Grant Morrison Batman Interview.

Following up from my review of the fantastic new Grant Morrison Batman series, Newsarama have got an interview with the great man on that very subject. (via LinkMachineGo).

Go read.

Batman: The Dark Knight Strikes Again – Frank Miller

I thought this was really awful at the time it came out and never actually finished the series to find out how it ended.
But on a whim, I picked it up again to give it another go.

Dark Knight Returns was one of the first books I read when I started work at Nostalgia and Comics. Along with Watchmen, coming out at the same time, it managed to create an incredible excitement around the comics industry. For those of you who haven’t read it I’ll not give anything away here.
DKR is the classic Batman as a pensioner story.
It’s the future, superheroes have been banned, the aging Bruce Wayne has given up being Batman and is watching his world and his precious city go completely mad. It doesn’t take long to get him back in the costume. He beats things up.
DKR is still a great book. Well structured, economical in the use of the big name Superheroes, brilliant in the use of the villains. A noir futurist story with slick, crafted artwork.

Dark Knight Strikes Again is very few of those things.
It’s not as bad as I remember, but that doesn’t mean it’s all that good.

The main problem is the feeling one gets whilst reading that Miller’s just doing this for the money (a reputed million plus) and that his story when he started writing it was a skeleton at best. Throughout the book characters and situations are just tossed into the mix without warning or reason, by the end it’s just a mess of conflicting storylines and a couple of very lazy deux ex machinas to quickly finish the book.

The story is pretty much DKR all over again. Bruce Wayne has been quiet, training his army, watching the world go to hell yet again. Superman’s working for the government still, heroes are banned still.
And the artwork is equally rushed – scratchy is okay sometimes but Miller takes it to a complete new level here – we get to abstract expressionism at some points.

This isn’t to say it’s completely without merit. The story bounces along and it’s readable, just not great and it’s very existence on the shelves next to DKR merely serves to diminish the brilliance of the original.

Happy Birthday Molly part 2

After tiptoe-ing to bed last night at 2:30am to gently deposit one present on the end of her bed as she requested, it came a a bit of a shock to be woken up at 4am by her excited shouts after she got up to go to the toilet.
Have you ever tried to put an excited 7 year old to bed at 4am when she’s already sneaked a look into the lounge and seen the rest of her presents?
I wouldn’t recommend it.

Anyway, after two and a half hours of trying to convince her that she needed the sleep we frankly gave up.
So at half past six this morning, with barely 3 hours of unbroken sleep, we were opening birthday presents.
Very tired now.
But had a lovely day.
With a lovely daughter.
Happy Birthday Molly.

Happy Birthday Molly.

Molly’s birthday is on August 25th. This means many things.
It means from mid May she watches the TV adverts on channel 5 and asking if she can put that on her birthday list.
It means that we seem to end up having 3 parties (school, family and friends+kids).
It means that she saved us nearly £5000 in nursery fees by being born just before the cut off date of 1st September for her school year.
It means we’ve spent ages looking in the argos catalog with her pointing at stuff and then us trying to talk her out of things.

but most of all it means the end of August is a lovely time for us all.
Happy Birthday darling. 7 already. wow.

Life gets in the way……..

A few weeks ago I did say something about getting some Sunday afternoon gatherings in the park organised this summer, partly to meet up and partly to get a new set of softball games started.

Well, guess what?

Yep. Life happened all through summer. And hence, no softball.
Oops. Sorry folks.
But like the title says…… Life does indeed get in the way.

Gin. is good.

I have rediscovered a love for a good old fashioned G&T.

Now, for the last few years, since finding out that I drink the stuff my wonderful parents have been buying me a litre of Gin for every Christmas.
And for the last three years I’ve been putting the bottles up on the shelf in the pantry and leaving them there.

But for some reason, I decided to pack a bottle in the car when we went away to Anglesey.
And I haven’t looked back since.
The only problem is that old chestnut of the home measure.
In a pub 1 G&T = 1 measure.
At Bruton mansions 1 G&T = something between 3 and 5 measures of Gin.

Heh.

Q: What do you call a drunk in the West Bridgford area of Nottingham?

A: adult street drinkers

Another one from Lou’s best friend Del.
In the streets of West Bridgford (Nottingham’s equivalent to Harbourne) the level of pretentiousness has reached an all time high.

Apparently they have a few local homeless drunks that hang around the place. But they’re not drunks. Heaven forbid we call the alcoholic on the street a drunk, that would be far too offensive. No, the wonderfully concerned people of West Bridgford want them to be known as Adult Street Drinkers.

For God’s sake. How stupid are these bloody people.
If he looks like a drunk, talks like a drunk and smells like a drunk, perhaps we should just call him a drunk?
Bless Del for managing not to join in with this and bless her more for tolerating these idiots.

New Cure Reissues – a Cure fan and his money etc etc…

Blue Sunshine – Deluxe Edition (Amazon Link – The Glove)
The Head on the Door: Deluxe Edition (Amazon Link – The Cure)

This was going to be part of a series of posts entitled “my favourite bands – ever”, but I haven’t gotten around to doing that yet and wanted to talk about these instead.

As you may know, I’ve adored the Cure since a young age, so the deluxe remastered series is exactly the sort of thing a saddo like me is going to end up buying. Now bearing in mind I’ve already got all the cds in question and the second discs are of varying quality, why, you may ask, have I shelled out another £10 each for them?

Because they’re Cure cds, with stuff I haven’t got on them, that’s why.

For example, the last set of reissues, 17 Seconds, Faith & Pornography had at least two songs on each extra cd that I’d have paid money for ages ago on bootlegs. But they’ve just not been available before now, so like any addict, I had to buy the cds all over again.

This series of 4 reissues, The Top, The Head on the Door, Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me and the Robert Smith / Steve Severin side-project The Glove – Blue Sunshine isn’t as laden with great extras as the original series, but what the hell.

At least the Glove second disc has all of Robert Smith’s vocal versions of the songs (he was contractually not allowed to sing on the whole album originally). The Top & Head on the Door at least have a couple of unreleased things, but Kiss Me is just studio demos of the album and a couple of live tracks.

But I had to have them anyway. And if you really have to ask why then you’ve never loved a band the way I loved the Cure. In fact, I’ve still got quite a thing going for them even now when we’re both getting a little long in the tooth.

A disastrous start to the football season for AFC Fictions…..

Well, it’s finally started.
The football season is here, and with it comes my annual attempt to play along in a fantasy football league game.
My game of choice is Fantasy League (link).
Each year I diligently pick my teams, poring over the form sheets and news articles, the reports of new players, who’s hot and who’s not.
Each year I present my best team for my budget and by the end of the first week I usually make half a teams worth of changes because the first week’s results aren’t great.

Not this year though.
This year has been a disaster. After the first weekend I am in 22,541st place with a total of 1 point. Awful.
Wholesale changes have been made.
Obviously I can put some of the blame at the foot of the stressy thing that cannot be named.
(Oooh, the mystery)
But mostly it’s because I am rubbish.

Batman 655 – Grant Morrison & Andy Kubert.

This is the first of the new Grant Morrison run on Batman. We were expecting great things from this, just like we did on Grant Morrison’s All Star Superman and yet again, he doesn’t disappoint in any way.

This is a fantastic comic. What Grant does which is so special is write really sparse stories, where so much happens between panels or even within the action of one panel. He does it so skillfully, so effortlessly that you don’t really notice what’s going on until you sit and try to work out exactly what made the 22 pages you just read so great.

He’s promised that this is going to be a return to a 70’s playboy Batman, more Neal Adams than Frank Miller. And on the evidence here it’s going to be a spectacular success.

He’s obviously having a ball writing the dialogue:
For example; Alfred to Bruce Wayne:

“I hope you don’t mind my saying so, sir,
but….. that growl in your voice —
the one you used to have to practice before you went out as Batman…………..
You’re doing it all the time sir”.

“So let’s try one more time shall we sir?
Repeat after me….
Ah, Good evening ladies”

Wonderful, can’t wait for the next issue.
First JLA, then X-Men, then Superman, now Batman.

There’s two sides to my thinking about this, one is that it’s great to be able to read these wonderful comics. The second is that doing superheroes means Grant has less time to devote to his non-superhero stuff, things like the Invisibles and the Filth.
Personally I’d give up all the superhero stuff in an instant for another series on a par with the Invisibles.
But while he does choose to carry on re-inventing each icon, I’ll be enjoying them.