Comic Cast First Year Birthday....Twisted Pepper, Friday July 17th

See these are the kind of conversations I enjoy in rural

Q: What are you doing at the weekend?

A; Ah, I'm going down to Dublin for a birthday party.

Q: Whose is it?

A: Well it's more of a what

Q: What?

A: It's like a birthday party for a podcast about comics and it's one year old.

Q: Is that one of the Ballinode Podcasts? lovely wee baby it is....

but anyway it's the first year party of Liam Geraghty and Craig O'Connor's great Comic Cast . I remember finally meeting the great Bob Byrne at the Birmingham Comic Show and having the conversation about growing up in Ireland and being a comic fan and all the comic-relating things you have in common even if you haven't met. Like the hot geeky girl that worked in Forbidden Planet etc. So listening to the lads is like an online version of that style of conversation

which goes from hilarious to suprisingly touching in places. Official blurb here:

The Comic Cast is an Irish based show about comic books - from the heroes of DC & Marvel to the anti-heroes of Fantagraphics and Drawn & Quarterly and beyond. Hosted by Craig O'Connor and Liam Geraghty, the show comes out fortnightly alternating between comics news and discussion and

interviews with mainly Irish comic creators, illustrators and animators.

They have also done a great job in connecting the worlds of comics, animation and graphic design in Ireland. Anyway, there first birthday is at the Twisted Pepper on Friday 17th of July

See in my day, comic geeks weren't allowed to hang out with top lady celebrities, but with a geek in the White House....yes we can.

Samatha Mumba rocks, at least I know who she is, had to look up Glenda Gilson as I've been England for 5 years and it takes a while to catch up on nonentities. Looking forward to it.

News from the Blogroll

Something Awful's PhotoShop Phriday: 'recreate famous movie posters in the classy tradition of grindhouse cinema' is a doozy!

Howdy, have upated the auld blog, so this could be called The Life and Times of Jimmny Homunculus Version 2.0 whenever I figure out how to make some demented banner, it will probably be a representation of me cranking onto an action figure. In deep dissertation marking mode so I have to curtail my rants until tomorrow these be three:
1. Why Grindhouse can go fuck itself
2. Why I have the total horn for Battlestar Galactica
3. Why Spider-Man 3 makes the same kind of sense as Superman Returns.

In the meantime here's some hot news from the blogroll:

Bob Byrne's just got an official date for his 2000 AD appearance: Prog 1536! Cover here.

Karl Whitney recently interviewed Evan Dando, until the singer hung up in a strop like, dare I say it, Evan Dildo. At least young Karly didn't start off the interview by going: 'We'd like to know a little bit about you for our files'...

Adam Buxton has a very funny and informative account of being on Have I Got News For You, hosted by Bill Bailey and with Armando Iannucci should be a great episode:

The night before the taping my Dad, without a trace of malice said to me, “Have I Got News For You is exactly the kind of programme on which you are thoroughly ill suited to appear. It’s full of people being witty and telling jokes and that’s not what you’re good at all.” My Ma, who was all excited about me appearing on proper telly, has remained conspicuously silent since the show went out so she perhaps agreed with that assessment.

hey ho, back to typing phrases like 'overreliance on online sources' and 'conversational tone unsuitable for an academic work' over and over again until my eyes fall out.

Big Bobbity Bob Bryne news

Bob Bryne dons his patented nodule hat to bestow clamnuggety goodness on the world

I have been meaning for ages* to put a big shout put to young Bob Bryne of Clamnuts who is soon to join the proud ranks of Irish contributors to 2000 AD. He is slated to have his own slot of 6-page silent stories. I think this pretty unprecedented for an artist writer to have a whole strand ofone-shot stories. It's called Bob Bryne's Twisted Tales:

There's a sneaky peak available here.

Bob had six pages of Mr. Amperduke published recently in Judge Dredd the Megazine. Check out a great early attempt at getting into the galaxy's greatest comic: Graylin. Oh and there's a new issue of the Shiznit out so if you're in Ireland find it, if not it's in a PDF file here. It's got lots of living in Dublin hatings, which I remember so well. Especially pertinent is the character "Gary Hyland...He's Just Back from Thailand". Whereas Irish parents would be loathe to see their little darlins acting like drunken bums for a two years if they stayed in Ireland, they seem to think it's a great idea for their offspring to do it on the other side of the world. Then these kids come home and either tell you how cheap everything is over there or start every sentence with 'when I was in Thailand' . See Bob's rants can be contagious...check it out.




*Explanation for blog absense: 70% work, 10% watching Battlestar Galactica in bed on my laptop and blubbing when the old Vipers turn up, 10% Star Wars Battlefront II, 10% cold-deflecting hot whiskeys.

Small Victories, sometimes all you have, you know...

If you're a Guardian reader (who has no sense of the contemporary state of cartoons) , you'll probably have seen these weird three panel cartoons and thought "what hell this...no be Doonesbury...is actually funn eee", if you've got any sense you know that Nicholas Gurewitch's Perry Bible Fellowship is one of the best three-panel cartoons to feature in the British mainstream press in (my) living memory, see below I am old. Jimmny H homie Bobby Clamnuts did a great interview with him. (ps this is Bob's archive site so no pics are there, his new site his here.)

Anyway I was in my room most of the day writing, then, when I left my room I saw the bizarre sight of my housemate's boyfriend and two of his friends, huddled round the back page of today's G2 in confusion, let me explain: two of these guys have PhDs in English lit and one is a published novelist finishing a PhD in Creative Writing. I walk past and they go 'can you explain this?' and I go, 'he's a guy trying to get off with her and she thinks he understands her and is about put out until his york notes pop out of his pocket and turns out he's shallow, and he trying to say it was only supplementing his knowledge' etc. I was like, read some comics you fecking lit mooks, you live in a visual culture...

This summer....a hero will rise....

and he'll be made of lego!!

Man, I've made no secret of how much I love Bob Bryne of Clamnuts' work (this is still my favorite pic) . I think it's partly becuase of being from rural Ireland. When you find other Irish comic fans, we seem to have very similar comic book experiences growing up as fans. Huge amouts of VAT, making British and American comics an almost magical commodity- 2000AD, The Beano, The Dandy being the usual comic fans' fare, Cheeky, Whizzer and Chips, Deadline etc seeming extremly exotic. The copies of Eerie, Creepy and Vampirella used as bassast in ships and sold for a quid a go by a guy in a news stand on O'Connell Street, Alchemy's Head, Freakout! where I bought crazy undergound comics, the flea market behind Stephen's Green where I found loads of Robert Crumb's Weirdo for 50p a pop!. I distinctly remember the year Judge Dredd and Batman Forever came out and Forbidden Planet on Dawson Street (back then) was thrashed by fly-by-night fanboys 'coz de saw de film'.

Anyway all this maudlin memory muck is just an excuse to put up a great trailer for yon Bryne's opus Mister Amperduke, description here, up above. It looks fucking great.