Marvel (Less Fat Too)

The Twenty-Ninth of March Two Thousand and Fifteen. Sunday.

How's your afternoon going? I'm listening to my vinyl copy of Television's Greatest Hits Volume II. Spider-Man's just been on. Nothing makes my heart soar more than a cracking TV theme and this is, of course, championship material. The lyrics are by Paul Francis Webster who won Oscars for Secret Love (off of Calamity Jane - and how fab a movie is that? Enough to make it my Tenth Film Recommendation) and Love is a Many Splendored Thing. If you could sum Spidey up in a couplet, it would be "wealth and fame - he's ignored, action is his reward". That's genius. And his name's Webster!

(Right, the first side's just finished with Mr Rogers' Neighborhood. I've got to get up and turn it over. I'll tell you where you can shove your retro...)

Yes, even though I am a grown man I still like to read about people in tights beating each other up. Thinking about Spider (hyphen) Man it dawned on me how my tastes have changed over the years. I was a dyed-in-the-spandex DC follower in my younger days. I'd buy the occasional Marvel book, but all my favourites seemed to be Metropolis and Gotham rather than New York.

More specifically the Metropolis of the 30th Century. The one comic I made sure I never missed an issue of was The Legion of Super-Heroes. It's difficult looking back to identify what exactly draws you into something. Every superhero has their own roster of rogues and supporting characters, but I suppose there was something about the Legion's huge cast of characters, set aside from the rest of the DC Universe by a thousand years, that appealed to a list-loving teenage nerd. For the most part each Legionnaire had a single power unique to them - you weren't allowed to join their club if you duplicated someone else's abilities. These arbitrary rules made perfect sense to a certain mindset, one that I definitely possessed (and still do - why do you think I work on the railway?)

I guess it was the intracacy of the 'rules' of DC's storytelling - with its multiple worlds and colour-coded kryptonite - that hooked me more than Marvel's 'messy' characters. Struggles with prejudice, alcoholism or even making rent money didn't resonate with me in the way that continuity minutiae did. I think most of my Marvel knowledge came from the black and white weekly UK reprint titles of the seventies. I'm looking forward to the Avengers: Age of Ultron movie coming out in a few months as it chimes with a hardback Avengers annual I had way back when that revealed Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch's true parents. My dad copied a portrait of the Vision from it in coloured pencil. I remember being surprised at this previously unseen artistic side of him.

Now, DC's reliance on complicated and rewritten histories is a bit of a turn-off to me (a notable exception being Grant Morrison's Multiversity, which positively revels in the notion of there being 52 different Earths, each with their own variation on the classic DC heroes). Somewhere, in the last couple of decades, Marvel's focus has shifted away from the perpetual second act structure of an ongoing narrative to discreet volumes of work where creators tell a story with a definite beginning middle and end before putting the toys back in the box for someone else to play with. I've spoken here about Jonathan Hickman's Fantastic Four comics. I think this is probably now my favourite run on a mainstream comic and he's following this up superbly with his work on the main Avengers titles at the moment.

So let me wrap up this vague waffle with a few recommendations.

I've spoken about Dan Slott, Michael and Laura Allred's take on Silver Surfer here. Now ten issues in, this title has only gotten better and better.

This morning I was reading Mighty Avengers, written by Al Ewing, with art by Greg Land and Salvador Larroca among others. Just good, action-packed, funny superhero comics by a UK writer.

But fully worthy of my Eighth Comic Book Recommendation is Nick Spencer and Steve Lieber's Superior Foes of Spider-Man. It's easy to poke fun at the super-hero genre, but that's a cheap laugh. Altogether more satisfying is humour that works within the tights and codenames paradigm, bending those conventions without breaking them. My friend, this is the book for you.

Featuring the Sinister Six (although, in true Blake's 7 style, there are only five of them), it relates the 'reality' of being a B-list supervillain in the Marvel universe. You can't help but root for these nearly-men even as they rob, double-cross and generally sell out in the search for that one big score that'll put them on the villain map. I know it's fashionable for comics fans to bemoan the quality of superhero movies in comparison to the books that spawned them, but there is no way that Sinister Six film is going to be anywhere near as good as this.

So of late I've been saying Make Mine Marvel. But that hasn't stopped me during this vinyl afternoon in unearthing Prince's Batman album and giving it a spin. Not for me using it as a weapon against an advancing zombie. I'll leave you now with the DC Vin of 1989 and the track Batdance. I was trying to find The Arms of Orion featuring Esther Rantzen protegé Sheena Easton but OoToobay isn't playing ball.

More soonliest

Making Connections: Epipode 01 - Ely to Peterborough

The Sixth of January Two Thousand and Fifteen. Tuesday.

Hello. My name is Vin Smarsden Hendrick and this is the first in an occasional series of blogs where I tell you about a shortrain journey I've made and the stories I've bumped into on the way.

I recently completed my first rail journey of 2015. It began in the picturesque Cambridgeshire city of Ely. I was heading for the 1815 service to Peterborough and as usual I was a little behind schedule. The sun had already set on the imposing cathedral which was now tastefully floodlit by a passing police helicopter, making an eerie crenelated silhouette. 2015 might have been around the corner but I could have sworn I was in the  Middle Ages of England! The fierce light also drew me to the new Subway concession installed within the lantern tower next to the Bishop of Huntingdon's chancel. I grabbed a quick lunch surrounded by clunch and made my way to the station. My sandwich was a simple three cheese affair, modest yet satisfying. 

On the platform I encountered Haraparit Kaur Gill, a laser eye surgeon from Chatteris. Drawn to the 'Game of Thrones' ring tone on her phone (she had just completed a short call when we met) I asked her if she was a fan of the epic fantasy television series. She replied she wasn't, but had been making her way through the boxed sets on the recommendation of a work friend who had lent them to her. Haraparit had got as far as the third series when she made a curious discovery. All of the discs in that box contained only a single episode repeated ten times over. I asked Haraparit which one. Apparently it had Dennis Pennis in it or something. Nevertheless, Haraparit's friend had never mentioned this despite claiming to have watched them all and read half of the books. The fibber!

I asked Haraparit if she was going to call her friend's bluff. She told me that she didn't want to risk upsetting her and was content to pretend that she too had watched the series confident that she wasn't going to be asked to comment on something that her friend had no knowledge of anyway. At that point my train arrived and I left Haraparit to unravel these intrigues worthy of Westeros.

My journey took around forty minutes from start to finish. One of my favourite things about rail travel is the opportunity to catch up with books, comics, podcasts or audios that somehow get missed during the hurly-burly of everyday life. On this occasion I reacquainted myself with recordings of the dead caught on electronic equipment that had come free with The Unexplained magazine many years ago. It's complete guff, but it still manages to give me goosepimples. Who knew Latvian was the preferred language of the dead?

I arrived on time in Peterborough where I was met by my friend Ramon - an old Spanish penpal who moved to England after a lottery win. He was kindly lending me a couch for the night. I asked if he had any tales he'd like me to pass on in my blog, but other than a time he saw David O'Leary of Arsenal buying lightbulbs in Wilko's he didn't have much to add. Perhaps that was as well. I think I had had enough excitement for one day!

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What You Would Have Won

The Fourth of September Two Thousand and Fourteen. Thursday.

Hallo. I know that you've been feeling tired. I bring you love and deeper understanding.

Hi Gang. So many things to tell you. I really should write stuff down. But instead I'll let them percolate inside my noggin and maybe they'll find their own way out over the years.

I've just watched that Kate Bush documentary that was on BBC4 a bit ago. I'm not a big fan, but I had a copy of The Whole Story, listened to my sister's copy of Hounds of Love regularly and caught up a little bit last year with Director's Cut. Consequently, I didn't make much of an effort when the tickets for Before the Dawn, her current live concerts were released (not that I would have had much of a chance considering how quickly they sold out). I have always had issues with pursuing things that might give me pleasure, something that seems to have become more acute in later years.

Then I heard that she performed The Ninth Wave, the haunting, basically all-round fabulous b-side (Hah! b-side!) of Hounds of Love, in its entirety and my constantly clicking regret counter spun round a few more times.

I haven't written a blog for a while now, so I turned to my colleague, top photographer and Boost bar afficianado, Jeves, to suggest a possible topic to get the ball rolling. This he did, quide liderally by suggesting I give my thoughts on Scarborough Athletic's eight-goal (plus pens) FA Cup thriller vs North Shields last night. However, he quickly revised that choice when he realised I wouldn't treat the beautiful game with the respect it deserves and would instead harp on about the Tyne and Wear Metro station at North Shields (here it is, by the way).

It's due to be refurbished, apparently, and have ticket barriers installed (it's a fare-dodging hotspot, you'll be intersted to know). I think he was also concerned that I might just go on about the Shields Ferry that takes you across the Tyne to South Shields instead of giving in-depth analysis of a match that saw both sides reduced to nine men and five penalties awarded (four successful, one missed) even before the deciding shoot-out took place. So he suggested I should talk about game shows instead.

Which made me think of Bullseye's famous, often-mocked, climactic tease where losing contestants were shown what prize they would have won if they'd been just a bit better with the arrows. Which, naturally, led me to be thankful that the technology doesn't yet exist to enable us to look into all those parallel worlds where we could see all the results of all the better decisions we didn't make. Bowen cruelly pointing out the version of myself that got off its arse and got Kate Bush tickets. Or was kinder, or cleverer, or both. And yet, as diffuse as my own moral code is, the central tenets of fairness and justice that I observe are inspired by game shows. When William G Stewart used to allow an answer even if it was given just after the buzzer went I thought 'it's important to have rules, and even more important to know when to ignore them'. And when Leslie Crowther let one of the tenants of Contestant's Row have the prize despite guessing wrong because the thing dropped down to reveal the price as if they'd won even though they hadn't I knew that doing right is better than being right.

And hey! Look! I was talking about Kate Bush and game shows three years ago! That's a bit of a coincidence, isn't it?

More soonliest.

The Five Nations Week O' Trams

The Seventeenth of May Two Thousand and Fourteen. Saturday.

This post about trams comes to you courtesy of an old Miranda Sex Garden CD playing in the background.

Weaste tram stop opened on 12 June 1999. I had left Salford the previous November, so, consequently, I missed the tram. Three months later I went and had one of those children things (well, my pre-ex-wife did most of the cooking, but I contributed a few molecules at the start) and as you know tiny people come with push chairs. So, whenever I visited No1 son's grandparents the tram, with its level access, was the easiest way to get from Piccadilly station to their house.

It had nothing whatsoever to do with being an anorak who loved anything that runs on rails. Oh no.

I've always been a sucker for a rail map - different coloured lines and interchanges and all that nonsense. Harry Beck's Underground map is, of course, the chef d'oeuvre of this particular genre. Here's the current one for the Manchester Metrolink.

Not a classic by any means, but a map is a map. And maps need to be explored.

The idea for the Five Nations Week O' Trams (incorporating The Metro and Subway Jamboree) came with the news that Edinburgh's beleaguered new tram route (over budget, inappropriate design, etc, etc) would be finally opening this May. I started wondering when I would be able to visit. 

This then led to the idea of visiting all of the UK tramways that had opened since the revival of Light Rail in this country at the end of the last century. So that would be Manchester, naturally. Sheffield, Nottingham, West Midlands, the new Blackpool trams and Croyon would all have to feature. Then I read a Facebook post about how a friend's dad had paid host to train-hopping TV Tory Michael Portillo at the Wirral Tramway. Could a few heritage tramways be included too? So as well as Birkenhead there would have to be the Crich Tramway Village, natch. Off to Wikipedia to see what other trammish delights lay about the country.

There were a lot more than I realised. That was when the idea to go further afield, to Belgium and to Ireland began to crystallise. Add a visit to the Great Orme Tramway in Llandudno and a theme and a title was born. Next Tuesday, the 20 May, marks the first (and possibly the only - let's get this one out of the way first, eh?) Five Nations Week O' Trams. Here is the itinerary:

Scotland

The inspiration for this tour was the announcement of Edinburgh trams starting in May. The most convenient time to take off work was around the May Spring Bank Holiday. Surely that would be in time for the trams?

Well, last month they announced the start date and while it was definitely in May it turned out to be the 31st - four days after FNWOT concludes. I was livid. In fact my first thought was to boycott the trams when they finally arrived, a response completely against the ethos of FNWOT, but which I felt would convey the level of disappointment I felt. Not that anyone would have noticed, but it's the principle of the thing, you understand.

A Brussels tram at Summerlee!

Would this become the Four Nations Week O' Trams? At least I wouldn't have to change the hashtag. But no, rescue came in the form of Summerlee - The Museum of Scottish Industrial Life in Coatbridge. They run a heritage tram daily and look well worth a visit. The first day of the tour will also take in the Riverside Transport Museum in Glasgow (which I will be visiting via the Glasgow Subway) to see the trams housed there too. And I've calmed down a bit now, so if there is time I will pop over to Edinburgh and look at the trams while they're running on test!

England (Part 1)

The next day takes in Blackpool (just regular modern trams - I couldn't time it for the heritage services), the Parry People Mover at Stourbridge -

- the Midland Metro, the Underground, the Docklands Light Railway, the Overground and the London Tramlink! Phew! Then we're off to...

Belgium

Eurostar to Brussels where we have a bit of a tram about town. If I've time I'll take in the Atomium and the Comics Museum.

Again, timing has worked against me. There is a fab tram museum here, but it's only open at weekends and there was other weekend-only stuff I wanted to see back in Blighty. Just means I'll have to come again. There's also a restaurant on a tram! But it's a bit expensive and you can only book tables for 2, 4 or 6. I'll just be sticking to frites and mayonnaise, I think.

On the way to the airport we'll also have a quick mooch on the trams in Charleroi before we fly off to...

Ireland

Only a very brief visit to Dublin, arriving one evening and departing the next afternoon - maybe an early lunch at the Temple Bar pub. But we should be able to get a quick trip on the Luas.

Then we set sail across the Irish Sea to...

Wales 

There's time enough for a stop off in Llandudno and a trip on the Great Orme Tramway.

It's tempting to go one way on the tram and the other on the cable car (me and the boys did this a couple of years ago), but I think it's going to be just the tram on this occasion.

England (Part 2)

After Llandudno it's off to Birkenhead and the Wirral Tramway.

Another busy day though, as we quickly head across the Mersey to Southport and ride on the Pier Tram, before heading back to the ancestral home in Salford.

If I was a bit peeved about missing the opening of the Edinburgh trams, then that was more than made up for by a fortunate bit of scheduling. On the morning that I am in Manchester there is to be a special farewell tour for the T68 trams that formed the original Metrolink fleet.

That this should be taking place during FNWOT on the very day that I'm in Manchester is a very welcome coincidence. I'll be receiving a commemorative ticket that'll be the perfect souvenir for this tram-mendous (sorry!) week. If I've got time that day I'll be popping up to the Heaton Park Tramway before heading toward Sheffield for a quick go on the Supertram. The last night of the tour takes place in Nottingham where I'll be having a brief bash on the NET and then taking the train the next day Whatstandwell and a short walk to the Crich Tramway Village. The perfect finish to FNWOT, especially since there's more than one mode of transport on show there...

Then that's that for FNWOT but there will be more international tram action later in the year with visits to Paris and Barcelona. For now though, all thoughts are on Tuesday and the adventure ahead. No doubt there'll be the usual blurry selfies of me stood in front of various vehicles, so look out for that on Facebook or wherever. 

Hah. Actually getting a bit excited about this now.

More soonliest.

Gray/Grainer

The Thirtieth of April Two Thousand and Fourteen. Wednesday.

I see they've brought back Comedy Playhouse, complete with a quick snatch of the original theme music: Happy Joe by Ron Grainer. Which reminded me that I had put 'Gray vs Grainer' as a tag on this blog entry here. And seemed to tie in nicely with the fact that I bought a CD of Ron Grainer's music last week.

And all this confluence of nonsense reminded me of the time I was witness to the Grand Final of the Theme Tune Composer Deathmatch XXIII.

Everyone else had fallen by the wayside: Hawksworth, Hazelhurst, Goodall and the like. Only the two giants were still standing: Ron Grainer and Barry Gray.

Appreciation of the Thunderbirds theme has gone through a phase of kitsch appreciation, but lets not lose sight of the fact that it is just a blooming good tune. The crowd gasped as Gray played it as his opening gambit.

Grainer always had a sense of humour though, and so he ironically replied by saying he hadn't expected that.

Gray simply said that 'anything could happen in the next half hour'.

But Grainer just thought that was a load of old junk.

Grainer was getting cocky - he didn't even bother with Doctor Who, confident in the depth of his oeuvre. But then Gray punched hard with UFO.

Grainer was reeling. He knew he had to finish this fast. First he took the mickey, doing his version of one of Gray's themes.

And then, while The Ron Grainer Orchestra were on fire, they finished Gray off with their own interpretation of the theme from The Prisoner (which for some reason I can't embed from Youtube so I'll have to do a link instead. Here it is).

Kapow!

Grainer wins! Next he travels to New York for the international final against Mike Post.

(PS, as a bonus here are the Japanese opening titles to several Gerry Anderson series)

More soonliest.

Un-On Demanding

The Seventeenth of April Two Thousand and Fourteen. Maundy Thursday.

Just a quick update for the lovers of irony out there (and when I say 'irony', I mean it in the same way that Alannis Morrisette does, which is to say it's not really irony but it almost sounds as if it might be and until they come up with a word that means 'near-irony' I'm going to say 'irony'. I mean, you could argue that there's nothing wrong with saying 'near-irony', but you can't really have near-irony, can you? So they need a word for that thing that would be near-irony if there was such a thing). After making a big fuss about how my viewing habits were tending toward streaming here, circumstance has conspired to return my telly-watching to something like it was when I was a boy.

Maybe it's when you reach a certain age, you start to revisit themes and ideas you'd long since abandoned. I buy most of my comics digitally now, but with a few shops having 50p boxes with titles from a year or more ago I've returned to making more eclectic purchases. Do any Manchesterfordians here remember the name of that second hand bookshop on Peter St? I used to rifle through the comic boxes there and find all manner of nonsense, from the 60s and 70s (this was in the 80s) in there. I'd buy whatever I fancied, rather than following a particular writer or artist. I feel I've recaptured some of that reckless excitement when I root through the bargain boxes now. An hour or so flicking through them all and pocketing stuff that catches your eye. At ten bob a throw you can't go wrong. The search is part of the enjoyment.

I actually had this telly!

And now I find I'm going back to those heady pre remote control days with my TV viewing. I found out that my Nineteenth Telly Recommendation, Community is having its fifth season shown on the Sony channel here in the UK. Now I don't have any access to Sky or Virgin (but if you do, tune in. They're showing older episodes at teatime and the new series is on at 10 on Thursdays) but me Mam and Dad do. And since they're not bothered about using Virgin TV Anywhere on their mobile device of choice, they've let me log on to this service so that I can watch the Sony channel and catch up with it! However, since I'm not connected to all their Tivo gubbins I can only live stream channels. In other words, I have to make sure I'm not doing anything when the programme airs and have that one and only chance to watch it. In order to fully recreate the TV watching experience of my teens I intend to make up a cup of tea during the ad break and come back too late so I miss the first two minutes of the second half. I wonder how long it will take before the novelty wears off?

I'm guessing just the one episode.

More soonliest.

Washing Machines Last Longer With Glycon

The Sixteenth of April Two Thousand and Fourteen. Wednesday.

This writing a blog thing is a right lark. It's easier than doing proper writing. You just put down the first thing that comes in to your head and hope for the best. No wonder everybody's doing it.

Alan? Alan, is that you? What are you doing here?

I can't come up with something original every time, Alan. I've got a job and I have very few opportunities to write. Sometimes I have to just coast a bit.

I can't remember, but I've a feeling you're going to remind me.

Easy for you to say, Alan. You worship Calgon, the god of dishwashers.

Alan, I'm scared. I don't want to be a writer. I just want to be a nerk who goes round looking at trams and eating breakfasts.

Oh blimey, I've given Alan Moore dialogue spoken by Dungeon Master off of the Dungeons and Dragons cartoon. In fact, why am I wasting time writing this nonsense. I think I'll put the DVD on right now and watch that instead.

Sorry, Al. I missed that. I was making a crisp butty. I'll catch you later. I've just got to rattle off this blog and it's nearly taken me five minutes already. Oh well, I suppose you've got to put in the effort sometimes.

More soonliest.