Comics Britannia on BBC4

surprised at leo baxendale.
surprised at kevin o'neill.

surprised the bbc illustrated the racist cartoons with a completely unrelated piece of racist film.

tv listings really confusing about which part is on when. tivo seems to think part 1 is on about 10 times in next week (ah, ok, is weekly)

3 page piece illustrated by bryan talbot in guardian guide on saturday, probably worth scanning it.

The Talbot piece in scanned on Rich Johnston's LITG this week. Thought it was a lovely little show, although the fact I don't know much about the subject probably helped. And I feel like a bit of a corporate whore for liking Whizzer and Chips now.

Also, the surprisingness of Kevin O'Neill -- OTM. I don't know why, but I expected him to look more like one of his drawings.

That first Baxendale stuff in "Wham!" looked incredible.

I thought it was atrocious. Hackish photoshopping that's then smothered in Talbot's balloons so the focus is a) specifically removed from showing you the actual work AND, separately, b) moved onto him and his expertise that you should respect (and then c) 'buy my books that I hem hem mention'). Also he has Deadline and subsequently Viz as '90s phenoms - Deadline started in '88 and died c. '93, and Viz started 10 years before it, and was also in sales decline by the '90s.

er, the Talbot piece that is, I elided your "lovely" onto that by mistake.

Yeah, the Talbot piece was a bit of a "what?", but I assume it wasn't really directed at us (i.e. nerds who know everything). Did you like the show?

The show was pretty interesting. I was surprised about how much knowledge of that stuff had seeped into my brain - merely by osmosis, I assume - because I was never a buyer of that kind of comic during my 70s childhood. xpost on the O'Neill thing, I really didn't expect him to look like a science teacher - I'm not sure what I was expecting btw, although given his artwork it wouldn't have been in any way surprising to see him being interview in his brand new baby-skin suit (with umbilical cords as tassels), with him occasionally breaking off to snack on live kittens...

ps. Did anyone watch the doc that was on afterwards about RIOT!Software ? That was absolutely mental stuff. Why hadn't I realised before that the Finns are even more "Scandinavian" than the rest of Scandinavia?

I am from Australia, I haven't seen it ;_;

I just saw it. I grew up in America. Did you not have superheroes over there, or were they all just through imported DC and Marvel comics? There were not domestic super heroes comics manufactures until when, the 70's or something?

Marvelman (a blatant variation on the recently defunct US hero Captain Marvel) started in 1954 and, w/ various spin-offs lasted, until 1963 - before and after that there were other superheroic characters in different British weeklies, tho its def. true to say that it was never as popular or significant a genre as in America.

Ahh, I didn't know Marvelman went back THAT far. That's basically begging for a sociologist to write about - Impact of superheroes on American psyche vs. superheroic absence in the UK.

Leopard From Lime Street. Nuff said.

I think that Zenith: Phase 3 amply illustrates what happens when you mix the British with superheroes...

bump.

impressed at the art in last night's episode regardless of whether it was from Battle or Girl or whatever. i think of those things has being thrown together cheaply but i guess that's not the case.

used to swap whizzer and chips etc for Misty with the girl over the road. spooky stuff, which didn't seem to have an equivalent in the boy's comics of the time.

> Leopard From Lime Street.

Billy The Cat (and katie)
http://www.internationalhero.co.uk/b/billycat.htm

Nice programme on tonight - as part of the season - on Moebius. Very interesting with great music by Karl Bartos.

caught that, yes.

to the running 'i never expected them to look like that' subthread i would like to add mike mignola. but not hr giger who looked exactly like i thought he would.

hadn't realised about his film work - alien spaceuits and general dune designs.

Caught the Moebius thing, very good. I didn't know that Giraud had spent time in Mexico but it does explain a few things about his work - the quality of light for one (and also how on earth he manages to get on with Jodorowksy, who gets more mental every time I see him)

In an addition to the ongoing "Why do you look like a science teacher?" sub thread; I really wasn't expecting Phillipe Druillet to look like that. Although Enki Bilal looked exactly as I'd pictured him...

part 3 disappointing, i thought.

omg, comics have grown up and become rude.

tank girl = voice of rave generation? wtf? the issue with EMF on the front was years after the tank girl strips they showed (from first few issues). defaline was much more fraggle than anything. and had strips that namechecked monkees songs and books about charles manson.

have seen carlos on tv before (Big Breakfast of all places, promoting Dredd film) but David Lloyd... (V had superpowers?!)

gaiman snubbed also.

I suspect it's because I knew more about the subject this tine, but yeah, that last one was a bit off, and full of holes. If you're going to give so much time to S*e*art L*e, Andr*w bloody Coll**s, and Alan Moore acting the goat, why not interview Neil Gaiman? Or Jaime Hewlett? Or Grant Morrison? Or John Wagner? Or -- you know -- a woman?

The Lost Girls and Viz stuff was good, though. Pat Mills is a bit full of himself, isn't he?

I loved the, "Yes comics have really grown up" pan shot, and then we see... a Johnny Ryan comic.

Watch wrong with that BBC webpage? I tried to watch the Alan Moore interview, and then it asked to me to choose whether I have Windows Media Player or Realplayer. I clicked Media Player, but then it said the video could be only watched with Realplayer. So I downloaded Realplayer, but the video still didn't work. You'd think a company the size of BBC could make their pages a bit more user friendly?

maybe they just don't like you

Don't start me on the BBC website, iPlayer, etc etc. The iPlayer buggered up my 4 On Demand and I can't get anything to work now. Its off to P2P for me...

or you could just watch it on a television.

didn't mind SL (who did that great interview with AM on radio 4 some years ago) or even AC and his 2000ad annectdote. AM's rorschach voice not good.

and enough parallax scrolling.

speaking of 2000ad and radio4: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/factual/pip/m0hqh/

"Futureshock! The Story of 2000AD

Phill Jupitus tells the story of 2000AD.

Over the past 30 years, the weekly British comic's distinctive visions of the future have shaped the imaginations of a generation of young readers. Its dark and gritty tales, often set in a near future of post-apocalyptic urban decay, have changed the tone of science fiction."

was last saturday but should be listenagainable until the end of the week.

It's possible that because I was actively interested in and buying comics for the period in question that the last of the series seemed a bit rubbish to me. The others covered periods and genres that, for the most part, were unexplored territory for me. So I guess familiarity bred contempt.

xpost on the Alan Moore readings from Watchmen, he was obviously going for the portentious, when I'd always heard Rorschach as a twitchy little bugger.

Oh, and Carlos Esquerra looks like the most Spanish man ever.

So how does an Amerikaner watch this? Is there a BITDELUGE?

"I shit on America" - Alejandro Jodorowsky