There’s never been another writer anything like Oates, and although she is clearly immensely admired and respected, I don’t think she is as treasured as she should be. She is – no contest – the most prolific serious literary w[…]

I adored the National Theatre Of Brent’s laughably overambitious productions, with Jim Broadbent’s Wallace playing stooge to Patrick Barlow’s pompous twit Desmond Olivier Dingle, as the two of them tried to stage things a touch too […]

Since it’s petty irritation month over on Blog Seven, I’ll mention here some of the stupidities that annoy me from the wrestling commentator Jim Ross, known as JR. He is generally regarded as the best commentator (Mick Foley is very good […]

I did a small item on this series when it started. I’m not sure how much it’s my state of mind and how much it’s the creative team of Kazuo Koike and Goseki Kojima finding their range, but volume 6 struck me as much the best yet, an[…]

The last year has been an odd one for me in gig terms – before last night, the youngest named acts I had seen were Ann Peebles and Iggy, both 58. Ike Turner, Billy Lee Riley, Syl Johnson, Cecil Taylor, Ornette Coleman, Anthony Braxton – a[…]

I don’t read trad SF often these days, but was interested to notice in Farthest Star, by Fred Pohl & Jack Williamson (from 1975, though spiritually of an earlier age), some differences similar to ones that are much talked about in comic bo[…]

DC have at last started their own equivalent of Marvel’s wonderful Essentials – fat and cheap B&W reprints of classic material. The first two (the other is Green Lantern) are at an extra-bargain price (£6.50 where I get my comics), […]

I’m a big believer in reading the classics – not to educate or better myself or anything like that, but because there is often a good reason for their status, and I’ve enjoyed many of them, found them hugely rewarding.
But there are[…]

On a documentary about space travel on the Discovery channel today: “The concept of a warp drive is like a moving walkway in the airport – you compress space-time in front of you, and expand it behind you.”
Yes, exactly like a movin[…]

One of the persistent awkward issues for writers of superhero comics is getting their top villains out of jail and back into the storylines. Many treat it as if there is no problem, and the villains have just escaped and that’s all there is to […]