Just Because I Can

Relative Dimensions

I would get the mini-Cyberman anyway, but the little super-deformed skeletal astronaut is wonderful.

Things I Never Knew, part 1

I've often wondered (because I am sad like that) how film-makers come up with the names of their characters, particularly in action movies. I wondered if there was some focus group coming up with tough, macho style names to attach to the latest Van Dammage feature, or whether it's picked at random from the phone book.

Well, apparently, to legally use a name in a film, there either have to be no examples of that name in the US national phone directory, or at least five examples. I assume this only applies to American films.

In No Particular Order

I'm a bit behind here, but Pro Evolution Soccer on Wii is the best footie game since Sensi. Since the death of that venerable franchise, I'd basically been making do with the playable but dull FIFA and had been avoiding the Pro Evo series for no good reason; particularly foolish given the consistently good reviews bestowed upon the franchise. The clever new control system of the Wii version got a lot of attention, but still I resisted, until it was forced under the tree at Chrimble. It turns out to be quite brilliant. It plays completely differently to any footie game I've ever seen (but doesn't have to; it can be played in a bog-standard Fifa way if you want, but you're missing out) in the sense that you really do control an entire team rather than just one player. In the majority of these games, you have to rely on the AI to back you up when you go for a run, or try to put a cross into the box, but in Pro Wiivo, you can move any team member into any position on the field, make them move where you want, and so on, and it's nothing short of revolutionary. What Konami have done, essentially, is take the environment of a real time strategy game like Command & Conquer and slap it onto football, and it works wonderfully. And at £13 from Amazon (likely cheaper elsewhere too), it's also a bargain. I'm not very good at it as yet, but I'd be up for an online match; my Wii number is 7714 7295 2393 7107.

ITV are trumpeting their snagging of the FA Cup broadcast rights with plenty of billboard advertising. It's all macho nonsense based around an "in the FA Cup, all men are equal" tagline, and one of the posters shows a fireman competing with a Manchester United player for a header; it's a clear reference to the previous round where a postman knocked the once-mighty Leeds United out of the contest, but the unfortunate implication of the advert is that a man who every day risks his life to save the lives of others is somehow not as worthy as a bloke who's paid millions to run around a field for an hour and a half once a week. Nice work, ITV. Classy.

I have a beard. I had an ill-advised facial growth back in Sixth Form, but it looked like a tuft of ginger pubes and was quite the embarrassment, and I swore never to repeat that mistake, and yet... Back around Chrimble '07, a colleague grew a superb beard, a full-on North Sea fisherman thing, but his missus not-so-subtly suggested that he get rid of it by buying him a shaver as a gift. I detected the beginnings of new winter plumage sometime in November and urged him to keep it this year, pledging that I too would grow a Christmas Beard in support. Meg hated the idea at first, but now has become quite taken with my hirsuteness, and won't let me shave it off. Combine that with the fact that I haven't had a haircut in two months, and I'm starting to look like a feral Geography teacher.

Vimanarama is great fun, and probably the last decent thing Grant Morrison did. It's also the only known instance where a Wikipedia page quotes me. Meanwhile, Brandon Graham ad Corey Lewis are geniuses, even if the former is borrowing liberally from Mitz. Graham's King City is particularly inspirational, and I can't wait to see the second volume; I may give his werewolf porn comic a miss though.

And I was rooting for Paterson Joseph, but this fellow has a definite sense of the eccentric about him, so I think he could work. After all, I thought David Tennant was too young when they announced him, and he turned out okay. Incoming showrunner Steven Moffat's favourite Doctor was Peter Davison, again a youngster at the time, and he seems to have a good idea of how to make the young-but-impossibly-old thing work. All that said, I am a tiny bit worried that the producers will try to twist the show to make it more youth-friendly, but I'll give them the benefit of the doubt.

Eins Zwei Drei

By the hairy chin of Odin, it's been a while. Apologies. I'm sure there's something worth reporting, but I'll have to have a think about it. Tomorrow. In the meantime, this is what's making me happy right now:



Middle-aged German car designer fights multiple copies of himself using his powerful kung-fu. This is the kind of thing I missed when I lived in America; apart from during the Superbowl, they don't tend to do funny or clever adverts over there. Then again, I'm not entirely sure how the "beat yourself" message directly relates to the car being sold.

I Say Thee... Okay!

There have been rumours knocking around for a couple of months now that Kenneth Brannagh will be directing the next big Marvel movie, an adaptation of Thor, god of Thunder and scion of Asgard. Now Brannagh doing something nerdy like that seemed somewhat unlikely (although he did do Frankenstein, and the less said about that, the better), and all in all it sounded like someone making a rather superficial connection between the director's love of Shakespeare and the dubious quasi-Shakespearean dialogue associated with the thunder god's comic appearances.

Brannagh's Henry V was on this afternoon, and I was reminded of how good it is as a film; not only that, but it's a pretty convincing audition piece for Thor: The Movie. It's dramatic, never slow, and there's a stonking battle at the end, filmed exactly the way I'd want to see Thor, all blood, tears, rain and mud. Great stuff.

And if Brian Blessed doesn't play Odin, there's no justice in the world.

As Nails

Now, I quite liked Ang Lee's Hulk; the ending was nonsensical, but the rest was pretty solid, and those who thought Eric Bana's performance was too restrained were missing the point. So I wasn't expecting much of the sort-of-sequel, particularly after lukewarm reviews from pretty much everywhere, only to enjoy it even more. It's not as clever as Lee's version, but I think the key thing is that it's not trying to be; the film takes the simple premise of a big green bloke smashing stuff and does it as well as possible. Not fussy, not special, just rock solid. It would have been nice to have seen the Hulk get stronger and larger during the big final fight, and I would have preferred him to do the big jumps from the cartoon and comics rather than the tiny little Spideyesque hops we got, but those are my only complaints. Not bad at all.

I was dead pleased this week to discover The Girly Comic Book v1 on my doormat. I contributed to the first issue of this anthology, ooh, about seven years ago now, and I never expected that contribution to appear again, so I was incredibly proud when editor Selina Lock got in contact to let me know that the story I drew back then would make it into the collected edition. I've had my name on the outside of a hardback comic collection before, but this is the first time my work's been included inside one. If only it were better work! But as Meg points out, whenever I'm not pleased with my current output, I can look back to see how much I've improved.

All of which is not exactly selling it, but The Girly Comic Book v1 really is a neat little collection full of great little comic stories, and it's quite eclectic too. The foreword from Mike Carey compares it to the generally excellent Flight, and I don't think he's far off. You can buy a copy for a very reasonable £15 at the Factor Fiction website.

The Legend

About ten or so years ago, Channel Four had a brief kung fu season of late night films, I think on Saturdays. One of those was The Legend of Fong Sai Yuk, a thrilling mix of martial arts, family drama, political tensions and vaguely Shakespearean comedy. I loved it to bits and was very pleased that I'd taped it.

That tape went missing a long time ago, and I've been trying to find a dvd copy for a while, only to discover that the Weinsteins had bought the international dvd rights and, as the Weinsteins tend to do, butchered the film and slapped an ugly dub on it, without giving the option to watch it in the original language. Oh dear.

The only option was to buy a copy direct from China, but I'm always wary of that route, as I've heard too many stories of dodgy bootleg copies being sold on the sly. Nonetheless, on Friday I went ahead and ordered one, thinking that a bootleg of the original is better than a pristine copy of the Weinstein atrocity.

Then I read this week's Radio Times, and discovered that it's on, in the original Cantonese, this Friday. Argh.

Funny Pages

Lots of newspapers have comics sections, but that tends to mean a little pull-out with reprints of Peanuts or somesuch. I recently discovered that the Guardian has a slightly more ambitious comics section, on Saturdays I think; this morning I discovered that they actually have a pretty good comics discussion and news section on their website. I don't think I've ever seen a print version of it, but it's good to see nonetheless. It's not even as highbrow and faux-trendy as one might expect, either.

My Life in Comics

Borrowed from Rol...

Favourite regular series right now?

I'm not reading many regular series right now, because I'm tired of all the crap. Sorry. But I'm still really enjoying Invincible; it's a simple, solid superhero title that reminds me a lot of the old Stern/Frenz Amazing Spider-Man, only with more gratuitous violence. I could do without that bit, although I understand its inclusion.

Comic book character you only recently discovered/started reading?

Er... the only title I'm reading from the Big Two (and what a joke that concept has become) is Captain Britain and MI:13, but he's been knocking around for decades, so I wouldn't say I've "discovered" him.

If you could draw/write one character who would it be?

The Avengers. I know it's a cheat, but I don't care.
Alternatively, Death's Head.

Are you a fan of the big multi-issue crossover extravaganzas?

In theory, but they're never any good, are they? They're done far too often nowadays; both Marvel and DC have been in a constant state of crossover for about three years now. They always seem to confuse "epic" with "long", and they always promise much but deliver little. I think the last crossover I actually enjoyed was Operation: Galactic Storm, and that was 1992.

Last comic book series that you dropped and why?

Ha. Pretty much all of them. I finally gave up on the Avengers titles because I couldn't justify paying money to see Bendis (puttup!) run them into the ground; I even stopped accepting the free review copies I got through Comics Bulletin because I got worn out by the interminable awfulness of it all.
And then there's Spider-Man. The recent reboot was as wrong-headed, inane, and smug as Boris Johnson at the Olympics, and I couldn't go on reading.
I never thought I'd drop Spidey and the Avengers, but Marvel proved me wrong. However, Bendis (puttup!) is leaving Mighty Avengers, the series he created but proved unable to actually write properly; taking over is Dan Slott, who was one of the Spidey reboot writers, but that mess was editorially-mandated, so I'm cautiously optimistic about his Avengers. It will probably be rendered unreadable by being forced to participate in the braindead crossover of the moment, but I can hope.

Favourite character?

Spider-Man, Death's Head, Rocket Raccoon, Thor. In that order. I think.

Are you a DC or a Marvel fan?

I really don't get DC's heroes. They all seem so stiff and conservative, your grandad's superheroes, if you will. Also, DC reprints weren't nearly as plentiful as Marvel's when I was a nipper, so I grew up on the latter.

Do you remember your first comic/series?


I remember it from a reprint in a Grandreams Spider-Man annual in the early 80's. While I'm sure I read comics before, that story stuck with me all my life, and is largely responsible for me swapping the Black Cat in for the simpering Gwen Stacy in the classic Spidey love triangle.

Is Watchmen the movie going to be as good as the comic book?
Nowhere nearly. The thing is, Watchmen isn't a great story; there's a decent twist, and it's a nicely layered mystery, but it's not a brilliant plot. What's great about Watchmen is the density of the storytelling, the repeated motifs, the playing with the structure and format of the comic book, the focus on aging superheroes past their prime, and the examination of the superhero psyche. All that structural stuff will, by definition, be chucked out in an adaptation (to me, the film looks less realistic than the comic), and I'm not expecting in-depth character psychoanalysis from the director of the Dawn of the Dead remake...

Favourite comic book movie?

Spider-Man 2 without a doubt.

Worst comic book movie?

It's either Batman and Robin or LXG. I'm tempted to put Batman Begins in there too, but it's partially redeemed by Gary Oldman and Michael Caine.

Character you’d like to see in a movie?

Thor. I hear it's in the works, but it'll probably be awful. They should do it either as a gloriously over the top fantasy, pulling liberally from Kirby and Simonson, or drench it rain, blood and mud and play up the viking aspect.

Series that you’d like to see on TV?

I'm not a fan of Daredevil, but it baffles me that there hasn't been a TV show already. You can do the superhero stuff, and since he's low powered, it'll be cheap on the special effects; you're not going to need to spend millions on a cgi Galactus, for example. You can do plenty of the soap opera love life stuff, since Matt Murdock's got more than a couple of notches on his bedpost. And then there's the courtroom stuff. There's enough material for three shows in there.