The FA complains to the Sun about a headline affectionately mocking Roy Hodgson's difficulty with pronouncing the letter R? I'm outraged. Not on behalf of the Sun or the FA or Roy or anyone connected with football, but because the WMSC didn't complain to the BBC when Anne Robinson made light of my own slight speech impediment on The Weakest Link in 2004! It's a travesty, I tell you.
Granted, Roy Hodgson is an employee of the FA, and I'm at best an annoyance to the WMSC, but I still think the same principle should apply.
Thursday, May 03, 2012
Monday, April 30, 2012
Bluebirds flying over the mountain again
I opened the curtains this morning and remembered that the sky's normally blue, rather than the murky grey we've had all April. It was great! I went out cycling and I've got sunburned!
Thursday, April 26, 2012
Hooray for football!
The good old Athletic Club have got through to the final of the Europa League! Ever since going to Bilbao, I've adopted them as my local team, so I'm delighted. And they'll play that other athletic club, Atletico Madrid, so it'll all be very confusing.
And Tuesday's game was really amazing to watch, so I'm definitely cheering for Chelsea in the Champions League. If anyone wants to buy me tickets for either final, I wouldn't complain.
And Tuesday's game was really amazing to watch, so I'm definitely cheering for Chelsea in the Champions League. If anyone wants to buy me tickets for either final, I wouldn't complain.
Wet
Last week I mentioned that I was fed up of the constant rain. Well, now it's eight days later and I'm really, really fed up of it! As someone who cycles everywhere, this kind of weather really puts a crimp in any travel plans I might have. I need to convert my bike into some kind of bubble-car.
Saturday, April 21, 2012
Hail Zoomy
I need to become a meteorologist and understand exactly what causes hail, and then do something about it so that it stops happening as regularly as it is around here just lately. You'd think that the existing meteorologists would have done something about it by now, but I'm almost certain that they all got into that career thinking it was about cool things like meteors and space, not boring things like weather, and now they're too disappointed to fix the hail. I'll add it to my to-do list.
Wednesday, April 18, 2012
Would you listen to that rain outside?
I'm all in favour of April showers, but April continual downpour all day every day? I tell you, if I was the kind of person who complained about hosepipe bans, I would definitely be complaining about hosepipe bans right now.
It's the Doctor's birthday!
I stumbled across the information that it's David Tennant's 41st birthday today, so happy birthday to him. I still wish he'd come back to Doctor Who, good though Matt Smith is, because he was so completely perfect for the part. I feel guilty about saying he was my favourite Doctor ever, since I'm such a big fan of the original series too, and I really ought to pick one of the classic seven Doctors if I don't want people to think I'm one of these modern types who's never even watched the old series... but there's no avoiding it, David Tennant was the greatest.
Monday, April 16, 2012
I am from space
My "I am from space" T-shirt is a huge source of amusement to everyone who sees it. I don't think anyone actually recognises the reference, though, so click here, please.
Thursday, April 12, 2012
The Gay Marriage of Gay Superhero Northstar (who's gay)
About a month ago, Marvel Comics announced that Astonishing X-Men #51, due out in June, will contain a very special wedding. People speculated that it would involve Marvel jumping on the gay wedding bandwagon by hitching Northstar and his boyfriend Kyle. Sure enough, there's now been an announcement that Marvel have "secured mainstream coverage both on-air and in print for something that has never been seen in the pages of a Marvel comic before… This will be an event that will have worldwide mass-media attention driving customers to your stores. Because of the nature of the event and the promised mass media break, we cannot say who will be tying the knot, but we promise that it will send shockwaves through the nation."
So yes, it's pretty clear what's going to happen. The thing is, this isn't a new idea - Archie, that most traditional of American comics, recently followed up their controversy-baiting introduction of a gay character (he's called Kevin Keller) by including him in a series of flash-forwards to what those loveable teens from Riverdale will do when they grow up. Kevin, it seems, will be a noble and traditional American soldier who will marry a (male) doctor who saves his life. There was, naturally, "mainstream coverage both on-air and in print". And Archie wasn't the first comic to have a gay wedding, obviously, it was just the first comic anyone's heard of.
So are Marvel really going to do just the same thing in their latest search for publicity? It certainly sounds like it. Northstar has always been a favourite character of mine, so here's a potted history of him that journalists can find when they're doing a cursory internet search for something to write in their articles...
Northstar, real name Jean-Paul Beaubier, first shows up in X-Men #121, cover-dated May 1979, along with the rest of his Canadian super-team, Alpha Flight. Northstar, along with his twin sister Aurora, can fly at super-speed, and when they touch hands it creates a blinding flash of light. As creator John Byrne later said, "the twins were there mainly to be French," and they don't get much in the way of characterisation.
Alpha Flight caught the imagination of comics fans, though, and they continued to pop up here and there until they got their own ongoing series, cover-dated August 1983. Northstar settled into the role of the misanthropic moaner who was unpleasant to everyone and only stuck with the team to support his sister. Since Marvel already had a super-speedster who was unpleasant to everyone and protective of his sister (his name's Quicksilver and he dates back to 1963), this wasn't really new, but the comic is very well written and Northstar is strangely likeable. And he does have something Quicksilver doesn't have - he's gay, as is made clear by the kind of coy, subtle hints that were what comics did in the early eighties - this from Northstar's origin story in #9:
When Bill Mantlo took over as writer, the hints got less subtle, and his extremely wordy style of comic writing gave plenty of opportunity to slip them in. Pretty soon, it was obvious even to the most dimwitted reader what Jean-Paul's personal preferences were, although it had still never explicitly been stated. This exchange in #41 is fairly typical:
And you had to know he was gay to pick up on what was happening in the storyline. In that same issue, he develops a cough, which steadily gets worse. In an amusing mistake in #43, we get a hint of what's happening:
The asterisk is meant to lead to a footnote explaining when this kiss happened, but obviously nobody could find it - no surprise, since it actually takes place in the NEXT month's issue! Bill Mantlo, in the usual "Marvel style" of writing, would create the plots, send them to the artist, and then fill in the dialogue when he got the pencilled pages back. He was notoriously always well ahead of his deadlines, and had obviously forgotten where his story had got to. The actual kiss from Alpha Flight's archenemy of the time, Pestilence, happens in #44:
That's Northstar's first on-panel kiss. And, indeed, his only one in the entire run of Alpha Flight comics.
There's a widespread belief that Bill Mantlo intended Jean-Paul to be dying of AIDS, but that's just silly if you actually read the comics. It's very very obvious that the talk of his illness is a red herring, and the always-intended real explanation for it is what saw print in #50. Northstar and Aurora are half human and half fairy, and living too long on this world has made him sick and driven her mad. They depart at the end of that issue, as the climax of Mantlo's gradual writing-out of all of John Byrne's characters, Northstar welcomed to the land of the fairies by his kinfolk.
It's not Mantlo's crowning moment of glory, to be honest, but it was clearly his intention all along and not forced on him by editors. Anyway, once Mantlo left to be replaced by James D Hudnall, there was a gradual return to the comics of the original cast, including Northstar. It turned out that the whole fairy thing was a lie of Loki's, and he was entirely human after all (even though a central plot point of #50 was that Loki was most definitely not lying... basically, they just swept the whole thing under the rug, and probably for the best too), so he rejoined the team and soon became his usual sardonic and miserable self.
The whole gay thing doesn't get a mention, or even a subtle hint, after his return, but at some point around #100 (I can't find it in my collection, so forgive me going by memory), the letters page printed a letter saying "Wouldn't it be nice if we could revive the Northstar as a gay character storyline?", which got a reply "As for Northstar, his sexual orientation never changed, it just hasn't come up lately." That's the first time the word 'gay' shows up in an Alpha Flight comic.
Then comes the famous #106, March 1992. By now the comic was being written by Scott Lobdell, and he alternates outright silliness with thoughtful and meaningful deep stories. This is one of the latter - Jean-Paul adopts an abandoned baby who turns out to be dying of AIDS. The nationwide publicity angers retired hero Major Mapleleaf, whose gay son died of the same disease but didn't get so much as a tug of the national heartstrings, and he takes out his frustrations on Northstar. This leads to those three words that were heavily publicised by Marvel Comics...
I think this is really good stuff. A few commentators laughed at the bang-pow-smash fight scene while discussing weighty issues, but that's how comics work. And I'd call it a great juxtaposition. Anyway, this was towards the tail-end of the speculator boom of the early nineties, and there was talk of this comic being worth a fortune, until it turned out that everyone who wanted one had already got a copy. Or three.
Alpha Flight was cancelled due to low sales after #130 - Northstar got his own four-issue limited series thereafter, to take advantage of whatever public notoriety the character still had. It was actually quite good, but it didn't lead to any kind of regular role.
There have been unsuccessful attempts to revive Alpha Flight every few years ever since then - the most recent was cancelled after eight issues a few months ago - but Northstar has now joined another team. He was added to the very large cast of the X-Men in the 2000s, and devoted himself to a career of standing in the background occasionally. He was actually killed by a mind-controlled Wolverine at one point, but he soon got better.
Jean-Paul has gradually become a much more mellow character - he's even acquired a boyfriend, for the first time in recorded history! Kyle, who's black, not a superhero, and basically a nice guy, showed up in Uncanny X-Men #508 (June 2009) and has made occasional appearances ever since. It seems that the two of them are going to help Marvel's sales by tying the knot later this year.
The funny thing is that Marvel is wildly against superhero marriage - they went to great (and ridiculous) lengths to undo Spider-Man's marriage to Mary-Jane in such a way that won't leave him either divorced or widowed (the story involved a deal with the devil, which apparently is more acceptable for a hero than being married), and I don't think there's a single hero in their enormous cast of characters who's currently married to a non-superhero. Northstar marrying Kyle might be normal in this world, but in the Marvel Universe, it's weird!
As a footnote, there are now a fair few other gay superheroes out there. DC comics seems to have four among its "New 52" cast - a relationship between Apollo and Midnighter in "Stormwatch", hinted at by subtle euphemisms that are positively Victorian in their coyness; the central character of "Batwoman", who's described as a 'proud lesbian' on the first page of every issue and basically stresses the idea so strongly that she doesn't have any other character traits; and the one comic that gets it right is "Teen Titans", with the weirdly-named hero Bunker. The love lives of the Teens haven't yet featured in the action-oriented series, but we get one nicely-written exchange in #6 - written, again, by Scott Lobdell:
Wonder Girl: Does that line work on all the girls?
Bunker: Girls? Uh... not exactly. You do realise I'm gay, right?
Wonder Girl: See? I have the worst gaydar in the world. But now that you mention it...
At which point they're interrupted by another fight scene. I'd recommend Teen Titans over the upcoming much-hyped wedding, any day.
So yes, it's pretty clear what's going to happen. The thing is, this isn't a new idea - Archie, that most traditional of American comics, recently followed up their controversy-baiting introduction of a gay character (he's called Kevin Keller) by including him in a series of flash-forwards to what those loveable teens from Riverdale will do when they grow up. Kevin, it seems, will be a noble and traditional American soldier who will marry a (male) doctor who saves his life. There was, naturally, "mainstream coverage both on-air and in print". And Archie wasn't the first comic to have a gay wedding, obviously, it was just the first comic anyone's heard of.
So are Marvel really going to do just the same thing in their latest search for publicity? It certainly sounds like it. Northstar has always been a favourite character of mine, so here's a potted history of him that journalists can find when they're doing a cursory internet search for something to write in their articles...
Northstar, real name Jean-Paul Beaubier, first shows up in X-Men #121, cover-dated May 1979, along with the rest of his Canadian super-team, Alpha Flight. Northstar, along with his twin sister Aurora, can fly at super-speed, and when they touch hands it creates a blinding flash of light. As creator John Byrne later said, "the twins were there mainly to be French," and they don't get much in the way of characterisation.
Alpha Flight caught the imagination of comics fans, though, and they continued to pop up here and there until they got their own ongoing series, cover-dated August 1983. Northstar settled into the role of the misanthropic moaner who was unpleasant to everyone and only stuck with the team to support his sister. Since Marvel already had a super-speedster who was unpleasant to everyone and protective of his sister (his name's Quicksilver and he dates back to 1963), this wasn't really new, but the comic is very well written and Northstar is strangely likeable. And he does have something Quicksilver doesn't have - he's gay, as is made clear by the kind of coy, subtle hints that were what comics did in the early eighties - this from Northstar's origin story in #9:
And you had to know he was gay to pick up on what was happening in the storyline. In that same issue, he develops a cough, which steadily gets worse. In an amusing mistake in #43, we get a hint of what's happening:
The asterisk is meant to lead to a footnote explaining when this kiss happened, but obviously nobody could find it - no surprise, since it actually takes place in the NEXT month's issue! Bill Mantlo, in the usual "Marvel style" of writing, would create the plots, send them to the artist, and then fill in the dialogue when he got the pencilled pages back. He was notoriously always well ahead of his deadlines, and had obviously forgotten where his story had got to. The actual kiss from Alpha Flight's archenemy of the time, Pestilence, happens in #44:
That's Northstar's first on-panel kiss. And, indeed, his only one in the entire run of Alpha Flight comics.
There's a widespread belief that Bill Mantlo intended Jean-Paul to be dying of AIDS, but that's just silly if you actually read the comics. It's very very obvious that the talk of his illness is a red herring, and the always-intended real explanation for it is what saw print in #50. Northstar and Aurora are half human and half fairy, and living too long on this world has made him sick and driven her mad. They depart at the end of that issue, as the climax of Mantlo's gradual writing-out of all of John Byrne's characters, Northstar welcomed to the land of the fairies by his kinfolk.
It's not Mantlo's crowning moment of glory, to be honest, but it was clearly his intention all along and not forced on him by editors. Anyway, once Mantlo left to be replaced by James D Hudnall, there was a gradual return to the comics of the original cast, including Northstar. It turned out that the whole fairy thing was a lie of Loki's, and he was entirely human after all (even though a central plot point of #50 was that Loki was most definitely not lying... basically, they just swept the whole thing under the rug, and probably for the best too), so he rejoined the team and soon became his usual sardonic and miserable self.
The whole gay thing doesn't get a mention, or even a subtle hint, after his return, but at some point around #100 (I can't find it in my collection, so forgive me going by memory), the letters page printed a letter saying "Wouldn't it be nice if we could revive the Northstar as a gay character storyline?", which got a reply "As for Northstar, his sexual orientation never changed, it just hasn't come up lately." That's the first time the word 'gay' shows up in an Alpha Flight comic.
Then comes the famous #106, March 1992. By now the comic was being written by Scott Lobdell, and he alternates outright silliness with thoughtful and meaningful deep stories. This is one of the latter - Jean-Paul adopts an abandoned baby who turns out to be dying of AIDS. The nationwide publicity angers retired hero Major Mapleleaf, whose gay son died of the same disease but didn't get so much as a tug of the national heartstrings, and he takes out his frustrations on Northstar. This leads to those three words that were heavily publicised by Marvel Comics...
I think this is really good stuff. A few commentators laughed at the bang-pow-smash fight scene while discussing weighty issues, but that's how comics work. And I'd call it a great juxtaposition. Anyway, this was towards the tail-end of the speculator boom of the early nineties, and there was talk of this comic being worth a fortune, until it turned out that everyone who wanted one had already got a copy. Or three.
Alpha Flight was cancelled due to low sales after #130 - Northstar got his own four-issue limited series thereafter, to take advantage of whatever public notoriety the character still had. It was actually quite good, but it didn't lead to any kind of regular role.
There have been unsuccessful attempts to revive Alpha Flight every few years ever since then - the most recent was cancelled after eight issues a few months ago - but Northstar has now joined another team. He was added to the very large cast of the X-Men in the 2000s, and devoted himself to a career of standing in the background occasionally. He was actually killed by a mind-controlled Wolverine at one point, but he soon got better.
Jean-Paul has gradually become a much more mellow character - he's even acquired a boyfriend, for the first time in recorded history! Kyle, who's black, not a superhero, and basically a nice guy, showed up in Uncanny X-Men #508 (June 2009) and has made occasional appearances ever since. It seems that the two of them are going to help Marvel's sales by tying the knot later this year.
The funny thing is that Marvel is wildly against superhero marriage - they went to great (and ridiculous) lengths to undo Spider-Man's marriage to Mary-Jane in such a way that won't leave him either divorced or widowed (the story involved a deal with the devil, which apparently is more acceptable for a hero than being married), and I don't think there's a single hero in their enormous cast of characters who's currently married to a non-superhero. Northstar marrying Kyle might be normal in this world, but in the Marvel Universe, it's weird!
As a footnote, there are now a fair few other gay superheroes out there. DC comics seems to have four among its "New 52" cast - a relationship between Apollo and Midnighter in "Stormwatch", hinted at by subtle euphemisms that are positively Victorian in their coyness; the central character of "Batwoman", who's described as a 'proud lesbian' on the first page of every issue and basically stresses the idea so strongly that she doesn't have any other character traits; and the one comic that gets it right is "Teen Titans", with the weirdly-named hero Bunker. The love lives of the Teens haven't yet featured in the action-oriented series, but we get one nicely-written exchange in #6 - written, again, by Scott Lobdell:
Wonder Girl: Does that line work on all the girls?
Bunker: Girls? Uh... not exactly. You do realise I'm gay, right?
Wonder Girl: See? I have the worst gaydar in the world. But now that you mention it...
At which point they're interrupted by another fight scene. I'd recommend Teen Titans over the upcoming much-hyped wedding, any day.
Wait, what?
It was actually an advert for photographerandmuse.com, showing the fascinating work of Daniel Ehrenworth and his "A Series". And "A Fan", on closer examination, isn't actually me, but wow, it's close.
Check out his "Naked People Clinging For Their Lives" series, too.
Wednesday, April 11, 2012
And I do my little turn on the catwalk
Extra bonus blog post tonight (so please, I'd hate to think of you missing my incoherent rambling about living on a street with the same name as me, scroll down and read that too), because I remembered I never posted these pictures of me. The people in Spain asked to see some snaps of me in different outfits so they'd have an idea how to dress me. So here we go with the fashion shoot...
What I happened to be wearing at the time I got the email - the T-shirt is the emblem of Samaritan from Astro City. Not Ultra Boy from the Legion of Super-Heroes, whose bird has more feathery wings, or any other superhero with a bird-themed emblem on their chest.
The T-shirt that always makes people point and laugh when they see it. More than they normally point and laugh at me, even.
The rather more stylish shirt that wouldn't look out of place on Carnaby Street in the 1960s as it exists in my mind.
The Man In Black. Words can't describe how cool I look. Not even the words "not at all cool".
Brazilian Mystery Cloak and T-shirt that looks like a dinner jacket. A great ensemble for everyday wear or for disguising yourself as Zephon, Master of the Fifth Galaxy.
The businessman look, albeit with the groovy playing-card tie that hints at eccentricity. I once went for a job interview wearing this, and I got the job, but was asked to wear a more boring tie. Those were the exact words.
What I happened to be wearing at the time I got the email - the T-shirt is the emblem of Samaritan from Astro City. Not Ultra Boy from the Legion of Super-Heroes, whose bird has more feathery wings, or any other superhero with a bird-themed emblem on their chest.
The rather more stylish shirt that wouldn't look out of place on Carnaby Street in the 1960s as it exists in my mind.
The Man In Black. Words can't describe how cool I look. Not even the words "not at all cool".
Brazilian Mystery Cloak and T-shirt that looks like a dinner jacket. A great ensemble for everyday wear or for disguising yourself as Zephon, Master of the Fifth Galaxy.
The businessman look, albeit with the groovy playing-card tie that hints at eccentricity. I once went for a job interview wearing this, and I got the job, but was asked to wear a more boring tie. Those were the exact words.
Oliver lives in Cromwell Road
This is new. Or new to me, anyway - did you know there are at least three roads in England called Pridmore Road? One in Coventry, one in Corby Glen near Grantham, one in Snodland, Kent, wherever that is.
I need to buy houses there. It had never occurred to me before that Pridmore might be a name that people named roads after. Pridmore Road in Coventry even has a primary school, apparently named after an influential city councillor! I not only need to live there, I need to adopt some children, rename them appropriately and send them to that school, so that they can claim it's named after them and boss everyone else around. That's the kind of start in life that's important.
There are Pridmore Avenues in California and Australia that I can have as my holiday homes.
I need to buy houses there. It had never occurred to me before that Pridmore might be a name that people named roads after. Pridmore Road in Coventry even has a primary school, apparently named after an influential city councillor! I not only need to live there, I need to adopt some children, rename them appropriately and send them to that school, so that they can claim it's named after them and boss everyone else around. That's the kind of start in life that's important.
There are Pridmore Avenues in California and Australia that I can have as my holiday homes.
Monday, April 09, 2012
Yes. Yes, you must.
I do like some of the phrases that people type into Google that lead them to this blog. Someone was brought here today by asking the internet "Must everyone learn Esperanto?"
Saturday, April 07, 2012
Fantastic Dan
I'm really impressed by the way Dan Evans plays in the Davis Cup tennis for Britain. Granted, he lost yesterday, but he did play extremely well, a lot better than his lowly world ranking would suggest. Possibly he likes best-of-five-set matches better, and the lower ranked tennis players very rarely get a chance to play those.
Davis Cup matches only count for the world ranking if you're playing in the top level, the World Group, so his ranking would probably jump up if we managed to qualify for that. We're pretty unlikely to do so, since Britain's only good player thinks the Davis Cup is beneath him, but you never know what might happen one of these days.
Another cool thing about Dan Evans is that I saw an article on the BBC website or somewhere like that in which the writer alleges that he sometimes acts like someone who isn't sure he wants to be a professional tennis player at all. This is cool, because more than any other sport, the top players in tennis all do it because their parents decided that's what they'll do, usually before they were even born. It's really disturbing how many of the big names have spent their entire lives taking orders from their mother and father and never seem to question it. Anyone who shows a bit of independent thought now and then gets a thumbs-up from me.
Davis Cup matches only count for the world ranking if you're playing in the top level, the World Group, so his ranking would probably jump up if we managed to qualify for that. We're pretty unlikely to do so, since Britain's only good player thinks the Davis Cup is beneath him, but you never know what might happen one of these days.
Another cool thing about Dan Evans is that I saw an article on the BBC website or somewhere like that in which the writer alleges that he sometimes acts like someone who isn't sure he wants to be a professional tennis player at all. This is cool, because more than any other sport, the top players in tennis all do it because their parents decided that's what they'll do, usually before they were even born. It's really disturbing how many of the big names have spent their entire lives taking orders from their mother and father and never seem to question it. Anyone who shows a bit of independent thought now and then gets a thumbs-up from me.
Thursday, April 05, 2012
The end of the new 52
Comics again! Here's a rundown of the world of modern superhero comics. Which, to be fair, nobody really buys any more, although everyone knows at least some of the heroes who feature in them. For the uninitiated, Marvel Comics publish the adventures of Spider-Man, the Avengers, the X-Men, Captain America, Iron Man, Thor, the Hulk and others, while DC Comics own Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Flash, Green Lantern, the Justice League and their friends. DC is the publisher that produced the New 52.
As of next month, it'll be the New 46 plus six new series. DC Comics is fond of the number 52 for some reason, and although I obviously sympathise as a card-memoriser, I'm still not sure why it has to be mentioned in every publicity stunt or press release. They do release more than fifty-two comics every month - there have been various mini-series and not-part-of-the-main-DC-universe comics that brings their monthly total up to about eighty, but I'm only talking about the 52 core series that were launched last September and which reach their eighth issues in April.
The fact that each of these 52 comics has released an issue every month is actually noteworthy in itself. It's generally accepted that artists can't draw a full twenty-page comic every month any more - it's true that comic art is a lot more detailed now than it was back in the days when a good artist could churn out fifty pages or more in that time, and the standard of some of the drawings in these comics is such that you'd think a solid month or more has been spent on each page, but there's still a sense of disapproval and laziness inherent in not meeting a monthly deadline. A few years ago it had become the norm for comics drawn by the 'cool' artists to only come out once every three months or so, whenever they'd finished an issue, but that seems to have been unprofitable for the big companies. Now, DC has gone back to the old tradition of fill-in artists coming aboard for an issue or two to allow the regular artists time to catch up. By contrast, Marvel has taken the approach of rotating regular artists every three or four issues, allowing them to publish two issues a month of their biggest titles.
Jim Lee, the co-publisher of DC, is apparently allowed more leeway in this 'publish or perish' philosophy than a normal artist; the fifth issue of Justice League was a week late, and then the sixth issue was two weeks behind. Everything else has come out when they said it would, which makes a nice change.
Then there's the interesting idea of 'story arcs' - in the olden days, an average monthly comic would have three different stories, eight or nine pages each, in which the hero would be confronted with a problem and would solve it in short order, having time for a chat with his girlfriend who doesn't know he has a secret identity along the way. Now whether it's that all the stories have been done before or that modern writers just don't have that much imagination, a single story runs over several issues. There was a time, again, a couple of years ago, when every single story arc was six issues, the right size to fit in a paperback collection, but DC have varied that a bit with the New 52, obviously realising that it wasn't a good policy to have all the stories end with #6 and provide readers with a perfect moment to stop reading. Even so, some of the ideas in these comics seem to be stretched out a lot thinner than is good for them in order to fit a pre-defined number of pages.
Speaking of pages, DC have decided that the standard number of pages in a comic should be twenty. There hasn't really been an official page count before this, but around 22 was normal for most comics. While the first issues of the New 52 sometimes exceeded the twenty pages, after that they've almost all stuck to that total quite rigidly - comics are made up of 36 pages including the cover, which leaves sixteen spare for adverts, but paid ads don't normally cover more than half the available pages, leaving room for DC to advertise their own products on what's left over.
As for price, DC have coined the soundbite "holding the line at $2.99", which is a bit silly, really, when you consider that not too long ago the standard price for a superhero comic was $2.25 or $2.50. And of course four of the New 52 are in fact $3.99 - your extra dollar gets you an extra eight pages of "content", which is sometimes an extra mini-story, but sometimes filled in with artists' sketches or some hastily-written and widely-spaced text. Detective Comics and Batman have also increased to $3.99 from this month; DC kept an impressively straight face while insisting that it's entirely 'for story reasons' that their two best-selling three-dollar comics are going to cost more in future. Still, DC still have rather more three-dollar comics than Marvel, who sell most of theirs for $3.99 now, and that's the point they're trying to make.
So here's a brief and entirely subjective look back on the comics from the first week of the month - four cancelled comics and nine selling well enough that they're almost certainly going to be around for the foreseeable future:
Brief summary: Superman's early days as a superhero.
Gripes: The fourth issue ends with an announcement that the story will be continued in #7; the two issues in between are an entirely different story, which isn't as good. The back-up strips (which fit between pages of the main story but are printed at the end as if to tell everyone that they can be safely ignored if you want) are pretty obviously just churned out and stuck in there to justify the higher price.
Good bits: The story is very nice, taking the original idea of Superman as some sort of defender of the downtrodden masses and mixing in the modern concept that he can be in some kind of physical danger and even meet someone stronger than him. However, he still resolves the situation by essentially punching the bad guy very hard, which is a bit of a let-down.
Should you start reading it? It's more aimed at people who are familiar with Superman comics (rather than films or TV shows) of the past, but I think there's something there for everyone. It's certainly entertaining stuff that's worth a look.
Brief summary: Animal Man's young daughter manifests extremely scary powers, and the family are drawn into a nightmarish world.
Gripes: The artist (Travel Foreman) can draw scary monsters extraordinarily well (the imagination and sheer horror of this comic is in a league of its own) but can't draw real people, so the contrast isn't what it should be. More seriously, he seems to have had personal problems preventing him from drawing more than a couple of pages of several issues, leading to the story grinding to a halt and several months of the family basically just driving around saying they really ought to find Swamp Thing and talk about stuff. One issue consists entirely of a film in which Buddy Baker (Animal Man) once starred. Foreman has announced that he's not comfortable with drawing scary monsters any more and has been re-assigned to Birds of Prey for the future, which doesn't suit his style at all.
Good bits: As mentioned above, some seriously awesome aberrations of nature appear in the comic. The story, with a married hero accompanied by his normal wife and son as well as his scary daughter, is something different and cool (the prevailing wisdom is that married superheroes don't work, so the big companies have undone pretty much every marriage in modern comics). Animal Man himself is also a much more likeable character than most heroes.
Should you start reading it? It's hard to recommend a comic that seems to have been marking time and doing nothing for such a long time, but the likelihood is that it'll kick back into gear in the near future, and might be fun. Wait until after the upcoming crossover with Swamp Thing is done with, and then see what happens.
Brief summary: Batman franchises his image to a Congolese policeman, who becomes the Batman of Africa. But someone's killing off the previous generation of superheroes.
Gripes: Ben Oliver's artwork, which graces five of the first six issues, is abominable and makes it very difficult to see what's supposed to be happening in the story. The writing is also surprisingly inept in the revelation of Massacre's secret identity - when the hero repeatedly asserts that he's almost certain it's one person, that leads the reader to assume it's not, and that by a process of elimination it must be the only other possible suspect. And sure enough, it is.
Good bits: The story itself is quite good, if a bit on the thin side.
Should you start reading it? Not really. It's okay, but there's nothing really special about the story other than that it's set in Africa - and a very generic American view of what Africa is like, at that. Not a bad comic by any stretch of the imagination, but there are better ones out there.
Brief summary: Batman fights the bad guys.
Gripes: The series was apparently written with the intention that it would chronicle Batman's early days like Action Comics does for Superman, but then at a late stage the dialogue was changed to make it contemporary with the rest of the DC Universe. The alteration is really obvious and jarring. #8 justifies its increased price with an almost completely incomprehensible back-up story about the origins of Two-Face.
Good bits: Nice artwork, and an entertaining storyline, particularly the part involving the Penguin. It's conventional superhero comic drama, but done extremely well.
Should you start reading it? If you're relatively new to comics and want to see what Batman's up to, this is the one to get. It's always going to be fun and readable.
Brief summary: The arrow-wielding hero tries to juggle his business life, his superhero activities and his womanising.
Gripes: In its eight issues, the comic has gone through three different writers, with a striking change of tone every time. The only consistency in the way the character's written is that he remains an annoying jerk throughout.
Good bits: It's quite hard to find any good bits here - the first story has some interesting villains, killing people in order to make popular YouTube videos and thus look cool.
Should you start reading it? I would have to say no. There are worse comics out there, but there are plenty of better ones too.
Brief summary: The chalk-and-cheese heroes try to save the world.
Gripes: The writer was sacked by editors apparently looking for a change of direction, meaning that the Condor story was very abruptly ended, following which the series was almost immediately cancelled. The last few issues, written by artist Rob Liefeld, seem to be just filling pages until the series ends.
Good bits: There's some nice art and some fun banter between the two characters, but it never quite clicks like it should.
Should you start reading it? It's finished now - the previous issues are certainly readable, but maybe not enough to justify the price of buying the paperback (the first storylines of all the New 52 are coming out in collected form over the next eight months - this includes the full eight-issue runs of the six cancelled comics).
Brief summary: The UN decides to create its own controllable and public superhero team.
Gripes: The opening storyline stresses that there are lots of other heroes in the world, but then when a world-threatening emergency arises (with lots and lots of time for people to stand around discussing what to do about it) everyone acts as if these nine characters are the only heroes out there. It's often necessary to ignore the shared-universe concept for story reasons, but competent writers don't shove it in the readers' faces like this. There's no attempt to reconcile the appearances of Batman and Guy Gardner with their roles in other comics.
Good bits: Excellent artwork, and some likeable characters who interact in interesting ways. The central character, Booster Gold, is particularly well written.
Should you start reading it? Yes, I think you should. It's good stuff, although it's one of those series that works better in isolation, unlike most of the rest of the New 52 which has the exactly right amount of interaction between different comics.
Brief summary: An anthology of various war stories.
Gripes: The main story for the first six issues is just about the worst comic story ever written and drawn, which can't make up its mind whether it's a realistic war series or a weird superhero comic and shifts wildly back and forth between them. The backup stories are mostly throwaway silliness or just plain bad. The last two issues are just filling pages of a cancelled comic - #8 is a story about Frankenstein in World War 2, written by Frankenstein's regular writer, which will look rather out of place in the collected edition of Men of War.
Good bits: I honestly can't think of any. Even the Frankenstein story isn't that good.
Should you start reading it? It's been cancelled, but it'll be replaced by what seems to be the exact same comic with a different title, G.I. Combat. I certainly wouldn't recommend that.
Brief summary: The hapless Kevin Kho is turned into a giant monster under the control of Brother Eye.
Gripes: There's no real connection between the sequences in which Kevin is OMAC and the sequences in which he's Kevin - he doesn't have any control over the monster at all, so we just repeatedly switch between the fighting plotlines and the plot of Kevin trying to live a normal life.
Good bits: Really great over-the-top artwork and a really fun plotline which indulges in all the inherent silliness of the idea.
Should you start reading it? It's been cancelled, but it'll probably be worth buying the paperback edition and seeing the insanity for yourself.
Brief summary: The rage-fuelled equivalent of the Green Lanterns indulge in a lot of rage.
Gripes: Bleez features quite frequently on websites deriding the way women are drawn in comics (I recommend Less Tits n' Ass, More Kickin' Ass and Escher Girls), and with good cause. The second issue is a fill-in with no mention of the subplots introduced in the first issue. These subplots take a very long time to develop into nothing in particular.
Good bits: Bleez aside, the artwork is excellent, with a lot of extremely interesting-looking characters and some great, detailed scenes. The story explaining the origins of two of the lesser Red Lanterns characters is extremely good.
Should you start reading it? There's not much of a story here, so unless you buy a comic just for the artwork (or for Bleez's ability to display her bum in every picture), you should probably skip this one. Alternatively, if you want undemanding action, this might be the one for you.
Brief summary: Teenage hero Static faces all kinds of problems, including his sister being split into two people.
Gripes: Original writer John Rozum quit after five issues, very publicly announcing that he didn't actually get to write anything, and all his ideas and dialogue were rejected by artist Scott McDaniel, with the support of editor Harvey Richards. New writer Marc Bernadin's contribution to #7 and #8 seems to consist of a bizarre introductory caption asserting that Static has been changed by past events and 'in many ways Virgil Hawkins ceased to exist', which is wildly at odds with what actually appears in the comics. The final issue takes the strange decision to recap his origin at length.
Good bits: A lot of fun superhero action, and a very likeable central character always made this a very readable comic. I seem to be in the minority there, but I've liked this series a lot.
Should you start reading it? Cancelled. Static is now going to join the already rather large cast of Teen Titans - there's no logical in-story reason why he hasn't been a member right from the start, it's one of those things the writers have had to just ignore while he had his own comic, so there won't be any problem fitting him into the story. The collected edition of his solo series is certainly worth a look.
Brief summary: The Stormwatch team defend the Earth from all kinds of terrible things, with little hiccups along the way like various team members trying to kill others and so forth.
Gripes: Writer Paul Cornell quit for some reason after #6 - he's still writing Demon Knights, which isn't anywhere near as good - following which Paul Jenkins fills in for two issues, but for the future it's going to be taken over by Peter Milligan, who I'm not a fan of. I can't really complain about anything in the first eight issues, though.
Good bits: There are some brilliant characters in here - the team's leader, Adam, has been alive since the universe was created, but isn't actually a particularly good leader. Jack is the God of Cities, Jenny represents the 21st Century, Harry is the Prince of Lies but everyone thinks he's on the team because of his amazing sword-fighting skills. The members with more boring super-powers are also given distinctive personalities by the writers, and the things they get up to are original and brilliant. Miguel Sepulveda's work on most of the first eight issues is brilliant, Ignacio Calero's art on the others is less so but still good stuff. Apparently Sepulveda returns for #9 and then Calero seems to be the permanent artist from #10, so the comic's going to stay readable.
Should you start reading it? This is probably a bad time to start reading - with a comic like this, it all depends on whether the writer can do interesting things with the characters, and although the first two writers certainly achieve that, it remains to be seen whether Milligan will do the same. It's a comic that might well change from great to terrible in a heartbeat. Buy the collected edition and you certainly won't regret it - ask me in a couple of months about the later stories.
Brief summary: Alec Holland eventually becomes the Swamp Thing again and fights the powers of the Rot.
Gripes: Nothing really interesting seems to happen during the whole eight issue series so far. I've read it, but I only have the vaguest memories of the storylines, and I'm not really inclined to go back and read it again. The Swamp Thing himself doesn't really show up until the eighth issue.
Good bits: I can't really think of any, which seems unfair, because it's not a dreadfully bad comic like Men of War. It's just forgettable and bland.
Should you start reading it? Actually, it seems to be popular with just about everyone who isn't me, so maybe you should. I personally would say no, though.
The four cancelled comics are replaced on the May schedule by "Dial H" (man with magic dial that turns him into a hero, apparently dealt with in a dark and gritty way), "Earth Two" (alternate universe shenanigans), "G.I. Combat" (I can't see how this differs in any way from Men Of War) and "Worlds' Finest" (more alternate universe shenanigans).
As of next month, it'll be the New 46 plus six new series. DC Comics is fond of the number 52 for some reason, and although I obviously sympathise as a card-memoriser, I'm still not sure why it has to be mentioned in every publicity stunt or press release. They do release more than fifty-two comics every month - there have been various mini-series and not-part-of-the-main-DC-universe comics that brings their monthly total up to about eighty, but I'm only talking about the 52 core series that were launched last September and which reach their eighth issues in April.
The fact that each of these 52 comics has released an issue every month is actually noteworthy in itself. It's generally accepted that artists can't draw a full twenty-page comic every month any more - it's true that comic art is a lot more detailed now than it was back in the days when a good artist could churn out fifty pages or more in that time, and the standard of some of the drawings in these comics is such that you'd think a solid month or more has been spent on each page, but there's still a sense of disapproval and laziness inherent in not meeting a monthly deadline. A few years ago it had become the norm for comics drawn by the 'cool' artists to only come out once every three months or so, whenever they'd finished an issue, but that seems to have been unprofitable for the big companies. Now, DC has gone back to the old tradition of fill-in artists coming aboard for an issue or two to allow the regular artists time to catch up. By contrast, Marvel has taken the approach of rotating regular artists every three or four issues, allowing them to publish two issues a month of their biggest titles.
Jim Lee, the co-publisher of DC, is apparently allowed more leeway in this 'publish or perish' philosophy than a normal artist; the fifth issue of Justice League was a week late, and then the sixth issue was two weeks behind. Everything else has come out when they said it would, which makes a nice change.
Then there's the interesting idea of 'story arcs' - in the olden days, an average monthly comic would have three different stories, eight or nine pages each, in which the hero would be confronted with a problem and would solve it in short order, having time for a chat with his girlfriend who doesn't know he has a secret identity along the way. Now whether it's that all the stories have been done before or that modern writers just don't have that much imagination, a single story runs over several issues. There was a time, again, a couple of years ago, when every single story arc was six issues, the right size to fit in a paperback collection, but DC have varied that a bit with the New 52, obviously realising that it wasn't a good policy to have all the stories end with #6 and provide readers with a perfect moment to stop reading. Even so, some of the ideas in these comics seem to be stretched out a lot thinner than is good for them in order to fit a pre-defined number of pages.
Speaking of pages, DC have decided that the standard number of pages in a comic should be twenty. There hasn't really been an official page count before this, but around 22 was normal for most comics. While the first issues of the New 52 sometimes exceeded the twenty pages, after that they've almost all stuck to that total quite rigidly - comics are made up of 36 pages including the cover, which leaves sixteen spare for adverts, but paid ads don't normally cover more than half the available pages, leaving room for DC to advertise their own products on what's left over.
As for price, DC have coined the soundbite "holding the line at $2.99", which is a bit silly, really, when you consider that not too long ago the standard price for a superhero comic was $2.25 or $2.50. And of course four of the New 52 are in fact $3.99 - your extra dollar gets you an extra eight pages of "content", which is sometimes an extra mini-story, but sometimes filled in with artists' sketches or some hastily-written and widely-spaced text. Detective Comics and Batman have also increased to $3.99 from this month; DC kept an impressively straight face while insisting that it's entirely 'for story reasons' that their two best-selling three-dollar comics are going to cost more in future. Still, DC still have rather more three-dollar comics than Marvel, who sell most of theirs for $3.99 now, and that's the point they're trying to make.
So here's a brief and entirely subjective look back on the comics from the first week of the month - four cancelled comics and nine selling well enough that they're almost certainly going to be around for the foreseeable future:
Action Comics
Brief summary: Superman's early days as a superhero.
Gripes: The fourth issue ends with an announcement that the story will be continued in #7; the two issues in between are an entirely different story, which isn't as good. The back-up strips (which fit between pages of the main story but are printed at the end as if to tell everyone that they can be safely ignored if you want) are pretty obviously just churned out and stuck in there to justify the higher price.
Good bits: The story is very nice, taking the original idea of Superman as some sort of defender of the downtrodden masses and mixing in the modern concept that he can be in some kind of physical danger and even meet someone stronger than him. However, he still resolves the situation by essentially punching the bad guy very hard, which is a bit of a let-down.
Should you start reading it? It's more aimed at people who are familiar with Superman comics (rather than films or TV shows) of the past, but I think there's something there for everyone. It's certainly entertaining stuff that's worth a look.
Animal Man
Brief summary: Animal Man's young daughter manifests extremely scary powers, and the family are drawn into a nightmarish world.
Gripes: The artist (Travel Foreman) can draw scary monsters extraordinarily well (the imagination and sheer horror of this comic is in a league of its own) but can't draw real people, so the contrast isn't what it should be. More seriously, he seems to have had personal problems preventing him from drawing more than a couple of pages of several issues, leading to the story grinding to a halt and several months of the family basically just driving around saying they really ought to find Swamp Thing and talk about stuff. One issue consists entirely of a film in which Buddy Baker (Animal Man) once starred. Foreman has announced that he's not comfortable with drawing scary monsters any more and has been re-assigned to Birds of Prey for the future, which doesn't suit his style at all.
Good bits: As mentioned above, some seriously awesome aberrations of nature appear in the comic. The story, with a married hero accompanied by his normal wife and son as well as his scary daughter, is something different and cool (the prevailing wisdom is that married superheroes don't work, so the big companies have undone pretty much every marriage in modern comics). Animal Man himself is also a much more likeable character than most heroes.
Should you start reading it? It's hard to recommend a comic that seems to have been marking time and doing nothing for such a long time, but the likelihood is that it'll kick back into gear in the near future, and might be fun. Wait until after the upcoming crossover with Swamp Thing is done with, and then see what happens.
Batwing
Brief summary: Batman franchises his image to a Congolese policeman, who becomes the Batman of Africa. But someone's killing off the previous generation of superheroes.
Gripes: Ben Oliver's artwork, which graces five of the first six issues, is abominable and makes it very difficult to see what's supposed to be happening in the story. The writing is also surprisingly inept in the revelation of Massacre's secret identity - when the hero repeatedly asserts that he's almost certain it's one person, that leads the reader to assume it's not, and that by a process of elimination it must be the only other possible suspect. And sure enough, it is.
Good bits: The story itself is quite good, if a bit on the thin side.
Should you start reading it? Not really. It's okay, but there's nothing really special about the story other than that it's set in Africa - and a very generic American view of what Africa is like, at that. Not a bad comic by any stretch of the imagination, but there are better ones out there.
Detective Comics
Brief summary: Batman fights the bad guys.
Gripes: The series was apparently written with the intention that it would chronicle Batman's early days like Action Comics does for Superman, but then at a late stage the dialogue was changed to make it contemporary with the rest of the DC Universe. The alteration is really obvious and jarring. #8 justifies its increased price with an almost completely incomprehensible back-up story about the origins of Two-Face.
Good bits: Nice artwork, and an entertaining storyline, particularly the part involving the Penguin. It's conventional superhero comic drama, but done extremely well.
Should you start reading it? If you're relatively new to comics and want to see what Batman's up to, this is the one to get. It's always going to be fun and readable.
Green Arrow
Brief summary: The arrow-wielding hero tries to juggle his business life, his superhero activities and his womanising.
Gripes: In its eight issues, the comic has gone through three different writers, with a striking change of tone every time. The only consistency in the way the character's written is that he remains an annoying jerk throughout.
Good bits: It's quite hard to find any good bits here - the first story has some interesting villains, killing people in order to make popular YouTube videos and thus look cool.
Should you start reading it? I would have to say no. There are worse comics out there, but there are plenty of better ones too.
Hawk and Dove
Brief summary: The chalk-and-cheese heroes try to save the world.
Gripes: The writer was sacked by editors apparently looking for a change of direction, meaning that the Condor story was very abruptly ended, following which the series was almost immediately cancelled. The last few issues, written by artist Rob Liefeld, seem to be just filling pages until the series ends.
Good bits: There's some nice art and some fun banter between the two characters, but it never quite clicks like it should.
Should you start reading it? It's finished now - the previous issues are certainly readable, but maybe not enough to justify the price of buying the paperback (the first storylines of all the New 52 are coming out in collected form over the next eight months - this includes the full eight-issue runs of the six cancelled comics).
Justice League International
Brief summary: The UN decides to create its own controllable and public superhero team.
Gripes: The opening storyline stresses that there are lots of other heroes in the world, but then when a world-threatening emergency arises (with lots and lots of time for people to stand around discussing what to do about it) everyone acts as if these nine characters are the only heroes out there. It's often necessary to ignore the shared-universe concept for story reasons, but competent writers don't shove it in the readers' faces like this. There's no attempt to reconcile the appearances of Batman and Guy Gardner with their roles in other comics.
Good bits: Excellent artwork, and some likeable characters who interact in interesting ways. The central character, Booster Gold, is particularly well written.
Should you start reading it? Yes, I think you should. It's good stuff, although it's one of those series that works better in isolation, unlike most of the rest of the New 52 which has the exactly right amount of interaction between different comics.
Men Of War
Brief summary: An anthology of various war stories.
Gripes: The main story for the first six issues is just about the worst comic story ever written and drawn, which can't make up its mind whether it's a realistic war series or a weird superhero comic and shifts wildly back and forth between them. The backup stories are mostly throwaway silliness or just plain bad. The last two issues are just filling pages of a cancelled comic - #8 is a story about Frankenstein in World War 2, written by Frankenstein's regular writer, which will look rather out of place in the collected edition of Men of War.
Good bits: I honestly can't think of any. Even the Frankenstein story isn't that good.
Should you start reading it? It's been cancelled, but it'll be replaced by what seems to be the exact same comic with a different title, G.I. Combat. I certainly wouldn't recommend that.
O.M.A.C.
Brief summary: The hapless Kevin Kho is turned into a giant monster under the control of Brother Eye.
Gripes: There's no real connection between the sequences in which Kevin is OMAC and the sequences in which he's Kevin - he doesn't have any control over the monster at all, so we just repeatedly switch between the fighting plotlines and the plot of Kevin trying to live a normal life.
Good bits: Really great over-the-top artwork and a really fun plotline which indulges in all the inherent silliness of the idea.
Should you start reading it? It's been cancelled, but it'll probably be worth buying the paperback edition and seeing the insanity for yourself.
Red Lanterns
Brief summary: The rage-fuelled equivalent of the Green Lanterns indulge in a lot of rage.
Gripes: Bleez features quite frequently on websites deriding the way women are drawn in comics (I recommend Less Tits n' Ass, More Kickin' Ass and Escher Girls), and with good cause. The second issue is a fill-in with no mention of the subplots introduced in the first issue. These subplots take a very long time to develop into nothing in particular.
Good bits: Bleez aside, the artwork is excellent, with a lot of extremely interesting-looking characters and some great, detailed scenes. The story explaining the origins of two of the lesser Red Lanterns characters is extremely good.
Should you start reading it? There's not much of a story here, so unless you buy a comic just for the artwork (or for Bleez's ability to display her bum in every picture), you should probably skip this one. Alternatively, if you want undemanding action, this might be the one for you.
Static Shock
Brief summary: Teenage hero Static faces all kinds of problems, including his sister being split into two people.
Gripes: Original writer John Rozum quit after five issues, very publicly announcing that he didn't actually get to write anything, and all his ideas and dialogue were rejected by artist Scott McDaniel, with the support of editor Harvey Richards. New writer Marc Bernadin's contribution to #7 and #8 seems to consist of a bizarre introductory caption asserting that Static has been changed by past events and 'in many ways Virgil Hawkins ceased to exist', which is wildly at odds with what actually appears in the comics. The final issue takes the strange decision to recap his origin at length.
Good bits: A lot of fun superhero action, and a very likeable central character always made this a very readable comic. I seem to be in the minority there, but I've liked this series a lot.
Should you start reading it? Cancelled. Static is now going to join the already rather large cast of Teen Titans - there's no logical in-story reason why he hasn't been a member right from the start, it's one of those things the writers have had to just ignore while he had his own comic, so there won't be any problem fitting him into the story. The collected edition of his solo series is certainly worth a look.
Stormwatch
Brief summary: The Stormwatch team defend the Earth from all kinds of terrible things, with little hiccups along the way like various team members trying to kill others and so forth.
Gripes: Writer Paul Cornell quit for some reason after #6 - he's still writing Demon Knights, which isn't anywhere near as good - following which Paul Jenkins fills in for two issues, but for the future it's going to be taken over by Peter Milligan, who I'm not a fan of. I can't really complain about anything in the first eight issues, though.
Good bits: There are some brilliant characters in here - the team's leader, Adam, has been alive since the universe was created, but isn't actually a particularly good leader. Jack is the God of Cities, Jenny represents the 21st Century, Harry is the Prince of Lies but everyone thinks he's on the team because of his amazing sword-fighting skills. The members with more boring super-powers are also given distinctive personalities by the writers, and the things they get up to are original and brilliant. Miguel Sepulveda's work on most of the first eight issues is brilliant, Ignacio Calero's art on the others is less so but still good stuff. Apparently Sepulveda returns for #9 and then Calero seems to be the permanent artist from #10, so the comic's going to stay readable.
Should you start reading it? This is probably a bad time to start reading - with a comic like this, it all depends on whether the writer can do interesting things with the characters, and although the first two writers certainly achieve that, it remains to be seen whether Milligan will do the same. It's a comic that might well change from great to terrible in a heartbeat. Buy the collected edition and you certainly won't regret it - ask me in a couple of months about the later stories.
Swamp Thing
Brief summary: Alec Holland eventually becomes the Swamp Thing again and fights the powers of the Rot.
Gripes: Nothing really interesting seems to happen during the whole eight issue series so far. I've read it, but I only have the vaguest memories of the storylines, and I'm not really inclined to go back and read it again. The Swamp Thing himself doesn't really show up until the eighth issue.
Good bits: I can't really think of any, which seems unfair, because it's not a dreadfully bad comic like Men of War. It's just forgettable and bland.
Should you start reading it? Actually, it seems to be popular with just about everyone who isn't me, so maybe you should. I personally would say no, though.
The four cancelled comics are replaced on the May schedule by "Dial H" (man with magic dial that turns him into a hero, apparently dealt with in a dark and gritty way), "Earth Two" (alternate universe shenanigans), "G.I. Combat" (I can't see how this differs in any way from Men Of War) and "Worlds' Finest" (more alternate universe shenanigans).
Wednesday, April 04, 2012
Mental competitions!
I've just had an email from the Mental Calculation World Cup, so this seems like a good time to summarise everything that's happening in the mental world of mental skills competitions this year...
- Please help to circulate this call for registrations -
Mental calculators from all over the world are invited to the 5th Mental Calculation World Cup 2012!
[Apologies if you receive this e-mail more than once]
Venue:
Mathematikum, a science museum in Gießen, Germany (http://www.mathematikum.de)
Date:
29 September - 1 October 2012
Contest Details:
Calculators will have to solve tasks in different categories (addition, multiplication, extracting roots, day-of-the-week calculations) and various surprise tasks.
Only strict mental calculation (no tools, no writing down of intermediate results) is allowed.
Prizes:
There will be several prizes and trophies for the best participants.
In particular, the MEMORIAD Association will sponsor free flights to the MEMORIAD 2012 competition in Antalya, Turkey (http://www.memoriad.com) for the winners in the categories addition, multiplication, square roots and calendar calculation.
(does not apply for participants who have already won a free flight in the MCWC 2010 event and for participants who are not allowed to enter MEMORIAD contests according to decisions of the MEMORIAD Association)
Registration:
The registration form can be found on the MCWC website (http://www.recordholders.org/en/events/worldcup/2012/).
Please download the entry form and send it by airmail to the address given in the form.
Deadline for Registrations: 1 June 2012
More information can be found on the web site:
http://www.recordholders.org/en/events/worldcup/2012/
Contacts:
If you have any questions on the MCWC, please contact info@recordholders.org.
I am looking forward to meet the world's best calculators in Gießen!
Ralf Laue
Is it really the fifth bi-annual competition? Wow, I suppose it must be, it started in 2004. I'm really getting old. Anyway, it's a fun competition, the Mathematikum is a great venue, and as usual I'll be going as long as I've got the money. They let me take part in it if they're weeding down applications to a maximum number because I'm a memory champion, even though I'm not all that great at mental calculations, so it'd be rude of me not to take advantage of this slight silliness.
And as Ralf mentions in that email, there's also the Memoriad - the second every-four-years competition encompassing mental calculation and memory. Long-time readers will remember I didn't go to the one in 2008 because getting out of bed after the world memory championship immediately beforehand was too difficult, but Boris, Andi and Gunther all say it was a fantastic competition. There's also lots of promises of big money and free flights and accommodation here and there. It happens on 24-25 November, in Turkey.
Making the convenient transition to memory competitions, here's what we've got planned so far:
The South German Memory Championship happens on April 21st - unlike the North German, which had an extra Open part, I think this is just for South Germans, and only a regional-standard (seven discipline) event.
The German Memory Championship moves back to its traditional summer spot in the schedule, on July 27-28, still at the very nice Experimenta in Heilbronn. Open to everyone, even if they're not German, and with translations into the language of your choice now available, I do really recommend this to everyone. As I've said many times before, this is the biggest competition with the highest standard of memorisers outside of the world championship and it's a great competition to go to. Let's have more non-Germans there this year, please!
The UK Memory Championship will happen in August, in London - details aren't finalised yet, but I'm sure they'll be coming soon. Presumably it'll be like the last couple of years, a two-day, International Standard, open-to-everyone-even-if-they're-not-British, kind of competition, exactly like the German.
The Swedish Memory Championship happens on September 29th, in what now counts as the 'usual' place (three years in a row is actually quite unusual for memory competitions) at the Gothenburg Book Fair. National standard competition, still open to everyone regardless of nationality.
The World Championship hasn't got a place or time as far as I know just yet, but I'm assured it'll be happening too. Probably late in the year, after all the above competitions.
Oh, and the Cambridge Championship? I'm getting on the case, I promise. I'm back in the mood to do something about memory competitions, I've been practicing cards for the last three days and I got below 30 seconds again today. Next step is working up to concentrating on numbers for a whole five minutes. It's an arduous process, believe me.
I notice now that the Mental Calculation World Cup takes place on the same day as the Swedish Memory Championship. That's annoying. I'll choose between them at some point in the future. That sounds like a decision that Future Zoomy will be great at making, I'll leave it up to him.
- Please help to circulate this call for registrations -
Mental calculators from all over the world are invited to the 5th Mental Calculation World Cup 2012!
[Apologies if you receive this e-mail more than once]
Venue:
Mathematikum, a science museum in Gießen, Germany (http://www.mathematikum.de)
Date:
29 September - 1 October 2012
Contest Details:
Calculators will have to solve tasks in different categories (addition, multiplication, extracting roots, day-of-the-week calculations) and various surprise tasks.
Only strict mental calculation (no tools, no writing down of intermediate results) is allowed.
Prizes:
There will be several prizes and trophies for the best participants.
In particular, the MEMORIAD Association will sponsor free flights to the MEMORIAD 2012 competition in Antalya, Turkey (http://www.memoriad.com) for the winners in the categories addition, multiplication, square roots and calendar calculation.
(does not apply for participants who have already won a free flight in the MCWC 2010 event and for participants who are not allowed to enter MEMORIAD contests according to decisions of the MEMORIAD Association)
Registration:
The registration form can be found on the MCWC website (http://www.recordholders.org/en/events/worldcup/2012/).
Please download the entry form and send it by airmail to the address given in the form.
Deadline for Registrations: 1 June 2012
More information can be found on the web site:
http://www.recordholders.org/en/events/worldcup/2012/
Contacts:
If you have any questions on the MCWC, please contact info@recordholders.org.
I am looking forward to meet the world's best calculators in Gießen!
Ralf Laue
Is it really the fifth bi-annual competition? Wow, I suppose it must be, it started in 2004. I'm really getting old. Anyway, it's a fun competition, the Mathematikum is a great venue, and as usual I'll be going as long as I've got the money. They let me take part in it if they're weeding down applications to a maximum number because I'm a memory champion, even though I'm not all that great at mental calculations, so it'd be rude of me not to take advantage of this slight silliness.
And as Ralf mentions in that email, there's also the Memoriad - the second every-four-years competition encompassing mental calculation and memory. Long-time readers will remember I didn't go to the one in 2008 because getting out of bed after the world memory championship immediately beforehand was too difficult, but Boris, Andi and Gunther all say it was a fantastic competition. There's also lots of promises of big money and free flights and accommodation here and there. It happens on 24-25 November, in Turkey.
Making the convenient transition to memory competitions, here's what we've got planned so far:
The South German Memory Championship happens on April 21st - unlike the North German, which had an extra Open part, I think this is just for South Germans, and only a regional-standard (seven discipline) event.
The German Memory Championship moves back to its traditional summer spot in the schedule, on July 27-28, still at the very nice Experimenta in Heilbronn. Open to everyone, even if they're not German, and with translations into the language of your choice now available, I do really recommend this to everyone. As I've said many times before, this is the biggest competition with the highest standard of memorisers outside of the world championship and it's a great competition to go to. Let's have more non-Germans there this year, please!
The UK Memory Championship will happen in August, in London - details aren't finalised yet, but I'm sure they'll be coming soon. Presumably it'll be like the last couple of years, a two-day, International Standard, open-to-everyone-even-if-they're-not-British, kind of competition, exactly like the German.
The Swedish Memory Championship happens on September 29th, in what now counts as the 'usual' place (three years in a row is actually quite unusual for memory competitions) at the Gothenburg Book Fair. National standard competition, still open to everyone regardless of nationality.
The World Championship hasn't got a place or time as far as I know just yet, but I'm assured it'll be happening too. Probably late in the year, after all the above competitions.
Oh, and the Cambridge Championship? I'm getting on the case, I promise. I'm back in the mood to do something about memory competitions, I've been practicing cards for the last three days and I got below 30 seconds again today. Next step is working up to concentrating on numbers for a whole five minutes. It's an arduous process, believe me.
I notice now that the Mental Calculation World Cup takes place on the same day as the Swedish Memory Championship. That's annoying. I'll choose between them at some point in the future. That sounds like a decision that Future Zoomy will be great at making, I'll leave it up to him.
Sunday, April 01, 2012
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?
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?
Saturday, March 31, 2012
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!
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!
Thursday, March 29, 2012
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?
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?
Wednesday, March 28, 2012
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...
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...
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