Secret Identity

So long, Martin.

2010-08-10T17:22:00.002Z

I'm going to interrupt my multi-part travelogue briefly to comment on the shocking news from yesterday that Aston Villa manager Martin O'Neill had resigned. I say 'shocking' because of the timing of it (five days before the 2010/2011 season starts), I'm not really that shocked that it happened, it was going to happen eventually. O'Neill needed money to strengthen the squad, Randy Lerner (the chairman/owner) needed to sell players to both balance the books after the club recorded a £42 million loss last year and to finance any new transfers. O'Neill didn't want to sell our star player James Milner, Lerner felt he has to, mainly because of the silly money Manchester City are offering. O'Neill feels he should be in charge of transfers, yet he finds out the club have allegedly accepted a bid from Tottenham Hotspur for another star player, Ashley Young, without his consent, and so he felt he had to go as his position was undermined.

There's a lot of Villa supporters saying they're glad he's gone, pointing out his faults as a manager, his bad signings, his lack of a 'Plan B' when we're losing, and his favouritism towards certain players at the expense of more qualified players. All of these points are, to a certain extent, true, but he was a still a fantastic manager for Villa. A lot of these fans have a very short memory and forget where we were when he took over the reins. Aston Villa was on its arse back then, it being the fag-end of Doug Ellis' chairmanship and having just avoided relegation thanks to David O'Leary's clueless and unpopular reign as manager. O' Neill took this great club and made us a Premier League force again, flirting with breaking into the top four two seasons running (our lack of a big squad the only thing that stopped us) , appearing at Wembley twice last season, and regularly getting points from the top four.

Yes, he did make bad signings (Salifou, Shorey, Routledge, Sidwell, Harewood and most of all Heskey) but he's also made some great ones (Young, Milner, Dunne, Collins, Friedel, Warnock, Carew) and ones where it's too early to call but could be fantastic (Downing, Delph). Add to that the good players he's brought into the first team and nurtured into fantastic ones (Agbonlahor, Albrighton, Delfouneso) and he can definitely say he's leaving his successor a much better team than the one he inherited from O'Dreary.

I'm sad to see him go and I know Villa will find it hard to replace him. Good luck Martin, and thanks for all you've done, mate. Especially that 5-1 mauling of them wankers down the road.

What we got up to in California, part one: Getting there.

2010-07-27T16:14:00.006Z

In June, my girlfriend's dad turned eighty. To celebrate, he decided that he'd go back to the land of his birth, America, and he invited my girlfriend and I along to take part in the celebrations. We of course said yes, and decided to go a bit earlier and celebrate our birthdays while we were over there. (My birthday is three days after my better half's, in late May, but, subsequently, because of the way the flights panned out, Heather ended up having her birthday in Birmingham, England, which she was a little miffed about.) So, the plan was that we spend a few days in San Francisco, then on to Sacramento to stay with Heather's half-sister, onto Lake Tahoe for a couple of days, a quick return to Sacramento, then on to San Jose for the big family shindig and to stay at Heather's other sister's house, then the journey back. Phew.

We were worried that we weren't actually going to get there at first, because, at the time, that Icelandic volcano was still playing havoc with British airspace. A week before we left, a colleague of mine had been to Florida and was stranded when his connecting flight in Philadelphia was grounded because of the volcanic ash. He was stuck there for nearly a week. So this was worrying us. Frankly, if this is how Iceland behaves when it plays with volcanoes, then it shouldn't be allowed to have one. Luckily that cleared in time, but we'd booked our flights with British Airways, whose cabin crews decided to strike, affecting our flight. There was a High Court ruling which said the strike was illegal (a bit dodgy, that decision, in my opinion) which meant we could fly out (albeit on a rearranged, earlier flight with limited services) but we weren't certain whether we were getting back or not. As we were staying with Heather's family out there for the most part, this didn't worry us too much, it just meant we'd have an extended holiday if the worst came to the worst.

This was my first trip to the States, my first trip anywhere outside of Europe, and therefore the longest flight I'd ever been on. After all the usual cobblers involving checking in three hours before the flight, paranoid security checks which means you have to take off your bloody shoes now (thanks, Richard Reid!) we faffed about trying to kill time by trying perfumes and aftershaves and eating a full english breakfast. (I'm sure that rule about checking in three hours early is more about getting you to spend money in the airport than it is about security and efficiency.) Although this part is the bit I hate most about flying, I didn't mind it as much this time as I was aware how bloody lucky we were to be flying at all.

So, we get on the plane. I'm dreading being stuck on this thing for ELEVEN HOURS. Heather, who's far more organised and on the ball about these things than I'll ever be, checked us in online previously, ensuring us seats at the front of the cattle section which gave us a couple of inches extra leg room, which, if you're over six foot tall like I am, is a godsend. The flight was fairly uneventful, except for a long period of turbulence when we were flying over Montana which made me very nervous indeed. Nervousness which evolved into sheer bloody terror when they turned all the lights and TV screens off and asked the crew to sit down and put their seatbelts on. I looked out of the window and saw nothing but mountains and jagged sharp pointy rockfaces and realised that if we plummeted, we'd be fucked. Luckily, after about half an hour, the plane stopped bouncing around like a four year old on an inflatable castle and settled down. Shortly after, so did my bowels.
As we were flying out to San Francisco, I decided to watch Bullitt on the inflight entertainment system to try and get me in the mood for Frisco. It basically told me that most of the police out there are all corrupt and I might get killed in a flaming car wreck. It's got a cool score, though. Whatever happened to Lalo Schrifrin? I also watched Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll (it was a long flight) which wasn't about San Fran at all, but about Ian Dury, which made me wonder why anyone remembered Dury fondly at all, as he came across as an insufferable arsehole who used the fact that he had a gammy leg to behave like a prick. I'm sure he wasn't like that all the time, but the film made it look like it. Anyway, after eleven hours, several aborted attempts at trying to sleep, and a couple of aborted attempts at trying to eat inedible plane food, we landed in San Francisco.
Before we left for the States, I'd already done my visa waiver form online, and was slightly pissed off I had to do it all again whilst on the plane. If there's one thing I hate, it's filling in forms. (actually, you all know there's more than one thing I hate.) Especially filling out forms I'd already spent valuable time doing before. Then I had to queue up once we got off the plane to answer several of the same questions again. My lovely girlfriend, being an American, didn't have to do this, so she swans off and gets all that 'Welcome home' stuff from the staff. I got an hour's wait with people who have been stewing in their own juices for eleven hours. None of us smelled very nice. Above us all were several televisions showing the same five minute film over and over again, interrupted by a short message in Mandarin telling Chinese people how they should fill the form in. (it probably said 'Do it twice') This is because San Francisco quite famously has the largest Chinatown outside of China (and they have monsters and guys who can conduct lightning and hold their breath until they explode, as seen in that documentary Big Trouble In Little China. Kurt Russell and Kim Cattrall live there, too, apparently.) The film that was on repeat was a montage of a few of the sights and people you might expect to see whilst in America, so you get the obvious ones like the Statue of Liberty, the Vegas strip and the Golden Gate bridge, mixed in with less obvious ones like blue-collar guys sawing up wood in a mill, and an old couple sitting in their rocking chairs on a porch, and many shots of the old Stars and Bars fluttering in the wind all set to rousing music. It was kinda cute the first seventeen times, then it seriously got on my tits. I was actively looking forward to next time the Chinese message came on to give us a minute's peace.
Finally, I get to show my passport to the customs guy, and have to repeat myself with every answer I gave him, because this is obviously the first time he's ever experienced the Brummie accent. (This was a taster for what was to come. Those yanks really can't understand us Brummies at all. How Ozzy Osbourne ever made it big over there is beyond me.) After he gives me a serious stare, he makes me put the fingers on my right hand onto a scanner which takes a picture of my fingerprints, then I have to do the same with my right thumb, then I repeat the procedure with my left hand. They also take a picture of my retina and, for luck, one of my actual face. You know, the most easily recognised identifying feature of my body?
So, with a sigh of relief, I get through. Even though I had nothing to worry about, little niggling fears start percolating in your mind whilst your waiting for an hour, and I was bloody glad to get it over with. I met up with Heather who had already got our bags and had been sitting there waiting for me for ages. She told me she'd just had a glaring competition with Michael Madsen. Apparently, he was on the same flight with us (although he obviously wasn't in economy with the rest of us plebs) and when Heather saw him, she kinda stared at him. Mr. Blonde didn't take kindly to this so he did a kind of sarcastic wide-eyed stare back at her.
We got into a yellow taxi and headed off to our hotel, extremely knackered. At last, we were in America.

Return Of The Mick.

2010-07-21T13:56:00.004Z

Umm....hello? Is there anyone still out there? There must be someone, surely.

Ah, there you are. I know it's been a while, but I'm back now. You could at least try and look pleased about it.

Although not quite as long as the famous break between posts on the band Faith No More's blog ("We've split up!" Eight years later; "We're back together!") it has been a long time, and I've had lots to tell you or moan at you about, but I've never really had the time, or if I did, this archaic steam-powered heap of shit that I call my computer would decide not to work. I've been gone that long, I was half expecting this blog to be an ex-catalogue furniture shop when I came back.(That's what happens here in Birmingham whenever a shop gets closed down and left vacant, ex-catalogue furniture shops. There's one not far from here that says (sic) 'EX-CATALOUGE SHOP' on its sign in big letters, and there's another one that lists 'Chester Drawers' amongst the goods they're selling on its cheaply made sign. Surely, if your living is selling ex-catalogue furniture, at least learn how to spell what it is you actually fucking do!)

During my absence I've had lots of things distracting me. There was my Granddad's funeral, mentioned in my last post, which was probably the most emotionally moving thing I've ever experienced. He had a send off he'd have been proud of. I've never been to a funeral where it was standing room only, with people also stood out in the church's courtyard because there was no room inside. Bless him.

There was my trip to the States, which I'll probably tell you about in my next post. It was a trip that encompassed San Francisco, Sacramento, Lake Tahoe, San Jose and Santa Cruz. It was my first trip to America, before, all those place names were just things I saw written on sweatshirts hanging on a rail in TK Maxx (which, I noticed, is called 'TJ Maxx' in the US, strangely.)

There was also a trip to Liverpool, where I watched England get knocked out of the World Cup, went to The Cavern, and bumped into Jimmy Osmond by the statue of Billy Fury on the Albert Docks. It's weird seeing the guy who sang 'Long Haired Lover From Liverpool' actually in Liverpool. It's not as if he lives there, is it?

There was also the book I was working on for a publisher called Insomnia. I say 'was' because Insomnia is now no more. There's still a lot of legal stuff going on at the moment, so I can't tell you any more, but it's all a bit disappointing. Luckily, because of issues I had with the company and contracts and lack of communication, and the time I lost due to bereavement, work and holidays and so on, I didn't really get that much done. There are lots of pages of character sketches and designs and a few finished pages of artwork and lots of hours spent researching and drawing which all now seem a bit of a waste. The writer and I are looking to pitch the book at other companies, so, hopefully, it might rise from the ashes one day.

However, it gives me a chance to get back on with the projects I had to put off because of the Insomnia gig. It might just take me a week or two to summon up the enthusiasm to pick up a pencil again, though.

So anyway, I've decided to start blogging again. Watch this space. And honestly, try and look pleased about it.

Larry Trimble. 1924-2010.

2010-03-14T20:56:00.005Z

The 28th of February was a real topsy-turvy, roller-coaster of a day. It started off with me getting excited about the Villa/Man United league cup final. We had my brothers and their other halves, our friend Liam and my eldest daughter all come round and watch it. The atmosphere was a good one, we all drank (except for my daughter, who's too young for that sort of thing. Legally, anyway.) wore Villa related clothing, including big foam claret-and-blue hands with 'Come On Villa' on them, complained about the uselessness of both the referee and Emile Heskey, cheered like mad when we scored, shook our heads and tutted and said 'fuckin' hell!' both the times they scored. We lost, but all in all, it'd been a fun afternoon.

Later that night, however, I got the news that my Granddad had passed away. He'd been seriously ill with a lung complaint for a long time. He'd been diagnosed as terminal about a year ago, but he hung on for as long as he could, as he's always been a tough old bugger. It put being disappointed about a stupid football match into its proper context; although he had been ill, and we'd been expecting and dreading the news for a long time, it still came as an almighty shock.

He was a great bloke, my granddad. It was a privilege and a pleasure to have been his grandson. I remember going to see him not that long ago, he was in bed, breathing with the aid of an oxygen tank, and he said to me, in that broad Dublin accent of his (which he never lost despite living in England for sixty years) 'Jaysis, I've lost some weight, haven't I? I've been pickin' my nose with my wrist!'

Even when he was seriously poorly, he never lost his sense of humour. A particularly unique sense of humour which all of us Trimbles have inherited from him. Even the day after he passed, a big chunk of the family (there's a lot of us) was at my Nan's house we were laughing as we swapped stories about him. There was lots of crying as well, we're all going to miss him.

He was the funniest guy I ever knew, and his heart was , as my nan would say, as big as a bucket. There are hundreds of great stories I could tell you about him, but I think that's for another time. It's his funeral this Wednesday, which is St. Patrick's day, which he would've appreciated. There's literally hundreds of people going, it's going to be the closest thing to a state funeral Erdington's ever seen. He deserves a good send-off.

It's true what they say, though. No-one's ever really dead as long as people remember you. He's going to live on in my heart and memories. Bless you, Gramps. Love you.

(This is a picture of my Granddad, my Dad, me and my brothers at my brother Marc's (second from right)wedding. It's the most recent picture I have of him and it was from a happy day, and it's how I want to remember him.)

Blog Birthday

2010-02-21T13:06:00.003Z

On this day, four years ago, a slightly overweight four-eyed nerd called Mick Trimble made his first-ever blogpost. Just thought I'd tell all of you. That's two posts in the same month for once! That's almost organised. Almost.

Since I last posted, I had the news from Insomnia Publishing that they definitely want me to work for them and my contract's on its way. So I'll probably be spending most of the next few months pencilling their 100-page book. I'm excited about it, even though the logistics of getting 100 pages done is only slightly overwhelming.

As soon as I've got some decent work done, and I'm allowed to, I shall post some of my scribblings up on this very blog, so stay tuned, as they say.

Anyway, my blog is four today, Happy Birthday Secret Identity! Any cards or gifts gratefully accepted.

Hello again!

2010-02-02T08:56:00.003Z

Hello again! It's been ages since my last post, I know. It was, in fact, the last decade when I last wrote anything for this blog of mine. Apologies to my three readers who kept looking at my blog for anything new only to see that fat pillock Gio Compario looking at you.
There are a few reasons for this absence. Firstly, there was Christmas, which was nice (despite my constant girlfriend-annoying grumbles about how much a pain in the arse Christmas is). We had a house-full this year, Heather's parents and my offspring and us all sharing the house for a few days, but it all went swimmingly. My youngest brother got himself engaged over Christmas, so congratulations to Matthew and his lovely fiancée, Emma, they're a great couple and it's about bloody time. ( He proposed on the Lake Of Love in Bruges, and Heather's good friend Jane also got engaged over Christmas when her boyfriend proposed in Costa Rica. I've got a bloody hard job trying to top those if I want to propose anytime soon. Thanks, lads.)
Secondly, over the last few months, my ISP has only been supplying me with internet only when they feel like it. Most of the time, I was getting 'Page not found' or 'Oops! This link appears to be broken' (I love how Google makes me not being able to access my email for weeks at a time sound like a minor inconvenience) and most of my time on the PC was spent trying to connect to the web and repairing links. Bloody BT. Seems to be okay now, though. Fingers crossed.
Thirdly, I've been busy on a secret project. I've been offered a 100-page graphic novel to do, but that's all I can say about it. I'm still in the character designing phase, which involves sending emails back and forth, not so easy when your bleeding computer won't work. The emails they send me have this scary non-disclosure legal message at the end, so I can't really tell you anymore, or show you any art just yet.
Fourthly, being a supporter of the mighty Aston Villa has been quite a big distraction over the last few weeks, with all the ups and downs (mostly ups, to be fair) that that entails. Villa are doing well on all fronts, and we've actually managed to get to a cup final for the first time in ten years. Can't get a ticket for Wembley, though.
So, anyway, I promise to update a bit more regularly in 2010. This blog is four years old at the end of this month, and I've been neglecting it. I never want to be accused of neglecting a four-year old. Not again, anyway.

Give me a break!

2009-11-10T17:18:00.005Z

There are some truly evil people in this world that must must be hunted down and stopped. Robert Mugabe. Osama Bin Laden. Radovan Karadzic. Nick Griffin. Noel Edmonds.

Above all of these demonspawn, however, is the most evil man ever to draw breath upon this planet:

I've been poorly a lot lately (hence the lack of updates) and I've been stuck at home in front of the telly. And every time I put the bloody thing on, this fat pillock turns up and ruins my day. He doesn't exactly make me feel better. And there's not just one advert now. There are many. Do advertising agencies really think that an annoying advert sells the product? Well, it doesn't sell it to me. In fact, I now steadfastly refuse to use the poxy website. If you 've not seen it, this is how it goes. Two blokes are in a coffee shop, each drinking those big mugs of coffee that cost three quid. These blokes are talking about car insurance. As you do. The one topic the whole nation is talking about is car insurance. At this juncture, the wanker in the picture above leaps up and sings a mock-operatic song about the virtues of a certain price comparison website. He's then accompanied by everyone else in the coffee shop, because they've either a) been convinced by him that his price-comparison website is indeed the best way to save money on your car insurance, or b) they're all suffering from Stockholm Syndrome because Gio Compario (apparently, that's his name. No, it's not Damien. I agree, it's a terrible name. I reckon they should have called him Juan Kerr.) has kept them all hostage in a dungeon underneath the coffee shop and has told them all that it'll be their children next if they don't follow him blindly. After the song and dance, it's all topped off with a god-awful, Bruce Forsyth-quality joke. If these blokes are really that skint that they have to save forty-seven pounds fifty on insurance, why don't they stay out of them bloody rip-off coffee shops and make it at home with a jar of Gold Blend?
It's not just Go Compare either. Every other advert seems to be about insurance or price comparison websites. There's Confused.com, Churchills, Compare The Market, Direct Line, Swiftcover and so on. Where are the adverts actually advertising tangible stuff I might actually want or need?
Actually, I'm probably being unfair to the comparison websites. There are lots of adverts advertising 'tangible stuff' that are just as annoying. There's that McDonald's one with a poetry voiceover about how everyone's 'just passing by', when really it should be saying 'just passing over from coronary disease'. There's that really badly dubbed one (another bugbear of mine; dubbed adverts. Just make your advert in English! If you can't be bothered to spend the extra money on an english version, then I can't be bothered to spend my hard-earned on your poxy bathroom wipes.) about that kid who 'wants to do a poo at Paul's'. Now, if that was me, I'd happily send him off to defecate at Paul's house if his arse stinks that badly. I certainly wouldn't pander to him by buying an air-freshener that disguises the smell of the little shit's shit, just because he told me to. Like my mother used to say (when she was sober, anyway) 'I want doesn't get.' What's also odd about that advert is that the young kid is chinese, and his mother is caucasian. I understand that he might be adopted, but we're not told. And if that is the case, surely it's going to put some people off adopting. They'll watch that and think, 'I was seriously considering giving a home to a poor unfortunate orphan asian baby, but I'm not going to now, because they stink out the house every time they poo. Actually, sod it! I will adopt, but they'll have to go round to Paul's every time they need to park their breakfast.'
A more recent addition to the annoying adverts canon are those new ones for Nintendo starring Ant and Dec. The Wii adverts were crap before when they had the Redknapp family or that bloke from 'My Beautiful Launderette' who isn't Daniel Day-Lewis flogging them to us. As I said, they were crap before, but they've taken on a whole new aura of shiteness. There's a family (all card-carrying members of Equity) playing Nintendo Wii. When I say family, I mean family. There's Nan and Granddad, Mom and Dad, sisters, brothers, sons, daughters, nieces, nephews and cousins, even the fucking milkman and all, probably, all sitting on the sofa playing Mario Kart. This is unrealistic for a start. That scene might happen for twenty minutes on Christmas Day, and that's only because dad wants to see if it actually works seeing he's spent so much money on the bloody thing, and they'll have fun playing on it until Nan demands they watch the Christmas edition of EastEnders (thus killing off any fun, or indeed, Christmas Spirit.)and she has to watch it on the big telly because she's 'only bought her readers'. Like I said, unrealistic. Then, they act all surprised when Ant and Dec walk in, despite the fact that they've just walked in without knocking the door or anything, and also the fact that there's a camera crew filming them playing Mario Kart. Then it ends on a cliffhanger. Ant (or is it Dec?) challenge one of the family to a race on Mario Kart, and then it stops! Who wins?! Go to the nintendo website to find out! Like I give a fuck whether or not one of the fabulous forehead twins wins his go on a video game. It's not even a good cliffhanger, they should've put an anvil on a fraying rope above Ant's (or is it Dec's) head and he has to finish his go before the anvil plummets down and smashes his giant bonce into porridge, like they did with the old Batman TV show. As cliffhangers go, it's probably up there with the following clip:

Makes you wonder how Doctor Who ever got cancelled in the first place, doesn't it?
Anyway, all this ranting has made me ill again. Poxy commercial television. I'm off for a Lemsip. Ta-ra a bit.

Mick's BICS

2009-10-11T10:14:00.003Z

Last weekend, I attended the British International Comics Show (BICS) here in Birmingham, and it was a really enjoyable weekend. The venue, as it as has been for the last couple of years, was Millenium point, a giant, grey building that looks like it should be in Mega-City One. this means that the two guys dressed up as Mega-City judges looked right at home when they were milling about the place.

Our friends Jamie and Theresa came up to stay with us for the weekend, so this meant Jamie and I could go to the show whilst the ladies went shopping. They also went to see Fame at the cinema, and apparently it's a load of shit. What a surprise.

When you get there, you have to go into the lift to get to where the event is being held. This must've been the right place, because sharing the lift with us was a stormtrooper. Not the historical Nazi-type, you understand, the imperial type, from Star Wars. After we got out of the lift, Jamie, who is a Star Wars nut, saw a group of blokes dressed up as various types from the space saga. There were Clone Troopers, Stormtroopers, Mandalorians (well, a couple of guys dressed as Boba Fett, anyway)and TIE-fighter pilots. He gave me his camera and then went and asked them if he could have his photo taken with them, and they duly told him to get on his knees and pointed their blasters at him. As usual, I pressed the button and nothing happened. I have a real problem with digital cameras. It's as if my hands turn into cow's tits.(That's why all of our holiday photos have just me in them!) It's a shame, it would've been a cool photo.

After we got in, we had a mooch about, and there seemed to be quite a lot fewer stalls than there were last year, but this meant there was more room to walk about. Unless you were stuck behind the Dalek, which seemed to revel in blocking the gangways. This year, as I didn't really have anything new to sell, my plan was to show my portfolio around and hopefully get some work. Everyone I showed my work to really seemed to like it, and I've already had a couple of emails asking me if I'd like to do something.(more on that when I know more myself!)

The main reason for going to these things, however, is to catch up with people you only ever tend to see at these things or shoot the shit with the creators you've worked with before. I tend to find that you hardly ever talk about comics with comics creators. The main topic of conversation seemed to be how shite the launch party was. I was glad I didn't go. It was held in the Panama bar, which is off Broad Street (Birmingham's 'Golden Mile' , which is only golden in the same way a stream of piss is golden.) I read somewhere that BICS special guest Howard Chaykin described the women he'd seen on Broad Street as “the sluttiest, trampiest women” he’d ever seen. Sounds about right.

As usual, we met up with Andy Winter, my collaborator on Septic Isle (still selling well), and moaned about the state of the world, as we tend to do, and we arranged to go out for dinner later on. I also showed him the two pages I've done for the four-page web comic I'm doing for him right now. (preview panel above) Also, over the weekend, I bumped into a couple of people I've not seen for a couple of years. Firstly, there was Michiru Morikawa, who was on the StripSearch course with me way back in the mists of time, and anyone who lives in Brum will be familiar with her art, as it is her work that's on the back of many of our buses, asking people if they want to adopt. Anyway, she's gone back to live in Japan, but she was back to promote her book Buskers, published by Imsomnia Publications. Her work is fantastic, pick up a copy. It's worth it.

I also bumped into fellow Brummie and Villa fan Ben McCool, who wrote the script for the Stuffed comic, which included my very first published comic art. He lives in the Big Apple these days, writing for DC. As usual, he had a stinking hangover when I saw him. He told me that he was taking his DC editor to Villa Park for the match against Manchester City. That's got to be a culture shock for the poor sod. He probably now knows very well what Karren Brady gets up to of a night-time, after having it sung at him by 40,000 people.

I also had a couple of stints manning the MC2 table, which was right next to Diamond Distribution's table, which had loads of free comics on it. During both of my stints, I never sold any books, but I was asked about sixty times 'Are these free?' by punters looking at the Diamond table.

On the Saturday night, Me and my glamourous other half, Jamie and his, Andy Winter and Andy Radbourne (creator of Brit Force, another comic you should go out and get) all went out for dinner and a few drinks, and a cracking night was spoiled when I got home by me not looking where I was going in my garden and ending up falling into some bushes and skinning my knee. The less said about this the better.

We went back on the Sunday, after being forced to watch Strictly Come Dancing, which seems to go on forever. There have been wars that have taken less time. Most wars are probably less psychologically scarring, too. I showed my portfolio to the people I didn't get a chance to see the day before, and again, generally positive feedback. I ummed and aahed about forking out for some Copic pens. They were very expensive, and despite hearing 'they're what Adam Hughes uses' at least twenty times, I decided not to, as I'm not Adam Hughes.

Generally, though, it was a great weekend, and I'm hoping it happens again next year, which is likely, as more people came this year, apparently. More normal-looking people, too! Since I've been going to Comic-cons regularly, I've noticed that the clientele is getting more and more normal-looking; glamourous, even! The days of the BO-stinking hunchbacks are long gone.

Shock News! Something Interesting Happening In Birmingham!

2009-10-02T13:24:00.003Z

This weekend, I'll be attending the BICS (it used to be the Birmingham international comics show, but it has been upgraded to the British international comics show this year.), which is held at Millenium Point, here in Birmingham. I'll be manning the MC2 table for a wee bit each day, and no doubt I'll be lurking around the Moonface Press table at some point, too, so if you want your freshly-purchased copy of Septic Isle signed by me, hunt me down. Figuratively speaking, of course.

It's really strange attending one of these things in your own town. I'm used to going to Bristol and staying in a hotel, so just hopping a bus to go to a major convention like this doesn't seem right, yet. This event is going from strength to strength every year, and with the Bristol show seemingly shrinking away into nothing, it's possibly now the UK's premier comics convention. I just hope all the publishers do something original this year, the last couple of years have been dominated by zombies. Marvel zombies 1,2& 3. Zombie variant covers. Barack Obama vs. The Army Of Darkness (okay, I made that one up, but I wouldn't be surprised if something like this turns up in Previews in the near future.) And last but not least, DC have jumped on the bandwagon with Blackest Night (which is apparently quite good, although I'm yet to read any of it). I'm fed up with the reanimated dead. You wouldn't catch me jumping on that particular bandwagon.

Okay, maybe I would. It's good to see the Zombie-Mick would still wear his glasses.

Anyway, come along to BICS! You know it'll be good for you!

Oh, and following up on my last post, I thought I'd put this video up, too. You've probably seen it, as it's done the rounds, but it raises a smile, even on my dry, black-hearted , cynical lips.

Way Out West.

2009-09-15T15:47:00.004Z

Apparently, last night, Kanye West got pissed up and stormed the MTV VMA stage in protest when Taylor Swift won Best Female and tried to take the award away from her. He wanted Beyonce to win. I have to agree, this video of hers is probably one of the best I've seen in years.

Birmingham City 0 Aston Villa 1

2009-09-13T13:35:00.002Z

After a tight game and a tense finish we beat our scabby neighbours from Small Heath 1-0 with a goal from the lovely-looking Gabriel Agbonlahor (left). Isn't he beautiful?

It was all too much for me and my blood pressure. I'm off for a lie-down now.

UP THE VILLA!!!!

What I did in the school holidays, by Mick, aged 35.

2009-09-10T18:04:00.006Z

Hello again! Sorry for the lack of updates, but it's been a busy few weeks, mostly taken up with work, various trips around the country and spending time with my nippers during the school holidays.

If you're interested, these are a few of the things I've been up to. If you're not, well, you can stop reading, I suppose.

Nine Inch Nails/ Jane's Addiction

Blimey, this seems like ages ago now. Those of you that read this blog regularly, or actually know me personally (that does happen, sometimes) know that I'm a big fan of Nine Inch Nails. Ever since I first saw them live way back in 1991 in a shitty little club here in Birmingham that isn't even there anymore. The American leg of this tour was called the 'NIN/JA' tour, which sounded cool. I can imagine Trent Reznor thinking 'Well, we're NIN, so we need someone with the initials JA to support us, just so we can have a cool name for our tour.' So, after Julie Andrews, and then Birmingham's own Joan Armatrading both turned him down, they asked the recently reformed again Jane's Addiction. ( I'm only kidding! I know Trent Reznor is a big fan of Jane's Addiction, even sampling Perry Farrell's screaming for 'Ringfinger', the last track on NIN's debut album Pretty Hate Machine, as well as using 'Sex Is Violent' on his soundtrack for Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers.)

As I said, NIN/JA was the name of the US tour. By the time it got to th UK, it had changed its name to 'Wave Goodbye' as Trent Reznor had decided that NIN aren't going to tour anymore. So I can say now that I saw them on their first tour, and their last. I bet Trent saw me in the crowd and thought 'I'm glad Mick's here, it kinda bookends the whole touring experience for me.'

Anyway, the gig was in Manchester, at the MEN arena. The hotel me and my glamorous other half stayed in wasn't very good. Should've been, for the price, but it was awful. I'm not a big fan of Manchester anyway, I've been there four times now, and it's never impressed me. That said, each time I've been has only been a flying visit, maybe I'd enjoy it more if I stayed there a bit longer. (Did that sound diplomatic enough? Good.)

Because we left after work and drove straight up there, we missed about half an hour of Jane's Addiction, but what I did see was very good. I was slightly distracted by the vertical sweat stain that was on the back of the bassist's shorts, but the music was good. However, at one point, a couple of scary-looking women in front of us turned around and asked me if I liked it. When I said 'Yeah' they shook their heads and the scariest looking one said 'I just don't get it, me.' So, in summary, Jane's Addiction: Good, but not for everyone, especially if you resemble Morticia Addams' chubbier sister.

Looking around the stadium, I realised I was one of the oldest people there. Most of the crowd probably weren't even born when I saw them in 1991, which is a frightening thought. Anyway, when NIN came on, they were awesome. Their light show probably damaged my retinas forever (this was before the government's ban on filament bulbs) and even though this was their last ever tour, they didn't go for the standard 'greatest hits' setlist. They played songs that I'd never heard them play live before, as well as some of the old standards. It was, basically, a great night, and I'm glad I was there.

Banksy vs. Bristol Museum

My girlfriend's old friend Sarah came over from Amsterdam (She's not Dutch, she works there.) to visit and we all agreed that going to the Banksy exhibit would be good for a laugh, so we booked a night in an ibis (always fun!) and buggered off down to Bristol. This was the first time I've been to Bristol without being there for the Comics Expo. It was kinda strange not seeing any imperial stormtroopers or kids dressed as Wolverine milling about, but that was cool as I like Bristol. I've had many a fantastic time there. And, unusually for the Summer we've just had, the weather that weekend was fantastic.
We were told to expect queues, and by the time we got there on a Saturday afternoon, the queue was massive, and we were told that we were likely to be waiting for three hours, so we didn't go that afternoon. Luckily, unbeknownst to us before we got there, Bristol was holding its annual Harbour festival, which consisted of loads of boats, obviously, live shows, music and comedy and lots of barbecues and drinking. We watched some of the live show, but after watching some woman fanny around on a tightrope whilst some bloke sat by the side playing flamenco guitar, (It's supposed to be 'arty', but I call it 'bollocks'.) I thought it would be a good time to go to a pub. Then again, I always tend to think it's a good time to go to the pub. Thing is, because of the festival, all the bars were heaving, and they only served you drinks in plastic cups, which I'm not fond of.
So, after a few plastic pints (for me, anyway. The ladies had cocktails. That's because they're ladylike and posh, and I'm neither of those things!) we went for an overpriced al fresco dinner, which tasted nice, I suppose, but it was kind of ruined by the sight of a local teenage girl who was too pissed to stand up and throwing her ring up. We took this lesson about binge drinking to heart and then went for a few more plasticky pints in several of the dockside bars.
The next morning, we got up early, which isn't good if you have a hangover, had a mediocre breakfast and several coffees at the hotel , then headed up to the Bristol Museum an hour and a half before it opened. It sounded like a good plan the day before. Still, the wait was worth it. It was a fantastic exhibition. I've been to a few exhibitions before (including the ones I was a part of) and they tend to be dry affairs. Except for the ones where there were free drinks (which was the only reason I went to a few of them). Not this one. This exhibition was fun. Sick and twisted, but fun. No free drinks, but great nonetheless.

As you go in, you notice the Ronald McDonald figure stuck to the front of the museum, he's very high up, his make-up is tear-stained, and there's an empty bottle of Jack Daniels perched next to him, and it looks like he's about to jump. As you enter the exhibit, you walk past a burned-out ice-cream van, and behind it is a policeman on one of those kiddie's rides you see outside supermarkets, with distorted ice-cream van music, and the effect is eerie. Before you go into the exhibition proper, there's a painting riffing on the old Hansel and Gretel story, only it's Michael Jackson opening the door to the children. Out of respect, there was a candle burning in front of it. This set the tone for the rest of the show.

The main part of the exhibit focuses mostly on his graffiti stuff, most of which is very clever, although a lot of it is anti-police, and that gets a bit boring after the fifth image of coppers kissing each other or holding hands. The highlight of this first room was a giant painting of the House Of Commons, only the politicians have been replaced by chimps.

The second room was set out like a zoo, several cages with animatronic puppets in them, one with a caged ape painting an imagined sunset, one with chicken McNuggets hatching out of eggs, a rabbit putting make up on in front of a mirror, a Birdseye crispy fish-steak swimming around in a tank, and so on, all basically highlighting how awful the human race is to animals. Which is a fair point, but I reckon it's the animals' fault for being so damn tasty. My favourite part of this room was the cage with an aged, wretched-looking Tweety Pie in it. I could've stood there and watch that thing sigh all day.

That wasn't the end of it, either. Banksy had had a go at the rest of the museum, too, replacing pictures and exhibits with his own. So, you get what looks like a Constable, a country landscape, but this one has a car in it, with a visible bare arse in the windscreen , and it's titled 'Dogging'. It's not highbrow, but it's funny. There was another one where UFOs were attacking an old painting of a busy seaport. My favourite of these replaced paintings was this one, called 'Agency Worker':

This was a clever way of geting people to have a look around the whole museum, trying to find the bits Banksy had tampered with. There was all kinds of puerile things, including a dildo in the stalactite collection, a plate with a turd on in a cabinet full of ceramics, and one of those awful plates with a photo of kittens on it was put in a cabinet with fine china.
Anyway, we had a blast. It's the first time I've been to an art exhibition and come out laughing. I'd recommend you go, but I think it's finished now. Oh well, go to Bristol Museum anyway, it's a lovely building.

Other stuff.

I've also been on various trips around the Midlands with my offspring: Cadburyworld, West Midlands Safari Park, and Warwick Castle, which were all good fun, and I've also been down to Brighton for a wedding, but I'm knackered now. I just want a nice, relaxing stress-free weekend for a change. Oh, hang on, Villa play Blues this weekend! Aaaaaaarrrrrggghhhh!!

New season, same old shite.

2009-08-16T10:47:00.001Z

Modern football is rubbish.

It's Back!

2009-08-13T19:30:00.004Z

At last! Tomorrow sees the start of the Premiership season 2009/2010. Weekends have a purpose other than just shopping again! I did start writing a post about how football is being ruined by the excessive money being bandied about by the rich clubs, but I deleted it, because I still love the game, and I can't wait for the footie to start.

The club I've supported since I was swimmimg around in my dad's ballbag, Aston Villa, has had a funny old pre-season. Gareth Barry, our club captain, left to join moneybags Manchester City, which was weird, because he always said he wanted to play in the Champions League, and if Villa didn't get there, he'd join a club that did. Before last season, Liverpool kept trying to sign him, but our manager, Martin O'Neill quite rightly told them to fuck off. This season, however, he's gone and joined Man City, who aren't in any European competitions at all. He gave some bollocks excuse about becoming stale at Villa, but we all know the hundred and twenty grand a week he's now getting in wages is the real reason he went there. I'd love it if Manchester City win absolutely fuck-all this season and finish nowhere near the Champions League, but then, I'm childish like that.

We have also lost our talismanic centre-half Martin Laursen, who retired through injury, and we've not replaced him. We've signed three new players in the close season, Fabian Delph, from Leeds, who, by all accounts, is going to be a star one day, but he's untried at the top level, Habib Beye, a defender from Newcastle, who got relegated, so he can't be that good, and Stewart Downing, a winger from Middlesbrough who is a decent player, but won't play until at least December, because he's broken his leg. O'Neill keeps moaning about how small our squad is, yet he never seems to buy any players. Put up or shut up, Martin. You'd think it was his money he's afraid of spending.

Villa won the Peace Cup in Spain, beating Champions League teams Porto and Juventus along the way. I know you can't read anything into these two-bob pre-season tournaments, but it shows how far we've come since O'Neill joined Villa. What was weird was seeing Villa get the cup from the Reverend Moon when we won. Strange.

As we've got next to no chance of winning anything this year, what I'm really looking forward to are the the derbies. Wolverhampton Wanderers and Birmingham City are both back in the Premiership this year, and it's good that the Midlands has a decent showing in the Premiership this year. The Wolves games I'm not that bothered about, although I hope we beat them, of course, but the priority is Birmingham City. We have to beat them. We will beat them. The 5-1 beating we give them the season before last was a fantastic result that will live long in the memory. It's almost up there with the birth of my kids as a great day in my life. The bluenoses (that's what City supporters are called up here) have been too gobby since they got promoted, and I'd love it if we shut them up.

So, basically, I'd love us to win something, but we probably won't. I'm just glad football is back after a boring summer watching shite like cricket, tennis and athletics. If we start doing badly, maybe I'll publish that post about how football is rubbish these days.

"Jar Jar Binks makes the Ewoks look like f**king Shaft!"

2009-07-28T17:13:00.007Z

I read somewhere the other day that it's been ten years since Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace came out. And this got me thinking;those prequels were a load of old shit, weren't they? I was so excited, at the time, being a child of the original Star Wars generation, and the trailer got me all excited, but then I went to see it. It was shit. You think I might've been warned by the 'fix it 'til it's broke' original trilogy special editions. You might be arguing with me in your head now, but read on, and I'll prove to you the prequels were shit:

The Baddies in Episode I are a Trade Federation. Yeah, the bad guys are a corporation! Stick it to the man, multi-billionaire George Lucas!

The aliens in the trade federation talk in rubbish 'We So Velly Solly' Japanese accents. You see, all evil businessmen are Japanese! Way to reinforce stereotypes, George!!

The bad guy droids are all linked to a central computer, so why do they talk to each other? And why do they say 'Roger roger' all the bloody time?

The Gungans all talk in rubbish 'Yaaa mon' Jamaican accents. Giant rasta frogs must've sounded brilliant in the scripting stages. They're basically just spacey Uncle Toms. Way to reinforce stereotypes, George!

Having Brian Blessed as their leader must've also sounded brilliant in the planning stages. Didn't turn out that way, did it?

Jar Jar Binks. Everything he says and does. He was the first major CGI 'synthespian'. What a missed opportunity.

Watto, the owner of the Skywalker slaves, talks in a rubbish 'Oy Vey' New York Jewish accent. He's a corrupt businessman. Way to reinforce stereotypes, George!

Queen Amidala's scary voice when she addresses anyone important.

Jake Lloyd as Anakin. I can't imagine the young man who grows up to be the biggest baddest bastard in the whole universe ever said 'yippee!'

I also can't imagine that the young man who grows up to be the biggest baddest bastard in the whole universe built C-3PO, either.

I also can't imagine that the young man who grows up to be the biggest baddest bastard in the universe is called 'Annie' by his friends and family.

I used to think Jedis had some special ability that made them be able to use the Force, but no, it's because they have Midichlorians in their bloodstream. I hate the whole notion of Midichlorians. If they could make a clone army, why not clone midichlorian infested blood too and have yourself an army of thousands of soldiers with Jedi-like abilities?

Anakin didn't have a dad. He was a virgin birth, apparently. Eh?! Is it a Christ allegory? Only, in this version of the New Testament, Jesus goes bad and throttles his pregnant missus? Nope, it's those pesky Midichlorians again, fertilising poor old Shmi Skywalker. I reckon Lucas just couldn't be arsed to write about Anakin's dad, he was too busy fucking about with rasta frogs.

That two-headed alien that commentates on the podrace is one of the crappiest-designed aliens I've ever seen.

The best characters, Qui-Gon Jinn, Sebulba (Yeah, I know he's an essentially one-dimensional cartoon bully, but I think he was a fantastically designed and realised alien) and especially Darth Maul (the best thing about the prequels, in my opinion) all die in the first episode, leaving all the shit ones behind to try and hold our interest.

Darth Maul's two bladed lightsabre might've been a cool surprise, if only they'd left it out of the sodding trailer!

Ewan MacGregor's piss-poor vocal impersonation of Sir Alec Guinness.

How come all the technology on show is much more advanced than the stuff we saw in the original trilogy? This is suppose to be set before those. Also, the people in Star Wars' past were far more equal opportunities, with more women being fighter pilots, etc. I can't remember any female fighter pilots in A New Hope. That's not a criticism, though.

The casting of Hayden Christensen as Anakin for Episode II. He's possibly the worst actor in the world after that bloke who plays Nick Cotton. Not unfairly is he referred to as 'Mannequin Skywalker' in Clerks 2.

Episode II is supposed to be ten years after Episode I?! Nobody looks ten years older, except Anakin, and if it is ten years after the first one, this makes Padmé a bit of a cradle-snatcher, doesn't it? Aren't there any Jedis her own age she can fall in love with and make them turn to the Dark Side?

I liked it when we didn't know that much about Boba Fett. It made him a much cooler character. Now we know he looks like that bloke from Shortland Street and Barb Wire under his helmet.
Jango Fett was a cool character, though, but like all the best characters in the prequels, he gets killed.

The fact that the prequels were filmed in Australia, and so have lots of people that used to be in Neighbours are in it. Except for Jim Robinson, who appears in every other American movie.

Obi-Wan and his 'You're going to be the death me' jokes/predictions when talking to Anakin.

That whole sequence when C-3PO heads gets swapped with a federation droid just isn't funny.

R2-D2 can fly?! Does he forget he can do it by the time he meets up with Luke and Leia?

The whole sequence when Anakin spends time with Padmé on Naboo and tries to chat her up by saying she's not like sand, is clichéd and awful, and illustrates something that's wrong with all the prequels; the god-awful dialogue.

The same old cliché; Anakin gets to his mother the very moment before she snuffs it.

The Death Star was designed by cock-roach people? Eh?

The Clone Wars sounded cool when they were referred to in the older films, but they were a bit of a letdown when we actually got to see them.

Yoda in Episode II doesn't look anything like the Yoda from Episode I, and even though he can't walk without the aid of a stick, as soon as he gets his lightsabre out he starts whizzing about like a giant bluebottle?

In fact, Yoda's cut-and-paste way of talking gets on my tits. In the original ones it was cute, you could explain it by the fact he was very old and he's talking in a second language and he has trouble with sentence structure when he's saying what he's thinking when he's thinking it, but in the prequels, even when he makes a bloody speech he still does it. And the original muppet in Empire still has far more personality than his CGI replacement in Episodes II & III.

Sorry to dwell on him, but Yoda was mates with Chewbacca when he was younger? Did he used to babysit for Han Solo's mum and dad too?

Christopher Lee's Count Dooku is a cool character, as it's Christopher fucking Lee, but again, his character gets killed way too soon.

Padmé dies because her husband tried to force-strangle her when she's heavily pregnant, but even though she's dealing with that and the colossal pain of childbirth, she still knows exactly what to call the babies, even the one she didn't know she was carrying? And even though most Jedis can see into the future, know-one knew she was carrying twins?

I still don't know why the Emperor's face went all lumpy.

The emergence of the black-helmeted Darth Vader should have been the highlight of the prequels, seeing as that was what we were all waiting for, but instead, we got this:

NoooOOOOOooooOOOOO! It's almost Shatneresque.

If you're going to hide a baby from the biggest baddest bastard in the universe, letting him keep the name Skywalker and giving him to his stepbrother on the planet he grew up on isn't really the best plan. It worked, though, so what do I know?

And finally, in A New Hope, Obi-Wan clearly states that he doesn't remember owning a droid. That droid is R2-D2. Surely you'd remember that robot that was by your side when all the bad stuff was happening?

And so I rest my case. the Star Wars prequels were shit. They weren't all bad, the lightsabre duels were much more exciting, the podrace was cool (a bit overlong) and some of the scenes in Revenge Of The Sith (the death of the younglings; the Jedis getting wiped out; Owen and Beru getting baby Luke) pack a dramatic wallop that equals anything in the other films, but there wasn't enough of those to save it from the overall dreck.

Oh, and thanks to Tim Bisley for the title.

Roman Holiday part three: Final Roundup.

2009-07-27T16:08:00.010Z

Right, I'm going to finish this if it kills me. I'm going to quickly round up the rest of my holiday in Rome, because I've taken far too long to actually get round to doing it properly, and I'm sure you lot are fed up of reading about it by now. It's like when someone offers you their holiday snaps to look at, and you take them, interested, only to find that interest totally evaporated by the time you get to the fifth photograph. (I'm reminded of that quote from Black Books: 'All holiday photos are of people who didn't realise they were that fat, squinting!')

So anyway, I'll go through what we looked at, as quickly and as (hopefully) humorously as possible:

Trevi Fountain

You can tell this was built in a time before the tourist was invented. The fountain, which is huge, is in a really small square. Because of this, you end up shoulder-to-shoulder with other tourists, beggars, pickpockets and tat peddlers, and there's loads of them.

The beggars are odd. In most other places, they invade your personal space and ask you for money. Sometimes they tell you their story. Sometimes they stumble over, pissed up, and swear at you until you give them a couple of quid to go away. Maybe that's just Birmingham beggars. Not so much in Rome, as most of the beggars I saw tend to lie prostate on the floor, as if praying, with a tin can in front of them in which you're supposed to put any spare euros you might have.

We didn't even get to chuck any coins in the fountain either, as is the tradition, because it was so bloody crowded there, but I did get shat on by a pigeon, so it's swings and roundabouts.

It is a bloody impressive thing, though. An awesome piece of sculpture. We didn't see Anita Ekberg dancing in it though, but that's probably a good thing these days as she's nearly eighty, bless her.

Pantheon

This place was originally a temple for all the Roman gods, built by Agrippa, but it burned down and was rebuilt by Hadrian. In the sixth century, it was given to Pope Boniface IV who converted it into a Christian church, and it's also the site of Raphael's coffin. It was the biggest dome ever built before the invention of reinforced concrete, and at the top of the dome is a big circular hole, called the Oculus.

This place is amazing. You walk in, and you notice how much cooler it is in there, you're no longer baking hot. As I mentioned, Raphael is interred there, and you can see his coffin through a glass window. I don't know where the rest of the ninja turtles are buried, though. It is an amazing piece of architecture, especially when you consider it was built in the early second century.

Generally, though, all this religion stuff leaves me cold. I can appreciate the beauty of the buildings, but they won't convert me to God-bothering. What pissed me off about this place was when I heard it used to be covered in marble, but them pesky Catholics took it to build St. Peter's with. By this point on the holiday, I'd heard this a few times at different ancient Roman buildings (the Forum and the Colosseum, amongst others) mainly because I'd have liked to see it in all its original splendour. But then again, how many ancient buildings can you see in their original form, anyway?
Apparently, the best time to see this place is when it's raining, as seeing the rain come in through the oculus is supposed to be amazing, but there was no chance of that at the time we went.

Castel Sant'Angelo

The day we went here was my birthday. We tried at first to get into St. Peter's Basilica, but there was some hold-up and we were stuck in a queue that was going nowhere for the best part of an hour, baking in the ferocious sun, until we thought 'fuck this' and left to get a beer and something to eat, but not far from the Vatican is this castle, and I loved this place. My glamorous other half wasn't so keen, though.

It was originally Hadrian's mausoleum, but it was later fortified and turned into a castle. It's a big, round building, with lots of spiral staircases. The main courtyard has a sculpture of St. Michael by Raphael in it (left) , and a lot of the other courtyards have cannons and other military ephemera in there. Also in there was a mini art gallery, which, whilst we were there, had a collection of the creepiest paintings I've ever seen. You know, kinda like Heironymous Bosch, but shit. Also in there was a museum of old military uniforms and swords and pistols and stuff (luckily, no Mussolini-era fascist togs; that would've given out the wrong message), I love looking at stuff like that, as I'm fascinated by wars. Wouldn't like to be in one, however. As you go up the castle, you get great views of Rome, and the view from the very top of the place is supposed to be amazing, but I didn't get to see it as my girlfriend got an attack of vertigo, so we had to get lower down fairly sharpish. I did get to see the top of the castle when we went to see Angels And Demons with Heather's parents, as the castle featured fairly prominently in the movie. Luckily, there weren't any antimatter bombs there when we were there, or any of the other far-fetched shite from that ridiculous movie. I mean, a bloody parachuting priest jumping out of an antimatter-induced exploding helicopter. What a load of old bollocks. Still more believable than Ewan McGregor's Oirish accent, though.

Basilica di San Pietro

Or St. Peter's, to you and me. Like I've said, I'm not religious at all, but this place is impressive. The Piazza outside, with all the columns and the statues of the saints and the obelisk is an amazing spectacle.

We went inside and it was heaving. A big chunk of the basilica was cordoned off. Marching through it was lots of Germans in lederhosen and other traditional dress blowing trombones and tubas and playing various musical instruments and waving the German tricolour flag about with lots of other banners all with very long words and lots of umlauts. I thought it might be a world record attempt for the biggest oompah-oompah band, because it went on for ages, but then I thought that was a stupid idea, as St. Peter's isn't really the place for that kind of thing. But then, it also seems odd that Germany, probably the most Protestant country in the world, had a delegation marching through the Vatican. Maybe I wonder about these things too much. Anyway, because of this event, a lot of the basilica was off-limits, but a lot of what I did see was beautiful. Like Michaelangelo's Pieta, for example. It's behind glass, so you can't look at it properly, but it is a beautiful sculpture, and apparently, it's the only work of his that he signed, and that was only because people refused to believe that an artist that young could achieve such a masterpiece. I still had a cob on with the Catholic church for nicking all that marble, though.

All around St. Pete's are loads of monuments to different saints and prominent churchmen and martyrs and suchlike. I got into a little bit of trouble when I asked my girlfriend 'where's the monument for all the buggered schoolboys?' she told me this wasn't the time or place for such crude humour. I argued that all those poor boys who martyred their bumholes for the Catholic church should get some kind of recognition, especially since the current Pope has done his best to sweep all reports of abuse under the carpet. But I got that look that means 'shut up' and I stayed quiet until I saw an american lad walking around with a T-shirt on that said 'I AM AN ATHEIST' on it in big letters. I want one of those. I thought I was being a bit cool wearing a Nine Inch Nails T-shirt (seeing as the band is named after the things they stuck Jesus to the cross with) but that shirt was ace. Anyway, after having a good mooch, we decided not to go further into the Vatican, as it would've cost us something like ninety quid to go and have a look around, and as it was near the end of our holiday, we didn't have much money to spend. It's a shame, I would have liked to have seen the Sistine chapel and the crypt and all the other stuff, but it wasn't to be. Maybe next time.

What was weird was all the stalls just outside. There tends to be more stuff for sale with the last Pope, John Paul II, on than there is with the new one. I wanted to get my kids the lollipops they were selling. You should've seen them, they were brilliant. They had lollipops with photos of both John Paul II and Benedict XVI on them. If you ever wanted to know what it was like to lick a dead Pope's face, then this is how you find out. I was talked out of buying my kids the lollies by my girlfriend, who said they were in bad taste, and at seven euros each, they were expensive. After I got back and I told my daughters about it, they told me they would've loved the lollies, as they've inherited my sick sense of humour. Maybe next time.

Villa Borghese/Bioparco

Bioparco is a zoo. It's inside the Villa Borghese park, which is a lovely park, a little oasis of calm in the chaos that is the city of Rome. It has little paths in it all named after the world's famous authors, and these paths have statues of the titular authors by the side of them. It's so big you can hire pushbikes or segways, or them mad tandem things with roofs on that they had in The Prisoner to get around it in. (At one point, when we'd stopped for a breather, we saw a dwarf hunchback get off one of these tandems to have a look at Victor Hugo's statue. I thought it was strange, anyway.) We went to the Villa Borghese to have a look at the Museo e Galleria Borghese, which is an art gallery housed in a 17th-century villa, but when we got there, we found out that you had to book tickets in advance, and we hadn't, so that was the end of that. Just down the road from the museum was the Bioparco, so we decided to go in. I wish we hadn't. It was extremely busy, with seemingly thousands of children screaming in it, and because it was so hot, all the animals were either hiding or just lying there, asleep. Heather was particularly disappointed by the so-called 'Valley Of The Bears', which should have been renamed 'A Ditch With One Comatose Bear In It'. The best bit, however was the seals. Not because of the animals, as they were mostly just clinging to the bottom of their pools because it was so hot and coming up for a breath or two every five minutes or so. It was because the Italian for seal is 'foca' and that sounds rude in English. It is funny, though, seeing an Italian dad pointing out the seals to his kids and shouting 'fucker'. It livened up a horrible afternoon, anyway.

Trastevere

This place was supposed to be all bohemian and a cool place to hang out. It wasn't. It was a shithole.

Piazza di Spagna

We didn't really see the Spanish steps. They were there, and so were we, but every available step was occupied by a sitting tourist. I couldn't really see what the fuss was about. We did however, buy some tacky gifts from there, for a laugh. I bought my brothers some penis-shaped pasta and we bought Heather's Mom and Dad some tastefully rude kitchen aprons. Oh, and I was coerced into buying a rose for my girlfriend by a street peddler.

That's pretty much it. I could tell you about some of the restaurants we went to and all that shit, but I can't be arsed. I'm fed up of typing about Italy now. I'd love to go there again one day, but I've had enough of writing about it! I'll soon get back to writing about bodily functions, comics, football and all the usual shite soon.

Still Alive.

2009-07-15T17:17:00.003Z

Blimey, the gaps between posts are getting longer and longer. Michael Jackson was still warming up for his O2 gigs last time I posted anything, and Farrah Fawcett, Karl Malden and Mollie Sugden were similarly all still breathing. It's been mental around here lately, mostly because of my girlfriend getting swine flu. This meant I couldn't go onto the internet because this disease is so contagious and deadly that anyone reading my blog would die almost straight away (yes, I have been reading the hysterical national press.) and I didn't want the death of those three people on my conscience. Anyway, my other half's okay now (mostly) , so, unless I contract the pig flu myself, expect more regular posts soon. I'll wrap up the Rome stuff soon, so keep popping by!

Roman Holiday part two: Colosseum.

2009-06-23T17:18:00.005Z

This was the only way Aston Villa were going to get to the venue of the Champions League final. Actually, I'm cheating a little bit; this pic was taken on a different day to the one I'm writing about.

For our first full day in the Eternal City, we decided to go to the Colosseum. So after Heather had opened her cards and prezzies (it was her birthday, after all) and we'd eaten our breakfast of weird bread with ham and and even weirder cheese, we left the hotel and went to Ciampino train station via the hotel's shuttle service, which is basically a pissed-off elderly Italian driving a people carrier.

We got on the train, which was a double-decker ( why don't we have those here in Blighty? I'm sick of paying through the nose for train tickets only to stand up all the way there. I better stop before I go off on one about public transport again!) and off we went into Rome.

As you go into Rome on the train, you notice three things. One, there's history all over the place. You'll see an apartment block, then a bit of ancient aquaduct, a football pitch, then a bit of ruined castle. The town planners have just built around what's left of Ancient Rome, whereas here, if we discover some Ancient Briton burial site, we'll let some archaeologists dig for a couple of weeks and then tell them to piss off and put a multi-storey car-park on top of it.

Two, there's loads of graffiti. All the bits that aren't ancient have got some toerag's tag on it. I'm used to seeing graffiti here in Brum, but it's everywhere in Rome. Then again, 'graffiti' is an Italian word, isn't it? I suppose it's not surprising then, if you think about it. There was an interesting piece of graffiti at the Colosseum, but I'll tell you about that in due course.

Three, it's fucking sweltering. Apparently, we'd arrived during a heatwave, and even the local Romans were moaning about the heat. There was a digital display on the train that tells you what the temperature was, and it was just shy of thirty-five degrees Celsius. I'm not good when it's too hot. I'm not a big fan of sweating. I'm also not a big fan of other people's sweat, especially when the train was as humid and as smelly as the inside of a Chelmsley Wood postman's sock on giro day.

After about twenty minutes in the sweatbox, we got off at Rome's Termini station and because the receptionist at the hotel told us isn't wasn't far, we decided to walk to the Colosseum. To be fair to the receptionist, she had given us a map, and it's not that far really. But to us, who don't know our way around and are very hot indeed, it seemed a fair old distance. Another thing about the inhabitants of Rome, is that they like to dawdle along. Put them on the road, in a vehicle, they go mental, but if you take them out of their car or off their Vespas and put them on a pavement and make them walk, they just saunter along. That's if there is a pavement, of course.

Anyway, after about half an hour of frequent stops to look at the map, and trying to navigate around five dawdling Italians walking side-by-side, we found the Colosseum. It's pretty hard to miss, actually. It is a very impressive building. I'm always amazed when I see something I've only ever seen in films or on telly with my own eyes. When you're there by the Colosseum, you're also surrounded by ancient arches and the remains of the Forum, and you do really get a sense of what ancient Rome must've been like.

Outside of the Colosseum, there's shitloads of tour groups, usually led by someone holding up a stick with a flag on it, there's also loads of blokes dressed up as gladiators or Roman centurions that charge you if you want your picture taken with them. Spoiling the effect, however, is the fact that most of these 'gladiators' are about sixty and smoking a roll-up. There's also quite a few market stalls, selling the usual shite you get at any tourist trap. I'm normally against giving any of these arseholes my money, but Heather talked me into going round the Colosseum with a tour guide, and I'm glad we did because our tour guide was a headcase.

So we sign up for a guided tour and we get given a little blue sticker to show that we've paid, and we join the rest of the punters who have also signed up for the tour. Along comes our guide, who looked a little bit like a younger Fabio Capello, holding what appeared to be a children's picture book about the Colosseum. Because our group wasn't as big as he'd like, he starts waffling on about any old shite to kill time while the group gets bigger.

He was an Italian, and a proud Roman. He began by asking us where we all came from. It was like a word association game for him. One of our group was from New Zealand (which didn't surprise me as looked exactly like Bret McKenzie from Flight Of The Conchords. We asked him about it later on and he said 'we all look alike in New Zealand, probably because we're all related.') When finding where he was from, the tour guide said 'Russell Crowe! Gladiator!'

When he found out where we were from, he replied 'Fish and chips!' and on he went, shouting out the national dish or footballers or film stars relating to the answer of the punter he'd just asked, until he came to one guy who was Dutch, and he was stymied, and decided to start the history lesson.

He started off telling us what it was like in Ancient Rome. About food, and orgies and slaves and the Vestal Virgins and about how badly women were treated. In fact, every time he mentioned any misogynistic acts the Romans did, he high-fived a man in the group in celebration. He then went on to tell us how clean the Romans were and are. He looked at us and said 'We Romans are so clean, when we invade your Breetan, we name a 'ole city 'Bath'! Not like French. French are Steenky, like skoonks!'

Then he told us that the films Ben-Hur and Gladiator are full of mistakes, most notably, both of those films show chariots being used in the Colosseum, which was never the case, as it was too small for any chariots. If you wanted chariots, you had to go the Circus Maximus, a much bigger venue down the road. (we had a look at the Circus Maximus later in the week, and it's just a vast green field these days, but you do realise how massive it must've been.)

For all his casual xenophobia and sexism, though, he knew his stuff and told us lost of interesting facts. For example, two million people were killed at the Colosseum. And of those two million, guess how many were Christians? Just one, Saint Ignatius. Apparently, persecution was big business, so all the Christians were murdered at the Circus Maximus instead, where there was a bigger audience to see it, as it had a capacity for 120,000 spectators. In fact, they set fire to Christians and used them as human torches so the spectators could see where they were going.

Also, the word Colosseum is an English name, coined by the Venerable Bede in the 9th Century. It's proper name is the Flavian Amphitheatre.

Another interesting fact is that the number four being represented by 'IV' in Roman numerals, came along after the empire became Christian, to save space and chiseller's carpal tunnels because it was 'IIII' when the Colosseum was built, as you can see when you look at the numbers above the gates into it.

Every time he gave us an interesting fact, he would back it up by showing us a picture from the children's book he was holding. At one point, he roped in one of the blokes dressed as a gladiator to help him. He looked authentic until his mobile phone went off. He fished it out of a little drawstring bag and proceeded to have a little chat. When he finished, he pointed to his phone and said 'Cleopatra'.

Anyway, after about half an hour of this, he'd got enough people for his group, and after a free photo-op with the gladiator, which I declined ,as he was far too tanned and good looking, and I'm always nervous around people holding swords, but lots of the other members of the group had their pictures taken with him, we were off into the Colosseum.

The first thing he pointed out to us after we got through the gates was a bit of ancient graffiti. An ancient Roman had carved a big phallus into one of the walls. 'See the penis?' he shouted. 'Look at the penis! Take picture of penis!' I hope he was referring to the graffiti, anyway. I'd hate to think he had a fetish for getting tourists to take a snap of his pudendum.

There was a middle-aged American couple in front of Heather and I, and the husband asked the tour guide 'Why's it so small?' The tour guide smiled and gave him a high-five.

You get an eerie feeling when you walk around the place, which isn't surprising, considering the amount of people killed there. This feeling was abated a little bit by the tour guide pointing out ancient bidets and saying ' Look! Arse-washers!'

So, we walk around for another forty minutes or so, looking around the place in the stifling heat, until we get down to where the fights actually took place. There's not much left of the floor now, but you can see where they had the lifts that elevated lions and other ferocious beasts into the arena. The tour guide pointed to a picture of a lion in his book, in case we'd all forgotten what the king of the jungle looked like. 'Lions are bastards,' he said. 'Capisce? BASTARDS!' and then he went on to explain how they had archers on standby should the lions decide to attack and eat the spectators. It was alright to eat the gladiator, but not the punters.

He then told us about the big crucifix that's there now, put there by some pope or other who came and blessed the place and prayed for the two million or so who died there. Like that's going to help them, seeing as all but one of them were pagans.

Afterwards, he took us to meet the other tour guide, who was taking us around the Palatine hills, but I won't dwell on her as she was informative, but a bit dull, but the area is lovely, and we came away, having looked, amongst other things, at the remains of the forum, well educated about ancient Rome, but also very sunburnt. And we'd been walking for miles. As soon as we got out, we headed for a pizza and a beer in a restaurant overlooking the Colosseum, and despite there being a whole boiled egg in the pizza, it had been a good day.

Roman Holiday, part one; Getting There.

2009-06-03T19:14:00.010Z

It's been a while since I last posted, I know, but I've got a good excuse this time, as my girlfriend and I were in Italy for a good part of my hiatus. This was my first proper holiday in God knows how long, my girlfriend and I were going to celebrate our Birthdays in Rome (yep, our birthdays are in the same week. Weird, huh?) and I was looking forward to it immensely, but the main problem about Rome is the fact that it's abroad and you have to get on an aeroplane to get there. And you can't get there directly from Birmingham International Airport, either, you have to go to Heathrow, which is nearly a hundred miles away.

I'm not a big fan of flying. Don't get me wrong, I'm not afraid of it; I quite like the bit when you're actually up in the sky. I love looking down at the world from above, seeing coastlines and the tops of mountains and the topside of clouds. It's just a pity I can't sit in a window seat because I'm poor and can only afford to travel economy and therefore end up with my knees around my earholes because I have the audacity to be taller than six feet. Anyway, as I said, I enjoy the actual flying. What I don't enjoy is all the rigmarole you have to go through before you can actually get on the plane. All the checking in and security checks and putting all your bottles in plastic bags and all the general fucking about really gives me a cob-on. (That's a Brummie phrase meaning 'in a bit of a mood')

When you get on a bus or a train, do they ask you to take off your belt first? No. And recent events tell us that buses and trains are just as likely to get blown up by terrorists as planes are. The stuff they won't let people take on, either; Tweezers, for example. If anyone ever mounted a successful hijack armed with just a pair of tweezers, then they deserve the fucking plane, if you ask me. (Not that I had a pair of tweezers, by the way. Anyone who knows me well enough to inspect my eyebrows can testify to the fact that I don't use them!) Don't get me wrong, I know we need security, but there's a difference between security and paranoid hysteria.

So, anyway, we flew from the new Terminal Five, which looks like something out of Flash Gordon, but unfortunately without a bellowing Brian Blessed. Actually, it'd be cool to have him do the Tannoy announcements. You certainly wouldn't ignore them. Typically, as this is England, our flight was delayed for an hour and a bit, but after we got on, it was all fairly plain sailing. Or Plane-flying, if you will.

Two and a half hours later, we land at Fiumicino Airport, and I knew for sure we were in Rome as the woman who checked my passport looked like a Vogue model and I was surrounded by loads of nuns.(Sounds like a dream I once had.) These nuns weren't your normal, boring, black-and-white penguin types, these ones were all in white, except for their wimples, which were navy blue. I suspect these nuns were Tottenham supporters. (if they were indeed Spurs fans, I bet their faith has been sorely tested lately!) Anyway, I get through passport control with a minimum of fuss as I'm from the EU. My girlfriend, however, with her American passport, had to queue for ages with the rest of non-EU undesirables. However, this just meant I had to go and get our luggage, which, as is usual for me, were the penultimate bags to come out onto the belt.

We were picked up by an elderly taxi driver and taken on a half-hour walk to where his car was parked. We were staying in a hotel which was on the other side of Rome, in a town called Ciampino. The taxi driver couldn't find it, and spent a lot of the journey talking and swearing to himself in Italian. Now, I don't know if you've ever been to Rome, but one of the things about the place is that everyone there drives like an absolute nutcase. The speed limit is seen as just a rough guide and stuff like traffic lights and roadsigns are just there to make the roadside look a bit more interesting. It's like Death Race 2000. (RIP David Carradine, by the way. Surely, he should've learned from Kill Bill that the palm technique was dangerous?) The village we were staying in didn't have the big roads Rome does, it just had single-lane roads and dirt tracks and roads that share space with train tracks and no pavements, so sitting in the back of a taxi with a swearing taxi driver who's lost whilst everyone else is doing their level best to collide with you was a bit worrying.
Anyway, after a while, and probably more through luck than judgment, we got to where we were staying, and it was a lovely-looking place. It was an old farmhouse which had been converted into a few apartments. We checked in, dumped our bags and went for a night-time al-fresco dinner. I normally struggle to make any kind of decision, especially when picking from a menu, but the hotel's menu helped me on this score as it only had three dishes to choose from on it. Chicken, beef, or a plate of cheeses. A vegan would be fucked, basically. Anyway, I had the beef, Heather had the chicken and afterwards we drank and looked out over the lights of Rome in the distance. It wasn't the best meal we've ever had, but it was just what we needed.

(Right. I seem to have been typing for ages, and we've only just got there! Serves me right for going off on one about air travel. There's another five days of this shit yet, so I've decided to do it in episodes. Next one soon!)

Vote Septic!

2009-05-14T16:02:00.005Z

Last weekend I was supposed to be at the Bristol Comic Expo but I never made it. Without going into too much detail, my girlfriend and I got to New Street station nice and early, but I had to get back earlier that night than originally planned, so I wanted to change the return train ticket. We found out that it would've cost seventy-five quid for both of us to get back a couple of hours earlier so we decided not to go, as seventy-five quid is a hell of a lot of money.
It's a shame, as it would've been nice to catch up with my old friends and collaborators, such as Andy Winter. Andy tells me that our book Septic Isle was his biggest seller over the weekend, which is nice to hear.

While we're on the subject of Septic Isle, it's that time of year when the Eagle Awards are looking for nominees. It's abit late this year, the results are normally announced at the Bristol Expo, and as that didn't happen, I thought they weren't going to happen at all this year, but they are, so it'd be nice if all of you went to the site (click on the link, or if that doesn't work, go to http://www.eagleawards.co.uk/) and nominated our book in the 'Favourite Black & White Comicbook - British' section. If you also wanted to nominate me (that's Mick Trimble, in case you'd forgotten!) as Favourite Newcomer Artist, and Andy Winter as favourite writer, then please be my guest.

I don't know if you've noticed, but I've put some subtle hints and dotted them around this post to help you make up your mind as to who to vote for. Hope it helps! Hurry up, though, you've only got until May 22nd (that's my birthday! All cards and prezzies gratefully received!) to get your nominations in. Cheers.

X Men Origins: Wiping Your Arse With Claws.

2009-05-05T18:24:00.003Z

Last Saturday, my glamorous other half and I went to the pictures to see the new Wolverine movie. In the queue with us was a guy dressed as Wolverine. He had the hairstyle and the vest and some leather fingerless gloves with the claws built in. I would've called him a sad fucker but he might eviscerate me with said appendages. Why is it only comic-book movies that attract these people? (Actually, come to think of it, which I do, that's not true; people dress up as nuns when they go and see The Sound Of Music, don't they?) You don't see people turning up at, let's say, The Reader, dressed as a death camp commandant. I did once think that a load of people dressed up and acting like zombies were queing up to see Day Of The Dead, but I was mistaken, it's just what any queue at a Broad Street cinema looks like.
The film itself was okay, nothing special. They whizz through Wolvie's early life showing us snippets of what could've been a more interesting film than the one that was made. For example, they don't tell us how he got the name Logan, but they do tell us how he got his leather jacket. Some of the CGI was very shoddy, too. Despite a few interesting ideas and a standout action set-piece involving Logan fighting a helicopter, this film was generally a wasted opportunity.
However, my girlfriend thought it was great, as she's in love with Hugh Jackman, and as it is basically two hours of him running around with no shirt on, she was in movie heaven. (I've no issue with that, I do, however, have issues with Jackman's hair in this film; he no longer has that 'pointy ears' haircut that his comic book equivalent has, he's got some kind of long curtains thing going on. It just looks rubbish. I know it's supposed to be set in the seventies, but Logan has never struck me as being a fashion slave. They should've given him a pair of flares and a belted cardigan to complete the look.)

After the movie, as usual, my bladder was the size of a space hopper, so I went to the toilets, and in there was the guy dressed as Wolverine drying his hands under the hot air dryer. He still had the claws on. So, he must've had a wee with them on. That's taking a risk, if you ask me. It's a good job he didn't go for a number two. Imagine wiping yourself with those things on!

Anyway, if this movie is an indication of what the summer blockbusters are going to be like, it's going to be a dull summer.

Heather's going to see again on Monday with the girls from work. I'm obviously not the film's target audience.

Drawing, Vomiting, Woking.

2009-04-28T17:17:00.008Z

It's been a while, I know. I'm sorry about the delay between posts. I usually blog when I've got some spare time to kill, but spare time's been a little thin on the ground just recently. But I've got a few minutes now, so I've decided to fill you all in as to what I've been up to.

My girlfriend and I spent Easter with her parents down in Woking, Surrey. It's quite posh down there. They get out of the bath to have a piss and everything. All the houses have names instead of numbers, and it must be a pain in the arse being a postman, having to remember which house is 'Acacia Lodge' or 'Riverside Manor' and totally bollocksing it up and delivering it to 'Clearview' instead. (If I could name my house, I'd call it something like 'Buggeroff' or 'Dunsodomisin', just to piss my neighbours off.)

Anyway, Woking is a nice place to visit. It was the birthplace of H.G. Wells, and they have a theatre there named after him, and about a hundred yards up the road from it is a cool statue of a tripod from War Of The Worlds and it's the kind of thing I wish we had more of up here in Birmingham. I mean, this is the place John Ronald Reuel Tolkien grew up, and do we have a statue of Gandalf? Do we buggery. Birmingham City Council seriously dropped a bollock in not aggressively advertising the city's links with Tolkien when the Lord Of The Rings movies were being released. New Zealand got all our tourists! What we do have is a statue of Tony Hancock, (who buggered off to Bournemouth when he was three) and some lame 'walk of fame' paving slabs on Broad Street which have 'Ozzy Osbourne', 'Jasper Carrott' and 'Noddy Holder' embossed on them and are frequently cordoned off because they become dangerously slippy when it rains. And it rains a lot here in Brum. (In fact,as I write, a big fucking thunderclap has just gone off above me, scaring the shit out of me, and now hailstones are raining down on us poor Brummies. It looks like Lenny Henry's paving stone is going to be cordoned off tomorrow.)

Anyway, back to Woking. If the tripod statue isn't weird enough, just up the road from that is a big silver-coloured fighter jet on a big pole as a piece of public art. I don't know why it's there or the significance of it, but it looks cool.

While I'm on the subject of public art, while we were there, we visited The Lightbox, a very smart art gallery where we looked at sculptures and where we also looked at an exhibition on the history of Woking, which told me stuff I already knew (Woking had the first Mosque in the U.K., I only knew that because it happened to be on the last The One Show I actually watched; Paul Weller and the MacLaren Formula One team is from there, too) and lots of stuff I didn't (Status Quo are from there! Woking's cemetery is the largest in Britain and the whole town was in fact intended to be, at one time, just one big graveyard to bury London's dead.) and generally, the Lightbox is a really nice place to go and spend some time.

Another thing I learned is that my girlfriend's parents are actually ninjas. There one minute, gone the next. We went on a drive around Surrey, stopping at points of interest, such as Guildford, which has a castle keep and the cathedral where they filmed The Omen, and all through the day, there were times when one of them (they were both dressed in black, as well) would just disappear into thin air. On the surface, they don't seem to be that nimble or agile, but it's just an act. Say the wrong thing, and the Sai would come out, quick as a flash, and pierce your neck. I'm only joking, of course, they're lovely people (I have to say that, I've got a sai up against my throat) but we did spend quite a lot of time looking for Heather's Mom or Dad at various points of the weekend.

That said, we had a lovely time down south. We had a posh Chinese meal and a lovely Easter breakfast which, because my girlfriend's parents are American, consisted of lots of pancakes, butter, maple syrup and bacon. Not very good for the arteries but it sure does taste good. We also spent a night drinking and playing 'Risk' with some of Heather's closest friends. I'm not a big fan of board games, but this was a good night because the Mick-Heather Axis managed to take over the world and win the game. Also that night, I discovered I knew quite a lot about Eighties pop music. It's frightening what useless facts are stored up in my noggin. Like I said, I don't really enjoy board games (I'm not really a competitive type of guy, I'm more of a 'let the wookiee win' person) but my girlfriend does, and it's nice for her to spend time with her friends and family, especially since she moved a hundred miles north because of some scruffy Brummie bloke.

I also had a week off work to spend some time with my daughters during the school holidays, but the time off was blighted by two factors: One, the weather was truly dreadful; torrential rain for three whole days, and when it got better factor number two kicked in: Stomach bug.

I spent two whole days pooing and spewing which wasn't very nice at all, and meant that me and my daughters were stuck indoors for most of their time here with me. Oh well, they had chocolate to munch on.

Heather and I went to see ...And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead, a rock band that I really love (and I heartily recommend their new album The Century Of Self, it's excellent. Don't be put off by the band's name, they're not as horrible as they sound. Slayer, however, are.) and it was an excellent gig in a shitty small venue that stunk like the inside of a Chelmsley Wood postman's shoe after giro day, and one of the support bands Middle Class Rut, were also very good. It was a good night, spoiled by the fact that after we got home, my stomach bug (thought defeated) returned with a vengeance, possibly aggravated by either the horrible burger I'd eaten or the horrible beer I'd drunk, and I spent the rest of that night violently spewing my ring up. Not good. Don't worry, though, I'm fighting fit again now. Well, as fighting fit as I can be!

On the art front, there's not that much to report, really. I had an interesting email from a film director who wanted me to submit some art to him as he was looking for a storyboard artist for an interesting sounding Anglo-Italian horror movie. He'd emailed a few people, but he did sound very enthusiastic about the stuff of mine he'd seen. He sent me a brief consisting of images they'd like to see a picture of, so I picked the one about the antangonist of the movie hunting at night, drew it in a surprisingly quick time and sent it to him. Below is the drawing I did (click on it for a larger version):

The director liked it a lot. He warned me that there wasn't much money involved (it's a very low-budget movie) but I might get to go to Sicily, where they're going to shoot it. He asked for my phone number. I was feeling quite confident about getting the gig, but in the end, I didn't. Oh well. At least I got a cool picture for my portfolio out of it, even if I say so myself. (Note the sky; on the original, it's done with an ink wash, but my scanner decided to tipp-ex out big chunks of it. I kinda like the effect.) You win some, you lose some.

I also went to a play at my eldest daughter's school. My daughter wasn't in it, but a lot of her friends were, so we went, despite my general dislike of these things, as school plays are nearly always rubbish. Maybe my views on these things are coloured by my own experiences in school plays. I think my last major role was as 'J.R.' who was a cowboy in my primary school's version of Cinderella. I know, there isn't normally a cowboy in Cinderella. I like to think they created the role especially for me, because they saw a rugged John Wayne quality in me. Actually, they probably thought I was more of a Gabby Hayes type. I remember my dad watching it through the window because he didn't want to pay and watch it, the tight bastard. I had this really long monologue about my character's lineage, and I remember being absolutely petrified. I've been scared of public speaking ever since.
Anyway, if the play we went to the other night is anything to go by, school plays have changed a lot since the days when I went to school. It was set in a hospital, and it was a portmanteau involving lots of different playlets about visiting times. Some of it was comedy, and some of it was dramatic. Some of it was very inappropriate indeed for a school play. There was one scene where a visiting wife was struggling to get the top off a thermos flask for her severely injured husband and saying 'Oh, this is hard', when a nurse comes in and thinks, because of the angle she's looking at it from that the wife's giving her husband a blowjob and runs out all embarrassed. This is a SCHOOL play! Bloody hell!
Besides this, it was fairly enjoyable. Some of it was dull and boring, and some of the acting was shit, but mostly the performances were excellent, and I enjoyed it despite myself. If only it'd been shorter.

Anyway, I think you're all up to date now. I can tell you're all impressed about my exciting lifestyle. I'm off to put the binbags out now. Will all this excitement never end?

Memorabilia.

2009-04-02T19:26:00.009Z

Last weekend, our good friends Jamie and Theresa travelled up from Southend-On-Sea to come and stay at our home here in The People's Republic Of The West Midlands. (If you read my blog regularly, you'll know Jamie, as he's the only one who leaves me any comments!)

It was Jamie's birthday on the Saturday (and might I say, he doesn't look bad for fifty! Only kidding, Jamie!), and after he opened his cards and presents, and still feeling the effects of the alcohol and Moroccan cuisine from the night before, Jamie and I headed out to the National Exhibition Centre for the Memorabilia show. His other half decided her time would be better spent mooching around Brum's shops, whilst my other half was at the theatre watching His Dark Materials with my eldest daughter.

We went to the NEC by train from the lovely, awe-inspiring New St. station, mostly because it's probably the quickest way of getting there, as it's only one stop, and the fact that parking at the NEC would cost at least eight quid. The problem with going to the NEC by train is that after you get off at Birmingham International, you think you're nearly there, but you're not. You're in a building that says it's the NEC, but it's a bloody long walk to the exhibition halls. You go up escalators, down escalators, down endless corridors, along several moving walkways until, about a week later (okay, I'm exaggerating slightly) you get to the exhibition halls. But that's not the end. The Memorabilia show was in hall 12, we were outside hall one, so we walk for another three days (I exaggerate again) until we get to our destination. If we weren't sure if it was the right place, the shitloads of blokes dressed up as stormtroopers and a couple of Jedi outside confirmed that this was indeed the Memorabilia show.

After being allowed to jump the queue because we were paying for our tickets with cash (Ten quid! Each! Bloody Nora!) we went into what was frankly a massive room stuffed to the gills with all sorts of cool stuff. One of the first things we saw was a toy stall, selling lots of stuff similar to the things I had as a kid for shocking amounts of money. All of it was still boxed, and you weren't allowed to pick any of it up. I might've mentioned before that I collect models of the Batmobile (I know, it's a sickness, but they make the windowsill in my sketching room look a lot cooler) and I saw a Batmobile I'd quite like. It was from the 70s, made by the Mego company for their 7" action figures of Batman and Robin (not included) to sit in. We asked how much it was, because none of the items had prices on them. Probably because a little sticky price tag might damage the precious packaging. Anyway, the stallholder gets out a little folder that had all the prices in it, looks it up and then tells us that the batmobile would cost me £195. That was about £190 over my limit, so we thanked him and moved along.

We also saw, from the side looking in, Robert Vaughn doing a Q&A session, and he's a lot smaller than I thought he would be. Quite old, too. It's amazing, though, how he's kept his hair colour even though he's well into his seventies. More on him later.

One of the things that bugs me about this kind of event (comics conventions included), and it's only a recent phenomena, is the amount of cosplayers that turn up. I hate cosplayers. I know they're essentially harmless and they're only having a bit of fun but they do my head in. I reckon they give the rest of us nerds a bad name. People look at them and think 'what a bunch of sad bastards', and think all of us geeks are like that. There was a group of about ten teenage boys all dressed up as Doctor Who. All of them were the David Tennant Doctor, except for one who must have read the email incorrectly and turned up as William Hartnell. A fat, Asian, William Hartnell. Still, at least he was the only one who stood out. I saw all those young lads, with their brown full length coats, brown suits, Converse trainers and their hair all spiked up and I was reminded of the crowd scene from Life Of Brian; "Yes, we're ALL individual!"

There were also quite a few very young teenage girls dressed in not much, including one girl of about fifteen wearing a revealing corset, and this kind of thing brings out the dad in me. I say things like 'I bet her dad doesn't know she's wearing that' and 'there's no way any of my kids are going out looking like that!' even though I know, deep down, that if my girls did want to go out like that, there's not really that much I could do to stop them. There is such a thing as freedom of expression in this country, despite all of my objections!

Also, it's very stupid going to these things dressing up as the thing you love. If you're dressed up as Anakin Skywalker, a Star Wars memorabilia dealer knows he can charge you a bit more because he know's you're a Star Wars nut and you'll pay it. I bet all the dealers with Doctor Who stuff rubbed their hands with glee the moment they saw the ten Tennants approaching them. Only under tens and the Fathers 4 Justice and those people who are paid to walk around these conventions dressed up are allowed to wear superhero or sci-fi costumes (I might make allowances for people press-ganged into going to a fancy dress party. I'm not a big fan of those, either!) the rest of you should stop. Really. Especially the ones that make their own costume out of bits of egg boxes and Lego. Honestly, it's like Paris Fashion Week for the blind and stupid.

Rant over.

The amount of stuff available here was amazing. If spare cash and spare space wasn't a problem I would've come home with shitloads of geeky stuff. Honestly, if you're a nerd like me, you would have had a field day looking at this cool stuff. There was some crappy junk as well, but it was mostly cool. Less cool, however, was the 'celebrities' charging you at least fifteen pounds for an autograph. Some of them are people the non-nerd has heard of (Stephanie Beacham, Robert Vaughn, Richard Briers-who was a bit of a weird choice, I can't really see loads of obsessed cosplaying fans turning up dressed in tweed and kilts asking him to sign their VHS copies of Monarch of The Glen, can you?) but a lot of them were 'third alien on the left' types from Star Wars and I don't think having the autograph from the guy who was 'Yak-Face' is worth fifteen quid, frankly. I'm not really sure whether these are actually who they say they are, anyway, considering that these people spent their moment of fame under shitloads of prosthetics. He could be lying and pretending he was Yak-Face, for all I know, just to get his hands on fifteen quid from a Star Wars freak who really should be old enough to know better.
Don't get me wrong, there were people there I would have liked to get autographs from. There were a few Bond alumni there, for example. There was Richard Kiel, the man mountain who played Jaws, who is absolutely fucking huge- he's probably wider across the shoulders than I am tall. It was sad to see his mobility scooter, though. I also would've liked Guy Hamilton's signature, as he directed Goldfinger, the quintessential 007 movie. (Interesting fact about Guy Hamilton: In the movie The Third Man, that famous shot where you see Harry Lime's shadow running away, that shadow actually belongs to Hamilton- who was Carol Reed's assistant director, because Orson Welles didn't bother showing up for filming that day, because he was a notorious pain in the arse and probably because the only running Welles ever did was away from the salad counter.) The thing is, if you ever happened to bump into these people in the pub, they'd probably give you an autograph for free (although it's unlikely Jaws ever drinks in Moseley, there are a few Yak-faces, though.) and that's the main reason I refuse to pay for it. The other main reason is I don't have that many spare fifteen quids at the moment! I was going to get George Lazenby to sign my picture (see last post) but he wasn't there, so stuff the lot of them.
Saying that, one of us did pay for an autograph, and it wasn't me. Jamie saw the bloke who plays PC Stamp from The Bill walk past us, and had a brainstorm. His dad is a big fan of the show, apparently, so Jamie thought it would be nice if he could get PC Stamp (don't know his real name, and I can't be arsed to Google it, either) to talk to his dad on the phone. Which he did, fair play to him, but the trouble is, he might be a well-known face on British TV, but he doesn't really have a distinctive voice like, for instance, Sean Connery, John Hurt or Michael Caine does. Jamie's dad didn't have a clue who it was that had phoned him up so the first five minutes of that phone call were really awkward. I don't know what was said on the other end, but I can imagine it was along the lines of 'Who the fuck is this?'
Anyway, when Jamie's dad realised who it was, the conversation went a bit more smoothly, but at one point, PC Stamp said to Jamie's dad something along the lines of 'Well, your son is going to buy you a nice signed photo for you' and from that moment on, Jamie felt obliged to buy a signed photo of a bloke from The Bill for fifteen pounds. He didn't really mind, it was a nice gift for his old man, after all, but I think Jamie, being a rabid Star Wars fan, would rather have spent that money on Yak-Face's autograph. I think I upset PC Stamp though, he asked if I'd got everything I'd came for, if I was enjoying it, the usual smalltalk, then for some reason, he sort of accused me of being a cosplayer. Probably on the basis that I was wearing a Silver Surfer T-shirt. Not only did he accuse me of being one of the things I hate most in the world, he suggested that I probably dress up as a superhero when I'm having sex with my girlfriend. I know he was only trying to be blokey and have a joke, but fucking hell, that's a bit much isn't it? I replied by asking him whether they let him keep his uniform (for sexual purposes) when he left The Bill.
"I haven't left, actually, but thanks for paying attention."
And that was the end of that conversation. Next to him was the German guy from Raiders Of The Lost Ark (another favourite movie of mine, but surely it's a favourite movie of everyone's.)whose face melted at the end, and I wanted to ask him about his appearance in the Ferrero Rocher 'Ambassador, you are spoiling us' advert, but I didn't have the courage so we went away and watched some wrestling instead.
Well, I say wrestling. It was a bit like wrestling. There was a ring, a referee and wrestlers, but it was all a bit, well, rubbish. For some reason, the wrestlers kept trying to get the crowd to clap along, but they didn't seem to realise that us Brummies don't really do audience participation. We have the attitude of 'I paid ten quid of my hard-earned cash to get in here, and you want me
to do your job for you? You entertain me! I don't ask you to come to my factory and polish my power press, do I?'
So there wasn't much clapping. Anyone who did clap along were either children, idiots or interlopers from beyond the Black Country. It was a bit like like wrestling used to be when I was a nipper- you know, World Of Sport and Kendo Nagasaki and Johnny Two Rivers and fat blokes with a woman's bathing costume on worn back to front, before we got slick, polished American wrestling shows imported to show us how it could be done if we could be bothered to put the effort in. To be fair, they were going for the American style of wrestling, the 'good guy' wrestlers had washboard stomachs and muscles (something the World Of Sport bunch couldn't be arsed with, they just bounced off ropes and belly-barged into someone with their beer guts) but the 'bad guy' was a bit weedy-looking and the actual bouts were unconvincing. I know wrestling is fixed, but you don't make it obvious. They were stamping on the floor when they 'punched' someone, for God's sake! I wanted one of them to slash his face with a razor, Mickey Rourke-style, that'd be cool, and it would really freak out all the five year olds watching. To be fair to them, though, they did throw themselves around with gusto, and their backs looked all red and sore, so it must hurt, and it's something I'd never do (probably because the sight of me running around in swimming trunks and bright green knee-high boots would turn the Memorabilia Show into the Projectile Vomit-Con 2009) so, my hat goes off to them. If I ever wore one. Which I don't.
At the end of the show, Jamie went up to one of the guys who organises the show and congratulated him on how good it was (Despite all my moaning above, I did have a good time. Moaning's just what I do.) and on the table in front of him was a load of large glossy prints of various people sitting next to Robert Vaughn. They apparently had a scheme where you pay to have your picture taken with the former Man from U.N.C.L.E. and you pick it up at the end, like you do when you get off a rollercoaster at Alton Towers. The weird thing was that the ex-Napoleon Solo (another intersting fact- Ian Fleming came up with that name. Also, my dad was such a big fan of The Man From U.N.C.L.E. that I was nearly given the name Napoleon Trimble. I'm glad he saw sense) had exactly the same facial expression in all of them. They might as well have taken one picture of him and photoshopped him next to all of those other people.
(Actually, I read in the Birmingham Mail the other day, that the next series of Hustle is being filmed up here in Brum, and that Robert Vaughn is looking for an apartment in this very city. Hopefully I'll bump into him and get an autograph and save myself twenty quid!)
And so, after about three hours of looking at cool stuff, and after trying and failing to get our picture taken with a bloke dressed as Iron Man, Jamie and I headed on the long, long walk back to the train station with our freshly-bought junk weighing us down. I got a few books and a few more batmobiles (one of which Jamie bought for me, bless him) and we'd had a good time. I'd definitely go again. It's a good laugh.

Oh, and the guy who plays PC Stamp's name is Graham Cole, apparently.

I've been expecting you, Mister Bond, but you didn't bloody show up!

2009-03-30T19:04:00.004Z

Like I said before, I've not been posting much because I've been drawing. None of it is paid work, but I'm trying to build up a portfolio of new stuff. I've nearly finished page three of a self-penned strip which will be a four or five pager eventually, I'll show you that stuff when it's all done. I've also spent some of my time doing the picture below, as I was going to the Memorabilia show at the NEC and I heard George Lazenby was going to be there, and I was going to get him to sign it and it would've been a nice geeky thing to add to my collection of Bond stuff. He wasn't there. He might've been hiding (he is a master spy, after all) but I don't think he was there. Anyway, I'll let you know what else was at the show in another post (when I've got time!), but I wanted to share the On Her Majesty's Secrety Service pic with you, because I'm quite proud of it. Here it is (click on it for a larger image):

MICK TRIMBLE WILL RETURN IN

'A FOUL MOOD'

Sláine: The Movie?

2009-03-17T22:57:00.004Z

Continuing the Irish theme (albeit a bit tenuously) from the last post, here's a frankly astounding fan film based on Pat Mills and Simon Bisley's Sláine: The Horned God. It's by a guy named Miguel Mesas, who should be signed up to do it for real. It's a bit odd hearing Ukko the dwarf talking in Spanish, though.
I used to be a big fan of Sláine. Bisley's excellent, but I always preferred Glenn Fabry's stuff. Mike McMahon's take on the character was excellent too, simultaneously stylised and realistic. I stopped reading when Sláine started travelling through time and the art was too CG influenced, though. Anyway, I digress. Watch it and be amazed:

Happy St. Patrick's day!

2009-03-17T18:52:00.002Z

The fates have conspired it for me to spend Paddy's day on my own this year, and not in a pub either! Bejaysus.
Anyway, here's a nice clip to get you in the mood.

May you be in Heaven for half an hour before the devil knows you're dead!

More Bale.

2009-03-05T17:18:00.003Z

It's going to be a low content couple of weeks, so this post is a quickie, as I've got some drawing to do. Sticking with the Christian Bale theme instigated by the last post, I've found the new trailer for the upcoming Terminator movie, and despite my misgivings (mostly concerning the stupidly-named director's previous output) it looks kinda cool. Let's face it, it can't be any worse than T3, which was just a retread of T2, but with a lady robot as the antagonist and a bleak ending instead of a hopeful one. Also cool is the use of Nine Inch Nails' track The Day The World Went Away. I love that band.
And never mind Bale's well-publicised rant. I think it looks very well lit indeed.

I'm not sure about the title either. Terminator Salvation instead of T4. I suppose it's because it's a prequel and therefore should be T-zero, or it might be because calling it T4 might make people think it's a film about Channel Four's endless repeats of Friends and The Simpsons linked together with inane chat from Steve Jones (the bland Welsh bloke, not the Pistols' guitarist) and Miquita Oliver.

Batman vs. Johnny Cash.

2009-02-24T17:18:00.003Z

This is a clip of Chtistian Bale and Joaquin Phoenix giving an award at the recent IFC Spirit awards. If you're at work, PLEASE BE CAREFUL, as we all know how volatile Christian gets when he's angry. Does he kiss his mother with that mouth? Probably not, he's more likely to smack his mom in the kisser. Allegedly.

Three years and counting...

2009-02-20T12:48:00.013Z

Well, technically, it's not until tomorrrow, but I'll probably be too busy to post anything (Villa are playing Chelsea) , so I'm doing it today.

Secret Identity is three years old. Yep, I've been doing this since 2006. It's had over 10,000 hits (since I've been counting, anyway), not bad for a blog which is basically about me moaning! I've also gotten extremely bored with the way the blog looked, so I've changed that. I'm not sure about the result, let me know what you think.

Thanks go out to everyone who reads this blog. It's great knowing that some people actually read this stuff. I hate talking to myself.

Cheers.

Brits.

2009-02-19T11:42:00.005Z

I like to think I'm a cool dad. I like to think, because I'm younger than most of my daughters' friends' parents, that I'm more with it than them. But I'm not. I'm turning into my dad, and that's a scary thought.
I have my children staying with me at the moment, because it's half-term, and after the Villa match finished last night, my kids nagged me into watching the Brit awards. I've never really liked the Brit awards, they never have any of the bands I like on, or are they likely to, but there's usually something on there that might be fun or interesting. Not last night. What a load of old shite. Watching that, I realised that I've reached the point in my life when I hate everything about modern popular music. I'll soon be shouting at my kids 'Turn that shit down' like my dad did. I'll soon be telling them about how music in my day was proper music and this stuff today is just noise and that in my day at least you could hear the words, even though none of the statement is in fact true.
Admittedly, I didn't see all of the awards, as I was watching the Villa outplay CSKA Moscow but still only getting a draw. Maybe the first hour of the Brits was amazing. I doubt it.
I turned over to see Take That fly in on a UFO. Robbie Williams has spent most of last year looking for UFOs fruitlessly and all he had to do was swallow some pride and get on the phone to Barlow, who had one in his back garden. And they were miming. Nominated for best live act and they turn up to lip-synch to their god awful song. No wonder they didn't win. (Weirdly enough, Iron Maiden did! )
I hate Take That. I hated them in their heyday and I hate them now.I know they write their own songs and they've come back from the wilderness and all that shite, but because they came back successfully we had to put up with all the other disbanded once-popular manufactured boy/girl 'bands' coming out of retirement too. I could cope if it was just Take That, but it's Boyzone reunions and Spice Girls tours and all the other wankers releasing crap records.
Duffy won three awards. Don't know why, as she seems to be a watered down version of Amy Winehouse. A lot nicer to look at, though. Tom Jones give her her last award, banged on as usual about how great being from Wales is (even though he lives in Las Vegas and L.A. most of the time) but now he's chucked the Grecian 2000 away he looks like Count Dooku.
Coldplay were nominated for four awards but won nothing. Good. It's a crime they were even nominated in the first place. An ex-colleague once summed up Coldplay when he said 'Coldplay are trying to be U2, but U2 turned into wankers, Coldplay are wankers already'. Still, lots of people inexplicably like them, and I bet any hurt they felt at being snubbed is balanced by the joy of looking at their bank statements. Lucky bastards.
Girls Aloud won Best Single for 'The Promise'. They moaned that thay haven't won one before, but that's because they're awful. I wish they'd promise to piss off. I don't get Katy Perry either. She won Best International female for singing about kissing a girl. Big deal.
The show itself played safe and was fairly dull, no controversy, and the acts they had on weren't interesting. They teamed up the Ting Tings with Estelle and they did a medley of their own hits. I heard they only got Estelle because they couldn't get Rihanna, who couldn't come because she got beaten up by her fella, ella, ella.
The 'celebrities' they got to dish out the awards were awful. David fucking Hasselhoff. Gok fucking Wan. Alan pissing Carr. For Christ's sake. And as much as I like Gavin and Stacey, I thought the hosts were shit, and they're getting everywhere those two, like dogshit.
By the time that wanker Brandon Flowers turned up (wearing a dead pigeon on his back) to sing with the Pet Shop Boys (who were this year's Outstanding Contribution winners) I'd completely lost all interest in music. At least I've still got football.

But that's starting to piss me off as well.

What A Way To Go! part one.

2009-02-06T16:21:00.002Z

Bit of a change of tack, this post. Because I've been off work with my crippled shoulder, I've been watching quite a lot of movies, more often than not, big dumb action movies. And one of the things I like about big dumb action movies (especially the ones from the '80s, I've found) are the big ridiculous deaths that happen in them. I likes me an inventive death! (Only in movies, you understand. Seeing anything at all like this in real life would almost definitely disturb me!) So I've decided to make an open-ended list of what I think are the best deaths in movies. It's pointless sticking to a 'top-ten' or 'best 100' because I might think of more good 'uns, or get bored and never post about it again, or some new good 'uns might come along and grab my attention.
Each post will feature one of these gruesome demises, and hopefuly, a clip, if YouTube has them. And there's no particular order of merit, I like them all equally for different reasons. So, enough waffling. Here's What A Way To Go-part one:

Kananga (Live and Let Die, 1973)

as you all know by now, I'm a Bond nerd, so I thought I'd start with a Bond death. Gruesome and inventive dispatches of bad guys have been part and parcel of the Bond franchise from day one. Dr. No was boiled alive in super-heated water (in the novel, however, he was buried alive in a mountain of bird shit; much more inventive!). Goldfinger was sucked out of one of Air Force One's windows. Hugo Drax was shot with a tranquiliser dart then shot out into outer space. Elliot Carver was chopped up by a giant industrial drill, and so on.
(The thing I've noticed about the Bond films is that, generally the henchmen get the cooler deaths and the head honcho just gets quickly offed. I recently watched Licence To Kill (probably the most extreme 007 movie in that respect) again and the henchmen are killed in many unusual ways, eaten to death by maggots, electrocution by eel, head exploded in a decompression chamber, chopped up in a grinding machine, which all make the main bad guy's demise, being burned alive, seem a bit of a let down.)
However, by far and away the most memorable demise in a 007 movie is indeed that of the main villain in Live And Let Die. What makes it so great is the sheer ridiculousness of it. He is forced to swallow a compressed air bullet which makes him expand like a big balloon until he flies up into the air and bursts into a million pieces. Fantastic.
Since when have compressed air bullets been practical? The film says the gun is designed to kill sharks. Surely normal bullets would do the trick just as well? How is blowing them up with compressed air more practical? Especially when you consider Bond is trying to sneak onto the island without raising alarm. Surely sharks suddenly flying into the air and then exploding is going to surprise even the most stupid henchman into action. This is a Bond movie, more importantly, this is a Roger Moore Bond movie, so a certain amount of disbelief-suspension is required. Maybe nearly being eaten by a shark in Thunderball back when he was Sean Connery traumatised Bond so much that he went back to Q branch and asked them to come up with something that would absolutely obliterate the pointy-nosed fuckers.
What also makes Kananga's death so great is how badly it's done. It looks rubbish. I'm sure that even back in 1973 it looked shit, but that adds to its charm. Also there's not a drop of blood to be seen, or no flying guts. This was as gruesome as they allowed PG-rated (or it's equivalent back then) films to get back then. Even the obligatory post-kill quip is a bit rubbish; 'He always did have an inflated opinion of himself' is an awful joke, but that adds to its charm too. ( I reckon 'I think he got the point' from Thunderball is the best death quip in the entire series.)All this, as well as the fart sound effect all add up to you laughing at someone's horrible and undignified death!
It's a ridiculous, fun, tongue-in-cheek demise that suited the tone of the movie. Roger Moore wasn't the best Bond, and LALD certainly isn't the best movie of his tenure, but it still had a sense of fun that was severely lacking in Quantum Of Solace. (don't get me wrong, I liked QoS, but it wasn't 'Bond' enough for me.)
Anyway, enough of me waffling on. Watch and enjoy:

WHAT A WAY TO GO WILL RETURN

Snow joke and other updates.

2009-02-04T18:48:00.011Z

Most of the blogs I've looked at today tend to consist of photos of peoples' gardens or streets covered in snow. Yes, it looks pretty, but it's a right royal pain in the arse.

It never ceases to amaze me how unprepared this country is for snow. It happens EVERY FUCKING YEAR, you think we'd have the mechanisms in place to deal with it by now, but no, of course we haven't. We can find untold billions to pay for missiles to rain down on Iraq, or to pay for the Olympics, but when it comes to dealing with snow, we're fucking hopeless. I bet Canada are laughing their bollocks off at us right now. I mean, our capital ground to a complete standstill, no buses, trains or planes at all. The 7/7 bombings never managed that!

This recent snowfall apparently cost the economy an estimated 1.2 billion pounds, and there's more on the way and we might run out of road salt. I'm not an economist, but surely spending a few million quid making sure we can deal with snow and making sure people can get to work and supplies are delivered, etc. will save us billions in the long run.

Still, at least the kids had a nice day off from school.

>Update on the previous post, my recent appearance on local and national news has now only bleeding gone online. See my full bell-endedness in glorious full colour. I apologise in advance for making you listen to Ace Of Base's (note the apostrophe!) 'The Sign'.

> My shoulder's still not brilliant, but it's a lot better, thanks for asking.

>Since Johnny Dixon passed away last week, two more Villa alumni have gone on to play for God's XI. Vic Crowe, former player and later manager of Villa died last week, and Monday saw the passing, at the very young age of 46, of Paul Birch. Birchy's death is particularly sad for me, because he's a player I actually remember, he was part of Graham Taylor's fantastic team of the late Eighties. I remember him marking Inter's Lothar Matthaus out of the game in our 2-0 win over them in the UEFA cup (the less said about the 3-0 defeat at the San Siro in the second leg, the better). I had an old Panini sticker of Birchy on the inside cover of my school hymn book (along with Gordon 'Sid' Cowans and Derek Mountfield and a posh foil sticker of our old round crest) He was a player from the time I used to go down to Villa Park regularly (those days are long gone! Can't afford it these days.) and though it's often claimed falsely that a player always gave 110%, Birchy always did, and that is why the Holte End still sing his name in our version of 'My Old Man'.

Punctuation.

2009-01-31T10:09:00.004Z

Yesterday, I was on my way to get my children for the weekend, and on the way I was stopped by a BBC news reporter and a cameraman and asked my opinion on the day's burning issue: Apostrophes. Apparently, Birmingham City Council doesn't like Brummie place names having apostrophes in them, so places like Druid's Heath, King's Norton and King's Heath (where I live, and why I was asked my opinion, being a resident and all) will all lose their punctuation. Good to see they're not wasting my council tax on stupid schemes like better services, isn't it? Let's re-punctuate all the street signs instead. A much better use of resources.
However, directly across the road from where I was interviewed, an attempted armed robbery had taken place at a Nationwide building society, there were loads of police and the road was cordoned off. Surely that's a proper news story? Shouldn't the TV journalists be over there finding out what happened? Nope. Whether or not we keep apostrophes is far more important, apparently.
They did broadcast my response. On the BBC's regional news programme Midlands Today. My eldest daughter was doubly freaked out because her English teacher was also in the same feature. I was freaked out, too, by my big bloated unshaved pale face and my horrible voice. Surely I don't sound like that, do I?
I do?! Bloody hell.
Anyway, I don't approve of them removing the apostrophes. My response on the telly was something like 'removing the apostrophes just for the sake of making it easier to read is sorta like dumbing down'. I know, erudite, snappy and witty. I came across as a right bell-end.
Luckily, nobody 'phoned or texted me, so it looked like nobody I knew had seen it. Which was good, especially since I've been off work all week with a bad shoulder, 'phoning them up and telling them how crippled I am. Me appearing larger than life on the telly kinda makes me look a liar. And I'm not, my shoulder is royally fucked, I had to go and get my kids. But it looked like nobody had seen it anyway, so I was okay.
I thought I was, anyway. They broadcast it again, many times, today on BBC breakfast. and I'm getting texts and Facebook messages from all over the shop. My mate in Darlington saw it. So it was nationwide, then. The whole country saw what a bell-end I am. Fantastic. My colleagues have seen it. So I'm in shit at work, probably. Brilliant.
Damn you, Birmingham City Council! You and your diabolical schemes have ruined me!

Cracked Back.

2009-01-29T08:54:00.005Z

Generally, I've had a shit January. I caught the worst cold I'd had for ages. Having a bright red nose and streaming eyes isn't really much fun, and the look doesn't really suit me, either. When I recovered from that, our boiler decides to commit suicide, and I spent most of last week shivering my nuts off. It's fixed now, and my house is now warm again.
But now, worst of all, I've managed to royally injure my back. It's my shoulder, mostly, but I've trappped a nerve and it's killing me. After spending possibly the most gruelling Monday at work I can remember for a long time (they're all pretty gruelling, actually, but this one had the element of serious physical pain thrown into the mix. Fun!), my lovely girlfriend booked me an appointment at a back clinic, which, luckily, is just around the corner from where we live.
This was the first time I've ever been to a chiropractor, and I was kinda nervous about what torture he was about to put me through, but as I was in so much pain I couldn't even sit down to have a poo (sorry to be brusque, but my bowels are a big deal to me!) I thought it can only help.
Also making me nervous was the fact that there was a running machine in the waiting room. I don't like running at the best of times, and the thought of doing it in the waiting room in my debilitated state didn't fill me with joy. I was imagining the receptionist laughing at this limping Quasimodo figure trying to jog along on this treadmill like a disabled gerbil. Then the lady who'd been in before me came out. She was walking very gingerly. My girlfriend, who had accompanied me, saw my worried mug and started laughing. This amused me too, but we had to keep straight faces in case the poor woman thought we were laughing at her. Trying not to laugh only makes me want to laugh even more, though, but I managed to keep it together, mostly because I knew that laughing would probably hurt. Everything else I did hurts, so it stands to reason that giggling would probably kill me, too.
So, it was my turn, finally. The chiropractor asked me a few questions, ascertained how much mobility I actually had and then he told me to take off my shirt and lie on the massage bed he had, on which you lie face down, and your face goes into a specially built-in hole. (I've seen a similar bed in the terrible Jackie Chan film The Protector, but Jackie's bed had a naked chinese girl lying under it for him to look at. No such luck in my case, I'm afraid. Just the floor. Luckily, though, unlike Jackie, no-one tried to stab me while I was lying there either, so it's swings and roundabouts.) The chiropractor pours some kind of lube on my back and gets to work. This hurts. I thought massages were supposed to be relaxing!
Then the really fun bit happened. He asks me to turn over and then he cracks my back. Ow. He does it again, higher up. Ow again. Then he puts his arm around my neck, grabs my head and twists it so my neck cracks. Fucking mega ow.

(Those James Bond movies lied to me! 007 always gets a blonde buxom masseuse to give him a rub down when he's injured, and he gets to shag them afterwards in the steam room. I get my neck cracked by a bloke called Steve. Not fair!)

Now, I'm a fairly big guy. I'm over six feet tall, and I weigh about sixteen stone (yeah, yeah, I know, I'm a fat bastard.) but he was throwing me around like I was nothing. He said I had a high pain tolerance. Nice chat-up line. Normally, if I was in a situation where I've got my shirt off, covered in lube and a man is wrestling me, him saying 'You've got a high pain tolerance' might've worried me, but it made me feel cool. Yeah, I have a high tolerance of pain! I'm a rough, tough real man! This all evaporated when I winced and gasped as I struggled to put my shirt back on.
It turns out I have no spinal damage, but the stresses I put my muscles under at work are affecting my joints. So I have to do exercises. The main one involves putting my left hand on my right shoulder, my right hand on my left shoulder, like I'm hugging myself (I was doing that all last week anyway when I was fucking freezing!) and then I have to move my upper body in a figure-of-eight motion. Now this exercise is the first one you learn in junior school when you pretend to be mentally handicapped. If I stick my tongue between my lower lip and my teeth when I'm doing this, I'd look exactly like I did when I was ten and one of my classmates had just done something stupid. So, anyway, I have to keep doing this before I go again, next week.
I'm still in pain, though. I haven't been back to work since Monday, but it is improving. The fact I'm sitting here typing this is a sign of how improved I am. And I've managed to have several poos since. Hurrah!
I'm so bored, though. As I haven't been able to move out of my seat, I've just been sitting there watching DVDs and daytime telly. It may sound fun but it does get tiresome, especially when I'm watching shite like Tarantino's Death Proof or Cash In The Attic. I don't know which is the most gruesome!
Also, because I know she reads this blog (someone has to, I suppose) I'd like to thank my wonderful other half for looking after me. She wasn't really expecting this level of care until we were both in our seventies, but she's doing a wonderful job, and it's good practice for when I'm a septuagenarian with dodgy joints.
Right, gotta go. It's Homes Under The Hammer in a minute, and I need to see how that guy who bought that town house in Weymouth is getting on.

Johnny Dixon RIP.

2009-01-21T17:01:00.002Z

Today sees the passing of a true Villa legend; Johnny Dixon. A winger and inside-forward (remember when there were such positions as 'inside-forward'? I don't!) who signed for Aston Villa in 1944 and spent seventeen years at Villa Park as a player, and a further six as a youth team coach. He will always be remembered by the claret-and-blue half of Brum as the captain of the F.A. cup winning team of 1957 (where we beat Manchester United's Busby Babes 2-1; albeit by flattening their goalkeeper!) which, sadly, was the last time we lifted the cup. Hopefully, we can win it this year as a tribute to the great man.
(Actually, winning anything would be nice! We've got as good a chance as we've had a very long time this season, though.)
So long Johnny, thanks for your contribution to the history of the mighty Aston Villa!

Bush Or Batman?

2009-01-20T17:43:00.003Z

Seeing as today is the long-awaited day we finally said bye-bye to the Bush Administration, I thought it would be pertinent to share the following clip with you all:

Be Seeing You.

2009-01-15T17:50:00.003Z

Yesterday saw the passing of Patrick McGoohan, creator and star of The Prisoner. He did lots of other stuff, but Number Six is how we'll all remember him. The Prisoner was a weird and wonderful series which made a hell of an impression on me. I'm obviously too young to have seen it when it first aired in the late Sixties, but I saw it when Channel Four repeated it when I was at an impressionable age. If you've never seen it, check it out. It's a wilfully weird and dark fairy tale, an evil Alice In Wonderland. McGoohan's turn as Number Six is a fantastic performance, and a cool character, a man unwilling to give in and conform, always one step ahead of his captors and defeating the new Number Two but never quite making his escape. The show looked great too, the Portmerion location adding another layer of strangeness. And who can forget the odd holiday camp-type clothes they all wore, the pedal cars, and of course there was Rover, the malevolent weather balloon. I remember catching an episode not so long back, on ITV4 or something, and I had my children with me. I told them to watch it as it's brilliant. Unfortunately, the episode was Fall Out, the very last one and possibly the strangest hour of telly ever broadcast on ITV. My kids shook their heads and left when a character started singing 'Them Bones, Them Bones' muttering something like 'this is crap'. Ah well, their loss.

TV's tried to do similar things since, but they just tend to go for 'weird', but there was more to The Prisoner than that. It's an allegory, especially that last episode when there's the big reveal of the bad guy, the ultimate evil, Number One, and it's Number Six's face we see. The ultimate evil is oneself, the whole series is Number Six fighting his own dark side. The people who put him there obviously want him to use his dark side in their service, and so were a bit peeved when he quit. That's what I think it's about, anyway, but I'm sure there are lots of interpretations of what this show was about.

What is strange now, looking at it from today, is that ITV ever made a show like this. The ITV of today churns out pap like X Factor and I'm A Celebrity..., but back in the Sixties it made fantastic shows like The Avengers, Thunderbirds, The Saint, Randall And Hopkirk (Deceased) and many others which made the BBC's output at the time look a bit tame and old-fashioned. It intermittently tries to come up with fun genre shows these days, but it's shit like Primeval and Demons, and gives up the ghost and goes back to Simon Cowell for another load of talentless hopefuls who will ruin TV and the charts too, for good measure.(That said, it's currently remaking The Prisoner with Jim Caviezel as Number Six and Ian McKellen as Number Two. I reckon it's a totally pointless exercise, myself.)

Anyway. So long, Patrick. Thanks for making British TV a hell of a lot more interesting than it was before you came along. We could do with you around now.

Dispirited.

2009-01-13T17:43:00.006Z

Whilst in the cinema the other night, I had a flash of inspiration; I reckon I've found a way to ease the world's environmental woes with a brand new totally green energy source. If we can somehow harness the energy of Will Eisner's rapidly rotating corpse we won't need to worry about fuel price increases.
Yes, I watching Frank Miller's woeful The Spirit. It's one of the worst movies I've seen in a very long time, and I've recently watched Australia! (Not usually the type of film I go and see at the pictures, but my girlfriend, who works in PR, got us some tickets to a special preview put on by the Australian tourism board and there was free food and beer (there was one woman there putting food from the buffet into her handbag for later. How Birmingham is that?), we even got free popcorn to munch while we were watching the film, and we were given free Australia-shaped luggage tags and an Australia pen. If you've seen Out Of Africa, Gone With The Wind, The African Queen, Last Of The Mohicans, Red River, Pearl Harbour, or Walkabout I wouldn't bother. To says it's derivative and unoriginal and clichéd is an understatement.You can tell it's Australian because Bryan Brown is in it. I think he's been in every Aussie movie since about 1981. It looks pretty, though, and there's lots of shots of Hugh Jackman with his shirt off. If you like that sort of thing. My girlfriend does. I don't, makes me feel inadequate.)

Anyway, The Spirit! This is not Will Eisner's Spirit, this is most definitely Frank Miller's. I'm not the world's biggest Spirit afficionado (I can recommend Will Eisner's Dropsie Avenue trilogy, referred to in the movie, and his Comics and Sequential Art book is a comic artist's bible), but I've read it, and the movie doesn't resemble what I've read at all. It's trying to be cultish and camp and comedic, but fails miserably.
Eisner was a master visual storyteller, groundbreaking and ahead of his time in his day. The film tries to be visually interesting, but if you've seen Sin City, you've seen it already. And Sin City was a far better movie. Probably because it had a proper director (I know Miller had a co-directing credit, but you know Rodriguez was the real guy in charge.) and decent actors (Jessica Alba excluded, of course) and knew when to use its visual flourishes for maximum effect. The Spirit has the same touches, but are used so inconsistently and for no apparent reason. The acting is terrible (Samuel L. Jackson is so hammy as the villain, The Octopus, I was expecting him to grow a little curly tail at the end) there's only the slimmest of plots and the dialogue is really awful.
It's basically an excuse for Miller to film lots of Hollywood starlets with very little on, and while that's an admirable aim, I'd rather he did his perving in his own time. (I was talking to a colleague about this movie, and he said he thought it was shit, but his teenage son loved it. I can guess why!) It's politically suspect in its portrayal of women ( I know it's supposed to be noirish, but this film is very definitely set in the present day, there's mobile phones and computers and at one point a photocopier on display, doesn't really fit with the look of the film) there are references to paedophilia (not very nice for a supposed kids' movie) and dressing Sam Jackson and Scarlett Johansson up as Nazis is a bit politically suspect as well. They're just dressed like that when they're explaining their grand scheme to our tied-up hero. As if we didn't guess they are bad people by that point, Miller tries to hammer it home by making them dress up as Hitler. And the plot's Macguffins, Heracle's Blood and The Golden Fleece, are not things that should be in a movie based on Will Eisner's comic.
As you can tell, I didn't really like it. It's a bad sign when the best thing about a night out at the cinema is the trailers.

Commercial Breakdown.

2009-01-08T20:35:00.004Z

In a newspaper I was flicking through earlier this week there was a feature on how to lose weight. I must've been bored to read through this shit, but anyway, one of the tips was to run on the spot during the ad breaks when you're watching telly. This might sound like a good idea, but this isn't going to work for me because I very rarely watch commercial TV. This is mainly because ITV and Channel 4 these days broadcast nothing but utter bilge. (There are exceptions; I love TV Burp on ITV, and I've been enjoying what I've watched of Dead Set on Channel 4. What is there not to love about a zombie Davina McCall eating one of her colleagues' entrails?)
And when I do watch something from commercial TV, it's usually been recorded so I fast forward through the adverts, so I'd be running on the spot for about twenty seconds, and the tremors from me jogging my lardy arse up and down would be enough to shake my can of lager of the coffee table. And spilling beer is a crime in my house.
However, I do see the odd advert, usually during half time when I'm watching a football match in the pub. (Actually, there's a cool ad doing the rounds at the moment, I think it's for VW, where a guy has a series of kung-fu fights against versions of himself. I like that one.) During the Villa match last Sunday, I saw an advert which upset me. Iggy Pop is selling insurance. What the fuck is Iggy Pop doing trying to sell me insurance? When he sang 'I Wanna Be Your Dog' with the Stooges, I didn't think he meant Churchill. Actually, I'm surprised he has a policy, this is a guy who regularly cuts himself open on stage, and has a history of heroin abuse. I bet his premiums are astronomical.
It's not really punk, though, is it? Speaking of which, there are apparently a series of ads which have John Lydon selling butter. I only know about this because my brother almost had a fight with him when he got shoved out of the way by one of his minders when they were filming a commercial in Trafalgar Square.( Apparently, when my brother Marc squared up to one of the minders; "Brick Shithouse, he had muscles in his piss" according to our Marc, Johnny Rotten said something like "That's it mate, show no fear" to which my brother replied something which involved ripping Lydon a new orifice. Miraculously, my brother walked away unscathed. He's good at that. But I digress.)
Who'd have thought, even five years ago, that we would be seeing adverts in which Alice Cooper and Iggy Pop are selling insurance, Johnny Rotten flogging butter, or Birmingham's very own Ozzy Osbourne promoting World Of Warcraft? You may disagree, but online RPGs are NOT Rock n'Roll!
I know selling out is part and parcel of success these days, but Bill Hicks, who said any artist is off the artistic roll-call as soon as they do a commercial as it's akin to sucking the Devil's cock, was absolutely right.

Happy New Year!

2009-01-05T19:53:00.006Z

Yeah, yeah. I know it's a bit late, but it's been a fairly hectic festive period for me. I didn't even start my Christmas shopping until three days before the big day because I had an art job (maybe I should say 'art favour' seeing as I've not received any payment yet) for a computer games company which took far more time than I wanted it to; it started off being five pages but then I received the script, which crammed far too much into its five pages, so I decided to virtually re-write it, making it more reader-friendly (and making it easier to draw!) and so it ended up being nine pages. Still, it was a useful exercise- I now know, should I need to, that I can produce four fully-inked, fully-lettered pages in a week and still do a day job. (Saying that, I did do the last twelve pages of Septic Isle in a week. I didn't go to work or have any sleep, though!) Some of the artwork was quite good, too, even if I say so myself:

Anyway, after that was done, Heather and I spent a weekend down south catching up with her friends and folks and spreading a bit of the Christmas cheer. Now, I don't know if I've mentioned this, but my lovely girlfriend is crazy about Christmas. She absolutely loves it. Normally, I see Christmas as a royal pain in the arse. I hate standing in queues in department stores listening to endless repeats of Slade or that awful one Paul McCartney did that sounds like an intestinal disorder (I'm still wondering why I never heard 'Rock n' Roll Christmas' by Gary Glitter at all this year. Funny how some festive songs go out of fashion, isn't it?) and all the forced jollity (you should know enough about me by now to know that I don't really do 'jolly') and repetitive strain injury from writing out all the Christmas cards for colleagues who probably don't even like me that much.(Although this year, I didn't bother with cards for work. I'm glad we don't do Secret Santa at my work. God knows what I'd receive!).
However, my girlfriend's enthusiasm rubbed off on me a little bit, so we ended up getting a massive tree (eight feet tall! I spent all Saturday sawing the bastard up and putting it into bags. I only had a poxy little hacksaw so now my arms and back are sore. Poor me.) and it did look nice, I suppose.
Christmas itself was a strange one for me, as it was the first Christmas day I've spent without my kids being present (I got them the next day and we had a nice time) but Heather's parents spent Christmas with us and had dinner and a nice day was had by all. Although, Heather was a bit pissed off that her folks had bought me more presents than they did for her! I'm currently working on Heather's dad, trying to make him an Aston Villa fan. I did succeed in getting him to say 'Up the Villa' as a Christmas toast. Sounds great in an American accent. Sounds great in any accent, actually. Especially as the Villa are doing well at the moment. (When I was doing some shopping in Woking, I saw a young lad wearing a Villa shirt, so it looks like we're picking up some of the glory-hunting Southern support. It's a good sign. He was probably an ex-gooner.)
As I said, I got my girls on Boxing Day, so we got to have Christmas all over again, and my brothers and their spouses came over the day after that for a festive drink or three. The highlight of that was when we played 'Who's in the box?' a game where you take pieces of paper out of said box, and have to describe who's written on them to your partner. You have a minute and have to describe as many as possible. This game threw up some great descriptions and answers. My partner was my youngest daughter, and her description of Gandhi as 'some bloke from the past who wore glasses' didn't win me a point. My eldest daughter's description of Jimi Hendrix as a 'left-handed guitarist, brown' got some giggles as well. My youngest got my description of Paris Hilton as 'that slag from America with a dog', which is just as well, because when I read her name all I could think about was the video 'One Night In Paris', and I didn't really want to be describing that to my thirteen year-old daughter. Other descriptions of note were:
'Old Christian singer with a turkey's neck and a colostomy bag,' and 'Rasta frog who ruined Star Wars.'

The main reason Christmas was a good one this year, however, was that I managed to get ten days off work and Heather and I spent them doing nice holiday type stuff like not having to get up, or going to the lovely Electric Cinema ( a restored 1900's cinema here in Brum where you can book a sofa and watch old movies. they also have this great service where you text them what you want from the bar and they bring it to your sofa) and watching It's A Wonderful Life on New Year's Eve. It almost made me want to emulate Jimmy Stewart when I came out of the picture house and run down the street it's on shouting 'Merry Christmas Old Rep theatre! Merry Christmas old Midland Red bus depot! Merry Christmas Adultworld sex shop and porno cinema!' but I managed to keep myself in check. We also went to the Thinktank at the Millenium Point, where I showed Heather the Spitfires built here in Brum at Castle Bromwich, and we learned that most of the guns used in the American Civil War were also manufactured here in Birmingham's Gun Quarter. So, not only is Brum responsible for keeping Hitler at bay, we're also responsible for the freeing of America's slaves. We also went to the planetarium there, where we watched a film about what Ancient Egypt saw when they looked at the night sky. And we watched Villa score a flukey win against Hull in a packed boozer in Moseley, and another flukey win against Gillingham in the same pub. All in all, it was a fantastic Christmas and New Year, and I enjoyed it so much I might even do it next year.
Hope your Christmases and New years were good too.

Always Has Been, Always Will Be.

2008-12-03T21:59:00.005Z

I read in the Birmingham Mail yesterday that some arsehole local councillor wants the mighty Aston Villa Football Club to change their name to 'Aston Villa Birmingham' and we should also replace the motto 'Prepared' on our badge with 'Birmingham'. He reckons that a lot of people don't actually know that Villa are from Brum and the name change will help raise the city's profile if the Villains win the UEFA cup.
Firstly, let's try and win the cup first. Secondly, we've been Aston Villa since 1874. It's been good enough for the last 134 years, why change it now? I mean, back in 1874 , Birmingham wasn't even a city yet, and Aston wasn't part of it.
Lots of football teams don't have the city they're from in their name, I mean, just off the top of my head, there's all of the London clubs, Everton, Port Vale, Lazio, Ajax, FC Twente, Espanyol, Benfica, Celtic, Rangers, Hibernian, Queen Of The South and Juventus. There's probably loads more. Any proper football fan knows Villa are from Brum. Anyone who doesn't know probably isn't that interested in football, so how does Villa winning a trophy raise Birmingham's profile in their eyes anyway? The main reason this is a bad idea, however, is the fact that our local rivals and worst enemies are called Birmingham City. How is Villa incorporating the scum's name into our own going to be a popular idea? It's not our fault if the team actually bearing the name of the city aren't raising it's profile because they're a pile of wank is it?
If the council want to increase this city's reputation, how about they spend their time coming up with better ideas, such as cleaning up the shit bits, for example? (I reckon one of the main reasons Birmingham has a reputation for being a shithole is, ironically, because of football, as both Villa Park and St. Andrews are situated in dogholes, so visiting supporters go home with a bad impression) . I know this idea isn't going to come to anything, and it will all blow over, but it has bugged me no end. Football is all about history, and our name is part of our heritage, so leave it the fuck alone.

If you want to read about how we got our name, and also, if it wasn't for Aston Villa there wouldn't be a football league to start with, read this fantastic article from the Times Online.

Ahh, There You All Are!

2008-11-27T16:43:00.008Z

In the words of trailer-trash headcase Britney Spears; "Oops, I did it again!"

I've been such a busy boy lately that I've not had the time to update my blog. (I've also found out that this blog has 'followers', now. Some of them are blogs I wasn't aware of until recently. I've got readers I didn't know about!The number keeps going up and down, though. That's what happens when you very rarely update, I suppose.) I've got an art project on at the moment which is taking up an inordinate amount of my time, and that's on top of all the stuff that moving to a new house entails, and that's on top of me being very ill this week with a virus that made my joints swell up and stop my bowels from moving. Still, not going to work for three days is almost compensation for not being able to bend or poo. Or bend and poo; after all, I don't do it standing up. Not every time, anyway.

More news on my art project if and when it gets finished. If you're reading this on the other side of the pond, firstly, happy Thanksgiving, and secondly, Septic Isle is now on sale in the US., so go out and get yourself a copy. As soon as the stores re-open after the holidays, obviously.

I promised to tell you what I've been up to since I've moved, but that would take ages, so here are the highlights:

We had a mini-housewarming with a lot of my glamorous other half's friends from down south. I made a twat of myself by slipping on the wet uPVC ledge on my patio door and crashing in a heap onto the very hard kitchen floor in front of everyone. My brother Marc thought this was the funniest thing he'd ever seen. I wasn't even drunk by then, either. My shin is still bruised. We'll probably have a housewarming with some of my friends from here in Brum at some point in the future, if I can find any.

The day after we moved in properly, Heather and I decided to go for a drive to get a feel for the area and find out if there's anything cool or useful nearby. We ended up in nearby Earlswood, which is near Bromsgrove and about ten minutes' drive away. We saw a garden centre and decided to have a look around. We looked at the cacky statues and gnomes and windchimes and the usual shite you get at these places, then we saw that this place also had an aquarium, so we had a look around there, too. Not because we want any pet fish, you understand. As we were walking around, I noticed that in one tank, the tiny fish inside were reacting to my movement. I waved my hand to the left, the fish all quickly swarmed to the left. I moved my hand to the right, they all swam to follow suit. Heather had moved along so I called her back to show her. She stood by me as I waved my hands all around the place quickly. The fish all went mental! The water acted as if it had suddenly boiled and the fish started leaping out of the top of the tank like some aquatic mass suicide attempt. My hands were moving rapidly again, trying to pick up all these dying little fishies and chuck them back into their tank quickly before the shop assistant saw me. I think I saved most of them. Heather had a look that said 'I can't take you anywhere, can I?' as we swiftly left the garden centre.

Heather's Mom and Dad came to stay with us, and we went to a posh restaurant as it was her mother's birthday. I even put a suit on. And a tie. It was a lovely meal,her folks enjoyed their time with us, I think. Which was good, as it was only the second time they'd met me. I had an interesting chat with a guy outside whilst having a fag, apparently he was taking photos for British Sausage Week, he was travelling around the country with famous cricket umpire Dickie Bird sampling and judging local bangers. I tried to see if Dickie Bird was in the restaurant with us, but I couldn't see anyone sitting at a table with five jumpers and three hats on. Pity.

We're more or less all moved in now. We still have a spare bedroom full of shite, though, and we don't have an aerial for our telly yet, either. We have to use a portable aerial, which isn't the best, and because it's plugged in to our freeview box, it means most of our programmes tend to be stop-start, i.e. the picture freezes for a bit or the sound comes and goes, which means the continuity announcer sounds like Norman Collier (but obviously not when he's doing his 'other joke' when he puts his jacket around his shoulders and pretends to be an unfunny chicken. By the way, is Norman Collier still alive?) but we get by. Most importantly, though, I now have a room where I can go and draw, it's got a desk, drawing board and everything. It's also got a 'gas lift' chair that doesn't stay lifted so when I'm drawing I start to sink every few minutes. Still, it's all good fun.

Also, it's very nearly Christmas! That's snuck up on us this year. I don't know where this year's gone. We finally get the house to look like a home and now we have to fuck about putting trees up. Bah Humbug! Nah, I'm looking forward to it really. I just have to act curmudgeonly to keep appearances up.To prove how much Christmas spirit I've actually got, check out the following clip:

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

Right. There's probably loads I've forgotten to tell you about, but I can't be arsed to type anymore, but I promise to update a bit more regularly from now on.

Return Of The Mick.

2008-11-07T17:11:00.003Z

Hello again. Sorry for not posting for however long it was, but in my defence I was moving house and my computer has been offline for at least a month. It's not anymore, obviously.
In my absence there's been loads to comment about, such as the Ross/Brand debacle (in which the Daily Mail decided for us what we can and can't broadcast), Guns N' Roses actually releasing some new music (it's shite) and the US electing it's first Black President (Second if you count Morgan Freeman in Deep Impact) but it's a bit late now.
This is only a brief post, I'll fill you all in at some point in the future, but the move went well. Thanks to those sent us cards (obviously, the ones who know either me or my girlfriend personally and also read my blog. It sounded a bit like a Radio DJ who gets birthday cards from his listeners then for a while) and I'd also like to thank those that actually helped us move in. Couldn't have done it without you, guys.
So, I'll try and make up for lost time and tell you all about my exploits in the past month or so, like, for example, me nearly killing a tankful of fish in a garden centre, just to pick an example at random. So, if you have stuck around, cheers, and stay tuned!

Mick's BICS.

2008-10-06T19:10:00.009Z

Well, Birmingham International Comics Show went by in a flash, didn't it? It's in its third year now, and it keeps getting better. It's certainly more slick and better organised , less malodorous and in a nicer venue than its Bristol counterpart, but it's still not quite got the vibe that the Brizzle expo has. Like Sting says, though, I'm sure it'll come eventually.

Andy Winter and I were there to flog Septic Isle, we got there fairly early on Saturday morning (after we'd had 'a night on the pop' on Friday) and discovered that our table was the first one people would see as they came in. However, we weren't in the main hall, so it turned out ours was the first table people would ignore as they rush past to go and meet John Cassaday. Just after we set up and had a coffee I got a phonecall from my friend and fellow MC2-er Laura Howell asking me if I could help them carry their stuff up from the car. I dutifully go down and offer my services and get roped in to carrying someone else's stuff, leaving Tim (Laura's partner) standing there in the car park like a spare prick. After I carried the other lady's stuff up to the exhibition hall, I rushed back down to see poor old Tim struggling with three big wooden boards and helped them carry it all up after all.

My good deed done for the day, I sat back down behind our table and got ready to meet the punters. We shifted a few copies of Septic Isle, but it wasn't exactly flying off the stand. Our stall was directly opposite a large projection screen, which, at about eleven o'clock, started showing an extended trailer for ITV2's crappy sitcom No Heroics. It showed it again and again and again and again. Not really helping us with sales. Jean-Paul Sartre once said that hell would be being stuck in a room with your friends for all eternity. Well, he was wrong. Hell is being sat opposite a loop of a really unfunny trailer (and besides, I like my friends. Most of them, anyway. I think you have to put Sartre's comments into context. His mates were French, after all.) The trailer was completely inappropriate anyway, as it was a room with quite a lot of young children in it, and the trailer had references to drug use, masturbation and someone said 'fucking' in it too. Andy, bless him, had a word with Shane (one of the organisers and a really nice bloke) about how annoying it was, he agreed with us and it promptly stopped. The sense of relief amongst the row of stalls we were in was palpable.

The other thing I've noticed after going to a few of these things in recent years is the change of the type of punters that are coming to the cons. When I first started going there were very few females attending, there are certainly more attending these days. Admittedly, a lot of them are girlfriends being dragged along by their nerdy other half (like my girlfriend, who I've not mentioned so far, but she did come along with me, bless her, despite us both being up to our eyes with our house-moving) but there are a lot of genuine female fans coming to the conventions.( I know there has always been genuine female comics fans out there, they just didn't seem to come along to conventions). There tends to be a lot more families coming along too, which is also a good thing.

But there are also the cosplayers. The ones at Brum tended to be of characters I'd heard of, the Bristol con tends to get the manga/anime freaks dressed as characters even I've not heard of, as nerdy as I am, and the costumes at Brum tended to be of a very high standard. There were some professional dresser-uppers there too, special mention must go to the guy dressed as the Heath Ledger Joker, as he did really look like him (or 'fucking creepy' as my lovely other half put it) and, though I wasn't looking, obviously, the lady dressed as Harley Quinn looked nice, too. There were also people dressed up as Dan Dare (although his eyebrows weren't the same distinctive shape as Dare's; things like that are important to me. I know, it's an illness, I can't help it!), Batman and some of the Thundercats.

Our friends Jamie and Theresa turned up a bit later, moaning about how poxy it is to get around Birmingham. Theresa rescued my girlfriend and they went off shopping. I later got a text from Heather telling me that Geri Halliwell was signing books in Selfridges. I asked one of the cosplayers who was dressed as Green Arrow (Connor Hawke, not Ollie Queen) sitting opposite us if he could actually use the bow he was carrying around and if he minded going to the Bullring to fire a few bolts at Ginger Minge. He looked at me like I was mental. He's dressed as Green Arrow and I'm the mental one. Figure that out.

Later on, my ex and my youngest daughter turned up, and I was shocked to discover it had cost them fifteen quid to get in. I reckon that's a bit steep. As good as the con was, there's not enough for the casual punter who is just there to buy stuff to look at or do that's worth that much money, and that got to hurt the stallholders if the punters are already a tenner lighter before they go in.

During a fag break (it took ages to get downstairs and outside for a smoke, the expo was three floors up) it was too windy for my poxy lighter to work, so I borrowed a lighter from another 'snoutcast' and got chatting to him about Brum's metal legends Sabbath and Priest, Bill Hicks and how us smokers are treated like criminals amongst other things. Then, on the way back up I found out that I'd been talking to the fairly famous artist Frazer Irving. He's a cool guy.

Generally, the Saturday's trade was steady, not spectacular, but it'd been a fun day, and it's always nice to meet up with the people you only see at these conventions.
After we all packed up for the night, we planned to meet up in town for a meal and a drink, so Heather and I headed back home so we could get changed (the thing I find weird about the Brum comics show is not staying at a hotel, it doesn't feel right going back home after a day at a comics expo) watched a bit of telly (still not sure about BBC1's Merlin) and headed back out to the city centre and met up with Jamie and Theresa, Andy and his old mate Rob, and Keith Burns (like me, a former StripSearcher and he's also the talented artist of Blood Psi) and we all went for for a big-ass burger at the Handmade Burger Company, which is on the canalside just behind the ICC. The meal was great, but the onions in it kept repeating on me and led to me doing foul rotten flesh-smelling mini-burps all evening. It's surprising how popular this makes you. Afterwards we decided to go for a pint or three, so it was up to me as the only Brummie to decide where to go. I plumped for the Tap and Spile, as it was close and doesn't have dance music drowning out any attempt at a conversation. The problem is, however, that particular pub is a bit of a dive. And it takes ages to get served. And you have have to listen to the other patrons talking about snuff movies at the bar while you're waiting. Besides that, though, it was okay and we all had a good evening. Whilst I was in there I bumped into two old schoolmates of mine and was cheered up by their distinct lack of hair. Okay, they might have better careers and all that stuff, but at least I can still ask the barber for 'a little off the top' and not worry about it!

At the end of the evening, Heather offered everyone a lift back to their hotels (she's poorly, bless her, so she decided not to drink and therefore could drive) so we traipsed through the little bit of Brum that most resembles Gotham City (Broad St.) to the car park at Brindleyplace (that's not a typo, it is all one word. When Birmingham City Council rebuild and rebrand stuff, they like to remove the spaces from names. The 'Bullring' is another example) where we were stuck in a logjam of cars. We waited nearly an hour to get out of the sodding place, but we had great fun bitching about all of the other drivers, who really were total cocks. Not so much fun were the rotting flesh belches, which are even less amusing in a car full of people. So, even though it took our friends over an hour to get to what was basically a ten-minute walk away, we were all in good humour (although I am slightly worried over one friend's admission that he fancies Rupert Everett. I think his wife might be, too) and looking forward to the Sunday.

After a very slow start (probably because of the weather. It was pissing it down as usual) Sunday was a good day for us. We sold loads more on the Sunday, very unusual as Saturday tends to be the biggie, normally. So much so, in fact, that all the initial print run of Septic Isle is now all gone. (Don't worry, there's about to be a second printing for our dispatch to shops and websites) I even managed to leave our table for a bit and have a proper look around and buy some tie-in tat as gifts for my offspring. The nice lady at the Forbidden Planet stall liked my T-shirt, it had cartoon versions of the characters from Monkey on it. She wasn't the first. I had comments about my T-shirt all day. I very rarely get nice comments about what I'm wearing from strangers, but I obviously impressed a few of my fellow nerds. Actually, whilst at the Forbidden Planet stall, a man passed by with the copy of Septic Isle he'd just bought, so I asked him if he wanted me to sign it for him. He checked the photo in the back to see if it was actually me that drew it, then he ran off to get a pen, and eventually I signed it. I always dreamed I'd be signing my comic books at Forbidden Planet; This was good enough for me!

I did a bit more sketching on the Sunday, and people seemed genuinely pleased to get my amateurish scribblings with their purchase of Septic. One bloke asked me to do a sketch, so I did him one of Marley, the protagonist from our book. He also asked me to write who it was, sign my name and date it, and he also took a picture of me doing it. As he'd bought our comic, I thought it was the least I could do. I reckon he was going to put the book and sketch on eBay('signed by the artist! photo verification!) I think he'll probably get about 12p. He obviously thinks I'm more famous than I actually am. Which is not very famous at all. Still, good luck to him. I just hope he doesn't spend all of the 12p in one go.

Other highlights from the Sunday include: My mate Jason getting work from DC after a portfolio review. That's great news, he deserves it as he's so talented. I finally got hold of the Frankenstein comic adaptation from Classical Comics, despite my own problems with that particular publisher, because my friend Declan Shalvey illustrated it, and it looks tremendous, and it's a good read, too. Had a chat with the FutureQuake guys, and it was good to see Dave 'Bolt-01'Evans telling off his son for being too nerdy. Bloody right too. The Joker looky-likey was back in a nurse's outfit on Sunday, and the girl who was Harley came back dressed as Lara Croft. she looked nice, apparently, but I wasn't looking, of course. Joining the professional dresser-uppers for the Sunday was a guy dressed as the Brandon Routh Superman. You know, the one with the burgundy cape and the too-small 'S'? He didn't really have the build for Supes, but fair play to him. My girlfriend told me how she shared the lift with him at one point, and at every floor, someone got on and said 'cape not working, then?'. On every floor. Brummie humour. Best in the world. Serves him right for not actually being able to fly.

Trade died a death after about half four so we decided to pack up. Heather went and asked around in the main hall to see if they had any spare boxes for our move. She got some too, so now, when I do move this weekend, I'll be carting my stuff round in boxes with 'Batman figural bank' and 'Sinister Six Vulture med statue' printed on them. Even my house move has become a nerdfest!

Still, it was a good convention. We had a great weekend, but now I have to turn my attentions to packing up all my various shite and shifting it to my new abode, so this'll be my last post for a bit, as I don't know when I'll next be online. I'll see you all on the other side of the move. Ta ra a bit!

My plans for the weekend.

2008-10-01T20:00:00.002Z

Just as Birmingham gets over a convention for sad, badly dressed, deluded people with no grasp on the real world (The Conservative Party conference) there's another one starting this Saturday October 4th (the Birmingham International Comics Show). I'll be there flogging Septic Isle, alongside the book's writer and publisher Andy Winter, so, if you want to meet either or both of us and want a signed copy, please come along to Millenium Point, Curzon Street, on Saturday or Sunday. I'm going to have a shave for this, so if I can be bothered to do that, the least you can do is turn up. I hate shaving. See you there, hopefully.

The Stuff I've Been Up To. (part two)

2008-09-28T19:08:00.002Z

House Hunting:

One of the main reasons I've haven't been blogging as much as I'd like is because i've been looking for somewhere new to live. When I say 'I', I mean 'we' as my lovely girlfriend and I have decided to move in and rent a place together.
Now, as all of you who have ever been house or flat hunting know, estate agents can be economical with the truth. We wanted to move to the Moseley area of Brum (or as I call it, Mos Eisley. I'll explain why later), but so do a lot of people. This means Mos Eisley is prohibitively expensive, and estate agents say properties are in Mos Eisley when they're not. We looked at places that were in Hall Green (famous for its dog track) when we were told they were in Moseley so they could bump the price up a bit. Also, what an estate agent calls a double bedroom is not what I would call a double bedroom. what they would call 'desirable' some times is what I would call a 'shithole'. We looked at one house that was a relatively new build, but inside it was terrible; the stair rods were mostly missing and every room's walls were riddled with holes. (I reckon the previous tenants were fans of the 'floating shelf'.) Apparently, having a house that resembles swiss cheese is 'desirable' these days! Not to me, matey!
My lady and I also saw a house we subsequently referred to as 'the house of death'. It was completely beige inside, beige walls and beige carpets all through the gaff. It smelled bad. Its kitchen hadn't been updated since about nineteen forty-seven and it was obviously a house where someone old had died. To be fair to the estate agent on this one, though, he could tell it wasn't the right place for us and looked suitably embarassed as he was showing us round.
We did luck out though. The house we settled on is in King's Heath, not far from Mos Eisley, it's got four bedrooms, it's in our price range and it's lovely. We'll be moving in a couple of weeks, so I'm up to my ears in packing and measuring stuff and buying washing machines. It's worse for my girlfriend, who is moving up from Winchester, so her hassles are probably ten times what mine are.

Mos Eisley Folk Festival:

My girlfriend is middle class, and I'm obviously not, so we're kind of putting ourselves through a cultural exchange. She makes me watch rom-coms (some of the time, anyway! I still won't watch anything with Reese fucking Witherspoon in it, though. I have some standards!), I make her watch kung-fu and zombie movies (but not Peter Jackson's Braindead, yet. That combines the two genres in one fantastic scene. You should all go out and see that movie if you haven't, yet. One of my faves.) I make her eat baltis, she makes me eat salad from wooden bowls. (This is the biggest indicator that someone's middle class, this is; owning wooden salad bowls.)
My girlfriend's a big fan of Seth Lakeman, who I'd not heard of before I met her, and I've since found out that he's a folk-singing midget who mostly plays violin as well. She found out that Seth was playing at the Mos Eisley folk festival, so she bought tickets for her and a friend to go and see him, and all the other bands playing at the festival. As the festival got nearer though, it turned out that her friend couldn't go, so I agreed to accompany her. This had a cultural exchange aspect to it too, as I stipulated that we had to watch the Villa-Liverpool match (which was on the same day) in a grotty pub first before we head off to the folk festival.
After watching one of the shittest nil-nils I've seen in a long time (fair play to the mighty Villa though, we're third in the Premiership as I type this, only one point off top) we headed off to Mos Eisley. Now, Moseley does resemble its Star Wars counterpart. It's a weird place, maybe not the 'wretched hive of scum and villainy' that Mos Eisley is, but it does have a strange mix of residents, so the pubs do resemble the cantina from A New Hope. There are a lot of posh people, you know the types with people carriers who take their kids to violin classes, there are also a lot of grungey students, lots of new age types, all wiry hair and sandals and creative facial hair. And that's just the women! (Insert rimshot noise here) and, Moseley also has more than its fair share of tramps. Not the modern Big Issue, dog on a string homeless, but your old-fashioned tramp. Meths-drinking, mismatched shoes-wearing, big overcoat-wearing, piss-smelling, giant beard wearing paraffin lamps. There was a famous itinerant called 'Pete the Feet' who used to bother drinkers in Moseley for small change, he was called that because he refused to wear shoes. But I digress.
We went to the festival and it was pissing down. Torrential. As has most of what we used to call 'summer'. A friend of mine said that the British weather is like the Muslim community, sometimes Sunni but mostly Shi'ite. (But, Brum's muslims are mostly Sunni, apparently, so it's a crap joke, really)
The festival was in Moseley Park, which is a park you have to go down an alley to get to, and the festival was like any other festival you've been to, but a lot smaller. That's a good thing, the queues for the chemical bogs are much smaller, for one thing. There was a real ale tent. Another good thing. There were a few stalls, including, weirdly, one that sold violins. I think the cheapest one was three hundred quid. Hardly an impulse buy at a music festival, is it? Unsurprisingly, the stallholder wasn't doing much business. There were all the usual jewellery, joss stick and hippie shit on sale, and there was quite a good book stall. Because most of the festival goers were new age-y types , I was worried I wouldn't be able to get anything substantial (i.e. meat) to eat, and, at first glance my worries were confirmed, falafels, veggie burgers, vegetarian indian nosh. I opted for a falafel, and it was lovely, but I dropped my girlfriend's chilli, so hers wasn't as nice as mine. Then, after I finished my falafel, I noticed the hog roast stand. Bastard!
The rain was coming down in big sheets, and we couldn't shelter under a tree because all the other festival goers were hugging them. And the music, whilst not my thing, was fairly good. It's nice to see proper musicians playing instruments and enjoying themselves. Bit too much accordion, though. People have a go at the metal music I like for being all morbid and obsessed with death, but it's got fuck all on folk music. The songs are about such heartwarming subjects like lifeboat disasters, the highland clearances and dead sheepdogs.
After an escape from the rain for a bit (we went to the O'Neills round the corner) we headed back into the park to watch Seth Lakeman, and he was good. Not good enough to convert me to being an Arran sweater wearing/desert boot folky, but he was alright. Despite the rain and the boring footie match, it was a good day.

The Stuff I've Been Up To. (part one)

2008-09-20T19:46:00.007Z

Apparently, sometime this week, this blog had its 10,000th visitor (well, since I started counting, anyway) so I thought I'd better put something mildly interesting on it! I've been busy the last few weeks, not updating as much as I'd like, so I thought I'd give you a brief round-up of what I've been up to. I'll leave out all the boring day job stuff that's taken up most of my time, as a post which just says 'I've been working harder than Janet Street-Porter's toothbrush' isn't very interesting. So anyway, here's part one of 'The stuff I've been up to':

Hiking weekend:

A few months ago, whilst out drinking with my dad and brothers on my birthday, we all drunkenly decided we were going to go on a big walk around Kinver Edge. My dad's other main hobby, besides drinking and passing wind, is hiking, but he hadn't gone on a walk for ages and talked me and my brothers into going with him when we were all pissed enough to say yes.

This was against my better judgement as I spent quite a big chunk of my childhood traipsing around canal towpaths behind my father. That's the thing, you see, my dad didn't really do the pretty walks, he liked walking along 'the cut' (that's what canals are called around here. You know how the Inuit are supposed to have four-hundred words for snow, because they're surrounded by it? That's a bit like us Brummies and canals; We've got a whole two words for them!) and subsequently knows how to get anywhere in the West Midlands by towpath. This isn't so bad these days, because Birmingham has been regenerated like Doctor Who, and the council has spent money cleaning up and renovating and prettifying a lot of the canals, but when I was a kid marching alongside the cut with my dad (this was the the early Eighties) it wasn't so groovy. Walking along a muddy towpath dodging overgrown nettle bushes alongside a canal full of shopping trolleys and used johnnies looking at the backs of semi-demolished empty factories in Thatcher's Britain wasn't really my idea of fun. But, my brothers and I all agreed to go on a walk with our dad because it sounded like a great idea at a quarter-past pint number seven.

Anyway, we decided to go for a walk on August Bank Holiday. That got changed as it was my brother's wedding anniversary that weekend. We didn't go to Kinver, we ended up going somewhere else in Worcestershire. (I don't want to put where we did go in case the guy that owns the B&B we stayed at happens upon this blog. You'll read why soon enough.)

My brothers, my father and I, my dad's mate and his son had a nice walk along the river Severn in the pissing rain, (it was torrential, most of the time) stopping in every pub along the way and taking the piss, swearing (mostly at the weather), talking football (mainly about how shit Birmingham City are) and swapping jokes and funny stories. My dad and his mate are very scatological in their humour; anything to do with farting and shite are incredibly amusing, so much so, every anecdote I heard from either of them during the weekend tended to be about all the amusing al-fresco shits they've had in years gone by. So, among the stories I heard were: Slices of bread being used as emergency toilet roll; bread which was subsequently eaten by a dog. I heard about the time my dad's mate accidentally shat in the hood of his cagoule, and the time he was dying for a crap but couldn't go because his wife's sister was using the bathroom, so he went and did it in a bucket in his shed, but he missed the bucket and crapped all over his lawnmower. These stories are base, not very clever, and yes, disgusting, but I love them! I also found out, from my dad's mate's son (who's a soldier) that, despite Hollywood telling us otherwise, people make a lot of noise when they've had their throats cut. Nice. We finished our walk in good humour, especially after seeing my brother Matthew go arse over tip in a muddy puddle, and avoiding the escaped cow that was running at us along the riverside.We ended up sitting outside a pub in the rain sinking a few more pints. Although hiking isn't really my idea of fun, I did enjoy it. It was a good craic, and all the other hikers we met were nice, always saying hello, and the views were great. It's just a shame, because of the rain, I had my head down for most of the walk and didn't really appreciate the scenery as much as I should have.

We headed back to our B&B to get clean and dry and to change into nicer clothes so we could head into the town centre for more drinking. My dad and his mate left us to it at about half-ten, but my dad's mate's son, my brothers and I carried on into the wee small hours. I've subsequently realised we drank something like sixteen pints that day (we started drinking very early and finished late), and we moved on to spirits at the end of the night. Staying out late was a bad idea, because we realised when we got back we couldn't get back into our digs. We weren't given a key, and we all tried phoning up our fathers but to no avail, they'd gone to bed and turned their mobiles off. Bugger. we ended up having to break in through a small open window on an upstairs floor. Let me tell you, trying to scale walls and run along rooftops like a staggering Matt Murdock when you've had sixteen pints is both difficult and, in hindsight, bloody stupid. Anyway, we got in and after me and my brother Marc stopped giggling like twats about the ridiculous situation we'd just found ourselves in, finally got some sleep.

We got back to Brum the next morning via the Severn Valley steam railway, and ended up in a city centre boozer (more drink; bloody hell! My liver was aching until at least the following Wednesday) putting the world to rights until we decided to go home and get some proper kip. All in all, a good weekend.

Interview!

2008-09-04T18:18:00.002Z

Just a quick post to draw your attention to an interview Andy Winter and I did for our forthcoming book (it's out in early November). The interview's on Comics Bulletin, and you can find it here. I actually sound quite intelligent and lucid for once; I think the interviewer, Kelvin Green, must've caught me in that brief moment of clarity that sometimes happens between the seventh and eighth pints.

And, because Septic Isle is currently in Previews , a lot of websites are now taking pre-orders. You can buy it here at Forbidden Planet International at a very cheap price. Maybe I shouldn't promote the site that's flogging it cheap, but FPI's blog were extremely nice to us in their review of the book, so I'm reciprocating their backscratch.

If you'd prefer to pay full price and get a signed copy, both Andy and myself will be at the Birmingham International Comics Show flogging Septic Isle on October 4th and 5th, which isn't that far away now! I know a couple of the organisers and I've told them all about you and they'd love to see you!

Another New World for Jonas Moore

2008-08-21T11:10:00.003Z

You may remember the comic strip I did for 'The Many Worlds Of Jonas Moore' sometime last year. Well, apparently, it's being developed into a TV show. Here's the bumpf:

"MGM Domestic Television Distribution is turning the U.K. online graphic novel "The Many Worlds of Jonas Moore" into a live-action action-drama TV series. Set in a time where the British Empire has never ended and America is just one of thousands of virtual worlds hosted on a vast global game network. When Jonas Moore (Colin Salmon), a character personally created by the network's founder, becomes self-aware he is tagged by the network as a virus and goes on the run. As he moves from one artificial game world to the next, his knowledge of the games and the real-world gamers spreads like a virus to the other game characters, freaks, creatures and monsters who live as slaves within the network - precipitating a revolution and fight for freedom against the murderously addicted real-world gamers. Howard Webster has adapted his graphic novel series for TV and will be intimately involved with its development. The series is expected to go to air next year. More details are up at the graphic novel's official website."

A Right Royal Embarassment.

2008-08-21T10:26:00.003Z

It's been a while since my last post, I've been busy with real life these last couple of weeks. I know it's hard to believe comic nerds have lives, but there you go. I'll probably blog about it in the near future, including my drunken hiking trip in the wilds of Worcestershire, but I'll wait until a bit more dust has settled on what my youngest brother now refers to as 'The Bewdley Incident' before I tell you all the gory details.
This post is about the Olympic Games that are happening at the moment. Whilst I'm pleased that Team GB has won so many medals this time, there's one thing that pisses me off about it all, and that's when our national anthem gets played when they're on the podium. What a horrible, dreary, out-of-date tune.
From a purely musical point of view, it's dull. In my opinion, a national anthem should be rousing. Not the same note over and over again. It's the lyrics and sentiment of it that bugs me. There are sixty million people living in Britain, why should we focus all our thanks on the one person, who, by accident of birth, happens to be our head of state? Especially at sporting events. I mean, for example, was it the Queen who got up at five every morning to go to the local swimming pool and train for years? Nope.
It's the same whenever the English football team play. I get embarrassed when the anthem is played. Only half of the team sing along. I've noticed that it tends to be the southern lads who sing along, and the northern lads who just stand there stony-faced (unless it's a northern lad that's the captain, he kind of has to or the newspapers will moan at him).
No other European monarchy's national anthem is so arse-kissy. You don't hear the Spanish football fans singing about their king (but that's probably because they're too busy making monkey noises at the opposing team's black players).
And what do the Scottish and Welsh athletes who win gold think when the national anthem is played? I can't see them giving much of a shit about our Queen. Since devolution, the Scots and Welsh have their own anthems now, so in that respect, God Save The Queen is outdated. It's a throwback to the days of the empire, and seeing as the empire no longer exists makes the song obsolete.

Maybe it's because I'm from an Irish family that I have a bit of disrespect for the royal family (my grandad used to spend his mornings writing funny comments all over the royals' pictures in the paper, and he never calls Prince Charles by his name, always referring to him as 'Lappy Lugs') but I do think of myself as English, and I'm proud of my Englishness. I just think that in the 21st Century, the thought of bowing and scraping to someone just because they happen to be from a cetain family is ridiculous. At the very least, we should change our bleeding horrible national anthem to something that's a bit more celebratory and inclusive.

And Finally....

2008-08-05T19:11:00.003Z

Having lived in the People's Republic of the West Midlands for nearly as long as there's been a county called 'The West Midlands', I thought I'd be used to the stupidity and crassness of our local news bulletins by now.
It turns out I'm not. I'm still weirded out by what I witnessed on Central Tonight, tonight (funnily enough). This is the bulletin on ITV, and it's been presented by Bob Warman for what feels like forever. I think his first story for what was then ATV Today was something along the lines of 'Sabretooth tiger attacks Neanderthal in a cave near Bromsgrove', but I might be making that up. Because Bob's the elder statesman of news in the West Midlands, the news bulletin tends to be a bit more straitlaced when he's on it, because he doesn't understand the modern world or senses of humour. You can see he's uncomfortable with the friendly lightweight stories or the affable banter with the sports presenter covering the lack of transfer activity at Villa Park that day. And rightly so, in my opinion. News is for news, not for giving airtime for some local tit who's designed a new way of getting jam into doughnuts or something.
Anyway, Bob Warman was away today. It was instead presented by that woman with the Lego hair and that Scouse bloke whose face is far too small for his head. (I think it's wrong for a Scouser to read out Midlands news).This gave the editorial staff the chance to fanny about a bit. It went like this; the weather girl, Emma Jesson likes to do her daily reports from different locations, although it usually tends to be an ice rink or the Walsall arboretum. Today, however, it was neither of those exotic locales. She was, wait for it, in a living room in Sutton Coldfield! (I can sense you're all getting excited by that particular piece of prose!) She had a couple behind her who were both dancing, albeit slightly out of sync with each other and a bit rubbish. This carries on for a couple of minutes, the lovely Emma telling us it's going to piss down all week, with this man and woman acting like they're both dying for a wee in the background.
Then we found out why. They're practising for their elaborate first dance at their wedding, which they're going to film and put on YouTube. How original! To prove how original it was, Central Tonight then showed us a montage of all the other wankers who have done something similar and put it on YouTube. (Just put 'wedding dance' into YouTube, you'll see the kind of shit I mean.) Why do people do this? Why is it always to a shit song? Why don't they do something original? (I'd love to see a wedding dancefloor with a big circle pit and lots of moshing! That'd be cool! Maybe I'll have it at my own wedding, should any woman be daft enough to agree to become Mrs. Michael Trimble.) What happened to dignity? Why do they feel the need to show the fucking world how 'wacky' they are?
I know I sound like a miserable old fart, but for fuck's sake, the last thing I want to see at a wedding is a re-enactment of Dirty Dancing, which is probably the biggest crime-against-the-eyes shown in a cinema ever made. (This reminds me, actually, of a wedding my dad told me about. It was one of his mates from work, and it was about twenty years ago, when Dirty Dancing was first out, and they tried to recreate that scene where she jumps into his arms and he holds her aloft. Thing was, she wasn't the lightest bride, nor was he the soberest groom. She gets up on a chair when the song reaches its big chorus, there's no way she can actually jump from the floor without a block and tackle. He's ready with his arms out. All their nearest and dearest are all round them on the dancefloor in a big circle, to give them both room. She launches herself at him, and he catches her, but he's too weak and too pissed and after about eight seconds of sweating , straining and swaying they both crash to the floor in a heap of white lace and grey tails. Fantastic. Now that, I wouldn't mind seeing. Unfortunately this was before the internet, so it will just have to live on in oral tradition.)
Where will it all end? Divorcing couples having a West Side Story-type dance off at the custody hearing?
As you can see, I'm a hopeless romantic.

This bit of the news wasn't the weird bit, though. Afterwards, they cut back to the studio and Lego Hair and the Scouser With A Face Too Small For His Head both remarked to each other how nifty the Sutton Coldfield couple's moves were. Then, and I shit you not , they went into a crappy dance routine of their own, which culminated in Lego Hair jumping into Scouser With A Face Too Small For His Head's arms and he swung her around at waist level. Then the theme music and credits came on, and Lego Hair carried on shimmying around the set with all the grace of a three-legged tortoise, whilst Scouser With A Face Too Small For His Head had a suitably shameful look on his face that was too small for his head. This was on the same show that had a big story about a poor bloke getting stabbed to death, and they looked like they were celebrating the news!
Local news, eh?

The Dark Knight.

2008-07-27T17:25:00.005Z

Yesterday, my girlfriend and I went to watch The Dark Knight, and it's as brilliant as you've heard it is. Generally, these films rarely live up to the hype, but this movie does. It's edgy, dark, exciting, intelligent and thought-provoking. That's right, thought-provoking! I can't ever remember coming out of any other comic book movie and having a lengthy discussion about the moral questions raised by the movie. It is a long movie, but thinking about it, I can't think what could've been cut out without ruining the film, as every scene is important to the plot or character development.

The script is fantastic. It looks and sounds amazing, the production design, stunts and effects are all top notch. Even the music is fantastic. (No Prince songs to announce the Joker's arrival in this film!) The performances are nearly all spot on. Everyone is banging on about Heath Ledger's Joker, and he is good, although probably not the Oscar-worthy performance some people are calling it, but he does blow away Jack Nicholson's pantomime act in the 1989 Batman. Ledger's Joker is a vicious psychopath, not doing it for money (which he proves in one fire-raising scene) but because his nihilistic antics amuse him. Ledger's performance in this movie, however, is not as good as Gary Oldman's as Jim Gordon. It's less showy, certainly, but Oldman is, for me, the standout in this film, and the best Commissioner Gordon ever (that said, the others weren't much competition, really.) Christian Bale's Bruce Wayne/Batman isn't lost in all the acting showboating, he more than holds his own, and is a more convincing Wayne than he was last time around. Aaron Eckhart's Harvey Dent is also good, but he does just degenerate to thug mode when he becomes Two-Face. Still better than Tommy Lee Jones' hammy turn in Batman Forever, though. In fact, this is a good ensemble piece with all of the performers doing their jobs superbly.

This movie is amazing. This is how you should do sequels. I'm just hoping the director Christopher Nolan sticks around to do the inevitable third movie (seeing as it has had the biggest opening of any movie ever) because this franchise is, so far, something special, and finally the character of Batman is getting the movies it deserves.

One thing I will complain about however, is its rating. It's been given a 12A, which means young kids can go and see it with their folks, but this is not a kids film. It's violent and scary, and any six-year old youngster who is going to see it because he loves Batman is going to be absolutely freaked out (and not in a good way) by the movie. Although the violence isn't that bloody or graphic, it's still too nasty for young children to watch. Also, given the knife-crime epidemic that this country is undergoing at the moment, I don't think kids need to see the scene in which the Joker explains why he loves stabbing people. I can also imagine young children getting frightened by Two-Face (although it's fantastic FX work combining prosthetics and CGI, but it's too gruesome for small kids to see.)

That said, this 34 year-old loved it, and I want to see it again, a film this layered and intelligent needs multiple viewings, I reckon. The best movie of the year so far and probably the best comic-book movie ever. Awesome.

Kids Today.

2008-07-24T19:49:00.003Z

I know this post will make me sound like a moaning old fart, but what the hell is wrong with some young people today? (Please notice that I wrote 'some', not 'all', as I know that there are many great youngsters out there.)
Usually, I'm thinking these negative thoughts about teenagers after every bus journey I take around Birmingham. Usually, it's thoughts like 'Why haven't these wankers heard of headphones? Why do they think everyone wants to listen to their shitty, tinny music? It sounds like Pinky and Perky!'
Today, I'm also hating youngsters because of a bus journey, but it wasn't because of some selfish scrote playing his crappy MP3s out loud on his phone. It was because, today, whilst travelling back from Birmingham city centre on the 97 bus with my two daughters, some little shitbags lobbed a brick at the bus window. The bus window right next to where my youngest daughter was sitting. Luckily, it struck the bottom of the window and bounced off. Any higher, and the rock would've probably come straight through and who knows what would've happened? The window was a write-off, though, and the driver had to make the rest of the journey at a snail's pace so it wouldn't fall out.
What makes these little wastes of spunk tick? Why is this fun? If I ever grab hold of them, it'll stop being fun for them. I'd make them wish their fathers pulled out early, the little fuckers.
Right, rant over.

Watch out, Obama!

2008-07-17T15:43:00.000Z

Ain't It Cool?

2008-07-16T18:03:00.003Z

Septic Isle has been reviewed at Ain't It Cool, and it's a mostly positive one. The reviewer, Ambush Bug, (not the real one, obviously. He's too busy annoying the DC universe to be bothered reviewing British indie comics) gives special mention to the 'ear jabbing in the gaping ear wound' scene, which is one of my favourites, too. I remember wincing when I first read that in the script all that time ago, and I'm glad it's had the same effect on at least one reader! Anyway, I'll stop jabbering away so you can go and read the review, here.

Knob namesake.

2008-07-08T18:46:00.005Z

Ever since Septic Isle came out, I've been guilty of putting my name into Google to see what people have been saying about the book and my artwork. I think it's known as 'Googlebating', but it does throw up some interesting results. Besides trudging though loads of listings about articles about David Trimble written by a journalist called 'Mick', I've found out that there's another Mick Trimble who used to play bass in a band called Iluvatar. Maybe he also puts his (our) name into Google and only finds criticisms of my 'wobbly linework'!

There are other interesting finds, such as this: The Trimble Funeral and Cremation Centers. You can now say goodbye to a dear departed loved one in that special Trimble way. This might mean less swearing than if you booked me personally, and that can only be a good thing, right?

I've also found out that there are 'Trimble tribute bands'. Excellent! You can book them here. While I have visions of four blokes dressed like me rocking out, it's just that these are bands who are from, or operate in Trimble County, Kentucky.

I think it's brilliant that there's a Trimble county! Maybe I should go and live there, claim my throne and live like the king I should! Maybe I can get my technically American lovely girlfriend to take me and help translate. (She's been complaining lately that I haven't mentioned her on this blog for ages. Happy now, Heather?) The main reason to go to Trimble county, however, is to see the magnificent Trimble Knob. Lots of people have marvelled at the magnificence of the Trimble knob, they want to go and sit on it. But only if it's a nice day and they can take a picnic.

TRIMBLE KNOB.

Don't You Think They Look Tired?

2008-07-06T11:17:00.003Z

This post is about last night's finale to the current series of Doctor Who, so if you've not seen it yet, don't read, as it will contain spoilers, I mean, who would've thought the Doctor would regenerate into Michael Barrymore? Only kidding! Awight?

The positives:

Julian Bleach was excellent as Davros. His scenes with the Doctor were tense, and him making the Doctor realise that he turns his companions into weapons was a brilliant scene. Much better than last year's scenes with John Simm's Master. Bleach's performance from under all that latex (and it was a fantastic design, updating but not completely changing Davros) was fantastic. A proper, shouty, scary villain for once.

Visually, it was fantastic. The SFX were brilliant, and it's great these days that British TV SF can compete with the production values of its American counterparts.

I liked the Daleks shouting in German. It was an unsubtle allusion to them being nazis, but I enjoyed it.

The end of Donna's time on the TARDIS was bleak. I likes me some bleak, sometimes. Very dark for a kids' show. A bit cruel though, seeing her develop and realise her full potential over the last thirteen episodes just to have her 'reset' button pressed and she reverts back to being a shouty caricature again. It was sad seeing the Doctor almost get ignored as he said goodbye.

Bernard Cribbins. He's been brilliant throughout this series, but the scene at the end when he realises how lonely the Doctor is, with the Doctor standing in the rain, was excellent. And I'm glad they didn't spoil the scene with a 'What?!' moment like they have the last couple of times.

The negatives:

I understand it was Russell T. Davies clearing the decks before he buggers off and lets Steven Moffat take over, but why did he feel the need to bring back nearly everyone? (Pete Tyler was a curious omission.) Martha's mum returned just to hug her daughter, cry a bit and then hide under a table. Jackie Tyler with a gun? What did Torchwood add to this episode? K-9 just teleporting in? None of them added much to the plot.
I knew after last week David Tennant wasn't going to change into another Doctor. There was no way Davies would've let him go without a big sentimental speech saying ta-ra first, and we didn't get that, and it would've been a shit way for him to bow out anyway, being winged by a Dalek because he was running to give Rose a bit of a hug. (That Rose is shit, anyway. Who reactivated the last Dalek? She did. Who activated the Genesis Ark? She did. Who got the Doctor shot in last week's episode? She did!) So we didn't get a regeneration. What we did end up with was another Doctor; two lots of smug gurning for the price of one!
A lot of the ideas set up in last week's episode were just wasted or ignored. What was the point of the Shadow Proclamation? After being referred to loads of times in previous episodes, it turns out it's just a posh shop inhabited by the Judoon and albino clones of that sex-change weird curly haired antiques expert kid. We were led to believe that they were going into battle, but they never showed up again. The Haagen-Dazs key, or whatever it was called, was another red herring, and was easily cancelled out by Davros and a transportation device. (I had to smile at that UNIT guy who didn't want his name to be associated with the end of the world. Who's going to know?) And what was the point ofthat necklace thing Sarah Jane had?
So, let me get this right. Dalek Caan went back in time to save the Daleks from annihilation in the Time War so he could kill them all over again? What?!! Why did Davros have a handy control panel in the same room as the prisoners that can control (and destroy) all the Daleks? And why was the same control panel built for use by humans? And what was the point of atomising everything in the universe anyway?
Also, I found the ending, with Rose going off with the Human Doctor, a little bit creepy. Rose settles for a second-best blow-up sex doll version of the Doctor? (Also, this makes it possible in the future, whoever the Doctor is, that Tennant can always come back as a guest star, no matter how old or fat he gets!)
And the Tardis towing the Earth back to it's rightful place just looked stupid. Last week, we were told that relocating planets took 'fearsome technology', and the TARDIS went on fire getting to the same point last week (bit of a design fault, that, a time machine that goes on fire when travelling through time!), but bringing the Earth back was a piece of piss, just tow it like some cosmic AA truck. And this was just after he'd sent all the other planets back by just throwing switches, why did he need to tow the Earth back? It was just so the cast could stand around the TARDIS console winking and smiling and hugging each other and looking smug. They reminded me of the contestants of The Crystal Maze when one of them had just won another crystal.

Don't get me wrong, I did enjoy it, but I think Davies is bowing out at the right time. Maybe I'm too hard-hearted for the sad stuff to affect me. Maybe I'm too cynical and the wrong age to appreciate this fully, because my youngest daughter (who's twelve) said to me just after it finished: "That was the best episode EVER!"

Britain Is Broken.

2008-07-01T18:21:00.004Z

Just a quick post to tell you all that the Septic Isle website is now live and ready for your perusal. I've done some new art for the site; Profile pics of the main players in the story. You'll find out that I was in a 'hand' mood on the day I did those, all the characters are doing stuff with their hands! Anyway, have a look for yourself, here.

George Carlin R.I.P.

2008-06-23T16:09:00.003Z

This video, as you may expect, contains some rude words, so be careful if you're at work or near children. If you're within earshot of a Christian fundamentalist, please play at maximum volume.
The world's a much poorer place now George Carlin's gone.

Previews.

2008-06-21T12:01:00.005Z

To your left, there, is the ad for Septic Isle that will be in August's edition of Previews. (Click on it to embiggen.)

What the (nice) critics have said so far:

"Septic Isle, written by Winter and illustrated by Mick Trimble is that rarest of things – a modern spy story that doesn’t rip off James Bond and isn’t shit. Seriously, it’s right up there with Oni’s Queen and Country and TV’s The Sandbaggers, which in this genre is about the highest praise I could give. Winter’s pacey script is worthy of John le Carré, and Trimble’s moody black and white art is a fine compliment to the noir feel of the book. I can’t claim to be an expert, but I strongly suspect that the world of the modern spy is very much like that of Jacob Marley – tense, dirty, desperate and utterly unglamorous. Winter captures something of modern Britain, our fears and our paranoia in these fifty two pages. Had me gripped from the very first page, and I literally couldn’t put it down."

-Regie Rigby, Comics Bulletin.

"... this story has elements of the TV series/books featuring the character Callan [starring Edward Woodward] and even The Professionals.... I enjoyed the story and art and if you get a chance to buy a copy – DO!"

-Terry Hooper, ComicBitsOnline.

"The plotline is kind of James Bond mixed with Spooks, so plenty of brutality and terrorism, mixed with whimsy and one-liners. The writer and artist are clearly having a lot of fun with the genre....Gripping, but brutal stuff. Worthwhile spy thriller. 9 out of 10"

-Glenn Carter, Comics Village.

"A dark-edged, modern-day spy story for the War On Terror era Britain ...it does it very well, with a nice twist and lack of sentimentality or relying on Bond-style fantasy...Andy and Mick do something remarkable – they make you feel sympathy for a suicide bomber. And no, I don’t mean in a bleeding hearted liberal kind of way as in ‘oh it is an awful act but we should try to understand what desperation drives a person to do such a thing.’ No, this is a horrible, brutal act – not just the actual bombings themselves, but the reasons behind them...Spy versus rogue spy is always going to be entertaining as a thriller (especially arrogant young turk versus seasoned old school player), but Andy and Mick invest it with some realism in the Harry Palmer mould so it never becomes too ridiculous...Mick’s black and white art suits Andy’s story well – he doesn’t try to do ‘superhuman’ poses, going for a more realistic styling, while even large action scenes like a fight or a desperate escape from an exploding block of flats, while satisfying our guilty action desires still don’t cross the line into being too cartoony or over the top, showing commendable restraint because it would have been too easy to go down that route...
I can see fans of Queen & Country or even Shooting War picking this up and enjoying a story which eschews gee-whizz gadgets and heroics for a more realistic tale which avoids the stereotypical plot traps of many of its fellows.

-Joe Gordon, Forbidden Planet Blog Log

"Septic Isle is a masterful espionage thriller...Taut, topical and terrifying"

-Mike Carey, writer, Crossing Midnight, Hellblazer.

"Where's my copy, you fat, four-eyed git?"

-Marc Trimble, Crimewatch.

Poorly Shoulder, Episode VII

2008-06-19T14:01:00.002Z

Guess what I've been playing with all afternoon! It's true though, my shoulder does hurt. I think I might've mentioned it to all and sundry at least eleventeen times...

Septic in the shops.

2008-06-15T20:27:00.004Z

After initially being told it wasn't, we found out this week that Septic Isle is being picked up by Diamond distribution after all. This means that it'll be in discerning stores around October time. To say I'm chuffed about this is an understatement. When, at first, I was told that it wasn't being picked up, I was gutted, it seemed a shame that, despite good reviews, a book I'd been working on for such a long time was only going to be seen by relatively few people. Now, it's going to be in shops here and in the States, and hopefully it'll do well.
Also, now it's going to have a second print, it's given me a chance to draw a new inside cover for the book. The original one was done quickly (saying that, though, the new one was done in less time, funnily enough, and it's miles better) and I grew to hate it more and more each time I saw it. The new one is the picture at the top of this post. Good, eh? Click on it to make it bigger. If only that worked for everything.
I've also done some character pictures this weekend for the website that'll be up and running soon to promote the book. I'll post those soon.

Auntie's Bloomer.

2008-06-11T15:56:00.004Z

There's been a lot of moaning lately about the publicly-funded BBC and how much it is paying presenters like Jonathan Ross and Graham Norton. I can't say I'm that bothered, but what does strike me as a total insult is the fact that Auntie Beeb has seen fit to give Steve McClaren a job as a pundit on their coverage of Euro 2008.
This man is the main reason England aren't taking part in the finals, yet the Beeb in its infinite wisdom has decided to give him a fat cheque for giving his opinions to an audience that has no-one to support. A situation that is his fault! I see this as a waste of my licence payer's money, probably more so than giving Graham Norton money for hosting endless shite talent shows.
And while we're at it, the BBC's 'Who Will You Support' ad campaign for the event really annoys me. No Englishman I've ever met would say 'Come on Germany!' And that Scouse kid who is supporting Spain because Fernando Torres is 'elastic' really bugs me.
I'm just bitter, I suppose, because England aren't playing, and that's a shame. Saying that though, from what I've seen of the tournament so far, I reckon we'd have struggled anyway!

Horse-faced Lies.

2008-06-01T18:24:00.003Z

I have to get something off my chest. It's been bugging me for a while now. The other day, whilst at the cinema, I was watching the trailers. As you do. One was for Hancock, a Will Smith movie. Now, Will might be a good actor, but I reckon he'll just look stupid in the black coat and homburg, and he'll have to go some to get the timing right of the classic line: 'A Pint? That's very nearly an armful!' Who have they got to play Sid James? Will Ferrell?
That wasn't what was bothering me, though. The next trailer was for the Sex And The City movie. Aaaaaarrrrggghhhh!!! I'm sick of seeing ads for this film. I'm sick of hearing about it, and I'm sick of flicking past articles about it in newspapers and magazines. They go on about this movie like it's the Second Coming. It's not. It's just a film about a horsey-faced skeleton and her four ropey mates sitting around a table and talking about men's cocks.
Now, I'm not claiming to have seen a lot of the original TV show. I did see a few episodes, though (the reasons why escape me, now) and they were all basically the same. Shergar or one of her mates gets a new boyfriend, or has problems with an old one. One of their boyfriends has a weird sexual kink, which they all have a good laugh about in a coffee shop.(They are all supposed to be successful career women, yet they all have employers that don't mind them fucking off for three-hour lunches every day.) They all buy shoes. Desert Orchid wears something that makes her look bleedin' ridiculous, the old one has a sex scene, and Red Rum sums it all up in a voiceover at the end.
This is not the great leap forward for feminism it thinks it is. I'm not claiming to be an expert on feminism either, but I have had my ear bent by a few of them in my time. SATC claims it shows modern women and relationships as they really are, but it basically tells us all women are interested in is shopping for shoes and big cocks. I suppose some are, but not the ones I know. (Just as well, really, considering my knowledge of shoes begins and ends with Doctor Marten. Can't really say I have a massive cock, either!) Also, in the episodes I saw, the men in it were either perverted or just useless. Or both. I find this offensive. Every bloke they met had something weird about them sexually, be it foul-tasting semen, or a prediliction for analingus or calling someone a bitch when they reached climax. And the four gorgons all found it a big laugh to share this intimate info about their boyfriends with their mates in a restaurant. I'd hate to be on the next table to them, about to tuck into a chocolate mousse when Trigger starts banging on about rimming. Lovely.
Can you imagine the furore if there was a TV show about four blokes sitting around a table in a cafe talking about how their girlfriend's fanny tasted disgusting? It would be criticised for being sexist. And so it should. Also, it should be noted that the SATC movie is written and directed by a man. Girl Power!
Maybe it's just me. Maybe I don't get it because I have a 'Y' chromosome. Maybe women like being stereotyped as cock-hungry fashion victims on telly and films. Or maybe it's because I've (hopefully) got a bit of intelligence and see this shit for what it is.

Harvey Korman R.I.P.

2008-05-30T19:57:00.001Z

Indy Movie.

2008-05-27T19:35:00.003Z

Yesterday, it was a Bank Holiday Monday, and it was pissing down with rain (as is usual for Bank Holiday Mondays) so my girlfriend and I decided to go and watch the new Indiana Jones movie.
Now, even though most of the people who want to see it have done so, I'll try and keep spoilers to a minimum, but in my opinion, it's not as good as the previous three, but it's a worthy addition to the canon, and it's good to have Dr. Henry Jones Jr. back.
The most notable change (to me, anyway) is the addition of CGI FX, which, for me, made the action sequences less exciting than before. In the previous instalments, every time someone was dragged under a lorry or hung off a tank or something, you were aware that a stuntman actually did do those things, and this adds to the excitement. This time, you're not so sure someone did do it. That's not to say it isn't entertaining, just less so. This is also evident in the 'icky animals' scene, in the previous instalments we had snakes, bugs and rats, which were mostly done for real, but in this one there are some very CGI fire ants, and while the scenes are cool, just not as cool as before.
Also, there's certain scenes featuring monkeys and fridges which stretch credulity just a little bit, but this is an Indiana Jones movie, for heaven's sake!
The cast are mostly excellent. Harrison Ford looks like he's actually enjoying being in a movie for the first time in a long time, Cate Blanchett is cartoonishly evil, and Shia LaBeouf is as good as he's been in everything else I've seen him in.
The English members of the cast fare less well. Ray Winstone and Jim Broadbent are good, but just seem to be there to spout exposition. John Hurt just gibbers like a lunatic, mostly, but, to be fair, he is actually playing a loon, so fair do's.
The climax has come under criticism in a lot of the online reviews I've read for being too unrealistic. So, in the previous instalments we've had an ark full of face-melting ghosts, holy stones that spontaneously combust, and a cup that made someone age rapidly and heal bullet wounds. Hardly gritty realism. The climax isn't faith-based, like the last three, it's more SF, but, in my opinion, this fits the fifties era it's set in. The original trilogy were homages to the old Republic serials of the Thirties, whereas this one is more of an homage to the 'Reds-under-the bed' SF movies of the Fifties.
What sets this movie apart from all the other rehashes we've had lately (Die Hard, Rambo, the Star Wars prequels) is that this feels like it belongs to the franchise that came before it.
So, in summary then, I liked it. It's a big, dumb, enjoyable action movie, pure Spielberg, and I liked it.

My trip to Bristol part four: Sunday.

2008-05-27T18:47:00.003Z

It's been a while since the last proper instalment of what I got up to in Bristol, and, to be honest, I can barely remember what happened! But, for all you completists out there, I'll try and do a quick recap so this blog can get back to posts about toilets and Aston Villa and Jimmy Saville impressions, because I know you all love that stuff. So here goes:

Sunday:

There had been a few drinks imbibed the night before, but I wasn't feeling that rough. We walked round to the exhibition hall, and the queue wasn't nearly as long as it was on Saturday. In fact, it was a more relaxed day. We didn't sell as many copies on the Sunday, but trade was nice and steady after a slow start. I do remember having to draw a sketch of The Phantom for a very nice young lad who was waiting very patiently for the artist that did promise him a sketch, but wasn't actually there at that time, so I stepped in and did the honours. he seemed to like it, anyway.
As it was a bit quieter, I could actually leave the stall sometimes and have a bit of a mooch around some of the stalls. I bought my daughters some gifts (My eldest got a manga-type skinny fit T-shirt, my youngest got a Gremlins Gizmo back-pack.), but I didn't really buy myself anything, as my flat is slowly becoming overrun with comics-related crap. I did, however, let my girlfriend talk me into going around the people I knew and getting sketches for her.
My girlfriend noticed that the crowd on the Sunday tended to be couples. Saturday was mostly blokes on their own, or cosplaying girls in groups, but not very many couples. What this says about the married or attached geek is beyond me, so I won't pass any comment at all. Strange, I know.
The thing that struck me about this particular Bristol Comic Expo was the atmosphere. There seemed to be more of a buzz this year than there has been in previous years, and it was generally a joy to be present to experience it.
Anyway, Andy and I stuck around until about half-four, and by then, it was dying off, so Heather and I bade our farewells and, seeing as our trains weren't due until six, headed to the local pub (The Reckless Engineer) for a bit of the hair of the dog. In fact, I'd had so much hair of the dog that weekend I was beginning to cough up hairballs! The thing I've noticed about that particular boozer on Comic Expo weekends is that every time I go in there, no matter what time of the day it is, Simon Bisley is in there. Without fail.
Anyway, after a slow pint, I carried my extremely heavy bag up to Temple Meads, kissed goodbye to my girlfriend and got on a train with some very pissed rugby fans (who luckily buggered off to another coach) and headed back to Brum, weary but happy, because it had been a fantastic weekend. Thanks to all the folks I spent time with there for making it such a great time.

Right, normal business will resume soon, I promise!

My trip to Bristol part 3: Socks.

2008-05-21T15:03:00.004Z

Hiya. I was going to write the last part of the Bristol trilogy, but I've just got back from 'that London' where I've been for the last couple of days as part of my 'birthday week' celebrations, so I'm totally shagged out and therfore can't be arsed to type anything substantial (I suppose it cold be argued that I never write anything substantial!), but I did find a video on YouTube of those Scottish socks that I referred to in my last post. You can see the Moonface stand at the very beginning, and if you watch carefully you can see me disappearing off sharpish for my tactical fag. (I checked, it's about 14 seconds in at the far left of the picture) You can also see Hattie Jacques wearing a Superman T-shirt in the bottom right of the screen at about 36 seconds in. You can see now how ludicrous the whole thing was,and why I wanted no part of it whatsoever!

My trip to Bristol part two: Saturday

2008-05-13T16:05:00.013Z

The weather had sorted itself out by Saturday morning and it was an extremely sunny day. I got to the Commonwealth rooms (where the con was being held) about half-nine and already the queue was all the way down to the bottom of the street. None of that queueing for me, as I was an exhibitor, so I joined the much smaller queue of other exhibitors and waited to get my pass. In the queue I met Hunt Emerson and Tony Bennett (from Knockabout Press) and shot the breeze with them as we waited to get our passes. This was organised very haphazardly, and I ended up with a pass that just said 'Temporary Pass' written on it in biro.(Actually, it just said 'Tempy Pass') But, I got in, and met up with Andy Winter and got ready to launch our book Septic Isle. Our table was directly opposite the Forbidden Planet stall/toyshop, and we were at the end of the aisle, and it was a fantastic spot.

We had a good day. Septic Isle was selling very well, Andy and I were signing books all day, and I've never been asked for so many sketches before. I think, over the weekend, I did a couple of Marley (Our book's hero, as it were), a Sontaran from Doctor Who, The Phantom, Conan, Judge Dredd, Superman, and a few more I can't remember. I do remember how stained my hands were because of the inks from the pens I was using, though! A tip for budding artists out there; Don't buy those 99p black felt tips from WH Smith. they lose their point after about five minutes and they leak all over your fingers!

Andy and I at the Moonface Press table. Note the Aston Villa wristband, which, apparently, is a fashion faux-pas according to my girlfriend. A fashion faux-pas? At a comics convention?! Strange, I know!

The hall was hotter and sweatier than Lucifer's balls, and though it was just about bearable by where we were (we were by a door) at the back of the hall it was roasting, and there was a lot of sweating, judging by the funky aroma at the rear of the hall. We were kept hydrated by my lovely lady, who kept bringing us water, bless her! And I know this doesn't sound like me, pessimistic sod that I am, but everyone I met at the table were really nice, including the four really nice Muslim girls who each bought a copy of Septic Isle because of its anti-Nazi/BNP stance, but then me and Andy started worrying that the sex scenes, swearing and extreme violence might offend them, and we'd forgotten to warn them about it. oops!

Heather had devised an excellent escape plan for herself by inviting her friend Jane down to a)meet me and b) rescue her for lunch for an hour or so. I wish I'd thought of something similar but I've not got any friends! I did manage to escape for a bit and had a drink (hair of the dog; still a bit rough from our rainy drinking session the night before) with my girlfriend and her mate. This drew stares of astonishment from most of the punters because it was weird that a bloke emerging from that hall actually knows some women.

Also, as usual at these things, the costumed types turned up. There was a garrison of Star Wars stormtroopers accompanied by a Boba Fett, a Snowtrooper, a Death Star Gunner, and a big Biker Scout. They were a very game bunch, posing for photos and raising money for charity and they must've been sweating buckets under all that armour. Then there were the Cosplayers, mostly teenage girls (though there were some lads doing it too) dressed up as their favourite manga/anime character. I found some of the costumes a bit inappropriate for fourteen year-olds to be wearing, I'd never let my daughter wear that kind of gear, but then that's me probably being out of step with what kids are like these days. Also, I must mention the one girl (I think it was a girl, anyway) dressed as a polar bear, or a snow-wolf or whatever (just imagine a big white furry animal thing with a big head) it shows dedication to walk around in the oven that was Bristol Commonwealth Rooms covered in fur. Especially when most people looking at you don't even know what you're supposed to be dressed as. There weren't many people dressed as actual superheroes. There was an Elektra hanging with the Cosplayers, but that was about it. Actually, at one point Kev Sutherland accosted three of these Cosplayers by our table, there was Elektra, a girl dressed as what appeared to be a giant Warhammery tank thing with knives for fingers, and another general Japanesey type costume and asked them if they wanted to take part in a video he was making. He set up the camera on our table, put on a Benny Hawkins-style woolly hat and two sock puppets on his hands to become his alter-ego 'The Scottish Falsetto Sock-Puppet Theatre' then he explained to the girls that he would sing 'my name is...' and that they had to shout out who they were dressed as. Then he said(in a decidedly Sid James kinda way) 'I'll take you one at a time'. So then he proceeds to play out this patently ridiculous act three times in a row, while me and Andy look on wondering how weirder the day was going to get. I was worried I might get roped in, so I buggered off for a tactical fag. I had a T-shirt on that had the 70s Batman comics logo on it. So, while I was outside smoking and waiting for the ridiculousness to end, a lady photojournalist said to me 'Excuse me, Batman? Do you have a light?' This is the first time I've ever been accused of being a superhero, but I made some shitty joke about telling her not to call me that name in public, and I lit her ciggie for her before I went back in. Luckily, Elektra, General Japanesy, Warhammery Tank and the Jock Socks had all done one by the time I got back. Phew.

A good thing about these conventions is the fact that you get to meet and catch up with friends that, for one reason or another, you only see at these things. Great folk like Keith Burns (Blood Psi), Declan Shalvey (Hero Killers), Dave Evans(Futurequake) and Steve Tillotson (Banal Pig). Plus you meet and make new friends too. I met Jamie, who is a frequent commenter on this very blog, and his lovely wife Theresa, for the first time and we got along like a house on fire. (Probably a bit too well-see picture!)

Keith, Andy, Declan, Jamie and I all arranged to meet up and go for dinner at the end of the day's festivities, and so we did, after I went back to my hotel and changed my by-now stinky Batman T-shirt for a Kirby Hulk one (my cache of nerdy T-shirts is almost bottomless!) whilst watching the generally disappointing 'Doctor's Daughter' episode of Doctor Who. We went to a pub/restaurant called The Hole In The Wall where it took ages to get served because the poor lad serving us all had a broken arm. I asked him whether they forced him back to work, but he told me he volunteered to come back because he was bored. Jamie then replied something along the lines of 'I understand, well, you can't have a wank, can you?'

The meal was a good laugh, conversation basically consisted of us slagging off each other's favourite movies. well, except for Declan and Heather who agreed on almost everything. We also found out that, in the case of The Shawshank Redemption, Andy was 'on the side of the guards'. We all had to leave when Declan remembered he should've been at the Eagle awards because he was up for a gong for 'best newcomer artist'. We tried to convince him it would be cool and a bit rock n'roll not to turn up, but dec was having none of it, so we all headed to the nearby Ramada hotel where the awards ceremony was being held.

To Declan's relief, we got to the ceremony just as it started, and the rest of the group who weren't nominated for anything stayed at the rear of the hall, by the bar, and watched the ceremony and generally tutted at the announcement of most of the winners. All the people I knew that were nominated for awards came away empty handed. Pity. I think that the Eagles should celebrate British creators more, maybe have a couple of 'international' categories, because most of the time the awards were given to people who weren't there, because they're in the USA, and probably don't even know they've won. Still, it was cool to see legends like Walt Simonson and Dave Gibbons (who weirdly won 'best letterer'; to my knowledge he only letters his own art) up on stage. After a bit of commiserating with some of the losers, (although I didn't buy any of them a consolation drink as it was nearly FOUR QUID a pint!) we all went into the Ramada bar proper and 'shot the shit' with all the other artists, writers and general geeks I know. Random topics of conversation included Jimmy Saville's sexual proclivities and whether 'Lobster Thermidore' is a viable first name for a girl. After spilling most of last pint down my aforementioned Hulk T-shirt (I wasn't that pissed, I was nudged) Heather and I decided to head back to our hotel while it was relatively early. This was one o'clock in the morning!

Me in the Ramada bar, after the spillage incident. Notice how my coat is done up?

Still, it had been a fantastic day.

My trip to Bristol part one: Friday.

2008-05-12T11:55:00.011Z

I'm extremely exhausted and trying to rehydrate furiously after the fantastic weekend I've just had at this year's comics convention in Bristol. As there's loads to tell, I'm going to split this up into fairly easy-to-digest bits. So here's what happened on the Friday:

Weirdly enough, my train was on time, and my reserved seat was unoccupied! I was sat amidst a group of French students who were extremely annoying. I'd forgotten to pack anything to read on the train journey, but luckily enough, the passenger who had occupied my seat before me had left a copy of The Times behind for me to have a read of. There wasn't a lot of interest in there, but I read the sports pages, and an interesting article about Bob Dylan and put the paper back down. As soon as I did, the French guy opposite me (I was sat in those seats that have a table, so you end up trying to spend the journey avoiding eye contact with the passenger opposite, and also trying to avoid kicking them, probably accidentally, under the table) asked me in broken English if he could read the paper. He took the paper and started laughing at the first story he was looking at, which was about Josef Fritzl. Then, he turned the page and saw a picture of a dying Burmese baby. He thought this was hilarious and held up the paper so all his mates could see it, shouted something out in French and all his mates had a good old laugh at the picture. How sweet.

Not long after, it was time for me to get up and wrestle my (very heavy indeed) bag out of the rack, which was not an easy task as my new Gallic friends had dumped all of their luggage on top of mine, and they all sat there watching me, smirking, as I struggled to get my bag out. In the end I just dumped one student's ridiculously large rucksack (it was virtually a bergen) on the floor to get to mine. He got up out of his seat then.

Bristol Temple Meads station is a fantastic-looking place, and it's how I think all railway stations should look. Especially when you consider that I'd just travelled from Birmingham New Street, a place not suffering from 'sick building syndrome', more like 'terminally ill building syndrome'. My girlfriend's train arrived about a quarter of an hour after mine did, so I hung around outside the station in the glorious sunshine topping up my nicotine levels rather than my tan. She duly arrived (bringing far too much stuff in her suitcase, as usual. It was one of them things with wheels that you can drag along like a tartan shopping trolley, which is a lot easier usually, but the area around the convention and the station has its fair share of cobbled and uneven pavements so you end up with vibration white finger after pulling it along for just five minutes!) and we went along to our hotel and checked in.

Now, for the last few comic-cons I always get there a day early so I can spend some time with two of my oldest friends, Mark and his wife Dawn, who don't live far from Bristol. Dawn came to meet us outside our hotel after she finished work and we all got on a bus to Keynsham, which is where she parks her car (it seems a convoluted way of getting to and from work to me, but apparently this saves her a hell of a lot of money in travel costs) and from there we went to a supermarket to get food and beer, survived a minor anti-freeze incident and then we went on to their lovely home in Saltford where Mark and Dawn cooked me and Heather (that's my lovely girlfriend) a fantastic Mexican meal which we ate in their garden, as the weather was glorious (but the clouds were looking ominous). Although they'd been in the house a while now, it was the first time I'd seen it, and Mark proudly showed us around his garden and the variety of crops he was growing. Ah, bless him.

After dinner, the plan was to head into Bath, where Mark was meeting up with some ex-colleagues of his, so we all piled into Dawn's car (she pulled the short straw and was the designated driver) and headed into Aquae Sulis. On the way the heavens opened; a torrential thunderstorm started to batter the south west. There was sheet lightning, heavy rain, and hailstones, and we couldn't park that close to the pub. Romans might've been shit-hot at building roads, but they're shit at providing parking spaces. This meant that we had to leg it to the pub in what seemed to be a monsoon. We turned up looking like drowned rats. However, after I had tried some fucking disgusting strawberry-based beer, we found out that Mark's ex-colleagues weren't coming as they had problems with their car or something, so we decided to head to Mark's local, a charming little tavern, and it was a lot drier there. In fact, they hadn't had any rain at all yet, so we sat outside with the smokers under an awning and watched the lightning from a distance. It all looked very Wuthering Heights. Then it started to rain again. A lot. The awning under which we all huddled started to fill up with water dramatically. We all looked up at the pregnant bulges above us and decided to make our way inside quickly. One of the other smokers wasn't quick enough and didn't make it in time; the awning collapsed and gave the straggler an almighty shower. Not only did it extinguish his cigarette, it also soaked him completely! Everyone who had made it in time was standing in the doorway of the pub pointed at him and laughed loudly. Then we all laughed at the inappropriately dressed teenage girls who were trudging past drenched. Then later, we saw two other young girls wrestling with each other in a big puddle. Strange.

When the rain died off a bit, the four of us headed back into Brizzle and had a few in the Hatchet. This is apparently Bristol's oldest pub and reputedly has a door covered in human skin. Nice. It's now a rock pub, and when I went there last year Mark and I were accosted by a woman obsessed with the SS and her very tall, very-manly looking transsexual mate. Nothing as weird as that happened this time, we had a few drinks, talked a lot of shite as usual and sang along to Flash by Queen whilst thumping the tables in time with the music. Heather, as usual, got invited to have dinner with my friends at some point in the future. (I think I might've been invited, too. It's one of the things I've noticed about Heather is that she gets invited to dinner by a lot of the people I've introduced her to. They ask her, not me!) Anyway, it was a great night, we headed back to our hotel slightly merry and happy and tired and all set for the Comics Convention the next day.

Mark and I (possibly in a refreshed state) in post-'Flash' celebratory huddle.

Bristol bound.

2008-05-08T20:06:00.003Z

Hiya! It's been a while since I last posted, I know, but this one is a quicky telling all eight of you that I will be at the Bristol Comic Expo this weekend with Andy Winter flogging our magnum opus Septic Isle. If you can, please come along and show your support, and maybe even buy a copy. We'll be at the Commonwealth Rooms, not far from Bristol Temple Meads station. See you there! I'll post a report on the convention when I get back.

It's Coming, part 3: Places

2008-04-21T20:02:00.008Z

Right. I'd promised to post some more Septic Isle art, so here you go!

I've probably written this on my blog before,but I find drawing strips based in the real world a lot harder work than doing one set in the future, or in a fantasy world.With SF and fantasy, you can use your imagination and make up buildings, landscapes, clothing, machinery, vehicles, weaponry etc. But Septic Isle is very much set in the present day, and it had to be realistic and gritty. So, you have to be fairly accurate, especially as most of it is set in London, a city I've only passed through and don't know very well (although I shall be visiting The Smoke very soon.)so I had to do research on such banal things as bus stops and lampposts and even the corporate logo of Lambeth council. This meant using Google images quite a lot (and I'm worried that the real MI5 are watching me because of the search terms I used, such as 'suicide bomber vests' and 'MI5 building', and so on. The excuse 'I was researching a book' worked for Pete Townshend. Might work for me, especially as I wasn't looking at the same things he was. I'm worried about the clicking noise I can hear every time I use my phone!) and whilst very useful indeed, it isn't infallible. It showed me the MI6 building and told me it was the MI5 building, for example.

Anyway, here are some of the buildings that appear in Septic Isle:

This is the very first panel of the book, and it's the Royal London Hospital, in Whitechapel.

This was the original panel from page 3 that was of the MI6 building, but MI5's Thames House was required, so the next panel was the replacement:

Next up is Blackfriars Bridge, scene of an important mission briefing:

Here's the same bridge from the Bond-esque prologue that was dropped. (but it still turns up in a shrunken form at the back of the book):

Here's a fairly nondescript-looking disused barn, in which a lot of important stuff happens:

And, last but not least, a London council estate. Note the scaffolding on that tower block. that might come in handy later on...

That's your lot for now. Hope you like them.

Aston Villa 5 Birmingham City 1

2008-04-20T13:13:00.006Z

YEEEEEEEEEEEESSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!

I can't believe I was nervous about this game all this week. We've got five goals against the scum and it looks like that sorry shower is on its way back to the championship. I'm actually looking forward to going to work tomorrow and taking the piss out of my bluenose colleagues. As important as the chase for a European place is, it's not as important as sticking it up our neighbours. God bless Martin O'Neill!

John Carew, Carew! He's bigger than me and you!!

He's gonna score one or two, John Carew, Carew!

Bring on the Toffeemen next Saturday, that's all I can say.

Normal service will resume soon.

It's Coming! part 2; Review

2008-04-18T19:23:00.005Z

This week I finally got my hands on a shiny copy of Septic Isle. The printers have done a fantastic job, it's a quality piece of work, it really is. Even if I say so myself! Just don't be put off by my photo at the back of the book. Let me assure you, I'm much better looking in real life. I showed the book around at work today, and all of my colleagues were impressed. Well, they were to my face anyway!

But, if you need more convincing at how great this book is, here is the first review of the book, over at Forbidden Planet International. It's a phenomenally positive review. Things I've been involved in before have had good reviews, but not like this, and it's especially gratifying considering this is the first time I've ever illustrated an entire book by myself, and I'm really proud of it.

So, if you want to buy it, come along to the Bristol Comic Expo (On May 10 and 11th at the Commonwealth rooms) to meet Andy Winter (Septic Isle's writer and publisher) and myself and we'll sign it for you, and I might even do some sketching for you. And you can see how much better looking I am in the flesh, as well.

I'll bung some more of the book's art up soon, I promise!

God Of Metal.

2008-04-11T16:46:00.002Z

Over at Fractal Hall, Madeley suggests that Matthew Vaughn's upcoming Thor movie should have Led Zeppelin's Immigrant Song on its trailer (it mentions 'the hammer of the gods' in its lyrics, and it's got a kinda Viking vibe to it, so it is apt.) and failing that, a soundtrack by a band like Queen. I like those suggestions, but something came to my attention recently that put the band Slayer into the hat for the Thor soundtrack gig, too:

I think it kinda works!!

Hypocrisy: The Curse Of The Brummie Nerd.

2008-04-09T18:51:00.004Z

Sorry for the big gap between posts, but I've been a busy Brummie boy lately. There's been lots of things I've wanted to comment on while I've been away, so this post is a quick roundup of my thoughts on said topics:

My accent:

It's been reported in a few newspapers in the last week or so that the Birmingham accent is the least liked of all the regional twangs. Apparently, prospective employers equate the Brummie accent with stupidity. So, do all companies in the West Midlands employ from outside the region because all the locals are stupid? Of course not. I'm sick and tired of the stick we Brummies get from the rest of the country. For example, in a recent episode of Ashes To Ashes, there was one character (played by Matthew MacFadyen) who was a famous charity fundraiser, who suffered from OCD, embezzling the money he'd raised by pulling a bath along, or some other bollocks.(As you can see, I was far from impressed with the return of Gene Hunt.) MacFadyen gave his character an unconvincing Brummie accent. This had no bearing on the plot, and seemed to be used just as shorthand for making the character a bit laughable. It's the same with Timothy Spall in Auf Wiedersehen, Pet. It's just an accent, no better or worse than Scouse or Geordie or Cockney. And I couldn't really give a toss if people like my accent or not, it's part of who I am and where I'm from, and I'm not going to change it. I'm proud of where I'm from.

Sausages:

Apparently, sausages give you cancer. Does that mean that, in a couple of years, every time I want to munch on a sausage, I'll be forced to do so outside, whatever the weather? Forced to brave the elements, exiled, risking hypothermia just for the crime of being addicted to pork?
If sausages do give you cancer, then Germany is fucked.

Charlton Heston R.I.P. :

No good will ever come from kissing apes. Now old Chuck's dead, I can finally get his gun off him, at last!
As much as I disagreed with his stance on gun ownership, it's a shame he's no longer with us, he did make some great films. He's probably best remembered for his epics, Ben-Hur, The Ten Commandments, etc., but generally, those biblical movies leave me cold. I liked Charlton's SF efforts from the late '60s and '70s: The Omega Man (much better than Will Smith's version of Matheson's I Am Legend) Soylent Green, and, of course, Planet Of the Apes:

Ta-ra, Chuck.

Return of the Doctor:

Doctor Who returned, and it was okay. Catherine Tate wasn't as annoying as last time, and the return of an old character at the end made me want to stick around to see what happens. The thing that gets me is how a lot of my female friends fancy David Tennant like mad. Besides the criminal jealousy this instils in me, I still think it's wrong that women should fancy the Doctor. When I was a kid, the Doctor was Tom Baker! Hardly a sex god. I don't remember my mother rushing to finish in the kitchen so she could rush in and swoon over him, anyway. Generally, all the Doctors have been a bit funny-looking. It goes against all tradition for women (or men, for that matter) to have a crush on Doctor Who. Actually, it goes against tradition to have women interested in SF in the first place!
(Not that I'm saying that it's a bad thing, by the way. It just tends to be a certain type of male that's really into SF. I don't know, one minute I rail against the stereotyping of Brummies, then I go and stereotype all SF fans. I know I'm a hypocrite, but as a Brummie nerd, it's just another reason for everyone to dislike me!)

That's all for this update. More from me soon, I promise!

It's Coming part 1: Moods

2008-03-24T11:14:00.010Z

May might be the month Indiana Jones 4 comes out, but bollocks to that, it's also the month Septic Isle is unleashed at the Bristol Comic Expo. Yes, it's got fights and explosions and social commentary, but I see it as more of a mood piece. For example:

Despair.

Shock!

Inebriation!

Pain!

Terror!

Can you speak up? It's a bit loud in here!!

Lust!

Tension!

I'll post some more images as we get closer to the launch. Watch this space.

A Weekend In Winchester.

2008-03-23T12:12:00.008Z

Last weekend, I went away for a bit. My girlfriend lives in the historical city of Winchester, and I thought it was about time I went and visited her flat for a change. (I won't go into the ins and outs of how I ended up going out with someone who lives a hundred miles away. It's probably not a very interesting story to the innocent bystander.)
Seeing as I can't drive, going to Winchester means putting myself through the delights of train travel. Ooops! I typed the word 'delights' when I meant 'pure fucking misery'! That always happens! So, last Friday, I packed my bag and headed for the Pritzker award-winning New Street Station.
Anyway, as usual, the train was delayed, but only by about fifteen minutes, which, these days, is seen as a bit of a result. I got on, and some cheeky mare was in my reserved seat. At first, I felt bad about getting a fairly attractive young lady to stand up for me to sit down (it goes against all the rules of public transport etiquette my mother installed in me) but then I had a change of heart because a) I had paid good money for that exact seat and b) I'd been at work all day and my legs were aching so bollocks to feeling bad about turfing a young woman out of my seat. I might have felt differently about it if she was pregnant, but she wasn't up for that so she had to stand, I'm afraid.
At the next stop, Birmingham International, a bunch of ladies got on who had heard of the notion of private conversation but decided it wasn't for them and proceeded to talk very loudly to each other. It was some kind of hen party, but they seemed a bit too posh for 'L' plates and inflatable penises. They instead had decided to go for a professional bra fitting, and then go back home to drink wine and eat 'mature cheddar and red onion' flavour crisps. See, I know all this because they said all of this very loudly. Posh people tend to talk loudly, I've found. Even their crisps were posh. Can't have boring old 'Cheese and Onion' like the plebs, oh no! 'Mature Cheddar and Red Onion' for us! Hooray!!
Anyway. I'd normally find posh women talking about bras and breasts and being felt up by other ladies quite arousing, but one of them had a slight Northern Irish accent, and this reminded me of Gloria Hunniford, and the thought of the Open House presenter being felt up by a 'butch dyke' (my fellow traveller's words, not mine!) put me right off. They all got off (oh, hang on, maybe I should put 'disembarked' in case I get accused of having a one-track mind!) at lovely Leamington Spa, the foot bath of the Midlands. The rest of the trip was fairly quiet and incident-free and I managed to finally finish the 700-page George R. R. Martin novel I've been reading on-and-off for about a year, and disembarked myself at Winchester, where I met up with my lovely new ladyfriend (I get brownie points for calling her 'lovely' on my blog, she does read it, so that's eight readers I've got now!) unloaded my bag at her flat (that's not a euphemism, by the way.) and went out on the town.
Now, we have historical buildings here in Brum. There's Aston Hall, Blakesley Hall, and Soho House to name three. But Winchester has them everywhere. You just have to throw a stone and you break the window of somewhere historical. Not that I did that. I realised that I was no longer in Birmingham and throwing stones at windows is not considered polite in the civilised south. Anyway, that Friday, we had a couple of drinks in the Royal Oak, which claims to be the oldest bar in England, it being there since 1002 ad, although I had my suspicions that the fag machine wasn't the original. Still, having a couple of pints in a thousand year old pub is cool. In fact, the whole High Street is cool, every building looks old, spoiled slightly by the modern shop signs stuck to them, but you do need to know if it's Boot's the chemist and not another museum, I suppose. Later on, we ended up in that very old and traditional boozer called O'Neills where there was a band on that consisted of four mid-life crises playing cover versions. Still, it was a good laugh. We played 'Celebrity lookalikes' and drinking with us were Paul Bettany, Owen Wilson and the Dairy Milk Gorilla.

Saturday was spent doing sightseeing properly, by daylight. I had a butcher's at the outside of the Cathedral. I didn't go inside, as they were charging people a fiver. Bollocks to that. Round the back of the cathedral was, you guessed it, more historical buildings. There was the Deanery, which is a history mishmash-it has a 13th century Norman vaulted porch, with a 15th century hall on the left of it, and a 17th century Long gallery on its right. Across from this are the ruins of the Norman Chapter House, and the Garnier garden, which is supposed to be a tranquil place, but had three very loud American women in it when we visited it. It is a nice place though, but there was no sign of the Laboratoire Garnier. Maybe it's a secret lab buried underground, like in a Bond movie, and Dean Garnier is down there sitting in a plastic egg-chair stroking a persian cat whilst overseeing the construction of a Doomsday machine that will aid him in his scheme to take over the world. Probably not, as the Dean's been dead for over a hundred years. That'd be ace though, wouldn't it?
Also, we looked at the Cheyney Court, a 16th century building that the bishop used to live in, apparently, and nothing to do with the current Vice-President of the United States.(I know it's spelled differently, never let that get in the way of a joke, however low-quality it is.) Then, we had a lunchtime pint in an old pub called the Wykeham Arms, which has a sign outside asking you to turn off your mobile phone. It's full of old desks and other memorabilia from the nearby Winchester college and had the type of old men drinking in there that you can imagine own blazers with masonic badges on them. After that, we looked at an old-fashioned bookshop and then we decided to get some lunch. Whilst walking back past the cathedral, my lovely (more brownie points) new girlfriend asked what I'd like for lunch. Now, those of you who know me personally know that I hate making decisions and tend to be fairly non-commital. I like to think of it as 'going with the flow' but the people around me think of it as 'fucking annoying'. So, I replied by just saying 'food'. An old man walked past us and said 'Good choice!' to me. So, I thanked him and he smiled. We ended up going for a pasty. I was starving and it was just the ticket. Haute cuisine or what? We saw more lookalikes passing by the pasty shop, Vinnie Jones, Julie Walters and that bloke with the curly hair from The Blue Lagoon.
After that, we looked at really extortionately priced organic chocolates at a shop called Montezumas, where we tried some free samples that were fucking disgusting. Then we went to look at the statue of King Alfred the Great (the Saxon king who basically united all of England, fought off the invading Vikings, but is most famous for letting some sponges overcook.) but you can't have your picture taken in front it, as there's a bit of road there. There's a little bit of paving behind it, so if you want to say to people whilst showing them your photos 'There's me by King Alfred's arse', you'll be in your element. It's an impressive statue, though, a lot bigger than I thought it was. We then went to the park opposite, which had a playground and a sundial that doubled up as a fountain. After that, we noticed there was a book fair on at the Guildhall (another impressive historical building that has all these heraldic shields on the outside of it. It also has a sign telling you that noon is actually five minutes and sixteen seconds later than Greenwich says it is), and no romantic weekend is complete unless you've been to a book fair, so we went in. I paid for us both, to which the man in charge of the entrance said 'ah, a gentleman, eh?' with a conspiratorial wink which seemed to say 'you're in there, now, mate!' So, if you're single, take a lady to Winchester and spend fifty pee on her, that seems to be the way to get some action, apparently. As usual, I was looking for comic-related stuff, and there was a few old Beano and Eagle annuals, a big book on Dan Dare, and a book on the history of comics that they wanted £17 for (no way!). There were some graphic novel anthologies based on the work of SF great Ray Bradbury, that were limited editions, signed by Bradbury and all the artists that had done the strips, all of them very famous artists, but there were four of them, and they were thirty quid each, a bit out of my price range, I'm afraid. There were also quite a lot of books on the occult, including The Book Of Magick by Aleister Crowley which seemed a bit out-of-keeping with the generally Christian vibe of the city of Winchester. We left without purchasing anything. What a waste of fifty pee. After another pint a watching a bit of the England-Ireland rugby match, we went back to the flat and had a lovely evening, interrupted by my constant journeys up and down five flights of stairs to go and have a cigarette outside, and once managing to lock myself out of the building in the pissing rain, because of the fiddly keys.

On Sunday, after a nice full English at a subterranean cafe, they weren't charging anyone to go into the Cathedral, so we went in and had a nose. Apparently, the big stained glass window of the cathedral got smashed by Parliamentarians, but the parishioners of Winchester collected all the bits and put them back in, albeit in a haphazard manner, so the window is now like a giant abstract collage, which is cool. The cathedral is an impressive building, even to a dyed-in-the-wool atheist like me, and it always strikes me as amazing what was achieved in the name of faith in times gone by. The thing that strikes me about the cathedral, though, was how obsessed by death it all was. There's a few tomb-effigies, gravestones in the floor, and lists of those lost in wars engraved into the walls. There's also boxes, that look like treasure chests dotted about, that contain the remains of holy men. There's also Jane Austen's grave, on the north side of the nave, which makes no mention of her writing at all! This is rectified by a big brass plaque telling us all about her literary work on the wall next to her final resting place. So, all in all, an impressive place, a bit morbid, but hey, it's a church!

We get to the train station later that Sunday afternoon, and guess what? Yep, my train is delayed! This is because of vital repairs on the line to Southampton. that's what the announcements said, anyway. Every five minutes. Eventually, I'm told that my train will come in as soon as the (heavily delayed)train that's at the platform now buggers off. Thing is, this train isn't moving. It's staying there for ages. Then, two British transport policemen turn up. They go on the train. They come off again. Two other coppers turn up. They all go back on the train and they all come off the train wrestling a large pissed-up Scotsman to the platform floor. He starts shouting obscenities at the coppers. The residents of Winchester looked shocked. I don't think they've heard the term 'fucking English copper cunts' before. They bring him into the waiting room where we were standing, and the arrested man keeps shouting at me 'Hey! Big yin! Take a fuckin' photo! This is abuse! Abuse! Assault!!' and so on. Also, because of the fracas, his trousers had slipped down round his arse, which he had cut in the fight, and was bleeding profusely. Not really the image you want to take away with you from a weekend away with your girlfriend. Anyway, after another mental episode when the police had taken off his hat; "Gies ma hat back!! See when these cuffs come aff, yous cunts are all deid!! Big yin! Take a photo! Cunt's got ma hat!!", they managed to take him away, and move the train on, so my one could come in. Lovely. The weekend had ended on just the right note!

Anyway, Winchester is a lovely place, and I recommend it. Just don't go by train.

Snow Flake.

2008-03-23T11:57:00.003Z

It's that time of the year again! A chill in the air. Jack Frost nipping at your nose. Snow is falling.
Happy Easter everyone!!
Right. That's enough cheeriness for this particular miserable Brummie. There's a Cadbury's 'Flake' egg beside me that's got my name on it. (Not literally. You have to go to Thornton's for that kind of thing.) So I'm going to gorge on it until I'm sick, in an attempt to recreate the Easters of my childhood.
Have a good 'un!!

What I'll probably be watching this summer.

2008-03-20T17:32:00.007Z

This summer is going to be exciting for a nerd like me. There are a few comics-based movies out I'm desperate to see. Saying that, though, I need to curb this sort of behaviour as more than a few comics-based movies have left me bitterly disappointed in the past. I'll live, though. (Actually,that sounded a bit dramatic.Don't be too concerned. I'm not going to slash my wrists because of the treatment Galactus got in that last Fantastic Four movie.)

Anyway, I'm a sharing, caring kinda guy, so I thought I'd put some of the trailers up so you can get excited about them too.

First up is Iron Man. This is Marvel's first self-financed film, and that makes me hopeful that the source material will be treated respectfully. I hope so, because I love Iron Man. The old Iron Man, anyway, before he got turned into basically a villain in Civil War. I've got a load of '70s Gene Colan Iron Man (when his helmet had a nose on it) comics that I love to bits. The trailer looks great, anyway. Robert Downey Jr. looks just the part as Tony Stark (not so sure about Gwyneth Paltrow as 'Pepper' Potts, though. I'm allergic to Ms. Paltrow and her whingey husband, and all) and having Brummie metal legends Black Sabbath on the soundtrack is both bleedin' obvious and utterly fantastic. The Audioslave and AC/DC songs used are alright, as well:

Right. The second in my trailer roundup is Guillermo Del Toro's follow up to the generally well-received by everyone Pan's Labyrinth. Yep, it's Hellboy 2. This film looks great. I'm a big fan of Del Toro anyway, and I liked the first one, but this one looks like it might be a cracker, a giant monster mash-up, with Lovecraftian tentacled creatures and Luke Goss' bad guy looking a lot like Moorcroft's Elric.
Also, there's a nice bit of Rammstein on the soundtrack at the end. What is it with heavy metal and comic-book movie trailers? I seem to remember Dimmu Borgir being on the trailer for the first Hellboy movie. God, I am such a geek, remembering stuff like that! Anyway, have a butchers:

Next up is Marvel's second self-financed movie, a reboot of the Hulk. Ang Lee's version of the Green Goliath has its fans, but I'm not one of them. It was an interesting attempt, but ultimately flawed. This new one has a great cast, and looks like there might be a bit more 'Hulk Smash!' than the Ang Lee one. Also, there's rumours of a crossover with the Iron Man film, creating a silver screen mini-Marvel Universe. However, I'm disappointed that there's no heavy metal in this trailer, and I'm also disappointed that Ed Norton doesn't seem to wear the purple trousers that the comics Bruce Banner is fond of wearing. (While I'm on the subject of the Hulk's pants, I hate it when people who think they're being clever ask 'How come the Hulk's trousers never rip ?' when the answer is bloody obvious: You can't have the Hulk's big green cock swinging about in a kid's comic, or for that matter, in a movie. It gives a new meaning to the term 'tentpole blockbuster', though.)

Next up is the one I'm probably looking forward to the most. It's a small independent film based on a little known character called 'Batman'. Yes, it's The Dark Knight, In which Christian Bale's funny jaw will be overshadowed by the tragic untimely death of his co-star. Besides Heath Ledger's Joker, the Scarecrow makes a comeback, and Two-Face also turns up (his appearance is still a mystery at the moment) and usually, lots of villains makes a rubbish movie (Spider-man 3, both of the Schumacher Batman movies) but I loved Batman Begins, and I reckon Christopher Nolan knows what he's doing. And, also, Katie Holmes is gone! In my opinion, she was the weak link in the first one, Maggie Gyllenhaal can only be an improvement. No metal on the soundtrack of this one either. Don't these people know that you need heavy metal to sell you a comic book movie?! Honestly!

And last, but not least, is a bit of a Secret Identity exclusive. It's the first look at Matthew Vaughn's upcoming Thor movie:

(Not really. It's an old Thor cartoon from the '60s dubbed with Derek and Clive. I felt the need to tell you this because I've found out recently that a few people who read this blog do so at work, and this clip has VERY strong language and I wouldn't want any of you to get into trouble. So, I can sleep easy now, because I did warn you!)

Also must-see this year, from my nerd's point of view, anyway, are Indy 4 (the trailer for that can be found elsewhere on this blog) , and Bond 22 , but those aren't comicky enough to be included, and besides, Quantum Of Solace hasn't got a trailer out yet.

Thank you for watching.

Still here!!

2008-03-17T21:20:00.006Z

Hiya. It's been a while since I last posted, I know. But, I've got a perfectly valid excuse in that I've been distracted by my lovely new girlfriend and I've been busy either at work or travelling to historical cities in the south of England (which I may blog about in the near future).

This post is about other people's blogs, basically. Over at Andy Winter's blog, he's been saying lovely things about the artwork I did for his fantastically scripted Septic Isle book, a book which is getting ever-nearer to being unleashed on an unsuspecting world. I do love blowing my own trumpet, but it's even better having someone else blow one for you. I'm very proud of this book, and I'm hoping it goes down well with readers. I might post some images soon, but I want all seven of my readers to buy a copy, and if I post a lot of my art, it may deter people from doing so! Watch this space.

Also, at Madeley's fantastic Fractal Hall he posts about one of my favourite topics ie. Movie posters, so, in response, I'd thought I'd post a favourite of mine:

Anyway, I promise to update a bit more often in future, but I'm going away now.

Nostalgia ain't what it used to be.

2008-03-02T16:04:00.004Z

This morning, I watched a 25-year old edition of ITV's The Big Match. ITV 4 have been showing them on Sunday mornings lately, and they showed me what happened in the world of English football exactly 25 years ago. And on this week a quarter of a century ago, Villa (then European cup holders) were playing Graham Taylor's Watford, and Villa were undone by a goal in the fourth minute of injury time. How times have changed! (Villa were undone by a late injury time goal yesterday as well!)

Anyway, I caught myself saying 'Ahh, them were the days', but were they? There's a big 80's revival happening at the moment, there's kids walking around with big 'Frankie' type slogans on T-shirts, Rambo, Rocky and Indiana Jones back in the cinemas. Knight Rider has made a comeback, and the top toys of the time, Transformers and GI Joe, have been or soon will be big Hollywood movies. And, of course, there's Ashes to Ashes on at the moment as well, cashing in on the current clamour for all things eighties. And there was that shit Calvin Harris record.

You see, I remember the eighties as being generally rubbish. Thatcher, Miner's strikes,Mullets, Reagan, Recession, The Falklands, Stock, Aitken, Waterman, the Brixton, Toxteth and Handsworth riots, Careless Whisper, IRA mainland campaigns, Piano-key ties, Greenham Common, Bucks Fizz, The Minipops, Howard's Way and Howard Jones. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. On a personal note, the eighties might've been the decade Villa won the Championship, the European Cup and the Super Cup, but it was also the decade in which we were relegated and we got Deadly Doug back. I did most of my puberty in the eighties, and that was a shit time. Having a squeaky voice and terminal acne is bad enough, but try combining that with having to wear Farah trousers, stonewashed denim jackets and tan leather neckties. Not a good look, especially when topped off with a flat-top haircut. Also, the eighties was the time when my parents split up, so I don't look back on the era that fondly.

But I did live through them, and my memories are first hand. A lot of the kids about now who are re-living the eighties weren't even born in the eighties. People having their first legal pint this year were born in 1990! That makes me feel old. To those people, Michael Jackson's always been a white bloke! Why have they latched onto the '80s? Is it the because the '90s didn't really have an identity?(I recently went to a '90s themed party and I honestly couldn't think of anything to go as, so I just wore an old football shirt. For a so-called comics artist I really do lack imagination! But it proves what a fairly nondescript decade the 90's were.) If the most recognisable star from the 90s is Liam Gallagher, then it really was a shit decade culturally. I really don't see the point of having nostalgia for a decade you weren't around in, and young adults might want to try creating their own cultural movement instead of borrowing one that wasn't that good in the first place.

God, I sound old!

Buy this blog a cake!

2008-02-21T22:24:00.004Z

Well, it's been two years since I started keeping a blog, with this as my very first post. It's been a very up and down two years, (mostly downs, probably, but I would say that, being both a Brummie and a pessimistic old git!) but the fact that my witless prose (213 posts and counting...)is read and enjoyed by some people is a gratifying one. Thanks to all my readers that have left comments, they've been, for the most part, amusing, supportive and complimentary, (except for those nasty ones from those menopausal celibates who moaned at me for having a go at Sir Cliff; They're entitled to their opinion, but apparently, I wasn't entitled to mine! It was only a little sly dig as well! Imagine what the response would've been if I'd actually said something really bad about the bloke. Like my opinion of his 'music'.) and thanks to those regular readers who lurk about but don't say anything. Make yourself known! Share the love!
Anyway, this blog is now two years old (well, tomorrow it is, anyway, but I'll be busy tomorrow banging my head at a gig. It's about time they put higher ceilings in at the Academy!) and like any two year old, it occasionally craps itself, but it's still full of unfulfilled potential. Any blog birthday cakes will be gratefully received.

Cheers.

Frankenstein, Dracula and a Crocodile?!

2008-02-19T19:26:00.006Z

I had to laugh at the newspaper today. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a monarchist at all. There's this inquest happening at the moment, which has cost upwards of £10 million pounds, just to rule that Lady Di died becaused she was being driven by a pissed up bloke at high speeds and forgetting to clunk click. What a waste of money. Or so I thought, but new evidence has come to light from Mr. Al Fayed that Prince Phillip's real surname is 'Frankenstein', he's a Nazi and a racist (those two do tend to go together, Mr Al Fayed) and this mockery of man stitched together from cadavers* and wearing an SS uniform was head of a conspiracy (that included the secret service, Tony Blair, and Di's own sister!) to kill the Princess Of Hearts, just so his son could bring a crocodile he was shagging into the folds of the 'Dracula' family that is currently ruling Great Britain and the Commonwealth.
I don't know about you, but that sounds reasonable to me. He's never going to get that British passport now. And Fulham are going down. That's probably the Duke Of Edinburgh's fault as well. Scheming Nazi Undead racist bastard!

*I know Frankenstein was the scientist and not the monster. Just thought I'd get that in before some smartarse does.

Oh, and the picture is from a series of strips I did for the 'newspaper strip'-type anthology Lost Property called The Adventures Of Prince Phillip. Check it out if you can!

Roll on May 22nd!!

2008-02-14T16:46:00.004Z

I know today is V.D. day (Valentine's day), but my letterbox was hardly overflowing with cards from sex-starved secret admirers, so I'm going to go off-tangent. Well kind of, because this is sort of about something I love, the Indiana Jones movies. I remember first seeing Raiders Of The Lost Ark at junior school, it was an end of term treat. We all packed into a classroom, sat on desks as well as the chairs, and the blinds closed out the encroaching summer, and we watched the film on one of them new fangled top-loading betamax video recorders. It blew my mind then as an eight year-old, I remember that day very fondly, and now, when I'm well into my thirties, I still love that movie, because it still entertains me as much now as it did then.

(There are things now, though, that mildly bother the thirty-three year old me after repeated viewings- Like, how does Indy know that to avoid being melted by the ghosty/angel/demon things at the end you just have to avoid looking at it? You assume he's read it somewhere, but it's not explained. And when those blokes from the government come to see Indy about a top-secret mission, Dr. Jones just happens to have a big antique book about the Ark of the Covenant under his arm? Or when they decipher the markings on the headpiece to the staff of Ra, we're told that the staff should be 72" tall, yet when Indy uses it, it's at least 18" taller than he is, which means they've bollocksed it up or Harrison Ford isn't much taller than Kenny Baker. I'm letting these things go, though. I don't want to sound too much like a net nerd!)

Anyway, I only bring this up because I saw the trailer for the fourth instalment, I'm excited, now (even though it's got Ray Winstone in it. Kinda sick of looking at his mush for some weird reason, but I'll get over it!) and it's coming out on my Birthday! I just hope George Lucas hasn't brought his 'fix it 'til it's fucked' philosophy to this franchise like he did with Star Wars . Have a butcher's yourself and see what you think:

Radio Ga-Ga, Marley Ta-Ta!

2008-02-06T16:23:00.000Z

Well, it's (more or less) finished. There's a couple of panels that need re-doing because I've drawn the wrong building (it was Google's fault! It's best to do it again, because some smartarse reader would've pulled me up on it!), and there's problems with the scans, (but that should be sorted shortly) but, mostly, Septic Isle is completed. Look left for a sample image!

I spent all of last week staying up until very late (at one point I had two cigarette lighters holding my eyelids up. I couldn't find the matches.) getting the last eight pages pencilled, then inking the last twelve or so pages. While I was doing this, I got very, very fed up with my CD collection. I have hundreds and I must've listened to each one at least twice in the last month or so. So for the final stint, I resorted to the radio.

Evening/late-night radio is a very different beast to its daytime equivalent. The playlists are different for a start, and the phone-in show is king. I'm allergic to Radio 4, I think. I can't be bothered with reviews of the latest pile of shite on at the Barbican, or interviews with the latest shyster to unveil another bigger pile of shite at the Tate Modern, and I've never found I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue that funny. I think Radio 4 is something you listen to when you grow up, and I'm yet to do so, and I'm too old for Radio 1, too young for Radio 2 and not enough of a classical music buff for Radio 3, and BBC WM is utter, utter bilge (unless there's a Villa match on, natch.) so I was stuck with the commercial stations. Now, you listen to enough of these for a while, you learn a few things.

The adverts, for a start, are mostly the government telling you to behave. Road tax evasion, benefit fraud, binge drinking, sharing needles and unprotected sex are all frowned upon. And so they should be, but it was like Chinese water torture listening to these ads again and again. There's one particular ad that warns against unprotected sex, which is a lad with a Liverpudlian accent telling me about his genital herpes that I must've heard about seven hundred and fifty-eight times in the last week. Talk about the City of Culture! I got so sick of hearing about this Scouser's scabby scrotal sac (alliteration!!) that I'm never going to wear a condom ever again just to spite him. (That may sound reckless, but it's okay, as Pope Benedict XVI probably gets more action than me lately!)

The people who get on these late-night phone-in discussion shows must be vetted to make the host sound clever. I've always wondered who can be bothered to phone up these shows anyway, and why are they still up? They can't have any work or anything meaningful to do, as they'd be doing it and wouldn't have the time. They obviously don't want to sleep, or they do sleep during the day and miss every news bulletin because most of them don't have a clue what's going on around them. So, generally, the host draws his conclusions on the topic of the night on the opinions of a bunch of lonely, ill-informed insomniacs with nothing better to do. For example, one show I listened to had Nick Pope on, he was the MOD's UFO investigator for a few years, and he was talking about all his reports which are soon to published under the Freedom of Information Act, and he said something along the lines of 'some information, such as addresses, and sensitive military and technical data will still be censored, this is for security reasons, but the conspiracy theorists will have a field day saying it's something else.' To which some bloke (from Sheldon, just up the road from me) phoned in and replied "Why does he use the words 'conspiracy theory'? It ain't a theory, it's real. Aliens have been coming down and mutilating our cats for years! That's a fact!" (Actually, later on in the same show, they had James Randi on, the famous sceptic, who has offered a million dollars of his own money to anyone who can conclusively prove to him that they have psychic powers. The money's stayed in his account so far. During his interview, they had a break which featured an advertisement for Derek Acorah's upcoming show at the Birmingham Alex. Well planned, that was. It's almost as if Derek knew...)

Anyway, I've survived listening to all this (I found it amusing, for the most part) to get this book finished, and it's going to leave a bit of a hole in my life for the immediate future (actually, some of the characters end up with a bit of a hole in them as well!) but there might be a sequel, so I don't think I've seen the last of Marley just yet. I was just thinking the other day that since i started working on this I've gone through a marriage break-up, a house move and four other break ups. Bloody hell. Let's hope the sequel is drawn during a less 'interesting' time!

Got it covered.

2008-02-01T11:09:00.000Z

Hey there! Long time no see. I've been busy working on Septic Isle, and I'm on the home stretch now, all the pencils are done, and I'm now inking the last few pages. I've stopped for a bit, to show you the fantastic cover, by the outrageously talented Declan Shalvey. It's been on here before, but this is the completed one, with the coverlines and everything. Cool, eh? Also, a little ambition of mine has been realised; I've got my name on the cover of the comic! (I've had my name on a back cover, and on the inside cover, but never on the front.Fame at last!) When it comes out, I want all seven of you to go out and buy a copy, right?

Anyway, I hope you're all well, but I've got to get back to my drawing board! See you soon.

"Evolution is a lie."

2008-01-21T23:35:00.000Z

I know I said I wouldn't be on here for a bit, but I've just drawn one of the best pages I've ever done, and had a down and up and down again Villa match to put up with (we're still sixth, I suppose!) so I need a bit of internet downtime to calm down! It's a shame my scanner is still problematic, as I'd share the page with you.

Anyway, I have to share this site with you, I don't know if it's hilarious or frightening. You decide!

I am still here!

2008-01-14T22:22:00.000Z

Hello again. I know it's been a while and you've probably all buggered off to more interesting blogs (ie. ones that update more than once a month!), but I thought I'd post anyway, just to keep my end up. If nothing else, a blog is just the 21st Century way of talking to yourself!
Hope you all had a good Christmas and New Year. Mine was okay, it had its ups and downs, but for the most part, it was good. Except for the unbearably grim TV they thought was appropriate for the festive season. I didn't watch much telly this Christmas, but the bits I did see were mostly shite.
There's loads of things I want to write (more accurately, moan) about, but I'm busy working and drawing. I'm on the last stretch of Septic Isle now, I'm about three-quarters done, and just about to start the big bloody denouement, which I'm looking forward to, God help me. There's nothing I love drawing more than graphic violence! I hate it in real life, you understand, but you can't beat a good, brutal, comic-book punch up. It should all be finished for the end of the month, so normal blog service should be resumed by then. There might even be some pics from the aforementioned strip as soon as I sort my malfunctioning scanner. I think my scanner may need some persuading with a clawhammer. Like I said, I hate violence.
So, I'm still (just about) alive, and I hope you're all okay, too!

Tinselitis: Slight Return

2007-12-19T21:10:00.000Z

Christmas is coming, and the goose is getting morbidly obese, and all that shite. I've left the Christmas shopping extremely late this year, on account of being potless and always at work at either my dull day job, or my glamorous art career. (If you can call it 'glamorous', or a 'career', come to that!)

I made a good start this week, but man, do I hate Christmas shopping and all the annoying crap that surrounds it. Like standing in queues and being cold, and avoiding other shoppers who decide to suddenly change direction, or worse still,just stop dead in front of you, leaving you a braking distance of about four inches. Listening to the same bloody Christmas records over and over and over again, and getting annoyed at the records that aren't Yuletide songs, but end up on these bloody festive compilations just because they had a Christmassy video, and that bothers me, for some reason. Songs like Stay Now by East 17, The Power Of Love by Frankie Goes To Hollywood and Keeping The Dream Alive by Freiheit are lyrically nothing to do with the festive season!! Alright?!! Stop bloody playing them!!

I know a sound like a curmudgeonly Scrooge-type, but I hate the forced friendliness that retailers insist their staff use on us, the stressed out customers. I like the normal 'get what you want to buy, take it to the counter, pay for it, and fuck off' system thats employed the other ten months of the year. I don't want to have yuletide smalltalk with shop assistants. They don't really give a toss whether I've finished my Christmas shopping or not. I was in WH Smiths the other day, purchasing a video game for my youngest daughter. The game is based on a popular cartoon character, and the girl serving me was a big fan of this character and was filling me in on the history of him. All well and good, but by that point in my shopping hell, I really wasn't interested, I just wanted to go home. But, lo and behold, the game's barcode wouldn't scan, so she had to bugger off for ten minutes to find it, leaving me standing at the counter like a spare prick. It would've been unbearable but for the girl on the next till who was wearing a rather revealing blouse (apologies for the Sid James-type sexism that will follow) and kept bending down to get carrier bags and showing me her 'goods', so to speak. Smiths have a campaign at the moment in which they donate some money or something to help plant trees every time someone refuses a carrier bag, so I was getting annoyed at the do-gooders who wanted to save the environment, because it meant the girl wasn't bending down to get a bag. I was thinking 'bollocks to the environment!' (I know I'm sounding like an old lech, but you really can't argue with the truth.)
Anyway, the more sombrely dressed girl who was serving me came back with the appropriate barcode and proceeded to tell me all about an old college friend of hers who asked for her mobile number, but she wouldn't give it to him because he didn't phone her up the last time she gave him her number. I don't care, just take my money and let me go home!! For fuck's sake!!

Also, during a shopping expedition, I bumped into my eldest daughter, who was buying gifts for her schoolfriends, and she also happened to be with her boyfriend. Now, the other day, after finding out she had a boyfriend, I jokingly said to her (acting like all the fathers of girls I've been out with, and once, I even met the father of my girlfriend for the first time after I'd already impregnated her. That was fun!) that if I ever met him, I'd rip his balls off. I was only joking, really! Anyway, she told him what I'd said, the devious little cow, so when I bumped into them in the BullRing shopping Mall, he promptly turned about face and fled. Surely I'm not that scary! I feel bad now. I've still not finished my shopping, either.

Anyway, despite all this, I do like Christmas, and I hope all of you out there that actually take the time to read the cobblers I write, have a great Christmas and an even better New Year, and remember, enjoy alcohol responsibly!

Holiday Bargains.

2007-12-07T21:30:00.000Z

During this festive season, it's good to remember the festivals happening in other cultures and faiths, and include them into our own, so we're all one big happy human race celebrating the end of another year. In that respect, it's fantastic that this particular store is trying to sell hams to the Jewish during the busy holiday period.