TimC

I just finished Neonomicon #2. I'm just not feeling this series.

The problem I have with the story is how dated it reads.

Maybe, but it's not set in the here and now. 'The Courtyard' (written in the early 1990s) was set in a 2004 which didn't much resemble our one. There are those domes over the cities, and a lot of other things that don't actually exist. Just assume it's an alternative (or metafictional) universe where the interwebs don't exist.

I thought the "Oh, please, no. I don't do that." line was more about the cunnilingus?

The latest Boys and Neonomicon 2 were a bit of a double whammy this week, though in very different ways. The Boys brought me as close to tears as a superhero comic ever has, though the authorial interjections on the last couple of page brought me back from the brink (just because they seemed intrusive - think it's the first time this kind of captioned commentary has appeared in this title). And Neonomicon - it's certainly reminiscent of some of the stories in 'The Starry Wisdom', where Moore's 'The Courtyard' first appeared in prose form, but it still raises an eyebrow to see such naughtiness so clearly delineated in a mainstream comic. It's turning out to be the 'Salo' of Lovecraftian pastiche.

I had to read I Zombie to recover. It's fun. And it now includes talking apes.

Greek Street meanwhile managed to reach as satisfying a conclusion as could be expected under the circumstances. I think I might miss it, just a little bit.

On the other hand, I really enjoyed "Crime and Punishment", but was bored by "Notes from the Underground" and "The Double". I suspect a lot depends on the translation.

The best version of "Notes" is the one by Magazine...

BTW, there seems to be a question we've all been neglecting:

Is Shade The Changing Man bi?

When he first appears, he seems hetero. In the Changing Woman story, he's occupying a woman's body and has sex with a man, which is surely also hetero.

Of course, after that, when he occupies 'Empty', he fucks the earth. That version was a bit omni.

He also turns into a bedspread for a bit, while Kathy and Lenny did things with each other under it. Not sure what that made him, other than confused.

He changes his preferences a lot, basically. Hence the name.

Can anyone explain the love for All His Engines? I remember it as a bit better than most of Carey's stuff, but it still seemed pretty unremarkable and generic, with a particularly rubbish muppety demon.

Who would've guessed that you could translate the "choose-your-own-adventure" children's books to the comic world?

I might be showing my age here, but I'd say: Anyone who remembers the short-lived 2000AD 'Dice Man' and others back in the '80s craze for such things.

There were a couple of strips reprinted in one of the recent 'Nemesis the Warlock' collections.

Sorry Balthazar - didn't see your message about issue 2.

But number 3 now! And crikey Moses, but it just keeps getting better. It's got it all this issue - metatextuality, zombies, girls in fur bikinis. It's damn good comics.

Heartening, if vague, news for the folk who enjoyed it -

The BBC's modern update of Sherlock Holmes will return following the end of its initial three-episode run, its producers have confirmed.

"There will be more," producer Sue Vertue told the BBC's Breakfast programme. "We're having a meeting to talk about how many and when."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-10925753

Good new interview with big hairy Al from Wired -

http://www.wired.com/underwire/2010/08/alan-moore/

I don’t think you can separate time and place. I don’t think you can separate a place from its history. I think a place is much more than the bricks and mortar that go into its construction. I think it’s more than the accidental topography of the ground it stands on. These are important factors, but surely the most important factors about any place or person is what they have been. Their helps to tell you what they mean. If you have that kind of insight into the tawdry and debased streets in which most of us spend our lives, then instead of walking down a rat trap you are walking through cataclysmic history, from your personal memories to the local legends. Then the rat trap becomes a fable, a mythological landscape. And just as living in rat trap will give you the impression you live in a rat trap, then l suspect that living in a mythological landscape might after a while give you the subliminal impression that you are at least a mythological figure. A heroic character in your own narrative. I think it would be better if we felt like that rather than victims of our environment. That would empower us, and put some genuine energy back into the streets in which we live.

Also a short interview in the Irish Times -

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/features/2010/0810/1224276465599.html

'Torchwood' was originally a code word used in the production of the first season of new Who, to disguise what they were actually working on. Clearly, it's an anagram, but the fact has been explicitly acknowledged in either programme, as far as I recall.

Similarly, when Moffat was auditioning for a new companion, it was ostensibly for a programme called 'Panic Moon'.

I wish I didn't know this shit.

Little Valley's Stoodley Stout. Mmmm.

But aye, Cumberbatch is his real name. I imagine though with a name like that he's unlikely to have been educated at at Gruntfuck Comprehensive, Tottenham; he probably went somewhere fee-paying boarding school where generations of Cumberbatches had been raised previously.

Harrow, apparently -

http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/2010/jul/17/benedict-cumberbatch-sherlock-holmes

- and blimey, his mum's Wanda Ventham! Timothy Carlton was his dad's stage name - played Colin Pillock in "The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin", among many other telly roles.

The Courtyard was written for one of those "Lovecraft retro" collections (Grant Morrison was also in this one), so you can't expect it to have been anything other than a pastiche, really.

'The Starry Wisdom' - an interesting one. It was intended to take Lovecraftian concerns into new and (post)modern areas, but it was a mixed bag. 'The Courtyard' was one of the most traditionally structured stories, and very much a play on the classic Lovecraftian form and tropes. Other pieces were a lot more experimental and tangential - Morrison's ('HP Lovecraft in Hell') was explicitly Lovecraftian in content, less so in structure. There were also a few old stories from the likes of Ballard and Burroughs, of questionable relevance.

The same editor recently published a follow-up, 'Songs of the Black Wurm Gism', which is much more solidly at the experimental/tangential end. It also has something from Morrison (an excerpt from his abandoned novel 'The If', if I remember right), which is rather further out than his previous); and some art from Moore.

Both recommended, if you like that sort of thing. But a warning: they do contain poetry.

Watched BBC's new Sherlock Holmes thing last night. I thought it was great.

It was fun, though there were a couple of glaring niggles. One, it took far too long for Sherlock (or anyone) to realise it was the

they wanted; and two, the whole

seemed ripped right off The Princess Bride (well, unless it was originally from a Holmes story).

Be interesting to see how it turns out. Moffat does have a habit of writing things that start off well, but fall apart into a right lot of nonsense (Jekyll, say, or the last season of Who).

I enjoyed Inception as a bit of daft fun, really. Can't really be bothered with the pseudo-philosophical ponderings, but something which competently mixes the rough metaphysical concerns of Christopher Priest with some heist flick action has my attention for a couple of hours.

I would have liked some more dream-weirdness in the different levels - Cronenberg's eXistenZ was much more successful in this regard - but understand why they didn't go that route. And it really should have been called something like 'The Four-Dimensional Caper'.

And the planting-an-idea-in-the-subconscious thing didn't really work as a driver for the plot - if I was Ken Watanabe, I'd have just got someone like Derren Brown in. Two minutes of finger wiggling, job done.

It was mentioned in the old Who thread that Michael Moorcock was writing a Doctor Who novel.

There's now a synopsis, and a publication date of 28 October -

Doctor Who: The Coming of the Terraphiles

by Michael Moorcock

‘There are dark tides runing through the universe...’

Miggea – a star on the very edge of reality. The cusp between this universe and the next. A point where space-time has worn thin, and is in danger of collapsing... And the venue for the grand finals of the competition to win the fabled Arrow of Law.

The Doctor and Amy have joined the Terraphiles – a group obsessed with all aspects of Earth’s history, and dedicated to re-enacting ancient sporting events. They are determined to win the Arrow. But just getting to Miggea proves tricky. Reality is collapsing, ships are disappearing, and Captain Cornelius and his pirates are looking for easy pickings.

Even when they arrive, the Doctor and Amy’s troubles won’t be over. They have to find out who is so desperate to get the Arrow of Law that they will kill for it. And uncover the traitor on their own team. And win the contest fair and square.

And, of course, they need to save the universe from total destruction.

A thrilling, all-new adventure featuring the Doctor and Amy, as played by Matt Smith and Karen Gillan in the spectacular hit series from BBC Television written by the acclaimed science fiction and fantasy author Michael Moorcock

'Captain Cornelius and his pirates'? Squee!

As the old Yorkshire proverb says: Revenge is a dish best served hot with pudding and gravy.

I was butted by a bullock on Saturday, while walking in a very popular part of Derbyshire. These bovine attacks seem to be happening increasingly often.

A friend of my mum's (a former mountain rescuer and lifelong country type) was trampled last year and had an arm and foot broken. I just got some big bruises on my leg, from horn and forehead, so I'm not complaining too much.

The Castor books get the thumbs-up from David Barnett in a Guardian blog about supernatural detectives (marking the centenary of WH Hodgson's excellent Carnacki the Ghost-Finder) -

For my money, though, the best of the current crop is Felix Castor, Mike Carey's trenchcoat-wearing exorcist who comes with a strong pedigree: Carey wrote the adventures of the comic world's greatest occult investigator, John Constantine.

And guess where the 'John Constantine' links to?

It was entertaining enough, but I do still generally prefer the episodes that make a little more sense when you think about them. 'Last of the Time Lords', for example.

Ladies and gentlemen, it's only Mr Shaky Kane in person, down my local comic shop!

OK, so he doesn't resemble WS Burroughs, but he is a very nice man. We had a good chat about the Deadline days (Fornicator Terminator!), eyeball heads, Halifax geography, and Hollywood's needless insistence on character motivation. I bought a poster of Ramona, Queen of the Stone Age, and Mr Kane's limited-edition Monster Truck book. And he and David Hine did a sketch for me (I requested 'something nuclear').

Happy me.

I think I missed the 2000AD stuff, but here's one strip - hell, damn near one panel - that shows why he is the legend that he is -

http://www.shakykane.co.uk/wishbone/monstertruck.htm

Yes, indeed! It is indeed very good - nice creepy start to the story, and lovely art. I've liked Shaky Kane since the Deadline days, so I'm looking forward to meeing him and Hine at my friendly local comic shop (Legacy Comics, Halifax) on Friday.

Actually, if he doesn't closely resemble William Burroughs, I'll be a little disappointed.

...So I've missed three or four years of Hellblazer and want to start reading again. Which of the more recent trades should I pick up, if I'm not bothered about chronological order but just want the best stories?

'Hooked', which is handily just out this week, is where Milligan starts to hit his stride. The first Milligan collection, 'Scab', is less essential - but still much better than anything else you might have missed in the past few years.

My mistake. I must be confusing it with the Mail.

Very easily done. Over the past few years, the management, most of the hacks, and the bilious dishonest reporting style have all been poached from the good old Daily Blackshirt.