Goodbye, goodbye, wipe that tear, baby dear...

And that's a wrap on the second chapter of Babble as I've not got got a clue what's going on with the publishing company and the seventy or so completed pages are going in the electronic filing cabinet until we know what's happening with the rights, though if past form is anything to go by, the fact that you can squint and kind of lump the story in with the 'zombies that aren't zombies' genre (admittedly by way of the end of Quatermass and the Pit) and there's a ton of zombie movies that aren't zombie movies out at the minute, I imagine that the company that didn't think to release a graphic novel about Burke and Hare at the same time as a movie called Burke and Hare hit cinemas will get around to sorting out the rights issue just in time for 'zombies that aren't zombies but the story is kind of like the end of Quatermass and the Pit' plots to show up on Kim Possible or something. Do they even still make that? Damned if I know - Wiki that shit if you care.

So I'm buggered if I know what I'll do with my time now. There's one five-page story for Zarjaz that I'll get done while I have the opportunity, I guess, and then back to Saucy Mondays for a while to see if I can sucker in some Google hits, but if getting Google hits is anything like getting Deviantart pageviews, pretty much all I have to do is figure out a way to add tags like 'bondage', 'bare feet' and 'wet librarian' to posts. Although a picture which combined all three would presumably break the internet.

"And this is your Insomnia contract..."

Ain't we done with this turkey yet?

"My cookie would kill you."

Your knowledge of scientific biological transmogrification is only outmatched by your zest for kung-fu treachery!

So the company I've been drawing this book for has ceased trading. Which is nice.

"--packing it in and packing it up, and sneaking away and buggering up, and chickening out, and pissing off home--"

"I remember one kid got re-educated so bad his testicles climbed back up into his belly - wouldn't come out."

Consumers respond to requests for their impressions of Windows 7...

Watching: Secret Life of the American Teenager - in theory, a tv show aimed at teens that talks frankly about their sex lives and passes no judgment is a great idea, in that general consensus is broadly that they absorb this kind of shit anyway so it may as well give something back while they lap it up indiscriminately between mouthfuls of Pot Noodle and Red Bull or whatever the fuck it is they eat to get that pimply, sandblasted complexion that offsets the white of their shellsuits in such charming fashion. As you may have guessed from subtle clues in my use of language, I am not in favor of teenagers as a collective body, though there's plenty of dramatic mileage in fiction that centers around any group trapped between two distinct stages of their lives, and by and large that means either middle-aged people or teenagers, with the 20-30-somethings presumably being an uninteresting bunch. Anyway, there's a lot of teen programming about, and Secret Life is now three years old and just as staggeringly sanctimonious as it was on day one, when absolutely no-one needed to be told that the producers were vaguely aware of the equally dull Juno and set out to make something just as boring and trite on a weekly basis.
Secret Life is awful, and that's why I watch it. Some right-wingers decided to make tv that told it like it is, and then went about telling it like they saw it, showing sexual activity as deviant behavior rather than an indulgence of those with opportunity and the inclination - sex is either explained by the actions of abuse victims, "your ethnic types", low income families, or catholics (though the latter three are usually three birds with one stone on American television), but it's all so thick-headed and impossible to take seriously that I enjoy it the same way I do sci-fi, because it's practically another planet these - and I use this term lightly - people inhabit, and it can be no coincidence that just as I would never have watched the likes of it years ago, I wouldn't have watched the Ferengi episodes of Deep Space 9 either, but now I breathe this crap in like oxygen.

Which is not to say you should watch it. You shouldn't.
It's terrible - so don't.

"I thought that some of the metaphysical imagery was particularly effective."

Looking at this panel, Lee would ideally be stuck to elicit some negative subtext on my part about his troubling quest to become Richard Curtis, but if he can tear himself away from writing Shirley Valentine fanfic or listening to his copy of the We Will Rock You cd personally signed by his hero Ben Elton long enough, he'll probably find it.

Reading:

Alex Zalban wraps up his first major project for Marvel with the fourth issue of Thor and the Warriors Four, and all told he's done a good job with most of it, avoiding going too far into mawkishness or sentimentality to get across the stakes for the pre-teen cast as they pursue their quest to steal the youth-bestowing golden apples of Idun from the orchards of Asgard in order to help their terminally-aged grandmother dodge the coffin, but on the other hand no doubt leaving many a frustrated reader unhappy that the writer has chosen to spare the child protagonists the loss of a loved one at the finale, instead opting for the happy ending that he's advisedly chosen to avoid overselling when it comes.

And make no mistake, there's more than likely a few grumping that this child's entertainment isn't terribly gritty or full of death and ninjas being stabbed in the face, since the aging Pack fan does occasionally seem to wander into this continuity-free series for their fix (after the regular Marvel universe Power Pack became pretty much unsellable when some genius came up with the bright idea of making kid superheroes adults - removing their only selling point - and then wondering why no-one's interested in buying the books anymore), and to those aging yet still somehow adolescent fanboys I snort a hearty "PSHAW!" and return to my entertainment, happy that any lingering vestige of the moron in me who secretly longed for the book to be about kids crying over a dead granny has been thwarted.

There are some great character moments between the beginning and ending of the quest like eldest girl Julie's lateral thinking and belief in the idea of family above superheroics, though the counterpoint of eldest kid Alex's musing that "stealing is wrong" ignores that the gods may be hoping people come along and steal their stuff (ie: fire) since through that act of engagement between mortal and deity is born their continuation in our culture through myth- or if that's too heavy for the little rugrat, he could try remembering that his first act as a superhero was to nick a doomsday weapon from Uncle Sam. No-one likes a hypocrite, kiddo, even if we do keep electing them.
His realisation near the end and subsequent heroic turn feel a bit of a let-down since he's the least interesting character and it feels like he's the focus more in that he's a blue-eyed blond male rather than - despite what Thor's hammer may think otherwise - because of any inherent worthiness on his part to be the central hero of the piece when it's essentially an ensemble thing and he's not contributed much on the journey for it to suddenly to be a Hero's Journey all about him - right up until then it hasn't been that, and when it becomes that kind of story at the last, it's a leftfield twist that makes it all slightly less of a tale than it had been. Less focused, certainly, and to an extent less epic as well.
Did I mention the book looks absolutely lovely in places?

The Guruhiru art studio does an absolutely bang-up job with some great storytelling that I wouldn't normally expect of a manga/anime-inspired style, which traditionally seems to focus more on producing static poses and character sketches than sequential artwork (a consequence of most manga artists using pre-rendered backgrounds), but here it combines with a clear animated style and energy that just makes me jealous the more I look at it.
At the back, there's also a Colleen Coover short where the kids meet another Marvel mythological refugee-turned-superhero in the Mighty Hercules as he explains the relationship between theology and science, which yields one of my favorite images in a book that's already packed with great panels:

If I used an arbitrary ranking system, I'd give it a solid 174 out of a possible 182.

"If there is to be any salvation... those of us who know our guilt must admit it."

A random panel from the day's work so Lee Robson can use it out of context to suggest some value judgment made on his script. I laugh at your Northern self-loathing, Robson. I laugh at it and your secret desire to be middle class and write plays about middle-aged housewives finding themselves.

Watching: Predators. I don't really know about all this "It's a sequel to the first one and sort of a sequel to the second one or bits of the second one that back up this story but we're ignoring the other two sequels and this is a continuation of the first one" reasoning that's being employed by the makers, but it doesn't sound like a good idea as it didn't stop Superman Returns being a big gay load of shitty ass just because it ignored the more dopey entries in the canon and they should just accept that someone made those and they weren't good and then move on. I have no problem with the existence of Alien 3, Resurrection, AVP and Requiem because no-one's forcing me to watch them more than once, and to be honest, there's no need for the hoop-jumping to distance Predators from poorer relations because it stands alone quite well even from the first, opening as it does with a conundrum not unlike that facing the cast of Cube or one of the many and dreadful Riverworld adaptations, in that a disparate group are stranded somewhere with no knowledge of how they got there or even where 'there' is, and must rally to adapt to unknown dangers. It's played for the first half hour like the audience haven't seen any promo material showing the locale to be an alien world, but a bit like when I watch Planet of the Apes, I do wonder why the characters don't look up and notice the stars and get an inkling - there's a bloomin' huge planet overhead that someone must have noticed even before they got out of the trees, but like Charlton Heston's 'astronaut' not noticing a little clue like THE FUCKING MOON when pondering where he might be, it's not a deal-breaker for me that the cannon fodder of Predators don't notice a couple of Jupiters knocking about between the treeleaves.
It's a fun movie I really enjoyed. The director could maybe have turned the lights on in a few action scenes, but otherwise it holds together well enough as popcorn accompaniment - though personally, I had a big bag of cheesy Wotsits that did the job too.

Sit down, brain off, enjoy - that's my advice.

"Groop I implore thee, my foonting turlingdromes; and hooptiously drangle me with crinkly bindlewurdles..."

Internet troubles

No, not an amusing caption only I understand so I can tell blog posts apart - I really am having spotty internet troubles that can only be resolved if I can live with exposed wiring and never using the house phone again.
The latter I can live with, actually - I only ever seem to use it when people are informing me at 2 in the morning what funeral I'll be attending two days' hence (and that I can kiss tomorrow evening goodbye, too). Text that shit, dammit! It's not like there's any hurry now.

"This is ridiculous - not only have I never even BEEN to Cincinatti, I don't even like women!"

"Hello, Smithers. You're good at turning me on."

And he says back "yeah I know - mom told me last night."

"I AM smiling."

How is it a weekend and I'm not drinking? An experiment in sobriety, I say.
I give me two days.

"I just saw your laundry move"

No, you mean why WOULDN'T she have a Bettie Page poster on her wall?

"Parlez-vous lesbianisme?"

Sometimes you get a page in seven hours, sometimes you get a page in HOLY FUCKING SHIT seven days.
FUCK YOU drawing block, that's all I have to say on the matter, though in retrospect getting out of bed before 1 in the afternoon and giving up drink for maybe even like a day or two would possibly help productivity - but god damn it this isn't communist Russia.

"Ellos amor Kirby, champán barato, y también el cock, si?"

Line weight constant as the northern star okay for foreground. But for background also?
Not so much.

Watching: Mongrels, Magnum, Royal Pains, Hung
Listening: Drugstore, Jeff Buckley, Tindersticks, Lemonflowers, Betty Boo, Bangles, Johnny Cash