dogpoet

Harlan Ellison is indeed brilliant!

He was very prolific through the 80s, and then had heart problems in the mid-90s, which has slowed his career to a crawl. I'm not sure if he's ever going to put out another book..... :icon_frown:

The last thing he wrote was a short story for a Michael Chabon collection back in 2002. It was hilarious.

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We may have to agree to differ on this: the stuff from the '80s and early '90s just reads like retreads of the stuff he was doing a lot better twenty years previously.

(If you're interested in Ellison as a person, you should definitely see if you can find a copy of that Moorcock thing, btw.)

We just got tickets to the SISTERS OF MERCY!!!  I've met the Cocteau Twins 3 times

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I officially hate you.

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A friend of mine saw them on the shellsuit tour and thought they were pretty crap, so that might be a lucky escape for you. (Though I can relate: I was a tad annoyed that the friend in London who could have put me up for Van Der Graaf Generator's first concert in thirty years was out of the country that month.)

No, I saw them once. They were pretty good. I got the shits and everything...

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Thunderous rhythm section, eh?

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Etrigan and the dead Irish bloke, perhaps.

How do you think ol' Conjob would get along with Elijah Snow?

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Better than he would with any of the Ellis characters who are blatant Constantine rip offs, I'd imagine.

is it Don Henley?

He's very often a brilliant guy, and I enjoy his output, but he strikes me as a very difficult, frequently unpleasant man, who's best appreciated at a distance.  He seems like the kind of person who, sooner or later, attacks everyone who's been around him long enough.  I'm sure I'm not "good" enough to be in his little circle, and I'm happy with that.

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Michael Moorcock gives an interesting account of him in "Letters From Hollywood": have you read that one?

(I'm not sure Ellison's quite that brilliant, either: it's not like he's written much of note since the '70s, is it?)

I'll look for that Public Burning book, don't know that one...

 

don't want to get off topic here just will answer the batman question briefly--so far as I can--I made it a jet resembling the newest version of the VTOL 'jumpjet', capable of vertical takeoff. It's more real than the movie version you mentioned I think...

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Even more off topic, but can I ask if you've read any of Mick Farren's SF? I was wondering if he was ever an influence on your own stuff.

Amazing as it is to believe there really are people out there who idolise the man and want to sycophantically worship at his altar.

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Even after Doom Patrol?

You mean there are actually people who use John Byrne's board who aren't members of his family, Byrne puppets set up with a hotmail account, or the occasional passing troll?

Odin Quincannon had heterosexual relationships.

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Can we be sure that all of the meat was from cows rather than bulls, though?

That's an interesting point with Ennis...John definitely did seem far too young in those first few storylines.

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It wasn't just the early storylines either: there was a reference in Damnation's Flame to him having used his "coven" as a pretext to have sex with somebody after a school disco. They had those in the late '60s?

I can't say "worst" because it didn't happen often, but I always cringed when John would turn into Cassidy during the Ennis run...

 

-b

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I was always more put off by the fact that Ennis was often giving him a frame of reference that seemed a bit too young, to be honest.

I didn't think the Ace of Winchesters ever actually appeared in Hellblazer: isn't it just mentioned in passing when Constantine's out getting drunk with the late Brendan Finn?

When we were playing "Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil"...a D and D module... I frequently suggested that we "nuke it from orbit.  It's the only way to be sure."

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They have nukes in D&D now?

I thought that was Gamma World...

If you think pollution is a purley capitalist result, then I suggest taking a dip in the Volga or to try breathing in Beijing.

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AAARRRRGGGHHH! Something else to be angry about. At this rate all my clients are gonna be local organic farmers who vote green and boycott everything.

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Um...organic farmers all eat kittens and otters!

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They're free range kittens and otters though, so that's cool.

You know, Lyra/liar never occurred to me? God, that English degree was three years wasted.

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I thought it was a typo for "lycra", myself...

I have found God: he was down the back of the sofa.

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Really I could have sworn I bloody looked there. Was he right stuffed down at the back, that's always the way isn't it. You look and see nothing so you stuff your hand down and it touches on a piece of mouldy pizza and you withdraw it quickly and go and wash your hand and don't go searching much further.

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Dude...God is everywhere. God is everything. God IS that mouldy pizza!

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And He's in Shane MacGowan's laundry basket as well. Who would you wish that on?

While on the subject of poetry and sunsets, can I mention When An Old Cricketer Leaves The Crease by Roy Harper? If there's ever been a more English pop song, I've not heard it. It'd make a much better national anthemn than the one we've got at the moment...

Thank you.

Um, there isn't all that much to tell at the moment, kinki. I signed a contract to publish a novella the other year, and the publishers I'm dealing with feel that it'll be printable once they've finished editing it, so it should be scheduled once I've seen what they've done with it (assuming that none of the changes they've made are abhorrent and I don't end up demanding further changes). October has been mentioned for it appearing, but they're not promising anything as yet so it could slip back a fair bit.

Besides that, I live in Staffordshire, wrote a script for the second series of a low budget horror series on Channel 5, which along with a lot of fanzines and one of the X Files rip offs 2000AD were doing instead of Future Shocks back in the late '90s is my only other professional gig as a writer. (I have been contributing reviews to Comics International for a while, though.)

alwayscrashing: yep, I'm the same dogpoet who posts on Matt's Mike Carey forum and Incandescent...

I'm neither a poet nor a dog, unfortunately (I just decided on that as a title because I like Mick Farren). I might have a book out by the end of the year, though. Then again I might not, it's a bit indeterminate at the moment.

I didn't post in here before posting elsewhere, I'm afraid. Sorry about that.

I have found God: he was down the back of the sofa.

:)  That was funny, but out of character IMHO. (BTW, you don't get a prize.)

 

Re the original question, Brian Azzarello wrote far and away the worst dialogue. I'm reasonably familiar with British speech patterns, and I honestly couldn't imagine how most of Brian's dialogue for JC could be read out loud.

 

The sad thing is that if he hadn't tried to write dialect, if he'd just written standard English, it would've been fine.

 

Dogpoet, are you trolling?

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No, I'm not trolling, I just don't think Hold Me was all that good. It's better than the Books Of Magic, but would have worked just as well with a character other than Constantine.

(Oh, and I'm not saying that Gaiman's dialogue stinks, just that I don't think he had the character quite right.)

OH saw Devil's Advocate on HBO last night.

and no, I dont want to watch  TCM.

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TCM is a far superior film to the Devil's Advocate.

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To be honest, so's Plan 9 From Outer Space...