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

Having a Day Off

The Twenty-Eighth of March Two Thousand and Fourteen. Friday.

How lovely to have some time off. I will be working all weekend, but here are some of the things that I have enjoyed today instead of doing all the chores I should be doing while I have the time.

I follow Rhodri Marsden (@Rhodri) on the Twitter - no relation. Only found out today that he is a member of a the band Dream Themes who do covers of top TV themes. They've just released their first double A side on iTunes: News at Ten and BBC News. Here's the video for News at Ten:

That's fabulous enough in itself, but then I find out that they used to play with Frank Sidebottom which led me to discover this:

"I've got a good idea; you are absolutely bobbins!" Joy, just pure joy.

Dan Slott is the man responsible for Doctor Octopus' mind being in Peter (Spider-Man) Parker's body this last couple of years or so. Along with artist Mike Allred, he is also responsible for the new Silver Surfer comic that launched this week.

Slott is a big Doctor Who fan and he admits to that being one of the influences on this series. An odd cosmic being sharing the sights of the universe with a human being? It seems such an obvious fit for the Surfer you wonder why no-one thought of it before. Not that this is slavish copy of Who - it's unmistakeably a Marvel comic, just that it shares that same sense of fun and wonder particularly associated with the 21st Century iteration of the series. I think it ought to be my Seventh Comic Book Recommendation.

Had a haircut. That wasn't particularly fun, but it was overdue.

Lunch was egg and chips at the Contrast cafe, just round the corner from my flat. I had an iced finger for afters.

I'm struggling with the level 6 dungeon on The Legend of Zelda. At Christmas, Number 1 and 2 sons were fortunate enough to get a Wii U. This meant that their old Wii was sent into my care. But rather than buy a load of game discs for it, I downloaded the original 1980s version of Zelda from the online store. This is about my speed and although I am not much of a gamer, I'm proud of the fact that I've got this far without any cheats. Seem to be stuck on this dungeon, though. It's very frustrating.

I've been catching up on True Detective today as well. Ah, it looks gorgeous (I'm going to watch ep 4 after I've finished this, with a 6 minute tracking shot that everybody's been raving about), but there is this slightly po-faced "Hey kids, these are quality HBO shenanigans" air to it that is faintly ridiculous. It's very watchable, but it certainly has a very high opinion of itself. The next few episodes will reveal if that's deserved.

I tell you what, those microwave rice packets are a godsend. Tea took three minutes to make tonight.

So, back to work tomorrow. Just thought I'd share a little of what's been occupying my time today. Of course, this has taken a chunk out of my evening, which is a bit annoying. I think I'll put the kettle on.

More soonliest.

In Search of the Invisible Man

The Thirteenth of April Two Thousand and Twelve. Friday.

What's the real difference between a day off and an off day? I keep feeling the weight of the myriad things I have got to get done, both domestically and in the Grand Scheme of Things. This means that the little things, the tiny steps on the road to enlightenment (or indeed, basic hygenic living) sometimes get put aside, overlooked during all the fretting about more important stuff. Fortunately, today I managed to redress the balance somewhat and have begun focussing on the small stuff with a view to it all forming part of some indecipherable puzzle of which I am at present not fully aware.

The first revelation came from doing me washing. I've probably spent enough at the launderette in the last couple of years to cover the cost of my own washing machine. Not that I'd want one in me flat. I've spoken before about hermit-like existence of the machine I have as a neighbour. Relations have deteriorated further since I discovered it was responsible for the leak that caused this to grow in me guest bedroom:

  

That's all been fixed now, but it was all very unpleasant for an unnecessarily long amount of time because the maintenance bods couldn't figure out what was causing it. So I am naturally wary of washing machines in the wild.

In captivity, in a well-run lauderette, they are harmless enough. They have to be fed tokens in order to be coaxed into working for you. But their associates, the tumble dryers, will happily work for cash. I was short of pound coins today so while the washer was in the middle of its cycle I popped over the road to the Saint Catherine's Hospice shop with a view to buying something cheap and cheerful to get some change. I came across this:


 

Twelve episodes of the 1950s Invisible Man TV series for a piddling £1.50. Aren't charity shops brilliant? And to think, I'd almost spent twice that on a railway magazine in the Costcutter (the rail publications placed tastefully on the top shelf next to the porn. There was a crossover point between the two that was marked by a title called Hornby - I think that must be a form of rail-based porn, nudes draped across diesel engines, that sort of thing. Not really my bag. No, really).

The St Catherine's shop was rife with incident. While I was browsing the unwanted biographies downstairs a woman was attacked by a stand in the shape of a swastika that was overburdened with handbags. It turned out there was a castor missing from one of the 'feet' causing the stand to topple over and strike this woman. As I prepared to pay for my DVD I overheard the lady on the till saying "of all the people it could fall on it had to be her". The injured party was obviously an unpopular regular. Fortunately, she took a shine to me, impressed with my domesticity when I told her I was in the middle of washing my shirts. I confessed to her that she wouldn't think me domesticated if she saw the state of my flat. There's another journey of a thousand steps that needs to start earlier rather than later.

I have a favourite washer and dryer, so back at the launderette I transferred my load from one to the otherwhereupon I discovered 25p loose in the drum! This day was getting better and better. I then took the time to enjoy reading Saga by Brian K Vaughn (author of Ex Machina and Y - The Last Man) and Fiona Staples (haven't come across her artwork before, but it's very good). In fact I'm happy to make it my Sixth Comic Book Recommendation. Well worth a read.

And then I went to the pictures in York to see The Cabin in the Woods, my Eighth Film Recommendation. It was showing on Screen 5 at the Reel Cinema, which was tiny, having only 30 seats. The screen was quite small too, small enough that you could see the pixels of the the digital projection. This didn't spoil the film, though. No, that honour was taken by the irritating woman who had a hysterical laughing reaction to a particularly jumpy bit and then proceeded to laugh on and off for the next couple of scenes. Could have predicted that, mind. They were told off in the first few minutes for having their phone screen glowing away while they gawped at some no doubt hilarious meme photo. And they were chatting. Grr.

The film was great though. I can't tell you anything about it, though. Suffice to say it was good enough to elicit a comment from someone sat behind me that went something like: "Oh my God, (SPOILER REDACTED)", which I am sure is exactly the response the film makers wanted.

I started the week using one of the two new pedestrian/cyclist entrances to York station. It seemed fitting then that the week should end with me exploring the other one. Of course, if I had realised where it was on my way out of the station I could have used it and not had to go around the houses to get to the cinema. At least I found it on the way back.

So to summarise: In not having anything to do today, I ended up getting a lot more done than I usually would. Have done. Or something. And that is how you find the Invisible Man. Or something.

Look, just go with it - it's all a bit Zen.

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Aquae Sulis

The Nineteenth of September Two Thousand and Eleven. Monday. 

Let’s start off with some Divine Comedy. 

I have a very compact and bijou flat, with all the mod cons (I even have a kitchen in my living room – how space age is that?) and apart from the damning cold which is once more beginning to encroach upon us (the tiny wall-mounted electric heaters are barely adequate) it suits my current needs quite nicely. 

Where it falls down a bit though is in the hygiene stakes. Not just the general unsanitary detritus you’d typically get in single male accommodation. No, it’s just that if I want or need to have good scrub I have only a shower with which to do so. 

A shower. 

Oh, how I long for a bath. I like a good soak. You can have a nap, read a (comic) book, listen to the radio. Have a bit of a think while all the while getting cleaner, it’s marvellous. 

It’s a tricky equation getting the temperature right, mind. In anticipation of a good hour-plus long soak some discomfort might be experienced as you fill the tub with piping hot water. That scalding sensation will only last minutes and it is necessary to endure it to ensure as long as is possible is spent in the water before it becomes cold enough to give you various muscle cramps. 

These days I only ever get the chance for a bath when I’m visiting my parents or I’m on holiday. I’ll say one thing for my old friend Travelodge, they usually do you proud on the tub front. I got a good soak with my copy of Action Comics no1 in Edinburgh recently (not the original 1938 edition, naturally, but Grant Morrison’s superb entry into DC’s line-wide reboot (yes another Morrison title forming my Fifth Comic Book Recommendation). In fact, I think that was my last bath to date. 

The parental bath is good, but there your time will most likely be curtailed as you will not have sole use of the bathroom. Still, I like to get as long in as possible before someone starts hammering on the door.

When it comes to very long baths we all aim to emulate the Captain of the Golgafrincham B Ark off of The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy. He knew how to drag out a bath. Let's see him in action:

Sigh.

Off to bed I go, and in the morning - a shower. But in my dreams I will be fully immersed and in the company of a rubber duck.

More soonliest.

Everyday vs Every Day

The Twenty-Eighth of June Two Thousand and Eleven. Tuesday.

Man, who's idea was it to do one of these every day. Obviously by now I'm flagging with about a week to go to my first agreed rest point. I know it's bad form to do one of these self-referential doohickeys, but there is a point I want to address here.

What's more important at this stage? Keeping to a daily deadline or making sure you have something worthwhile to say?

I've been reading the blog of comics writer and editor Jim Shooter lately. He's done tons of stuff but my own interest in him comes from his work on one of my faves, The Legion of Super Heroes (the black and white Showcase reprints of the 60s LSH tales, many written by Shooter, are my Fourth Comic Book Recommendation). He was also an editor, later Editor in Chief, at Marvel in the late 70s and 80s. This was a time when superhero comics were still found in newstands instead of just specialist shops and so if a title was advertised as monthly it was vital that it shipped monthly. Nowadays, with creators often aiming toward collected editions of their work as their final goal, a 'writer' or artist might fall behind schedule and individual issues appear months apart (interestingly enough, DC's younger-skewed September relaunch of all their titles has made a big deal out of reversing that trend - stories paced for a regularly-shipping (physically and digitally) periodical seems to be their goal). But back then, Shooter often refers to substandard art and scripts being accepted because they had a schedule to keep.

You can see where I'm going with this. Last night's blog was a bit poor and all that was gained from posting it was a headache from lack of sleep after an extra-long day.

Hmm, I feel a graph coming on. If we plotted how late it got against the effects on my poor head it would look something like this:

Obviously, the area under the graph is where we should all be aiming for.

So how useful is it for me to keep churning out any old tat? Well, mostly it's to observe how I write and see if I can exploit any patterns I see to help me form a working methodolgy. Unfortunately, this so far seems to be based around staying up until nearly 2 o'clock every night. What is it about that time that I accept it as a deadline in a way I won't for an earlier, more sensible time?

That's the interesting thing. If it turns out that that's the best time for me to write i can start looking at ways to make sure I can fit that into the rest of my day. At this stage I'm afraid the content is coming second to the process.

Which of course is another roundabout way of me apologising for another lo-fi blog entry ;-) Stick with it though folks, I'm certain that there's better ones on the way. But for now it's enough for me, for now, to keep regular. Which I guess is another way of saying:

More soonliest!

Not a Hoax, Not an Imaginary Story

The Twenty-Third of June Two Thousand and Eleven. Thursday.

This blog starts on York station and will probably make its way back to Scarborough before it's done. I don't think my poor head could manage another 2 o'clock finish so this one's coming to you on the move.

Spider-man is dead.

Don't worry, not the real Spider-Man. You see, back in 2000 (a phrase that still makes my tiny space age brain spin) Marvel comics came up with a new line of comics that started some of their best known characters - such as Spidey and the X Men - from scratch. They called this line of comics Ultimate Marvel and Ultimate Spider-Man was the first title to be launched (and the collection of those superb first few issues is my Third Comic Book Recommendation). (Wait a minute - I haven't made a Second Comic Book Recommendation. Well, it was suppose to be Grant Morrison's Batman Inc. So there you go)

The idea was that a streamlined history - this world would deliberately not feature more than 4 or 5 titles at any time - would be more accessible to new readers. As time passed though, this version of the Marvel universe began to get almost as complex in its own right. Indeed, the recent run of Marvel movies has based much of its background on Ultimate Marvel. In a case of art imitating life imitating life artist Bryan Hitch based the likeness of the Ultimate Nick Fury, head of superspy agency S.H.I.E.L.D., on Samuel L Jackson.

When it came to Fury's cameo appearance at the end of Iron Man who did they cast but...

Ultimate Spider-Man has just reached its 160th issue, with each of those written by one man: Brian Michael Bendis. The first 111 were drawn by Mark Bagley, his collaboration with Bendis being the longest on a Marvel title, outstripping Stan Lee and Jack Kirby's 105 issue run that kick started the Fantastic Four. It's a substantial body of work. And in that latest issue Peter Parker dies fighting the Green Goblin.
I've dipped in and out of Ultimate Spider-Man over the years (I used to subscribe to the UK reprint edition that was available in newsagents here) and I've bought this latest issue today. It's excellent, totally true to the characters Bendis has written for this last decade while underlining the Ultimate universe's raison d'être - things can happen here that wouldn't happen in the regular (Alan Moore called it Earth 616 in a Marvel UK story back in the 80s, of all places, and the handle stuck) Marvel universe.

So does that mean it doesn't count? Or to put it another way is one story more real than another?
Certainly the regular comics Spider-Man is to all intents and purposes the same character that first appeared nearly 50 years ago. (In contrast with DC characters that are regularly rebooted. Heck, they're rebooting their whole line in September - everything back to No1 ). Except he hasn't aged but the world around him has. Why should he 'count' more then when he's clearly as fictional as Ultimate, or Movie, or Cartoon Spider-Man? (An interesting version of this is Grant Morrison's run on Batman these last few years. His take is that everything we have seen in the 70+ years of Batman, from the hard-boiled stories of the 40s, through the wacky 'bam!' 'pow!' adventures of the 60s, to the grim vigilante stuff of the 90s, all took place but over the last 15 years or so of Bruce Wayne's life. Everything counts.)

Followers of Sherlock Holmes consider the stories of Conan Doyle 'canon' even though inconsistencies within them make them no more real than those by other authors. Only certain Star Wars spin offs are considered as true additions to that saga. So clearly it does matter if a story is 'real'. Fiction or not, we feel cheated if we're told something we've invested in didn't happen (I'm thinking Bobby Ewing in the shower in Dallas here, perhaps the most famous example of the 'it was all a dream' cop out). If we say to an author 'I know this isn't real but I'll play along as if it is' the last thing we want is a 'yah-boo, fooled you' betrayal in return.

So when does an honest, non-cheating alternative version count? Well that's easy- when it's good. In long-running narratives like comics or popular characters if something made an impression, or was just plain cool, in a 'what if?' story it quite often turns up in the 'official' version eventually. Villains from the superb 90s Batman cartoon - such as Harley Quinn - moved over to the comics and Chloe from TV's Smallville made it to the paper and ink Metropolis.

So does Ultimate Spider-Man's death count?

It's good enough to.

More soonliest.

(ps Ha! They've just showed Stewie Kills Lois and Lois Kills Stewie episodes on BBC3. What are the chances?)

The Cost of Solving Everything is Everything

The Ninth of June Two Thousand and Eleven. Thursday.

I had completely forgotten I’d ordered it! That’s how bright I am. My Mister Fantastic t-shirt, imported from the US. Fanboy joy!

I was going to let this garment’s arrival be the springboard into a paean to how brilliant the current Fantastic Four comic is (it’s called FF and was and is my First Comic Book Recommendation) but to do so would include many spoilers or be too vague so take my advice and treat yourself to a volume of Jonathan Hickman’s run. It’s set fair and square within the Marvel Universe so some comics nous would come in handy but don’t panic. It starts with the Dark Reign tie-in, which is cool and foreshadows some of the later stuff, and then kicks off in earnest with Volume 1.

It's ace. It's one of the few comics that I immediately reread - for pleasure and to pick up on the stuff my tiny mind missed the first time round.

I suppose this blog has just turned into one big recommendation tonight. Sorry about that - been a bit busy so run out of time. Normal service will be resumed soon. But I'd hate for you to have come all this way for nowt, so his a little spot the difference for you. Which of the following is the super-smart stretchy superhero with the hot invisible wife and which is the slightly overweight nerd with a train set under his bed? Look carefully now...

See? It's not as easy as you might think, is it?

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Walking on the Aire

The Twenty-Eighth of May Two Thousand and Eleven. Saturday.

Big shout out to Shu-Shu for coming up with tonight's title.

Oh, I'm aching all over. I've had a bit of a walk today, from Leeds City station to Woodlesford, much of it between the River Aire and the Aire/Calder Navigation along the Transpennine Trail. I've just checked and apparently it's about 7 miles! Didn't realise it was quite that far (although my feet are quite convinced of the fact by now). Coincidenatally, Canal Walks with Julia Bradbury is on BBC4 as I type. It looks quite good, and I enjoyed her railway walks series, but without having seen it properly I can't add it to the list of Telly Recommendations. Sorry.

I once saw a spot in the Stoke-on-Trent A to Z where a footbridge crosees the Macclesfield Canal as it crosses over the Trent and Mersey canal right on the border between Cheshire and Staffordshire. A bridge over a bridge between two worlds. That was a magical place to visit.

Always had a thing for A to Z maps. As a boy I was fascinated by the out-of-date A to Z of Manchester that my dad had. I'd go on expeditions on my Raleigh Chopper trying to find interesting looking places (for 'interesting' read 'rail-related'. Patricroft station or meeting my friend John Bramwell for the first time on the footbridge - now gone - over the Liverpool-Manchester line at the foot of Weaste Lane (flashback: a much older boy taking potshots with his air rifle at the aluminium chimney on a nearby factory and then letting me have a go! Bullseyed it with the telescopic sight. Haven't thought of that in years...)) on pages 48 and 49 (that's where Seedley, Weaste and Eccles could be found). Quite often a street I'd taken a fancy to no longer existed (the fact that it detailed the locations of Manchester Central and Exchange stations - closed some years earlier and then in ruins - was like reading a document from some lost civilization) - that was a bit of a disappointment to the budding explorer. There were also strange codes to be broken. It was some time before I realised Alpha S W Nadine St. wasn't some exotic thoroughfare but was simply an abbreviated Alpha Street West next to Nadine St. I promise you now, if I ever pull my finger out and get around to writing another story or two there'll be a character named Alpha S W Nadine in it.

Got quite a few A to Zs now and it was while perusing the Leeds and Bradford combined edition (so much more satisfying than the separate volumes) that I saw the proximity of Woodlesford station to the river and resolved to walk that route some day. Well that was today and very pleasant it was too.

Killed two birds with one stone and took a train to Cross Gates station while I was out and about. Small station, but it has an M&S Simply Food right next to it. That's got to be worth something. And I found Tranquility while I was there - it was the name of a street. Simply Tranquility, LS15.

Needless to say I popped into the City Centre and got a Frappucino and some comics (oh, is this a good time to mention Jonathan Hickman's brilliant run on Fantastic Four and its successor FF? Let's make this the First Comic Book Recommendation then).

Now I go sleep

More soonliest