Superer Sunday

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Written by Abnett and Lanning, drawn by Dagnino.

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

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

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

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

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

Milligan writes, Benes pencils, Hunter inks.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wallace writes, Gugliotta pencils, Faucher inks.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Legion Lost #1
Fabian Nicieza, Pete Woods

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Grifter #1
Edmonson, Cafu, Gorder

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Deathstroke #1
Kyle Higgins, Joe Bennett, Art Thibert

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tomasi writes, Gleason pencils, Gray inks.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Well, it's better than fifth

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

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


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




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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I'm still complaining

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

Ben Pridmore's Xtreme Memory Show

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

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

Super Sunday

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Stormwatch #1
Paul Cornell, Miguel Sepulveda

Cornell's the writer, Sepulveda the artist.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Swamp Thing #1
Scott Snyder, Yanick Paquette

Snyder writes, Paquette draws.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hawk and Dove #1
Sterling Gates, Rob Liefeld

Gates writes, Liefeld draws.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Detective Comics #1
Tony S. Daniel, Ryan Winn

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

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

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

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

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

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

Batwing #1
Judd Winick, Ben Oliver

Winick writes, Oliver draws.

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

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

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

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

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

Batgirl #1
Gail Simone, Ardian Syaf, Vicente Cifuentes

Simone writes, Syaf pencils, Cifuentes inks.

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

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

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

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

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

It's just not very exciting

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1001011010

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

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

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

Give it the elbow

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

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

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

It actually is funny

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

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

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

Epic Something!

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

I wish people would stop liking me

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

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

Hey, it's an anniversary!

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

Binary

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

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

Chemistry

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

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

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

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

Germany calling

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

Broad beans are sleeping in a blankety bed

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

Look for signs that summer's done

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

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

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

Heeeere I come to save the daaaaaay!

I'm Mighty Mouse.

This is what we need

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

Remembering memory

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Downpour!

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

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

Boris Bikes!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Suggestive

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

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

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

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

London beckons

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

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

He wasn't!

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

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

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

Drat, I forgot to blog today

And I'm still determined to keep up the daily chronicle. But it's past my bedtime already, and I do need to get up early tomorrow for work. Well, not really need to as such, but I'm also determined to get up early in the mornings. Determination isn't something I'm good at.

Sport Billy

I know I probably say this every year, but it's so great when the football season starts again. Match Of The Day on a Saturday night is a great British institution. Scrap the summer break, make them play football all year round, that's what I say.

Weekend!

One last practice of memory stuff this weekend, then two days of work, then I've got Wednesday off to travel down to London before the competition on Thursday and Friday. And then it's a bank holiday the next Monday, and bank holidays are meaningful again now that I'm more or less working!

I'm really looking forward to the UK Championship now, just because it'll show how well I can do in a real competition this year, and give me a useful guide to how far I need to improve before December. I can never quite be sure where I am, preparation-wise, until I've done a two-day competition.

The Daley News

The press release for this year's UK Memory Championship is basically last year's press release with a few subtle changes, so it still says I'm of the status of Daley Thompson. I'm really not. I'm worried that he'll read it and come around and beat me up, because he's quite a lot bigger than me (or was in the 1980s, anyway).

In fact, the press release is pretty much entirely about me, which is a little bit worrying. Maybe nobody else is coming to the competition? That would make it easier to win, but it'd be a bit embarrassing if someone who's read the press release comes and writes an article.

Oh, and just for the record, the press release says I've memorised a pack of cards in 24.64 seconds, when it should be 24.97. And that's not even close to being a world record any more - I'm going to have to try to beat it next Friday.

Work!

There's no getting around it, I need to work. I've had the day off, all by myself, the brother's gone back to China, and I've done nothing. I need to be in the office so I can do things in my free time and complain about how I haven't got enough of it. And that really annoys me. Still, back to work tomorrow and I'll forget about it and wish I had whole days to myself again...

Comics!

Hooray, because I've got my new Order of the Stick book today - not reprints of the awesome webcomic, which has just passed its 800th episode and is still going strong, but reprints of the strips that appeared in Dragon magazine, plus a whole lot of never-seen-before unashamed-filler bonus material which is actually really brilliant. I laughed out loud four times, and really loudly too, which is well worth the price of the book. I'd say "go and buy it", but it was a limited edition and might actually not be available any more, I'm not sure. Go and acquire one somehow, anyway.

Also, the 2012 comic annuals are in the shops now - we seem to have given up on the in-time-for-Christmas release date and now be gradually inching towards a three-years-in-advance kind of thing. I was curious to see whether the Dandy annual would reflect the new look, or whether it would be a couple of years behind the weekly comic as usual, but actually it's sort of half-and-half, in an amalgam that's really quite interesting.

Ooh, Arsenal just scored after three minutes! Yes, it's also football season again, and I'm fully intending to waste a lot of time watching games (in addition to the time I spend reading comics) instead of memory training.

Anyway, as I was saying, the Dandy annual has a lot of characters who haven't been seen for quite some time, alongside some strips that came along with the latest relaunch. There's an old-fashioned art style on Desperate Dan and an all-new-looking Korky the Cat who's entirely unlike any previous incarnation. It's all very readable, too. Go and buy it. And the Beano, which is the same as it always is, and therefore worth reading.

One thing that's not out yet is the annual Broons and Oor Wullie classic-comic reprint book. But it's listed on Amazon, and ooh, look at that! No, not the cover (I know there are very few full-colour, high-quality pictures of the Broons drawn by Dudley Watkins, but they've already used that group pic on the covers of two previous reprint books, and it's getting silly now) but the page count! 144 pages, 32 more than last year, which makes me believe they've listened to the impassioned complaint in my blog post last year and brought the number of reprinted strips back up to what it used to be! Maybe it's also chock-full of racism, just like I demanded in my other blog post last year! I feel quite accomplished now.

It's all in the mind

I seem to be getting a lot of news updates about mind sports lately, so I felt that I should pass them on. The World Memory Championship has moved - but don't worry, it's only in space rather than time, and to a hotel rather than a university, which tends to be a good thing, more often than not. Hotel conference rooms are more luxurious-looking than exam halls, even if the latter are better suited to memory championships. New location is the Jingyi Hotel, in the Haidian district of Beijing.

I'm really quite looking forward to Beijing now. Just as long as I've got enough money for the trip from somewhere by then, it'll be a great place to visit! And since the press releases are still claiming (in defiance of all common sense) that six billion people watched last year's WMC on telly, no doubt I'll be mobbed by millions of devoted memory-championship fans!

Elsewhere, back home in London, I'm told that the fifteenth Mind Sports Olympiad kicks off on Saturday. It can't really be the fifteenth, can it? ... (A small amount of counting on fingers and toes later) ... It is. Wow, I must be old. I was there at the start, with all the wild dreams of international success and piles of money for competitors and organisers alike. Still, it's nice that it's still sputtering along, though I won't be bothering with it this year.

And I haven't said congratulations to Richard Ratcliffe on the Stratego World Championship last week! Shame I couldn't go to that, but it's got to be a good omen that there was a British winner for a change. And it's also the British Othello Championship in Cambridge on September 17th and 18th - once again, I can't go because of a memory championship clash, but if you feel like a bit of othello in its ancestral home, I recommend it heartily!

The Marc Gallery

As I've mentioned on this blog once or twice before, I'm fascinated by the work of "Marc", the illustrator of cheap cartoon videos in the 1980s. His depictions of the Japanese cartoons that came via America to Krypton Force can be seen here, but he seems to have really come into his own when drawing the covers for collections of public-domain American cartoons from the 30s and 40s, packaged by a company called "Vidage".

Vidage might well have been the same people as Krypton Force, or maybe they just also chose Marc from the usually-anonymous ranks of cheap-video-cover-artists, I don't know. But I've only got a couple of their videos, and the BBFC website tells me that there were actually quite a lot more, all seemingly with covers by Marc!

Here are the two examples I do own:

Betty Boop Noveltoon One - containing three Betty Boop cartoons ("Betty Boop and Grumpy" is actually called "Betty Boop and Grampy", and he isn't at all grumpy), a Porky Pig (the 1960s Korean-produced colorized version of the black-and-white original), Ub Iwerks's "Jack Frost", and a Little Audrey. The latter was a Noveltoons cartoon - the name given to the cartoons made by Paramount after they bought out the Max Fleischer studios - but the rest weren't. Nonetheless, the Vidage people seem to have liked the name, and applied it to a number of 'sequels' to this video.

But just look at that wonderful cover, proudly signed by Marc! His technique was to pause the video at carefully-selected points, and carefully copy the pictures, then combine them all into one big scene. So we get Porky in his nightshirt, with a slice of cake drawn into his hand to fit the general theme, and the cat in a singing pose that cleverly matches Little Audrey's delighted expression and the Candyland background. There's a lot of work gone into this!

The BBFC tells me that there are the following other tapes in the "Noveltoon" range by Vidage - two of them are available second-hand on Amazon:

Sport Champion Noveltoon Two
Mutt Jeff Noveltoon Three
A Kick In Time Noveltoon Four
Ding Dong Daddy Noveltoon Five
All's Well Noveltoon Six

"Sport Champion", which I'm guessing included the cartoon "Sport Chumpions", although maybe I'm wrong, got a PG rating for some reason - I wonder what other cartoons were on it? It's more normal to say "Mutt and Jeff" rather than "Mutt Jeff", which surely someone would have noticed by watching the cartoon, but perhaps the person who named the video collection thought it was about a mutt called Jeff. The cover to volume 3 is signed by Marc, volume 4 doesn't seem to be, but it's clearly his work. Again, they're real masterpieces!

And then there's Fun Parade:



Now this is really ugly, but you've got to admire the way the characters are grouped together so that Marc has to draw as few hands as possible. He also seems to have decided against trying to draw Bugs Bunny, perhaps because he couldn't find a pose to copy that would fit into the Christmas get-together theme he'd chosen for the cover.

The BBFC lists eight volumes of Fun Parade, with no further detail except that volume two is directed by "Seymour Kneitel/i. Sparbar/others", which suggests it might actually contain some more Noveltoons (Seymour Kneitel and Isadore Sparber also worked for Fleischer before Paramount took over, but the complex sibling politics there meant that Dave Fleischer was always credited as director on Max Fleischer cartoons).

I want to know more, and assemble a gallery of Marc's work for the world to see! Anyone finding one of these old tapes in a charity shop or attic is urged to please let me see it!

There might be more out there - the BBFC list omits one of the Sci-Bots tapes and the mysterious Mission Promete (which I'm increasingly convinced came from an alternate universe, because nobody else has ever heard of it). And Marc may have worked for yet more companies producing cheap artwork. I must put on an art exhibition some time...

If you're at the Fringe...

... You might want to check out Rrrants at "Laughing Horse at the Pear Tree", which might be a pub, although the website doesn't make it entirely clear. Anyway, it's on West Nicholson Street, and I think my friend Dave used to live there once, so go and ask him where it is.

Getting back to the point, I can't speak for most of the Rrrants crew, but my other friend Jammie Sammy, who's an awesome and funny singer, is among them, and it's well worth your while to go and check her out. You know I only give free plugs to people I really like, so this comes with a Zoomy guarantee of quality. I'd go myself, but I've got a job and a memory championship.

In other news, the Blogger stats tell me I've had 42 hits from the Bahamas today, and I'm wondering whether it's one enthusiastic reader or a suddenly-emerging community of Zoomy-fans that has sprung up over there. In any case, hello! I always love to see pageviews from new places.

I've fixed it!

My computer developed a thing where Internet Explorer and Firefox kept trying to open new windows, so I did a search on google and found that lots of people had had the same problem, but nobody had replied with anything beyond 'sounds like you've got a virus'. So I downloaded a new virus-killing thing and killed it. I'm a computer whiz.

Anyway, it's the weekend, and you really appreciate them when you're working nine to five during the week. Although actually, I've been starting at eight this past fortnight, because that way I get up and dressed and out of the house before my brother gets up, and we don't get under each other's feet in the mornings. Still, it's good for me - I might keep doing it when he's back in China, although I'll more likely go back to my old routine of waking up at twenty to nine and still getting to my desk (a 15-minute cycle away) at 9:00 on the dot.

Speaking of routines, I'm tentatively hopeful that if I can practice all the 30-minute disciplines again this weekend, like I did last weekend, I'll be better at the UK Championship than I was last year. That may sound like a modest goal, but we've still got four months to the world championship (more than that if they postpone it again), so I'm pacing myself carefully.

And remind me to talk about cartoon videos tomorrow. I want to mobilise some kind of Zoomy Army to find some for me.

I'm determined to post a blog entry every day

So this will do for tonight.

Remember remember the 25th of September

There are three memory competitions in the next month and a half, that hopefully I'll be going to if I've got enough money.

The UK Championship happens on August 25 and 26 in London. I just tried to look up the schedule, but all it says on the website is that it "will follow the same timetable as last year", so obviously I've failed the first memory test. Still, there are important principles at stake here. There have been four previous UK Memory Championships, and I've won them all. Gunther won seven consecutive German Championships, back in the dark ages, so I'm already half-way to one-upping him! By the way, this is also an invitation to other UK memorisers to get off their backsides and try to beat me, please.

The German Championship, nowadays not quite as Gunther-dominated as it used to be, although he did finish a strong second last year, takes place on 16 and 17 September, in Heilbronn. I'm certainly hoping to improve on my miserable performance last year. And as always, Germany is the place to go if you want to compete against all the best (non-Chinese) memory folk in the world! It'll be a classic, they always are.

And the Swedish Championship, which I also failed to win last year (although apparently a Swedish news article has recently announced to the world that I'm the reigning champion - it was actually Simon Reinhard, for avoidance of doubt, and I've never claimed otherwise) will take place on 24 and 25 September, in Gothenburg. People will come from all over the world to watch us memorising, because once again it's part of a busy book fair, and possibly in a giant glass cube just like last year. It's the place to be seen!

So pack your bags, everyone, and do some memory globe-trotting! I guarantee fun and frolics!

Hello, handsome!

Yesterday I saw myself in a mirror and thought I looked really quite good. This doesn't happen very often (because, let's face it, I'm no oil painting), and the fact that I was wearing an open-necked shirt like my dad always used to no doubt has something psychological to do with it, but my hair is at just the length where it's sort of flowing without looking stupid, and my beard is just the right thickness that I think makes me look cool, so I was quite impressed with myself for once.

And then shortly after that, I found a new Krypton Force video that I don't already own! It inspired me to update my authoritative blog on the subject, which thanks to some internet research now almost certainly lists every release of Force Five cartoons that made it onto the British market thanks to the good Krypton Force folks. By my count there are only four that I still need to find!

"Krypton Force" is one of the most popular searches that lead people to my blog, you know, so that post is extremely important. The only subjects that bring more people here are "Bumcivilian" and the perennial favourite "How to give yourself food poisoning". The latter worries me a little, quite frankly. Is it the same person every time, or is the world full of people who need a quick recipe for sickness and diarrhoea? Please tell me, next time you drop by.

Anyway, all this disjointed rambling isn't winning me any memory championships. Today is the first day for a couple of weeks when I haven't done any memory training, and it's my brother's fault. He's gone away for the next couple of days, so I've had to cook my own tea and completely fallen out of the habit of memorising things after eating. Changes to the routine can be fatal, you know. I did lots and lots of half-marathon training at the weekend, by the way. I'm almost feeling confident of putting in a passable performance at the UK Championship in a fortnight-and-a-bit. Just as long as I can get back to training tomorrow. I do need a live-in slavedriver of some kind, as I've always said.