fast broads

Licking the Queens Face

2012-01-06T09:15:00.002Z

Things that make me cheerful on a miserable day.

On the 20th of March the Royal Mail will be celebrating British comics by
releasing a set of stamps that show 10 comic covers with a character from each
on the stamp as well.The set includes The Dandy, The Beano, Eagle, Topper,
Tiger, Bunty, Buster, Valliant, Twinkle and 2000 AD with Dredd as the main
man.

Something me and the wife will both like. me because I love comics and her because she loves Nurse Nancy from Twinkle, which her gradfather used to read her.

Darkseid of the Moon

2011-11-14T15:34:00.004Z

Remember how much I disliked Geoff Johns and Jim Lee's Justice League? No, well scroll down a little bit and you'll see but enough of that. In it I wondered if the editor was allowing hideous art because Lee is his boss, and in the comics industry jobs are wafting out the window in New York. Well, after seeing this I am possitive that that statement is correct. Introduced into the JL fairly soon is Darkseid, ruler of Apokolips and neo deity of evil. He was a hulking brute, think brick out house created by Kirby, who didn't really do sleek and slender at the best of times. This is what Darkseid looked like in the old DC

He is a scary beast, and quite right too as he wants to erase free will and make the Universe in his shape via the Anti Life Equation. He may wear a little skirt but then so did the Cekts and the Romans and they shoved swords and spears where swords and spears don't belong.

So how does this fear laden monster look in the eyes of Jim Lee? The most feared man in the universe has to look scary enough to wet several layers of foundation garment in a single stare. Surely Jim's cracked it, with Kirby creating such a great start, and this from a Kirby hater. Come on Jim, let's see it
Ladies and Gentlement I give you Darkseid, the Duncan Norvelle of New Genesis.

And with that any credibility in the leadership of Johns, Lee and DiDio flew out the door, never to return

Review

2011-10-31T09:54:00.001Z

Great review of Too Much Sex and Violence #1 here

You can buy it from Rol

Too Much Sex and Violence

2011-10-14T08:25:00.007+01:00

Nigel Lowrey

Rol's new comic is now out and I have to say it's a humdinger.

Set in the northern town of Fathomsby, where there is something not quite right around every cobbled street corner, TMSAV introduces us to a rag tag bunch of residents, all of whom are not quite what they seem. Monster movie DJs run the local radio station, the derelict pier is owned by the local gangster who's missus is bit weird and a bit friendly with the gents of the town and the new cop in town is possibly the only one who's not corrupt. Add in two mysteries and some other nutters, freaks and odd bods and you get the gist. Think Psychoville and League of Gentleman and you've kind of got the idea

Andrew Cheverton

TMSAV is drawn by a plethora of artists all who do a character each. The art team from The Jock, Hirsts debut small press book,Nigel Lowrey and Adrian Bamforth are joined by Paul Rainey (There's No Time Like The Present, Book of Lists), Martin Eden (Spandex, The O Men), Andrew Cheverton (West, The Girly Comic), Rob Wells (Crisp Biscuit Comics),Kelvin Green (Pjang) and Mark Renhard on the first issue. I thought at first the distinctive styles may clash, but the world of Fathomsby is so well realised that the different artists just add to the character of each protaganist. Some you'll love, some you'll hate and some will will just make your spine shudder.

Paul Rainey

I have to declare my bias for this book as I letter, design and do production work on it, and have drawn 3 pages for issue 2, but I don't care as it's excellent. I have worked on Rol's comics for over 15 years and TMSAV is one of the strongest pieces he's written, with the balance between plots (and there's several of them here) and character set just right along with an intriguing sense of mystery, humour,fear and general unease. You can buy it here for £2.50 inc p&p for a print copy or 99p for pdf download

Adrian Bamforth art Me colours

Layout

2011-09-02T12:46:00.005+01:00

Layouts for a page of a short story I'm doing with Rol Hirst. Going for a different style to usual, and blatantly using photo reference. Not sure how this will turn out but will be in colour

DC New Schmoo

2011-09-01T09:17:00.010+01:00

So the DC New Universe is finally here.

I've held back discussing this until the books came out. I really wasn't happy with the cancelling of everything and then whacking 52 new titles out in a month, it just reeked of two things,
1-the new order making their mark on the company with controversial, publicity grabbing agendas
2-money grabbing because everybody knows that issue #1s sell like hot cakes, and JL#1 has reported 200,000 domestic sales, add on 10-15% for UK retailers and international figures and we are looking in actuality at around the 300,000 mark.

Out of the 52 there are only about a half dozen I'm really looking forward to, and they are in the "the dark" line, with Jeff Lemire's Animal Man and Frankenstein books, Swamp Thing and the fantastic sounding Justice League Dark By Peter Milligan which sounds mental by having John Constantine, Zatanna and Shade the Changing Man amongst others together in a hero team.

However most of the 52 look to range from shoddy to shocking. There's a horrible return to the art styles of the Image days, even resorting to Rob Liefeld returning on Hawk and Dove with possibly the worst art of his career - Hey kids he's doing two ongoing books and you can tell because this is worse than ever

Liefeld on the new Hawk and Dove

Red Hood and the Outlaws art by Kenneth Rocafort

So yesterday we saw the first release - Justice League by Geoff Johns and Jim Lee. It's the only new 52 title released this week and its the big name creators so you can tell it's the biggest title on the books. Only releasing 2 books in a week is unheard of, the other title being the final Flashpoint which brings in the new universe, it's financial suicide. It'd better be good...

Spoilers may appear review after the following illo

It isn't. It's the worse JL since Justice League Task Force.

I'm guessing its the one with the big names and big hype because both Lee and Johns are on the staff of DC, Co Publisher and Chief Creative Officer respectively so they were cheap, hey lads you already get a hefty wedge each month, you know that bit on your job description that says "Any other duties deemed reasonable..." well, this is one of those. I say this because the script has no effort whatsoever put into it and Lee's art is great if you like backgrounds but the characters are shocking.

Setting a new continuity five years ago in what is essentially a multi issue flashback is a bad idea, giving the other 51 books a chance to set the world events next week. If the next arc writers, because I honestly expect Jones and Lee to have gone when the first story finishes, want to write something they now have to consider at least 200 issues of other books.

The aim of DCnU is to get kids back into comics so we have another generation of sales, and you can tell this because it's written like the Disney Channel, the hardest word in the strip is subtlety and there are parts where exposition and art show the same thing, making one of them pointless.

We start with Batman chasing an alien while he is being chased by the most weapons heavy Gotham PD ever seen. When did they get a fleet of attack choppers? He's on it but messed up only to be saved by Green Lantern. Which is when the big problems start

Jones has made Hal Jordan, his beloved Green Lantern into the a himbo. All this guy does is brag about himself and does so in an annoying manner, referring to himself in the 3rd person, talking like the love interest in Sharpays Fabulous Adventure, amazed that Batman exists and lighting the sky up to show the anti heroes Gotham PD their location like a big sign that says Hey Cops We're Here with a thousand arrows pointing at them while chirping the brilliant piece of dialogue "Put my hands in the air? So they can just shoot me?" and "I know the drill. They don't like us." These words of wisdom are soon followed a couple of pages later with such excellence as "Move!" "We don't need to. Green Lantern's got this." and "Hold on a second...You're not just some guy in a bat costume are you? Are you freaking kidding me?!"

It's not just GL who has this dialogue problem, The so called super smart detective Batman has trouble understanding GL's role as a space cop, not knowing what a space sector is.

Then we actually get a third member of the League introduced some 18 pages in, only as its flashback he's not even a hero. Vic Stone, or Cyborg as he will become is one big cliche, a high school kid who is a true jock, but his dad is embroiled in his work and doesn't see the matches that he excels at. He's the acceptable black face in the locker room-the art suggests another two in distance during the match and a black scout but only the colouring says this, his face has no Afro-American characteristics. He's in it for 4 pages then its back to GL and Bats for a couple of pages before they chuck in a splash of Tom Welling, sorry Superman,and that's it.

The script is terrible, the dialogue worse but what really lets it down in the art. Jim Lee doesn't even try with the characters, the backgrounds are fabulous but it's like he drew them whilst waiting for approval on character deigns, he just went back and drew the costumes on over sketched in mannequins. There is no dynamic movement beyond the first four pages, it's all very stilted and wooden. Batman has no contrast of black and gray, its all very scratchy where you would expect solid black. His cover is hideous with the Man Of Steel being more Boy of Suet, everyone on the cover is pudgy faced while David Finch's alternative has everyone looking like they are in the mid 40s. Talk of the cover - Superman's chest emblem looks like it's been stuck on the art at a later date. The shadow of the ribs cages at points are so deep that it looks like there is no room in the torso for organs. Some of this could be the fault of inker Scott Williams, but he's normally a reliable inker and his relationship with Lee is usually really good, but it makes me wonder if he's afraid to change Lee's lines now that Jim is in charge. And going by these inks for issue 2 I don't think it is his fault.

Usual colourist Alex Sinclair isn't given much to do either, bar chuck a bit of luminous green on greys and blues. Again, if I saw the name Sinclair on I would look forward to good colouring as he's one of a few excellent computer colourists, but again he's sub par.

Overall JL1 is a massive disappointment. I don't know if it's that the creative team are past their best, the idea sucks or an editor who is afraid to tell his bosses that the work they have put out isn't good enough, what I do know is that I'll be leaving this on the shelf next month

sketch

2011-08-30T10:28:00.003+01:00

Character sketches to see if a new style would work. Click to enlarge

2011-08-24T11:51:00.000+01:00

And here it is inked with minimal colour

Rondo a la Mondo

2011-08-23T14:20:00.003+01:00

Work in progress for my contribution to The Weekly TAB who this week are featuring art on the theme of 1950s Sci Fi and B Movies. I'm doing films greatest face, Mr Rondo Hatton who's name wasn't half bad either. Unfortunately he never saw the 1950s as he'd died some years earlier, but I had to pay tribute to a man who's name nobody knew but who's face was instantly recognisable.

Too Much Sex and Violence

2011-07-19T08:45:00.004+01:00

Starting September - a new comic written by Rol Hirst.

Issue #1 art by Andrew Cheverton, Paul Rainey, Kelvin Green, Nigel Lowrey, Mark Renhard, Martin Eden, Adrian Bamforth and Rob Wells. Design by Dave Metcalfe-Carr.

Future issues to include art by Dave Metcalfe-Carr, Chris Askham, Tony McGee, Ryan Taylor, Neil Cavenham, Stephen Prestwood and others...

To be sure you don't miss the latest updates, sign up at rolhirst.co.uk

art by Kelvin Green, Nigel Lowrey and martin Eden, Colour and Design by me

top ten tash test

2011-07-18T14:15:00.017+01:00

There is something about a well groomed moustache that makes those members of the male population who cannot grow one so envious. I can grow a middling to fair one, always wanted to be able to get a full on, hard as nails lip warmer but to no avail, and since marrying a fuzzaphobe any chance of me growing a tash are gone. Up north the hairy lip is known correctly as a tash, however for some reason the midlanders call it a tosh, but that's a load of old tosh, they think the double decker passenger transport vehicle is named after the sound a bee makes.

So let's raise a shaving mug and toast the greatest moustaches of all time

10 Jimmy 'Greavsie' Greaves

I'm letting one footballer in on the list because most soccer snot soakers don't cut the mustard, like 80s high cut shorts the footballing facial furniture didn't do much good at concealing something highly undesirable. Greavsie left the tache till late in life to counteract the receding barnet and ended up looking like a greengrocer at Morrisons in Clacton.

9 Captain Mainwaring
There's something wrong about a ginger tache, it looks like a cat's left it's tail there whils sleeping on the back of your chair. This sad tash belonged to one of tv's best comedic characters, a sad clown full of his own importance.

8 Leslie Phillips
Ding Dong!

7 Salvador Dali Just look at it, why do you need reasons when a nation who are notiously bad at the fuzz can give us something as wonderfull as that?

6 The Chuckle Brothers
You buy one, you get one free. Champions of the mullet/moustache combo and purveyors of intellectual high brow comedy, the Chucks are sill going strong 30 years later, but where is the so called superior Ben Elton, eh?

5 Emmet J Scanlan
Soaps have a bad rep with tashes, you just have to look at Ian Beale's attempt, but here's a young actor in a young person's soap reclaiming the tash. Unfortunately it turned out to be a signpost that his character - Brendan Brady in Hollyoaks was gay. Tashes, as we will see later on are not the unspoken domain of the gaylord, they are the property of the tough action man.

4 Hulk HoganHe is obviosly mad in the head, but the peroxide blode zapatta against the unnaturally high blood pressure pink of his face and the yellow of his outfit just shouts out "DON'T MESS WITH ME OR I'LL KICK YOUR PUNY HEAD IN!" followed by a"RRRAAAAARRRRRGHHHHH!" that would make a lion soil itself.

3 Merv Hughes

Showing that cricket and do so much more better than football at anything except being overpaid wimps and affairs, it's basically the Hulk Hogan but without the dye.

2 Burt Reynolds Back in the 70s, when men were men and women did as they were told or be forever branded aliberal or lesbian, Burt ruled. He strode the earth like some pheromone factory, chicks fell at his feet and wanted to be all over his hairy chest, bushy brow and flashy grin. He roared around in his muscle car and a girl was in his cockpit with just a wink and a howdy. He was, after all The Bandit, and hi tash drove the chickitas crazy. What could stop Burt, he was top of the world
1 Tom Selleck
In came the 80s, a decade of AIDS and political correctness. A wink and a tash wasn't ebnough and Burt was overtaken by a man with a well groomed top lip. He didn't have to worry about catching a bit of veg soup in there, he was a star and he was Magnum PI. Tom's tash was the uberBurt, a newer, more caring face of the 80s, but he was still old school enough to kick ass, and wipe the floor with the Hitler tootbrush sported by his boss Higgins

Rebekah Brooks' Resignation Letter -The truth behind her words

2011-07-15T10:46:00.005+01:00

Photo :Olivia Harris/Reuters

At News International we pride ourselves on setting the news agenda for the right reasons. Today we are leading the news for the wrong ones.

Oh bum, We've been caught out

The reputation of the company we love so much, as well as the press freedoms we value so highly, are all at risk.

We've cocked this one up, big time.

As Chief Executive of the company, I feel a deep sense of responsibility for the people we have hurt and I want to reiterate how sorry I am for what we now know to have taken place.

I don't really care, but everyone now knows what a conniving git I am

I have believed that the right and responsible action has been to lead us through the heat of the crisis. However my desire to remain on the bridge has made me a focal point of the debate.

We sacked all the staff who weren't involved, closed the paper what more do you want?

This is now detracting attention from all our honest endeavours to fix the problems of the past.

You can see me back pedalling and stuffing all the secret files into next doors shredder

Therefore I have given Rupert and James Murdoch my resignation. While it has been a subject of discussion, this time my resignation has been accepted.

I can stop Rupes and Jimbo being hauled in front of the enquiry so I'm no use to them and have been sacked

Rupert's wisdom, kindness and incisive advice has guided me throughout my career and James is an inspirational leader who has shown me great loyalty and friendship.

The pay off is bloody amazing, I can buy Fox News and really hack off (pun intended) that slimy Aussie and his toadying idiotic retarded son. Screw the pair of you, I'm off to beat up my husband

I would like to thank them both for their support

They've shafted me big style and I don't have a leg to stand on

I have worked here for 22 years and I know it to be part of the finest media company in the world.

How much is 22 years redundancy money Mr Lawyer?

News International is full of talented, professional and honourable people. I am proud to have been part of the team and lucky to know so many brilliant journalists and media executives.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA YEAH RIGHT!

I leave with the happiest of memories and an abundance of friends.

BECAUSE I'M RICH! And aggresive and have kept all the sign off papers from Murdoch

As you can imagine recent times have been tough. I now need to concentrate on correcting the distortions and rebutting the allegations about my record as a journalist, an editor and executive.

Dear Rupes, if you don't want the evidence going to the law courts, stick the extra money in a brown envelope in the third bin on the right and make sure that The Times has a glowing right up of how fabulous I am. Also do you have Piers Morgan's phone number, i see a CNN exclusive coming up, if the price is right.

My resignation makes it possible for me to have the freedom and the time to give my full cooperation to all the current and future inquiries, the police investigations and the CMS appearance.

Channel 5 have signed me up for "Brookes Behind Bars:My First Week in Chokey."

I am so grateful for all the messages of support. I have nothing but overwhelming respect for you and our millions of readers.

You thick morons, You couldn't even get the right answer to the Daybreak competition question. Go back to watching Jeremy Kyle

I wish every one of you all the best.

I hope you all die painfully of a long battle with cancer, but what's your phone number so I can listen in

Rebekah

the Evil Witch Queen

sleep when I'm dead

2011-07-12T12:47:00.004+01:00

I have trouble with my sleep. I know, you've heard it all before "my insomnia is unbearable, I can't get to sleep for ages" and stories of friends who live on 3 hours sleep a day. It's not that. My problem is I fall asleep instantly and sometimes without warning, anywhere at anytime I am not actively doing something. I can be drawing or using the computer and I'm fine but as soon as I stop to watch tv or chat with Mrs DMC then I'm spark out, and it's unfeasably deep sleep. So deep my wife cannot wake me.

I've always been a really deep sleeper.I used to sleep for about 4 hours a night but they were like 10 normal sleep hours, and I wouldn't wake at all in that time. I slept through the smoke alarm no problem, Kids playing up outside, not a worry. Pubs, clubs, people's houses and I'm up the hill to Bedfordshire It got so bad I slept through an arson attack on the snooker hall opposite my flat that involved 5 fire engines, cop cars and ambulances. It was there when I went to bed, when I got up and drew back the curtains it was gone. I had to ask my then flatmate what had happened. Incredulously he couldn't understand why I hadn't heard the commotion. I didn't even hear Lloyd Cole. My wife can scream in my face and I don't wake up. She kicked me in the groin in my sleep omce and although I was screeching in pain and clutching my gonads I knew nothing of it until she apologised to me the next day. Recently it's also been accompanied by really bad snoring. Snoring that sounds like the runway at Heathrow in peak time. So I decided to do something about it and went to see the quack to get referref to the sleep clinic at the hospital.

Tonight I will be going under polysomnography, where you sleep at the hospital and they strap loads of machines to you to see why my sleep is wrong. I think that this is the craziest of tests because who can sleep with a mass of tubes and wires coming out of their face, a strap around the chest and clothes pegs clipped to their fingers in a strange bed? Not only do you have the misfortune of looking like Frankenstein's Monster laid out on the slab waiting for the lightning bolt, but you have the pleasure of having your sleep videoed and watched by strangers. Plus no telly so I can't see Holby City, where the real medical traumas are.

And so here are a few sleep related ditties to tuck youself in with and cuddle up to. Good night

two films one week.

2011-07-04T10:11:00.005+01:00

An epic (in Metcalfe-Carrian terms) cinematic week has just passed for me with two - YES TWO- trips to the cinema. The week was rounded off by E4 showing Ferris Bueller's Day Off, on of the classic brat pack films and early role for a certain mentalist Mister Charles Sheen Esq, playing a mental on drugs. How John Hughes predicted the future. He never made a film about flying cars and three course dinners in pill form, he just showed that the future star of Two and a Half men was a drug addled freak full of his own self importance, but very funny in his breakdown.

So Film One on Wednesday night was Green Lantern. In 3D. Or so it claimed to be because with the exception of a table lamp and the back of Green Lantern's head there was no visible 3D effects in the film. And charging extra for the film and the so called free guest with Orange Wednesday just rubbed my back up even more in the wrong direction. GL has been panned critically and to be fair it's not the worst film ever made, it can't be because neither Ashton Kutcher nor Josh Hartnett appear in it. What it is is the biggest under achiever put onto celluloid

If you were in charge of a film about an intergalactic police force who can do anything because of the power ting on your hand what would you do? Michael Bay would just have things blow up very loudly. Kenneth Brannagh would have it done in iambic pentameter with a story about someone having unnatural feelings for his mum and killing his dad. Spielberg would stick an annoying kid in and make it a metaphor for the way the American family is becoming extinct. What Martin Campbell does is make the most boring film ever. If you take an action hero and go to make an action film you need to add something called action. Green Lantern is the most boring and depressing film I have seen this year and I've watched The Road. There is no spark between the characters, no chemistry between Ryan Reynolds, who I think is a damn fine actor and Blake Lively. In fact Blake Lively is a breach of the Trades Description Act as she practically sleepwalks her way through the film. The CGI villain Paralax is as frightening as a verruca and the whole thing is a mess from start to finish. My friend I went with was a massive GL fan as a kid and even he wasn't impressed, with a high rating of "Well, it passed a couple of hours".

Friday, and Film Two, this time accompanied by the good Mrs DMC, was Bridesmaids starring Kristen Wiig and the ubiquitous Rose Byrne who seems to be in every film ever made in the last year, enforcing this by appearing on Channel 4 last night in Sunshine. Judd Appatow is usually involved in good comedy but it tends to be bromantic comedy, so how does he cope with a chick flick? Well, it isn't really a chick flick as it involves the usual sex and toilet humour as Knocked Up and 40 Year Old Virgin. It could be any of his comedy output and the fact that it's an all woman main cast really doesn't matter as you could put Paul Rudd and Steve Carrel in the leads and you'd not notice the difference. Bridesmaids however is extremely funny and quite moving, it's not really about being a bridesmaid, it's about growing up and life changing, about opening up to others and also in there is a revenge comedy. The amount of ideas that appear in Green Lantern is surpassed in the first five minutes of Bridesmaids. Kristen Wiig shows why the reputation she's getting in US comedy is actually of some value, forget your Sarah Silvermans, Wiig is naturally funny without the offensiveness being forced and feeling like its chucked in there for headlines. Rose Byrne is excellent as the young trophy bride, you want to Annie to break her nails as well as her nose. The big surprise is the amount of UK talent, with Matt Lucas as the odd flatmate and Chris O'Dowd from the IT Crowd as an unlikely romantic lead. Me and the Mrs wet ourselves laughing through this one because it's not just fart gags, it's a well though out and admirably executed romantic comedy.

Doctors and Professors

2011-06-23T09:47:00.004+01:00

Over at the Weekly Themed Art Blog it's Doctors and Professors week. This is my little effort, and I can see you may be confused so here's the skinny

The Monarch of the day, King Charles II was also a regular visitor to
Covent Garden, which was home to his mistress Nell Gwyn. It is thought the King
enjoyed the puppet shows so much that a Royal Decree was passed, allowed Punch
& Judy men to call themselves “Professor”. Although there is little truth
behind this, to this day Punch & Judy performers refer to themselves as
Professors.

So there you have it. Photoshop only, no preliminary sketching and a self imposed time limit of 30 mins . I was going to do a Tom Baker Doctor Who as I missed Doctor Who week, but thought the better of it.

I'm not 100% happy with it but there's a lot I do like, and as an experimental break in strip work I think that it's acheived most of the things I wanted it to.

X Men: First Class

2011-06-17T08:56:00.005+01:00

Wednesday saw me and Mrs DMC head down to the local flicks for X Men First Class. Mrs MC has really gotten into the X Men films and in preparation watched the first three last week while I fell asleep on the couch. She was actually quite excited about seeing it and had loads of questions such as who was playing Magneto and Xavier, was Wolverine in it and how it tied into the other films.

When we left the cinema her verdict was "it was a good film but it's not my favourite. Not by a long shot" I told her Longshot wasn't in it but may turn up in the next one. She didn't understand.

The thing is, whilst it is a decent film it suffers from the typical Hollywood machine limitations of bad script written by too many people and characters are in there to sell toys.

I'm not an X Men genius. I know a bit, enough to get by but I hadn't the faintest who a lot of these people were. That they weren't even named or spoke confused the hell out of me. That they were messed about with so Scottish geneticists became American CIA agents, (bizarrely played by an Australian), English and Irish characters were whitewashed into bland Americans with no personality and of course the black guy dies first.

Nicholas Holt cannot maintain an accent in the film, but the whole Beast seems wrong, When did he have hands for feet, and when he transforms into the blue Beast, it's the worst make up I've seen in years. Rather than a blue lion-esque creature we get what looks like a fairground prize, more the cowardly lion than king of the beasts. Mystique's make up is equally bad, making an attractive woman look like a melting waxwork of Thora Birch.

Then there's Matthew Vaughan who can't decide if he's filming a superhero movie, Lock Stock or Oceans 11 as the visual style chops and changes around the place. from multi image montages to ariel battles to dodgy voice overs, it's all thrown into the mix and out comes a mess.

James MacAvoy is very annoying, constantly putting his finger to his temple, playing the most unconvincing drunk and enforcing a bad toff accent. I don't get where the writers came from with Charles, he's turned into some selfish drunk student with bad chat up lines and no compassion for anyone and the idea of me caring what happens to him as a viewer just goes out of the window.

There are good bits, the ariel battle is the most convincing human flight footage I've seen since Frank Spencer took flight Condorman. Rose Byrne and Michael Fassbender give excellent turns as Moira McTaggart and Magneto, and Kevin Bacon is excellent keeping the ham just this side of right as the villain but it's not enough to make what could have been a great film anything more than just 'good'.

One thing still confuses me however- when did the Polish Magneto start talking with an Irish accent?

30 Day Song Challenge

2011-06-17T08:37:00.006+01:00

day 20 - a song that you listen to when you’re angry

Has anybody ever finished the 30 day Song Challenge in 30 days? Does anyone care anymore? Is it really worth it? Does anyone read this crap? ANSWER ME, DAMN YOU!

And when I get angry I need to be made to laugh at it all, put it back into perspective and just calm down so I listen to this

I loved The Goodies, with their ridiculous antics growing up as a kid. There was nothing worng with the show, it was all perfect from the mad surreal and bizarre antics to the theme tune

People may mock programmes that all the family can sit and watch and enjoy together as lowest common denominator entertainment, but The Goodies proved that such snobbery was pointless. You couldn't help but find something you loved in the show from Tim's elitism, Bill's working class hero and Greame's mad boffin, you sided with them in their quest for a better life.

Review - The Road

2011-06-07T10:53:00.003+01:00

The most depressing film ever made. Harrowing, bleak and hard to watch , the wife bought it on a DVD splurge and we decided to watch it on Sunday.

This is not a Sunday afternoon film. Air Bud is a Sunday afternoon film. Dunstan Checks In and Matilda are Sunday afternoon films. This is the sort of film you feel completely lifeless and empty after watching

IMDB has the plot summary as

A father and his son walk alone through burned America. Nothing moves in the ravaged landscape save the ash on the wind and water. It is cold enough to crack stones, and, when the snow falls it is gray. The sky is dark. Their destination is the warmer south, although they don't know what, if anything, awaits them there. They have nothing: just a pistol to defend themselves against the lawless cannibalistic bands that stalk the road, the clothes they are wearing, a rusting shopping cart of scavenged food--and each other.

The snow fall isn't the only gray aspect, the whole film appears to have been shot by a camera with a heavy woolen black sock over the lens. Bleak, unlike Grease, isn't the word. It makes you instantly on edge as Man (Viggo Mortenson) and Boy (Kodi Smit-McPhee) stumble about in broken footwear and broken spirits. The only time we get any colour is in the flashbacks with Charlize Theron as Man's wife Woman. No character has a name in The Road. We don't know who they are or who they are, just brief glimmers of a past for Man and Woman. All that happens is people walk, people scavenge and cannibals come and go along with an old man, a thief and a couple in a house. There is no hope in the film, and two brief glimmers are quickly squashed. Man gets more and more paranoid and Boy gets more and more whiney, that's all that happens apart from a bit of running here and there, and a brief bit of swimming giving Viggo his obligatory butt shot.

There is no way possible anyone could enjoy this film. It's a good film, don't get me wrong, it's well acted, the script is well written what there is of one and the cinematography is excellent, but the end of it had Mrs MC in tears and me looking for a noose to put me out of my misery. It just comes across as seriously worthy and begging for an Oscar

COMPETITION TIME!!!

2011-06-02T11:56:00.002+01:00

This week you can win a fantastic prize* by answering this simple question

This weeks quote under the banner - who said it and in what programme.

Calls do not cost £1.51 from a BT landline. No percentage of profit goes to charity. Just enter by putting your answer in the comments box.

*You can win the smug sense of warmth and satisfaction at knowing as much useless crap as I do

The ballad of little bobby liefiled

2011-05-27T14:46:00.006+01:00

2011-03-18T14:33:00.000Z

How I managed to screw my degree up but learn to dance

The Weekly Themed Art Blog

2011-03-18T08:40:00.004Z

This week over at The Weekly TAB the theme was Tron. What did I come up with? This...

I had it in my mind that the new film was called The Tron Legacy and it sounded like an Ealing comedy, so I did the film poster for it. I also wrote a synopsis of the film to get the feel of what was going on in the scene, which is explained in the poster text. What it has to do with Tron I don't know, but you can see the other members' work by clicking on the link on the right.

30 Day Song Challenge

2011-03-17T13:17:00.003Z

Day 04 - a song that makes you sad

There's different kinds of sad that went through my mind thinking about this. Literall sadness inducing songs would include this

and this

and this

And there's songs that fit into the "You like that? You are a sad git, man" catagory, which I could fill one hundred times over with stuff like this

then there's the sadness that something failed, a song or band that should have been massive but failed for some reason and went into small venue obscurity before becoming song writers for hire or worse, session musicians. That would have been the thing that mad me saddest. I could handle a sad song, but that never ending knowing that for some reason the best thing you ever wrote will be heard by three men and a budgie on a country station's night time retro slot when it should have propelled you to levels of success you had never known, well that to me is the saddest thing. This is the best song the artist ever wrote, and after being in three great bands it says a lot that their first solo album was the peak of their work. I saw this live at the Portsmouth Wedgewood Rooms and it made me shiver, and that is why it is the song that makes me the saddest.

30 Day Song Challenge

2011-03-16T10:05:00.003Z

Day 03 - A song that makes you happy

Party Hard - Andrew WK

There's something very alluring about taking enjoyment from the bizarre. The old freak shows worked on the principle that the odd, strange and downright wierd were fascinating. This is still true today with shows like Embarrassing Bodies and The Wolf Boy or other typical Five documentaries like The Man Who Was A Tree and I Love My Car (Literally.)

Andrew WK is the Tree Man, the Wolf Boy, every Siamese Twin joined at really inconvenient places. He is The Elephant Man of rubbish rock and all out crass freakishness. As his website says "Andrew's true will is to use all forms of entertainment to create feelings of pure joy, fun, love, freedom, and possibility."
And he does, he makes me truly happy that I am not him.

Andrew WK, we salute you and your banal stadium cock rock ranting. Also, we salute your selling ad space at the start of all your videos on line.

AMV - Andrew W K - Party Hard - The best video clips are here

30 Day Song Challenge

2011-03-15T12:21:00.002Z

Day 02 - your least favorite song

Puddle of Mudd - Blurry

There are songs when you can replace the words with groans or whoops. This lot join a list a mile long of similar bands who's whole vocal consists of the words "whardy whardy whardy" and "aurgh" uttered through gravel. It's probably all very worthy but I can't understand it. And to make things worse they have the most literal video of all time. I can imagine the briefing

Record Company "So tell me the high concept"

Director "It's BLURRY by Puddle of Mudd, so I'm gonna shoot it out of focus through a muddy puddle"

Record Company "Job's yours, boys"

Plus they cannot spell Mud. Lazy gits

30 day song challenge

2011-03-14T10:38:00.002Z

Day 1 - Your favourite song

Moon River - Henry Mancini

I love this song so much, always have since seeing Breakfast at Tiffanys and falling instantly for Audrey Hepburn. There's been some great versions of this over the years including Morrissey's single word titled version, but for me the best version is the one my wife sang to me in front of everyone at our wedding

Spring Cleaning

2011-02-21T13:22:00.004Z

I decided that I needed to sort out all my social networking sites and have a bit of definition added to things, so I have now made my mind up and made changes.

This will be my blog of reviews and thoughts.

Future art, design and photography can be found at http://davemetcalfecarr.posterous.com/

Randomness can be found on Twitter here http://twitter.com/MetcalfeCarr

Facebook will be used for keeping up with friends. I've discovered that it's over two years since I posted at my Myspace account so that's gone, as has thefriday7.

Laters

The Kings Speech

2011-01-28T08:40:00.004Z

Sometimes I hold back on reviewing a film. It normally means it was alright - one thing I can't review in any kind of depth is averageness. I detest the word average, but even more I detest gushing. I don't need someone fawning over entertainment, it makes me want to avoid the product even more than a bad assessment. I'd rather see a Rancid Aluminium than a The Green Mile if based only on reviews. I'd rather not see The Green Mile because it has Tom Hanks in it, but you get my drift. However I have a new facet in my movie choices nowadays, and that is the wife. We take turns in choosing what we see, which explains how I've seen far too many Adam Sandler films for my own good, and why Mrs Metcalfe-Carr has seen Watchmen.

I saw the other week and it thought it was excellent. I find Colin Firth a take or leave actor, always puts in a good performance but it always seems to be the same character of a grumpy, slightly off putting, terribly English chap. All clipped pronunciation and correct annunciation. He cam along the same time as Mark Strong and I believe that Strong is the better actor, with more variety and range in his characters, and a willingness to do something unexpected, like playing Sinestro in the upcoming Green Lantern film. I can't imagine Firth as the villain in a blockbuster, and the one film I can think of where he didn't play posh is Fever Pitch, where he was just a grumpy middle class guy. Putting this aside though he was excellent as the Prince. The element of duty over all things gave him an empathy, the scenes with his wife - the strong alpha role in the relationship and two girls were a beautiful adjunct to his stuttering, desperate prince come king.

It isn't a film about disability or overcoming difficulties, or even about a Britain in flux. It's a bromance, with the two main characters, Firth and a resplendent Geoffrey Rush in fine form as the speech therapist from Down Under going from unease through friendship, betrayal and reconciliation, all played terribly prim and proper with an underlying sense of humour.

The supporting cast are excellent, Bonham Carter back in her Merchant Ivory heyday was your go to girl for this kind of role, and after years of going batty in Tim Burton's attic it's an excellent performance. Derek Jacobi as the Arch Bishop is understated but explosive but I was distracted by his hair, Gambon is Gambon, and Guy Pearce shows again why we shouldn't remember him from Neighbours as Edward, all loved up and knowing he cannot have a future as the new King but confused in his choice between duty and self.

I could only find one fault with it and that was making the gorgeous Jennifer Ehle look old and drudged. If they can do that they can do anything.

Love and Other Drugs

2011-01-11T13:22:00.002Z

Elton John is a big fat baby buying liar.

Saturday night isn't really made for fighting. Not in the Metcalfe-Carr household, no sirree Bob. Saturday night is made for entertainment and good food. So off me and my good lady wife popped to the local Cineworld for a cuddly romcom and a bit of scran at the Pizza Hut next door.

We didn't get the cuddly romcom, we got Love and Other Drugs instead.

Now don't get me wrong, L&OD is funny. It's also romantic. But it's also sad and depressing and slightly erotic and overly verbose and has too much man ass on display. Now Jake Gyllenhall may have a lovely butt, you'd best ask my wife for the answer to that, but as we were forced to sit on the front row due to the stupidity of sticking it on the smallest screen in the cinema and selling tickets to every rude person in Solihull who decide that nobody will sit next to them at all and claim the seat is taken, even though I checked three times during the film, I really don't need to see it at extreme close up five foot wide size. Anne Hathaway's norks, I do feel able to make a judgement on as they were on screen more than she was. They are good norks.

Set in 1996, Jamie Randall (Jake Gyllenhall) is a salesman in an electrical outlet, but he's a whizz and has a proper gob on him and enjoys his job, and his boss's bird in the stock room. I don't know if this is realistic, I only lasted two weeks at Comet in 1996 and I don't remember getting any on top of a box of toasters. He becomes a drug rep for Pfizer and is a bit crap but through Dr Knight he meets Maggie Morrison and gets it on with her after a frosty first encounter. She has Parkinsons and is a bit of a sex addict. It goes alright then he screws it up when he makes her his project rather than his girlfriend. He also becomes a star rep when his company release a little drug called Viagra Do they get it back together or not, who knows (everyone who watched the film.)

Gyllenhall is annoying. He is smug and grins like a loon all the way through, and that kind of distracts from the story. I guess this is a character thing but I spent a lot of my time wanting to punch him. Hathaway has a lot to contend with making him look like there is chemistry between them, especially in the sex scenes. She has a lot to deal with through most of the film as she is given some really bad stream of conscience dialogue early on. She just gets dumped a page of script and has to get on with it. Also the sex scenes are quite nasty, I know its meant to be mindless at first, but it kind of stays that way, even when they declare their love for each other, it's not evident.

The supporting cast is excellent. Josh Gad as Randall's brother is hilariously bad taste, and Hank Azaria as Dr Knight shows what we know over here, America can't use it's talent right, promoting on fad rather than ability, George Segal's great in a small cameo as Randall Snr but all the cast are fighting some bad scripting and adequate directing by Edward Zwick.

Overall it is a good film, and it tugged enough at Mrs MCs to get a few tears and I enjoyed it, but I will be eternally scared by Jake Gyllenhall's massive arse looming down at me.

Game On

2010-12-23T13:43:00.001Z

Found this at one of Pete Ashton's many sites. Love it

Sketch of the Day - Thursday 23rd December 2010

2010-12-23T09:54:00.004Z

Last day of work before a deserved long break, and today we have the first design for a strip I'm doing with Rol for the Eagle Initiative competition. This is the hero's girlfriend Chloë.

I didn't get a massive description form Rol, but rather just the one line;

Chloë is cute and over-excitable. She wears weird clothes

I know the hands are wrong, but sometimes you think that the first sketch just gets who you want it to be. I was considering some 1930s glasses, but this kind of clicked for me.

Sketch of the Day Wednesday 22nd December 2010

2010-12-22T09:15:00.003Z

In a vain attempt to keep my art skills fresh as I tend to work purely digitally, I have started to set myself a daily sketch challenge. A sketch a day in 3 minutes or less. Here be a quick one of the lead character in a comic strip I'm drawing at the minute. Picture taken on my phone as my desk at work has no scanner, ao sorry if the quality of the image is poor. Taken for granted the quality of the sketch is.

Sketch of the Day

2010-12-21T10:40:00.002Z

Rough sketches for a strip I'm working on Taken in my phone and sent to Facebook so I could upload. My scanner isn't working so I improvise.

Quick on the Draw

2010-12-20T12:11:00.003Z

Quick concept sketch for upcoming project. Picture taken on my phone then uploaded from facebook so aapologies in advance if it's a bit crap in quality.

Pulling Hair and Eating Dirt

2010-12-15T15:44:00.004Z

Page in progress from Girlfriend on the Payroll for an upcoming issue of PJANG.
Created by Rol Hirst and Dave Metcalfe-Carr

Things of the Year

2010-12-14T15:35:00.010Z

The end of year polls are starting, and here are my top 5 things. I haven't seen enough films, heard enough new music or read enough new books or comics to merit individual polls so here's a multimedia top 5.

FILM - RED

Warren Ellis and Cully Hamner's comic passed me by, and even the trade was tied in as a double header with Mech so I thought it would suck and never read it. The film was great, from the opening Christmas scene with Bruce single handedly taking out an entire squad of black ops assassins with nought but weapons and a wry smile to the exceedingly erotic Helen Mirren blasting the crap out of a car park with a rapid fire machine gun, this was the feelgood film of the year. Why? Because it was younge in cheek fun. Not ironic, not post modern, not deep and meaningful but good old fashioned fun. Dinner for Schmucks came second by a cocked hat because of Jermaine Clements from Flight of the Cochords dressed as a Centaur while pretending to be Russel Brand.

MUSIC - Cee-Lo Green Forget You/ F**K You

I haven't heard the original version, but this by far is the best song I've heard all year. Upbeat, Uplifting, Up to date remaking of Motown that Mark Ronson would let a million horny goats pummell him to near death to make.

TV - The Apprentice

I loved I'm a Celebrity this year but Lord Alan and his begging gimps was the one thing I had to watch. Stuart The Brand Baggs made my year as proof that confidence and spouting full on crap will get you far in life. Melissa and her list of non-existant words and manners made me cringe, and the fact that someone who had actually pulled themselves up from the gutter to succeed in life won.

COMICS - 2000ad

The only thing I've actually read with any frequency this year, and for a 33 year old it just gets better and better. Tooth has shown it's stamina to survive in a market of capes and tights by developing new talent and giving them a go. While most have shut their doors to submissions Tooth keeps on going by nurturing writers and artists in their infancy. CLiNT may have come to fight for the newstand heavyweight title, but the only way that is surviving is by being reprint and Millar probably not paying himself anything for writing most of it for US companies and it being creator owned.

SMALL PRESS - ZARJAZ

I had to disqualify PJANG as I do quite a lot of stuff with it for Rol, and Outcastes as I used to print it, so with those rules my favourite small press this year has been the 2000ad fanzine. There's always a good mix of stuff in an issue but it wins for the two part Chris Askham drawn Rogue Trooper strip. Lovely stuff

The Camera Never Lies*

2010-12-10T14:25:00.004Z

And they say crime doesn't pay. This spaz will have his 15 minutes of fame and get £250 off of You've Been Framed

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-11942814

Silly Billy.

*Yes, I have quoted Bucks Fizz , so what you gonna do about it?

When Hell Freezes Over

2010-12-03T09:15:00.003Z

It's a bit parky, isn't it?

After last years fiasco where the country came to a standstill when we got a couple of inches of snow you'd have thought we'd have learnt that our delicate infrastructure cannot cope with a spot or two of the cold white stuff.

Here in Birmingham however, we seem to have been completely missed out by the snowfall . Oh yeah, we've had a touch here and there, and yesterday we had a good five hours of constant snow but that was it, and at the end of the day the ground resembled a dropped bag of flour on a supermarket aisle. No drifts, no stopped traffic, no Christmas card vistas, just a bit of white speckled amidst a sea of grey sludge. Well it's not good enough, and I want retribution for my lack of igloo building materials. Everyone on Facebook and Twitter is moaning on about the snow and how they can't get to work/school/uni/the corner shop for porn.* Well, Sonny Jim try living in Brum. The buses are running ON TIME. Businesses HAVE food and supplies on their shelves ON SALE. People are being educated at most of the learning establishments. And what worries me most is that on the paths where snow and ice are, there are no signs of skid tracks that a couple of kids have made.

When I was a kid, the first sign of snow or ice and we'd have a skid track set up in the playground. Break time would be filled with the gleeful shouts and shocked "oohs" as 7 year old boys glided down the playground at speed, broken by riotous laughter as someone went 360 through the air while trying to cut across the track. The track would be so thin from being compacted down it would be like plate glass covered in oil and as each kid took it's turn he would hope and pray just to go that little bit further than the last, just to be crowned king of the skid. Any available space would be used, playground, back yard or the favoured foot path. Walking around these last few days though there has been no evidence of the skid track. No cheers from the school I pass, no death traps on the pavements I walk along. No view of a couple of kids whizzing past to stop with either a flourish or a fall. Where have they gone to? Have the conker banning Health and Safety people banned them from the rite of passage that is being crowned King of the Skid? Have teachers, so afraid of being sued by claim culture parents, forbidden the track alongside the snowball and shoving a handful of snow down a girl's back? Or have the kids, with their iPhone and their DSI simply forgotten the glory gained by being the one to pull of the champion slide while preferring to fill their time away from technology by throwing snowballs at traffic?

And another bites the dust

2010-10-29T13:42:00.003+01:00

Paul the Psychic Octopus, predicter of football matches, producer of black ink, expert tickler and enemy of Islam and Germany,gone to the rockpool in the sky. We salute you. Eight times

Another death in the family

2010-10-22T13:53:00.005+01:00

In the same week as Tom Bosley, we loose Ari Upp of The Slits.

She, Debbie Harry and Siouxsie all had an effect on me as a wee boy, now just a faint stirring of a feeling.

A Death in the Family

2010-10-22T13:49:00.002+01:00

RIP Mr C, gone to the flat above the garage in the sky.

Hall and Oates

2010-10-20T13:22:00.003+01:00

The weekend of BICS didn't see me heading down the road to punch Jonathon Ross or give Bryan Hitch a rubber and shout "Get rid of all them pointless lines, you oik". I gave the comics festival a miss and instead me and the wife went for a little break in the middle of nowhere, or Market Bosworth as the road signs stated.

Now, spas and treatments isn't really what I'm about but as there was a "complimentary" treatment included I decided not to look a gift horse in the mouth and had a free hand and arm massage. This was carried out by a nice young lady who's first words to me were "remove your wedding ring, please" which took the idea of spa treatments being a little fleet of foot and spun it Alistair Campbell style into something a little seedy and salacious. The day before I had had a back massage which was anything but, more really relaxing and welcome after weeks hunched over a desk/garden/patio hole. I've not taken my wedding ring off in the 6 months since I got wed apart from to clean it, and it struck me that there is nothing really that would makeme take it off apart from if it was a risk, but a young woman asking me to take it off felt kind of sordid. Especially with Mel in the next room just out of earshot. I'd have felt more comfortable with her saying take of your trousers,

Odd, but the rest of the break was fantastic, as anywhere that looked like that would be. The fact that we were away from everyone and couldn't get a knock on the door wa also a massive boon...

Opposites Attract

2010-10-14T12:39:00.002+01:00

I'm always amazed by odd couplings. Geeks with Playboy Playmates. Einstein and Marilyn Monroe, Megan Fox and the kid from the original Beverley Hills 90210.

But I discovered the oddest husband and wife team yesterday. The one couple I never thought would happen in a million years.

TV satirist, Guardian columnist, Channel 4 screenwriter and the funniest man in Britain Charlie Brooker is married to TV Vaccuum Konnie Huq. Yes, Konnie Huk, who seems to have problems reading her name let alone Autocue. Who's interview technique makes Graham Norton look like Paxman. Who is to talent what Zimbabwe is to the global exchange mechanism.

Blimey.

NOOOOOOOO!!!

2010-09-14T12:40:00.003+01:00

John Romita Jr draws the cover to Judge Dredd trade for US release. Reminds me of when Frank Miller did one that was so bad they sent it back unused. Bloody terrible, and possibly the worst thing to happen to Dredd since Stallone took the helmet off to kiss Hershey

Bunch of CLiNT

2010-08-27T11:20:00.008+01:00

There used to be a rule in the UK boys market that said no character could be called Clint or Flick, as the old print presses and cheap bog paper newsprint uses to soak and smear the ink so the gap between the L and the I would become filled and leave the unprintable words in boys comics. On the evidence provided in this first issue, I think they should just go ahead and let the ink fill.

So the new Mark Millar/Titan anthology CLiNT launched this week, Part comic anthology part magazine I had hopes for it. The brief sounded like a new version of Deadline with the mix of comic and features, and with the stellar names behind it from TV as well as Comics it should have a good,broad audience appeal. He says in his press release that

"This is Eagle for the 21st Century," declares Millar. "I've worked on everything ... for Marvel in New York, but what really excites me is the gap I see in the UK market at the moment. There are absolutely no comic-books aimed at 16-30 year old guys and I think CLiNT has potential to make an enormous impact, bringing a new type of magazine to a new generation."

So with all the market knowledge, big names and business savvy behind it, why is it so bad?

First off, it hasn't a clue who it or it's audience is. It claims to be for 16-30 year old men, but it is written for 6 year olds who think poo is the funniest word ever. The features are sub Front with a load of Top 5 lists, Q&As with bit part actors and the Top 10 Fittest TV mums (winner Holly Willoughby, Louis from Family Guy comes in about 4th). It is so inane in it's features it may soon have to do the big questions like "What's your favourite cheese?" Things get worse as we get the diary of a celebrity pot smoker in which an unnamed actor writes how he is cool because he deceives his live in girlfriend about the ammount of weed he smokes. This is the worst piece of "journalism" I've ever read. The writer is trying to portray how cool he is when really he's a deceitful little cock head and like most other dope smokers a boring, self obsessed knob. Add to this a feature on the regional actors who dub the A-Listers, and an interview with Jimmy Carr that teaches me absolutely nothing I couldn't learn from every other fluff piece that's been written about him.

The cover features Frankie Boyle with a ridiculous beard in front of a film still from Kick Ass, And the art department so blatantly couldn't give a shit trying to make this look even a bit convincing as there is a massive shadow across the still. Why he's on the cover we don't know, the only thing he does is co-write a comic strip with fellow Scottish comedian Jim Muir called Rex Roid, which I think by co-write, they mean he wrote his name on the invoice because this is as far away from anything recognisably Frankie Boyle-ish about it. Instead it is some generic sci-fi/superhero tosh badly illustrated, and scripted even worse. There is no redeeming feature about Rex Roid at all, pacing, dialogue, art and colours stink like a sewerage plant in a heatwave.

Next up we have Huw Edwards Presents Space Oddities. Huw of course has nothing to do with this except his face appearing in the title bar. It's three pages of badly put together filler, neither odd, bad, scary or interesting. It is, at best pointless.

Then we have Jonathon Ross and Tommy Lee Edwards' Turf. This is sumptuously drawn and coloured by Edwards, possibly the best work he's produced. I say possibly because it's so overwritten you cannot see half the artwork because it's covered by John Workman's lettering. Workman is a genius letterer but even he cannot pull this out of the bag. Ross scripts like he talks - using 159 words where 3 would have done and this is a problem because in certain panels its so bad that the storytelling is completely lost. I don't know if Ross had an editor as it's creator owned but he needs one because the storytelling is getting lost under all the unnecessary speech. Apart form that it's a fairly good take on vampires and Al Capone style mob wars in New York in the 1920s prohibition scene. Throw in an alien craft as well, and it's quite inventive with enough to keep the interest but it's just too much. According to one forum, Workman, at Edwards' request letters before the art is down in the old EC style. If so the fault lies solely at Ross' feet and an editor is severely needed. Boyzone sang words are not enough, maybe Ross should listen to that song on a loop when writing.

Finally we get Millar's two strips, a reprint of Nemesis which he is putting out with Steve McNiven in the US, and is basically a sequel to Wanted, more in your face uber violence and shouty swearing. Double page spreads of Japanese bullet train crashes and up close heads splitting open. It's just one cliched character after another and even McNiven can't be arsed. It's basically a cash job, Millar rehashes his Authority/Wanted/Ultimates scripts with an excessive ammount of swearing, and so they can keep as much of the cash for themselves it's shot straight from McNiven's pencils that show how much of his artstyle was down to Dexter Vine's inking. It's scrappy at best. Then we have the only original strip, Kick Ass 2, but we get about 8 pages compared to a full issue of Nemesis. It's the same as the first series with people getting beat up, swearing and the kind of lazy, ugly, out of proportion, shapeless, scratchy art that I've come to expect from John Romita JR.

I really wanted CLiNT to work, but it doesn't and needs a radical re-working of non comic content. The problem in my opinion lies with Millar himself as an Editor. An Editor needs to have a firm vision of where the magazine is going and how to get there. It doesn't, it's all over the shop. I remember fanzines in the 1980s and 90s that were pumping out the same material as CLiNT is, and it wasn't paerticularly funny back then. I understand Titan's reasons for doing this, I personally think Millar and Ross are in it for vanity.

Hello! Hello! It's Good To Be Back...

2010-08-17T15:19:00.006+01:00

And so it's been a while, and that while is far too big a while. It's the Cheddar Gorge of whiles, but I've been lurking and dropping by.

It seems a trait of the habitual blogger that there are fallow fields of silence amidst ripe, abundant crops of comment, gossip and bitching about celebrities. I've had my reasons, the big one being without the internet for the last year and Solihull library banning my blog as well as most of those I read for obscene content. Who'd have thought that Sunset Over Slaithwaite would be banned by local government as an corruptive influence? But the main reason I haven't been blogging is that I went and got myself married off to the Bishop's daughter, and that takes a lot of time and planning. Most men seem to believe that a wedding just happens by magic, but it doesn;t, the women just take over. I spent 5 hours after work sat in the womens fitting room in Debenhams while my wife to be, her sister and the mother-in law tried on bridesmaids dresses. I spent three days constructing 100 white card boxes and lids to put favours in. I spent a day designing and printing Orders of Services to then fold and staple together. I wasn't going to be one of these men who let the world fly by around me then turn up on the day. I did as much as I could, and here's the result

So now that I'm settled and sorted and back on the net, what can the blogging world expect? Exciting dialogues about the latest films? Well, I saw Knight and Day last week and it was excellent fun. I even forgot it was the Crooze and his Thetan friends. I did spend the opening five minutes deciding if he had died his hair the wrong colour and then the rest of the film mesmerized by La Diaz who looked fantastic. Then we followed it with a DVD double header of Happy Gilmore (greatest sports film ever made) and Bruce Almighty (Good Carey, just not The Cable Guy good.) Well no, just expect the dithering inane blather of old, just with newer refernces and as many typos as before.

Man, it's good to be back...

Round Round Get A Round I'll Get A Round...Up

2009-12-14T13:35:00.007Z

It's been a while since I posted so thought, with time being tight and having a day off I'd do a quick round up.

SPOILERS MAY APPEAR

Thankfully X Factor's finished and I have my Saturdays back. You could tell that they were aiming for Joe to win as the winners song was so blatantly targeted at little Joe. A more Oli-unfriendly song would be as hard to find as a pig at a bar mitzvah, and you could see that in his face when he warbled the last few bits. I was appalled at Joe winning, a more antiseptic, personality free zone than usual. Oli entertained, Joe sang note perfect. Of all three duets Joe's version of Sun Go Down On Me with George Michael, which funnily enough is what he asked Joe backstage was the blandest. I was more interested in George's bizarre bad plastic surgery bodge up face look, a fine blend between Michael Myers and Bono. Going by his new song George has gone mad, but putting on a Bo Selector mask to perform wasn't the best idea.

I've not seen many films recently but watched 2012 out of curiosity. What a pile of image over content. It looked great but was so bad a film I cried for John Cusak that he had to appear in this shit. I didn't expect anything great but this so under met expectations. I laughed all the way through this, especially at the way Gordon is dealt with

Kid:" I hate you John Cusak, Gordon's a better dad than you've been, and he ain't even my dad"

John Cusak: "That hurts son. That really hurts"

Go about two hours into the future and Gordon dies, crushed between two massive cogs without even a comedy sound effect crunch. John Cusak lives and goes back to his kids and ex wife

Kid: "Hey Dad, you're back and a hero."

John Cusak: "Yeah, son, I'm back"

Kid: "Hold on a minute, where's Gordon?"

John Cusak: "Oh, he died. Squashed between two giant cogs without even a squelch"

Kid: "Oh, right. Let's go up on deck"

I hated ID4 and Godzilla, this was even worse. This made Dude Where's My Car look like the work of Orson Welles.

Still at least us comic fans have some good news in the knowledge that Pete Milligan will be bringing back Shade The Changing Man in the pages of Hellblazer. STCM was possibly the best comic DC put out in the mature readers boom of the late 80s early 90s. Literate, intelligent and full of plot and character it pissed over Sandman but got none of the accolade of Gaiman's reworking of everything he'd read before. He's already brought Kathy George back, who's languishing in Hell, and the second trade's been issued, so the future looks Rosy for us fans of Rac Shade and the meta vest.

And to finish here's a little Christmas cheer with a cameo from Les Dennis and the best of the season to you, with the hope fo more regular postings in the new year

Dave

All Our Heroes Are Whores

2009-10-07T12:13:00.004+01:00

So I finally got around to blogging again, although you probably didn't miss me. I needed a break to plan wedding stuff and catch up on bits, but never mind, on with the usual.

I was watching The X Factor over the weekend to see what my intended was going to inflict upon me up until Christmas and several things were problematic to me.

Cheryl refusing to take Dan (?) the opera style guy through because she "didn't get it" when he was by far the best singer in her group, instead pushing through three gimps who are obviously aimed at the ten year old girl market. So this is all about sales rather than talent

Louis picking those annoying twins even though they have no possible future. They make my beloved Daphne and Celeste sound like the remaining two tenors.

Simon picking the blokes who are showmen rather than the girls who can sing.

Me for not having a problem with the ones Danni Botox and her sister picked

But my real beef with X Factor isn't that it dashes hopes of a million untalented idiots or that it negates all pop music other than ballads and Abba songs because in Cowell's World nobody can sing if it's not whiney love songs by Mariah or Whitney. My problem is that there is no longer any point by anybody to release a Christmas record. Number One every year will be the X Factor winner and that's wrong because now we won't get a Christmas Rapping or a Merry Christmas Everyone because there will be no point. Blandy McGeneric who wins the TV show will outsell everyone by a million percent because they have had all the free TV publicity through premium rate phone call shows. And that is why I resent the bloody thing. I want proper Christmas songs, not some shit by someone who's singing words without knowing WHAT THEY BLOODY MEAN. Someone who thinks shouting the third chorus is putting passion into their music and someone who is so bad they can make Snow Patrol sound like cherubs.

I'll be watching next week though with the missus going Sshh at me every time I tut at someone being shit though

Guess Who's Back, Back Again...

2009-07-07T17:42:00.003+01:00

And so I return to blog a bit more about the utter randomness of life in the last lane. It's been a while, and this is down to a few reasons -

1. I've been busy

2. I got bored

3. I aint got the internet anymore.

1 and 2 aren't really that interesting, but 3, 3's been the bane of my life. We had to move house a few weeks ago, but the new place isn't ready so I've had to find a stop gap for a couple of months. That means no internet unless my useless wi-fi is strong enough to piggy back a signal from one of the surrouinding businesses. My dongle wasn't even strong enough to pick up a signal from a router 15 feet away in the house so I wouldn't hold your breath. If only there was an advert where a strong wi fi card kicked sand into the weedy dongle's face encouraging the weak one to buff up, but alas....

So, I have to make do with work's net, and it blocks all the good stuff so don't expect a return too soon.

The Key - inks

2009-05-01T19:07:00.002+01:00

I am a freak amongst most comics people, because, with the exception of of fellow PJANG artist Uncle Tony, I am the only person I know who enjoys inking.

Back in college when everyone else was learning how to mix gouache properly, I was spending my time perfecting the art of dipping pen and brush. I mean, I could actually draw using a paintbrush, who'd have thought of that? Brian Bolland for one. The skill that man had with a 00 Windsor and Newton sable was immense. I'd got pissed off at a very early age of the 00 as you kept having to refill the tiny brush head every two or three lines, but according to Bri, he drew whole episodes of Judge Dredd with the dreaded 00. Me, I was drawing with twigs and cotton buds dipped in thick black India ink. Loved the stuff. And I loved the feel of drawing with a spindly metal split point mapping pen, attempting to perfect the delicate and scratchy John Ridgeway approach. Even when the nib got stuck in the paper and cut it up, throwing spatter over the page.

And so we get to the inking part of The Key. Lately I've been inking with a Pentel Brush Pen which runs off a cartridge like a fountain pen but has a thick brush point that when mastered produces some mighty fine lines like a dip pen. I'm still trying to get a consistent result doing that and I decided that for The Key I wanted a delicate line to contrast against blocks of solid black and white spaces. Instead of reverting to the trusted Gillot nib and holder I went and spent a fortune on a Rotring art pen. These are like a fountain pen in look and in nib , and again run off a cartridge but the handling is far better as is the quality of line they produce and don't dig or splay whilst being used. However you don't really get the variety of line a mapping pen gives because the nib is fixed and doesn't open very far when you apply pressure.

These are the last two frames of the first page, which are in flashback. In his script Rol asked for an obvious visual difference between flashback and modern day, which will be the topic of the next blog.

The Key

2009-04-15T18:38:00.006+01:00

So I started on my next venture with Rol - The Key, and decided that I'd like to keep a log of what I'm doing with it. I haven't kept a work log since Uni when I had to keep a journal of my work in video production as part of my assessed work. They could have been written on a Rizla - "Made shit film, put very little effort in. Was alright I suppose" I hated video production, lugging around a weighty Super VHS camera and having to knock together something I wasn't really that interested in. I only took it because the other option was Broadcast Journalism and you had to do a production module every semester. I wanted to be Paxman, they seemed to churn out a lot of people wanting to be Ben Shepherd.

I had received the script from Rol about a month back when I was still working on Blinded..., and had intended to leave it a while so I could get on with my own stories but I hadn't finished writing the strip so decided to start on this one, reckoning I've a good four months to do it in, and at a page a week I could manage that easily while still having time to do my other stuff. So I went down to the swimming pool , and after finding the deep end I went and jumped in.

I'm a bit odd in as much as if I have a full script I tend not to do thumbnails. I look at the script and do a little frame layout based on how much text there is on that frame or if I need to do an establishing shot, and then get on with it. Why repeat work? I won't be talking in depth about stuff, and I won't be spoiling anything, just concentrating on the odd panel here and there that I like, along with different stages of the work. And there's definitely NO SPOILERS So here goes, as we start at the beginning with page 1 frame 1...

Frame 1

Script by Rol Hirst

1. A suburban street – starter homes and flats rather than family homes. A
summer evening, still light. Richard (30s, scruffy, stubble, jeans and denim
shirt) walks towards one particular house, trying to look like he belongs here,
trying not to look shifty.

I hate doing buildings, and as the opening scene I had to do a good job. Enter extreme close up to avoid drawing all those pesky windows and details. Also, shove in some hedges to avoid that too.

What I do love doing is little details not mentioned in the script to create realism. There's no request for a car, and I hate drawing vehicles so why put one in? It's not too bad a job either?

Note the blue lines - I sketch layouts first in non-repro blue, normally inking straight from there, but here I used the blue to draw perspective lines in without confusing myself. Also I've roughed in where the title will go so that I don't put any important detail there that may get covered up by text

I had Get Carter on while I was drawing the page. I love that film, so bleak and yet so vividly colourful. It's the best film Caine ever did. So I decided to pay tribute in one of those unscripted moments to one of the greatest film score composers for his chilling theme.

It was then that I noticed I hadn't drawn the lead character walking through the frame.

Next: I probably forget to draw something else important

Blinded By The Light

2009-04-11T15:28:00.005+01:00

Finally finished drawing Rol's Blinded... strip this week which will appear in his PJANG #3 alongside two other strips. Next up for Rol is another 20 page story called The Key which I hoped was an adaptation of the Urban Cookie Collective's house track The Key The Secret but unfortunately it isn't. Here's the first page of Blinded in it's full glory. Further details for PJANG can be found here

Fast Broads Sketch revisited

2009-04-02T18:05:00.007+01:00

It's been too long between posts, over a month and it looks like it's not gonna be much more often for the foreseeable future due to work, the course I'm doing and my life interfering with things. So to try and keep up, here's a sketch of Carl from Fast Broads.

Carl is Scam's best mate, they've been together since school, and he's the eternal optimist, the dreamer. He knows life is rubbish but tries to make the best of it. He likes Pulp, William Shatner, pub quizzes and Cinnamon Grahams. He doesn't like the girl from 4 music who keep popping up on T4 and ruining his weekend with he personality free presenting. he wonders how many cocks she had to suck to get that job. But he hates the girl with the mad hair from Big Brothers Little Brother more. I mean, what kind of name's Zezi? And don't you need to be able to read if you use autocue?

Fast Broads sketch

2009-03-01T20:21:00.004Z

Lately I've been drawing strips written by other people but have had a hankering to get back to doing ones I've written myself, mainly a series of short Fast Broads stories. I started FB about 13 years ago as a series of single issues and mini series that interlinked through a set of characters. I was trying to see if I could write a generational dynasty thing - you know, the story of a family throughout the generations told through one or two members of it. I started it with Modern Life Is Rubbish drawn by the glorious Chris Askham which featured a drug addled Scam and Carl on a night out. They popped up again with Scam's cousin Holden in Wake Up With Peter Engel which never finished as I got embroiled in my final year of degree studies while working a million hours a week and drinking pretty heavily. Scam's brother Will turned up in Fast Broads: Worthing drawn by Chris. Written in full but never fully drawn it'll stay in the ether of small press history as Chris went through a crisis of artistic confidence and I sold the computer it was written on to pay for baked beans but never kept a copy of the script. Two issues were printed and published a few years back. I wrote some more strips starring the McNeill family and started to draw them but gave up to do other things for other people and found them again recently while cleaning out a cupboard. Looking back through them I got ideas to start them again as the art needed tweeking and the dialogue was a little clunky in places. So I started to do some character sketches. Here's one of the young Scam McNeill done for a story about youth clubs and Yazoo. Expect it, at my current rate of drawing, in 2010, or sooner if I get the chance

Nigel

2009-02-26T21:11:00.003Z

Going through the cupboard i found this old portrait of my old mucker Nigel which I knocked up in a couple of minutes using a Blue Black Lettraset marker at a pub meet. I love Lettraset markers, they're three pens in one with chisel, thick bullet and thin nibs all on the same body. I coloured a whole comic with them a year ago as you can get a blender and various tones of colours.

Unfortunately I stopped using them and opted for Photoshop to colour everything I'd drawn for speed reasons as I had less and less time to dedicate to drawing. Sat here are boxes of paints, inks, Chinese brushes and pencils all waiting to be picked up again when I have the time. The only implements regularly being used being a blue lead pencil, a Rotring art pen and a Pentel Brush Pen. The idea of going back to life classes keeps going around in my head and if I do, I can't wait to get out the old tools of the trade

Interview with the Dave-l

2009-02-24T20:50:00.005Z

As part of Chris A Free Man's Interview 2009 I was interviewed by Meghan who very kindly asked me the following

You have many references to your artwork and illustrations (which are really great, by the way) on your blog… when did you first become interested in the art world?

Thanks. I kind of got into drawing when I was about 7 or 8. There used to be a couple of TV shows that showed you how to draw on kids TV which I used to watch between coming home from school and doing my jobs on the farm I grew up on when I was about 5 or 6, and I was an avid reader of British comics like 2000ad and Look and Learn, but I wasn’t really interested in it, we had countryside to play in and animals to look after. When my folks split up and we moved into the town I kind of lost myself in reading and drawing, as the fields were quite a walk away and there wasn’t much else to do. I kind of taught myself to draw from watching Tony Hart and Rolf Harris on the TV and looking at my comics. Look and Learn was great because it was an educational comic and you’d get these lush oil paintings of nature and it kind of got me into trying to paint as well as do these crap biro pictures of Dan Dare.

What's your favourite piece you've ever created?

I don’t know if I have a favourite piece, but I really liked the work I produced in life drawing at college and it was the only part of the course I’d really put effort into, as I hated the rest of it. I couldn’t afford to get new glasses at the time and spent most of my time there squinting and trying to bluff that I could see when quite obviously I couldn't because my eyes are worse than Mr Magoo so I'd end up with all these blocks of shape and shade rather than a proper image, but our tutor for those classes didn’t care about how exact your work was, she wanted to see how you were pushing yourself to be better than your last piece. She forced me to look at stuff differently and try to approach things in new ways so I'd end up working in negative space or in scribbles rather than lines. They were possibly my favourite pieces, which is a shame because I left art college in the early 1990s.

Who is your favourite artist/favourite work? Why?

There’s too many, but I really love Hopper and Lowry for their depictions of average people going about their days. They may be very different in style and subject but it’s that glimpse into other people’s lives that I love. I like David Hockney, who is from where I grew up in the north of England and his bright splashes of colour and movement which contradict so much the grim and gritty place he grew up in that you can see why he had to move to California and more up to date I love the elegance and mystery of Jack Vettriano. His paintings remind me of old pulp thriller covers. I also love comic artists like Philip Bond, Jamie Hernandez and Sean Phillips.

What do you like best about living in the UK (yes, that's an odd question, but I'm a boring American…)?

At times I can’t stand the place, with it’s nanny state government and the idea that seems to be over riding the population of that nobody is responsible for their actions. I keep reading about people who’s only defence is “It’s not my fault, I only did it cos I didn’t know any better.” These are adults. And if the adults are like that what hope for their kids? But then I think of the history of this country and the culture, that where else would we have something so rich and full of life as the words of Shakespeare, The Smiths and Olivier. Where you can walk through towns where you can physically see the country 500 years ago. I like the idea that we have a sort of free press, and that the media isn't totally controlled by advertisers and putting out lowest common denominator product all the time. We seem more open to trying new things but reserve the right to complain about it while doing nothing to change things.

And then there’s the countryside. Man, the countryside is beautiful here

What do you plan on seeing next "Wednesday Film Night?" If you could only watch three movies for the rest of your life, what would they be?

That’ll be a surprise as it’s the girlfriend’s turn to chose, but I hope it's not Confessions of a Shopaholic. If I could only watch three films for the rest of my life, it’d have to be The Elephant Man which is the most beautiful film ever made, Breakfast at Tiffanys, which is the defining George Peppard moment (and I’m a massive A Team fan) and The Breakfast Club. But it’ll change tomorrow and probably include Dunstan Checks In

In one of your recent posts you question what the "Big Guy is playing at behind his pearly gates." What would be your idea of the perfect afterlife?

I don’t really believe in an afterlife, but if I pictured a pefect one it’d be in a bar in the countryside of Ireland with all my friends, family and my heroes drinking Guinness and having a sing along the world’s greatest supergroup played all our favourite songs while the chef cooked dinner for us all. Music, food, drink and good company, what more do you need in this life? It'd be a shame to lose it for eternity.

Random question: what's your best/funniest/oddest memory of your childhood

I don’t have that many memories of childhood, but when I was about 5 we were at my brother's friend's house after school playing Scalextric. My brother was being a goon and not letting me have a go, so I thought I’d be sneaky and pull the plug out enough to stop the cars but not be noticeable. However I wasn’t looking and touched the pin with my finger while it was still in contact and gave myself a massive shock. I got sent home for messing about and had to tell my dad who gave me a slap for playing with electricity.
On a similar note my mate and me found some porn by the canal a year later, and took it home. My dad asked me where I got it from and I told him. He gave me a slap not for being 6 with porn but for being down by the canal without a grown up.

I'm interviewing Ryan, and it's all good fun. If you fancy a go at being the next Paxman go over to Chris's blog and sign up for a random victim and inquisitor. It's a good way of finding new blogs to read and to probe the mind of someone unknown

blinded page 3 detail

2009-02-19T21:14:00.002Z

Headline Of The Week

2009-02-19T12:56:00.005Z

Good old NME.com tells the news as it is. Click to enlarge for why the NME really is shit

Thought I'd Seen Everything But I Was Wrong

2009-02-18T19:26:00.004Z

Craig my line manager came up to me at work today with a smirk.

"Did you see The One Show on Monday?" he asked.

"Nah I was at the gym til half seven, and it's not really my choice of viewing, not when Five USA has CSI night" I responded revealing the house addiction to Gil Grissom , Mac and the really annoying Horatio Kane. An addiction that may need intervention therapy.

"Morrissey was on"

"Sod off. Moz, on The One Show? You're taking the piss" I added, though slightly censored here for politeness.

"No, it's true, I watched it. It'll be on iPlayer."

Being an iPlayer addict I tuned in when I got home and sure as eggs is eggs, there he was. And it was actually one of the best interviews with him in years, if particularly vacuous in questions, he was on sparklingly witty form, especially when remarking that execs who've lost their jobs in the current economic climate (I refuse to call it the credit crunch) "should do some painting".

It can be viewed until Sunday night on bbc.co.uk or by clicking on the title of this post

At Last! A-Z of Comic Characters: Zenith

2009-02-02T18:25:00.004Z

In the words of Blur, it looks like we've made it to the end. It's taken a while, but here we have the final entry in the A-Z with not one, not two but four Zeniths. I've taken a stab at the iconic images of the series with homages to the versions of the character from Phases 1,3,4 and zzzenith.com.

Created by Grant Morrison, Brendan McCarthy and Steve Yeowell, Zenith was 2000ad's attempt at a superhero tale. It was about young pop star Robert MacDowell, son of two members of 1960s Superteam Cloud 9. As well as one of his early takes in the genre, Morrison used Zenith as a diatribe on pop culture and the current government in the UK. As times changed so did Zenith and his mentor MP Peter St John, who was allegedly based on Robert Kilroy-Silk.

The main story was told in four Phases. In Phase I, Zenith reluctantly teams up with surviving members of Cloud Nine to defeat one of the Many-Angled Ones, Phase II details the efforts of a media tycoon modeled on Richard Branson to use Zenith as breeding stock for a new group of superpowered slaves that he will use for world domination. Phase III involves a multidimensional war utilizing comic-book characters from other British comics from the 50's, 60's and 70's (using either the actual characters or analogs, depending on their legal status). The final series, Phase IV, brought the story full circle as the Lovecraftian horrors from the first series were revealed as originating much closer to home than previously realized. Many years later in Prog 2001, a short story zzzenith.com brought back the characters of Zenith, St John and old comic character Robot Archie, who was introduced in an earlier Phaze as Aciied Archie in a one off tale about celebrity and pop music. As much an essay on modern culture and the fame game, Zenith is currently tied up in a copyright battle between Morrison and the publishers.

Frost/Nixon

2009-01-29T19:15:00.005Z

So me and Mel finally get to see Frost/Nixon after going on about wanting to for the last month or so last night. We've been having our Wednesday film night for a while and they've ranged from the alright (Lakeview Terrace) to the good (Sex Drive) to the great (Kurt and Miri Make A Porno), but we've yet to see a truly brilliant film.

Things didn't look great as the reception area was rammed, and it was already start time. "it's going to be rammed in there, there's a lot of older folk in here" said Mel. Anyway we get inside the theatre just as the titles are rolling and find we are one of 8 people in there. Great no halfwit tossers or screaming kids, just adults watching a film about a real event.

Frost/Nixon is the first film in a long time that's made me think. Normally I go to the pictures with someone to be entertained, anything serious I will watch on my own, along with anything to embarrassing to see with someone else - I've been tempted to go to Bride Wars in secret - but F/N made me doubt who I was meant to be supporting, because although Nixon was a bit of a cunt with his mind games and his sense of moral indignation, the more I watched Michael Sheen's performance the more Frost was becoming a smug, self serving fuck of a man attempting to do something to further his career and media image. As the lady friend said at one point about Nixon "I want to kick the fucker", but at the end added "I know I shouldn't but I felt sorry for Nixon at the end."

The script is excellent, Frost comes over as a slimey git, Nixon as a sanctimonious crook, but both become one character in it for the game, and all that brings - fame, women, money. John Birt comes over as a bland tv exec, his attitude being that Frost is bound to fail because he's a performer. Oliver Platt is underused, stuck in the middle of Bland Birt, Egomaniacal Frost and the whining lefty lecturer played by Sam Rockell who annoys the shit out of you with his single minded mission to make Nixon stand trial. However Michael Sheen and Frank Langella are sublime, their tennis match confrontations are note perfect, the cat and mouse toying with each other brilliant. They captivate with nuance, pull you in and keep you there waiting for a mere twitch of an eye or flick of hair. Langella deserves his Oscar nomination, he is brilliant and it's a shame Sheen didn't get one ahead of Brad Pitt. However, the star of the show is Kevin Bacon. Like Rob Lowe in The West Wing he shakes of his Brat Pack image to play a member of staff who seems to have given up his own life to live in the shadow of the president. He is Smithers to Nixon's Mister Burns, and that includes the almost homosexual devotion to the man

The one thing that struck me on the way out was the film is structured like a classic underdog movie, like Rocky. There's the training and preparation, the fight with it's setbacks and sucker punches only to come back in the last round and win with the killer blow.

So, after five films we've found our truly brilliant film, which leaves us with our next mission - how do we top this one?

Blinded Inks

2009-01-25T21:03:00.002Z

No More Heroes In the Gallery

2009-01-18T23:36:00.003Z

Mel had just picked me up to go to Sunday lunch with her family when I get a text message from my mum. I knew it'd be her as it was half one on a Sunday, and she normally texts me about then.

"This'll be me mother" I say to Mel, and I'm right.

"What's she got to say?" asks the missus while trying to navigate a right hand turn.

"Shit, Tony Hart's dead."

"What the bloke with Morph?"

"Yeah"

This really saddened me because nobody, not even the great Rolf Harris made me want to draw and paint than Tony Hart. This ex Gurkha created marvellous works of art you could do at home using anything fro around the house alongside large pictures done using sticks in the beach, tennis court painters in parks and car parks, shot from an overhead crane. As well as Vision On, Take Hart and Hart Beat, I remember him doing funny animal sketches on Swap Shop and Saturday Superstore, dressed in chinos, a blue cotton shirt and a cravat, his perfectly coiffured silver hair bouncing as he drew. I remember his tiffs with the caretaker Mr Bennett, the god awful Morph and his total lack of sexual chemistry with the beautiful Margot Wilson. Got rid of from our screens because he simply didn't fit the current trend on kids tv. Later on he would be an internet rumour about him having an affair with Andii Peters . After losing the use of his hands due to two strokes he died on the 18th January. A true gentleman and a fine artist he will be missed

Blinded Pencils

2009-01-17T16:09:00.003Z

Detail from page 2 of Blinded... For some reason Blogger doesn't like my art and keeps changing the colours - this is actually drawn in non repro blue.

God's Taking the Piss

2009-01-17T15:34:00.003Z

So, Big Guy, what are you playing at up there behind your pearly gates?

I asked myself that this week when three of my heroes passed away.

First up was Patrick McGoohan, or Number 6 in The Prisoner as he was more widely known. He created, wrote and produced the show, not just starred in it, and his portrayal of a man who lost his freedom, a man who was part of the authority but now was subjected to total dictatorship in a prison for subversive types was a thing of acting beauty. He was also had the honour of being the only man to be told "Just one more thing..." by Peter Falk four times on Columbo. He was a great actor and wasn't all about the money, but worked within a self imposed moral code, allegedly leading him to turn down the role of James Bond

The day after up pops the news that Ricardo Montalbán had died. Best known as the evil Khan who's wrath was seen in Star Trek 2, Ricardo Gonzalo Pedro Montalbán y Merino was best known to me as the philanthropist Mr Roarke in Fantasy Island. I still fondly remember the calls of midget sidekick Tattoo to his gaffer of "De plane boss, De plane" as a new cast of characters arrived. Later in life he would appear in Spy Kids and Family Guy. Another man of conviction, he was a pro-Hispanic campaigner and a truly great actor.

Yesterdays BBC News 24 announced John Mortimer, lawyer, author and creator of Rumpole of the Bailey had died. I used to love Rumpole, the grumpy barrister with no time for judges and less time for the cases he took on. Mortimer was also a great campaigner, taking on cases where publications were being tried for obscenity, our art and culture being taken to court over speaking out against what they saw as wrong, he was truly a pioneer of the freedom of speech. Living in a world where big money is paid for zero talent and image is everything, Mortimer looked like a toad, and his image was based on his talents both as a legal man and a writer.

We have lost three men who's heart and ideas were as great as their talents, where they understood what they were fighting for rather than talking shit given to them by PR people, and knowing what they were saying was as important as the actual words. When he could have taken charlatans such as Mark Ronson and Scarlett Johanson, God took three men good and true. Guess even Deities have bad weeks.

Blinded detail

2009-01-13T20:23:00.004Z

The current project from Rol Hirst and myself was meant as a submission for an anthology but due to my slackness working on PJANG #2 didn't get finished before the deadline. Not being wasteful types we've decided to put it in a future issue of Rol's anthology.

Unlike 24(minutes), it's only 6 pages and has given me a chance o experiment a bit with a new style. I was worn out after the hyper detail of 24, and so that I could enjoy drawing Blinded I've gone a bit more open, with thicker brushstrokes. I'm doing it in grayscale, but here's a frame in colour.

Next, I may just finish the A-Z of Comic Characters... MAY, that is

NOT the man from Del Monte

2009-01-04T17:19:00.003Z

Went to see Yes Man last night with the missus, and have to say I wasn't expecting much, disliking both Jim Carey and Danny Wallace, who's book it was based on. I will admit that old Jim is growing on me now he seems to have realised doing a bad impression of Phil Cool and Robin Williams isn't really acting, but he still grates. Danny Wallace however is just a nob in my opinion, who has struck it lucky after riding on Dave Gorman's coat tails for far too long. In fact, everything he does strikes me as an idea Gorman has rejected for being too simple/stupid. His column in Short List is to journalism what Dan Brown is to the serious novel. Anyway enough, on to the film...

Carl Allen is a no man, he'd rather stay home and watch DVDs than hang out with mates, ignores all his calls and is going through the numbers at work where once again he's passed over for promotion. His wife left hm after 6 months and is hooked up with a rich and successful new bloke. You get the picture, he's a failure. He gets roped in to going to a seminar with lifestyle guru Terrence, (played by Terrence Stamp with a strange accent) where he is forced into a strange covenant to say yes to everything. With hilarious consequences and a Hollywood ending.

While it sounds terrible, it's actually very good. Carey is believable, both as the hyper Yes Man and the down on his luck misanthrope Carl. Love interest Alison, is weird and cooky enough and Zooey Descanel is likeable enough, but the star of the film is Rhys Darby(Murray from Flight of the Conchords) who plays Norman, The boss of the bank where Carl works. His understated performance as the likable wacky geek seems to rub off on Carey and the scenes where they act together are the best in the film.

2008-12-30T18:31:00.002Z

If you're in the Birmingham area and stuck for something to do for New Year's Eve, then this pop down and see us at the Flapper for a cheap night out. Put away those fears of financial hardship, your job going down the shitter and general woe. Anyone who comes up and says "New Years already Hasn't 2008 gone quick?" will receive a free shoeing.

new art for the people

2008-12-30T17:28:00.007Z

I finally finished darwing Rol's 24 minutes strip which has sen print in his second issue of PJANG. You can get hold of a copy at rolhirst.co.uk or if you haven't read it you can buy issue 1 as well if you have one of them paypal things. Cover by the affable Nigel Lowrey, pages out of sequence...

A to Z of Comics Characters: Ymir

2008-12-09T22:07:00.005Z

And so, finally we nearly make it to the end, and as I'd intended to do Young Marvelman, we get the picture of a really bizarre Avengers villain instead. My attempt at Young Marvelman was so bad not even I'd publish it, and I've pumped out some shit in the past in the name of art.

So who is Ymir? Well, he was created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby and first appeared in Journey Into Mystery #97 and the rest I'll leave up to Wikepedia

Formed shortly after the creation of the Earth, Ymir considers all other forms of life - with the exception of his kin the Frost Giants - to be aberrations that must be destroyed. Chronologically, Ymir is first mentioned in the Hyborian Age by his apparent daughter, Atali, who together with two of her Frost Giant brothers have an encounter with the barbarian hero Conan.

Thousands of years later, Ymir is summoned back to Earth by a human
cult called the Sons of Vanir, and briefly battles the original X-Men before
being banished by the Thunder God Thor. Another cult, the Sons of Satannish briefly
summon Ymir - together with fire demon Surtur -before being banished again by
the superhero team the Avengers and the sorcerer Doctor Strange. Alongside
arch-rival Surtur, Ymir later invades Asgard, but is defeated
when Thor, wielding the Odin Power, banishes the pair to the Sea of Eternal
Night.
Despite the final Ragnarok and the eventual return of the Norse Gods,
Ymir has yet to return from exile.

So we've one left to do, and I can't say it's not come too soon. What started out as an exercise in getting to grips with drawing again, and developing my colouring has ended up dragging on and out into the ether of time. I should have finished this ages ago but due to being lazy/ busy/without Internet/ ill/ romancing it's still here like a bunion on the foot of blogging. Who is going to be Z? Who knows

Question Time

2008-12-01T20:50:00.003Z

There is one question I never seem to have the correct answer to when asked by the missus. One simple question that could be answered in a couple of easily thought out words, but I always seem to screw up, and that question is

What are you thinking?

I can never get the right answer no matter how carefully thought out. I'm all about honesty between couples, but sometimes honesty is possibly the wrong path to take. I was asked this yesterday morning while laying cuddling.

"What are you thinking?" Mel asked

After a short pause I answered:

"Do you think you could train a team of squirrels to be a crack squad of assassins?"

Sometimes I really shouldn't speak

A - Z of comic Characters: Professor Charles Xavier

2008-11-25T20:49:00.003Z

A quick one tonight, and a rare delve into Marvel territory - I'm not a Marvel zombie, was always more interested in the UK and DC comics which seemed more edgy. But this one needs no introduction as everyone knows who Professor X is, so it's here, and if you want more info go to Wikipedia and learn nothing. He's a teacher, social reformist, on and off cripple, and possibly worse for kids than Gary Glitter, judging by the amount who've been put in peril or killed in his care. Created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, he first appeared in X-Men #1

This was painted totally in Photoshop using three brushes and a nicely muted (not mutated) palette. I actually think this is one of my best entries in the A-Z, and with only 2 left am I going to better it? Stay tuned to this bat station

and said little boy gonna make you a man

2008-11-24T20:56:00.003Z

A wierd day at work that, around the conversation on the Carter USM gig from Friday, which was brilliant, involved me wearing a 1950s style skirt and neck scarf for half an hour while doing a bit of script reading. It's ended up with me appearing at the Good Food show for three days later this week doing a bit of acting/presenting, with the instructions "Camp it up Dave, the cheesier the better"

How much camper I can go than a bit of casual office based cross dressing I don't know, but I'm gonna give it my best shot. You'll probably see it here, or on YouTube under the heading Camp Twat at the Good Food Show later this week. I'm up against Ramsey and the Fat Tongued Mockney Cunt, so at least nobody'll see it live.

A-Z of Comic Characters: Devlin Waugh

2008-11-24T20:28:00.004Z

After a busy weekend including watching the attrocious Englan performance against the Springboks in the rugby, and the excellent performance of Carter USM with EMF in support - their lead singer looks to be regressing rather than aging, we return to the A-Zof Comics, with Devlin Waugh, another for a certain someone to ask "whhoooooo?"

Devlin is the creation of John Smith and Sean Phillips and appeared in the Judge Dredd Megazine before a Bosman to 2000ad and then being sold back in a double transfer with Judge Anderson. A papal investigator into the occult, Devlin is described as Noel Coward played by Arnold Schwartzenegger, and for some reason only Phillips knows the face of Terry Thomas, and first appeared in Swimming In Blood where a vampire outbreak occurs in an underwater prison, arriving in a fetching smoking jacket with the line "You can all breathe a sigh of relief, gentlemen. Fingers off the triggers, sphincters unclenched... The name's Waugh. Devlin Waugh. I'm here to steal the show...". Unfortunately he gets bitten himself and becomes one of the undead.

Devlin was born around 2075 to the famed actress Stella Waugh and magus/Egyptologist Magnus Waugh, and had a brother, Freddy. His education was at least in part under the tutelage of nuns. As a teenager Devlin was sent to Eton College, on whose playing-fields he "splinted more legs as a schoolboy than Florence Nightingale did during the whole of the Crimean War" . With life made a hell by his mother and his father descending into alcoholism, it was here he felt most happy at the start. He took up occult activities as part of the four-boy "Caliban Club", eventually masturbating a homunculus into being (losing his virginity to it). Due to heavy bullying and the poltergeist activity caused by the resulting emotional turmoil, Devlin was reduced to a physical wreck. His father stepped in and had him to the time-travelling Kem-Kwon Monastery, where he learned Kem-Kwong killing techniques which stood him in good stead in his future life.
Following her husband's death, Stella burnt all his artifacts and brought Devlin and Freddy to Castle Neuschwanstein, according to Devlin 'Freddy loathed it with a vengeance but I thought it was just divine." Grief-stricken, Devlin attempted to solve the mystery of the Black Pyramid of Ptah idol that had confounded his father; in doing so he neglected his friend and unrequited love Conrad, and didn't realise until the boy's suicide that he was being molested by the Eton chaplain. When the chaplain tried this on Devlin, he caved the man's skull in with the Pyramid. It opened in response, revealing the Eye of Sekmet that he would use in later life.

After phillips left the strip the adventures of Devlin Waugh were continued by Michale Gaydos, Colin MacNeill. Steve Yeowell and more recently Peter Doherty, with Smith always writing fractured, dialogue heavy scripts of occult battles and his mother's biographer.

A-Z og comic characters: Valkyrie

2008-11-20T21:54:00.002Z

A Marvel character for Rol, who's by now getting fed up of asking "Whhhhoooooooooo?" to my entries. She was in the Defenders and Avengers, and was created by Roy Thomas and John Buscema, and that's about all I know, so over to the font of all knowledge Wikipedia for the following:

"Valkyrie is a Marvel Comics superheroine. An Asgardian demi-goddess by birth, her real name is Brunnhilde. Among her other aliases are Barbara Denton-Norriss, Samantha Parrington and Sian Bowen who all were host bodies to the spirit of Brunnhilde. Her first appearance was in The Avengers vol. 1 #83. For much of her history she was a mainstay of superhero team known as the Defenders. Samantha Parrington, a previous host to Brunnhilde, later received the Valkyrie powers herself and became a member of the Defenders as Valkyrie.

Valkyrie is the strongest of all Valkyrior. Like all her people, her tissue and bone are several times as dense as the mortal equivalent. Though she is not immortal, she ages far more slowly than humans. Valkyrie is immune to all terrestrial diseases and is resistant to most forms of injury. Her Asgardian physiology grants her superhuman levels of stamina. Valkyrie can perceive the approach of death, in the form of a "deathglow" surrounding a person's body. She doesn't know how death will come but she can tell that it is imminent. Valkyrie can transport herself and a dying or dead body to and from the realm of the dead by willing it. Valkyrie has had extensive training in sword fighting as well as unarmed combat and horseback riding. Her natural fighting ability is among the best of all Asgardian females, matched only by Sif.

Brunnhilde was selected by Odin, King of the Gods of the realm of Asgard, to lead the Valkyror (the Choosers of the Slain), a group of warrior goddesses who would appear over the battlefields of mortal worshippers of the Asgardian gods and choose which of the fallen were worthy to be taken to Valhalla, the land of the honored dead. Brunnhilde served capably in this capacity for centuries."

So she is a hard ass warrior woman, and can kick the shit out of most of the other Marvel characters, but then in The Ultimates it all went tits up and she became eye candy for the boys. Shame really.

A-Z of comic characters: Ukko the Dwarf

2008-11-19T22:01:00.003Z

Another 2000ad character, but this time it's a minor one, one who never had his own series. The star of today's portrait is Ukko, the dwarf, narrator of Slaine, the Celtic warrior tale from Tooth.

Ukko is Sláine's traveling companion and friend. It is he who, after Sláine's death, records the adventures of Sláine. Ukko is your typical dwarf who cares much for battle and even more for money. Ukko plays a great part in Sláine's adventures and without him Sláine would probably had failed to attain the Four Gifts. After Sláine's death it is Ukko who writes down the legend of the mighty hero.

Created by Pat Mills and then wife Angie Kincaid, Ukko starts off as a cowardly moneygrabbing, snivelling character who, as the tales go on, develops as much, if not more than the hero of the strip. Later the art would be taken on by Bellardinelli, Mike McMahon and Glenn Fabry before Simon Bisley took the character into the realms of painted comics with the three part Horned God which made the strip an international success. Fabry returned, painting the strip and then there was a string of other artists doing short stints including Dermot Power who probably had the longest run on the character. Artists came and went until Clint Langley took over and has produced his computer generated art on the strip for the last 6 stories.

While Mills' strip is deeply entrenched in Celtic mythology, the origins of Ukko are in Finnish mythology and paganism. In Finnish mythology, Ukko is a god of sky, weather, crops (harvest) and other natural things. He is the most significant god in Finnish mythology. In the Kalevala he is also called ylijumala (the high god), as he is the god of things above. Other names for Ukko include Pitkänen (pitkä, long), isäinen (isä, father), isoinen (iso, great) and Äijö. He makes all his appearances in myths solely by natural effects when asked. Translated to English "Ukko" means literally "old man". He is the equivalent of Odin in the Norse pantheon, with properties of Thor. The equivalent of Thor, Tuuri, was seldom encountered in the Finnish pantheon, and relegated only as deity of harvest and success.

A-Z of Comic Characters: Tharg the Mighty

2008-11-04T19:10:00.003Z

So, if you were a comic buying kid in 1977 you had to have the latest IPC release 2000ad even if it was only for the plastic Space Spinner. Action had folded and boys comics were in the doldrums. 2000ad launched around the same time as Star Wars and the Sci Fi craze made it a hit. The editor being Tharg the green alien cannot of harmed things.

With his weekly greetings of Borrag Thung Earthlets, the green headed one from Betelgeuse opened the comic with his rubber masked mug glaring out of the page, lauding us of the thrills inside like Dan Dare, Mach 1, the Harlem Heroes and a week later Judge Dredd. It was the thing for IPC boys comics to have editorial characters. Tornado had Big E, Scream had Ghastly McNasty and so on, but none of them have been around as long as the one known affectionately as Telephone Head due to the Rosette of Sirius stuck firmly above the permanent scowl.

Known as a no nonsense kind of guy, Tharg would happily dispatch insulent and surly creator droids for reprogramming to Mek Quake where they would be eaten by the robot furnace to the cry of Big Jobs. He appeared regularly in strips in the comic written by TMO - or The Mighty One and drawn by such British comic luminaries as Carlos Ezquerra, Massimo Bellardinelli, Eric Bradbury, Ian Gibson and Robin Smith where he would battle his dreaded enemies the Thrill Suckers and the evil Dictators of Zragg. Even though in the 90s at the comics low spot he was replaced by the grey men of Vector 13, Tharg returned to his rightful role as masthead of the Galaxy's Greatest Comic where he remains to this day.

A-Z of Comic Characters: Shade the Changing Man

2008-11-03T21:42:00.004Z

It was always going to be an easy choice for S, and as a treat for Tone I've thrown in the sometime girlfriend and her sometime girlfriend.

Created by Steve Spider-Man Ditko during his mental as fuck period where he was dealing in dodgy right wing philosophies and politics in the 70s. But to me Shade will always be the 1990 re imagining by Peter Milligan and Brendan McCarthy - although he didn't draw the comic until issue 22, contributing covers before Jamie Hewlett took over, the interior art being done by newcomer Chris Bacchalo and inker Mark Pennington for the majority of the first 50 issues.

The new series changed the character from Ditko's secret agent to a lovelorn poet sent to earth to save us from increasing madness. Along the way he meets Kathy George who has become an alcoholic since the murder of her parents and boyfriend at the hands of Troy Grenzer who's body Shade inhabits on Earth. She's also haunted by the spirit of Roger her murdered boyfriend before starting affairs with both Shade and Lenny, a sassy bisexual on the run from her life.

Shade starts as a commentary on America and it's culture before becoming a surreal fantasy of gender politics, alienation and obsession. The five Shades Milligan uses are all various aspects of the same character as well as very different, and Hades, the violent and sexually aggressive version of the first Shade contribute to a study on identity and the aspects of personality. In my view the best book DC ever put out, it lasted 70 issues before Milligan ended the story, and although plagued by rotating artists after #50 when Bacchalo bowed out, the story of Shade is one that has to be read in storylines rather than individual issues

The Dating Game

2008-11-03T13:05:00.006Z

It's strange how ideas seem to come to people at the same time. Over on Rol's blog he's asking for research on school discos in 1987 for a story he's writing. About five weeks back I wrote a script and drew three pages of comic art based on exactly the same thing, a strip about romance at 15 where you asked a girl out by getting your pal to thump her on the arm, squeak "my mate fancies you" and leg it, leaving you smiling awkwardly at her, red faced and embarrassed as her and her chums, all ra-ra skirts, white denim jackets and loose perms lok at you like you're either a child killer or a monkey fiddler.

I went on my first date in years last night, and I have to admit I was longing for those days of sending your mate over before I got there. It didn't start well when the pub I'd arranged to meet her in was shut and we ended up in a Wetherspoons(the romantic in me will never die.) Then there was the worry of me clamming up and not having a single thought of what to say other than "Would you rather be a Gimp Chimp or a Junkie Monkey", and such classic Dave questions such as "Do you like The Smiths?"and then judging them based on the answer.
In the end it all went okay enough for me to merit a second date, but man it was so much easier back then when all your date ended up being was sitting in the park on the swings, swigging from a bottle of Thunderbird and smoking fags you'd told the shop keeper were for your mam, even though you didn't smoke, just were trying to look cool but making a tit of yourself by takin tiny little draws and then blowing it straight out again.

new art for the people

2008-11-03T12:46:00.004Z

whilst trying to get back on track with the A-Z of comic characters here's some bits of digital painting. Portraits of Sid Vicious, Frank Sidebottom with Mark Radcliffe, and everyone's favourite babysitter Fred West.

over there

2008-10-24T18:08:00.002+01:00

the friday 7 returns and it's actually on a fiday. go figure. the links over there

Can You Tell What It Is Yet - the result

2008-10-15T18:26:00.004+01:00

So here's the finished digital painting. Or at least as finished as it is, because there's things I immediately want to change. Good old Moz in full Elvis pose.

My photo reference gave funny brown shadows which I don't like, but apart from that I'm quite happy with it. I got onto a theme of doing Northern Icons, and in fifteen minute knocked up the Norths greatest living woman in a cod Julian Opie style.

Ladies and Gents I give you Hilda