I'm a complicated man

So here's what I did this evening

Pizza in the oven, beer in the fridge and Sons of Anarchy on the laptop.I'm such a lad.
— Tom Healey (@TomHealey88) March 30, 2013

and here's something I said this afternoon.

Hey everyone @okcomics are giving away Easter eggs! Mine's a pink Disney princess one!
— Tom Healey (@TomHealey88) March 30, 2013

What the Duck?!

My friend Andy sent me this link (don't click on the link or any of the others if you don't want to see an un-bloodied, apparently pain free duck impaled with a crossbow bolt) today about a duck being shot with a crossbow in Barnsley.  The duck was, if not fine, well enough to avoid being caught by the RSPCA.  Apparently this mallard is Rambo.  Anyway when I finished reading the article I noticed the related stories box at the bottom of the page.

So two more ducks have been shot with crossbows, in Lincolnshire and Derby.  I read these articles and found a similar story reported in Cornwall.  In total the BBC has reported six incidents of crossbow attacks on ducks, in Herefordshire and Leamington Spa in addition to those listed above.  The RSPCA reports an additional duck being crossbowed in Cheshire, I have no idea why the beeb failed to cover this story.  Eight ducks were shot and two were killed.  Ducks really are crossbow proof.

I'm not sure why I'm writing this, I guess mostly out of surprise at the number of duck crossbowings I've just discovered.  Who knew that all across the UK people are united by there shared love of using medieval weapons to spectacularly inconvenience mallards?  At least I hope that's the case, what if it's all one person?  What if it's one shadowy individual biding his time, spreading his crimes over years and hundreds of miles to hide his guilt, perhaps conducting some satanic ritual?  Why do I feel like I've only uncovered one dark corner of a massive web of water foul murder?

It's because I've watched too many serial killer movies, that's why.

Play the game, play the game, everybody play the gaaaammmmeee!

I like video games.  I wouldn't really call myself a gamer and I haven't bought one since 2011, because I'm a proper grown up with grown up things to do like sitting in my pants and watching repeats of Stargate SG1 on Pick TV. But as I say I like video games, I watch Zero Punctuation every week, subscribe to Rock Paper Shotgun's RSS feed and lose embarrassingly to my more gamery friends at Halo.  It's not beyond the realms of possibility that I could be convinced to part with money for a shiny entertainment fun disk.  Then I see something like this, or this and I think fuck the video games industry.

Do they really think so little of their customers to believe that this sort of stuff is what they want to buy?  (Obviously the answer to that question is no, as evidenced by Valve's frequently wonderful ad campaigns but it's much less fun being nuanced).  What sort of mindset thinks that people will want to pay extra for a statue that suggests they are a dangerous pervert?  Ed Gein should think that bust looked a bit tasteless.  I don't want anything to do with anyone who thinks associating their brand with horribly violent sexual imagery is the way to get my cash.  I can't believe that this needs saying but don't advertise your product with a serial killer's wank fantasy.

Deadbeats

Deadbeats is a graphic novel by Chad Fifer and Chris Lackey with art by INJ Culbard. I was familiar with the writers form their work on the HP Lovecraft Literary Podcast, an insightful and amusing examination of the great horror writers work that combines literary criticism, interesting triva and dumb jokes. I first encountered Culbard's artwork on the Brass Sun strip that ran in 2000ad last year and was impressed by his beautifully clean, European style cartooning.  Aside from his work for Tharg Culbard has adapted a series of Lovecraft stories into graphic novels published through British publisher Self Made Hero. Given this shared interest in the Lovecraftian it comes as no surprise that Deadbeats is a weird tale with a twenties setting.  However, the comic is more than a pastiche, the creative team have taken some of the core ideas of Lovecraft's work and created a story around them that could only have come from these three people.

Lovecraft's work focused on mood, atmosphere and concepts rather than plot or character and he told his stories through dense, beautifully purple prose, Deadbeats is a story centred around a strong core of characters who are constantly on the run with little time to pause for breath.  Long drawn out descriptive paragraphs are replaced with pact chase scenes and moments of slapstick. The story focuses on three jazz musicians on the run from the mob who run straight into Lovecraft country. The central characters are all well defined and most of the time likeable. They have distinct voices and feel like believable prohibition era people.

The comic contains perhaps the best use of music I have seen in the medium.  As comics are a silent medium the use of music can often feel awkward and take the reader out of the story.  Alan Moore in particular seems unable two resist derailing a masterpiece by having the characters burst into song. However the authors of Deadbeats succeed not by recreating a song lyrically but by using the medium of comics to represent the feeling of different pieces of music in a immediately recognisable way. 

Deadbeats' greatest success is in recreating the most enjoyable aspect of the author's podcast, its sense of humour.  The book never quite becomes a farce or a parody as the various supernatural threats are presented seriously and remain scary but the authors allow plenty of moments of humour.  This is aided by the art which manages to combine some exaggerated facial expressions and almost farcical schemes with the moody terror of the entities menacing our heroes.  The story feels like it could easily exist within the Lovecraft cannon, you believe the Dunwich Horror could be happening a few valleys over from our heroes' adventure. In the same way that Scrubs, House and Bodies are all successful hospital stories.

Deadbeats is an action packed, funny and scary romp right through Lovecraft country and its well worth reading. The comic is available world wide from the book depository or from retail sites such as OK Comics and Travelling Man in the UK (I'm certain you can find it in other places as well).

RIP Gerry Anderson

Gerry Anderson died today and that's a right shame.  I haven't given the man or his work much thought in years, I think I might have watched a few episodes of the CGI Captain Scarlet a few years back but that's about it. However my Twitter feed's been full of tributes to the man and as I've watched the opening credits to some of his shows and thought about the likes of Stingray, Thunderbirds and even Space Precinct I've started to realise just how into Superanimation I was as a kid.  I had the toy's and the comics, my mum made me a Virgil Tracey dressing up outfit and I once had a Thunderbird 2 birthday cake.  I didn't just build the Blue Peter Tracey Island, I built it twice.  Thinking about it now I realise that Gerry Anderson's work was probably the first thing I properly geeked out over as a kid, setting me on the path to become the endearingly pathetic man child I am today.  

I've posted some videos of the opening credits of his various shows and I think they pretty perfectly sum up the appeal of his work.  Everything Anderson created was bold and exciting and unique.  His work featured big Sci-Fi ideas in bold, optimistic pop art colours.  He created worlds with square jawed heroes, evil villains and amazing machines, vast industrial installations built to launch rockets or hide underground from the Aquaphibians.  I loved how methodically these creations were filmed, so many shows would skip over the launch of a spaceship or have the crew embark a vehicle between scenes, Thunderbirds and Stingray and everything else revelled in the Heath Robinson, domino track like qualities of their creations and as a child I couldn't think of anything more exciting, Britain would probably have a lot fewer engineers without Anderson's work.

Gerry Anderson created some incredibly loved, utterly unique television, distilling the 60's adventure into something timeless, probably his greatest achievement was creating puppets that weren't utterly terrifying,  he'll be missed.

Derailed

Hello all, apologies for the unexpected hiatus, this was caused by having an excessive amount of things to do and people to see for the past few weeks.  I know you've all missed out on my poorly punctuated onanistic ramblings but you should be pleased to hear that I'm in the process of alienating all of my friends and family so I should have a lot more time to sit alone and write.  

Whilst I was out and about not writing I had one of the weirdest train journeys of my life.  It was a Friday night and I was travelling to see my girlfriend on the 17:15 train from Leeds.  The train was as packed as a cattle truck and I found myself crammed into the luggage compartment behind the driver's cabin with about a dozen other commuters.  About fifteen minutes into the journey the train pulled to a halt, I assumed we were just pulling into a station but when I looked out of the window all I could see was a lonely patch of woodland that surrounded the train tracks on all sides.  Then the cabin door opened and the driver emerged.  He looked sheepish and confused as he said "I'm very sorry but I think we're lost."  

Until then I didn't think trains could get lost, I assumed they just followed the rails.  Now I think about it I realise one of the junctions on the tracks must have been set wrong or maybe there was something the matter with "the points" but on that evening, as I watched a confused train drivers climb onto the tracks and glance around frantically, trying to work out where he'd driven to all I could think was "Oh great, we've been whisked away to the world of the bloody faeries."  I had visions of my girlfriend waiting at the plat form for hours before asking a passer by (probably Rod Sterling or Vincent Price) when the 17:15 from Leeds arrived only to be told "there's no 17:15 from Leeds my dear, not since that crash where everyone died 10 years ago tonight!" Fortunately I don't live in a predictable urban legend so rather than never being seen again I just had to put up with a ten minute delay, but I quite like the idea of a phantom train that leaves it's passengers stranded somewhere unnatural, I might write something inspired by that journey one day if I can think of an approach that isn't a massive cliché.

The novel currently stands at 35,488 words or 47.3% of my target, although I'm a lot further than half way through the plot as I'm currently ripping what's left of my hair out trying to structure the ending.  My original plan was to have a complete draft done by mid April, but I'm probably going to have to move that goal post.  Now my plan is to finish the skeleton of the story (probably about 45,000-50,000 words) by the 19th of April and flesh this out into a full, functioning first draft by the end of May.  I'm really excited by what I'm writing at the moment as the book's various plots and sub plots are pulling together and shit's blowing up all over the place.  Come back next week to see if I hit 40,000 words.

Novel Update 05/03/2012

Greetings puny mortals.  I've suffered from a minor bit of writer's block this week; nothing major, but annoying none the less. Man Writer' Block perhaps.  I spent most of the first half of the week trying to get into a scene which is going to be fairly pivotal to the last third of the book and repeatedly changed my mind over how to approach it.  I eventually cracked it on Saturday night after a few pints of inspiration, it's not perfect and definitely needs a good proof reading/rewriting but it's there for now and I've found the subsequent scenes a lot easier to write.  Whilst failing at novel writing I managed to come up with a few pieces for the blog about creator owned comics and the gender politics of Earth's Mightiest Bums.  I also passed my driving theory test, take that crippling sense of inadequacy!

The current word count is 30,048 of 75,000 or 40.1% as I mentioned in the last novel update I've left quite a few gaps so I'm starting to see the end of the plot so I'm quite excited to be approaching the climax.  Come back next Monday to see if I hit 35,000.