make your cat more calm and well-adjusted. They started out as Bonfire Night things, but now they're all-year-round behaviour-modification devices. There's just something really totally wrong about the idea, and if I ever own pets, I'll make a point of not buying the things.

Not that I'm going to buy them now because I haven't got pets, you understand. That would be silly, and besides, they probably affect humans too and gradually kill your brain. It's a conspiracy.

I'm in heaven when you smile

I've been singing "Jackie Wilson Said" to myself all day since I heard that Jocky Wilson had died.

Also, it's the day the clocks go forward, so I reset the clock in my living room to show the correct time for the moment - it gradually gains time, so it was ten minutes fast until I fixed it. It's a pretty terrible clock, all in all - I bought it to be an alarm clock but it's much too quiet to wake me up, and also it doesn't keep time at all accurately (I didn't think digital clocks were supposed to do that, but this one does). But its great advantage is that it lights up in pretty colours when you press it, so who cares about these minor problems?

Not off to Germany!

Despite what I said yesterday, I'm not feeling well, so I decided to give the German open a miss. We'll have to wait till next week for the world to see how rubbish I am at memorising things now. I'm sure the North German and US Championships will be fantastic, though!

Off to Germany

Tomorrow I make tracks for Niebüll, where I've never been before - I'm still finding new places to explore in Germany, however many times I go there. But since I haven't done any training for a very long time, I'm not likely to be able to remember anything at all, so don't expect wonders.

The cool thing about this championship is that things are being done in entirely the right way - memorisation on paper followed by recall on computers. Assuming the technology works, it should all be much simpler and quicker!

And they're all made out of ticky-tacky

I've seen some people criticising that advert that uses a version of "Little Boxes" as its jingle to sell mobile phones or whatever it's for (I never remember what adverts are advertising - ad companies really need to work on that), but the advert at least follows the same basic theme as the original song. There are quite a lot of adverts nowadays that take cynical songs and just strip out the cynical parts to make a happy piece of music to illustrate whatever they're selling. My three favourites:

"Smile" by the Supernaturals - an advert for Sky TV or something along those lines, uses the "Smile, smile, smile" chorus to leave viewers with the impression that happy programmes are coming on telly (or whatever the advert's for), but anyone who knows the song will surely just carry on after that and sing "Cause that's all that you've got left, your life's a mess, you've been cut adrift...". For me it just makes me think of the brilliant opening line of that song, "Every silver lining has a cloud!"

"Lucky You" by the Lightning Seeds - used in a Halifax bank advert that cleverly fades the song in and out so you only hear the words "Oh lucky you", and not the immediately preceding "If it's really true..." This one starts with the line "You're lying again, you say you don't but then you do," which is even more appropriate for a bank.

"Happy Ending" by Mika - an advert for shampoo or something similar, which has to be my personal favourite because at the end of the ad they didn't even edit out the backing singers singing "This is the way you left me, I'm not pretending, no hope, no love, no glory, no hap--" before it abruptly cuts off. Did they just choose a piece of music at random and play it in the background?

I've become so cynical these days. I don't know how it started, but it won't go away...

Payments from Lulu

Every month, lulu.com send me a small amount of money from the sales of my book. What surprises me about it is that having sunk to a low of £21.46 a couple of months ago, it's sharply risen again this month, so it's practically as high as it's ever been.

28-Apr-11 £35.52 GBP
31-May-11 £38.56 GBP
29-Jun-11 £48.51 GBP
29-Jul-11 £47.80 GBP
30-Aug-11 £55.22 GBP
29-Sep-11 £39.44 GBP
17-Oct-11 £42.56 GBP
17-Nov-11 £33.49 GBP
14-Dec-11 £26.58 GBP
16-Jan-12 £21.46 GBP
17-Feb-12 £37.64 GBP
16-Mar-12 £47.29 GBP

This is just "How To Be Clever", you understand, the book that I give for free to anyone who wants it, that I warn you is rubbish and that I don't really consider a real book as such. Who's still buying the thing? It's not like I've publicised the book at all.

Still, I'm very grateful to all those buyers (although obviously they don't read this blog, or they would just have emailed me and got a free copy), because that's an extra £474.07, less whatever tax I have to pay on it (it's complicated, it takes money off for American sales and leaves you to pay British tax yourself, I think - I'll work it out by the time tax returns have to be filled in) in my bank account, which is certainly welcome. Maybe next financial year there'll be another memory book to join it? And the kind of book that I just sell to people and don't let them read for nothing! I'll be a millionaire yet! Or a hundredaire, anyway.

Memory Competitions Happening

I'm safely back from Bilbao, having neatly swapped places with the travelling army of Man Utd fans, who I'm sure will love the place. The drawback is that I'll have to watch the game on Channel 5 instead of being there, but the plus is that I'm briefly back in my own bed before jetting off to Germany.

Speaking of, the North German Memory Championship is taking place on Friday 23rd and Saturday 24th March, 2012, in Niebüll. Actually, the North German Championship is happening just on the Saturday and is only open to North Germans, while there's also the Niebüll Open taking place over the two days - Friday's three disciplines are the extra three that turns a "regional standard" competition into a "national standard", and then Saturday's disciplines are simultaneously two different competitions.

It's all a bit confusing, but this is a competition for clever people, after all. Here's the schedule:

Friday March 23rd Start 4:30 pm

- 10 Minutes Cards,
- 15 Minutes Numbers
- Spoken Number

Sat March 24th : 9am-5pm

- Binary 5
- Words 5
- Numbers 5
- Dates
- Abstract
- Names 5
- Speed Cards

My three biggest rivals from Germany will be there, competing in the "Open" even though some or all of them are North German - Simon Reinhard, Johannes Mallow and Christian Schäfer.

(I need to find some comic or cartoon character with a name like "Simon Reinhard", since whenever I think of the other two I think of Marsh Mallow from Baby-Face Finlayson and Schaeffer the sheepdog from The Raccoons.)

I'll be competing there too, I haven't really made that clear yet, but I haven't done any training since last year, so I'm not expecting to do well. Some or all of the events will be done on the new-fangled computerised Memocamp.com, so get practicing! And if you're coming to the Open, let them know quite quickly, since the closing date is tomorrow. I should have mentioned this earlier, really.


At the same time (well, Saturday only, and six hours later), in the lovely Con Edison building in lovely New York, the US Memory Championship is happening. It's too late to register for that, and you needed to be American anyway, but if you're in the area, you can still go along and watch. It's highly recommended!


Then, the weekend after that, on Saturday 31st, it's the Welsh Memory Championship! I, um, don't know who'll be coming, where exactly it is or what the schedule might be - I have a vague idea that it's in a village hall somewhere, but I can't find the details on the internet. Dai will know, ask him. I'll be there, anyway!


That's all your memory competition fun for March, that I know of. Wow, I haven't written about memory for ages, partly because I worry that if I do I'll get another nasty email from the WMSC, but mostly because I just haven't been in a memory kind of mood for a long time now. Maybe that will change now the season's back in full swing...


(Added five minutes later)
Not being entirely satisfied with my coverage of the Welsh Championship, I've now found the details. Please come along!


Saturday, 31 March 2012
09:00 until 18:00
Llanover Village Hall, Tre Elidyr, Llanover, Abergavenny, South Wales. NP7 9HB

One Day National Standard Competition

Schedule

08.45 Meet at Venue
09.00 5 Min Random Words 10 Min Recall
09.30 5 Min Binary 15 Min Recall
10.00 5 Min Names 15 Min Recall
10.30 15 Min Numbers 30 Min Recall
11.30 10 Min Cards 20 Min Recall

12. 30 Lunch

13.30 5 Min Numbers 15 Min Recall
14.00 15 Min Images 30 Min Recall
15.00 5 Min Historic 15 Min Recall
15.30 Spoken 100 5 Min Recall
16.00 Spoken 200 10 Min Recall
16.30 5 Min Cards 5 Min Recall
17.00 5 Min Cards 5 Min Recall

18.00 Get together.

It is traditional to bring you own deck/s ofcards to these events :-)

As this is an open competition foreign competitors may also compete.

The competition is ideal for beginners and FREE to spectators.

Entry Fee £35 English Pounds.

Language translations available on request and age is no barrier.

Gain an Official World Ranking !

Feel free to send me a message should you have any other questions.

My feet hurt

Wow, I don't think I've EVER worked a twelve-hour day before. This is why I've never advanced in my career, obviously - the hot-shot accountants live in the office and only go home when they're off sick with their stress-related illnesses, but I've never been one for that. But this was a lot more fun than an average day in the office, which is a good thing.

Home to England tomorrow - I can't decide whether to go straight home or stay in London and spend the day there. It's nice to have that kind of choice...

I can't speak Spanish!

I'm in the slightly embarrassing position of not knowing any more vocabulary than "no habla espanol", but that's not normally a problem in fast food restaurants, where you can order meals by pointing and sign language and usually get more or less what you asked for.

But for some reason here in Spain I just can't get my head around what country I'm in. I find myself automatically saying "hai" for yes, or "bitte" for please, and I think I lapsed into French today too. Although I'm wearing my "I Am From Space" T-shirt, so people probably expect a language barrier.

Incidentally, that shirt gets more comments and laughs from people on the street than everything else I own put together. I need to wear it more often.

Athletic, Athletic!

I can write about this with impunity - I've just been to a pub in Bilbao with the Spanish crew to watch Man Utd get well and truly trounced by the Athletic Club. Isn't it groovy to have your home-town football team called The Athletic Club? They don't like adding 'Bilbao' after it, apparently, because the whole world should know where the one and only Athletic Club is. Even groovier is that they have a policy of only using Basque players. They're the Yorkshire of football, which is a bit strange since Bilbao is definitely the Wales of Spain, with everything in both Spanish and Basque.

It was a great game, though. Must remember not to cheer so loudly for Bilbao when I'm back in England for the return fixture.

The Ballad of Bilbo Pridmore

Wow, I've got a lot to talk about. It'll have to be another week or so, because I'll spoil the surprise otherwise (not that big a surprise, really, so don't hold your collective breath), but I've spent today being followed around by about twelve Spanish people, and this was just the pre-filming day...

Great place for a holiday, though!

Blue Spanish Eyes

Okay, tomorrow I'm jetting off to Bilbao, at ironically the same time as the football-loving people of Bilbao are coming to Manchester. And then I'm coming back on the 13th, while the football-loving people of Manchester are going to Bilbao. I bet I'll still offend someone who can't afford to go to the game, though.

Footy

I'm going to Spain next Wednesday, almost certainly, on another secret project that I'll tell you about later. My life is full of secret projects lately. This is a pretty cool one, though.

But while I'm still here, let's talk about football. Getting the obvious joke out of the way, can I say I'd do a really great job as the next manager of Chelsea, and they'd only have to pay me half a million pounds or so? I'm not greedy and I've got a couple of weeks with nothing better to do.

Having done with that, this is a great premier league season, isn't it? We've had a lot of good ones lately, but this one looks like going all the way. Man Utd actually have an easier last eleven games than City - they've played all the other big teams, whereas City have to play Chelsea-with-a-new-manager in a couple of weeks, then Arsenal and Newcastle away. The derby match on April 30th really is very likely to be decisive, which is awesome.

Also awesome is the race for the other two Champions League spots. Chelsea and Arsenal both have long, distinguished records of qualifying every year for a long time, but it really doesn't look like they can both overtake Spurs. Arsenal for my money will take it now - they're half-way through a run of four extremely tough games, and they've won the two most difficult ones already. But then there's that new manager aspect, which usually gives teams a boost. There are going to be some really great games the next couple of weeks. Hope I don't miss it all in Spain.

Or Germany. This isn't a secret, I think, but I'm going to Germany on the 23rd for a memory competition, most likely. The North German championships, which will happen at the same time as the US Championships, give or take a time zone difference. Or I could go to America instead, I suppose. Or stay at home and have my own Beeston Memory Championship that only I'm allowed to compete in. I haven't quite decided yet.

Jubilee

Looking at the new othello ratings, I notice not only that mine hasn't tumbled too drastically after last weekend, but also that I've played 492 rated games. I need to do something special for the 500th, like wear a special hat or something.

The average regional has seven games, so maybe it'll be the first game of the regional-after-next, whatever that is - I may or may not be in Oadby, depending whether or not I'm in Spain. I'll tell you about that some time soon.

Giant in the playground!

I've mentioned it before, but you should really be reading The Order of the Stick, the funniest webcomic out there, and also the cleverest and best written.

It recently had a fundraiser on Kickstarter and raised so much money that it broke all the records in the universe, and you can see why - great writing and lots and lots of cool stuff given away to people who donate money.

But look at today's strip, which was one of those that made me think "Oh, wow, that's awesome, why didn't I see that coming?" This is the 842nd strip, and it contains the revelation that the Order's current situation is related to something Vaarsuvius did in strip number 639, which of course he was pushed into doing by the evil and mysterious demons, and now it all makes sense and ties everything together... the whole comic is full of bits like this. And to think it started out with basically just making jokes about the rules of Dungeons and Dragons.

Seriously, go and read it, even if like me you're only vaguely aware of the way the rules of Dungeons and Dragons work. You won't regret it!

Life in the Lubbock

Although there are possibly worse global calamities than me coming last in an othello tournament, it's still deeply upsetting. But on the other hand, I don't think I played particularly badly in all but one of my games (my one against Frederic Auzende is one to forget), and I did win three out of ten, and it really was a very strong field. And I only came last by one Brightwell-quotient tiebreaker point, so that barely counts.

I was responsible for taking people's money, which meant knowing who people were - always a weak point for me - so I took the precaution of asking everyone their name even if I'd met them enough times that I should know who they are. I follow Dogbert's rule of etiquette, that if you don't know someone's name it's probably best not to guess. I did start making an effort to remember what people look like: Mark van Heere, my first opponent, is extremely tall, wears glasses and has a Manchester United tracksuit top, so I figured I'd always recognise him in future unless he changed his clothes, started wearing lenses or shrank. But then I noticed that a whole lot of the players this weekend fell into the 'extremely tall' bracket - it was like living in the land of giants, seriously - so I got despondent about my height and decided not to bother remembering people's names after all.

We were strangely short of British competitors, just me and Imre Leader, but had fifteen foreigners to make up for it. I was pretty unspectacular throughout, but Nicky van den Biggelaar was unstoppable and won in impressive style. Maybe I'll practice some more and do better next year.

1: 11 pts [860] VAN DEN BIGGELAAR Nicky
2: 8 pts [832] KASHIWABARA Takuji
3: 7 pts [822] LEADER Imre
[782] MARCONI Francesco
[755] VAN HEERE Mark
6: 6 pts [794] NICOLET Stephane
[781] AUZENDE Frederic
[775] MORENO Borja
[772] SCHOTTE Tom
10: 5 pts [775] HOBO Roel
[693] AUBROECK Patrick
[684] VAN DEN BERG Erwin
13: 4 pts [658] FRANSEN Martin
[656] SNEEK Marcel
[652] STANZIONE Pierluigi
[614] DE GRAAF Jan C.
[613] PRIDMORE Ben

Nicky won the final against Takuji 2-0, and Francesco beat Imre in the third-place play-off. Congratulations to everyone!

Embiggening the station

How long has it been since I came to Cambridge? There's two new platforms on the railway station and a whole pile of new buildings! I'm pleased that they've carried on with the non-linear numbering of platforms at Cambridge station, where platform 1 turns into platform 4 halfway along its length - the new 7 and 8 are over the tracks from 1/4, in the opposite direction from 5 and 6.

Cambridge beckons

Othello again! I haven't really played properly for ages - the Sheffield regional recently was about the only time in six months at least. But the Cambridge International is always a highlight of the year, and since I didn't go last time for reasons that must have been important but I've forgotten now, it'll be great to spend a weekend flipping discs.

I really must learn how to play the game well, some day. I'll add it to my things-to-do list.

Did you ever see a dozen die?

Gary Friedrich is in the comic-related news lately. With the latest Ghost Rider movie not doing spectacularly well at the box office, the lawsuit he brought against Marvel Comics around the time the previous movie came out has been decided against him. Presumably figuring that he'd got nothing to lose, he claimed that the character of Ghost Rider, which he created, still belonged to him in some way and he was due a pile of money from the movie. Marvel counter-claimed that he'd sold them the rights perfectly legally, decades ago, and indeed that since he's sold autographed Ghost Rider pictures at conventions and things since then, he actually owes them a pile of money. Seventeen thousand dollars, in fact, which since Friedrich is 69 years old, in poor health and penniless, is seen as poor form on Marvel's part by most observers, even though they're presumably not planning to demand the money (which he doesn't have) and probably going to settle it in a friendly way.

But that's mainly by the by here, because it just reminds me of something I've been meaning to write about for a long time - Combat Kelly and the Deadly Dozen. A short-lived, unsuccessful, early-seventies war comic, written by Friedrich and drawn by Dick Ayers. I quite like it for some reason - mainly because of its untapped potential rather than the actual stories it told - and there's very little about it on the internet (the Marvel Wiki actually credits Mike Friedrich, an unrelated but similarly-named writer, with it, but it was actually Gary), so it needs some attention.

War comics were pretty much dead by 1972. Vietnam and the nearly thirty-year timespan since the end of World War II had pretty much killed American kids' interest in stories set in the forties about fighting Germans. Superheroes definitely ruled the roost, and Marvel's last bastion of what was once a thriving industry was Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos, now approaching its hundredth issue. The Howlers actually did rather more fighting than the entire American army did in real life, and all over the world too - the series went on for many years longer than the war! But the powers that be (which in those days were still pretty much Stan Lee calling the shots) decided that there was a chance that another regular series might thrive, and so were born the Deadly Dozen.

The logic seems reasonable - Sgt Fury had been running occasional reprints of old stories in its monthly series for some time, and if they made it a regular every-other-month thing and had the regular creative team of Friedrich and Ayers also produce a new bi-monthly comic in between new Fury stories, there might be a healthy increase in sales overall. And someone had apparently seen the movie "The Dirty Dozen" recently, and so...

Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos #98

Cover-dated May 1972 (that's the off-sale date, it was published a couple of months earlier)

Since #94, the Howlers had been involved in a long continuous story fighting in Germany alongside a couple of American pilots. #95 was an old reprinted issue, but that's still three issues of ongoing plot, which was quite unusual for the comic. Fury was seriously injured, Eric Koenig was captured by Nazis and #97 ended with the team struggling to climb a cliff face under heavy fire.

Rather than continuing the story, however, the Deadly Dozen plotline was conceived between issues, and forced into #98, rather jarringly. So instead of revealing what happened to the Howlers at the end of last month's story, we're confronted with this splash page:

This is followed by a scene of "Dum Dum" Dugan, the muscular, moustachioed second-in-command of the Howlers - alive and well and back at base - being shouted at by Captain Sam Sawyer, the man whose regular job it is to shout abuse at the commandos and send them on missions, all the time thinking what a wonderful bunch of soldiers they really are. He tells Dugan that with Eric captured and Fury unconscious in hospital, he's decided that this would be a good time to reassign him and two other Howlers (movie star Dino Manelli - whose resemblance to Dean Martin was presumably picked up more readily by readers in the sixties and seventies - and comedy Englishman Percy Pinkerton) to an all-new commando squad, the rest composed of criminals. Dugan isn't happy about it, naturally enough, and stomps out. But we're given full details of the Deadly Dozen:




These two pages are separated by the classic Charles Atlas advert, funnily enough. Dum Dum Dugan could definitely beat Charles Atlas in a fight, any day.

Now take a look back at the cover, and you'll notice something interesting. Dugan is getting shot through the bowler hat, as happens to him every month - if only the Germans had aimed a couple of inches lower, they'd have won the war in weeks - but he's accompanied by only eight new characters out of the nine. And who's that with the eyepatch?

Well, the answer actually seems to be Ace Hamilton. When drawn in normal size, the Dozen look nothing like those close-up pictures above - they're drawn as generic comic characters with no distinctive features - so they all wear different hats to tell them apart. Hamilton is the one who wears the helmet, and it seems he was drawn with an eyepatch throughout this issue, but then it was tippexed out in most but not all of the panels. Sometimes you can see a stray line on his face where the strap hasn't been properly erased, when he's standing in the background he's fully eyepatched. This is pretty typical of the behind-the-scenes chaos that typifies the Deadly Dozen.

So where's Snake-Eye Simpson? (Or Snakeye, as it's written in this issue?) Well, that will become a regular question throughout the series. He's in this story, wearing a woolly hat and seen occasionally in the background, but never does anything of interest. He must be a last-minute addition, perhaps when someone decided that the Dozen had to have twelve members. Not that it stayed that way for long, as you'll see.

It's worth mentioning that the weird pale yellow colour of Shigeta's skin was an artistic convention of the time, making Oriental characters look different using the very limited colour palette available in the early days of the comic. It looks awful, I know. The Deadly Dozen are impressively diverse, though, considering that the real-life US Army was still segregated in the forties. This was, I think, the first Marvel comic with two different regular black characters (Sgt Fury was revolutionary in having one, Gabe Jones, so this was the logical next step). On the other hand, Bullseye Miller seems to have been transplanted from the 1970s - everything about his appearance and behaviour in his rare moments in the spotlight looks thirty years later than the time period he's supposed to be living in...

Anyway, once we've been introduced to the new characters in this way, Dugan goes to bed and has a three-page dream telling us what happened between last issue and this one - the remaining pilot died, but everyone else got away safely. We're reminded again that Eric Koenig is missing and that Nick Fury is in hospital, and then Dugan, Manelli and Pinkerton go to meet the rest of the team.

Sawyer promotes Dugan to sergeant, asserting that "we can't have a corporal leading a commando squad!" - which will be quite funny when we see the next story - and then we finally meet the rest of the Deadly Dozen. They have a training session in which they get to demonstrate some basic personality traits.

Hamilton, without eyepatch, seems to have also been wedged into this issue at the last minute - this page is typically weird:



From the art, it looks rather like Dugan is talking to Hillbilly throughout, but the dialogue in the first half seems to have been changed at the last minute to make it a conversation with Hamilton. Note the eyepatch in the first panel, and that the man in the cap at the far right of panel two is Shigeta - he's drawn and coloured like a white man if he's not in close-up. I can't help thinking they made a whole lot of late changes to the lineup of this squad while the comic was being drawn by long-suffering Dick Ayers.

Anyway, Hamilton acts lazy and spoiled, Wagner acts like a hillbilly singer, Laurie Livingston is unwilling to get muddy on the obstacle course (but is thrown in the mud by Dugan, who insists there'll be no sex discrimination in his outfit). Dugan then outshoots Miller on the target range, asserting that Miller's reputation suggests he can do much better than he currently is. Why he's underperforming is never followed up on.

There's then a bare-chested wrestling match between Dugan and Hoss Cosgrove, which Dugan wins and Hamilton and Miller bet on. And then there's a call from the hospital - Fury has woken up. In two panels, the nominal star of this series says hello to his colleagues, who then depart with the Dozen on their first mission. There's only four pages left in the comic, so it has to be quick, but we manage to give everyone a moment to show off their quirks.

First off, Laurie Livingston gives a motivational speech (saying ruddy and bloomin' repeatedly), and then the squad go into action against a raft of German spies who happen to be passing. Miller shoots one in what the dialogue assures us is a non-fatal way, Sample gives another a low blow ("here's a Don Sample original... although it's probably not worth as much as my drawings!" - that's his only character moment, and only line, in this issue), Shigeta defeats another with a karate chop (talking about "self-defense", a craze which started in the sixties, so perhaps he's been transplanted from modern days too), Hillbilly hits a German with his guitar, Laurie beats up another, proving that women can do whatever men can do, Hoss Cosgrove impressively beats up half a dozen Germans at once, spinning them around over his head, Hamilton offers another a pack of cards to pick from before punching him in the face, and Jake Jensen goes to steal one man's wallet before headbutting another with the steel plate in his skull.

The baddies are all beaten and captured, and someone who by a process of elimination must be Snake-Eye Simpson offers to go through their pockets to check for weapons but is told to shut up by Dugan. Then Captain Sawyer shows up to shout at them and secretly think that they're a splendid bunch of soldiers, and that's the end of this debut story.

The letters page, though, tells us to look forward to "Combat Kelly and the Deadly Dozen". But is that the same thrilling twelvesome you've just read about? C'mon - you don't think we'll spoil the surprise here, do you? I honestly don't think they know at this point. Because when the series launches next month, there are lots more changes ahoy...

Combat Kelly and the Deadly Dozen #1

June 1972

Yes, Combat Kelly, and not Dum Dum Dugan. That surely can't have been the intention when they wrote the Sgt Fury comic just a month ago, but that's what we get here. Kelly is a revival of the title character from an old war comic, cancelled long before. And while Sgt Fury #99 reprints another old adventure, our new story for the month is this one.

We start with a splash page of Kelly leading the rest of the Dozen as established in the last issue, minus Dugan - Manelli and Pinkerton, plus the nine new convicts. This is the only time we get to see this incarnation of the Dozen all together, but it leads straight into the story itself. It's very confusing. We get another page of the Dozen attacking a new Nazi jet plane, Combat Kelly losing his cool under fire while Manelli and Pinkerton worry that he's not up to the job. The rest of the squad are featureless blobs in the background.

Then we move into a flashback, which a caption assures us is to the end of Sgt Fury #98 - however, instead of Captain Sawyer showing up personally to greet the commandos, a messenger in a jeep summons Corporal Dugan to go and see him. Yes, he's wearing corporal's stripes again and addressed as such - his promotion is never mentioned again. Hoss Cosgrove grumbles at being bossed around by Manelli and Pinkerton while Dugan is gone, but Shigeta (coloured caucasian throughout this issue rather than that horrible pale yellow) reminds him that it's better than jail.

At HQ, Sawyer shouts abuse at Dugan again but tells him he's done a good job, then shows him the file on Michael "Combat" Kelly - used to be a heavyweight boxer, but recently killed a man with his bare hands (we're not told why) and is now serving a life sentence. Sawyer assigns Dugan back to the Howlers ("Fury will be out of the hospital in a few days now... and with Manelli and Pinkerton in the Dozen, he's gonna need you more than ever!" he says, explaining this weird and sudden change of heart) and invites Kelly into the room. He's got a chance of a pardon if he serves his country well and leads the Deadly Dozen, apparently. He's also a corporal, but it seems that now it's okay for a corporal to lead a commando squad. We're introduced again to the team...

Same artist, but several of them are drawn quite differently this time, aren't they?

I love Sample's line here! It turns him from a common crook into a free-thinking idealist who plays by his own moral code and is quite up-front about how he'll do it again given the chance. This, and the fact that he used to be an officer as established last issue, are never mentioned again, but there's real potential to do a good story with him. Likewise, Snake-Eye Simpson, now that he's drawn as a cool-looking, cigarette-smoking man rather than a tracing of a Jack Kirby face, seems to be showing signs of interesting personality too. I wonder what happened to him? As we'll see - or rather not see - he doesn't appear again, apparently forgotten about completely. Too bad, really. And Hoss Cosgrove's downright refusal to do anything is fun too, albeit rather at odds with his exuberant Nazi-bashing last month.

Kelly takes issue with a woman serving on his team, and Laurie responds with "We need a leader... not a blimey brute with no brains!" 'Blimey' isn't an adjective, you know. She's not really British, I can tell. Not like brolly-carrying Percy Pinkerton, who's as English as they come!

Captain Sawyer intervenes in the argument, telling the two of them they'll have to work together. Interestingly, he remarks in passing that "I'll give you a replacement for Cosgrove - because I don't think he'll work as a team member --"

And that's it for Hoss Cosgrove. He disappears from the story completely from here on in. Why feature him in the first couple of pages if he's not going to appear? Why write him out in the first place? I really don't know what was going on during the production of this series, but this is one of the reasons why I find it so fascinating. Snake-Eye Simpson also doesn't appear after this point, barring one background scene that's probably him, and is never even mentioned again. Likewise, Don Sample disappears for the remainder of this issue except for one panel, but at least he shows up again later down the road.

So we need replacements, I guess - luckily, Kelly knows a couple of people he's planning to recruit, and they get two whole panels to introduce themselves:



Jay Little Bear, as the caption tells us, was a regular character in another now-cancelled Sgt Fury spin-off a couple of years earlier. We're never told how he ended up in prison, how he came to be friends with Combat Kelly or how he's now a commando - Captain Savage was a comic about marines - or given any more detail than this about Doc Watson's crime. Then the new-look squad (seen in silhouette so we can't really tell who's there) are sent off on their mission - to destroy a Nazi jet plane and kidnap the scientist who built it.

As mentioned above, Simpson and Sample play no real part in the mission, and neither does Doc Watson - after his introduction, we don't see him again this month. But I guess they're all there, because Kelly frets that "twelve people are gonna die" if he gets things wrong and the narrator tells us that "two ex-Howlers and eleven convicts" are going on the mission. The "Dozen" now excludes Kelly, it seems. We don't really ever get to see a full Dozen in action as the series progresses - I guess so many characters is just too many to juggle in one comic.

The others get their moments, though - Manelli and Pinkerton complain to Sawyer about following a criminal's orders, but he shouts at them and sends them back into action.

In Germany, Bullseye Miller guns down a lot of Germans (unlike last issue, where for some reason they were under orders to take everyone alive, killing Nazis is okay again now) and the ex-Howlers pitch in too. Percy throws his trusty brolly at one. A survivor is pressed into service to lead them to the plane. Kelly is drawn in one panel with no fringe, just a balding head - he looks actually like he might be Cosgrove, coloured wrong, but it's hard to tell.

But the shining moment goes to Ace Hamilton. Sneaking up on a guard, he thinks to himself "Man, I can't wait to feel his neck break in my hands!", laying the groundwork for the sadism that will go on to define him later. There's been no mention of it before now, but it's his personality from here on out! Meanwhile, Little Bear shoots a guard with his bow and arrow (no, really), Jensen and Shigeta remind us briefly that they exist and assert that they're not inferior to the master race, while Miller disables the alarm. Then Hillbilly Wagner distracts the Germans by singing folk songs over the PA system (again, really, this is how the Americans fought the war, apparently) and a bit more fighting ensues.

But then Ace Hamilton finds the scientist, who surrenders, but Ace kills him anyway for the fun of it, laughing heartily. Little Bear suspects he wasn't firing in self-defence like he claims, but can't prove anything at the moment. Then all that's left is to destroy the plane, run for it, and give Laurie her turn in the spotlight, proving again that a woman can fight and arguing with the chauvinist Kelly. Yes, she says 'chauvinist', another very seventies expression. And so our heroes escape back to base!

In Ace Hamilton's personality shift, we really get something different in this comic - he's one of the very few Dozen members who consistently gets a personality, and it's an interesting one. On the one hand, we're supposed to disapprove of his cold-blooded killing, but on the other hand he's a really awesome bastard. And his ideological conflict with Jay Little Bear gives us a fascinating subplot to follow as the series progresses.

Of course, it'll be a long, long time before we get back to it...

Combat Kelly and the Deadly Dozen #2

August 1972



Sgt Fury #100 was a special celebration story, set in the present day, in which the Howlers (including Manelli and Pinkerton) get together at the Marvel Comics office to celebrate a hundred issues. The creative team also appear - Nick Fury observes that Gary Friedrich looks like a blasted hippy, and indeed he's drawn with long hair, groovy moustache and big peace-sign medallion. Seeing him in modern photos, he doesn't look a bit like that, and I feel quite cheated. #101 was another reprint - I guess Fury needed a lot of recovery time.

Meanwhile, this issue of "the Deadly Dozen" is a bit different. Kelly, Little Bear, Manelli and Pinkerton tunnel into a German prison camp to rescue three brave native Americans and a bunch of more apathetic white prisoners. A later letters page prints a letter asking why they didn't just go back through the tunnel with the prisoners - the answer is that they were worried it might collapse, but that's not mentioned here - so they blow their way out and have to run for cover. The brave Indians sacrifice their lives so that the others might escape. However, back home, Captain Sawyer refuses to give them the medal of honour, saying that all three were accused of cowardice before they were captured, and the best he can do is stop their families finding out about it.

Jay Little Bear is left to soliloquise "They kill off our race, let those who remain starve, then ask us to fight for them! And when three of us show great courage, they refuse to acknowledge it. Still we remain proud, and we will continue to remain proud - but for how long!? How long...?"

So, to sum up, all the new characters don't appear in this issue at all - the four established ones take part in a story about American Indians. Which is very noble, but it's clearly not what the readers of this war comic were expecting, judging by the letters pages, and it really slows down the plot of this bi-monthly comic to have most of the stars not showing up in this one. And there's more to come...

Combat Kelly and the Deadly Dozen #3

October 1972

Sgt Fury #102 returned at last to the war, and featured the only Sgt Fury comic without Dino Manelli or Percy Pinkerton, with a mission for the recovered Nick Fury and his depleted squad of Howlers. It also printed a letter listing the many spectacular failures that had attempted to use the "Dirty Dozen" concept since the movie came out a few years previously, which got a reply assuring us that Combat Kelly would be very different and not consist of 'tired old war stories' like those other examples. #103 goes back to reprints again.

Meanwhile, Combat Kelly #3 once again uses the convict concept by ignoring them completely, presenting us instead with the story we apparently demanded, "the origin of Combat Kelly!"

As a framing sequence, we're told it's January 1945, after the Battle of the Bulge - I guess they weren't planning on this series going on much longer, because the war's almost over! - and the Dozen and a bunch of other soldiers are running for cover in snowy wilderness. Manelli and Pinkerton are the only ones definitely identifiable, but there are brief lines given to characters who might be Hillbilly and Ace as the squad ask Kelly to tell his origin.

And so he does - back in 1940, it seems he was already in the army, but also a boxer in the army championship. He kills an opponent who has been drugged, but is released to fight the German champion, because he's the only American who can possibly beat him.

However, the German is a nasty piece of work, and his thugs beat up Kelly before the fight and break his ribs. Nonetheless, Kelly bravely fights anyway, and wins. Yay. Back in the war, he observes that the charges against him were dropped, although he was forbidden to box again, then at a later date "I got in trouble, and was convicted of manslaughter! Now that's where my real beef with the army comes in, and believe me, I've got one!"

So we don't even get the story of Kelly's manslaughter conviction, now or ever in the future! He's about to tell the story, when the Germans attack again, and they have to run for it. We're told that it'll be continued in Sgt Fury #104!

This is a weird series, isn't it? There are characters with potential to be interesting in a way that war comics hadn't done before, and instead we get a standard boxing story? Once again, the Deadly Dozen aren't in it at all - were the creators stalling for time or something, trying to agree on how to do something with this series?

Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos #104

November 1972

Crossover excitement! This is the normal marketing strategy - promote the new comic with another appearance in the parent title, then move the second part of the story over to the new one. It doesn't necessarily mean that the Deadly Dozen was doing badly in sales at this point.

Continuing from last issue of CK and the DD, our heroes have joined up with a new officer, Captain Conner, an untested captain who's coasting on his father's record, and the troops are worried he's not up to the job. Dino Manelli calls his old friends in the Howlers for reinforcements. Nick Fury persuades the general in charge that this would be a good idea, overruling Conner much to the latter's annoyance, and they set forth to turn the tide of the battle.

Interestingly, Eric Koenig is back with the Howling Commandos, without explanation. There seems to be a bit of uncertainty as to who he is - his name is never mentioned and his hair is often the wrong colour, but it can't be anyone else. And from the next new Sgt Fury story, he's a member of the team again. Must have escaped the Germans in an adventure too boring to include in the series.

Of course, the real explanation is that with reprints every other month, the creators (Roy Thomas has taken over as editor by this point, with Stan Lee moved upstairs) must have worried that readers were confused. With Eric, Dino and Percy among the Howling Commandos in odd-numbered issues - reprinted from old stories without any explanation that they weren't new - it doesn't make sense to have them absent in new material in the even-numbered stories. This also has to be why Manelli and Pinkerton return to the Howlers after this story. The crossover would be a good time to put in a line or two of dialogue explaining that this has happened, but they don't.

And so the Howlers join forces with the Dozen and fight off the German tanks. There's reunions all round - Shigeta, Miller and Little Bear get a line each, just to justify the 'guest starring the Deadly Dozen' label - and then Fury has a falling-out with Conner and is sent out on a suicidal scouting mission. Manelli and Pinkerton join up with the Howlers for it, and they come back to report to Kelly and Conner that a huge enemy army is approaching. This makes Conner crack up completely, at the worst possible time.

This, unlike the Deadly Dozen comics, is classic war story from Gary Friedrich - complete with healthy disdain for the officer class and a general distaste for war itself. Again, there's very little contribution from those new characters created for the series, so I can only assume the intention is to force Fury fans to buy the next issue and make them like the new characters then...

Combat Kelly and the Deadly Dozen #4

December 1972



Continuing straight on, our heroes are facing imminent death, and their officer has gone barmy. Fury takes charge and sends Miller and Wagner to escort Conner back to HQ. Jensen (with his skin coloured pink), Sample (hey, Don Sample's still alive!) and someone who's probably Ace Hamilton get a line each, tensely waiting as Fury enacts his plan to wait until the last possible moment, make the Germans think they've gone, and then strike suddenly with everything they've got.

It works quite spectacularly, giving Jay Little Bear a chance to get in a stereotypical remark about taking scalps back to the reservation. Meanwhile, Hillbilly, Bullseye and Conner are caught by a sniper who's got through the American lines. Hillbilly Wagner is killed stone dead and Bullseye Miller seriously wounded, but Captain Conner is still alive, albeit more unhinged than ever. He vows to get back to the battle and teach those traitors Fury and Kelly a lesson.

Fury calls his army off when the Germans are in full retreat, and we get a full and extensive look at the horrors of war on the battlefield - something we don't normally get in war comics. Then Conner shows up, insisting on executing the traitors who tried to mutiny against him, until he's shot in the back by Miller, who's followed him all this way before dying himself.

At Fury's insistence, they don't tell the general what happened, leaving him to believe Conner was the hero who masterminded the victory, but they pay tribute to Hillbilly and Bullseye, saying "get on with the war - and to HELL with heroes!"

Saying 'hell' in comics was frowned upon in America at the time, so it seems even more emphatic if you take it in context. This is a good one, Friedrich combining his hippy ideals with battle action in a way that goes further than his usual Sgt Fury stories.

So we say goodbye to four of the Dozen - Miller and Wagner are dead (a letter in a later comic points out that Hillbilly is alive again in Sgt Fury #105, and the editor apologises for the mistake, but that comic is a reprint of a much older story - the letter writer is confusing Hillbilly with Howling Commando Reb Ralston, who looks and sounds very similar and is occasionally called 'Hillbilly'), and Manelli and Pinkerton, we can only assume, return to the Howlers after this story - they're not seen or mentioned in the Deadly Dozen comic again. But, after a lengthy period when they don't appear in their own comic, in two months' time we get a story featuring our heroes!

Combat Kelly and his Deadly Dozen #5

February 1973

The title undergoes a subtle change this issue - from "Combat Kelly and the DEADLY DOZEN" to "COMBAT KELLY and his Deadly Dozen", with the Dozen name now in much tinier letters. Coupled with the cover highlighting Kelly in a big way, you'd think the emphasis of the comic had shifted away from the commando unit to its leader, but actually it's the opposite - despite the cover, Kelly barely features in this story, and certainly doesn't appear in the scene shown here!

In fact, after two and a half pages of the Dozen running an obstacle course under the orders of a tough sergeant - Little Bear and Kelly are the only ones who we see, the former getting his bow and arrow (yes, he still carries it around with him) caught on barbed wire - Kelly bows out of the main action for once. Then Laurie Livingstone shows up for the first time in ages, reminding Shigeta and Doc Watson that it's time for their date. Why she isn't involved in the obstacle course isn't revealed, but maybe it's her day off.

Hilariously, Kelly assumes the 'date' is a romantic liaison between Laurie and Howard, and wonders "but why drag the old Doc along on their date?!" I dread to think what he's imagining, to be honest. But he shrugs it off, and the three of them go off to a pub, where Laurie observes that it's the first ruddy chance they've had to talk since they were reunited in the Dozen.

This is a bit strange, really - the three of them have barely been seen, especially Doc Watson, who was in two panels of #1 and never showed up again, so you'd think they would have found a moment before now to have a quick chat. Shigeta, sadly, is drawn with slitty eyes and coloured that horrible pale yellow throughout - his sparse cameos in the previous four issues have coloured him like the white characters, and not really shown him with obviously Japanese features. Strangely, it's the same artist as always, Dick Ayers. Doc Watson, too, doesn't look much like he did in his one brief previous appearance.

The three of them chat about their first meeting - kidnapped by German spies in London, they are shipped to the prison on Devil's Island, and become friends along the way. They're all a bit mystified as to why they're there, all being civilians with no government connection, and the reason why Shigeta and Watson are kidnapped is never revealed (perhaps they were just in the wrong place at the wrong time, although I'm not sure what kind of parallel universe we're in when German spies wander the streets of London and kidnap people at will).

Laurie, though, is informed by evil Major Strasser that they have her father, whom she's never met, a prisoner, and she will persuade him to spill British government secrets. Meanwhile, an evil sergeant bullies and tortures Shigeta and Watson. But eventually, the three of them enact a plan to escape, Strasser is killed by the evil sergeant, who in turn is killed by Laurie - the first time she's ever killed anyone. Strangely, her father goes unmentioned after that one line.

Back in the pub, Kelly and the sergeant show up and offer to buy the three a drink, but they take the view that they've had enough sergeants for one day, and leave.

So that's that - a pretty conventional story, but at least it reminds us that three of the Dozen still exist and have stories to tell. I suppose we could have built on that if the series had lasted a bit longer. Maybe we'd even have got an explanation as to how these people ended up back together in the Deadly Dozen, because it's a pretty wild coincidence - they all were assigned there separately after committing individual crimes, after all. Still, we're back on track now, and from here on out it's actual stories featuring Combat Kelly and the Deadly Dozen!

Combat Kelly and his Deadly Dozen #6

April 1973

Just like the cover shows, we start with Combat Kelly leading an army to attack a fortress. He's accompanied by people who later in the issue are revealed to be Little Bear, "Johnson", Hamilton and Sample, but it's honestly not possible to tell from the art. Sample's characteristic moustache is shorter and more normal-looking than before and he's now wearing a red beret, Hamilton is drawn throughout this issue with black hair instead of his previous brown, and as for "Johnson", as he's repeatedly addressed throughout, he's either Doc Watson, or Jake Jensen coloured wrong, or an all-new character. It's impossible to tell.

You can recognise Jay Little Bear from the mohawk, at least.

The attack doesn't go well, the fortress is impenetrable, and they exchange views with the regular soldiers that their pilot has lost his nerve again and done a runner. Then we go on flashback to a USO dance, where Kelly and Laurie do something about the sexual tension that's supposedly been between them all along - although they haven't spoken since #1, so it comes as a bit out of the blue - and dance. Perhaps to flatter Kelly, she calls him "sergeant" several times, although he's still wearing his corporal's stripes.

But before they can kiss, they're interrupted by Captain Sawyer, who orders everyone back to barracks and tells Kelly to come with him. Ace Hamilton reminds us of his love of gambling, and how it's surpassed only by his love of killing krauts. Yes, that storyline hasn't been forgotten after all this time!

Meanwhile, Kelly is introduced to Jack "Mad Dog" Martin, amazing pilot who lost his nerve in the middle of battle, but has now been assigned to the Deadly Dozen. Kelly doesn't want to work with him, but Captain Sawyer is insistent. And when they return to the barracks, Hamilton picks a fight, but Martin - a small man - stands up for himself fiercely. Kelly orders Hamilton, Little Bear, Sample and Johnson (whoever he is) to get ready and come with him on the mission.

Strangely, the barracks is full of nondescript white men - are they members of the Dozen too? Have there been more recruits to replace the casualties and keep the name numerically accurate? There is an unidentified man who whines "Aww, sarge, can't you talk to 'im?" at the dance - it might even be the rarely spotted Snake-Eye Simpson, although by this stage I think it could be anyone. And yes, everyone's calling Kelly "sarge" now - it persists throughout the issue.

Off they fly, and Don Sample uses his photographic memory to examine the fortress from above, planning to analyse his blueprints in detail once he's got it down on paper. And yes, apparently Sample's got a photographic memory. Not been mentioned before this moment, but it comes in useful here. Meanwhile, Ace has fun shooting down planes, and is aiming for an ejected pilot when Little Bear punches him in the face, annoyed by his bloodthirsty attitude. Being Jay Little Bear, he phrases it as "I thought we'd seen the last of your kind at Wounded Knee!"

The five members of the Dozen then parachute out, leaving Martin to avoid the German fighter planes, spot the weak point in the fortress and come back for the others. Or will he lose his nerve again and fly away?

After our heroes have a little character moment each - Hamilton exults about the joy of fighting and killing, Sample laments that his photographic memory and amazing draftsman skills are being put to use shooting things and Johnson, whoever he is, thinks he must be nuts for giving up his nice safe cell for this - Mad Dog Martin returns and crashes his plane into the fortress, giving the soldiers their chance to break in. The others admire his sacrifice, but then it turns out he ejected in time and is just fine. The six commandos leave the soldiers to it and go on their way, welcoming Martin to the Dozen. "I ain't said I'd join... yet!" he quips. Actually, it seems to turn out he didn't join after all, because after they return home in the next issue, we don't see him again!

Combat Kelly and his Deadly Dozen #7

June 1973

Now this is a classic. The moment where the series really comes together, as highlighted by the new slogan "the war-mag for people who hate war!"

Our heroes are returning home from the last story, annoyed that they have to walk a long way back to their rendezvous and the army can't spare them a jeep to take them. Technically, "Johnson" should be with them, but apart from one early picture showing six figures walking from behind, he's entirely absent from this story. Maybe he died. So our lineup here is Kelly, Hamilton, Little Bear, Sample and Martin. Ace and Jay continue their fight, until Kelly forces them to keep away from each other.

Meanwhile, four Germans have been trapped behind the lines, and take shelter in a house owned by a nun, with four children of varying ages. Sister Angelique is a very forceful pacifist, and she makes the Germans go and wash their hands before inviting them to dinner. They agree - they're stuck behind enemy lines and with nowhere to go, and there's no sense in fighting for the sake of it. Impressively, they have individual personalities (if not names) and all feel that Sister Angelique is right in her views.

Then the Americans arrive, and the increasingly unhinged Ace Hamilton wants to shoot all the unarmed Germans dead, until Jay manages to stop him. And he's not keen on the nun and kids collaborating with the enemy either. Nonetheless, Sister Angelique manages to persuade the two sides to sleep without fighting each other, and night falls.

Kelly goes out for a smoke, and meets the German leader, who's in reflective mood and has been tired of fighting for a long time. But when you're in the army, what can you do but follow orders? However, Ace Hamilton has got his trusty knife and plans to kill all the Germans in their sleep. He's beaten to the punch, though, by a German who figures if he's going to be locked up without women for the rest of the war, this would be a good time to have his way with the oldest girl. It all turns into a mass brawl, until Sister Angelique comes along with a rifle. She orders the soldiers out of the house, and they leave, the Dozen with their prisoners.

It's a really beautiful story, properly exploring all the different points of view. It's very properly clever, and if you're going to read one of the wildly inconsistent nine-issue series, I'd recommend this one. And now we move on to the final act...

Combat Kelly and his Deadly Dozen #8

August 1973



Well, the end is nigh - writer Gary Friedrich obviously knew the series was being cancelled by now, so it's high time we got Kelly and Laurie together. Or Laura, as she's called throughout this issue.

The Dozen are on a training exercise scuba-diving, when Laurie gets her foot caught in a net. Annoyed with herself and fearing Kelly will be angry with her, she tries to get loose herself before he can rescue her, and just makes things worse. Kelly's annoyed all right, but back on the surface he finds himself taking the blame for the delay.

The Dozen are, once again, composed of a lot of nondescript white men. They really must have been recruiting, but the new bugs are gone by next issue! Kelly invites "Laura" out to the movies, and they see Humphrey Bogart, and eventually kiss. But then it's time to go on their next mission again - Kelly doesn't want Laura to go, but Captain Sawyer points out that she's an integral part of the plan.

And so they set off. The dinghy they're in seems to contain sixteen people, and only one sailor remains behind after everyone's jumped out. Who are these extras? And where do they go to after this issue? But they're going to bring down evil Doctor Sweikert, who's performing nasty medical experiments, and is expecting a high-ranking Dr Lola Steimle to visit. The plan is for Laurie to impersonate her and infiltrate the hospital.

The squad get up to the beach and successfully carry out the plan. Jay Little Bear gets a brief moment to himself, but otherwise it's very much Kelly and Laurie's story. She doesn't remotely resemble Dr Steimle, but they carry on anyway in hope that nobody's seen her before. It doesn't work, the Germans have a photo, and both Kelly and Laurie are captured.

After last issue's heights, we're back to a more by-the-numbers war story, although Dr Sweikert is genuinely scary, and his experiments are nasty. But this is setup for our final issue slaughter...

Combat Kelly and his Deadly Dozen #9

October 1973



And now all that's left is to kill everyone. Well, it had been long established that Sgt Fury and his team would survive the war, so it's only fair to bump off the Deadly Dozen, right? Or maybe the decline in popularity of war comics had put everyone in a bad mood. Anyway, this issue is death to everyone!

Or at least, everyone who shows up. The remaining members of the Dozen are clearly identified - Doc Watson, Jake Jensen, Howard Shigeta, Don Sample, Ace Hamilton and Jay Little Bear. They've been waiting for some sign from Kelly and Laurie, it hasn't come, and now they're moving in to rescue them.

So, Snake-Eye Simpson has definitely gone AWOL. So has Mad Dog Martin, for that matter. And Hoss Cosgrove? Doesn't he want to join his old friends for one last fight? Not a mention of any of them. Or of Dino Manelli and Percy Pinkerton, who are safely back with the Howlers.

They make what it has to be said is a pretty poor job of breaking in - Doc Watson, with his very limited grasp of German, is sent to distract the guards (thinking to himself that he's too old for this and doesn't want to be involved any more), and is killed - possibly because Ace is getting into position with his knife and not just firing his gun, though it's not entirely clear. Jake Jensen pronounces Doc dead and then is killed too.

The others break into the building and find themselves penned in with no time for Sample to pick the lock (he's a lockpicker now? Ah, all those hidden talents, what a waste) so he nobly sacrifices his life by blowing the door up with a grenade, sheltering the others with his own body. Hamilton is staggered by such a stupid death, but then, as Jay points out, he wouldn't know anything about real heroism.

The adversaries come to blows again, and Shigeta has to tell them to stop fighting and get on with the mission. His reward for that is being shot dead himself. So our two surviving heroes split up, and Ace goes on another killing spree, including Red Cross nurses. Jay is furious and vows to settle things once and for all, but Ace is then killed when his gun jams, leaving him open to be shot by the Germans. Dumb luck, he muses to himself - if his love of gambling had been mentioned more often, it might count as an ironic death, but as it is, we're rather expecting his comeuppance for his sadism. He doesn't learn his lesson at all, dying with the words that "You ain't gonna have old Ace to bail you out any more..."

Jay Little Bear finally manages to rescue Kelly and Laurie, but by this time she's had her legs permanently crippled by evil Dr Sweikert. They get to an ambulance, where Jay is shot and killed, leaving only Combat Kelly and his disabled lover to survive the series.

Kelly goes to Captain Sawyer and angrily resigns, saying he's never coming back to the army. Sawyer muses that Kelly will change his mind, but that's the last we see of him, ever.

Sgt Fury and his Howling Commandos limped on for another few months, until #120 had the last original story. It went on for another eight years or so as a bimonthly reprint title, but then that was the end of war comics for Marvel.


And so that's that. It's a great series to read, really. If you like something different, anyway. There's some really good moments in there, and a lot of characters who they could do so much more with if ever anyone saw fit to bring them back in a new series. It needs to be reprinted in a collection, at least - come on, Marvel, this could mend fences with Gary Friedrich! Or get him to write a new Deadly Dozen series! And get Dick Ayers out of retirement to draw it - according to Wikipedia he's still around, aged 87!

Lent!

It's Pancake Day, which means it's Lent tomorrow, which seems like a good time to not only give up cherry coke, but also to make sort of resolutions about doing things. And I need the help of you, my beloved bloglings, if I'm going to succeed.

See, I was on holiday last week and had lots of fun, but I came back on Sunday night and wasn't able to click straight in to my resolution about being useful and productive yesterday. Whenever I'm working, I want to be free to do stuff, but whenever I'm not, I miss the big paycheques in my bank account and want to be working again. I've come to the conclusion I'm one of those people who's never happy.

Also, cherry coke is really really addictive. People in the 30th century are going to understand this and look back on this blog and say ahh, poor Zoomy, nobody understood and they thought it was just funny. But I'm just going to have to go cold turkey until they invent cherry coke patches I can wear on my arm. Maybe I can buy supermarket brand cola flavour drink instead and gradually transition to drinking other things?

Okay, so every day, starting tomorrow, I'm going to tell you what useful and maybe money-making thing I've done. And if I don't, any day from now until Easter (when I'll celebrate Christ's glorious resurrection by staying in bed and doing nothing), you have to send me rude and abusive messages.

I should take Sundays off, shouldn't I? Did you know Lent isn't forty days long, it's forty-seven, because Sundays don't count? I didn't know that until I looked it up. I don't think Jesus took Sundays or Saturdays off, did he?

Also, this is blog entry number 1976, it seems. So let's celebrate my birth too, in the year 1976. I spent the famously hot summer gently simmering in my mother's womb, which is probably why I'm so weird, and was born in October to the tune of "Mississippi" by Pussycat. Or at least that was number one, I don't remember ever hearing the song in my life. It's not very good. But did you know that if you type Pussycat into an internet forum with an American swear-word-filter, it censors the first half? Anyway, that's all I know about 1976.

Celebrity barber

I went to get my hair cut this morning, and it turns out the guy who won £45 million on the lottery this week is a regular there. His dad was actually in there as I came in.

Then I went to Nottingham, and bumped into Wayne from Boots, which is always a good ego-booster, because he always says I look like I've lost weight. I weighed myself on the machine in Boots to see if I had, and I haven't, but who are you going to believe in sensitive matters like that? A soulless machine or Wayne from Boots? I know who I choose to believe, anyway.

Really have to get off the cherry coke, though...

Making a living

You know what, no more accountancy. It's a rubbish career. I finish my temp job on Friday, and then I'm going to make a concerted effort to find a way to make money in some way I enjoy. You all have to ask me what I've done to further that aim every day.

Next week's answer will be "go away, I'm on holiday", but the week after that...

Those fifty-two again

I'm almost as interested in the sales figures for DC's New 52 as I am in the comics themselves. Which probably isn't that much of a compliment, if you think about it. Here's the ranking of their sales for January, with Dec-Nov-Oct-Sep in brackets:

1 (1,1,1,1) JUSTICE LEAGUE
2 (2,2,2,2) BATMAN
3 (3,3,3,3) ACTION COMICS
4 (5,5,6,7) DETECTIVE COMICS
5 (4,4,4,4) GREEN LANTERN
6 (7,7,8,8) BATMAN THE DARK KNIGHT
7 (8,8,7,6) SUPERMAN
8 (6,6,5,5) FLASH
9 (9,9,9,9) BATMAN AND ROBIN
10 (10,12,15,15) AQUAMAN
11 (11,10,10,12) WONDER WOMAN
12 (12,14,13,14) TEEN TITANS
13 (14,15,14,10) GREEN LANTERN NEW GUARDIANS
14 (15,13,12,16) BATWOMAN
15 (13,11,11,11) BATGIRL
16 (16,17,18,19) NIGHTWING
17 (17,16,16,13) GREEN LANTERN CORPS
18 (19,19,20,22) SWAMP THING
19 (18,18,17,17) RED LANTERNS
20 (20,21,21,24) CATWOMAN
21 (22,24,24,25) RED HOOD AND THE OUTLAWS
22 (23,23,23,23) SUPERGIRL
23 (24,20,19,20) JUSTICE LEAGUE INTERNATIONAL
24 (21,22,22,18) JUSTICE LEAGUE DARK
25 (25,25,27,35) ANIMAL MAN
26 (26,26,26,28) SUPERBOY
27 (27,27,25,21) GREEN ARROW
28 (28,30,30,32) SUICIDE SQUAD
29 (30,28,29,29) STORMWATCH
30 (29,29,28,26) BIRDS OF PREY
31 (31,36,41,40) ALL STAR WESTERN
32 (33,34,37,43) DEMON KNIGHTS
33 (34,33,32,31) LEGION OF SUPER HEROES
34 (35,32,35,36) BATWING
35 (32,31,31,27) SAVAGE HAWKMAN
36 (36,35,33,33) DEATHSTROKE
37 (38,37,39,44) FRANKENSTEIN AGENT OF SHADE
38 (39,40,38,37) DC UNIVERSE PRESENTS
39 (40,39,36,34) LEGION LOST
40 (37,38,34,30) FURY OF FIRESTORM THE NUCLEAR MEN
41 (41,42,43,42) RESURRECTION MAN
42 (42,41,40,46) GRIFTER
43 (44,43,42,38) BLUE BEETLE
44 (43,46,48,49) I VAMPIRE
45 (45,49,47,47) VOODOO
46 (46,44,45,41) HAWK AND DOVE
47 (47,45,44,39) CAPTAIN ATOM
48 (48,48,49,52) OMAC
49 (49,47,46,45) MISTER TERRIFIC
50 (50,50,50,50) STATIC SHOCK
51 (52,51,52,51) MEN OF WAR
52 (51,52,51,48) BLACKHAWKS

(American market sales to comic shops as per Diamond distribution, returnable comics arbitrarily adjusted, returns data not included, etc etc... hey, real sales figures aren't published, we have to make do with what we can)

There's some interesting things to see there - naturally, the old established heroes sell much better than the new ones. But Superman is having a bit of a renaissance - before the relaunch he was threatened by comparative johnny-come-latelies Green Lantern and Flash (created in the late fifties, based on heroes created in the early forties...) but now Action Comics (Superman's not-named-after-him comic) is a safe third place behind Justice League (all four of the above heroes, plus Aquaman and Wonder Woman) and Batman.

Detective Comics, the second Batman comic, was underestimated in the initial retailer orders but has now knocked Green Lantern off fourth place. And the second Superman and third Batman comics knock the Flash down into eighth place. First-string heroes are definitely outselling second-stringers now. What does that mean? Beats me.

Aquaman (a great comic) has risen above Wonder Woman (a pretty terrible one), which suggests there might actually be some quality issues involved here too!

At the other end of the chart, Blackhawks once more takes the coveted wooden spoon from Men Of War - they're both pretty dreadful and won't be missed. Static Shock, though, will, by me at least. It's really impressively stayed the 50th-best-selling of the 52 ever since the start.

Biggest climber since September is now Demon Knights, biggest faller is Firestorm. I'm not a fan of either of them.

I like this kind of analysis. Gets my geekiness in full flow.

I'll tell you what IS a good comic, though

Strikeforce: Morituri! Marvel have just released a paperback collection of the first 13 issues, with the promise of two more volumes to collect the complete 31-issue series and five-issue sequel, and the first one is just awesome. I've never read it before (it came out in the mid-eighties) and have always sort of wanted to, so this new release is just my cup of tea. There's a possible movie in production, apparently, hence the revival, although a planned TV series came to nothing amid arguments between Marvel and Peter B Gillis.

The first 13 issues are supposed to be the best - Gillis (a great writer) left after twenty to be replaced by James D Hudnall (not at all a great writer), but I'm a sucker for complete stories, so I'll be getting the whole set. And the art is almost good throughout - this first collection is drawn very nicely by Brent Anderson, with one fill-in by the equally nice Whilce Portacio, and the later issues were mainly the world of Mark Bagley. And even though John Calimee, who did three issues, is supposed to be about the worst artist ever employed by Marvel at the time, I quite like his work on Alpha Flight in a weird way, so I'll look forward to seeing his work on Morituri too.

But the whole premise of the series is more-or-less original science fiction of the type the big companies don't do any more, so it needs encouragement. Go out and buy the too-expensive paperback, now! Or buy the old comics for cheaper, if you can find them...

The Return of Super Sunday!

We're now in month six of DC's new comic 'reboot'. The best ones are selling well - consistently out-performing Marvel Comics' range of heroes, which is an important thing to some people - but the rest aren't so spectacular. DC announced midway through last month that they're cancelling the six lowest-selling comics (Hawk & Dove, OMAC, Mister Terrific, Static Shock, Blackhawks and Men Of War) and replacing them with six all-new series.

Actually, the sales of #4 available on the internet say that Hawk & Dove is selling very slightly more (97 copies) than Captain Atom, but presumably DC had access to worldwide figures, returns data, maybe even the sales for #5 before they made their decision, so the Captain gets reprieved. But he still has to be on thin ice, which if you come to think of it probably wouldn't bother him too much, since he's got super-powers.

Whether anyone will read the replacement six is another question, since presumably there won't be so much publicity this time round. But there are Batman connections in most of the new ones, so they'll be okay. I worry about "Dial H", a reimagining of the old comic "Dial H For Hero" about a boy with a magic telephone, but in a dark and gritty 21st-century way. It might actually be good, but on the other hand it will probably be awful.

There are several really quite good comics among the 52, but nothing really great. There's nothing that people will look back on in twenty years and say 'that was a great moment in comics'. In fact, there's really nothing that people will look back on in twenty years at all, which is a bit sad. Comics really needs a Watchmen moment. And speaking of which...

To add to the excitement, DC have announced that they're giving up on the idea that Watchmen is sacrosanct and making more Watchmen comics would stop people buying the original - now there's a movie out, we're going to have a huge pile of prequel comics by the likes of J. Michael Straczynski, the man who wrote a Spider-Man story saying that the radioactive spider that bit him was actually on its way to bite him and give him powers anyway, and getting zapped by radiation was just a coincidence. And another one saying that his old girlfriend Gwen Stacy had sex with his arch-enemy Norman Osborn and gave birth to twins, all during the period while they were both regulars in the comic. I can't wait to see what he does with Watchmen!

More Marc!

You know I love that somewhat untalented artist who drew cartoon video covers in the late eighties and proudly signed everything he drew (or cut out of a Transformers comic). Well, my brother found two Sport Billy tapes with his masterpieces on the front cover!

"Take 2 Plus" are pretty obviously the same people as Krypton Force, don't you think?

Esses

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 Murray is never going to be successful unless Scotland becomes a real independent country.

Hooray for Sheffield!

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

"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.