Top Ten Things of 2010

As I don’t get to the cinema that often, but don’t want to be left out and feel as if I should post something on the blog this year at least, I’ve knocked up a wee list of 10 things of note from the year from my completely irrelevant perspective. I’ll steer clear of mawkish stuff about my family who are always the highlight of the year for me and stick with more personal stuff. No particular order btw.

The Chilean Miners

Charlie Brooker pretty much summed this up on his excellent (if slightly overlong) 2010 wipe the other night, but I have to admit I shed a wee tear when the first guy came up and his wee girl came over to hug him.

This was a genuinely pleasant story, during which the vagaries of the “24 hour news cycle” seemed slightly less irksome. There was still plenty of narrative fabrication and absolutely loads of reporters standing around reporting on sod all from where sod all was happening (live!) but all in all it was nice to see the news media focus on a positive event for once rather than see them default to their seemingly natural position of spouting a generally inaccurate and ceaseless account of world wide fear, death and disaster.

Inception

This astonishing film (#2 in Tom’s annual Top Ten) was so good, it made me forget that I was watching what was in large part a fairly dry tale of industrial espionage involving the highly unethical mental manipulation of an unwitting individual. The fact that you are rooting for characters who are to say the least ethically suspect provides an aside about the power of cinema and indeed perspective. This result is achieved thanks to a series of excellent performances, (particularly from Tom Hardy) and visual effects that leave you little time to ruminate on any fleeting misgivings.

It’s also of course at its heart a love story and it is the compelling, passionate tragedy of this aspect of the story that provides the beam on which the rest of the film is balanced.

A sensational, brilliantly executed film from one of the most exciting talents in Hollywood. I cannot wait for The Dark Knight Rises.

Getting an Xbox 360

Self-explanatory really – one of the main reasons I have written nothing of any great substance this year.

Discovering Spotify

I tend to rely on Tom when it comes to finding out about new online thingamajigs and thankfully he managed to persuade me that Spotify was worth a try. And what a joy it is. As much as I’ve enjoyed the playlists of many friends and strangers alike, what I really love about it is you can find something to match your exact mood at any given time of the day. This has led me to discover that Saturday mornings are all about disco era Kiss for me, and how could I have possibly been expected to live without knowing that about myself?

Getting a Smartphone

What a revelation this was. As you may have guessed from the last entry, I am a bit rubbish when it comes to embracing new tech. This is partly because I’m not easy and need be wooed over a lengthy spell – it’s also probably because I’ve never really had the money for gadgets before so have consciously or otherwise characterised any new development as crap in order to assuage disappointment in not being able to join in.

Peer pressure eventually told. Genuinely bewildered by the various options, I got a Blackberry because all my mates had one. As soon as I joined them they almost all switched to the iPhone, as if my joining the Blackberry squad was in itself some kind of jump the shark moment. But to say I’m happy is an understatement. I can’t imagine how I functioned in what I now lovingly refer to as “the before times”.


The 75th Anniversary of DC Comics

The 75th Anniversary of DC Comics has been marked by some wonderful books and ephemera celebrating the home of Batman, Superman and many, many others.

My personal favourites have been the vertebrae crumblingly substantial “The Art of Modern Mythmaking” by Paul Levitz and "DC Comics: The 75th Anniversary Poster Book".

“The Art of Modern Mythmaking” is a 720 page, beautifully presented tome weighting in at 15.9 pounds and is genuinely difficult to read without superpowers of your own. It’s worth the extra effort though and is brim full of Levitz’s taut, scholarly prose and amazing artwork from down the years reproduced on high quality heavy stock paper. Some may find it a bit pricey at £76.23 (Price from Amazon 31/12/10).

"The 75th Anniversary Poster Book" is slightly less of a struggle coming as it does in softcover. Here, we are treated to page after page of full colour reproductions of classic DC covers down the decades, each page perforated in case you want to neatly pull one out for framing. It’s just a very nice, simple and effective encapsulation of what has made DC a veritable icon factory over the years and it’s a bit less of a strain on the pocket as well at a modest £12.49.

Getting Worryingly Enthusiastic About Toys

Bad enough really that I never chucked a lot of my old ones away, however this year has seen me buy among other things a Blammoid Batman (Series 2) and Mini Mate versions of Booster Gold and The Blue Beetle, the latter mainly so I could recreate this harrowing scene of senseless murder from classic DC crossover series "Infinite Crisis"…



Having More Money Than Usual

This year has pretty much been the first that I’ve been able to pay the bills and have some money left over. Not loads, but some. I mention this not to suggest I’ve achieved anything because of course I haven’t but really because it’s been the most unnerving and unsettling experience. Proper weird. Having never had any before, I genuinely don’t know what to do with any extra money. If I do spend some, I second guess the purchase to death and think of 10 other things I should have done with it instead. If I save it, I worry some disaster will hit the house or the family and it will be gobbled up in one. It’s been a long road leading me to the final conclusion that I’m a twat who should worry less. Now excuse me while I head over to Amazon…

News of the Avengers Movie

People who aren’t into comics, sci-fi or all that gubbins will have no idea what I’m talking about but the few of us who do will know what a huge waste of time comic/pop culture conventions are. If you actually go, you pay through the nose to fight with other allergy infested nerds for panel seats on the off-chance that someone might say something that hasn’t already been all over the internet. If you don’t, the Internet is fairly bulging with sites and bloggers dying to feed you every tiny mini-morsel of what can often be laughingly referred to as “news”.

But…once in a while, a convention produces a spine tingling moment, and so it was at the San Diego Comic Con when Samuel L. Jackson and Robert Downey Jr. brought on the full cast for the Avengers film followed by director Joss Whedon. A whispered half-rumour for such a long time, the fact that this film will finally be made with this cast and director is possibly the most exciting movie news I’ve ever heard.



Discovering Twitter

By far and away the most impactful discovery of the year for me was Twitter. Again, I have to thank Tom for persevering with me on this – I resisted for a looooong time.

As dull as it can sometimes be and as full of bots and twots as it plainly is, Twitter is also home to a huge array of just genuinely brilliant people, communicating away right in the face of all the doomsayers who tell us the dialogue is over, that people just have nothing left to say to each other. What rot.

I started tweeting in March and so far I’ve reconnected with people I’d lost touch with, made some new and very amusing pals and have even managed to make a few quid in the process.

I should have realised really that this 140-character world would be the ideal place for a lazy but attention seeking plum such as myself.

2010’s been a mixed bag really as years tend to be. A lot of good, some bad and the hardest part to get through, the vast grey bulk that makes up the lion's share. But at least there have been a few things, people and events worth pulling back the covers for. See you hopefully a bit more often on Talking Pish in 2011.

Comics Journal Menshy

Blogging? We don't seem to be bothering much in this age of the tweet, not that I was doing much anyway.

But now I have something to crow about so here I am.

Me and Iain Laurie and our strip Blackcape got a nice write up in The Comics Journal in this interesting article about the Scottish Underground Comics scene. I've linked to the bit that bigs me up of course, but you can skip back for the 1st part as well.

San Diego News

For anyone interested in comics, cult TV or movies, The 2009 San Diego Comic Convention - for years the biggest of the big pop culture events in the US - has just wrapped up for another year.

There was little to grab all but the die-hard this year other than news Gary Oldman let slip that Batman 3 will be along sooner than expected.

The other big news of the con for me was that Marvel have sorted out the complex legal mess entangling the much loved character Miracleman and have bought all rights to the character, who will revert to his original name of Marvelman.

Why is this potentially good news? Well, Miracleman/Marvelman was re-vamped in the mid 80's by none other than Alan Moore and latterly Neil Gaiman but was never properly finished and the stories, considered some of Moore's greatest early work, was never effectively collected. Now it looks as if fans will now get the chance to see why wealthy comic junkies pay top dollar for the hard to find original issues and ultra-rare collected editions.

Here's a digest page of all the news and announcements made during the con from Newsarama.

Scott McCloud on Comics

Scott McCloud talking about comics. It runs for about 17 minutes.

Watchmen

Has there ever been a time where someone tried to replicate a perfect day or experience for you? Maybe its taking you back to a restaurant where you had a great meal or a holiday spot where you fell in love or just had the best time with your friends. Then someone takes you back and tries to do the impossible and replicate the magic. You end up feeling bad about yourself because you appreciate the effort but also resent them for trying to do something so blindingly obviously un-doable. That pretty much sums up how I felt walking out of the cinema yesterday having just taken in Zak Snyder’s “Watchmen”.

It’s a very solid effort with some excellent moments – the jail sequence and Dr Manhattan’s origin being particular high points. But it plods for long periods and the soundtrack is sometimes extremely jarring. I also wonder how people who do not know and love the comic will relate to these characters and even get what’s going on half the time. Characters are implied rather than introduced and plot elements simply happen without any sense of pace or crescendo.

It may well be that there will eventually come a director's cut of this that hangs together a little better – certainly how anyone could hope to perform the alchemy of squeezing 400 pages of densely plotted and drawn graphic fiction into a 2 hours plus movie is beyond me – and I’m sure there will be myriad DVD extended versions of this to tantalise us further.

In the end though I have to say I can’t see how anyone could have done any better with the task in hand. But when the task is effectively turning apples into oranges, what was the point of trying in the first place? Just read the comic for fucks sake.

Minutemen Photograph

From Ain't It Cool News comes this 1940 picture of The Minutemen from the forthcoming Watchmen movie.

75 Comics Being Turned Into Films

The Den of Geek lists 75 comics currently being turned into movies.

Runaways (2011)
This Marvel comics original finds teenagers fleeing to make up the sins of their parents, who they have discovered to be covert super-villains. A finished script is expected by early 2009 and Runaways is said to spearhead Marvel's post-Avengers strategy.

Red (2010)
Warren Ellis's 2003 thriller - about a retired CIA assassin that a new administration feel is a threat - is the first DC property to leave the fold for other producers, and will be produced by Transformers/2's Lorenzo di Bonaventura, amongst others.

Wasted is Oot!

I was through at Forbidden Planet in Edinburgh last weekend for the launch of Wasted, a new comic where pal of 'pish Iain Laurie and I have found a home for our strip Blackcape.

We had a great day. It was nice to see people giving a toss about something we had been involved in and it was nice to see all the different folk who had contributed to the comic, including head honcho Alan Grant and big names like Frank Quitely and Jamie Grant, thrusting aside their gazillions of awards to hang out with us little guys. Many fun hours were spent in the pub but my favourite bit was sharing a fish tea with Jamie Grant, Frank Quitely, Alan Kerr and Iain in the City Cafe. It's the first time I've seen the house red ordered in a greasy spoon style chip shop.

The comic itself looks great and reads well for an anthology which tend usually to be editorially fuzzy and massively variable in terms of the quality of strips inside. Its not a loftily ambitious collection of course, its purely looking for laughs but I think it hits the mark more often than not.

It's available now for £3.25 and you should be able to get it from Forbidden Planet (certainly the Edinburgh store had loads and on checking, the Glasgow FP has copies as well) or direct from our distributor here. You can also get it here.

I notice that you can order it from Amazon as well now.

If you can't find it, gimme a shout and I'll get a copy to you. It may also be worth mentioning that if you subscribe (4 quarterly issues for £17.50 - print off the slip, fill it out and just sent it in - your money covers your comics and your P&P) you'll get an exclusive t-shirt by Simon Bisley, who's also been signed up for the cover for #3.

Here's a nice review we got from The List.

Everything We Know is Wrong

The trailer for The Watchmen movie. It does look good.

Same Old Same Old

Same Old Same Old is my new weekly comic strip about the horror of spending the bulk of your life with people who mildly hate you.

Big thanks to Iain for the art - it'll be the same 3 panels every week with a different gag.

Wasted Reviewed

Wasted has got a really good review in The List.

Powwkipsie

While we're on the subject of comics and Iain Laurie, here's his latest work,Powwkipsie.

In it, Iain moves away from the pay-off based humour of Blackcape to produce something starker and altogether more disturbing. He also continues to make strides as a visual storyteller, testing his own boundaries and those of the reader.

Chapters 1-3 are up already, so have a look and see what you think.

Wasted Available For Download

Most of you will (hopefully) have read Blackcape, the comic strip I do with 'pish mucker Iain Laurie. It has been due out in the shops for a while now in Wasted, a comic magazine put together by Alan Grant, Jamie Grant, Frank Quitley and several other comic book mega-talents.

While the printed edition of Wasted has been held up for a further short spell (hopefully available mid-June-ish), there is now a PDF download of the whole shootin' match so have a look and see what you think.

There's two of our strips in it, beautifully coloured by the soon-to-be-far-to-good-for-us Derek Dow and loads of other stuff by really great, talented people. Iain and I have still no clue what we're doing among them...

New Capes

Parping my own trumpet as per, just to let you know there are new "daily" style Blackcape strips going up over at our blog: getsomeblackcape

We've done a bunch, so there should be two or three up a week for the foreseeable future - have a check back every now and again if you like what you see.

There are also some BC pin-up's on the blog including cracking interpretations by the likes of Curt Sibling, Alan Kerr (see right) and Dave Lupton so have a ganders.

Awright, I'll post...or (to sound more positive) Creative News!

Tom has thrown down the blogging gauntlet so here's my first entry of 2008, which so far has been a busy and remarkably shite free year.

As Tom was saying, Iain and I have had Black Cape, our strip about unemployed superheroes, accepted for publication. We're told that we're just about certain of inclusion in the first issue in new underground style humour comic "Wasted" which should see print within the next few weeks and if last minute advertising squeezes us out, we're certs from #2 onwards.

Wasted should be quarterly moving to bi-monthly if successful and is the brainchild of a small core of creative people led by comics legend Alan Grant , who's famous in comic book circles for, among other things, long and extremely successful runs on Judge Dredd and Batman. Also contributing is the art team responsible for the best Superman comic in decades, Frank Quitely and Jamie Grant. The former is cover editor, the latter art editor for the entire publication. There's loads of great folk involved from UK comics veterans to guys getting their first real break.

Quite what the fuck we're doing rubbing shoulders with these genuine talents is anyone's guess, but here we are.

Being comic geeks of the highest/lowest order, Iain and I are of course having a whale of a time doing stuff that would interest only a person entirely sappy for comics. We were practically shaking with pleasure a few weeks ago for example when we managed to sneak a peak at some art for the new issue of Superman. Iain is now basically in a position where his favourite artist in the world knows him and says hello to him, which is naturally blowing his mind.

So that's great and who knows, we may even make a few quid.

We've also been doing our wee silver age-y side project GoshWow Comics as and when we get the chance.

Right now, we're also doing a guest strip for fellow Wasted contributor Alan Kerr's very funny Kreepy Kat site. "Fans" of my old fake Dilbert's may get a fleeting sense of Deja Vu...

On top of that, Tom and I wait with baited breath to hear back about our Glue radio pilot, which is in the hands (or bin) of BBC Radio's top man at present and we're also cracking on with a play that we'll hope to perform before the end of the year.

Oh aye, wife, wean, job - still doing all that n'aw.

Let's Get Wasted

There's been very little comics news on here of late. So here's some. A new comic hits the shelves this month. Wasted is brought to you by comic veterans Alan and Jamie Grant. What makes it interesting for readers of 'Pish is that the magazine will feature this site's very own Black Cape.

This is an article on the mag and Editor Alan Grant. Perhaps Fraser will come out of blogging retirement to tell you more about it.

"There are reputed to be around 300 million marijuana smokers in the world. Our aim is to have all of them buying and reading ‘Wasted.’"

And here's a post by Gerry Alanguilan, who, several years ago, published another comic called Wasted, which you can read here.

GOSH!WOW COMICS

Coming soon from the team who brought you Black Cape...and all that. This is Iain and I having a look at the kind of stuff we read by the ton while growing up.

We'll be posting it here and Iain has already stuck up some cracking teaser artwork.



The first Mr Hubris story is with me to complete at the moment so shouldn't be too long.

Black Cape #34

Merry Xmas folks...

Black Cape #33

Early Bill Watterson

Here's a website that shows off some rare Bill Watterson artwork. They are taken from his days as a student at Ohio's Kenyon College.