This is a call...

I need your help, blog-fans! I'm after the book on the left, Out Of The Pit. It's a sort of companion piece to those choose-your-own-adventure books of the Eighties (and now rereleased), and eBay is being particularly unhelpful in tracking down an affordable copy.
So if any of you have an unwanted copy (hi Bill!), or know of one somewhere, please let me know. I'd also appreciate it if you can spread the word that I'm looking for it. Fell free to leave a comment, or to emal me. Thanks, weblings!

Sad news. The Incredible Hulk has shut down his diary. I suspect the involvement of Marvel lawyers with humour deficiencies. The world of blogging will mourn his absence.

I've been unusually productive in the past couple of days. No final pieces, but lots of sketchbook stuff. I'm toying with the idea of putting a "sketchbook" section on the website, but only proper artists do that, and I've noticed that their "sketchbooks" tend to be work they've not coloured in, rather than actual sketches. Still, it's a possibility. Anyway, lots of potential illustrations in there, I think.

On TV tonight: Alias is pretty much it. This season looks to have a very interesting story arc, but the individual episodes have been rather dull thus far. Which, now I think of it, has been true of the show all along.

Aiee! My Bleeding Ears! (or Eliminate William)

One growing trend in cinema that I'm not enjoying is this idea that films need to be really, really loud. It started with xXx, a film so painfully dull that it needed to give its audiences brain haemorrages through sonic torture in order to make them think they saw something special. It also occurred in Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle, apparently, but I avoided that one, with the excuse that I hadn't seen the first one, so didn't want to get the storyline muddled. I've always been a bit of a prude in this respect, as I've never full understood the eardrum-burstingly-loud=good, equation, even when it comes to music, but from the number of complaints we received at the cinema I worked at when xXx was shown, I'm not alone when it comes to films. It threatened to ruin Kill Bill.

But it didn't. I can't adequately explain why this film is good without describing every scene in detail, and I can't do that half as well as the film does. So go and see it. The worst that can happen is you don't like it.

Actually, you could go deaf.

A note about the violence. Over here at least, the outrage over this violent film has already begun, which considering it only came out today so half of these people complaining haven't even seen it yet, is quite surprising. If you've seen the Black Knight scene of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, you've already seen the worst Kill Bill can offer. For Pete's sake people, it's a live-action cartoon, nothing more.

New Arrivals And Missed Opportunities

A while ago, Cap'n Black asked me what it's like out here in Minnesota. I've not forgotten, Dan, but I need to think about it some more. I was going to write a bit tonight about how ladybirds have widely different reputations on either side of the Atlantic, but I suspect that's not really what Dan was asking about. I'll get to it, promise.

I've updated my blogger links over there on the right. Everyone over there is a jolly nice person, and is bound to make your day more interesting and/or cheerful.

The Case Of The Missing Plot: Smallville and Angel

Okay, so that wasn't it.

Smallville angered me today. I'm growing quite fond of the show, even though it concerns Superman, quite possibly my least favourite comic character (closely followed by Captain America-see a pattern?). I thought the first season was pretty awful, but the second season was pretty strong. Still no replacement for Buffy at its best, but still pretty good.
Tonight, they dealt with last week's silly ending quite quickly, which is good, as it was quite silly. Meg points out that the reason they did it was so they could smash up lots of stuff this week, which they did. I still think if they'd done it the way I suggested (see this time last week for more), it would have been more dramatic, albeit less action-packed. Anyway, this is all beside the point. I was angered by this week's epsiode because they left out a whole chunk of the episode's plot. There are spoilers below. Only click and drag the mouse pointer if you're prepared.

Nasty gangsters have kidnapped Clark, and have tied up the lovely Kents. Lana turns up, notices these weird fellows with guns hanging about (very astute), then, quite audaciously, beats them up. These must be the worst gangsters ever. During the fight, Lana knocks one gangster onto a pitchfork, where he unsurprisingly dies. Ma Kent looks horrified. Lana bgins to cry. Cut to advertisements. We come back from advertisements. No Lana or Ma Kent or shish-kebabbed gangsters. Okay, they're teasing us with it. They'll come back to it later. Next time we see the Kents, they're having Happy Time with Clark (who has rescued himself) and Lex (who they've sort of adopted). No mention of the dead gangster in the barn. Next time we see Lana, she rides onto the farm on her horse, having left her car at the farm already when she killed the gangster. She and Clark have Sad Time. End. BUT WHAT ABOUT THE GANGSTER? Did they bury him on the farm somewhere? Did the police come along and let Lana and the Kents off because they're major characters, and it just wouldn't be the done thing to have them rot in jail? And what happened to the gangster's gangster mate, the one who wasn't killed by Lana? Now I realise that they may be saving this for a future episode, but if so, surely there should have been hints about it, rather than just dropping it altogether? Weird, and frustrating.

Meanwhile, Angel featured the reintroduction of a character thought to be dead. The spoilers are all out of the bag now, and you'd have to be really dedicated to avoiding them to not know who this character is, but I'll leave it unsaid just in case (and I know I mentioned their name here a week ago). Anyway, this character steals the show, as expected, and the episode is a lightweight one, obviously deisgned to get this character back into action with the minimum of fuss. Unlike Smallville, the plot for tonight's Angel was all there, but none of it made any sense. In an attempt to make it look as if Angel, the resurrected character and a third character were all conspiring against each other, we were treated to a plot where a lack of writing ability replaced any mystery, to the extent where Angel had to explain the plot of the episode to another character, and the audience, at the end. Shoddy. But it was good to see the once-dead character back in action, even if it cheapens their death somewhat. That said, there's a definite air of desperation in Angel. The show's not doing badly, otherwise it wouldn't have been renewed, so I can only assume that it's a case of the Angel creative team worrying too much about holding onto any audience that has jumped over since the end of Buffy. As a result of this, the cast of this show are starting to resemble the Buffy gang too closely (for instance, Fred's dialogue has gone from "scatterbrained" to "just like Willow's"), and almost every scene references Buffy in some way. It's not welcoming, rather it's, as I said above, clingy and desperate.

But first, the news...

Here's an excellent article comparing American politics to a soap opera. Compelling stuff, although I do think the writer is being a bit harsh on Governor Arnie.
Another excellent article here highlighting what really goes on at the Natural History Museum, including a warning never to buy a bag of crisps at the museum.
Finally, a very sad article about the Vatican's new aggressive policy on condoms. And people think that only Islam breeds fundamentalism. Regime change© at the Vatican, anyone?
Alas, there's not much else to report. I have a splitting headache and it's far too hot (it's October, it's Minnesota, and it's 28° outside!). Still, I have the adventures of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser to keep me entertained, and I'm very excited about a little project that's just come up...

Oh, and there's this, which is good fun if you know a bit about Star Trek. Finally (really finally this time), Tom makes an excellent point (scroll down to Tuesday's entry) regarding the return of Doctor Who.

Okay, that's really it now. Off you go Bill/Meg!

"Oh My GOD!"

I slept for a grand total of three hours last night. I'm a little spaced out this morning, but strangely, not too tired.
Excellent news for fans of quality televisual entertainment: Magnum PI is set to appear on the big screen! Happy news indeed. Start growing your replica Thomas Magnum mustaches now!
Troubled by the responsibility of the One Ring? Want to get rid of It? Don't know the way? Well, courtesy of our good friends at Billyworld, here are the directions to the Cracks of Doom. You'll not need to pack a lot, as you'll most likely be killed, but apparently it's quite warm down there this time of year.
My plan for today is to get my head down and do some drawing. I have a lot of requests, not to mention scripts, to catch up with.

Looking at that little lot, it seems I'm more spaced out than I thought. Perhaps an hour or two in bed before I pick up the pencils...

What the heck is HE doing in my comics?

Geoff Johns may be a wonderful writer of all things JSA and Flash, but his Avengers run has been diabolical. Inconsistent characterisation and disjointed plotting have been the defining characteristics of his run, as well as a bungled attempt at real-world relevance. I don't begrudge him trying, as the idea of a world-saving superteam now has to deal with the reality of stuff like the World Trade Centre attacks, something that should only have happened in comic books. But does Johns have to be so damn bad at it? I had to laugh when Iron Man berates the EU for wanting to dissolve the Maastricht Treaty, apparently thinking that all of Europe's "personal" freedoms would be dissolved with it. Geoff mate, it's not that kind of treaty. Quite why the first thing the EU, upon finding out that Europe's capital cities have vanished, wants to dissolve an agreement on a single currency and the steel trade, I don't know. Apparently Johns does, but then Johns seems to get his ideas from Fox News.
That was funny. When he portrayed the Russians as evil world dominators in a later issue, then spent most of the current "Red Zone" storyline chucking about loaded words like "terrorist" and "traitor" with apparently no knowledge of their meaning, it got offensive.
Then he has George-Bloody-Bush turn up at the end to give everyone a slap on the back for being such good Americans.
If you're under eighteen, do NOT click and drag the mouse pointer over the follwing:

Wanker.

Okay. Done now.

On a slightly related note, here's a Guardian interview with Michael Moore. Moore is a shameless and manipulative propagandist, but at least he's a good guy. Every American should be made to read his Stupid White Men, and a fair few Brits could do with having a look too. Just ignore the chapter about Israel and Northern Ireland.

The Great Desktop Mascot War...Part II

I didn't get any points awarded to me, which is very sad. Was it because I didn't have a picture? Well, what a camera cannot provide, let an artist's hands produce!

Alas, there is no Eeyore...

West Wing: The Next Generation

You know how Star Trek: The Next Generation would do those issue-based episodes, where they'd build up a really tricky and meaty moral question, and then something would happen in the last five minutes which would deflate the situation completely?

The West Wing did it last night. Last week's season opener was top, being an exciting political thriller in the Tom Clancy mould. This week, tensions were high, bombs and bullets were starting to fly, war was imminent. Someone was going to have to make a difficult (i.e. interesting) decision.
Then, in literally the last five minutes, the reason for all the ultimatums (ultimatia?) and threats just went away, and no difficult (i.e. interesting) decisions needed to be made, in one of the floppiest, laziest examples of scripting I have ever seen in a quality show. Shoddy.

Smallville did better, serving up an interesting and exciting season opener. I have only one reservation, and that's that the ending was wrong. [SPOILERS] I agree that Pa Kent should have gone up to Metropolis to bring Clark down, but he should have done it the Dark Knight Returns way. He should have gone up there with Kryptonite in hand, and smacked the boy around a bit. Instead, he goes to Clark's secret cave and Jor-El gives him superpowers so that he and Clark can have a superhero slugfest.[END SPOILERS] Disapppointing ending, but a good episode.

Haven't seen Angel yet. We got Meg's sister to tape it for us, because Meg wanted to watch The West Wing. What an excellent decision that was.

The Great Desktop Mascot War

Over at biLly's blog, you can see the opening salvoes of this one-upmanship in the field of desktop mascots/toys. Unfortunately, we don't have a digital camera (yet), so you'll have to take my word on this, but crowded around our laptop-turned-desktop are:

• Donatello the Teenage Mutant Ninja/Hero Turtle. One of the newer toys which are much better than the original toys, and because they're not selling at all, are dirt cheap.


• Mantenna, member of the Horde and classic Masters Of The Universe figure, recently won on eBay.


• Two identical HeroClix Hulks, facing off against each other. While the model is identical, one is #58-Avengers Hulk, and the other is #059-Defenders Hulk.


• Gali Nuva, a blue Bionicle.


• Evil Bendy, hanging by his legs from the desk lamp.

That chap there is Cleveland Skaggs, the protagonist of a cyberpunk graphic novel I'm co-creating with Liam. Click on the picture, or here, to see a larger version.
I did some minor updates to my Avengers pages (mostly some cover scans for the early issues), and page fourteen of the Dungeons and Dragons cartoon comic is now up at Spooky's Dungeon.
The new seasons of Angel and Smallville start tonight. Both should be entertaining, with an "evil" Clark in the latter and Spike joining the cast of Angel. They're heavily promoting the Spike angle, knowing full well how popular the character is, and how dull and B-lister the Angel cast are (the strength of the show is the plots). I wonder how David Boreanaz feels about being upstaged on his own show? I almost feel sorry for the bloke.