The Sandman

The High Cost
Of Dreaming

The Sandman
Directed by various
UK/USA August 2022
Series One - Eleven Episodes

Well then... so they finally adapted one of my favourite comics, The Sandman, to a television format. Well, I say it’s one of my favourite comics and, that much is true but, I’ve only ever read the first couple of story arcs and assorted stand alones so... let’s just say I’m a big admirer of the comics (which I am now reading again, hopefully in their entirety) without being any kind of authority on them. And, it has to be said, as someone who has a special place in the heart for these particular four colour wonders, I was extremely worried just how much they were going to screw it up. Certainly, some of the casting choices were extremely concerning to me when announced. I hate this bizarre, tokenism cultural reappropriation that seems to be going on in everything right now and, certainly, many pasty, white characters have been cast as black here and, similarly, some males characters have been recast as female.

So, for example, my favourite character from the comics, the iconic looking Death, is played by black actress/writer/producer Kirby Howell-Baptiste and I figured that would be a calamity. However, one of the things this reminded me was, sometimes, it’s possible (and switching mediums, perhaps necessary) to change things but, as long as you keep something of the spirit of the character intact during that transition, then you’re onto a winner. And I have to say, not only does Kirby Howell-Baptiste look the part (skin colour aside... she still manages to look something similar to the character), she absolutely knocks it out the park with her ‘low-key powerhouse’ performance as Death. She had my heart in minutes, for sure.

Now stuff like these appalling kind of casting issues are all over this series and, surprisingly, these don’t actually deter from the spirit of the comic and these characters in the slightest. And even changing the great John Constantine to a female character, Johanna Constantine (of which there are now two in The Sandman TV universe because of this casting change), played by the extraordinary actress Jenna Coleman (as both versions of Johanna, for the record), is much less problematic than I imagined... I’ll have a little more to say on her a bit later on.

Now I’m sure the great Neil Gaiman has had something to do with the writing and development of this show so, the various changes (and there are many) can perhaps be looked at as a genius writer revisiting his earlier work and just tweaking it slightly, with the benefit of hindsight (and to make it work in another medium, for sure). And much as I hate ‘George Lucas style’ revisionism to a work, which is a little like what’s gone on here... I think they all did a wonderful job.

So, yeah, the TV version of The Sandman is not only absolutely brilliant, it’s also very true to the heart of the source which... is probably a very difficult thing to pull off but, yeah, they somehow managed it. This show deserves all the awards. Now, I’m not going to go into the story content here... if you’ve never read these brilliant comics then you’ll want to go into this show absolutely fresh (and then maybe read the comics after) but it’s a show which, like its source, is a series of brilliant ideas and concepts strung together in a heady, dramatic cocktail of supernatural and mythical shenanigans which is hard to resist... because they did it so well. Luckily for me, the first series adapts the first two story arcs plus a few stand alone issues... and it’s all the ones I’ve read. Kirby Howell-Baptiste as Death appears in the version of my favourite ever issue (to date), The Sound Of Her Wings and, it’s absolutely brilliant... I’m hoping that the powers that be will star the same actress in the first Death comic book mini series now, Death - The High Cost Of Living (please?).

Tom Sturridge plays Dream/Morpheus, the titular Sandman and, while he doesn’t quite look like the more stylised version of him in the early comics (maybe not as pale or spiky enough) he does kinda look like a young Neil Gaiman and, honestly, he does absolutely brilliantly as Dream here. Very much a cipher of a character but also a character which, already in the show, you can see is being changed from his experiences with humans. After a few episodes I turned around to my dad, who I was watching these with and said, “... you know, this guy would make a good Elric!” and it’s true. If anyone thinks to do a TV or movie version of Michael Moorcock’s brilliant Elric Of Melnibone stories, Tom Sturridge is obviously the man to go and see.

Okay, some of the changes I was not a fan of but that didn’t hurt in the long run were... hmm... okay, let’s see...

A lot of the DC character references are gone. So the 1930s Golden Age comic book version of The Sandman, referenced in the comic as being inspired by Morpheus’ imprisonment in one panel on a page, did not make it into this. Similarly, the great David Thewlis plays John Dee but I don’t think he’s once referred to as Doctor Destiny, his alter ego as a villain in the Justice League comics. And he also doesn’t have a neighbouring prison cell next to Jonathan Crane, aka The Scarecrow from Batman, in Arkham Asylum as he does in the comic book version either. Also, while Thewlis is the perfect piece of casting for this character (I would never have thought of that... brilliant choice), his actions seem more tempered. ONE SENTENCE SPOILER WARNING... he doesn’t kill the woman who goes out of her way to give him a cross country lift in her car after they have a long, pleasant conversation, as he does in the comics either... which I personally thought was a mistake but, I guess they thought the character wouldn’t garner enough sympathy with a modern TV audience for what comes later if they’d have gone through with that (I’m guessing).

Which brings us to another important change... Jenna Coleman as John Constantine. Really? Okay, so, presumably to not cross threads with either the John Constantine TV show or Keanu Reeve’s big budget Constantine movie (and the sequel which may well be going ahead now, after all this time), they’ve turned John Constantine into a woman, Johanna, not to be confused with her/his own ancestor Johanna (who also turns up in an episode played by the same actress). And, much to my gobsmacked shock, Coleman absolutely rocks it in this role. Now, I loved the Constantine movie and I love the work of Keanu Reeves but, my main criticism of that film (which I also loved, just not as an adaptation) is that Reeves plays a down on his luck, blonde, dirty raincoat wearing Liverpudlian (I think he’s from Liverpool, right?) as a rich, black haired yuppie person who, frankly, is nothing like John Constantine. Which is why I was amazed that, not only does Jenna Coleman rule this role, she also plays it just like the John Constantine in the comics. I mean, she channels John amazingly well and I would love to see a spin off series about this version of the character as well, it has to be said.

Okay, I’ve probably written much more than I was expecting to without even going into the plot but, honestly, if you like brilliant ideas, of which there are many on display, then The Sandman is one heck of a TV show and it gets a big recommendation from me. Two of the stand alone comics (again, two of my favourites) turn up as a special double bill bonus Episode 11 at the end and, yeah, I was wondering how they’d do Dream Of A Thousand Cats credibly... the solution was, as an animation, of course.  And there you have it. Can’t wait for series two to come out and this whole show, every episode, was an amazing experience (and the way they do the ‘story fight’ between Morpheus and Lucifer is very inventive for a kinetic visual medium... it’s just right). Definitely don’t waste anymore time if you’re on the fence about this... a perfect show with a perfect cast, it turns out. Absolutely loved this and I just hope Netflix will consider releasing this on Blu Ray at some point soon (not to mention a proper soundtrack CD please).

Good Omens

Omen Roads

Good Omens
UK BBC2 & Amazon Prime Six Episodes
Directed by Douglas Mackinnon
Airdate: Amazon Prime 2019 and
BBC2 January 15th - February 19th 2020

Well this is a fun romp if ever I watched one.

I’m not that into Terry Pratchett but I quite like the work of his co-writer on the original source novel of Good Omens, Neil Gaiman (seriously folks... read The Sandman comics or, even better, his first Death mini series, The High Cost Of Living). As it turns out, Gaiman also wrote the script to this TV mini series, a final request from Terry Pratchett before he died after several people had tried to turn it into a movie... not least of whom was Terry Gilliam, who would have had Robin Williams and Johnny Depp in the two lead roles of the angel Aziraphale and the demon Crowley (yeah, that’s right, named after Aleister Crowley... I don’t think this is the first time that Mr. Gaiman has referenced Mr. C in his work). So, yeah, this thing has been adapted very well, from what I understand.

Even so, I might have given this a miss if it hadn’t been for the guy who sometimes sells me tickets at Enfield Town train station recommending this show to me. So special thanks to Lee... much appreciated.

Now the show opens less strongly than I’d expected after all the rave reviews on Twitter last year, with a sequence narrated, as is the entire six episodes, by the always watchable (or should that be listenable in this case?) actress Frances McDormand as the Voice of God. The problem for me at just the start of this was that the way the opening was put together made it sound like it was an episode of Douglas Adam’s excellent The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy and, if anyone was going to do that right it was certainly the BBC but, for a little while there, I was missing Peter Jones as ‘The Book’. However, after a little while, everything settles down and we are plummeted headlong into a fairly dense narrative involving switching the anti-Christ for a baby in an evil nunnery to hasten along the apocalypse eight or nine years later.

The narrative starts many centuries in the past and tells this tale of the human race hurtling towards an oblivion which all the angels and demons are anxiously awaiting so they can battle each other in some kind of Holy War. In this version we have Michael Sheen as Aziraphale and David Tennant as Crowley and, to be honest, it’s these two fine actors, surrounded by many more famous and fine actors, who make the brilliant words of the writers sing and hold the interest. Everybody is good in this but Sheen and Tennant are on fire as unlikely ‘friends’ posted on Earth for many hundreds of years to keep an eye on everything. It’s their relationship with each other that really keeps you watching as it soon becomes clear that neither of these two want their home on Earth ruined by some coming Apocalypse and they bungle their way, for the most part, into ultimately doing their bit... along with Adria Arjona as Anathema Device, Jack Whitehall as Newton Pulsifer, Michael McKean as Shadwell, Miranda Richardson as Madame Tracy and the anti-Christ himself, Sam Taylor Buck as Adam... trying to prevent the potential Holy War on their doorstep. Helped out  or hindered by numerous special guest stars who pop up now and again like Brian Cox, Benedict Cumberbatch, Josie Lawrence, Derek Jacobi and Bill Paterson... who are among a cast that give some amazing performances along the way.

I said the narrative was dense and that’s because it takes its time, focusing on little details and the backgrounds of various characters which are an absolute joy to watch. You might think this means that the audience won’t be able to see the wood for the trees but Gaiman’s script and the confident direction of Douglas Mackinnon allows you to see both... and lets you rub yourselves up close and personal on the bark and branches as you journey your way through six riveting episodes.

It’s not a predictable story for the most part either. I didn’t quite see what the ending would be (although I came close to figuring out the nature of the denouement, just not the long term consequences) and there are things which happen that keep the mind engaged as each story thread unravels.

All this and with a good score too by the great British composer David Arnold, who has a nice theme tune and a score which I’ll need to become better acquainted with once I give the generous double CD of the soundtrack from Silva Screen a spin. Heck, it even has a cover of the song A Nightingale Sings in Berkeley Square by pop music Goddess Tori Amos, who is a friend of Neil Gaiman and who ‘inspired’ the character of Delirium in The Sandman comics (aka, the character is loosely based on her).

The series is charming with likeable central characters and some clever things happening throughout. I especially liked the younger version of Shadwell working for Crowley in Soho in the 1960s and how he thinks the Crowley in the present day is that character’s son (the two lead protagonists obviously don’t age over the years but the people around them do). There are a fair few Doctor Who references hidden in the run too (as well as a fair few ex-Who actors and actresses), if you’re into that kind of reference spotting mindset.

Not much more to say other than, it’s very funny in places, very moving in others and also, bearing in mind this is a joint BBC production, has some fairly competent special effects thrown into the mix too. Not so much Good Omens but Great Omens, as far as I’m concerned and it even has a nicely thought out ending. Definitely one to take a look at even if, like me, you’re not really that into Pratchett. I might even give the book a go at some point, I think.

Ghosts of Christmas Past

Ghost Writers

Ghosts of Christmas Past

edited by Tim Martin

John Murray Press  

ISBN: 978-1473663466

Okay so... this is the third year I’ve sat down to read something specifically Christmassy at Christmas. A couple of years ago I read Mystery In White (reviewed here) and I enjoyed it so much I thought I’d do a Christmas novel every year. Last year I thought I’d switch to a horror anthology, Horror For Christmas (reviewed here) but I wasn’t all that enamoured of it, to tell the truth. So, I thought I’d give the good old horror tales another go and settled on a different collection of traditional (and some less traditional) ghost stories with a Christmas theme, Ghosts of Christmas Past.

My first warning about going down this route came in the editors preface which joyfully told me that... “Despite the title, this isn't entirely a book of Christmas ghost stories.” WTF? Why did I just pay out for a selection of Christmas ghost stories which, by admission of the publisher, doesn’t actually fit that description after all. Now, as it happens, the stories in question do all either take place at Christmas or, in some, are told to other characters at that particular time of year. So while I didn’t feel too short-changed by this... well, I guess this was a less than ideal situation.

Truth be told, it wouldn’t have bothered me too much as long as this selection was filled with suitably atmospheric tales of lurking, seasonal dread. As it happens, though, I rarely found any stories throughout the book that appealed to me or even challenged me in some way. Even some of the classic authors who are known for their tales of ghostly delights, like the first story here - The Story Of A Disappearance And An Appearance by the remarkable M. R. James - left me somewhat cold. To be fair, that one is fairly well written and has a nice atmosphere but just kinda throws everything away very quickly, it seemed to me (I also, possibly, didn’t understand the end, to be honest). 

This is followed by Jenn Ashworth’s tale Dinner For One which tries to do something different but it’s all telegraphed so badly right from the outset that it really just ends up covering old ground and isn’t that enjoyable when, after the first few paragraphs, you have figured out the ‘trick’ of the story. I actually am beginning to think the limitations of the short story format have something to do with this but I’ll come back to that thought in a future review, maybe. 

We then come to one of the better stories of the selection, The Shadow by E. Nesbit (known for such works as The Railway Children and The Phoenix And The Carpet). This, like a few others in the volume, carries on the tradition of somebody telling a ghost story to others as a framing device. I actually can’t remember what the heck this one was about (even though I only read it a couple of weeks ago) but I’ve noted down that it was a quite good one and... who am I to disagree with myself.

This Beautiful House by Louis De Bernieres is another story which treads a tried and tested formula with, really, not much to add to the proceedings. Any surprises are snuffed out within the first page or so. 

The Leaf Sweeper by Muriel Spark is an interesting piece about the founder of the fictional Society For The Abolition Of Christmas and the ghost of this man who haunts his previous life while he is still alive in an asylum. It’s an interesting curio but, like most of the tales in this volume, it’s not particularly atmospheric and I would say that it’s very interesting, rather than in any way chilling... if indeed, that was the brief to the editor of this collection.

Christmas Eve On A Haunted Hulk by Frank Cowper is a little nearer the mark in terms of a slow build atmosphere, as the narrator accidentally traps himself on a rotting, long abandoned vessel on a country river and is faced with the prospect of spending the night sheltering from the wind and rain in the dark. As the ghostly, audible events of a long since gone atrocity goes on around him, the writer skillfully creates an atmosphere of, if not dread exactly, the acknowledgement of fear of the unknown in a sceptical man. Like most here, though, the ending does not really match up to the build up to it.

The Step by E. F. Benson, best known for his Lucia books and the two subsequent Mapp And Lucia TV adaptations based on the last three novels in that series, is another nicely written, if inconsequential account of a business villain dogged by the sound of a step following him home at night. The end of this one is a little incongruous with what one might expect the limitations of the set up would be but it at least has a kind of ghastly, 'Hammer Horror' style shock ending which is something which a few more of the stories in this tome could have done with, truth be told.

Then we have The Vanishing House by Bernard Capes. While I would normally say well done to the writer for writing in a specific dialect (which unfortunately, in this case, left me slowly piecing together just what the characters were talking about at times), ultimately this tale seems less about being evocative of a certain atmosphere and more about... well, I’m not sure what, to be honest. I certainly had no idea what was going on by the end and I really didn’t care... the way the characters were expressing themselves just left me vaguely uninterested the entire way through. 

Someone In The Lift by L. P. Hartley is a bit more interesting but, alas, it’s another one which gives you the answer to the mystery at its heart from a very early point in the story and one is left wondering just when the heck the characters in the piece are going to catch up with what is really going on. Well written but hardly intriguing, I’m afraid.

Up next in the volume is The Visiting Star by Robert Aickman but, as soon as I was a sentence in to that tale I realised I had already read this one in last year’s Horror For Christmas collection so I skipped it as I don’t remember this one making too much of a good impression on me. 

Then we have the main reason why I expect many people purchased this collection...

A quick  and alternate reflection on the nature of Santa Claus called Nicholas Was by writer extraordinaire Neil Gaiman. This isn’t, I’m afraid to say, anything like a ghost story and, as the shortest piece here by a long chalk, spread out to seem like it's actually taking up two pages when it could easily take up a half a page if not for the amount of spacing put in it to pad it out. Originally a brief reflection that Gaiman put inside his Christmas cards one year, this is interesting but insubstantial and so not, in my humble opinion, worth the price of the book. If you want to see how many people are out there who feel they’ve been conned by this (bearing in mind Amazon lists Neil Gaiman as being the main author of the book) then you should take a look at the reviews of this collection on the aforementioned site. 

After that we get The Ghost Of The Blue Chamber by Jerome K. Jerome. This is quite a funny tale and that’s just what I would expect from the writer of Three Men In A Boat (To Say Nothing Of The Dog). It’s not in the least frightening in any way, shape or form but it’s certainly not supposed to be and it is, at least, somewhat entertaining. I also wasn't aware that a carol singer, in olden days, was called ‘a wait’ until I’d read this... so I learned something too. 

The Lady And The Fox by Kelly Link is the last tale in this collection and Tim Martin was right to save this for a finale as it’s easily the most engaging story of the lot. A powerful tale of love across the ages with hardly anything spelled out to the reader to bring a shot of reason to proceedings and an ending which haunts you with its lack of an explanation more than any of the ghosts summoned up in this tome. Not exactly scary but with a central character you can care about, this at least doesn’t leave you with a sour taste in your mouth as the final story. 

And that’s that. Ghosts Of Christmas Past is not what I was hoping for in a collection of Christmas ghost stories and so, combining this experience with last year’s, I think I’m going to try a mystery novel next year again, maybe. Unless anyone can come up with a fantastic Christmas themed book for me to read. If you can, please leave mention of it in the comments below.

How To Talk To Girls At Parties

Spiking The Punk

How To Talk To Girls At Parties
UK/USA 2017 Directed by John Cameron Mitchell
London Film Festival screening 7th October 2017

So here we go with another year of films at the London Film Festival and, I have to say, this year has got to be one of the best line ups of interesting films that I’ve seen at the LFF in quite some time. Certainly, since joining the BFI almost 30 years ago, I’ve not seen a Festival Programme filled with quite so many movies I either can’t afford to go and see or being shown at times too inconvenient for someone who relies on the overground railway to get them home at night. So I’ve had to miss out on some real interesting debuts like Let The Corpses Tan and I am just hoping I’ll somehow get to see some of the ones that got away in some kind of release or another (although, I suspect like most years, some of them won’t get any kind of commercial release with English subtitles). So my first film in this year’s programme was How To Talk To Girls At Parties and I was off to a good start because it’s a real corker.

How To Talk To Girls At Parties is based on an award winning short story by comic book writer extraordinaire (among other things) Neil Gaiman. I’ve admired Gaiman as someone who can weave words together in a meaningful way ever since reading his character Death from his much revered DC Vertigo comic, The Sandman. I’ve not read this short story but, looking at a quick synopsis of it on Wikipedia, I can see that the film takes the kernel of Gaiman’s source material and then expands on it in a, perhaps less subtle but certainly cinematic way.

The film revolves around Enn (played by Alex Sharpe) and his two school friends who are all into the punk scene. Which makes sense since this is set in deepest, darkest Croydon of 1977 and everybody is celebrating The Queen’s Silver Jubilee (ahh, I remember that street party well). The three go to a punk gig to try to hook up with Queen Boadicea, who is a kind of promoter on the punk scene and played, totally against type but totally brilliantly, by Nicole Kidman. When the boys get lost and go to the wrong 'after party', they instead crash a gathering of people who are all kitted out in latex costumes much like the ones you’d see in a Skin Two magazine or buy from Honour Clothing. They are all indulging in strange, fetishistic rituals... which makes perfect sense because, as it turns out, Enn and his mates have stumbled on a colony of aliens living among us. Things get strange but Enn meets a beautiful, young girl called Zan, played by Elle Fanning and... the two fall in love. However, Zan has only 48 hours to get as many experiences from Enn and his ‘punk scene’ before committing human suicide (kinda) and returning to the alien form in which she appears to roam the galaxy with her species. Which makes things complicated.

Everybody is brilliant in this and the film pitches some nicely observed comedy against some poignant and touching scenes as both Enn and Zan experience emotions and adventures in what could be their first and last two days together. The humour is mostly centred on the cultural differences between Enn and his mates and the race of aliens with Fanning and her species playing off the standard ‘fish out of water’ scenario as she mistakes various Earth customs and sayings while Enn and his mates mistake the aliens for ‘Californians’ and use this to explain away some of the, actually very alien, things they see.

The director uses different kinds of camera work for the movie including some montage sequences where the camera speed and stock is played with to make it both more gritty and ethereal at the same time but he also brings us some very crisp compositions and sharp, brightly lit colour palettes to offset that a lot of the way through. It’s almost like a meeting of two worlds in terms of the way different styles of shooting the thing are thrown together... which, of course, is exactly what the film is representing. So it’s a nice way of showing it.

I’m seeing that this hasn’t been getting very good reviews from previews in other countries and I have to wonder why that is because I found it an absolute joy to watch from start to finish. The only thing I can think of which might be off putting is that the film is... not only ‘so very British’ but it’s also capturing a time of living in Great Britain that is barely recognisable now. The punk scene in the 1970s was gritty, raw, loud and in your face and the director really manages to show this. Indeed, when the film started I had absolutely no sympathy or empathy for these three punk urchins blagging their way into a venue without paying but, very quickly as the film progressed, my heart started to melt and get into the journey of the movie with them and... well... it helps that the film is quite funny in places. The first kiss... or attempt at one... between Enn and Zan is... well, I don’t want to spoil it for you here but the audience responded to it with a lot of laughter. It was a pretty well received film, I can tell you, judging by the brilliant audience response it was getting here.

As the film continued on and transported me into a love story which isn’t a million miles away from Romeo And Juliet in tone, I realised that the lead actor looked a little bit like Neil Gaiman and, then I figured out why he was called Enn (presumably, the letter ‘N’ for Neil). Indeed, after a heart wrenching ending which, again, I am certainly not going to spoil for you here, there’s a wonderful epilogue where the story jumps something like 15 years and Enn is signing a novel based on his experiences at a bookshop reminiscent of the old Forbidden Planet signings you used to get in Denmark Street and St. Giles High Street in the 1980s (of course, Forbidden Planet still do signings regularly but the look and feel of this one, with issues of 2000AD and The Sandman on display in the window, seemed just like a part of my childhood recaptured... although the early 1990s setting might be a little late for the atmosphere being evoked here). Again, I’m not going to spoil the wonderful epilogue scene for you here but what this did, to me, is drum home how much the movie incarnation of the character was partially based on Neil Gaiman... or at least a fictional Neil Gaiman who maybe never existed like this in real life. Who can tell... well , yeah, alright, Neil Gaiman could tell but I doubt somehow he’s going to be reading this review and providing me with an answer to that one.

Anyway, that’s my first of this year’s London Film Festival movies and, I have to say, it was a thoroughly enjoyable one. If I had any one minor complaint about How To Talk To Girls At Parties it’s that the three ‘school chums’ looked way older than the ages they were supposedly playing but, that’s okay, they all did a really great job here and it was pretty easy to suspend disbelief on this stuff when the script and performances of everyone in this movie are so good. I would love to see this released over here at cinemas and would also love to be able to pick it up as a Blu Ray at some point so... you know... here’s hoping this one somehow manages to grab the success it certainly deserves. I, for one, haven’t got a bad thing to say about it.

Future Shock: The Story of 2000AD

Mills And Boom

Future Shock: The Story of 2000AD
UK 2014 (released December 2015)
Directed by Paul Goodwin
Metrodome DVD Region 2
When I heard there was a (relatively) new documentary focusing on the story of “the galaxy’s greatest comic” I got quite enthusiastic. I haven’t picked up an issue of 2000AD in about 14 years but, up until then, I had every single issue they published (and still have those boxes full of the first 1000 plus issues to this day).

I remember back in 1977, I was recovering from a fairly brutal car accident (long story and I’m not going to bother going into it here) and the first issue came out. It had a new feature on an important new movie I was just hearing about in those days. Something called Star Wars, which was due out in cinemas at the end of the year over here in the UK. However, this was not the main selling point to me or my dad. It wasn’t even the free Space Spinner (aka cheap frisbee) stuck to the front cover. We’d seen an advert on television, I think, for the comic which was basically a cartoon including some of the characters, referred to even then as ‘hyper heroes’ (presumably to avoid copyright issues with DC and Marvel) and among them was... the new Dan Dare.

I’d been hearing stories from my dad about how good Dan Dare in the Eagle comic was all my life (I was 9 years old) and so we both decided that this comic was something we should have. I read it first, loved it, and then passed it straight on to my dad to read... which was pretty much the way it was for the more than 20 years we were buying it... at first as a standing order from the local newsagents and, later, as a subscription direct from the publishers. I remember how cool the second issue was with its “biotronic man” stickers which you stuck on your arms and legs to show your machinery innards... it was one of the most painful free gifts to remove from young, hairy arms ever... even in the bath. We already had some cool strips presented to us from the comic’s host alien, The Mighty Tharg, such as Dan Dare, MACH 1, Invasion, Flesh and Harlem Heroes but, the second issue also debuted a comic book character fairly important to this day... Judge Dredd (which also crossed over into Harlem Heroes on occasion). It was all good and the cool Summer Special, out around the same time as the first couple of issues, was also pretty amazing.

I stuck with it for years but my absolute favourite strips all coincided at a period in the early to mid 1980s... Sam Slade - Robo Hunter, Ace Trucking and, the absolutely brilliant, stupendous literary masterpiece... The Ballad Of Halo Jones. It was a great time to be reading comics but the quality did dwindle by the time I gave it up, that’s for sure.

So, yeah, I was positively salivating to see what truths  and ‘behind-the-scenes’ stories to some of my favourite strips and certain famous incidents would be in Future Shock - The Story of 2000AD and... this documentary only half delivers as far as I’m concerned. Which I hate to say because there are some great talking head interviews in here with some of the great comics creators including Pat Mills, Grant Morrison, Brian Bolland, Neil Gaiman and even a quick nod from the last Dredd actor, Karl Urban.

Now the main problem is not the abundance of interview footage... far from it. There are some nice illustrations to split these up from time to time with comics either brought to life by panning around a multi-planed version of various panels (either done for real or digitally) and even some animated sections. These were quite cool although... I think there should have been more of them, to be honest.

No, my main problem is just the wealth of stuff not covered in this documentary. There were some key moments in the early history of 2000AD which I think weren’t covered here. Also, although it does at least have a few minutes on the comic’s predecessor Action (in many ways it could be seen as that, I think) and the subsequent banning of that comic by the British government, I think it could have done with a lot more exploration of the British comics scene before 2000AD to really bang home the context of how important it was, at the time, to the people reading it.

And then there were some pretty big incidents that I really would have liked to have seen covered with a little more knowledge of what was really going on that the public didn’t know about at the time.

For instance, when the second Judge Dredd multi part epic The Cursed Earth ran in the comic (if you count The Robot Wars as the first but not counting the Lunar City One stories as a multi-part tale), it got into a whole lot of trouble. Why? Well there were issues where you had Kentucky Fried Chicken's Colonel Sanders sadistically beating or killing other advertising slogan characters like Speedy the Alka Seltzer boy. There was the Jolly Green Giant, a famous frozen brand’s mascot character, who would yell “Ho! Ho! Ho!”, just like he did in the adverts at the time.... but then eat people in this particular incarnation. Or the infamous Burger Wars chapters... where rivals Ronald McDonald and Burger King would whip and kill their employees until they got it right etc. I remember a few weeks after the Jolly Green Giant stuff there was a small strip in the comic by way of a retraction, with Judge Dredd and character Spikes ‘Harvey’ Rotten eating the frozen food products and saying how good it was. I still have all these issues of course, although I haven’t read them in decades. They’ve never been allowed to be reprinted and trade paperbacks of The Cursed Earth have always been pretty light in content up until... as it happens... July 14th this year, when an uncensored reprint has finally been allowed to come out in a new hardback edition.

However, this whole incident was not covered in this documentary and it would have been nice to have known just what was going on behind the scenes at the time... how the many varied companies responded to these stories and also, how were the artists and writers allowed to get away with it by management in the first place. We loved it at the time but... I just don’t know how they had the gumption to even try to get cynical satire this dark published in a popular, weekly comic.

Another thing which seemed to go completely unmentioned in this documentary were the comic’s other related publications. For instance, they talk about, or show, characters like RoJaws and Hammerstein from RoBusters and Johnny Alpha from Strontium Dog but they actually originated in the comic StarLord. The comic was cancelled and folded into 2000AD which took on the name 2000AD and StarLord for a while. Similarly, sometime after the comic had reverted back to its lone 2000AD title, the newish comic Tornado also failed and then it became 2000AD and Tornado for a while. None of this stuff was mentioned even once in the documentary. Nor was their more mature sister publication, which I also used to love, called Crisis.

Various people in the interviews here were quick to point out how much they hated the alien editor of the comic, The Mighty Tharg but... most of the readers loved him and I would have liked to have heard more tales of how he came into being. Also, again, I would have liked them to say a few words even about the two companion comic’s hosts StarLord and Big E (Dave Gibbons in a ridiculous costume, as I recall) but there's nothing about them on here. Nor about any of those cool ‘free gifts’ the comic used to sometimes have in the early days... like the aforementioned Space Spinner, the Biotronic stickers and the Red Alert Survival Wallet! Would have been nice to have heard about this stuff, to be honest.

Then again, the documentary does give us some interesting stuff, like the ego clashes between Pat Mills, who comes across as very professional and easily ‘the man’ to be talking to in this film, and various other editors who worked on the comic later. It also charts the dip in quality, which I suspect is when I decided I’d finally had enough of the mediocrity which was going on under the name of 2000AD at a particular time, and how it’s been subsequently bought and rescued by a publishing company that understood how the comic worked and why it was so successful in the first place.

The highlight for me, in this documentary, is Neil Gaiman telling us why Alan Moore walked away from the comic and that, after the first three books of The Ballad Of Halo Jones, he had a load more books planned and how he’d once told Gaiman the story of where it was going, ending up with Halo as an old woman. Gaiman says there were tears in his eyes when he heard it and, remembering how powerful and influential to me that strip was, I still can't believe that Moore has never been offered gazillions of pounds to carry on with it.

One of the good things the documentary does do is highlight the poor working conditions, in terms of basic, decent rights for the various writers, artists etc. It also dovetails that into the time when the American comics basically poached all the best of the talent from British comics to work over there... with 2000AD being a primary source for top British talent. It talks about the big talent "defection" to the successful DC "adult brand", Vertigo Comics, and even talks to their most famous editor/nurturer of talent, Karen Berger. It spends a while on this subject and this is all fascinating stuff but, again, while I was watching all this, I was wondering why there wasn't less of this stuff and more about 2000AD itself... especially when there was so much essential stuff missing.

The purloined Tharg's Future Shocks short story that became the basis, unofficially, for director Richard Stanley's classic sci-fi movie Hardware is touched upon, especially since it really highlights, again, the poor working conditions the staff were having to suffer at the time. Of course, this leads in nicely to the obvious but perhaps often overlooked fact that 2000AD has been a major influence on all kinds of film, literature and even music in the intervening years since its inception. However, what it really doesn't touch upon too much is the amount of shameless rip-offs the writers and artists of 2000AD perpetrated themselves. Practically every time a new issue would arrive,  me and my father would read the comic and we would trade "references" we'd spotted in the issue and marvel at how these creator's were getting away with nicking it week after week. It's touched on very obliquely in a blink and you'll miss it sideways look at the reflection of the media at the time but when it comes down to mentioning things like Strontium Dog, pretty much, being a futuristic Spaghetti Western, for example, it just doesn't go there at all.

The only extras on the DVD are digital reprints of single episodes of some of the strips but the quality didn't seem that great to me and most of the double spread openings are badly split between two screens and, in the case of The Ballad Of Halo Jones, for example, doesn't retain the colours of those first two pages as they originally appeared as the colour centre spread of the issue... so not very good as a historical document either, I reckon.

All in all, this is not the best review of Future Shock: The Story of 2000AD, I know. I guess I could half recommend it to people who are totally unfamiliar with the comic but, really, it seems light on the more interesting chapters in the comic's history. Comic book  readers will no doubt find it at least, in some ways, interesting because a fair few good creators are included in the interview footage. For old school fans of the comic, however, I would say this may not be a film which covers what you would be wanting to see here. Still, at the moment it's the only documentary movie I know of that at least tries to cover this material so, not exactly a recommendation, maybe, but well done for giving it a bash, at least.

Doctor Who - Nightmare In Silver

High Cyber Diet

Doctor Who - Nightmare In Silver
Airdate: 11th May 2013. UK. BBC1

Warning: Yeah... minor spoilers, I guess.

You know, I really used to like the cybermen as a nipper, growing up with Jon Pertwee as The Doctor. That’s possibly because they were never on TV at that point, of course. Jon Pertwee didn’t met up with them until he officially came back to the role one last time in the anniversary story The Five Doctors. But I knew about them, of course. Because quite apart from Pertwee standing against one of them on the wraparound cover shoot for the Doctor Who tenth anniversary magazine (which I still have) all the kids my age, or any who were of any interest at any rate, would read the Target novelisations of the older stories and, as you may or may not know, the cybermen were pretty much running rampant through Patrick Troughton’s rein on the show, hot on the heels of the really sinister looking versions used in their first outing, the final William Hartnell story The Tenth Planet. So we all knew who they were and we all wanted to see them in action.

So it was pretty cool, actually, when Tom Baker’s incarnation of The Doctor met them in Revenge Of The Cybermen... and then they didn’t come back again for a while. Tom Baker never met them again but when Peter Davison came on board they returned in a big way in the story Earthshock, which truly brought the scariness of the cybermen back in a marching legion of terror... very sinister first episode if I recall and, pre-internet, nobody really had a clue they would be back until the big reveal at the end of the first episode. Not only that, but they killed off The Doctor’s companion Adric, who sacrificed himself to save the planet Earth (and who destroyed all the dinosaurs in the process if I remember correctly). This was a big event and I remember the end credits of that episode being silent (do I remember correctly?) and focussing on the decimated remains of Adric’s gold rimmed badge for mathematical excellence, which he’d used to take out one of the cybermen with... being that they could be killed by the introduction of gold into their system.

But after that, things started to get a bit silly.

The BBC, in much the same way as they have been behaving over the last 6 or 7 years with the show, didn’t really want to waste those new costumes... so the cybermen started coming back again just a little more frequently until, by the time we got up to Sylvester McCoy’s stint on the show, they really were nothing more special than “monster of the week” and were, for all intents and purposes... really boring.

When the show came back under the Russel T. Davies era, the programme had been off the airwaves long enough to once more generate big interest at the return of the cybermen and, although the new design was somewhat juvenile (with a big C across the front) there was enough drama in the story to make their welcome return a success. When they went up against the daleks at the end of David Tennant’s first season, all the fans were into it because, well, ever since the early days of their first appearances on the show in the 60s, people had been wondering who would win a fight between a dalek and a cyberman.

But then the rot set in again. Not only did the cybermen keep coming back repeatedly to the show, but they were still cursed with that blasted C on the front of their armour. Honestly, I’ll never know why the BBC don’t learn about why it’s not a good idea to keep recycling the same costumes in close proximity. The Doctor travels in time as well as space... it’s completely impractical he’d keep meeting the same model of cybermen in different times just because the BBC don’t want to pay out for a new costume design, or rebuild any of the, much cooler, older ones for that matter.

But never mind all that. Neil Gaiman, one of modern fantasy’s great writers (his spin off from his own The Sandman comics, Death: The High Cost Of Living is one of the greats in modern comic book fiction) and who had a very successful episode of the show last series with The Doctor’s Wife (reviewed here) was promising to make the cybermen scary again and, to boot, the BBC were upgrading the design a little. So there was maybe a glimmer of hope there after all.

So was this episode of the show really a Nightmare In Silver or was it more of a bad dream in platinum?

Well I’m sorry to have to report, since I do admire this writer greatly, that for me it really wasn’t a show which was in any way scary or made me feel threatened by the menace that the cybermen should be seen as. It was definitely one of the less interesting stories of the second half of “series seven” although, that being said, it was still a damn sight better than the majority of episodes in the first half.

But, it certainly wasn’t a tragedy either. It was still entertaining and there were definitely some nice things going on in there. When the cybermen started moving very fast, almost like they were teleporting, that was a good sign and I was hoping for more in that vein but, alas, this advantage wasn’t pressed against the army defending the planet and ultimately, uneasy moments were few and far between.

But, like I said, there were some nice things. The Doctor’s ongoing battle of wits with the cyber version of himself in his head was kinda cool and it was a way in to show us that there was a memory block in his head when it comes to new companion Clara. There was also a reference, with Cyber Planner version of himself calling himself Mr. Clever, to the phrase that Clara’s various “apparitions” keep repeating... Run You Clever Boy And Remember... the initials of which make up the word CYBARR... except I don’t believe that "almost had me conclusion" for a minute. Moffat knew we’d all figure that out last year so I’m just assuming the lameness of that particular anagram is dead wrong. I hope.

There were some particularly nice scenes with Clara’s personality really coming to the fore (I think she may be River or The Doctor or possibly Rani or The Master, by the way) and it was really good to see the chemistry between her and Matt Smith working quite well. Also, there was a blink and you’ll miss it alignment of hordes of cybermen who make up the shape of an inverted question mark, just like the inverted question mark that hangs around Clara’s neck... so that was kinda cool. As was the introduction of the new upgrade of the old cybermats... namely the cybermites.

Add to this a very nice turn by Warwick Davis as someone who turns out to be a quite important character and some excellent scoring by Murray Gold, once again using variations of the cyberman theme he composed for their first appearance against David Tennant, plus a few nice appearances of the Eleventh Doctor sub theme, and it made for an okay, entertaining, close but no cigar episode of the show, which is fine. That’s my opinion anyway and it’s hugely disappointing that I didn’t like an episode penned by Neil Gaiman all that much.

And, of course, next week we have the final episode of the current series, which everyone is hoping will be the big reveal. Not of The Doctor’s name, of course. Nobody wants to know that and, frankly, I really hope they don’t reveal it. But hopefully something will come to some kind of conclusion with the current show's dangling story threads. This might, as it happens, even be the last time we see either of Alex Kingston or Jenna Louise Coleman in the programme. I hope not but there’s always that chance. I know lots of people, myself included, are hoping that the return of The Great Intelligence will somehow bring The Doctor’s old foe The Yeti out of hybernation... but something tells me that may not happen, I’m afraid.

Oh well. I’ll be trying to make it through to next weeks episode then... keeping myself alive for the sake of a TV show is as good a way of carrying on as any other I would guess. Hopefully I’ll see some of you here after for a major autopsy... if all things go well.

And all who sail in her...

Doctor Who: The Doctor’s Wife

Airdate: May 14th 2011. UK. BBC1

Warning: Here be spoilers... so if you’re Steven Moffet, definitely don’t read anymore of this.

Well that was quite a bit better than a kick in the Krynoids!

This weeks episode was written by a stalwart of the fantasy genre, Neil Gaiman, possibly best known for his 75 issue comic series for DC/Vertigo... The Sandman. And best loved by me for the creation of one of my favourite comic-book characters Death (Oh come on! Who can’t resist a cheery young lady in black... even if she has come to take you to your final resting place?).

Now I’ll have to admit I was sceptical when I heard Gaiman was writing an episode of the good Doctor’s travels because, frankly, I’m not sure his writing necessarily translates well on the screen... he writes with a very deft touch and you need a director, actors and a whole bunch of other people to work some similarly subtle magic to bring his words and concepts to life without them falling flat and... well... um... falling flat. :-o

The past couple of weeks of the show have not done anything to reassure me that the production crew were able to match that kind of subtlety. I knew the principal actors could and so I wasn’t too concerned about them... but I was unsure about whether the tone and editing would be able to match what I expected to be an incredibly subtle script.

Well I’m more than happy to say that I this case I was proved dead wrong. Thank Rassilon’s teeth for that then. Phew. This is probably the most refreshing and watchable episode of Doctor Who I’ve seen since... hmmmm... maybe The Lodger. Oh well, hang on there that wasn’t all that long ago I’m sure I can do better than that. Scratches head... thinks a bit more... no The Lodger was about right. There were some definite hits as well as the molasses of misses last season and fair is fair.

So anyway... this episode is special because you get to see the TARDIS’ soul transplanted into a human shell and The Doctor is trapped with her in a junkyard on the edge of the universe while Amy and Rory are trapped in the shell of The Doctor’s TARDIS who is having deadly fun with them, running them around corridors and playing mind games. However, the real spirit of the TARDIS is housed in a rapidly failing humanoid host and it’s a race against time to somehow catch up with the old Type 40 shell... which has gone off gallivanting around our universe in search of other TARDIS' to feed from... and replace the soul of the TARDIS, rescue Amy and Rory from both the malevolent force inside the TARDIS and a rampant Ood (Ood have thought that we’d be seeing a villainous Ood again, ay?) before time leaves our heroes high and dry and dead. And dead is not much good I’m afraid... have TARDIS, will travel.

And that’s all I want to say about specific plot details this time around (but really, isn’t it more than enough).

I was a bit disappointed at the start of the episode as a distress beacon cube which came a knocking on the Doctor’s TARDIS door was, frankly, a terrible looking cheap effect and I thought that could have been done a lot better... maybe it was a little reference to the good old days of the BBC in the 80s (when the special effects seemed to get even more pedestrian than the not so brilliant effects work in the 60s and 70s) but once this little sequence was out of the way it was “all systems are go” for the special effects and the story they were there to support was a really nice addition to the Doctor Who episodes of the show that will probably be really affectionately remembered in years to come. Like Blink, The Girl In The Fireplace, The Mind Robber, Tomb of the Cybermen and The Talons of Weng-Chiang (to name a few of my favourites).

There are some very touching moments where The Doctor and the living personification of his TARDIS are conversing in the junkyard and it really adds a new spin on the old, almost used up idea of The Doctor stealing the TARDIS. The TARDIS apparently chose him and stole him, leaving herself unlocked so she could shanghai the willing timelord and see the universe. Nice concept... I like it. Some may say that this kind of revisionism smacks of "Greedo shooting first" but, what the heck! It was delivered with such sentiment and feeling that I was really sold on the concept. Well done Mr. Gaiman (or possibly Mr. Moffet, depending on whose idea that was)... that really worked out rather well.

And as an antidote to that, the mind games played on the TARDIS with an old, hateful and vengeful Rory and the writing on the TARDIS walls (which one can only presume was an homage to The Shining) was almost as chilling and foreboding as an episode of The Deadly Assassin. Well no, alright, not quite then... but as close as we’re probably going to get in this era of over-censored, dumbed down television.

So all in all I was completely bowled over this week. Really great episode. It’s a shorter review this week due to there being nothing much for me to grumble about I guess? That’s okay, less typing for me and now there’s nothing to do but go over to Hypnogoria’s and Flaysomewench’s blogs and read their latest Doctor Who reviews... because their insights are always different from mine and always house a little touch of genius. Check them out as soon as you can... they’re well worth a look.