Primeval

The penultimate episode of ITV's Primeval comes up this Saturday and its penned by the very fine novelist, screenwriter and comics scribe Paul Cornell, who was also responsible for some of the finest episodes of the new Doctor Who - "Father's Day" and "Human Nature". We were lacking time for a full-length interview but I couldn't let it go past without marking it and Paul kindly took some time out to answer a few questions for the Forbidden Planet blog, should you fancy a read before the episode airs on Saturday evening.

Comics Britannia

Next Monday (the tenth) sees the start of a season of programmes on BBC4 about comics, with the centrepiece being three one-hour programmes on British comics, from the launch of the Dandy and Beano in the late 1930s through to the present day, with a nice array of contributors from Leo Baxendale (creator of Minnie the Minx and the Bash Street Kids among others) to Bryan Talbot and Alan Moore, with the three programmes comprising The Fun Factory (which looks at the kid's comics), Boy and Girls (which looks at - well, comics for boys and girls like the Eagle, Bunty etc) and Anarchy in the UK where comics get nastier and grittier (and often ruder!) with 2000AD, Deadline, V For Vendetta and Viz.


(a panel of Leo Baxendale's Bash Street Kids, (c) DC Thomson)

I first heard about this last year when they were looking for suggestions for comics, characters and creators to try and include and in a stoke of luck I was offered preview discs of the series by the Beeb (and obviously I wasn't going to say no!). I've been looking forward to this for a fair while and was delighted to see that it was indeed excellent - and before you think oh, I'm not really a comics fan, you might want to take a look because it has been made to be accessible and enjoyable to anyone, not just comics geeks like me and there is also a nice wave of nostalgic pleasure to be had from it; after all just about everyone over the age of 30 in the UK would have read comics at some point growing up. I've posted a review (or preview, I suppose) up on the Forbidden Planet blog, along with a Q&A with Alastair Laurence, the series producer and director about the making of the series (Alastair also worked on the brilliant Animation Nation a couple of years back).

Necrophiliacs, please be gentle...

"And I like the idea of graveyards. I don’t want to be cremated, I want to be buried. Though it’s in my will that they’re not allowed to have an open coffin. But, I always say if you’re really famous someone steals your body and then you get two burials and more publicity. I always fear that in America, if you are a necrophiliac, where else are you gonna meet a body? In a funeral home! When you’re dead I think the word goes out: ‘You’ve got 36 hours, Anna Nicole’s here. The bidding starts at $150,000.’ I actually believe that does happen. I am afraid of that. If anyone bids for me, I hope they’re gentle. I hope I go for a high price if they bid on me and if my fear is true."

The great John Waters, the 'Pope of Trash', speaking in the Scotsman today. I love John Waters, if he's one of those counter culture figures in movies that if he hadn't existed he'd have to have been invented. And he also starred in one of the best Simpsons episodes ever (back when the show was still great and not watered down like today), the Homer Phobia episode.

Postcards from Palestine

I mentioned Katie who runs the Moomin13 LiveJournal a while back here and who posts on life as a peace activist in Gaza and also her art and cartoons which draw on her experiences in and around Ramallah. She's been doing more cartoons and also beginning an actual comic strip based on her experiences, some of which have been published in magazines and papers in the region. I had a very brief chat with her over on the FPI blog this week (with links to a lot more of her work, including the titular Postcards, which show art and when the cursor runs over them flip over to show the context on the 'back' of the postcard), which I hope some folks find interesting.

Filming in the Gardens

I was asked recently to do another interview about blogging for an upcoming TV programme. They wanted to avoid the normal static interview so opted for asking me questions while walking alongside me with a camera in Princes Street Gardens, which was fine, except being a sunny, spring day the place was full and, not unnaturally, everyone was looking at us (is it for the telly? Who is he?). I'm pretty far from shy but neither am I a total extrovert (regardless of what some folks think! I think I am a bit of an introverted extrovert actually, which, if it sounds like a contradiction in terms is fine, because I've always enjoyed being one of those) but jeez, talk about self-conscious! This is why I much prefer doing radio (plus I have a good body for radio) or being on the other side of the camera.

Anyway, it seemed to go well and I managed to forget about everyone watching us as I got onto my High Horse and discussed freedom of expression in blogging and tried to relate it to the growing culture of censorship we seem to be experiencing from governments and corporations alike. How much of it ends up in the cut I have no idea, although the folks making it did tell me they had interviewed someone at the LSE before coming to see me and he had apparently been interested in seeing my interview because that case still comes up; I quite liked the idea of my overly-opinionated blog posts being referenced in an academic essay, it appealed to the part of me that is the Eternal Student (frankly I'd be happy spending half my life studying one degree after the other if it was feasible, purely for the pleasure of learning and applying it). It does all make me wonder what my old computer mediated communications lecturer would make of it all; I'm sure Mad Dog McMurdo would probably find it amusing.

Apart from some mild embarrassment though it seemed to go quite well and they will let me know once it is all put together, etc. Not sure I actually want to see it since frankly I avoid being in pictures for the most part, but I know my mum will want to see her wee boy on the screen; before anyone asks, I am not available to join other Z-list celebs on I'm A Talentless Twat Get Me Out of Here or Big Brother, although I am available to kiss Shilpa Shetty. Talking of which, how mad was that reaction to a very showbiz kiss? I'm told that public kissing is frowned upon in much of India; I know one shouldn't disrespect different cultures, but burning effigies because someone kissed in public? Good grief, get over yourselves you stupid, uptight numpties!!! Can this really be the land that gave us the Kama Sutra?!!? And you just know most of the guy burning those effigies and professing outrage at this kiss would bloody love to get a chance to snog Shilpa, hypocritical tossers.

Funny thing was, as we were setting up to film I got a phone call from my Norwegian friend Vidar; by coincidence he and his friend were lying on the grass in the Gardens enjoying the sun and nursing hangovers and had spotted us, so I went off to join them afterwards. When they asked us what it was I told them we were location scouting for a new Scottish porno movie "Tossing the Caber", but alas these days I suspect I would be relegated to a bit part (mind you, depending what bit it could still be interesting). Since it was a warm, sunny evening I ended up doing the Annual Rite of Spring, which involves paying homage to the return of the Earth Goddess in the time honoured Celtic tradition (we went to the Pear Tree and sat out in the huge, cobbled beer garden for some al fresco drinking).

Charlie Huston interview

I've just posted up an interview with Charlie Huston on the FPI blog, already an established author in the US for his Henry Thompson crime novels and now moving into a new vampire-noir-crime series featuring a character called Joe Pitt. The second book has just come out in the last few weeks in the States while my friends at Orbit are set to release the first one, Already Dead, in the UK in February - if you like vampire novels and want something a bit different I highly recommend it.



Charlie also made his comics debut in 2006 with the revamped Moon Knight for Marvel, with the first arc recently issued in a hardback collection, winning his quite a few plaudits. And I loved his answer when I asked him how he saw his interpretation of Marc Spector:

"He was always a visceral character to me, and I wanted to try and share that feeling with other readers. Violence, drug abuse, mental illness, moon copters, these are all visceral elements. I wanted Marc Spector to be a shambling mess of a human being who only comes alive, who only understands the world when he puts on a cowl and a cape and jumps out of a helicopter and lands knuckles first in someone’s fucking face."

Ah, superheroes, they are so noble...

Leah and John

I've posted my first author interview of 2007 over on the FPI blog, chatting again with Leah Moore and John Reppion, principally about their upcoming work but the subjects also range across using zombies to do your Christmas shopping and comics writers as guest on reality shows like Strictly Come Dancing (we aim for a diverse approach, you know). John and Leah's recent handiwork (alongside Shane Oakley and Leah's dad, a certain Alan Moore) can be enjoyed in Albion, which just hit the shelves a couple of weeks ago (and ended up being a present to myself). Albion is a very clever reworking of classic British comics characters from yesteryear, such as the Steel Claw and the Spider.

You don't need to be too familiar with the characters - most of them are well before my time and the little of them I have read was in old reprints in the back of modern comics annual as a kid - to get into this; it takes a basic premise that all of these old characters, largely forgotten today (as they are in real life) turn out to have actually existed but have all been kidnapped by a nervous government who has locked them all up (the superheroes and the villains both) in a remote, secret prison in a Scottish castle. As an overbearing American officer visits and criticises the Brit approach for not being like the American one (just as UK comics characters were quite different from American - far odder and weirder) events are coming to a head.

The book is damned clever, one of those works you will need to go back and re-read several times, spotting more characters as you do so. It also creates some interesting analogies to current political events, not least holding people without evidence or trials simply because they are different and you are scared of them. And it has Robot Archie in it! Highly recommended, this is a graphic novel that you will come back to again and again.