Atticus

No, but we do get to see a side of Negan that isn't just murdering and mulilating anyone who disagrees with him.

Gives him a bit more depth than being the Governor 2.0

Those are excellent, glad that your education allows parental guidance and that your twins have such an aesthetic sense of rockets.

Well, I did show them some pics of real rockets, and they did make them under instruction, but they made all the bits and put them together themselves (with a bit of guidance) (well, ok, a lot of guidance).

And Avaunt? Reuben is a boy's name!

I have spent the afternoon helping the twins do their school project. They had to make a rocket out of 'found' materials from home.

Striving for at least some semblance if reality, Reuben decided to do the space shuttle, and Ava chose an old Soviet style rocket.

Feeling very much the alpha daddy at the moment.

Ooo-oh! I want a Cylek in the next services.

I thought it was ok. I actually liked Ford's bad guy/not bad guy role - it suited his grumpy demenour - but the film was too long. Got bored towards the end.

Aye, I saw that. If Harrison Ford can remember how much fun Han was first time maybe it'll be worthwhile.

However, if he is as much of a miseryguts as Indy 4 he'll drag all the fun out of it.

Well, they deserve it. They got fuck all out of the Chernobyl disaster.

She's a good choice for Kit, but I originally thought she should be played by Maria Doyle from The Commitments. Probably because I read my first Hellblazer (#62) not long after the film came out.

But lately I'd definitely say that Orla Brady has just the right look to play Kit.

Aye, just watched a video of it on the BBC website.I read that most of the 500 injured were due to broken glass falling from buildings because of the shockwave (but that was a couple of hours ago, so maybe more info is available now). No idea if any of those 500 were badly injured. The pictures were pretty awesome when it sinks in that this ISN'T a special effect.

Still: asteroid heading towards earth, a black US president - does anyone know where Robert Duvall is?

Just been reading about Mike Carey's new project Suicide Risk.

The premise sounds promising, and he seems to have 12 issues planned with an option of ongoing if it goes well.

The cover art by Elena Casagrande looks great, and I believe she's on interiors too. Never seen her work before but it sure looks impressive.

I shall certainly be giving this a whirl.

Thanks. I might give it a go after I'm done with The Twelve, if I haven't got anything else by that time.

Not usually a fan of vampire stories, but I'm always willing to broaden my horizons. I do, however like stories about how a worldwide crumbling of society takes place.

I say again: Horse Meat Disco.

Who took their name from a headline a few years ago "HORSE MEAT DISCOvered in salami"

but it was all so much tit for tat in the shirt pulling

I'll agree with you that at the start the Celtic players were responding with their own shirt pulling, but they stopped it pretty quickly after Gary Hooper was booked along with Lichsteiner. Afterwards they were even putting their hands behind them to show they weren't doing that.

The thing is, it wasn't just shirt-pulling. That goes on to an extent in every match, and while it's not desirable it's tolerated until it becomes a major problem.

This was basically wrestling. Arms around the attacking player, physically pulling him out of position or preventing him moving into position. An attacking player has the right to move around the box as he wishes, and it's the defender's job to stay with him.

This was obstruction, often employed in the most cynical fashion: perfect example was Lichsteiner facing away from the ball, chest pressed up against Hooper, arms around him stopping him moving to where he wants, and then Buffon pushing his defender from behind to push the attacker to the ground. Defender puts his hands up as if to say "well, it wasn't me who pushed him over".

I cannot, for the life of me, figure out why the ref didn't take more action. He warned the players involved several times at the start, dished out a couple of yellow cards - so he was obviously aware of the problem -and then did nothing. The Juve defenders acted without fear of any censure.

It was deplorable. The Juve coach had said on Monday he knew Celtic were dangerous at corners but he had a plan for that. Well, I think we all saw the plan in action.

I'll say it again - the ref DIDN'T lose us the game. But if Lennon gets punished for his remarks after the match I'll be very disappointed.

That really does look terrible. Maybe I won't be giving this a test run after all - is it safe to judge a comic on 3 pages?

Just started The Twelve. I expect to, again, enjoy the near-future breakdown of society stuff more than the post-apocalyptic Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome bits.

Latex?

EDIT: oh, you mean Playtex?

That would've been funny. Do it again and I'll pretend I didn't read it first time.

Is anyone planning on picking up the new Jim Starlin reboot of the already rebooted Stormwatch?

"DC editorial pretty universally thought Stormwatch wasn't working out. Everyone involved seemed to be giving it their all but the pieces just didn't seem to be fitting together properly. So Dan asked me to come in and do some retooling. Of course, being a creature of excess, I've sort of gone over the top and what's come out of it is an entirely new Stormwatch, a revamp of a revamp."

I'm going to have a gap in my list when Saucer Country finishes (and Happy and DD: End Of Days and America's Got Powers) so I may give it a go.......

I just finished The Passage by Justin Cronin yesterday, and was going to post my thoughts, seeing as it's not the sort of book I'd normally pick up.

But a quick search of the book thread found this:

I've just started The Passage by Justin Cronin. A sort of Post-Apocalyptic vampire story. I've just gotten done with the big apocalypse part of the story, and it's jumped about 90 years into the future. It's super good so far, i hope it holds up.

 

I'd be curious to hear what you think about it. I didn't really enjoy the future stuff. I loved it until the bit where you are now. But the book got so much praise that I'm thinking maybe I missed something.

 

 

Well, i finished the book last night. It was very good, but it suffers from a screeching momentum halt when the story leaps into the future. What we've basically got is 2 novels in one, the story of the end of the world which is over 200 pages then the seperate story of a group of survivors. This second story suffers because Cronin has to spend a hundred or so pages world building, which if this was a standalone book wouldn't matter as much, but because it's coming after the rocking near future of the previous chapters really seems super slow.

 

After it gets going again, i really enjoyed it. It obviously left enough plot strings to fashion a marionette army, but i'm sure the sequels will deal with them. Hopefully now that the world is built those books won't suffer from the same problems. I did like the various devices he used to move the plot forward; the "artifacts" and journal entries being presented to some even farther future academics.

So yeah. B+/A-

....and I thought Dave summed up my thoughts on it almost exactly. So, saved me the bother.

.......aaaand - now they've changed the headline, Mark, to "Horsemeat inquiry...."

Obviously you weren't the only one to find it, y'know....

Especially considering the fine work of these DJs (I would totally recommend their albums BTW)

Celtic's first appearance live on terrestrial TV across the whole of the UK didn't go quite as planned.

It was a terrible result, and one that knocks out of the Champions' League. There'll be no coming back from this in Turin.

The referee was absolutely terrible. The amount of grabbing and pushing of Celtic players at corners - by Lichsteiner in particular - was shocking. Even at the first corner for Celtic, Gary Hooper was literally pushed backwards into the goal and ended up tangled in the corner of the net.

It took over 30 minutes for the ref to address it, and when he did he showed a yellow card to Hooper as well. Even as the ref was writing the names in the book, Lichsteiner was at it again, 3 feet from the ref, with absolutely no retribution. At one point Scott Brown was actually pushed to the ground right beside the post after a prolonged bout of obstruction and having a defender's arms actually wrapped around his torso.

On top of that, again and again fouls by the visitors went unpunished and bizarre decisions went against Celtic.

Aside from the goal-line tussles there were actually 2 clear penalty claims, with Brown and Commons being dragged or pushed around in the box during open play.

Even Michael Owen, no stranger to goalmouth hanging, expressed shock on Twitter that the Juve defenders were getting away with so much. The commentary team and the pundits all held the same view, and yet when Neil Lennon says the same thing after the match he's warned there may be sanctions against him from Uefa for his comments. Surely there is room for valid criticism of officials?

But while the ref's performance was atrocious, he didn't lose us the game. That was down to two glaring defensive mistakes from Efe Ambrose, straight off the plane from his African Cup victory on Sunday. It was a gamble playing him, and one that didn't pay off. His first, after 3 minutes, gave us a mountain to climb, but after that we were dominant in the game for long periods.

Poor finishing from Kris Commons and pointless long range efforts from Wanyama were frequent, but we bossed the midfield and we were not outclassed by the Old Lady of Turin.

We had most of the possession, more shots at goal, and more play in the last third than Juve but Celtic as much as anyone know this doesn't translate into a win (you just have to look at the stats in our victory against Barcelona to see that).

I genuinely thought we'd score, given our efforts at peppering the Juve goalmouth, but the second half started tamely and we were definitely lacking the control we showed in the first half. Tony Watt came on for Commons, and we got the spark back that had been missing. Still we knocked the ball around confidently, and we again had control of the midfield, and again made plenty of chances in the final third. The best chance was a corner that seemed to take Ambrose by surprise when it reached him, and he headed straight at the 'keeper from close range instead of knocking it out of Buffon's reach. It was entirely typical of our efforts.

At this point, I'd have been happy with a draw, and content with a 1-0 defeat - we were always going to have to score in Italy to win the tie - but the second goal after 77 minutes made it crucial we get a goal back.

To go into the second leg one goal down would've made it difficult but not impossible to progress; 2 goals down is a huge ask.

However, Effin' Ambrose made another howler 7 minutes from the end to give Juve a 3-0 victory that flatters the Italians and makes the return leg a mere formality. There's no coming back from that.

The selection of Ambrose was, with hindsight, a mistake but one that is entirely understandable. I'm sure Lennon took him aside on his return from Nigeria to ask him how fit he felt. He's been such a great player for us this season, and would have been on such a high that if he told the boss he felt up to it he's on the team sheet.

We missed Samaras in a big way - for all his faults, usually in the league, he is a huge player for us on the European nights but he just couldn't recover from injury in time.

Fraser Forster in goal was perhaps a bit rusty after 5 weeks out with a neck injury, but he certainly couldn't be blamed for 2 of the goals.

In the end, if we'd made more of our chances these faults wouldn't have mattered.

Gutted, absolutely gutted, to have failed on such a big stage. The European adventure is over for another year.

Fair enough. Personally, I'd never noticed any change in the Hitler Youth claims since he became Pope.

As far as his military service was concerned, I hadn't actually given any thought to it: I wouldn't automatically assume every conscript was a fully fledged, true believer Nazi, and it doesn't suprise me that he and many others like him would feel such shame that they'd keep as quiet about it as possible.

This sounds entirely in keeping with that, and I wouldn't assume anything more sinister than that.

But you & I obviously differ in that regard. You may think I'm being overly niaive, I may think you're being overly cynical. Such is the rich tapestry of life.

Aye, well, there was a report on Bleeding Cool that the first draft of the script was terrible, and it had already been decided that they would wait and see how Man Of Steel does at the box office before pushing on with it.

Amongst some this could be seen as being "in trouble".