Last of the Time Lords

Copying Vader's funeral from Return of the Jedi, shot for shot, was a bit too cute, even for me, but otherwise... crikey that was a good episode of Who.

Wowsers.

51st?

In the Marvel Universe of today, as a result of a lengthy and boring story that claimed to be a civil rights metaphor but was actually about Iron Man and Captain America punching each other, super-powered people in the US have to register with the government or face prosecution. Those who register get the chance to join The Initiative, an organisation that lets Marvel sell yet another Avengers titile stations a government super-team in each of the fifty US states. So Minnesota gets a team, Hawaii gets a team, and so on.

Here are the members of The Initiative:



But wait. Who's that towards the back?



Why, it's Captain Britain, a British superhero, from Britain.

Which of the fifty US states is he representing then?

Stupid Marvel.

Dead Shredder

Gosh, it's been a while. Well, not much has changed in my life, except now I have a proper job, working in the enrolments office of one of Brighton's colleges. The inexorable slide into becoming a grown-up has finally begun...

May-ry Christmas

I've just seen my first Christmas shopping advert of the year.

Really.

Crikey.

Tooting One's Horn

To be honest, I wasn't very impressed when I heard about this, but Meg was, so she had us go on a hunt for the book in question.



Is that Neil Gaiman and John Romita's new Eternals hardback graphic novel? Yes it is. Is that a quote from me on the back cover? Indeed it is. Is it the only quote on the outside of the book? Why, I believe it is.

It's a queer kind of second-hand fame, but I'm considerably more impressed now.

Even if they did spell "bullet" wrong. Stupid Marvel.

Chronomancy!

From the New York Times:
...more viewers are watching shows delayed rather than live, using TiVo and other DVRs. Research indicates those viewers are more likely to fast-forward through spots than those who watch live TV.

...

"More likely"? I should think so. How many people have the Matrix-esque ability to fast forward through live TV anyway?

Someone got paid, probably vast amounts of money, to "research" that...

Joined a Cult

Yes, I've joined yet another social networking site (although one must ask how much social networking you can do if you're at a computer all day updating umpteen profile pages). This time, it's Facebook.

Lazarus Experimented on a Spider-Man

They drew very obvious parallels between the Time Lord regeneration process and the experiment Mr Saxon was funding. Which is no surprise, as we saw Saxon looking very ill indeed in the trailer immediately following the episode. He's obviously dying, and he apparently knows exactly who the Doctor is.

Of course he's the blinkin' Master isn't he?

Apparently showrunner Russell T Davies gives his writers a list of elements to include in their episodes. This episode's writer, Stephen Greenhorn, was given "Marvel Comics", "mad scientist", "experiment gone wrong", "supervillain", and it definitely showed in the episode. The climax was supposedly a nod to Quatermass, but seeing the Doctor defeat an enemy in a church belltower using sound as a weapon certainly evoked Spider-Man's battle with his alien costume, and not entirely because I'd seen Spider-Man 3 earlier in the day.

Which was excellent, by the by. It's got some mixed reviews, and it's not without some minor problems (Lucy Gordon's turn as an English news reporter (in New York?) was so horrible, I was sure that she had to be some Hollyoaks/girl group offshoot given a cameo rather than an actual actor), but if you don't like this film, you don't have a soul. Not as good as the peerless second film, but quite good nonetheless.

I had to laugh when a character literally blunders into a particle accelerator experiment at one point (are they still using bits of James Cameron's Spidey script?), further exemplifying that "experiment gone wrong" aspect of the Marvel Universe. One scientist unsportingly pointed out that there was someone in the machine, but his colleague was thankfully on hand with a shrug and a suitably irresponsible "it's just a bird". Wouldn't Civil War have been more sensible if the government had registered the scientists, given how 90% of Marvel Universe experiments go so badly wrong and produce all these dangerous freaks in the first place?

Not Sensible

So apparently, a new online version of Sensible World of Soccer is being released to the X-Brick's Live service. Online. Sensi. X-Brick only.

Bloody Micro$oft.

The Brighton Festival Can Go F*ck Itself

They've got David Lloyd and Kate Evans (among others) in to do a talk/workshop thing on the 18th of May. David Lloyd drew V for Vendetta. Kate Evans does political activism comics, like Copse. The Festival organisers have decided that this is part of their "four-day mini festival of writing for children". Because comics are for children, of course, and the speakers they've assembled don't disprove that at all. Cretins.