Size A6

In the comments to these weekly posts (and only these posts), it's your chance to go as off topic as you like.

Talk about non-comics stuff, thread derail, and just generally chat among yourselves.

The intent of these posts is to chat and have some fun and, sure, vent a little as required. Reasoned debate is fine, as always, but if you have to ask if something is going over the line, think carefully before posting please.

Normal board rules about conduct and behaviour still apply, of course.

It's been suggested that, if discussing spoilers for recent media events, it might be advisable to consider using the rot13 method to prevent other members seeing spoilers in passing.

The world situation is the world situation. If you're following the news, you know it as much as I do, if you're not, then there are better sources than scans_daily. But please, no doomscrolling, for your own sake.

There's nothing quite like announcing that a firing squad execution will be televised, to cause a significant portion of the the world to surprise themselves and find they can LOWER their opinion of Pete Hegseth even further.

Over the weekend, in the midst of Trump selling out Ukraine to buy Russian diesel, and waffling on about how Ukraine should get a new President (after Zelenskyy dared to criticise him). Ukraine's missiles took out three facilities in Russia which are believed to house extremely prolific bot farms. Three weeks before the US Midterm elections, that may have done more to preserve democracy than anything else in YEARS.

In the UK, our latest PM has actually spoken the words that no one Prime Minister has dared utter since 2016, that maybe the UK should actively pursue closer ties to the EU (Starmer came close, but was very very cautious about it)

Knights of Guinevere has had a second episode released!

200Gb of files from classic Cartoon Network shows have leaked online.

Brian Blessed has just celebrated his 90th birthday.

My thanks to those who encouraged me to try more of "Widows Bay" but, alas still not getting into it. I did go down a rabbit hole of what qualifies as "cringe comedy", and I found that about 95% of the shows listed are ones which have had massive fanbases and which I have just never cared for at all, so I think it's a trend with me, not a one off. Oh well, live and learn.

“Maybe we could introduce a character in the Absolute Universe BEFORE we meet them in the main universe?” they said. “Okay,” I said. -- Al Ewing

( Read more... )

I can't say I was particularly excited by an entire series of vampires and X-Men, but honestly? This was pretty good!

Below the cut, worldbuilding and red meat for Scott Summers fans.

( Read more... )

The book's had the two simultaneously existing from the start, but at a distance - the threats that " Sin Es Tro " and Hector Hammond represented were very separate.

Issue #17 put one in the former - issue #18's a bit of the pulp history of the world in which the latter thrives.

Issue #19's more of that history from a more grim angle.

( It's hitting the same notes as the Absolute Evil one-shot. )

"The horror imagery is very patient in a way that I really admire, but then when it cuts loose, just some of the visuals that I see in manga comics are so over the top and upsetting in a way that really just serves horror comics so well. It's not like nobody's drawing gross shit in Western horror comics, but something about manga just really hits hard. I don't know. I just really admire it. So yeah, I'm just drawing on that for for influence. The visual style of Midnight Spider-Man is very East meets West." - Phillip Kennedy Johnson

( Read more... )

In the comments to these weekly posts (and only these posts), it's your chance to go as off topic as you like.

Talk about non-comics stuff, thread derail, and just generally chat among yourselves.

The intent of these posts is to chat and have some fun and, sure, vent a little as required. Reasoned debate is fine, as always, but if you have to ask if something is going over the line, think carefully before posting please.

Normal board rules about conduct and behaviour still apply, of course.

It's been suggested that, if discussing spoilers for recent media events, it might be advisable to consider using the rot13 method to prevent other members seeing spoilers in passing..

The world situation is the world situation. If you're following the news, you know it as much as I do, if you're not, then there are better sources than scans_daily. But please, no doomscrolling, for your own sake.

So we have a snap election in Spain, and widespread disruption of schools in France as they protest underfunding? Well, it makes a change to see reports on this instead of whatever is going on in the US from day to day.

For those wanting to ease into "the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness" as Keats puts it, or "spooky season" as several online retailers seem to insist on calling it, PattyCake Productions, makers of fine Disney homages and tributes, has released a new track, "Home is Where the Haunt Is" an electro-swing earworm, and tribute to the Haunted Mansion, with VoicePlay's Geoff Castellucci on lead vocals, with his bass notes seemingly bypassing the ears and going straight to the spinal column.

The second season of the UK Celebrity edition of The Traitors (the only reality show I've watched in YEARS) has just started, with a remarkable line-up (ie I'd heard of more than 40% of them before), and Richard E Grant immediately cornering the market in attention grabbing eccentricity by the unusual route of, the admitting he was a Traitor to everyone in earshot the first time he was asked (as a joke) by another player. He could have played it off as a joke, but you could actually see the moment his brain seized up. His subsequent explanations were amusing, though hardly convincing, and the only reason not everyone is assuming he IS a Traitor is the fervent belief that no one could be THAT bad at it.

After it's multiple Emmy wins, I tried "Widow's Bay" and I'm just... not getting it. The production values are high and the acting seems fine, but the whole vibe is just... "Everyone on our quaint little town is quirky (or an asshole) and that means EVERYONE!" that I also got from "Gilmore Girls"and "Twin Peaks" (both shows I REALLY wanted to like more than I did) and this seems like those with a "supernatural" instead of "Coming of Age" or "David Lynch weird" theme. I think, sometimes you do need a regular character to bounce the oddities off of (See Joel in "Northern Exposure") and I've not found that in this. I can see the Mayor is supposed to be that, but he's not selling it to me. Oh well, my loss I'm sure.

I did Found a couple of stashes of short lived old shows to pass the time from around the turn of the century, and gosh, some of those haven't aged well! :) "Jake 2.0", a perfectly decent attempt from 2003 at a low budget sci-fi superpowers show, marred by, amongst other things, Christopher Gorham's distractingly bad haircut (No, seriously, it IS that bad), and the ACHINGLY hip "Level 9" from 2000 where overly trendy nerds work for a government agency with super-duper (ie terrifyingly intrusive) tech for observation (spying), utterly unconvincing keyboard skills, and so much jargon flying around that they actually have a character called "Jargon".

Also 2002's "Glory Days", a VERY short lived series from Kevin Williamson who wanted to make something akin to "Dawson's Creek", but for older viewers, but was then asked to make it a mystery series, and honestly, it plays out like live action Scooby Doo as seemingly supernatural events are always explained as being faked via means which seem less plausible than supernatural activity would have been.

So, since I've not asked a question in a while; What's your favourite "It's awful but I love it" old show? :)

Late addition: The BBC has released it's first image from the upcoming pre-school show: "Doctor Who: TARDIS Crew". Get ready for a slew of fanboys who are decades older than the target audience wanting to play "Affronted Bingo" over this. Bonus points for them using "DEI" as an expletive!

So, we have reached the end of Lanterns season 1....

( In Stewarts eyes, in Jordan's butt. Spoilers lie, beneath this cut )

What if... the other Spider-Man had kept a sammich in his pocket?

( Read more... )

One panel. Context?

( Read more... )

'The cues are all there in the story. And there's a whole subtext to my book that I've been warned directly, "Do not directly tell people what it is."' - Alex Ross

'In some ways, there's overtones that are very peaked, and that's one of the reasons I was warned, "Don't go into all this. Don't explain to people what you were thinking because then you're going to piss off somebody," and eventually there are enough things in here to get one cancelled over.' - Alex Ross

( Read more... )

#800 is only the beginning! -- Al Ewing

( Read more... )

When I’ve been talking about this to friends, it’s basically all I can do to not just rant out all The Good Bits. This drops in September, so speak to your retailer [...] Oh – actually one thing I will add: No Mister Sinister. -- Kieron Gillen

( Read more... )