Phil Friel – Page 20

The Prodigal Returns…

It\’s been a while, hasn\’t it?

My last post on this blog dates from more than two and a half years ago (June 2007). To be brutally honest, I\’d set up the account for the purely mercenary reason of obtaining an API Key for my self-hosted WordPress blog – the much missed (by me, anyway) SFreaders.com – which I\’d just installed on a newly purchased domain. That one was always going to be the main blog, a more specialized one, but I did state at that time my intention of keeping this one up and running for posts and rants of a much more general nature.

I did originally have the bright idea of having several separate blogs for my main interests, as I already had four blogs at my disposal – my self-hosted WordPress blog, this one on wordpress.com, and one each on livejournal.com and blogspot.com. However, that approach quickly proved to be a bit over-ambitious and not so great an idea in the longer term. So I made a couple of posts here, and then… nothing. I stopped using this blog altogether.

So what happened? Well, the honest truth is, I\’m more of a \”one blog person\”, not like all those other guys out there who seem to have blogs all over the place, and are making zillions of posts every day. I have enough trouble keeping one blog at a time running, without trying to juggle a whole bunch of them, and I don\’t have enough free time to post so much anyway.

Even on a single blog, I\’m not a prolific poster at the best of times, and I suffer badly from depression, going through spells when I post very little, and during which I have little interest in anything. Even during a good spell, a couple of posts per week is decent going for me. I like to make long posts, not little snippets or soundbites, and I like taking my time over two or three days to think about what I want to say. I also prefer breaks in between posting, taking a breather to marshal ideas for the next one. I also prefer to post when I feel the urge to, rather than give in to the constant pressure to churn out a lot of crap posts by the clock, just so I can boast that I\’ve made so many posts per week on my blog.

With my \”slow but steady\” approach, on a single blog, I could build up to a fairly healthy body of posts over time. But spread those posts out over a number of blogs, and it starts to look pretty lousy, resulting in several \”undernourished\” blogs rather than a single strong one. Those blogs tend to die off due to disinterest and lack of posts. I\’d rather focus on a single blog, which would receive my undivided attention, and which would be be much more likely to last the course in the long one.

So I concentrated on my main blog, and allowed this one and the others I have scattered over the \’net to lie idle. For a year and a half, things ran smoothly. Aside from a few fallow patches during which the depression kicked in (it seems to come and go in \”waves\”) and posts were very sparse, the total number of postings increased steadily over time, until it was by far my most sustained effort… ever… at maintaining an ongoing online presence. I\’m into a very wide range of topics, and the well was never going to run dry with regards to having material to post, at least during the periods when the depression didn\’t sap my will to post (or do anything in general). Things were building up, slowly but steadily, and overall I was well pleased with myself, and had great plans for the future direction of my blog.

Then disaster struck. One morning I switched on my computer, booted up Firefox, and clicked on my blog. It wasn\’t there anymore. There\’d been a couple of downtime glitches before, but I knew from the onscreen error messages that this time was different, and this wasn\’t a temporary problem. My ISP had suddenly, without any warning whatsoever, gone belly-up, taking my blog (and doubtless many, many others) with it. All that work, all those posts, a year and a half of serious effort, building that bloody blog up, with big ideas for even greater things down the line. Gone. All gone. I just sat there, staring at my monitor, totally sick to my stomach. I\’d made the fatal mistake of choosing my ISP unwisely.

The WordPress self-hosting experiment had died a sudden and painful death, and I gave up in disgust, not having the heart to start up again somewhere else (despite having saved everything from the old blog). I was so pissed off that I didn\’t even have the slightest interest in starting up from scratch again with another hosting service, so I decided to take a long time out to think about what I was going to do. Even at this present point in time, I still haven\’t really regained any enthusiasm for self-hosting a blog, and, for more than a year now, I\’ve been dithering and dithering, drifting about, undecided as to what approach I\’d take next. Did I even want to go down that same path again? What other options were there?

Well, at least the time out gave me a lot of time to reflect on the entire experience and to think about the overall positive -vs- negative aspects of self-hosting. As I see it, the \”plus\” things I liked about my self-hosted blog as opposed to the service here on wordpress.com were the sheer extra power, flexibility, and the ability to configure stuff, mainly themes, css and php code. Learn enough css and php, and you can do pretty much anything with a WordPress self-hosted blog.

The problem is, these \”plus\” things also turned out to be a liability, for me, at least. I\’m no expert – I\’m not a beginner, either, but I fall under the heading of \”knows enough to be dangerous\”. Combine that with my compulsive need to tinker, and it\’s an explosive mixture. In extreme cases this could result in a non-functioning blog – luckily enough I\’m not that stupid. But I did spend an unacceptable amount of time tinkering with css and php, messing with themes, etc, rather than actually posting. Maybe fewer options would\’ve been better for someone like me.

Another thing I found was that, yes, a self-hosted WordPress blog may be way more configurable and powerful than the more limited wordpress.com version, but it also takes a lot more work to maintain it. In general, I found that the administration of my blog, whilst not too difficult, took up a lot of my time. The constant stream of upgrades seemed to come far too quickly – it feels like you\’ve hardly installed an upgrade when there\’s another one landing down the pipe, and you have to go through the same thing all over again.

Despite the process becoming a bit more automated over time, it was still a pain, and I found a few niggling little problems each time I upgraded, which prevented my blog operating at full efficiency. It seemed that I was spending far more time on maintaining WordPress upgrades than I actually wanted to, rather than posting on my blog, which defeated the whole idea that running a blog should be easier than maintaining a static website. All in all, I\’d become royally fed up with the seemingly never-ending WordPress upgrade cycle, long before my ISP ever pulled the plug.

Sometimes I found myself yearning to go back to simpler times, doing a static website coded by hand, and giving up the whole blogging lark altogether. Looking with a clinical and dispassionate eye at the entire experience with my blog, I\’d never actually used a fraction of the capabilities of WordPress anyway, and probably never would have. It was simply too powerful and too complex. By comparison, the more limited nature of a blog on wordpress.com means that a lot of this complexity and the overall hassle with administration and upgrading is removed, whilst still seeming to keep just about enough of the power plus the familiar environment to satisfy me.

My needs are relatively simple – I\’m mainly a text-based person, a writer, so I don\’t ask for much. A handful of decent templates (I\’ve already settled on one that I like), a nice text editor (which we already have), a few nice \”dashboard\” options (ditto), and the ability to easily upload one or two pictures from time to time (ditto). That\’s about it. I have no need for lots of glitzy stuff, no excessive amounts of graphics, videos, flash, music, or any of that kind of thing. WordPress.com seems to have all the bases covered. The only thing I can foresee becoming a problem down the line is running out of hosting space. I\’m one of those weirdos who prefers to have \”unlimited\” webspace, or at least a paltry 20GB or so, \”just in case\”. Saying that I\’ve only got two or three gigabytes makes me nervous.

So I\’ve started for the first time to take very seriously the idea of having my main online presence here, on my long-abandoned wordpress.com blog, something I\’d never really considered doing before. I\’ve fallen badly out of the habit of blogging and posting in general, and grown very, very stale over the past year or so. It\’s so easy to turn into a lazy sod, but much harder to kick-start oneself again after a prolonged period away from blogging. Maybe concentrating on this blog, rather than going back down the more complex self-hosted route, will prove to be a more successful tactic for getting me back into regular posting again.

Despite some prolonged periods without regular posts, I was (in general) on a roll with my old blog before it disappeared, and I\’d really like to get back on that roll again. Whether or not I\’ll stay the pace, or fade away as I have so many times before, I dunno. But I\’ll never know unless I try. But the signs are good. Over the past few months, I\’ve been starting to get back the old urge to start posting again – I\’ve got lots of stuff to post about, and a need to get it \”out there\”.

Things might just be about to get a bit more interesting around here.

Christmas Comes Early – Santa\’s Bringing Me 19 Issues of Spaceship Away

I joined the Spaceship Away group over on John Freeman\’s excellent Down the Tubes forum a while back in preparation for my first subscription/purchase of Spaceship Away. I\’ve been following the magazine very closely since the early days (still have some of the fliers that they sent me) and have always intended to subscribe, but a seemingly endless parade of Real Life crap and tragedies over the past few years has always diverted me at crucial moments.

Well, this morning, I said, \”To hell with it\”, bit the bullet, and ponied up for the entire run of Spaceship Away. This was the fourth and final part of a humongous early Christmas present to myself (nobody else buys me any pressies, do they? Boo, hoo, hoo!), which started off with sending off for the entire run from #1 to the present (Vol 2 #4) of Dangerous Ink, catching up with the last couple of issues of Andersonic (I have an otherwise complete run), catching up with the six back issues of Crikey! that I was missing plus placing a sub for the next six issues, and, finally, that enormous run of Spaceship Away from #1 up to the yet-to-be-released #21.

My credit card/wallet is a lot emptier now, but what\’s money for, if not to spend on stuff like this, eh? I now have all this incredible reading material plus, lots of lovely food and booze to tide me over Christmas. And, on top of that, I\’ll have everything I need to take part in John\’s discussions over in the Spaceship Away group on Down the Tubes. I just can\’t wait for these goodies to arrive. At the moment, I\’m a real happy bunny. 🙂

Marvel Gets Their Man – The End of the Great Marvelman Rights Saga?

So Marvel Comics have bought the rights to the classic Marvelman character (known as Miracleman in the US) from original creator Mick Anglo? Interesting. Very interesting. Given the rather \”colourful\” legal history between Marvel and the folks who worked on Marvelman/Miracleman throughout the 1980\’s and early 1990\’s, if the situation wasn\’t so ironic, it would be hilarious. That Marvel would\’ve ended up the saviours of Marvelman? I can barely believe it myself.

The classic Alan Moore reinterpretation of the original 1950\’s Marvelman first appeared in the famous British monthly comic Warrior back in 1982, and was later reprinted and continued as Miracleman (I\’ve always greatly preferred the original name \”Marvelman\” over \”Miracleman\”) by Eclipse Comics. It is my all-time favourite superhero strip, by a huge margin. I also rate the Neil Gaiman version which continued on directly from Moore\’s version very highly, if, perhaps, not quite so highly as Moore\’s.

Coming at a time when the Bronze Age (which I had been a huge fan of) at Marvel and DC was starting to seriously run out of steam, Marvelman was the precursor to a new breed of superhero comic. It was the first of its kind, and started a storm which was to change the entire comics landscape during the \’80s, leading directly to classics such as the Watchmen and the Dark Knight Returns. We didn\’t know that at the time, of course, although it all seems so obvious now, but everything is always 20/20 in hindsight. But after being raised since childhood on a diet of classic British comics and Silver and Bronze Age Marvel\’s and DC\’s, all I knew at the time was that Marvelman was absolutely mind-blowingly incredible, and I had never seen anything like it before.

I have all the issues of the original Warrior, and it didn\’t just contain Marvelman, but also a few other classic strips, including another all-time favourite written by Alan Moore, the original V for Vendetta. I liked V for Vendetta a lot, but Marvelman was by far my favourite. I distinctly recall my anger, rage and total disbelief when the strip was dropped from Warrior after about twenty issues, due to the legal wrangling with Marvel over the name. I was absolutely livid. The best superhero strip I had ever read, cut short due to petty legal squabbles.

When Warrior folded a half a dozen issues later, and I saw that mainstream comics had nothing left of quality to offer (or, rather, nothing to offer ME), I dropped out of comics in disgust for over a decade. I didn\’t find out until many years later that Eclipse Comics had reprinted and continued the Marvelman story, now rechristened Miracleman (due again to continued legal wrangling with Marvel), during my time away from comics.

I came back into comics full-time again around 1997 or so, and I\’ve spent the years since tracking down the Eclipse series, and now have the entire 24-issue run, with the exception of the classic Miracleman -vs- Kid Miracleman finale in Issue 15. I also have the 3-issue Apocrypha mini-series, and the Apocrypha trade paperback, plus two of the four collected trade paperbacks of the main series. The original collected editions haven\’t been available for years now, and collectors are paying exorbitant prices for them. The trade paperbacks frequently go for £70-£80 or higher on ebay.co.uk, where, at this very moment, a hardcover of Book 1, A Dream of Flying, is asking for a Buy It Now price of £175, and the hardcover of Book 2, The Red King Syndrome, an incredible Buy It Now price of £375. As much as I love Marvelman/Miracleman, I wouldn\’t pay these ridiculous prices for them, particularly since I already have the entire run (bar one) of the Eclipse series.

Eclipse went bust in 1994, and, since that time, Marvelman/Miracleman has remained in limbo, the focus of one of the longest running, most complicated, and bitter legal conflicts over character rights in the comics world. This dispute got even worse when Todd McFarlane acquired the rights to the bankrupt Eclipse properties in 1996, and it has dragged on, year after year. The issue of who owned the rights to which part of the character has always been a muddied minefield, with so many different individuals involved in the matter, each claiming to own a share – Quality Communications/Dez Skinn, Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, Garry Leach, Alan Davis, Mark Buckingham, Todd McFarlane, and the original creator, Mick Anglo (dunno if I missed anyone – like I said, it\’s a really confusing mess). It got so bad that for years most of us were none the wiser as to who really owned what.

In recent years, the legal situation seems to have been resolved, with the courts settling in favour of original Marvelman creator, Mick Anglo. Despite the grumblings of Todd McFarlane, it\’s emerged that Quality Communications had never owned the rights to Marvelman in the first place, and that they still resided with Anglo, which make\’s all the other creators\’ claims to ownership of the character null and void. Considering the legal quagmire over rights that the character has been mired down in for years, now that they\’ve been bought up by Marvel, we might just see an end to the endless legal wrangling that has kept Marvelman in limbo for so long.

That is, unless Todd McFarlane somehow manages to kick up a legal fuss of some kind, if he has any legal legs left to stand on. I would assume that any trademark rights he may own, if any, relate only to the Eclipse character Miracleman, not the original Marvelman. But even with Marvel buying the rights to the character from Mick Anglo, the legal situation still isn\’t completely crystal-clear. They might have the rights to the 1950\’s/1960\’s version, but what about the 1980\’s Moore/Gaiman version, which is the real jewel in the crown? We do know that Marvel has been discussing plans for the character and its stories with Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, Alan Davis and Mark Buckingham. I guess we\’ll just have to wait to find out exactly what they\’ve agreed on.

However Marvel may decide to revitalize Marvelman, I\’m just hoping that they do the character justice, and don\’t make a complete mess of it. I would dearly love to see Alan Moore revisit his best-ever (in my opinion) creation, but that seems highly unlikely. It would also be great to see Neil Gaiman and Mark Buckingham get to finish their original run on the comic, completing the trilogy of stories that they were in the thick of, and closing out the unfinished Silver Age, and the final Dark Age sequences that they were working on when Eclipse went to the wall. The fact that they had at least another full issue (or more) completed (but never published) before Eclipse went bust has kept hard-core fans chomping at the bit for years to see this unfinished work. And I\’m one of those hard-core fans. The hardest of the hard.

But if none of the above happens, and if they were to start from a completely clean slate, Marvel really would need to bring out their big guns for their new acquisition, given the importance of the character, and put together a massive creative team to give it their best shot. A writer of the caliber of Joe Straczynski, Warren Ellis, Kurt Busiek, Mark Millar, Grant Morrison (now THAT would be ironic, considering the slating he gave Moore over Marvelman back in the day), would be an absolute must. Absolutely no second stringers or hacks – this revival has the importance and potential to be one of the biggest events of the decade, so don\’t fumble the ball, Marvel, please. Pick a top-notch writer and pair him with an artist of equal standing, and make sure they stay on the strip. Avoid the instability of creative teams constantly chopping and changing, something which would surely guarantee the failure of the new title.

Whatever happens with Marvel, the current situation has to be better than the stalemate the character has been trapped in for fifteen years. Even if they make a total disaster of their new version (and fingers crossed that they don\’t), I\’m really hoping that we will, at last, be able to get regular reissues of the classic 1980\’s strips in trade paperback or hardcover. I\’d dearly love to see a huge hardcover omnibus edition with the entire Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman run, plus the Apocrypha mini-series and other bits \’n\’ pieces thrown in as extras. And, who knows, maybe, somewhere down the line, even reprints of the original Mick Anglo strips. Please, please, please. Here\’s hoping.

That is, unless Toddy or some other gremlin doesn\’t manage to throw yet another spanner in the works, re-starting the old legal merry-go-round and consigning our hero to limbo once again. For all fans of Marvelman, I really, really hope not. Let\’s have this fantastic, ground-breaking character back in circulation again. A generation of comic fans – all but the most determined collectors – have been deprived of one of the greatest superhero strips of all time. It\’s well beyond time for him to be back in the public eye again, receiving the recognition and adulation that he so richly deserves.

Marvelman deserves to be up there with The Watchmen, V for Vendetta, The Dark Knight Returns, and the other 1980\’s mega-classics of the comics medium. He\’s the equal of any of them, and, in my opinion, the best of the lot.

The Apollo 11 Moon Landings and After – The Space Adventure That Should Have Been

Today marks the 40th Anniversary of Man\’s first setting foot on another world, when Apollo 11 landed on the lunar surface, There\’s the expected buzz on the internet, and a few television programs celebrating the event. At the moment, we\’re watching Moonshot: The Flight of Apollo 11 on UK television (ITV1).

I\’ve always been a huge space exploration nut, so much so that my dad dragged me out of bed around 3.30am UK time on that long ago unforgettable day (I remember it vividly – I was only eight years old, and was a fan even then) to watch Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin take their first momentous steps onto the lunar surface. Even today I feel great excitement and elation whenever I read or watch anything to do with that golden age of space exploration. But I also feel a great sense of loss, of regret, and of anger.

Because the truth is that we had the stars in our hands and let them slip through our fingers.

To the current XBox playing, goldfish-attention-span generation, the moon landings mean absolutely nothing. They\’re an irrelevancy, ancient history, something that happened way back when their parents were young. It shouldn\’t be this way. Space travel, real space travel (not just space shuttle earth-to-low-orbit), should be a part of their everyday lives.

It\’s a terrible shame that manned space exploration (outside of Earth\’s orbit) died when the Apollo missions ended, scuppered by the nasty mix of public apathy and political connivance. Politicians won\’t fund anything that doesn\’t get them votes, and the public had lost interest, so the politicians therefore refused to continue funding the big bucks needed for this kind of space exploration.

So we lost it all, because of the dumb, apathetic general public and greedy, corrupt politicians. Wouldn\’t ya know it. It makes me sick to even think about it. Ninety-nine percent of the general public can\’t see past their daily fix of reality TV and sport, and politicians aren\’t interested in anything that won\’t get them votes, money or power.

We should\’ve… would\’ve… been \”out there\” now, with a lunar colony and a permanent base on Mars, just waiting to stretch our hands out and grasp the rest of the solar system. We should already be taking our earliest steps as a proper, space-faring species, out there, traveling regularly between Earth and the moon and even Mars, and looking with eager envious eyes at the asteroid belt and beyond, like Dan Dare and his Space Fleet.

For a dreamer and sci-fi/space exploration fan such as myself (and there are many, many others like me out there), it really, really sticks in my gut, every time one of these anniversaries of this glorious first lunar landing event comes around, and I look at the reality of what did happen, and think of what should\’ve happened instead.

Think of it… we took our first steps on another world, and then just gave up and came home again, instead of keeping on going out there. So, so tragic, and absolutely pathetic.

There\’s one vital thing those selfish, greedy, narrow-minded politicians and the ignorant, self-serving bulk of the population don\’t seem to understand or care about. Space travel and exploration is not irrelevant or a waste of money. Our species simply has to move out into space to ensure its long-term survival. If we keep all our eggs in one basket (here on Earth), someday we\’ll live (or won\’t live) to regret it. We\’ll become extinct, either through natural catastrophe, or we\’ll destroy the environment, this world, ourselves, and we will have nowhere else to go.

Or else another stonking great rock will come at us from the depths of space, with Target Earth and RIP the Human Race written all over it. And it\’ll be all their fault if our species dies off totally, and I hope they (or their descendants) remember that when the big space rock comes at us with our number written on it. It has happened quite a few times before during Earth\’s history, and it\’ll inevitably happen again. Maybe in a thousand years time, or ten thousand. Or it could just as easily be next week, or tomorrow. We should always be prepared for that eventuality, just in case, and setting up colonies on the Moon or Mars would be first steps towards ensuring that our species would not be wiped out, should the unthinkable ever happen. As I\’ve already said, the old proverb about keeping all of our eggs in one basket is very apt here, and continuing to do so would be a very, VERY bad idea for humanity.

However, if we\’re thinking about starting all over again, getting back out into space, we\’d better get a move on. Our civilization only has a relatively small window of opportunity left, before the oil and other industrial resources are gone, and we no longer have the capability of launching space missions. After that, we really will be stuck here, with nowhere to go.

As I said at the beginning of the post, I\’m watching Moonshot, but with a lot of mixed feelings. A sense of excitement and nostalgia, but also of anger and regret. And in my alternate world of \”What Should Have Been\”, I\’ll be dreaming of those brave colonists striding across the surface of the Moon and Mars and conquering new frontiers for the human race.

John Freeman on the Doctor Who: Delta and the Bannermen DVD

I\’ve always been a huge fan of the classic Doctor Who series, but I\’m one of those die-hards who would prefer to think that the old series actually ended when Peter Davison left the show, and who considers the entire Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy eras, with the exception of a handful of stories, to be a complete abomination. Most of that entire period of Doctor Who\’s history is such a dire and diabolical embarrassment that it should be erased from living memory. Why oh why can\’t crap like this be among the fabled \”missing episodes\”, rather than all of those missing gems from the Patrick Troughton and William Hartnell eras?

Now you certainly won\’t catch me buying any DVDs (with the exception of five or six stories) from this sad period of Doctor Who, but I have to admit that I\’ve just spent a pretty enjoyable evening with a mate, perusing the extra features on his latest Doctor Who DVD acquisition, Delta and the Bannermen. A Sylvester McCoy story it might be, but I have to admit that the extras on the DVD aren\’t half bad, my favourite among these extras being a piece covering the Doctor Who comic strips of the 1980s.

And you\’ll never guess who pops up in the middle of that one. Yes, our very own John Freeman of Downthetubes.net, giving it the old yakkity-yak about his time on Doctor Who Magazine, and the comic strips therein. It\’s nice to see and hear John in living, breathing action for the first time (well, the first time I\’ve seen him), and in the best feature on the entire DVD, no less.

Needless to say (so why am I saying it?), I watched all the features, but didn\’t even bother putting on the main story. Why ruin a perfectly good evening? 🙂

Reborn #1 and Marvel\’s \”Hard Sell\” Tactics – A Step Too Far?

I\’m rarely surprised these days by any of the seemingly ceaseless dirty goings-on in the comics industry, particularly the never-ending merry-go-round of hype and sneaky \”crossover\” tricks that the Big Two (Marvel and DC) use to con us into buying their (mostly rubbish) titles each month. But the latest issue of Marvel Previews contains possibly the newest \”low\” in a long line of questionable tactics employed by Marvel in their eternal attempts to part us from our hard-earned pennies.

It centres around the first issue of a new, upcoming five-part Marvel mini-series, known only as Reborn, which, apparently, is the next Big Event in the Marvel Universe. Leaving aside the fact that I dislike these Big Events intensely, and avoid them like the plague – they\’re so common these days, and mean so little now that they have no real impact or meaning anymore (why the hell can\’t we just have normal, decent stories, without everything having to be Yet Another Boring, Bland and Irrelevant Marvel Big Event or Crossover?) – there\’s something new about this one that disturbs me like none before it has.

There\’s always a certain amount of secrecy involved in the run-ins to these Big Events, as the publishers don\’t want to give away too much, too soon. But there\’s also always some information available, just enough to whet our appetites or to let us know enough about it that we can decide whether or not we want to buy it. But in the case of this new Reborn mini-series, there\’s an incredibly high level of secrecy involved, way beyond anything we\’ve seen before. Marvel won\’t give us any information. Nothing. Nada. Zilch. Not the slightest clue what it\’s about or who\’s in it.

They\’re messing with our heads. We\’re expected to buy it without knowing anything about it, like we have to take Marvel\’s word that it\’s gonna be great. Like we\’re dumb shits who can\’t be trusted to make up our own minds, mindless sheep who will pay up without question for anything that they throw at us. They regard their customers with total contempt, arrogantly assuming that if they tell us absolutely nothing about this new \”event\”, we\’ll all be so overcome with anticipation that we\’ll rush out in droves to buy it.

Well, guess what Marvel? No thank you. At least from this particular customer. Some of us have enough intelligence to know when we\’re being insulted and manipulated, and I, personally, feel really insulted and irritated when confronted by cynical con-man \”hard sell\” tactics. And this new Marvel selling tactic stinks. It bugs me, I mean REALLY bugs me, extremely, big time, with lashings of cream on top.

The vile stench of cold, hard, cynical manipulation of comics buyers by the marketing department of one of the so-called \”leading lights\” of the comics industry is positively nauseating. As a long-term Marvel junkie – I\’ve been buying their comics for four decades now, and more than 75% of my $400+ monthly comics spending goes into the Marvel coffers – I find this level of sneaky, underhand, taking-for-granted manipulation of their ultra-loyal customer base totally repulsive. At this moment I\’m thoroughly disgusted and ashamed to be a Marvel fan.

And it isn\’t just the lowly customers. Marvel are also keeping comics retailers in the dark about Reborn, a fact that shocks and surprises even me. They\’re being messed around even more than we are, since they\’re expected to pay handsomely and upfront for the honour of stocking a whole bunch of these (non-returnable) Reborn #1 thingies, unseen, and all just on Marvel\’s say-so. Well, at least one of these retailers is really pissed off about it (and good fer him).

Yesterday I received this rather interesting email from my friend and esteemed comics supplier Jack Curtin – http://www.jackcurtin.com (well worth a visit). I\’d urge you to click on the link for Savage Critic and have a read for yourselves:

\”Those of you who became pals with Brian Hibbs back in the CIS days, might appreciate seeing this… http://savagecritic.com/2009/05/on-marvels-reborn-1.html\”

Much of what Brian Hibbs says in his article echoes my own sentiments. I recall Brian from my days on the Compuserve Comics & Animation Forum (known as CAF to long term members and ex-members), although he probably wouldn\’t remember me, and I\’m not one bit surprised he\’s taken this stand. He\’s definitely one of the good guys, and we need more like him in the business.

On the Reborn #1 thing, Marvel is treating both its retailers and customers with astonishing arrogance and contempt, and it\’s absolutely refreshing to see a comics retailer act on his conscience by telling them to sod off, thankyouverymuch, rather than letting greed rule his head. Far too often, single-minded greed is sadly the bottom line for too many retailers out there.

It\’s not a question of whether or not retailers will shift all the copies of Reborn #1 on the shelves. It\’ll probably sell by the truckload. Rather, it\’s the principle of the thing, and we need far more people emulating Brian Hibbs, retailers sacrificing a few sales and customers a refusing en masse to buy this particular title, just to let Marvel know in no uncertain terms that they can\’t treat us all like shit. Most importantly, we have to make darned sure that this despicable new sales tactic they\’ve employed does NOT become accepted industry practice.

Boy, do I hate these Big Companies… Speaking as a customer, I myself will definitely not be buying Reborn on principle, whether or not it might be my cup of tea (probably not, being a Big Event thing), and despite the fact that I usually like the work of both Ed Brubaker and Bryan Hitch. Even if I really, really want to have it, I\’m still sticking to my guns and refusing to buy it, either in comic book or trade paperback form, precisely and solely because of Marvel\’s new selling tactics.

Nor will I buy ANY other Marvel title employing the same approach. And if they adopt it as a general marketing tactic, I will boycott their entire range – and believe me, I do not say this lightly, since I\’m a die-hard Marvel fan and the bulk of my comics spending goes on their products. But I\’m sure there are a lot of deserving indies and small press titles out there who who be glad of a larger chunk of my monthly $400.

In my case, Marvel\’s new \”hard sell\” has backfired, badly, and I reckon (at least I hope) it\’ll also backfire with a sizeable percentage of the customer base. When I read the Reborn entry in the current Marvel Previews, my only thought was \”BASTARDS!!! They can take Reborn and stick it where the sun don\’t shine\”. I make a point of reading Previews each month solely to get information on upcoming releases, so I can make up my own mind on exactly what I\’ll be ordering. Marvel\’s refusal to give any information whatsoever about Reborn prevents me from doing just that, at least in the case of Reborn. So I won\’t be buying it, simple as that.

I really am quite livid at what I see as Marvel\’s latest, and possibly most blatantly cynical and arrogant attempt to hook and reel in the Marvel Faithful. Most of the obsessive Marvel Lemmings will most likely just behave like crack addicts, and buy this thing in droves, so Marvel will see the new approach as being successful, at least in terms of sales. But I\’m sincerely hoping that enough of the more discerning general readership may just see through this cynical marketing ploy, and that there\’ll be some kind of backlash.

We badly need a lot of retailers and readers to do the Right Thing for once, giving Reborn #1 a well-deserved raised middle finger, and sending an emphatic message to Marvel that they really should quit messing around with their customers and retailers, the people who have made them what they are.

If this doesn\’t happen, and, unfortunately, there\’s a strong chance that it won\’t, since most comic fans are mindless sheep – no offense intended to the more intelligent and discerning minority, nor to the younger readers, who haven\’t yet learned about the cynical side of the comics industry – I anticipate lots of bad shit descending upon us down the road a bit if Marvel continues on this path, and DC and others start to follow in line.

It looks like a certain greedy company has forgotten the very stark and costly lesson provided by the implosion of the industry back in the \’90s. But remember this, Marvel. Piss off enough customers, and history might just repeat itself. Biting the hand that feeds you is not a good long-term business practice.

I\’m sincerely hoping that many, many more retailers will follow the brave lead set by Brian Hibbs, and refuse to order Reborn #1. For once, please, think longer term, beyond the extra bit of money you\’ll bring in for the few weeks that Reborn is the new Big Event on the block. Take a stand, \’cos even if it costs a few bucks now, it may just cost a heckuva lot more in the future if you don\’t. Send a loud, clear message to Marvel that the Direct Market should never be abused in this way, and that this kind of behaviour simply will not be tolerated. My most fervent hope is that this cynical, underhanded game-playing blows up completely in Marvel\’s greedy face.

Did I mention that I hate these Big Companies? They\’re a lot like the Ferengi in Star Trek: The Next Generation and DS9. To them, Profit is God, and they\’ll use every low-down trick in the book to bleed us dry. If they\’re allowed to, that is. The Big Guys really do need the occasional swift, hard kick in the nuts to bring them right back down to Planet Earth. Be warned – apathy and mindless subservience to Marvel now on the part of retailers and collectors will reap lots of pain for all of us later on down the road.

It takes guys in the industry like Brian Hibbs to bring this sort of thing to the public\’s attention, to get us all to sit up and take notice, because most people are, lets face it, apathetic and easy-going at the best of times. So a big Thank You to Brian, and, come Friday night, when I\’m in the pub with my mates, enjoying the music of a decent local rock band, and imbibing a few glasses of the old liquid pick me up, I\’ll make sure to take a minute or two out to toast Brian\’s good health.

I wish there were a lot more like him in the comics industry.

The Ninth Gate

Just been watching this movie on TV. It\’s a supernatural thriller starring Johnny Depp and Emmanuelle Seigner. Frank Langella and Lena Olin are quite good as the bad guys.

The movie, overall, is quite interesting and watchable, but what the hell was that ending all about? Beats me. Must watch it again sometime, to see if I can figure it out.

Some New Books

I\’ve built up a new stash of recently acquired books to add to my ever-growing \”To Read\” pile. If I can acquire a couple of extra lifetimes, I might even get to read a few of them.

First up is a large hardback anthology, Machines That Think, edited by Isaac Asimov, Patricia S. Warwick and Martin H. Greenberg. This one contains twenty-nine stories about robots and computers. Next up is The Year\’s Best Fantasy, Second Annual Collection, edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling. I\’m not nearly as big a fan of fantasy as I am of SF, but these two ladies always put together a decent anthology.

Third on our list is 18 Greatest Science Fiction Stories, edited by Laurence M. Janifer, followed by Not the Only Planet – Science Fiction Travel Stories, edited by Damien Broderick. And last up are two novels, which is a rarity for me these days (I tend to read a lot more short fiction than I do novels). The hardback of Mining the Oort, by Frederik Pohl looks very interesting indeed. And the final book is a novel by Edward Eager, The Time Garden, a kid\’s/YA fantasy novel written back in 1958. Looks a bit of an oddity, but interesting.

Also, I must get another chapter of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows under my belt. I\’m about six chapters into it, and enjoying it so far.

Lots of good reading ahead…

SF Fandom and the Internet – Big Disappointment?

One of the things that I enjoyed most about the old SF magazines (the \”Pulps\”) was the letters sent in by readers. Have a look through any magazines from (say) the 1940s or 1950s and you\’ll find missives from fans of all descriptions, including some names that would later become big-name authors in the SF field. But the one thing you\’ll really notice is the feeling of community, of \”togetherness\”.

Those letters pages were a forum, THE place where SF fandom got together and discussed not only the stories from previous issues, but also other things in SF that were important to them. These letters pages were the place where SF fans hung out together in between conventions, and they played a vital part in creating and nurturing SF fandom as we know it.

With the arrival of widespread internet access, we should have expected a similar process to occur online, but on a much greater scale. Huge numbers of fans could potentially get together in a vast online virtual fandom, with near-instantaneous communication provided by online chat facilities, and email and forums allowing fans everywhere to maintain constant contact and discussions on a global scale that would\’ve been impossible in the old magazines.

So why hasn\’t it happened? Sure, fans do maintain contact by email and chats, do talk in forums, and do visit SF websites. But not on the scale we would\’ve expected. And not in any overall cohesive manner. It\’s all fragmented and small-scale, some websites here and there, a few scattered watering holes on Usenet and in forums on the likes of Compuserve, Yahoo and Delphi. Where is the vast global SF fandom that the internet should\’ve spawned, the single huge online SF forum where every SF fan could hang out?

And where is the feeling of \”family\” and \”togetherness\” that so distinguished the letters pages in the SF magazines? It just isn\’t there. Instead of the single collective \”meeting place\” or \”virtual tavern\”, the internet seems to be used more as an enhanced form of snail mail or telephone communication connecting lots of little separate communities and sites run by individuals. It\’s all so long-distance and stand-offish.

It seems that, while the internet provides the potential for this theoretical vast collective global SF fan network, in reality it has turned out to be something else altogether – a disparate collection of small groups and individuals, all doing their own thing, although with the ability to communicate with or visit other such groups. Instead of a single vast collective fandom, everybody together, all of these little groups and individuals keep their distance, setting up their own little patch on the internet, and only commune with the rest of online SF fandom if they feel the need (which most rarely do).

I know that the internet has changed my life, and, like a junkie hooked on heroine, there\’s no way I could survive without my daily fix. But frankly, compared to my fantasy of a single vast virtual SF fandom, I find the reality distinctly disappointing…

Classic Comics – Miracleman (Eclipse Comics)

Some very nice comics arrived from Ebay.co.uk today. A bunch of Miracleman comics, from the classic Eclipse Comics series. Issues 12, 14 , 22, 23, and Miracleman: Apocrypha #3 (of 3), to be exact. Leaves me just #\’s 11, 13, 15 and 24 of the main series to complete the entire run. I was outbid on #24 at the last second (with the previously winning bid from me sitting at £21), something that I was rather pissed off about (to put it very mildly).

This series is a much sought after classic title. And the asking prices reflect that. Certain individual issues will pop up regularly at £30 or more – I expect the hotly demanded #\’s 15 and 24 to cost me a pretty packet at some point. The four trade paperbacks of the main series – A Dream of Flying, The Red King Syndrome, Olympus and The Golden Age (there is also a fifth, covering the Miracleman: Apocrypha 3-part mini-series) – go for exorbitant prices (and only cover up to #22 of the 24 parts).

I still need A Dream of Flying and Olympus, but the high asking prices for the trade paperbacks have forced me to concentrate on the original comics instead. In a way, this is preferable, as the original comics are worth more anyway – the trade paperbacks only have artificially inflated prices only because of the fact that the series is unlikely to be reprinted anytime soon due to the complicated legal situation surrounding the creators rights. But I\’d definitely like to get the other two tpbs, eventually (and at the right price), as this series is structured to fit four \”books\”, and are extremely collectible in this format.

I don\’t usually pay this kind of inflated collector\’s prices for comics – I have better things to do with my money – but, for a series like Miracleman (originally known as Marvelman, an infinitely better title, at least in my opinion), it\’s well worth paying out over the odds. The original modern incarnation of Marvelman first appeared as a black and white strip in the classic British comic, Warrior, at the start of the 1980s. It was written by a then relatively unknown Alan Moore (later an equally relatively unknown Neil Gaiman – this comic has some serious creator pedigree) and drawn by Garry Leach (later Alan Davis and others), and totally redefined the stagnant superhero genre. It blew me away. It was, and remains, my favourite superhero strip of all time. By a huge margin. When you rate something as highly as that, you\’ll pay what it takes to get it.

I\’ve been following the Gaiman vs McFarlane legal squabble over Miracleman copyrights with interest. Apparently Gaiman says that issue 25 was mostly completed before Eclipse went under, and that he\’d get it finished, and the Miracleman story finally wrapped up, if the legal situation ever gets resolved in his favour.

Lets hope that\’s how it turns out, and sooner rather than later.