The good, the bad and the ugly...

...things about moving to Burton-on-Trent.

Good: It's much bigger than I thought it was. Lots of shops and things, with a town centre about the size of Lincoln's. Glen did actually tell me that before, but I didn't believe him until I went along and looked around. There's also a Conference football team, Burton Albion, which would mean I could go to an affordable game on a Saturday afternoon without a train journey. And it would certainly be a lot more convenient for work if I lived there.

Bad: I'm pretty sure there isn't a comic shop, although there might be one hidden in a back street somewhere (like comic shops always are). If there is, though, they don't advertise it in Comics International. That'd mean a hassle getting my weekly fix of superhero action. Also, moving house is such a drag in the first place. And I'm still not convinced this job will last.

Ugly: The whole town smells like a brewery. I suppose you get used to this kind of thing if you live there...

All in all, I think I'll commute for a couple of months until I'm sure I'm not going to get sacked for gross incompetence, then find a place to live there.

Anyway, having the day off also gives me a much-needed chance to cram a few more hours TV-watching and comic-reading into a day. I discovered a fascinating cartoon called 'Gnoufs' this afternoon. It's French originally, dubbed into English with a strange variety of regional accents, and as best I can determine from the episode-and-a-half I watched, it's about a group of aliens who've come to Earth in the form of cuddly toys. The half episode was the best - I missed the start, but I have a feeling I wouldn't have had the faintest idea what was going on even if I'd seen it all, which is always a good thing.

Basically, it seems that one of the gang, a jack-in-the-box, had retreated into the dream world at the bottom of his box and the others joined him there. Cue a whole lot of floating past psychedelic imagery and bizarre dialogue: "You all have your own dream world at the bottom of your boxes." "But we haven't got boxes. We've got feet." "Everyone's got boxes. Everyone's existence is on the end of a spring."

And it subsequently turned out that everyone's dream world was the real world, because they all like it so much. The second half of the double-bill, in which one of the characters swaps bodies with a dog, and is nervous of its owner on the grounds that he's Welsh and therefore probably a cannibal, was comparatively tame.

What's particularly weird about this show is the script. I watch a lot of cartoons, and there's a general rule that anything at least theoretically aimed at kids (as this seems to be) should have somewhat dumbed-down dialogue. Nothing too drastic, just enough to keep it comprehensible to younger viewers while still entertaining for older ones. That doesn't seem to apply to the Gnoufs, though. If anything, they go out of their way to use big words, without explaining them. I have not the faintest idea what age group this is meant to be aimed at - possibly it's aimed at very weird 28-year-olds. Possibly I've just watched a very atypical episode and they're normally standard preschool fare. I'll have to see more, anyway. If I could remember what time it was on and which channel, I'd set the video tomorrow.

Also (I've got extra time for writing this thing tonight, so I'm going to go on and on and on for pages and pages. Feel free to skip it) I watched an episode of DS9 on Sky. I confess to being a Star Trek fan, and DS9 in particular, but this particular episode was one of the two I actively dislike, so rather than explain why I like (or at least put up with) all the others, I'm going to go into detail about why this one is so bad.

It's "Inquisition", the episode that introduces Sloan and Section 31, horrible mistakes in both cases. The problem is that the episode does its best to make it clear that a perfect society like the Federation couldn't possibly exist without a shady undercover organisation doing nasty business and dressing all in black. This is really infuriating to me, and completely against the whole idea of what Star Trek is supposed to be about. Individual characters can and should be multi-faceted, even downright evil on occasion, but the setting they're in really should be a representation of what human beings are capable of. A big part of Trek's appeal is that it's so optimistic about the future. When you make out that there's 'dirty work' going on behind the scenes to make the future look bright, it spoils it.

The other DS9 episode I hate, incidentally, is "Body Parts", which is based on a huge, fundamental misunderstanding about how Ferengi culture works. And, like "Inquisition", it has major repercussions on the ongoing storylines, so you can't just ignore it. There are plenty of other bad episodes, but those two are the ones that have something so wrong with them that they tarnish the whole series. "The Storyteller", for example, misses the point of the whole DS9 series (it's a Next Gen-style episode changed with the bare minimum of rewriting into a DS9 show), and has laughably bad plot, dialogue and characterisation, and unforgivably ends with the line "No thanks, I think I've had ENOUGH storytelling for one day!"... but it's fun to jeer at, is never mentioned again and doesn't do anything that undermines the fabric of the universe it's set in. So I'd rather watch that one than "Inquisition".

I've also been buying comics today, and while I've got nothing better to do I thought I'd talk about them too. It has occurred to me, incidentally, that I could split these kinds of rambling posts into several shorter posts, but I quite like the idea of forcing everyone to read the whole long thing. That way people interested in only one of my various hobbies and obsessions can learn about the others. Or just ignore me completely. Either is good.

So, comics. Only two new ones I was interested in buying this week - Young Avengers #7 and the ABC A-Z. Still need to get Ultimates #8 somewhere - I really need to find a good comic shop (by which I mean one that orders too many copies of each comic so they don't run out) or start ordering them in advance. I also got the fifth volume of Exiles in trade paperback form - I'm collecting them now after years of reading it occasionally in the shop but not generally buying it.

The ABC comic is strange. The whole ABC line was set up for Alan Moore to do whatever he liked with a whole new range of characters. It was uniformly brilliant, like everything Moore does. When he got bored with it and moved on to whatever strange things he's doing now (involving human sacrifice and tarot cards, probably), he let other writers play with his characters, foremost among them Peter Hogan, who's writing this one. It consists of a lengthy Tom Strong story recapping his origins and introducing his large supporting cast, and a shorter Jack B Quick story doing essentially the same thing. I have no idea why they thought anyone would want to buy this. Tom Strong is only occasionally published nowadays, and new readers really don't need to know the back story in summary form to understand it. Jack B Quick hasn't appeared in a new story for ages (and I hope he carries on like that if Moore isn't writing it - nobody else could capture the sense of pseudoscientific insanity that makes Jack such fun).

If you want to know what happened in the old Tom Strong stories, go out and buy them. Nobody needs to read an ultra-abridged, soulless synopsis like the A-Z to like the new stuff. I doubt anyone will buy it apart from people like me who buy everything with the ABC logo as a matter of principle. It's not even entirely accurate, for crying out loud - it suggests that Fingel Parallax is still alive, which is either foreshadowing of an upcoming story or (more likely) a flat-out mistake.

Young Avengers #7 is the first part of a new storyline. Marvel comics nowadays come in six-part story arcs so that they fit nicely into a paperback collection, and the first six issues of Young Avengers mostly consisted of writer Allan Heinberg fulfilling the awful remit he'd been handed ("We've decided to do a series about young versions of Captain America, Thor, Iron Man and Hulk. Because Teen Titans is cool, so Young Avengers would be even cooler. Go and write it.") The opening story did that, introduced some less stupid characters, killed off Iron Lad and set it up with some great promise for the future. And did it very entertainingly, albeit with some incomprehensible time travel logic. The first part of the new story looks like it's going to be great. It really could be a big hit - it's selling well, and word-of-mouth is only going to get better now Heinberg's writing the kind of characters he wants to write, and hopefully avoiding world-changing drama. I'd recommend it to anyone who wants to read a genuinely good modern superhero story.

As for Exiles, this collection is Chuck Austen's five-issue fill-in run from 2003. Austen is much maligned in the comics business, and with good cause because he's just not a very good writer, but these ones aren't too bad. The stories don't make a great deal of sense, but that's never been a requirement for Exiles stories. The character interaction is quite fun, and the abundance of characters in the X-Men crossover really works somehow. Stories with more than ten major roles all doing something have always appealed to me for some reason. It's not as good as the Judd Winick stories that appear in the first four collections, but it's still worth reading.

Anyway, that's probably enough babbling for one afternoon/evening in between watching cartoons (Justice League Unlimited is great, by the way). Conclusive proof, if any were needed, that I'm only writing this thing to entertain myself. Imagine being someone else and reading through all that. I shudder to think of it!